"How dare United Airlines favor a sleazy politician over a paying passenger? You know how? Graft. It's called bribery too. But whatever you call it, it has no place in our country."

Susan Carroll reports at Chron about United Airlines giving a woman's first class seat to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston.

CBD has this to say at Ace of Spades.

We started a revolution to change the world's paradigm that some people are better than others. But we have regressed to a 21st century version of royalty, and it disgusts me.

This is one of the many things that must change before we return to a society more in tune with the one our founders envisioned. The idea that a member of Congress is in any way more important than any other citizen of these United States is anathema to everything we stand for, fought for, died for, and strive to protect.

And the cozy, disgusting, rent-seeking relationship between business and our ruling class is another thing that needs to end. Yes, that is my secret populist emerging again, but I can't think of another way to describe how I feel about it. We need to break the power of government officials, and we need to destroy the relationship between big business and government. How dare United Airlines favor a sleazy politician over a paying passenger? You know how? Graft. It's called bribery too. But whatever you call it, it has no place in our country.

Graft and crony capitalism

Investors Business Daily got the Wikileaks transcripts of Hillary's three questions and answers sessions with Goldman Sachs, and IBD asks,

Goldman Sachs Paid Hillary $675,000 For This?

Read more from the Wikileaks transcripts here.

Politicians accumulating money, power, and prestige

Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today,

politicians don’t care, except to the extent that we make them care. Whatever they say when they’re running for office, their top priority once elected is to build a coalition that will keep them in power, and accumulating money and influence, regardless of whether the interests of that coalition coincide with the public’s.

One of the reasons that America enjoyed such tremendous growth over the past century was that technology outran regulators’ ability to keep up. Will that remain true over the coming decades? Let’s hope so. We can’t make it in the 21st century with a 1950s economic model, however appealing that approach might be to politicians.

Read more here.