Every once in a while there come reports of a United States congressperson taking a bribe, and everyone wonders how these people could betray the people’s trust and lose their jobs for so little money. The reason they take so little money is because they aren’t worth more. If you really want to see graft and corruption on an industrial scale, look to the dictators of this world. They all reign over desperately poor countries yet live in luxury, own homes in the south of France, and regularly deposit millions in Swiss bank accounts. And that is because they have power. A tin pot dictator or the president of a failed third world country has much more power to dispense favors, and many more favors to dispense, than your average congressman, so naturally their takes are much larger. Congressmen think small because their world is small, kinda like the world as seen by the small fish in an ocean containing fish much larger, more voracious and much hungrier than they.

The small fry hang around the bait

The bigger fish look on

The small fry is too dumb to wait

And in a moment’s gone

A slick dictator is worth more

A Congressman worth less

A President runs up the score

As Congressmen confess

That twenty grand looks mighty nice

It buys the girlfriend shoes

A dictator spends in a trice

That much and more on booze

So give our Congressmen a break

They do the best they can

And twenty grand will top the take

Until they are The Man