So your argument here approximates to that no-one can have their views evolve or change their mind on something?
I'm just going to put it out there that that is not a good argument.
Supreme Court rejects affirmative action at colleges as unconstitutional
- Thread starter gorfias
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I'm just going to put it out there that that is not a good argument.
They didn't change their ideals, they changed their strategy.
What I'm saying is that identity politics is a different strategy than political idealism.
Political idealism isn't a strategy. Identity politics isn't a strategy. And those two terms are in no way contradictory
Fine. But you started this identity politics did not reflect policy, or even was carried out in contradiction of political beliefs. I don't think what you have provided regarding this group makes that point.
I started with: "Identity politics" is the idea of organizing based on personal identities rather than policy or belief system.
Identity politics does not need to reflect personal policy preference, and it can be carried out in contradiction to political beliefs. It doesn't have to contradict, but it can, because it's not defined by policy, it's only defined by identity. Trunkage has been attempting to claim that some policies are inherently identity politics, and that isn't what identity politics is. Not even something like racial reparations is inherently identity politics. That is my point.
Just so we are clear. Most of what is called 'identity politics' is just people wanting equality as they are pointing out which groups don't have that equality yet. BLM isn't about African Americans being treated BETTER than everyone else. It's about African Americans being treated the same as everyone else. Someone else already made it about identities before BLM ever existed. Identities were already being used to
NOTE: This is clearly about a belief system
Conversely, many people like traditions because some benefits certain identities over others. Eg. Rule of Law sounds great but it is not applied to all identities equally. Standardized testing sounds great but all tests are biased towards particular identities
This whole case is based on identity politics. We have a bunch of white rich people who have forced most other people (including many white people) out of universities. They circumvented the rules and the concept of meritocracy. That doesn't mean that adding points based on minority school clubs isn't also identity politics. They're both identity politics
target people.
I must have deleted it, as I went back to add the note at the end.
Sorry
‘Unprecedented, stunning, disgusting’: Clarence Thomas condemned over billionaire gifts
Calls for the supreme court justice to resign grow as new details of 38 more undeclared gifts and vacations from rich donors emerge
www.theguardian.com
Of course, Clarence Thomas has been totally unswayed by any of these gifts... because he says has hasn't, pinky promise.
The stench of potential corruption and lack of wisdom to think how this could be perceived is enough to think resignation a reasonable expectation. Unfortunately, doing this indicates arrogance and a lack of honour in the first place, so I doubt it will be forthcoming.
Would you be willing to actually accuse the man of selling Supreme Court decisions based on this info?‘Unprecedented, stunning, disgusting’: Clarence Thomas condemned over billionaire gifts
Calls for the supreme court justice to resign grow as new details of 38 more undeclared gifts and vacations from rich donors emerge
Of course, Clarence Thomas has been totally unswayed by any of these gifts... because he says has hasn't, pinky promise.
The stench of potential corruption and lack of wisdom to think how this could be perceived is enough to think resignation a reasonable expectation. Unfortunately, doing this indicates arrogance and a lack of honour in the first place, so I doubt it will be forthcoming.
Scalia's been dead for years; the man has to have someone to tell him how to rule on cases. Y'know, in between bouts of napping at the bench during orals and writing some of the worst dissents the court's seen this side of Felix Frankfurter.
At least, it was until it was subverted, coopted, commodified, packaged and resold by the capitalist class as a means to divide and conquer the proletariat over the past thirty years. Catchy slogans printed on T-shirts by people working in sweatshops being paid fractions of a penny on the dollar in economic southern generational poverty and despair pits, who almost without fail are of the same identity groups those T-shirts supposedly uplift, and sold $30 apiece by multinational e-tailers, do not a serious political movement make.
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I think the standard required of judges should be extremely high: to not just be clean but seen to be clean.
Let me put it to you this way. I am a public sector worker of vastly humbler station, and have strict guidance on what I am allowed to accept as gifts. If I receive anything over the sum of just £20 (as I recall, no-one's given me any gifts such that I've had to check), I am obliged to report it within 28 days or could face disciplinary action. Nothing need be proven about what I may have done in exchange: those are the rules about accepting gifts and I need to be seen to behave with probity.
Taking lavish gifts from anyone - never mind highly powerful politically active citizens who may regularly have interests come before the court - is extraordinarily damaging to the reputation of a judge and thus public confidence in the court.
The rules SCOTUS gave themselves are extraordinarily lax compared to mine, and there are little consequences even if broken. But irrespective of that, Thomas's conduct on this has been shameful. Not just a failure to appreciate how it may open the door to corruption and reputation damage of the court, but potentially recognising these risks and deliberately circumventing transparency.
I think in this situation SCOTUS should consider at minimum some sort of formal reprimand, and that an honourable justice would strongly consider resignation. Thomas hasn't even issued a recognisable apology. What should also concern is that this sort of behaviour has been rife in SCOTUS for decades, and they want to bury it quietly because a lot of them have profitted off it, and god knows how bad it might look for the court if the public find out how much they've been open to potential corruption.
Avoiding even the appearance of impropriety is supposed to be the standard for any public servant or private employee in a position that requires public trust (like for example, a journalist). But alas, here we are in a world where billionaires just buy whole-ass news outlets and overtly run them as their personal propaganda outlet, and we're fortunate legislators aren't just literally blowing defense, finance, fossil fuels, and tech executives on CSPAN.
Like I mentioned, it's frankly a step up that Thomas has been getting paid for his nonsense, opposed to past understanding which is that he just copied Scalia's homework for free.
To start, I'm going to take that as a "no" to my question, you're not making that accusation.
Now, let's be critical of the reporting for a moment. They talk lavishness and frequency, but then choose the maximum possible interpretation of lavishness or frequency. He was given vacations, so many vacations, fewer than one per year! They went to exotic destinations like his wife's alma mater in the midwest. Very exotic. His friend flew him on a private plane that would have cost $160,000 to do for himself, unless he just flew a regular flight, and then it would be way less than the $400 their supposed to report. And access to a private golf course is theoretically priceless! Well yes, exactly. Staying with friends is priceless, and also costs nothing. That's how that works. And something like meeting a college basketball team isn't a gift to Clarence Thomas, it's a gift to the basketball team.
The people digging into this are doing their best to make it look like impropriety. But I don't think they've succeeded, and I think you would agree. The point of rules against gifts is to prevent people from being bribed into doing the wrong things, and to avoid even the appearance of doing so. Well, rather than look at this from the perspective of strict rules (that don't really exist), look at it from the spirit of those rules. If even you don't think it looks like he was being bribed to change his decisions, what are the calls for resignation about?
You are being completley uncritical. Firstly, you're being dishonest by omission to pretend that Thomas wasn't also taking week+ holidays on luxury yachts (or similar), for which even the most optimistic cost would be tens of thousands of dollars each. Or that property deal involving Thomas's mother's house, which runs well into six figures.
Secondly, a free $5,000 private plane trip is a $5,000 gift. It doesn't magically become the $500 it would cost for an equivalent public flight like us plebs use. Much like if Crow gifted Thomas a $20,000 Rolex, you can't go around pretending it's actually only a $20 gift because that's all Thomas would have to pay for a cheap black plastic Casio that could tell him the time just as well.
Er, you've got that arse over elbows. My argument is that Thomas's behaviour was very obviously transgressing the spirit of the rules, and the only reason he isn't facing a major disciplinary is the virtual non-existence of appropriate rules that could hold him to account.
It is extraordinarily hard to find out whether anyone was swayed by gifts. This is why giving and accepting gifts are so often limited or prohibited. As long as the parties aren't stupid enough to write something down or get caught discussing a quid pro quo on a microphone, there's no way to catch them; and even when they are that stupid, only a small fraction of the time will it be exposed. What you're suggesting is tantamount to a bribery free-for-all as if the USA were a banana republic.
This episode reflects extremely poorly on Clarence Thomas's honour and judgement, and thus I think given his station resigning absolutely is appropriate.
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You mean free. If your friend says "hey, my family has access to a beach house next week, do you want to come with?", what does that cost them to invite you? Nothing. Zero. Zilch.
Check this out:
The filing instructions for judicial financial disclosures.
In the gifts section, it says:
" Food, lodging, or entertainment received as personal hospitality need not be reported. Personal hospitality means hospitality extended for a nonbusiness purpose by an individual, not a corporation or organization, at the personal residence of that individual or his or her family or on property or facilities owned by that individual or his or her family. "
The yacht rides, or mansion visits, or private golf course access are all exempt. The only thing in their list that its actually an infraction not to disclose is the travel, as travel is not exempt, even with privately owned means of transportation. There is a line in there that specifically calls out transportation as non-exempt:
" the reporting exemption does not include: • gifts other than food, lodging or entertainment, such as transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation..."
But that line wasn't always there. It was added there for clarification this year, which is part of how this has come to light. Clarence Thomas was disclosing when people paid for commercial travel for him. The things that were excluded were all when people were sharing their private property with him, which according to him, he believed were exempt from the disclosure filings:
Justice Thomas, gift reporting rules, and what a Supreme Court code of conduct would and wouldn’t accomplish
Russell Wheeler assesses the Supreme Court's ethics rules and how they pertain to the recent controversies surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas.
www.brookings.edu
I'm pretty sure you think his conservative positions reflect poorly on him, and everything else is rationalization.
The question is not what it costs your friend, it's what it would cost you to do the same without them, because that is the value of the gift to you.
Secondly, I've already stated my objection is that Thomas did not follow the spirit of the law (or even the letter, given his excuses blaming other people for their guidance because like every arrogant twat ever he's taking no responsibility), and that the exceedingly feeble rules faciliate grotesque self-enrichment. Then telling me "it's by the rules" is only so much dead weight.
Once again, you severely underestimate my moral standards, in this case how I feel about probity of people in high office, and the systems that exist to oversee probity. A little more circumspection, and you would see me very frequently criticising the lack of rigour, scrutiny and transparency in such systems, with overreliance placed on the moral good conduct of individuals holding office. Thus why we get messes like Clarence Thomas's.
That's why you have such strong opinions on Joe Biden's interactions with Hunter's overseas business, right?
A person's inner philosophy soaks into and guides in some form every single expression of that person's life, not just their 'official conservative opinion', so, yes, his conservative positions do reflect poorly on him in every facet of his life.