Can Two Multi-Billionaires Buy Off The Legal System?
Do you recognize the dapper duo? Probably not, but you should. They are Charles and David Koch, brothers who own one of the largest private oil and chemical conglomerates in the world, Koch Industries of Wichita, KS. The company was founded by their father Fred, a honcho in the John Birch Society. Today the brothers are worth over $20 billion each. They have a radical far-right wing-nut agenda and are willing to spend many hundreds of millions of dollars to get their way. Thanks to the Supreme Court's dreadful Citizens United v. FEC decision, the Koch boys bankrolled most of the TEA Party activity and plan to do more than ever before to influence the 2012 elections.
In the recent past, Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas have attended Koch-sponsored events for conservative eggheads. The purpose of these secretive little soirees is to discuss ways and means to eliminate business regulations and grease the financial skids for maximum corporate thievery. They wave flags and tell themselves it's all in the service of "freedom".
Both Scalia and Thomas insist there's no conflict of interest in their presence at such affairs. Scalia said he was there merely to remind the assembled patriots that the U.S. Constitution is immaculate in its original construction and therefore all legal time effectively stopped somewhere in the early 1800's. Thomas said he was there because he'd heard they'd be showing some really good porn videos.
Thomas has another conflict of interest problem involving his awful wedded wife Ginni, who's a big-time conservative lobbyist. For years, he somehow forgot to mention on his financial disclosure forms that Mrs. Thomas was being paid $686,000 as a consultant to the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing activist group. These days, Ginni is CEO of Liberty Central, a conservative PAC which advocates getting rid of Obama-Care one way or another. Most analysts believe that the health reform law will eventually come before the Supreme Court. Gosh, I wonder which way Clarence will vote?
An interesting article in the NY Times reports that Justice Thomas has not uttered a word in open court arguments in five years. Not a peep. That's a lot of silence! (Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the last time Thomas spoke in any court-related matter was during a lunch break in chambers in 2004, when he was clearly heard to say, "Pepperoni.")
Why so quiet? Clarence is keeping his trap shut to avoid saying anything which would confirm his conflicts of interest or might land his sorry ass in jail. Many people are now calling on Thomas to recuse himself from deliberations on the constitutionality of the health care reform law.
To hell with recusal. The fucker ought to resign!
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