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Subject: The Key To Failure
SYSOP    2/8/2012 5:00:29 AM
 
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Toosh       2/8/2012 11:09:36 AM
 "A major military problem in most of the world is corruption. This means refusal to follow the rule of law, and a willingness to lie, cheat and steal for personal gain."
 
I know a lot of people who fit that description. And they're not in the military.
 
 
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Tucci78    You mean like Pelosi and Boehner and Odumbo?   2/9/2012 5:55:30 AM


 

Recent noise about the U.S. Senate's passage of S.T.O.C.K. ("Stop Trading On Congressional Knowledge")  and a similar bill grinding its way through the federal House of Representatives has been following a gaudy 60 Minutes feature...... last November in which the open-source research of Peter Schweizer (author of Throw them ALL Out......, published in 2011) confirmed what average Americans have always known:
 
"Politicians have made politics a business. They are increasingly entrepreneurs who use their power, access, and privileged information to generate wealth. And at the same time well-connected financiers and corporate leaders have made a business of politics. They meet together in the nation’s capital to form a political caste.

"In short, the Permanent Political Class has clearly figured out how to extract wealth from the rest of us based solely on their position and proximity to power. If you have a seat at the table, you are in for a feast. If you don’t have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu. Exactly how crony capitalists are consuming public wealth and fattening themselves is the subject of this book."
 
 The effectively insurmountable problem is that the officers of government cannot be relied upon to police their own ranks.  To a professional political whore, there is no such thing as "objective reality" and therefore standards of thought and conduct to which any of them (or their "campaign contributors") can ever be expected to adhere.  The plenum of the politician is malleable.  It can be wheedled, log-rolled, blackmailed, bargained, cork-screwed, back-stabbed, and dirtily dealt into any damned condition that the politically powerful want it to be.
 
In an interview...... last December, Schweizer discussed the roots of this phenomenon - including not only "revolving door" practices among elected politicians and their staffers (in which people like Newt Gingrich get out of the Congress and become "consultants" for government-regulated businesses like Freddie Mac) and stock transactions but also real estate deals - and he went into greater depth in a Heritage Foundation presentation...... archived online by CSPAN 2 as a Book TV program.
 
I question Schweizer only in his failure to appreciate that this is not a recent phenomenon in the history of these United States, at all levels.  To quote the late Harry S Truman:
 
"You can't get rich in politics unless you're a crook." 
 
Can we trust anybody with the kind of economic power unconstitutionally usurped by our grafting bastids in Mordor-on-the-Potomac?
 
Sure. But you neocon "Cops of the World!" schmucks hate his guts. 
 
Ron Paul. 
 
Maybe we need to get rid of you at the same time we get rid of "legal graft." 
 
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