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What do Clarence Thomas and Ed Burke have in common?
The question may seem absurd at first glance, but stick with us. The latest on the U.S. Supreme Court justice from the investigative news group ProPublica, which has published a series of reports on Thomas and his acceptance of financial help from uberwealthy business figures, details the concerns he expressed to a Republican congressman more than 20 years ago about how little justices were paid. According to the report, Thomas hinted at stepping down from the high court in order to make more money, a prospect that alarmed conservatives and may have set in motion the questionable gifts bestowed upon him. Those included payment of private school tuition for his grandnephew and forgiveness of much of a private loan covering the cost of Thomas’ recreational vehicle.
The reports have helped create something of a slow-moving crisis at the Supreme Court over ethics standards and the need for more transparency and stricter rules around justices’ income outside their jobs.
What caught our attention about the Thomas saga was how familiar it sounded. What apparently prompted Thomas to accept so much help from wealthy benefactors over recent decades has been at the root of multiple corruption scandals here in Chicago — the desire of public officials to enjoy standards of living that their taxpayer-funded salaries alone won’t support.
Exhibit A locally right now is Burke, a former alderman who is on trial accused of using his powerful position as longtime chair of the City Council’s Finance Committee to pressure businesses to use his law firm for their property tax appeals. The case is before the jury now.
If he is found guilty, Burke will have been preceded by numerous other aldermen convicted of using their positions to fatten their wallets. Patrick Daley Thompson and Willie Cochran are two recent examples. Since 1972, more than 30 aldermen have pleaded guilty or been convicted of crimes related to their aldermanic duties.
In Burke’s case, the evidence paints a picture we’ve seen time after time in this corruption-afflicted city. Public officials who think of themselves as big shots — and it didn’t take an indictment and trial to understand that’s how Burke thought of himself — opt to use their positions as wheelers and dealers on behalf of taxpayers to feather their own nests.
The problem is that Burke, Thomas and so many others won’t confront the obvious choice. You can be a public servant, or you can try to make yourself rich. You usually can’t do both at the same time.
If living ultracomfortably is most important to you, then you can decide to no longer be a public servant and pursue a more lucrative career.
What seems lost on the Burkes and Thomases of the world is that public service doesn’t have to be a lifetime gig. Burke was an alderman — one of 50 — for five decades! That job, it’s safe to say, really wasn’t meant to be a lifetime career.
The Supreme Court is a different animal, of course. Justices are appointed to their posts for as long as they want them, or until they shuffle off this mortal coil. As a result, in the past 20 years, we’ve watched the process of advice and consent devolve into a sort of blood sport as the stakes for these lifetime posts get ever higher.
With the already-powerful high court becoming arguably the most important branch of government, given the inability of Congress to function as it was intended, a justice perceived by one side of the ideological spectrum as a reliable vote becomes invaluable.
Thomas most certainly is a reliable vote for the right, so it comes as little surprise that some moneyed conservatives were happy to chip in to keep him on the court when he got the word out that he was having financial difficulties.
But here’s some food for thought. As unthinkable as it may seem to some that a Supreme Court justice might step down before he or she reaches traditional retirement age, it would be far healthier for the country if any justice who desires to make more money simply would do what many others in public office do and leave for that reason.
Chicago Tribune Opinion
A Supreme Court justice may wear a fancy black robe, but he or she is a public servant just the same. There should be nothing wrong with treating the high court the way most other public offices are treated — as posts in which the occupants are there to perform a public service. If they choose to do that for decades, that’s fine. But the financial rewards that others in their exalted orbit enjoy don’t come with the job. For that, they should do something else.
For Burke and the state and local pols who’ve used their posts to enrich themselves, the issue is somewhat different. They’re permitted to hold private-sector jobs. They don’t have to choose between public service and an upper-middle-class — or even upper-class — life.
But so many resort anyway to improperly mixing their public and private occupations because it’s an easier way to make a buck than to have to compete fairly for business. It’s gratifying to see Burke and former House Speaker Michael Madigan, among others, prosecuted for these alleged violations of their duty of service to the public.
The issues can get complicated, we allow. For example, it’s not in the public interest to select only independently wealthy people to serve on the Supreme Court for fear someone of more modest means might resort to the kind of questionable assistance Thomas received or fail to spend 30 or 40 years on the court, as their zealous advocates want.
But it would be far healthier for our democracy and institutions if we returned more to the notion that public service is just that — public service — and not also a way to obtain wealth.
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