The Supreme Court is the highest arbiter of the law in the nation, the final defence for the highest law of the land, the Constitution. Supreme Court justices are selected for their legal scholarship and experience, for their wisdom, and for their moral rectitude. Justices should be solomonic in their impartial judgements, unswayed by partisan considerations. Their moral character should be unimpeachably pure, and, like Caesar’s wife, they must appear to be pure as well. Any hint of personal impropriety diminishes the office and diminishes respect for that office.

One of the requirements for Supreme Court Justices is the completion of an annual “Financial Disclosure Report” of personal finances to we, the people. This report includes the Justice’s sources of income and amounts, both earned and unearned, as well as investments and other positions held. It also requires disclosure in section III(B) of “Spouse’s Non-Investment Income”, although the required disclosure is of sources only: as the instruction states “dollar amount not required except for honoraria”.

Why is completion of this report required of Justices? So that we may see for ourselves that those doing the people’s business and protecting the people’s freedoms are not subject to undue influence, and that their interests are not in conflict with the duties of  high office. Accurate and complete reporting is an absolute requirement, and it must be certified by the reporting Justice as follows:

“I certify that all information given above (including information pertaining to my spouse and minor or dependent children, if any) is accurate, true, and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief..” 

Under the certifying signature is this: “Note: Any individual who knowingly and wilfully falsifies or fails to file this report may be subject to civil and criminal sanctions (5 U.S.C. app # 104)”.

All Financial Disclosure Reports by Supreme Court Justices are retained for public review for six years (which is coincidentally the statutory limit on IRS filings as well) and are then destroyed. All well and good – now what about Justice Thomas?

Justice Clarence Thomas is married to Mrs. Virginia (Ginni) Thomas, who over the past thirteen years has worked for pay for, among others, The Heritage Foundation (a right-wing authoritarian political “think-tank”), the Republican Party leadership in the House of Representatives, Hillsdale College (described by National Review as “the citadel of American conservatism), and “Liberty Central”, a Tea-Party affiliated group funded by among others the Koch Brothers. She is, by her affiliations and her paid work, a political operative at the highest level of national politics, working at the far right end of the political spectrum. And her work must be of a very high caliber indeed, since between 2003 and 2007 the Heritage Foundation paid her nearly $690,000, an average of  $138,000 per year. Nice work if you can get it!

That Justice Thomas’ wife is a political operative is a reality of Washington DC, and while interesting and somewhat concerning, is not in itself either disqualifying nor in any sense improper, at least in the sewer of corruption that is our nations capital. Justice Thomas was a nominee of Republican President George Bush (the first), and it would be quite a surprise if his wife worked for Move-On.org, Greenpeace, and Acorn!

What is improper, and in my opinion an absolute disqualification for office (and possibly criminal fraud) is that from 1997 to 2009 Justice Thomas reported that his wife had NO non-investment income of any kind. And he certified this with his signature. Here is a link to the Opensecrets.org section on Supreme Court Justices’ annual filings:

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/02/supreme-court-justices-personal-finances.html

And here is a link to Justice Thomas’s 2008 filing:

[url=http://pfds.opensecrets.org/N99999918_2008.pdf]http://pfds.opensecrets.org/N99999918_2008.pdf[/url]

Thomas claims that this information was “inadvertently omitted”. This is quite an admission of incompetence by someone whose decisions affect the state of justice in the entire nation. And if Justice Thomas is so incompetent that he can’t complete a simple disclosure form accurately, he is not qualified to drive a bus let alone occupy high office.

Whether the result of incompetence (as claimed by Justice Thomas), or deliberate fraud (which I suspect but which should be tested in a court of law in my opinion), Justice Thomas has disqualified himself utterly as suitable to occupy his position. He has besmirched the government – why should we as citizens respect an institution which allows such a man to continue in office? The contemptible actions of one who should be above reproach are compounded and multiplied if not corrected.

Unfortunately, this corruption at the highest levels of our government appears to be quite common – consider Treasury Secretary Geithner’s similar admission of incompetence in failing to pay his self-employment taxes because Turbotax made a mistake. I use turbotax, and you have to be pretty creative to avoid it calculating self-employment tax! And Mr. Geithner, who I suspect is merely a common garden tax cheat, is in charge of doling out trillions of dollars of OUR treasure to his pals at his ex-employer Goldman Sachs. This man, like Justice Thomas, is by his own admission incompetent to hold high office, and, also like Justice Thomas, probably guilty of fraud upon the American people.

That both these men continue to hold office is disturbing and leads to a very scary conclusion: they are not being investigated, nor prosecuted, nor forced to resign, BECAUSE WHAT THEY DO IS NORMAL IN WASHINGTON DC. Apparently we have a criminal government, run of by and for the thugs who grab power by whatever means possible. And they use that power illegitimately to enrich themselves and their sponsors.

What then is the appropriate action of a citizen faced with the criminal illegitimacy of his government? Writing articles is therapeutic, and may influence a few. But to really cut these scum off at the knees takes two things: DEFUND and DEFEDERALIZE. By defunding, I mean that they can only print money for so long to finance their annual spending of 50% more than annual tax receipts. I’d love to have a champaigne and cocaine lifestyle on a beer budget, but I find it difficult to print my own money to do so. No problem for the feds however, since they rake it in personally now and our children and grandchildren get to pay for it for the next fifty years. And we as citizens can defund now – how? By reducing our incomes below the level that attracts federal taxes. If fifty million people jumped off the hamster wheel and lived more simply on less income, not only would they have more time to live better, it would starve the federal government and hasten the end of its corruption. I agree with Grover Norquist in this regard.

The result if this forced shrinkage of the federal government (defederalization) would be the restoration of powers to the States misappropriated by the federal government contrary to the Constitution. This has to happen by direct action, since we can no longer rely on any branch of the federal government to be uncorrupted with the likes of Clarence Thomas and Timothy Geithner occupying high office.

Like our government’s pal Mubarak’s Egypt, we live in a land governed of by and for the most greedy, arrogant, deceitful, and corrupt. It’s a disgraceful end to a noble experiment.

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