Government corruption has become rampant:

• Senior SEC employees spent up to 8 hours a day surfing porn sites instead of cracking down on financial crimes

• Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers watch porn instead of cracking down on unsafe conditions at nuclear plants

• An EPA employee who downloaded 7,000 porn files, then spent 2-6 hours each workday watching porn. He’s been doing it for years … but the EPA never fired him. Another EPA employee harassed 16 women co-workers … and then was promoted to a higher-paying job with more responsibility, where he harassed more women

• NSA spies pass around homemade sexual videos and pictures they’ve collected from spying on the American people

• NSA employees have also been caught using their mass surveillance powers to spy on love interests, such as girlfriends, obsessions or former wives … and to eavesdrop on American soldiers’ intimate conversations with their wives back home. And see this (“routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted” … “‘Hey, check this out … there’s good phone sex’”)
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When the state Department of Environmental Conservation has a filing cabinet full of records, who owns them?

When a state Assembly member uses his or her state-provided email, who owns the inbox and the sent items?

When the state Department of Transportation maintains an electronic database, who owns the data?

The answer is a no-brainer: We own the information. The taxpayers.

Elected state officials simply are visitors in Albany until they lose an election, quit, die or head to prison for corruption. The state bureaucrats who show up to work in Albany and elsewhere every day are our employees, no one else’s. And when they retire, it is us, those who pay taxes, who fund their highly lucrative pensions.

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Nearly a year ago, crusading federal prosecutor Preet Bharara mocked Albany’s culture of corruption, heaping extra scorn on the deals hatched in secrecy by three men in a room. Now two of them are on their way to prison and the third, Gov. Cuomo, reportedly remains a potential target of a separate probe.

The convictions of Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos mark a historic development in Bharara’s years-long campaign to drain the swamp. Silver, a Democrat, was the boss of the Assembly, while Skelos, a Republican, ruled the Senate.

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WikiLeaks has published 30 hours of secret tapes and transcripts at the heart of the AbilityOne/SourceAmerica scandal.

Thirteen Presidential Appointees (ten Obama, three Bush) are embroiled in a multi-billion dollar corruption scandal being probed by the US Department of Justice and four Inspector Generals.

The appointees oversaw the federal government’s $3 billion a year “AbilityOne” program which was meant to pay for the employment of more than 50,000 disabled people — the largest such program in the United States.

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Sheldon Silver, for decades one of the most powerful politicians in New York state, was convicted Monday of honest-services fraud, extortion and money laundering in a trial that is likely to reshape the business of Albany and embolden prosecutors with an appetite for public-corruption cases aimed at the Capitol.

The Democratic speaker of the New York state Assembly for more than 20 years, Mr. Silver was found guilty by a 12-person federal jury in Manhattan of four counts of honest-services fraud, two counts of extortion, and one count of money laundering.

His conviction triggers his automatic expulsion from the Legislature, to which he was first elected in 1976.

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Two of the most powerful men in New York state government are on trial for corruption at the same time. Voter turnout is lower than it’s been in decades. And polls show the public is as distrustful as it is apathetic.

Yet it’s business as usual in Albany, where top lawmakers shrug off questions about ethics and campaign finance reform while a crisis of corruption and confidence shakes one of America’s most powerful and important capitols.

“No one cares. No one votes. Everyone thinks everyone in government stinks,” said Assemblyman Todd Kaminsky, a Long Island Democrat and former corruption prosecutor. “We are living the worst-case scenario.”

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For the second time in a month, one of New York State’s biggest political figures is going on trial in a case brought by a federal prosecutor crusading against corrupt elected officials.

Jury selection begins Monday in Manhattan federal court in the extortion and bribery trial of former Senate leader Dean Skelos and his son, Adam.

Dean Skelos, 67, was the state’s most powerful Republican before his May arrest on charges that he abused his position to make hundreds of thousands of dollars for his 33-year-old son. He stepped down from his leadership post but retained his Senate seat.

The arrests came several months after the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Preet Bharara, brought corruption charges against one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. Silver, who quit his leadership post after his arrest, is accused of earning $5 million through extortion and bribery. His trial began two weeks ago.

All three men insist they will be vindicated at trial and are presenting a vigorous defense.

“This is a prosecution that should never have been brought in the first place,” Dean Skelos told reporters after a court hearing Friday.

The Skelos trial is expected to showcase a facet of politics that is more bare knuckles than the evidence that has surfaced in the Silver trial, where jurors are being told that the longtime politician disguised bribes as legal fees.

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New York has won the title of the most politically corrupt state in the U.S., setting a national record for the number of lawmakers kicked out or chased out of office since 2012, according to a new study released this week.

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The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, has rated Nevada as one of the worst states in “laws and systems … to deter corruption.”

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