The problem with Clarence Thomas’ luxe vacays

Make Me Smart April 6, 2023 Transcript

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Kimberly Adams 

Hello, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to make me smart where we make today make sense. It’s Thursday, April, the sixth. Kai is out but joining me today is the wonderful Sabri Ben-Achour. Hey, Sabri.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Hi, thanks for having me. Glad to be back.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes. So today is news fix and smile day. We can get started with the news Sabri, what caught your attention today?

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Well, so I saw a story about Airbus doubling production in China. This is in the New York Times. So they’re going to double production, of one of their planes in China. And the… that might sound like okay, whatever. But the interesting part of this is that this sort of illustrates the difficult position that a lot of companies are when it comes to China because they need that market. But on the other hand, there’s been a state sponsored effort to steal industrial secrets from the same companies who need the Chinese market. So they’re expanding in China. They’re also the target of Chinese industrial espionage. One of the makers of… one of the engines that goes into Airbus planes was actually the target of, of an elaborate spy operation, you know, by the Chinese government, by the military to extract secrets. And so it’s just, you know, it’s just kind of crazy.

Kimberly Adams 

I mean, hasn’t this been going on for ages though, versions of this were the, you know, Western companies, which is kind of funny calling Europe western to China, when, depending on which anyhow direction you go on the globe. Anyway, but when, you know, sort of European and American companies, you know, want to expand in China and at the same time they know that China is stealing from them. And they complain to the US and European governments about Chinese espionage, but still work there.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Yeah, I mean, it has been going on for four decades. But I just, you know, China’s made promises to not do it, and it still happens. But it just… every time I read about this or learn about this, it still boggles my mind. I actually was just talking to this former Defense official today. And he was saying there’s a, there are 250,000 people in China employed by the government to steal industrial secrets. At a minimum, at a minimum. So and, you know, the FBI, like every day has a new case of industrial espionage from China. And it… I just, I don’t know. I’m just continually just shocked by it, even though I shouldn’t be.

Kimberly Adams 

Hmm. I mean, I, I wonder if they just like factor this into the cost of doing business. But on the other hand, when it’s stuff that could be a national security threat, you can’t really just write it off that way.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Yeah. Yep. What about you? What was your, what caught your eye today?

Kimberly Adams 

This story that is another amazing piece of journalism from ProPublica, the nonprofit newsroom. Wow, they went deep into information about what Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been doing. And he has been taking cruises, flights on private jets, and stays at private resorts from a billionaire Republican donor named Harlan Crowe. And I mean, we’re talking about trips to exotic islands and private private resorts, really luxurious trips that would cost like in the hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years, if not each time. And this is over the course of like two decades. So for what it’s worth, Thomas has a salary of $285,000, and is hanging out with a billionaire on a super yacht, on private jets and going to these private resorts and private ranches. And none of this appears on Clarence Thomas’s financial disclosures. And according to ProPublica, I’m just going to read here, “his failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts to ethics, law expert says. He also should have disclosed his trips on the yacht.” Thomas, of course, did not respond to a detailed list of questions. Now, look, it’s Washington and there’s a lot of crossover in terms of friendships and personal relationships in all sorts of segments, but you have to disclose this stuff. And you cannot ignore how powerful both of these men are in shaping some of the most contentious decisions of our moment. And I strongly encourage people to look at the ProPublica reporting. And ProPublica got this stuff, by drawing from flight records, internal documents distributed to Crowe’s employees and interviews with dozens of people ranging from his super yacht staff, to members of the secretive Bohemian Club, which is one of the clubs they would go to, to an Indonesian scuba diving instructor.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Wow they really did go deep. Well, yeah, here’s not… I mean, I know I think I know the answer to this question. But I mean, on the one hand, just to play devil’s advocate. I don’t know, sometimes people have rich friends, right, that they hang out with. And, you know, like, if you’re rich friend invites you to like a $500 dinner and knows that’s out of your range, they’re probably going to pay for it. But on the other other hand. Like, this guy also donated like $120,000 to Thomas’s wife’s some organization, some political organization. So I like… on the one hand, I’m inclined to think well, okay, fine, he has rich friends. Okay. But on the other, it’s like, well, I don’t know, couldn’t you’ve just written it down, you know. Just like disclose it.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes you can have rich friends. Fine. But being in a position of public service comes with some trade offs, right? And great power comes great responsibility. You and I know this, as journalists. We get offered stuff all the time that we don’t take, because it’s not appropriate for the jobs that we do. And that just means we don’t get to do some stuff that would be really cool to take advantage of. You know, being offered like exclusive tours, or free tickets or things like that. And we have a real strict policy. And so like a very kind person sent me like some samples of cocktail mixers to the DC bureau. And I like took a photo of it and sent it to my supervisor, and I was like, “this is valued at over $25. I think I need to disclose this.” You know, because we have to have a discussion about it. It’s like, I’m not gonna send it back in the mail but we have to be upfront and transparent about this kind of stuff. And he’s a Supreme Court justice, and there are just trade offs. There are things you don’t get to do when you have these positions of public power, but I guess you do get to do them in his case. Yeah, I mean, or if you do do them, then just just put it in the form, you know, just like be up front about it. Follow the law. Follow the law. Follow the law. I’ll be so fascinated to see the continuing fallout from the story if Thomas ever responds. I don’t know who would enforce this on the Judiciary, on the Supreme Court,

Sabri Ben-Achour 

I guess it would have to be the Supreme Court itself, right? Because if they don’t do something, I imagine the other branches of government will figure out a way to do something. And I’m assuming they would like to avoid that. So I don’t know.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah but the other branches of government being the White House, right? The executive, which is Biden. And if Biden tries to do anything to Thomas, everyone’s going to blame him for being partisan. And you’ll get the same kind of rhetoric you get around Trump. And if you leave it up to Congress to do something, well look at the division in Congress and good luck getting anything meaningful through. So I wonder what accountability looks like here.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

That’s a very good point.

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, and it’s a very good time to turn to smiles. You’re our resident plant expert has a plant themed make me smile. Go ahead, Sabri.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Yes, I do. The corpse flower has bloomed at the New York Botanical Gardens. It’s actually, I checked the live cam and it’s kind of like crumbling now. It’s kind of past its peak, but I I’m going to try and maybe see it before it completely collapses in on itself. But because the bloom only lasts fully like a day and a half or so. But I did get to see when… I got to see one, I don’t know it must have been like eight years ago, something like that. I was actually going to buy one. Like you can buy them.

Kimberly Adams 

I was gonna say, I thought you had one at one point.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

So there’s a bunch of different species like unrelated species that all rely on the same evolutionary mechanism of smelling like rotting flesh and/or rotting meat or poop. And they’ve just sort of all happened upon the strategy to attract flies instead of like bees. So the corpse flower that I have is a totally different species and is much smaller. But it does, it literally gives me a migraine every time it blooms which is why I moved to the office.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh, wow. If any of you ever get the chance to tour Marketplace’s New York Bureau, you will find it full of Sabri’s plants. Everywhere, everywhere. All over the place.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Some are a little worse for wear since the COVID era but yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s a very oxygen rich environment in there. All right, well, mine. Oh my gosh. So I’m such a huge fan of Lizzo. And she apparently, and I’ve been traveling so I’m not caught up in all my shows so I haven’t seen the latest episode of the Mandalorian in which apparently Lizzo has a cameo.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

No way!

Kimberly Adams 

Yes! Lizzo appeared as “the Duchess, one of the rulers of the planet Plazir-15, alongside Jack Black as Captain Bombardier and Christopher Lloyd as security chief Commissioner Helgait. As The Duchess, the pop star appeared to have the time of her life bonding with Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) throughout the hour, and even knighted the little green alien before he left the planet with Pedro Pascal’s Din Djarin.” This is from Billboard’s coverage of it. And they have this really nice story about how getting this opportunity brought her to tears because, and here’s the quote, “when I was a young girl, my dad introduced me to Star Wars like a rite of passage. The trilogies are his favorite movies and quickly became mine. When they called me and offered me the role of The Duchess, I cried all day wishing my dad was still with us because he’d be so proud.” Aww. And I’m super excited because they’re bringing back a second season of her reality TV show “Watch out for the big girls” which I love so much. So much. So that made me smile. For sure. For sure. So that is my activity for tonight. I will be catching up on the Mandalorian. Oh, boy. All right. Well, that is it for us today. We will be back tomorrow for economics on tap. It starts at 6:30 Eastern, 3:30 Pacific. We will do the news but we’re also going to bring some drinks and play half full/half empty.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Can’t wait!

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, it’s gonna be so exciting. And so yes, please join us on the YouTube livestream and if you can’t, you can catch us later in all the different platforms.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Cool. And if you have a question or a thought or a suggestion about something that you heard on the show today, or any other day, you can let us know. You can reach us at 508-U-B-SMART and makemesmart@marketplace.org

Kimberly Adams 

Make me smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s episode was engineered by Drew Jostad. And our intern is Antonia Barreras.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Marissa Cabrera is our acting Senior Producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts and Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital.

Kimberly Adams 

All my little seedlings are coming up in my garden outside. I’m planting like 40 different varieties of herbs and vegetables and things. It’s pretty wild out there.

Sabri Ben-Achour 

Awesome. Awesome.