Come to America - Bribery is Legal

 The Supremes have ruled a new law about Bridery. Here is the poopski. I will sum up a little.

1. The Mayor of Portage, in 2013, ran the competition for a new garbage truck company. They chose Great Lakes Peterbilt.

2. In 2014, after this was chosen and the $1.1 million purchase was made, the Great Lakes Peterbilt paid the Mayor $13,000 dollars.

3.  The FBI investigated and found it the process had been manipulated by the mayor to ensure the company won the bid. 

4. A jury convicted the Mayor of accepting an illegal gratuity. The Mayor insisted it was for consulting services to the Great Lakes Peterbilt company. BTW: This seems a pretty shady practice in my mind anyway. How can you consult for a company you are judging, but whatevs.

5. The verdict was upheld by the State Supreme Court.

6. The Mayor appealed to the Supreme Court.

7. The Supreme Court said that since it was after the fact, the US statute does not concern gratuities, only to brides.

8. Get this, in their justification, they said that this would mean, "Could students take their college professor to Chipotle for an end-of-term celebration? And, if so, would it somehow become criminal to to the professor to a steak dinner? Or to treat her to a Hoosiers game (college basketball for those outside the US)?

    I would think that taking a professor out to dinner, a professor who is paid by the college and is not paid by the student, would be okay. But apparently, I am not as smart as a Supreme Court Justice.

But that conviction was too much for this court. In this court, the person who MADE the decisions and was "supposedly" employed as a consultant DURING the decision process, getting $13,000 later, was acceptable.

In at least one way, this is a totally expected outcome. You cannot expect at least 2 of the Justices who received $100s of Thousands in "gratuities" to find it illegal. 

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