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Comment by appleskeptic | Hacker News Reader

This would be awful. Theft and bribery are already prosecuted aggressively. If anything, too much. It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to be lobbied. Here they are, some of the most powerful people in the world, paid barely enough to live an hour drive away from DC, having to spend a fair bit of their personal income to go to lunch and dinner with leaders of private industry.

As for criminalizing “waste”, you start to get dangerously close to criminalizing politics itself. Then it just becomes about controlling DOJ and using it to go after your enemies (this is already too true).

The better thing to do would with regards to intelligence agency abuses would be to have more review of the decisions, mandatory discipline of rulebreakers, and prosecution of specific crimes committed for egregious cases. No need to generally criminalize every time a government official makes a bad judgment call.

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You seem to be arguing that we have a system where theft and bribery are necessary in some way, and therefore we shouldn't prosecute it aggressively. Wouldn't we rather reform the system such that it makes theft and bribery less attractive?

> You seem to be arguing

The sarcasm is positively dripping from that post

I am not so sure, there are always people with very odd opinions.

There are a lot of weird people out there but believe me that's a sarcastic post.

No, I’m saying the definition of bribery has been stretched so far to include ballpoint pens, a $30 lunch or free attendance at a conference, at the same time that high officials are underpaid, so as to place an absurd financial burden on middle-class people holding high office. No one says that a CEO who meets a potential supplier who buys him lunch is being bribed. But if a politician does that, it’s a crime somehow. Frankly absurd.

> It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to be lobbied.

Good! But also, not true!

Your comment brought to mind the number of IRS employees who are delinquent on their taxes. I think it really comes down to trust. You say that the government is already investigated enough, but I would contend that it's really the government investigating itself. If there is a separate, independent agency that investigates government and employee malfeasance, then at least there can be some check, accountability, and maybe transparency.

I can understand your focus with intelligent agency abusive, but I think the problem is much more systemic, and far greater than simply the intelligence agencies. People who work in the public trust should be held to a higher standard.

"According to the FY 2021 FERDI Annual Report, IRS employees had a 1.35 percent delinquency rate, compared to 4.93 percent for civilian workers throughout the Federal Government."

That number should really be zero.

So IRS employees are now magically exempt from making mistakes in life, just because they're IRS employees? I think it's good that the rate of delinquency is lower for IRS employees, but I think expecting it to be zero is a bit much.

But sure, that should be fixed. Just like the 5% of other workers who should get their tax situation in hand. Just like how all the private citizens who are delinquent should get their tax situation in hand.

I'm not really sure how this oversight agency you advocate would even work. How would it be independent? Who would fund it? How would you ensure that its members aren't biased or influenced in any way? Ultimately these sorts of agencies are staffed by real humans, not automatons with perfect, disinterested software. I agree with the desire for this sort of thing, but I don't think it's at all practical.

> It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to be lobbied.

Of all the sad things I’ve read today, this one is surely the saddest. Good thing it isn’t based on a reality I have observed… where do you think those billions “to” Ukraine are really going?

> It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to be lobbied.

This is just nonsense, most members of congress take lobby money.

https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/top-recipients

Members of congress are a small subset of government officials.

That they get away with corrupt behavior doesn't mean that people in the civil service should have to be anxious about trivial things. If a government employee can be influenced by something as minor as a pen or lunch, they are in the wrong line of work.

Yes, and making even small bribes illegal and enforcing that is how you get people who are influenced by them out of that line of work.

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