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This year, the Center for Public Integrity has once again ranked all 50 states for their transparency and accountability. A high score means your state is tolerably honest. A low score means corruption galore. AJ Vicens has the whole story here, along with plenty of detail.

But for those of you who just want the tl;dr version, I’m here to help. The chart below shows how all 50 states did. Congratulations, Michigan! You’re our most corrupt state, edging out Wyoming by a few tenths of a point. In the “beats expectations” category, I think I’d give the award to Illinois, with New Jersey as runner-up. In the “most disappointing” category, I’d pick Oregon, which really brought down the otherwise impressive performance by the Western states.

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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