> I think the focus, then, should be on holding elected officials accountable for their actions.
The unwritten corollary to this is that we elect better officials. And in that regard, this week's episode of the EconTalk podcast on cronyism had an interesting line I've since been pondering. Paraphrased, "It's not that we should get better people, we need to incentivize bad people to do good things rather than incentivize good people to do bad things."