Comment by TheRealDunkirk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TheRealDunkirk | Hacker News Reader

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> They funded the war efforts in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Aaaannnndd?... You're just going to leave out the banning of TikTok while claiming a victory for sending my money to other nations for wars I do not want to fund?

And another thing </Andy Rooney>, government shutdowns are problems created ENTIRELY BY CONGRESS for never operating under a proper budget since 1997. All they're doing is fighting each other over a massive shell game of sending the right amounts of money to their donors' interests to guarantee reelection.

"Infrastructure projects" is just another term for crony capitalism. Just look at funding for telcos to build out infra, or EV charging stations, or solar panels, or anything else they fund as "infrastructure." It's always just a massive kickback scheme, and nothing gets built.

They're doing work alright, just not any that I want. Our system is nakedly and brazenly corrupt, and we don't seem to be able to do anything about it.

>"Infrastructure projects" is just another term for crony capitalism. Just look at funding for telcos to build out infra, or EV charging stations, or solar panels, or anything else they fund as "infrastructure." It's always just a massive kickback scheme, and nothing gets built.

This is the most baffling one. Everyone seems to forget that they also failed to pass the bill that contained the provisions that most working and middle-class Americans wanted. I've had multiple conversations where the counterargument was, "Well, at least they got part of it passed." No, that's actually worse. We got all of the expensive giveaways without any of the mitigating funding and policies. We literally would have been better off if nothing had passed.

> we don't seem to be able to do anything about it.

I thought that, with our democratic structures, it would be really easy "to do" a lot about it, but you seem right:

I don't get it and have been guessing that

> It's always just a massive kickback scheme,

is correct.

A first problem is some basic vote counting: A politician does something, e.g., a "kickback scheme", that pleases < 10% of the voters by essentially stealing from > 90% of the voters. Soooo, at the next election, the politician should lose by at least 9 to 1, but apparently not and I'm wrong and the politician, correct?

Uh, maybe the politician partitions the voters into 10 parts, has 10 schemes, and for each of the 10 steals from the other 9 to please the one, and everyone is happy even though everyone gets stolen from 10 times?

My guess was, if a good majority, 80%, maybe as low as 55%, of the voters would write their Members of Congress objecting to the scheme, then Congress would STOP it, in a few minutes. But, nope. Apparently tough to get > 20%, maybe > 5%, of the voters to write their Members of Congress about even a "brazen" scheme.

In simple terms, Congress is awash in powers, e.g., that massive one, "power of the purse". So, I have to believe that in any 10 minutes, Congress could have gasoline under $2 a gallon and falling, but Congress declines to do that.

The blame is the media that wants eyeballs for ad revenue and, thus, creates divisions, grabs people emotionally, avoids exposing the schemes??? Or the voters are "apathetic"??

Politics is goofy, inscrutable, and the media is right? Uh, ABC, CBS, CNN, ... WaPo are short on money so are not really "right"?

Back to something that makes sense.

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