Quote:
Originally Posted by Mynydd
You hit the nail. Corruption at local (municipal) government level has soared in the last few decades.
Only a few weeks ago, during the festivals of a small village near here, I was briefly talking to a friend's grandfather, a 93 y/o man who had been the mayor in that village in the past. A very clear mind for such an old man. He cursed all politicians while he was telling me how he had been the mayor in that village for long years, and how he never earned a cent from it.
I feel very bad for the old people like him, who have worked hard and lived honestly all their lifes, to now see in their last days the moral dump that we have turned into, since Brussels, Socialists and Liberals.
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Spain went from poverty to great development, economic growth and well being some thirty years later than Italy: it went also the same way from a strictly moralistic catholic society to a corrupted modern "democracy".
The foremost problems come from the development plan sector, thatìs's generally where the corruption process starts: clerks and local politicians quickly learn that businness licenses are a gold mine to increase their not so optimal legal rewards, with minimal risks.
Development plans are distorted to favour speculators, politicians become speculators themselves through complacent proxies: they start by using wifes and relatives as proxies , then they concoct more refined schemes.
Waste disposal and treatment also is a great source of kickbacks and illicit traffics.
In Italy in the North we have a situation that can be compared to France, everything happens behind a facade of legality and civil sevice efficency: apaprently it is all ok, but there are rumors that big kicks are still running.
In central Italy corruption is worst (in the roman area it us often utterly indecent) but there is no violence and public service is still decent or even optimal as in Umbria.
In the south various mafias control directly politicians , who are often mafiosi themselves, or staff civil service with their hacks and protegees, or with mafiosi provided with school degrees: it is not unlikely to hear of physicians who are accused of being bosses of the mafia or strict cohoperators of bosses, as for an example.
The regional civil service staff of Naples came to the fore for its refusal to implement a waste disposal plan that any other region has: they refused to implement it because it is in the interest of camorra (neapolitan mafia) to avoid the construction of incinerators and other waste treatment plants, since they run and illegal dumping ground system that is immensely lucrative.
You may imagine what it is like to build a road in such zones ...