Unethical behavior in government is insidious for so many reasons, not least of which it engenders a feeling of apathy and hopelessness in the citizenry, particularly if it goes unpunished (or lightly punished), as is usually the case. Congress as an institution has become a cesspool of corruption and consequently enjoys abysmally low approval ratings. But worst of all, the conflicts of interest that are regular occurrences and the shady deals that are nothing less than bribery no longer shock the American people into action or outrage. They simply shrug there shoulders and say, “That’s our Congress!” as though they were the mischievous but lovable neighbor on a sitcom.

I think the problem stems from uninformed voters. Many voters vote the incumbent based on name recognition alone. I think this is probably true especially for relatively “low level” politicians (you could argue that a state senator is not “low level”, but I doubt the average person even knows what a state senator does) like these three. So I don’t know if people voted for these three knowing that they were corrupt or if they voted out of pure ignorance. I don’t know which is worse!

As far as ethics courses go, I understand and support a basic course (not a course per se, but a standard document online or in book form that goes over the state ethics code in a remedial way). I think there’s a difference between morals and state ethics. State ethics are a definite set of rules and procedures that may or may not be common sense. Although, I won’t disagree – the transgressions committed by these three certainly fell into the common sense category.