cheap politicians.

the extensive research team over at King of Zemba point to a fascinating article about corruption in peru - with the govt paying-off media and jundges and politicians and so forth. go read the whole thing, but i wanted to highlight this line in particular:

"The politicians' bribes were mostly between $5,000 and $20,000 per month."

as i've said before about the american political system, for a one-off payment of just a few thousand dollars in campaign contributions you can buy "significant slices of 'democracy'. its quite remarkable. and really fucking cheap."

at least the peruvians have the damn sense to charge properly - that's $60k to $240k per annum, and i betchya they put the money in their own pockets rather than in some stupid campaign fund.