How Employment and Economic Growth are Hindered by Politics

America, meanwhile, is settling down to a presidential election. On the one hand is a candidate who seems to have no firm convictions and no real ideas about how to move the country out of its post-crisis funk. On the other hand, is…well…the same thing.

As usual, the candidates are disappointing. But politics is a tawdry profession that invites hustlers and hollow men. No matter what kind of system you think you have, it is always the same. It is always dominated by the same fellow — grasping, status-hungry, ambitious… He is a world improver…a bully…a scold…a power-broker… He is a fixer…and a user. He uses the power of the government — that is, the power to force people to do what you want, at the point of a gun if necessary — to fix himself, his friends, and, he often believes, the entire world. At best, the politician is a conniving opportunist. At worst, he’s a madman or a mass-murderer.

Bill Bonner has some thoughts on the candidates, politics and the economy.

The Receding Tide

The Soviet Union had an admirable constitution, and paid no attention to it. America heads rapidly in the same direction. 

In America, the Constitution is largely and increasingly ignored by the government. Constitutionally the three branches of government are co-equal, but in practice the Supreme Court is of little consequence and Congress is the action arm of a corporate oligarchy. Constitutionally Congress must declare war, but now the president sends combat troops wherever he pleases and Congress reads about it in the Washington Post. The president can order citizens murdered, ignore habeas corpus, monitor and store email. The government can search you at will with no pretense of probable cause. Third World.

Fred Reed compares corruption in the US to Third World countries and notices more than a few alarming similarities - the US is just better at hiding it from the citizens.