Appearances mean everything when it comes to ethics
Former Post-Star reporter Lydia Wheeler goes national covering Supreme Court
By Ken Tingley
There appear to be several justices on the Supreme Court who don’t have a lick of common sense when it comes to ethics.
ProPublica - thank you very much for your important reporting - has revealed that both Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have taken lavish vacations courtesy of billionaire Republican donors and both don’t see anything wrong with it.
They obviously live in a different world than the rest of us.
In addition to lavish vacations going back decades, Thomas had one donor purchase three properties owned by his family, including one where his mother continues to live.
It was also revealed by ProPublica that Thomas’ wife had worked behind the scenes to overturn the 2020 presidential election, yet the justice did not believe he should recuse himself from cases related to the election.
The most recent information from ProPublica revealed Justice had also accepted an expensive Alaskan fishing trip aboard a private jet. After ProPublica asked Alito for comment, he took the unusual step of refuting the charges before they had even been published with a guest essay in the Wall Street Journal.
Alito’s argument for accepting the trip was that it wasn’t that lavish and it “would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially.”
I consider myself to be reasonable and unbiased and I don’t agree at all.
As editor of The Post-Star, we adopted an ethics policy developed by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) at the time. I was a member of that journalism group and a board member for a time.
It was nice to see the ethics policy - the ASNE statement of principles - is still in place and published on The Post-Star’s website.
Here is the part we lived by in the newsroom that is listed under Article III - Independence:
Journalists must avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety as well as any conflict of interest or the appearance of conflict. They should neither accept anything nor pursue any activity that might compromise or seem to compromise their integrity.
That is a high bar.
The Supreme Court should set a high bar.
The key point is avoiding even an “appearance” of impropriety.
For Justice Thomas and Justice Alito, there is clearly an “appearance of impropriety.”
Justice Alito’s argument seems to be no reasonable person would think a Supreme Court justice’s integrity would be compromised by something as small as a hunting trip to Alaska on a private jet.
He is wrong about that and the Supreme Court has a black eye and recent polls show fewer and fewer Americans trust its decisions.
The Supreme Court could put these ethics controversies behind them by simply adopting the ASNE Statement of Principles. And then living by them.
There is no study that needs to be done.
It is common sense.
If it looks bad, don’t do it.
The Supreme Court may have restored some faith from the American people this week with its 6-3 verdict “independent state Legislature theory.” It was a rare decision where liberal and conservative justices agreed. The long-term ramifications of the decision was it allowed elections to be decided by voters and not state Legislatures.
That seems like a no-brainer.
But what I found so disturbing was that three justices descented on the ruling, at least one on technical grounds. So three of the most esteemed legal minds in the country believed it was OK for state Legislatures to throw out voting results if they choose.
For years, I believed Supreme Court justices cornered the market on wisdom. That they tried to do what was the right thing for the country, not what was expected of them politically.
If the Supreme Court had to rule on the validity of climate change these days, I fear the vote would be 5-4 against because it might hurt the oil companies.
The American people dodged a bullet this time, but I worry about next4 time.
It’s OK because they are too good to ever be bribed.
Lydia goes national
One of my initiatives as editor at The Post-Star years ago was to hire local reporters and editors to reduce turnover. We even had a teen journalism program at one point. One of the participants was a Queensbury High student named Lydia Wheeler.
We saw Lydia’s potential in high school. After she graduated, she went off to Keene State in New Hampshire, but came back and worked for us in the summers.
After college graduation, we hired Lydia. I was hoping she would spend her entire career at her hometown newspaper. I was even more optimistic when she started dating a young man who was our online editor. I joked with other editors this would benefit because our online editor would have to stay as well.
But then Jon Davenport was offered a job at the Washington Post, Lydia decided to follow him to Washington and we lost two great talents.
Jon is still working at the Post and Lydia now works for Bloomberg Law covering the Supreme Court. They married a few years ago and I expect they will soon be a Washington power couple.
On Tuesday night, Lydia appeared on “The 11th Hour (MSNBC) with Stephanie Ruhle” to talk about the most recent Supreme Court decisions.
And it all started at The Post-Star.
Amtrak shuts down
Rep. Elise Stefanik, who quickly took credit for the Amtrak line to Montreal reopening in April, had harsh words for Amtrak when it closed the line this week.
“After we worked so hard to reopen the Adirondack Line this year, this news is absolutely unacceptable. My office is working with Amtrak, local and state elected officials, as well as the North Country Chamber of Commerce to ensure that Canadian National Railroad leadership provides a written plan to reopen the line immediately.”
Rep. Stefanik really needs to take a trip on the line to ascertain its importance to the North Country.
Currently, once you get north of the border, trails are forced to creep along at 10 miles per hour because of deteriorating tracks. My guess is this line is not reopening anytime soon.
Anytime you can drive to a place faster to a place than by train, it is no longer practical.
I truly wonder if it was always this way and we just didn't know it or if people just had more integrity in the past? I remember a day when people said that they gave their word and that meant something. There was an internal moral monitoring. Do they justify it to themselves now or do they really have no ethics and not care? Both?
1) funny #pos_tefanik has a new lie about Amtrak. Albeit another lie of ommission. When they reopened the lie was: "one day after I called Amtrak, they restarted that line" implying her conversation changed everything.. Though no one from Amtrak said anything about restarting because of #pos_tefanik. To be clear though, they said nothing about anyone... democrat or republican.. though all noted they were happy to have the service back.
And let’s point out there are a few politicians who COULD take Amtrak.. the line runs right by #pos_tefanik pretend home in Schuylerville.. I believe when she is grandstanding in Plattsburgh (where the train has a stop) she flew there in her private jet. She definitely did NOT take the train there to the press conference.
Now she isn’t saying when the last time she talked to Amtrak, but one can guess her ‘phone calls’ this time are going unheeded.
2) Taking your car over a train because it is faster, ignores a couple of things. One if you have a sensible car (that gets more than 15 mpg).. and gas at Adirondack prices $4 a gallon it is cheaper
Amtrak $194, (https://www.amtrak.com/tickets/departure.html), and in a car getting 30 mpg (mind you I get 40) at $4 a gallon is $72.
Second, if you are going to the Adirondack.. most places have NO public transportation, i.e. you need a car.