Every year the Koch brothers—or brother, since David Koch died—hold a big donor meeting in Palm Springs. It's an explicitly political event that typically raises hundreds of millions of dollars for conservative and libertarian causes.
In other words, it's not really the place for a Supreme Court justice. But that kind of thinking has never stopped Clarence Thomas:
Thomas has attended Koch donor events at least twice over the years, according to interviews with three former network employees and one major donor. The justice was brought in to speak, staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.
That puts Thomas in the extraordinary position of having served as a fundraising draw for a network that has brought cases before the Supreme Court, including one of the most closely watched of the upcoming term.
Thomas never reported the 2018 flight to Palm Springs on his annual financial disclosure form, an apparent violation of federal law requiring justices to report most gifts. A Koch network spokesperson said the network did not pay for the private jet. Since Thomas didn’t disclose it, it’s not clear who did pay.
Back in the day, it wasn't unusual for Supreme Court justices to hobnob with senators and presidents and discuss the issues of the day with them. We'd like to think we've gotten beyond that in our more enlightened era, but apparently not. At least not in the case of Clarence Thomas.
Of course, maybe he'll recuse himself in cases that involve the Koch network. That would certainly impr—ha ha. Just kidding. Of course he won't recuse himself. Let's not be silly.
Justice Thomas has been wallowing in corruption during his entire tenure on the court, yet none dare call him on it ... until now. It's just too bad that the Constitutional remedy, impeachment, is totally feckless and unworkable. Just like the 25th Amendment.
Meanwhile, the Second works all too well, and we're waiting for the verdict on the Fourteenth.
In terms that could actually do something, Kagen and Sotomoyer [sp] need to retire ASAP. Otherwise, we are quite possibly going to have a 8-1 SCOTUS in 3 years.
um ... wut? Kagan is only 63, and Sotomayor 69. Alito is 73 and Thomas is 75.
Iz troll?
Isn't it time to start to refer to "justice" Thomas (rather than justice Thomas)?
Justice* Thomas.
I would actually not have a big problem with this happening. What Thomas is doing is way worse. There's a difference between discussing the issues of the day with your fellow politicians, and leveraging yourself as a fundraiser for explicitly partisan causes that directly intersect your role as a judge.
.. and hiding it from the public.
Not to mention raking in the bribes, big time, and living high on his own corruption.
A justice hobnobbing with senators and presidents is quite a bit different from hobnobbing with billionaire business interests with huge stakes in the decisions you make.
I don't mind SCOTUS justices having some interactions with presidents and senators. I don't like the idea that they are these neutral oracles in a hidden enclave, because they aren't. They're people, and they hold political positions, however much we'd like to admit that or not.
But there are limits even I can't tolerate. They are supposed to be impartial, or attempt at it. They should avoid conflicts of interest (or recuse themselves.) They shouldn't be involved in anything explicitly political. And they shouldn't be receiving gifts, especially from people with strong interest in case outcomes.
Thomas has gone way beyond this, and reports are Scalia did too, and Alito to some extent. This is pretty open corruption. And we still don't know who paid of Kavanaugh's debts. Or why he had them.
"And we still don't know who paid of Kavanaugh's debts. Or why he had them."
FWIW, Kavanaugh's debts were probably paid off by his parents. Beerboy grew up very rich, and despite having just a judge's salary (which gets you into the upper middle class, but not solidly in the DC area and not in comparison to the lawyers practicing before the DC Circuit--Circuit judges get paid about $250k, which is less than a second-year associate at a Biglaw firm gets in salary+bonus) continued to live that lifestyle. Junior apparently got a lot of help from his wealthy folks in buying his house, covering the credit card bill when he bought a bunch of season box seats to baseball games, etc.
So, basically, Mr. I-Like-Beer never stopped being an entitled little trustafarian.
You'd think that somebody like Thomas, who actually *did* pull himself up out of racism-induced poverty by his bootstraps, would end up with different politics than a prepschool fratboy parody like Kavanaugh, but I guess there are many routes to making out-of-touch/corrupt plutarchs.
Thomas’ original goal was to join an east coast silk stocking Republican law firm and get rich. He blames his failure to achieve this on his “devalued affirmative action” Yale law degree. More likely it was that he just lacked the social connections to join such a closed group. In any case it left him bitter. Now he maintains we need to study history to know the meaning of the constitution, but not history according to historians, but rather history as interpreted by right wing amateur historians with law degrees and federalist society endorsements.
Thomas is a weird case study. Such a bitter and crabby man given that he's basically won everything he could have ever wanted out of life.
I mean, I'd like to think that spending decades as a lifetime appointee to one of the most exclusive and powerful governing bodies in the history of humanity would give a person some perspective or at least mellow them out a bit, but Thomas seems to nurse every grievance about every perceived slight he ever got, despite having, from his perspective, _won_.
I just don't get it--does Thomas bitterly think that others of his classmates are more successful than he is? That he should have been a SCOTUS judge even *earlier*? That *more* billionares should be giving him vacations and tuition for his kids?
Sigh. As with everything, IOKIYAR. The media have now all been distracted with the Menendez indictment anyway, it looks like, which of course they luuuuv because now they can go "Ah hah! Bothsides! Neener neener!"
Of course the difference is that, as far as I can tell, approximately zero prominent Democrats are lining up behind Menendez and trying to normalize what he's accused of doing. He should do the right thing and resign and let the NJ gov appoint a replacement, but from what I've been reading, Menendez is a ornery SOB and will almost certainly not go quietly.
And people wonder why trust in government is going down. It is no wonder when we have corrupt judges like Alito and Thomas on the Supreme Court. It is not just that these guys are corrupt they are brazenly and openly corrupt.
Thomas is fond of saying his Yale law degree wasn't worth shit. If true, he got exactly what he deserved.
Wow, who knew all the time he was playing Mr. Inscrutable on the bench, he was just trying not to be noticed, like the drug dealer in the back of class.
Clarence is just a whore. Long past time for him to go.
So, should we start referring to him as Abe Thomas, or as Clarence Fortas?
I dislike Thomas for his judicial rulings.
As for the issue in the article, you realize for example that, from memory, Breyer and Kagan have have been featured speakers at ACLU fundraisers? In fact, Breyer took more than 200 paid trips while on the court.
So yes, I think Thomas is horrid but no, I don't think his personal life/paid travel is nearly as unique as is often claimed.
https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/06/scotus-justices-rack-up-trips/
... and reported it, no? This is a big part of the problem with Thomas, and it suggests either unfathomably gross negligence or clear consciousness of guilt.
bbleh - for me, as long as Thomas votes as he does, I will dislike him. Thomas' reporting, or lack there in, is not really impactful.
Further, as I mention above, Thomas is not the only justice taking a lot of freebees and profiting from his time on the court: frankly, hearing that a liberal justice uses her law clerks to sell her book is similarly disturbing to me.
Really? A book -- from sales of which she doesn't earn a penny -- is "similarly disturbing" compared to personally enjoying hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of luxury travel and accommodation from parties with interests (and sometimes actual lawyers themselves) before the Court?!?
That's some ... uh ... interesting scales you're using there.
👍👍👍👍👍
You are attempting to compare reported public speaking trips with unreported private fundraising to benefit a political party from rich people with business before the court.
One is an everyday thing lots of people do out in the open, because it is a normal everyday thing to do. The other is explicitly forbidden to judges not on the Supreme Court. Thomas also hid it, almost certainly because he's not stupid, and knew what a problem it was.
"I don't like Bernie Madoff, but in fairness, other people have made money in non-illegal ways, so I don't see what the big deal is."
I'd like to see some historians' take on it, but I think we might have the most corrupt Supreme Court in our history right now.
The Court has made some shameful rulings in the past, but I think they have all been consistent with the shameful popular opinions of their times.
Today's Court makes shameful rulings that run counter to popular opinion.
The Federalist Society, which is ultimately an instrument of a group of very wealthy people, has put 6 of the 9 Justices on the Court. Roberts arguably doesn't consistently toe their line, but the remaining 5 still constitute a majority.
So far this cabal has ended limits on political campaign spending, overturned the Voting Rights Act, overturned Roe v. Wade, ended Affirmative Action in college admissions, and probably a lot of other things that weren't as newsworthy.
The consorting with billionaires by some of the cabal is pretty well known, but I think the most telling corruption is that they didn't disclose it. If there is nothing wrong with it, why not disclose the hell out of it?
And the reason is, they know it's wrong. They pretend it has no influence on their decisions, but that's obviously bullshit. There is a very fine line between access and influence, or more often no line at all. If a judge claimed that his friendship with a suspected drug kingpin wouldn't affect his rulings on drug cases, he'd be laughed out of his court.
But we have Supreme Court Justices cavorting with billionaire business moguls and insisting that won't affect their rulings in cases dealing with matters of concern to billionaires and businesses.
And concealing their interactions with the billionaires so no one has the opportunity to question their impartiality on the basis of those interactions.
And now the cherry on top of this unseemly dessert is Justice Alito LYING about the United States Constitution.
Why exactly a Supreme Court Justice would lie about the Constitution is a bit of a mystery, but it can hardly be for any good reason. My guess is that he's just providing some doubt -- for people who don't bother to see what's actually in the Constitution -- so that Trumpublicans in Congress have political cover for ignoring the corruption of the Court and allowing the rot to continue and expand.
And someone who has basically proclaimed his intent to impose a police state has a reasonable shot at becoming President.
This is where we are.
I expect sometime soon the GOPs will throw Thomas under the bus. Then they'll claim they've solved the problem. They'll Ignore Alito and Robert's wife. Remember that pro publica caught Thomas, but the rest of them are subject to the same, minimal, constraints and temptations.
"You'd think that somebody like Thomas, who actually *did* pull himself up out of racism-induced poverty by his bootstraps, would end up with different politics..."
Many of those self made people end up with an immense sense of entitlement. I think this is exactly what we are seeing in the case of Thomas. He thinks he worked so hard that he deserves all he can get.