For years, conservative billionaires have treated Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas to opulent vacations and trips on their private jets. If these were anything other than disinterested gifts, then they’re taxable — and Thomas owes the IRS a huge bill.
The belief that politics reacts to public outrage is also a mechanism of control by the system, when in reality it only offers up sacrificial, insignificant lambs like Santos, always keeping the actual power players safe.
If the outage we see over police killings hasn't shifted our central government one iota (and it hasn't; even Biden has been calling for MORE police than pre-George Floyd, nevermind Republicans), what do you think this is going to do?
Politics changes when politicians die and are replaced by ones who believe something else.
I don't know. Tax authorities can be relentless when someone get caught committing shameless tax fraud.
There might not be enforceable penalty for ethics violation at the supreme court. But there definitely are penalties for tax fraud. Obligatory Al Capone reference.
Who enforces them though? The Supreme Court has shown that it doesn't believe in conflicts of interest or recusing from cases, and all he needs to do is contest the rulings until they land on his desk.
Woah there chief! Lemme tell everyone a little story...
Back when I was on Reddit, I followed any and all Trump news (and especially Jan 6 investigation news) on an unhealthily regular basis. These kinds of Eeyore comments were extremely common and usually voted up to pepper through the top ⅓ of all the 'best' comments. It got so bad that some subreddits explicitly banned them, though it didn't really end the practice.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine. All the disparaging comments ceased immediately. The frequency absolutely fell off a cliff, because all those comments were being served up to us by Russian bots. Russia wants nothing more than to further destabilize the US as well as any other democratic institution.
I'm not saying this comment right here is a Russian bot, but it's definitely doing a Russian bot's job by trying to undermine any confidence we might have in the concepts of justice or democracy.
Just to check, you meant to put this in a comment saying Clarence Thomas is dead to rights guilty as sin for a wide range of corruption alegations.... but nothing will ever be done about it.
Right?
Fuck Israel. Support Ukraine. Lock up Trump and Gulianni. Bury DuPont. Expel Florida and Texas from the union... I could go on...
The bottom line is that at least 3 of our sitting Supreme Court justices are rat bastard pieces of corrupt shit. Like Congress. And like the White House.
A dolla won't make em holla. A million will though, and the entire federal government of the United States is holla-ing.
Can't expect a corrupt fuck federal official to nail a correct fuck federal official's ass to the wall.
Punchline: the fed is fucked. I hate it. Fuck you for calling me a Russian bot.
By my read, this is the core of the articles argument:
But if these billionaires’ largesse was designed to retain the conservative judge on the country’s highest court, the donations might fall outside of the definition of tax-free gifts, which according to the Supreme Court must stem from “detached and disinterested generosity.” If the benefits showered on Thomas were designed to elicit court actions or job decisions, they could be considered taxable income, whether or not there is definitive proof of quid pro quo on Thomas’s part.
"You should pay income taxes on your bribes" is a stupid hot take. If they were bribes he should be required to disgorge the full amount as part of his punishment.