The corruption is bad enough at the local level. I can’t even fathom how much theft is going on at the state and federal level. It’s one of the more frustrating things to see how much money you are paying into the system for such meager benefits. We can’t even get sidewalks installed in my area, but the township can certainly give a sweetheart tax break to one of their buddies to build a new gas station.
Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
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Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#72Looking at their charts, Democrats and Independents clearly think corruption is up a lot since 2024. But Republicans think corruption is down from 2024. The polarization of the electorate in the U.S. is pretty incredible.
U.S. Trust in Government Depends Upon Party Control
https://news.gallup.com/poll/697421/trust-government-depends...
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#73Looking at their charts, Democrats and Independents clearly think corruption is up a lot since 2024. But Republicans think corruption is down from 2024. The polarization of the electorate in the U.S. is pretty incredible.
At least they think it's up since 2025. I wonder how this will inform their votes in November...
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
All of that is several orders of magnitude less bad than a normal Tuesday in the Trump administration. For evidence, refer to TFA.
Okay and how do you think it helps the democratic candidate's ability to win elections when they are part of the same party that supports corporations over people? In the not so recent past the democratic party controlled Congress for 60+ years on the new deal coalition alone, now look what the party has morphed into... I read the article too, in what sane world is it okay if 70% of citizens thought their governments…
>The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.
I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United. Corporatism is definitely a bipartisan issue, but at least Democrats recognize it as a problem, while to Republicans it's a feature. Not everything in politics is symmetrical, and misguided nihilism is actually how we got where we are. Turns out the road to hell is paved with "it's both sides."
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#75Corruption in the US isn't new, but it's never been done as openly as it has been recently. I don't think it's a good thing. It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks, which suggests that they believe they no longer have to be. That's not a healthy sign for what's supposed to be a democracy.
When Congress people enrich themselves while serving in office[1] and there's a revolving door from public service into private and we have billions in unaccounted spending, fraud everywhere you look (especially since Covid), it's no surprise people feel upset by corruption.
My hope is we will, one day, have an administration that roots it out using modern fraud detection, gets rid of waste, shuts down non-profits that funnel monies to their founders (anything where "overheard" is over 50%), stops insider trading amongst politicians and government workers, but I don't see them voting against their greed.
[1]https://ballotpedia.org/Changes_in_Net_Worth_of_U.S._Senator...
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#76I don’t know why this should be surprising since it’s all out in the open now. They made Carter give up his family peanut farm to be President. Trump and his family are selling stock every week, running crypto currency rug pulls, accepting gifts ostensibly for the country that they say will be donated to Trump at the end of his term(the Qatar plane). It’s all out in the open under Trump term 2. At this point if you t…
yet Republicans think corruption is _down_ since 2024 :smacks-head:
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#77Citizens United. Nothing else to say.
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#78Lots of people here are focused on one guy. But the the article says "widespread". In my experience, much of the corruption is at a local or state level. At the federal level it seems the corruption is mostly related to agencies (GAO reports) and lobbying.
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#79I’m not an American. Those not American are frankly gobsmacked that U.S. citizens voted the current President in a second time. You all literally saw what he did in his first term!
> You all literally saw what he did in his first term! Yeah, he stopped US military from defending other countries for free. Soft power doesn’t pay your rent/mortgage.
Soft power is _literally_ what pays your rent and mortgage.
Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread
#80Even before this new record high, in the previous ~15 years the average seemed to be around 75% (±), which seems… high? I would perhaps understand the US public thinking that (some levels of) government being "incompetent", but not corrupt. By some measure the US does seem to have 'decent' scores for perception of corruption: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index * https://www.transparency.org/…
This is what a steady diet of conservative, increasingly monopolistic, media does to a populace.