If you want to find out about the rot in our system, I have three great books for you to read.  First THE OUTFIT, by Gus Russo is the best history of the Mafia from its earliest days up to the end of the 20th Century. PROPHETS OF WAR, by Thomas Hartung gives you the cost-plus accounting, and no bid contracts of the defense industry. And THE INFILTRATOR by Robert Mazur puts you inside the giant money laundering machine that's called our financial sector.

Conservatives like to talk about American exceptionalism, but when it comes to political corruption, there's nothing exceptional about the USA. Transparency International is the world's arbitrator of ranking countries on their cleanliness, and the USA is tied at #22 with Belgium. Numerically, the US is only at the 70th percentile on the TI index -- way behind the Scandanavian countries, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada, and Switzerland.

Americans forget, that given the size of the American economy overall  -- the absolute amount of American corruption accounts for a bigger percentage of dirty money than any other country on the planet proportionately.  It's been estimated that worldwide, corruption accounts for between 10% and 30% of all financial transactions. Let's assume that in the US, it's only 10% black money.  Well, that still accounts for an incredibly large percentage of illegal financial transactions on a national level.

This doesn't say anything about the level of corruption in your neck of the woods.  I wasn't able to isolate a numerical index for state corruption.  But Maine, Minnesota, and Oregon have good reputations, while Louisiana, West Virginia, Illinois, and New Jersey all have bad reps. In my experience, the worst spots in the USA are certainly equal to the general level of corruption found in Mexico.

But the thing that really bites my craw is the fact that it appears that the conservative push to do away with government has been responsible for increasing corruption at every level of government in America.  I don't have to take 50,000,000 words to tell you how sick the culture is in Washington, DC.  The Supreme Court ruling of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission just legalized a lot more slack for the area of political bribery nationally.

And more insidious than that, the attack on sound public administration practices (because of austerity programs), substantially increases the level of political corruption at all levels of government -- by removing critical bureaucratic nodes that enforce compliance with government rules.  When you have a "winner take all" society, you automatically make some actors much more unequal than others.  Now do away with various pieces of infrastructure in following a philosophy that government is no good, and you push government operations towards  an environment favorable to corruption. The  Reaganite, libertarian policies of eliminating departments, starving them (and their employees) for funds and benefits, short circuits the process of administration -- skewing their operations  towards favoritism, cronyism, and full blown corruption. 

I've seen traces of dry rot creep into my local governments, and I've said that it's just a matter of time before my county gets its ass hauled before a federal grand jury for the hanky panky that's becoming standard operating procedure internally.  I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you can see the same phenomenon where you live.

This is going to be a much bigger and more visible challenge to America in the future. Remember.  When we turn back the clock to the good old days of the gilded age and the robber barons, why shouldn't we see a thousand Boss Tweeds spring up locally like mushrooms in American politics?