politics @lemmy.world MicroWave @lemmy.world 1y ago

Clarence Thomas’ Latest Pay-to-Play Scandal Finally Connects All the Dots

slate.com Clarence Thomas’ Latest Pay-to-Play Scandal Finally Connects All the Dots

There has never been a straighter line between Thomas' unethical conduct and his jurisprudence.

ProPublica released a new report on Friday detailing Justice Clarence Thomas’ close relationship with the Koch brothers with previously undisclosed and extraordinarily damning new details.

According to ProPublica, the justice developed a friendship with the Kochs as they were funneling hundreds of millions of dollars into right-wing causes, many of which ended up before the Supreme Court. The brothers then used Thomas to raise money for their sprawling network, inviting him to speak at “donor events” that brought in millions of dollars.

He disclosed none of these activities on his annual disclosure forms, an obvious violation of federal ethics law.

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So before, we could only assume from the preponderance of evidence that Thomas is corrupt as shit. Now we know it for a fact. And still, nothing will change because the Koch brothers own more than some SCOTUS justices. They also own most of congress.

End legalized bribery now.
- Let's end the Koch family fortune while we are at it.
  
  Pretty sure you'd have to end the Koch family to do that. I wouldn't stop you.
- And still, nothing will change because the Koch brothers own more than some SCOTUS justices. They also own most of congress.
  
  See: George Carlin - The Big Club (NSFW)
- And still, nothing will change because the Koch brothers own more than some SCOTUS justices.
  
  It's just the Koch brother now. Happily one of the wretched fucks died a few years ago.
  
  If I recall right there's 3 brothers. Two were right wing scumbags, but I think the third wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of it
At minimum, it’s time to investigate Clarence Thomas. When the Democrats retake the house (hopefully in 2024 after the Republicans shutdown the government over nothing), they need to begin impeachment hearings in the House. I don’t care if the Senate will never remove him.
- That's right. You don't skip your responsibilities because you think another link down the chain won't fulfill their duties. You do your job and make whoever skips out on their responsibility to put their name to it. Doesn't matter if nothing practical comes of it. Integrity and faith in "the system" demands no less.
We shouldn't be talking about impeachment at this point. We should be talking about prison. Injustice Thomas needs to go to prison.
- First impeachment, then a criminal trial ending in significant prison time.
  
  Edit: scratch that. Caging humans doesn't decrease crime or otherwise benefit society. Give him several years of community service and permanently take away his licence to practice law in any way, shape or form.
  
  You're right about incarceration. But there needs to be a further penalty. Monetary. Make him pay back all the dirty money. And maybe make him clean up dog shit for the community service.
  
  No. Let him keep the license but only so he can serve as a public defender in New Your City as part of a 10 year term of community service working 40 hours per week with one week of vacation per year. Then reduce the sentence for one day for each successfully defended case.
  
  Im not an American but if people I know are put in a cage for fucking Weed I certainly want shitbags like him to go there too, it may not be helpful but certainly what he deserves!
- "But muh Furst Amindmint rites to do wut I want."
- The problem is I doubt anything he is doing is illegal. If it is though that is a much more realistic option than impeachment
  
  It's a job and they're violating the terms of their job, of course it's illegal. They might just do more cheat/illegal things to get around it. Also, what the Kochs were doing is highly illegal. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/201
He and is going to take every dime they can hustle and sign off on any "Supreme Court decision" that Koch's lawyers hand to him.

And he's not even going to pretend to feel bad about it because there's not a god-danged anyone is going to do to stop it. He's a removed, bought and paid for.
- That's a bit offensive to removed. They only sell their bodies, he's selling democracy.
  
  He's selling the body politic.
I love the USA, but I'm surprised at how passive the average American has become. Thomas is actively making your lives worse in exchange for bribes. Where are the mass protests? SCOTUS will do nothing about it, and neither will Congress, if you don't protest.
- Half our population is insane actually
  
  This sounds like a joke but it actually isn't.
  
  About 30% are openly in some kind of weird suicide pact, and the other 20% will vote for the same people as them, just while furrowing their eyebrows sometimes
- This is why the police force in America is equipped like an army, to quickly and violently suppress any protests. Then when you have a prison stay on your record, no more voting, struggling to get a job or even survive.
  
  Where were they on jan6?
- Title 18 section 1507 makes it illegal to protest outside a judges home, and they have indicated they will use the same law to prevent protests outside the court.
- Don't be surprised.
  
  Everyone here is either indoctrinated enough to be here for it, powerful enough to be above it, or disassociated enough to endure it.
  
  It's just what happens after 22 years of social shock doctrine (I made that term up. I will not elaborate. Ama closed).
  
  Naomi Klein beat you to it by about 15 years.
Of course, none of this actually matters in the slightest unless those ethics violations have consequences.
This POS assaulted Anita Hill and never should've been affirmed.
- And biden called her a liar
Clarence Thomas is clearly not just a threat to the integrity of the court but to the entire United States. If we are going to have a functional democracy, he needs to be removed from office and imprisoned.
Does a wild bear shit in the woods? Of course he worked for the Kochs. Doesn't everyone already know this?
murica is winning and winning and winning.
- So does this mean we get a redo on all the laws he influenced? Since like, clearly he was cheating the whole time and has made unjust decisions?
  
  Nah it just means he keeps on keeping on with the debauchery until he keels over sometime in the next ten years.
- Monerica!
Banana republic
- Oligarchy
  
  Kakistocracy
- I've seen this term thrown around on Lemmy in different contexts, so I looked it up and the wikipedia page gives a very specific definition of that term relating to a type of economic situation. I don't think that particular definition applies in this case, or does it?
  
  It's less the economic definition than it is this:
  
  https://www.dictionary.com/browse/banana-republic
  
  noun - Usually Disparaging.
  
  a small, poor country, often reliant on a single export or limited resource, governed by an authoritarian regime and characterized by corruption and economic exploitation by foreign corporations conspiring with local government officials.
  
  any exploitative government that functions poorly for its citizenry while disproportionately benefiting a corrupt elite group or individual.
It literally doesn't matter. The republicans don't care and they've gerrymandered control away from the democrats so it can't change.

Even if democrats had control it would just be more of the same bullshit with some sugar coated feel good nonsense that still funnels wealth to the real owners of the country while appearing to make a difference.

What do you do with the democratic process when the same people control the judges, the legislative branch, and the executive branch? The answer is nothing. You just continue on getting f'd like the cows we all are.

This is not a nation of the people, it's a nation of the owners.
- What do you do with the democratic process
  
  There's more than one way to run a democracy, and more than one way to tally votes; it just so happens that the way we're currently doing it —First Past The Post Voting— is utter shit; it's the lynchpin of the two party system and systemic corruption.
  
  If we commit grassroots focus to electoral reforms in favor of Ranked Choice Voting then all these insidious actors will find power to be much more slippery.
  
  I want this but I don't see any way of it happening in current republican controlled states. Seems really difficult in democrat ones too.
- 1492 Project
I feel like every case justice thomas was a part off and had a vote on the winning rule should be thrown out.
We need to look forward to 2024, take back the House and get a 60 vote majority in the Senate, along with the White House...maybe then, things will change.
- I don't see any scenario where Democrats take 60 seats in the Senate. The states have polarized so much, and the system favors the Republican states too much.
  
  Unlike the House, Senate races are state wide and can't be gerrymandered.
  
  It's going to take a major effort focused on reforming the Supreme Court to flip those seats, but looking at 2020, we flipped BOTH seats in Georgia which is about as red as it gets.
- That didn't work the last time why would it work this time?
  
  Because we didn't do it last time.
You people make it sound like Thomas is somehow responsible for the slew of right-wing decisions of the court and not the fact that trump got 3 judges in there
- They are both problems, but if blatant corruption concerns you less than which way they naturally lean, you might be a partisan moron.
  
  The republicans aren't calling for him to step down so this is partisan politics, not an actual call for ethics reform.
- Anti-corruption should be bipartisan.
  
  But it isn't. Conservatives aren't interested in democracy, they're interested in winning. So act accordingly.
  
  And Trump should have been removed when he was impeached.
  
  https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/13/politics/mitch-mcconnell-acquit-trump/index.html
- Clarence Thomas has been a skeevy moron for a loooong time. Of course Trump's three appointments are why certain cases are getting pushed to SCOTUS, and why they're being ruled on the way they are, and I don't think anyone is trying to put that on Thomas alone.
  
  The court has shifted hard right, and Thomas is corrupt.
  
  Did I say he wasn't? The fact that he's being targeted alone is the issue I have, there's 0 articles posted here talking about any other judge
- it's almost like having appointed supreme court judges without term limits is a colossally bad idea
  
  Like many things, the core concept was good for the time.. To try to insulate the court from unstable politics and presidential whims, in the interests of a stable legal system that doesnt have to be afraid of being replaced when they displease the president.
  
  its just no one had the foresight to see that one side would betray the country 200 years in the future and turn the court into a corrupt, bought and paid for factory from which the undermining and destruction of democracy could be launched.
  
  The Supreme Court was thrown into chaos because republicans refused to appoint any justices under Obama (Edit. I neglected to specify in his last year, Thanks to the next poster for pointing that out), This giving them more than enough picks under their guy to permanantly damage the court and skew it forever in their favor short of radical action.
  
  But if God didn't want them to be there, they wouldn't be. And we all know God doesn't make mistakes, and knows best, don't we? 'Murica! What Index Fund Would Jeebus Use?
- If he’s the deciding vote, which he was on Citizen’s United IIRC, then yes, he’s got a LOT to answer for because apparently he should have been recusing himself on quite a number of cases where he basically voted the way he’d been paid too.
  
  When is meat going to be back on the menu?
  
  You should refuse yourself on all those cases, not just if you're "the deciding vote".
  
  That decision was 5-4, and Kennedy gave that opinion out, not Thomas
- A lot of the shit Thomas has slipped into his writing over the years has been used to justify the worst parts of the recent terms.
  
  Thomas is the most right-wing of the current justices, so much so that he has actually (partially) dissented when the other right-wingers don't go far enough for his tastes.
  
  One of the others will write something, and he'll come in with a concurrence and try to take it so much further, and he does it every single time he's not given the majority opinion.
- You can thank Muck McGoon for that.
- So you're saying keep Thomas on the court because he's done such a good job?
- Thomas is the one we have smoking gun evidence of corruption for.
- Whare are yoi getting that from?

128 comments