North Dakota most corrupt state?

[star2city]

USA Today: N Dakota tops corruption analysis

WASHINGTON — Its largest city is legendary for machine-style politics and its elected leaders have been under investigation for years, but by one measure, Illinois is not even close to the nation's most-corrupt state.

North Dakota, it turns out, may hold that distinction instead.

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.

Louisiana, Alaska and North Dakota all fared worse than the Land of Lincoln in that analysis. ...

But North Dakota?

Don Morrison, executive director of the non-partisan North Dakota Center for the Public Good, said it may be that North Dakotans are better at rooting out corruption when it occurs.

"Being a sparsely populated state, people know each other," he said. "We know our elected officials and so certainly to do what the governor of Illinois did is much more difficult here."

Morrison said the state has encouraged bad government practices in some cases by weakening disclosure laws. North Dakota does not require legislative or statewide candidates to disclose their campaign expenses.

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.

The numbers in the USA Today certainly look bad. But if the data is renormalized based on elected officials, the story changes quickly. (With huge numbers of elected ND officials coming from township boards and "towns", the majority of which are less than 500 people, no wonder ND looks so bad).

Here's what one poster wrote:

The conclusions in this article are bogus. Here are some other statistics that you may be interested in.

The per-capita basis would be valid if the number of elected officials on a per-capita basis was the same for all states. The founding fathers of North Dakota must have liked elected officials because ND has 243.3 elected officials per every 10,000 of population which is almost twice as many as the next closest state (151.6 for Vermont) and over 6 times as many as Illinois (37.0). North Dakota also has 9 times as many as Pennsylvania (25.7), 17 times as many as New York (14.4), and 38 times more than California (6.4) on a per capita basis.

If you use the same Dept of Justice information the “experts” at USA TODAY used along with info from the US Census, you get a completely different picture:

ND – 53 convictions for 15,482 elected officials – 3.4 per 1000

IL – 502 convictions for 42, 336 elected officials – 11.9 per 1000

PA – 565 convictions for 30,476 elected officials – 18.5 per 1000

NY – 704 convictions for 25,932 elected officials – 27.1 per 1000

CA – 547 convictions for 18,925 elected officials – 28.9 per 1000

[star2city]

USA Today also badly botched the Smokestack Study of Nations Schools

Actually, some good, sound reporting by the Herald:

The study, The Smokestack Effect, ranks most Grand Forks and East Grand Forks schools in the first, second and third percentiles, putting them among the schools with the worst air quality in the nation.

The test evaluated 128,000 schools across the nation, looking for industrial air pollution outside the buildings. Wilder Elementary School and St. Michael

[dlsiouxfan]

USA Today also badly botched the Smokestack Study of Nations Schools

Actually, some good, sound reporting by the Herald:

.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the air quality studies are correct regarding Grand Forks. The smell from Simplot most days is absolutely rancid and it's not hard to believe that prolonged exposure to that could have negative effects on a person's health.

[star2city]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the air quality studies are correct regarding Grand Forks. The smell from Simplot most days is absolutely rancid and it's not hard to believe that prolonged exposure to that could have negative effects on a person's health.

If stench ='ed toxicity, EGF and Moorhead would be spring-time Hiroshima's and the highest death rates would occur from sitting on the throne!

[jloos]

USA Today used convictions of Tribal officials, which account for most, if not all of these federal convictions (same with South Dakota). The numbers are correct, but the conclusion is obviously flawed. North Dakota is not the most corrupt state. The reservations are obviously rampant with corruption, and the US Attorney's office in ND is extremely aggressive.

[UND92,96]

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the air quality studies are correct regarding Grand Forks. The smell from Simplot most days is absolutely rancid and it's not hard to believe that prolonged exposure to that could have negative effects on a person's health.

I actually grew up about five blocks from Simplot, and the "french fry" smell never really bothered me. Now Crystal Sugar, on the other hand...

[Chief Illiniwek Supporter]

North Dakota most corrupt state?

I was hoping this would be posted. Everyone here in Illinois was just sickened by the reports of rampant corruption and graft in your state.