“Facing the Facts of Moral Corruption in Government” August 6, 2023 Dr. R Ray
https://www.commondreams.org/news/william-barber-moral-declaration
"It is time for people with a moral conscience to wield every ounce of influence and power they have towards justice and to force this nation to be true to what it said on paper." William Barber
In a recent interview, former President, Barack Obama, was asked by Hasan Minhaj how he keeps from becoming hopelessly depressed by the current direction of our country regarding civil rights, abortion rights, affirmative action, and voters’ rights. In his famous calm manner, he replied that the current generation has lived through a remarkable period of time, lasting more than a century, in which we saw a slow but steady march of progress. We abolished slavery, and eventually abolished Jim Crow laws, we awarded the right to vote to women, we integrated schools, neighborhoods, and workplaces. We established a 40-hour work week, abolished child labor, and provided social security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and Obama-care in a steady march towards granting healthcare to everyone. We legalized abortion and gay marriage, and made some noble efforts in the direction of environmental projects to heal an ailing planet.
Obama wanted to encourage this young reporter and through him, the rest of us, not to give up hope. Over the past six years we have seen a resurgence of racism, an attack on women’s rights, minority access to education and employment, and some very backwards efforts to keep coal and oil in the center of our economy. But while this is certainly a setback, it is not a defeat of the modern era.
For almost all of Obama’s time in the White House, I thought he was too moderate. I felt that he didn’t fight hard enough or loudly enough. I thought he gave in way too easily.
I thought that when Mitch McConnell refused to hold hearings on his nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court that this was a direct assault on the constitution and the democratic government it establishes. I thought that this called for an all-out public protest, calling for the removal of McConnell from the Senate, but Obama seemed to take it all in stride.
And, if I may be so bold as to say it now, some 7 years after the show down over Merrick Garland, I was right, and Obama was wrong. Failing to get Garland on the court ended up allowing Trump to appoint 3 right wing justices who have created a super majority on the Supreme Court which has been bust dismantling American democracy.
I was comforted by Obama’s perspective that this past decade is not necessarily the end of progress in forming the kind of democracy that could boast of liberty and justice for all, but it is clear that there are forces at work that really do intend to turn America into a fascist state that serves the interests of the wealthy and powerful, and, for the most part, the white and male members of our society.
Still, as ironic as it may seem, it was Clarence Thomas who added to the decision to overturn Roe v Wade his opinion that the court must also reconsider decisions that made gay marriage and contraception legal. I suspect that he did not mention overturning the Loving decision that legalized inter-racial marriage only because that would have cost him his own marriage, although, if I were married to Ginny Thomas, I would be looking for any exit available to me…. but I digress.
The larger issue here is that somehow the American public has come to accept a government that is rife with personal corruption, and which is systematically robbing them of their rights and their freedoms. Somehow, in the prophetic tradition of Jeremiah and Isaiah, of Gandhi and of Martin Luther King, somebody is going to have to wake up this country to recognize that they deserve better than this kind of criminality and government control. To use the language of Jeremiah, somehow, in spite of the crimes and greed of Donald Trump and the amazing corruption of bribes being paid to Supreme Court justices, the American people have forgotten how to blush.
Thankfully, religious leaders like Bishop William Barber, political and academic leaders like Robert Reich and Cornel West, and many others have been mounting a cry for a better government than what we have now.
If you will allow me to take you to school for five minutes, we all recognize those glorious words in the Declaration of Independence that say:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Sadly, however, we far too often stop right there. Today I believe that it is crucial for us to remember the paragraph that follows that lofty introduction:
--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.
In spite of the fact that January 6th insurrectionists were shouting about it being a “1776” time for revolution, the truth may be that it is time for a revolution that will reject corrupt government and either by ballot or by more direct means, restore our progress towards a more perfect union. The majority of Americans believe that women should have legal access to abortion. The majority of Americans believe that gay people have a right to marry the person they love. And the majority of Americans want some kind of universal access to health care and gun laws that restrict the sale of assault rifles and most handguns but our government is so influenced by bribes that the government is failing to represent the people and are, instead, representing a wealthy class of oligarchs and, frankly, we deserve better.
It is exceedingly difficult for me to believe that even two years after he has been out of office and after more than criminal indictments against him than ever boasted by Al Capone, we stand a reasonable threat of Donald Trump returning to office just 18 short months from now, but whether he can win the next presidential election from a jail cell or not, his three appointments to the Supreme Court, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, are working in concert with three previously appointed right wingers, to dismember our representative government and our modern expectations of constitutional rights. And may I remind you that these justices were chosen, not just for their right-wing beliefs but also for their relatively young age so that they can extend Trump’s influence over our government for decades!
To an absurd extent, we are being ruled by a class of people who believe that they are somehow above the law, above ethics, above the national interest, and that they are somehow entitled to wealth and power denied to the rest of the nation. When Donald Trump repeats in his cult like political rallies that he has done nothing wrong, I believe that he believes it. He repeatedly called for his political rivals, both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, to be “locked up” for things that they demonstrably did not do but which Donald Trump has done repeatedly. He just doesn’t believe that it is wrong when he does it but it is wrong when anyone else does it.
We have heard a lot about how our Supreme Court has refused any accountability for the millions of dollars in bribes they have greedily taken while judges in every other layer of our justice system are held to published ethical standards, the violation of which can have them immediately removed from the bench. Let me give you a quick overview of what we are talking about:
Harlan Crow befriended Justice Clarence Thomas thirty years ago, treating him to vacations on his yacht, flights on his private jet, and lavish vacations at his private resort. He also bought the home where Thomas’ mother lives and he has improved it an provides it to her rent free. He is also paying the private school tuition for Thomas’ nephew whom he is raising as a son. He has also made donations to create a high salary job for Thomas’ wife, Ginny Thomas, all while he regularly has interests in cases before the Supreme Court. A Supreme Court justice receives a salary of about a quarter of a million dollars a year, which sounds great to most of us but that would not afford anyone a lavish lifestyle in Washington, D.C. Thomas lives like royalty because of these bribes which far exceed his legal salary by many times.
Billionaire Paul Singer has provided similarly expensive trips to Justice Samuel Alito who has had the temerity to reference Singer’s private jet as being “accomodations” and insisting that there is nothing wrong with accepting trips that would cost more than $100,000 without even reporting them, even when Singer has cases before the court.
Chief Justice John Roberts has refused to be questioned by congress or to reprimand either Thomas or Alito for their obvious acceptance of millions of dollars in bribes. But here is a possible reason for Roberts’ reticence: His wife, Jane, is also a lawyer but when Roberts was appointed to the court, she gave up her practice, she said, to avoid any appearance of conflict of interests. However, she works as a recruiter, finding new talent for law firms that do have cases before the court. In a recent 8-year stretch, she was paid more than $10 million for her consulting services, increasing the Justice’s household income by four times. The firms that pay her these amazingly high fees have an equally amazing record of success in the cases they have before the Supreme Court.
Justice Neil Gorsuch had a 40 acre piece of land that he had been trying to sell for years, repeatedly reducing the price to try to get it sold. However, just a few days after being appointed to the court, a law firm with business before the court bought it for almost $2 million dollars. Gorsuch has been meticulous about reporting gifts like a fishing rod and a pair of cowboy boots but this $2 million land deal slipped his mind when he was filling out his disclosure forms.
I understand that Justices will sometimes either earn or be given handsome royalties and honorariums for books, speeches, and appearances. Who can expect anyone to keep up appearances on a quarter of a million dollar salary without some side hustle? But when do we begin to draw the line between the benefits of holding such a high office, and public corruption? Especially when these people who believe that they are above accountability believe that they can impose their own religious views or the conservative denial of rights held by their benefactors on the rest of us?
If you remove our American acceptance of such corruption for persons in high office and just look at the millions of dollars unethically accepted by Roberts, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito, isn’t it obvious that all four of them should be in jail right now? And if you consider the lies told by Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett in their senate hearings, isn’t it obvious that they should be removed from the court?
These justices are attempting through rulings on the bench to reshape America into a country that would be unrecognizable except to those authors of the Declaration of Independence who decided that King George no longer had the moral authority to rule over the colonies and they had an answer to those abuses and their answer was revolution.
If we allow the court to be seated again this fall without serious reform in light of this corruption then, I’m afraid that we deserve whatever happens to us. I just hope that we know that we deserve a better government.
