{"id":3800,"date":"2008-12-12T07:41:13","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T12:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3800"},"modified":"2008-12-12T07:58:40","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T12:58:40","slug":"the-only-honest-leftysphere-journalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3800","title":{"rendered":"It’s Just Like They Say – In Opposite World<\/i>!"},"content":{"rendered":"

They sometimes say a gaffe is when a politician screws up and tells the truth.<\/p>\n

By that token, journalistic malfeasance is when an MSM outlet accidentally doesn’t spin things in favor of Democrats.<\/p>\n

The leftysphere was all afrot<\/a>h over this story in USA Today claiming that my native North Dakota was the most corrupt state<\/a> in the union.<\/p>\n

Oh, yes – they’re spinning for Illinois’ famously-corrupt Democrats:<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

The analysis does not include corruption cases handled by state law enforcement and it considers only convictions<\/strong>. Corruption may run more rampant in some states but go undetected.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gosh. D’ya think? Places that convict fewer corrupt pols<\/em> maybe more corrupt than ones that do?<\/p>\n

It’s mildly sobering to see that Wonkette would seem to be the only leftyblog that twigged to the simple fac<\/a>t that, while the story claims North Dakota is the most <\/em>corrupt, the metrics indicate that my reliably Republican home state is the most anti-corruption state<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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 \u201ccorrupt,\u201d 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,<\/em> their political criminals. Instead, they elect them Mayor of Providence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

KB <\/a>notes:<\/p>\n

There are international measures, most commonly used being the Transparency International <\/a>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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

As usual, leftyblogs – great job. Just great!<\/p>\n

Oh, the USA Today <\/em>completes the leftymedia trifecta, adding a little ofay victimology (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

\n

Michael Johnston is a political science professor at Colgate University in New York \u2014 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<\/strong> that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

“Expectations build up \u2026 and you replicate those expectations<\/strong> when you get to the top of the ladder,” Johnston said. “It gets repeated.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

“Blogojevich is a victim<\/em>! He couldn’t help himself! <\/em>It was expected <\/em>of him!”<\/p>\n

Sorry, USA Today<\/em>. You call it “self-fulfilling prophecy”. We call it “culture of corruption”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lefty-alt-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}