I remember in Oklahoma, where I grew up, there was an investigation of the county commissioners – there was maybe one county out of 77 where at least one of the 3 commissioners didn’t end up spending time in the hoosegow.

OK State Sen Gene Stipe (D-McAlester) was one of the most thoroughly corrupt politicians in the country. He’s in the Crossbar Hotel now, if he’s not dead.

My point being, there’s public corruption everywhere, as long as people tolerate it. They often tolerate b/c they think they’re getting something back out of the deal, no matter how petty. In OK, a lot of folks got free culverts on the county. They were accepting of the fact that the petty pols were among the richest guys in the county, even on their $3K/yr official salary.

In LA, everyone seems to want to have an in with an official who can fix a speeding ticket. Or fudge a property tax assessment. The parish assessors wield a crazy amount of political power due to the fact that we have an outrageously high homestead exemption, and the vast majority of folks pay little or no property tax.

Jindal’s reforms may get rid of some of the smellier aspects esp. wrt the Legislature. There are way too many local boards & authorities that become little feifdoms for the guys that control them: just in N.O., you have the Levee Board (now consolidated), the Dock Board, the Causeway Commission. A lot of sleight of hand goes unnoticed because the authority is decentralized.

‘In 1919, Judge Perez launched a reign of bought elections and strict segregation. Laws were enacted on Perez’s fiat and were rubber-stamped by the parish governing councils. Elections under Perez’s reign were sometimes blatantly falsified, with voting records appearing in alphabetical order and names of national celebrities such as Babe Ruth, Charlie Chaplin, and Herbert Hoover appearing on the rolls. Perez-endorsed candidates often won with 90 percent or more of the ballots. Those who did appear to vote were intimidated by Perez’s enforcers. He sent large tough men into the voting booths to “help” people vote. Many voters were bribed. Perez testified that he bribed voters $2, $5, and $10 to vote his way depending on who they are. Perez took action to suppress African Americans from voting within his domain. Perez said “Negroes are just not equipped to vote. If the Negroes took over the government, we would have a repetition here of what’s going on in the Congo.”

Starting in 1936, Perez also diverted millions from government funds through illegal land deals. When he was a district attorney, he was the legal adviser to the Plaquemines levee boards. He used this position to negotiate payoffs between corporations he set up and big oil companies that leased the levee board lands for drilling. After Perez’s death, the parish government sued his heirs seeking restitution of $82 million in government funds. In 1987, the lawsuit was settled for $12 million.’

From Wikipedia