This is little more than an outline

but perhaps discussion would help get my juices flowing. (That's what's called a homely simile.)


Government is fully capable of failing as much as anybody. Getting a government job doesn't turn anybody into an angel instantly.

Exhibits:

a. Al Ghraib prisoner abuse--not to mention the horrors of our own prisons. [Much later: Abu Ghraib, excuse me.]
b. Abusive police, there's a couple of stories in the news I'd like to link, but I'm not finding them quickly.

There are likely to be more scandals in government than in the private sector, because that is the quickest route to power, hence, that's the route the skanks will head down. Democracy produces scandals, other systems produce tyrants.

Businessment get put in prison for the tiniest scent of corruption:

Mises article today

This may or may not have been an obstruction of justice. A gray area is bound to result when trying to judge someone's motives. Quattrone claimed that his was a routine e-mail and that he was never led to believe that it would hinder the federal investigation. Prosecutors argue that his e-mail proved that Quattrone had something to hide, even though no devious intentions were shown over the course of two trials. (An earlier Quattrone trial ended in a hung jury.)

It is clear that this lack of intent to deceive investigators should play heavily in Quattrone's sentencing hearing. Unfortunately, it is also clear that given the orchestrated backlash against the private sector following the most recent recession, Quattrone will receive little mercy from a justice system hell-bent on demonizing the market so as to draw attention away from the State's very great complicity in exacerbating the effects of the boom-bust cycle.

As the feds scapegoated business to hide the ill-effects of New Deal policies in the 1930s, so they are today—this time, to cover for the disastrous economic results of its fiscal, monetary, protectionist, and regulatory interventions in the market order that create unsustainable economic booms and that prolong the market correction process. The great irony today is that the very political classes that benefited from Quattrone's efforts turned against him once the economy dipped.