Back in the day, a Chicago cop would signal a motorist that a bit of folding money would take care of the ticket by offering to sell a pencil to the driver. Depending on the infraction (and what the cop thought he could get), the pencil would cost between ten and fifty bucks.
Nowadays, of course, corruption is more genteel. A politician's spouse sets up a charity and the big corporations just line up to shovel cash in through the door. It may all be for a good cause. But can anyone honestly say that if Bobby Jindal owned a small chain of Stop `n Goes in East Baton Rouge Parish that AT&T would donate a quarter-mil to his wife's charity?
Note that one of the largest givers, a refinery company named Alon USA which also contributed a quarter o a million bucks to the charity, got the state to reduce its water discharge testing requirements from twice a week to twice a month.
It may be graft for a good cause. But it is still graft.
No comments:
Post a Comment
House Rules #1, #2 and #6 apply to all comments. Rule #3 also applies to political comments.
In short, don't be a jackass. THIS MEANS YOU!
If you never see your comments posted, see Rule #7.
All comments must be on point and address either the points raised in the blog post or points raised by commenters in response.
Any comments that drift off onto other topics are subject to deletion.
(Please don't feed the trolls.)
中國詞不評論，冒抹除的風險。僅英語。
COMMENT MODERATION IS IN EFFECT UFN. This means that if you are an insulting dick, nobody will ever see it.