That wasn’t the claim. As a business person, you should know that the terms of an agreement matter. Misinterpreting key terms like what the claim actually is is not very good practice.
Not going to quote the rest line by line, but you are conflating a whole host of things. Things like tax reporting, financial accounting, wage rules, etc. with the issue of gifts and how they relate to the appearance of unethical behavior. You don’t have to report a $2 screwdriver because of rules about ethics. If you are using this point to say that paperwork is not an insurmountable task, sure. But that’s not the issue.
If my mayor, of a city with 10,000 residents, started driving a really nice car, and my roads stopped being plowed in the winter, I’d be pretty upset about that, and wonder if there was any sort of impropriety going on. I don’t think that he is above needing to report any valuable gifts. Same with city council. I know the mayor has a secretary, I don’t know about the council, probably not, I would guess.
Obviously, the more power someone has, the more scrutiny they should be under, and also, the more resources they have to comply with them. I am active enough in my community, and show up enough at city hall meetings, that I have more or less reason to trust that my elected officials are doing a good job with little corruption. I am their oversite. (Along with my neighbors that are more or less as active in the community as I am.)
Anyone above that local level, I don’t really know well. I cannot determine whether they are representing the interests of their constituency, or only their own. I truly do not think that any scrutiny of their activities is too much to ask for.
What would you consider to be the lowest level that should be subject to oversite?
But then, I have always been of the opinion that politicians should be serving the community they represent, rather than the other way around.
He said that the president would have the resources to manage reporting gifts, but lower people may not. As this thread was about a governor, I would assume that he felt that governors would not have those resources. I responded in such a way that I hoped that he would say what the lowest level official he felt should be required to report gifts.
I was responding there to how hard everyone seemed to think that such a reporting rule would be, to show that they are not in any way some insurmountable burden. That does seem to be the issue that was brought up by John.
No. The issue is not the insurmountable burden or administrative difficulty in reporting items. The issue is what counts for reporting purposes. “Report everything” is not workable. The law says official acts. Clearly unofficial acts are not covered.
Although this is the Pit, please believe me when I say I am not trying to make this personal… but you are in the running for the goal post moving of the year award! I mean, it’s great that you’re refining your position, but you act like it’s somehow our fault that you started out making some pretty unbelievable assertions and are now having to back away from them.
I think, and I believe this is a major sticking point, that the gift giving/receiving issue has to be tied to the person having a motivation to giving you a gift related to the job you are doing. That is, there should NOT be a restriction on friends and relatives giving you gifts when their relationship has nothing to do with your job. Kind of like what is recommended here.
Emphasis added. I’m throwing a BBQ and invite the neighbors, they can bring over a nice bottle of wine and I don’t have to worry about it being a bribe (unless i have some professional relationship with them).
It doesn’t even have to be a gift. IIRC Jim Wright got in trouble because he created a book of his collected speeches, and sold them by the thousands to lobbyists.
If a politician can write a law, a politician can figure out a way to get around the law.
Yes, the ethics issue and the practicality issue have been conflated. That is at least mostly my fault. I spend usually 2-3 hours on these posts, being interrupted every 5 minutes, so it is a bit difficult to maintain a whole stream of thought. I certainly did feel though, that the practicality issue was being brought up, by the comment of the president having people to do these things for him. My rebuttal to that was that I do not feel that this is hard.
Ethical issue is different, sure. But if we can agree that the practical side isn’t an issue, then I am happy to end that part of the discussion.
I do not believe that a public official can ever be acting in a truly unofficial capacity. By their very nature, that firewall is problematic at best.
Certainly do not feel like it is your fault. I have no real
dog in this fight as it were. I never planted goal posts to be moved. I stated my opinion, and remarked on the best remembering I had of rules that didn’t apply to me 8 years ago. I am perfectly willing to be talked into a different position, if that position makes sense to me. That’s not goal moving, that’s a discussion.
That link is, actually not too far off from the rules I remember. I see that the actual value is only $20, so, my $10 wasn’t that much of a move.
I don’t know if I completely agree with the family and friend stuff. How close of family? How close of friend? Doesn’t say in there. Statistically, we are likely related by less than 7 or 8 generations, are we family? How do you determine that someone was a friend before they got a position of power?
Direct family (sibling, parent/child) I can get behind, they don’t need to give money or gifts to receive influence. Grandparents and grandchildren, I am not sure. Cousins and aunts and uncles, I think the line needs to be drawn here soon. In-Laws… does my brother in law count? How about his sister, or parents? Second cousin once removed? Twice removed? I don’t know. That rule seemed pretty damn vague to me.
Friends… what if we were acquaintances, then you got elected, now we are really good friends and I buy you a nice car? How do we prove that the growing friendship has nothing to do with your position? I may not ask for favors for myself, but I might ask for a favor for a friend of mine.
And the rule you cited did say “so long as the gift is motivated by the relationship (like a birthday present to your sister).” How do I know what motivated the gift, if you never report it?
Like I said, I am willing to be talked down on this a bit, but I do not see any reason that I should accept that my elected officials will have little to no accountability for potentially influencing acts by outside forces.
And that is why I am not saying that these things need to be prohibited, just disclosed. Allow others to determine whether or not it was appropriate, I do not feel that the person receiving the gift is in the best position to determine this.
Now, as it is pretty hard to tell if a gift is given to you because they just like you, or because they would like you to do something for them, it does not seem that odd a burden to have oversite for such things.
Also, those rules in your link applied to govt employees. It did not say elected officials. Do those rules apply to them as well? If not, why not?
Don’t focus on family/friend. Focus on job-related/not job related.
There may not be a bright line, and if I’m a high level official, the concern should be gifts from folks there is a reasonable expectation that I might be engaging with on official business. And if there were an issue involving my neighbors or family, I’d probably opt to recuse myself, if at all possible, anyway.
Hey, maybe the opponents of Citizens United, instead of banning spending on speech, can just get it reported as a donation! So every time someone buys a button or bumper sticker somewhere in support of a politician, he/she has to go find out about it and report it on a form. And since speech that involves no maney has value to the politician, that would have to be reported too!
An excellent post that does a service to the board. In the unlikely event that anyone still wonders why I’ve stopped wasting my time with you, this is a great example, so I’m taking a moment to point it out. If it was anyone else I would say that this unearthly pile of steaming gibberish was astonishing in its abject stupidity, but it’s not astonishing for you, because just about everything you post is similarly asinine if not outright incoherent. It’s almost like you were proud of continually demonstrating how utterly clueless you are on this subject, and probably many others.
I rescind my earlier statement that you’re a dogmatic extremist. That actually implies some kind of coherent supportable position. It appears that you’re just a clueless fucking idiot. Hopefully this will persuade others to let you rant in peace and not get themselves into the position of arguing with an oblivious simpleton.
I guess the main thing that I get out of this, is that it seems it is no longer necessary to leave office before becoming a lobbyist.
Fortunately unlike Citizens United, this ruling doesn’t prevent legislation aimed at fighting corruption it just says that the current laws in Virginia weren’t sufficient to prevent McDonnell from legally taking bribes. A clear case of “There otter be a law!” but there wasn’t. Hopefully Virginia can rewrite their ethics laws to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future, but that would require law makers to turn off their own gravy spout, which they are naturally loathe to do.
After reading the opinion, I agree that McDonnell’s behavior stinks to high heaven. Accepting six figure amounts from someone who just happens to want a government benefit has the strong appearance of impropriety and for the sake of fair government, something needs done to stop it.
However, I agree with the decision. There needs to be some dividing line for what a politician can do and what he cannot do before he is convicted of a felony and subject to fifteen years in prison. What if McDonnell just handed the guy the email address of the person who made the research decisions at UVA? Would that qualify? What if he introduced them at a reception at the Governor’s Mansion? Who knows? A person should not have to guess what type of conduct lands him in prison.
I think its fair to leave a certain amount of discretion to the voter. There is no real advantage to imprisoning him, he is unlikely to recommit the offense. And sometimes a thing we know is wrong is difficult to define. Or, at least, in such precise terms not even a lawyer can squirm away from it. I think they made the correct call, and they are free to reference my concurrence as they see fit.
I’d forgotten this thread, in which the Brickhead demonstrated his utter insolence and, well, brickheadedness.
Let’s start with the facts. Not the facts imagined by lawyers, or the subset of facts which judges are allowed to examine in a perverse system, but the actual human facts.
A sitting Governor accepted several $100,000 in gifts in return for expediting the regulatory needs of a business. Anyone who fails to draw the conclusion that this is almost certainly what happened is a dunce, or so drenched in legal poo-poo that they’ve effectively duncified themselves.
Now I’m sure Brickhead knows all about legal loopholes. If the Governor didn’t order a regulator to take some action, but instead did a Wink! Wink! How’s the wife doing at her new job? Wink! Wink! then the Governor did not exert his official influence supposedly. And if the hundreds of $1000’s were just reciprocation because little Jimmy gave a nice Valentine’s card to little Wendy, Wink! Wink! then how could that be a bribe?
Let’s see a show of hands! Was the Governor immorally bribed?
No, I’m not asking whether the Law was badly written. Laws are written by lawyers, mostly contemptible; a well-written law may be as rare as a 4-leaf clover … or, in some venues, a humane and ethical lawyer.
No, I’m not asking whether judges and prosecutors (themselves lawyers) made the correct legal decisions. The behavior of lawyers holds as much interest for me as the behavior of rabid dogs.
I’m asking whether the Governor’s action was horridly and obscenely corrupt! (Corrupt with a small “c” before some asshole or lawyer finds a definition of “corrupt” written by a fellow asshole.)
This was all implicit in OP, yet Brickhead felt the need to immediately turn it into an attack on me. “Septimus is not a lawyer.” Of course not, as I’ve often said … proudly. Et cetera et cetera, blah blah blah.
And here he is as usual. “Nanner nanner nanner. Lawyers triuumph over human dignity and common sense. Your side lost Nanner nanner nanner. Republican evil triumphs over libtards, ha ha ha. Because Karl Rove. And Benghazi. Ha ha ha.”
Bull-shit. Demostrate anything I said in the thread that was wrong or confused. To prod your memory, here’s how your insolence and non sequiturs started off:
[QUOTE=septimus]
Please note that I am NOT asking whether SCOTUS has the power or right to legalize bribery. AFAIK they can make it legal for Officers of the Court to parade naked down Main Street while raping baby goats. Nor am I waiting for some hyper-pedant to “correct” the word bribery to be apparent bribery.
[/QUOTE]
If this didn’t make clear that legal analysis was NOT the focus of my Pitting, then Brickhead should tell us what his native language is. It ain’t English:
[QUOTE=Bricker]
another chance for septimus to display his finely honed legal analytical skills
[/QUOTE]
