Here comes the usual "everyone does this [and no I cannot provide any comparable examples]."
How fortunate Alito got to live and corrupt himself in this age of peak GOP cravenness!
How fortunate Alito got to live and corrupt himself in this age of peak GOP cravenness!
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.
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).
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.