>To put it even more simply: When a person uses a room in a house to engage in illegal or just terrible activity, we don’t call on the electric company to cut off the light and heat to the entire house, or the post office to stop delivering mail.
LA actually did this during covid to shut off water for homes being accused of holding parties during covid.
I read an interesting article the other day. It was about the Freedom of Information Act. We now take this for granted, but getting it passed was a huge ordeal. It dramatically strengthened the accountability of government and gave citizens one of their strongest tools available. It was, unsurprisingly, vehemently opposed by both major parties and nearly every form of the US political establishment. It would eventually go on to be passed in 1966 after an extensive campaign in support of it.
Anyhow, the point. Check out this [1] snippet, which was published as part of said campaign. More important than the snippet is who it's written by. A young exceptionally popular congressman from Illinois by the name of Donald Rumsfeld, who was also critical about the senseless US involvement in Vietnam. His is a name, which if happens to be before your time, would later come to be synonymous with the Iraq War, US ABC agencies torturing people, and of course the complete fabrication of evidence to justify the invasion Iraq.
And he's not especially unique. I think it all comes down to a simple problem. Imagine you happen to be pro-choice. If I paid you $10,000,000 would you become an advocate for pro-life? For the overwhelming majority of people, the answer there is going to be yes. But of course you and I are relatively irrelevant, so nobody's ever going to really try to change our values. But if you or I gained power, such hypotheticals suddenly become entirely real. For a man to be surrounded by such possibilities, yet remain true to his own values - he's going to need to be rich enough that people can't afford to bribe him, or some once in a millennium Aurelius like man of true character.
> For a man to be surrounded by such possibilities, yet remain true to his own values - he's going to need to be rich enough that people can't afford to bribe him, or some once in a millennium Aurelius like man of true character.
Not really. The easiest way to be rich enough that you don't need to take bribes to betray your core values is to take a bunch of bribes over issues you don't really care about.
Forget the IRS, imagine if the President himself were to withhold American resources promised to foreign governments in exchange for dirt on his political opponents.
and then force the country to fire the top prosecutor who was investigating his son's illegal activities, truly imagine if such person would do something like that and then have the audacity to publicly brag about it knowing full well the media would cover for him due to his political party.
> Among other issues, he was slow-walking the investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma and, according to Zlochevsky's allies, using the threat of prosecution to try to solicit bribes from Mr. Zlochevsky and his team
Weird choice to fire the guy slow-walking the investigation if you want to cover up illegal activities.
> [Archer] has also said, including under oath, that he was told Burisma’s allies in Washington didn’t want Shokin fired. “No, we were told that it was bad, and we don’t want a new prosecutor, and Shokin was taken care of,” Archer recently told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Anyway, I guess the EU, IMF, World Bank, Germany, France, and the Ukrainian Parliament were all also colluding to save this guy's son from scrutiny back in 2015.
Cool narrative, unfortunately it isn't true. "Biden did want Shokin fired, but western leaders had widely criticized the prosecutor general as corrupt and ineffective. Biden was leading a widespread consensus in asking for removal. Secondly, a former Ukrainian official said the investigation into Burisma was dormant under Shokin."
I think history shows it pays to be friends with the party in power. As for the IRS it is complicated by the fact that the branches of government can be split along party lines. This should be considered a feature as the branches are intended to check the power of each other.
What do you mean by "the third world" in this case? It's a geographic descriptor (non-Nato / Warsaw Pact countries), not one about how a country treats its people or its developmental state.
Interesting, didn't even know about it's roots on the cold war and its politics. I think by the time I studied history it had already lost it's original meaning.
The more modern view I was referring to, is that third world countries are lesser, developing countries where things that are given elsewhere, like water, food, electricity, education, healthcare or internet access are a luxury.
I guess a more accurate term is "a developing country"
> some people have decided the ends justify the means essentially
...and it's long past time they were told in no uncertain terms that the proletariat has had enough of this bourgeoisie nonsense. Laws exists for a reason. No one should be subject to the whims of bourgeoisie overlords. Just because some imbecile believes they have a great idea and thinks it should be forced upon others does not make it so. This is such an important point that there are entire religions built around it.
I didn't think I'd live to see it, but I'm proud, delighted, and amused to see that people are finally starting to wake up to the notion that maybe the rule of law is a good idea and should apply to everybody.
LA actually did this during covid to shut off water for homes being accused of holding parties during covid.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/us/los-angeles-shuts-off-powe...
I don't agree with it, but just showing that some people have decided the ends justify the means essentially.