I’ll give you a million dollars to not make bribery illegal again

-these conservative legal groups

A low level government employee would loss their job if someone takes them out to a nice dinner.

We don’t need to make it illegal, it already is.

We need to start enforcing the rules across the board.

Illegal for the people doing and taking the bribe, with real teeth.

The thing is- at least with SCOTUS justices- we can make absolutely anything illegal regarding them and they can just turn around and say, “fuck you, what are you going to do about it?” And the rest of the government says, “uh… nothing I guess?”

The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that corporations are people and money is free speech.

We have become what Benjamin Franklin feared we would become. He could see the future:

“In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”

It’s illegal.

Enforceable is the issue here because the people being bribed are the same ones that would ultimately decide any criminal appeals and they, themselves, have no accountability or oversight.

The bar set for bribery was set by legal precident which established a “test” which has multiple parts that must be met to be considered bribery. This test must have a clear “quid pro quo”, with hard evidence, to show that a particular action was taken in exchange for the bribe. Unfortunately, swaying a person to a particular mindset is not a specific action so it does not meet the standards of this test. It also means that lawmakers may repeatedly be given gifts and donations to be kind when writing laws in favor of things like less burdensome taxes for the wealthy, or harsher penalties for the poor - simply because those lawmakers and the gift givers are like minded and totally not engaging in bribery.

The scary thing is that this system is self sustaining and stable. Bribe to make bribery harder to enforce. Wealthy people have money to bribe lawmakers and judges, thus making laws in favor of wealthy people and against poor people. It’s got a built in Nash Equilibrium.

It was basically designed around nobody having enough power to do anything that would affect landowners, or doing much in general. I think the founders would be shocked at the political factions they feared so much and considered the country a failed project. They didn’t see a reason for anyone to vote that didn’t hold arable land etc. Kicked the can on slavery as far down the road as they could to avoid the inevitable confrontation. Handed power back to the planters during reconstruction. Beat down any opportunity for collective public action.

To be fair they dropped the ball completely on the whole of the judiciary. They said “Okay there’s a Supreme Court, and it’ll have at least a Chief Justice… Congress can decide how many others there are, but they serve for life. And Congress can determine how it works otherwise. There should probably be some lower courts and stuff but Congress can figure that out later.”

I used to imagine, “What would a new constitution look like if we actually invoked the clause to hold another constitutional convention?”

But imagine if we voted to hold one now, when billionaires hold so much power already. I all but guarantee that they’d make sure they had control over a majority of the delegates, and we’d end up with something that was somehow even worse than what we have today.

The framers COMPLETELY dropped the ball on checks on the judicial.

First and second amendments were intended to be that check. Communicating and causing damage are the two capabilities a populace needs to be respectable enough to have to play nice with.

And all this talk of revolution … that’s the check. The government was built with an off switch, in the form of specific protections for the things that could destroy it.

They knew that no structure would be incorruptible. You can have layers but eventually the layers stop. It’s a who watches the watchers that watch the watchers … and so forth scenario.

They knew that there’s no way to arrange those pieces so that it won’t go bad eventually. Sp they made a rule that the people must keep the power to destroy that structure.

Like summoning a dragon to protect you, but first making sure there are dragon-proof boxes with lances inside, because dragons are dangerous as fuck. You only summon one if there’s something even worse coming at you. But just because it’s your best option doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous as fuck and may need to be put down.

What do you mean? It’s entirely reasonable that the lower chamber must deliberate for weeks and vote to hold a trial that lasts for additional weeks where 2/3 the members must vote in favor of removing a single bad actor. That’s a completely viable solution. /s

good to know even the rich sometimes get bad coke

Ding ding ding. If it comes out of their mouth it is because they did it already or are planning to do it. It is like that employee at work who accuses someone of stealing so no one will notice that they are the thief.

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”