STATE OF THE ONION

All governments are corrupt.

Some are just more tainted than others.

There can be no other way.

Whether elected by ballot or propelled by sticks and stones, the inhabitants of the castle are always playing with the coin of the realm.

That is, your money.

The kings, prime ministers, presidents, despots-for-life, kleptogenerals or whatever title they may wrap about their shoulders have not been tending the fields or the flock, re-soling the shoes or sailing the rugged waters to bring back bounty from distant lands.

They have been taxing or stealing or muscling funds from the people who work - you.

Not all government actions are dreadful.

Just most.

Occasionally, a man nor woman in government will do a good deed. They will treat some poor local sufferer with kindness. They will act reasonably.

This is the exception, not the rule.

The official story is always suspect.

If not an outright lie, it is at the least a marvelous thigh-slapping whopper.

Take the Canadian Senate...please.

You work.

Larry Campbell plays.

He has air fares, secretaries, lunches and a life-time sinecure.

Triple E senate is a three-Monte scam. The only reasonable senate is no senate. We don't need one. We need to spend our billions of dollars on other things.

The police are in disarray. Not just at Georgia and Homer, but across the country. Demoralized, understaffed, without leadership and clarity.

Every day, some school trustee or Member of Parliament or other elected or appointed official is found criminally responsible for some felony or other - theft, fraud, sexual misconduct, addictions, madness, lack of humour.

The teachers' union doesn't want their members to be scrutinized too closely for job performance. No tests, no evaluations. And that's just for the students. No matter. The kids are taking the tests anyway and doing just fine.

How are we to impress upon those who run for office and then how are we to remind them that this is public money with which they are playing their childish games.

You have your own personal fortunes? Good. Go ahead. Build bike lanes that no one uses.

Tear up main streets and destroy small businesses.

Open places for drug addicts to be drug addicts and for prostitutes to be prostitutes and call this progress.

On your own dollar, please.

All governments are corrupt.

In 2001, friends picked me up at Inchon airport and drove me into Seoul over the cleanest, firmest, straightest piece of highway I have ever seen. I asked from the back seat, "Who's cousin got the cement contract?" My hosts thankfully didn't get my impolite joke.

The next morning I came downstairs to the breakfast room in the hotel (Korean, American and Japanese breakfasts on tap), chose my fare and opened up the English language newspaper.

What was the headline story?

The Highway Cement Scandal.

Somebody's cousin was at the center of the story.

All governments are corrupt.

If you even knew how many people are working, for example, for the Canadian federal government in this city doing obscure, unnecessary, largely political backroom jobs that add nothing to the common weal, you would throw up. These faceless bastards have six-figure jobs. They are plotters and plodders. They are deemed necessary to the smooth working of your government. They all have i Phones.

All governments are corrupt.

Some are just more corrupt than others.

They are playing with your money.

They are naughty, irresponsible children.

We mustn't take them too seriously.

They are good targets for fun and ridicule.