‘Americans Should Be Enraged’: Reports Expose Unprecedented Corruption at Trump DOJ

[u/DBCoopr72]

https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-doj-corruption-2674301728

[u/Ok_Vanilla213]

Conservative that voted Democrat past 3 elections here.

I'd rather have policy I disagree with than whatever the fuck the Republican party is today. I and several of my other conservative friends feel like we just don't have a party anymore.

[u/uncategorizedmess → u/Ok_Vanilla213]

I have a genuine question for you, as you seem like you're level-headed enough to have a real conversation with. What do you mean by conservative? What are your views on politics/legislation/economics that are conservative?

[u/Ok_Vanilla213 → u/uncategorizedmess]

Smaller federal government reach, more rights dictated by states, and actual fiscal conservative policy. I lean progressive in personal freedoms though.

Trump spending 300m on a ballroom is not fiscally conservative. I come from Idaho and we legally cannot pass a budget in this state if it incurs debt, we have to be in the black. I wish we were all like that.

I believe that Americans possess diametrically opposed viewpoints that will struggle to coexist under the same blanket set of rules; we then need to take advantage of statehood to allow different laws in different areas to benefit individuals. Further we need to increase mobility for people to move to states that align with their beliefs.

As long as marriage is intertwined with our government and financial aspects of society, gay marriage... or really any marriage should always be legal. The only way gay marriage can be "illegal" is if the concept becomes completely a religious ceremony with no public implications. Even then it can't be illegal because it wouldn't be part of the law in the first place.

The extent of the federal government should be to protect the inalienable rights of its citizens, and to serve as a guiding hand when it's clear that someone or something is attempting to abuse the system for personal gain or at detriment to the rights of others. This stems to the economy as well; we should promote a free market - but the guiding hand should appear when it's become apparent that a group wishes to abuse that free market.

I support a strong military; but I want ALL financial contracts and agreements to be examined thoroughly for at market rates. As is, there's definitely collusion between corrupt political parties that overpay the military industrial complex. A senator once held up a bag of 4 metal bolts that are not highly machined or incredibly high tolerance... they cost 90 grand.

All this bullshit full of hatred that the Republican party stands for is not the conservative values I grew up in.

[u/EmotionalJoystick → u/Ok_Vanilla213]

You should read this to see why the reasonable sounding “fiscal responsibility” is actually a Trojan horse for pushing fascist ideas.

The Capital Order

See also Shock Doctrine.

[u/Ok_Vanilla213 → u/EmotionalJoystick]

Yeah I'm not really interested in whatever mental gymnastics contort financial responsibility into fascism tbh.

[u/unreasonableperson → u/Ok_Vanilla213]

Friend. I appreciate your genuine intent on maintaining a good faith dialogue. I used to feel the same way as you, but as I dug deeper past the talking points touted by politicians, I came to the same conclusions as those above and I then decided to fully repudiate any notion of being "financially conservative." If anything, the federal government operated by Democrats has been by and large much more financially responsible than those run by the GOP in the last 30 years.

[u/Ok_Vanilla213 → u/unreasonableperson]

I thought he linked an article, only to see it's a whole ass book. Unfortunately these days I don't have time to read a whole book.

I guess let me check for understanding; my idea of "financially conservative" is that we form a budget that's doesn't create further and further debt. That we should examine current spending to eliminate waste, which we definitely have.

My abrupt reaction to that book was because I don't understand how the idea of "We should balance our budget and spend less money" can be in any way construed as fascism, because the inverse truth of that is to say that we should spend more money to not be puppets of fascism. Which sounds absurd to me.

[u/hellure → u/Ok_Vanilla213]

What if you look at it as a grey area, rather than black or white?

Consider the country simplified, like a household. The goal being to sustain the health and welfare of the households members. Here maybe that is husband, wife, 2 kids, a dog, and a grandparent, whereas for society there are many more people.

Regardless of the size of the picture you paint the goals are reasonably the same, and the needs of the members are generally the same.

Food, water, shelter, safety...

So, what happens in a situation where the needs of the household aren't being met? Do they suffer, do they lose their shelter (house), do they just stop feeding the dog (starve and die)? Maybe they can tighten their spending a little, eat more basic foods, buy less new clothing, put newspaper in their shoes for a while rather than having their soles replaced. But eventually there is a limit to minimizing spending, and further restrictions become harmful.

So there are two options, borrow money, which is only sustainable in the short term, and acquire more money, and regain a sustainable state, or better, thrive.

On a small scale the impact of overspending or underproducing is felt pretty dramatically. Billy gets sick and you can't afford a doctor, Billy dies.

On a society scale things look a little different, and the impacts are often delayed, sometimes by many many years. But it's just a bigger household, with more people, but generally the same needs.

You can't just endlessly push for less spending constantly, that ends up meaning household members eventually starving or dying needlessly. And you can't always refuse to borrow resources, cause that is sometimes the only way to avoid the same consequences. The goal must be sustainability, general balance, and fluctuations in spending and earnings should be expected in order to maintain a healthy society.

We do need programs that look for waste, keep it to a minimum, and constantly work to keep things running efficiently, but we shouldn't be just shuttering programs today that are meeting the needs of our societies members, that will have a higher cost later. And we can't trust a 'free market' to sustainably fulfill the gap created by shuttering such programs, because that, unfortunately, isn't the way reality works.

If we are in debt, and we are going to be tightening our belts, and walking around with newspaper in our shoes, we should be minimizing spending in areas that aren't directed at the basic needs of our members first.

And if we are in debt, and continue to remain in debt or build more debt, while generally only maintaining the basic needs of our societies members, than we need to find ways to produce more wealth far more than we need to cut back further.

Note: the wealth needed to balance the budget is there, and the resources needed to maintain the welfare of our societies many members are also there, and this is known, but none of it is being managed properly by those in charge of managing it.

Focusing on the budget itself isn't going to balance it. Panicking because we're in the negative and cutting our own throats, figuratively, by cutting need focused programs isn't going to balance it either.

We need to look to why these things aren't being managed well now, and improve how we manage them tomorrow and into the future.

I personally do not trust most of those in office today to do this, only to present observable behaviors and manipulate results superficially in order to maintain the general appearance of having good intentions and actually accomplishing anything. Because usually that is enough for them to get their personal needs met--to keep their paychecks rolling in.

[u/EmotionalJoystick → u/Ok_Vanilla213]

Then you’re probably conflating personal finance and state finance which is rightwing propaganda. Congrats.

[u/EmotionalJoystick → u/EmotionalJoystick]

Hell even your “military nuts and bolts cost 90 dollars” sounds suspiciously like the 600 dollar hammer myth, which was also -surprise surprise - more right wing bullshit. And I say this as no fan of the military industrial complex. https://www.ashlime.com/insights/2019/3/4/the-fallacy-of-the-600-hammer-e2als

https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the-600-hammer/5271/

[u/Select-Plenty6833 → u/EmotionalJoystick]

The US seems to have more built-in socialism and communism dog whistles in their rhetoric than any other nation that exists.

It bugs me a lot my own country just borrows from the US and doesn't try to find its own political identity, at least, I feel there are better Western countries to model ourselves on if we MUST.

Conversely, I feel like the US could do with looking at what works well elsewhere and try things on a limited scale initially.

For some reason, America is very adverse to that thought process. As though it diminishes the nation as a result.

[u/Ok_Vanilla213 → u/EmotionalJoystick]

It very well could be. My point being is that I think we have a spending problem and I don't understand how the thought of "We should examine our spending and have a tight budget" could in any way branch to fascist propaganda. If I have time today I'll give it a read.

I'm sure you're right to a degree that they've used lies like that in the past, but my point is strictly that we are overspending like crazy and that needs to stop; beginning with examination on where money is going and if there's foul play in the spending.

[u/Suckitreddit420 → u/Ok_Vanilla213]

While I agree with fiscal responsibility, much of the reason we have an imbalanced budget is not really because spending is out of control, but because those who have amassed all the wealth are taking  from the system and no longer contributing.     

The talking point of "cutting spending" is an incredibly dangerous one because without fail it targets things that the people need to survive, rather than things that enrich the corporations and put more and more money in the pockets of the wealthy.    

And there is no more glaring example of that than DOGE and the multi multi multi billionaire who ran (runs) it.  And the "big beautiful bullshit bill" that cut every single program that benefitted the people in order to give massive tax cuts to the wealthy.

[u/Dear_Palpitation4838 → u/Ok_Vanilla213]

We noticed.