THIS... Right Here... Is Why I Want Bernie Sanders Over Hillary Rodham Clinton...
We’re living in a kleptocracy: America robs from its poor — while its infrastructure crumblesThe U.S. fancies itself the world leader in clean government, even as we methodically bankrupt our disenfranchised.
Rebecca Gordon - Salon
Sunday, Nov 29, 2015 12:30 PM PST
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A top government official with energy industry holdings huddles in secret with oil company executives to work out the details of a potentially lucrative “national energy policy.” Later, that same official steers billions of government dollars to his former oil-field services company. Well-paid elected representatives act with impunity, routinely trading government contracts and other favors for millions of dollars. Meanwhile, ordinary citizens live in fear of venal police forces that suck them dry by charging fees for services, throwing them in jail when they can’t pay arbitrary fines or selling their court “debts” to private companies. Sometimes the police just take people’s life savings leaving them with no recourse whatsoever. Sometimes they steal and deal drugs on the side. Meanwhile, the country’s infrastructure crumbles. Bridges collapse, or take a quarter-century to fix after a natural disaster, or (despite millions spent) turn out not to be fixed at all. Many citizens regard their government at all levels with a weary combination of cynicism and contempt. Fundamentalist groups respond by calling for a return to religious values and the imposition of religious law.
What country is this? Could it be Nigeria or some other kleptocratic developing state? Or post-invasion Afghanistan where Ahmed Wali Karzai, CIA asset and brother of the U.S.-installed president Hamid Karzai, made many millions on the opium trade (which the U.S. was ostensibly trying to suppress), while his brother Mahmoud raked in millions more from the fraud-ridden Bank of Kabul? Or could it be Mexico, where the actions of both the government and drug cartels have created perhaps the world’s first narco-terrorist state?
In fact, everything in this list happened (and much of it is still happening) in the United States, the world leader — or so we like to think — in clean government. These days, however, according to the Corruption Perception Index of Transparency International (TI), our country comes in only 17th in the least-corrupt sweepstakes, trailing European and Scandinavian countries as well as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In fact, TI considers us on a par with Caribbean island nations like Barbados and the Bahamas. In the U.S., TI says, “from fraud and embezzlement charges to the failure to uphold ethical standards, there are multiple cases of corruption at the federal, state and local level.”
And here’s a reasonable bet: it’s not going to get better any time soon and it could get a lot worse. When it comes to the growth of American corruption, one of TI’s key concerns is the how the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the pay-to-play floodgates of the political system, allowing Super PACs to pour billions of private and corporate money into it, sometimes in complete secrecy. Citizens United undammed the wealth of the super-rich and their enablers, allowing big donors like casino capitalist — a description that couldn’t be more literal — Sheldon Adelson to use their millions to influence government policy.
Kleptocracy USA?
Every now and then, a book changes the way you see the world. It’s like shaking a kaleidoscope and suddenly all the bits and pieces fall into a new pattern. Sarah Chayes’s Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security shook my kaleidoscope. Chayes traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 as a reporter for NPR. Moved by the land and people, she soon gave up reporting to devote herself to working with non-governmental organizations helping “Afghans rebuild their shattered but extraordinary country.”
In the process, she came to understand the central role government corruption plays in the collapse of nations and the rise of fundamentalist organizations like the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State. She also discovered just how unable (and often unwilling) American military and civilian officials were to put a stop to the thievery that characterized Afghanistan’s government at every level — from the skimming of billions in reconstruction funds at the top to the daily drumbeat of demands for bribes and “fees” from ordinary citizens seeking any kind of government service further down the chain of organized corruption. In general, writes Chayes, kleptocratic countries operate very much as pyramid schemes, with people at one level paying those at the next for the privilege of extracting money from those below.
Chayes suggests that “acute government corruption” may be a major factor “at the root” of the violent extremism now spreading across the Greater Middle East and Africa. When government robs ordinary people blind, in what she calls a “vertically integrated criminal enterprise,” the victims tend to look for justice elsewhere. When officials treat the law with criminal contempt, or when the law explicitly permits government extortion, they turn to what seem like uncorrupted systems of reprisal and redemption outside those laws. Increasingly, they look to God or God’s laws and, of course, to God’s self-proclaimed representatives. The result can be dangerously violent explosions of anger and retribution. Eruptions can take the form of the Puritan iconoclasm that rocked Catholic Europe in the sixteenth century or present-day attempts by the Taliban or the Islamic State to implement a harsh, even vindictive version of Islamic Sharia law, while attacking “unbelievers” in the territory they control.
Reading Thieves of State, it didn’t take long for my mind to wander from Kabul to Washington...
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More: http://www.salon.com/2015/11/29/were_living_in_a_kleptocracy_america_robs_from_its_poor_while_its_infrastructure_crumbles_partner/
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Good luck with that.
What astounds me is, Sanders supporters actually believe, are even convinced, that Bernie Sanders can make a national $15 p/hr minimum happen. Or free public college. Or break up the banks. Or Medicare-for-all. Uh huh. Pie. In. The. Sky.
I ask Sanders supporters, considering the above are all domestic policy which falls under purview of Congress' constitutional powers...with what Congress can a President Sanders get any of those through? 
He ain't got NO friends amongst Democrats, and he certainly won't get any Republican cooperation there.
Another great piece, WillyT...
was making calls trying to inform people about a meeting for our New Democratic PROGRESSIVE Party group! We are working to mobilize enough people for a local "grassroots" organization here in this very RED county in Florida. Trump was here this past weekend, I was gone so missed it.
Not sure when the STATE By-Laws got organized, but now they've begun to get counties to form their own groups. This isn't the state Democratic Party because too many people are SICK of how far right the Democrats in the Legislature have gotten. So I JUMPED at the chance too join THIS Democratic Progressive Caucus!
So many Democrats here simply have become FED UP and don't vote, but they also don't know where to turn because right now all we have are the local Democratic Parties who are mostly DINOS! All over the state, even counties that are considered "blue" can't seem to elect a Democrat!
It's only a start and will take a very long time to see real change but at least we've begun!! The state Democratic Chairman has already announced her support for Hillary! We're not even sure if this is legal, but what can ya do? This is the state from which Debbie Wasserman-Schultz hails. I, and so many like me have HAD it because like so many states in this country we wonder WHY we should vote because Democrats LIE to get elected and then actually VOTE with Repubs after they get elected.
Tallahassee is so very DINO and controls the money. The Koch's have total control over Florida State University in Tallahassee and actually hand picked the President of the University!!
Anyway, I'm just ranting along about what almost everyone here knows. But, the fact that this Democratic PROGRESSIVE Caucus has filed all the paperwork and set up By-Laws and elected officers and directors is quite AMAZING!
I need to mention one more thing... even though only a small group attended, around 25... every single one of us is a Bernie supporter. There are more members, just not at the meeting. But we did have to pledge that we will vote for the Democratic nominee to be a member. OH WELL! This is a BIG deal regardless!
but does deserve some 
Thanks you the post, and all of your efforts!
so badly needed! I can't say this enough, or LOUD enough, though you can't hear me through my PC!
I know how much you yourself have done for Bernie and follow your posts ALL THE TIME!
Again Thank You!
Back in the day, we called them teach-ins.
Most people were not then, and are not now, being taught the myriad ways we are all being screwed. Teach-ins opened people's eyes.
Draft some young people you know personally... ask them what they would do...
Put some bulletins up on local high-school/college campuses offering intern positions for helping out. (Always looks good on a resume...)
Have them come up with ideas you've never thought of.
Think. Have fun. Create change... CHANGE THE WORLD !