Go to archive.is (or one of the other archive sites), paste in the URL you want to get an archive copy of, then copy the resulting URL and paste it here.
> Lawmakers are also eyeing Apple over its hosting of tracking apps used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
This is bizarre. ICE is an (enforcement) arm of the government. So the government is investigating Apple for hosting tracking apps used by the government?
Having immigration enforcement is legitimate and not illegal. Hosting an app related to legitimate government function in an app store is so far removed from any possible element of a real crime...
Calling what ICE is doing "immigration enforcement" is beyond the pale. Administrative warrant are made up take-my-word-for-it notes ICE writes for themselves. Putting kids in cage immoral by any measure. Detaining citizen for days at a time is against the law. Constantly lying about why your summarily executed anyone is a power no law can grant.
Am I seriously being led to believe that the government was not doing this long before ICE? This seems performative at best. Come back to me when they decide to break the massive loophole where government has been buying private citizen data for over a decade now.
they'd better keep it laser focused on stuff like bribery that is easy to demonstrate, and not stuff like "enabled ICE by hosting apps" etc. which is much less understood by the American people and harder to nail down as a crime
Congress has to start working for the people it represents again, so I really hope the Democrats start pushing lots of legislation that addresses the real needs of the people. Even if every bill gets vetoed, make sure Trump and the Republicans around him own the lack of progress in a very visible way to ensure 2028 is an easy-mode Democratic win.
But... they also have to undo the damage to the rule of law that has been supercharged by the Trump administration.
Letting bygones be bygones and trying to move back to the old status quo without addressing actual wrongdoing is how you end up with Trump getting reelected even after January 6th.
If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.
> If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.
So the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
POTUS graduated from pumping and dumping crypto shitcoins to pumping and dumping the American Economy with Iran announcements and then lining up his billionaire friends to brag about how much money they made insider trading it on public television.
Against this backdrop, it takes some truly extraordinary selective attention to be scandalized by the Pelosis managing to beat QQQ by one percentage point last time I checked.
It makes sense to start with the biggest offenders though? Pelosi’s net worth is peanuts compared to what Mango Mussolini and his friends and family made in the last couple of years.
> So the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
I'd support it.
By the same token, if Bill Clinton gets damaged by a full release of the Epstein files? Good. Fuck 'em then. I'm not a team booster. Investigate likely wrongdoing and punish the guilty, regardless of their politics.
Though of course... Nancy Pelosi isn't remotely the only one who likely benefited from insider knowledge, there are long lists of people from both parties who are in the same boat. Pelosi just gets elevated as a figurehead here because of her high profile (and despite not being a big Pelosi fan myself I still think, if we're being honest, at least a smidge of misogyny)
We should also just ban trading for all elected officials during their terms in office.
I'm pretty skeptical that the political and legal system in America is capable of the kind of radical change needed to stave off the control of the big tech oligarchs that have aligned themselves with the Republican party. There's a lot of entrenched powers in the Democratic party who lack the foresight and desire to make the kinds of moves necessary to do so and are mostly just riding it out until they can retire and/or die.
But on the other hand I'm really surprised by the lack of foresight and intention displayed by big tech oligarchs and to be honest I'm troubled by it. Like there's a lot of seemingly unforced errors from these guys and I'm not sure why.
For instance Sam Altman didn't have that stupid thing that he recently said about the allocation of RAM and Elon Musk doesn't have to say the stupid stuff that he says all the time in social media, so what makes them say these things? These are small things, admittedly, but they are also kind of big things, or hint at big things, you know?
Is it simply a lack of immediate negative consequences for their actions that slowly reshapes their brain into not being able to foresee negative consequences in general?
Or is there some deeper plan there? It doesn't seem like it. And if that's the case, that there is no deeper plan, how are the organizations that these people command able to continue functioning, are the CEOs really so unnecessary that the people around them just smile, nod, tell them what they want to hear and work around whatever damage they cause when they spout off some hare-brained ideas? Like who is running the show here?
> First you need to control the ones that are there
No, you don't. In fact that's exactly the wrong approach because it recognizes them as institutions.
Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
Note that I'm using the term oligarch precisely. Not just rich people. Rich people holding direct political power. You don't control that without empowering it, you remove the direct political power.
Prosecute the one accepting the bribes, not the one giving it. Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally. So you've got to make it so that law enforcement cannot be criminal. Own goals all over.
Both are crimes, and it's made pretty clear by the compliance training I have to retake every year at my corp job. If a corporation has to train employees to not give bribes because we can go to jail, and the corp will be on the hook as well, then they will likely also be prosecuted.
Both sides are wrong on this, giving or accepting.
> Prosecute the one accepting the bribes, not the one giving it.
... Wait, what? You prosecute _both_.
> Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally.
The "just following orders" defence is, fairly, notoriously, weak. "Just following requests" is presumably even weaker. If you assist law enforcement in doing something illegal, you shouldn't assume that you're magically in the clear.
> "That statement is very simple, I said, ‘Vote for me, you’re not gonna have to do it ever again,’” Trump told Ingraham. “It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.” [^0]
They possibly thought that the democrats might go for the "all forgotten, we're all friends now, right?" approach. Which wouldn't be a _crazy_ thing to think, because it's pretty much what happened in 2020.
Arresting Tim Cook for bribery would send a message. Why else would Apple Pay for an inauguration ceremony or for a white house ballroom or a golden plaque gift?
This is kind of insane when you realize 80% of their employees are democrats even if their executives pal around with trump. I am crying tears of joy for this overall.
"If Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becomes the House minority leader, he may bring his reputation for partisan oversight to proceedings to counter Democratic machinations."
Good luck with that Mr. Jordan. The House minority leader doesn't have the power to issue congressional summons, and there is a 0% chance that the Democrats will allow him to take any committee assignment that would put him in such a position (and even his own party didn't trust him enough to put him in charge of anything important after it was revealed that as a coach at OSU he knew about the sexual abuse of minors and student athletes for decades and did nothing about it).
You'd think the Party of Law and Order would be OK with holding their elected representatives to the most basic of laws. Things like "don't solicit, accept, and brag about taking bribes on public TV." But I guess not.
You had every chance to fix this yourself. In Trump's first term, in between terms, and again in his second term. But it appears you are incapable of self-imposed accountability. Now it's our turn to enforce the law.
Will you have the consistency to say it's good on both sides? Will you support deporting Ilhan Omar, for example? I highly doubt it. You're just another partisan, and we all live in Brazil now where an election means locking up your opponents.
You may be right about some people but are wrong about me. Trump is shameful and should have been held to account by Republicans, long long ago.
No treatment of him by Democrats will be seen as remotely fair (and be honest, it won't be remotely fair), and only makes us progressively into more of a shithole country.
Not to mention, half of the lawfare that's being proposed is against Elon, who is abrasive but legally a far cry from Trump. It's just lawfare.
Edit: and it's too bad to see I was right about you!
No, you're not being honest. The consistent failing of Democratic attempts to enforce the law is having too limp a wrist. Being too meticulous, forming too much bipartisan consensus, giving too much opportunity for "delay until it goes away." All the way from Jerome Powell through the Epstein investigation to the Jan 6 prosecution.
If that changes -- and to be clear, I hope it does -- it will be a dramatic departure from trend.
Vetoes can be overridden by Congress, though Republicans will have to vote with Democrats since the Democrats don't have a significant enough majority. And many of the surviving Republicans are going to have to evaluate how safe they feel given the recent election. Do they continue to fail their constituents and risk losing in 2028 to kowtow to a lame duck president, or do they actually do something worthwhile for their salaries and the trust that's been given to them.
Let Trump veto a minimum-wage increase, the ACA premium, a war-powers resolution and an Epstein bill. Then let Republicans defend not overriding it. That will deliver a Democrat trifecta in 2028.
If Democrats only investigate, they’ll fail. But if they ignore corruption, they will also fail.
We can raise the minimum wage ($12.50 in 2027, $15 in 2028, $17.50 in 2029, $20 in 2030 then indexed to CPI); expand Medicare (I’d add neonatal and pediatric care); restore the ACA subsidies; call a War Powers Resolution (to end Trump’s war in Iran and ban the on-and-off trick); and cut the deficit by slashing DoD and DHS funding while also impeaching and removing Hegseth, Blanche and RFK; while also pursuing the Epstein cover-up; while also investigating everyone who made donations and received a pardon; while also investigating Musk’s treason and the Cabinet’s self dealing and the crypto corruption by David Sacks et al.
Hell, if I were Speaker I’d announce a special schedule for Year One that has Congress running over time every week until these priorities are passed.
Trump will veto all of that. Much of it should still be done as a performative measure as 2028 election prep, but only as a secondary priority to actually getting stuff done.
Now that it's obvious that being a Trump shoe-licker is harmful for electoral chances, Democrats should be able to assemble veto-proof majorities to pass compromise bills. Only a handful of Republican defectors are necessary. For example, impeaching Hegseth, a war powers resolution and passing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act are obvious candidates. Those 2 will establish a pattern and they can proceed from there.
> Much of it should still be done as a performative measure as 2028 election prep
It's more than that. It's getting together a cohesive policy package that Democrats can agree on. It's putting Republicans on the record opposing popular policy. And it's something that could yield extra seats as special elections come up.
Agreed on all three, but it's still less important than getting something done concretely IMO. They only need 4 senator defections to be filibuster proof, and 11 to be veto proof. It's highly doable.
The 3 agendas: investigations, performative legislation and bipartisan compromise legislation are going to be really hard to balance in the next 2 years. That's a lot of work in very little time. How well they do so will be how they're judged in 2 years time.
That would require allowing real estate prices to fall, which neither party can ever do. Real estate price appreciation is now a sacred entitlement alongside social security and medicaid and anyone threatening that loses the next election.
Unfortunately that also means housing can't become affordable because housing can't simultaneously be affordable and a good investment.
I'm not just being cynical. It's genuinely a hard problem, since crashing real estate would open the door to the next generation while bankrupting all previous generations and causing a banking crisis.
We are very much painted into a corner here, and the US doesn't even have it the worst compared to other developed nations.
They might not need to fall. With inflation being what it is, mere flatness in nominal terms could help.
Also, crafty government policy can make housing more affordable for some buyers while letting prices seem to rise. I’m not crafty enough to know how this would work, but it works in other markets. For instance, apartments that have high and increasing rent but with months of “free rent” and “discounts” thrown in that reflect a different reality, or new cars with “cash back,” or tuition at expensive selective private universities that is almost completely fanciful.
Real Estate can go sideways for a decade or two while the rest of the economy grows around it. Given that bonds move in 40 year cycles and rates bottomed 5 years ago, it might already be happening.
You will be presented a list of all the things that must be done first. Said list will then grow in such a way that the things able to move the needle on these topics will keep getting pushed down further. The show will continue until the helpless American population swings again in 2028 in the pointless endeavor of electing a government that actually cares about its constituents.
And when you try to have meaningful conversations on this topic, both sides will use Gish Gallop until you shut up or go away.
Investigating people engaged in blatant corruption and crimes (including televised bribing of the president with a literal gold brick) isn't "retaliatory", it's simply doing the job.
there is actual criminality here. they are pursuing accountability. musk shut down federal investigations into his operations while at DOGE. at the very least picking these investigations back up would plain old accountability, and if he's innocent he has nothing to worry about. However, since those have been closed, he has committed other acts, like shutting down starlink in Ukraine to assist a russian bombing campaign, that likely constitute crimes, perhaps even treason.
"musk shut down federal investigations into his operations while at DOGE"
there is absolutely nothing even remotely true about this. please focus on his real issues like being responsible for the deaths of 14 million people instead of making things up
Starshield exists specifically for this. The US loses money for every Starshield satellite that orbits on-station without any allies using it. It is a literal waste of taxpayer money not giving Ukraine access.
SpaceX may have committed treason under Musk. Meta and Apple may have paid bribes. This is real criminality. Nobody is going after folks for tweeting or even privately donating.
Depends. It’s not ideal but you have to start somewhere. Also if the other side starts playing dirty you have to step it up as well, doing something else is about as stupid as unilateral nuclear disarmament
no dipshit, he shut down federal investigations while leading doge. a private individual being given the ability to shut down investigations into his companies is clearly something that needs to be investigated
"we shouldn't persecute our political enemies" of course, but you are being obtuse if you think what happened to letitia james is similar to what is happening here. it's a bit different when he donates enough to take over the federal government to protect his businesses and secure contracts
The party of law and order when it's time for the most blatant offenders to be held to the most basic of laws: nooooooo it's not faaaaaaaairrrrrrrr!!!!!!
> Should your political enemies be selectively prosecuted, though?
Obviously. How else they will understand that they should be your political allies and not the enemy?
Wouldn't that be amazing if Trump will be impeached for his 200 felonies and put in jail for the rest of his life? Along with all his allies who helped him to commit crimes and to avoid the responsibility. And the life sentence for Musk for treason and the other crimes he had committed.
And multi‑billion‑dollars fines for Zuck, Bezos, and others to show everybody that it is not okay to support the worst criminals alive just because they have won the election.
Failing to prosecute government officials who break laws guarantees future criminal wrongdoing. There's a fairly strong argument that failing to impeach and imprison Nixon for his wrongdoing was a straight line to what's happening now under Trump.
The rule of law no longer exists when crimes are ignored in fear of the appearance of political retribution.
Holding people accountable and fixing the cracks in the system are the only way to ensure the Trump administration doesn't serve as a trial run for an even worse administration in the future.
The worst possible outcome would be for the Democrats to repeat their behavior under Biden and spend all their effort attempting to return to the status quo while pretending the Republican party won't try again the moment they regain power.
So each election should wipe the slate clean? Anything illegal done under the previous administration should be automatically forgotten just in case someone might conflate doing anything about it with persecuting your political opponents.
Trump was clearly into "vengeful prosecution" territory, at least with some of the people he told DOJ to go after. But "go after nobody" clearly isn't the answer either.
And when you go after someone, if you don't find enough to prosecute, let it go. None of this "try three times to find a case" stuff that Trump's DOJ did.
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
"I built my own country and it started to be successful and then gangsters took over, the neighboring countries got pissed and bombed us, we all starved because farmers grew more profitable drugs than food but countries wouldn't import to us because we were sanctioned, and then bears finished us off because we didn't deal with the trash and they got out of control" --Libertarian paradise.
You'll love Ethiopia. They have no meaningful federal government to speak of right now.
Of course, you'll end up paying most of your income as tribute to the various warlords, but they won't be taxes! They'll be "payments in lieu of death."
Or, you could live in the real world and pay taxes because they enable things like...preventing warlords. Also unimportant things like roads and police and clean running water.
There's a civil war going on right now with various rebel groups, but overall they certainly do have a federal government. They have an income tax rate around 30% plus a VAT of 15%.
Yea, the fact someone doesn't understand how corruption can massively increase costs for everyone is odd to me. It's like the number one way to decrease trust in the government and allow bad actors to screw over society in general.
> I already have zero trust in government due to the kind of corruption that DOGE was going after. But the Democrats shut that down.
DOGE never actually went after corruption, though, and only idiots ever believed that was their intention. They said they were pursuing savings by finding fraud, waste, and abuse and then ignored one of the biggest sources of all three: The DOD.
And then the Republicans decided that the remarkably efficient and perennially audit failing Pentagon should get an extra half trillion dollars. Largely to pursue contracts with companies owned by Musk, Thiel, Lucky, and other Trump inner circle types.
And how, by the way, did Democrats shutdown DOGE? Republican president, Republican Senate, Republican House. They controlled everything they needed to to continue operating DOGE. DOGE is squarely a Republican failure to do anything useful.
Trump has already pardoned the following Medicare/Medicaid fraudsters:
Dirtbag USD in Medicare/Medicaid Fraud
-------------- -----------------
Philip Esformes $1300M
Judigeth Negron $ 205M
Lawrence Duran $ 205M
Daniela Gozes $ 50M
Simon Melgen $ 42M
John Davis $ 4M
and I bet he could pardon many more for a small fee.
Cowards like them are why I quote comments. They claimed that Democrats (not in power at the time) blocked DOGE and that DOGE was actually going after corruption, both lies. Then they deleted it when called out.
I just hope that the congressional panelists do their homework. Especially in the televised bits in which C-suite reps testify in front of Congress.
Every time I come away thinking that the investigators themselves have not spend much (or any) time understanding the basics of these businesses.
And so they resort to what they know: speeches/lectures to let their constituents hear and see them on the record standing for anything.
No Palantir?
What are the allegations against Palantir?
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I hope they find time to address healthcare and Social Security once their new majorities are sworn in.
If they make good faith efforts to solve these ( not partisan pork filled non-starter efforts ) I will be deeply grateful.
The Republicans had a chance and failed to even act. If the Democrats do the same I’ll be deeply disappointed.
https://archive.is/BRasv
Thanks for this.
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you make these links?
Go to archive.is (or one of the other archive sites), paste in the URL you want to get an archive copy of, then copy the resulting URL and paste it here.
I have a bookmark of
Go to the main domain, setup browser block for the domain of the guy getting DDoSed (https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-...), paste the link for the article.
Or just use wallhop.io, Archive.org, or any other site that doesn't draft your browser into an ongoing harassment campaign against its enemies.
I wish other services were as good. Yeah, start with those. But unfortunately this one has the widest support for various sites.
> Lawmakers are also eyeing Apple over its hosting of tracking apps used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
This is bizarre. ICE is an (enforcement) arm of the government. So the government is investigating Apple for hosting tracking apps used by the government?
“Just following orders” is not necessarily a legitimate defence if the government was doing something illegal in the first place.
Which US statute was broken by Apple?
Having immigration enforcement is legitimate and not illegal. Hosting an app related to legitimate government function in an app store is so far removed from any possible element of a real crime...
Calling what ICE is doing "immigration enforcement" is beyond the pale. Administrative warrant are made up take-my-word-for-it notes ICE writes for themselves. Putting kids in cage immoral by any measure. Detaining citizen for days at a time is against the law. Constantly lying about why your summarily executed anyone is a power no law can grant.
Having immigration enforcement is legitimate and not illegal. The way the government was doing it was, at times, illegitimate and illegal.
The app... I don't at all understand what the role of the app is, so I really can't comment on that aspect of the situation.
Am I seriously being led to believe that the government was not doing this long before ICE? This seems performative at best. Come back to me when they decide to break the massive loophole where government has been buying private citizen data for over a decade now.
they'd better keep it laser focused on stuff like bribery that is easy to demonstrate, and not stuff like "enabled ICE by hosting apps" etc. which is much less understood by the American people and harder to nail down as a crime
Good.
Congress has to start working for the people it represents again, so I really hope the Democrats start pushing lots of legislation that addresses the real needs of the people. Even if every bill gets vetoed, make sure Trump and the Republicans around him own the lack of progress in a very visible way to ensure 2028 is an easy-mode Democratic win.
But... they also have to undo the damage to the rule of law that has been supercharged by the Trump administration.
Letting bygones be bygones and trying to move back to the old status quo without addressing actual wrongdoing is how you end up with Trump getting reelected even after January 6th.
If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.
Precisely. No bygones this time.
Where just and applicable.
Not "where it will score political points" or "where we really want to get that guy". Where just and applicable.
So, in any of 100 blatant and obvious places that Republicans will nevertheless whine relentlessly about.
> If you spend years (correctly) telling people the current cronyism and open corruption is destroying our democracy, you have to act like it really was when you regain power and that means investigating and punishing those who took advantage of it, where just and applicable.
So the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
> the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
If Todd Blanche weren't busy pursuing Trump's political enemies with frivolous lawsuits, maybe he could have gotten around to this.
How about something much larger, like investigating Biden's second largest donor and throwing him in jail for 25 years for fraud?
Wait, SBF is already in jail.
POTUS graduated from pumping and dumping crypto shitcoins to pumping and dumping the American Economy with Iran announcements and then lining up his billionaire friends to brag about how much money they made insider trading it on public television.
Against this backdrop, it takes some truly extraordinary selective attention to be scandalized by the Pelosis managing to beat QQQ by one percentage point last time I checked.
One percentage point? Her own party lampposted her over the corruption and hundreds of millions. They’re both corrupt
It makes sense to start with the biggest offenders though? Pelosi’s net worth is peanuts compared to what Mango Mussolini and his friends and family made in the last couple of years.
> So the investigation into Nancy Pelosi's fortuitous stock trades is starting next week?
I'd support it.
By the same token, if Bill Clinton gets damaged by a full release of the Epstein files? Good. Fuck 'em then. I'm not a team booster. Investigate likely wrongdoing and punish the guilty, regardless of their politics.
Though of course... Nancy Pelosi isn't remotely the only one who likely benefited from insider knowledge, there are long lists of people from both parties who are in the same boat. Pelosi just gets elevated as a figurehead here because of her high profile (and despite not being a big Pelosi fan myself I still think, if we're being honest, at least a smidge of misogyny)
We should also just ban trading for all elected officials during their terms in office.
I'm pretty skeptical that the political and legal system in America is capable of the kind of radical change needed to stave off the control of the big tech oligarchs that have aligned themselves with the Republican party. There's a lot of entrenched powers in the Democratic party who lack the foresight and desire to make the kinds of moves necessary to do so and are mostly just riding it out until they can retire and/or die.
But on the other hand I'm really surprised by the lack of foresight and intention displayed by big tech oligarchs and to be honest I'm troubled by it. Like there's a lot of seemingly unforced errors from these guys and I'm not sure why.
For instance Sam Altman didn't have that stupid thing that he recently said about the allocation of RAM and Elon Musk doesn't have to say the stupid stuff that he says all the time in social media, so what makes them say these things? These are small things, admittedly, but they are also kind of big things, or hint at big things, you know?
Is it simply a lack of immediate negative consequences for their actions that slowly reshapes their brain into not being able to foresee negative consequences in general?
Or is there some deeper plan there? It doesn't seem like it. And if that's the case, that there is no deeper plan, how are the organizations that these people command able to continue functioning, are the CEOs really so unnecessary that the people around them just smile, nod, tell them what they want to hear and work around whatever damage they cause when they spout off some hare-brained ideas? Like who is running the show here?
Long overdue.
Paywall for me. Link anyone? Curious to read this. Thanks.
Not sure about the others but here is information on the SpaceX investigation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/11/05/what-de...
archive.is is your friend bro
WallHop doesn't disable its site based on geography: https://wallhop.io/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology...
> “We’ve been telling clients all year that winter is coming,” he said. “Now winter has arrived.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3ARequests_for_comme...
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/wikipedia-bans-a...
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Good. Either the state controls the oligarchs or oligarchs control the state.
Or, get this, no oligarchs.
First you need to control the ones that are there.
> First you need to control the ones that are there
No, you don't. In fact that's exactly the wrong approach because it recognizes them as institutions.
Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
Note that I'm using the term oligarch precisely. Not just rich people. Rich people holding direct political power. You don't control that without empowering it, you remove the direct political power.
> Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
This is controlling them.
> This is controlling them
It's really not. Putin controls his oligarchs. Denmark doesn't have oligarchs. (It does have nobility and billionaires.)
Putin is an oligarch.
And for US it's too late, it already has oligarchs.
> Tax them. Reduce money in politics. Investigate them if they did something wrong.
That's how you control them, yes. I don't understand what you are disagreeing with?
Prosecute the one accepting the bribes, not the one giving it. Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally. So you've got to make it so that law enforcement cannot be criminal. Own goals all over.
Both are crimes, and it's made pretty clear by the compliance training I have to retake every year at my corp job. If a corporation has to train employees to not give bribes because we can go to jail, and the corp will be on the hook as well, then they will likely also be prosecuted.
Both sides are wrong on this, giving or accepting.
No, giving a bribe is not "working with law enforcement." These are two different things.
Giving bribes is "definitionally" a crime.
But more than that - giving bribes is fucking over people who cannot afford to give bribes so they are treated unfairly.
So not only it's a crime - it's also morally evil.
Obviously you have to prosecute the ones giving bribes as well. What a ludicrously entitled position
> Prosecute the one accepting the bribes, not the one giving it.
... Wait, what? You prosecute _both_.
> Working with law enforcement is... uh, not a crime, definitionally.
The "just following orders" defence is, fairly, notoriously, weak. "Just following requests" is presumably even weaker. If you assist law enforcement in doing something illegal, you shouldn't assume that you're magically in the clear.
Did these guys think Republicans would be in power forever?
> "That statement is very simple, I said, ‘Vote for me, you’re not gonna have to do it ever again,’” Trump told Ingraham. “It’s true, because we have to get the vote out. Christians are not known as a big voting group, they don’t vote. And I’m explaining that to them. You never vote. This time, vote. I’ll straighten out the country, you won’t have to vote any more, I won’t need your vote any more, you can go back to not voting.” [^0]
[^0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/30/dona...
They possibly thought that the democrats might go for the "all forgotten, we're all friends now, right?" approach. Which wouldn't be a _crazy_ thing to think, because it's pretty much what happened in 2020.
Arresting Tim Cook for bribery would send a message. Why else would Apple Pay for an inauguration ceremony or for a white house ballroom or a golden plaque gift?
This is kind of insane when you realize 80% of their employees are democrats even if their executives pal around with trump. I am crying tears of joy for this overall.
"If Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) becomes the House minority leader, he may bring his reputation for partisan oversight to proceedings to counter Democratic machinations."
Good luck with that Mr. Jordan. The House minority leader doesn't have the power to issue congressional summons, and there is a 0% chance that the Democrats will allow him to take any committee assignment that would put him in such a position (and even his own party didn't trust him enough to put him in charge of anything important after it was revealed that as a coach at OSU he knew about the sexual abuse of minors and student athletes for decades and did nothing about it).
The pivot from "we just want single payer healthcare" sure happened a lot quicker than I expected.
https://x.com/search?q=Subpeonas&src=typed_query
You'd think the Party of Law and Order would be OK with holding their elected representatives to the most basic of laws. Things like "don't solicit, accept, and brag about taking bribes on public TV." But I guess not.
You had every chance to fix this yourself. In Trump's first term, in between terms, and again in his second term. But it appears you are incapable of self-imposed accountability. Now it's our turn to enforce the law.
I think lawfare is bad on both sides.
Will you have the consistency to say it's good on both sides? Will you support deporting Ilhan Omar, for example? I highly doubt it. You're just another partisan, and we all live in Brazil now where an election means locking up your opponents.
No, you don't think lawfare is bad on both sides, you think the most blatant fraudsters in history should be above the law.
You may be right about some people but are wrong about me. Trump is shameful and should have been held to account by Republicans, long long ago.
No treatment of him by Democrats will be seen as remotely fair (and be honest, it won't be remotely fair), and only makes us progressively into more of a shithole country.
Not to mention, half of the lawfare that's being proposed is against Elon, who is abrasive but legally a far cry from Trump. It's just lawfare.
Edit: and it's too bad to see I was right about you!
> and be honest, it won't be remotely fair
No, you're not being honest. The consistent failing of Democratic attempts to enforce the law is having too limp a wrist. Being too meticulous, forming too much bipartisan consensus, giving too much opportunity for "delay until it goes away." All the way from Jerome Powell through the Epstein investigation to the Jan 6 prosecution.
If that changes -- and to be clear, I hope it does -- it will be a dramatic departure from trend.
I literally laughed out loud.
You live in a dream world.
No examples. Coward!
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Trump has the veto power until 2029. Until then, not many laws are going to be passed.
Vetoes can be overridden by Congress, though Republicans will have to vote with Democrats since the Democrats don't have a significant enough majority. And many of the surviving Republicans are going to have to evaluate how safe they feel given the recent election. Do they continue to fail their constituents and risk losing in 2028 to kowtow to a lame duck president, or do they actually do something worthwhile for their salaries and the trust that's been given to them.
Let Trump veto a minimum-wage increase, the ACA premium, a war-powers resolution and an Epstein bill. Then let Republicans defend not overriding it. That will deliver a Democrat trifecta in 2028.
Americans aren’t stupid.
If Democrats only investigate, they’ll fail. But if they ignore corruption, they will also fail.
We can raise the minimum wage ($12.50 in 2027, $15 in 2028, $17.50 in 2029, $20 in 2030 then indexed to CPI); expand Medicare (I’d add neonatal and pediatric care); restore the ACA subsidies; call a War Powers Resolution (to end Trump’s war in Iran and ban the on-and-off trick); and cut the deficit by slashing DoD and DHS funding while also impeaching and removing Hegseth, Blanche and RFK; while also pursuing the Epstein cover-up; while also investigating everyone who made donations and received a pardon; while also investigating Musk’s treason and the Cabinet’s self dealing and the crypto corruption by David Sacks et al.
Hell, if I were Speaker I’d announce a special schedule for Year One that has Congress running over time every week until these priorities are passed.
Trump will veto all of that. Much of it should still be done as a performative measure as 2028 election prep, but only as a secondary priority to actually getting stuff done.
Now that it's obvious that being a Trump shoe-licker is harmful for electoral chances, Democrats should be able to assemble veto-proof majorities to pass compromise bills. Only a handful of Republican defectors are necessary. For example, impeaching Hegseth, a war powers resolution and passing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act are obvious candidates. Those 2 will establish a pattern and they can proceed from there.
> Trump will veto all of that
Given the Miller appointment, probably.
> Much of it should still be done as a performative measure as 2028 election prep
It's more than that. It's getting together a cohesive policy package that Democrats can agree on. It's putting Republicans on the record opposing popular policy. And it's something that could yield extra seats as special elections come up.
Agreed on all three, but it's still less important than getting something done concretely IMO. They only need 4 senator defections to be filibuster proof, and 11 to be veto proof. It's highly doable.
The 3 agendas: investigations, performative legislation and bipartisan compromise legislation are going to be really hard to balance in the next 2 years. That's a lot of work in very little time. How well they do so will be how they're judged in 2 years time.
> it's still less important than getting something done concretely
Oh, absolutely. Permitting reform. War powers reform. Russia sanctions. Repealing the exchange stabilization fund.
But these are in the same category as reforming the Electoral Count Act. Necessary. But insufficient without the popular policy moves.
> Given the Miller appointment, probably.
Historically, the HN crowd has been a fan of Miller. Curious to see why there's been a shift.
> the HN crowd has been a fan of Miller
Of Stephen Miller? I've genuinely never seen this.
The whole problem with US is that average people pay taxes and oligarchs rule the country and extract public resources.
You can do both. This election was just as much about affordability as it was about blatant corruption in the Trump administration.
That would require allowing real estate prices to fall, which neither party can ever do. Real estate price appreciation is now a sacred entitlement alongside social security and medicaid and anyone threatening that loses the next election.
Unfortunately that also means housing can't become affordable because housing can't simultaneously be affordable and a good investment.
I'm not just being cynical. It's genuinely a hard problem, since crashing real estate would open the door to the next generation while bankrupting all previous generations and causing a banking crisis.
We are very much painted into a corner here, and the US doesn't even have it the worst compared to other developed nations.
They might not need to fall. With inflation being what it is, mere flatness in nominal terms could help.
Also, crafty government policy can make housing more affordable for some buyers while letting prices seem to rise. I’m not crafty enough to know how this would work, but it works in other markets. For instance, apartments that have high and increasing rent but with months of “free rent” and “discounts” thrown in that reflect a different reality, or new cars with “cash back,” or tuition at expensive selective private universities that is almost completely fanciful.
Real Estate can go sideways for a decade or two while the rest of the economy grows around it. Given that bonds move in 40 year cycles and rates bottomed 5 years ago, it might already be happening.
And making sure real estate prices don't fall = making sure housing doesn't get built anywhere near jobs or other places people want to live.
The plan was "lie to the public about the election" then retaliate against our enemies after the election. There is no plan to improve your life.
"Retaliatory investigations"
hide your power levels if you are going to play the village idiot, it is more convincing. just extremely bad faith commenting
My Republican canidates promised affordability as well. Why did they lose then?
You will be presented a list of all the things that must be done first. Said list will then grow in such a way that the things able to move the needle on these topics will keep getting pushed down further. The show will continue until the helpless American population swings again in 2028 in the pointless endeavor of electing a government that actually cares about its constituents.
And when you try to have meaningful conversations on this topic, both sides will use Gish Gallop until you shut up or go away.
Graft, regulatory capture, and monopolies increase prices.
Also, Congress can do more than one thing at once, if it puts its mind to it.
Those sound hard and boring. This sounds easy and flamboyant. You're not thinking like a politician.
The plan for affordability starts with getting Trump out of Iran, because the bar is on the floor.
Investigating people engaged in blatant corruption and crimes (including televised bribing of the president with a literal gold brick) isn't "retaliatory", it's simply doing the job.
The republican approach to governing:
1. Destroy the country
2. Complain your opposition doesn’t solve all the problems you contributed to
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there is actual criminality here. they are pursuing accountability. musk shut down federal investigations into his operations while at DOGE. at the very least picking these investigations back up would plain old accountability, and if he's innocent he has nothing to worry about. However, since those have been closed, he has committed other acts, like shutting down starlink in Ukraine to assist a russian bombing campaign, that likely constitute crimes, perhaps even treason.
"musk shut down federal investigations into his operations while at DOGE"
there is absolutely nothing even remotely true about this. please focus on his real issues like being responsible for the deaths of 14 million people instead of making things up
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when you say that the war would have been over sooner, what do you mean?
Do you mean that Russia could have more easily conquered Ukraine thereby bringing about the end of the war?
Starshield exists specifically for this. The US loses money for every Starshield satellite that orbits on-station without any allies using it. It is a literal waste of taxpayer money not giving Ukraine access.
SpaceX may have committed treason under Musk. Meta and Apple may have paid bribes. This is real criminality. Nobody is going after folks for tweeting or even privately donating.
If your political enemies have committed crimes they should be held accountable for them
Should your political enemies be selectively prosecuted, though?
> Should your political enemies be selectively prosecuted, though?
Congress doesn't have power to prosecute anyone.
That said, you're right. We should impeach Todd Blanche for selective prosecution.
There is only ever selective prosecution. The government rarely goes after jaywalkers, but they could.
The three listed companies are some of the biggest in the country. If you want to start somewhere, seems like a good place.
Depends. It’s not ideal but you have to start somewhere. Also if the other side starts playing dirty you have to step it up as well, doing something else is about as stupid as unilateral nuclear disarmament
no dipshit, he shut down federal investigations while leading doge. a private individual being given the ability to shut down investigations into his companies is clearly something that needs to be investigated
"we shouldn't persecute our political enemies" of course, but you are being obtuse if you think what happened to letitia james is similar to what is happening here. it's a bit different when he donates enough to take over the federal government to protect his businesses and secure contracts
The party of law and order when it's time for the most blatant offenders to be held to the most basic of laws: nooooooo it's not faaaaaaaairrrrrrrr!!!!!!
> Should your political enemies be selectively prosecuted, though?
Obviously. How else they will understand that they should be your political allies and not the enemy?
Wouldn't that be amazing if Trump will be impeached for his 200 felonies and put in jail for the rest of his life? Along with all his allies who helped him to commit crimes and to avoid the responsibility. And the life sentence for Musk for treason and the other crimes he had committed.
And multi‑billion‑dollars fines for Zuck, Bezos, and others to show everybody that it is not okay to support the worst criminals alive just because they have won the election.
Failing to prosecute government officials who break laws guarantees future criminal wrongdoing. There's a fairly strong argument that failing to impeach and imprison Nixon for his wrongdoing was a straight line to what's happening now under Trump.
The rule of law no longer exists when crimes are ignored in fear of the appearance of political retribution.
Holding people accountable and fixing the cracks in the system are the only way to ensure the Trump administration doesn't serve as a trial run for an even worse administration in the future.
The worst possible outcome would be for the Democrats to repeat their behavior under Biden and spend all their effort attempting to return to the status quo while pretending the Republican party won't try again the moment they regain power.
So each election should wipe the slate clean? Anything illegal done under the previous administration should be automatically forgotten just in case someone might conflate doing anything about it with persecuting your political opponents.
False dichotomy.
Trump was clearly into "vengeful prosecution" territory, at least with some of the people he told DOJ to go after. But "go after nobody" clearly isn't the answer either.
And when you go after someone, if you don't find enough to prosecute, let it go. None of this "try three times to find a case" stuff that Trump's DOJ did.
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All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
I don’t think you’re in the right country for that to ever happen.
For one, what you consider “wasteful”, others might not.
Maybe consider being an entrepreneur and go start your own country?
"I built my own country and it started to be successful and then gangsters took over, the neighboring countries got pissed and bombed us, we all starved because farmers grew more profitable drugs than food but countries wouldn't import to us because we were sanctioned, and then bears finished us off because we didn't deal with the trash and they got out of control" --Libertarian paradise.
You'll love Ethiopia. They have no meaningful federal government to speak of right now.
Of course, you'll end up paying most of your income as tribute to the various warlords, but they won't be taxes! They'll be "payments in lieu of death."
Or, you could live in the real world and pay taxes because they enable things like...preventing warlords. Also unimportant things like roads and police and clean running water.
... Ethiopia? Huh?
There's a civil war going on right now with various rebel groups, but overall they certainly do have a federal government. They have an income tax rate around 30% plus a VAT of 15%.
Have you consider Somalia?
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This is extremely bad faith. The government has to tackle alot of problems. And corruption has been a huge one
Yea, the fact someone doesn't understand how corruption can massively increase costs for everyone is odd to me. It's like the number one way to decrease trust in the government and allow bad actors to screw over society in general.
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> I already have zero trust in government due to the kind of corruption that DOGE was going after. But the Democrats shut that down.
DOGE never actually went after corruption, though, and only idiots ever believed that was their intention. They said they were pursuing savings by finding fraud, waste, and abuse and then ignored one of the biggest sources of all three: The DOD.
And then the Republicans decided that the remarkably efficient and perennially audit failing Pentagon should get an extra half trillion dollars. Largely to pursue contracts with companies owned by Musk, Thiel, Lucky, and other Trump inner circle types.
And how, by the way, did Democrats shutdown DOGE? Republican president, Republican Senate, Republican House. They controlled everything they needed to to continue operating DOGE. DOGE is squarely a Republican failure to do anything useful.
Will corruption of government spending on welfare and Medicaid be investigated?
Trump has already pardoned the following Medicare/Medicaid fraudsters:
and I bet he could pardon many more for a small fee.If Trump keeps dropping the ball on it, yes, the Congress will have to take that on as well. He’s supposed to be running the executive.
Yes, it's a bad faith question, but also easy to answer because the bar is on the floor: start by getting Trump out of Iran.
.
How will it block that? (Nice edit, btw)
coward.
Cowards like them are why I quote comments. They claimed that Democrats (not in power at the time) blocked DOGE and that DOGE was actually going after corruption, both lies. Then they deleted it when called out.
I didn't even think there were still DOGE shills in the wild.
Comments like that should be preserved for their historical value alone, it's like seeing the photo of the last known thylacine.
These two were but a part of what the Dems ran on. The explicitly also ran to stop the insane corruption by Trump and team.
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