They won, we lost: How corruption became America’s national pastime

How the nation's corporate elite "extorts hard working people for their own political and financial gains"
Janine Wedel

What does “SWIMNUT” know that the world’s supposed experts on corruption or the elites who gather each year for skiing and schmoozing in Davos do not?

This anonymous commenter was responding to an online article about the 2013 ranking of the world’s most corrupt countries, as measured by the best-known international arbiter of corruption, the organization Transparency International. In TI’s survey, the experts canvassed perceive Somalia, North Korea, and Afghanistan as the worst transgressors. But “SWIMNUT” sees it differently:

Not quite sure how corruption is defined but I think the US needs to be included as one of the most corrupt “civilized” countries in the world. . . . In the US . . . we have created a political elite that extorts hard working people for their own political and financial gains.

“SWIMNUT” wasn’t the lone voice of skepticism.