Dude, we are ripe and ready to peel.
Posted on 04/19/2014 12:47:22 PM PDT by Kaslin
photo of Norm Ornstein By Norm Ornstein
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April 16, 2014
Last week, I was in Prague for the third annual World Forum on Governance, which brings together people from countries around the world, including Eastern and Central Europe, Russia, China, Ukraine, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, India, and Bolivia in search of best governing practices.
One highlight of the forum—which I codirect with Tom Mann of Brookings and Stephen Davis of Brookings and Harvard Law School—was a conversation with Pietro Grasso, president of the Italian Senate. Grasso is best known as the longtime chief of the anti-Mafia squad, who survived death threats and actual assassination attempts to bring down a series of Mafia leaders and hollow out the organization. He gave a stirring talk on the international nature of corruption, but his advice to those assembled also emphasized the importance of cleaning up campaign finance.
Corruption is a cancer that afflicts societies struggling to adopt democratic values and forms of governance, and those that make no or few pretenses about democratic values. It also hits all established and venerated democracies. It can come in big forms—leaders such as Turkey's Racep Tayyip Erdogan or Russia's Vladimir Putin and their cronies, and oligarchs piling up fortunes; and it can come in smaller forms—professors in Kenya demanding sexual favors or money in return for grades, or local officials in India demanding bribes for services. It can be illegal or legal, including, as Grasso pointed out, corrupt organizations and individuals laundering their ill-gotten gains through legitimate organizations they purchase.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
Whistling past the graveyard.
someone should make bananas foster. that’s some tasty stuff
Hmmm...
The action-proven purpose of the US Obama Federal Government is to destroy all private enterprises, and then confiscate all that the all-talk-and-no-action, doormat Republicans in Congress will allow them to.
Feudal Lord Reid and his Outlaw Rustler Gang’s recent “kill and run” raid on Nevada Rancher Bundy’s spread have made that transparently clear, beyond a “smidgen” of a doubt!
BTW, what has the US Federal Government ever confiscated, Nationalized or otherwise controlled that has ever made a profit?
BTW, BTW, how much more Permanent Debt, confiscation, Nationalization and otherwise control does the Obama Federal Government have to do to qualify the United States of America as an Official Third World Country?
Could? Has!
When Rafael Callejas was president of Honduras he said he didn’t mind if people called his country a banana republic because “We grow the best bananas in the world”.
“Could America Become a Banana Republic? “
Not unless we elect a Kenyan National.
I must say the replies are quite interesting, :)
If this is not a banana republic, what would the tyrants do differently than what they are doing now, in order to make it one?
If I remember correctly Norm Ornstein is part of the problem?
I couldn’t say, because I never heard of him
Let’s see.....CORRUPT GOVERNMENT who does NOT follow the Rule of Law......and STUPID VOTERS....Yep, we are THERE, BABY!!
“.... our resources are too vast and our economy is not and never will be totally dependent on one commodity”
Look at Africa! Enormous resources. One banana republic (if they’re lucky) after the other.
Hugo Chavez used his pen and phone quite often.
Well, we already have a monkey as TOTUS.
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