DOJ Closing Abbott Labs Case Spurs Wider Corporate Crime Retreat
news.bloomberglaw.com
news.bloomberglaw.com
For example, if Russia met the definition of an enemy, and if the President compromised the interests on the country in favor of Russian interests (presumably for his own personal benefit), that would probably count. The compromise would have to be knowing, though, mere incompetence is not enough. So if the issue ever arose, Trump has a pretty good defense.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/05/europe/putin-trump-call-indep...
or that time multiple US congressmen were forced to spend the 4th in Moscow
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/395719-gop-senators-visi...
JFK met with Khrushchev. Bush Senior and Reagan had regular contact with Gorbachev. It's not weird for heads of state to talk to each other.
What's weird is for Trump to be paying tax dollars to cancel energy projects because he doesn't like windmills or using the FCC to investigate media outlets who criticize him.
There are plenty of good examples to use that it makes no sense to resort to evidence-free innuendo.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/russia/russia-ukraine-war-trum...
> President Donald Trump’s special envoy broke with long-standing protocol by not employing his own interpreter during three high-level meetings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, opting instead to rely on translators from the Kremlin, a U.S. official and two Western officials with knowledge of the talks told NBC News.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/427505-trump-put...
> President Trump reportedly met late last year with Russian President Vladimir Putin without a translator or aide from his administration present.
House of Cards used this same setup just to highlight how untrustworthy the president was acting.
Why not? The only other person in the room doesn't speak Russian.
Yes, I absolutely expect that sort of security at such a meeting.
> Only Mr. Trump, who has alternately contradicted his own narrative of what was said and complained about a lack of fair coverage from a meeting only four people witnessed, could permit Ms. Gross to tell anyone about what she heard. The White House has not said whether Mr. Trump has asked her to do that.
Translators are civil servants with security clearances, not reporters. When the leaders of Germany and Brazil have a meeting, they may say things they don't intend for China and everyone else to know about, and it isn't the translator's job to report what was said to the media. Unless they've witnessed something on the scale of criminality that they need to act as a whistleblower (in which case they wouldn't need anyone's permission), they should never be telling anyone what happened in the room since their job is to keep those secrets.
The media are fully aware of that, but they're being disingenuous and pretending that allowing a diplomatic translator to act as a media witness is a request anyone is likely to grant. Then Trump predictably responds to that by removing the translator from the room, so now they're complaining about that instead.
The fact that he can't keep his own story straight?
In either instance?
This is kind of the point. Trump is such a polarizing jackass that people default to attacking him even in cases when there is nothing there, and then end up eroding their own credibility by making too many accusations they can't actually substantiate instead of sticking to the ones they can.
You don't have to reflexively defend claims so silly that you can only try to escape by moving the goalposts.
Governing doesn't even appear to be an afterthought.
I still haven't figured out how he's profiting from Trump Accounts yet. Kick backs I suppose.
I would guess that he could have been paid in many various ways (TrumpCoins anyone) by financial institution(s) that were set to benefit from the accounts. Have the trump crypto companies followed all of the KYC laws?
- A privileged state - for the rich and powerful to get away with crimes
- A normative state - for ordinary people whom experience more prosecutions
- A prerogative state - for poor and enemies whom experience arbitrary injustice and persecution for infractions or made-up crimes
Was Alex Pretti a victim of your prerogative state, and his executioners were merely government agents executing a state imperative? Or was he a victim of gang violence and his executioners were part of the privileged state? In the dual state framework, the answer is wu.
But don't let me discourage you from expanding upon your framework! It may be more effective at explaining some things. It just needs to be more substantial than trying to do a simple tweak in an HN comment.
Plenty of those pardoned for their acts on Jan 6.
Some presumably lived near and didn’t have jobs.
When you're poor, you can't help but be immersed in rebellion and discontent. Every song on the radio, every free TV show, every buddy at the dive bar is talking trash about your leadership and the powers that be. There was never any way for me to avoid the voices that hated everything I stood for, from the beginning, and basically being immersed in rebellion led me to intense self-hatred and a losing/denial of my own identity, as if I ever had it.
And that's really problematic for the poor of today, who can get really immersed in global geopolitics, and exposed to all sorts of social media glurge, and being poor, they cannot really find escape from the "free to consume" media at every turn, and so the poor tend to be couch-potatoes who are fed by the television sets and YouTube and Facebook feeds, and eventually most of us drown in lies, and fake news, and bitter rebellion against every authority.
BTW you know those classified records he took to Mar-a-lago that almost put him in prison?
They were all the records about his family businesses, it's documented, they were unique investigation records and he was trying to end all investigations
Now, if the democrats had more big donors than republicans, maybe they wouldn't? But that's a counterfactual that we can't know. But we do know that Bush 1 vetoed a soft money limit passed mostly by democrats, and that Clinton pushed for one, but didn't get it done.
McCain-Feingold passed the Senate with 48 out of 50 D votes (96%), and 11 of 38 R votes (29%) (and one I (100%)), the House with 198 of 210 D (94%), and house, 41 out of 217 R (19%), 1 out of 2 I (50%). Then it was a mostly R appointed Supreme Court that gutted it. Then a _more_ R appointed court that has continued to whittle it down.
For all that the Democrats don't go far enough, there is a _huge_ difference between the parties on this.
In Communist China they would be shot
Ex-HK bookseller Lam Wing-kee, detained by China in 2015, dies in Taiwan at 70
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/03/g-s1-131904/ex-hk-bookseller-...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/...
No, they don't. The UnitedHealth dude who got shot had a CEO title, but Thompson was ultimately a middle manager.
The actual CEO of UnitedHealth Group–the one who signs off on its financial statements and fields quarterly calls–and the billionaire owners were fine. Which explains, in part, why nothing changed after the shooting.
One getting shot is an anomaly; if one were being shot every week, then the system they operate under would be different.
(To be clear: I am not advocating for changing the system in this way. A world ruled by vigilante justice is not a good world to live in.)
Health insurance companies don't have absurdly high margins. They offer more expensive plans and less expensive plans. The less expensive plans will cause more claims to be denied (not covered by the cheaper policy), the more expensive plans cost more.
People both can't afford the more expensive plan and can't afford to have a claim denied and then get upset, but the company can't actually fix that because it's caused by the regulatory environment. The only way for them to deny non-trivially fewer claims is to charge higher premiums. To actually fix it you have to solve the scarcity problems -- get rid of certificate of need laws, open more medical residency slots, require price transparency, etc., so that people can afford the plan that denies fewer claims. But those are all things the government would have to do rather than the company.
It would have sent the message its sender (and his supporters) intended to send. Instead, both sides got a convenient totem. Luigi's supporters get to pretend he was effective. The billionaire class got to consolidate power here and there by pretending he was more than a one off, and by pretending he was competent.
The Dems inability to cash in on these things is so absurd that people just accept it: The Trump administration and GOP are letting a company get away with contaminating baby formula. That should be repeated by the Dems from now until the end of time. Everyone should associate Trump and the GOP with it.
But as always, the Dems will not make Trump and the GOP pay any price, no matter how awful events are (and this one is hardly the worst), and so why would they stop doing these things?
Part of the duty of the political competition is to hold the other party responsible. It is also very obvious and basic self-interest.
Let the plebs wear themselves out so money can be extracted and power can be used without any fuss.
When the GOP screws up, they should be losing votes and reputation. The Dems have failed to do that.
All the Dems have to do is kick the DEI/woke, open borders, etc. contingent out of their party and "cashing in" will commence.
> open borders
You tip yourself off as someone consuming political propaganda. Nobody of any prominence or influence in the Democratic Party advocates or has advocated for 'open borders'. The only place I hear that is from people who watch Fox News, etc.
All Dems have to do is abandon their hatred of Whites and males, and [insert groups] will like them.
>You tip yourself off as someone consuming political propaganda. Nobody of any prominence or influence in the Democratic Party advocates or has advocated for 'open borders'.
Facts are not "political propaganda". Look at the numbers of border crossings and illegal immigrant apprehensions between Trump and Biden. Biden and those who supported him were advocating for open borders with their actions.
edit: to be clear, IMO, corporate power is an expression of govt power, which should be minimized.
Naked corruption and public harm, without consequences.
Libertarians aren't generally in favor of limited liability. Read it again, slower.