Thursday, October 10, 2013
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
A corrupt decision blind to corrupt access and influence
CU was Bad
The Citizens United Case was an incredibly corrupt decision. At first I laid the source of the corruption to it's reservation of the "right of personhood" to corporations, but the reality is simpler.
We are talking about what our founders considered to be bribery!
MCCutcheon is Worse!
On September 30, 2013, in an article by Richard L. Hasen in today's Slate titled "The Next Citizens United?" [http://tinyurl.com/NextCitizensUnited] writing about the upcoming "McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission," which is likely to overthrow most controls over influence pedaling and bribery, Hasen quotes Justice Kennedy's opinion in Citizens Unitd (CU), writing for the majority and saying:
“there is only scant evidence that independent expenditures even ingratiate. … Ingratiation and access, in any event, are not corruption.”
Ingratiation and Access ARE OFTEN Corruption
The New York Times further quoted him with this nonsense:
“The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.”
But undue influence and access start with ingratiation, favors, and promises. As the political revolving door demonstrates, sometimes the "quid" isn't simultaneous with the "pro-quo!
Both at the time and in retrospect, those comments sound absurd. Especially after CU got cited in the dismissal of 100 years of evidence that outside expenditures, and their impact on political behavior, in fact generate ingratiation, access, and flagrant corruption. & that that was the reason Montana passed strict corporate expenditure laws in the first place! The corrupt majority know this in their personal lives, but pretend to not notice in real life.
CU sure caused a lot of people I know to lose faith in our democracy. The decision itself was corrupt.
Preferential Access and Undue Influence
The problem is not mere access, it is "preferential access". And the problem is not "influence" it is undue influence, preferential influence, "private, separate advantage" [Locke,199] and these amount to tyranny.
The New York times article also notes how the CU case contradicted their own earlier decision, noting how in 2003, in McConnell v. F.E.C., the Supreme Court said there was
“no meaningful distinction between the national party committees and the public officials who control them.”
Large contributions to parties:
“are likely to create actual or apparent indebtedness on the part of federal officeholders,”
the court said, and
“are likely to buy donors preferential access to federal officeholders.”
The appearance of corruption is often an indicator of the reality of corruption, and we have judges all over the country being convicted for taking bribes from private companies running jails or other influential people. Often folks they do business with while playing Golf on the Links or getting a rubdown in a country club. Fact is that ingratiation and access, especially private separate access, are at the heart of corruption in the USA, and since the Supreme Court made it's Citizens United, the level of perceived and actual corruption we are witnessing nationwide has gone up exponentially.
Gutting the Definition of Corruption
So the real problem with Citizens United is that Kennedy gutted the definition of corruption. Heather K. Gerken in the Prospect published an article immediately after the decision [http://prospect.org/article/real-problem-citizens-united]:
“For many years, the Court had gradually expanded the corruption rationale to extend beyond quid pro quo corruption (donor dollars for legislative votes). It had licensed Congress to regulate even when the threat was simply that large donors had better access to politicians or that politicians had become "too compliant with the[ir] wishes." Indeed, at times the Court went so far as to say that even the mere appearance of "undue influence" or the public's "cynical assumption that large donors call the tune" was enough to justify regulation. "Ingratiation and access," in other words, were corruption as far as the Court was concerned. Justice Kennedy didn't say that the Court was overruling these cases. But that's just what it did.”
The problem with "quid pro quo" corruption is that most corruption occurs on the Golf Links or in the locker-room in a country club. You know "locker-room talk."
"If the Court rigidly insists that Congress can regulate only to prevent quid-pro-corruption, narrowly defined, then Citizens United has implications that extend well beyond what corporations can do. Justice Kennedy's own opinion even hints at the possibility, as he notes that the evidence supporting the "soft money" limits – which apply across the board -- rests on evidence about the connection between money and political access. While Justice Kennedy backed off from saying anything definitive, we may find that it was the Court's discussion of corruption, not corporations, that matters most in the long run."
If the Supreme Court applies this rule to the McCutcheon case, which it probably will, then we'll be further down the road to shameless corruption under the protection of the first amendment as "free speech."
Fact is that money buys access which leads to influence which leads to collusion and is corruption. Corrupt court illustrates this at work, when they make decisions that legalize corruption while drawing outside income from teaching, speech making, and become blind to the reality that "access = influence". Judges used to avoid even the appearance of Corruption. Thanks to being exempt from Judicial ethic rules all other judges are supposed to live by some of the court justices on the Supreme Court now display openly their corrupt associations. This is destroying peoples faith and trust in the government and is enabling flagrantly corrupt politicians to get elected by flagrantly venal wealthy individuals. When Justice Scalia hunted with Dick Cheney and then selected his choice to be President, that is corruption. When folks graduate from universities, become lawyers work for a corrupt official, and then take a job at a company as a reward for corrupt decisions as a regulator, and then gets appointed to offices as a result of corrupt decisions in private practice, that is known as the "revolving door" and there is never a Quid Pro Quo that one can identify -- but it is incredibly corrupting. There doesn't have to be direct quid pro quo to run a corrupt enterprise, and US Penal Law represents "influence" as criminal when it is coerced. It's also criminal when it's not -- but thanks to the Supreme Court only morally.
Kennedy's decision was either morally blind, or morally corrupt –or both!
The Swiss define corruption this way:
"Corruption means any abuse of a position of trust in order to gain an undue advantage. This involves the conduct of both sides: that of the person who abuses his position of trust as well as that of the person who seeks to gain an undue advantage by this abuse."And "private, separate advantage" was the core part of John Locke's definition of tyranny, so corruption, oppression, usurpation and tyranny are always connected. And the Swiss (SECO) go on:
"Corruption can occur in relation to officials as well as between private persons. It is particularly prevalent in certain kinds of transactions (for example, when awarding public contracts), in certain economic sectors (for example, in extractive industries), and in certain countries. Corrupt practices can range from small favours in anticipation of a future advantage to the payment of large sums of money to senior members of governments."
http://www.seco.admin.ch/themen/00645/00657/00659/01387/index.html?lang=enBy those definitions "undue influence" is at the heart of corruption. Kennedy's decision was not just incorrect, it itself was corrupt, because it gives advantage to corruptors and the corrupt by forcing the government to a narrow and hard to prove definition of corruption.
Published: 10/18/2013
- Related Posts in series:
- A Corrupt Court
- The Expected Corrupt Decision by a corrupt court
- Seven Reasons Issa Cut Cumming's Mike
- Corruption Racketeering and the Supreme Court
- Corrupt Court and Undue Influence
Further reading:
Original date: 10/8/2013
Monday, October 7, 2013
Campaign Reform that might pass Supreme Court
I believe that some of the justices on the Supreme Court are corrupt, but there are things we can do to improve our campaign finance laws that will be difficult for them to overturn on "first amendment" and "corporate personhood" grounds without showing just what scoundrels the majority of the Supreme Court are. These modest proposals all draw on past laws and commons sense:
- Define certain kinds of donations as de-facto evidence of bribery:
- Any donations from a person or other organization doing business with the Federal Government, or an officer of an organization doing business with the Government shall be deemed as an effort to influence the Federal Government favorably to their business and such gifts, donations or loans shall be deemed as evidence of quid pro quo for bribery, or extortion (if given to an opponent), even if there is no direct link between the Federal Contractor and the recipient, or the person or business doesn't get the business or the gifts are returned and the debts paid unless the recipient discloses such gifts, loans or donations and recuses him or herself from any decision involving that business.
- All donations, gifts, loans, or other contributions from any person whatsoever shall be disclosed at the time they are received. Failure to disclose such gifts, loans, donations or other contributions by persons or organizations doing business with the Federal Government by elected officials, or their immediate families, at the time they are received shall be deemed as evidence of intent to violate the law and of bribery.
* Note, the only reason for not making this a blanket restriction is the courts are currently corrupt.
- Any legislator or other officer of the Government who receives money, gifts, or other emoluments, from anyone doing business with the Federal Government shall recuse him or herself from all legislative votes or decisions related to any matters related to that business or the officer or legislator shall be presumed to have been influenced by a bribe and shall be subject to US bribery laws.
- All persons making any kind of donation, gift or loan to any politician or person running for office or re-election, shall disclose those donations to the IRS and these donations shall be listed publicly if they are over $2000.00 individually or $10,000.00 total in 2012 dollars.
- Any person having information about campaign irregularities, bribery, influence pedaling, or other violations of the law shall be protected from retaliation, firing, or being targeted for prosecution by those who he has accused and if there is a conviction or a plea the person shall receive a 10% bounty on the amount of money value of the fine or of the amount of money saved to the taxpayer.
* Note: This is a variation of the Lincoln Law.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
Elysium
Saw the movie Elysium here in Frederick. It was a good movie, a little sad. The future it describes is a distopia where a few live in comfort and near eternity and the vast masses of people live in "La Miseria" comparable to that of Favelas in Brazil or "La Miseria" in Argentina or Mexico. In fact a lot of the dialogue was in Spanish, and what got to me is that the daughter of the main character's love interest is named "Matilde" and has untreated Leukemia. It sure would be nice to be able to save her the way this character did.
Unfortunately, movies like this are getting to seem increasingly prophetic. Too often our officers are starting to forget that they don't "rule" except by consent of the governed, and in a democracy they either serve the people or they are usurpers. In Elysium the elites have gone so far as to flee into space, taking their technology with them. In our current times they are trying to buy Islands on the border between Canada and USA on Public land instead.
Drop the Gun, Release the Hostages, and then we'll talk
The GOP is hostage taking because it works. Thanks to the Hastart rule and a willingness to "crazy dance" the GOP was able to extort anti-democratic concessions from the Democrats in 2011 -- by threatening the faith and credit of the USA treasury. In 2011 they used the crazy dance to extract a "sequester" rule to fund the government in the face of GOP obduracy with constant cuts. They grabbed the democrats, refused to raise the debt limit, and jumped up and down on the edge of the "fiscal cliff" until the Democrats either caved to them or the economy collapsed. They were willing to risk economic collapse and this was reemphasized by the rating companies lowering our ratting to AA. Another debt collapse would cause our cost of borrowing to rise and restart inflation. I suspect the Koch's and other folks paying for the far right want that outcome. They can charge higher interest on their own loans, and buy up the country at bargain rates with their money. They already own most of it. We are seeing the plans outlined in "Atlas Shrugged" being implemented. The Democrats agreed to the sequester if they couldn't get a clean vote.
As a result they've refused to negotiate and deal with Democrats since then and managed to accomplish a lot of their goals of stiffing the 99% by using the Sequester compromise from the 2011 hostage taking. In fact, they've cut funds to old people, poor people, women and children using the sequester. This time they figured they could use the crazy dance to dump the ACA. But tricks like this only work once. Once people see that the extortionist is going to kill the hostage whatever they do, they can't put up with it anymore. As a result this sequester has run into a wall of refusal to deal. All the spinning, lying, and efforts to pass a budget piecemeal are now PR efforts by the Republicans to shift the blame for their extortion effort to the Democrats. They are counting on low information voters to not be paying attention. But the extortion efforts are ongoing. A minority in the republican party are pushing a seditious and anarchist agenda on the rest of the country. And it has to stop. This is a call for a Parliamentary style House of Representatives and dividing the government into a Presidency and a Prime Minister. Then the President could dissolve the House and call new elections. But that is pie in the sky in this country.
Meanwhile: As the cops say: "Drop the gun, release the hostages, and then we'll talk."
Meanwhile we can hope that the Democrats coupled with a few sane Republicans can come up with a way to get this insanity ended. Unfortunately the crazies have safe seats with crazy local majorities, so it will be hard to dislodge them in 2014. But we have to try.
Friday, October 4, 2013
Expand the Whistleblower Act and Qui Tam rewards
There is an active movement to paint whistleblowers as hackers and malcontents, bad people or even terrorists in the government right now. All that is happening at the same time as white collar crime is so rampant that much of it is either legal or so hidden that no prosecutor will ever catch the conspirators. There is a solution to this however, and it is an old one. It's to change the law to make it illegal for officials to violate the law, and reinstate and broaden the Whistleblower law. Wikipedia explains:
"The False Claims Act (31 U.S.C. §§ 3729–3733, also called the "Lincoln Law") is an American federal law that imposes liability on persons and companies (typically federal contractors) who defraud governmental programs. The law includes a "qui tam" provision that allows people who are not affiliated with the government to file actions on behalf of the government (informally called "whistleblowing"). Persons filing under the Act stand to receive a portion (usually about 15–25 percent) of any recovered damages. Claims under the law have typically involved health care, military, or other government spending programs, and dominate the list of largest pharmaceutical settlements. The government has recovered nearly $22 billion under the False Claims Act between 1987 (after the significant 1986 amendments) and 2008."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_Claims_Act
A lot of our fraud and mischief is directed by persons with power and money. They behave very similar to the defense contractors of both Lincoln's times and present times, except that our corruption is often outside of the pure acquisitions realm. If hackers had the legal power to turn in those committing crimes and file Qui Tam suits, then we would have restored one of our democratic controls that helps keep a lid on corruption. Whistleblowers need to be protected not persecuted and that involves a government whose priority is protecting the general welfare, not attacking it. This law should extend to bank fraud, securities fraud, NSA security fraud, and all frauds.
It's not the NSA, and that's the problem
In my previous posts starting with Bush's Loogie I showed that the problem wasn't so much with NSA proper as with how those capabilities have been granted to private and State actors; which basically amounted to reducing our privacy protections to something like a strippers pasties and thong and the Metastasis of surveillance which has given NSA/FBI powers to State and local police. In the later I detailed how most of our security flows from well meaning directives or efforts to make security work better by sharing it with law enforcement or by inviting in State and private partners.
Thus almost all our problems derive from these seemingly well meaning National Security Council Directives. Since I wrote all that I've been investigating each of the institutions implied by the NSC directives. My last article on this subject was about the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) which went after Occupy as detailed by Naomi Klein. And other efforts that have gone after "intellectual property" have the intended/unintended consequences of strengthening the power of giant corporations.
The result of all this is that law enforcement has tools to go after innocent folks and is sufficiently in bed with powerful private companies that it now has the incentive. Organizations like DSAC are invitations to corruption, and themselves are corrupting because they are run by folks from organizations whose private interest is often at odds with the public interest. At best private companies are mercenary and at worst they are corruptors of our system. I have a lot more to write, but this let me put it all in one place.
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