Supreme Court Corruption

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Today we cover a Supreme Court case about corruption, and the little decisions that lead up  to people eventually making  horrible corrupt decisions. We also discuss  the hollowing out of the middle class and how that has affected corruption as we see it in government, and the important implications for democracy.

Jordan Berg Powers, Jonathan Cohn, and Anna Callahan chat about Massachusetts politics. This is the audio version of the Incorruptible Mass podcast, season 5 episode 45. You can watch the video version on our YouTube channel.

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Transcript

Hello and welcome to Incorruptible Mass. Our mission here is for us all to transform state politics because we know that we could have a state that has policies that support the needs of the vast maajority of the residents who live here. And today we are going to be talking about corruption.
We will cover a Supreme Court case about corruption. We are going to talk about all the things that lead up the thousand decisions that lead up to people eventually making these horrible corrupt decisions that are obviously corrupt. We're going to be talking about the hollowing out of the middle class and how that has affected corruption as we see it in government.
We're going to be talking about democracy and how that intersects. And so you will definitely want to tune in and forward it to all your friends. Before we do, I'm going to introduce–Or actually they will introduce themselves, my two illustrious co hosts. I will start with Jonathan. Jonathan Cohn.
He him his joining from Boston. Sunny day here, right near Symphony hall in the Huntington Theater. And I've been active andissue electoral advocacy here in Massachusetts for a decade.
Fantastic. And Jordan. Jordan Berg Powers him.
And I think for the purposes of this conversation, I'm also a zoning board member in Worcester, Massachusetts. And that will become important later on in this conversation. And I'm Anna Callahan.
She her coming at you from Medford. I don't know why I do this gun thing with my fingers while I'm saying that, but I do. And I am also, in addition to being super, I think corruption is.
Has been a sole, top priority focus of my attention and research and work for like eight years now. I also happen to be a city counselor in Medford. So I am in a position ready to get corrupted.
I'm in that position where you can be corrupted. So today we're talking about corruption. And we are going to have Jonathan Introduce this news story because we couldn't believe what we were hearing, what we were reading.
And you won't be able to believe it either. So, Jonathan, take it away. Unmute myself.
So what we were talking about is a Supreme Court case that we just had someone I was hearing kind of yesterday that deals with corruption. And in particular the question about whether or not corruption is just a. Like a before scenario.
Right? So in the way that the Supreme Court seems incredibly likely to want to further narrow the definition of corruption beyond what they already have, along the lines of that if you give a gift to somebody after they do the thing for you, it's not corrupt. And That it's only corrupt if you give it to them in advance. Okay, so corruption mean corruption.
What most people think of corruption, they're like, yeah, getting money for, like, some corner vote or something. Right? That's Corruption. Exactly.
There you go. Most people's definition of corruption does not involve this, like, analysis of where exactly on the timeline that the, like, transaction happened, but that they're connected. And the specific story itself, which is kind of why here involved this formermayor of this town in Indiana, near Lake Michigan, who, when the city was buying garbage trucks from a local company, and according to the federal prosecutors, it was very clear that he kind of rigged the process for this specific company, and that company gave him $13,000 afterwards and what he called consulting services.
I don't know how you, the person in charge of a process, can in good faith say that you were a consultant for the person. Like,seeking the contract is itself the type of thing that, like, I don't even know how that is a good defense. But he was charged by federal prosecutors and being sentenced to 21 months in prison for corruption.
And then he sued. And his law suit, which is now before the Supreme Court, which gets to decide a body full of people who are themselves quite corrupt. Clarence Thomas perhaps had the decency to not show up on a case of corruption, but he's not likely to recuse himself from this.
That you had some particularly absurd examples. Before we get to those people trying to defend, like, against that this counts as corruption. Should I pause? Let's pause.
Pause. Before you go into those examples. I totally want to go into those because they're a crack.
Okay. Okay. Lines like, and I'm quoting this specifically from the New York Times coverage yesterday from the lawyer for this major, noting things like, I don't know where on the Harry and David menu the gift becomes corrupt.
Talking about fruit baskets like, it's not corrupt. Like, is it not corrupt if it's a cheap fruit basket and corrupt if it's a large one that you're giving to somebody to get them to do a thing for you? Particularly absurd became the discussion about whether it would be for, let's say, the hypothetical example of that if you have a hospital, were to serve a rich person in hopes that they would get money as a donation that we risk criminalizing that behavior as though offering favoritism and special treatment in healthcare to a rich person to get them to donate to your hospital is not like a textbook example of what corruption would mean. Right.
So the Supreme Court is saying, oh, well, you know, if we enforce this, then that means that a hospital, like prioritizing rich people over poor people would be corrupt. Like, as far as the definition of corruption, and that example came from one of the democratic appointed justices because it was Elena Kagan using the example of before you.
I know there's more examples. Yeah. I have been a little bit on some of just the broad picture here.
Right. So what they're saying is they think corruption is when you receive a check and then you vote a certain way. Right.
Or do what they want. Right. But it's not accurate.
If you do what they want and then you receive a check, that's somehow not corruption. And as far as I'm concerned, like, if you have to do the thing before you receive the check, then it's even worse. Like, you literally don't even have the tiny wiggle room of being like an elected official in Congress or whatever, saying, oh, yeah, give me the money and I'll do the thing.
And then afterwards being like, oh, well, I had a reason not to do the thing. Like, there's zero. You literally now you can have absolute and complete corruption where you have to do it before they're going to pay you.
I mean, it is worse. Yeah. So it's what I say.
Also, I just want to say, I just want to say a really quick part of this. You know, most people understand that to be payment in lieu of services. And so they're saying it can't be corruption if you got, if you provided the corruption and then got paid.
It's like, that's actually just how payments work. That's my favorite part about this is they're just like, they're like, those people don't get paid before you do the thing. Like, I don't get, as a consultant, I.
So as a consultant, I don't get paid to, in the theory of work, I get paid for the work. Right. So this is, so basically they're saying you.
I don't know, it's just, it's bizarro worlds. It's bizarro worlds. Yeah.
Most people would consider that just pavement in lieu of services. Corruption, Lewis services. It really tells you how completely out of touch the Supreme Court is with, like, normal ethical values.
And this is something I want to talk about, because in my, like, studying corruption and stuff, the way I think about these things is that when you. When you're doing that level, when you're taking $100,000 from the fossil fuel industry and voting to destroy the planet. Right.
Or voting to destroy the planet and then take $100,000 from the fossil fuel industry, either of those that you do like, that is after a thousand other decisions that seemed much smaller, that each one brought you to a place where then you felt like, oh, well, it's not as bad as the thing I. You know, it's. It's almost like the thing I already did, therefore, it's fine.
And what. What I understand corruption to be is the change, which happens quite quickly for some people, like Kristin Sineva, of your ethical values that you have before you're elected, into the ethical values that the political class has and that group of people who are elected. And I consider the Supreme Court as involved in that political class because people have lifetime appointments that.
Where they totally can vote on political things and have permanent decisions made. So they are totally in that class, but their ethical values are just. They cannot even understand what it's like to be a normal person and to have normal ethical values.
They're totally outside of that. Yeah. It also almost speaks to the way in which, particularly the Supreme Court justices, where we saw a few months ago so much of the kind of run of the mill corruption that exists, you can imagine these people think, like, I get gifts all the time.
Is that. And that divorce some basic reality where it's probably just so common that at any timeline around a case that they may or may not have before them, they're constantly getting people engaged in influence peddling. And that, like, that doesn't mean it's not corrupt.
And to your point, it's often setting over the years in which the Supreme Court has been trying to define down corruption every chance that it gets, as though the only definition of corruption is that if you had a briefcase filled with money and, like, an instruction manual. So that there's, like, an instruction manual of, like, this is for the vote that you're taking tomorrow. Yeah.
Then again, it's not that blatant in that direction sequence in that order. So that, like, to their point, if they gave you the briefcase full of money and rather than having instructions, it said, thank you for the vote that you took yesterday, it would somehow not be correct. This is payment for the vote that you took yesterday.
I do think. I think. I do want to say really quickly, I want to tease out some of these things, because I do think as somebody who sat at an intersection of little bit of power at mass alliance, where you had access to our groups and people wanted access to them,they wanted endorsements, and saw me as a pivotal part of that process.
What Anna's saying is really important. There are a million little decisions you make, and that basket of goods does affect you. It Affects you.
You think nicely of that person and it can skew whether or not you, how you see them, how you view the way, how you interpret the way they talk to you, whether or not you trust them. Right? Those are all little decisions and those are all little corruptions and those are all little places that the influence of being in that position of power inevitably starts to sort of. You start to skew your own view.
And I would say that all the time to people. Listen to me, talk to me. And I'd say, like, yeah, like, I've been here a long time.
I need other people to weigh in, other people. It's really important we get new faces. I'm not going to put my finger on this because I know you, right? Like, I would.
It would be really difficult. I would, you know, I would say, people say, what do you think? I would say it's not fair for me to think I Know this person, right? Like, it's so. It, you know, it's really hard to hold that high level of standard, to know that even though you think you can be impartial, that that's an impossibility.
Because you have that. Because you. Because you have that familial whatever, it might even be like that they gave you a HarryDavid fruit basket.
And that's good. That is going into. That is a low level of effect.
That is influence peddling. And so, you know, when they say, like, oh, what level? The answer is every level there should. If you are.
And they have this backwards. They have this ass backwards. So as a zoning board member, I have a higher level of standard than a city councilor or a state rep has even less.
And congresspeople less. Right? Like, your ability to influence people and give them money increases the more power they have, which is backwards. So, like, it.
If you. If you are. So if you are the supreme Court, there should be $0 you should be able to take.
You shouldn't be able to get, you know, they talk about a Chipotle meal. You shouldn't be able to get one chipotle meal for free. Every dollar that you get should be from the public and that's the only dollars that you should get because you have absolute power.
You're basically little kings and queens. So like, that's like you, like, the more power you have, the lines should be bigger and blacker and clearer, not greater and less enforceable. Right.
And so, like, that's the problem with this is like when they, they're sort of, they're deriding these hair like, oh, like what? Fruit basket.The answer is zero. Fruit basket.
You should not be able to deliver a, you should not be able to deliver a napkin for free to a Supreme Court justice, let alone a president, let alone a congressperson. Right. And a zoning board member.
A fruit basket is not going to make much of a difference, says the zoning board member. But I agree with you. The only thing I Wanted to throw in here is I said something about the stack of decisions that lead one to another that are easy to start making that decision at the beginning and that leads you to whatever.
And I just want to give people a sense for what I'm talking about. You know, not because everybody thinks about money.Everybody thinks, oh, corruption must include money.
And I totally, totally disagree. I think it's about ethical values and favoring other elected officials over like regular people and the beliefs of other elected officials and the wealthy over regular people. And so just a little example.
Like, you know, I have talked to good, pretty progressive elected officials who say, well, my policy is I only endorse incumbents unless they're like, you know, basically like going to be arrested. And, you know, this is the thing is they're saying like, hey, other elected officials are my team. I'm going to be, you know, supporting my team and I'm not going to be supporting other people even if politically, you know, policy wise they completely agree with a challenger.
Like that is these are the kinds of decisions. And you make those decisions usually because it has to do with your own ability to get reelected. And that is so effective, especially like here, a little bit less in a place like Massachusetts, but you're in a purple state and there is some possibility that the other party is going to get your seat.
And then suddenly everybody's like, do anything you can, even if it's like ethically questionable to win your seat because if you don't, then the other side is gonna win and the other side will pass these horrible laws and it's for the greater good. And that's how a ton of small corrupt decisions get made slowly over time, you know, they just get bigger and bigger and bigger until you end up with this kind of thing, which to everybody except the people on the Supreme Court is obviously corrupt. The one quick thing that this discussion reminded me of, it's one of those, um, things that went viral on Twitter soon.
Uh, soon that went Twitter recently, uh, from the account Internet hippo. And I don't know if either of you are familiar with the account Internet hippo. Uh, this is something last year, which was like, the new right wing thing is describing crimes as generically as possible to pretend like they're not crimes.
Someone gets convicted of conspiracy and they start yelling, wow, so it's illegal to make plans with friends. Now. I feel like that this is exactly.
That speaks so well of this, how corruption gets talked about, that you will see people try to reduce it to the seemingly, like,anodyne thing when it's just very obvious that it was kind of not above board. Yeah, I just want to. I want to say there's so many.
I have so many things swirling in my mind. Like the fact that. The fact that, like, guy Glottis got $10,000 for reportedly to get his kitchen redone, although no one could see proof that that happened app. And because they were like,oh, look, it was for a service. They said it wasn't corruption to money appearing in one of our congresswoman's bank accounts without accountability and nothing happening.
And just the ways in which there's this benign corruption happening all the time. And I guess I want to step back and say that the reason this matters is that this is the things that's leading to the undermining of our democracy. People believe to their core that the system is rigged, and they're right, it's rigged, but it's rigged in lots of little ways, right? Like, if you have somebody thinking it's totally okay for a billionaire to go into a hospital and get care that you don't get access to because of money, and the might donate a million dollars to them in the hopes that they might give you benefit, right? And like that.
And that is corruption to its core. And we think. And that's normalized, right? So there's.
And that under, that is the. That is the literal petri dish for which governments get undone, right? Like, why does a government get.Not just democracy, any government.
Governments become undone when corruption starts to feel like the government is stopping the government from doing the basic things government needs to do to provide care, opportunities for people, right? So when people feel like there's just no hope because it's so corrupt, they will overthrow that form of government or who's whoever is in charge. Right. They'll start by just getting out, not voting, leaving the political parties, which we see already, they start by removing themselves from, but eventually they get fed up.
And you get it feeds. You know, there's a reason that, like, the through line between Barack Obama's campaign message andDonald Trump's are largely the same, although obviously Donald Trump's is way more racist, but is the through line of feeling like the system is not working for you and it's on purpose, and the people in charge are not the people who, the people who are causing the problem. And so there's some great books out there I would encourage.
Chris Hayes wrote a great book about the loss of faith in institutions and what that's doing. And I think what's really important about that is it's not just like Congress, which is how we focus on institutions, but rather that as a whole, we as a society have lost our faith in the broader institutions that we used to think of as, um, as important parts of it. And a lot of the reason for that is, is benign corruption.
The ways in which money and power and the promise of money and power. Right. Not even actual money and power, but just the promise of it, the opportunity to it is allowing, is skewing decision making.
Um, and I'm. And I. And, uh, I would be remiss without talking about, like, this is all possible because of the hollowing out of the middle class.
Right. Like, you, it's really, if you, you know, if everybody. It's really hard.
People are less likely to do really corrupt things if they're doing okay. And the person who's trying to do. To help them do something that they know is wrong is just doing a little bit better.
Right. This is possible because there are. Because everyone knows that, yeah.
You might be able to move a little bit up, you might be able to do a little bit better, but by and large, the only way you are going togo from, you know, for. To get real economic opportunity is to either be born rich or marry into it or be friends with them. Yeah.
And the other thing that it does is for the political class, the pandering to the middle class doesn't matter anymore. The only thing that matters is to phone call the uber wealthy, listen to whatever they say, and then do it like that is the only thing that matters because we don't have a middle class that has any power. Right.
Well, it's dwindling. Yeah. Dwindling power.
That just reminds me of the attraction that when you have that kind of fractal inequality that exists and people who often have more money than most who are in hold elected office, see those who have exorbitant sums that. There was this New York Times Article a month ago about the film tax incentives in different states. And one thing that they had noted is, like, you'll have some of the studios having exclusive parties with celebrities for, like, local, like, for some of these state legislators.
And like, that's like, when you have that degree of inequality that exists at every scale, it helps fuel, like, where power ultimately gravitates in that direction. And those seeking power, seeking or seeking the perks that power comes from, I will say naturally gravitate accordingly. When you're talking about the state legislature in California, state Senate seats in California are larger than congressional districts.
So, yeah, like, you know, these are not small seats, just FYI, you know. Yeah. Yep.
And so I guess I want to say also that the Supreme Court has been on this, this thing undoing, you know, sort of basic things about corruption for some time now. Jonathan, do you want to mention some of the other cases? These are hilarious. I was just, I Didn't even know that they had undo all of these things.
Oh, the fact that they. Yeah, let me, let me pull that up. It's like the bridgegate case is from.
Is one of the, like, shocking things to me that I. And the Virginia that that was actually overturned, that, like, famous 2013 case involving the George Washington bridge closures. But also, let's say in 2016.
I'd forgotten about this as well. Don't stop there. Say what that is.
Get a little more context. Bridgegate. I remember it.
Colloquial. Jordan, do you remember the exact sequence events in basically they purposefully to hurt people who weren't endorsing Christie for reelection. The Christie campaign and operatives closed, like, did construction and some of the worst places to cause traffic to make people mad at the local mayors.
And in this case, it was one of the most famous bridges into lower Manhattan. And they purposefully caused like, just hours of traffic and delay just to hurt this one mayor. Wow.
And then the other, the other one is recent cases that the Supreme Court overturned was a conviction of Bob McDonald, who's the former governor of Virginia, who had accepted various loans and vacations on a business executive. And the Supreme Court's like, no, no, we do that. How could that be corrupt? I just want to say that.
Thank you for pointing that out. I just wanted to say that because this is what's so amazing about this case. So essentially in our current system, because our senate and our media are so corrupt and they so want you to believe in these institutions that are failing us that, like, they won't even say the obvious thing, which is these are literal criminals being like, well, I mean, can we just undo the crime that we're currently committing? Not illegal, right? They're trying to.
These people are taking money after the fact for the ways in which they are producing legislation that's making money for rich people. I mean, they're producing, they're producing decisions in the Supreme Court that can't be undone, that make rich people richer. And then those rich people are giving them money for it.
And they're like, what if that's okay? What if we just make that okay and there's no copies? Do you know what the most effective way of rooting out corruption in government is? Defining away the existence of the definition of corruption itself. Nothing is corruption. And I imagine, I just want to say real quickly, it's just like, it's like, it just, I just, I have this picture of like the hamburglar from McDonald's from our childhood getting a jury of other, like, criminals in the jury box.
It's just like. Or like a bank robber. And it's like, twelve bank robber jury members being like, I think it's fine.
That's what's happening. I've done that too. Doesn't everyone, doesn't everyone do, therefore it's fine.
I was just going to say that, you know, other countries have much stricter laws than we do. So this is already a giant problem that we have. Yeah, Supreme Court is like, oh, let's just make nothing illegal.
And therefore, no, we won't have any, you know, criminals in the, in the, you know, political elite class. I say this all the time, that i have really made normal because we think of our democracy as exceptional. We've really made normal corruption.
There's a high level of corruption happening across all these levels of government. I think this podcast talked a lot about it. I talked about how you come before the zoning board and you say, I'm going to spend all this money and you get a different government than poor people who have no money.
And then they're like, you have to every rule to be ticked perfectly. And I'm just like, that's opposite of how government should work. But that's, to me, this is endemic.
And there's some. The last thing I wanted to say really quickly is there's another great book called Elite Capture. I encourage readers to listeners to read it it's a fantastic book.
It's about how in the ways in which power corrupts the things that we value, the sort of public goods and public areas, including, most importantly, public ideas, and the ways in which progressive ideas get co-opted through these processes. And I think this is sort of, all of these things are working together to sort of undermine our democracy in this moment. Absolutely.
Well, thank you so much. I love conversations like this. Really close to my heart here, close to my outrage, you know.
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