RUSULTS ON ADULTERY ARE IN! UNITED STATES IS THE No. 1 COUNTRY COMMITTING ADULTERY IN BOTH RELATIONSHIPS AND MARRIAGES!

World Agrees: Adultery, While Prevalent, Is Wrong

Media reports highlight adultery among political leaders and celebrities, and such visibility could erode moral objections

Joseph Chamie

Thursday, April 12, 2018

Adultery on trial: From Chinese leader Bo Xilai, with wife Gu Kailai, to a Pakistani commoner,

adulterers in some nations face punishment and shame

NEW YORK: Adultery, despite near universal disapproval, has become more visible and prevalent worldwide, challenging established morals of acceptable behavior. Daily news headlines list extramarital affairs of heads of state, government officials, celebrities and other elites. In many instances, extramarital affairs among high-level officials are open secrets, tolerated until other corruption or crimes are uncovered. In addition, social media, technology, and modern lifestyles facilitate adultery.

Adultery, defined as voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a person who is not a spouse, occurs in every society. Historically, most cultures consider the behavior immoral, and religions imposed stiff penalties including death: In the Bible, the seventh of 10 Commandments states, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and the Koran prohibits adultery, describing the behavior as “a shameful deed and evil.” In Hinduism, marriage is a sacred and sanctified relationship, with adultery considered a serious breach of dharma, punished here and in the hereafter. Buddhism regards adultery as a serious transgression, furthering suffering and viewed as harmful to oneself and others. Confucianism, considering marriage of prime social value, holds faithfulness and sincerity as first principles and includes infidelity among grounds for divorce.

While religious doctrines still condemn adultery, social norms and laws have changed. Adultery continues to be strictly prohibited in some countries like Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia and Somalia, yet is decriminalized in nearly all industrial societies. A notable exception to decriminalization of adultery among developed countries is the United States, where it remains a criminal offense in 21 states: Various forms of adultery are a misdemeanor in Florida, New York and Utah and a felony in Massachusetts, Michigan and Wisconsin.  Prosecutions are rare.

While severe punishments for adultery have by and large disappeared, the majorities of the general public in virtually every country still view adultery as immoral. A global survey across 40 countries, covering three-fourths of the world’s population, found 78 percent suggesting that married people having an affair was morally unacceptable. The study’s notable exception was France, where 47 percent said an extramarital affair was morally suspect.

Such widespread disapproval makes reliable estimates of adultery among married men and women hard to come by. The estimates, for the most part based on self-reporting, are likely to be lower than actual levels. Those involved are reluctant to admit adulterous behavior even to researchers. Despite measurement difficulties, a 2005 global survey estimated that 22 percent of married people worldwide admitted to having committed adultery. A 2016 survey suggested that in more than one-third of marriages, one or both spouses commit adultery.

Global morals: More than 75 percent of respondents worldwide suggest that extramarital affairs are morally unacceptable, reports a Pew Research Center survey that posed questions on a range of behaviors

Men are more likely to commit adultery than women. In the United States, for example, national surveys of married couples found that 25 percent of men and 15 percent of women admitted to committing adultery; in the United Kingdom, 15 percent of husbands and 9 percent of wives reported having an extramarital affair. A 2012 study of Chinese aged 18 to 49 years either married or in a stable relationship also reported higher adultery/ infidelity rates for men than women, 14 and 4 percent, respectively. Recent data for some countries, such as the United States, indicate that women may be closing the adultery gap. Younger women appear to be cheating on spouses nearly as often as men, while some researchers question whether the gap is real or if women are less likely than men to admit to extramarital affairs.

People deny the activity because infidelity has serious negative social and personal consequences – and can lead to blackmail, bribery and corruption. Extramarital affairs can devastate marriages, families, careers and political ambitions. Adultery increases a couple’s odds of separation and divorce and is often cited as a major reason for divorce and an underlying factor for rising divorce rates.  Popular media are full of instances of celebrity and elite couples breaking up after adultery is discovered. In the United States, estimates suggest that one-third of marriages survive extramarital affairs.

Extramarital affairs can impose serious emotional effects on spouses, children and other family members. In particular, an extramarital affairs can result in psychological difficulties for the noninvolved spouse along with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder including damaged self-esteem, confusion, depression, nightmares, disassociation from reality and a compromised sense of confidence.

Throughout history, especially in traditional and religious communities, marriage and the sexual behavior of men and women were proscribed within culturally acceptable norms and rules of behavior. Modern lifestyles are eroding those customs. In particular, technology – the internet, mobile phone messaging and cameras, social networking and pornographic websites – allows people to observe one another and interact, often clandestinely, more than ever before. One study reported on how social networks encourage users to connect with new people and reconnect with old partners, which in turn facilitates adultery.

Extramarital dating and adultery websites have proliferated worldwide. One website reports more than 30 million users in more than 15 countries. Such websites permit individuals to meet online, browse profile photos, list interests, specify desired characteristics and check potential partners in advance before identifying discreet locations for a meeting. Social-networking technology also permits individuals in conservative societies to directly and privately observe new patterns of marital and sexual behavior. Some men and women, especially younger adults, consider trying out the lifestyles of other countries, including sex before marriage, cohabitation and even adultery.

The media’s reporting of adultery, particularly in politics, entertainment and business, has also evolved in recent decades becoming more frequent and detailed. In the United States, for example, infidelity reported among presidents during the 20^th century, including Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, emerged after the men had died. Today, newspaper stories, interviews and photos of officials and celebrities accused of having extramarital affairs are commonplace. Recognizing the changes in marital sexual behavior, the public’s interest and financial gains, the movie and entertainment industry have increasingly focused on the issue. Movies such as American Beauty from the United States, China’s In the Mood for Love, France’s Nathalie and India’s Astitva tend to normalize adulterous behavior.

The institution of marriage and its meaning has changed markedly since the mid-20^th century. Marriage is no longer the permanent or sacred institution it was a century ago with increased incidence of premarital sex, cohabitation, divorce, separation, remarriage, blended families, single parenthood, and individualistic social values and expectations.  Most people across the globe continue to regard adultery as morally unacceptable and just plain wrong, yet the widespread disapproval may not be sufficient to alter the growing visibility. In the long term, sexual decisions of individuals may erode moral objections to adultery and social trust.

Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division. 

2017 AMERICA'S INFIDELITY RESULTS ARE IN!

NH COURT RECORDS STILL LIE!  CLAIMING FOR OVER 100 YEARS NO ADULTERY HAPPENS IN NH!

Pay Attention And Weep!
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THE DEMOGRAPHICS OF INFIDELITY IN AMERICA

By Wendy Wang 

JANUARY 10, 2018

Category: Marriage, Divorce and Break-Ups, Infidelity, Women, Race, Men, Religion

The last few months of 2017 treated us to a whirlwind of news coverage on sexual harassment and abuse, with powerful men from Hollywood to Washington, D.C. falling because of sexual misconduct. It continues into the new year, with Missouri Governor Eric Greitens the latest to fall. And most of these men are married.

When Time magazine picked the silence breakers as the 2017 “person of the year,” few people paid attention to the other group of women negatively impacted by the fallout—the spouses of the men who engaged in inappropriate or even criminal (in some cases) sexual behavior. To these women, sexual harassment/abuse also means infidelity.

In general, men are more likely than women to cheat: 20% of men and 13% of women reported that they’ve had sex with someone other than their spouse while married, according to data from the recent General Social Survey(GSS).

However, as the figure above indicates, this gender gap varies by age. Among ever-married adults ages 18 to 29, women are slightly more likely than men to be guilty of infidelity (11% vs. 10%). But this gap quickly reverses among those ages 30 to 34 and grows wider in older age groups. Infidelity for both men and women increases during the middle ages. Women in their 60s report the highest rate of infidelity (16%), but the share goes down sharply among women in their 70s and 80s. By comparison, the infidelity rate among men in their 70s is the highest (26%), and it remains high among men ages 80 and older (24%). Thus, the gender gap in cheating peaks among the oldest age group (ages 80+): a difference of 18 percentage points between men and women.

Trend data going back to the 1990s suggests that men have always been more likely than women to cheat. Even so, older men were no more likely to cheat than their younger peers in the past. In the 1990s, the infidelity rate peaked among men ages 50 to 59 (31%) and women ages 40 to 49 (18%). It was lower for both men and women at the older end of the age spectrum. Between 2000 and 2009, the highest rate of infidelity shifted to men ages 60 to 69 (29%) and women ages 50 to 59 (17%). Meanwhile, the gender gap at ages 80+ increased from 5% to 12% in two decades.

A generation or cohort effect is likely to contribute to this shifting gender gap in infidelity. As Nicholas Wolfinger noted in an earlier post, Americans born in the 1940s and 1950s reported the highest rates of extramarital sex, perhaps because they were the first generations to come of age during the sexual revolution. My analysis by gender suggests that men and women follow a slightly different age pattern when it comes to extramarital sex. Women born in the 1940s and 1950s are more likely than other women to be unfaithful to their spouse, and men born in the 1930s and 1940s have a higher rate than other age groups of men. The higher infidelity rates among these two cohorts contribute to the changing pattern in the gender gap as they grow older over time.

In addition to gender and age, the infidelity rate also differs by a number of other demographic and social factors. For example, cheating is somewhat more common among black adults. Some 22% of ever-married blacks said that they cheated on their spouse, compared with 16% of whites and 13% of Hispanics. And among black men, the rate is highest: 28% reported that they had sex with someone other than their spouse, compared with 20% of white men and 16% of Hispanic men.

A person’s political identity, family background, and religious activity are also related to whether or not they cheat. Overall, Democrats, adults who didn’t grow up in intact families, and those who rarely or never attend religious services are more likely than others to have cheated on their spouse. For example, 15% of adults who grew up with both biological parents have cheated on their spouse before, compared with 18% of those who didn’t grow up in intact families.

On the other hand, having a college degree is not linked to a higher chance of cheating. Almost equal shares of college-educated adults and those with high school or less education have been unfaithful to their spouse (16% vs. 15%), and the share among adults with some college education is slightly higher (18%).

Given that many of these factors could be interrelated, I ran a regression model to test the independent effect of each factor. Basically, holding all other factors equal, will each factor still be related to the odds of cheating? It turned out that most of these differences (such as age, race, party identity, religious service attendance, family background) are significant, even after controlling for other factors. And a person’s education level is not significantly associated with cheating.
However, when it comes to who is more likely to cheat, men and women share very few traits.

Separate regression models by gender suggest that for men, being Republican and growing up in an intact family are not linked to a lower chance of cheating, after controlling for other factors. But race, age, and religious service attendance are still significant factors. Likewise, men’s education level is also positively linked to their odds of cheating. By comparison, party ID, family background, and religious service attendance are still significant factors for cheating among women, while race, age, and educational attainment are not relevant factors. In fact, religious service attendance is the only factor that shows consistent significance in predicting both men and women’s odds of infidelity.

Infidelity is painful to the person who is being cheated on and can be detrimental to the relationship. Although statistics on the link between infidelity and divorce are hard to find, my analysis based on GSS data suggests that adults who cheated are much more likely than those who didn’t to be divorced or separated.

Among ever-married adults who have cheated on their spouses before, 40% are currently divorced or separated. By comparison, only 17% of adults who were faithful to their spouse are no longer married. On the flip side, only about half of “cheaters” are currently married, compared with 76% of those who did not cheat.

Men who cheated are more likely than their female peers to be married. Among men who have cheated on their spouse before, 61% are currently married, while 34% are divorced or separated. However, only 44% of women who have cheated before are currently married, while 47% are divorced or separated.

This gender difference could reflect the fact that men are more likely to be remarried than women after a divorce. A portion of currently married “cheaters” may be remarried, since we can't tell from the data whether or not the person who cheated is still married to the spouse he or she cheated on.

Wendy Wang is director of research at the Institute for Family Studies and a former senior researcher at Pew Research Center, where she conducted research on marriage, gender, work, and family life in the United States. 

SOUND THE ALARM, TAX FREE NH GOVERNMENT STILL IGNORING LAWS AND DOESN'T WANT AMERICA TO KNOW HOW MUCH TROUBLE "THIS DRUG INFESTED DEN" OF A STATE IS REALLY TRULY IN!

BETWEEN 2015 AND 2016 AMOUNT OF HOMELESS PEOPLE WENT DOWN 19%.  IN JUST 12 MONTHS, IN 2017 NH HAD AN 11% INCREASE IN HOMELESS PEOPLE!
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On February 15, 2018, Governor Chris Sununu said in his State Of The State Address:

"Simply put, "Life in New Hampshire is better today than it was one year ago – and that's no accident."

"Today in New Hampshire, the rights of crime victims are stronger than ever before." 

"As we look back on this past year and recognize our milestones and achievements, we cannot lose sight of New Hampshire's future."

"NH State law requires municipalities to help people who are destitute, including those who are otherwise unable to obtain shelter."

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This article appears in the March 16 2018 issue of New Hampshire Business Review
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The nagging problem of homelessness in New Hampshire

A decade after Manchester’s call to arms to end homelessness, the problem has gotten worse statewide

By Jack Kenny

Published: March 15, 2018

From left: Chrissy Simonds and Cathy Kuhn, director of the NH Coalition to End Homelessness, at the building where Chrissy lives now, after going through the Families in Transition Granite Leaders Program. 

Photos by Allegra Boverman

Time flies when you’re fighting homelessness. It has already been 10 years since the publication of a report titled, “A Home for Everyone: A 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness in the City of Manchester.” The plan was a virtual call to arms to help people living on the streets, sleeping on park benches, under bridges or even staying in emergency shelters into permanent housing and a state of self-sufficiency.

“It is time to take a moral stand in declaring homelessness to be unacceptable in our city,” the report declared, in boldface type. While there would always be the need for emergency assistance, the problem of long-term homelessness was described as both solvable and practical.

“Not only is long-term homelessness immoral, it is also unnecessarily costly to communities. Cost studies have demonstrated that it is more expensive to keep people on the streets, incurring the excessive costs of crisis intervention, emergency room health care and revolving-door intervention programs, than it is to provide permanent supported housing that produces much better outcomes.” 

The report pegged the number of homeless in the city annually at 1,500, “approximately 400 of whom are children.”

Significant number

The 10-year plan, outlining a coordinated attack on the problem involving city, state and nonprofit agencies, was issued on Feb. 22, 2008. The decade has gone by, but the problem hasn’t. Indeed it may have gotten worse.

“We’ve actually had the largest number of participants we’ve ever had,” said Tim Soucy, city health officer, who oversees a program of health care for the homeless in Manchester.

The program provides primary health care at the sites of two recently merged nonprofits, Families in Transition and New Horizons for New Hampshire. It deals with a variety of physical and psychological afflictions, along with the all-too-common problem of substance abuse. The city receives “a ballpark figure” of $1.5 million annually for the program, most of it coming from the federal government, with some state funding included. 

“That doesn’t include the in-kind contributions Catholic Medical Center provides with lab work and other kinds of specialty care,” said Soucy.

Just over 1,700 people received treatment of one kind or another in 2017, or a couple of hundred more than the total number of homeless cited in the 2008 10-year plan. Overall numbers, however, are hard to pin down, as various agencies count the homeless differently.

Tim Soucy, public health
director for the City of Manchester

The city’s Department of Health, for example, counts among the homeless those who are “couchsurfing” or “doubling up” with relatives or friends for temporary shelter. Other agencies, like the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, number only those who are unsheltered altogether. 

Whatever the count, there are still a significant number of people without homes living in the city. Nashua and Concord are also among the cities that still see chronic homelessness in their communities, despite the adoption several years ago of their own 10-year plans.

In fact, the state of New Hampshire formally adopted a 10-year plan to end homelessness statewide in 2006. Indeed, a national call to end homelessness in 10 years was issued as far back as 2000. The effort was given a boost in 2002, when then-President George W. Bush appointed Philip Margano to head the Interagency Council on Homelessness. Hundreds of cities joined the campaign. Nearly two decades, later chronic homelessness in America persists. 

Opioid crisis

“Obviously, we haven’t ended homelessness,” said Patrick Tufts, president and CEO of Granite United Way. Tufts, co-chair with then-Mayor Frank Guinta of the task force that produced Manchester’s 10-year plan, said it did help to focus attention on the problem and spur an increased effort to coordinate the resources of various agencies and programs to address the issue.

“I am very encouraged by the union of New Horizons for New Hampshire and Families in Transition,” he said, citing the newly merged nonprofits as a vital component in the “continuum of care” for those in need. Yet during the 10 years since the plan was published, new and unforeseen problems have arisen that have increased the dangers of life “on the street” and likely has increased the number of homeless.

While substance abuse has always been a factor, “I would say that one thing we didn’t see on the horizon 10 years ago was the opioid crisis — that’s really hit the homeless,” Tufts said. “As a city and a state, we’re mobilizing around that.” 

One of the positive results from both state and local efforts to address the problems of homelessness has been a more integrated and coordinated effort among local and nonprofit agencies, said Cathy Kuhn, director of the NH Coalition to End Homelessness. 

“Agencies have always collaborated, but over the last 10 years, we’ve developed a system, an infrastructure, needed for a coordinated assessment of people and their needs in order to get them to the resources appropriate for them,” Kuhn said. A key component of that is the 211 phone number that people can dial from anywhere in the state to find where to go in their respective communities to find the help they need.

An unusually severe winter can add to the number of people seeking shelter and strain the resources needed to help them. In warm weather months, the emergency shelter run by New Horizons of New Hampshire might house up to 70 people, said Maureen Beauregard, president of Families in Transition. This winter, more beds had to be added to accommodate as many as 110. 

Waiting List

While the New Horizons shelter takes adults only, Families in Transition provides emergency shelter and permanent housing for both individuals and families.

FIT owns or manages 250 units of housing throughout the city. Along with an 11-bedroom emergency family shelter, the nonprofit offers 11 units of intermediary housing and permanent affordable housing for low and moderate-income renters.

Founded in Manchester in 1991, FIT has since branched out to offer housing and other assistance to homeless individuals and families in Concord, Dover and Wolfeboro. Beauregard, FIT’s founder, notes that while the number of available units have increased over the years, the number of potential occupants has grown even more. As evidence, she cites “a little over 150 families on a waiting list for 11 units” of housing. While they wait, some are “doubled up” and moving around among homes of families and friends while others, including pregnant women, are “living in cars or living outside in tents.”

Providing affordable housing, defined as rents that consume no more than one-third of a family’s income, is a formidable challenge in today’s housing market, with rents typically at $1,000 or more a month.

While some of FIT’s units qualify for HUD Section 8 housing subsidies, the nonprofit relies to a great extent on private donations from individuals and businesses, volunteer work and a variety of fundraising events to keep its operations going. “The community can be very generous to us,” Beauregard said. 

FIT also runs a Granite Leaders program to enable people who have experienced homelessness to become advocates for others still in need of housing. Chrissy Simonds went through the program after becoming homeless as a result of domestic violence.

“I was pregnant and thinking about leaving when [the child’s] father choked me into unconsciousness,” she said. Until then, “I didn’t know anything about homelessness.”

Patrick Tufts, president and CEO of Granite United Way in Manchester.

She stayed with friends for a time, but worried about getting her friends dragged into the middle of her domestic battles. She learned about Families In Transition through Child and Family Services in Manchester. She earned her GED while in transition housing and now has a permanent home on Market Street, in the same building that houses the FIT/New Horizon offices.

‘Getting worse’

While domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse are often cited as contributing causes of homelessness, the extremely tight housing market and soaring rents are pricing many potential tenants out.

“It’s a significant problem for any community, especially in southern New Hampshire and the Seacoast where rents are higher,” said Patricia Murphy, welfare administrator for the town of Merrimack and president of the NH Local Welfare Administrators’ Association.

State law requires municipalities to help people who are destitute, including those who are otherwise unable to obtain shelter.

“We do assist people with rent,” said Murphy. “That’s the number one thing I have to deal with.” Despite an expanding economy and low unemployment figures, many employed at $10- or $15-an-hour jobs are unable to pay rents of $1,000 or more a month.

“When the economy is good, rents go up,” said Murphy. “It’s kind of like a catch-22. You think things are better, but people are still struggling.” 

“It’s definitely getting worse for families,” said Ellen Tully, welfare administrator for the city of Portsmouth. “The affordable, available housing in Portsmouth is very minimal.”

The vacancy rate in the Port City is less than 1 percent, she said. “We see more homeless families than we ever have before. I look at the amount of money we spent at hotels last year and it was in the $50,000 range. We’ve spent about $10,000 so far this year, and that’s high for us.” 

The Portsmouth Housing Authority operates most of the more modestly priced rentals in the city, with 600 units of its own and another 400 units of Section 8 housing it administers.

The PHA is, in fact, the city’s largest landlord, said Craig Welch, executive director. Demand greatly outruns the supply, however, as Welch reports a waiting list of about 450 would-be tenants.

“Almost all of the new development in Portsmouth has been from private developers, building almost exclusively for a high-rent market,” he said. 

One new development the housing authority is heralding the construction of a new apartment complex on Court Street for a mix of market-rate and affordable housing among 68 rental units. It is a private development, financed in part by low-income housing tax credits, Welch said. 

“The rents there will likely be out of the reach of people who are extremely low-income, but we still think adding to the supply of housing is going to be helpful,” said Welch, calling the project the largest development of its kind in the city in nearly 50 years.

Elissa Margolin of Housing Action NH contends the state needs to do more to increase the supply of affordable housing.

“The rental market in New Hampshire has never been this tight or this expensive,” said Margolin. “Our message is that workforce retention requires workforce housing and keeping millennials in the state. To do that, we need a more friendly rental market. We need to keep up with the other New England states that provide below-market loans to real estate developers for affordable housing. Rhode Island just bonded $25 million.”

According to Margolin, Vermont has bonded $35 million in addition to another $10 million a year. Maine bonded $50 million in 2010, and every year commits between $6 million and $12 million to affordable housing. And Massachusetts bonded more than $1 billion over five years.

As for New Hampshire, “We came in with the chamber of commerce and asked for $25 million and got $2.5 million.” 

“Surely, across the state there needs to be more housing units to accommodate the need,” said Bob Quinn, government affairs director for the NH Association of Realtors. “If not, we’re just going to continue to see rising rents.”

But Quinn sees some of the problem as the result of local zoning regulations and planning board requirements, including minimum acreage and frontage requirements, that impede or prevent the construction of multifamily housing.

“There’s this fear and concern for those sorts of developments, that it will invite more children into the community and that means up go the school costs that get shifted onto the property taxpayer. What we’ve seen is the exact opposite,” Quinn said, contending that an increased housing supply is needed for a growing workforce and expanding business opportunities.

“A lot of communities have had the most vibrant economic development where families and children are moving in,” he said.

Same problems

Manchester developer Dick Anagnost, who has built 500 units of affordable housing in the Queen City, said Manchester has done more than most communities to accommodate the construction of multifamily housing.

“Manchester has the highest per capita multifamily units,” Anagnost said, but he contends the city could still do better.

“Zoning in certain places could be changed, to accommodate multifamily housing,” he said, adding that there are restricted areas where the infrastructure in place could well accommodate the higher residential density that multifamily housing would bring.

Other communities are far more restrictive, he said, though he declined to identify any he considers to be among the worst offenders. “I can’t,” he said. “Because then I wouldn’t be able to develop there anymore.” 

In developing Manchester’s 10-year plan, the task force looked at how cities in other states are dealing with homelessness. Mark Swann, executive director of Preble Street Resource Center in Portland, Maine, did some consulting with the group. Ten years later, he concedes his city is still confronted by the same problems facing Manchester.

“I wish I could tell you we eradicated the problem. Unfortunately, I can’t,” he said. Record-high and rapidly rising housing costs have added to the challenges of mental health issues, substance abuse, broken homes and what Swann called “the added layer of the opioid crisis.”

“Right now, our challenges include a gentrification process in our city, the likes of which I have never seen in over 25 years. Affordable housing is very scarce,” he said.

Preble Street runs a network of six shelters with a total of 400 beds, including facilities designated for people with alcohol and substance abuse problems. The resource center works in partnership with the nonprofit Avest Housing, Maine’s largest provider of affordable housing, to move people into permanent housing. The partnership works on a “housing first” basis, an effort to get homeless individuals off the street before dealing with addiction issues. 

“We’re relying on private funding, church support, bake sales, car washes. There’s not a lot of public funding available,” Swann said. “When we do have an opening, the most challenging exercise the agency has to go through, really, is choosing who gets their own home.” In some cases, he said “it’s a life-or-death decision. We know if someone is left behind it could be a tragic situation.” 

One thing Portland didn’t do was adopt a 10-year plan, he said, because he said it would raise false hopes and expectations.

“It’s frustrating,” Swann said. “People see we still have homelessness and they would like it to go away. So would I. I would be very happy if I didn’t have a job tomorrow.”
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NH SUPREME COURT IS NOT ALONE,

BREAKING RULES, LAWS, AND ETHICS

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    The Supreme Court Has An Ethics Problem                       

Justices on the high court don’t have to follow the same code of conduct as they do in lower courts. That needs to change.

By ELIZABETH WARREN

Democratic Senator For Massachusetts

November 01, 2017

      

A few days before the Supreme Court returned from its summer break, Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court’s newest member, attended a luncheon at the Trump International Hotel, where he was to give the keynote address. The location of the speech attracted the attention of dozens of protesters and a number of ethics watchdogs, who noted the apparent conflict of interest posed by Justice Gorsuch—a Trump nominee—keynoting an event at a hotel whose revenue goes in part to President Trump. That arrangement was bad enough on its own. But there was another potential conflict of interest created by Justice Gorsuch’s speaking engagement—and it highlights the ongoing ethical issues that threaten the credibility of our nation’s highest court.

The same morning that Justice Gorsuch gave his speech, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear Janus v. AFSCME. This is a case that will determine whether public sector unions—which represent teachers, nurses, firefighters and police in states and cities across the country—can collect fees from all employees in the workplaces they represent. Justice Gorsuch is widely expected to deliver the court’s deciding vote to strip unions of this ability. A decision along these lines would seriously undercut workers’ freedom to have a real voice to speak out and fight for higher wages, better benefits and improved working conditions.

Here’s the rub. Justice Gorsuch’s speech at the Trump hotel was hosted by the Fund for American Studies. And who funds the Fund of American Studies? The Charles Koch Foundation and the Bradley Foundation. The Charles Koch Foundation is dedicated to promoting limited government, free markets and weaker unions; and the Bradley Foundation has worked for decades to, in their own words, “reduce the size and power of public sector unions.” In fact, the Bradley Foundation helped pay the litigation expenses for Janus—the case in which Justice Gorsuch is likely to be the deciding vote. Think about that: Just as the ink was drying on the court’s announcement that it would hear Janus, Justice Gorsuch was off to hobnob with some of the biggest supporters for one side of this important case—the side that wants to deny workers the freedom to build a future that doesn’t hang by a thread at the whim of a few billionaires.

This isn’t the first time the Supreme Court has strayed over the ethical line. Take a look, for example, at ABC v. Aereo. The court concluded that Aereo, a small television streaming service, had violated the copyright of broadcasters by capturing signals from television stations and retransmitting programming from those stations to the company’s subscribers. Time Warner—one of the broadcasters who stood to lose if the court allowed the practice—filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that the court should side with the broadcaster. At the time, Chief Justice John Roberts owned as much as $500,000 in Time Warner stock. Despite this blatant conflict of interest, Roberts would not recuse himself from the case. Instead, he joined the majority in effectively killing the small streaming service.

There are plenty of other examples of ethical conflicts. According to Fix the Court, a nonpartisan group focused on increasing accountability and transparency on the Supreme Court, Justices Roberts, Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito owned shares in 53 publicly traded companies as of 2016.

The Code of Conduct for United States Judges requires judges to recuse themselves when certain potential conflicts arise, such as in cases in which the judge, the judge’s spouse or the judge’s minor children have a financial interest or in cases in which the judge has a “personal bias or prejudice” against or for any party in the case. But those rules don’t apply to Supreme Court justices.

In fact, Supreme Court justices are the only federal judges who are not bound by a formal code of conduct. The reason, as explained by Chief Justice Roberts, is that the Supreme Court is the only court created under Article III of the Constitution, while the lower courts are created by Congress. For Chief Justice Roberts, it’s sufficient that the justices consult the code when determining their ethical duties and voluntarily abide by rules on a case-by-case basis.

The chief justice’s argument is exactly backward. When an ethical cloud hangs over the court, its fundamental integrity is compromised. At a time when Gallup polls have found that fewer than half of Americans approve of the way the court is handling its job, the justices ought to be making every effort to show that their personal integrity is above reproach.

It is time to begin rebuilding American’s confidence in the court by establishing a formal code of conduct. That’s why I co-sponsored Sen. Chris Murphy’s Supreme Court Ethics Act, a bill that requires the Supreme Court to adopt an ethical code. As the nation’s highest court, the Supreme Court has an even greater duty to set the example for courts around the country and demonstrate that its decisions are based on a fair and unbiased assessment of the facts and the law, not personal biases or their own financial interests. Eliminating ethical questions and conflicts of interests should be the starting point.

Federal judges are not supposed to be politicians or advocates. They are supposed to rise above the political winds of the day and demonstrate a single-minded commitment to one promise: equal justice under law. As judges of the nation’s highest court, it is time for Supreme Court justices to demonstrate that they can meet that standard.