DailySusan Humor Blog

Least Corrupt, or Biggest Suckers?

News flash: it’s NOT a good thing that Nebraska was named “the least corrupt state in the nation” recently. That was based on the relatively few political corruption convictions in our federal courts, as charted by the newsletter Corporate Crime Reporter.

I wish I could be as quick as the major local media to claim we’re all Honest Abes out here in the boonies, and the lack of scandals proves it.

But come on. It’s much more likely to be the result of lackluster journalism. Where are our reporters digging around and turning up corruption stories? Where’s our computer-assisted investigative reporting? Where’s the real accountability pressure on public officials?

A big reason bad stuff isn’t coming into the spotlight around here is that nobody’s shining the light where the bigshots don’t want that light to shine.

You follow?

I mean, attendance records in the Los Angeles Public Schools were so inflated last year that $120 million was ordered returned to the state. One of the reasons Gray Davis was kicked out of the governor’s chair there is that he “forgave” the fraud and canceled the audit program that found it.

State aid is determined by enrollment and attendance statistics. Nebraska public schools spend $1.2 billion a year with enrollment upwards of 275,000 students. You don’t SUPPOSE there’s any fandango going on there? But how would we know?

I just printed out a story about a $20 million fraud case in California involving public school money that the outgoing State School Superintendent, a former Democratic assemblywoman, tried to cover up. Now taxpayers will also have to pay $4.5 million in judgments to the whistleblowers involved. It seems her department gave millions in federal adult-education money to “community-based organizations” for English and citizenship classes. In some cases, the “schools” were in open fields or empty houses; some of the money bought Mercedes-Benzes; some was embezzled; some can’t be found. That’s a sad, but typical story of school fraud such as those exposed elsewhere . . . but not here.

The Chicago Sun-Times just revealed that three sisters were paid more than $450,000 in overtime to write math teaching manuals for the Chicago public schools. The manuals were full of errors and have since been scrapped. They were all teachers, but one had flunked an elementary teacher certification exam seven times.

Could there be instances like that, of excessive overtime and other unchecked non-classroom costs, contributing to the skyrocketing trend line in Nebraska school spending?

But nooooo. We don’t know. Every time you go to another city and pick up the paper, you read about some kind of scandal involving misuse of public funds. But not here.

And yet we have billions of dollars in governmental budgets being spent every year in Nebraska. State aid to schools, probably the biggest pile of it, isn’t even audited by the State Auditor. What’s up with that? A wacky situation, that’s what.

It just doesn’t make sense to think corruption is not going on.

A sleeping watchdog gathers no bones . . . and isn’t doing its job.

I may be only a Chihuahua in this. But I say it’s time for the public to demand that they let the dogs out in Nebraska journalism.

Arf, arf.

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Prayer request: Blessings today, Lord Jesus, for my friend Jeannie, who celebrates a birthday today. She always signs cards and notes with lots of whimsical drawings of tiny stars. I see You in her sparkling, twinkling personality, Lord, and I praise You for sharing one of Your “stars of light” with us. (Psalm 148:3)