Justice for Sale: Luxury trips, tax cuts for billionaires and Supreme Court Ethics in United States vs. Moore
United States v. MOORE will decide if billionaires get more tax cuts or pay their fair share of taxes.
Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have taken luxury trips from billionaires who would benefit greatly from this decision. Legal experts are demanding Thomas and Alito recuse themselves from the case to uphold Supreme Court ethics. Follow the money (and gifts) in this relationship map and decide if they should recuse themselves from ruling on this case.
The Moore is about the federal government to tax “income,” allow the government to put levies on taxpayers’ assets if they didn’t actually get the money in cash?
Our current tax system does a wonderful job of taxing your wages and mine, but it leaves vast pools of wealth completely untaxed—often for generations. Billionaires want to keep it that way while President Biden is pushing for everyone (including billionaires) to pay their fair share. Now two Supreme Court Justices who’ve been taking luxury trips with billionaires get to decide.
Will Thomas and Alito act ethically and recuse themselves? Or will they decide to rule on the case in the hope of more luxury trips? The jury is still out.
Follow the money, trips and gifts
Shameless
“Here’s where Thomas comes in. As ProPublica has extensively documented, a small group of billionaires including Harlan Crow, David Sokol, the late Wayne Huizenga, and Paul “Tony” Novelly have provided extraordinary benefits to Thomas, including at least 38 destination vacations, 26 private jet flights, six helicopter flights, yacht voyages (including to the Bahamas), a dozen VIP passes to sporting events, and much, much more.
Our current tax system does a wonderful job of taxing your wages and mine, but it leaves vast pools of wealth completely untaxed—often for generations. Folks like Crow, Sokol, and Novelly (as well as Huizenga’s heirs) would very much like to keep it that way. Thomas may soon have the opportunity to help them. (It’s worth noting that Justice Samuel Alito has his own very real conflict concerns, as well.)” – Slate
How billionaires have corrupted the justice system
Don’t be fooled by all the dark money groups with fancy names filing Amicus briefs in support of more tax cuts for billionaires. Check to see who funds them? What benefits do they provide the Supreme Court Justices?
Justice Gorsuch may have felt the same way when the law school, courting him in 2017, asked him to help choose the Italian city where, for two weeks the following summer, he would co-teach a seminar on national security and the separation of powers. A memo offered options including Padua, a “first-tier city in a picturesque setting,” Venice, with its “seven-mile-long-sandbar known as Lido” and Bologna, “Italy’s most prestigious academic city.”
In the end, the class would be in Padua, where the law school put up the justice and his family in what a listing described as an “aristocratic,” antique-filled apartment in the heart of the old town. A draft handbook for the trip, emailed to Justice Gorsuch, made clear that his teaching responsibilities would be limited to the mornings, leaving plenty of time for excursions, including planned visits to Bologna and Florence. “Fantastico!” the justice responded. – NYT
American Justice should not be for sale
Democrats, led by the Senate finance committee chairman, Ron Wyden, have proposed a “billionaire tax” that would target gains billionaires make on stocks and other unrealized assets. Any ruling by the supreme court that stated that taxes on unrealized income is unconstitutional could – in theory – make such a “wealth tax” hard to pass, experts say.
“The Moores are not the real parties of interest [in this case]. The billionaires financing the litigation are the real parties of interest,” said Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “There are so many different variations of what could be income,” said Rosenthal. For the past 100 years, he said, the definition of what gains were taxable has been treated as an administrative issue for Congress and not as a constitutional issue for the supreme court to decide.
He said the case raised questions about whether the Moores’ seemingly narrow tax dispute could be a “stalking horse” case that will ultimately be a boon for billionaires. “The billionaires don’t care whether the Moores are taxed or not. Musk, Zuckerberg and all the other billionaires out there start these companies and have all these unrealized gains on their stock investments. And they are threatened by the Warren and Wyden wealth taxes that might tax unrealized gains,” said Rosenthal.
“For the supreme court to reach out and take a case that is not really a controversy is tremendously dangerous,” he said. “Why are the billionaires being able to pull the strings of the US supreme justices like puppets?” – The Guardian
TakeAway: Demand Supreme Court Justices recuse themselves from USA vs Moore and other cases which would benefit billionaires, if they have taken favors from billionaires and their dark money lobbying groups. Stop this racket!
Deepak
DemLabs
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