Daniel Engber in “Slate”:http://www.slate.com/id/2149240 finds that Chicago is only third in the nation in federal corruption convictions, after southern California and southern Florida. Well, gee, that’s a letdown. Besides, we have so many more local governments than either of those metro areas — 371 municipalities here, compared to 201 in Los Angeles-San Diego and 61 in Miami (according to “Metropolitan Area Research Corporation”:http://metroresearch.org/projects/national_report.asp), with more elected officials per capita besides (compare 50 Chicago aldermen to 15 LA council members).

Well, this particular number crunching makes me realize that I’m now part of the problem: an official in one of those 1,500-odd local governments that have taxing authority in Chicagoland. (That was before LSCs were invented, too.) Ah well.