A UNIVERSAL CODE OF ETHICS

For all Federal Appointed, Elected, or Hired

A UNIVERSAL CODE OF ETHICS 

FOR ALL FEDERAL APPOINTED, ELECTED, OR HIRED 

By 

Fay E.A. Reid 

Most Americans, or at least those who think about it, are appalled at the lack of integrity, honesty, fairness, truthfulness, and disregard for the common good, of the general leadership of this nation. Many of the Supreme Court decisions since 2010 appear to be unconstitutional and downright anti-American. The 118^th Congress is the worst in years. What used to be the fiscally conservative, but reputable Grand Old Party – the Republicans, has devolved into the Anti-American, Anti-Democratic, Pro-America's avowed enemies, Pro-Fascism, or worse Pro-anarchists. 

In the Supreme Court, once the most esteemed institution in America, we have members or their wives who have taken enormous bribes, then refused to recuse themselves, when cases involving the very wealthy businessmen who gave them those bribes came before them. They re-wrote the law – strictly forbidden by the Constitution to create Citizens United, a finding in which legal documents in the form of articles of incorporation, suddenly, by magic, become living, breathing organisms. And not just any old organism; Homo sapiens no less. With the ability to speak, influence, hire lobbyists, everything but organically reproduce. Not only papers of incorporation were given life – BUT money is now given the equivalent of free speech – just imagine all those little hundred-dollar bills as a chorus line singing ‘Happy Days Are Here Again!’ With twenty-dollar gold pieces tap dancing for the chorus. 

They even managed to anger some MAGA female cultists by overturning Roe v Wade. Although on this one the Supremes were in the right Constitutionally, there is no mention of abortion – or any other medical procedure – in the Constitution so, per Amendment 10, this is left to the States. Or using common sense (something the MAGA’s don’t believe in) leaving medical procedure to those persons, trained, licensed, and registered to perform them – in other words, gulp, health care professionals 

We have had the Senate Majority leader refuse to allow a position on the Supreme Court to be filled Eleven months before an election, because the sitting President was a colored person in the opposition party. Only to turn around four years later and rush through a questionable new justice in less than six weeks prior to the election. 

The current House of Representatives – the 118^th, has a used to be Republican party majority. It took fifteen rounds to elect the first House speaker, then when he committed the unacceptable error of cooperating with the Democrats to partially approve last year’s budget was ousted, because what used to be Republicans are now retrumplikans, and they get their orders from the defeated ex-president. To the detriment of their constituents. It took them three weeks, to find a new speaker acceptable (meaning sufficiently dishonest) to be approved by trump. Since January 3, 2023 when this group of gargoyles took control, not a single piece of New Legislation has passed and gone into law. Approving the budget means they agreed to pay for goods and services ALREADY received. Oh, and by the way, this year’s budget hasn’t even made it to the floor. Of course it came from that Putin hating Biden, it must not be good, our dear leader told us so. Besides, it only helps regular citizens, not a dime for the poor suffering billionaires. h  

Enough ranting, for the background. Let’s move on to the solution. First, like medical procedures, nowhere in the Constitution is a code of ethics mentioned. My personal opinion, (questionable) is the 70 men who participated in writing the Constitution were men of integrity and honor, the MAGA cult were probably so far outside their imagination they couldn’t conceive of it. Both the Senate and the House of Representatives have Ethics committees. The Supreme Court recently displayed a meaningless code they sorta, kinda, might be willing to live by. Hey, show a little faith here boys. Ya mean you don’t trust the fox to guard the hen house? We’re the Supremes – the Law of the land, for heaven’s sake, cut us some slack. 

Maybe, in the first twenty years or so when the leaders knew each other, and were men of integrity it did work. But we are, after all Homo sapiens, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now going on two hundred and fifty years later and 535 Homo sapiens in the Legislative Branch plus their myriad assistants; 2 Homo sapiens heading the Executive Branch plus several million Federal employees; 9 in the Supreme Court, a few thousand in the Federal Judiciary Branch; not only do they not know each other, not even their Constituents know them. There are just too bloody many Americans. 

It’s not just the Supremes and the retrumplikans who can’t be trusted; the Dems are not doing that great either. Look at Menendez of New Jersey. He’s a criminal and we know it, but he’s our criminal so we’ll protect him. Hogwash! A criminal, is a criminal, is a criminal. When we find he’s guilty, dump him. 

But there is a legal solution. As I said earlier, there is nothing in the Constitution regarding a code of ethics. Article 1, sections 3 and 4 discuss impeachment, Article 3, section 3, discusses treason, and of course Amendment 14, section 3 discusses the consequence of insurrection. Amendment 10 gives us, the people, the right to resolve any issue not mentioned in the Constitution or forbidden by it to the States. To wit “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States respectively, OR TO THE PEOPLE.” The emphasis is mine. The people are separately granted the power to correct something not mentioned in the Constitution. 

This allows us to form and collectively pay for a committee to write a Code of Ethics and to require Congress to fund an independent agency not answering to any branch, but to the people of the United States. 

I would suggest having one delegate from each of the fifty States plus one from the District of Columbia. One delegate from each registered political party. The total number of delegates not to exceed 100 total delegates plus the Leader/Facilitator. They can meet in person once or twice but mostly remote. They will each write what they consider to be the expected and best code of ethical behavior for any public servant. Ten clerical workers can be hired to each read and correlate ten documents and present one paper for each ten with no duplicates. They can then reduce the ten documents to one with no duplicates, and post the final for the committee to review. It should take no more than 4 5 day work weeks to arrive at a finished presentation.I doubt the final document will be very long, we are only developing a code of ethical behavior. This final document, will become the referendum on which all registered voters will decide. I anticipate an overall approval. It should take no more than six months to complete the code of ethics. Since we are only talking about behavior there is no reason why it shouldn’t be universal 

Once approved, the Legislative Branch will write the Legislation to create the Ethics Enforcement Agency, the duties of this agency will be to investigate and review any reported ethical misconduct. There will then be a hearing in which the accused will have the opportunity to defend themselves against the accusation. If found guilty, the least punishment will be dismissal from the job, whether appointed, elected, or hired. If the behavior amounted to criminal, the guilty party would then be remanded to the Department of Justice for further punishment according to the law.  

The end result should be an honest, ethical government working for the good of the nation instead of a small greedy oligarchy.