Robert Wechsler's blog

Is there an ethical requirement to discuss matters that are not being discussed?

Dan Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence, refers to something he calls the Four Attentional Rules. 'In any group, from the family, to organizations, to entire societies, there are these unstated rules that we learn tacitly about the questions that can't be asked.'

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Usually an ethics pledge is something required of a town official or something requested by a good government organization. But sometimes an ethics pledge is an election strategy.

This is the case in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where the state legislature's Government Administration and Elections co-chair Christopher Caruso and his Citizens for Real Change slate of candidates took an ethics pledge earlier this month.

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My first experience with municipal politics in New Jersey, where I lived for nine years before moving to Connecticut, was accompanying some neighbors to a council meeting, because a couple of them wanted to speak about a change in zoning that affected the street we lived on. A neighbor asked the mayor when they could speak, and was told people would be alerted when it came time to speak. The council debated the issue and then, without a pause, started to vote on it. I rose in protest and had...

Taiwan has come up with the perfect way to prevent mayors from misusing government funds. Its solution appears to be based on the way parents prevent their children from taking money out of their wallets: give them an allowance to spend any way they please.

The mayor of Taipei gets a $62,000 annual 'special mayoral allowance' which, according to...

Today's guilty plea by New Orleans' City Council vice president, Oliver Thomas, is on its face about the acceptance of a bribe. But behind that bribe is a serious conflict of interest.

Not only was Thomas the council vice president and longest-serving council member, but he was also a member of the board of the French Market Corporation, a city agency that owns and manages buildings in the French Quarter. The bribe was from someone who wanted to keep his parking lot contract with the...

It's difficult to show clearly that ethical government correlates with ethical conduct. However, last year Raymond Fisman and Edward Miguel came up with a study that does this: They studied parking tickets given to United Nations diplomats in Manhattan.

Because, until 2002, there was zero enforcement of parking rules for diplomats, they were given a carte blanche or, if you will, were tempted to act unethically (breaking...