Massachusetts: 'C' is for 'Corruption'


The Center for Public Integrity assigned letter grades to each of the states for risk of corruption, and the results are pretty startling. No state earned an A+ or A-, and seven states earned an F. Massachusetts came in with a pretty average (but not all that impressive) C. “Politics has always been a contact sport … and Massachusetts has a colorful history of corruption capers” write Maggie Mulvihill, Matt Porter and Kirsten Berg, citing our history of political embarrassments, blue laws, and culture of distrust. “Every decade of the 20th century stars a breed of government rogue, from the rascal politician James Michael Curley, reelected from his JAIL cell in 1904, to last year’s federal conviction of the third consecutive House Speaker for corruption.”  [Center for Public Integrity]