Incentives Rule the World

Ryan Murphy, an economist at Southern Methodist University, recently published a working paper in which he ranked each of the states by the predominance of—there’s no nice way to put it—psychopaths. The winner? Washington in a walk. In fact, the capital scored higher on Murphy’s scale than the next two runners-up combined.

“I had previously written on politicians and psychopathy, but I had no expectation D.C. would stand out as much as it does,” Murphy wrote in an email…

On a national level, it raises the troubling question as to what it means to live in a country whose institutions are set up to reward some very dubious human traits. Like it or not, we’re more likely than not to wind up with some alarming personalities in positions of power.

– From last year’s Politico article, Washington, D.C.: the Psychopath Capital of America

One of the most frustrating aspects of modern American politics — and the culture in general — is our all encompassing fixation on the superficial. It’s also one of the main reasons I have very little interest in presidential politics, which basically consists of a bunch of billionaire friendly puppets auditioning to become the next public face of imperial oligarchy. Though I understand the desire for quick fixes, our focus on highlighting and mitigating only the symptoms of societal decay as opposed to the root causes, ensures we’ll never achieve the sort of positive paradigm-level shift necessary to bring humankind forward.

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Congress Introduces Legislation to Ensure Corporate Criminals Remain Above the Law

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House Republicans on Monday unveiled legislation that would decriminalize a broad swath of corporate malfeasance, a move that injects white-collar crime issues into the thus-far bipartisan agenda on criminal justice reform. 

The House bill would eliminate a host of white-collar crimes where the damaging acts are merely reckless, negligent or grossly negligent. If enacted, it would make it more difficult for federal authorities to pursue executive wrongdoing, from financial fraud to environmental pollution.

Department of Justice spokesman Peter Carr blasted the legislation in a statement provided to HuffPost, saying it “would create confusion and needless litigation, and significantly weaken, often unintentionally, countless federal statutes,” including “those that play an important role in protecting the public welfare … protecting consumers from unsafe food and medicine.”

– From the Huffington Post article: House Bill Would Make It Harder To Prosecute White-Collar Crime

A key key theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg from inception is that there are two tiers of justice in America. One for the rich and powerful, another for the poor and voiceless. It’s even worse than that though, since not only are certain segments of the population above the law, they are actually rewarded for a lack of ethics and criminality.

There is no more perfect example of this than the banker bailouts, in which the one sector of the economy that created and nurtured the financial collapse was rewarded with trillions of dollars in taxpayer backstops and bailouts. This same finance sector has seen a disproportionate amount of all income gains since the “recovery” started, precisely because the bailout itself was designed to help it as opposed to the middle class.

Of course, it’s not just Wall Street. The elite’s minions must also be taken care of. As such, police are allowed to SWAT raid, shoot to kill and rob average Americans via civil asset forfeiture with impunity. In fact, we just learned that police civil asset forfeitures exceeded all burglaries in 2014. So you are actually more likely to be robbed by a government criminal, versus a street thug in today’s America.

As reported by Armstrong Economics:

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