Ever since I accepted this columnist thing at Banker & Tradesman, I’ve been waiting patiently for the region’s bankers and tradesmen to take me out to lunch, or dinner, or a three-week fact finding trip to Bermuda, or, at the very least, to elect my wife to a well-compensated board of directors slot.

Nothing

I get nothing.

You seem to be under the impression that I’m operating under some kind of ethics code or something.

Don’t worry about ethics. If this publication has an ethics code, it is in a drawer of my desk that I’ve never opened. Ignorance of the law is a good defense, despite what you might have heard.

Consider Gov. Deval Patrick, who apparently sent cigars and flowers and barrels of rum to Senate President Therese Murray and House Speaker Robert DeLeo. This seems to be an apparent violation of the ethics code and the laws of man and God, but the governor insists he was sending the gifts to abstractions, to government offices, not to real people. You can send gifts to existential office auras, the governor explained, just not to actual, real, breathing people.

I’m very sympathetic to the governor on this. Ethics stuff is very confusing. His flower crisis brings to mind a similar situation a friend of mine had while working in state government in a jurisdiction far removed from Massachusetts.

My pal got elected to a sensitive financial job. A friend of his on Wall Street was so thrilled with his election victory that he sent my pal a pretty bush/plant/flower thing for his office.

Oops. It’s a gift. Can’t accept gifts from financial services pals. So my pal orders the staff to fill out 63 forms in triplicate, transforming the personal gift into “state property,” so that it can remain in the office, looking pretty (sort of like Cohen at Banker & Tradesman), but not technically be considered a personal gift.

The problem was, over time, like all of us, the plant died. Well, you just can’t dispose of “state property.” You must file another 63 forms in triplicate, have a team of internal auditors inspect the damaged goods, and then pledge your first-born to the Ethics God – all before you dispose of state property. So, the dead plant just sat there, brown and dry and ethical.

Digesting An Idea

I also had an ethics trauma, although it certainly didn’t happen at Banker & Tradesman, because, in case I haven’t mentioned it, not one of you has offered me anything at all.

I got lost once on the Mass Pike and ended up in Connecticut, working on the senior staff of the governor at the time. One day, I get a box of chocolate forwarded to me from my old office. It’s the same box of chocolate I’ve gotten every year since time began, from a lobbying firm pal.

So, just like very year, I ripped open the box of chocolate at my desk and ate it all. Oops. Not only had a member of the governor’s staff accepted a gift from lobbyists; he ate the thing right there at his government desk.

So, I raced on down to the ethics office and reported the good news and the bad news: I had accepted the gift, but all the evidence was gone.

This ethics stuff can lead to a lot of broken hearts. State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson is still reeling from the controversy surrounding her being photographed stuffing cash into her bra –- as if she was taking a bribe, instead of acknowledging what every woman knows: Her purse was full.

U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd in Connecticut is fighting off critics who want to know how his wife ended up on so many corporate boards of directors. Because she’s the best woman for the job, that’s why.

And poor Mary Easley was just fired from her mysterious $170,000 a year job at North Carolina State University, just because, well, her husband, the former governor of North Carolina, may have had a little something to do with her hiring.

It’s all very complicated and ambiguous, this ethics stuff. Take me out for an expensive dinner and I’ll tell you about it.