I think it is one of the angriest posts that Juan Cole has ever written or
at least, that I've ever seen of his.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2015 11:22 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Top 10 Signs the US Is the Most Corrupt
Country in the World
After reading this, I lost my appetite. In fact, I think I'll just crawl
back into bed and pull the covers over my head.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/14/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
corrupt.
Cole writes: "While it is true that you don't typically have to bribe
your postman to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America's
political and financial practices make it in absolute terms far more
corrupt than the usual global South suspects."
Donald Trump. (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Top 10 Signs the US Is the Most Corrupt Country in the World By Juan
Cole, Informed Comment
14 December 15
Those ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries
as hopelessly "corrupt" always imply that the United States is not
VOA reports :changes hands.
While it is true that you don't typically have to bribe your postman
to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America's political
and financial practices make it in absolute terms far more corrupt
than the usual global South suspects. After all, the US economy is
worth over $16 trillion a year, so in our corruption a lot more money
1. The rich are well placed to bribe our politicians to reduce taxescorruption.
on the rich. A nonentity like Donald Trump got filthy rich via tax
loopholes, and is now trying to buy the presidency. The way the
Supreme Court got rid of campaign finance reform and allowed open,
unlimited buying of elections is the height of corruption. Note that
despite his supposed "populism," Trump never talks about the
unfairness of our current tax system, instead dividing and ruling
working and middle class Americans by stirring racial and religious
hatreds. As it stands, 400 American billionaires are worth $2
trillion, as much as the bottom 150 million Americans. That kind of
wealth inequality hasn't been seen in the US since the age of the
robber barons in the nineteenth century. Both eras are marked by extreme
2. Money and corruption have seeped so far into our media system thatrespectable.
people can with a straight face assert that scientists aren't sure
human carbon emissions are causing global warming. Fox Cable News is
among the more corrupt institutions in American society, purveying
outright lies for the benefit of the billionaire class. The US is so
corrupt that it is resisting the obvious urgency to slash carbon
production. Even our relatively progressive president talks about
exploiting all sources of energy, as though hydrocarbons were just as
valuable as green energy and as though hydrocarbons weren't poisoning
the earth. All of the GOP candidates for the
2016 presidential election are climate change deniers, all of them in
the back pockets of Big Oil, and this includes Trump.
Even Qatar, its economy based on natural gas, freely admits the
challenge of human-induced climate change. American politicians like
Jim Inhofe are openly ridiculed when they travel to Europe for their
know-nothingism on climate.
3. Instead of having short, publicly-funded political campaigns with
limited and/or free advertising (as a number of Western European
countries do), the US has long political campaigns in which candidates
are dunned big bucks for advertising. They are therefore forced to
spend much of their time fundraising, which is to say, seeking bribes.
All American politicians are basically on the take, though many are
honorable people. They are forced into it by the system. Former House
Majority leader John Boehner has actually just handed out cash on the
floor of the House from the tobacco industry to other representatives.
When French President Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated in 2012, soon
thereafter French police actually went into his private residence
searching for an alleged $50,000 in illicit campaign contributions
from the L'Oreale heiress.
I thought to myself, seriously? $50,000 in a presidential campaign?
Our presidential campaigns cost a billion dollars each! $50,000 is a
rounding error, not a basis for police action. Why, George W. Bush
took millions from arms manufacturers and then ginned up a war for
them, and the police haven't been anywhere near his house.
American politicians don't represent "the people." With a few
honorable exceptions, they represent the the 1%. American democracy is
being corrupted out of existence.
4. That politicians can be bribed to reduce regulation of industries
like banking (what is called "regulatory capture") means that they
will be so bribed. Billions were spent and 3,000 lobbyists employed by
bankers to remove cumbersome rules in the zeroes. Thus, political
corruption enabled financial corruption (in some cases legalizing it!)
Without regulations and government auditing, the finance sector went
wild and engaged in corrupt practices that caused the 2008 crash. Too
bad the poor Afghans can't just legislate their corruption out of
existence by regularizing it, the way Wall street did.
5. That the chief villains of the 2008 meltdown (from which 90% of
Americans have not recovered) have not been prosecuted is itself a
form of corruption.
6. The US military budget is bloated and enormous, bigger than the
military budgets of the next twelve major states. What isn't usually
realized is that perhaps half of it is spent on outsourced services,
not on the military. It is corporate welfare on a cosmic scale. I've
seen with my own eyes how officers in the military get out and then
form companies to sell things to their former colleagues still on the
inside.
7. The US has a vast gulag of 2.2 million prisoners in jail and
penitentiary. There is an increasing tendency for prisons to be
privatized, and this tendency is corrupting the system. It is wrong
for people to profit from putting and keeping human beings behind
bars. This troubling trend is made all the more troubling by the move
to give extra-long sentences for minor crimes, to deny parole and to
imprison people for life for e,g, three small thefts.
8. The National Security Agency's domestic spying was a form of
corruption in itself, and lends itself to corruption. With some 4
million government employees and private contractors engaged in this
surveillance, it is highly unlikely that various forms of insider
trading and other corrupt practices are not being committed. If you
knew who Warren Buffett and George Soros were calling every day, that
alone could make you a killing. The American political class wouldn't
have defended this indefensible invasion of citizens' privacy so
vigorously if someone somewhere weren't making money on it.
9. As for insider trading, it turns out Congress undid much of the law
it hastily passed forbidding members, rather belatedly, to engage in
insider trading (buying and selling stock based on their privileged
knowledge of future government policy). That this practice only became
an issue recently is another sign of how corrupt the system is.
10. Asset forfeiture in the 'drug war' is corrupting police
departments and the judiciary.
So don't tell the Philippines or the other victims of American
corruption how corrupt they are for taking a few petty bribes.
Americans are not seen as corrupt because we only deal in the big
denominations. Steal $2 trillion and you aren't corrupt, you're
corrupt.
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valid.
Donald Trump. (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
http://www.juancole.com/2015/12/signs-corrupt-country.html?utm_source=
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ntry.h tml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook
Top 10 Signs the US Is the Most Corrupt Country in the World By Juan
Cole, Informed Comment
14 December 15
hose ratings that castigate Afghanistan and some other poor countries
as hopelessly "corrupt" always imply that the United States is not
VOA reports :changes hands.
While it is true that you don't typically have to bribe your postman
to deliver the mail in the US, in many key ways America's political
and financial practices make it in absolute terms far more corrupt
than the usual global South suspects. After all, the US economy is
worth over $16 trillion a year, so in our corruption a lot more money
1. The rich are well placed to bribe our politicians to reduce taxescorruption.
on the rich. A nonentity like Donald Trump got filthy rich via tax
loopholes, and is now trying to buy the presidency. The way the
Supreme Court got rid of campaign finance reform and allowed open,
unlimited buying of elections is the height of corruption. Note that
despite his supposed "populism," Trump never talks about the
unfairness of our current tax system, instead dividing and ruling
working and middle class Americans by stirring racial and religious
hatreds. As it stands, 400 American billionaires are worth $2
trillion, as much as the bottom 150 million Americans. That kind of
wealth inequality hasn't been seen in the US since the age of the
robber barons in the nineteenth century. Both eras are marked by extreme
2. Money and corruption have seeped so far into our media system thatrespectable.
people can with a straight face assert that scientists aren't sure
human carbon emissions are causing global warming. Fox Cable News is
among the more corrupt institutions in American society, purveying
outright lies for the benefit of the billionaire class. The US is so
corrupt that it is resisting the obvious urgency to slash carbon
production. Even our relatively progressive president talks about
exploiting all sources of energy, as though hydrocarbons were just as
valuable as green energy and as though hydrocarbons weren't poisoning
the earth. All of the GOP candidates for the
2016 presidential election are climate change deniers, all of them in
the back pockets of Big Oil, and this includes Trump.
Even Qatar, its economy based on natural gas, freely admits the
challenge of human-induced climate change. American politicians like
Jim Inhofe are openly ridiculed when they travel to Europe for their
know-nothingism on climate.
3. Instead of having short, publicly-funded political campaigns with
limited and/or free advertising (as a number of Western European
countries do), the US has long political campaigns in which candidates
are dunned big bucks for advertising. They are therefore forced to
spend much of their time fundraising, which is to say, seeking bribes.
All American politicians are basically on the take, though many are
honorable people. They are forced into it by the system. Former House
Majority leader John Boehner has actually just handed out cash on the
floor of the House from the tobacco industry to other representatives.
When French President Nicolas Sarkozy was defeated in 2012, soon
thereafter French police actually went into his private residence
searching for an alleged $50,000 in illicit campaign contributions
from the L'Oreale heiress.
I thought to myself, seriously? $50,000 in a presidential campaign?
Our presidential campaigns cost a billion dollars each! $50,000 is a
rounding error, not a basis for police action. Why, George W. Bush
took millions from arms manufacturers and then ginned up a war for
them, and the police haven't been anywhere near his house.
American politicians don't represent "the people." With a few
honorable exceptions, they represent the the 1%. American democracy is
being corrupted out of existence.
4. That politicians can be bribed to reduce regulation of industries
like banking (what is called "regulatory capture") means that they
will be so bribed. Billions were spent and 3,000 lobbyists employed by
bankers to remove cumbersome rules in the zeroes. Thus, political
corruption enabled financial corruption (in some cases legalizing it!)
Without regulations and government auditing, the finance sector went
wild and engaged in corrupt practices that caused the 2008 crash. Too
bad the poor Afghans can't just legislate their corruption out of
existence by regularizing it, the way Wall street did.
5. That the chief villains of the 2008 meltdown (from which 90% of
Americans have not recovered) have not been prosecuted is itself a
form of corruption.
6. The US military budget is bloated and enormous, bigger than the
military budgets of the next twelve major states. What isn't usually
realized is that perhaps half of it is spent on outsourced services,
not on the military. It is corporate welfare on a cosmic scale. I've
seen with my own eyes how officers in the military get out and then
form companies to sell things to their former colleagues still on the
inside.
7. The US has a vast gulag of 2.2 million prisoners in jail and
penitentiary. There is an increasing tendency for prisons to be
privatized, and this tendency is corrupting the system. It is wrong
for people to profit from putting and keeping human beings behind
bars. This troubling trend is made all the more troubling by the move
to give extra-long sentences for minor crimes, to deny parole and to
imprison people for life for e,g, three small thefts.
8. The National Security Agency's domestic spying was a form of
corruption in itself, and lends itself to corruption. With some 4
million government employees and private contractors engaged in this
surveillance, it is highly unlikely that various forms of insider
trading and other corrupt practices are not being committed. If you
knew who Warren Buffett and George Soros were calling every day, that
alone could make you a killing. The American political class wouldn't
have defended this indefensible invasion of citizens' privacy so
vigorously if someone somewhere weren't making money on it.
9. As for insider trading, it turns out Congress undid much of the law
it hastily passed forbidding members, rather belatedly, to engage in
insider trading (buying and selling stock based on their privileged
knowledge of future government policy). That this practice only became
an issue recently is another sign of how corrupt the system is.
10. Asset forfeiture in the 'drug war' is corrupting police
departments and the judiciary.
So don't tell the Philippines or the other victims of American
corruption how corrupt they are for taking a few petty bribes.
Americans are not seen as corrupt because we only deal in the big
denominations. Steal $2 trillion and you aren't corrupt, you're
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http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
