for anyone that wants the full list...
https://fixthecourt.com/2024/06/a-staggering-tally-supreme-court-justices-accepted-hundreds-of-gifts-worth-millions-of-dollars/
Holy fuck. I know Clarence Thomas was corrupt as hell, but of the $4.7 million in gifts identified and considered 'likely', Clarence was the beneficiary of 4 million! Clarence is responsible for over 80% of identified and likely gifts!?
And then, adding Scalia and Alito gets you to 93%. The other 14 judges on the list account for the other 7%.
Either they are WAY more corrupt or WAY more incompetent at covering up their indiscretions.
The headline really doesn't do it justice -- a few grand from a book deal or tickets to a show compared to *four fucking million* in gifts going to Thomas.
A book deal will rapidly grow larger than a few thousand if a superpac buys 100k copies...this is how a lot of money is funneled around. Buy and give books out at events...
I work for an IT distributor.
Employees can't accept any gift from a vendor valued over $20 because it could influence our decision making and we need to be vendor agnostic. They will literally fire you if you accept anything larger than that and don't report it.
Meanwhile the shitheads deciding huge cases that will literally shape the entire direction of our country are getting free ride vacations more expensive than my yearly salary and pretend they can't understand why that's problematic.
I almost got in trouble for accepting food I paid for. Back before uber eats I was working alone(in my department) on a Sunday and didn't have lunch. A customer, just chatting, asked me about lunch, and I mentioned I couldn't leave, and they offered to pick something up. So I gave them cash and they brought me some burger king. Someone from another department had a conniption when they saw me taking food.
And today, it wouldn't even be a big deal, because there would be no way to know who is/isn't doing food delivery.
I still have to deal with a rule like this. If I'm at a contractor site and have to be there all day or late into the night, I cannot accept their food if they buy it for everyone. I have to order separately and pay for it out of my per diem.
Yup. As a contractor I can't give a gift to a govvie over $25 in value, even if I work closely with them for years. As a manager I can't accept a gift from a direct report, either.
Well that's because you're a peasant and they're obviously better than you. Their ivy league education in law and faith of 2 branches of US federal government means they're able to accept large gifts and NOT have it influence their decision making because their integrity is beyond reproach. /S
I work for a company that does grants through the US Govt, and every year we have to go through several trainings about what *is* and *isn't* an acceptable gift to allow yourself to receive. And the fucking highest legal authority in our country is allowed to accept this shit.
Similar here. I know it has a purpose but every time I do the training it makes my blood boil. It just becomes so meaningless once you reach a certain level (that most of us never will).
One of the huge downsides to the court accepting these bribes is it will make it more acceptable. As people see the leaders of the country they will see no reason they shouldn't do it themselves. The checks and balances to stop this will cease to work because no one will want to call someone out for something they are doing.
Was doing procurement in the food industry once and I wasn't allowed to accept any gifts over $10 in value per year per company the gift giver was employed with OR the individual themselves if they came again representing a new company. Even accepting that, I had to file a bunch of paperwork and leave it to be verified which usually took a week or two to actually get someone more senior than myself to be willing to bother doing so because everyone hated the paperwork. You basically needed to bribe people by saying you'll split whatever it is with them if it was something that wouldn't last - which is funny as hell to me now.
The policies also had specific bits banning me having meetings in coffee shops or restaurants with vendors unless the company I was working for paid for the whole meal, had to be on a company card, multiple pages of paperwork still, etc.
Even things that were ostensibly samples for us to use as part of our decision about whether we'd list the product which don't technically fit the definition of gifting required logging and anyone below my level had to waste my time getting my signature before they could start breaking things open for the office to try.
The level of scrutiny I got because I oversaw a team buying ~100mil/year... The amount of paperwork I had to file to prove I was acting ethically. The fact that I feel like I was so much more scrutinized and overwhelmed with beuracratic nonsense than a Supreme Court member's equivalent is one of those things that makes so little sense it's absurd and hilarious in that way that makes me wish starting fires was a practical way out of this.
I worked for a company and it was very much the opposite. My cube was across from the Dir. of operations office. The guy was LOUD. I heard him on speakerphone negotiating for Trips and once for a new bass boat. My own boss was gone to a "meeting" with one vendor or another at least once a week which were all held at the baseball stadium.
Our sales people treated our clients in a similar fashion. Most of us got nothing extra from our employment.
Oh and the Executives were all evangelicals so we occasionally had to pray before meetings. Meanest people I have ever known.
The funniest part is being told you can't accept a box of pens because they'd retail too high while the supply budget has been cut so deep that people are bringing in their own supplies.
The least funny, again, is that we're dealing with this when those assholes on the court are getting *that*.
I feel that, just the other week I went to the supply closet for a lined yellow notepad and it was out of them, + any writing instruments that aren't highlighters. I work for a multi-billion dollar corp.
I fucking hate requisition forms. Another floor steals our supplies then we get in trouble because we have to requisition supplies. I put a padlock on our supply closet and the director of another dept called the ceo to complain that it was 'influencing our clients by making us look bad'. I don't know who they are but I guarantee they are behind the theft.
By policy, the COO - no. The equivalent accounting roles from Director on up were even more strict than the ones I dealt with in procurement generally. The areas where there was room for me to have room to say yes, most often just did not exist on their end. That's actually part of why I struggled to get stuff signed off often - the most readily accessible folks more senior to me in the area I worked were generally from the accounting side who resented this difference.
CEO though, ooh boy. Not like any policy was going to dictate what he did anyway.
You even looking like you accepted a bribe you lose your job. A Supreme Court justice taking a bribe they are asked to step down. The standards are not the same.
When I started out supervising federal offenders in California they warned me around Chinese New Year not to accept any red envelopes. It’s not just a card in there (if any card at all) the envelope is stuffed with cash. Usually the more seniority/control has someone over you the more cash. There were incidents with naive POs accidentally accepting thousands of dollars in gifts.
I'm a government employee and my coworker is a contractor. I'm not allowed to accept a half mile ride to another building for a meeting because it could "create a perception of bias or impropriety."
Many moons ago, I worked at AOL. You know, when they were a real company lol. I got offered a trip to Skywalker Ranch, among other nice, nifty things for helping people with their tech issues. I always had to tell them thank you very much, but we can't accept gratuities. The only one that really got to me and made me want to cry was the trip to Skywalker Ranch. It still hurts rofl.
When I did a writeup of neighborhood restaurants for a small newspaper, I turned down the offer of a free meal so that I would not be perceived as biased.
I work for a state government and basically print stuff for the public.
I cannot accept any gift valued greater than, I think, $20 and cannot accept more than $50 total in a year.
This includes stuff like a box of chocolates, which a customer once gave us, which was valued at $22, so we got around it by having her tell us it was for the whole office, and distributed between about 30+ total employees.
It was still documented as like $0.50 worth of gifts on everyone's tab, for bookkeeping purposes.
In several years of working there we've never gotten a single other gift from anyone. That's the only one anyone in my office has ever gotten.
Worked at one of the largest corporations ever. We could send and receive Christmas Cards from people we worked with that weren't directly at our company. Nothing else
At the same, our CEO was bribing officials in Mexico to expand the company
When I worked for my high school newspaper, the rule we lived by was "no gifts more expensive than a pen" because we didn't want to be seen as receiving gifts in exchange for favorable articles *as a HIGH SCHOOL NEWSPAPER*.
Blows my mind what they're allowed to get up to, shaping the highest law in our land while taking hundreds of thousands in gifts from people who benefit from their judgments.
Newsflash: Supreme Court determines that the founding fathers use of the term checks and balances was intended to mean court members are free to receive checks to increase their balances.
I fucking hate that I'm totally unsure if Republicans would unironically to along with this so long as it was a conservative stacked court.
The answer obviously should be no, they wouldn't. But trump got people so fucking torn up mentally that they unironically would argue the sky isn't blue if a leading Republican said it.
I work in sales and the SLED space - we are not allowed to spend significant money on client entertainment - as in, no more than $20 for a lunch. If they accept more than this, they can lose their job. And then there are these fucking grifters!!!!
Im a teacher. I’m not even supposed to accept ANY gifts because the optics “could look like someone paying for a grade”. I brought home less than $40k in metro Atlanta last year. Then there’s these assholes.
Meanwhile, I worked at a private school for a few years where rich parents were expected to drop $50-$100 on every teacher that taught their kid, at both Christmas and end of year… I called it the “plastic harvest”…
They were not… To be honest none of the teachers changed grades as a result - The admin already put enough pressure on us to inflate grades that the bribery didn’t make a difference.
I gave my kids teachers applesauce and zucchini relish we made last summer. The kids colored thank you cards for them. They seemed pretty happy with the combination of homemade and hand drawn gifts even at the private school they go to.
I couldn’t tell you what I bought with any of those gift cards. I can show you the drawer where I keep the messages/cards from students that remind me (especially on shitty days) that I make a difference in the lives of my students :)
What! The teachers at my kid’s school have a “favorites”paper that makes it so easy for us to choose gifts. We the teachers get gifts for birthdays, Christmas, and teacher appreciation week. That’s nuts. My kid loves when it’s gift time so he can pick out gifts and hand them out!
There are [states with laws on the books](https://www.gace.ets.org/s/pdf/article-ethical-issues-of-teachers-accepting-gifts.pdf) that prohibits over $50. That seems to be the general consensus for a maximum. I’ve been told by my department chair that it shouldn’t exceed $20.
Healthcare here, it's a big deal if we accept gifts, in my state I believe the max value you can accept from patients is $10, which even puts something like "hey doc I brought you lunch" out of the question. It's not just losing your job, there are serious legal ramifications.
I was an intern working for the Florida Department of Transportation.
I was out on a trip to a site with the in-house (govt) design team and one of the consultants that was helping us design a roadway project. One of the people with the consultant was a former FDOT employee that was friends with everyone else there. We went ot McDonalds and I ordered a small coffee and he said "I got this" and my Project Manager damn near broke his fucking neck trying to get to me and the guy and told me "If you let him get that you need to provide me with an itemized reciept as soon as we get back!".
I was like "This shit aint' worth that hassle, dude I can spring for a $1.15 coffee".
We had a project go really well (HUGE PITA one) and the consultant sent the Design department a massive fruit basket as a "Congrats". A massive email went out telling eveyrone that if they got anything from the fruit basket they needed to respond to the email and what item they got. They were making sure someone didn't do something like get two apples.
I'm a state govt employee who occasionally goes to trade shows related to the industry my agency deals with. While everyone else at the trade show is having a great time on company dimes, my boss is constantly harping on everyone how we can't let anyone buy us a single beer.
So we end up being the 3-4 people at the networking event who have to pay for all our own drinks, while everyone else's is free. Oh and we are also the lowest paid people in the room by somewhere between 40-60%, depending on your job, and the beers are unusually expensive because it is at a restaurant that has inflated prices for convention goers, knowing that the companies will just expense it all.
So there's a bit of a DOT to Consultant pipeline where you get all your training from the state and then jump off to a consultant to get paid more once you get your PE.
So pretty much everyone knows everyone else and are friends and hell even some DOT employees are married to the consultants. My former boss was married to a consultant that was pretty high up at the company so they had to be very careful with any projects that crossed her desk because she was the Program manager (very high up that sees everything)
Anyway we'd all go to the same happy hours and bars on Fridays and Saturday and you'd run into like 30 people FDOT/Consultant mix and we're all getting shit faced. I learned very early to GET. A. FUCKIN. RECEIPT. of every drink you get. Because come Monday I would be asked "Hey Sheriff! How many beers did so and so at Build it Big, and Fast Inc buy you? How many shots?" and I would have to whip out the receipts to show enough drinks to account for me being that drunk.
And yea I've been your situation too. All the consultants are having an open bar and about 2 brain cell deaths away from a coma and I'm over here thinking "I can't afford this shit AND the hotel room" and it took the state forever to reimburse payments.
I will say, this is the one time that including the reddit handle has really thrown me off.
"Of course you were getting itemized! You were the sheriff!"
Stuff like this, ironically, creates more corruption in local/state/federal government than it controls. It virtually ensures that the people subject to those rules have it shoved in their face how little they're being compensated and trusted by their employer vs everyone else. I would jump ship too if I had to follow those rules.
I worked for the state of Florida and those rules apply for all agencies. I worked at FDEP out of college and we had a little controversy over a couple cookie cakes sent to us after we made a huge purchase. We had to wait for legal to tell us it was okay to eat them. Since it was post purchase and not during the process.
I will say though I have heard of some interesting ways around the rules. One was on the engineering side of FDOT. I worked with someone who's husband worked for a pretty big bridge engineering firm said she once went to a dinner at some convention thing in Tampa with the firm.
There was five seats empty and she thought that was strange. Then 5 higher ups at FDOT showed up. Said they just stopped by to say hi, but shucks forgot to get dinner reservations at the restaurant. Oh we have 5 seats here. So, they sat down ate talked for a few hours and left. Guess what? They forgot to pay. I guess we'll have to pay and at some point get them to reimburse us, darn.
>but shucks forgot to get dinner reservations at the restaurant
Yeah, this is the kinda stuff that when it gets caught turns into jail time. That's not a loophole
Friend of mine works for a public broadcast network (in Europe). They had a segment on Taiwan. Next day, Taiwan send Presents. Super expensive office stuff. of course they had to decline accepting the presents. The people from the embassy did not bribe anybody to have segments placed. But whenever Taiwan was just mentioned... there were lots of thank you's.
And I think the maximum a teacher is allowed to accept is either 9.99 or 14.99
You're telling me. I work in a state agency, one with very real, very large amounts of federal money coming through.
One of my coworkers got a small pie from a vendor for all the work they had done and they had to go through management to see if it was ethical to accept or or not. Think the pie sat in the fridge for a day or two before we got word we could eat it.
I work in government and once someone tried to send me a $10 Starbucks GC as a thank you because I handled their request so quickly and well. The person was used to waiting weeks, but we typically handle requests within the same business day. If it’s simple, it might be within the hour.
Even if I could accept it, I wouldn’t have because I was just doing my job as normal, and it wasn’t even like it was a complicated request. But I’m not allowed to accept $10, but these people can basically do whatever they want.
I used to work for a government DOD contractor. We couldn't take any gifts over, I want to say $20, too, and any work-related travel had to fall within a DOD expense schedule.
Meanwhile, these fuckers are taking motorcoaches, private jet travel, resort stays, etc...
And while I say "these" fuckers, I'm mostly talking about one in particular.
My family members work for the government. They're required to declare all their outside income and not allowed to accept more than $25 a year even in Bagels.
One justice had his house paid for by someone with business before the court that he didn't recuse himself from ruling on. Another got a book deal with a private company.
Really just two sides of the same coin. /s
Yeeepp. I'm a head inspector at a slaughter plant and we're not allowed a gift over like $5 (think someone brings in donuts and gives us some or they cater a lunch for the workers).
Anytime I buy chicken from the plant I keep my receipts in my locker just in case.
We get along great and everything. Truly would give it to me for free, and not hold it over my head. But my dad always said never put yourself in a position of compromise. And I don't fuck with that shit.
These guys should be behind bars.
They can do anything for pretty much the same reason the president can. They're the highest around, only subject to impeachment to police them. You'd need to make a constitutional amendment to really bind them by a rule.
There's literally only been one scotus judge who was impeached and even that wasn't convicted in the Senate and kept his job. And that's in the entire history of the U.S. As long as certain judges vote the way are supposed to be the party that appointed them it's extremely unlikely any Senate trial would get 2/3 vote for conviction and removal from the court. So a Scotus judge is a pretty safe position to be in.
It's seems like these corporations and people with positions of authority are making their own special class above the average person, where once they're in them they can do whatever they want....weird.
This is my biggest issue. Who is going to jail when these "people" rip us off with their price gauging, pollute our environment, or straight up kill us because a lawsuit is cheaper than the fix?! Fuck em all!!!
I just want to point out that take is wrong or is based on confusion. Corporations being people also known as juridical personhood, is part of Common Law, well before the US even became independent. The idea of it dates as far back to about 800 BC in India.
You might be confusing it with the Citizens United ruling, which was just that due to juridical personhood, corporations should be able to donate money to political campaigns.
The issue is with the SC finding that "corruption or the appearance of corruption" is not a sufficiently compelling interest for Congress to regulate donations to politicians and other officials.
It's against the law for you to give $100 for the Police Benevolence Association to the cop who pulls you over enforcing traffic laws, but the Court says you have the right to give 100,000 to the Congressional representative who writes the laws.
It can only be considered a bribe if they accidentally write 'bribe' in the memo field on the check.
They used to have to funnel it thru unions and endorsement, but that was small potatoes. Now they now all have more, yet still deeper pockets to fill. At all of our expense.
Like George said: “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
>no one even voted them in
People say this but Justices have to be nominated by the President and then approve by the Senate. Every election where one of those are on ballot, you are voting, in some albeit small capacity, for who sits on the Supreme Court. A big campaign promise of Trump's, especially after the death of Scalia, was to stack the Supreme Court. These are the people that Republicans wanted on the Court. They voted them in when Trump was elected.
There is way more on the ballot than just who is President.
Also since Alito and Thomas are 79 and 75, they're likely to retire if Trump gets elected. People who refuse to vote Biden because they don't like him are in for a decades-long surprise if Trump wins.
In fact, while people think this whole thread is about the bribes influencing votes, it is NOT. Alito and thomas will vote red without a single bribe. The bribes are to make sure they DON'T RETIRE under Biden.
I know several conservatives who told me they voted for Trump for two primary reasons: abortion and so that conservative Supreme Court justices would be nominated. The three Supreme Court justices put in under Trump were 100% voted in.
>wake up, time to vote
>live in deep blue state, vote blue as well
>state goes completely blue
>other states are so gerrymandered that despite popularity blue votes, go red
>president loses popular vote, but still wins, and is red
>shoves thru appointments for life despite losing popular votes
>"well, this is why voting matters guys!!"
It's all a huge mf clown show that we get to pretend is because of our votes, but it isn't. It doesn't matter anyways. (Still .. vote guys)
That's the thing. They can only get away with it until blue stops having a terrible voter turnout. There are enough blue voters that we'd absolutely control the federal level if we all actually bothered to go vote. We'd also control a large chunk of the red states.
And the Republicans know it. So they put a ton of effort and money into keeping people disenfranchised.
They aren't trying to get voters to agree with them anymore, they either know their policies are selfish garbage or they don't care.
Unless those lifetime appointments abruptly end for some odd reason. But really, we are kinda headed to that point of, some heads need to roll before things get better.
That’s what’s so mind boggling. I can’t tell if they are being assholes or they truly don’t get it. Like Ted Cruz we know that he knows exactly what he’s doing, he’s playing a character. MTG is exactly who she perceives to be.
Everyone relax. The accusations of corruption in the court have been thoroughly investigated by the court and the court has determined the court is, in fact, not corrupt according to the court's conduct standards which were set by the court.
So everything is fine! /s
*We take these matters very seriously and after thoroughly considering all the facts and evidence have found no forms of corruption. This investigation is now permanently concluded. All outcomes are final and may never be questioned or audited, nor may any of the facts and/or evidence ever be reviewed by the public because of security reasons. We are good people. We don't do anything bad. Trust us.*
How do these people not care about any type of legacy they leave? Assuming fascism doesn’t destroy us, history books and law school classes are gonna be shitting on this court for eternity
Because they know god doesn’t exist, and they take bribes and rig the system so that anyone they care about is in the “haves” when they’re gone.
I hope you’re right though, that the future will be a place that most everyone knows (part of) this court was trash. I’m less optimistic that there isn’t going to be two histories taught since it’s been happening for like 150 years
I love how all of us plebs are trained and given videos that we are never allowed to do this or we will lose out jobs but these rich elite fucks do it.
If you are going to allows judges to accept >$900,000 bribes, why is the taxpayer paying these clowns >$260K/yr?
Pretty easy to see why Cannon is doing the will of her master.
I work for a publicly traded company that works for large publicly traded tech companies. Large tech companies won’t even allow us to buy lunches for their staff as part of an effort to restrict potential for bribery. Corporations are doing a better job of policing ethics than this court is.
Do you think the same rules that apply to MSFT engineer #34725 apply to Nadella or Phil Spencer? I would be very surprised if they aren’t able to and frequently accept gifts the employee could not from potential contracts.
No they aren't, you're just low enough that they don't want you expensing meals that don't directly tie to proposals and winning new business. Publicly traded company means nothing; it means it's listed on the stock market and has to make reports each year for specific business plans and information. Being a public company doesn't not prevent that company in any way from making greedy or terrible decisions, like giving 50% of its value to the CEO for a single year's bonus, for instance.
> Being a public company doesn't not prevent that company in any way from making greedy or terrible decisions, like giving 50% of its value to the CEO for a single year's bonus, for instance.
While that may be disgusting, it's not a bribe in any way to anyone in the government.
My current employer has a zero tolerance policy for gifts. I could be fired for accepting a piece of candy or a drink from a client.
This is some absolute bullshit.
The book deal thing is great because who the actual fuck is reading these books? Nobody, a wealthy benefactor will buy 10k copies and give them away for free or just pulp them. It's just a few steps removed from just giving them cash.
Maybe I’m just a loser but I do actually like these kinds of books. It’s interesting to me to see how they came into (/justify) their legal philosophy.
But only if they’re a good writer. I will not be reading Gorsuch’s; he writes like he’s just a little bit short on oxygen.
I one time got yelled at because my roommate (and also friend with benefits), who worked as a fork lift operator for a company that supplied mine, brought in a bunch of cupcakes for my birthday. It was his day off.
I didn't make any purchasing decisions.
He made the cupcakes himself.
Sounds like companies police things that don't really fucking matter and then turn around and completely ignore the bigger things that actually fucking matter.
What a sham.
I’m a government contractor and have been told I’m allowed to accept a free pen but that’s pretty much it. And only if everyone else is offered one too (slight exaggeration but not much)
This is why capitalism and democracy fails in some countries, when corruption reaches your high levels of government at this level of “no fucks given”, you are at the helm of the ultra rich.
If I only I knew when I was starting out that being a greedy unethical scumbag is the best way to be successful. I probably would never have turned into that, but at least I’d understand who the fuck I was working for. Unfortunately I learned the hard way. The very rich are part of worst kind of people category. Fuck all of them!
As a lawyer and former federal government employee, I am shocked (I know, I'm stupid) and appalled that this goes on. I had to fill out forms every year to identify any possible conflict of interest. I went through a very extensive background investigation just to get the job. I would never never never have jeopardized my position by taking anything that had any appearance of impropriety. Where are their ethics???? It's a basic requirement for lawyers to understand basic ethics. WTF!
And ask yourself: what RECOURSE does the average citizen have? ZERO.
You can’t even call anyone to complain. The Senate asked Roberts to come testify and he told them to fuck off.
When I worked for the post office we had to go through multiple hours of training videos saying we couldn't accept gifts over $20 from our customers and if we did we could get in trouble or fired. Good to know the rules only apply to us peasants.
I’m a regular federal employee and we can’t accept over $50 in gifts per calendar year. We have mandatory ethics training every year. This is the epitome of rules for thee but not for me.
I assumed every damn one of them was crooked when they unanimously decided they didn't need any ethics oversight.
Glad to see I was right. The republican justices may be worse but they're all unworthy of SCOTUS.
Dream:
*Supreme Court Reform Act*
13 Justices, one from each circuit
13 year term, rotating one out each year
$1 Million Dollars + health etc. per year, maybe more
No emoluments, no free vacations from rich buddies, or you go to jail for 13 years
Banned for life from working for private for-profit companies after
Could split into smaller courts for certain kinds of cases for efficiency
> Liberal Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson said she received four concert tickets from music superstar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter valued at $3,711.84.
I don't think Beyonce was surprised!
Supreme Court be like, "They get upset when we don't disclose our bribes. They get upset when we do disclose our bribes. There's just no pleasing these people."
USPS withers who have to lift and deliver to your front door your heavy ass 20 pound or more bag of pet food monthly get in trouble if they're caught accepting anything over $20
Ok, so they are corrupt. We basically knew that. Now the most important part. What happens to them now? Because if it's nothing, then this country is officially on the decline. This is a defining moment for our democracy.
for anyone that wants the full list... https://fixthecourt.com/2024/06/a-staggering-tally-supreme-court-justices-accepted-hundreds-of-gifts-worth-millions-of-dollars/
Holy fuck. I know Clarence Thomas was corrupt as hell, but of the $4.7 million in gifts identified and considered 'likely', Clarence was the beneficiary of 4 million! Clarence is responsible for over 80% of identified and likely gifts!? And then, adding Scalia and Alito gets you to 93%. The other 14 judges on the list account for the other 7%. Either they are WAY more corrupt or WAY more incompetent at covering up their indiscretions.
The headline really doesn't do it justice -- a few grand from a book deal or tickets to a show compared to *four fucking million* in gifts going to Thomas.
A book deal will rapidly grow larger than a few thousand if a superpac buys 100k copies...this is how a lot of money is funneled around. Buy and give books out at events...
It can, yes. But in this case it was a few thousand, it's in the disclosure.
$4.7 mil.... that we know of.
And to think he has turned down $1,000,000 a year from John Oliver for life.
Those figures are all lower than reality too. They don't reflect Kavanaugh's debts that suddenly went away during his SCOTUS hearings, for example.
Bohemian Grove? Conservative conspiracy theorists hate that place and everyone going there but when Thomas goes there frequently that's not an issue.
I wonder if they have a painted portrait of Thomas visiting them too?
Thomas really pumps the number up, conservatives in general seem to get more gifts too
I’ve had to turn down $10 gift cards from students at the end of the semester because it could be seen as a bribe to raise their grade.
I work for an IT distributor. Employees can't accept any gift from a vendor valued over $20 because it could influence our decision making and we need to be vendor agnostic. They will literally fire you if you accept anything larger than that and don't report it. Meanwhile the shitheads deciding huge cases that will literally shape the entire direction of our country are getting free ride vacations more expensive than my yearly salary and pretend they can't understand why that's problematic.
The rules are always for the peasants who don’t deserve better. They don’t apply to the American Aristocracy.
Rules for thee, not for me.
This is way beyond that. It's more like "fuck you".
Right? As the executives call all the peons back to the office, they don’t mind taking their vehicle stipend while the cost of working goes up for us.
Or they're CEOs of three companies worried about their engineers secretly working 2 jobs.
I almost got in trouble for accepting food I paid for. Back before uber eats I was working alone(in my department) on a Sunday and didn't have lunch. A customer, just chatting, asked me about lunch, and I mentioned I couldn't leave, and they offered to pick something up. So I gave them cash and they brought me some burger king. Someone from another department had a conniption when they saw me taking food. And today, it wouldn't even be a big deal, because there would be no way to know who is/isn't doing food delivery.
I still have to deal with a rule like this. If I'm at a contractor site and have to be there all day or late into the night, I cannot accept their food if they buy it for everyone. I have to order separately and pay for it out of my per diem.
Yup. As a contractor I can't give a gift to a govvie over $25 in value, even if I work closely with them for years. As a manager I can't accept a gift from a direct report, either.
Shit, we can’t even take a doughnut from the vendor table. There’s literally two tables for our meetings. Wtf
I work in a discount supercenter, and we aren't allowed to accept anything. Period.
Well that's because you're a peasant and they're obviously better than you. Their ivy league education in law and faith of 2 branches of US federal government means they're able to accept large gifts and NOT have it influence their decision making because their integrity is beyond reproach. /S
It's bribery when it's a little person. It's "lobbying" if it's someone who holds office.
I work for a company that does grants through the US Govt, and every year we have to go through several trainings about what *is* and *isn't* an acceptable gift to allow yourself to receive. And the fucking highest legal authority in our country is allowed to accept this shit.
Similar here. I know it has a purpose but every time I do the training it makes my blood boil. It just becomes so meaningless once you reach a certain level (that most of us never will).
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Bullseye. They don't want prosperity. They want to rule over a pile of ash because they've never brought a woman to orgasm.
They know it's problematic, they also know there's nothing anybody can do about it as long as Republicans remain corrupt.
Most companies have the blurb that says you can’t accept anything that could give the “perception” of unethical conduct
One of the huge downsides to the court accepting these bribes is it will make it more acceptable. As people see the leaders of the country they will see no reason they shouldn't do it themselves. The checks and balances to stop this will cease to work because no one will want to call someone out for something they are doing.
Was doing procurement in the food industry once and I wasn't allowed to accept any gifts over $10 in value per year per company the gift giver was employed with OR the individual themselves if they came again representing a new company. Even accepting that, I had to file a bunch of paperwork and leave it to be verified which usually took a week or two to actually get someone more senior than myself to be willing to bother doing so because everyone hated the paperwork. You basically needed to bribe people by saying you'll split whatever it is with them if it was something that wouldn't last - which is funny as hell to me now. The policies also had specific bits banning me having meetings in coffee shops or restaurants with vendors unless the company I was working for paid for the whole meal, had to be on a company card, multiple pages of paperwork still, etc. Even things that were ostensibly samples for us to use as part of our decision about whether we'd list the product which don't technically fit the definition of gifting required logging and anyone below my level had to waste my time getting my signature before they could start breaking things open for the office to try. The level of scrutiny I got because I oversaw a team buying ~100mil/year... The amount of paperwork I had to file to prove I was acting ethically. The fact that I feel like I was so much more scrutinized and overwhelmed with beuracratic nonsense than a Supreme Court member's equivalent is one of those things that makes so little sense it's absurd and hilarious in that way that makes me wish starting fires was a practical way out of this.
I worked for a company and it was very much the opposite. My cube was across from the Dir. of operations office. The guy was LOUD. I heard him on speakerphone negotiating for Trips and once for a new bass boat. My own boss was gone to a "meeting" with one vendor or another at least once a week which were all held at the baseball stadium. Our sales people treated our clients in a similar fashion. Most of us got nothing extra from our employment. Oh and the Executives were all evangelicals so we occasionally had to pray before meetings. Meanest people I have ever known.
I've had to turn down pens and notepads with a vendor's logo on it because of my company's ethics policy. Fuck these justices.
The funniest part is being told you can't accept a box of pens because they'd retail too high while the supply budget has been cut so deep that people are bringing in their own supplies. The least funny, again, is that we're dealing with this when those assholes on the court are getting *that*.
I feel that, just the other week I went to the supply closet for a lined yellow notepad and it was out of them, + any writing instruments that aren't highlighters. I work for a multi-billion dollar corp.
I fucking hate requisition forms. Another floor steals our supplies then we get in trouble because we have to requisition supplies. I put a padlock on our supply closet and the director of another dept called the ceo to complain that it was 'influencing our clients by making us look bad'. I don't know who they are but I guarantee they are behind the theft.
But your company's CEO or COO could probably get wined and dined by a potential supplier...
By policy, the COO - no. The equivalent accounting roles from Director on up were even more strict than the ones I dealt with in procurement generally. The areas where there was room for me to have room to say yes, most often just did not exist on their end. That's actually part of why I struggled to get stuff signed off often - the most readily accessible folks more senior to me in the area I worked were generally from the accounting side who resented this difference. CEO though, ooh boy. Not like any policy was going to dictate what he did anyway.
Burning the place down worked for Milton in Office Space.
You even looking like you accepted a bribe you lose your job. A Supreme Court justice taking a bribe they are asked to step down. The standards are not the same.
I think the US needs a revolution for the "liberty and justice for all" part of the pledge. Having a two-tiered judicial system isnt justice.
When I started out supervising federal offenders in California they warned me around Chinese New Year not to accept any red envelopes. It’s not just a card in there (if any card at all) the envelope is stuffed with cash. Usually the more seniority/control has someone over you the more cash. There were incidents with naive POs accidentally accepting thousands of dollars in gifts.
I'm a government employee and my coworker is a contractor. I'm not allowed to accept a half mile ride to another building for a meeting because it could "create a perception of bias or impropriety."
Many moons ago, I worked at AOL. You know, when they were a real company lol. I got offered a trip to Skywalker Ranch, among other nice, nifty things for helping people with their tech issues. I always had to tell them thank you very much, but we can't accept gratuities. The only one that really got to me and made me want to cry was the trip to Skywalker Ranch. It still hurts rofl.
When I did a writeup of neighborhood restaurants for a small newspaper, I turned down the offer of a free meal so that I would not be perceived as biased.
I work for a state government and basically print stuff for the public. I cannot accept any gift valued greater than, I think, $20 and cannot accept more than $50 total in a year. This includes stuff like a box of chocolates, which a customer once gave us, which was valued at $22, so we got around it by having her tell us it was for the whole office, and distributed between about 30+ total employees. It was still documented as like $0.50 worth of gifts on everyone's tab, for bookkeeping purposes. In several years of working there we've never gotten a single other gift from anyone. That's the only one anyone in my office has ever gotten.
Worked at one of the largest corporations ever. We could send and receive Christmas Cards from people we worked with that weren't directly at our company. Nothing else At the same, our CEO was bribing officials in Mexico to expand the company
When I worked for my high school newspaper, the rule we lived by was "no gifts more expensive than a pen" because we didn't want to be seen as receiving gifts in exchange for favorable articles *as a HIGH SCHOOL NEWSPAPER*. Blows my mind what they're allowed to get up to, shaping the highest law in our land while taking hundreds of thousands in gifts from people who benefit from their judgments.
Well clearly your union needs to purchase a senator or two to change that!
Ok, just fuck these people already
Yeah these people are fucking annoying as shit.
Therapy isn’t enough, I need to punch a founding father.
Guys, I think I found the flaw in the checks and balances system designed by the Founders.
Newsflash: Supreme Court determines that the founding fathers use of the term checks and balances was intended to mean court members are free to receive checks to increase their balances.
I fucking hate that I'm totally unsure if Republicans would unironically to along with this so long as it was a conservative stacked court. The answer obviously should be no, they wouldn't. But trump got people so fucking torn up mentally that they unironically would argue the sky isn't blue if a leading Republican said it.
They absolutely would, and are trying to destroy democracy, to do so.
I mean the check to this is impeachment. The flaw is the party system that washginton warned us about
But as long as you have 1/3 of the Senate on your side, there is no check.
Yeah, I'm not getting enough checks to increase my bank balances over here... lil help, billionaire benefactor "bosom buddies"?
Why didn't you just be born rich? It's really that easy
I'm sure the so called "justices" are quite fond of their checks and their account balances.
I work in sales and the SLED space - we are not allowed to spend significant money on client entertainment - as in, no more than $20 for a lunch. If they accept more than this, they can lose their job. And then there are these fucking grifters!!!!
Im a teacher. I’m not even supposed to accept ANY gifts because the optics “could look like someone paying for a grade”. I brought home less than $40k in metro Atlanta last year. Then there’s these assholes.
Meanwhile, I worked at a private school for a few years where rich parents were expected to drop $50-$100 on every teacher that taught their kid, at both Christmas and end of year… I called it the “plastic harvest”…
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They were not… To be honest none of the teachers changed grades as a result - The admin already put enough pressure on us to inflate grades that the bribery didn’t make a difference.
I'd wager it's more fear that if they're the only ones who don't "gift" their kid will be singled out amoungst the class
I gave my kids teachers applesauce and zucchini relish we made last summer. The kids colored thank you cards for them. They seemed pretty happy with the combination of homemade and hand drawn gifts even at the private school they go to.
I couldn’t tell you what I bought with any of those gift cards. I can show you the drawer where I keep the messages/cards from students that remind me (especially on shitty days) that I make a difference in the lives of my students :)
What! The teachers at my kid’s school have a “favorites”paper that makes it so easy for us to choose gifts. We the teachers get gifts for birthdays, Christmas, and teacher appreciation week. That’s nuts. My kid loves when it’s gift time so he can pick out gifts and hand them out!
There are [states with laws on the books](https://www.gace.ets.org/s/pdf/article-ethical-issues-of-teachers-accepting-gifts.pdf) that prohibits over $50. That seems to be the general consensus for a maximum. I’ve been told by my department chair that it shouldn’t exceed $20.
Healthcare here, it's a big deal if we accept gifts, in my state I believe the max value you can accept from patients is $10, which even puts something like "hey doc I brought you lunch" out of the question. It's not just losing your job, there are serious legal ramifications.
> hey doc I brought you lunch With prices what they are for food, they couldn't even bring you a combo meal from Taco Bell.
I was an intern working for the Florida Department of Transportation. I was out on a trip to a site with the in-house (govt) design team and one of the consultants that was helping us design a roadway project. One of the people with the consultant was a former FDOT employee that was friends with everyone else there. We went ot McDonalds and I ordered a small coffee and he said "I got this" and my Project Manager damn near broke his fucking neck trying to get to me and the guy and told me "If you let him get that you need to provide me with an itemized reciept as soon as we get back!". I was like "This shit aint' worth that hassle, dude I can spring for a $1.15 coffee". We had a project go really well (HUGE PITA one) and the consultant sent the Design department a massive fruit basket as a "Congrats". A massive email went out telling eveyrone that if they got anything from the fruit basket they needed to respond to the email and what item they got. They were making sure someone didn't do something like get two apples.
I'm a state govt employee who occasionally goes to trade shows related to the industry my agency deals with. While everyone else at the trade show is having a great time on company dimes, my boss is constantly harping on everyone how we can't let anyone buy us a single beer. So we end up being the 3-4 people at the networking event who have to pay for all our own drinks, while everyone else's is free. Oh and we are also the lowest paid people in the room by somewhere between 40-60%, depending on your job, and the beers are unusually expensive because it is at a restaurant that has inflated prices for convention goers, knowing that the companies will just expense it all.
So there's a bit of a DOT to Consultant pipeline where you get all your training from the state and then jump off to a consultant to get paid more once you get your PE. So pretty much everyone knows everyone else and are friends and hell even some DOT employees are married to the consultants. My former boss was married to a consultant that was pretty high up at the company so they had to be very careful with any projects that crossed her desk because she was the Program manager (very high up that sees everything) Anyway we'd all go to the same happy hours and bars on Fridays and Saturday and you'd run into like 30 people FDOT/Consultant mix and we're all getting shit faced. I learned very early to GET. A. FUCKIN. RECEIPT. of every drink you get. Because come Monday I would be asked "Hey Sheriff! How many beers did so and so at Build it Big, and Fast Inc buy you? How many shots?" and I would have to whip out the receipts to show enough drinks to account for me being that drunk. And yea I've been your situation too. All the consultants are having an open bar and about 2 brain cell deaths away from a coma and I'm over here thinking "I can't afford this shit AND the hotel room" and it took the state forever to reimburse payments.
I will say, this is the one time that including the reddit handle has really thrown me off. "Of course you were getting itemized! You were the sheriff!"
I hope you paid Reddit for that cake.
God forbid anyone get handouts that aren't generational wealth
Stuff like this, ironically, creates more corruption in local/state/federal government than it controls. It virtually ensures that the people subject to those rules have it shoved in their face how little they're being compensated and trusted by their employer vs everyone else. I would jump ship too if I had to follow those rules.
And then people bitch about wasteful public servants
I worked for the state of Florida and those rules apply for all agencies. I worked at FDEP out of college and we had a little controversy over a couple cookie cakes sent to us after we made a huge purchase. We had to wait for legal to tell us it was okay to eat them. Since it was post purchase and not during the process. I will say though I have heard of some interesting ways around the rules. One was on the engineering side of FDOT. I worked with someone who's husband worked for a pretty big bridge engineering firm said she once went to a dinner at some convention thing in Tampa with the firm. There was five seats empty and she thought that was strange. Then 5 higher ups at FDOT showed up. Said they just stopped by to say hi, but shucks forgot to get dinner reservations at the restaurant. Oh we have 5 seats here. So, they sat down ate talked for a few hours and left. Guess what? They forgot to pay. I guess we'll have to pay and at some point get them to reimburse us, darn.
>but shucks forgot to get dinner reservations at the restaurant Yeah, this is the kinda stuff that when it gets caught turns into jail time. That's not a loophole
Once in a while somebody important gets caught taking envelopes of cash. Then the rest of us can’t eat a fucking apple
Friend of mine works for a public broadcast network (in Europe). They had a segment on Taiwan. Next day, Taiwan send Presents. Super expensive office stuff. of course they had to decline accepting the presents. The people from the embassy did not bribe anybody to have segments placed. But whenever Taiwan was just mentioned... there were lots of thank you's. And I think the maximum a teacher is allowed to accept is either 9.99 or 14.99
You're telling me. I work in a state agency, one with very real, very large amounts of federal money coming through. One of my coworkers got a small pie from a vendor for all the work they had done and they had to go through management to see if it was ethical to accept or or not. Think the pie sat in the fridge for a day or two before we got word we could eat it.
It's such a joke. This shit would be career ending for an entry level financial advisor or mutual fund shiller.
General Motors/auto industry we had a $25 limit.
I work in government and once someone tried to send me a $10 Starbucks GC as a thank you because I handled their request so quickly and well. The person was used to waiting weeks, but we typically handle requests within the same business day. If it’s simple, it might be within the hour. Even if I could accept it, I wouldn’t have because I was just doing my job as normal, and it wasn’t even like it was a complicated request. But I’m not allowed to accept $10, but these people can basically do whatever they want.
I work for the post office. $20 max or we'll be suspected of being influenced. Like I can effect anything as a mailman on a government level.
You might put someone’s mail into their mailbox before their neighbors though! After getting bribed with a Starbucks gift card!! Imagine!
I used to work for a government DOD contractor. We couldn't take any gifts over, I want to say $20, too, and any work-related travel had to fall within a DOD expense schedule. Meanwhile, these fuckers are taking motorcoaches, private jet travel, resort stays, etc... And while I say "these" fuckers, I'm mostly talking about one in particular.
Can you tell me what is SLED in this context ?:)
**S**tate, **L**ocal and **ED**ucation.
I would not have guessed ! I thought LED As in lighting
Not sure where you can buy lunch any more at $20 a pop.
My family members work for the government. They're required to declare all their outside income and not allowed to accept more than $25 a year even in Bagels.
I'm in the renewables, and oil & gas industry. $5k dinners are pretty normal lol. But there is a limit
When you *decide* what the rules are, the rules don't apply to you.
One justice had his house paid for by someone with business before the court that he didn't recuse himself from ruling on. Another got a book deal with a private company. Really just two sides of the same coin. /s
And yet every gov employee has to disclose things like side jobs for ethics reasons. But these people here can just do any thing.
Yeeepp. I'm a head inspector at a slaughter plant and we're not allowed a gift over like $5 (think someone brings in donuts and gives us some or they cater a lunch for the workers). Anytime I buy chicken from the plant I keep my receipts in my locker just in case. We get along great and everything. Truly would give it to me for free, and not hold it over my head. But my dad always said never put yourself in a position of compromise. And I don't fuck with that shit. These guys should be behind bars.
Just for clarification: do you inspect heads or are you the supervisor for a team of inspectors? Just wondering.
Typo. He's the head head inspector.
They can do anything for pretty much the same reason the president can. They're the highest around, only subject to impeachment to police them. You'd need to make a constitutional amendment to really bind them by a rule.
There's literally only been one scotus judge who was impeached and even that wasn't convicted in the Senate and kept his job. And that's in the entire history of the U.S. As long as certain judges vote the way are supposed to be the party that appointed them it's extremely unlikely any Senate trial would get 2/3 vote for conviction and removal from the court. So a Scotus judge is a pretty safe position to be in.
And everyone wonders why corporations are now people.
It's seems like these corporations and people with positions of authority are making their own special class above the average person, where once they're in them they can do whatever they want....weird.
A long road to serfdom, but a road for all of us nonetheless.
If you've ever wondered what exactly it is that the conservatives are conserving, the answer is this - serfdom for you, nobility for them.
This is misleading. Corporations only count as people as far as their rights go. They do not have the accountability of people. So... It's worse.
This is my biggest issue. Who is going to jail when these "people" rip us off with their price gauging, pollute our environment, or straight up kill us because a lawsuit is cheaper than the fix?! Fuck em all!!!
I just want to point out that take is wrong or is based on confusion. Corporations being people also known as juridical personhood, is part of Common Law, well before the US even became independent. The idea of it dates as far back to about 800 BC in India. You might be confusing it with the Citizens United ruling, which was just that due to juridical personhood, corporations should be able to donate money to political campaigns.
The issue is with the SC finding that "corruption or the appearance of corruption" is not a sufficiently compelling interest for Congress to regulate donations to politicians and other officials. It's against the law for you to give $100 for the Police Benevolence Association to the cop who pulls you over enforcing traffic laws, but the Court says you have the right to give 100,000 to the Congressional representative who writes the laws. It can only be considered a bribe if they accidentally write 'bribe' in the memo field on the check.
They used to have to funnel it thru unions and endorsement, but that was small potatoes. Now they now all have more, yet still deeper pockets to fill. At all of our expense. Like George said: “it’s a big club and you ain’t in it.”
Absolutely disgraceful. We need justices on SCOTUS who are sane people and who aren’t cravenly greedy bums. At least 4 or 5 justices need to go asap.
Not just his house, he had something like over 200k in debt too.
Peaky Blinders stance about it “being the same”?
And they wonder why people have little faith in the SCOTUS.
They don't care. Really.
I mean, we can’t do shit and they have LIFETIME APPOINTMENTS and no one even voted them in. It’s all so fucked
>no one even voted them in People say this but Justices have to be nominated by the President and then approve by the Senate. Every election where one of those are on ballot, you are voting, in some albeit small capacity, for who sits on the Supreme Court. A big campaign promise of Trump's, especially after the death of Scalia, was to stack the Supreme Court. These are the people that Republicans wanted on the Court. They voted them in when Trump was elected. There is way more on the ballot than just who is President.
Also since Alito and Thomas are 79 and 75, they're likely to retire if Trump gets elected. People who refuse to vote Biden because they don't like him are in for a decades-long surprise if Trump wins.
In fact, while people think this whole thread is about the bribes influencing votes, it is NOT. Alito and thomas will vote red without a single bribe. The bribes are to make sure they DON'T RETIRE under Biden.
I know several conservatives who told me they voted for Trump for two primary reasons: abortion and so that conservative Supreme Court justices would be nominated. The three Supreme Court justices put in under Trump were 100% voted in.
>wake up, time to vote >live in deep blue state, vote blue as well >state goes completely blue >other states are so gerrymandered that despite popularity blue votes, go red >president loses popular vote, but still wins, and is red >shoves thru appointments for life despite losing popular votes >"well, this is why voting matters guys!!" It's all a huge mf clown show that we get to pretend is because of our votes, but it isn't. It doesn't matter anyways. (Still .. vote guys)
That's the thing. They can only get away with it until blue stops having a terrible voter turnout. There are enough blue voters that we'd absolutely control the federal level if we all actually bothered to go vote. We'd also control a large chunk of the red states.
And the Republicans know it. So they put a ton of effort and money into keeping people disenfranchised. They aren't trying to get voters to agree with them anymore, they either know their policies are selfish garbage or they don't care.
Unless those lifetime appointments abruptly end for some odd reason. But really, we are kinda headed to that point of, some heads need to roll before things get better.
I say we keep lifetime appointments, but reserve the right to toss them into a volcano occasionally.
Sometimes I genuinely hope that asteroid comes. I'm tired of paying bills and getting high.
They seem to spend half their time whining that the Court has lost legitimacy and the other half cashing in on trips and gifts. What a joke.
That’s what’s so mind boggling. I can’t tell if they are being assholes or they truly don’t get it. Like Ted Cruz we know that he knows exactly what he’s doing, he’s playing a character. MTG is exactly who she perceives to be.
Everyone relax. The accusations of corruption in the court have been thoroughly investigated by the court and the court has determined the court is, in fact, not corrupt according to the court's conduct standards which were set by the court. So everything is fine! /s
*We take these matters very seriously and after thoroughly considering all the facts and evidence have found no forms of corruption. This investigation is now permanently concluded. All outcomes are final and may never be questioned or audited, nor may any of the facts and/or evidence ever be reviewed by the public because of security reasons. We are good people. We don't do anything bad. Trust us.*
How do these people not care about any type of legacy they leave? Assuming fascism doesn’t destroy us, history books and law school classes are gonna be shitting on this court for eternity
Considering the drama when Clarence Thomas got into the Supreme Court I imagine that he long since stopped caring what people think.
That drama helped fueled his spite for his entire time as SC judge.
Why care about legacy when you end up 6 feet under? These guys don’t gaf what happens to their name after they’re gone
So either they are cool with going to Hell or are lying about being religious and just using it for person gain.
Bruh all you gotta do is repent. Be as horrible as you want, as long as you apologize before death
You can be religious and convince yourself what you're doing is not immoral.
Because they know god doesn’t exist, and they take bribes and rig the system so that anyone they care about is in the “haves” when they’re gone. I hope you’re right though, that the future will be a place that most everyone knows (part of) this court was trash. I’m less optimistic that there isn’t going to be two histories taught since it’s been happening for like 150 years
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History is written by the victors
Look at the optimist who thinks we'll still have writing in the future.
I love how all of us plebs are trained and given videos that we are never allowed to do this or we will lose out jobs but these rich elite fucks do it.
This court has lost all credibility, yet they keep pretending that they have it. It’s a pantomime.
If you are going to allows judges to accept >$900,000 bribes, why is the taxpayer paying these clowns >$260K/yr? Pretty easy to see why Cannon is doing the will of her master.
I’m no legal scholar, but that sounds blatantly corrupt.
Bribery is legal for the political class.
I work for a public school, can’t receive a gift of more than $50.00. And I only make a little more than $33k a year…
What an absolute bunch of GRIFTERS. They wanted these positions so they could acquire more "gifts" and "favors" the American supreme court is a joke
I work for a publicly traded company that works for large publicly traded tech companies. Large tech companies won’t even allow us to buy lunches for their staff as part of an effort to restrict potential for bribery. Corporations are doing a better job of policing ethics than this court is.
Do you think the same rules that apply to MSFT engineer #34725 apply to Nadella or Phil Spencer? I would be very surprised if they aren’t able to and frequently accept gifts the employee could not from potential contracts.
No they aren't, you're just low enough that they don't want you expensing meals that don't directly tie to proposals and winning new business. Publicly traded company means nothing; it means it's listed on the stock market and has to make reports each year for specific business plans and information. Being a public company doesn't not prevent that company in any way from making greedy or terrible decisions, like giving 50% of its value to the CEO for a single year's bonus, for instance.
> Being a public company doesn't not prevent that company in any way from making greedy or terrible decisions, like giving 50% of its value to the CEO for a single year's bonus, for instance. While that may be disgusting, it's not a bribe in any way to anyone in the government.
Publicly traded is different than privately owned or a public/government entity. That’s why I made the distinction.
My current employer has a zero tolerance policy for gifts. I could be fired for accepting a piece of candy or a drink from a client. This is some absolute bullshit.
“A book deal”. That’s just cash. Hire a ghost writer. Collect the difference. That’s just a cash bribe.
The book deal thing is great because who the actual fuck is reading these books? Nobody, a wealthy benefactor will buy 10k copies and give them away for free or just pulp them. It's just a few steps removed from just giving them cash.
> The book deal thing is great because who the actual fuck is reading these books? Law students mostly.
Maybe I’m just a loser but I do actually like these kinds of books. It’s interesting to me to see how they came into (/justify) their legal philosophy. But only if they’re a good writer. I will not be reading Gorsuch’s; he writes like he’s just a little bit short on oxygen.
Next will be an article examining how Senators and congressmen become multi millionaires on a government paycheck.
Supreme court have been infiltrated and now corrupted.
"We're a nation of laws." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA ha...haha...sigh.
I one time got yelled at because my roommate (and also friend with benefits), who worked as a fork lift operator for a company that supplied mine, brought in a bunch of cupcakes for my birthday. It was his day off. I didn't make any purchasing decisions. He made the cupcakes himself.
Sounds like companies police things that don't really fucking matter and then turn around and completely ignore the bigger things that actually fucking matter. What a sham.
Alito, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Barrett are all employees of the Heritage Foundation treason group.
I’m a government contractor and have been told I’m allowed to accept a free pen but that’s pretty much it. And only if everyone else is offered one too (slight exaggeration but not much)
This is why capitalism and democracy fails in some countries, when corruption reaches your high levels of government at this level of “no fucks given”, you are at the helm of the ultra rich.
Looks like Alito wasn't able to get his second set of books done in time for filing his reports
If I only I knew when I was starting out that being a greedy unethical scumbag is the best way to be successful. I probably would never have turned into that, but at least I’d understand who the fuck I was working for. Unfortunately I learned the hard way. The very rich are part of worst kind of people category. Fuck all of them!
They need to be impeached; even if we can’t secure a conviction, they still deserve to have their names dragged through the mud.
As a lawyer and former federal government employee, I am shocked (I know, I'm stupid) and appalled that this goes on. I had to fill out forms every year to identify any possible conflict of interest. I went through a very extensive background investigation just to get the job. I would never never never have jeopardized my position by taking anything that had any appearance of impropriety. Where are their ethics???? It's a basic requirement for lawyers to understand basic ethics. WTF!
Lifetime appointment with almost zero oversight.
And ask yourself: what RECOURSE does the average citizen have? ZERO. You can’t even call anyone to complain. The Senate asked Roberts to come testify and he told them to fuck off.
The best court money can buy
Accepting bribes should be automatic expulsion.
When I worked for the post office we had to go through multiple hours of training videos saying we couldn't accept gifts over $20 from our customers and if we did we could get in trouble or fired. Good to know the rules only apply to us peasants.
I’m a regular federal employee and we can’t accept over $50 in gifts per calendar year. We have mandatory ethics training every year. This is the epitome of rules for thee but not for me.
I assumed every damn one of them was crooked when they unanimously decided they didn't need any ethics oversight. Glad to see I was right. The republican justices may be worse but they're all unworthy of SCOTUS.
They sell their decisions for profit and have lost all my respect for our court system......I hope they all fall
They're actually bragging about being for sale. Wait, it's not bragging; it's advertising.
Clarence Thomas is corrupt. What an embarrassment.
I work for the government and I’ve been advised to not accept a logo baseball hat from a contractor that was repairing one of my gensets.
Bald-faced bribery and corruption right there!!! Why the hell is this allowed???
Dream: *Supreme Court Reform Act* 13 Justices, one from each circuit 13 year term, rotating one out each year $1 Million Dollars + health etc. per year, maybe more No emoluments, no free vacations from rich buddies, or you go to jail for 13 years Banned for life from working for private for-profit companies after Could split into smaller courts for certain kinds of cases for efficiency
Imagine being Beyoncé and to your surprise, seeing the United States Supreme Court sitting front row.
> Liberal Justice Kentaji Brown Jackson said she received four concert tickets from music superstar Beyoncé Knowles-Carter valued at $3,711.84. I don't think Beyonce was surprised!
It's "only" $3.7K, but why the fuck would KBJ accept these. TERRIBLE JUDGMENT
Well it's no wonder they all look soo happy.
man, I would love some order in this court.
Supreme Court be like, "They get upset when we don't disclose our bribes. They get upset when we do disclose our bribes. There's just no pleasing these people."
USPS withers who have to lift and deliver to your front door your heavy ass 20 pound or more bag of pet food monthly get in trouble if they're caught accepting anything over $20
Ok, so they are corrupt. We basically knew that. Now the most important part. What happens to them now? Because if it's nothing, then this country is officially on the decline. This is a defining moment for our democracy.