We’ve been spending the last generation funneling as much money to the oligarchs as possible. We’ve seen what that did/does to Russia’s capabilities and we’re somehow surprised that it works the same way here too.

Of course he is.

He’s not the bar we need to rate everybody against, though. Being better than Trump is not enough. Let’s hold our government to reasonable standards.

We built an entire system based on perverse incentives and then act surprised at the outcomes.

In before “But… but… whatabout Trump!”

Americans aren’t lining up to do these jobs at low wages, without proper worker protections. Creating a society that depends on a lower tier of people that have fewer rights is seriously fucked up and is not something we should be embracing.

Siding with the rich business owners who are taking advantage of illegal immigrants is extra weird.

Who brought Trump into this comparison?

You can “win” this argument if you want to. I don’t really care. My issue was with Gates being described as a good hearted oligarch. I’m not trying to rank them or say that Gates is the worst or anything. Rewriting history so that Gates is a good guy is a bit much though.

I’m not going to give you a list, because I have other things to do, but you can read for yourself under Controversies here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Gates.

I was mostly thinking of the decades of anti-trust and “embrace, extend, extinguish”, as well as his sexual harassment of his employees. But I had forgotten that he was besties with Epstein and his wife divorced him after the extent of his endeavors there came out. So I guess child-raping may be on his list too.

Pretty swell guy.

Gates was (and arguably still is) an enormous asshole and has only recently started spending money on “charity” and PR to improve his public image (similar to Carnegie). That you’re willing to let him off the hook for all of his past evils only shows that spending a tiny fraction of their ill-earned gains on PR will wipe their slate clean and people like you will let them off the hook.

If you let Gates, Carnegie, etc off the hook for their rotten past, expect future generations to let Musk et al. off the hook once they buy back their reputation when they get old.

Should we really be propping up wealthy business owners by letting them create a underclass of desperate workers that can be deported at any moment?

Just because Trump is against something doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Broken clock and all.

Deportations aren’t the answer as much as actually prosecuting the “employers”, but having our economy dependent on unauthorized workers is not good at all.

I use this thing all the time. It will serve up ISOs and VMDK images also. It’s quite fast

I would argue that this sort of logical path wouldn’t be too shocking for the founders and they would just count on civility or elections to keep this from happening. The executive pardon itself is a fairly indefensible and corruption-facilitating loophole in the justice system.

He’s the biggest liability to all of his companies. Good on SpaceX for firewalling him from the company as well as they do.

I think that Israel’s habit of constantly fucking with its neighbors makes it more of a liability to the interests of the US. It leads to more local hostility towards US troops in other regions in the area and attacks on US people and interests both abroad and at home (9/11).

A better approach would be to ally with indigenous democracies and help them maintain stability. First, our allies should be at least mostly compatible with our own national values (not theocracies, monarchies, apartheid states, etc). Secondly, allying with an indigenous nation instead of a bunch of settler colonists is less likely to draw the ire of every common person in the region.

lol, somebody modded this up?

So you’ve waded into an article about the criminal behavior of an American policeman, found a comment calling for police accountability in the US and posted some unverifiable anecdotal “evidence” that only qualifies their statement in the vaguest sense, but is aimed to plant uncertainty and doubt in the sentiment that police as a whole are bastards and need better oversight and accountability…

You very much appear to be one of the “good” cops that will do anything to minimize the crimes of his bad brothers. I would say that maybe ACAB only applies to the rotten societies like ours, but you are falling over yourself to cast yourself in the same lot as the bad cop in the article and to defend the profession. That’s not making the statement you think it is.

I’m not sure how things work in your country. You’ve helpfully neglected to even state what country that is (which conveniently makes it difficult to find examples of the state of policing in your country).

This article is discussing American police and so that’s the context of my statements. We don’t do police accountability or oversight here, so your counterpoint doesn’t lend much weight.

Think the following question over yourself. Don’t bother answering it here.

As the enforcer of the law, how many times have you casually broken the law and felt ok doing it? How many times have you seen a fellow police officer break the law and failed to hold them accountable or even helped them cover it up? In your experience, these events may have only involved minor crimes - not murder or rape or anything - but you almost certainly still operated in an environment of willingness to break the law and fraternal duty to protect your colleagues at any cost. The same situation is too common with serious crimes, as we see in the news on a regular basis.

Good cops don’t help cover up the crimes of bad cops.

Once police throwing out/locking up the bad ones starts to become the norm, instead of circling the wagons and covering up each others’ crimes, we’ll start to see that distinction. In our universe in the present, however, the police, their unions, the prosecutors, and the judges all act almost in lockstep to prevent police from ever being accountable for any of their actions in almost all situations. Thus ACAB.

Relieved in the sprinkle pool? If not, I’m disappointed.

Hiring “bad apples” needs to be a crime for the sheriff, chief, etc. It’s sad that’s what it would take to keep guns and badges out of these guys hands.