Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to start — I want to put aside my written statement, for a moment, and address one of the points that was brought up — I think an important point by the Ranking Member — that this body ought to be concerning itself with issues that impact directly the American people: the rising price of groceries, 76 percent over the past two years for basic food stuff, the war in Ukraine, inflation issues, the border issues, many other issues that concern us all as a nation. We can’t do that without the First Amendment, without debate.

When I gave my speech — my announcement speech — in Boston two months ago…I talked about all those issues. I focused on groceries. I focused on the fact that working class people can no longer afford to live in this country. I talked about inflation — all the issues that deeply concern you, and that you’ve devoted your career to alleviating those issues. Five minutes into my speech, when I was talking about Paul Revere, YouTube deplatformed me. I didn’t talk about vaccines in that speech. I didn’t talk about anything that was a verboten subject. I just was talking about my campaign and things — the conversation that we ought to be having with each other as Americans.

But I was shut down. And that is why the First Amendment’s important. Debate — congenial, respectful debate — is the fertilizer, it’s the water, it’s the sunlight for our Democracy. We need to be talking to each other.

Now, this is a letter that many of you signed — many of my fellow Democrats. I’ve spent my life in this party. I’ve devoted my life to the values of this party. This — 102 people signed this. This itself is evidence of the problem that this hearing was convened to address. This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing.

The charges in this — and by the way, censorship is antithetical to our party. It was appalling to my father, to my uncle, to FDR, to Harry Truman, to Thomas Jefferson, as the Chairman referred to. It is the basis for democracy — it sets us apart from all of the previous forms of government. We need to be able to talk. And the First Amendment was not written for easy speech. It was written for the speech that nobody likes you for.

And I was censored — not just by the Democratic administration — I was censored by the Trump administration. I was the first person censored by the — as the Chairman pointed out — by the Biden administration, two days after it came into office…And by the way, they had to invent a new word, called “malinformation,” to censor people like me. There was no misinformation on my Instagram account. Everything I put on that account was cited and sourced with peer reviewed publications or government databases. Nobody has ever pointed to a single piece of misinformation that I published. I was removed for something they called “malinformation.” Malinformation is information that is true, but is inconvenient to the government, that they don’t want people to hear. And it’s antithetical to the values of our country. //

Now I want to say something, I think, that’s more important, and it goes directly to what you talked about, Ranking Member, which is the need, this toxic polarization, that is destroying our country today. And how do we deal with that? We are more — this kind of division — is more dangerous for our country than anytime since the American Civil War. And how do we deal with that? How are we gonna — every Democrat on this committee believes that we need to end that polarization. Do you think you can do that by censoring people? I’m telling you, you cannot. That only aggravates and amplifies the problem.

We need to start being kind to each other. We need to start being respectful to each other. We need to start restoring the comity — to this chamber and to the rest of America. But it has to start here. //

This is how we need to start treating each other in this country. We have to stop trying to destroy each other, to marginalize, to villify, to gaslight each other. We have to find that place inside of ourselves of light, of empathy, of compassion. And above all, we need to elevate the Constitution of the United States, which was written for hard times. And that has to be the premier compass for all of our activities. Thank you very much.

Thursday brought about another hearing on the weaponization of the federal government on Capitol Hill. In an ongoing affair as of this writing, Robert Kennedy Jr. is testifying before the select committee. //

Citizen Free Press @CitizenFreePres
·
The Democrats vote to censor Bobby Kennedy from speaking at a hearing detailing how the Biden administration censored political speech online.

Democrats don't want you speaking online OR in person. It's all too dangerous. You can't make this stuff up.

10:03 AM · Jul 20, 2023

The preliminary injunction prohibits nearly all of the federal government, including DHS, DOJ, and HHS, from coercing and colluding with social media companies to censor free speech, amongst other things: pic.twitter.com/CixBjbT8LN

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 4, 2023

Just as the judge hinted at in our first hearing in May, there is nothing stopping the feds from continuing to censor political speech without this injunction.

— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) July 4, 2023

When Congress approved and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, it became the law of the land that the public business of the United States is the business of the American public.

Just because the FOIA had become the law, however, little immediately changed in the dominant culture of secrecy, self-serving, and cover-up that always and everywhere pervades bureaucracies, but especially the sprawling bureaucracy of the federal executive branch.

That suffocating and constantly expansive culture would only change when millions of individual citizens and activists (plus journalists devoted to “the public’s right to know”) made continuing use of the FOIA and insisted that the law be respected and followed, even if doing so required persistence and insistence to the point of hiring lawyers and heading into court.

When the authoritative history of the succeeding 56 years is written, one individual and the non-profit group he founded will stand out — Adam Andrzejewski and Open the Books. The reason why is captured in the OTB purpose, “Every Dime. Online. In Real Time,” and its standing invitation to “Join the Transparency Revolution.”

There are legions of advocacy and activism groups in America that raise hundreds of billions of dollars each year based on claims of working to make government better. But not one of them can match the monumental accomplishment of Andrzejewski and OTB.

Here’s why: transparency is the absolute prerequisite to accountability in government. That’s the ideal underlying the FOIA and the essential condition for the survival of a republican democracy. And knowing how the government is spending the tax dollars of its citizens is the necessary first step to achieving genuine and enduring accountability. That is where Andrzejewski and OTB excel as no other individual or group in America.

Using the power of the federal government to pressure Big Tech into censoring “disinformation” is a modern Pandora’s box. Sure, the Biden administration may decrease the influence of its critics—in an astonishing violation of the First Amendment—but it also enables bad actors to weaponize this very tool against the U.S. government itself, in an utterly embarrassing cautionary tale.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released an astonishing report Monday, revealing that the FBI under President Joe Biden urged Meta, Instagram’s parent company, to remove the U.S. State Department’s official Russian-language Instagram account.

After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the FBI routinely forwarded lists from the Secret Service of Ukraine, or SBU, to Big Tech companies, warning that the social media accounts allegedly “spread Russian disinformation,” according to the report.

The SBU flagged the accounts for Big Tech and the FBI, and the FBI often would follow up to ensure that Big Tech took action against these social media accounts. The lists from Ukraine’s secret police often included U.S.-based accounts, and the House subcommittee faults the FBI for failing “to respect fundamental American civil liberties.”

A tremendous catch affected the scheme to combat “Russian disinformation,” however. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, had infiltrated Ukraine’s SBU. This may not come as a surprise, since both Russia and Ukraine established these agencies as replacements for the old Soviet secret police, known as the KGB.//

That list from Ukraine’s secret service included the Instagram account “usaporusski,” the verified Russian-language account of the U.S. State Department.

So, according to the SBU, the U.S. State Department has been “used in the interests of the aggressor country to distribute content that promotes war, inaccurately reflects events in Ukraine, justifies Russian war crimes in Ukraine in violation of international law,” and more.

Ultimately, it appears the State Department survived this round of social media purging, but other accounts may not have been so lucky.

The House subcommittee report notes that the FBI, on behalf of Ukraine’s secret service, also flagged multiple pro-Ukraine Facebook and Instagram posts from Americans. Some of these posts currently are unavailable, while posts from Russian government officials—to whom the pro-Ukraine posts had been responding—remain on the platforms.

The Biden administration is reportedly gearing up to challenge a federal court ruling that found government collusion with social media companies to censor speech likely violated the First Amendment. The Justice Department filed a notice of appeal on Wednesday in the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that the administration disagrees with the judge’s decision but would not elaborate further on the scathing ruling against censorship aimed at conservatives.

On Tuesday, Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty, a Donald Trump appointee, issued a 155-page injunction in response to the lawsuit by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri. The lawsuit alleged that the White House had coerced or “significantly encouraged” tech companies to suppress free speech during the COVID pandemic.

The ruling held that “the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech” but emphasized that the issues raised by the case transcend “beyond party lines.” The Biden administration argued that it took “necessary and responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security.”

Judge Doughty wrote:

… evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’ //

Astonishingly, the administration attempted to absolve itself of responsibility with the claim that social media companies should determine what qualifies as misinformation and how they should combat it without consideration for its role in pressure campaigns. In an ironic argument, they claimed that the lawsuit was an attempt to “suppress the speech of federal government officials under the guise of protecting the speech rights of others.” //

Elon Musk revealed many government communications and requests for censorship in public releases known as the Twitter Files. The government’s backdoor requests for censorship of speech were uncovered after he purchased the Twitter platform in 2022. https://redstate.com/tags/twitter-files

The National Fire Protection Association found that four-fifths of cooking fires involve electric stoves. They correlated with significantly inflated rates of reported fires (2.6 times higher than gas stoves), civilian fire death rates (3.4 times higher), civilian fire injury rates (4.8 times higher), and average fire dollar loss (3.8 times higher). //

A proposed DOE standard, published in May, would require dishwashers to use significantly less water and power. Moreover, federal regulations have, historically, skyrocketed average cycle times, driving consumers to choose the far less water-efficient practice of handwashing dishes.

Chuck Schumer @SenSchumer
·
This MAGA Supreme Court is continuing to erode our country’s environmental laws.

Make no mistake—this ruling will mean more polluted water, and more destruction of wetlands.

We’ll keep fighting to protect our waters.

The Washington Post @washingtonpost

Breaking news: The Supreme Court on Thursday cut back the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the nation’s wetlands and waterways, another setback for the agency’s authority to combat pollution. https://wapo.st/3q9g6Nx

Readers added context
All 9 judges agreed that the EPA overstepped its authority and that the plaintiffs' property should not be subject to EPA regulation. However, 4 judges disagreed with the majority's opinion on the limits of EPA authority with respect to wetlands.

nytimes.com/2023/05/25/us/…
12:02 PM · May 25, 2023

Not Raising the Debt Limit Just Means Balancing the Budget
The debt limit is a law restricting how much the federal government may borrow. The current law says $34.4 trillion. If Congress refuses to change the law, it will remain at $34.4 trillion. Borrowing more than that is illegal. So the government will have to pay its debt obligations out of current revenue.

Could the federal government do that? Sure.

Current revenue is about eight times current interest payments. (In other words, debt service is about 13 percent of revenue.) Obviously, there’s enough money coming in to pay existing debt while retaining most government services. Of course, the feds would have to trim other parts of the budget. I’m sure readers have many suggestions on that score.

These facts are no secret. Moreover, they’re buttressed by experience: We have reached earlier debt limits on many occasions, but there has been no default. Mostly what happens is a few federal facilities close. (When that happened last time, the feds closed Rocky Mountain National Park. No problem: Colorado state government took over the job.)

Still, every time we approach a new debt limit, unscrupulous politicians and their media propagandists claim we’re at risk of default. This is so patently false that we can only conclude that what concerns them isn’t default but something else.

What is that “something else?” That people might learn they really don’t need all that exorbitant federal spending. That they might decide they like the budget being balanced.

Yesterday in these pages Margot Cleveland rightly noted that the most damning finding in the 306-page report from Special Counsel John Durham is not necessarily the FBI’s scandalous Crossfire Hurricane investigation of the Trump campaign in 2016, but that the egregious abuses of power detailed in the report cannot be remedied “absent a curing of the corrupted hearts and minds of law enforcement and intelligence agencies.”

For all the FBI’s blatant partisanship, its disregard of exculpatory evidence, and its outright deception to secure FISA warrants on Trump campaign associates, writes Cleveland, “what should terrify the country is not the catalog of malfeasance the special counsel recited — for mistakes and even gross failures can be corrected — but that Durham warned of corrupted hearts and minds, unfaithful to the people and their Constitution.”

For his part, Durham didn’t recommend any changes to FBI guidelines or policies, because no amount of reform will be sufficient if the people in charge feel free to disregard guidelines and policies whenever they see fit to do so. As such, wrote Durham, “the answer is not the creation of new rules but a renewed fidelity to the old. The promulgation of additional rules and regulations to be learned in yet more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI’s guiding principles of ‘Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity’ are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI’s mission of ‘Protect[ing] the American People and uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States.’” //

That people like former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, along with the entire cast of villains and liars in the Durham report, rose to positions of such power, and then proceeded to abuse that power by arrogating to themselves the right to decide who should be president — a right that belongs solely to the American people — says something about the state of our republic.

What it says is this: We have produced, and are still producing, a totally corrupt elite bereft of any sense of “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity,” to say nothing of moral virtue or the common good.

Put bluntly, an elite like that makes self-government in a republic of free citizens impossible. It also means that the elite will work to corrupt ordinary Americans, eroding their respect for the rule of law and fidelity to the Constitution. As the elites go, so eventually the entire country goes.

Seen in this light, the Durham report should be understood as a dire warning about the fate of our country. John Adams issued a similar warning when he penned his famous line, that “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” George Washington did the same in his farewell address when he said, “’Tis substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” //

The founders knew what we seem to have forgotten: Without a virtuous people, without citizens and leaders who believe in objective moral truth and understand themselves to be bound by it, we cannot be a free people, and we cannot sustain a republic. Laws alone, to say nothing of guidelines and policies, are not enough to support and sustain self-government. You need citizens who will respect and uphold the law, and leaders who actually believe in the principle of self-government — something our current crop of leaders clearly rejects.

Without a morally virtuous citizenry, the founders also knew we would eventually become a society not of free men and women, but of slaves to a tyrannical regime. That’s the real warning embedded in the Durham report. The corruption of the FBI, the CIA, and the entire federal intelligence community, which led to the Russia-collusion hoax and almost took down Trump’s campaign, and then his presidency, cannot be fixed with new rules and policies. It’s a moral failing, moral corruption, and it can only be fixed by a spiritual renewal in America, by a return to — let’s be honest — a civic culture shaped and guided by Christian moral virtue.

Just three days after sending its “pre-litigation” letter to HHS, which included the zinger, “If we go to court, you will lose. I write in the hope that you will see reason (or at least the law) and we can skip to the easy part,” HHS beat a hasty retreat.

“The game was simply not worth the candle for HHS,” Lori Windham, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, the religious freedom law firm representing the hospital, told The Daily Signal in a written statement Friday. “It realized it would be playing with fire in court if it stood by its absurd demand, so it chose wisely. We are glad Saint Francis’s can continue to serve those most in need while keeping the faith.” //

Windham noted that there are other sources of fire in the hospital, but CMS only singled out the candle for further scrutiny.

“In this same inspection, they were OK with pilot lights in the kitchen and will gas dryers. It was just the candle that was the problem,” she said. //

There is no doubt that the Biden White House and its parent organization, the Obama administration, are implacably hostile to Christianity in general and public devotion to it specifically. It was Barack Obama who tried to convert the Constitutional Freedom of Religion into FDR’s Freedom of Worship. We have to be constantly on guard or this liberty will be snuffed out by the use of the regulatory power of the administrative state. //

Laocoon
a day ago
Lesson Learned: Push back on these bureaucratic monsters and it's at least an even bet that they'll fold like Streiff's cheap suit.

Solzhenitsyn pointed out that Russians who either resisted or fled from the Cheka often got away with it. It was only the passivity of Russians when faced with authority that empowered the NKVD and other orgs to get away with their atrocities. //

DaveM
a day ago edited
I thought it would change the instant a suit was being brought. There was no way this was going to pass muster.
Looks like the TJC surveyor had a chip on his shoulder. Think of them as the Inspectors General of the Medical World. My own 40+ experience with these people is that they are pretty good at what they do but we do see a jerkwad like this every few years.
I was surprised to see NFPA 99-2012: 11.5.1.1.2 cited for a Chapel. That standard is associated with the administration of medical gas in a clinical environment.

fyi: For those not familiar with it
NFPA 99-2012: is the Healthcare Facilities Code and is one of the Bibles used in assessing Healthcare Facilities during licensing and accreditation surveys. Chapter 11 covers medical gas equipment. Currently the 2012 code is the one used.
The standard 11.5.1.1.2 prohibits open flame in a patient care environment where medical gases are being administered to patients. The context of the chapter makes it abundantly clear that the intent is to apply this to a clinical environment -which a Place of Worship is not.

The NFPA Life Safety Code NFPA 101-2012: (which is the Life Safety Surveyor's Bible) specifically recognizes the importance of candles like this for religious purposes and makes allowance for them to be used safely. The cited Hospital most definitely adheres to a safe practice no one should have an issue with.

In any case the final authority on whether the hospital's practice under NFPA 101 is is not TJC or CMS. The specific regulatory agency is the AHJ (basically the local Fire Marshal).

RFK Jr., in his recent announcement of his candidacy for president, declared that he was going to do something truly radical if elected president: tell the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or unpopular //

The idea of a politician being held to such a standard shouldn’t be radical, but it absolutely is. At this point, we simply take it for granted that if a government actor’s lips are moving, he’s probably lying. The only questions are how much of what he’s saying is exaggerated, distorted, or outright fabricated, and for what purpose?

And because the corporate media that is supposed to expose and chronicle politicans’ lies is almost always in on the deception itself, the onus falls on the individual or a trusted independent media source to sort fact from fiction. What this leads to is a devastating decay in trust in government and an erosion of civic engagement of the sort seen in Eastern Europe in the heyday of Soviet communism.

“The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them.”
– Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs

Dozens of countries have privatized or partially privatized.

Computer screens have replaced not-always-clear windows in many air traffic control centers. Controllers don’t use binoculars anymore because high-definition cameras let them see much more, especially at night.

A Government Accountability Office study found that in countries that privatized, there are fewer delays and costs are lower.

So why doesn’t America privatize?

Because our politicians get money from labor unions, who “advocate for keeping the same people in the same jobs,” says Furchtgott-Roth.

Another opponent is the private plane lobby. Under our current system, Congress makes sure that the big airlines, which you fly, subsidize private flights’ air traffic fees.

“If they have private planes,” says Furchtgott-Roth, “they should be able to pay their fair share.” Yes. Today’s pricing amounts to welfare for rich people.

A third obstacle is fear. “For-profit companies will cut corners and make flying less safe!” But this is nonsense. That GAO study found that safety stayed the same or improved in countries that privatized.

Also, “For-profit companies actually run the airlines!” Furchtgott-Roth points out.

The airlines get FAA supervision, but the main reason planes don’t crash is because the private companies don’t want to destroy their business by killing their customers. //

Today, computers controlling air traffic in other countries keep getting better. In America, privatization would reduce delays and make flying even safer.

But our arrogant politicians won’t allow it. They insist government run things.

Since governments rarely innovate, you must sit at the airport and wait.

Sometimes there is a vast conspiracy at play, and the problem isn’t that someone is donning a tinfoil hat but that he’s buried his head in the sand. //

Thursday’s reporting exposed even more government-funded organizations pushing Twitter to censor speech.

But yesterday’s thread, titled “The Censorship-Industrial Complex,” did more than merely expand the knowledge base of the various actors: It revealed that government-funded organizations sought the censorship of truthful speech by ordinary Americans. //

The government funding of these censorship conduits is not the only scandal exposed by the “Twitter Files.” Rather, the internal communications of the social media giant also revealed that several censorship requests rested on bogus research. //

But really, that is nothing compared to what Thursday’s “Twitter Files” revealed: a request for the censorship of truthful information, including news that certain Covid shots had been banned in some countries. And that censorship request came from a group of so-called disinformation experts closely coordinating with the government and with several partners funded with government grants....

Milhouse | March 1, 2023 at 10:45 pm
“Security from domestic violence, no less than from foreign aggression, is the most elementary and fundamental purpose of any government, and a government that cannot fulfill that purpose is one that cannot long command the loyalty of its citizens. History shows us – demonstrates that nothing – nothing prepares the way for tyranny more than the failure of public officials to keep the streets from bullies and marauders.

“Now, we Republicans see all this as more, much more, than the rest: of mere political differences or mere political mistakes. We see this as the result of a fundamentally and absolutely wrong view of man, his nature and his destiny. Those who seek to live your lives for you, to take your liberties in return for relieving you of yours, those who elevate the state and downgrade the citizen must see ultimately a world in which earthly power can be substituted for divine will, and this Nation was founded upon the rejection of that notion and upon the acceptance of God as the author of freedom.”

— Barry Goldwater

It’s yet another state-level example of Republican politicians selling out their own voters to bloated and harmful special interests.

Indiana’s term-limited governor, highly unpopular with his GOP base, is pushing an overfunded public health plan that could steal local control from county officials. It’s yet another state-level example of Republican politicians selling out their own voters to bloated and harmful special interests.

The lame-duck governor and several top Republicans in the Republican-controlled legislature are clearly angling to get hired by Big Pharma after leaving public office, thereby using this sweetheart deal to eventually line their own pockets from one of the state’s largest lobbying interests.

None of that means that asking Congress to reauthorize federal spending bills every few years isn’t a great idea. Why would stalwarts of “democracy” oppose revisiting spending decisions made by legislators nearly 90 years ago? No living person has ever voted on them. And though “liberals” are generally more protective of Social Security than the Bill of Rights, entitlement programs aren’t foundational governing ideas, they do not protect our natural rights, nor are they at the heart of the American project. Government dependency is, in fact, at odds with all of it.

Every year, hundreds of thousands of private-sector establishments go out of business, and yet not a single federal government program ever does. While nearly every facet of society embraces cost-saving efficiencies, the federal government perpetually grows. It is madness. Simply as a function of good governance, it would be reasonable for Congress to review the efficacy and cost of existing federal programs, and then make suggestions for reforms or elimination or — yikes — privatization. Forget entitlements. Is there any reason we shouldn’t revisit the billions spent on the obsolete Natural Resource Conservation Service (created in 1935 to help farmers deal with soil corrosion) or the Rural Electrification Administration (created in the same year, when large swaths of rural Americans did not have electricity) or the counterproductive Small Business Administration or the subsidy sucking Amtrak corporation? //

In the 1970s, Biden supported re-upping federal spending authorization every four years and requiring Congress to “make a detailed study of the program before renewing it.” Obviously, Biden hasn’t stuck to a single principled position in his entire career. But it is worth noting there was plenty of bipartisan support for sunsetting bills from 1970 through the 2000s — including from Ed Muskie, Jesse Helms, liberal “lion” Ted Kennedy, and George W. Bush.

But as silly as it all seems, there are two significant underlying problems. The first, and most obvious, is that progressives have zero limiting principle of governance. If they could ban Americans from saying things they detest or owning a gas-powered car, they would in a heartbeat. They’re authoritarians in both petty and significant ways. The Consumer Product Safety Commission, the brainchild of nomenklatura Elizabeth Warren, is a perfect example of this inclination. It’s an institution that exists without any democratic oversight or constitutional authority. When Washington banned useful light bulbs years ago, they at least had the decency to do it with the consent of elected officials. //

The state should have no right to dictate such things, either way. Electric stoves are probably far more dangerous to an average family than gas stoves. Of course, nearly everything we do is imbued with some level of risk. Refrigerators, dryers, computers, and dishwashers are likely just as dangerous as your stove. When the state is imbued with the power to pick and choose which risks it can abate, it can do basically anything it likes. Of course, it’s all a big joke until some bureaucrat is controlling your thermostat during a heat wave.

Scoundrels have always been in the halls of power, along with amateurs, the inept and the deranged. But these days the criminality of some political leaders has reached levels worthy of the tyrants of antiquity. And the ineptitude of those in power now has much graver consequences due to globalization, technology, the complexity of society, as well as the speed with which things happen. //

No, in a kleptocracy criminal behavior is not individual, opportunistic, or sporadic, but rather collective, systematic, strategic, and permanent. It is a system in which all the high-level government officials are complicit, where they deliberately work to enrich themselves, and then use their accumulated wealth to perpetuate themselves in power. For the kleptocrats the common good and people’s needs are secondary and only looked at when they are at the service of their primary goal: to fatten their fortunes and make sure they stay in power. //

No, in a kleptocracy criminal behavior is not individual, opportunistic, or sporadic, but rather collective, systematic, strategic, and permanent. It is a system in which all the high-level government officials are complicit, where they deliberately work to enrich themselves, and then use their accumulated wealth to perpetuate themselves in power. For the kleptocrats the common good and people’s needs are secondary and only looked at when they are at the service of their primary goal: to fatten their fortunes and make sure they stay in power.

The case of the inept in power is something different. Kakistocracies (literally, governments by the worst) proliferate in weak and disorganized political systems that repel the talented and attract the inept and most debased. Obviously, sometimes they they come together producing a government that is both criminal and incompetent. When the two coincide, the kleptocracy and the kakistocracy feed back on each other.

From pony express to phony excess.