This is usually what 3rd world type "banana republic" corruption looks like.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2016/04/22/googles-remarkably-close...
[2] https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-u-s-antitrust-probe-...
[3] https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-avoided-ftc-probe-but-ot...
It seems that pretty much all of the FAANG corps would require serious invesigation into their walled garden and anti-competitive practices to allow for smaller players to again enter the market and compete. Having a single search provider is extremely dangerous. As dangerous as having an OS where no 3rd party browsers can exist and no software without Tim's approval can run.
Edit: downvoters, mind explaining the reasoning?
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamjeakle/2019/11/25/how-ap...
People fundamentally want government that's fair.
Corruption is bad, period. There's no "someone else did it" get-out-of-jail card.
Also, why didn't we hear all these accusations of corruption against Obama during this presidency? I heard tons about Benghazi, and Fast and Furious, both of which were epic screw-ups that deserved a strong response, but nothing about this supposed corruption. I find it hard to believe that the GOP Congress was willing to let a little corruption go during the Obama presidency.
I even agree with the assessment that GOP during Obama years would certainly cry foul if there was even a perception of inapproriety. Frankly, it kinda was their job to be a check ( though I would argue that they failed then as well ).
There is a but coming. But, Obama had a decent team, which kept unapproved leaks from surfacing, had a cover from friendly media so even if there was something there, it was tightly held under wraps.
Now compare it to current administration where everyone is out to leverage their current position for something better in the future ( book deal, friendly energy company or just extra business for your daughter ).
I guess what I am saying is, Obama, HRC, Biden et al are just waaaaay better at covering their tracks.
One problem with diminishing enforcement is that whenever you DO pursue enforcement action, it will inevitably look extremely political.
What bothers me about this line of thinking is its suggestion that because corruption is common, observers and interested parties should do nothing about it and remain uncritical towards abuses of power.
In particular, it discourages criticism in partisan ways: "Your politicians did it so our politicians should be able to do it. Everyone is corrupt so what are you complaining about?" When partisan ideology normalizes corruption all you end up with is more corruption.
Is an implicit comparison between X & an unstated Y
1. Linguistically speaking, humans tend to save energy. Every utterance is designed to provide new information, to describe what is different from the norm. Going on a rant on how this administration suffers of problems a, b, and c, weakly implies that other administrations suffer much less of problems a, b, and c. Otherwise it would be common knowledge that all administrations suffers of problems a, b, and c roughly in the same degree, and why bother wasting time repeating common knowledge?
2. Arguments that focus specifically on one administration, carefully avoiding anything that could be construed as a negative reflecting onto opposing party administrations, come across as partisan. It is the hallmark of the USA media environment that most what we hear in the political news is technically true, but carefully curated to further one of the major two narratives. Also known as "information bubble". "Democrats: saviors, Republicans: evil" OR "Democrats: corrupt, Republicans: straightshooters".
If we truly are to move past partisan criticism, it is on us to fairly depict deplorable behavior on both side of the aisle, regardless of our own political leanings. Otherwise, we risk engaging in the usual half-blind partisan discourse that is tearing this country apart.
As an outsider (I'm Canadian), it seems to me that the left-wing of America invented "whataboutism" because their hypocrisy is off the charts.
>It is the type of excuse you expect from an elementary school child.
The idea that you criticize someone for something you yourself are doing is something I'd expect of a child.
Anyone crying "that's whataboutism!" in the face of their blatant hypocrisy.
I'm not talking about justifying corruption because the other guys do it. But I am talking about things like holding up bills, or filibusters, or whipping the vote, or leaking information, or any other of a multitude of things that one party always seems to lose their mind when it happens like it's never happened before.
One party uses something as a political strategy one year, then the next year cries foul like the Union is coming undone when the other side does the same thing. It's stupid.
However, when you claim that your own party is the bastion of righteousness and the only possible solution because the other party does bad things that you do as well, it undermines your argument.
> Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives and hiding information and news that is good. They are controlling what we can & cannot see. This is a very serious situation-will be addressed!
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/10344562811202068...
Trump promised he'd take action against Google. Now action is being taken against Google. Maybe there's no connection, but Trump has given everyone a very good reason to suspect that there might be one.
It's certainly not a forgone conclusion that investigations led by "friendlier" administrations are necessarily fairer. I doubt there's any way to have a purely unbiased investigation into an entity as prominent and influential as Google.
Edit: Also, poor form or not, I see the same patterns here as I do on threads about china and the people that took over bitcoin - votes up in increments, then all comments are downvoted multiple times in batches. That and lots of whataboutism.
It's an Obama-era policy that has been shown to have wide, bi-partisan support across the country. Bringing it up here is a means to say "Look, Obama also did bad stuff. You can't call Trump out on his bad stuff" which is an asinine way to frame anything.
It reminds me of an old conservative response to progressive/leftist ideas about American foreign policy.
Leftist: "... and that's why the current administration should be considered as war criminals" Conservative: "By that logic every administration since World War 2 were war criminals" Leftist: "Yes"
Whether or not the argument posed by the above comment is even valid is, for the purposes of this comment, irrelevant. What is more interesting is knowing why the supposed crimes/overreach of the Obama administration excuses the overreaches of the Trump administration.
When secret FISA courts were first introduced, I'm sure many people wondered how long it would take before they're used illegally, for political purposes...
I guess it's just the sign of the times that two people, probably relatively similar in most regards, can have precisely opposite feelings.
While you may believe he is taking on the FISA court, and there are abuses there to fix, by Barr's own admission he doesn't seem to think there are any restraints on an Executive's power in the realms of national security or foreign policy. It seems to me the motivation around FISA is strongly motivated not by sincere belief in the limitations of executive authority, but because of a sense that they (read: the President) were wronged.
When Attorney General William Barr spoke to the Federalist Society in a memorial lecture just a few months ago[1] he lamented the transparency Congress has forced upon the Executive, "There is no FOIA for Congress or the Courts. Yet Congress has happily created a regime that allows the public to seek whatever documents it wants from the Executive Branch at the same time that individual congressional committees spend their days trying to publicize the Executive’s internal decisional process. That process cannot function properly if it is public, nor is it productive to have our government devoting enormous resources to squabbling about what becomes public and when, rather than doing the work of the people."
Barr then attacked the judicial branch directly, claiming they are "encroaching on Executive responsibilities in a way that has substantially undercut the functioning of the Presidency" and in particular, those darned judges keep finding that they can review the acts of the Executive! Isn't that frustrating?
He writes in such an example: "Courts are now willing, under the banner of judicial review, to substitute their judgment for the President’s on matters that only a few decades ago would have been unimaginable – such as matters involving national security or foreign affairs.
"The Travel Ban case is a good example. There the President made a decision under an explicit legislative grant of authority, as well has his Constitutional national security role, to temporarily suspend entry to aliens coming from a half dozen countries pending adoption of more effective vetting processes."
Do you think that a surveillance state reformed by Barr would really rein in the courts, or simply remove them from the picture?
[1] - https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-william-...