"Does this dress make me look cheap?"
"No, it makes you look expensive."
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is the latest public servant to offer the strange argument that his acceptance of favors implies no corresponding favoritism because someone in his position would never sell out so cheaply.
A similar line of argument has been forwarded by Dick Cheney and his defenders regarding the $150,000 or so the vice president collects each year from Halliburton Co., his former employer.
Cheney's critics point out that the company, which paid Cheney more than $44 million during his five years there, has thrived on government contracts over which Cheney has at least some influence, and that this seems to have a whiff of corruption about it. Cheney's defenders point to the same massive salary and wealth as evidence that a measly $150,000 couldn't possibly be enough to turn his head now. To most of us — those who must work for years to earn $150,000 — this seems like a princely sum. But for people like Cheney, it's regarded as too little to register as a possible influence.
The same argument was used to dismiss criticism that focused on the windfall President George W. Bush and members of his Cabinet stood to gain from passage of his tax cut plan. Harper's Index framed this criticism this way:
Average amount a Bush Cabinet member will save this year due to cuts in capital-gains and dividend taxes: $42,000
Median U.S. household income in 2002: $42,409
The notion that any member of the president's Cabinet might be swayed by a measly 42 grand — a year's income for most of us — was sniffed at as unworthy of a response. Such a paltry sum was viewed as scarcely worthy of notice for the titans of the administration. No one could seriously think that such a tiny lagniappe might influence their decisions or their agenda.
Scalia, responding to criticism over his chummy duck-hunting trip with, yes, Dick Cheney, and calls to recuse himself from a current case involving the vice president, made the same argument:
"If it is reasonable to think that a Supreme Court justice can be bought so cheap, the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined," Scalia wrote in response to the Sierra Club's request that he disqualify himself.
A food critic who received a free meal would be regarded as corrupt and unreliable, and would be in violation of the code of ethics that governs food critics. Scalia is here suggesting that justices of the Supreme Court of the United States have a higher status, and therefore may have lower standards, than food critics.
Every time I hear this argument — "little bribes are for little people" — I'm reminded of John Edwards' "Two Americas" speech:
What this president fails to understand is that we still live in two different Americas: one for the privileged few, and another for everybody else. …
How else to explain the vast disconnect between our leaders and the rest of the public about the significance and value of chartered planes and tens of thousands of dollars?
This disconnect was again on display in Scalia's arguments in a recent case regarding a Texas HMO:
The ordeal of two Texas HMO patients was the subject of a lively Supreme Court argument Tuesday, but the justices seemed to have little sympathy for their legal case, which hinged on the ability to sue insurers in state court.
Fort Worth lawyer George Parker Young, representing Juan Davila of Denton and Ruby Calad of Sugar Land, argued that his clients had been wrongfully denied proper care and should be able to sue their HMOs under Texas state law instead of federal law.
Davila's insurer, Aetna, denied payment for Vioxx, a brand-name prescription drug, and he developed bleeding ulcers after using a cheaper drug that his doctor prescribed. …
Scalia appeared to dismiss the argument that Davila was effectively denied proper care by the HMO. "All you're talking about here is money," said Scalia, who noted that the patient could have purchased the drug himself.
"All you're talking about here is money." That about sums it up.
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