When Was Bribery of Politicians Legalized In America?

Why don’t we have gun control? Why are the rich getting richer and the rest of us are in the dust? Why won’t Congress act on global warming?

It’s because our Supreme Court, or, more correctly, five Republicans on our Supreme Court, legalized bribery.

Not the bribery of store clerks or bank tellers or people who work for airlines. You go to jail for that.

Not the bribery of judges or police or people who work in government offices. That’s still very much a crime.

Not even international bribery; if your company does business overseas and you execute a bribe to conduct that business, you can still go to prison here in the United States.

The Supreme Court legalized bribery for only one very narrow and very specific group of people in the United States: politicians.

There’s a reason we have laws against bribery.

Bribery short-circuits normal, expected interactions and damages economic systems, typically through theft. Most important, it reduces trust. It hurts business, it hurts society, and it hurts us individually.

For example, if someone were to walk up to a salesperson in a store and offer them money to look the other way while something is stolen from that store, nobody can…