WILLisms.com: Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 563 -- Chicago Newspaper Says, "Hey, Look Over There!" On Corruption.

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Trivia Tidbit of the Day: Part 563 -- Chicago Newspaper Says, "Hey, Look Over There!" On Corruption.

Measuring Corruption-

People in Chicago are upset that the Blagojevich situation has reminded Americans that their entire political establishment is woefully corrupt, so they got some Chicago Tribune interns to research corruption convictions around the country and prove that other states have it a lot worse:

Is this REALLY the best measure of corruption? Has Senator Chris Dodd been convicted yet? What about Congressman David Obey? Some of the most truly corrupt states and cities and political machines probably let certain people in power get away with whatever they want to get away with. In Minnesota, they pride themselves on being a "good government" state, meaning clean and open and so forth, but you just have to know that in Duluth and up in the Iron Belt, unions and political shenanigans just feed off of each other.

While I don't doubt that Louisiana has a lot of corruption or that Nebraska has very little of it, I just don't find a lot of value in this map.

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Posted by Will Franklin · 27 March 2009 10:06 AM

Comments

Wouldn't convictions per elected official (or government employee) be a better metric than per person living in the state?

In practice, 1) if you're not in government, you don't have a chance to be convicted of government corruption and 2) it's at least slightly biased against small states as, for example, every state has only governor, regardless of population.

Posted by: Jody at March 29, 2009 07:20 AM