It’s Just Like They Say – In Opposite World!

They sometimes say a gaffe is when a politician screws up and tells the truth.

By that token, journalistic malfeasance is when an MSM outlet accidentally doesn’t spin things in favor of Democrats.

The leftysphere was all afroth over this story in USA Today claiming that my native North Dakota was the most corrupt state in the union.

Oh, yes – they’re spinning for Illinois’ famously-corrupt Democrats:

On a per-capita basis, however, Illinois ranks 18th for the number of public corruption convictions the federal government has won from 1998 through 2007, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Department of Justice statistics.

But see if you can juuuuuuuust maybe find the clinker in USA Today’s story. I’ll provide emphasis, for those of you who get your news from the Minnesoros “Independent”:

The analysis does not include corruption cases handled by state law enforcement and it considers only convictions. Corruption may run more rampant in some states but go undetected.

Gosh. D’ya think? Places that convict fewer corrupt pols maybe more corrupt than ones that do?

It’s mildly sobering to see that Wonkette would seem to be the only leftyblog that twigged to the simple fact that, while the story claims North Dakota is the most corrupt, the metrics indicate that my reliably Republican home state is the most anti-corruption state:

However, one arrives at this metric by dividing the number of political corruption convictions in the past ten years by the number of residents. Thus, low-population states with normal-sized governments are disproportionately “corrupt,” as evidenced by the shameful badge of corruption affixed to neighboring South Dakota and Montana. Meanwhile, the truly corrupt states (Rhode Island, anyone?) emerge a shade better, because they never bother to arrest, or god forbid convict, their political criminals. Instead, they elect them Mayor of Providence.

KB notes:

There are international measures, most commonly used being the Transparency International rankings of bribe payers and corruption perceptions…Micro-level studies seemed to be more persuasive. I would argue that corruption is higher in places where the top pay of the private sector is greatest, which is not inconsiderable in Chicago.

While the North Dakota legislature makes $5 a day during its biennial session (no raises since the 1890’s), government work is actually a decent living in NoDak, where the general standard of living really isn’t all that high.

As usual, leftyblogs – great job. Just great!

Oh, the USA Today completes the leftymedia trifecta, adding a little ofay victimology (emphasis added):

Michael Johnston is a political science professor at Colgate University in New York — which is ranked just after Illinois for corruption convictions. Johnston, who has studied political corruption for 30 years, said places such as Illinois gain a bad reputation that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Expectations build up … and you replicate those expectations when you get to the top of the ladder,” Johnston said. “It gets repeated.”

“Blogojevich is a victim! He couldn’t help himself! It was expected of him!”

Sorry, USA Today. You call it “self-fulfilling prophecy”. We call it “culture of corruption”.

16 thoughts on “It’s Just Like They Say – In Opposite World!

  1. There was a short lived TV show (a comedy, if memory serves) a few years back about a police precinct in an area with a high crime rate. A new captain arrives, after having washed out everywhere else, and he instructs all of his officers to stop writing up crime reports. Crime continues unabated, but because the officers aren’t allowed to report on it, the crime rate drops, and the new captain wins all kinds of awards. I don’t remember where/why the hilarity ensued, but as I said it was a short lived show.
    You have to remember, the people who wrote the article are likely the kind that complain about the record number of people incarcerated these days then aren’t able to make the connection as to why crime rates are so much lower these days.

  2. When in Chicago, I have noticed among the native Chicagoans a certain bravado about their legacy of political corruption. Which is not the same as being in favor of corruption, more like asserting it as a claim to a kind of worldliness.

    It sounded to me a lot like the kinds of things commonly heard in Minnesota about cold and snow. Not that we actually LIKE the extremes of cold or the hassles of snow, but it is something we are stuck with if we want to enjoy the more pleasurable aspects of the place, so we make the most of it.

    Culture of corruption? So…. does it then follow we have a CUKTURE of cold? I’m skeptical that any place is more corrupt than others; I think it is a function of the sheer quantity of people, not geography or some notion of culture that is at the root. The more people in one place, inevitably the greater the risk of some of them being corrupt.

  3. Doggoneit, you’re right. I grew up around Chi-Town, where the jokes about Daley winning every graveyard election and winning precincts of 500 souls by 5000 votes fly thick. There was a certain pride in not obeying the rules but coming to a solution that sort of “worked” for most involved.

    One place where I differ with you, though, is in thinking that one place isn’t necessarily more corrupt than another. Sorry, nobody who grew up watching the cracks grow on 294 because the roads weren’t built right can come to that conclusion, at least if they’ve got three or more living brain cells.

    (Falstaff; essential ingredient for Chicago politics! It kills off the neurons that might have you voting for someone who isn’t corrupt)

    294 is a great example of what’s wrong with Chicago, by the way. You have a freeway built on top of hundreds of feet of solid limestone, and it STILL manages to crack like a cheap varnish.

  4. Mitch,

    Your self-defense defensiveness talking about convictions, leaves a very convenient open hole. “See, there’s more corruption there, it’s just not being CAUGHT”, by that measure, I guess we all have to disprove your negative… what a load.

    NoDak leads the nation in convictions for corruption, per capita. Those are the cold hard facts. If you had cold hard facts that said it was Illinois, I’m sure you’d be screaming about them at the top of your lungs, and you’d backhand any of the kinds of objections you raise here as exactly what they are UNPROVEN CONJECTURE.

    Having grown up in Chicago TOO, I can tell you DAMNED few people embraced anything like corruption. The corruption I DID see was in Dupage county, where if you wanted a public job, you had to get the local RNC’s permission. Oh, that and Pate Phillip, the Repugnicant who stood in the way of growth at Ohare Airport for DECADES just to prevent the additional appointments from going to Dems, he wanted them to go to Republicans in a spree of patronage. It was so bad that eventually W had to step in and threaten Phillip – who subsequently retired.

    Still, NoDak gets the lead – creating strawmen about how the crimes are THERE they just aren’t being proved, conveniently allows you to make claims NO ONE can disprove because it relies upon phantom statistics and crimes.

    Here’s a question, which state leads in indictments? That’s about the ONLY other metric which is, you know, actually measurable fact.

    Regardless, read the other part of the quote from KB “corruption is highest where private sector pay is highest” – meaning, tada, overpayment in the private sector is CORRUPTING! – get it. Those princely wages you otherwise champion lead, in fact, to corruption – to bribery – the thing you SAY the market will correct. It’s funny you’d rely on those kinds of comments to reflexively defend your home state, and champion corrupting higher pay as NOT being such in all other discussions. So, to avoid corruption, I assume you now support a more level pay playing field? No!??

  5. Yeah, all that corruption in DuPage County is why it works so well, and Cook County works so poorly, Penigma.

    But let’s be serious. If we want to measure public corruption via convictions, we must first start by using the right units; convictions per government worker. Convictions per capita is simply the wrong unit.

    And, more or less, there is the reality that in certain places, people are simply not looking for corruption. Conviction rates really depend on a good prosecutor actually looking, as well as upon people who get ticked when their tax money is mis-spent.

    Is that such a complicated thing?

  6. In my state (Hawaii) a few years back the cops arrested a low level airport employee. He had been shaking down franchises around the airport for monthly fee of few hundred bucks each. He said that if they didn’t pay up he’d see to it they lost their lease. Someone complained and the cops pulled a sting on him.
    No one would press charges. The airport authority somehow couldn’t find the employee’s hiring information. Couldn’t even say who his boss was. All that they’d say for sure was that he was hired on a recommendation from the governor’s office.
    No conviction for corruption, so no corruption, according to peev.

  7. Peev,

    You are to logic (and, in this case, ethics) what Andy Dick is to heterosexuality.

    Seriously. It’s like arguing with a drunk guy, every day, every issue, no matter what.

    Get it.

  8. I think Mitch is right. NoDak people aren’t as clever as people in the rest of the country. So when they turn to crime, it’s natural that they won’t be very good at it. Ask Marge Gunderson.

  9. Now you are even blowing it in pop culture knowledge. Margie did not work in Fargo, & was likely from Minnesota. The movie was called Fargo, because the hiring of the killers happened in Fargo, Everything else was in Minnesota.

    For crying out loud, even Wikipedia got this right!

  10. AC couldn’t spell “Fargo”
    AC also seems to have problems telling fictional movies from real life.

  11. I probably should have said it better to avoid Penigma’s confusion. It’s the differential between public and private sector pay that matters, and not for the top officials but for the sergeants and lieutenants. In Ukraine the stories of corruption are told as Sergeant Slava jokes. Customs officials are the most notorious in most of the xUSSR. &c.

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