Complicity and Knowledge

Faida Hamdy was a
municipal inspector in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia. She was not a very
respectful municipal official. So when she found that a young fruit
vendor did not have a license, she slapped him. She humiliated him
in front of others. The fruit vendor set
himself on fire, and this set the Arab world on fire, because the
same sort of disrespect from government officials was felt throughout
the Arab world. Disrespect
is a very powerful thing. And so is respect.<br>
<br>

I had a conversation with a developer the other day, which got me
thinking in what I think are interesting ways about unwritten land use rules.<br>
<br>

Local party committees have a great deal of power. Most of the people
we vote for have been selected and, where allowed by law, endorsed by
local party committees. Most of the people who are appointed to boards
and commmissions have also been approved by local party committees. In
most places, they determine who runs our communities.<br>
<br>
One of the principal roles a political party has, at least in theory, is
assuring the public that its candidates have been screened in some

Oxytocin is a hormone released by the hypothalamus portion of the brain
which, among other things, makes people trust each other more. In other
words, one could argue that local government ethics seeks to increase
the release of oxytocin in the brains of people when they think about
their local government.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/science/11hormone.html&quot; target="”_blank”">An

I recently read a book by Stanley Cavell called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cities-Words-Pedagogical-Letters-Register/dp/0674…; target="”_blank”">Cities of Words: Pedagogical
Letters on a Register of the Moral Life</a> (2004). Despite its title, it
is not
about cities; in fact, much of the book uses movies to discuss this

I find it fascinating that, although kickbacks (also known as "thanks giving") are one of the central
elements of unethical conduct in local governments, I have only
mentioned them three times
in my blog posts.<br>
<br>
Kickbacks are a dirty secret for one principal reason:  they are
difficult to prove. Along with bribes, they require hard-to-obtain
proof
to tie money to conduct. Coincidentally, these are the two forms of

When it comes to government ethics, too often lawyers are nowhere to be
seen, unless they are the ones saying that unethical conduct is legal.
Far too often, lawyers do not use their knowledge, their strong, independent
personalities, and their professional
obligations to stand up to, or at least question, those acting
unethically.<br>
<br>
A horrible example of this, a cautionary tale that every law student
should read in the first year, occurred when all the lawyers in the

This week saw the opening of the trial of former New York state senate
majority leader Joseph Bruno for honest services fraud. According to
the assistant U.S. attorney presenting the
case, as <a href="http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=860586&quot; target="”_blank”">quoted
in the Albany <i>Times-Union</i></a>, although a
criminal trial, "this case is about conflicts of

It should come as little surprise to people involved in local
government that <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/health/09klas.html&quot; target="”_blank”">a New York
<span>Times</span> article</a> about
bullying among ten- and eleven-year-olds has a great deal of relevance.
I said for years about my town's government that its major participants
were like ten-year-old boys on a playground, taunting, playing games of

There is a bright side to the British Parliament expenses scandal. For
one thing, many M.P.'s had the fortitude to walk right by that enormous parliamentary
trough and eat at home instead.<br>
<br>
Second, Parliament showed the world how a failure to do the right thing
and do it transparently — seek larger incomes — and instead to take
public money clandestinely and then, when news started leaking out, to
deny and obfuscate, can completely undermine trust in a public
institution.<br>
<br>