The story is in The Atlantic, by Franklin Foer, title is “How Kleptocracy Came to America.”
It tells of a 1999 hearing in congress testimony of Richard Palmer, who was CIA station chief in Moscow for a couple of years in the 90’’s.
The punch line is that our current kleptocracy has its origins in Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Here’s a quote from near the top of the story:
Washington told itself a comforting story that minimized the importance of this outbreak of kleptomania: These were criminal outliers and rogue profiteers rushing to exploit the weakness of the new state. This narrative infuriated Palmer. He wanted to shake Congress into recognizing that the thieves were the very elites who presided over every corner of the system. “For the U.S. to be like Russia is today,” he explained to the House committee, “it would be necessary to have massive corruption by the majority of the members at Congress as well as by the Departments of Justice and Treasury, and agents of the FBI, CIA, DIA, IRS, Marshal Service, Border Patrol; state and local police officers; the Federal Reserve Bank; Supreme Court justices …” In his testimony, Palmer even mentioned Russia’s newly installed and little-known prime minister (whom he mistakenly referred to as Boris Putin), accusing him of “helping to loot Russia.”
The rather lengthy article goes through a lot of particulars about involvement of bankers, lawyers, lobbyists and bought politicians.
There is reference to a “sting” operation by an anti-corruption effort involving one “Ralph Kayser.” There’s a story about it on CBS 60 Minutes (I did not read it all but there’s the link). In essence they apparently got video different folks acknowledging or participating in the cycle of corruption.
Citing Zephyr Teachout, Corruption in America, the article concludes that the Founders were vigilant during the country’s first 200 years but have gone slack.
Near the end, here’s a money quote (with my bold and italic emphasis):
The defining document of our era is the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010. The ruling didn’t just legalize anonymous expenditures on political campaigns. It redefined our very idea of what constitutes corruption, limiting it to its most blatant forms: the bribe and the explicit quid pro quo. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion crystallized an ever more prevalent ethos of indifference—the collective shrug in response to tax avoidance by the rich and by large corporations, the yawn that now greets the millions in dark money spent by invisible billionaires to influence elections.
I’m not doing justice to the story, just go read it. I’ll watch for comments and maybe read it more myself.
Peace.
