Must Government Be Honest to Be Effective?

mollpeartree contemplates how much corruption contributed to the Katrina disaster.

Chicagoans of all political stripes agree: If Chicago needed levees for any reason, Chicago would by God have levees, and they would be approximately 3/4 a mile high, and they would have "Richard M. Daly, Mayor" etched into them at eye level every few blocks or so, and Chicago would be known as the City of Levees. And they would have cost us (or, more likely, the American taxpayer in general) 10 times as much as they should have, but they would be there, and they would hold.