My guess: what’s special about Chicago politics is not venality —hardly!— but operating style. An overview is available in this book, especially chs. 1&2. I see Amazon is almost out of stock; could be quite relevant, or at least there are a lot of enquiring minds turning to a book that’s been out 6 years.

I guess that either Simon Johnson is presently in the other hemisphere, or else this thought was keeping him up Friday night:

Private sector capture of the state is bad enough, wherever it happens in the world. But when the capturers have an unparalleled ability and willingness to “tax” the rest of us, we should really be afraid.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got French toast with warm maple syrup this morning. Ah — adventures in home repair. Hoover pushed out the corner of a screen (BAD kitteh…) so today I embark upon my first adventure in replacing window screening. I’m full of theoretical knowledge, but practical experience is sadly lacking. Wish me luck! Have a great day.

We’ve played the “let’s limit the damage” game by electing anyone who was willing to call himself a Democrat, and look where it’s gotten us.

We weren’t wrong. Just unfortunate.

I am out, too. nite pups

In any case, we really don’t have many choices, do we? If Obama won’t lead, then he’s toast. The thing to do is figure out how to minimize the damage and move on.

Things are going to be bad in the U.S. for the next few years, regardless of what we do at this point. The unemployment, the real unemployment, will remain high. Hopefully, we can rebuild some in the meantime, and make some investments in the future. To do that, though, we need to change the balance of power in Congress, and in the White House.

Anyway, I find it hard to be Mr. Positive, but when you only have crummy choices, you pick the best one. We’ve played the “let’s limit the damage” game by electing anyone who was willing to call himself a Democrat, and look where it’s gotten us. If all we do for the next few years is keep these guys from fucking up any more, then at least we’ve done more than has been done in the last decade. We’ll just have to build from there.

Well, I can tell it’s late, because I can barely write anything coherent. I’ll stop now.

Oh, wait, I’ll just add one more thing. Much of the rest of the world built itself back up at the end of WWII. That’s one of the reasons we have such a time competing now (although I’d say it’s the least of them). Korea was a burnt-out husk in 1953. They built themselves into a power in less than thirty-five years. They did that by being industrious and by educating themselves. I was amazed at what I saw there back then, and it was easy to tell where they were headed. Societies can come back. They’ve come back from worse than we’ve managed to do to ourselves.