"Russia tries to stamp out bribery; Anticorruption bill promised" by Peter Finn, Washington Post | July 20, 2008
MOSCOW - From birth to death, corruption courses through the lives of Russians - a phenomenon that newly elected President Dmitry Medvedev recently said has become "a way of life for a huge number of people."
"Those who take bribes feel it involves no risks or consider such risks to be negligible," Medvedev told lawmakers. "It mustn't be so."
Sounds like AmeriKa's political system.
In the Russian education system alone, about $1 billion is paid each year in bribes to secure entry and to pass exams, according to Mark Levin, a professor at Moscow's Higher School of Economics who has studied the phenomenon. Medvedev has pledged to introduce new anticorruption legislation by October as part of a broad campaign to reduce bribery.
In the early weeks of his presidency he made the centerpiece of his administration the establishment of the rule of law and the ending of what he calls "legal nihilism," or the wholesale flouting of the law.
Yup, we DEFINITELY have that in AmeriKa!!!
The country's staggering new wealth, largely flowing from oil and natural gas revenues, has led to an explosion in graft, which is now measured in the tens of billions of dollars.
In a survey of corruption levels in 180 countries, Transparency International, a watchdog organization based in Berlin, ranked Russia 143d, with 180th as the worst.
I wonder where the U.S. ranked? Last?
"We have a lot of people who in their lifetimes worked only in the civil service, and what they have does not correspond with their income, which is extremely modest," said Yelena Panfilova, head of the group's Russia office. "They have shares in business, property in London or Paris or Madrid or the Maldives, children in boarding school in England, . . . and a couple of cars.
Sounds like OUR POLITICIANS HERE!!!
"And they say that any law forcing them to account for their assets is a violation of their human rights."
Bribery enriches Russian bureaucrats and other officials to the tune of $120 billion annually, a senior Russian investigator said.
I'll bet AmeriKa's War Contractors get more war loot than that!
You know what my solution to corruption is? It involves a noose.
I say make examples of a couple, and watch the rest fall right in line!
