Louisiana Voice

Well, it’s now official: public officials are for sale.

Of course, we’ve known this for some time but yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court all but cleared the way for officials to accept bribes. Oh, they were careful to call them gratuities, but anyone not living under a rock understood that virtually all definitions of bribery are officially out the window.

It took 20 pages for the opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to rationalize that so long as gifts to officials are given after some official action is taken, it’s considered a gratuity and not a bribe. It took another 24 pages for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson to write her dissent. Concurring were Chief Justice John Roberts and justices Samuel Alito (no surprise), Neil Gorsuch, Amy Comey Barrett and Clarence Thomas (now there’s a real shocker!).

Joining Jackson in her dissent were justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The decision arose from the conviction of former Portage, Ind. Mayor James Snyder who was convicted of bribery for accepting $13,000 from a local trucking company after the city purchased five trash trucks from the business for $1.1 million back in 2013.

Snyder, who was mayor at the time of the purchase, claimed the payment for consulting, leaving unanswered the question of how a sitting officer-holder could legally – or ethically – be working a side gig as a consultant for a potential vendor for the agency he represents.

That murky ethics question aside, the ruling leaves the door wide open – and I mean WIDE open – for all manner of backroom deals to enrich politicians at the possible – and probable – expense of taxpayers.

Vendors, just be certain that you don’t give the gift, cash or vacation trip in advance. Be sure that the package (official decision or action) is done and wrapped in a pretty bow first. THEN, it’s perfectly okay to shower the politico with those tokens of appreciation for a job well done (for the vendor, that is).

Let’s just say, for example, there is a major case pending in a state or federal court against one of our petro-chemical plants. Or some entity wants a multi-million-dollar contract to construct a jail for some sheriff. It could even involve some company striving to land a lucrative contract to say, perform maintenance at the Superdome. Maybe someone would desire to land a hefty contract to perform consulting services on something like a feasibility study on a new state constitution.

All that is necessary to grease the right palm – legally, of course – is to wink at the decision-makers and promise that the right decision “won’t be regretted.” And then all the principals need do is wait until it’s a done deal and the write the check, give the motor home or provide transportation and lodging for an elaborate vacation to some dream spot.

In the eyes of our Supreme Court, it would then be all nice and legal.

Of course, a furtive agreement ahead of time isn’t always necessary. Let’s say you have a decision to make about some unfortunate victim of some corporate misdeed. Who’s in a better position to award you a “gratuity,” someone with little or no resources or someone with a virtulally unlimited budget?

And don’t worry about the nosy press snooping around for public records that might expose your duplicity. Jeff Landry has already taken care of that by all but aboloshing Louisiana’s public record laws, making it difficult if not impossible to follow any paper trails.

And you can count on the Repugnantcans and their apologists to put a smiley face on the decision – if they mention it at all. But you can’t really make a silk purse of a sow’s ear. Put another way, as Fraser Crane once said, “Just because a cat has kittens in the oven, it doesn’t make them biscuits.”

Of course, with the wrong decision, those “gratuities” could vanish. It all harkens back to Sen. Simon Cameron who also served as President Lincoln’s secretary of war, who once said, “An honest politician is one who when he’s bought, stays bought.”

Folks, it turns out all the hoopla over abortion rights and immigration, important though they certainly are, might have simply been a smokescreen to divert our attention away from governmental ethics. I mean, it’s not like a couple of the Supreme Court justices don’t have dogs in that fight.

With the complete gutting of any ethical barrier between business and government, all vestiges of purity and good government have vanished from the Republican agenda because this issue most assurably occupies the top rung of the GOP ladder of priorities.

It began, probably, with the 1976 Supreme Court Buckley v. Valeo decision that said limits on the amount of money individuals could spend to benefit politicians were unconstitutional, that purchasing the allegiance of public officials with cash is a variant of protected free speech.

Unless, of course, you might happen to be a lowly civil servant. A person I know who worked for the state received – unsolicited – a Christmas ham from a vendor one Christmas. The ham was sent to the employee’s state office and she was ratted out as having accepted a gift from a vendor and the ever-vigilant State Ethics Commission popped her with a $250 fine.

Had she been a powerful bureaucrat or elected official, that gift would never have been raised as an issue.

The question now is with the latest Supreme Court decision, will the new rules be applied equally across the board? Will they be applied to elected officials and civil servants alike?

Don’t count on it.