Measuring Corruption (A Page From Marketing)

A favorite marketing newsletter's lead story today originates from Slate: Why is Chicago So Corrupt? The Slate author provides tips on how to measure corruption. Acronyms like ROI, ROE and ROMO come to mind:

1. check the number of convicted local officials (Cgo would rank lower than LA or Miami)

2. check the number of city employees per 1,000 people (bif payrolls = patronage)

3. check to see how long it takes to get a construction permit through (delays = system of bribery)

4. measure constiuent perceptions...if they view corruption as a fact of life, they're more likely to forgive those who trangress

Sources:

SmartBrief on Leadership [leadership@smartbrief.com]

www.slate.com/id/2206364/

A new word for our culture

The cover of today's Sun Times introduced new language into our culture: Windy City White House. It has a memorable ring, with the alliterative "whi" sounds offering potential for stickiness in our culture.

Perhaps this will become a word-of-the-year for 2008. For the past several years, the American Dialect Society votes upon a word-of-the-year. The words from the recent years are like little time capsules of where culture was going for those given years. Could Windy City White House be a cultural sign post?

2007 Subprime
2006 Plutoed
2005 Truthiness
2004 Red state, blue state, purple state
2003 Metrosexual
2002 Weapons of mass destruction