The growing scandal surrounding Chicago’s contract set-asides for minority-owned companies has prompted an attack from U.S. Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.: “If Mayor Richard M. Daley does not take the bull by the horns and clean up the City of Chicago’s corrupt and apparently often phony affirmative action program, he could threaten the existence of affirmative action nationally.” Now, rumor has it that Rep. Jackson’s attack is motivated in part by his own designs on the mayoralty, and of course he will always champion “honest” affirmative action, but the fact is that contract set-asides equals corruption all over the world, from Malaysia to South Africa to Atlanta. Details in, for instance, Thomas Sowell’s book last year, Affirmative Action around the World: An Empirical Study.