The Progress Report
June 22, 2011
In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned in disgrace after the nation learned that he had accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from corporate executives and other wealthy benefactors. Forty years later, Justice Clarence Thomas is caught in a strikingly similar scandal. Similarly to Fortas, Thomas has a wealthy benefactor named Harlan Crow who has shown lavish generosity to Thomas and his Tea Partying wife Ginni. And where Fortas had an ad hoc group of corporate executives to subsidize his lifestyle, Thomas seems to have the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) — a corporate-aligned think tank that once gave him a $15,000 gift. We find it difficult to find daylight between Thomas’ actions and the gifting scandal that forced Abe Fortas off the bench.
LAVISH GIFTS: Like Fortas before him, Thomas received tens of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from wealthy benefactors — some of whom have an interest in cases before his court. Crow gave Thomas a $19,000 Bible that belonged to Frederick Douglass. He provided Thomas’ wife with half a million dollars to start a Tea Party group, and he donated over $1 million dollars to fund a museum that will include exhibits honoring Justice Thomas. Crow has a long history of investing in conservative political causes — he’s donated nearly $5 million to Republican candidates and conservative organizations, including $100,000 to the anti-John Kerry Swift Boat Veterans for Truth — but he isn’t even the most troubling entity to rain gifts upon Clarence Thomas. That honor goes to AEI, which gifted Thomas with a $15,000 bust of Abraham Lincoln even though AEI frequently files briefs in Thomas’ Court. Thomas has not recused himself from cases in which AEI participated.
SCANDALS UPON SCANDALS: If Thomas’ addiction to high dollar favors were his only problem, that would be deeply disturbing. But this is just one of many scandals facing the justice. Justice Thomas attended a Koch-sponsored political fundraiser intended to fund the conservative infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks, and media outlets, an act that would likely violate his ethical obligation not to engage in fundraising if the Supreme Court were not exempt from the Code of Conduct for U.S. judges. Thomas claimed that his wife Ginni — a lobbyist and high-earning member of the professional right — earned no non-investment income whatsoever while she was working at the right-wing Heritage Foundation, despite having a legal obligation to disclose her income on his annual disclosure form. After Thomas’ failure to disclose this income was widely reported by the press, Thomas amended his disclosure forms to include Ginni’s income. And the fact that his wife is now working as a Tea Party lobbyist could raise recusal issues for Justice Thomas. Ginni Thomas has a right to do whatever she wants for a living, but if the Thomas family earned one dime to lobby in favor of repealing health reform, it would be a serious conflict of interest for Thomas to sit on a case that could make that repeal a reality.
THEIR MAN ON THE COURT: The rich and the powerful have been good to Justice Thomas, but Thomas has been extremely good to them. Thomas didn’t just join the infamous Citizens Uniteddecision opening up the flood gates to corporate money in elections, he also would have struck down essential transparency laws that allow Americans to know who is buying their democracy. Thomas stood behind decisions eviscerating consumer rights and the rights of workers in the workplace, and he embraces a vision of the Constitution that is nothing shy of terrifying. Inthree separate opinions, conservative Thomas called for a return to a discredited theory of the Constitution that early 20th century justices used to declare federal child labor laws unconstitutional. So Thomas has little regard for the Constitution and even less for precedent — perhaps that explains why he has thumbed his nose at the Fortas precedent and entangled himself so tightly with his wealthy and influential benefactors.
Evening Brief: Important Stories That You May Have Missed
The natural gas industry has developed the coloring book “Talisman Terry’s Energy Adventure,” starring the “friendly fracosaurus,” a smiling dinosaur who glosses over environmental concerns and promotes the message that fracking is smart.
Several taxi companies and more than 2,000 cab drivers have filed a lawsuit against Georgia’s new immigration law, arguing that the provision that prevents anyone from transporting an undocumented immigrant would burden them with the responsibility of checking the immigration status of each and every one of their passengers.
The State Department warns that if you try to sail to Gaza, Israel may try to kill you.
Former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt now opposes IPAB, even though he once government intervention in the health sector that would have gone further when it comes to health care costs.
NBC has “rewarded” Donald Trump with a hefty paycheck: $65 million a year over two years, “a sum that’s apparently a ‘substantial increase.’”
An undocumented immigrant came forward today with his true identity, not in a police round-up, but on the front page of The New York Times Magazine. Jose Vargas, a Pultizer-Prize-winning journalist who has written for The Huffington Post, The New Yorker and The Washington Post, reports here on his own journey from a childhood in the Bay Area to his successful career to the moment he decided to go public.
The economy has not lived up to growth predictions for June, leading the Federal Reserve into“a zone of inaction” in which it proposes a cautious economic plan and most likely will stay clear of future bond-buying schemes.
Good news for Rep. Michele Bachmann: The double-bind predicament that then-presidential-candidate Hillary Clinton reportedly suffered from in 2008 may no longer be an issue for strong women in the media, according to a new study. Instead, women portrayed as tough seem to benefit in much the same way that tough men do with regards to public opinion.
And Stephen Colbert unveils who he thinks is the GOP’s best candidate: the stick figure from road signs.
© 2005-2011 Center for American Progress Action Fund
No comments:
Post a Comment