I've tried to explain this to people from outside Wisconsin before. Why don't I just repost a sort of run down of just a few of the kinds of things you can expect to see from our "extraordinarily well run" government here in Wisconsin:

>"We've had our share of bent DA's here in Wisconsin. Probably the best story I can tell you about is a DA that would allow drug dealers and other criminals to "contribute to charity" in lieu of going to jail for their crimes. Of course, all of the "charities" they could contribute to were controlled by he and his buddies. (This way they could make sure all the "contributions" went for the benefit of the local community you see.) It got so bad that drug dealers were routing their shipments through that municipality because if you get caught, you just paid the bribe. I mean, "charity". You didn't have to go to jail.

I won't go into too much detail on this one, because it's disgusting. That said, we have a juvenile detention facility where the guards were discovered to have using the boys for... Well, I think you can figure it out. If not just Google "Lincoln Hills". (but I'd recommend just ... yeah... just not googling it.)

Moving on, we have something called the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation. Basically everyone chips in to a fund, via taxes, and that fund gives money to entrepreneurs and businesses to stimulate economic growth. That's the idea. In practice, whatever politician is in power funnels the money to his/her cronies. They're pretty open about it too. So small businesses in the state end up having to make do with whatever they get out of the federal SBA. Because the big political guys take all the money from WEDC.

And that's just scratching the surface with the criminal related stuff. There's all kinds of political and public spending related stuff that happens here all the time. There's the typical police corruption that you need to look out for. Man don't even get me started on Wisconsin's part in the VA nursing home scandal. Wisconsin is so bad that at one point there were 100's of thousands of protesters outside our Capitol building in Madison. We're just a really bent state, and there's not much that can be done about it because of how we're set up. There's a lot going on up here. Despite what you may have heard on Netflix, the corruption up here is not ALL about Steven Avery.

Illustrative factoid, there is a restaurant in Madison right on the Capitol Square. It's pretty conveniently located for the state senators and assemblypeople. Kind of a nice place too.

What's it's name?

"Graft", I kid you not.

Located on the ground floor of a building full of lobbyists. I mean, "lawyers". Right across from the Capitol.

I know that sounds just WAY too brazen, but it's a true story..."

PS - People generally REALLY find the part about the Graft restaurant difficult to believe. I understand. So I encourage you, don't take my word for it. Go ahead, Google it.