Not only is there no reason, it’s stupid that they don’t, because the vagueness ends up hurting them.
Not sure why you chose the word “power.” Getting gifts doesn’t give them power, just gifts.
There must be a reason of some sort, or else this wouldn’t be an issue.
The power to legally receive gifts that the naive layman may consider to be bribes is a power that they would not wish to give up. That is why I chose the word “power”.
The government does have rules, which may vary from state to state. From my cursory reading of the case, it looks like McDonnell went to some effort to insure that the gifts he received from Williams were not technically illegal (though some creative accounting may have been involved, which I think was part of the charges against him). Where McDonnell seems to have run afoul of the law is providing favors for Star Inc. McDonnell’s case to the Supreme Court is based on the assertion that he was wrongly convicted because the judge failed to instruct the jury adequately (I believe by allegedly not constraining the definition of bribery narrowly enough).
Or perhaps the judge was remiss in allowing the prosecutor to identify McDonnell as a politician. What reasonable jury would ever let a politician off the hook?
They want the gifts.
That’s kind of a weird way to use the word, but whatever.
Still waiting.
I guess you can’t offer a substantive reply.
So much trash talk but with nothing to back it up. That’s typical. The more they talk, the less they have.
The law is very enforceable against a bribe given to secure an official act. Vote for this, veto that, grant this permit, deny that zoning variance.
A payment to get a favorable introduction to someone is not illegal.
Well, sure, but still stinks. Some crock of shit snake oil herbal crap made out of tobacco. And wasn’t one of the “friendly introductions” involving a state board that regulates health care products? Correct me if I’m wrong. (As if wild horses could stop you…)
The trial judge disagrees with you, as does “A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia [which] unanimously upheld the former governor’s convictions last year,” as you’d know if you had the wherewithal to click the link, but I guess in discussions with you we all need to bow down and incant
“Thou, Esquire Bricker, are the greatest criminal lawyer in the Galaxy!! :eek:”
(By the way, to quote Jesse Pinkman, “are you a criminal lawyer or a criminal lawyer?” 
)
But this is all beside the point. We hear of government officials giving any bottle of wine they receive valued at more than $5 to charity (whether any quo corresponded to the quid or not) to avoid any hint of impropriety. Do you have your adding machine handy, Bricker? Do you think “expensive vacations, a Rolex watch, fifteen thousand dollars for their daughter’s wedding reception, the use of a Ferrari, and a hundred and twenty thousand dollars in loans” together have a value greater than $5?
Your opinions on the relationships among ethics, morals, and crimes are always amusing, Bricker, so let me ask you: Do you think McDonnell should have accepted the (allegedly legal) bribes? Should bribery be made illegal? Do questions with “should” even have any meaning for you?
That’s the issue of this thread though. Such a payment may be illegal - the federal law is vague. In McDonnell’s case, that kind of payment was found to be in violation of the law.
In any event, I think it SHOULD be illegal, and probably most people do.
That may be the law as it currently stands. If it is only illegal if the participants are stupid enough to lay out exactly the quids for the quos, then the law is pretty useless.
Government officials should not be considered to be private actors. Their very position gives them undue influence over the political machining of their jurisdiction. I do not believe that any elected official should be ever considered to be not acting in an official capacity.
If this is too much for politicians to swallow, if they feel that their rights will be too curtailed by needing to be responsible, they have an easy solution to that. Don’t take the privileged position in the first place. If a VP of Comcast was taking money in return for “introductions”, they’d be sanctioned or fired, why are govt officials not held to the same standard?
It’s not necessary that the quid and the quo be explicitly named – just that both people understood what they were asking and that the quo be an official government act. It’s in this latter element that the defense team argues the prosecution failed.
Even more specifically, they argue that the jury way not correctly instructed that the quo be an official act, leading to the possibility that the jury’s factual findings rested on non-official acts.
Go back to my hypothetical. I live next to a state senator. I am seeking a zoning variance so I don’t get tickets for unmowed grass. I ask him to mow the lawn for me while I work on the variance, promising him an expensive bottle of scotch as a thank-you.
Do you believe this act should be criminal?
I would say that with the greater responsibility that was voluntarily taken when your hypothetical senator ran for and won office, they should be under greater scrutiny.
I would say that your bottle of scotch for those reasons would not be criminal, but it should be declared in a public disclosure of ALL gifts received (over maybe $5-$10 in value), for official and non-official capacity. Not declaring it would then be criminal.
You could even get away with taking more questionable gifts, if they were declared, and an ethics oversight committee could decide that certain gifts needed to be returned or donated.
I would say that if I saw you handing your state senator an expensive bottle of scotch, right after you got your zoning variance granted, I would feel as though something untoward had happened. I would lose faith in my elected representatives. I would be less likely to trust democracy and government.
And that is even if nothing at all happened. If I could look up the public gift disclosure, and see that he had nothing to do with your variance being granted, and that the bottle of scotch was for unrelated activity, then I may feel differently.
I realize that this is not the law as it stands, but writing a law that would cover all these hypothetical and contingencies is not that hard. Just look at any corporation’s rules on receiving of gifts. They’ve figured it out.
Passing such a law, I realize is a bit harder.
It is, and for a number of reasons.
First, I am unaware of any big corporation that, if it employed me, would require my reporting that my neighbor gave me a bottle of scotch for mowing his lawn.
If my son were to buy his first house, and I gifted him $10,000 to help with the down payment, I don’t know of any big corporation that would require his reporting that gift.
I don’t agree that there is anywhere near sufficient popular support for requiring that level of reporting from elected officials.
It’s been a while, but I am pretty sure the reporting requirements were for any valuable gift. Even if it was not someone that was associated with the industry.
The fact that HR would look at the disclosure and say, “sure, that’s fine” doesn’t mean that they didn’t have to report it.
Reporting is not the same as not allowing. I think there is plenty of popular support for removing corruption or the appearance of corruption from our governmental officials.
No, he’s totally right! A public official accepting a gratuity/gift is just exactly like giving your children money! It was in the pocket of A, now its in the pocket of B! So, there you have it! The man has a real gift for simplifying complex notions.
Christmas must get pretty complicated. No wonder there are so many Jews running things!!
I’m going to ask for a cite for this claim. I don’t believe it to be true.
It must have sucked having to report all those coupons he got in the mail too.
Always interesting to compare the opinions of our wittiest wit and the Doper with the most over-inflated opinion of his own wit.
Again I marvel that you apparently have some skill set that some employer finds useful enough to pay you money to exercise.