Before his sextacular political implosion, former Rep. Anthony Weiner was hard at work on a plan to make diplomats pay for their $18 million worth of parking infractions. Weiner may have turned out to be a hypocrite—he himself owed $2,180 in unpaid Washington DC parking tickets—in more ways than one, but his fight against diplomats' ticket exceptions was left hanging in the wind. But Forbes has taken to statistics and maps to better expose the sordid underbelly of what Andrea Peyser once referred to as those "malodorous, greedy, drunk and demented" foreign nationals.
In the graphs, Forbes compares two separate studies: one compiled in 2006 which was a comprehensive list of diplomatic parking violations and staffing levels to find the countries with the most violations per U.N. diplomat; and one dealing with corruption scores from Transparency International. And the results? Statistically titillating, but unfortunately, ultimately not that illuminating: "The correlation between political corruption and parking violations is statistically robust, but a quick comparison between the two maps suggests that it’s not universal."
But there is a positive look at the future: since 2002, when the U.S. began withholding parking fines from foreign aid payments: violations fell by 90 percent immediately after the measure was passed. Uh, except for Egypt, who still owes $1.9 million in unpaid parking fines from last year alone. Check out the statistical maps in full below:
