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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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...
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.
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.
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.
So not just giving up "increase," but I'd advocate giving up bank or stock accounts altogether. Democracy is worth it.
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.
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.
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.
I think what is needed is restrictions on jobs people can do after leaving public office.
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.
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.
If you were the VP of some company with a trillion dollars of revenue your compensation wouldn't be under a million/year.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Watson,_Baron_Watson_of_Wy...
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.
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.
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).
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.
Like a doctor believes in disease
Like a preacher believes in sin
Like a teacher believes in ignorance
What is and isn't "Big databases" isn't up for debate, point to the exact example and ask them about it.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
These people are a cancer.
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.
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.
What causes you to disagree?
Do you have a citation for that, or are you putting words into the FTC's mouth that nobody ever said?
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...
Revolving door is a bit gross but we've just seen sooooooooo much worse.
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
Imagine thinking that politicians are any different to what they say publicly.
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. 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.
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).
I mean does it do anything I couldn't do with Postgres?
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.
Every aspect of the industry from initial collection to resale to packaging to presentation needs scrutiny.
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.
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)
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 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 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 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.
Trying to have your disgusting cake and eat it too?
this democrat congress:
Only one party seems to have a spending problem, and it's not the Democratic one.
Would have been nice if Obama ended both of them, sure, but it's not like anyone threw Biden a parade.
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. mass surveillance on the American public
2. Palantir's tech is used to kill people
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.
Advice on who/how to lobby is not 'lobbying' but come on.
Fox is CEO of the henhouse. It's cartoonish, nobody seems to care at all any more about looking remotely ethical.
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.
We need real socialists in congress to reign these guys in and obliterate these companies.