Odd O'blography

Bribery for Dummies

The conservative majority of SCOTUS ruled six to three this week that it is not a crime to bribe government officials. It’s only a crime for the bribe to be paid up front. The case involves a small-town mayor who received a $13,000 'gift' from a garbage company shortly after awarding them a million-dollar garbage contract. A reasonable person might conclude that a large cash payment following a lucrative contract award indicates that a favor was granted in return for the cash. The Roberts court, however, holds that a gift following a favor is merely a gratuity for a job well done. It's definitely not a quid pro quo, merely an understanding between friends that first I need you to do me a favor. Justice Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion and should have included the infamous quote from Donald Trump's Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney: "It happens all the time . . . get over it."

Kavanaugh did acknowledge a few basic rules of etiquette for public corruption. Payment of the bribe must follow completion of the favor and there can be no contractual agreement up front. There can be no incriminating emails with price negotiations, no awkward text exchanges that predate the favor, and no inconvenient witnesses to the agreement. But as long as there is no proof of prior collusion, then there is total exoneration!

This is an important point for MAGA to establish in the law, especially for self-serving justices Thomas and Alito, who maintain that accepting gifts from wealthy political donors is not illegal or even unethical. They have both provided favorable rulings for ‘friends’ who later rewarded them with gifts. In his opinion, Kavanaugh described such gifts as gratuities, given in appreciation for a job well done. A reasonable person might conclude that this smells like bribery. The Roberts majority, however, has agreed with Thomas and Alito that SCOTUS is above any legal or moral requirement to act ethically.

When I worked in the corporate world, I was required to take yearly ethics training. These presentations emphasized that even the appearance of misconduct was unacceptable. We were told not to pursue a personal friendship with a vendor or a customer. We were told not to accept gifts from vendors or give gifts to customers. Even wearing a ball cap with a logo could be construed as evidence of favoritism. This mandatory training for all employees was put in place after a few high-level executives were found to have acted unethically to secure business contracts and personal perks. It may have been cynical for the bosses to push ethics training on us peons, but at least they acknowledged that ethical behavior should be the norm.

President Trump made many grandiose promises for his first day in office. He was going to make dozens of major changes in his first week. He promised to repeal and replace multiple laws that he disagreed with. But what he actually did that first week was to cancel the customary ethics training that had always been given to incoming White House staff. We don’t need no stinking ethics! Little did we know that ‘his’ judges would make this the official motto of the Roberts court. And now this smack-down of ethical behavior has been codified in U. S. law by a Supreme Court ruling. Choices have consequences and bad choices have bad consequences. A corrupt President Trump appointed corrupt judges and those corrupt judges make corrupt rulings. We should all keep that in mind in November.

I can’t help but wonder, and hope, that the blatantly unethical behavior of the Roberts court will enable future courts to find reversible error. Not just with this case but with any ruling handed down by SCOTUS since Roberts was appointed Chief Justice. These so-called conservative justices have openly admitted that they take gifts from interested parties. They do not recuse themselves from cases that involve their wealthy patrons. And they have ruled that this is acceptable behavior for government officials at all levels. As far as I’m concerned, a future court can overturn any decision from the Roberts era simply because it has the taint of a Roberts ruling.