Not ignorance. Impunity.
Impunity: exemption from punishment or freedom from the injurious consequences of an action.
A quarter million is more like 90th percentile for lawyers, so it’s a high bar for half-decent, yeah. If you imagine that all half-decent lawyers are on partner tracks at big firms, then they all have some chance at some multiple of that quarter million. But that is a pretty hyperbolic look at it. Certainly it’s true that someone who is Brett Kavanaugh (double Yale, top credentials and connections, all that BS) forgoes millions in compensation above the table.
It is absolutely unbelievable, in the literal sense, that anyone could believe what you’re saying. I know the glib contrarian “I refute it thus” thing is your whole thing, but c’mon. Clarence Thomas has very famously, for decades, stubbornly recited conservative dogma in his opinions and flatly refused to even consider doing his job beyond that. Doesn’t care about the facts, doesn’t care about precedent, just writes dissents or short little concurrences reciting his litanies. He–again, very famously–doesn’t ask questions, probably sleeping through oral argument. He is the person you would imagine as a justice so corruptly bought and paid for that you wouldn’t believe it in a fictional story. And your position is that, because he has behaved in that completely immovably arch-conservative way for so long, there’s no evidence giving him money was beneficial to conservative donors because it wasn’t a “quo.” It is a very stupid position, man. It’s not the quo, it’s the quid. The millions in payola is the quo. What, if he had contributed less to Harlan Crow’s project, that would seem more corrupt? If he had occasionally not done exactly what Harlan Crow wanted the Supreme Court to do, all the constant rewards he was receiving would then seem more corrupt?
Chomsky did an interview once with a BBC journalist, who asked him about his statement that the media didn’t have to be literally controlled by the government in order to engage in propaganda. Andrew Marr, the journalist, said to him hey man, I can assure you that I only say things I believe, I don’t censor myself. Chomsky said, “I’m sure you believe everything you say. What I’m saying is if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.” Clarence Thomas is being paid to sit on the Supreme Court and suborn the law to a Federalist Society project of self-enrichment. Why would anyone care what’s privately in his mind about any of the individual cases while he’s accepting the checks?
It’s a genuine impossibility. I was briefly the equivalent of a middle manager at an administrative state office working with judges on one very narrow slice of their job–didn’t get anywhere near a courtroom in that role, never discussed a case, rarely saw judges themselves unless they came to our offices or were doing trainings, etc.–and if someone sent us a holiday treat or some baked goods as a thank you, they went out into the common areas for other offices. We couldn’t accept them, we were the “judiciary.” Most of the people in the office weren’t even lawyers, let alone judges, but they knew.
What I find baffling is that the Democratic Party isn’t even calling for his impeachment (Mostly. Of course there are outliers). They’re just calling for a code of ethics and maybe a punishment system if they break that code. That’s what the Republican Party is fighting against. In what world shouldn’t the most powerful court have an ethical code? I find it stupefying.
A world where Republicans think they should be able to tell everyone else what to do, but nobody else can ever tell them what to do.
They are outraged at the very idea of having to listen to anyone not of their tribe. The facts don’t matter.
It would be an exercise in pointless futility. With a GOP House majority, the motion would die instantly, never mind being put to a vote.
Even if Dems had a majority, an impeachment would be pointless. They’d never get a Senate conviction, and the entire effort would be seen as pointless – and not just by Republicans. A surprising number of Americans on both sides don’t give a crap who’s on the SCOTUS.
It’s the middle letter in “GOP”.
There is a certain political logic in not calling out for action that you know you do not have the clout to achieve lest it make you look even weaker than you are regardless of how rightous your cause.
Stranger
This. I care a lot who is on the supreme court, but i don’t think “failure to report confident of interest” is even criminal, and i can’t see any hope for impeachment, even if the Republicans didn’t just vote party-line.
It doesn’t have to be criminal, and framing the problem as “failure to report conflict of interest” is doing the Republicans’ PR work for them. You can impeach a justice because they’re behaving badly.
You’re all correct that it wouldn’t succeed, obviously, but I don’t understand this two-step that Democrats are always doing. The problem is so bad that in an abstract theoretical sense the literal fate of the republic is riding on every election, but then we can’t do anything in a concrete day to day sense because of practical reasons, so we aren’t going to act in any way that differs from business as usual? If you think it’s bad, don’t do nothing, do something. Imagine what a Republican would do about this situation in reverse and try that. You’re afraid you’re going to look weaker to some hypothetical undecided person than continuing to do nothing looks?
That’s the point of the calling for an explicit code of ethics and pledge to abide by them and by continuing to investigate. That’s not doing nothing.
It’s quite possible that no concrete reforms or ever come out of this, but that’s a different matter.
I understand that Joe Q Public may not care or pay attention unless it’s something headline grabbing like an impeachment, but that’s the difference between populism and an actual attempt to faithfully execute Congressional responsibilities.
I’m with @Jimmy_Chitwood. Republicans spent like 200 years investigating Benghazi, and it helped them form a new coalition of diehard political activists. If fake outrage can be so politically powerful, imagine the untapped potential of real outrage. The left needs to be taking strategy lessons from the right.
Perhaps, but I don’t see it.
There’s nothing the left likes more than a circular firing squad. Unless there are immediate consequences, they tend to lose interest. And it’s not nearly so much a monoculture as conservatism in the US. Also, it’s not like there is, for example, a single source of news that nearly everybody on the left consumes on a daily basis to continue stoking that outrage.
It is much, much easier to mobilize violent, low-information racists than it is to mobilize people who value education, diversity and tolerance.
Good idea – see below.
The code of ethics thing, while 100% correct, just sounds too wonky – like a high school civics exercise.
Yet as I’ve argued above, an impeachment process would be DOA.
But what would a Republican, lacking a House majority (and thus the ability to launch an investigation or hold hearings) do? They would scream bloody murder for the offending justice to resign.
And that’s what Dems should do – through whatever official channels are available to us, and unofficially through social and other channels. Make the case loudly and clearly why Thomas is not fit to remain on the SCOTUS and just keep making it.
Of course Thomas would never in a million years actually resign. But keep pounding that nail to drive home the idea that he’s corrupt, and by extension every Republican defending him is corrupt.
Where I just don’t see that working is part of what I alluded to above - there’s no equivalent to Fox News to keep pounding that drum or nail or whatever your preferred metaphor.
Benghazi and the Biden laptop and all the manufactured outrage was not promulgated by Republican congressional leadership. Yes, they stuck to their talking points and crafted the message, but the actual propaganda part was left mainly to a single cable news network that in a very deliberate and calculated manner chose to focus on certain events.
If you want to do what the Republicans would do, you need to stop looking at the level of political parties or even Congress and start looking to media sources. What they did and what has been terrifically successful was identifying and even partly creating that monoculture on the right and crafting a propaganda machine to drive that outrage. Those people don’t care what the Republicans would do. They care about the message the talking heads pound into them every evening for weeks or months on end.
So, if you want people to be outraged about Thomas and SCOTUS in general and to continue to be outraged for several months the same way those on the right would be outraged about their causes, you need to go back at least 10-20 years, find or more likely create a similar monoculture on the left and find an able and willing billionaire to create a massively profitable TV news (or perhaps internet these days) network to keep the outrage machine going.
The “code of ethics” thing implicitly declares that Thomas did nothing wrong until the next time he does it. It’s a surrender.
There is nothing preventing a very loud, public, investigation specifically into Thomas’ prior bad acts, with the stated purpose of identifying whether there are grounds for impeachment. If you don’t think Thomas did anything actually wrong, then sure, that’s not a good idea. If you do, then a “code of ethics” is just kicking the can down the road. Code of ethics enforceable by what?
I really hate to go down this road, but as long as we’re speaking broadly about the left and the right and circular firing squads and public perception problems, have you considered that proudly declaring there’s no point in trying anything of substance unless you have a time machine is unlikely to persuade people to vote for Democrats?
Is demanding something that everyone knows is not going to happen (that the GOP house impeach him) going to persuade anyone to vote for Democrats?
Given the choice between a person who was willing and capable of stating what I can see to be true – that Thomas is corrupt and unfit and should be removed – and someone unwilling or incapable of stating that, I would choose the first one.
I’m voting Dem regardless, but knowing that they’re actually willing to fight for something, even if they don’t win, would make me a lot more enthused about it.
It might.
It highlights the pervasive corruption among conservatives. I think this will sour young people even more on the GOP. There is a reason conservatives are changing election laws and removing polling stations and whatnot because the writing is on the wall. They will be losing very soon without extreme measures to keep power. We already see insanely close elections and that is with conservative Gerrymandering and whatnot.
This mess with Thomas just highlights the issue even more and also drives home that voters need to care about who gets on that court.
It also might drive ethics changes on the court which would be welcome. It is worth making a stink about it.