Jim Devine worries about the low cost of spies; I worry about the low cost of politicians. My brother tells me that his group contributed $5000 to Dan Rostenkowski and lo and behold he changed an important provision in the tax code. Suppose we had a minimum wage law for politicians on the take. As it stands, political bribes now often earn 100-fold returns. Suppose we made it a felony for any politican to accept less than $100 million in bribes, then politicans could still get rich but they would have to do fewer bad things to get their money. Some might argue that this would be unfair to smaller bribers that could not affort that much, but they can still probably hire local pols. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
