Justice Samuel Alito Took Luxury Fishing Vacation with GOP Billionaire
propublica.org
propublica.org
Alito, in the extremely unlikely chance that you're reading this comment: if you want to understand if someone could reasonably find that a gift might pose a conflict of interest, why not try asking your own law clerks? Or better yet, take the same training they have to. It is absolutely gobsmacking to me when you have elected officials taking massive gifts and defending themselves by saying they can still be impartial, when their unelected underlings aren't allowed a thousandth the leeway without falling afoul of election rules.
Although, given that he thinks "I was offered a seat on a private jet that would otherwise have gone vacant" is a defense... he is really, really out of touch with how most of the country will see things.
Because people like John Eastman are your law clerks and they likely agree with you? It's a pretty insular bubble they're all in.
Democracy isn't just for sale. It's been sold.
The way it’s worded sounds like it can be a gift card, just not one that could be exchanged directly for cash.
(PDF) https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/p_4090_fed_0305_text.pdf
How can I get invited to one of these vacations?
- Singer was another guest on the trip, not the one paying for Alito.
- Singer's side won the later case by 7-1.
- $100k was the cost of the entire plane, not Alito's seat.
$100k: yes but it’s unclear they would have flown the private jet if Alito had said “no thanks I’ll fly commercial and pay for the ticket”
How fortunate Alito got to live and corrupt himself in this age of peak GOP cravenness!
George Soros-funded DAs represent 20% of Americans after $40M was funneled into races - https://www.foxnews.com/media/george-soros-funded-das-repres...
Related story from a different source: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/george-soros-criminal...
Edit: The invitation was for "comparable", not identical, examples. I provided a much larger scale, but comparable, example of undue influence. That they differ in legality is more an indication of the law's shortcomings, than proof that they're not comparable. Focusing on legality to the exclusion of all other considerations is motivated reasoning.
Consider me unconvinced.
I'm sympathetic to the view that these should be seen more similarly than they are, but that is unambiguously not the case in current law.
At some point money doesn't even talk, it becomes about stuff like positions, literal wielding of power, and influence with a capital "I", not social media type stuff but "I can change the world" sort of ambition. Politicians especially all seem to think of themselves as being part of a thin line, of being a vanguard of how the world should be run.
I want to believe that public servants in the so-called developed world are above all this, but I have doubts. There just aren't enough guardrails in the system, it requires the rule-makers to make rules about themselves and for their allied enforcement officers to actually hold that law above their comradeship (and, above the power-gaining benefits of that very friendship).
You could argue that that's legitimate income (in contrast to a gift), but it's at least in the same direction.
Public service is just that – service.
GPT4 summary: "Research suggests that higher government wages can reduce corruption, particularly in poorer countries. However, as a country's income per capita increases, this method becomes less effective, leading to a need for other measures such as improving rule of law, transparency, and better mechanisms for detecting and punishing corruption."
I have little money myself, but I have relatives who were high society types and the stuff they talk about is mind-boggling. Massive corruption is just baked in at those levels.
I don't think that's true at all.
The base salary for a Justice is ~$270k as of 2021.
FWIW, I don’t think $750k would be too much for a Justice’s salary. It wouldn’t hurt, and would likely pay for itself just through the reduced motivation for corruption.
We shouldn’t have top-level public servants that are struggling financially. We shouldn’t make them ultra wealthy, but paying them enough to live comfortably even if they’re terrible with money and live paycheck to paycheck seems like a reasonable approach.
Literally a joke in The Onion, at https://www.theonion.com/clarence-thomas-promises-to-adopt-c... :
"""I admit to seeing the wisdom in developing some kind of ethical framework for the Supreme Court, so long as Papa gets some sugar,” the senior associate justice said in a prepared statement, emphasizing that he would be willing to submit to a code of conduct that included ignoring special interests and disclosing private trips if there was some serious coinage thrown his way. “It’s reasonable to believe justices serving on the highest court in the land should hold themselves to the highest ethical standards, if only so citizens can have faith in their decision-making process. And if that means so much to lawmakers, they should take whatever donors are giving me every year and double it. Also, in order for me to adhere to some sense of values, Ginni needs to wet her beak.” Thomas suggested he might also support term limits for justices if he was guaranteed a yearly all-expenses-paid trip to the Maldives in retirement."""
It is quite concerning that the SCOTUS judges can have such networking. So far it is been mostly the right wing judges (what a shame that we have to say this about our court). It could be the rest of the right wing judges. Some of the left wing judges possibly too, which I wouldn't be surprise given the hubris of RBG --- although might be unfair to give guilt by association.
Regardless, my point is that letting the SCOTUS judges self-enforce ethical requirements is clearly not working and can never work. I don't blame the judges. I blame systems that don't give incentives and safeguards.
Left wing judges??!!
We have supreme court judges who are far-right extremists who were appointed by Republicans, and we have right wing judges who were appointed by Democrats.
There is no one on the left in any position of power in the US federal government, and never has been. The closest we have/had would be considered centrist or even center-right in other countries.
Your take seems absurd in its lack of nuance.
The left includes socialists and communists, for example. With anarchists and (the original[1], left) libertarians at the far left. Many countries have Socialist and Communist parties with representation in government. The political spectrum in the US is truncated at it's left somewhere around center-right in part due to first-past-the-post elections which tends to devolve into a two party system. But, the far-right fascists and their fellow travelers and (right) libertarians are well represented. Also in part due to corporate media propaganda-- see Eugene V. Debs (a socialist) and the role Hearst media's false reporting had in preventing his election (the same Hearst media that was instrumental in starting the Spanish American war with its false reporting). Of course, the US throughout its history has tended to imprison, expel, and execute folks on the left who rose to prominence too.
Just look at the policies of the so-called "left" presidents in the US:
Clinton: Basically 3rd and 4th term of Reagan. Welfare reform (aka gutting social safety net), prison reform (partially responsible for the current American Gulag with the US imprisoning more in absolute numbers and as a percentage of population of any country-- Clinton signed the federal 3-strikes law into being. Illegal wars in the Balkans. Aggressive stance against Russia-- snubbing Russian attempts to join Nato, and expanding Nato to Russia's doorstep against agreements made in Bush Sr. administration with Moscow (current Ukraine war is arguably the result). Pushed neoliberal policies of Reagan (neoliberalism is the economic policy of the right to privatize everything, provide open boarders to capital while closing boarders to humans, and de-regulate business and finance-- this last one directly setup the circumstances that allowed the 2008 financial crisis to occur; Clinton signed the repeal of Glass Steagall). Illegal sanctions against Iraqi people-- responsible for the death of half a million children under the age of 14 per UNICEF (Clinton's secretary of state Madeleine Albright said this death toll of children was "worth it".
Obama: Attempted to gut social security benefits by redefining the way cost of living adjustments were made. Continued illegal wars of aggression and illegal sanctions. First president known to order the summary execution of an American citizen (the man's young US citizen son was also executed by Obama's drone attacks; A Trump commando team executed his even younger US Citizen daughter). Obama's crowning achievement, his health insurance law ACA was actually originally proposed by the far-right Heritage Foundation during Clinton's tenure-- it ensures that private corporations will continue to reap huge profits at the expense of ordinary Americans-- actual access to healthcare seems almost an after-thought. Huge proponent of privatizing education.
Biden: His proposed domestic policy had much more veneer of the left than I'd have expected from his time in the Obama administration (probably due to Sanders), but his politically right colleagues in the Democratic party prevented passage (perhaps by design; this always seems to happen when progressive / pro labor legislation is proposed by a Democrat-- it usually isn't even proposed unless Democrats have a minority so its defeat is certain). His foreign policy is solidly on the right, though. Continuing illegal sanctions on 1/4 to 1/3 of the entire world's population. I haven't seen any figures yet, but his sanctions against Afghanistan were predicted to kill 1M people primarily children this last winter. His administration has actively worked against a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.
These are solidly right-wing policies. We have right and a far-right parties. The left has zero representation.
[1] libertarianism, a left ideology that grew out of anarcho-syndicalism, but the right seems to have co-opted the term.
> snubbing Russian attempts to join Nato
This is false, Russia itself declined to join after being told it would have to follow the same process as everyone else.
> and expanding Nato to Russia's doorstep against agreements made in Bush Sr. administration with Moscow.
This is also not true, the USSR President at the time Mikhail Gorbachev has said that this agreement never happened.
> (current Ukraine war is arguably the result).
The Ukraine war is more arguably the result of Russias imperialistic notions. But don't believe me, read it yourself from their own news site.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226051154/https://ria.ru/20...
> His administration has actively worked against a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine.
This is false as well, what has led to the end of the discussion of a negotiated end of the war in Ukraine was Russia's terrible war crimes in Bucha and other areas of Ukraine.
The federalist society planned to fix this in two ways: vet judges better and provide judges with a rightwing social circle so they won't be gradually moderated by having mostly liberal friends.
These trips are a small investment if they make sure Thomas is less likely to have occasional idiosyncratic rulings like Gorsuch does.
> “We would rehearse lines like, ‘We believe you are here for a time like this,’” which is a reference to the Old Testament Book ...
> Schenck said the goal was to create an ecosystem of support for conservative justices, as a way of making them more forthright in their views.
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/08/religious-right-sup...
(this is a different org, not fedsoc)
I don't think it's that hard. I know quite a few people at maybe bacon number of 2 that falls in this case.
If you are one of these workers and break the conflict of interests rules or regulations, you will be fired, whether or not you were taking advantage of the conflict.
Two examples.
About twenty years ago they spearheaded modest-to-mediocre efforts at expanding Medicare; today, post-ACA, the party seems intent on an unprecedented degree of privatization and deregulation.
In 2002, GWB was able to mandate increased military smallpox vaccinations with little to no resistance; now almost all GOP party members are on the record as against any form of vaccination mandate (exception: Gov. DeWine of Ohio, who famously received hundreds of death threats from his own partisans over the issue).
I intentionally chose the tamest examples of a substantial platform change in the GOP over the past twenty years, but many more come to mind.
Did you really link something which opens by calling the Republican party extremely far-right as evidence that they aren't that?
> Did you really link something which opens by calling the Republican party extremely far-right as evidence that they aren't that?
This should be obvious from the fact that I shared it, don't you think? I'm confident that the average HN user is perfectly capable of reading through the Times' biases and getting to the underlying facts, even if you had trouble.
Their actions expanding wars in the Middle East, extending the Patriot Act, covering for fossil fuel atrocities, prosecuting whistleblowers, failing to end torture or even try very hard, etc, put a lot of doubt on that.
The way they treated Bernie and other progressives has sealed the deal, for me - they weren't the tiniest bit inept all of a sudden.
That was cold, calculating, ruthless, and effective. They took the mask fully off, and I'm startled that so many people still think they're bumbling goons. The hyper-cynical way Dem elites managed to blame Sanders for Hillary's loss killed my last shred of hope for America to turn things around.
I guess this could be considered off-topic, or flamebait. But it's important.
The propaganda push is real trying to get Americans to think of the supreme court (of course, only the "conservative" justices) as corrupt. It's unthinkable that highly ambitious, successful people have highly ambitious and successful friends. It's impossible that people like to spend time with like minded people who agree with them on their core beliefs. No, it must be that they're getting paid to rule a certain way on the court.
I can't tell if this push is to get some justices to retire so that Biden gets to appoint more, or if it is a bigger play to remove faith in the supreme court and give more power to the executive. Either way this is a dangerous game being played.
The supreme court is less corrupt now than it ever has been IMO, since the first supreme court. And it it sacred, if the supreme court gets corrupted, the public loses faith in it or something like that, the republic will not survive.
[1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-samuel-alito-propublica...
George Soros-funded DAs represent 20% of Americans after $40M was funneled into races - https://www.foxnews.com/media/george-soros-funded-das-repres...
In current law, though, it's entirely acceptable for organizations like Soros's to donate to political campaigns. If Soros starts sending DAs on free fishing trips on a private jet, then it becomes comparable.
You mean legal.
Especially when one can use the unambiguous and concise "legal" instead of the vague and plodding "In current law, though, it's entirely acceptable".
Edit: You focus on legality to the exclusion of all else, while I care more about ethics and undue influence. Yes, the two cases are not identical. That does not mean they're not at least equally problematic.
This is not to say Citizen's United shouldn't be repealed and campaign contributions much more tightly regulated. But it ain't the same.