Every man in the White House is benefiting himself first.
Look at Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. In his previous job as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, he became deeply involved with stablecoin cryptocurrency Tether. Supposedly Cantor Fitzgerald holds close to a hundred billion dollars of funds for Tether, but this has never been verified by an audit — the only confirmation is from Lutnick himself.
In his White House job, he has worked hard to make it easier for companies like Tether to operate in the US with no oversight. And why wouldn’t he? As the sole guarantor of Tether’s credibility, he’s probably making billions from them.
Add to the fact that people are still defending this gross corruption and both siding it. It seems to me that Americans have went from “drain the swap” to “corruption is okay because the other side does it too. My only regret is that I am not part of the government to score some money too.” It is now a race to becoming a low trust, third world government.
I wonder if government by random assignment would help, since a random number of citizens would then prioritise their own agenda but for a limited amount of time/scope/power.
Actually no, not really. The safeguards were mostly customs, not laws, so they can be safely ignored.
And what few laws there are, like the emoluments clause, seem to be entirely unenforceable because it’s not clear anyone has standing to bring a suit and the president presumably isn’t going to enforce the law on himself.
What we’ve learned in the last twelve years is our democracy was built on the good will of the people we elected, and when we stopped demanding the good will with our votes it was no longer guaranteed.
This! A "silver lining" from the current adminstration is that we've become aware that we've left way to much to custom. It's time to put some laws in place to act as hard guard rails. Or, as another commentor mentions, incentivise congress to exert control as they are supposed to do.
> This! A "silver lining" from the current adminstration is that we've become aware that we've left way to much to custom. It's time to put some laws in place to act as hard guard rails.
The US federal government had such laws -- they were implemented around 1910.
We rolled them back in the 60-80s in the interest of executive efficiency.
So it wouldn't be creating a novel check and balance, but rather returning to a previous configuration where the executive's powers are more devolved into strong independent balancing bodies via Congress.
(And no, the Supreme Court hasn't removed this possibility, because Congress hasn't passed intentional and unambiguous laws like this in 100+ years)
Yes, we cannot take politicians willingly following past norms for granted.
We knew this already. Washington set the precedent of only serving two terms and it lasted all the way until FDR. Then after he got 4 terms they amended the constitution to prevent it.
I sincerely hope similar things happen after this administration, but, I am not optimistic. The Biden administration didn’t make any move in that direction (and he violated plenty of norms too) but perhaps the new level will scare them into action. Fingers crossed.
I think Biden was sort of the last gasp of trying to "turn the other cheek" and show by deeds and words what an inclusive, forward thinking administration looked like.
I think a lot of people are now done with that, and are looking to burn down some things, figuratively speaking.
Congress has a lot of power here even outside of impeachment, which was always meant to be the nuclear option. The tariff power is theirs, they delegated it to the President in certain situations willingly, like national emergency. The Supreme Court will not rule that they cannot do that, they surely can, but they may rule that there is not a national emergency. (I think congressional Republicans hope for that, it gets them out of the situation without causing them to be opposed to Trump.)
The Supreme Court is never “complicit”, they call balls and strikes. Most complaints about the court are actually really complaints about our laws or constitution. For instance, I am as pro choice as anyone, but the Supreme Court definitely made the right call overturning Roe as the constitution clearly does not have a right to privacy, does not give the federal government the right to regulate abortion, and clearly delegates that power to the state. I do not like that (I’d support a right to privacy amendment wholeheartedly) but it is correct.
Congress in this case is also functioning more or less as intended. The whole point of democracy is that the government should reflect the will of the voters. If the voters overwhelmingly chose Trump, to the point where they’ll vote for whatever person he endorses in Congressional primaries, this is the will of the people. I don’t understand it still, but this is the electorate getting what they wanted. (That may change very much in a year.)
Not sure what to see in mid term. American people chose Trump, knowing he’s corrupted. They will do so again and again.
The only thing may led to their hesitation is trump and allies are so incompetent that they can’t even pretend the economy is ok, for which I think we are not there yet.
Sometime around 2016 everyone learned that “corrupt” was just some synonym of “bad” and here we are, showered in a repeat of an administration of endless actual corruption.
In every practical sense, this is the grifter administration. They know they are untouchable at the moment, so everyone is out to get their piece of the pie.
All decisions and plays have some financial motives behind them. There's a reason POTUS admires Russia, and their style of governance - if he could, and had the time, the US would be a mirror of just that.
Keep the people occupied with a non-stop firehose of grievance bullshit, and be laser focused on enriching yourself and your allies.
EDIT: Gotta love the downvotes. The sheer level of shamelessness exhibited by the this admin, and people somehow still run to their defense.
Assuming the old unhealthy man doesnt die and can make those pardons, and you are still in his good graces when he is handing them out… sounds like a risky bet to me.
They have never been held accountable, nothing short of a revolution would hold them accountable right now. They're also becoming rich beyond consequences, so doesn't even matter if there are some consequences for it later.
Most corrupt administration in American history by far. Sadly, not at all surprising. Many people are somehow ok with this cesspool and it is sickening.
Half the country will just grumble something about Nancy Pelosi and how everyone is corrupt in response to points about the current administration being corrupt. I feel like people have just lost all sense of scale when it comes to political matters. Yes, Nancy Pelosi making a series of improbably fortuitous trades while in office is bad and she should probably go to jail for insider trading. Is that the same thing as the Trump accepting many hundreds of millions, likely billions, in direct cryptocurrency bribes from foreign and domestic agents? Obviously not, the latter has a much, much larger in scale and has direct negative effect on the American people. Half the country is willing to equate the two and, throw their hands up, and say its all the same.
No. Large numbers of Americans aren't. Corruption and abuse of power is why we we have millions of people protesting. It may not be covered on the mainstream news but I was on the ground in Chicago where I easily saw a quarter of a million protestors. New York, Los Angeles and other big cities had similar numbers.
it's telling that travelling "first class"
means more leg room , a wet towlett, and microwaved slop, but all in all is just bieng pushed through a big metal tube, like everybody else, and the important people are gone, as they travel private, bank private, go to private clubs, etc
Hard working generational busineses and farm familys are now explisetly, second class, and even having millions will only get you an airplane with propellors and not the required jet, with the rapidly changing and irrational policys making those smaller, hard won fortunes, precarious.
It's a situation where the "base" is waking up under threat from all sides and will start to make exceptionaly, pragmatic decsions.
Exactly. An Etsy shop and a CNC will only get you so far. The tariffs are killing businesses bottom lines and either they raise prices or close up shop. If they raise prices, they anger their customers. If they close shop, they anger their customers. My friends are furious that they are in this position.
Then there’s a few local farmers who basically sold their land to housing and gone are 150 year old heritage sites. Replaced with a Ryan Homes banner for townhomes starting in the low $400k’s.
It’s back to the point where only generational wealth will survive and the American dream of working hard to achieve it is gone unless you scam people with AI slop or fake accounting. The back and forth over what’s “true”. As if truth itself has no solid underlying footing in reasoning and science.
No. It all doesn’t make sense because ReasonGPT is down…
If "We the People" means anything anymore, the blatant, pervasive criminality, incompetence, and corruption of this ghoulish administration will be judged harshly in the midterm elections.
But it would take significant change in the US to regain the international trust that the country formerly enjoyed among allies.
This too, shall pass, but we need to make it happen. I am looking forward to the day when we spit on their remains, destroy their ballroom, torch his painting and turn this administration into a footnote in history that future historians will hold up as an object lesson. Let's hope it happens without too much bloodshed, but we fought too hard and for too long to watch this happen to this once great republic.
> But if you reran the 2024 election today you'd likely get the same result. Nothing has happened to change anyone's mind.
I don't think this is true. Trump's approval rating among independents has dropped 20%+. There's a reason he lost the 2020 election, but voters had 4 years to forget those reasons and look back with rose-colored glasses. Now they remember.
> They were very clear about their priorities, and those who voted for it accepted that.
I don't think this is true either. (I did not vote for Trump, to be clear.) Project 2025 were very clear about their priorities, but before the election Trump tried to pretend that he had no knowledge of or involvement with Project 2025. After the election, he changed his tune.
Trudeau got a lot of hate, but won next election. But your point stands, covid was turning point in Trudeau's popularity, Liberal's kept power between Trudeau stepping down more gracefully than Biden, Carney being a very centralist candidate (it's a compliment when your opposition is down to accusing you of stealing their policy ideas), & Trump's recent victory giving many the ick towards Poilievre
There is a wall in place that causes people to believe things others don’t, and vice versa.
To those seeing awful corruption here, Hunter Bidens $500k Ukrainian gas job was legitimate. They were not outraged by the emails describing a 10% cut for ‘the big guy’. Joe Biden joining business conference calls was fine.
It seems like the end of the world, but it’s no worse than we’ve seen, historically. It’s always been there.
How is Hunter Biden writing a letter to an embassy the same as untraceable investments into Trump's meme coin? No deals or payments ever materialized from the Burisma letter or "the big guy" email... while Trump and his family have literally amassed billions (with a B) in profits and net worth from crypto grifting.
To compare these things to what is happening now is disingenuous. I believe you know that, but you choose loyalty to MAGA over any principles or ethics.
Doubtless Hunter Biden's job was a naked nepo quasi-bribery thing, and he said and did all sorts of ridiculous things. Dude is indefensible.
But on one hand you have a president joining a conference call and not discussing business, and on the other hand you have a president literally demanding tribute, gold bars, a ballroom, firing all available oversight, blackmailing all of the universities to toe his ideological line, installing crypto and antivax scammers, and looting like it's going out of style, and meanwhile all of his kids are becoming millionaires trading openly off the name and the power.
"Barron’s first major business move came in 2024, when he co-founded World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture launched with his father and older brothers. He is even credited inside the family with explaining basic crypto concepts to his father. After Trump won the presidency, the company exploded in value. Forbes estimates it added more than $1.5 billion to Trump family wealth—about 10% of which belongs to Barron." (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/etimes/trending/net-wort...)
Trump admin is a godsend. He just does what everyone before him did, just openly. Which is better in a way - before him the upper classes in the west were quite adept at hiding corruption.
The presidential libraries, the foundations, the speaking fees, the books, the revolving door between companies and regulators - was it any different in essence?
It is not, the west corporations history of corruption in Latin America, Africa and Asia is at this same level but was heavily under-reported/persecuted, for obvious reasons.
The important difference is not the price, but the extent of the corruption. A politician whose public persona is clean, law-abiding, respectful of norms and institutions, and generally benevolent will be limited in how far they will go to abuse their power and sell out their country -- even if they are secretly very cynical and amoral. A politician who is openly corrupt, above the law, norm breaking, and vindictive will be free to do much more damage.
The Netflix deal with Obama for $50M and book deals for $65M are a bit blatant. Certainly a $8B crypto rug pull is far worse by a few orders of magnitude. I think it’s weird that these are the new standards, I really hate presidential politics. Perhaps Jimmy Carter was the least damaging and he was forced to give up his family farm.
One difference is that the few on the right that I know (I’m sure a biased sampling) think that what Trump did is wrong but those on the left seem to have forgotten all about Obama’s deals or worse they think that its kosher.
Maybe you can explain why the Netflix deal is corruption? The deal was signed after he was out of office (2018). Did he or people in his administration create policy that benefited Netflix in exchange for this deal? Was there any sort of quid pro quo? Where is the abuse of office?
The ability for Netflix to operate as it does is entirely dependent on banks lending it vast sums of money, the same banks that staffed the Obama admin who continued the bailouts. Corruption doesn’t have to be a direct quid pro quo, that’s the standard needed for bribery, I did not suggest Obama was bribed. Because it’s in the interest of the corrupt to hide their practices the general way of avoiding it is to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and on that standard I believe Obama has failed.
There's a difference between favors and corruption, there has always been. It's something called regulations. We the people must tolerate a certain amount of favors, but there's a line: You cannot accept these favors while in office, particularly so when the exchange involves a public good or decision. You must sell your peanut farm before you hold office. You can't accept a plane from a foreign government in exchange for use of an airbase while in office. The things you do in office must be for the people. The things you do after may be immoral but they don't impact your decisions while in public service.
I don't know where this narrative comes from. He wasn't forced to do any such thing. He voluntarily put his family peanut seed business into a blind trust when elected, with his personal lawyer as trustee. He subsequently only gave up the business once he took control again after his presidency, because it was in massive debt.
I’m assuming the property was mismanaged during his presidency, which means it largely amounts to the same thing. Evidence I would be looking for would be evidence that it wasn’t mismanaged, or that if Carter had retained control that the farm still would have gone bankrupt.
In the general case it’s near impossible to find a third party who can run your family farm as well as you can, a task made more difficult if that person also has to be a lawyer.
You must see the difference between making money from books/speaking fees and using the full power of the US government to create policy that directly benefits your investments (possibly at the detriment to your competitor).
Mr. Huang argued that restricting exports of Nvidia’s chips would push Chinese companies to develop more powerful alternatives.
This is so disingenuous. You think they'll stop developing local alternatives if you sell them your high end chips? That won't even stop Google, much less a command economy like China.
There's a reason Huang's quote is in context of PRC talent.
PRC generates plurality of global AI talent and is projected to generate disproportionate more short/medium term. Nvidia want to delay future where 50%+ of global AI talent working on Huawei/Ascend ecosystem or fragment PRC talent pool so net 50%+ of global AI talent works on CUDA moat for as long as possible (which is strategicially significant depending if you're near/medium term AGI believer). The reality is huge % of foreseeable US AI talent is going to be from PRC anyway, but without fragmenting domestic PRC talent, PRC will be net talent winner. The second order effects of that is PRC will have single direction valve to siphon knowledge (knowledge diffusion + espionage) from SV but the vice versa will be more controlled, a PRC AI blackbox, and faster PRC proliferates domestic AI the less ability for west/NVIDIA to brain drain PRC talent developed from different system. And with hardware gap closing in 5/10/15 years, and energy gap firmly in PRC favour (i.e. US likely not able to close energy gap faster than PRC can close compute gap), and you basically have trendline where PRC will sprint from a few years behind to years ahead once compute constraint lifts from their talent advantage.
If NVIDIA is blocked in China and China keeps developing AI models of comparable quality using home grown chips, it puts into question the dominance of NVIDIA in the market.
If NVIDIA is allowed to continue operating in China, it doesn't matter much if China actually uses NVIDIA or Huawei, as long as there is some plausible deniability that China is using NVIDIA powered clusters for their strongest models.
Subtitle:
David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments.
Could be man or woman, and they’ve been doing it forever. Not news.
Every time I see one of these political hit stories it makes me close the tab for ycombinator for the day.
Look at Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. In his previous job as CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, he became deeply involved with stablecoin cryptocurrency Tether. Supposedly Cantor Fitzgerald holds close to a hundred billion dollars of funds for Tether, but this has never been verified by an audit — the only confirmation is from Lutnick himself.
In his White House job, he has worked hard to make it easier for companies like Tether to operate in the US with no oversight. And why wouldn’t he? As the sole guarantor of Tether’s credibility, he’s probably making billions from them.
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