Do expertise and conflicts go together more like love and marriage, or like horse and carriage? In other words, are they necessary or are they outdated in this age of government ethics? Interested people making important decisions that affect their livelihood was the American way for most of our na…

Almost two years ago, I wrote about the self-serving nature of attempts at ethics reform in the village of Niles, outside Chicago. A lot has happened since then, but in terms of an ethics program, not much. According to an article in the Niles Patch, in early October the village's board of ethics a…

A week ago, Transparency International published its fifteenth annual Corruption Perceptions Index, which scores countries on the basis of a variety of independent reports on and surveys about corruption, including those from the World Bank and other development banks, and those surveying journalis…