A Lot from Lydia
ProPublica has uncovered more of the same corruption by conservative Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas. Thomas said of his vacations with Harlan Crow, something to the effect of we are good friends, of course we go on vacations together. The home Crow purchased for Thomas’s mother, and the elite education for Thomas’s nephew, were not addressed.
His acceptance, and non-disclosure, of gifts from billionaires now includes three more benefactors, besides Harlan Crow.
- H. Wayne Huizenga, a billionaire who turned Blockbuster and Waste Management into national goliaths
- Paul “Tony” Novelly, retired oil company titleholder
- David Sokol, former heir apparent of Berkshire Hathaway
Thomas enjoyed many extravagant excursions over the 30 years of his tenure. The booty includes flights on private jets and helicopters, stays at luxury resorts, skybox tickets to college and pro sporting events, and a standing invitation to play at a high-end exclusive golf club in Florida. (Yawn.)
Did I mention Thomas failed to report these perks on his financial disclosure forms?
The reason it is unethical for Thomas to lap up treats is that he has been the SCOTUS, presiding over several cases of interest to these generous friends. This is a pattern, Thomas accepting bribery with limited public admission.
Read The ProPublica article, link attached, to find the methods they used to uncover this round of undisclosed gifts.
Sokol, one of the busted billionaires, said,
“We have never once discussed any pending court matter. Our conversations have always revolved around helping young people, sports, and family matters. As to the use of private aviation, I believe that, given security concerns, all the Supreme Court justices should either fly privately or on governmental aircraft.”
Did Thomas break the law? He shows consciousness of guilt by not disclosing the gifts. But also, if it was public knowledge, we would have scrutinized him for presiding over cases of interest to his “dear friends.”
How many of these billionaires would have gifted Thomas perks that are estimated to value in the millions if he wasn’t a Justice? I dunno. But, when I stopped taking cupcakes to class on my birthday, no one gave a duck what day it was.
The Constitution states that Justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behavior.” So he’ll resign, right? Hahaha… no. Why would he give up a lifetime appointment that protects him from accountability?
What can we do? Considering that members of the SCOTUS have declared themselves immune to the laws of mortal men, the only recourse is to remove Thomas is by impeachment.
Has a Justice ever been impeached? The only case of impeachment was Associate Justice Samuel Chase in 1805.
Is anyone working on reform?
- In February, Senator Whitehouse introduced a bill establishing new codes of conduct for judges and justices of U.S. courts, including Justices of the Supreme Court.
- Soon after, Senator Whitehouse and Blumenthal, and Representatives Johnson, Nadmer, Quigly and Cicilline introduced a revised version, ‘Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act.’
- And in June, Representatives Ro Khanna and Don Beyer reintroduced ‘The Supreme Court Term Limits and Regular Appointments Act’ following the Supreme Court’s decision to block the Biden Administration’s Student Debt Relief Plan.
- Another group of Senate Democrats has introduced the ‘Judiciary Act of 2021,’ proposing an increase adding four Justices to the Supreme Court. This would match the numbers in the circuit court, which was the formula of the past. As you can see by the name of the bill, two years have passed without success.
- Finally, On July 10, 2023, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin proposed a bill to speed things along.
“The bill would give the court 180 days to adopt and publish a code of conduct, allowing the public to submit ethics complaints that a randomly selected panel of lower court judges would review. It would establish new rules for disclosure of gifts and travel. And it would impose recusal rules pertaining to gifts, income and other potential conflicts.”
The problem lies here, this bill these bills require a supermajority to pass the Senate. That means instead of 51-49, they need 60 votes to pass. To abolish the super majority rule involves a vote with a simple majority. Two Democratic Senators, Manchin and Sinema, refuse to add their tallies to that cause.
This is a quite a conundrum. The only solution to passing any of the bills is to garner a real majority in the Senate and House at the same time. To achieve that, we must all vote Democratic. Until then, Thomas and his right-wing SCOTUS colleagues in crime are not going anywhere, or changing their behavior.
I’ve often imagined where we would be as a country and as a planet if Al Gore had been allowed to be president? He won, and had the Supreme Court at the time not stopped the recount, he would have been president. Clarence Thomas was the deciding SCOTUS who ended the recount. Now I realize I should have been wondering where we’d be had we listened to Anita Hill. This would be a different world.
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Via https://alotfromlydia.com/2023/08/10/scotus-thomas-outed-again/
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Pingback: SCOTUS Thomas Outed Again; 86 Total Gifts Received, (but he claims that results in no favors granted) | AGR Free Press
The original US Constitution is extremely vague on a number of issues we take for granted, like the makeup of the Supreme Court, or the number of members it should contain. The so-called Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, was a negotiated arrangement in order to get a majority of the 13 states to ratify the Constitution. It was finally ratified in 1787, a full 11 years after the July 4, 1776 date we ascribe to the Declaration of Independence. Even then, ratification was by specially appointed assemblies instead of state legislatures.
My point is the US has never had a coherent legal framework to draw on. Clarence Thomas was appointed by George HW Bush in 1991, presumably to replace Thurgood Marshall, who had left. Anita Hill slowed down Thomas’ appointment confirmation with her accusations. The same thing happened again later, with vague reports of previous sexual improprieties.
In the 1930s, FDR tried to increase the number of Supreme Court justices. As it happened, FDR created a huge bureaucracy, transforming the “class tax”, the income tax, into a “mass tax” that included payroll taxes to pay for Social Security. Medicare came later, under Lyndon Johnson. But FDR appointed lots of federal judges and created lots of work for people out of work from the 1929 stock market crash. The TVA, for instance, and the CCC.
FDR, encouraged by correspondence from Albert Einstein, initiated the Manhattan Project, a secret network of facilities working on the first atomic bomb. Roosevelt, who died at the beginning of his fourth term as US president, did not live to see his Vice President, Harry S. Truman, drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, but FDR was president when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.
The US has been heavily engaged militarily in Southeast Asia since North America was co-opted from the natives by the British Empire, which also fostered a soft takeover of India to have easy access to its bounty. The Roosevelt dynasty in the US got its money, as so many families did, by the “China trade” which included opium smuggled from India to China and out of the British- controlled ports obtained in the Opium Wars around 1850.
It’s hard to draw a line between public and private interests, since all are so interconnected in a time line that spans centuries.
Why is Washington DC so named? Is it important that it abuts George Washington’s Mount Vernon? That the sterile “father of our country” was a land speculator, who wanted to build a canal from the Potomac to his property holdings in the Ohio River Valley, where he had led troops in the French and Indian War against the French and the Indians? That he and first Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton devised the Whiskey Tax to insure a perpetual revenue stream for the nation’s first central bank in 1789? Or that George Washington got much of his personal revenue from his business as a whiskey distiller?
So-called “perks” come with all jobs. Perquisites were cited in Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” in 1776. Smith claimed governments can generate lots of money through the postal system, and through government jobs. That may be why be was appointed customs commissioner of Edinburgh, Scotland, to oversee imports and exports from various nations and protectorates.
I could go on, but won’t. A look at US history shows that we all have personal in addition to public motivations for what we do. I’ve never met Clarence Thomas, but I might have, since he was born and raised down the street from me, on the salt marsh just outside Savannah, GA. We share a certain impersonal history, so I feel connected by proximity in time and place.
I do wonder why the members of the US Supreme Court get life appointments. I wonder how the number of members was established. The role of the electoral “college” has never been defined, yet it is crucial for all presidential elections. Why is re-districting within states such a big issue? How did the US obtain Alaska and Hawaii? All these and more facts of our history are buried in individual minds and memories, and through books and libraries and American folklore.
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Matthew Ehret talks a lot about the purchase of Alaska in his Clash of the Two Americas. It has to do with a close relationship Lincoln had with czar Alexander II. The US had a strong relationship with Russia developed by Ben Franklin and US engineers were fundamental in building the Trans-Siberian railroad. Simultaneously Lincoln was building the transcontinental railroad in the US, and his cabinet was negotiating with British Columbia to join as the 26th state. The goal when Seward completed the purchase of Alaska was to run a west coast rail link through British Columbia and Alaska and across the Bering Strait to link with the Trans-Siberian railroad.
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