Book Reviews

Constituent service is a basic legislative role that I have pretty
much ignored in my blog (<a href="http://www.cityethics.org/node/425&quot; target="”_blank”">click here to read the
principal exception</a>). Government ethics focuses too much on
votes and self-serving conduct, and too little on the ways in which
council members and other government officials help their
constituents in special or inappropriate ways. Constituent service

<br><br>
In <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/ethics-congress-i-institutional-corru…; target="”_blank”">my

first post</a> on Dennis Thompson's book <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Congress-Individual-Institutional-Corrupti…; target="”_blank”">Ethics

My second volume of summer reading is a classic, Dennis F.
Thompson's <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Congress-Individual-Institutional-Corrupti…; target="”_blank”">Ethics

<br>
<br>
It's arguable that a bigger problem than unethical conduct in local
government is the way local officials respond to allegations of

This is the second half of my look at Mary C. Gentile's 2010 book, <i>Giving Voice to Values.</i><br>
<br>
<b>Naming and Framing</b><br>
Framing is central to acting on one's values. So often ethics
matters have already, effectively, been framed (and justified) by an
organization.
There are accepted truisms (this is the way it's always been done) and
stories that everyone knows (the last time someone disagreed openly

The failure to deal responsibly with conflicts of interest has many
causes, but the principal cause is the silence of those who are not
directly responsible. I've written several times about some of the

Two months ago, a book was published called <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jersey-Sting-Crooked-Money-Laundering-Informant/d…; target="”_blank”">The
Jersey Sting</a>, by two <i>Star-Ledger</i> reporters, Ted Sherman and Josh
Margolin. It provides the history of an enormous federal sting
operation which led to the arrest of dozens of government officials,

Max H. Bazerman and Ann
E. Tenbrunsel, the authors of the new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507&quot; target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to
Do
What's
Right
and
What to Do about It</a> (Princeton University
Press), present several ways of dealing with the many problems they
raise in their book.<br>
<br>

I've noted on several occasions that indirect conflicts are among the
most problematic areas in government ethics. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507&quot; target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to
Do
What's
Right
and
What to Do about It</a>, a new book by
Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press),

The denial of unethical behavior, which usually occurs long after the
behavior itself, is usually the worst part of an ethics scandal, the adding of insult to injury. The public is faced with two possibilities when an official
denies that he did something unethical. This dilemma is well described
in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507&quot; target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to