American people CAN be fooled. Power seems to very often corrupt pols and business. Sad reality of life.
Is corruption inevitable at every leadership level in every country. Helmut Kohl dies at 86, and I thought he was an excellent German leader, but in the end he admitted in his later years that he was corrupt.
"It Only Seems That Political Corruption Is Rampant"
By MICHAEL WINESJAN. 25, 2014
"Political malfeasance grabs headlines, and few public failings are as colorful as a House legislator who stores $90,000 in marked bills in his basement freezer (William J. Jefferson, Democrat of Louisiana, convicted of bribery, racketeering and money laundering in 2009) or one who boasts to an F.B.I. undercover agent, “I’ve got larceny in my heart” (John W. Jenrette Jr., Democrat of South Carolina, convicted of accepting bribes in the Abscam sting; Mr. Jenrette was later found guilty of shoplifting shoes and a necktie at a Marshalls department store).
Nevertheless, political analysts say, one rotten apple — or even the scores of them picked up in the past two decades — does not spoil the barrel. “I’ve studied American political corruption throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, and, if anything, corruption was much more common in much of those centuries than today,” said Larry J. Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics."
So corruption was less in the "old" days makes it OK today, or at least less evil? No, it is as evil today as when there was more of it. Corruption in Government needs to be ZERO!
"Corruption, USA"
by David Rosen, March 11, 2016
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/11/corruption-usa/
"The game is rigged — you know it, I know it and so does a growing number of Americans know it. A recent Gallup poll found that in 2014 three in four Americans (75%) acknowledged corruption was widespread throughout the U.S. government. More revealing, it noted that over the last decade this perception increased; in 2007 and 2009, it was at two in three Americans, 67 percent and 66 percent, respectively. The belief that the game is rigged is a core assumption in the 2016 presidential election."
Sadly the conclusion leads us past the election where corruption seems rampant, continuing as last regimes have, but in the form of Tweety and his gang of sycophants who like the status quo of abuse of power based on a particular ideology.
"Marx, acknowledging Hegel, once wrote, “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” We’ve entered an era of tragic farce, an era in which a growing proportion of the Americans know the game is rigged, that government and corporations are — individually and colluding together – corrupt institutions. One can only wonder if there will be any change as a result of the upcoming election."
This is not about Tweety whining about a rigged election to me. This is abut a rigged Government and rigged economy favoring the upper 1%. This is also about the foolish middle class that buys the BS that says rich people, businesses, banks, Wall Street, the justice system, social system, and the police are not to blame.
"Proof the U.S. is rotten to the core"
by Ted Rall
"Still think the United States is governed by decent people? That the system isn’t totally corrupt and obscenely unfair?
Two stories that broke April 23 ought to wake you up.
Story 1: President Barack Obama admitted that one of his Predator drones killed two aid workers, an American and an Italian, who were being held hostage by al-Qaida in Pakistan. As The Guardian reports, “The lack of specificity [about the targets] suggests that despite a much-publicized 2013 policy change by Barack Obama restricting drone killings by, among other things, requiring ‘near certainty that the terrorist target is present,’ the U.S. continues to launch lethal operations without the necessity of knowing who specifically it seeks to kill, a practice that has come to be known as a ‘signature strike.’ “"
There's more.
"Story 2: David Petraeus, former hotshot media-darling general of the Bush and early Obama years, received a slap on the wrist — probation plus a $100,000 fine — for improperly passing on classified military documents to unauthorized people and lying about it to federal agents when they questioned him about it.
Here we go again: more proof that, in the American justice system some people fly first-class while the rest of us go coach."
Tweety has been so awful in his first five (5) months of being "President," his staff and VP are lawyering up. They need to be ready to defend themselves in criminal investigations!. The Dems are not sore losers. It turns out the Republicans might be bad winners, maybe criminal winners!
"Vice President Pence Lawyers Up"
Kevin DrumJun. 15, 2017 6:13 PM
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/06/vice-president-pence-lawyers-up/
