Getting the Government America Deserves

Richard Painter is the S. Walter Richey Professor in Corporate Law at the University of Minnesota School of Law. From February 2005 to July 2007, he was Associate Counsel to the President in the White House Counsel's office, serving as the chief ethics lawyer for the President, White House employees and senior nominees to Senate-confirmed positions in the Executive Branch. Professor Painter is the author of the casebook, Securities Litigation and Enforcement (with Margaret Sachs and Donna Nagy; West, Second Edition 2007) and another casebook, Professional and Personal Responsibilities of the Lawyer (with Judge John T. Noonan, Jr.; Foundation 1997; Second Edition 2001).

Chapter 1 ; Government Ethics Rules That Don't Work When We Need Them, Rules We Have That We Do Not Need, And Rules We Need But Don't Have At All ; Gifts and Travel ; Financial Disclosure ; Financial Conflicts of Interest ; Insider Trading ; Covered Relationships and the Impartiality Rule ; The Revolving Door ; Odd Ball Ethics Rules the Executive Branch does not need but Congress thinks it does ; Congress's Rules for Itself - Stringency or Hypocrisy? ; The Rules ; The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act ; Can there be better rules? ; Chapter 2 ; Implementation and Enforcement of Government Ethics Rules - How Big are the Gaps in the System? ; Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll - and Matters of Money and Revolving Doors - in Clearing the President's Nominees ; Ethics Training, Monitoring and Enforcement at the Agency Level ; The Office of Government Ethics - An Overworked and Underappreciated Agency ; Inspectors General. Does the White House need one? ; Special Government Employees ; Outsourcing Government Functions - but not Ethics - to Private Contractors ; Chapter3 ; Bagmen in Black Tie or Professional Intermediaries - The Growth of Lobbying and Prospects for Reform ; A Short History ; The Influence of Lobbyists ; K-Street Society on the banks of the Potomac ; Use and Abuse of K Street's Power ; Why the disclosure regime is inadequate and why we need substantive regulation of lobbyists ; Chapter 4 ; Off the Books Lobbying, Electioneering and the Special Purpose Entities that Do It ; Think tanks ; Public Policy Groups ; Legal Policy Groups ; Single Issue Advocacy Groups ; Foreign Governments, Their Friends and Enemies ; Foreign Policy Advocacy Organizations ; Religious Advocacy Groups ; Trade and Industry Associations ; 501c(4) Organizations and 527s ; The Overall Impact of Washington's Special Purpose Entities ; Chapter 5 ; The Official White House Office of Political Affairs, the Unofficial Office of Political Affairs, and Personal Capacity Political Activity by Government Officials ; Chapter 6 ; Building a Bridge to Somewhere - A Perspective on the Cost of Earmarks from the Banks of the Mississippi ; Chapter 7 ; Campaign Finance - The Elephant and Donkey in the Room ; Chapter 8 ; Beyond Ethics and Back - What is Wrong with Government Decision Making? ; Ethics Officials' Scope of Authority is too Narrow ; Government Lawyering is sometimes Excessively Political and Insufficiently Objective ; No Matter how Many Times they Make the Same Mistake, Government Officials Still Succumb to the Psychology of the Cover-up ; Afterword ; Index