14 ms·

Everything's corrupted. Pretty much every branch of government is rife with corruption. Even the enforcement is corrupt. Money has infiltrated everything and ju

by Jerry2 5y ago

Everything's corrupted. Pretty much every branch of government is rife with corruption. Even the enforcement is corrupt. Money has infiltrated everything and justice is now truly blind. And if by some miracle you're tried and found guilty, you can even buy your way out of serving any time and you can even buy a presidential pardon and have your crime expunged. If you're rich, vast majority of laws simply don't apply to you. Yet there's so many laws on books and many of those laws are so vague that an average person commits several felonies every day. [1] [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438...

grecy 5y ago
> Money has infiltrated everything Worse, money is protected speech, and using it to buy influence is protected by the law!
- EastOfTruth 5y ago
  bribes/lobbying should be illegal... please get a referendum going on this subject
  - jimktrains2 5y ago
    Why do you want to make it illegal for me to contact my representative and voice my opinion on upcoming legislation -- that's also lobbying.
    - FpUser 5y ago
      As long as id does not involve money direct or indirect between "lobbyist" and the official sure go and convince your rep. Just do not promise cushy job later or for relatives or any other creative ways to buy your politicians.
  - grecy 5y ago
    The challenge that the USA faces is the people who have the power to change it are the very ones who benefit the most from it. There are MANY established institutions in the USA that will fight tooth and nail not to change, because the established players are getting exceedingly rich the way things are now, to the detriment of everyone else.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      Yeah. How is change supposed to come when they control the system that's supposed to bring it about? If you try to fix things outside the system, you essentially become a terrorist and the government gives itself license to do unspeakable things to you.
      - trollski 5y ago
        revolution. does not mean blood on the streets. like soviet block circa 1989-1990.
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    Lobbying is essentially a constitutionally protected right, right? Comes from the right to petition our government.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  When that happens, people will have even less recourse against media, internet and social media companies using their power to influence.
  - lazyasciiart 5y ago
    What do you mean, "when that happens"? It's the law today.
    - throwawaylinux 5y ago
      I must have intended to reply to one of the replies to you calling for it to be outlawed.
- bitwize 5y ago
  It's time to repeal the First Amendment. It's probably time to repeal the entire Bill of Rights, and replace it with a framework that allows the government to restrict the exercise of rights when and as much as required to protect public safety or the mechanism of democracy. All functioning democracies (which the USA is not) have such a framework in place. In Canada it's famously called the Notwithstanding Clause. Well, maybe not all. We can keep the Third Amendment as a souvenir.
  - eloisius 5y ago
    I can’t tell if this is sarcasm. The solution to corruption in government is to give even more powers to the government to restrict the exercise of rights?
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      The fact that they’re suggesting we keep the Third Amendment (which is, for all intents and purposes, useless), but get rid of the rest leads me to believe it’s sarcasm. If someone was serious about “repealing” the Bill of Rights, they probably haven’t read it and don’t know anything more than the First and Second.
      - bitwize 5y ago
        Oh no, I think the entire Constitution actually needs to be rethought if we intend to do something about corruption in the system. It's clear that the USA is a failed state -- the Constitution hampers the government from doing good, necessary things (like implementing universal health care, strong consumer and worker protections, protecting against hate speech, etc.) while allowing corruption to run rampant. It needs to be replaced. Something like a proportional representation, multiparty parliamentary system. While we're at it we may as well rejoin the Commonwealth, because the Crown has one non-ceremonial power that can be used to fight corruption, that no person or body has in the U.S. government: the power to disband the government and force the institution of another by democratic means. If you think this sounds familiar, you're right: New Zealand is practically an ideal model of how to form a modern, practical, democratic government that reasonably respects personal freedom and public safety and security. Their example should be followed elsewhere, especially in the USA.
- throwaway6734 5y ago
  The negative influence of Big Money in politics has been proven to be vastly overblown. Small dollar donations ar much more dangerous as they tend to come from the most engaged & partisan members of society and encourage pols to be much more extreme in their rhetoric
  - Frost1x 5y ago
    Where is the proven evidence of this? I find this very difficult to believe, otherwise.
    - throwaway6734 5y ago
      Big money pulled their donations from the GOP after 1/6. Look at [Marjorie Taylor Greene's fundraising](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/marjorie-taylor-greene/summary?cid=N00044701 https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/marjorie-tay...)
  - akudha 5y ago
    Are you not watching Sinema and Manchin? Two people (maybe another half dozen, quietly) holding up legislation that much of the country wants to pass
    - throwaway6734 5y ago
      You think they're the only two Democratic Senators or house members that don't want this legislation? I don't. They're cover and the lightning rods for other reps in swing states. Also, a large chunk of the country does not want this legislation to pass (I'd even go as far as to say potentially a majority).
      - akudha 5y ago
        Two people (maybe another half dozen, quietly) No, I believe it is more than two democratic senators, I don't know how many. That is why I put half dozen, in parenthesis. Poll after poll shows the legislation is popular, even in Manchin's own state. Same in Arizona. What provisions of the bill do you disagree with?
- refurb 5y ago
  Exactly! Bloomberg spent $1B on his nomination for president and… it failed entirely.
  - plebianRube 5y ago
    I don't think he had any expectation or interest in winning. He bought his way in to divert votes from other nominees. Spend a billion to save 10 billion.
    - hellbannedguy 5y ago
      How would he save money?
    - missedthecue 5y ago
      Why not just spend a billion on the Biden campaign then and save yourself the campaign trail headaches?
      - spacemanmatt 5y ago
        because it wouldn't work as well as what he actually did
  - Invictus0 5y ago
    Hardly evidence of anything... It's one thing to spend money, another thing entirely to spend it properly.
    - refurb 5y ago
      This is the exact attitude I’m talking about. It happened with AB 5. Money is just used as an excuse for when voting doesn’t go the way someone expected or wanted.
mlindner 5y ago
Hyperbole doesn't contribute to the discussion.
- CapitalistCartr 5y ago
  None of the prior comment is hyperbole. Everything has happened, multiple times that we know of. "Three Felonies a Day" https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...
saurik 5y ago
> ...justice is now truly blind. (I think you are misunderstanding this metaphor, as Justice being blind is actually supposed to be good: it means Justice makes decisions without bias or regard for who the parties are, only able to analyze the facts. A corrupt court that benefits some people over others based on connections or group affiliation would imply Justice not being blind.)
- Aethylia 5y ago
  Time to start popularising 'Justice is 20/20' then!
- jwatt 5y ago
  Indeed. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice#Blindfold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice#Blindfold
ralusek 5y ago
It's not just money, it's also ideology. Rule of law is increasingly looked at with distain in favor of rule by arbitrary authority. At some point deontological liberalism has been overtaken by utilitarian pragmatism. The thing is that deontological rule of law is the exception throughout human history, and utilitarian pragmatism is the norm among unremarkable populations. It's not exactly easy to reclaim. When I hear people around me thinking it's a good thing when a judge rules in a way that nets the outcome they want, regardless of whether or not it was done so in accordance with the law, it hurts. Somehow, people fail to realize that rule of law is the single greatest defense against tyranny that we have. Short sighted pragmatism.
- bluejekyll 5y ago
  > people fail to realize that rule of law is the single greatest defense against tyranny that we have. This purist view ignores the fact that not all laws are good. Many laws are in fact bad, and it’s important for them to be challenged. As an example, many here would agree that the DMCA is a bad law. It’s a law that is generally only enforceable by wealthy players. There are many bad laws on the books. Those laws do not get equally applied to everyone in society. The fact that we have bad laws, implies that applying them will lead to bad outcomes. This is partly why having an unbiased appellate court to review the laws and throw out the bad ones is so important. Sadly much of the appellate court has also become corrupted, but at least the system is there to ideally correct bad laws and allow for blind application of justice.
  - ralusek 5y ago
    Blind application of justice is rule of law. And nobody is saying there aren't bad laws; there are plenty. We just have a system in place which dictates where the law is created, where the law is modified, and where the law is carried out. Our legislative branch is writing the code, theoretically downstream from our democracy, theoretically constrained by the meta layer that is the constitution. I don't want my code to be compiled only for the execution layer to suddenly decide that the code I wrote isn't what I meant. What if the execution layer is a racist? What if they stand to benefit financially from a particular ruling, as the OP says? What we should want is the judiciary acting like a compiled executable. If we're going to argue that a law is fair or not, let's do it with our democracy through some pull requests, and not give our executable the leeway to decide if they personally like the code they're meant to carry out.
2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff, Martin Skreli, and countless others served hard time. There is no such thing as a corruption-free government because it is made of human beings but I think that the US Govt has definitely trended in the right direction over time. I hope the trend continues, more transparency is a good thing.
- goldenkey 5y ago
  You've got it backwards. Shkreli served time because of public opinion and the things he revealed about the medicare drug pricing [1,2,3] Shkreli's case shows the partiality, politics and bias embedded in our justice system. He was unable to even serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest as very reasonable covid safety precautions despite his crime being entirely nonviolent. The justice system is in many ways the government's instrument of vengeance. You can clearly see this with O.J. Simpson's 33 year sentence in 2008 for armed robbery. Essentially, a new fluff case was used to dole out an improportionate sentence. as retribution for the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. [4,5] The truth is that Shrkeli pissed off a lot of people in powerful places. None of the investors wanted him tried because he ended up making them all a lot of money. [1] https://youtu.be/L-U1MMa0SHw https://youtu.be/L-U1MMa0SHw [2] https://youtu.be/2PCb9mnrU1g https://youtu.be/2PCb9mnrU1g [3] https://youtu.be/hjAQOWSP3Cc https://youtu.be/hjAQOWSP3Cc [4] https://youtu.be/BB4ss7q5X08 https://youtu.be/BB4ss7q5X08 [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_robbery_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_robbery_case
  - sam2426679 5y ago
    Agreed. Shkreli was dumb/honest enough to say "this is what I've done with your broken system." If he had pulled a Sackler-style, "I did this for your own good" lie (complete with the requisite bribes/speaking_fees for industry "experts"), he wouldn't have earned the same ire from the media or regulators, imo.
    - goldenkey 5y ago
      Indeed, moreso pride and lack of wisdom. Perhaps a bit of martyrdom. Shkreli liked playing around with these people who literally wanted to slay him. I don't think he understood how seriously evil and petty boomers can be, and how most judges are from that generation. He took one for the team in a sense, showing how the justice system serves as the instrument of vengeance for the executive and legislative branches. He's by no means dumb [1,2] but yes, honest to the point of being blunt. Very much in the spirit of Mike Tyson who is also extremely intelligent but often portrayed as a dolt. [3,4,5] [1] https://youtu.be/VI_riscmviI https://youtu.be/VI_riscmviI [2] https://youtu.be/poyf3Cnb-MQ https://youtu.be/poyf3Cnb-MQ [3] https://youtu.be/B9abU6r80P4 https://youtu.be/B9abU6r80P4 [4] https://youtu.be/OOhdx1TLutw https://youtu.be/OOhdx1TLutw [5] https://youtu.be/KaMb3GqKXb0 https://youtu.be/KaMb3GqKXb0

by Jerry2 5y ago

grecy 5y ago

> Money has infiltrated everything Worse, money is protected speech, and using it to buy influence is protected by the law!

EastOfTruth 5y ago
bribes/lobbying should be illegal... please get a referendum going on this subject
- jimktrains2 5y ago
  Why do you want to make it illegal for me to contact my representative and voice my opinion on upcoming legislation -- that's also lobbying.
  - FpUser 5y ago
    As long as id does not involve money direct or indirect between "lobbyist" and the official sure go and convince your rep. Just do not promise cushy job later or for relatives or any other creative ways to buy your politicians.
- grecy 5y ago
  The challenge that the USA faces is the people who have the power to change it are the very ones who benefit the most from it. There are MANY established institutions in the USA that will fight tooth and nail not to change, because the established players are getting exceedingly rich the way things are now, to the detriment of everyone else.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Yeah. How is change supposed to come when they control the system that's supposed to bring it about? If you try to fix things outside the system, you essentially become a terrorist and the government gives itself license to do unspeakable things to you.
    - trollski 5y ago
      revolution. does not mean blood on the streets. like soviet block circa 1989-1990.
- TheFreim 5y ago
  Lobbying is essentially a constitutionally protected right, right? Comes from the right to petition our government.
throwawaylinux 5y ago
When that happens, people will have even less recourse against media, internet and social media companies using their power to influence.
- lazyasciiart 5y ago
  What do you mean, "when that happens"? It's the law today.
  - throwawaylinux 5y ago
    I must have intended to reply to one of the replies to you calling for it to be outlawed.
bitwize 5y ago
It's time to repeal the First Amendment. It's probably time to repeal the entire Bill of Rights, and replace it with a framework that allows the government to restrict the exercise of rights when and as much as required to protect public safety or the mechanism of democracy. All functioning democracies (which the USA is not) have such a framework in place. In Canada it's famously called the Notwithstanding Clause. Well, maybe not all. We can keep the Third Amendment as a souvenir.
- eloisius 5y ago
  I can’t tell if this is sarcasm. The solution to corruption in government is to give even more powers to the government to restrict the exercise of rights?
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    The fact that they’re suggesting we keep the Third Amendment (which is, for all intents and purposes, useless), but get rid of the rest leads me to believe it’s sarcasm. If someone was serious about “repealing” the Bill of Rights, they probably haven’t read it and don’t know anything more than the First and Second.
    - bitwize 5y ago
      Oh no, I think the entire Constitution actually needs to be rethought if we intend to do something about corruption in the system. It's clear that the USA is a failed state -- the Constitution hampers the government from doing good, necessary things (like implementing universal health care, strong consumer and worker protections, protecting against hate speech, etc.) while allowing corruption to run rampant. It needs to be replaced. Something like a proportional representation, multiparty parliamentary system. While we're at it we may as well rejoin the Commonwealth, because the Crown has one non-ceremonial power that can be used to fight corruption, that no person or body has in the U.S. government: the power to disband the government and force the institution of another by democratic means. If you think this sounds familiar, you're right: New Zealand is practically an ideal model of how to form a modern, practical, democratic government that reasonably respects personal freedom and public safety and security. Their example should be followed elsewhere, especially in the USA.
throwaway6734 5y ago
The negative influence of Big Money in politics has been proven to be vastly overblown. Small dollar donations ar much more dangerous as they tend to come from the most engaged & partisan members of society and encourage pols to be much more extreme in their rhetoric
- Frost1x 5y ago
  Where is the proven evidence of this? I find this very difficult to believe, otherwise.
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    Big money pulled their donations from the GOP after 1/6. Look at [Marjorie Taylor Greene's fundraising](https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/marjorie-taylor-greene/summary?cid=N00044701 https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/marjorie-tay...)
- akudha 5y ago
  Are you not watching Sinema and Manchin? Two people (maybe another half dozen, quietly) holding up legislation that much of the country wants to pass
  - throwaway6734 5y ago
    You think they're the only two Democratic Senators or house members that don't want this legislation? I don't. They're cover and the lightning rods for other reps in swing states. Also, a large chunk of the country does not want this legislation to pass (I'd even go as far as to say potentially a majority).
    - akudha 5y ago
      Two people (maybe another half dozen, quietly) No, I believe it is more than two democratic senators, I don't know how many. That is why I put half dozen, in parenthesis. Poll after poll shows the legislation is popular, even in Manchin's own state. Same in Arizona. What provisions of the bill do you disagree with?
refurb 5y ago
Exactly! Bloomberg spent $1B on his nomination for president and… it failed entirely.
- plebianRube 5y ago
  I don't think he had any expectation or interest in winning. He bought his way in to divert votes from other nominees. Spend a billion to save 10 billion.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    How would he save money?
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    Why not just spend a billion on the Biden campaign then and save yourself the campaign trail headaches?
    - spacemanmatt 5y ago
      because it wouldn't work as well as what he actually did
- Invictus0 5y ago
  Hardly evidence of anything... It's one thing to spend money, another thing entirely to spend it properly.
  - refurb 5y ago
    This is the exact attitude I’m talking about. It happened with AB 5. Money is just used as an excuse for when voting doesn’t go the way someone expected or wanted.

mlindner 5y ago

Hyperbole doesn't contribute to the discussion.

CapitalistCartr 5y ago
None of the prior comment is hyperbole. Everything has happened, multiple times that we know of. "Three Felonies a Day" https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229 https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...

saurik 5y ago

> ...justice is now truly blind. (I think you are misunderstanding this metaphor, as Justice being blind is actually supposed to be good: it means Justice makes decisions without bias or regard for who the parties are, only able to analyze the facts. A corrupt court that benefits some people over others based on connections or group affiliation would imply Justice not being blind.)

Aethylia 5y ago
Time to start popularising 'Justice is 20/20' then!
jwatt 5y ago
Indeed. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice#Blindfold https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Justice#Blindfold

ralusek 5y ago

It's not just money, it's also ideology. Rule of law is increasingly looked at with distain in favor of rule by arbitrary authority. At some point deontological liberalism has been overtaken by utilitarian pragmatism. The thing is that deontological rule of law is the exception throughout human history, and utilitarian pragmatism is the norm among unremarkable populations. It's not exactly easy to reclaim. When I hear people around me thinking it's a good thing when a judge rules in a way that nets the outcome they want, regardless of whether or not it was done so in accordance with the law, it hurts. Somehow, people fail to realize that rule of law is the single greatest defense against tyranny that we have. Short sighted pragmatism.

bluejekyll 5y ago
> people fail to realize that rule of law is the single greatest defense against tyranny that we have. This purist view ignores the fact that not all laws are good. Many laws are in fact bad, and it’s important for them to be challenged. As an example, many here would agree that the DMCA is a bad law. It’s a law that is generally only enforceable by wealthy players. There are many bad laws on the books. Those laws do not get equally applied to everyone in society. The fact that we have bad laws, implies that applying them will lead to bad outcomes. This is partly why having an unbiased appellate court to review the laws and throw out the bad ones is so important. Sadly much of the appellate court has also become corrupted, but at least the system is there to ideally correct bad laws and allow for blind application of justice.
- ralusek 5y ago
  Blind application of justice is rule of law. And nobody is saying there aren't bad laws; there are plenty. We just have a system in place which dictates where the law is created, where the law is modified, and where the law is carried out. Our legislative branch is writing the code, theoretically downstream from our democracy, theoretically constrained by the meta layer that is the constitution. I don't want my code to be compiled only for the execution layer to suddenly decide that the code I wrote isn't what I meant. What if the execution layer is a racist? What if they stand to benefit financially from a particular ruling, as the OP says? What we should want is the judiciary acting like a compiled executable. If we're going to argue that a law is fair or not, let's do it with our democracy through some pull requests, and not give our executable the leeway to decide if they personally like the code they're meant to carry out.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago

Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff, Martin Skreli, and countless others served hard time. There is no such thing as a corruption-free government because it is made of human beings but I think that the US Govt has definitely trended in the right direction over time. I hope the trend continues, more transparency is a good thing.

goldenkey 5y ago
You've got it backwards. Shkreli served time because of public opinion and the things he revealed about the medicare drug pricing [1,2,3] Shkreli's case shows the partiality, politics and bias embedded in our justice system. He was unable to even serve the remainder of his sentence under house arrest as very reasonable covid safety precautions despite his crime being entirely nonviolent. The justice system is in many ways the government's instrument of vengeance. You can clearly see this with O.J. Simpson's 33 year sentence in 2008 for armed robbery. Essentially, a new fluff case was used to dole out an improportionate sentence. as retribution for the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. [4,5] The truth is that Shrkeli pissed off a lot of people in powerful places. None of the investors wanted him tried because he ended up making them all a lot of money. [1] https://youtu.be/L-U1MMa0SHw https://youtu.be/L-U1MMa0SHw [2] https://youtu.be/2PCb9mnrU1g https://youtu.be/2PCb9mnrU1g [3] https://youtu.be/hjAQOWSP3Cc https://youtu.be/hjAQOWSP3Cc [4] https://youtu.be/BB4ss7q5X08 https://youtu.be/BB4ss7q5X08 [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_robbery_case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_robbery_case
- sam2426679 5y ago
  Agreed. Shkreli was dumb/honest enough to say "this is what I've done with your broken system." If he had pulled a Sackler-style, "I did this for your own good" lie (complete with the requisite bribes/speaking_fees for industry "experts"), he wouldn't have earned the same ire from the media or regulators, imo.
  - goldenkey 5y ago
    Indeed, moreso pride and lack of wisdom. Perhaps a bit of martyrdom. Shkreli liked playing around with these people who literally wanted to slay him. I don't think he understood how seriously evil and petty boomers can be, and how most judges are from that generation. He took one for the team in a sense, showing how the justice system serves as the instrument of vengeance for the executive and legislative branches. He's by no means dumb [1,2] but yes, honest to the point of being blunt. Very much in the spirit of Mike Tyson who is also extremely intelligent but often portrayed as a dolt. [3,4,5] [1] https://youtu.be/VI_riscmviI https://youtu.be/VI_riscmviI [2] https://youtu.be/poyf3Cnb-MQ https://youtu.be/poyf3Cnb-MQ [3] https://youtu.be/B9abU6r80P4 https://youtu.be/B9abU6r80P4 [4] https://youtu.be/OOhdx1TLutw https://youtu.be/OOhdx1TLutw [5] https://youtu.be/KaMb3GqKXb0 https://youtu.be/KaMb3GqKXb0