Gifts

November 25, 2015

Quote of the Day

"At the end of the day, anybody could fall into a trap like I did." — Former New York state senator Thomas W. Libous, after being sentenced to a $50,000 fine and probation for lying about the fact that he helped get his son a job with a local law firm and then arranged for a $50,000 payment to the …
Read more →
Conflicts of Interest December 6, 2014

Gift Bans and Falling Sales

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 Unit…
Read more →
Conflicts of Interest October 31, 2014

Some Wisdom on Gifts from a Former Lobbyist

Former lobbyist, now jailbird, Kevin A. Ring shared some valuable words of wisdom in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post this week. He says that the gift limit should be zero, because any other limit will be abused (what he doesn't say is that any exception will also be abused). He also notes tha…
Read more →
Conflicts of Interest August 19, 2013

Do Gifts Establish Subordination?

Five years ago, I wrote a blog post about gifts and reciprocity, based on a classic anthropological work, Lewis Hyde's The Gift. An op-ed piece in Friday's Washington Post by another anthropologist, Hugh Gusterson, extends this look at gifts by considering two kinds of gift:  those between equals a…
Read more →
Conflicts of Interest April 11, 2012

The Quid Pro Quo of Social Relationships

An excellent article on the front page of last Sunday's New York Times looks at a proposal by the federal Office of Governmental Ethics (OGE) to limit two exceptions to the prohibition on accepting gifts from lobbyists:  the "widely-attended gathering" (WAG) exception and the "social invitations" e…
Read more →
Subscribe to Gifts