The Guardian published its Corruption index 2010, which depicts corruption levels of various countries as ranked by Transparency International. The corresponding article indicates that the United States still ranks as one of the least corrupt nations within our global community. However, corruption is on the rise and it is not the least corrupt.
Today's New York Times and yesterday's Colbert Report stated that this election set all time records for expenditures on political campaigns. Democrats spent $188 million and Republicans $178. Wow, that much cabbage would have fed a lot of hungry people and maybe even paid for a significant amount of job training. Of course this is a direct consequence of January 2010 Supreme Court landmark 5-to-4 decision (Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission) in which it struck down a major portion of a 2002 campaign-finance reform law, saying it violates the free-speech right of corporations to engage in public debate of political issues.
Locally, the Arizona Republic reported that in 1988 then State Senator Jan Brewer while driving on a freeway rear-ended a van and admitted to police officers that she had been drinking. And although taken to jail in handcuffs, charges were never filed.
And then there is Mexico, which continues to experience massive unchecked violence paid for by the United State's demand and expectation for drugs of all kinds.
But the sad part is that this is not even our big problem. According to my boy, Thomas L. Friedman:
A dysfunctional political system is one that knows the right answers but can’t even discuss them rationally, let alone act on them, and one that devotes vastly more attention to cable TV preachers than to recommendations by its best scientists and engineers.
Can a Brother get some help here?
1 comments:
Friedman's comments in the light of the election is great. An angry mob of voters drifting from party to party with no guiding ideas or principles other than "we're mad" but with no rational way to explain or deal with that anger.
Tell me what is rational about saying that the government has sold out to corporations (the tea party) and then voting in the party that wants business to run politics? How do you cry for a government to "fix" unemployment then vote in a party that says government should fix nothing except taxes for the wealthy and deregulation of corporations? How do you cry for constitutional adherence and then vote for a party that wants to amend the constitution to be "in line with the word of God" (Mike Huckabee)?
American voters have become the rabid dog with the bone at the stream that stops to bark and growl and ends up losing the bone that would have ended his hunger.
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