Standards

There was an interesting story on the radio about Paul Wolfowitz, the conservative architect of the Iraq War who President Bush sent to head the World Bank. Wolfowitz has refused debt relief to one of the poorest countries in the world, the Republic of Congo. They don't deserve the help, he says, because their government is corrupt.

Perhaps Wolfowitz should deny himself his own salary, because it looks like he's pretty corrupt himself. He "personally directed the World Bank's head of human resources to offer Shaha Riza, a bank official with whom he was romanitcally involved, a large pay rise and a promotion." The raise is worth $193,000, tax free—about a thousand times what the typical citizen of the Republic of Congo makes a year, where over two-thirds of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.

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