Oxfam America Blog

I remember my first encounter with bribery. It took me a little while to register that that’s what was actually happening—a $25 payout for a set of travel papers that would have been mine for a lot less if I had been willing to wait for days for someone—somewhere—to process the request. But by that time, I would have long-missed the flight to my destination. I had to get there and the bureaucrats in charge of the papers probably knew it.

So I forked over the money, as did a friend with whom I was travelling. Our handlers knew the drill well. Before we could even begin to worry about  this unexpected outlay, one of them handed us a piece of paper that said “justification for expenses without receipt.” It was stamped with a government seal and the amount recorded at the bottom. Read the rest of this entry »

“Luxury apartments,” said the sign. But the chipped paint and graying wood beneath those words indicated something different–a worn neighborhood of transients able to hold onto their apartments only as long as they could hold onto their jobs.

These, we were told, were the “undecideds,” the people who 10 days before the historic presidential election had yet to make up their minds despite the multi-million-dollar barrage of advertising, the horse-race headlines, and the droning of the pundits. Read the rest of this entry »