America Has Become A Banana Republic, Heading Toward Kleptocracy

I am certainly not the first one to say it, but America these days looking more and more like a banana republic, if not an outright kleptocracy. Just take a look at the most recent posts I've put up in the last two days:

• Trump's hedge fund investments stand to make enormous gains if FNMA and FHLMC are once again privatized as Treasury Secretary nominee plans to do.
• Trump Organization pressures foreign embassies to use Trump's new DC hotel for functions; Embassies comply because they believe it will buy influence with the next President.
• Betsy Devos, Trump's Education nominee, runs PAC that asks for ruling on election spending from state of Ohio; when it gets a ruling it doesn't like, it proceeds to ignore it and exceed the limit by more the three-quarters of a billion dollars; PAC gets hit with a record fine so it shuts down and refuses to pay.
• Newt Gingrich basically says Trump is so rich and powerful that existing laws should not apply to him.
• Uber tells California DMV and Attorney General to basically shove it saying the law does not apply to them.
• Another Wall Street hedge fund turns out to be a Ponzi scheme but these guys were especially egregious and sleazy by profiting from insurance policies they took out on the terminally ill.
• Pharmaceutical companies reap billions in profits from taxpayer funded research, making us all pay twice - once for the research and then again through the outrageous prices Big Pharma can charge due to their monopoly of treatments.
• Michigan sets up a program that deliberately declares unemployment insurance applications as fraudulent, costing tens of thousands of workers millions of dollars in benefits they were entitled to.
• A massive conspiracy between drug wholesalers, pharmacies, doctors, and elements of the West Virginia government fuels an opioid epidemic in the state, destroying the lives of millions.
• Release of details of warrant shows how egregious James Comey's actions were and the questions about his behavior must be answered.
• FBI agent's actions sink a huge insider trading case, once again illustrating an agency out of control.

This is all that I could put together in the last two days. But there are plenty of other examples, such as the Trump family continually trying to sell access to the President. I'm sure you all have some of your own, so please go ahead and add them in comments.