Corruption Movie 1933

[Karoline]

TimButler is elected Mayor of a city known for corruption, unfortunately, he is elected by those who are corrupt. Butler is set up and removed from office, to only be convicted of killing Regan, a major member of the political machine. Butler is helped by his loyal assistant, Ellen and is eventually exonerated.

Corruption occurs when individuals criminally leverage their positions of power for financial gain. A new study by a team from the University of California, Davis, looks at how corruption varied by position of power and within criminal contexts by measuring the actions of corrupt players in Chicago before and during Prohibition. The players included cops and politicians.

The researchers found that before Prohibition, more police were involved in organized crime than politicians, but the small group of politicians who were involved were more deeply embedded. During Prohibition, as the content, structure and profitability of corruption changed, members of law enforcement engaging in crime decreased in proportion, dropping from 14 percent to 2.6 percent.

They also became less embedded in organized crime and their positions were more randomly distributed. In contrast, politicians maintained their proportion at 5 percent in the organized crime network and also remained deeply embedded.

Humble Origins

Fulgencio Batista Zaldvar was born in Cuba's Oriente province on January 16, 1901, in Banes, only miles away from the Castro family plantation, Las Manacas. A mulatto of humble origins, he joined the army as a private, and in 1932 he became a military tribunal stenographer with the rank of sergeant.

Strong Man

The villain of pre-Castro Cuba, Batista began his political career as a hero. As a young sergeant in 1933, he led non-commissioned officers in a rebellion against dictator Gerardo Machado in alliance with students and labor leaders. Later, he conspired with the U.S. ambassador, Sumner Welles, to force the resignation of provisional president Ramn Grau San Martn. By then a colonel, Batista became the strongman behind a succession of puppet presidents until he was elected president himself in 1940.

Coalition Builder

Under Batista's rule a new constitution was drafted which was, by all standards, a progressive document. It called for government intervention in the economy and provided a social safety net. In the late 1930s Batista legalized the Cuban Communist Party (P.S.P.). In 1940, taking advantage of the P.S.P.'s ability to keep labor in check, he brought the party into his government.

Retiree

In 1944 Batista, respecting the electorate's choice of the opposition coalition, stepped aside and the same man he had deposed in 1933, Ramn Grau, became president. Batista left Cuba to live in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Power Grabber

For the next eight years, Cuba's Partido Autntico presided over corruption and irresponsibility in government. Corruption had been widespread since 1902, but the public was shocked that the "pure" revolutionaries of 1933 -- Grau, then Carlos Prio -- participated in it. But democracy survived. As new elections approached in 1952, Batista saw an opportunity to return to government, running for the presidency, alongside the Autnticos and the Ortodoxos, the party to which Fidel Castro belonged. As election day approached, Batista was a distant third. Then, on March 10, 1952, he seized the government in a coup d'etat -- taking by force what Cuban voters were about to deny him.

Status Seeker

Batista's return to power did not herald a return to progressivism. He became obsessed with gaining the acceptance of Cuba's upper classes, who had denied him membership into their exclusive social clubs. Increasingly, his energies were devoted to amassing an even greater fortune. Batista opened Havana to large scale gambling, announcing that his government would match, dollar for dollar, any hotel investment over $1 million, which would include a casino license. American mobster Meyer Lansky placed himself at the center of Cuba's gambling operation. At the same time, Batista sponsored massive construction projects -- the Havana-Varadero highway, the Rancho Boyeros airport, train lines, an underwater tunnel.

Brutal and Unpopular

As he delayed plans to step down from office, Batista faced growing opposition, and eventually, a popular challenge. In the wake of Fidel Castro's Moncada assault, in 1953, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and increasingly relied on police tactics in an attempt to frighten the population through open displays of brutality. Though he made some political concessions between 1954 and 1956 -- lifting press censorship, releasing political prisoners (including Fidel Castro and his brother Raul), allowing exiles to return -- his unpopularity continued to grow.

Instability

As popular unrest in Cuba intensified, Batista's police proved adept at torturing and killing young men in the cities. But his army proved singularly inept against Fidel Castro's rebels, who were based in the mountains.

Fighting Guerrillas

Batista had Castro after Moncada, and let him get away with his life. He had him prisoner at Isle of Pines and released him in a general amnesty. He could have destroyed him after the disaster of the rebels' Granmalanding, and let him get away. "Batista committed a huge strategic blunder," when the rebels returned, in the judgment of writer Norberto Fuentes. "You push landings back to sea. But Batista pushes Fidel Castro into the Sierra Maestra with the words 'in the Sierras no one survives.'" A more indicting observation is that of author Carlos Alberto Montaner: "Batista does not finish Fidel out of greed... His is a government of thieves. To have this small guerrilla band in the mountains is to his advantage, so that he can order special defense expenditures that they can steal." By spring 1958 when Batista sent 10,000 soldiers against the rebel army, Castro was too deeply entrenched and Batista's army too rotten from within for the offensive to succeed.

U.S. Rejection

Faced with Batista's military ineptness and growing unpopularity, the United States began to seek an alternative to Batista and to Fidel Castro. But Batista was determined to hold on. On December 11, 1958, U.S. ambassador Earl Smith visited Batista at his lavish hacienda, Kuquines. There he informed Batista the United States could no longer support his regime. Batista asked if he could go to Daytona Beach, where he had a house. The ambassador said no, and suggested instead that he seek exile in Spain.

Flight

On New Year's Eve 1958, Fulgencio Batista left Cuba before the break of dawn, with one hundred and eighty of his closest associates, having amassed a fortune of as much as to $300 million. Batista lived the rest of his life in splendor in Spain and in Portugal. He died on August 6, 1973 in Marbella, Spain, two days before a team of assassins from Castro's Cuba could carry out a plan to kill him.

When Black neighborhoods across America erupted in violence in the summer of 1967, President Johnson appointed a commission to find the cause for the unrest. Their findings offered an unvarnished assessment of American race relations.

Cuando una ola de violencia se apoder de barrios negros por todo Estados Unidos en el verano de 1967, el presidente Johnson nombr una comisin para encontrar la causa de los disturbios. Sus hallazgos ofrecieron una evaluacin honesta de las relaciones raciales estadounidenses.

In the late 1970s, residents of Love Canal in Niagara Falls, NY discovered their neighborhood had been built on a former chemical waste dump. Housewives activated to create a grassroots movement that galvanized the landmark Superfund Bill.

In Newfoundland's Era of Corruption: Responsible Government 1855-1933 Jack Fitzgerald delves deep into the political records of the Responsible Government era in Newfoundland to reveal the widespread corruption and incompetence of Newfoundland politicians. In just forty-five years, Self-Government was handled so irresponsibly England considered taking it away. In the decades that followed things deteriorated even more. A sad commentary detailing this entire era is the only one Prime Minister Sir Robert Bond preserved in his private papers. This was to assure future historians would have no reason to question his integrity. It was a banner day in Newfoundland history in 1949 when that whole sorry era was laid to rest.

Jack Fitzgerald was born and educated in St. John's, Newfoundland. During his career he has been a journalist, a feature writer and political columnist with the St. John's Daily News; a reporter and public affairs writer with CJON and VOCM News Services; editor of the Newfoundland Herald and the Newfoundland Chronicle. During the last years of the Smallwood administration he was assistant director of Public Relations with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador. He has also worked as Assistance Officer with the Department of Social Services. Jack Fitzgerald also hosted a regular radio program featuring off-beat Newfoundland stories on radio station VOFM.

Began early on. 1923 Hitler sent his stormtroopers to loot a Jewish bank to get funds. Later on, until 1933, he discouraged such actions. But in 1933 they were given free rein. Massive looting of trade union premises on 2 May 1933, when furniture, utensils, even beds taken away. Many other incidents. Attacks on Jewish synagogues and the destruction of 7,500 Jewish shops and the trashing of many thousands of Jewish flats and houses in the so-called Reichskristallnacht on 9-10 November 1938 accompanied by the theft or removal of many personal possessions and valuables of the owners. In the days following the Anschluss in March 1938, Austrian Nazis broke into Jewish homes, threw out inhabitants, and looted the contents; Jews were stopped on the streets, and robbed of the fur coats, jewellery and wallets.

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