Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corruption. Show all posts
It's Weird Out There
It's not about arresting "the worst" criminals, or even about criminals at all. They can just grab you if they don't like your looks, or if they need a couple more victims to meet their quota.
Imagine that your cousin is hoarding spoons. Her kitchen drawers are full of spoons. She has crates of spoons stacked in the garage. When you comment that she has more spoons than she can possibly use, she says, "I might need them someday." Then you find out that her neighbor also hoards spoons, in some kind of competition to see who can own the most spoons in the county. Between the two of them, they have actually created a local spoon shortage, making it difficult for folks to obtain spoons for their families. They know this, but they keep obsessively hoarding more and more spoons, setting world records for spoon accumulation, while other people are reduced to using sticks to eat their pudding.
Why do we think it's crazy when it's spoons, but not when it's dollars?
Once upon a time, crooked politicians had the dignity to do their corruption and bribe-taking in secret.
Imagine a department manager in the company where you work, who often admits he doesn't remember orders that he issued, has never heard of company policies, doesn't know what people in his department are doing, admits to making important decisions based on the vague opinions of "many people", can't explain the reason for directions he gave to employees, often seems unable to remember events he was involved in just a few days or a few hours ago. That guy would be fired.
People who are unimaginative and without skills, unable to create anything interesting or valuable, make themselves powerful the only way they can, through destruction.
"Privatize It"
The purpose of a government agency is to provide a service. The purpose of a business is to make a profit. When public services are privatized, the quantity and quality of the service is reduced in order to maximize profit.
In a free market, you can leave a business that provides bad products and services. When a business has a government contract, you don't have that choice, and you are paying (through taxes) for that bad service.
But What's In It For Me?
Every chance they get, Musk, trump, and their closest buds try to demonize "NGOs". NGO just stands for Non-Government Organization, or what we Americans usually refer to as a "nonprofit", like the Red Cross, Samaritan's Purse, or Save the Children.
These guys claim that nonprofits are all corrupt and are stealing money to enrich their leaders. Musk has even claimed that organizations feeding starving children are criminal. This is because Musk and trump simply cannot believe anyone would want to do good things for other people. They believe the only reason to do anything in life is to make money. Healing the sick, feeding the hungry, making the world a better place in some way -- these ideas just don't make sense to them.
Whatever they do, they're only in it for the money, and they assume other people are just like them. "Those charities must be stealing the donations," they think. "That's what I would do."
Telling them that they should support a program that cures disease is not persuasive, unless there is a way for them to profit from it. Telling them that cutting a program will cause suffering and death is not persuasive, because they do not believe human lives (other than their own) have value beyond the ability to generate profits. Once you understand this about them, the bizarre-seeming things they say and do are easily explained.
Random Thoughts
trump could go to Arlington, dig up JFK's grave, gnaw on the bones, and then post the video in an ad on Tik Tok, and his cult would argue that it was okay because nothing he does is ever wrong and their grandpa never really liked the Kennedys anyway.
I don't believe in ghosts, but I have met perfectly sane people who saw *something*
Mainstream news outlets declared Joe Biden unfit to run because he spoke complete sentences in a very soft voice. They do not question donald trump's fitness, even when he quite loudly speaks nonsense.
People who insist on talking to you through the bathroom door.
The "spoils system" was a corrupt tradition whereby government jobs were given to people loyal to the party in power. It led to incompetence, waste, damage and chaos. In the US, it ended after the Civil War. trump's Project 2025 plans to bring it back by firing thousands of civil service employees and replacing them with party loyalists.
Do you like having a device in your car that can tell you, turn by turn, exactly how to get where you're going, while keeping track of traffic incidents and offering alternate routes? Without educated people who took science classes, you'd still be using paper maps.
Certain politicians blame lax border security for a flood of fentanyl entering the country. They seem to have forgotten that most fentanyl is brought in by US citizens at legal ports of entry. People choose to take drugs. Without the demand, the supply would end. But addressing the causes of addiction is more complicated than just blaming the border, so it's beyond them.
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