Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread • Hacker News Board

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#121

Post by bigfatkitten » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:50 AM UTC

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #110

autoexec wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EPA is a good example of why this is so bad. Even if 90% of the states pass rules to protect the air and water it takes only a small number of states not following environmental regulations to cause a massive amount of harm to air and water quality and the effects of that can be felt in other states. It also hurts businesses when they suddenly find themselves forced to follow an inconsistent/conflicting patchwork…

You're only looking at the glass half empty side of things. The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is? Not having to put up with rules that make sense in the arid plains or western deserts is gonna be a huge boon to everyone east of the Mississippi. The "consistency" argument is like 99% red herring. There's already a huge patchwork because the way federal agencies…

> The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is?

Because there’s relatively little need for diversity. Dumping toxic waste into river systems is as bad in Oregon as it is in Florida. Things that genuinely need local management (e.g. wildlife) can be managed locally.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#122

Post by stevenwoo » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:50 AM UTC

chris_wot wrote: post #53

I’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!

I live in California and even though Trump lost here he still got 1/4 to 1/2 the vote even in the coastal areas so a lot of people one might work with support Trump - there’s always an undercurrent of racist dog whistles in GOP campaigns that with Trump became daily broadcasts on social media and conservative news sources - these MAGA hear it and believe in that and the ones I’ve talked to are like cultists - they won’t believe any other evidence to the contrary and they like the simple message and the messenger - others are to blame and he can fix it.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#123

Post by AdieuToLogic » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:51 AM UTC

shimman wrote: post #58

estearum wrote: post #36

Earlier 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.

Destruction is easy, as we are all witnessing.

Making things better is hard. It takes commitment to incremental change, often having to overcome setbacks, and accepting that the product of democracy is inherently nonlinear.

Democracy also demands that its participants understand that most of the time what each individual wants to be, will not be exactly as they envision, since that would be autocracy.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#124

Post by vannevar » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:51 AM UTC

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #6

I thought electing an outsider with theretofore no experience nor interest in governing was supposed to break the system in a good way so as to erase the incumbent problems and rebuild with common sense and integrity.

The problem with government was that wealthy charlatans were rigging the system in their own favor. Naturally, the solution was to put a wealthy charlatan in charge of the whole thing and eliminate the middle man.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#125

Post by Sl1mb0 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:53 AM UTC

esafak wrote: post #60

Loughla wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half that supports this nonsense genuinely believes this level of corruption has always existed. They're just happy it's their team this time. I simply do not understand American politics.

It's a very banana republicy thing and not uniquely American.

Lol do you know how the term "Banana Republic" originated

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#126

Post by cucumber3732842 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:53 AM UTC

Webstir wrote: post #4

But, not the politicians I voted for. It's always the other guys.

This is tautologically true for everyone all the time because most of the government is unelected.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#127

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

tstrimple wrote: post #111

Loughla wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The half that supports this nonsense genuinely believes this level of corruption has always existed. They're just happy it's their team this time. I simply do not understand American politics.

Imagine there had been no Nuremberg trials. The Nazis just got a slap on the wrist and almost immediately let back into politics as usual. That's how we got here. We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy. Germany and Japan in particular purged most of those elements from their society. Here we built statues to the evil fucks.

Here's a map which attempts to estimate when slavery was abolished across various parts of the world:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/zsnr8q/year_of_abo...

The US wasn't much of an outlier.

As a general rule, anyone who tries to use slavery as a skeleton key to understand US politics is most likely an ideologue with an agenda. Sane people don't propose struggle sessions for events which happened 100+ years ago when everyone involved is long dead. You wouldn't point to a gigantic statue of Genghis Khan to explain what's wrong with modern Mongolia.

I don't think this is a slavery thing. Trump just sucks.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#128

Post by esafak » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

Sl1mb0 wrote: post #125

esafak wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very banana republicy thing and not uniquely American.

Lol do you know how the term "Banana Republic" originated

Yes, of course. There's a whole wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_republic

Modern usage is not about fruit companies.

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#129

Post by vannevar » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 2:00 AM UTC

paisawalla wrote: post #115

vannevar wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics. This is not surprising; a big reason that Republican voters were able to justify voting for Trump and open corruption was that they were bombarded with claims that there was a "Biden crime family" in office for four years. No real evidence of that was ever uncovered, but it didn't stop Fox Ne…

[flagged]

>I wonder what else we have in common?

Well, obviously not an appreciation for the distinction between evidence and opinion. The fact is that there is clear, uncontroverted evidence that Donald Trump has profited directly from his presidency, and no clear evidence that Joe Biden did. Not everything is symmetrical in politics, and it's not always "both sides."

Re: Record-High 89% in U.S. Say Government Corruption Widespread

#130

Post by cucumber3732842 » Sat, Sep 05, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

bigfatkitten wrote: post #121

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're only looking at the glass half empty side of things. The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is? Not having to put up with rules that make sense in the arid plains or western deserts is gonna be a huge boon to everyone east of the Mississippi. The "consistency" argument is like 99% red herring. There's already a huge patchwork because the way federal agencies…

> The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is? Because there’s relatively little need for diversity. Dumping toxic waste into river systems is as bad in Oregon as it is in Florida. Things that genuinely need local management (e.g. wildlife) can be managed locally.

You are ignorant of how much of what the federal agencies do is create rules and recommendations and best practices and then tell the states they don't qualify for grant bucks if they don't implement somme amount of all of it.

This is where most of the dysfunction comes from, not the classification of what is or isn't a pollutant. Because this is how you get some water rich municipality in the southeast having to adopt stupid rules they don't even want based on some guidelines that were written to be compatible with the water poor west.

There'd be a ton less people who are categorically opposed to the federal agencies if not for this sort of thing. And it goes for most agencies, not just the EPA.