The Iran Contra, Elections 2000, 9/11, and Russian treason-got SCOTUS postures quickly that they are fine with the bribes, corruption, and racketeering for obstruction of justice schemes they, the GOP, and Trump have been caught in, as their Trump deadlines loom.

"A democracy is run by and for the benefit of the demos, the people. An oligarchy is run by and for the oligoi, the “few,” aka the morbidly rich.

Thanks to a corrupt bloc of Republicans who’ve controlled the US Supreme Court since the Nixon era, America is more than halfway through the transition from democracy to oligarchy.

But it’s not too late for We, The People to reclaim our government from the forces of neofascism and great wealth who’ve worked so hard since the Reagan Revolution to seize complete control of it.

It’s going to require a two-step process: end the ability of the morbidly rich and giant corporations to legally bribe judges and politicians, and then use that reclaimed political power to require the rich to pay their fair share of taxes.

It sounds like a heavy lift, but it’s been done several times before in American history, most recently between 1932 and the Reagan Revolution 1980s, and each time produced a period of extraordinary prosperity for working class people while still helping the rich get rich as well.

Today, however, millions of Americans are working two or more jobs just to pay the rent, more than half of us (56%) can’t deal with a $1000 emergency expense like a car breakdown or broken tooth, and the top 1 percent of Americans own more wealth than what’s left of the entire middle class.

The three wealthiest families in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of the American people, and, since the days of the Reagan Revolution, the top 1 percent has gained $21 trillion in wealth while the bottom 50 percent of us have lost $900 billion in wealth.

And now comes the headline that America’s 614 billionaires, according to Forbes, have almost doubled their wealth (an 88% increase) just in the 3+ years since the pandemic started in 2020.

Almost all of this transformation of the American economy — and the gutting of the middle class — are the result of five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling, in 1976, 1978, and 2010, that when rich people or corporations shower judges and politicians with money and other gifts in exchange for rulings and legislation (particularly tax breaks!), that’s not bribery but, instead, merely an exercise of “free speech.”

After five corrupt Republicans on the Court legalized bribery in 1978, the Reagan administration (1981-1989) embraced it with gusto, trading what would eventually become tens of trillions of dollars in tax cuts in exchange for a few hundred million in campaign contributions and a few billion for the financing of a national network of think tanks, radio stations, publications, and rightwing television.

Several billionaires reached out to buy off Clarence Thomas, who was the 2010 deciding vote in the most egregious of these decisions, Citizens United. Open Secrets has documented over $2.8 billion in dark money spending and contributions reported to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) just in the years since then.

And two recent Supreme Court cases have allowed massive loopholes to FEC reporting so additional hundreds of millions to billions — nobody knows the amount because it’s unreported — are today pouring into political campaigns, third-party advertising, influence campaigns, social media, and coffers.

It’s a safe bet that not one penny of those dark money billions came from average people like you and me.

This growing reality of oligarchy is why so many Americans are frustrated and angry: it’s a primary reason why our political system is in turmoil. It’s the reality that oligarch Donald Trump has exploited, convincing working class people he cares about them, even as he gave his own billionaire class the largest tax cut in American history.

The vast majority of voters want:

— Good public schools,
— Inexpensive and comprehensive healthcare coverage,
— Debt-free college,
— Clean air and water,
— Quality infrastructure,
— Reasonably priced housing,
— Action on climate change,
— Easy access to a union,
— Adequate Social Security and Medicare for retirement,
— And real competition in the marketplace that brings back the small family- and locally-owned businesses that have been wiped out in the 41 years since Reagan stopped enforcing our nation’s anti-trust laws in 1983.

Year after year we vote for these things, and year after year we get the opposite, almost entirely because of Republican politicians taking huge bribes from corporations and the morbidly rich to block any legislation that might raise their taxes to benefit the poor or even average working people.

(There is a handful of sellout “Problem Solver” Democrats, too, but they’re the minority: you’ll not find a single Republican in either the House or Senate who’s not currently on the take in a big way: just check out Open Secrets.)

And now it appears that the six corrupt Republicans currently on the Supreme Court are preparing to make political bribery even easier for their well-heeled patrons.

In the case of Snyder v United States, which the Supreme Court will hear on April 15th, James E. Snyder is claiming that when a public official accepts a “gift” from a person or corporation who has benefited from that public official’s actions, that should not be legally considered a bribe. Think of it instead as a “tip,” like you’d leave for good service in a restaurant.

Snyder is the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, who, federal prosecutors successfully argued in court, rigged a city bidding process for $1.125 million worth of new dump trucks to help out a friend who sold such trucks. After the contract was awarded to his buddy, his friend’s company gave a “tip” to Snyder of $13,000.

Snyder is appealing his bribery conviction before the Supreme Court next month, and his main argument is that the federal definition of bribery must include an explicit advance agreement, a spoken or written quid pro quo, to exchange money or gifts for official actions. And that all this explicit agreement stuff must happen before the official acts are taken.

If five for all of the six Republicans on the Court agree with Snyder, it will end almost all federal bribery prosecutions of corrupt elected officials and we’ll see an explosion of politicians anxious to fall all over themselves to “earn a tip” after they bow to their “friends” wishes. (Katya Schwenk has written a great summary of the case and its implications for The Lever.)

It’s frankly shocking that four members of the Court have already agreed to grant cert and hear the case, displaying a mind-boggling level of tolerance for political corruption.

If the Court rules as expected, will this be the straw that finally breaks the proverbial camel’s back? Will if feed the growing groundswell of disgust directed at Republicans on the Supreme Court and in Congress enough that people take action?

So far, the case has been virtually invisible in the media. But in four weeks it should be getting some attention and may well stir national outrage.

Democrats need to be ready.

The naked corruption of Republicans on the Supreme Court has only been matched since the 1980s by the naked corruption of Republican (and a handful of Democratic) politicians enabled by the Court’s Citizens United decision and its predecessors. As President Jimmy Carter told the world on my radio/TV program eight years ago:

“It [Citizens United] violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. …  So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over.”

And that was before Trump and McConnell stole two Democratic seats on the Court and packed it with sold-out rightwing cranks. Virtually all of America’s current crises track back to corrupt GOP appointees on the Supreme Court rewriting or outright cancelling over a century’s worth of good-government anti-corruption laws.

They’ve been at it continuously ever since Richard Nixon put Lewis Powell on the Court in 1972.

While not as sexy as the border or book bans, Democrats must make the corruption of Republicans on the Supreme Court a major issue in this year’s election.

Until recently, it’s been mostly a lonely crusade by Sheldon Whitehouse, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden, and members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the House.

You can call your member of Congress and your two senators at 202-224-3121 if you’d like to let them know that they can do many things about corruption on the Court, and encourage them to elevate this to a major campaign issue this fall."

Similarly, Rolling Stone's Charisma Madarang noted two days ago that SCOTUS is trying to compare their corruption and bribery, and that of Trump and the GOP, with billionaires and enemies of the United States, to that of a teacher being provided a piece of cheesecake, is how desperate and fringe their legal theories have become in a bid to not only legitimize themselves after they were unlawfully installed by those who had disqualified themselves from being able to legally install SCOTUS and the judiciary, but to unlawfully serve as their own judges for their own ongoing criminal misconduct in what is simply wild to watch unfold. 

"The Supreme Court, amid an unprecedented crisis of legitimacy pertaining to unreported gifts to justices, debated on Monday whether a contractor making a $13,000 gratuity to a politician is similar to taking a teacher to the Cheesecake Factory.

In 2012, James Synder was elected mayor of the Northwest Indiana town of just under 38,000 people. Synder, who was struggling to keep his own business afloat and was behind on taxes, oversaw the bidding process for a contract to buy new garbage trucks for the town. The contract, which was worth over $1.1 million, went to a local company, and the final round of papers were inked. One month later in January 2014, the trucking company, Great Lakes Peterbilt, sent Snyder $13,000 for what he later claimed were consulting services.

In 2019, Synder found his second term cut prematurely when a federal jury convicted of him of bribery. Although he appealed and was granted a new trial, the former mayor was convicted again in March 2021 and sentenced to 21 months in prison.

The case found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to review an appeals court decision affirming the 2021 conviction of the former mayor of Portage - transforming the small-time corruption case into a national issue that has the potential to legalize corporations rewarding public officials in exchange for lucrative government favors.

The Supreme Court has consistently worked to narrow the definition of corruption, but the timing of the case and its subject matter is interesting: Over the past year, the court has faced unprecedented scrutiny over revelations that justices have received and failed to disclose luxury gifts.

As The Lever recently pointed out, high-profile corruption cases in other states have been put on hold as prosecutors wait to see how the Supreme Court rules in Snyder v. United States.

On Monday, in a debate peppered with hypothetical meals to the Cheesecake Factory, gift baskets, and Starbucks gift cards, justices appeared poised to side with the convicted Indiana mayor.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the facts of this case were great for the government, but was hesitant to subject 19 million state and local officials to the law, which has been on the books for decades.

Justice Elena Kagan chimed in, supporting his statement. "This statute applies not just to government officials but to pretty much, like, every important institution in America," she said, painting an example of a billionaire hospital patient given preferential treatment in hopes of receiving a large donation.

The "problem is the word ‘corruptly' then creates enormous uncertainty and vagueness about where the line is drawn," Kavanaugh argued. "You don't know if the concert tickets, the game tickets, the gift card to Starbucks, whatever, where is the line, and so there's vagueness."

"Counsel, how does anyone in the real world know the line?" Justice Neil Gorsuch mused to Colleen Sinzdak, the lawyer arguing for the government. "Put aside billionaires and hospitals. Deal with small gifts with teachers, doctors, police officers, all the time."

Gorsuch, seemingly unable to differentiate between a slice of peanut butter cup fudge ripple and $13,000 gift, continued to offer hypotheticals. "How does this statute give fair notice to anyone in the world as to - and I hate to do it, but I'm going to - the difference between the Cheese Factory [sic]…" he said, as Justice Amy Coney Barrett broke in to quip, "Inn at Little Washington."

"And the Inn at Little Washington. Thank you, thank you," Gorsuch replied. "How does anyone know?"

As the justices devolved into semantics, Sinzdak said, "What you're all talking about is these fringe cases," adding those cases would be "really hard for the government to show consciousness of wrongdoing."

Later on, Sinzdak explained, "I guess I'm not kind of including in here the kind of apple for teacher and the hypotheticals that you see in petitioner's brief. They're just not even on the radar in terms of the government. What we're looking for is, again, corrupt acceptance of a payment with the intent to be rewarded in connection with business or transactions worth at least $5,000.""

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/supreme-court-justices-compare-bribes-to-taking-a-teacher-to-cheesecake-factory/ar-BB1lGiLP

Our earlier reporting also found that most, if not all, of the 6 out of 9 GOP SCOTUS "justices" were hand-picked by Jeffrey Epstein's crime syndicate and orbit, and later were found to have corrupted their public offices, and now they are trying to reinvent what the word corruption means, because of course they are. They have to in order to stay in illegitimate usurping of power over the justice system they keep corrupting. This makes SCOTUS justices above the law and in a manner where they get to be the judges in their own cases, in gross violation of hundreds to thousands of years of Western civilization's laws. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society

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https://nypost.com/2023/07/25/jeffrey-epstein-helped-jpmorgan-land-googles-sergey-brin-as-client/

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https://news.yahoo.com/shady-corrupt-watchdog-group-sounds-150004632.html