This is quid pro quo being ruled as NOT bribery because it comes to the person on the backside of the favor. This is almost certainly to do with the majority of the court recently being outed about the amount of high value
bribesgifts/vacations they are getting from “friends”.“We realized that people now knew the things we constantly do that are wrong, so we made them not wrong anymore.”
“We’ve investigated ourselves and found no evidence of wrongdoing”
This is almost certainly to do with the majority of the court recently being outed about the amount of high value bribes gifts/vacations they are getting from “friends”.
Nah, this is a long running theme. In chronological order-
Sun Diamond Growers - The government must prove the bribe is actually connected to the act.
Skilling - Corruption charges require a second party to give you a bribe or kickback, self dealing is fine.
Citizens United - Money is political speech, and you can spend as much as you want on an election.
McDonnell - Acting as a pay to play gatekeeper is fine. Even if the government connects the bribe to the act.
Ted Cruz - Politicians can keep unspent campaign funds as long as they maintain the fiction of having lent the campaign money.
Snyder - Kickbacks aren’t actionable. <- We are here.
Holy fuck! As if Citizens United wasn’t bad enough. Our government is fully for sale now.
Same as it ever was.
… but worse!
And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. And you may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”
Thanks to the Supreme Court, that’s how
Same as it ever was!
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was?
So that means that I can engage in a a little tax evasion, as a treat, right?
On a serious note, from the article:
the law makes it a very serious crime, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for a federal official to accept a bribe
Can we start actually enforcing this please?
Define bribe and you’ll start to see where enforcing this becomes a problem. Especially with legalized corruption in the form of lobbying and ‘gifts’.
Well, federal officials are already forbidden from accepting gifts/anything valued more than $25 in one instance, and no more than $100 a year from any one group or person. Enforcing that seems like a good place to start.
Billionaires can just make a coupon thousand shell orgs to funnel $100ks into their pockets.
Legislators, executives, and jurists aren’t officials in the sense you mean. They are referring to government employees, who can still receive every joyful punishment a prosecutor can dream of.
Well, perhaps the wording should be amended to encompass all public employees. But that would require the law be rewritten by the people that benefit from it, so, yeah.
Can we start actually enforcing this please?
No. You can’t bind the rich.
So is the difference “I’ll give you money to do this thing” versus “I’ll give you money if you do this thing”?
They both sound like bribes to me. Money, goods, or services are just handed over at different times.
I fucking hate these people. No shame. No morals. No humanity.
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No see the first one is a bribe, the second one is a job. I’m paying you for your time! /s
That was actually the argument made by the official in question. Called it a “consulting fee”.
I should’ve been a consultant. I could have a few yachts by now…my country would be destroyed, but at least I could be in my own little world.
It’s a kickback. They just made kickbacks completely legal.
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SCOTUS has routinely bent over backwards to protect politicians from corruption and bribery charges though so the message is clear. You cannot charge a politician with bribery except in extreme circumstances. Like them being a democrat.
“At every level” she’s making specific reference to a specific certain level in the US judicial system here… Some pretty good, brave activism three - good luck getting your mom a house from a billionaire now Justice Jackson
Your comment is nonsensical. Format that shit. And wtf, are you saying Judge Jackson is corrupt as well? You are making no sense.
Their formatting was dog dukey, but I was still able to parse what they were saying fairly easily. They’re saying “good job judge Jackson. Too bad you won’t be able to get a free house from insert evil billionaire here (/s)”. While I agree with your sentiment, the way you go about pointing these things out can backfire, if done with a rude tone, such as the way you chose to do it. There you go; an unsolicited constructive criticism for an unsolicited constructive criticism. :)
I like you better than yourr brother James.
bro i thought this was an onion post for a second what the fuck just happened
Just yet ANOTHER consequence of Trump’s first term…
unfortunately you may be right, but the onion also has a very specific type of title that they write out, and this was pretty close.
i love how the standard went from “the appearance of impropriety” to “you know what, just leave the money on the counter”.
NOT THAT COUNTER!!! That is the bribe counter! You put it NEXT the bribe counter so nobody gets the wrong idea.
No that’s fine too, we’ll just blow up the journalist and bury the story. #PanamaPapers
Bro… Fuck this country.
Saw the title, figured it couldn’t be that bad. Read the article. It is that bad.
Then they at the end they give that know an extra twist by specifically mentioning two justices notorious for receiving substantial
bribesrewards who didn’t feel the need to recuse themselves.That’s exactly what I did too. I was like “they’ve gotta be exaggerating.” Nope, not at all. Ffs
Haha, what a silly Onion article!
:checks URL:
Oh. Oh no.
Welcome to
Russiapost-Covid world
Its just out in the open. Corruption on full blast.
I didn’t think they could weaken it any further, you already had to get caught on tape exchanging money, laughing maniacally, and saying, “This is a bribe for X action.”
Now you can do that, as long as it happens after the politician delivers. That’s a kickback. It’s the fucking definition of a kickback. They gave someone a contract and the contractor then gave the contract giver a large sum of money.
Politicians can legally be bribed after the fact now. Phew, what a relief.
I guess step two is to decide exactly how many hours a bribe needs to be given, before doing someone a favour, for it to just be considered a gift.
Just a reminder that bullets can be bribes.
It depends on how they’re delivered. Generally bullets are interpreted as a threat.
Vocabulary question X + shell + powder = bullet, what is X?
Because usually the threat is that X will be delivered through use of powder the destination of the shell is ambiguous but not included in the delivery.
When you deliver while (unfired) bullets it’s generally not considered a threat.
That very much depends on how the unfired bullet(s) is/are delivered. Did we leave a bullet on the lieutenant’s pillow or did we give the politician a box of the latest match grade hunting rounds with a bow on it?
If you write “NOT BRIBE” on the cheek, it obviously CANNOT be a bribe.
I nominate this guy for SCOTUS
If they ever flip back to a Democrat majority, it’s going to take decades to undo all the damage this court has done (and they’ll still have the incentive to not undo stuff like this).
Longer than that. Democrats are pretty centrist these days, so some of this will linger on for long long time.
Joe Biden nearly got 1 food truck in to gaza from the 300 million dollar pier and one of Israel’s bomb shipments was 10 minutes late thanks to him though. That’s bringing the left and liberals together.
seems like a good thread to plug https://represent.us
they describe themselves as
RepresentUs is America’s leading nonpartisan anti-corruption organization fighting to fix our broken and ineffective government. We unite people across the political spectrum to pass laws that hold corrupt politicians accountable, defeat special interests, and force the government to meet the needs of the American people.
here’s their policy platform https://represent.us/policy-platform/
they claim to have played a part in over 185 pieces of legislation (mostly at the state level) that contributed to their core platform https://represent.us/our-wins/
here are their ongoing campaigns presented state by state https://represent.us/2024-campaigns/
nobody and no organization are perfect but I feel like most people can find something to agree on here
