‘If you’re rich enough, says the supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests.’‘If you’re rich enough, says the supreme court, you can now pay off state and local officials for government acts that fit your policy preferences or advance your interests.’id you know you could give your local government officials tips when they do things you like? Brett Kavanaugh thinks you can.
In so doing, the court has narrowed the scope of anti-corruption law for state and local officials to apply to only those exchanges of money, goods and official favor in which an explicit quid pro quo arrangement can be proved.
The court’s narrow vision of corruption – one in which only explicit, whispered deals in shadowy, smoke-filled back rooms count as “corruption”, and all other forms of influence and exchange are something other than the genuine article – also fundamentally misunderstands how influence-peddling works. In his controlling opinion, Kavanaugh emphasizes that in order to be an illegal bribe, a gift or payment must be accompanied by “a corrupt state of mind” on behalf of the official or benefactor.
There is no reporting to indicate that the justices received this expansive and expensive generosity in direct compensation for their extremely conservative jurisprudence, even though the judges’ legal writings have furthered the billionaire’s material interests and social preferences. It seems reasonable, to me, to infer that the gifts, as frequent and valuable as they are, are not the product of explicit agreements to exchange things of value for specific official acts.