Originally a comment by Beth Clarkson on Greasing the wheels.

I agree with you both that it’s blatant corruption and that it shouldn’t be shrugged aside as unimportant and also agree that it isn’t a big deal. My Trump supporting relatives point to Hunter Biden regarding his well-paid Ukrainian corporation position. I can’t say that doesn’t look like corruption. It does. Turning a blind eye to this sort of thing is why so many working-class Americans are MAGA people. I just point out that the Trump children were even more blatant about cashing in on their fathers position, both foreign and domestically. Doesn’t matter of course. They love Trump. He hasn’t done anything wrong in their opinion. Then we talk about other things.

IMO, the most serious corruption affecting us is the issues of industry capture of regulatory agencies. It is pernicious throughout the federal U.S. regulatory system. I don’t have any solid feeling about what it would take to turn those agencies back into defenders of citizens rather than corporations. Terrible tragedy maybe? That seems inevitable if we don’t figure out a better solution to improving that situation. Sadly, this one doesn’t even make anybody’s radar as a thing to focus on.

Actually, on second thought, the solution isn’t that hard. We have a lot of research about what we need to do regarding this problem. But it’s devilishly hard to implement because it would require a power shift within each of the agencies.