Propaganda (renamed 'PR' in the 50s), media distractions, political lobbying. Illegitimate power-seeking individuals and organizations always use the same toolkit.
The only permanent remedy is to outright ban those - or better: mandatory transparency into what politicians spend how much time with whom, where money streams come from and go out of organizations, etc, etc. All transparent in a public ledger. (and no: it is not 'anti-competitive' if it's the same regulatory landscape for everybody, but a way to safe-guard the government permanently from corruption). Of course if you there are ideas that would complete this or are truly overall better, feel free to throw them in the comments hat.
> better: mandatory transparency into what politicians spend how much time with whom, where money streams come from and go out of organizations, etc, etc. All transparent in a public ledger
The only downside of transparency is that it often has the net effect of increasing partisanship, as quietly making deals and compromises isn't possible.
While I agree this is the only sustainable way of ensuring transparency, I'd want gerrymandering handled and some version of ranked choice voting passed before implementing it. Otherwise, you're going to get even more dysfunctional candidates.
I think the evidence is all anecdotal about the end of Congressional earmarks. In 2008-9 Congress banned set-aside earmarks, and no one has brought that back, and there are plenty of experienced legislative people who claim that has hurt the ability to get deals done.
In addition, the fate of the "Cornhusker Kickback" is illustrative. One of the more conservative Democratic senators during the ACA negotiations was Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson. In exchange for his vote he got Nebraska a much better deal than any other state- the Federal Government would pay 100% cost of Medicaid expansion costs, rather than 90% as with every other state. This was a classic case of negotiations and special deal cutting for important votes.
But then the news media got a hold of it, called it the "Cornhusker Kickback" and it became so unpopular that Nelson got it stripped out of the final bill. These sorts of things dying in the attention of the media mean that Nebraska got a worse deal than they could have! But it was so unpopular in Nebraska that Nelson thought it hurt his standing with the state. Which goes to the main point.
To both commenters under here (re: earmarks and horse trading) - thank you. This was really informative. I still don't fully understand this, but it seems related to public perception, automatically assuming concessions == corruption, so we allow politicians to do this behind closed doors. Things still don't fully connect, but this Gemini response is definitely helpful:
While (1) is important, I'd continue the prompt towards (2) and (3), which are equally corrosive of middle-ground. Suggested follow-on prompt: "proof that transparency increased the effect of 2 and 3, to the detriment of bipartisan compromise"
It's ultimately an argument between whether one wants the best possible outcomes for the country and state, regardless of party affiliation, or the most party-obedient voting.
The parties (enforced through the primary process) naturally prefer the latter.
Here's an excerpt from an interview with Senator Slotkin of Michigan talking about working on a committee, and how it being private avoids Grandstanding effect [0]:
> Jordan Schneider: Maybe before we do the specific stuff — is there any structural change that would make more of the building work like SASC does on NDAA markup days?
> Senator Slotkin: The way you would do it is probably never gonna happen, because it means you kick the cameras out. That’s the only difference — the cameras are not there, so people don’t feel like they need to play to an audience. They aren’t kicking back with their political talking points; they’re actually doing substantive work. And it’s a pretty hard argument to make: “Hey America, we’re going to be less transparent in the Senate.” That’s a hard thing to do.
> I think there’s a million ways to make the Senate more efficient. The Senate was a caterpillar and could one day be a butterfly, but is right now in the disgusting cocoon and doesn’t know what it’s going to be. I have a million ideas on how to reform this institution. But we’re effective in the NDAA because people are not playing to the bleachers.
> Jordan Schneider: Do people really need those clips, though?
> Senator Slotkin: I don’t know that people wake up in the morning and say, “I’m so excited for my five minutes in front of an Armed Services hearing today.” But those hearings have been televised for over twenty years, and no one’s gonna be the chairman who says, “I’m kicking out the public,” right? And I don’t think the public feels like they want less oversight and insight into what the House and Senate are doing. So it’s a tough position.
It's definitely true, and there are a lot of studies and papers on it that you can read that usually use the term "horse trading." It's an important thing for people to know about, especially extreme partisans who like to accuse people of "conspiracy theories" who are just ignorant of the way day to day politics works.
But a thing that's important to keep in mind is that most of it in regard to the US is an artifact of having two parties who stand for nothing in particular and are virtually (and sometimes explicitly) written into law; making other parties difficult or impossible to make viable at any level. In that situation, horse-trading between the two parties entirely determines the outcome of governance, and they can (and will) also work together on public messaging to create a narrative that favors both parties against their unsatisfied bases.
So this does not work as well in parliamentary democracies, where horse-trading between the two dominant parties (usually nominally representing workers and business) and their coordinated actions and messaging can result in the shrinking of both of them together, as we've seen all over Europe where the dominant "opposition" parties who have been trading off rule since after WWII have been shrinking to a third or less of the electorate and only holding onto government by explicitly cooperating to hold onto presidencies or by pressuring other smaller parties through the media to refuse to create coalitions with the parties that have been their biggest 3rd party threats in the recent past.
In the US, what happens is that the entire electorate shrinks, and the party who had fewer voters in that cycle discouraged enough to leave the political system altogether declares that they have a mandate to continue the same policies that their predecessor instituted.
> During his 18 years in the Senate, Tester was an outspoken critic of the PATRIOT Act that passed shortly after the 9/11 attacks that expanded the Justice Department's surveillance powers. When asked whether his concerns over government surveillance remain and whether he has the same concerns with his new employer, Tester said Palantir is different and that the company doesn't build "big databases" or trade in private data.
That is literally what Palantir does.
> "I wanted to do away with the Patriot Act because it was about privacy," Tester said. "It was about making sure that I am not being watched by anybody, including Big Brother. And by the way, I've talked to many people within Palantir. They believe the same way I do. This is an organization that believes in privacy."
Congress is full of these people. Forget party affiliation, this is as broad as it is systemic. Talk a big game in office, develop your network and have a cushy job waiting for you once you leave where you make millions calling your friends who are still in office. All while saying that it's not lobbying with a straight face.
Just place all their assets into a blind trust, perhaps a "congressional employees' index fund", for the duration of their employment plus n years. There are many obvious loopholes, like all assets in your spouse's name, etc, but maybe there is a lookback period or something. There are much thornier compliance problems that are solved, so all the what-ifs can likely be addressed with precedent.
But yes, cap their wealth, limit their stock investments to broad market ETF for stocks and bonds. Extend this to spouses and probably children (for a term). Perhaps provide them with housing in Washington DC.
And attempts to bypass the limits should have very harsh punishments.
Politics should be like teaching - no one does it for the money.
Such rules have to be marketable to people in public office in order to be enacted. One way might be to have a congressional alumni committee with very high salaries and strict rules on donations (this strictness could be sold as a way to prevent alumni officials from competing against the power of active officials).
Even if it cost a few hundred million a year in do nothing salaries, it'd help the integrity of multi trillion dollar budgets.
The British House of Lords sort of used to work this way until the stigma of aristocrats being involved in commercial/social activities faded.
But then the only people who run for office, are independently wealthy and don't need work after they serve. Which is also a class of people who don't represent the people.
They can be paid to make up for it. MPs have a good pension scheme too (especially if they serve several terms).
I also said restrict, not prevent them from working. If their previous jobs do not present a conflict of interests they can go back to that. There are lots of careers that are fine.
> Which is also a class of people who don't represent the people.
Neither do professional politicians, especially as they end up being closely connected to the wealthy who fund them.
> I think what is needed is restrictions on jobs people can do after leaving public office.
People who have left public office aren't the only concern, either, there are also quite a few disturbing family connections these days.
For example, both of Chuck Schumer's daughters work in "government outreach" and "politics marketing" positions for big tech companies. One works at OpenAI, the other works at Meta. Not illegal, but not a good look and the sort of thing people should be concerned about.
(I'm glad the Democrats trounced the much worse Trump Republicans, but let's not pretend they are beyond reproach).
>Congress is full of these people. Forget party affiliation, this is as broad as it is systemic.
I wish more people understood this. Forget party allegiances, vote for those who have your best interests in mind. I bet if the people stopped focusing on their differences, and instead focused on the struggles we all have in common, we would get so much done.
General annoyance: Not having a specific patriot act-like privacy violation ready to not let politicos weasel out like this is journalistic malpractice. Is it just laziness? Just look up some examples before the interview!
What is and isn't "Big databases" isn't up for debate, point to the exact example and ask them about it.
> > Tester said Palantir is different and that the company doesn't build "big databases" or trade in private data.
> That is literally what Palantir does.
I don't know where this perception of Palantir comes from. Why do people believe things like this that are utterly divorced from reality. I'd ask you to point to a single instance where Palantir has "traded in" private data.
As for building "big databases", it is technically true that Palantir helps organizations organize and operationalize their data. But it brings no data to the table and stores no data for the organizations. It originates no data. It does not have access to any of this data.
I genuinely think we need some kind of restrictions on free speech for representatives in/formerly in government, because the fact that our politicians can lie this blatantly is as disgusting as it is anti-democracy. It's no wonder 1/3 of our electorate is completely fucking detached from reality.
And the complicity of the media here is also fucking disgusting. A former senator getting a job at Violating Privacy Inc. after opposing the Violating Your Privacy law, Jesus fuck.
At first glance this came off as a bit absurd to me but the government puts restrictions on what it can do all the time. Now it is probably too far to say officials not currently in government have speech restrictions but restrictions on those in office is no more outlandish than any other regulation or rights legislation. Elected officials _are_ the government.
Agreed. I think the US Military is a good example- when you enlist you agree to limits on freedom of speech, association, and privacy. Parker v. Levy established the fact that the military is a “specialized society” with unique needs. Congress could be a similar group.
I want the DoJ to prosecute Trump for his lies to be honest.
He's free to accuse whoever of whatever (as though we could stop him anyway) but if not implied in the original comment, this should be subject to being proven to be lies. And I think similar to libel, it should be a decently high bar to clear in terms of "this person knew what they were saying was bullshit," insofar as it's able to be proven in court what someone or some entity knew at a given time.
Putting aside the precedent of prosecuting former leaders (imo more permissible now that he is term limited than before), I think there is a lot to prosecute Trump on that doesn't require handing a loaded shotgun to whoever happens to occupy the presidency.
>At first glance this came off as a bit absurd to me but the government puts restrictions on what it can do all the time. Now it is probably too far to say officials not currently in government have speech restrictions but restrictions on those in office is no more outlandish than any other regulation or rights legislation. Elected officials _are_ the government.
That's not a great idea. In fact, that's why it's explicitly disallowed[0] by the US Constitution.
If you think that should be changed, you just need to convince 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the legislatures of the several states to officially agree with you[1]. Good luck with that.
I got a 5 on the AP US History exam; think it was just a 4 on AP US Gov though. Reread the federalist papers this year given the year. Don't even think they mention it. Reading the history of the clause it seems like it's such a given inherited from English law that it's not super commonly talked about nor the meaning frequently debated.
My takeaway is I'm a bit embarrassed. I don't know if I'd expect others to be though.
That being said it still doesn't seem unreasonable nor impossible given the clause for Congress to limit itself. In fact that does happen with things like censures. Sure there's no literal punishment but there are standards of speech which have been used in the past(many times for questionable reasons).
>My takeaway is I'm a bit embarrassed. I don't know if I'd expect others to be though.
Apologies. My intent wasn't to embarrass you. Rather to take your K-12 teachers to task.
I do get that, especially since 1979 (when CSPAN started, not to mention the demagoguery of Joe McCarthy[0] back in the 1950s, but that was something of an aberration until the 1980s or so), that much of what's said on the House/Senate floors is pure hyperbole and intended as outrage bait for the party faithful.
But the Debate Clause (as you're now aware) was specifically added to ensure that members of Congress could, barring criminal acts, say exactly what was on their minds without fear of retribution.
Which is, on the whole, a good thing IMNSHO.
Then again, it is quite nauseating and disappointing to hear our elected representatives consistently dissemble and obfuscate just for personal and political advantage. And more's the pity.
All that said, the alternative (having the executive and/or judicial branches, not to mention majorities in either or both houses of Congress assail, investigate and prosecute members of either house for their speech) is even more galling and antithetical to our de jure system of government, even if things have, de facto, gotten somewhat out of hand.
Nothing to apologize about. Part of learning is realizing what you don’t know and sometimes making a fool of yourself when you think you know more than you do. I care about this stuff so I’m glad to know more than I did yesterday.
Let people lie. However, if they're arguing politics then they have to provide equal time to the opposition. Bring back the fair-time rules and make them apply beyond radio.
>Bring back the fair-time rules and make them apply beyond radio.
While that seems like it might be a good idea, there are those of us who remember watching late-night TV and seeing those "equal time" segments at 0400, just before the channel signed off until 0600. I'd expect that except for drunk/high people and insomniacs, no one saw those segments.
Which significantly limited the usefulness of such rules.
All that said, the world has changed since then. There are plenty of places for anyone that wants to share their opinions to do so. And that's good for all of us.
What's more important isn't (as you correctly point out) restricting speech, but rather restricting the amount of money that's allowed to be used for political "speech."
What's more, we should have publicly funded sites where anyone can express their political opinions that are not curated, but can be scraped and curated by others in very specific ways only.
There are a raft of other ways to maintain freedom of expression while limiting the power of money to corrupt the political process. Limiting such activities/expenditures, whether that be directly, via ad/marketing campaigns, payments/salaries to insiders to advocate for monied interests with our elected officials or engagement maximizing algorithms designed to increase corporate profits and other mechanisms should be a top priority.
> What's more important isn't (as you correctly point out) restricting speech, but rather restricting the amount of money that's allowed to be used for political "speech."
Well I don’t want to argue too much since you’re right.
But if you say own the Washington Post is it “money in politics”? I’m assuming when Trump when on Dave Ramsey’s podcast neither of them were compensated so is it “money in politics”? I’m all for undoing citizens united but i don’t want loopholes to pop up.
I don't think it was ever meant for free speech to mean free lying, and if you forbid politicians to lie to the public you solved most problems of democracy
Politicians should be allowed to have their net worth increase by, let's say, $200,000 a year while in office and for 15 years afterwards. Anything more is taxed at 100%. Let it be a price of public service.
Public service should not be any different from a regular job. You should be paid no less or more than a regular job. And the consequences of your performance and your ethics should be the same as a regular job.
I can’t trade my company stock outside of a few days in the year even though I’m a lowly IC with access to no additional non public information. Same should be true for politicians. I can’t take money from other companies to influence the way I do my work. I cannot influence my ex colleagues to work a certain way after I leave my company based on what another company pays me. I get fired for poor performance at any time and I have to consistently show that I’m working. I can’t take a “recess” and not work a third of the days I’m supposed to work. And I can’t take paid indefinite medical leave. The list goes on.
Once you align the public and private sector, you’ll see improvements on both fronts.
I'd be happy for people in Congress to not have to deal with money from then on, and just to be put on a generous allowance until they die. They can do volunteer work, and we'll give their kids a few bucks and a free ride through state school. Of course, that means that they will have to give up what they have now before they serve - 100% tax.
So not just giving up "increase," but I'd advocate giving up bank or stock accounts altogether. Democracy is worth it.
You have come up against a fundamental problem with capitalist private property, to which there is no solution no matter how clever. In this case they would just point the lobbyists towards their family members.
You cannot solve the problem in this way unless you're willing to restrict people's property right to "give away" money; and even then it's likely the ultra-rich will find a loop hole given they can pay teams of lawyers indefinite full time salaries to do so.
You need to attack the source of elite power, not play the game it designed. You need to tax wealth itself, regardless of who holds it. You can't "keep money out of politics" in a system premised on money's right to do whatever it wants. People act like we can just post about repeal Citizens United and it will happen, like they don't live in a world that went from no Citizens United to Citizens United because of a powerful force called capital, to which they have no answer.
Wealth is the distribution of wealth. By which I mean, having wealth allows for getting more wealth, once you have enough.
An investor can have their investments grow so quickly that they can never spend it. They only pay taxes on what they take out and spend. But, again, they will never spend most of it.
Stock trading is a red herring. By all means, it should be banned, but nothing will change after it's banned. Politicians will still have a string of good luck and well paying "jobs" after they retire, etc.
I'm kind of tired of hearing about stock trading, because it's such a tiny drop in the bucket, and yet it gets so much talk.
Judges around the world have a lot of restrictions on economical participation. Of course, politicians legislate their own incompatibilities. The only absurd proposition is that it would ever happen, but if we suddenly woke up in a parallel world where politicians would be economically restricted, the world would go forward. Of course, the following day they'd just dissolve those restrictions.
Palantir will have no problem pivoting to serve a hypothetical D administration, and the same future admin will have no trouble bringing it into the fold and leveraging its services. Many Palantir employees will probably welcome it given the direction of their political donations: https://residualthoughts.substack.com/p/libbing-out-at-palan...
The same invasive surveillance apparatus that’s been focused on immigrants and left-wing protestors can easily be retargeted to focus on gun owners, “hate speech”, and right wing groups. This industry shouldn’t exist at all in its current form.
But of course neither party will be able to turn down the power to subjugate its political enemies.
> retargeted to focus on gun owners, “hate speech”, and right wing groups
This sounds like retargeting the surveillance apparatus away from people who are opposed to fascism, genocide, and secret police killing people in the street, to focus on the groups that actually commit 90% of political terrorism in this country. Unfortunately, it will never happen, because liberals have never, in their entire history, had the guts to go after citizens for political reasons, even when those citizens have actually committed crimes. This is why almost everyone who openly fomented insurrection against the United States is still walking around and even running for (and sometimes winning) office. Right-wing groups love to pretend that they're being targeted and victimized -- mostly because it gives them an excuse to overtly victimize other groups -- but they never actually are. You sometimes see right-wingers claim that they'll be sent to prison if liberals are elected; it's a damning self-incrimination, but nothing ever actually comes of it. Microseconds after it was clear that this latest "blue wave" was actually happening, Hakeem Jeffries was already making speeches about how, don't worry you guys, we're not ever actually going to hold anyone accountable for any crimes.
Palantir is not just going to suddenly give up on instituting their fascist dystopian dream just because some liberals won some elections. There will be no "pivoting to a D administration." Their politics isn't going to change at all -- it doesn't need to.
> liberals have never, in their entire history, had the guts to go after citizens for political reasons
You make it sound like this would be a good thing. It’s a bad thing when anyone does it!
And besides, you’re wrong — liberals were in charge in Philadelphia during the 1985 MOVE bombing, and they authorized it. LBJ expanded COINTELPRO and authorized Operation CHAOS. Obama’s government coordinated national disruption of Occupy groups. I’m sure there are more examples.
> JON TESTER: You know, a perception is reality in Washington, D.C. and in politics in general. But the fact is that I think Palantir's got a good story to tell, and they need to tell it. And hopefully folks will be receptive to it.
This tells you all you need to know about politics and who elected people work for, it's a cancer that you can "hire" people to go and "talk" to another people in congress, what an infinite level of corruption.
> it's a cancer that you can "hire" people to go and "talk" to another people in congress,
Is it? Regular Americans do this all the time. Lots of charities exist that, in part, use money to lobby members of congress. Lots of citizens do this as well. I do.
I have lobbyists that speak on my behalf as a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
So, you need to explain to me why I am not allowed to have someone else speak on my behalf?
Now, to be clear, bribing and other illegal things are still illegal. You need to answer why I am not allowed to have someone else speak on my behalf?
More importantly, why do you want to repeal the First Amendment?
I think the problem is we assume that lobbying is evil. It's not. What we should do is make sure we have stronger ethics reform and not what we have now (which is basically letting anyone get away with anything). But that's not getting rid of lobbying, which is just speaking to the government and addressing concerns.
You call it a cancer. I call it the First Amendment. Anyways, you have questions you need to answer.
OHHH RIGHT, sorry, I forgot we elect politicians to work for the paid people that go to talk to them.
You are right first ammendment.. that's why they are paid... right... the first ammendment, the right to pay to be heard.. and only you will be heard...
The every day citizen has a "call your senator" and you are left there hanging forever or to mailbox... but if you have billions then first ammendment!!!!
I vote to start removing the "we the people in passports" and put "we the lobbier" because FIRST AMMENDMENT!
For a second I thought saying what I said above was also first ammendment... duh-me
I'm probably more worried that any corporation or trillionaire can dump limitless money into elections. That said, I'm encouraged to see that despite the far right buying up such a large share of the traditional and social media networks and astroturfing the shit out of our feeds with right wing AI slopaganda and dumping record setting sums into campaign ads that they still suffered a massive defeat.
Unfortunately, the defeat probably had less to do with their outright corruption and contempt toward American values or basic decency and probably everything to do with the cost of gas specifically.
They are correct. Efforts like the US TikTok acquisition and Warner Bros/Paramount merger were pushed through the FTC specifically to consolidate media power with GOP-friendly EOs like Safra Katz and Larry Ellison.
The fact that those, and Twitter, were recently bought and the mergers were allowed because they don't get close to the reach that Disney, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads), Google (especially Youtube), Netflix, Reddit, CNN, etc do. Do you really think these recent mergers have already produced biased content that gets more eyes per day than even the non-exhaustive list above? If so I encourage you to do some basic fact checking, and maybe I didn't account for something.
You are every bit capable of googling it for yourself, this lazy behavior of asking for links is not a defense nor any kind of support for your argument.
The fact that you think approval of the merger by the U.S. Department of Justice on June 12, 2026, with no major concessions is "putting words into the FTC's mouth" is just plain annoying and, at best, misleading.
Since you seem to value links over rational thought and independent research, you can start here:
I'm not seeing any quotes. Basically all of those links re-confirm that the merger was approved to fit a political agenda, with very little investigation into the foreign funding, political influence, job losses or market harm concerns that were raised.
Do you have any FTC-associated quotes that confirm your claim that they approved the merger for GOP parity with Democrat-aligned media? I suspect not, that would be totally crazy.
Sometimes you have to buy Trumpcoins first before meeting with certain politicians. The most powerful politicians just do it in the open like never before.
The levels of hell run deep, and we just got schooled as to how deep. The revolving door is the surface, POTUS shitcoin was next level, pumping and dumping the world economy with fake Iran announcements to insider trade it and brag about it on national TV was next level, and there are levels beyond these.
Revolving door is a bit gross but we've just seen sooooooooo much worse.
Perception is reality especially online, you get people vehemently pushing their broad generalizations on topics they learned about through memes, comments, and maybe a handful of snips from dubious online articles.
FWIW, these types of people were still a cancer before the internet existed. If CCTVs were being put up on every block in the 1980s, citizens would be indignant no matter what the TV lobbyists told them.
LOL. I go to an 18-day-long Folk festival and as a songwriter I am a member of Folk Alliance International.
For what it's worth, "folks" is my preferred gender-neutral noun for a large group of humans. So, point of order, but at least one folk uses "folks" regularly. :D
I mean, in the quote "people" would have made sense and worked just the same. It does feel excessively corpo-speak, especially when you consider the full context of the article.
Well, far be it from me to agree with some dumb suit- your ear is as good as mine and so I don't really take issue with the claim that "folks" feels false.
That said, [language|words|vocabulary|poetry-if-you will] is [neat|enjoyable|endlessly fascinating|cruel|miraculous] in that words can be [endlessly|randomly|carefully][substituted|variegated|swapped] while still making sense and working [more-or-less|roughly|similarly] the same.
> No, there are good people in Congress who do want to help out normal Americans.
No. ALL of them are liars and do what is best for their political party. They are lobbied (bribed) very easily to appease the one that has the most money and they even insider trade on key legislation before it becomes law.
Even when they get caught, it is a slap on the wrist. If any of us did the same thing, we would be in prison.
What if I told you that there are more than two numbers? What if there are things which are neither 0% nor 100%? What if there are politicians who are not perfect but also far better than the far right?
Way back in the day, when Twitter was a thing and the API feeds were reasonably accessible, people were using tweets to build network graphs of terrorist cells and drawing maps of territories gangs controlled in major cities. It's amazing what people would put on twitter, and assuming that a micro blogging platform open to the public wouldn't be an incredibly fertile ground for the people looking for them.
This was all done in excel spreadsheets at first, then custom built tools later on. Palantir was one of the early tools, though not the most capable at the time, just the one with the most red-tape-cutting backing.
It's just political hatred and jealousy from what I can tell. They make a lot of different software, it's not like it's just a custom type of database. They don't have any sort of information that didn't exist before, it's just new ways of presenting that information. Instead of $$$$$ tax dollars being spent in secret, it's $$ and the company is in the spotlight. Anyone against transparency and cost-savings naturally hates them, but I don't know where the other hatred comes from.
They are a analysis and presentation layer that is used to plug in data sources gathered by brokers (or other parties) and present it for other uses. Yes, they themselves don’t gather this data, but they do make it seamless to use the data.
I’ll admit they are much less culpable than companies like LexisNexis or CLEAR (or even shadier outfits), and those companies should receive the lion’s share of the scrutiny, but Palantir is not blameless.
Knowingly building an apparatus that evil people can use to more easily do evil things, and which seems to have that as its primary purpose. And then naming it after a similar device used by a Tolkein villain. All accidental, I’m sure.
IBM didn't own or collect lists of Jews and undesirables, it just sold machines to the owners of that data.
Honestly I'm not sure what this analogy means. On one hand, should we let IBM off the hook because they only sold the Excel of the 1930s? On the other hand, if not many people in the world have spreadsheets and you sell yours to Hitler, maybe you bear more responsibility than you would if everyone had spreadsheets.
Palantir, if the hype is true, is building something currently rare. They also probably tailor their product to their customer more than IBM did. And there are rumors, which I don't have time to investigate at the moment, that they cross-polinate datasets between customers, which would make them a broker/owner/collector.
>During his time in office, Tester voted for the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which rolled back parts of the Dodd–Frank Act,
From Wikipedia, this shows he fully aligns with Palantir. He seems to be 1 step away from being a Republican.
So it cam probably be said he is a DINO (democrat in name only).
It’s a career that self-selects for narcissists and sociopaths. What kind of person thinks they should lead others and is willing to treat them like resources and pawns?
What are you using as examples to measure "horrible societies and broken kids"? In my mind, the Taliban represents what you're wanting vs Nordic countries represent what you don't want. It's pretty clear to me the Taliban is the horrible society with broken kids (watch the "The Kite Runner" for more info) here where-as in Nordic countries you have a fairly high quality of life. What is your take on this?
I appreciate the honesty so I put this forward sincerely - you dont think its problematic to essentially force women down a certain life path (aka "gender roles")? - how is this compatible with individual liberty? Presumably you would not like being forced into a traditinal "peasant role" of toiling on the farm, which 99% of men were subjected to before modernity, perhaps that can help you relate.
Can you elaborate why gender equality breaks down family structure? Why would it lead to broken children and societies? I’m legitimately curious why you think this.
I'd say you're hoping to (fallaciously) turn the clock back to some imagined rosy past rather than directly addressing the actual oppressive dynamic we're facing today. Women being able to enter the workforce was not a problem for family formation in and of itself.
The number of workers doubling while the definition of full time employment per worker stayed fixed rather than being halved is the problem. Combined with the Fed mandate for an inflationary treadmill, this made it so the new standard lifestyle is now a two income household - with all those domestic chores still getting done in mostly system-illegible ways. And while you can live with dirty floors or buy cleaning services in a competitive market, raising children is an extraordinary chunk of domestic work that can't be straightforwardly outsourced.
True choice is good. An illusion of "choice" under a strong economic incentive / paperclip maximizer / Moloch is the liability.
(Also "LGBTQ" is another red herring only involving a small part of the population, but yet emphasized to keep you from focusing on the economic oppression)
Damn hoss, I'm sorry that you can't get a partner without one of the partners being unable to get a bank account. That's gotta be a hard life and a hard thing to think about yourself.
GP is probably one of the non-white conservative dudes that are onboard with the rest of the MAGA agenda. The racism is only bad because they are the outgroup on that specific issue, and in harm's way. That group is surprisingly diverse and includes swathes of immigrants from the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa (non-exhaustive list).
They'll only "come around" on LGBTQ issues when it affects them personally, say, if one or more of their kids come out of the closet.
It is a non exhaustive list because in addition to the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, it also includes East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and South East Asia. Having lived there for a while it also (somewhat) includes Eastern Europe and Russia.
It really is everywhere other than progressive parts of the US and Western Europe and I want to turn that around. I don’t like the way it is now.
I'd say OP has a genuine concern, if you do the work to see past the needlessly inflammatory framing. Their pain is coming from somewhere, right? Ostensibly advocating for sexism is not where they started, but rather a product of the hate industry pushing fake solutions on vulnerable people. Writing off their whole point of view (especially when you think it matches a significant group!) rather than focusing on the underlying economic problems is exactly how we ended up with the maggot movement.
I know it's quite tempting to merely cheer blue blue blue after voters soundly rebuked open fascism, but we need to really address the longstanding problems driving that frustration if we don't want to just end up right back there again.
> I'd say OP has a genuine concern, if you do the work to see past the needlessly inflammatory framing
> I know it's quite tempting to merely cheer blue blue blue
I'm not shouting "blue blue blue", I'm talking about the politics of tolerance (or lack thereof).
I am far from the first to make the observation that generalizes gp's comment: a lot of non-white immigrants come from cultures and/or belong to religions that are socially conservative, and are a natural fit for American conservatives - were it not for the racism. Republicans will need to grapple with this, if they don't succumb to ethno-nationalist fascism.
> [...] after voters soundly rebuked open fascism
Sadly, the voters did not rebuke fascism, they just got hit in their pockets, and didn't like it. They knew Trump's agenda in 2024 and voted him back in.
> Ostensibly advocating for sexism is not where they started
That's a big assumption; for a lot of - let's call them culturally conservative folk - disliking the "LGBTQ agenda" and "wokism" is the first common thread binding a bible believin' Southern Baptist Conservative good ol' boy, a conservative Muslimah, and a Hindi Nationalist.
The Patriot Act survived nearly two decades with power changing hands between the parties many times. You don't need to look very hard at all to see that this former senator is not much of an exception for either party.
Sure, but I assumed that the poster was talking about the new wave of democrats just voted in in the recent election. It's possible, even likely, that they'll be as irritating and terrible as the rest of congress has been since the PATRIOT Act, just that it's not implied by this event. They haven't even been sworn in yet.
The more leftwing ones are much less likely to fall for this. But they have had to fight some of the "democrat blob" along the way (e.g. the Hayley Stevens meltdown).
The bar is on the floor. To be less hawkish than every Republican this decade/century/millenium, Democrats just have to avoid starting a forever war. That's it.
That's not entirely true. They just have to fail at stopping the forever wars, so they can play the victim card and say "I tried! If only you'd given me more money, I could have done it."
Yes, but the 2028 Democratic President hasn't traveled back in time to stop Trump from starting a war in Iran, so both sides are basically the same, you see?
I suppose you're right, there isn't an "A implies B" relationship there. That said, if the tech is used to kill people, and given that their tech is primarily data analytics and correlation, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that their tech being used to kill people is likely as a result of surveillance. They aren't producing katanas or machine guns; the only realistic way their tech could be used to kill people is surveillance.
That said, they also did a pretty big contract with ICE recently. Trump 2's ICE is basically just a private militia right now, so it's easy to assume that their tech is used for surveillance.
And now: "President Donald Trump has nominated Palantir security chief Michael LoSapio to lead CISA, putting an executive from the controversial government supplier in line to run America's civilian cyber defense agency"
Fox is CEO of the henhouse. It's cartoonish, nobody seems to care at all any more about looking remotely ethical.
The 'Democrats' in Montana are the worst sort. They pretend to support the people, but then slow walk anything the people actually want, leading to accidentally fall short at the last minute. Then after they've spent 18 years in the Senate doing this, they get rewarded for their incompetence, by the people who had the most to gain from it.
Steve Bullock did the same thing when he rode out his last term. He became the head of the largest Democrat Dark Money SuperPac.
The Bankhead/Bodnar race was a complete clown show too, designed to split the vote to ensure Alme won. Watch where Bodnar and Bankhead reappear later, I'm sure they'll magically land in places with money and power.
Democrats love war and billionaires almost as much as republicans. "Scrutiny" in the title essentially functions as propaganda to manage perceptions of the public. Ha, the unpopular Palantir will be facing "scrutiny" meaning more tea-and-coffee conversations between lobbyists and government officials. Maybe a few beers.
We need real socialists in congress to reign these guys in and obliterate these companies.
These are the companies most closely integrated with the government. If USA went socialist, much more of our production capacity would be allocated to this work, not less. The most likely scenario is that instead of choosing to work for a company and being able to step away from the job when you felt it crossed your moral line, you'd just be forced to continue working there. I think threatening families is the most often used tactic in socialist societies.
The part where the private sector is five times larger than the public sector and completely out of control in exactly the ways it wants to be, so giving it even more power is a deeply unserious strategy for addressing any of the problems it has created.
Propaganda (renamed 'PR' in the 50s), media distractions, political lobbying. Illegitimate power-seeking individuals and organizations always use the same toolkit.
The only permanent remedy is to outright ban those - or better: mandatory transparency into what politicians spend how much time with whom, where money streams come from and go out of organizations, etc, etc. All transparent in a public ledger. (and no: it is not 'anti-competitive' if it's the same regulatory landscape for everybody, but a way to safe-guard the government permanently from corruption). Of course if you there are ideas that would complete this or are truly overall better, feel free to throw them in the comments hat.
> better: mandatory transparency into what politicians spend how much time with whom, where money streams come from and go out of organizations, etc, etc. All transparent in a public ledger
The only downside of transparency is that it often has the net effect of increasing partisanship, as quietly making deals and compromises isn't possible.
While I agree this is the only sustainable way of ensuring transparency, I'd want gerrymandering handled and some version of ranked choice voting passed before implementing it. Otherwise, you're going to get even more dysfunctional candidates.
This is an interesting observation. How are you evaluating this is the outcome? Is there some historical precedence? Would love to read about it.
I think the evidence is all anecdotal about the end of Congressional earmarks. In 2008-9 Congress banned set-aside earmarks, and no one has brought that back, and there are plenty of experienced legislative people who claim that has hurt the ability to get deals done.
In addition, the fate of the "Cornhusker Kickback" is illustrative. One of the more conservative Democratic senators during the ACA negotiations was Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson. In exchange for his vote he got Nebraska a much better deal than any other state- the Federal Government would pay 100% cost of Medicaid expansion costs, rather than 90% as with every other state. This was a classic case of negotiations and special deal cutting for important votes.
But then the news media got a hold of it, called it the "Cornhusker Kickback" and it became so unpopular that Nelson got it stripped out of the final bill. These sorts of things dying in the attention of the media mean that Nebraska got a worse deal than they could have! But it was so unpopular in Nebraska that Nelson thought it hurt his standing with the state. Which goes to the main point.
> Nebraska got a worse deal than they could have
Another way of wording that is
> the rest of the US states got a better deal than they would have
Because that extra money paid to Nebraska had to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is the people in the rest of the states.
To both commenters under here (re: earmarks and horse trading) - thank you. This was really informative. I still don't fully understand this, but it seems related to public perception, automatically assuming concessions == corruption, so we allow politicians to do this behind closed doors. Things still don't fully connect, but this Gemini response is definitely helpful:
https://share.google/aimode/nzJAjdOzDHZteAZxl
While (1) is important, I'd continue the prompt towards (2) and (3), which are equally corrosive of middle-ground. Suggested follow-on prompt: "proof that transparency increased the effect of 2 and 3, to the detriment of bipartisan compromise"
It's ultimately an argument between whether one wants the best possible outcomes for the country and state, regardless of party affiliation, or the most party-obedient voting.
The parties (enforced through the primary process) naturally prefer the latter.
Here's an excerpt from an interview with Senator Slotkin of Michigan talking about working on a committee, and how it being private avoids Grandstanding effect [0]:
> Jordan Schneider: Maybe before we do the specific stuff — is there any structural change that would make more of the building work like SASC does on NDAA markup days?
> Senator Slotkin: The way you would do it is probably never gonna happen, because it means you kick the cameras out. That’s the only difference — the cameras are not there, so people don’t feel like they need to play to an audience. They aren’t kicking back with their political talking points; they’re actually doing substantive work. And it’s a pretty hard argument to make: “Hey America, we’re going to be less transparent in the Senate.” That’s a hard thing to do.
> I think there’s a million ways to make the Senate more efficient. The Senate was a caterpillar and could one day be a butterfly, but is right now in the disgusting cocoon and doesn’t know what it’s going to be. I have a million ideas on how to reform this institution. But we’re effective in the NDAA because people are not playing to the bleachers.
> Jordan Schneider: Do people really need those clips, though?
> Senator Slotkin: I don’t know that people wake up in the morning and say, “I’m so excited for my five minutes in front of an Armed Services hearing today.” But those hearings have been televised for over twenty years, and no one’s gonna be the chairman who says, “I’m kicking out the public,” right? And I don’t think the public feels like they want less oversight and insight into what the House and Senate are doing. So it’s a tough position.
[0] https://www.chinatalk.media/p/sen-slotkin-ndaa-ai-guardrails...
It's definitely true, and there are a lot of studies and papers on it that you can read that usually use the term "horse trading." It's an important thing for people to know about, especially extreme partisans who like to accuse people of "conspiracy theories" who are just ignorant of the way day to day politics works.
But a thing that's important to keep in mind is that most of it in regard to the US is an artifact of having two parties who stand for nothing in particular and are virtually (and sometimes explicitly) written into law; making other parties difficult or impossible to make viable at any level. In that situation, horse-trading between the two parties entirely determines the outcome of governance, and they can (and will) also work together on public messaging to create a narrative that favors both parties against their unsatisfied bases.
So this does not work as well in parliamentary democracies, where horse-trading between the two dominant parties (usually nominally representing workers and business) and their coordinated actions and messaging can result in the shrinking of both of them together, as we've seen all over Europe where the dominant "opposition" parties who have been trading off rule since after WWII have been shrinking to a third or less of the electorate and only holding onto government by explicitly cooperating to hold onto presidencies or by pressuring other smaller parties through the media to refuse to create coalitions with the parties that have been their biggest 3rd party threats in the recent past.
In the US, what happens is that the entire electorate shrinks, and the party who had fewer voters in that cycle discouraged enough to leave the political system altogether declares that they have a mandate to continue the same policies that their predecessor instituted.
Throw in eliminating primary elections to the list. Those sort for the nuts.
> The only permanent remedy is to outright ban those
if just making it illegal prevented politicians from being dishonest we would live in a utopia.
bribing will still happen, just off the books and often with dirty money, this is by far worse.
politicians should wear the logos of the people giving them money, like F1 drivers, you want them in the open, you want to know who is doing it.
> During his 18 years in the Senate, Tester was an outspoken critic of the PATRIOT Act that passed shortly after the 9/11 attacks that expanded the Justice Department's surveillance powers. When asked whether his concerns over government surveillance remain and whether he has the same concerns with his new employer, Tester said Palantir is different and that the company doesn't build "big databases" or trade in private data.
That is literally what Palantir does.
> "I wanted to do away with the Patriot Act because it was about privacy," Tester said. "It was about making sure that I am not being watched by anybody, including Big Brother. And by the way, I've talked to many people within Palantir. They believe the same way I do. This is an organization that believes in privacy."
Congress is full of these people. Forget party affiliation, this is as broad as it is systemic. Talk a big game in office, develop your network and have a cushy job waiting for you once you leave where you make millions calling your friends who are still in office. All while saying that it's not lobbying with a straight face.
Its not just the US either. Meta hired a former British deputy Prime Minister and leader (Nick Clegg) and it happens everywhere.
I think what is needed is restrictions on jobs people can do after leaving public office.
If I have to sign a non-compete agreement in the private sector, it seems very reasonable to have a similar restriction for public employees.
Politicians should have a cap on the amount their net worth can increase for the rest of their life.
Let it be a price of public service. Let them build a society that works for normal people, and then they'll be fine being a normal person.
Just place all their assets into a blind trust, perhaps a "congressional employees' index fund", for the duration of their employment plus n years. There are many obvious loopholes, like all assets in your spouse's name, etc, but maybe there is a lookback period or something. There are much thornier compliance problems that are solved, so all the what-ifs can likely be addressed with precedent.
They already get generous pensions.
But yes, cap their wealth, limit their stock investments to broad market ETF for stocks and bonds. Extend this to spouses and probably children (for a term). Perhaps provide them with housing in Washington DC.
And attempts to bypass the limits should have very harsh punishments.
Politics should be like teaching - no one does it for the money.
That cap better be near a billion.
If you were the VP of some company with a trillion dollars of revenue your compensation wouldn't be under a million/year.
That's not a normal person and shouldn't be a politician.
Palantir itself has done a similar thing in the UK by hiring Tom Watson [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson,_Baron_Watson_of_Wy...
Such rules have to be marketable to people in public office in order to be enacted. One way might be to have a congressional alumni committee with very high salaries and strict rules on donations (this strictness could be sold as a way to prevent alumni officials from competing against the power of active officials).
Even if it cost a few hundred million a year in do nothing salaries, it'd help the integrity of multi trillion dollar budgets.
The British House of Lords sort of used to work this way until the stigma of aristocrats being involved in commercial/social activities faded.
But then the only people who run for office, are independently wealthy and don't need work after they serve. Which is also a class of people who don't represent the people.
They can be paid to make up for it. MPs have a good pension scheme too (especially if they serve several terms).
I also said restrict, not prevent them from working. If their previous jobs do not present a conflict of interests they can go back to that. There are lots of careers that are fine.
> Which is also a class of people who don't represent the people.
Neither do professional politicians, especially as they end up being closely connected to the wealthy who fund them.
That's not true. To stay with the UK example, think of Jeremy Corbyn.
Perhaps we should pay them a pension that will make them comfortable for life and actually ban them from ever working again.
I think it’s fine if they do charitable work, like Jimmy Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity.
This already exists, at least for senior US senate staff. Not sure about actual senators. The restrictions are relatively mild but do exist.
> I think what is needed is restrictions on jobs people can do after leaving public office.
People who have left public office aren't the only concern, either, there are also quite a few disturbing family connections these days.
For example, both of Chuck Schumer's daughters work in "government outreach" and "politics marketing" positions for big tech companies. One works at OpenAI, the other works at Meta. Not illegal, but not a good look and the sort of thing people should be concerned about.
(I'm glad the Democrats trounced the much worse Trump Republicans, but let's not pretend they are beyond reproach).
>Congress is full of these people. Forget party affiliation, this is as broad as it is systemic.
I wish more people understood this. Forget party allegiances, vote for those who have your best interests in mind. I bet if the people stopped focusing on their differences, and instead focused on the struggles we all have in common, we would get so much done.
The structure incentivizes it.
> This is an organization that believes in privacy.
Like a doctor believes in disease
Like a preacher believes in sin
Like a teacher believes in ignorance
General annoyance: Not having a specific patriot act-like privacy violation ready to not let politicos weasel out like this is journalistic malpractice. Is it just laziness? Just look up some examples before the interview!
What is and isn't "Big databases" isn't up for debate, point to the exact example and ask them about it.
> > Tester said Palantir is different and that the company doesn't build "big databases" or trade in private data.
> That is literally what Palantir does.
I don't know where this perception of Palantir comes from. Why do people believe things like this that are utterly divorced from reality. I'd ask you to point to a single instance where Palantir has "traded in" private data.
As for building "big databases", it is technically true that Palantir helps organizations organize and operationalize their data. But it brings no data to the table and stores no data for the organizations. It originates no data. It does not have access to any of this data.
I genuinely think we need some kind of restrictions on free speech for representatives in/formerly in government, because the fact that our politicians can lie this blatantly is as disgusting as it is anti-democracy. It's no wonder 1/3 of our electorate is completely fucking detached from reality.
And the complicity of the media here is also fucking disgusting. A former senator getting a job at Violating Privacy Inc. after opposing the Violating Your Privacy law, Jesus fuck.
At first glance this came off as a bit absurd to me but the government puts restrictions on what it can do all the time. Now it is probably too far to say officials not currently in government have speech restrictions but restrictions on those in office is no more outlandish than any other regulation or rights legislation. Elected officials _are_ the government.
Agreed. I think the US Military is a good example- when you enlist you agree to limits on freedom of speech, association, and privacy. Parker v. Levy established the fact that the military is a “specialized society” with unique needs. Congress could be a similar group.
You want Trump to have the ability to direct the DoJ to prosecute senators for lying?
I want the DoJ to prosecute Trump for his lies to be honest.
He's free to accuse whoever of whatever (as though we could stop him anyway) but if not implied in the original comment, this should be subject to being proven to be lies. And I think similar to libel, it should be a decently high bar to clear in terms of "this person knew what they were saying was bullshit," insofar as it's able to be proven in court what someone or some entity knew at a given time.
Putting aside the precedent of prosecuting former leaders (imo more permissible now that he is term limited than before), I think there is a lot to prosecute Trump on that doesn't require handing a loaded shotgun to whoever happens to occupy the presidency.
>At first glance this came off as a bit absurd to me but the government puts restrictions on what it can do all the time. Now it is probably too far to say officials not currently in government have speech restrictions but restrictions on those in office is no more outlandish than any other regulation or rights legislation. Elected officials _are_ the government.
That's not a great idea. In fact, that's why it's explicitly disallowed[0] by the US Constitution.
If you think that should be changed, you just need to convince 2/3 of each house of Congress and 3/4 of the legislatures of the several states to officially agree with you[1]. Good luck with that.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Five_of_the_United_Sta...
Huh that’s super interesting. Genuinely did not know that was expressly defined. Thank you!
>Huh that’s super interesting. Genuinely did not know that was expressly defined. Thank you!
Assuming you grew up in the US, your middle school social studies teachers should be ashamed of themselves.
Or didn't you pay attention to US history/civics in K-12?
I got a 5 on the AP US History exam; think it was just a 4 on AP US Gov though. Reread the federalist papers this year given the year. Don't even think they mention it. Reading the history of the clause it seems like it's such a given inherited from English law that it's not super commonly talked about nor the meaning frequently debated.
My takeaway is I'm a bit embarrassed. I don't know if I'd expect others to be though.
That being said it still doesn't seem unreasonable nor impossible given the clause for Congress to limit itself. In fact that does happen with things like censures. Sure there's no literal punishment but there are standards of speech which have been used in the past(many times for questionable reasons).
>My takeaway is I'm a bit embarrassed. I don't know if I'd expect others to be though.
Apologies. My intent wasn't to embarrass you. Rather to take your K-12 teachers to task.
I do get that, especially since 1979 (when CSPAN started, not to mention the demagoguery of Joe McCarthy[0] back in the 1950s, but that was something of an aberration until the 1980s or so), that much of what's said on the House/Senate floors is pure hyperbole and intended as outrage bait for the party faithful.
But the Debate Clause (as you're now aware) was specifically added to ensure that members of Congress could, barring criminal acts, say exactly what was on their minds without fear of retribution.
Which is, on the whole, a good thing IMNSHO.
Then again, it is quite nauseating and disappointing to hear our elected representatives consistently dissemble and obfuscate just for personal and political advantage. And more's the pity.
All that said, the alternative (having the executive and/or judicial branches, not to mention majorities in either or both houses of Congress assail, investigate and prosecute members of either house for their speech) is even more galling and antithetical to our de jure system of government, even if things have, de facto, gotten somewhat out of hand.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
Nothing to apologize about. Part of learning is realizing what you don’t know and sometimes making a fool of yourself when you think you know more than you do. I care about this stuff so I’m glad to know more than I did yesterday.
Thanks for some solid responses!
You're going the wrong direction with this.
Let people lie. However, if they're arguing politics then they have to provide equal time to the opposition. Bring back the fair-time rules and make them apply beyond radio.
>Bring back the fair-time rules and make them apply beyond radio.
While that seems like it might be a good idea, there are those of us who remember watching late-night TV and seeing those "equal time" segments at 0400, just before the channel signed off until 0600. I'd expect that except for drunk/high people and insomniacs, no one saw those segments.
Which significantly limited the usefulness of such rules.
All that said, the world has changed since then. There are plenty of places for anyone that wants to share their opinions to do so. And that's good for all of us.
What's more important isn't (as you correctly point out) restricting speech, but rather restricting the amount of money that's allowed to be used for political "speech."
What's more, we should have publicly funded sites where anyone can express their political opinions that are not curated, but can be scraped and curated by others in very specific ways only.
There are a raft of other ways to maintain freedom of expression while limiting the power of money to corrupt the political process. Limiting such activities/expenditures, whether that be directly, via ad/marketing campaigns, payments/salaries to insiders to advocate for monied interests with our elected officials or engagement maximizing algorithms designed to increase corporate profits and other mechanisms should be a top priority.
> What's more important isn't (as you correctly point out) restricting speech, but rather restricting the amount of money that's allowed to be used for political "speech."
Well I don’t want to argue too much since you’re right.
But if you say own the Washington Post is it “money in politics”? I’m assuming when Trump when on Dave Ramsey’s podcast neither of them were compensated so is it “money in politics”? I’m all for undoing citizens united but i don’t want loopholes to pop up.
There are good reasons we don't allow the DoJ to investigate senators for "lying."
I don't think it was ever meant for free speech to mean free lying, and if you forbid politicians to lie to the public you solved most problems of democracy
No, we need more of these people getting into car accidents.
Politicians should be allowed to have their net worth increase by, let's say, $200,000 a year while in office and for 15 years afterwards. Anything more is taxed at 100%. Let it be a price of public service.
Public service should not be any different from a regular job. You should be paid no less or more than a regular job. And the consequences of your performance and your ethics should be the same as a regular job.
I can’t trade my company stock outside of a few days in the year even though I’m a lowly IC with access to no additional non public information. Same should be true for politicians. I can’t take money from other companies to influence the way I do my work. I cannot influence my ex colleagues to work a certain way after I leave my company based on what another company pays me. I get fired for poor performance at any time and I have to consistently show that I’m working. I can’t take a “recess” and not work a third of the days I’m supposed to work. And I can’t take paid indefinite medical leave. The list goes on.
Once you align the public and private sector, you’ll see improvements on both fronts.
I'd be happy for people in Congress to not have to deal with money from then on, and just to be put on a generous allowance until they die. They can do volunteer work, and we'll give their kids a few bucks and a free ride through state school. Of course, that means that they will have to give up what they have now before they serve - 100% tax.
So not just giving up "increase," but I'd advocate giving up bank or stock accounts altogether. Democracy is worth it.
You have come up against a fundamental problem with capitalist private property, to which there is no solution no matter how clever. In this case they would just point the lobbyists towards their family members.
You cannot solve the problem in this way unless you're willing to restrict people's property right to "give away" money; and even then it's likely the ultra-rich will find a loop hole given they can pay teams of lawyers indefinite full time salaries to do so.
You need to attack the source of elite power, not play the game it designed. You need to tax wealth itself, regardless of who holds it. You can't "keep money out of politics" in a system premised on money's right to do whatever it wants. People act like we can just post about repeal Citizens United and it will happen, like they don't live in a world that went from no Citizens United to Citizens United because of a powerful force called capital, to which they have no answer.
People generally want wealth. You want to tax the uneven distribution of wealth
Wealth is the distribution of wealth. By which I mean, having wealth allows for getting more wealth, once you have enough.
An investor can have their investments grow so quickly that they can never spend it. They only pay taxes on what they take out and spend. But, again, they will never spend most of it.
[dead]
That's an absurd proposition. It would be easier just to ban stock trading altogether.
Stock trading isn’t the only way to illegally profit as a politician though.
Stock trading is a red herring. By all means, it should be banned, but nothing will change after it's banned. Politicians will still have a string of good luck and well paying "jobs" after they retire, etc.
I'm kind of tired of hearing about stock trading, because it's such a tiny drop in the bucket, and yet it gets so much talk.
Judges around the world have a lot of restrictions on economical participation. Of course, politicians legislate their own incompatibilities. The only absurd proposition is that it would ever happen, but if we suddenly woke up in a parallel world where politicians would be economically restricted, the world would go forward. Of course, the following day they'd just dissolve those restrictions.
Yes, and nothing like what you've proposed. It would be impossible to measure and enforce.
Is it anymore absurd than a group of few dozen people that own 90% of the wealth in the country?
Palantir will have no problem pivoting to serve a hypothetical D administration, and the same future admin will have no trouble bringing it into the fold and leveraging its services. Many Palantir employees will probably welcome it given the direction of their political donations: https://residualthoughts.substack.com/p/libbing-out-at-palan...
The same invasive surveillance apparatus that’s been focused on immigrants and left-wing protestors can easily be retargeted to focus on gun owners, “hate speech”, and right wing groups. This industry shouldn’t exist at all in its current form.
But of course neither party will be able to turn down the power to subjugate its political enemies.
> retargeted to focus on gun owners, “hate speech”, and right wing groups
This sounds like retargeting the surveillance apparatus away from people who are opposed to fascism, genocide, and secret police killing people in the street, to focus on the groups that actually commit 90% of political terrorism in this country. Unfortunately, it will never happen, because liberals have never, in their entire history, had the guts to go after citizens for political reasons, even when those citizens have actually committed crimes. This is why almost everyone who openly fomented insurrection against the United States is still walking around and even running for (and sometimes winning) office. Right-wing groups love to pretend that they're being targeted and victimized -- mostly because it gives them an excuse to overtly victimize other groups -- but they never actually are. You sometimes see right-wingers claim that they'll be sent to prison if liberals are elected; it's a damning self-incrimination, but nothing ever actually comes of it. Microseconds after it was clear that this latest "blue wave" was actually happening, Hakeem Jeffries was already making speeches about how, don't worry you guys, we're not ever actually going to hold anyone accountable for any crimes.
Palantir is not just going to suddenly give up on instituting their fascist dystopian dream just because some liberals won some elections. There will be no "pivoting to a D administration." Their politics isn't going to change at all -- it doesn't need to.
> liberals have never, in their entire history, had the guts to go after citizens for political reasons
You make it sound like this would be a good thing. It’s a bad thing when anyone does it!
And besides, you’re wrong — liberals were in charge in Philadelphia during the 1985 MOVE bombing, and they authorized it. LBJ expanded COINTELPRO and authorized Operation CHAOS. Obama’s government coordinated national disruption of Occupy groups. I’m sure there are more examples.
> JON TESTER: You know, a perception is reality in Washington, D.C. and in politics in general. But the fact is that I think Palantir's got a good story to tell, and they need to tell it. And hopefully folks will be receptive to it.
These people are a cancer.
This tells you all you need to know about politics and who elected people work for, it's a cancer that you can "hire" people to go and "talk" to another people in congress, what an infinite level of corruption.
> it's a cancer that you can "hire" people to go and "talk" to another people in congress,
Is it? Regular Americans do this all the time. Lots of charities exist that, in part, use money to lobby members of congress. Lots of citizens do this as well. I do.
I have lobbyists that speak on my behalf as a card-carrying member of the ACLU.
So, you need to explain to me why I am not allowed to have someone else speak on my behalf?
Now, to be clear, bribing and other illegal things are still illegal. You need to answer why I am not allowed to have someone else speak on my behalf?
More importantly, why do you want to repeal the First Amendment?
I think the problem is we assume that lobbying is evil. It's not. What we should do is make sure we have stronger ethics reform and not what we have now (which is basically letting anyone get away with anything). But that's not getting rid of lobbying, which is just speaking to the government and addressing concerns.
You call it a cancer. I call it the First Amendment. Anyways, you have questions you need to answer.
OHHH RIGHT, sorry, I forgot we elect politicians to work for the paid people that go to talk to them. You are right first ammendment.. that's why they are paid... right... the first ammendment, the right to pay to be heard.. and only you will be heard... The every day citizen has a "call your senator" and you are left there hanging forever or to mailbox... but if you have billions then first ammendment!!!!
I vote to start removing the "we the people in passports" and put "we the lobbier" because FIRST AMMENDMENT!
For a second I thought saying what I said above was also first ammendment... duh-me
I'm probably more worried that any corporation or trillionaire can dump limitless money into elections. That said, I'm encouraged to see that despite the far right buying up such a large share of the traditional and social media networks and astroturfing the shit out of our feeds with right wing AI slopaganda and dumping record setting sums into campaign ads that they still suffered a massive defeat.
Unfortunately, the defeat probably had less to do with their outright corruption and contempt toward American values or basic decency and probably everything to do with the cost of gas specifically.
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They are correct. Efforts like the US TikTok acquisition and Warner Bros/Paramount merger were pushed through the FTC specifically to consolidate media power with GOP-friendly EOs like Safra Katz and Larry Ellison.
What causes you to disagree?
The fact that those, and Twitter, were recently bought and the mergers were allowed because they don't get close to the reach that Disney, Meta (Facebook, Instagram, and Threads), Google (especially Youtube), Netflix, Reddit, CNN, etc do. Do you really think these recent mergers have already produced biased content that gets more eyes per day than even the non-exhaustive list above? If so I encourage you to do some basic fact checking, and maybe I didn't account for something.
> the mergers were allowed because they don't get close to the reach that Disney, Meta [...]
Do you have a citation for that, or are you putting words into the FTC's mouth that nobody ever said?
You are every bit capable of googling it for yourself, this lazy behavior of asking for links is not a defense nor any kind of support for your argument.
The fact that you think approval of the merger by the U.S. Department of Justice on June 12, 2026, with no major concessions is "putting words into the FTC's mouth" is just plain annoying and, at best, misleading.
Since you seem to value links over rational thought and independent research, you can start here:
https://hls.harvard.edu/today/will-12-states-block-the-111b-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_of_Warner_Bros._Di...
https://usaherald.com/doj-opens-antitrust-review-into-netfli...
I'm not seeing any quotes. Basically all of those links re-confirm that the merger was approved to fit a political agenda, with very little investigation into the foreign funding, political influence, job losses or market harm concerns that were raised.
Do you have any FTC-associated quotes that confirm your claim that they approved the merger for GOP parity with Democrat-aligned media? I suspect not, that would be totally crazy.
Sometimes you have to buy Trumpcoins first before meeting with certain politicians. The most powerful politicians just do it in the open like never before.
The levels of hell run deep, and we just got schooled as to how deep. The revolving door is the surface, POTUS shitcoin was next level, pumping and dumping the world economy with fake Iran announcements to insider trade it and brag about it on national TV was next level, and there are levels beyond these.
Revolving door is a bit gross but we've just seen sooooooooo much worse.
Perception is reality especially online, you get people vehemently pushing their broad generalizations on topics they learned about through memes, comments, and maybe a handful of snips from dubious online articles.
FWIW, these types of people were still a cancer before the internet existed. If CCTVs were being put up on every block in the 1980s, citizens would be indignant no matter what the TV lobbyists told them.
That guy saw Digger.
Jon "look at me and my lack of fingers!" Tester
Anyone who uses folks is suspect. No folk use folks in regular conversation.
LOL. I go to an 18-day-long Folk festival and as a songwriter I am a member of Folk Alliance International.
For what it's worth, "folks" is my preferred gender-neutral noun for a large group of humans. So, point of order, but at least one folk uses "folks" regularly. :D
Next they’re gonna ban saying y’all!
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I mean, in the quote "people" would have made sense and worked just the same. It does feel excessively corpo-speak, especially when you consider the full context of the article.
Well, far be it from me to agree with some dumb suit- your ear is as good as mine and so I don't really take issue with the claim that "folks" feels false.
That said, [language|words|vocabulary|poetry-if-you will] is [neat|enjoyable|endlessly fascinating|cruel|miraculous] in that words can be [endlessly|randomly|carefully][substituted|variegated|swapped] while still making sense and working [more-or-less|roughly|similarly] the same.
Huh??? It's definitely a part of my everyday vocabulary, and of many people I know.
Obama does, and Trump doesn't.
Anybody that doesn't say "folks" to me is suspect, and I probably wouldn't trust them.
I don't get it, what's wrong with the midwest?
South, Midwest, West for sure all say folks
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They are the exact same sort of people who do not care about us.
Imagine thinking that politicians are any different to what they say publicly.
All of them are liars and are grifting in front of you.
> All of them are liars and are grifting in front of you.
No, there are good people in Congress who do want to help out normal Americans.
Saying all of them are bad and corrupt is helping the bad and corrupt ones.
> No, there are good people in Congress who do want to help out normal Americans.
No. ALL of them are liars and do what is best for their political party. They are lobbied (bribed) very easily to appease the one that has the most money and they even insider trade on key legislation before it becomes law.
Even when they get caught, it is a slap on the wrist. If any of us did the same thing, we would be in prison.
There is no need to defend this grift.
What if I told you that there are more than two numbers? What if there are things which are neither 0% nor 100%? What if there are politicians who are not perfect but also far better than the far right?
What do they think Tester can do for them?
Help them meet and target campaign donations to people he knows in Congress.
No strings attached, of course.
QA
Question Avoidance.
I still don't get what is inherently evil with Palantir. Is it the use-cases? The clients? The technology? The founder?
I mean does it do anything I couldn't do with Postgres?
It's the combination of capability and clients.
Way back in the day, when Twitter was a thing and the API feeds were reasonably accessible, people were using tweets to build network graphs of terrorist cells and drawing maps of territories gangs controlled in major cities. It's amazing what people would put on twitter, and assuming that a micro blogging platform open to the public wouldn't be an incredibly fertile ground for the people looking for them.
This was all done in excel spreadsheets at first, then custom built tools later on. Palantir was one of the early tools, though not the most capable at the time, just the one with the most red-tape-cutting backing.
It's just political hatred and jealousy from what I can tell. They make a lot of different software, it's not like it's just a custom type of database. They don't have any sort of information that didn't exist before, it's just new ways of presenting that information. Instead of $$$$$ tax dollars being spent in secret, it's $$ and the company is in the spotlight. Anyone against transparency and cost-savings naturally hates them, but I don't know where the other hatred comes from.
They are the accessible “head” of an evil industry (data brokers) that should be regulated to near-death. The whole industry, not just Palantir.
Every aspect of the industry from initial collection to resale to packaging to presentation needs scrutiny.
They are not data brokers, they do not own or collect any data. It is owned, collected, and used by the People via their governments.
They are a analysis and presentation layer that is used to plug in data sources gathered by brokers (or other parties) and present it for other uses. Yes, they themselves don’t gather this data, but they do make it seamless to use the data.
I’ll admit they are much less culpable than companies like LexisNexis or CLEAR (or even shadier outfits), and those companies should receive the lion’s share of the scrutiny, but Palantir is not blameless.
Then what do you blame them for?
Knowingly building an apparatus that evil people can use to more easily do evil things, and which seems to have that as its primary purpose. And then naming it after a similar device used by a Tolkein villain. All accidental, I’m sure.
IBM didn't own or collect lists of Jews and undesirables, it just sold machines to the owners of that data.
Honestly I'm not sure what this analogy means. On one hand, should we let IBM off the hook because they only sold the Excel of the 1930s? On the other hand, if not many people in the world have spreadsheets and you sell yours to Hitler, maybe you bear more responsibility than you would if everyone had spreadsheets.
Palantir, if the hype is true, is building something currently rare. They also probably tailor their product to their customer more than IBM did. And there are rumors, which I don't have time to investigate at the moment, that they cross-polinate datasets between customers, which would make them a broker/owner/collector.
>During his time in office, Tester voted for the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which rolled back parts of the Dodd–Frank Act,
From Wikipedia, this shows he fully aligns with Palantir. He seems to be 1 step away from being a Republican.
So it cam probably be said he is a DINO (democrat in name only).
Really disappointed in Tester about this
“They (palantir) have a story to tell”, what a shameless sleezeball.
They are politicians and they are not your friends nor do they care about us.
Some things really start to make sense when you look at the political landscape from this point of view.
It’s a career that self-selects for narcissists and sociopaths. What kind of person thinks they should lead others and is willing to treat them like resources and pawns?
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Why are you pro-sexism?
Gender equality = breakdown of traditional family structure in my mind. That’s just going to lead to horrible societies and broken kids.
What are you using as examples to measure "horrible societies and broken kids"? In my mind, the Taliban represents what you're wanting vs Nordic countries represent what you don't want. It's pretty clear to me the Taliban is the horrible society with broken kids (watch the "The Kite Runner" for more info) here where-as in Nordic countries you have a fairly high quality of life. What is your take on this?
I appreciate the honesty so I put this forward sincerely - you dont think its problematic to essentially force women down a certain life path (aka "gender roles")? - how is this compatible with individual liberty? Presumably you would not like being forced into a traditinal "peasant role" of toiling on the farm, which 99% of men were subjected to before modernity, perhaps that can help you relate.
Unfortunately on the last part, we may be heading back there, except toiling as a peasant is better than the alternative we will get.
Can you elaborate why gender equality breaks down family structure? Why would it lead to broken children and societies? I’m legitimately curious why you think this.
I'd say you're hoping to (fallaciously) turn the clock back to some imagined rosy past rather than directly addressing the actual oppressive dynamic we're facing today. Women being able to enter the workforce was not a problem for family formation in and of itself.
The number of workers doubling while the definition of full time employment per worker stayed fixed rather than being halved is the problem. Combined with the Fed mandate for an inflationary treadmill, this made it so the new standard lifestyle is now a two income household - with all those domestic chores still getting done in mostly system-illegible ways. And while you can live with dirty floors or buy cleaning services in a competitive market, raising children is an extraordinary chunk of domestic work that can't be straightforwardly outsourced.
True choice is good. An illusion of "choice" under a strong economic incentive / paperclip maximizer / Moloch is the liability.
(Also "LGBTQ" is another red herring only involving a small part of the population, but yet emphasized to keep you from focusing on the economic oppression)
Damn hoss, I'm sorry that you can't get a partner without one of the partners being unable to get a bank account. That's gotta be a hard life and a hard thing to think about yourself.
Oh no, I’m happily married. I’m just worried about the future.
> I’m happily married
But is your wife?
GP is probably one of the non-white conservative dudes that are onboard with the rest of the MAGA agenda. The racism is only bad because they are the outgroup on that specific issue, and in harm's way. That group is surprisingly diverse and includes swathes of immigrants from the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa (non-exhaustive list).
They'll only "come around" on LGBTQ issues when it affects them personally, say, if one or more of their kids come out of the closet.
It is a non exhaustive list because in addition to the Middle East, Latin America and Africa, it also includes East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and South East Asia. Having lived there for a while it also (somewhat) includes Eastern Europe and Russia.
It really is everywhere other than progressive parts of the US and Western Europe and I want to turn that around. I don’t like the way it is now.
I'd say OP has a genuine concern, if you do the work to see past the needlessly inflammatory framing. Their pain is coming from somewhere, right? Ostensibly advocating for sexism is not where they started, but rather a product of the hate industry pushing fake solutions on vulnerable people. Writing off their whole point of view (especially when you think it matches a significant group!) rather than focusing on the underlying economic problems is exactly how we ended up with the maggot movement.
I know it's quite tempting to merely cheer blue blue blue after voters soundly rebuked open fascism, but we need to really address the longstanding problems driving that frustration if we don't want to just end up right back there again.
> I'd say OP has a genuine concern, if you do the work to see past the needlessly inflammatory framing
> I know it's quite tempting to merely cheer blue blue blue
I'm not shouting "blue blue blue", I'm talking about the politics of tolerance (or lack thereof).
I am far from the first to make the observation that generalizes gp's comment: a lot of non-white immigrants come from cultures and/or belong to religions that are socially conservative, and are a natural fit for American conservatives - were it not for the racism. Republicans will need to grapple with this, if they don't succumb to ethno-nationalist fascism.
> [...] after voters soundly rebuked open fascism
Sadly, the voters did not rebuke fascism, they just got hit in their pockets, and didn't like it. They knew Trump's agenda in 2024 and voted him back in.
> Ostensibly advocating for sexism is not where they started
That's a big assumption; for a lot of - let's call them culturally conservative folk - disliking the "LGBTQ agenda" and "wokism" is the first common thread binding a bible believin' Southern Baptist Conservative good ol' boy, a conservative Muslimah, and a Hindi Nationalist.
> What I truly want is a party that is sexist/anti LGBTQ but not racist.
Trying to have your disgusting cake and eat it too?
And for maximum freedom and liberty, no doubt.
"oh boy! i sure hope this democratic congress will be less hawkish and pro surveillance than the republican one!"
this democrat congress:
That might be true but it's not implied by this, given that this is a former senator.
The Patriot Act survived nearly two decades with power changing hands between the parties many times. You don't need to look very hard at all to see that this former senator is not much of an exception for either party.
Sure, but I assumed that the poster was talking about the new wave of democrats just voted in in the recent election. It's possible, even likely, that they'll be as irritating and terrible as the rest of congress has been since the PATRIOT Act, just that it's not implied by this event. They haven't even been sworn in yet.
The more leftwing ones are much less likely to fall for this. But they have had to fight some of the "democrat blob" along the way (e.g. the Hayley Stevens meltdown).
The bar is on the floor. To be less hawkish than every Republican this decade/century/millenium, Democrats just have to avoid starting a forever war. That's it.
That's not entirely true. They just have to fail at stopping the forever wars, so they can play the victim card and say "I tried! If only you'd given me more money, I could have done it."
> If only you'd given me more money
Only one party seems to have a spending problem, and it's not the Democratic one.
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I mean, Obama ended the Iraq War and Biden ended the Afghanistan War.
Would have been nice if Obama ended both of them, sure, but it's not like anyone threw Biden a parade.
Yes, but the 2028 Democratic President hasn't traveled back in time to stop Trump from starting a war in Iran, so both sides are basically the same, you see?
Palantir really loves hiring former public office holders, must've happened at least a dozen times across US and UK by now.
They love for public office holders to know that if they behave during their term, a cushy gig might be waiting for them after.
The Carlyle Group showed the way.
Elephants make money, donkeys make money, American citizens get slaughtered.
> Palantir has long denied claims it aids mass surveillance on the American public
This seems at odds given that Alex Karp went on TV talking about how Palantir's tech is used to kill people. [1]
Pointing out Alex Karp saying something evil isn't exactly "original", but forgive me when I don't really believe their PR bullshit.
[1] https://youtu.be/NQ5107TKTBg
Those two points are completely orthogonal though, what's the invisible bridge between:
1. mass surveillance on the American public
2. Palantir's tech is used to kill people
I suppose you're right, there isn't an "A implies B" relationship there. That said, if the tech is used to kill people, and given that their tech is primarily data analytics and correlation, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that their tech being used to kill people is likely as a result of surveillance. They aren't producing katanas or machine guns; the only realistic way their tech could be used to kill people is surveillance.
That said, they also did a pretty big contract with ICE recently. Trump 2's ICE is basically just a private militia right now, so it's easy to assume that their tech is used for surveillance.
Ah, yes. The Congress to Mouth of Sauron pipeline.
Time to pay the protection fee buddy buddy!
See also Dame Cressida Dick, former Metropolitan Police commissioner, who's been hired to sell surveillance to the UK.
Mark Rowley's already said how much they 'need' Palantir too. It's all very, very fishy.
> "My agreement with Palantir is advisory in nature, it is not lobbying," Tester, who lost reelection to the Senate in 2024, told NPR in an interview.
Advice on who/how to lobby is not 'lobbying' but come on.
I mean... they've been around for 20+ years, they know exactly how to play this game.
And now: "President Donald Trump has nominated Palantir security chief Michael LoSapio to lead CISA, putting an executive from the controversial government supplier in line to run America's civilian cyber defense agency"
Fox is CEO of the henhouse. It's cartoonish, nobody seems to care at all any more about looking remotely ethical.
The 'Democrats' in Montana are the worst sort. They pretend to support the people, but then slow walk anything the people actually want, leading to accidentally fall short at the last minute. Then after they've spent 18 years in the Senate doing this, they get rewarded for their incompetence, by the people who had the most to gain from it.
Steve Bullock did the same thing when he rode out his last term. He became the head of the largest Democrat Dark Money SuperPac.
The Bankhead/Bodnar race was a complete clown show too, designed to split the vote to ensure Alme won. Watch where Bodnar and Bankhead reappear later, I'm sure they'll magically land in places with money and power.
Democrats love war and billionaires almost as much as republicans. "Scrutiny" in the title essentially functions as propaganda to manage perceptions of the public. Ha, the unpopular Palantir will be facing "scrutiny" meaning more tea-and-coffee conversations between lobbyists and government officials. Maybe a few beers.
We need real socialists in congress to reign these guys in and obliterate these companies.
These are the companies most closely integrated with the government. If USA went socialist, much more of our production capacity would be allocated to this work, not less. The most likely scenario is that instead of choosing to work for a company and being able to step away from the job when you felt it crossed your moral line, you'd just be forced to continue working there. I think threatening families is the most often used tactic in socialist societies.
Crazy take.
What part of giving the government more power do you think would make it behave in a more open and just way?
The part where the private sector is five times larger than the public sector and completely out of control in exactly the ways it wants to be, so giving it even more power is a deeply unserious strategy for addressing any of the problems it has created.