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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

#471

Post by FireBeyond »

shimman wrote: post #35
estearum wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it’s almost certainly not just more open. But also more common and more intense. There is 100% absolutely no possible comparison to Trump’s personal acts of corruption in any prior White House ever.

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…

> Feels like they're upset that Trump exposed how rotten this game has gotten.

You make it sound like he's the one calling this out, "Drain the swamp" style, when instead he's the one elevating it to the next level. A month ago he sat for a TV interview in the White House, and he said, verbatim, "My children are insider trading all the time". And it was so on-brand for Trump's administration that it barely moved the needle.

Barron is an unemployed college drop out who gained $150M in net worth in a year. Donald Jr and Eric start companies or get paid millions for board seats that get billions in government contracts within days of their forming/joining.

You, unable to form more than three words about all of this, but able to go on a vague rant about how its the Democrats we should really be angry at. Corruption is endemic. It's never been as brazen, and as much, as now.

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

#472

Post by FireBeyond »

LastTrain wrote: post #202
autoexec wrote: post #8

Corruption 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.

You are partially right. We used to collectively throw people out when they were exposed as corrupt. Now it works like this: Republicans get called out by Democrats, Democrats get called out by Republicans and Democrats. And if that goes on long enough Democrats will start overlooking their own transgressions, I see that starting already.

It's amazing that in a discussion about how bad corruption has become or is perceived to have become under this particular Republican administration, that there's several people hand-wringing about the Democrats and how they've been corrupt, or they're worse, or now "what if they get hypothetically get worse as a result of this?". Anything to avoid having to take direct action against those currently in power, currently openly selling pardons, shitcoins, and government contracts.

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

#473

Post by FireBeyond »

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #152
socalgal2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

U.S. Trust in Government Depends Upon Party Control https://news.gallup.com/poll/697421/trust-government-depends...

Same for supporting issues. If the "other" party proposes something, people are automatically against. As soon as "their" party supports it, they are all in. The MAHA movement is a good example. If democrats had said something about the problems with high sugar food or additives, republicans would have shouted "nanny state". Now that Kennedy is talking about it, they support it.

Would have? They did. Michelle Obama was ripped to shreds over programs to make school lunches healthier.

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

#474

Post by FireBeyond »

mitxela wrote: post #281
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for supporting issues. If the "other" party proposes something, people are automatically against. As soon as "their" party supports it, they are all in. The MAHA movement is a good example. If democrats had said something about the problems with high sugar food or additives, republicans would have shouted "nanny state". Now that Kennedy is talking about it, they support it.

Chief republican politician Mitch McConnell once filibustered his own bill because democrats also supported it. https://theweek.com/articles/469675/mitch-mcconnells-amazing...

And stood in front of a TV camera during Obama's administration and said that Republicans would not support bills that objectively made Americans lives better because their goal was only to make sure Obama was a one term President.

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

#475

Post by potamic »

pjc50 wrote: post #466
potamic wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not directly, but indirectly by declining any punitive actions. Ideally the banks earnings should've been used up towards the bail out punishing shareholders in the spirit of the free market. But if I remember at that time, execs paid themselves large bonuses immediately following the bail out.

"Not directly" = no. Plenty of bank shareholders got zeroed out entirely! Like RBS. Please name a bailed out bank which didn't hit shareholders.

Most of the big ones. The government in fact was issued equity in these banks that they later sold to recover the funds. So it was very much necessary to preserve shareholder value.

This arrangement probably wouldn't have upset people so much were the people responsible for the crisis held accountable. Worse still, they paid themselves huge bonuses as soon as they got bailed out from the bailout money itself! All this made people question the real intention behind the bailout. Corruption is often effected indirectly, so as to give the perpetrator plausible deniability.

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

#477

Post by crote »

hakunin wrote: post #195
autoexec wrote: post #8

Corruption 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.

Saying “US corruption isn’t new” is a truism. There are probably isolated incidents, and many unproven theories, but everyone is quick to agree with this statement because it’s a common feeling everyone has now for some reason. The reality of corruption is likely much smaller and more boring than people think. What we’re witnessing now is what should be called corruption. That corruption that everyone has been scream…

The US has been suffering from late-stage capitalism for quite a while now. The obvious example is Citizens United allowing corporations to make unlimited political bribes. We just pretend it is okay by calling it "lobbying", but with the current slide into fascism the megacorps no longer feel the need to pretend.

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

#478

Post by devilbunny »

pjc50 wrote: post #305
mitxela wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What can a single person legally do about corruption though?

The big cheap lever that everyone has is voting, and using whatever social leverage you have to get people around you to change their vote. Primary legacy democrats. In NYC, the primary was the real election. Then vote in the replacement Democrat. Replace any Republican in any elected positions, then start taking a closer look at the local D machine.

Ah yea, the famously successful political approach of “discard half the people, they don’t matter, then throw away half of the ones left over”. Works very well.

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

#479

Post by mrtesthah »

imthatsteve wrote: post #429
iAMkenough wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sucks seeing the federal government weaponize the U.S. Postal Service to prevent legitimate ballots from being counted.

Okay so now that everyone has been shown how they can cheat the election with mail in ballots. How do you propose to stop the republicans from using mail in ballots to steal the next election? Since clearly you cant use the feds to weaponize the post office. How do the democrats secure an election? Do you just make sure you stuff the box with more mail in ballots than the other guy? You already made it illegal to sho…

Our election protocols are secure and past elections have been secure[1][2]. And mail ballots have never been shown in any significant way to constitute "cheating". Mail ballots are only issued to registered voters and cannot be "stuffed"[3].

You need to cite some actual sources behind the question loaded in your comment.

1. https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/do...

2. https://statesuniteddemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01...

3. https://www.snopes.com/collections/mail-in-ballots-rumors-co...

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

#480

Post by Tanoc »

majormajor wrote: post #261
dabinat wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it’s more accurate to say that corruption didn’t start with Trump (he wasn’t even involved in politics when Citizens United was happening, for example). The US has been marching in that direction for a while. The difference now is the openness and also the scale. If a president does one bad thing the press will dig into it, committees will investigate, etc. But what if the president does 20 bad things every s…

> The US has been marching in that direction for a while. It's trivial to remember corruption issues from 100+ years ago (I learned about one in middle school with Teapot Dome and political "machines", and those are hardly the full extent) so this is another one of those cliches that is easy to claim but is never proven. There's always some. Humans gonna human. But that doesn't mean either (a) there's always a high a…

There's a few I could recount from before this current onslaught, but the delineator is that those incidents of corruption were a once a year sort of thing. If you want examples there's the PATRIOT Act in 2001, No Child Left Behind in 2002, the 2004 rewrite of CAFE standards for vehicle emissions, and the 2007 bailouts of General Motors and Wells Fargo. From about 2000 to 2013 every year you would have one big thing that all the major news outlets like NBC or CBS covered, and then about a dozen smaller things that specialized entities with specialized interests like Mother Jones or Chalkbeat would cover. After Citizens United in 2013 things started to accelerate to about twice and two dozen times a year because the perpetrators could argue it wasn't corrupt, merely "politically motivated speech." Since 2017 however that has been shortened to twice a week and a dozen a day.
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