The compromise announced yesterday between Mayor Bloomberg and the State Department regarding parking tickets will almost certainly fail to cajole diplomats to pay up. After all, they are the species sent abroad to lie for their countries. The parking ticket feud has been running for years, since, our Benjamin Smith reminds us today in his dispatch at page 3, back when Ed Koch was in Congress, well into the previous century. Mr. Koch himself is now arguing that the way to deal with the millions of dollars in a country’s outstanding parking tickets is to deduct it from the country’s foreign aid, though what kind of impact that might have is hard to say. Egypt is the largest parking ticket scofflaw in the city, but after the Gulf War, President Bush up and simply forgave Egypt’s foreign aid debt of $7 billion. Its diplomats would have to double park in front of a lot of fancy restaurants to register in the kinds of cash flows that eddy back and forth. No, the way to deal with these diplomats is not to get into a long negotiation over how much to discount their parking tickets. The way to do it is to use the boot, that metal clamp that makes it impossible to move one’s stretch Jaguar or Saab with the tinted glass. Clamp those limousines the minute you spot them. It’ll give the rascals from North Korea, Red China, and France something to deal with between expensive meals.