I'd be curious to see that too.

It is interesting when you look at the worlds most corrupt countries there is a very strong correlation to the poorest as well. The inverse correlation is also very strong. Admittedly other factors are in play as well.

He can speak for himself, but it's explicitly not characterizing every participant as Bernie Madoff. I would take it as a description of the very function of facilitating one person's investment in a venture in exchange for a share of profit or interest. But, it could also be taken as the "sum of all people's action" as you describe, which is quite different than a characterization of each person.

We would certainly get more qualified candidates.

I believe the least corrupt country is Denmark and members of parliament make $95k/yr. I suspect none of the countries at the good end of the corruption index have exorbitant salaries for elected officials.

No.

Interesting, I wasn't thinking of the data that way. That is a very good counterpoint.

I delete a lot of posts. I edited it twice, couldn't get it right (imo), and gave up.

You can get a homeless guy to eat a dog**** sandwich for $500. You can't do that with a dentist. When you look at the money guys politicians pal around with, they are comparatively a lot closer to homeless guys than to dentists. Obviously, there is some amount of money you could pay a dentist to eat ****, but with the amount he'd charge, it's probably not worth it for you anymore. Especially if you have to pay a whole bunch of dentists to eat ****.

If you had a guaranteed salary of $300k/yr for life, excellent benefits and lots of opportunities to make much more money doing nothing but good I suspect a billionaire could still pay you enough to shove that **** sandwich down your mother's throat, but a decent person would tell them to **** off.

ATC,

How do you like that post?

This is a pretty good read and pure trump.

I was always entertained by trump in the he is a clown sort of way.

I don't get how tens of millions of people didn't see it.

Very much.

@Adebisi: I included the threshhold for a reason. There's no comparison to somebody like a bum, who is desperate for his own basic needs.

Again, what this boils down to is an assumption that I don't buy, namely that significantly more pay implies significantly less corruptibility. Like a straight line graph as micro mentioned earlier.

Of course it's just a single data point, but we have a very good high profile example of this principle failing to hold in Donald Trump. He routinely throughout his life engaged in small time cons, despite possessing a vast fortune that in theory "should" have wiped out his incentive to do so.

All kidding aside I hope we can dodge the nuclear winter long enough for Christopher Nolans new movie to hit theaters. I really want to see that.

I'm thinking that it went too far and am tempted to delete it. I will just say that I was being a dick for the sake of entertainment.

Isn't this just a longer more extended version of Cory Bookers' "Leave private equity finance alone!" tearful plea when Romney got portrayed as a cold out of touch plutocrat emblematic of finance as, you know, the culprit of the financial crisis?

lol Cory Booker

What a ****ing fraud

Texas legislators were originally not paid or paid virtually nothing and corruption was insane because you couldn't be a legislator and work any amount of hours and make a living so the only thing to do was to have implicit or explicit quid pro quos with companies to be paid lobbyists after the term. Eventually Texas paid their legislators something, though it's still something like 20k, it's envisioned as a part time job for some reason, and the outrageous examples of corruption ended though obviously the pay is too low and corruption is still endemic but not as crazy as the early years of the state.

HSS head on every morning show going on about how cutting one trillion from healthcare can only help patients. We are at peak double speak.

The problem is the special interests are actually donating to the campaign not the candidate. So if candidate A refuses money from special interests out of principle and candidate B gets $25 million form special interests candidate B will be elected almost always, unless candidate A is rich by other means and can somehow match that $25 M.

Is it my imagination, or does Trump get a "piece" of everything he gets his hands on? Literally everything. I'm just wondering if this is another item for the list of things no other president has done before.

You're getting close to the root of the problem, but think bigger.

If we want less crime, corruption, violence, drug use, and suffering, we have to create a system where everyone can thrive, not just politicians. That means a Universal Living Wage, Universal College (including trade school), Universal Health Care, and Universal Right to Vote and have Free and Fair Elections.

Unfortunately these are all things the Republican party are strongly aligned against. They don't want us to have a better society.

Definitely looking forward to the WH being shamed hard, hopefully to the point that it causes a slip-up or something really juicy.

The promotion of Yates has been crazy the last few days. I'll be pretty pissed if nothing happens.

I had an epiphany during my glorious nap today:

America lucked out that Trump won the election this time.

It just had to happen, and if it wasnt him this time then the monstrous (smarter)creations coming out of his hype train would've been way more devastating in the long run.

(just imagine 4 years of Clinton right now and how their propaganda machine with all the obstruction would've made it look)

Now instead we get the idiot at the top of the church of stupidity right front in the center, and we get to see him naked in his worthlessness, and the emptiness of the far right and the soullessness of the GOP again

A rough few years as a blessing in disguise imo

No thanks.

putting it another way: Trump might've been the only person capable of killing the alt right xenophobic movement and the GOP in one stone. I mean, it's a kidney stone, but it'll pass.

Might not even get a full term.