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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

#331

Post by patagurbon »

hakunin wrote: post #197
shimman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump is bad, but please let's not excuse corporate neoliberal dems that are totally fine with insider trading, legalized bribes, and are quite proud that their consultant campaign workers get lucrative gigs at corporations/boards due to insider access. I mean we have people like Gillibrand that are openly in bed with the crypto industry while somehow decrying what Trump is doing. Feels like they're upset that Trump…

When I hear people making these claims (all unproven theories, or misrepresentation of what really happens), I want to know: what happened in democratic administrations that went in favor of a large corporate donor and against the public? Any specific example where they diverged, and a politician ruled in favor of the corp, and against their constituents?

I think a lot of these beliefs are downstream of some perceived aloofness and intellectual elitism in the party combined with sour grapes about how 2016 turned out for certain grassroots demographics in the party.

I don’t think the vibes argument there is incorrect, Dems have failed to deliver for a long time, but the claims themselves really just make a conspiracy out of the shitty electoral situation Dems / progressives have been in since the creation of the senate 250 odd years ago.

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

#332

Post by nephihaha »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #247
guerrilla wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading things like this help me understand how so many people fall for scams. You're so extremely trusting that it's hard to wrap my mind around... I can't relate on any level.

Prove him wrong. Show us documented cases of corruption from, say Obama, or Biden, or Bush Jr. And then we'll compare it to the documented cases of Trump corruption, starting with his 2 crypto pump-and-dump schemes and his family's fake crypto company (3 already very brazenly open ones and there are more!) and let's see if you can pull similar for any of the previous presidents of the 21st century

Halliburton got a lot of work from Bush's wars if I remember correctly.

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

#333

Post by Hikikomori »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #294
Hikikomori wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're moving the goalposts Rich from someone that brought up slavery from nowhere.

Oh please, are we pretending that the confederacy wasn't working to preserve slavery? Is this some sort of lost cause advocacy on your part? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVVIACrX38

I didn't even make any argument nor do I disagree with you, just found it weird that you brought it up from nowhere.

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

#334

Post by patagurbon »

koolba wrote: post #180
vannevar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 e…

> I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading We had two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and the Senate. They passed no legislation to ban insider trading. It probably didn’t help that the poster octogenarian for insider trading was Speaker of the House > and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United. C…

> two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and Senate

Nobody has controlled the Senate since ‘09. The veneer of bipartisanship created by the filibuster meant that Congress has done nothing since ‘09 (outside of a few stimulus bills and the Green New Deal which was probably a good bill in the long run hampered by bureaucracy). It turns out that’s great for the party that wants to do nothing, and really bad for the party that wants to do something.

You could say that Dems should’ve killed the filibuster. But there was no appetite for it until Trump 2 because things weren’t going great but they weren’t going belly up

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

#335

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

multjoy wrote: post #327
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is bad faith hair-splitting. You know perfectly well what tshrimple thinks "Nuremberg trials" were needed for, or why they think confederates were "evil fucks".

Are you actually 'both sidesing' slavery?

I'm pushing back on Chermska1's effort to say that "well actually, the confederacy wasn't really about slavery".

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

#336

Post by nephihaha »

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.

West Germany and Japan did not purge "most of those elements". Both places retained a surprising number of people from the early 1940s, for the simple, cynical reason that many of these people had skills and experience in administration. Many Nazis ended up in significant positions in NATO and even NASA, and some such as Walter Debus and Klaus Barbie ended up in American employ.

A few examples of prominent Nazi officials who worked in West Germany: Reinhard Gehlen, Albert Schnez, Adolf Heusinger (Inspector General of the West German Army), Hans Speidel (major NATO commander), Johannes Steinhoff (Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1971–1974), Johann von Kielmansegg (Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe), Ernst Ferber, Karl Schnell, Franz Joseph Schulze, Ferdinand von Senger und Etterlin etc.

“Researchers found that some 77 percent of senior officials in the [West German] Justice Ministry had once identified as Nazis, a portion higher than during the Third Reich, the period between 1933 and 1945 when Adolf Hitler controlled Germany, and much higher than researchers expected. The group included Nazi-era prosecutor Eduard Dreher, a man who sought the death penalty for petty criminals, and Max Merten, who played a role in deporting Jews from Greece.” – 2016 Christian Science Monitor Study

East Germany did purge most of its Nazi elements, but became a dictatorship in its own right. When Germany reunited, there was a purge of East German judges but a number of people involved in the old system continued in the new Germany. (Even Angela Merkel who had a significant position in the FJD.)

Most of former Soviet Union made a limited attempts to remove Communist era officials. Some of those responsible for Stalin era atrocities died in their beds. Russia is still full of them, and age, not officialdom . Even people like Valentina Tereshkova the former cosmonaut. PR China has never purged itself fully of Maoism, and Chairman Mao's picture still pops up everywhere despite being arguably the biggest mass murderer in history.

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

#338

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Hikikomori wrote: post #333
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh please, are we pretending that the confederacy wasn't working to preserve slavery? Is this some sort of lost cause advocacy on your part? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZVVIACrX38

I didn't even make any argument nor do I disagree with you, just found it weird that you brought it up from nowhere.

Am I taking crazypills? You think talking about slavery in the context of the CSA is "bringing it up from nowhere"???

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

#339

Post by nephihaha »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #127
tstrimple wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That map is inaccurate. Unfortunately slavery is still very much a thing in many parts of the world, including forced labour, prostitution and some sweat shop labour.

The PRC and North Korea still use slave labour as do some other countries. The Soviet Union had slavery with the Gulag system during the 20th century, and other places such as East Germany had some within living memory.

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

#340

Post by Hikikomori »

nephihaha wrote: post #332
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove him wrong. Show us documented cases of corruption from, say Obama, or Biden, or Bush Jr. And then we'll compare it to the documented cases of Trump corruption, starting with his 2 crypto pump-and-dump schemes and his family's fake crypto company (3 already very brazenly open ones and there are more!) and let's see if you can pull similar for any of the previous presidents of the 21st century

Halliburton got a lot of work from Bush's wars if I remember correctly.

Looked this up and it seems like most if not all high level officials divested from companies they worked for or would profit from. Cheney still owned stock in haliburton but it seems he gave away profits when selling those to charity, he did get a large parachute when he left them.

This is very different from the current admin at least. But direct profiteering by high level officials didn't happen or they were very good at hiding it. They did make their friends and old colleagues very rich, maybe that it reason enough?

And I am someone that considers that administration to be full of war criminals that manufactured a reason to invade Iraq.

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