Hypothetically speaking, that is how the drug war works. But unfortunately, ONLY low level dealers go to prison.

Lock up a few big fish, and behaviors will change very quickly. Give them impunity and it is the same ole’ song and dance which will corrupt. There is a reason over 500 prosecutors wrote in support of keeping Jorge Chavarria on. It certainly is not because he is doing a good job. It covers for the corruption that has been institutionalized all throughout the nation. This change is much easier than most think. It starts with getting Jorge Chavarria out!

One theory I heard (if memory serves it came from Otton Solis–though memory may not serve so I shouldn’t attribute it to him) is that a fair number of high-level staffers and appointees have information that if released would send selected politicians to prison, but instead of releasing the information they use it to blackmail the politicians into continuing to hire and appoint them. It therefore becomes a club of the corrupt in which no one rats on anyone else as long as each one gets a cut of the take. This may be what’s going on with the Head Prosecutor, although I’m more suspicious of certain cabinet members who keep being appointed as ministers of this or that.

However, it’s hard for me to suspect Solís of being blackmailed like this, since he’s an outsider. But who knows, it may all happen more indirectly. Or, Solís may be out of the loop still. I would be surprised though if Solís failed to prosecute if he had hard evidence.

OK, I’ll concede that multinationals do sometimes bribe, but I think that’s rare. More common are things like the Clinton speaking fees in the article you post. Usually there are legal ways to buy influence.

Everywhere in the world the order of people’s priorities is family, friends, and country. This was discovered long ago by the Nazis and adopted by the US military. Soldiers simply do not fight for their country. Rather, they fight for their buddies alongside them, and when they think of “country” they think of their sweethearts back home. Since WW II, military strategy has always been to kindle the ties among the small groups of soldiers and to forget about the nation. Since soldiers in the battlefield are so motivated, I see no reason to believe that others aren’t, and there are lots of reasons to believe that others are also motivated by family first, then friends, and last country.

As a moral position, I also dislike putting country first. It reeks of nationalism, which to my mind is the among the greatest evils in the world today. Authur Schlesinger wrote that famous Kennedy line about “ask not,” and he was a good speechwriter while Kennedy was pretty good at delivery, but we have to remember that Kennedy was running for president, a national office, and that’s what politicians are suppose to emphasize.

We might though ask ourselves what effect this US nationalism had, insofar it was believed. Yeah, domestically it helped. Tax rates were higher then than they have ever been since and the society was more equal than it has been since. Crucial equality legislation was soon pushed through to help old people and on behalf of civil rights. There were domestic achievements. But look at foreign policy. Kennedy himself made a mess of Cuba and embarked upon the ill-fated Vietnam War. In fact, while these guys were fairly living off the glory of having taken the right action in WW II, and possibly right in the Korean War, even Ike blew it in Guatemala before Kennedy did in Cuba and Vietnam. And can we count the number of US wars since then? It helps that the Iraq wars are numbered.

I’m not keen on family being first, and when Kennedy was elected the top inheritance tax was 90%, while it’s now much lower and decried as the “death tax.” Putting family first can be quite harmful to the larger society. But I personally don’t want nationalism first, since that’s even worse.

And to my mind, Costa Rica is too nationalistic already. It was a rude awakening for me to see the reaction of Costa Rica to Nicaragua’s so-called invasion. My feeling was thank God Costa Rica doesn’t have a military, since if it had one it would have started the same kind of war that the US always starts when it’s nationalism is insulted.

I also don’t like the way the beer monopoly gets away with charging inflated prices by nationalistic advertising, or the xenophobia in the country. To my mind, Costa Rica needs to tone down its nationalism.

OK, while I’m on this roll, IMO what the country really lacks is a civil society, the stuff that comes between family and friends on one hand and the state on the other. Although it could be strengthened there too, both the US and Canada have a much stronger civil society ethic. In Costa Rica there is a gap of indifference between the people a person is related to and friends, on one hand, and the government. Indeed, people put too much emphasis on the government handling this in between area, when governments really can’t do that. Alas, the civil society deficit makes government corruption easier, since there is no check on it.

True, if exports of bananas and pineapples are down–pretty standard things–it would appear that exports overall are down, but who is worried about a decline in banana and pineapple exports? I’m not. Rule #1 in global commerce is that when you’re exporting unfinished goods like agricultural products, you are importing finished goods like cell phones–and lose. We may not want to see banana or pineapple exports down in the short run, but if the business class is going to fret about this, it is tantamount to their saying that they want to remain a Banana (or Pineapple) Republic.

It’s also clear that the Banana Republic business class has been mounting an all-out assault on the Solís administration, and I can’t imagine that PROCOMER isn’t part of this assault. Their agenda is transparent: It is to make Solís look bad so that they can once again install their own lackeys in the government.

Just beware: Corruption in Costa Rica isn’t limited to the government. The book-cooking by the multinationals makes political corruption look like amateur stuff. And the Banana Republic business class wants us to fault the government, since that deflects attention away from its own misdeeds.