We were also surprised to learn this week that fall follows summer and winter follows fall. Man! Over the weekend a New York Times writer referred to Florida as a "hothouse of corruption" due to the Sunshine State being home to the largest number of people convicted of public corruption from 2000 to 2010.
That got the nice folks at Business Insider thinking: What if we graded corruption by population? You know, per capita? Well, when they did, the Bayou State bobbed to the surface like a dead, bloated gaspergou, sporting nine convictions per 100,000 people. The Dakotas are runners up followed by Kentucky, Alaska, Montana, Mississippi and Alabama. Joy-zee and Virginia round out the top 10. Eight of the 10 most corrupt states, we note with a raised eyebrow, are red states. And by BI's methodology, that "hothouse of corruption" falls to No. 20.
States with the least corruption in BI's ranking are South Carolina, Oregon, Washington, New Hampshire, Minnesota and Utah. Now go bribe a police juror already!