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A lot of unfounded speculation in your comment. It seems more politically-motivated than rooted in facts. Secondly, have you done your research? Surely Faceboo
by complianceowl 7y ago
A lot of unfounded speculation in your comment. It seems more politically-motivated than rooted in facts.
Secondly, have you done your research? Surely Facebook is not the only company being targeted by the government right now. I can assure you that, surely there are more.
Thirdly, as much as I might dislike an administration, I won't take the giant, speculative leap as to assume that I know exactly what they're thinking.
Fourthly, if this "quietly disappears", why would you automatically assume the administration's involvement? Again, there are presidents I strongly dislike, but part of remaining objective requires grounding your position in fact. Facebook has world class lawyers. Having worked in the legal field for numerous years, I am more than positive that Facebook has made many things "quietly disappear" on their own.
- davidw 7y agoGood comment, and good way of looking at things. However, currently it's not possible to obtain a lot of facts about the inner workings of this administration, since it is effectively above the law in terms of things like subpoenas.
- hugh4life 7y agoThe subpoenas you're talking about were purposely not taken to court.
- AaronFriel 7y agoSome were, and based on the timeline provided by the District Court it was clear that it would be nearly impossible for the matter to be resolved expediently. i.e.: before the next election, which the President was alleged to have abused his power to interfere in. It would rely on Congress trusting that the Supreme Court would deviate extraordinarily from its normal process and decide a matter in a very short time. And on top of this, Congress has the power to grant subpoenas. The Supreme Court has affirmed this right since the 19th Century and it's absurd that defenders of the President keep insisting that every subpoena must be fought in court, all the way up to final appeal, in order to be valid. That is expressly not what Courts have said in the past. See: https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/07/cases-and-controversies-congress-the-subpoena-power-and-a-legislative-purpose/ https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/07/cases-and-controversies-c...
- nradov 7y agoThe Supreme Court will deviate extraordinarily from its normal process and decide a matter in a very short time when national politics are at stake. For example see Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000). The whole case took only a few weeks, and the court delivered its decision just one day after oral arguments.
- ceejayoz 7y ago"We don't know who's about to be President in a month" is a fairly uniquely urgent scenario that doesn't apply here, though.
- jellicle 7y agoDahlia Lithwick described how the courts are intentionally making the political choice to slow-walk various Trump matters in order to enable his behavior: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/courts-slow-trump-decisions-deliberate.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/01/courts-slow-trum...
- vertig0h 7y agoCongress' unprecedented barrage of subpoenas force the administration's hand here. You may find it "absurd", but unprecedented animus requires unprecedented defensive measures.
- ejstronge 7y ago> Congress' unprecedented barrage of subpoenas force the administration's hand here. You may find it "absurd", but unprecedented animus requires unprecedented defensive measures. Not sure where in the Constitution this appears...
- vertig0h 7y agoThe administration's use of legal defensive measures is not itself illegal or prohibited by the Constitution.
- ceejayoz 7y agoBecause they'd be stuck there for years. This emoluments suit has been going since 2017 and got tossed on appeal via a technicality instead of being evaluated on merits, for example, and it hasn't even gone to SCOTUS yet: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/07/appeals-court-rejects-democrats-emoluments-suit-against-trump-111942 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/07/appeals-court-rejec...
- MrStonedOne 7y ago>unfounded speculation It's not unfounded in the days of pardons to political donors, political donations to jury members, and firing of whistleblowers and witnesses. You are allowed to assume bad faith when the entity has time and time again showed bad faith. This is suppose to be one of the detriments to acting in bad faith time and time again.
- vertig0h 7y agoThese things you're mentioning are minor issues which have been blown out of proper proportion and context by a hostile media spoon-feeding political propaganda to a willing segment of the public. That said, none of the things you mentioned are related to investigating tax evasion. "Oh, you sneezed on Sally when you were in first grade without apologizing? You must be guilty of armed robbery."
- MrStonedOne 7y agoCorruption is never a minor issue unless you live under the rule of winnie the pooh.
- AndrewUnmuted 7y ago> the days of pardons to political donors, political donations to jury members, and firing of whistleblowers and witnesses How long have we been in these "days," would you say?
- naringas 7y agodo you really think that this isn't a case of selective law enforcement? the IRS is famously understaffed, why Facebook? why not Apple? or Amazon? or will they go after them next?? edit: and google?
- Will_Do 7y agoMy guess: Facebook makes an enormous percentage[^1] of its revenue in the US compared to Amazon/Apple. This might make it legally more tricky to argue that its Irish profits are not actually US profits. Also the IRS would definitely go after Amazon instead if it were politically motivated. [1]: Can't find absolute numbers but US users have 10x revenue per user: https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average-revenue-per-user-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...
- naringas 7y ago> Also the IRS would definitely go after Amazon instead if it were politically motivated. amazon is running computing services for the government, which makes me doubt it. And what about Google?
- res0nat0r 7y agoAmazon is suing the government right now because of the abrupt cancellation of a 10 BILLION dollar government cloud contract that the likely were on the way to winning, that the Trump administration intervened with likely because they don't like the Washington Post (owned by Bezos) reporting of Trump's corruption. https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-13/amazon-microsoft-jedi-military-cloud-computing-contract https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2020-02-13... Also if FB is being picked out of all large companies by the Trump administration for something like this which most all large companies have been doing for decades it's easy to believe it may be to get FB back in line with the fake narrative of "stop silencing conservatives on FB" which is a narrative that doesn't exist, but has been pushed by Trump admin folks online for a while now.
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- riazrizvi 7y agoI understand that lawyers are taught to think logically and to support their arguments, so I would appreciate your analysis on our exchange, which looks to me like this: MY COMMENT: question / observation / speculation / hypothesis-with-circumstantial-evidence-to-support-speculation / expectation / expectation YOUR REPLY: assertion / speculation question / speculation / assertion personal observation question / self-evident-assertion / assertion / assertion The main complaint to my comment was about unsupported speculation, which I don't see, instead I do see it in the reply. I genuinely want to do better if I should.
- vertig0h 7y ago>"Especially considering all the other political reprisals and pardons that are in the news" What news are you talking about? Whatever news you're watching is only giving you one perspective on events, so this "observation" is not helpful on its own. The rest of your comment is similarly rooted in assumptions and speculation borne out of a hostile media's interpretation of recent events, so the conclusions you're reaching are built on a far less sturdy foundation of "evidence" than you may think.
- jedberg 7y agoThe media is supposed to be hostile. They are always hostile to the administration. It is their job as one of the checks on power enshrined in the constitution. Why do you think freedom of the press is in Amendment one?
- FlowNote 7y agoIs that why Obama went 8 years without ending a single war?
- vertig0h 7y agoThat's not always the case. The mainstream media - both the news media and entertainment media more broadly - was extremely accommodative and deferential to the Obama administration largely because he was on the mainstream media's political "side". Given this, many actions taken by the Obama administration that would have dominated the news cycle as impeachment-worthy if taken by the Trump administration were simply ignored or brushed aside by the Obama administration's media allies.
- CodeSheikh 7y agoI hate to say this but a lot of unfounded speculation in your comment as well. "Secondly, have you done your research? Surely Facebook is not the only company being targeted by the government right now. I can assure you that, surely there are more." Can you back this up with some factual information? Would love to know more about other companies. Thanks.
- monadic2 7y agoBud we entered a post fact world, especially when it comes to politics, decades ago.
- LegitShady 7y agoThis is not true and just more political talking points. You're contributing to the problem you describe.
- monadic2 7y agoOh what “fact-based” source do you get news from and how do they verify the “fact”? Do they use floating signifiers like “democracy”, “freedom”, “liberal”, “middle class”, “big government”? Do they have opinion columns and private ownership? It is impossible to act as if you’re both fact based and as if you’re serving your readership at the same time—the very act of choosing which stories to cover is deeply political itself, and that’s before you hit framing, what parts of the story you choose to emphasize, the goddamn headline (often written by a different person). The National Review for instance is excellent at fact-checking, but I would not call the NR a factual paper or a paper of record. There are no rocks on which to build these days (probably ever), just a series of private rides you can choose to be taken on.
- complianceowl 7y agoJust this month, the Department of Justice announced the largest-in-history FCPA case against Airbus, totaling 3.9 billion in fines[1]. The government's agenda is much larger than you're aware of, apparently. Unfortunately, the media loves to scandalize things, throw out big names, and hype-up news. The problem is when people just take it, run with it, and parrot it back in the public square. Anytime a company rises to the stature of Facebook, the probability that they will come into the government's cross hairs is much higher. [1] https://www.natlawreview.com/article/airbus-to-pay-unprecedented-39-billion-multinational-bribery-fcpa-violations https://www.natlawreview.com/article/airbus-to-pay-unprecede...
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y agoIt may be speculation, but I honestly can't categorically state it is unfounded. I have no love for FB, and, as parent memtioned, they are hardly the only beneficiary of this particular loophole. Then, if you recall FB recent stance on e2e, Barr's and Lindsay's comments, the question of political influence over IRS becomes much less an unlikely proposition. It does not make it automatically true, but let us not pretend that IRS moves in mysterious ways. To claim otherwise is to ignore context in which IRS goes after them. It may be completely unrelated, but it does raise questions.