[heavyset_go]

> Sure, you can cherry pick certain statistics for any period. That doesn’t tell you anything.

I'm curious what this is supposed to tell you, then:

> And corruption is way down from say the early 1900's (don't even talk about the 1800's where it was odd for a politician to not be corrupt).

[refurb]

That was a counterpoint to the OPs concern about corruption today in an attempt to convey that it’s not all that different now, not to argue it’s better now.