According to a NYT report:
““Start with Lord
Acton and the famous axiom that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts
absolutely,” said Wayne Flynt, a retired professor of history at Auburn
University. “Alabama has had a seamless transition from Democratic one-party
rule and synonymous corruption to Republican one-party rule and synonymous
corruption.”
Power in Alabama is
centralized by design. The state Constitution requires legislatively approved
amendments for matters as trivial as local traffic laws, resulting in what has
been described as the longest constitution in the world. Consolidating things
further, Alabama has nearly always been a one-party state.”Massive corruption scandal in New York:
Commentary: We’re all paying the costs of corruption
by JOHN LLOYD
A must read for anyone interested in economic development
or international affairs:
How the U.S. and Britain help kleptocrats around
the world — and how we pay the price as well by Anne Applebaum
“… Not that “corruption” in London takes exactly the
same form as it does in Abuja or Kabul. Daily life in Britain does not require
the payment of bribes; the court system is widely and justly admired. But over
the past couple of decades, London’s accountants and lawyers have helped
launder billions of dollars of stolen money through the British Virgin Islands,
among other British overseas territories. The British property market —
like the New York property market — has long functioned like an old-fashioned
Swiss bank, providing safe real estate investments for owners who wish their
identities and their sources of income to be hidden. Several U.S. states — most
famously Delaware, but also New Mexico, Nevada and Wyoming — make it possible
for anonymous owners to register companies with few legal checks, too. Those
companies can then go on to do business, or buy property, in places such as
rural Hampshire.”