American Corruption and the U.S. Supreme Court

Is America the most corrupt nation on Earth? Well, not quite, or not yet, but the trend is bad and the implications scary.

According to transparency.org, the United States is indeed the most corrupt of the top 10 richest nations but not of the entire world. Denmark and Finland are the least corrupt, and Syria and Somalia the worst. But still, U.S. corruption is headed in the wrong direction, and that effects public confidence in government. It’s why I share this today.

I often write here about healthcare technologies and policies and have been critical of the insane levels of corruption I see coming from the cartel-like medical industrial complex. As with any modern corporation that exhibits sociopathic behavior, the healthcare industry is incentivized to maximize revenue, profits, and shareholder value rather than the health and productivity of our nation’s workforce. But, the problem seems to go deeper than that.

I’ve long noticed this trend and attribute it to greed, extreme wealth, and failed public policies. But it’s also seen in an April 2023 bombshell report from ProPublica. The well-publicized report revealed that for decades GOP mega-donor Harlan Crow has hosted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on luxury vacations worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The news kept getting worse as we later learned that Crow also bought a home for Thomas’ mother and has been paying over $6,000/month in tuition for his grandnephew to attend an elite private school. Thomas didn’t disclose any of these political “gifts,” as required by a law passed after Watergate that applies to judges, members of Congress and other federal officials. He also didn’t recuse himself from cases affecting the Crow family and real estate industry, or from cases involving his wife, Ginni, in her efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. 

Working for the nonprofit Judicial Education Project, conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo paid tens of thousands of dollars to Ginni for “consulting work” in 2012. The funds were funneled through GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway, specifying that Ginni’s name be left off the billing paperwork. The same year, the nonprofit filed a brief with the Supreme Court in a landmark voting rights case. Of course, Thomas did not recuse in that case either. 

So, it appears justice in the U.S. is up for sale to the highest bidder, just as with Congress. But it get’s worse.

Lifetime Appointments Questioned

The Constitutional purpose of giving federal judges such extraordinary job security of lifetime appointments is to remove them from political pressures. This was intended to help ensure that the decisions they make are guided by law and judgment rather than trying to placate political interests to save their job. But there are questions to whether lifetime tenure removes the politics or adds to it. Because Supreme Court Justices can serve decades, every vacancy has become a partisan contest, where winning or losing the nomination can have a significant impact on the future of our nation. That concern, and questionable behavior of Justice Thomas and others, is fueling debates over reforming the Court.

Lack of accountability – Sadly, the Supreme Court is exempt from ethics rules and the mentioned post-Watergate law. It’s left almost entirely to police itself with no accountability at all. This lack of oversight is eroding trust – not just of the Court but also of Congress and other public institutions. Even the perception of corruption harms the very soul of our nation and likely our mental and physical health too. So, today I write about it with spin about what the news media is ignoring. 

Lies erode trust too – In their senate confirmation hearings, several Supreme Court justices blatantly lied when asked about their positions on abortion and Roe v. Wade. Later, they voted to overturn that landmark case. While the damage to trust and the health of women has already been done, some have argued these lies should be grounds for impeachment. 

Citizens United and What the News Media is NOT YET Talking About

How did Clarence Thomas vote on Citizens United? His was the deciding 5-4 vote that allowed dark money to corrupt our government and gave Crow and other billionaires unlimited sway over elections and policy. Notice how the Crow family’s average yearly political contributions went up 862% after Citizens United was decided in 2010.  New analysis by Americans for Tax Fairness found that 465 billionaires pumped $881,000,000 into the 2022 federal midterm elections by October. That was 27x more than they ever contributed before Citizens United was decided, and I expect it to get much worse. There’s no longer a cap on campaign spending (as long as it’s not coordinated by the campaign itself), and there’s no reporting requirement, so dark money from adversarial nation states can now influence our elections. The return on investment of political corruption is too great to not do it.

The High Return on Political Investment 

The Healthcare industry is just one example of outsized political influence and corruption. According to OpenSecrets, there are over 1,800 registered lobbyists working for pharmaceutical and health products, meaning the industry has more than three lobbyists for each member of the Congress. Fixing this corrupting imbalance requires fixing our political system and the extreme inequality and corporate greed underlying it, as well as getting the healthcare objectives and incentives right.

The perversely profitable medical cartel has stolen trillions of dollars per year from the middle class, risking our health while protecting ill-gained profits with massive “investments” in political influence. Since Citizens United, insurers, hospitals, drug companies, testing companies, and medical equipment providers can now invest much more to influence elections and polity. And they invest because the ROI is so high. Because of that, I even predicted the first trillion dollar election and suggested other industries could follow suit.

Greed and the profit motive – In 1923, two Canadian scientists won the Nobel Prize for discovering insulin. They decided to give away the patent for free because they wanted insulin to be available to diabetics everywhere at no charge. For turning over their patent to production, they agreed to receive just $1 each in compensation. Since then, however, drug companies have distorted the patent process to monopolize the insulin market and charge diabetics $500 per month for the drug so many need to survive. Thankfully, President Biden stepped in to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices on behalf of patients and reduce exorbitant insulin costs. That’s important, because the more important a drug is to saving life or relieving extreme pain, the larger the profit potential. In my view, this isn’t healthcare; it’s extortion, and it was made possible through political corruption.

Misaligned objectives and incentives – Even worse than the perverse profits from some drugs is the side effects they may cause, creating market opportunities for new drugs to treat those side effects. Unfortunately, curing patients is not a sustainable business model, but treating side effects, and even causing them, is.

Extreme Inequality and its Effect on American Corruption

As I’ve said here before, extreme inequality of wealth and income underlies almost every issue our society faces today, including healthcare, immigration, infrastructure, the environment, women’s rights, social justice, foreign relations, and more. To influence both public policy and public opinion, rich libertarians like Harlan Crow and Charles Koch have invested for decades and poured millions into

• conservative think tanks (Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, Cato Institute, American Legislative Exchange Council),
• conservative judges (through the Federalist Society),
• conservative politicians (through campaign finance), and
• conservative media (AM talk radio, Fox News, One America News, NewsMax).

Often described as American oligarchs, they have successfully divided our Congress and nation along partisan lines. One of the best examples of that is with the documentary, “The Brainwashing of My Dad.” The film shows how voters can be made hateful, convinced to support radical policies, and vote against their own best interest. It has a storyline that chronicles grandpa’s severe change of personality when he got hooked on conservative talk radio and Fox News. Most surprising was how quickly grandpa returned to his friendly, fun-loving, and accepting self after his radio broke and grandma programmed their new TV without putting Fox on the favorites list. Grandpa then started watching NPR, PBS, BBC News, and National Geographic instead.

In another example, AMERICA BROKEN is my critique of American Capitalism, Healthcare, and Politics. The article argues, “There’s no such thing as Free Market Capitalism without rules governing Property, Monopoly, Contracts, and Bankruptcy.” But who makes the rules? And who enforces them? It concludes that Capitalism today has been distorted by wide disparities of wealth, influence and opportunity. All of this is made worse by news media profiting from sensationalism and social media spreading disinformation wider and faster than the less exciting facts – all to sell ads or get Likes and Clicks.

The Impact

Without addressing extreme wealth, political corruption, and antitrust enforcement; we will almost certainly see more bad behavior everywhere, more wealth and power directed to the already wealthy and powerful, higher prices and lower wages from more industry consolidation and monopoly power, and more distrust of government and dissatisfaction among voters. The solution is not electing false profits promising to Make America Great Again but electing real leaders with a positive and inspiring vision for the nation that works for all of us. 

Is bad behavior related to political party or ideology?

While this list came from a trusted Facebook friend and has not been independently verified, I find the difference troubling.

• Republican Chief Justice Roberts: Wife got $10.3 million from large law firms.

• Republican Justice Thomas: Luxury vacations and travel on private planes and yachts. $150,000 tuition paid for grandnephew. Mothers house paid. Wife involved as an insurrectionist.

• Republican Justice Kavanaugh: $92,000 country club balance paid. $200,000 credit card debt paid. $1,200,000 mortgage paid.

• Democrat Justices Sotamayor, Karen and Jackson: nothing.

Some Related 3rd Party Resources

• Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America is a related book by Nancy MacLean. It examines the role of the Koch brothers in co-opting the Republican Party, Christian Evangelists, and White Nationalists to promote a Radical Libertarian agenda to remove regulations and protect the property rights of billionaires. By promoting political polarization and mistrust of our government and institutions today, democracy itself is threatened as power is taken away from the populace and given to a few rich elites. Traditional conservative voters should feel angry to learn how masterfully and legally they’ve been duped. If you don’t want to buy and read the book, please watch this 58-minute interview with the author. 
• Dirty Money is a related 6-part NETFLIX documentary series about global greed and corruption. From crippling payday loans to cars that cheat emissions tests, this investigative series exposes brazen acts of corporate greed and corruption.
• “It may actually be worse than you think,” said Common Dreams. “We are up against an unprecedented level of organization and funding by a right wing that is more extreme than anything seen in the modern period.”
• Patriotic Millionaires HAS published related articles and produced this 16-min video about the need to reform our tax code, which favors the rich and is rigged against the rest. How did public policy get so lopsided, favoring the rich? Corruption.

SUMMARY (from the video):

• If you make $100,000 working and a billionaire makes $100,000 selling stock, you will pay $9,000 more in taxes than the billionaire because of the tax code.
• If you own your home and a billionaire owns 2 yachts, 3 planes, 4 Picassos, 8 racehorses, and $900 million of stock, you will pay more in “wealth” taxes than the billionaire because of the tax code.
• If you paid more than a single penny in federal taxes last year, you paid more to run the country than FedEx, Nike, HP, and 52 other multinational corporations did in 2020 because of the tax code.