Brazilians sardonically refer to their often corrupt public bureaucracy as O Trem de Alegria, or The Joy Train. I've written about a number of the train's happy passengers over the years, including the mayor of a small working-class town near Rio de Janeiro who jobbed the system so brazenly that he earned a $264,000 annual salary – twice that of the President of Brazil at the time. But with Brazil's economy beginning to cool down after running Amazon hot for the past decade, and with the country about to host the soccer World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016, President Dilma Rousseff knows the Joy Train is a guilty (make that felonious) pleasure the South American giant can no longer afford.
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