The Supreme Court Wednesday said it’s okay for companies to give public officials “gratuities” after those officials award the companies seven-figure contracts.Because, honestly, what even is “unethical”?
The 6-3 ruling fell along party lines, but split the court’s bipartisan gift-accepting judges.The judges who okayed official corruption were appointed to the court by law-and-order Presidents Bush, Other Bush, and Trump. The judges who objected to legalizing corruption were the trio of women appointed by namby-pamby soft-on-crime Presidents Obama and Biden.
Wednesday’s ruling, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh — a credibly alleged sexual abuser — said that the law makes a legal distinction between bribes given for government action before the fact, and “gratuities” given after the fact.
The case concerned Portage, IN, Mayor James Snyder, who gave contracts worth $1.1 million contract to Great Lakes Peterbilt for five garbage trucks. The next year, Great Lakes Peterbilt wrote Snyder a $13,000 check.
Snyder claimed the check was for his work as a consultant. A jury of his peers heard that argument and proceeded to shoot milk out their 12 noses from laughing so hard. Snyder was sentenced to a year in prison.
In his appeal, which he lost, Snyder dropped his whole “I was a consultant” thing and just argued that federal law only prohibits pre-bribes, not post-”gratuities.”The appeals court, too, disagreed. So Snyder had no choice but to take his newly candid case to justices world-famous for accepting bribes gratuities before and after rendering services for their bribers friends patrons.
Almost every justice, including Democrat-appointed ones, has accepted gifts. The most egregious bribe gratuity accepters are Justices Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas, both of whom approved bribes gratuities in yesterday’s ruling. Prior to the ruling, Thomas had claimed that the gifts he got — including luxury flights and vacations worth millions of dollars — were just tokens from friends, the same as you get from your friends, amirite? The ruling frees Thomas and his billionaire bribers tippers from having to claim that the bribes gifts gratuities arose from some hilariously implausible friendship.
In Kavanaugh’s opinion, he explained that the ruling was necessary to clarify for people the oh-so complicated previous system. To illustrate just how murky and byzantine American corruption law has been for 200+ years, Kavanaugh, a legal genius, listed examples of gift-giving that could hypothetically present complicated, nuanced legal dilemmas for everyday people…if we didn’t already have 200+ years of history and facts and people-living to prove otherwise.
Kavanaugh’s hypotheticals included asking what about, for stupid instance, a family that wanted to tip their mail carrier? Kavanaugh suggested that without his ruling, these tips could be prosecuted even though they actually in for-real land are not.
In fact, in for-real land, millions of families for decades and decades have successfully tipped their mail carriers without the involvement of legal counsel. What most of those families have not done is tip their mail carriers after said mail carrier bought $1.1 million in garbage trucks from said family.
On a serious note, having covered small communities, including one-party South Bend, IN, and having lived in New Jersey for a while now, I know that the issue of official corruption, co-option by local fat cats — and not just car-dealership owners — is a very very super-duper real one. With local accountability journalism vanishing, this ruling threatens to unleash a tidal wave of wealth extraction via corporate control of government. It is, as the old saying goes, bad.
Plus, the ruling could prove especially valuable to corrupt officials if Donald Trump is elected and enacts his proposal to eliminate taxes on gratuities!
And it clears the way for officials to register their desired bribes gratuities online, so that their bribers friends private contractors can sign up for specific items.
Corrupt judges, say, are now able to register desired bribes gratuities for rulings on specific crimes. A cutlery set for stabbing a dude. Matching set of unwanted babies for overturning Roe v. Wade. A glamping trip for glelection stealing.
Had the court addressed this unfair ban on bribes gratuities earlier, history would have been very worse different. Criminals might have escaped their penal fates simply by rewarding acquittals with bribes gratuitites after the fact. A National Enquirer subscription from Donald Trump. Cuisinart from Jeffrey Dahmer. You get the idea.
Published with permission of The Fucking News
