Over the last decade, organized criminal violence has reached unprecedented levels and has caused as much violent death globally as direct armed conflict. Nonetheless, the study of organized crime in political science remains limited because these organizations and their violence are not viewed as political. Building on recent innovations in the study of armed conflict, I argue that organized criminal violence should no longer be segregated from related forms of organized violence and incorporated within the political violence literature. While criminal organizations do not seek to replace or break away from the state, they have increasingly engaged in the politics of the state through the accumulation of the means of violence itself. Like other non-state armed groups, they have developed variously collaborative and competitive relationships with the state that have produced heightened levels of violence in many contexts and allowed these organizations to gather significant political authority. I propose a simple conceptual typology for incorporating the study of these organizations into the political violence literature and suggest several areas of future inquiry that will illuminate the relationship between violence and politics more generally.

https://www.amazon.com/Gangster-States-Organized-Kleptocracy-International-ebook/dp/B00UHT2TAS

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/alesina/files/organized_crime_violence_politics_march_2016.pdf?m=1456945412

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-impact-of-organized-crime-on-governance-a-case-study-of-nepal/

https://www.idea.int/sites/default/files/publications/protecting-politics-deterring-the-influence-of-organized-crime-on-local-democracy.pdf

Would you be shocked to discover that Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and Jerry Brown are at the top of an organized crime operation that they and their families operate?

They all seem "so nice" and committed to green crunchy granola things but if you look at all of their covert bank accounts and track the money back to the sources, you can clearly see mobster activity.

Members of Congress trade in companies while making laws that ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/members-of-congress-trade-in-companies-while-making-laws-that-affect-those-same-firms/2012/06/23/gJQAlXwVyV_story.html

June 23, 2012 Email the author. One-hundred-thirty members of Congress or their families have traded stocks collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars in companies lobbying on bills that came before their committees, a practice that is permitted under current ethics rules, a Washington Post analysis has found.

Congress: Trading stock on inside information? - CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/congress-trading-stock-on-inside-information/

Steve Kroft reports that members of Congress can legally trade stock based on non-public information from Capitol Hill ... If you are a member of Congress, those laws are deemed not to apply ...

Congress Cashes in on Insider Trading | RepresentUs

https://represent.us/action/insider-trading/

In 2011, a CBS investigation blew the lid off of one of Washington's most poorly-kept secrets: members of Congress were routinely exploiting legal loopholes to engage in insider trading and line their own pockets — a criminal offense for regular citizens. In the ensuing public outrage, Congress passed a law called the STOCK Act, and took a loud victory lap for supposedly putting an end to their own unscrupulous behavior.

Congress Quickly And Quietly Rolls Back Insider Trading Rules ...

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130416/08344222725/congress-quickly-quietly-rolls-back-insider-trading-rules-itself.shtml

While everyone else is subject to basic insider trading rules, it turned out that members of Congress were exempt from the rules. And, as you would imagine, many in Congress have access to market ...

Many in Congress invest in companies they'll affect with votes

https://www.statnews.com/2015/12/01/congress-pharmaceutical-investment/

Dec 1, 2015The fact that members of Congress hold stock in companies while "they are passing laws that affect those businesses is a particular area of concern," said Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group, a nonprofit health advocacy organization.

Congressional Immunity Law and Legal Definition | USLegal, Inc.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/c/congressional-immunity/

Congressional Immunity Law and Legal Definition. 1. A Congress member is exempted from arrest while attending a session of the body to which the member belongs, excluding an arrest for treason, breach of the peace, or a felony, or; 2.A Congress member is exempted from arrest or interrogation for any speech or debate entered into during a legislative session.

 

How Congress Quietly Overhauled Its Insider-Trading Law : It ...

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/04/16/177496734/how-congress-quietly-overhauled-its-insider-trading-law

How Congress Quietly Overhauled Its Insider-Trading Law : It's All Politics With no fanfare, Congress moved to undo large parts of the popular law known as the STOCK Act, and President Obama has ...

Why can U.S. Congressmen get away with insider trading?

https://www.quora.com/Why-can-U-S-Congressmen-get-away-with-insider-trading

So, Members can trade upon inside knowledge of changes in the law, not upon non-public knowledge of company-specific data. BUT, many, including me, think this type of action should be statutorily illegal, rather than some fuzzy 'code of preferred conduct' as it presently is.