The ND Material Keeps On Coming

They need to leave John Burke out of this!

Blessing or a curse?

I was planning on writing about my Business Associations Exam that was this morning.  I wanted to point out that given the past success rates given to us by our Professor, that the best strategy was to be able to confidently answer 35 or 40 questions [out of 75] and then make educated guesses for everything else.  This was because the average success rate was below 50%, yada yada, ad infintum . . .

But now for today’s North Dakota news:

North Dakota tops analysis of corruption from USA Today.

Say what?

The story points out that ND, Alaska, and Louisiana [LA, no shit, I'm not sure why they're making this list.] all have corruption convictions at a greater rate than Illinois.  The story continues:

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.

Id. (As usual linked added to the blockquote for background information.)  The story does include the little tidbit that that it may just be that smaller states are better at rooting out corruption leading to greater per capita convictions.  I would say that this is probably the case, for ND because I am biased.

John Burke in the US Capitol. Is this the same statute as the one in Bismark?

Although this business with Kent Conrad‘s favorable loans kind of bothers me a little bit.  Who knows how far corruption runs anywhere I guess.

Perhaps my views have changed since moving to Washington DC, the root of government wrongdoings.  I consider DC to be both corrupt and ridiculous, but I never thought I’d be reading a news story making the claim that ND is the most corrupt state.  IL and LA have that honor [which they share with NY and FL, a fact which should surprise no one].

So, I’m just going to go ahead and call shenanigans on USA Today: ND isn’t the most corrupt state, unless you are only comparing it to its neighbor to the south.

I missed the memo about it being ND Week, but I caught up quickly.  By the way, USA Today, what the hell did John Burke ever do to you? Do you think we should take his statute out of the capitol building now? Back off.  I’ve said it once and I hope I don’t have to say it again: ND get out of the news.

Oh and mass media: Please decide if we North Dakotans are the simple, conservative, never fancy types, or the evil corrupts, crazy type.  It be best if you could get back to us before the weekend, we’ve got a lot of snow coming.