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Comment by anoonmoose | Hacker News Reader

I don't really wanna get into a political flamewar but I think for a person to be accurately called "notoriously corrupt" I should pretty easily be able to find...I dunno, at least an accusation of corruption somewhere, if not some actual punishments for actual corruption. This dude's Wikipedia article doesn't even have a "controversy" section...hell, I tried searching his name plus the word "corrupt" and still couldn't find anything that justified that. Just one breathless opinion piece from Jonathan Chait about how people voting for Gottheimer would be better served by the opposite party.

fwiw, I had never heard of him before I looked him up. If I had to guess I'd say your label was based on some combo of political donations received and political positions taken but that seems like standard to below average corruption for Congress to me lol.

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I have never heard of him as well.

I found reports, easily. Google: josh gottheimer bribes

What on earth did you search for that you turned up nothing?

https://theridgewoodblog.net/representative-josh-gottheimer-...

Did you, though? Is that a report? Or, is it a press release, written pseudonymously, on a local blog no one has ever heard of, that only quotes one of Gottheimer's political opponents, who is accusing him of doing something that is extremely common? Note that last part- even if I took every word of that as gospel truth (which I have no reason to do), what is "notoriously corrupt" about doing something that I think we all think most of Congress is doing?

I searched..."Josh Gottheimer corrupt". And that certainly didn't come up. But again...that's not a very convincing link. It's literally just his opponent saying "he's corrupt".

Gottheimer is a creature of the swamp - someone who doesn't attend town halls, who avoids any challenging press engagements, and basically sells his vote to corporate $$.

...and? You just described several hundred members of Congress. There's nothing notorious about any of that. It's swamp-standard.

Actually he just described thousands of memebers of congress in any country that has one. Corruption is the most globalized thing you can imagine.

Honest question: is he your "congresscritter"?

> Did you, though? Is that a report?

I obviously did. It's far from the only one, since we have access to Google.

> doing something that is extremely common?

Something extremely common of Congress members who are insider trading, like Feinstein (among others, as you mentioned), yes. Deciding that any critical analysis are politically motivated reports is a typical partisan approach to de-escalating obvious malfeasance, which can be seen on any of the usual media suspects. Why is this person a legislator when they can obviously be one hell of a successful stock broker, a real-life superstar? Must be a coincidence.

Can't be outraged at the right kind of evidence, so why waste the time being critical of legislators? This is, partly, how the US political system has been corrupted. Citation-please-style dismissal implicitly supports the status quo. Only if they are prosecuted, is it tasteful to declare them guilty, otherwise, nothing to see here. Must be working as intended.

If my family lived in his state, and there was a superior candidate, we would get more involved in the politics.

There may be other Googleable reports, but no, that anonymously written press release that only quotes one of his political opponents is not "a report". If it's so easy to find good sources for accusations against him, perhaps you should have lead with one of them instead of such useless exhibit.

> perhaps you should have lead with one of them instead of such useless exhibit.

Certainly not. The point was not to prove guilt, but to demonstrate that it was trivial to detect smoke.

> I should pretty easily be able to find...I dunno, at least an accusation of corruption somewhere,

This was a direct refutation of your statement, because you did not even do a search before describing the state of the political landscape. I stand by the point I made.

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