Red-light camera company CEO confesses to bribing Ohio Democrats.

As well as using the Ohio Democratic party as the bagman.

A former chief executive officer of the red-light camera company Redflex has pleaded guilty to bribing Columbus elected officials – including Council President Andrew Ginther – through the Ohio Democratic Party to install the cameras and keep them operating in the city.

Karen L. Finley, 55, of Cave Creek, Ariz., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery,according a press release from Carter M. Stewart, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio.

Imagine that. Imagine that.  How could it possibly be that a company might think that there was enough money in the installation of automatic traffic ticket generators that it’d be worth bribing city officials to do it?  And a real cheap one, too: apparently, in 2011 you could have bought the Ohio Democratic party for forty thousand dollars.  I assume that’s per-policy position, although I wonder if Ohio Democrats offered a group rate?

Such is the nature of civic corruption; and it’s a really good argument for giving governments as little power as is humanly possible.  Because the more things that you can bribe a government official to do, the more bribing will be done to government officials.  You just can’t get away from that: money exists to solve problems.  As long as humanity keeps insisting on creating institutions whose job it is to cause problems, you’re going to see this kind of dynamic tension on the interface. So make government as irrelevant as possible and then maybe fewer people would go to jail, hey?

Via @scottlinciome.

Moe Lane (crosspost)