Robert Wechsler's blog

According to an article in the November 29 issue of The Economist, when China banned gifts to government officials, sales of the principal producer of baijiu, a sort of Chinese vodka, fell 78% in just a year.

The only sales that would likely go down if gifts were banned across the board in the United States would be restaurant and golf club sales. That is because petty bribery is less a problem here than the ongoing reciprocal relationships between lobbyists and the...

It's official:  what differentiates us from chimpanzees is not our intelligence, our ability to deal with the abstract, or our ability to tell jokes. According to the decision of a five-member New York state appellate panel yesterday, "Unlike human beings, chimpanzees cannot bear any legal duties, submit to societal responsibilities or be held legally...

Partial withdrawal from participation is not a sufficient cure for an apparent conflict of interest. When there is any involvement, it can be seen as providing preferential treatment, as being unfair. Once again this is made clear, in the most controversial local government problem of the year:  a white police officer's killing of a black man in Ferguson, MO.

According to...

According to an article yesterday in the Rockdale Citizen, Rockdale County, GA's county commission is having a debate on how to select its three-member ethics board and its alternates. Unfortunately, it's a debate that is being waged with no reference to best practices and almost no outside professional input. It's as if a debate about a construction project...

I left out one big local ethics/election story from my blog post yesterday:  the approval of an excellent ethics reform initiative in Oakland, with an approval percentage of 72%, according to the KQED News website.

For a description of the referendum, read my...

Two big local ethics/election stories come from Contra Costa, CA and Tallahassee, FL.

Ethics Reform Package Features a Different Sort of Public Campaign Financing Program
According to an article this morning on the Tallahassee Democrat website, by a 2-1 margin Tallahassee voters approved a charter amendment that will (1) create a...