Billionaire-Backed Conservative Legal Groups Are Paying for Judges’ Luxury Vacations
Billionaire-Backed Conservative Legal Groups Are Paying for Judges’ Luxury Vacations
Right-wing legal interests funded by the megawealthy are routinely feting lower-court judges and treating them to all-expenses-paid trips, which effectively function as a reward system for judges who espouse and maintain hard-line conservative legal views.
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Genuinely how is this not considered illegal in the US?
If you tried this in most parts of Europe you'd be charged for committing briberyThe Supreme Court of the United States has decided that corporations are people and money is free speech.
We have become what Benjamin Franklin feared we would become. He could see the future:
“In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”
The founders feared political factions forming above all and basically designed the government around not allowing factions to take absolute power, like separating the presidential office from the executive branch etc. and not even making the position clear. Presidents have basically pushed on the limits and defined the office over the years and political factions formed around economic interests of the people because of course they would. At first you basically needed a minimum amount of worked land to even vote in most states, men's suffrage happened long before women's. America was basically designed as a free real estate project and sort of still is.
Pretty sure the founders kind of assumed we'd have a couple of revolutions by now
when the people shall have become so corrupted as to need a despotic government.
See that’s interesting. Franklin’s talking about society getting fucked up and naturally spawning a bad government above itself as a necessary part of its own structure.
It’s not just that people get corrupt and form a despotic government, it’s that the world getting fucked up means despots are more likely to be liked and desired by people seeking safety from the corruption around them.
It's illegal.
Enforceable is the issue here because the people being bribed are the same ones that would ultimately decide any criminal appeals and they, themselves, have no accountability or oversight.
Who knew the American empire rested entirely on the concept of shame. Take it away, and there's literally nothing left to keep the corrupt from burning the whole experiment to the ground.
And guess what Trump and his MAGA army proudly lack?
Or cultivate healthy emotions, and build the thing back into integrity again.
Saying that our system collapses when a sense of honor collapses isn’t the worst criticism. I’m not sure that a system that could survive most people being awful would be worth living in.