It’s certain few were more born and raised with a silver spoon than Harlan Rogers Crow. Sired in 1949 by Texas real estate magnet, Trammel Crow, young Harlan was the heir apparent to the Crow family wealth by the time he “began his career” as an industrial leasing agent in 1974. By 1988 he was CEO of Crow Holdings, by all accounts critical to steering the company through convulsions caused by a crash of market values. The firm emerged from the rubble bruised but intact, a giant in the real estate investment industry.
At its zenith Crow interests totaled nearly 300,000,000 square feet (28,000,000 m2) of developed real estate, comprising eight thousand properties in more than one hundred cities. “America’s landlord” is how the Wall Street Journal once summed up the company’s massive reach.
Harlan Crow has never been shy about pressing his financial position through civic intercourse. In 2009 Dallas city officials proposed a publicly-funded hotel to invigorate the city’s underused convention center. Crow, who wanted the initiative pursued within private sector parameters he could dominate and profit from, launched a multi-million dollar campaign to block the project. While Crow refused to be interviewed or make any public comments about the issue, other than his belief “they’re making a big mistake,” nobody doubted who was writing the checks.
Since then Crow has only become more generous on the down-low when the cause is enhancing his own business prospects… or big picture rightist efforts to influence America’s political and judicial process. Whether it be 501-C4 organizations or public servants, Crow won’t hesitate to turn on the dark money spigot. And apparently, few have personally received more from Crow’s munificence then Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and wife Ginni.
Thomas is no stranger to the kinds of problems personal character flaws can create. But even back in 1991, before Anita Hill credibly told her sordid recollection of Thomas’ sexual harassment, his response to questions asked by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee abjectly failed to inspire confidence that his feet were anywhere near big enough to fill Thurgood Marshall’s shoes. The irony then that the GOP was never going to rethink its vetting of Mr. Black anti-affirmative action, no matter how flawed a pick he turned out to be, matches the pathetic certainty Republicans won’t blink at their token’s overt corruption now.
For more than 30 years Thomas has mailed it in at SCOTUS, first as a docile “protege” of Antonin Scalia, and now as a shrill cheerleader for demolishing precedent in favor of Fox/AM culture war extremism. From the start his vote was as predictable as an August afternoon thunderstorm in DC. Now, a slew of revelations concerning the graft he gladly accepted from Crow fill in the missing puzzle pieces. Not just intellectually dormant. Not just a self-loathing rightist zealot. A genuine corrupt toady, in it to skim it.
Whatever his position on whatever case, it’s bought and paid for. Crow-sponsored Indonesia extravaganzas, complete with private jets and $4000 bottles of wine provide a more than reasonable basis to draw such a conclusion. Add to that actual cash purchases of family real estate, not to mention cushy six-figure salaries for the wife to drone on about the menace progressives pose, and it becomes nearly impossible to label it anything else.
Of course, it is a harrowing notion that one of America’s major political parties is not only no longer willing to accept the democratic process, but fully enthused to subvert it. That’s a situation worth losing plenty of sleep over. However, most Americans prefer other distractions to disrupt their REM, and “partisan politics” has always been low on our list of daily priorities.
Thomas, whose wife is a documented seditionist, incessantly texting Mark Meadows on January 6th in a MAGA-crazed frenzy to thwart Biden’s inauguration, provides the most accurate barometer yet for measuring just how subversive the GOP has become. Not only will they ignore any and all discoveries of how compromised he is; they will do whatever it takes to keep his robe on. Nothing new, no matter how much it smells, is going to make a difference; it’s 6-3 and it’s going to stay that way.
Were one assigned the task of compiling a list of priorities a sworn enemy of America could pursue it would have trouble keeping up with the current House Republican agenda. Force the US to default on its debt? Check. Block any efforts to address climate change, even as it wrecks coast-to-coast havoc? Check. Actually push for permitless concealed carry, and assault weapon accoutrements in the face of daily mass shootings that numb the nation. Check. Terrorize the LGBT community, discredit police brutality victims, relentlessly incite seditious nullification of federal mandates, defund whoever seeks to hold Trump accountable, and on and on.
What the ugly revelations about Thomas add is clarity about how far back the rot goes, and how inadequate our institutions have always been to police recalcitrant offenders higher up the food chain. Once again we are learning the hard way that reliance on some bare minimum of good faith and a sense of shame no longer cuts it when one of our major political parties is bereft of both and proud of it. Leave it to John Roberts to police his own… uh, yea, sure thing. Thomas is simply what he has always been… as bad as we figured and smug as he can be, protected by enemies of our republic he calls friends. BC