http://www.salon.com/2015/06/14/heres_how_bernie_sanders_could_win_the_one_issue_where_hillarys_vulnerable_and_where_the_tea_party_might_be_right/ Sunday, Jun 14, 2015 04:59 AM CST
Here’s how Bernie Sanders could win: The one issue where Hillary’s vulnerable, and where the Tea Party might be right
If progressives want to retake government, a full-throated war on public corruption is the key to everything
Bill Curry
After one of many trips to sub-Saharan Africa, Bono recalled that on his first visit there he thought its biggest problem was AIDS. Later, it seemed it was poverty; after many visits over many years he at last saw that it was corruption: the problem that kept all other problems from ever being solved.
Corruption is hard to unmask, and harder to measure, but we know its cost to Africa is truly staggering. One study puts it at a quarter of the continent’s total GDP, itself a paltry 2.4 percent of world GDP. Another says it slashes growth by 20 percent every year. It was long hoped that the sale of Africa’s vast trove of natural resources would generate the investment capital necessary to move its people out of poverty and into the modern age. Instead, the money is siphoned off by corrupt elites who blow it on lavish lifestyles, park it in Swiss banks or invest it in high-end Paris or London real estate. It’s the world’s most common form of treason and goes largely unpunished.
We live amidst a global pandemic of corruption. It ravages Asia, Latin America and the Middle East and devours Africa. It was the issue at the heart of every uprising of the Arab Spring. It has spurred riots in India and Brazil, struck fear into the hearts of China’s leaders and contributed mightily to the warping of Russia’s politics as well as its economy. It tops liberal agendas everywhere in the world — everywhere, that is, but here.
continued
