This ruling is all about how, at a minimum, Thomas and Alito are guilty of the **exact same thing**.
Of course thomas and alito will vote against it. They’re the ones who have blatantly taken bribes and there’s no one policing their behavior.
This is just an embarrassing reminder, not that we needed one, that this court/country is for sale to the highest bidder.
[deleted]
Everyone elected suddenly claim to be consultants so they can legally take bribes.
You realize that they did this so that they themselves can now not be ethically entangled as long as the gifts/trips/hookers and blow are all provided AFTER a ruling.
Good thing the 2022 Supreme Court established a precedent for overturning previous Supreme Court decisions
she is a true american treasure.
Really not surprising considering how corrupt scotus currently is
To be fair, Snyder (the plaintiff in this case) took a gratuity. He does not even deny this. It is questionable about whether this $13,000 was mentioned prior or not.
However, the law (18 USC 666) mentions taking a gratuity “corruptly” is just as impermissible as taking a bribe. It is clear, based on the facts of the case (a federal grand jury though so to) that the man is guilty of acting corruptly and accepting a gratuity.
How in the world did the majority find this conduct permissible under the statute? It’s absolutely mind-blowing the mental gymnastics being performed here.
We should be STRENGTHENING corruption laws in this country, not the opposite.
Once again, I’d like to give a special shout out to everyone who refused to vote for Hillary in 2016. Nothing this Supreme Court does would have been possible without your support.
Alternative headline: “Supreme Court, under recent scrutiny for bribery and kickbacks, rewrites bribery law to exclude kickbacks”
>Reading §666 to create a federal prohibition on gratuities would suddenly subject 19 million state and local officials to a new and different regulatory regime for gratuities.
Apparently, reading the history of §666 it’s been controversial ever since Regan signed it into law for this very reason. So much so Congress has ratified its original “definition” because they realized later it essentially prohibited any lobbying.
As a govt worker I don’t take so much as a coffee from a business. Which is the way it should be. But the higher up the chain you go, the fewer scruples the govt workers/politicians seem to have. They’re the ones who should most be adhering to a strict code of ethics and honor or at least matching the ethics those of us in the trenches adhere to.
It was said to me by a manager, “even if it’s legally ok, if it can even have the appearance of impropriety, don’t do it.”
The majority on the court are already taking bribes they aren’t going to put themselves in legal jeopardy.
Yep, just setting the stage for discouraging any complaints about their own “gratuities”.
Slowly but surely, the Oligarchs are removing all the barriers and guard rails.
There really has to be a push back. There really has to be a huge blue wave this coming election.
Checks and balances?
Enjoy the checks and increase the balances!
Majority opinion penned by Kavanaugh, who *lied under oath* about what both boofing and a Devil’s Triangle are.
I work for a small municipality and had to give up a T-shirt a vendor sent along with an order. I’m not even allowed to let a client/vendor pay for my burger if we have a lunch meeting. My small town government has more scruples than the Supreme Court.
I 💕 KB-J. One of the few decent judges on this Kangaroo Kourt.
We are at a point when half the country thinks it is totally fine that special interests should be able to openly pay off our justices. What the hell is happening.
To paraphrase Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) “This court needs an enema.”
It’s wild how cheap conservatives can be bought for too
Justice Thomas out there rubbing his hands together thinking about all the new Motor Coaches he’ll be able to “buy” now.
Soooo basically bribes are now just CODs?
Interesting how it shifts the risk.
Old: Pay a bribe but what if he doesn’t do thing?
New: I’m going to do thing but what if he doesn’t pay?
The Supreme Court has an onlyfans for lobbyists and the like
Worst democracy you can buy.
It’s the dumbest ruling.
I work for a federal contractor, so the procedures that apply are under different statutes, but they use similar phrasing (gift, bribe, thing of value, reward for, in expectation of, etc). That includes FCPA training.
Every year we have a 2-3 hour ethics training. I would say that, next to time charging, the #1 topic covered is gifts and bribes. There are *always* scenarios covering these topics, from cases where an employee notices a coworker is coming into the office with new luxurious cars and accessories, to scenarios where a prospective contract bidder treat the team to dinner, to cases where a corporate partner sends each person in the office a $20 box of chocolates for the holidays, to thank you cards. There are also scenarios where a sales rep has to weigh the option of whether or not to push through an expense to expedite some kind of shipment in the supply chain.
Regulations and restrictions on bonuses, bribes, basically any form of compensation that was not explicitly included as a part of a legal document or contract, are well defined, and hammered into probably tens of millions of Americans annually.
They may as well strike down the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act next.
As she certainly should. This alone sets her legal and moral character well above the others who voted in the majority.
This era will be laughed at for centuries if not millennia.
Hello, future historians. We know…. we know….. We’re so sorry… There is no excuse… ~~We all…~~ ~~most of us…~~ some of us knew.
I think you now have to make a bribery pre-contract in order to be convicted of bribery in a federal court. If payment is not made at the exact time of the favor it is now not subject to federal bribery law.
KBJ is my hero. She, along with Sotomayor, are beacons of hope in today’s day and age.
Yet another reason I’m okay with expanding the court. Half the Yays were put on the court by a president who lost the popular vote
Bribery is now legal in the US…. It is called “Tipping” or “Gratuity”. (This is literally insane. Legalizing bribery by calling it something else is…. as Jackson says…. Absurd.)
The GOP SCOTUS members have raised the bar so high for calling bribery what it is that the bar is beyond reach for all cases. There is no way to prosecute bribery any longer. Hell…. you might as well just start flinging cash at voters to change their minds…. It’s legal now…..
We’re just so fucked and it keeps getting worse, so keep them on blast, it’s helping a lot.
This is the next Citizens United ruling. The floodgates for corruption are now wide open.
TIL it’s not a ‘bribe’ given beforehand for corrupt services rendered, it’s a ‘gratuity’ that is given afterwards for corrupt services rendered. Totally different, yo.
And of course the rotten conservative majority would be all over that ruling, with the usual GOP crook judges leading the way.
The Roberts court will go down in history as a raging trash fire.
She’s absolutely right. This ruling is hilariously deranged. The right is just taking the mask off and looting the working class openly now.
The lone jurist on a completely corrupt court. Sad time to be alive in America.
So how do officials, supreme court officials get brought up on charges exactly?
“Jackson is the latest liberal justice to express frustration with the high court’s sharp rightward turn.”
the Republicans on the Supreme Court are just criminals legalizing their own crimes. Is “criminal” now synonymous with “Right”? Can we cut through the bull and just say it then?
43 comments
This ruling is all about how, at a minimum, Thomas and Alito are guilty of the **exact same thing**.
Of course thomas and alito will vote against it. They’re the ones who have blatantly taken bribes and there’s no one policing their behavior.
This is just an embarrassing reminder, not that we needed one, that this court/country is for sale to the highest bidder.
[deleted]
Everyone elected suddenly claim to be consultants so they can legally take bribes.
You realize that they did this so that they themselves can now not be ethically entangled as long as the gifts/trips/hookers and blow are all provided AFTER a ruling.
Good thing the 2022 Supreme Court established a precedent for overturning previous Supreme Court decisions
she is a true american treasure.
Really not surprising considering how corrupt scotus currently is
To be fair, Snyder (the plaintiff in this case) took a gratuity. He does not even deny this. It is questionable about whether this $13,000 was mentioned prior or not.
However, the law (18 USC 666) mentions taking a gratuity “corruptly” is just as impermissible as taking a bribe. It is clear, based on the facts of the case (a federal grand jury though so to) that the man is guilty of acting corruptly and accepting a gratuity.
How in the world did the majority find this conduct permissible under the statute? It’s absolutely mind-blowing the mental gymnastics being performed here.
We should be STRENGTHENING corruption laws in this country, not the opposite.
Once again, I’d like to give a special shout out to everyone who refused to vote for Hillary in 2016. Nothing this Supreme Court does would have been possible without your support.
Alternative headline: “Supreme Court, under recent scrutiny for bribery and kickbacks, rewrites bribery law to exclude kickbacks”
I read the full text of [the decision](https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-108_8n5a.pdf), and this is their main reasoning:
>Reading §666 to create a federal prohibition on
gratuities would suddenly subject 19 million state and local officials to
a new and different regulatory regime for gratuities.
Apparently, reading the history of §666 it’s been controversial ever since Regan signed it into law for this very reason. So much so Congress has ratified its original “definition” because they realized later it essentially prohibited any lobbying.
As a govt worker I don’t take so much as a coffee from a business. Which is the way it should be. But the higher up the chain you go, the fewer scruples the govt workers/politicians seem to have. They’re the ones who should most be adhering to a strict code of ethics and honor or at least matching the ethics those of us in the trenches adhere to.
It was said to me by a manager, “even if it’s legally ok, if it can even have the appearance of impropriety, don’t do it.”
The majority on the court are already taking bribes they aren’t going to put themselves in legal jeopardy.
Yep, just setting the stage for discouraging any complaints about their own “gratuities”.
Slowly but surely, the Oligarchs are removing all the barriers and guard rails.
There really has to be a push back. There really has to be a huge blue wave this coming election.
Checks and balances?
Enjoy the checks and increase the balances!
Majority opinion penned by Kavanaugh, who *lied under oath* about what both boofing and a Devil’s Triangle are.
I work for a small municipality and had to give up a T-shirt a vendor sent along with an order. I’m not even allowed to let a client/vendor pay for my burger if we have a lunch meeting. My small town government has more scruples than the Supreme Court.
I 💕 KB-J. One of the few decent judges on this Kangaroo Kourt.
We are at a point when half the country thinks it is totally fine that special interests should be able to openly pay off our justices. What the hell is happening.
To paraphrase Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) “This court needs an enema.”
It’s wild how cheap conservatives can be bought for too
Justice Thomas out there rubbing his hands together thinking about all the new Motor Coaches he’ll be able to “buy” now.
Soooo basically bribes are now just CODs?
Interesting how it shifts the risk.
Old: Pay a bribe but what if he doesn’t do thing?
New: I’m going to do thing but what if he doesn’t pay?
The Supreme Court has an onlyfans for lobbyists and the like
Worst democracy you can buy.
It’s the dumbest ruling.
I work for a federal contractor, so the procedures that apply are under different statutes, but they use similar phrasing (gift, bribe, thing of value, reward for, in expectation of, etc). That includes FCPA training.
Every year we have a 2-3 hour ethics training. I would say that, next to time charging, the #1 topic covered is gifts and bribes. There are *always* scenarios covering these topics, from cases where an employee notices a coworker is coming into the office with new luxurious cars and accessories, to scenarios where a prospective contract bidder treat the team to dinner, to cases where a corporate partner sends each person in the office a $20 box of chocolates for the holidays, to thank you cards. There are also scenarios where a sales rep has to weigh the option of whether or not to push through an expense to expedite some kind of shipment in the supply chain.
Regulations and restrictions on bonuses, bribes, basically any form of compensation that was not explicitly included as a part of a legal document or contract, are well defined, and hammered into probably tens of millions of Americans annually.
They may as well strike down the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act next.
As she certainly should. This alone sets her legal and moral character well above the others who voted in the majority.
This era will be laughed at for centuries if not millennia.
Hello, future historians. We know…. we know….. We’re so sorry… There is no excuse… ~~We all…~~ ~~most of us…~~ some of us knew.
I think you now have to make a bribery pre-contract in order to be convicted of bribery in a federal court. If payment is not made at the exact time of the favor it is now not subject to federal bribery law.
KBJ is my hero. She, along with Sotomayor, are beacons of hope in today’s day and age.
Yet another reason I’m okay with expanding the court. Half the Yays were put on the court by a president who lost the popular vote
Bribery is now legal in the US…. It is called “Tipping” or “Gratuity”. (This is literally insane. Legalizing bribery by calling it something else is…. as Jackson says…. Absurd.)
The GOP SCOTUS members have raised the bar so high for calling bribery what it is that the bar is beyond reach for all cases. There is no way to prosecute bribery any longer. Hell…. you might as well just start flinging cash at voters to change their minds…. It’s legal now…..
We’re just so fucked and it keeps getting worse, so keep them on blast, it’s helping a lot.
This is the next Citizens United ruling. The floodgates for corruption are now wide open.
TIL it’s not a ‘bribe’ given beforehand for corrupt services rendered, it’s a ‘gratuity’ that is given afterwards for corrupt services rendered. Totally different, yo.
And of course the rotten conservative majority would be all over that ruling, with the usual GOP crook judges leading the way.
The Roberts court will go down in history as a raging trash fire.
She’s absolutely right. This ruling is hilariously deranged. The right is just taking the mask off and looting the working class openly now.
The lone jurist on a completely corrupt court. Sad time to be alive in America.
So how do officials, supreme court officials get brought up on charges exactly?
“Jackson is the latest liberal justice to express frustration with the high court’s sharp rightward turn.”
the Republicans on the Supreme Court are just criminals legalizing their own crimes. Is “criminal” now synonymous with “Right”? Can we cut through the bull and just say it then?