The SanityPrompt

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Monday, April 18, 2005

Corruption as a form of professional specialization

Considering the frequency with which some people get into legal troubles or flirt with it (see Tom DeLay) my hunch is that the economy requires a certain breed of person who can specialize in corruption. How else to explain the masterful ability of those who manage to get into the newspapers for shady dealings? It's either habit or a form of specialization.

WASHINGTON, April 14 - Back then the commodity in play was rice and this time, a criminal complaint alleges, it was oil. But nearly 30 years after Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman, stood at the center of the Koreagate influence-peddling scandal that rocked official Washington, he has emerged at the center of the United Nations' Iraqi oil-for-food scandal - accused in a strikingly similar scheme.