As we all breathe a collective sigh now that another hurricane spared Delaware and its beaches, we should be thankful that we missed bad weather for another important reason.
Bad weather leads to government corruption.
This somewhat bizarre conclusion comes from a new paper by two University of West Virginia professors who concluded that natural disasters not only wreck property and disrupt lives, but also encourage graft.
And what feeds the graft, you might ask? Why it's the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The paper by Peter Leeson and Russell Sobel, reported in The Economist, makes a striking correlation between states that experience lots of disasters, such as Mississippi, Florida and South Dakota, and government corruption.
When disasters happen, FEMA disburses gobs of relief money. That, in turn, tempts the politicians to use it in ways other than designed.
For instance, they could embezzle it directly; or demand kick-backs for government rebuilding contracts.
The authors concluded that in the average state, an extra $1 per person in money from FEMA increases corruption in that state by 2.5 percent.
Eliminating all FEMA payouts would cut corruption by over 20 percent, they say.
Now that's a key to clean government that Common Cause overlooked.