Quantifying public corruption and incompetence

Two of the local establishment press, Jay Miller, Inside the Capital, link, and John Robertson, the Journal, link, have written about the quantification of public corruption in New Mexico. It is important in establishing our national standing among corrupt states.

It turns out that it isn't all that easy to do. There are apparently no widely accepted standards for measuring public corruption.

The question is moot. As Robertson pointed out, measurement (and standings based upon them) are largely irrelevant in the light of widespread agreement that any corruption is too much corruption.

The only use I can imagine for a statistic like "New Mexico is number one in public corruption", is that it might be used to galvanize the people into doing something about it. It is the failure of the people to do anything about public corruption and incompetence that enables them both.

"Public corruption is made possible, only by the sanction
we give it."Ayn Rand (derived)

When we stop enabling public corruption, we will end public corruption. When we make public corruption impossibly difficult to hide (by means of governmental transparency limited only by an ethical reading of the law), we will end public corruption.

New Mexico will be dead last on another list, and
it will be a good thing.

... when we end public corruption.