Don't take gifts. Don't accept favors. Don't play favorites. Don't be unethical. Don't appear unethical.
The opposite of a government that does things "by the book" has a name: Corruption.
There is a silver lining to our complaints about stickler bureaucrats in the federal civil service. We don't have a culture of bribery, favor-granting, and self-dealing among career federal employees. But there is a growing divide between the rules for the civil service and the norms projected by people at the very top in the Congress, the Executive Branch, and the Supreme Court. They are setting a bad example.
Jennifer Angelo understands the rules about ethics in government. As a federal employee, she lived under them. As a government lawyer she enforced them. She has now retired. She lives in Washington, D.C. She shared a comment.
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Guest Post by Jennifer Angelo
Peter’s April 14 piece about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was right on the money. It’s not just important for public officials to follow the letter of the law when it comes to ethics, they should avoid even the appearance that they’re violating ethical principles. Public service is just that. For most people it’s easy to stay on the right side of the line.
As a former federal employee, I find it ironic that Thomas is held to a lower standard than I or any of my colleagues were. Federal Agencies go to great lengths to make sure employees comply with ethics laws and regulations, which are detailed and specific.
If you’re interested, here is the starting point from the Office of Government Ethics. These rules cover reporting requirements, conflicts of interest, acceptance of gifts, and a host of other ethical issues. In addition to these rules, each agency has additional standards that cover situations specific to their mission. Much time is spent reviewing financial disclosures and advising employees on how to comply with the law.
I wore many hats as an attorney at the U.S. Postal Service, one of which was ethics advisor. I got calls daily from Postmasters who were offered meals or refreshments at meetings with big mailers, rounds of golf at events with vendors or personal hospitality at the home of a business associate who had become a friend. Most employees were scrupulous about following the rules, if only to keep from stepping over a line and getting into trouble. I gave dozens of ethics training classes, and I can assure you that every federal employee understands that “personal hospitality” includes such things as dinner or drinks at someone’s home, not lavish vacations on private jets to exotic locations. Gifts were limited to $20 per occasion totaling no more than $50 a year. I once returned a book sent to me by an expert witness because I was told, even though it was worth only $15, it might create an appearance of impropriety if I wanted to use that witness again.
Despite best efforts, ethical slip-ups happen. In the 1990s, Postmaster General Marvin Runyon, one of those Agency heads who comes in and shakes up the whole organization, found out the hard way that conflicts of interest are taken seriously at federal agencies. He came to USPS out of a lucrative career in private industry and owned lots of Coca Cola stock. One of the money-making ideas his marketing people came up with was putting Coke machines in Post Office lobbies. Runyon participated in meetings to discuss the idea, which never came to fruition.
Those discussions were enough to trigger the criminal conflict of interest law – a strict liability statute that doesn’t require criminal intent – and an investigation by the Department of Justice. It went on for more than a year; ultimately Runyon was not criminally charged but paid $27,550 to settle a civil case once the investigation was over. If you Google Marvin Runyon and Coke, you will see the stories in major news outlets. The Coca Cola incident also appears in every obituary of Runyon, who died in 2004. Not the kind of legacy anyone hopes for.
What Clarence Thomas has done is orders of magnitude worse than anything the typical ethics advisor sees over their entire career. He accepted – and didn’t report - gifts of lavish vacations, private jet trips and yacht voyages from Harlan Crow, a conservative activist, claiming someone had told them they qualified as “personal hospitality” from a friend. This is ludicrous and speaks very ill of his ability to research an uncomplicated legal issue. As if that weren’t enough, Crow bought the house Thomas grew up in, which his mother still lives in. Crow renovated the property and apparently is now Mrs. Thomas’s landlord. Thomas didn’t disclose any of that, and there is no ambiguity in the rules that required him to do so. Who knows what else Thomas is hiding?
Will Clarence Thomas be treated like any other public servant in this situation? Apparently not, because even though he violated the disclosure rules that every federal employee must comply with, there appears to be no one willing to enforce the rules when the violator is at the top of the judicial food chain. Right now, my only consolation is that when Clarence Thomas dies, this scandal will be featured in every one of his obituaries. It’s not much, but at least his legacy will be tarnished, even if he faces no consequences in the meantime.
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27 comments:
Every American should celebrate the day he finally steps down. Unfortunately he probably doesn't want to retire because then he might have to spend more time with Ginni. They are both very disturbed people. Anita Hill warned us.
Well said Jen. My husband was an AID employee for 30 years. We were well aware of the ethics rules. That a Supreme Court justice apparently was not, is a little hard to believe. Robert’s should clean his house if he is concerned about how all this appears. Shameful.
"Growing up as a devout Catholic, Thomas originally intended to be a priest in the Catholic Church" - Wikipedia
Thomas grew up poor, so it's not surprising that rubbing shoulders with wealth would reveal a weakness for luxury, and it's not a great leap from that to corruption, particularly when there are many enticements. Making one's way to the Supreme Court must be an intoxicating thrill for such a person, perhaps exacerbating an already inflated ego, which of course brings up the biblical adage:
"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall," (Proverbs 16:18)
The challenge we are facing is whether or not we will restrain those who attain power and abuse it. The common denominator between Trump and Thomas and Santos, is a Republican party in moral and ethical free-fall.
Studies have shown that corruption is a leading indicator for political instability, which explains why Republicans tried to overturn the 2020 election. Now we’re in danger of having the Supreme Court side with them. So much for checks and balances.
What this uproar about Clarence Thomas lacks is a shred of evidence that even one of his decisions was improperly influenced. Convincing evidence that some decision he made was improperly influenced would be a serious matter, but I have not seen anything of the sort.
He violated a rule, the mainstream media screeches, as though rules were something sacred, handed down on tablets by a prophet, direct from God himself.
I worked for a year as a civilian employee of the US Navy, and let me tell you: we had rules. We had so many rules of such awesome complexity that not only were they incomprehensible, they made it almost impossible for us to get anything done.
This country is strangling in bureaucratic rules. I just heard an NPR report about how the United States wants to become dominant in production of lithium ion batteries. But this requires mining, and NPR said it can take up to 10 years to get permits for a mine here in the US. Meanwhile, China is charging (so to speak) ahead, and by the time we manage to get through the red tape (assuming that is even possible), China will have achieved dominance in yet another strategic field.
There has to be a balance between useful rules and the ability to get things done. We are way out of balance right now. Allow me to paraphrase from Blazing Saddles: We don’t need more stinkin’ rules.
Borrowed from Garret Epps, a distinguished Professor of Law; Reading the entire dissent by Thomas is a little mind numbing, but wort the time, imho.
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I am a cynic. I expect nothing from the current Republican Party but skulduggery and unethical conduct. Too few in the GOP exhibit any ethical core from lowest to highest levels in their party. People that work with stone know that even the largest rock can be fractured and cleaved by repeated small, well placed, strikes. Current ethical lapses and partisan skulduggery leading to nothing in the way of consequences for the offenders is cleaving our republic. Tainted now is the judicial system, our legislative branch and even rot within the executive branch, all a leftover from the previous administration. What happened to checks and balances? Oh, checks and balance actions require ethical people to enforce and demand that corruption in government will not stand. So I guess it's up to us, the voter, to remember character matters in our politicians and leaders casting our vote accordingly.
I have to laugh at the notion, even though it’s not funny, that a billionaire Republican donor’s largesse to Clarence Thomas didn’t affect his decisions. That’s like saying the all the money going to politicians from lobbyists doesn’t affect their decisions either. The reason bribery is such a time-honored tradition is because it works. Of course, it’s hard to draw a straight line between the money received and the decisions made, which is why they get away with it.
As Lily Tomlin said: “No matter how cynical you get, it’s impossible to keep up.”
Michael Trigoboff makes an interesting and good point. I do not think that the parent of one of his students could have tempted him to write an enthusiastic letter of recommendation to a graduate school in Computer Science for a student he thought could not do graduate school work. Similarly, I don't think the way influence operates is for that donor to reverse a decision that Clarence Thomas felt was a matter of conviction.
Still, it would morally wrong for Trigoboff to take gifts of $50,000, $100,000, or $5 million dollars from a parent who had a daughter or son who wanted admission to a CS grad school. It would look wrong and be wrong. Even if Trigoboff disclosed to the graduate school that "Susan Student's father has made cumulative gifts to me of $5 million dollars but I do not feel this influenced this enthusiastic recommendation" would be sufficient disclosure. The graduate school would be skeptical and troubled and unclear about how to evaluate the recommendation.
The mechanism for influencing Thomas is to be so friendly and simpatico that Thomas cannot separate his legal opinion from his friendship. They are intertwined.
Would the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on family vacations together influence Trigoboff. I would say yes in the sense that if he were compelled to write some recommendation, as Justices are in fact compelled to write them, than I suspect that he would take some care, with a mind running in multiple directions, to be fair, yes, but also not to offend and disappoint a friend. It would be a complication. A conflict.
There are rules in place for that reason. Yes, darned nuisance rules. Those rules of ethics and conflict of interest would keep Trigoboff from writing any recommendation for a person who had given him both friendship and enormous "hospitality." We are better for having those rules.
Civilization requires rules. Of the government doesn't make them on our behalf then the powerful will.
You won't like that outcome, I promise you.
We're reminded regularly of the effects of corruption in other countries.
Do we really want to go there? SCOTUS should be an example, not an embarrassment. Equal justice and all that, right?
Remember, that reader just likes to argue.
He is like the teenager who always has an excuse and who just keeps arguing on and on.
Every decent person knows that public officials and public employees, ESPECIALLY JUDGES FOR GOD'S SAKE, should be free of corruption and free of the appearance of corruption.
In addition to juvenile delinquents, the only people who disagree (as usual) are criminals, social deviants and anyone with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD). They have brain disorder and possibly were raised in a bad home.
Exactly. Not to mention, How difficult is it? Not difficult at all.
I have been on welfare. According to the rules, if the program participant receives anything of value over $25.00 (twenty-five bucks) the person is required to report it to county social services.
It’s kind of you, Peter, to assume that Justice Thomas didn’t consciously allow his decisions to be swayed by gifts from his donor. The problem is that his billionaire benefactor didn’t befriend him until after he became a Supreme Court justice. For Thomas to be oblivious of why the relationship was cultivated or that accepting such high-value gifts is unethical, he’d have to be really stupid. Considering his position, it would be more reasonable to assume he isn’t that stupid.
Rules are necessary. But bad rules are often disastrous.
Parts of the ethics rules are occasionally unsupportable, in my experience, but the rules, per se, are really important.
Anyone in the building trade could speak for hours about bad, stupid, rules, that are not only unfair to builders, but increase the already expensive housing costs.
I wonder how the survivors of the condo collapse in Surfside, Florida feel about all those bad, stupid rules that hadn't been followed.
Regarding rules: I talked about a balance; Malcolm talked about bad rules. No one said, “No rules.”
Responding as though someone said that is dishonest and toxic.
For the 98 people killed in surfside, ignoring the rules proved pretty toxic. For the credibility of the Supreme Court, Thomas' contempt for the rules proved pretty toxic. In a civilized society, if you want to play, you need to play by the rules.
Mike, I’m with Michael on this one. Your examples, though true, don’t address all the really bad rules. One example: Oregon's Constitution originally outlawed blacks from living here. And cited the “legality' of whipping (caning?) any black who tried to settle here. This was “improved” shortly thereafter. No more whippings, forced labor ibstesd.
Mike, think about it. Some rules are simplwritten without addressing things with common sense. Others are downright evil. And yes, many (most?) are spot on.
Here’s an example of the unfortunate consequences of poorly designed rules.
Malcolm,
In my youth, I worked on BART. If you've ever taken it under the bay, I'll bet you're glad we followed the rules.
Mike, what’s that have to do with BAD rules?
Aye, Michael, as licensed general contractor, and 8 year Planning Commissioner, I’ve seen all that shit, and a lot more. All caused by bad rules. I’ve also inadvertently profited from them, since the rental houses values have increased at way higher than inflation due to the bad rules caused housing shortages.
If you ever want to be a leader, you can’t be a yes-man follow every rule, follower.
The manager I briefly had When I worked for the Navy told me that he thought his main job was to be like an umbrella, to protect us from the bureaucratic crap rolling down towards us from upper management.
Most rules were created for a reason. I would hate to live in a high-rise where the builder decided which rules were unreasonable. Besides, this is all nothing but a distraction. The reason for people in Clarence Thomas' position not accepting high-value gifts couldn't be more obvious.
Wow. So much for reason. Nothing as hard to reason with as a broken record.
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