Is North Dakota As Guilty As Chicago Of Political Corruption

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jul 23, 2012
1:26pm

I won’t try to sell you readers on the idea that politics in North Dakota are as pure as the snow driven across the prairie. We’ve got our problems, as evidenced by the fact that one of our state-run universities, Dickinson State University, was guilty of misappropriating tens of thousands of dollars and handing out hundreds of fraudulent diplomas and nobody is facing criminal charges or even an investigation at the state level.

But I didn’t think it was fair when a George Soros/Forum Communications-sponsored study concluded that North Dakota was one of the most corrupt states in the nation (while ludicrously claiming New Jersey is one of the least corrupt), and I don’t think this comparison of North Dakota to Chicago-style corruption made by the LA Times is fair either.

The purpose of the article is to defend President Obama from accusations of “Chicago politics,” and they do so by claiming that North Dakota is actually more corrupt.

But political wrongdoing knows few geographic bounds. On a per-capita basis, North Dakota endured more than twice as many federal corruption convictions as Illinois over the last decade, according to Justice Department data. And politicians don’t complain about North Dakota-style corruption.

Chicago may be in the cross hairs of conservative political stereotyping because of Obama, but the city has company.

This is utter nonsense. Distorting the results of corruption measured by federal convictions per-capita is the fact that a) North Dakota doesn’t have a lot of people and b) North Dakota has a lot of Indian reservations where corruption is, unfortunately, rampant.

It’s not fair to suggest that North Dakota’s government is corrupt based on convictions which take place on Indian reservations where the state has no jurisdiction.

Again, I’m not saying North Dakota is perfect, but this comparison is idiotic.