Now this is a statistic I never would have guessed:
The piece in USAT was prompted by the recent excitement in Illinois. Turns out several states rank on a per capita basis as more corrupt than Blago's, including Louisiana (now there's a shocker!) and Alaska (ditto). But North Dakota?
Don Morrison, executive director of the non-partisan North Dakota Center for the Public Good, suggested to USAT that corruption is just easier to root out in North Dakota, because there are so few people that everyone knows what everyone is up to. "We know our elected officials and so certainly to do what the governor of Illinois did is much more difficult here."
Maybe. Or maybe there's nothing for folks to do there in the winter except sit around with their good buddies and plot ways to exploit the system.
--Michelle Cottle