I wouldn’t call “ex-president of the union being 15th person charged in conspiracy embezzlement” a low grade corruption: if that’s low grade, what would high grade corruption look like?
I'd say the PPP loans offered to large corporations for "Covid relief" are high-grade corruption due to the sums involved, the explicit removal of traditional oversight processes and funneling it through the US banking system even though the banks were only responsible for collating paperwork and not providing any sort of risk-assessment or capital for the loans themselves.
The PPP loans were meant to go to those corporations. Congress wanted to incentivize Shake Shack to not lay off their employees. It wasn't their own idea.
I know more than a few people who received large PPP loans (>$6M) and they had no legitimate need for them. They just filled out the applications and got the money just because they could. Knowing that, I'm sure there are much more egregious examples.
Perhaps. There's lots of corruption in the world. Consistent and unrelenting corruption of American Unions contributed significantly to their downfall, whether or not other forms of corruption exist.
One of my first jobs was working part-time in a grocery store: collecting shopping carts, "clean up in aisle 7", stocking shelves, etc. I was 16 and forced to pay dues to a union. The dues were deducted from my minimum-wage paycheck. I had NO opt-out option. I worked maybe 10 hours per week? I was a high school student. I got ZERO benefit by paying union dues. This extortion was corruption in itself, nevermind the executive-level corruption that makes headlines every few years.
Regardless of merits of your PPP loans as corruption argument, what I’m more interested in is what “high grade” corruption would look like in context of a trade union. Is an organization like UAW, of half a million members, and $200M of annual revenue capable of “high grade” corruption? What does it look like, if indicting 15 members including ex president ain’t it?
