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It’s not illegal to joke about bribery.
by 1123581321 6y ago
It’s not illegal to joke about bribery.
- sjwright 6y agoCorrect. And it’s not illegal to investigate when nominal jokes about bribery may be construed as code inviting actual bribery.
- 1123581321 6y agoI recognize the clever point. Investigations in cases such as these will gather evidence to bring to a grand jury, which will issue indictment. So investigation would either proceed to either the grand jury trial, or be abandoned due to lack of evidence. In the case of jokes, it would be the latter, and experienced offices would recognize this early, perhaps before beginning, and focus on other cases.
- mlyle 6y agoI'm not sure why people are treating this like it's bribery. Free wifi would be something that inures to the benefit of the city / jurisdiction, not primarily to the individual decisionmakers or their department. It may not be something legitimate that they can make planning approval dependent upon, but an elected body trying to negotiate something that sweetens the deal for their electorate is completely legitimate. Indeed, back before California ended development controls, my city's planning department effectively ran a huge reverse auction, picking the housing developments that would make the biggest street and park improvements in excess of the statutory minimums to authorize for each year's development quota. (A bit more complicated than that: various ways that the development exceeded building code or had additional amenities also counted for points in the "competition").