Does it get any more naked? The hypocrisy, the stench of insider power politics, the very phenomena that has so turned off the public and made them feel useless in the democratic process.
This is outrageous. Just as the Executive Ethics Commission is set to hear six cases involving current or past Fletcher administration employees, (five of whom are accused of merit-hiring violations) governor Fletcher appoints to this Ethics Commission---Ethics—a man, Ronald Green, who he had previously appointed to the Supreme Court just in time to make the deciding vote that effectively ended the merit-hiring investigation. (Ronald Green also gave $2800 to Fletcher’s Congressional campaigns from 1996-99.)
In law school, the one really main thing about ethics and conflicts of interest they taught us, or tried to teach us, was that we must scrupulously avoid even the APPEARANCE of impropriety, in this case a conflict of interest. Think about this, Ronald Green is an attorney, appointed to the state’s HIGHEST court, and he knows, or absolutely should know, that he has a duty to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. He should never have been offered that spot on the Supreme Court, but having been offered he should have refused it.
And he should most definitely refuse this position on the Ethics Commission. It matters not that he said, “If I thought I was biased in that way, I would not take part,” in reference to his past donations and support of governor Fletcher. What matters is that there is a reasonable possibility that he could be compromised, i.e. there is an appearance of impropriety.
No honor. No ethics. And unfortunately, no shame.
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