A few days ago, I wrote a blog
post about how several government officials in Wausau mishandled a
conflict situation involving the purchase of property fixed up with an
interest-free loan from HUD. Yesterday's The State of South Carolina
covers two
other HUD loan conflict situations in Columbia, which are...
Global Ethics, an
organization run by Rushworth Kidder, author of Moral Courage and other books,
has a good Ethics Newsline, which you can subscribe to. His lead
article this week is about government ethics awards, inspired by
what
happened in Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa.
Blago watchers will be interested in the news in today's
Chicago Tribune about his former chief of staff and campaign
manager pleading guilty and providing detailed testimony about the
schemes of Blagojevich and three of his friends to make money off
Blago's position, "such as through operating businesses that would get
state money or receiving fees from people who did business with the
state."...
On Sunday, the Lexington Herald-Leader took an unflattering
look at Kentucky's legislative ethics commission. As in New York
State, a
central problem appears to be the commission's lack of independence.
David
Brooks' column in the New York Times today is about two views of
character, the philosophers' and psychologists' views. He too simply portrays
the philosophers' view as involving ingrained character traits, which is sadly
how most people seem to view character. I would call this the
mythological view of character.
The psychologists' view of character involves a "multiplicity of
tendencies .....