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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33940 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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Oceania was not after all at war with Eric Adams. Oceania was at war with The Federalist Society. Eric Adams was an ally.

A few days ago, news broke that the DOJ ordered the federal corruption charges against New York City mayor Eric Adams dismissed. As of this writing, the charges have still not been formally dismissed. Apparently, the Attorney General's office can't find anyone willing to sign their name on the dismissal paperwork. The acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Danielle Sassoon, resigned yesterday after refusing to carry out the order. If the name sounds familiar, she was the lead prosecuter in the SBF case. She must be some typical big-city liberal lawyer right? Well, apparently not.

The Federalist Society: "She was a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III."

The gorgeous Miss Sassoon wasn't the only casualty. Reports are at least six people have resigned rather than sign-off on this.

It's worth taking a step back here. Six months ago, anyone would have expected that a big-city Democrat mayor getting indicted on federal corruption charges would have been the reddest of red meat to the online right. How did we get to the point that right-wing law influencers are denouncing the Federalist Society for prosecuting Democrats for corruption? The monkey wrench thrown in the gears is Trump's decision to use the charges as leverage to extract concessions on immigration. A few offhand comments by Adams critical of mass immigration are retroactively cast as the Casus Belli for the initial investigation by Biden's DOJ. Am I missing something here? Why is this not an obvious quid pro quo? I can't tell whether the MAGA claim is that, "yes, this is a quid pro quo, and that's fine", or if the claim is that, "no, actually the corruption charges were themselves corruption. Dismissing the corruption charges is actually fighting corruption".

Adams can’t even do anything on immigration. That said, while corrupt, he’s still less corrupt than the average Democrat machine politician in eg. Chicago or Philadelphia and it’s clear he was (even if justifiably) targeted because the party wanted Garcia.

That said, while corrupt, he’s still less corrupt than the average Democrat machine politician in eg. Chicago or Philadelphia and it’s clear he was (even if justifiably) targeted because the party wanted Garcia.

Proof for either of these claims?

I don't know what you'll take for proof, but let's break it down:

  • Despite it being very obvious, Adam's corruption is hilariously trivial: some nice plane tickets and hotel stays for fast tracking a building.
  • Chicago is an incredibly corrupt city, you don't have to go too far into the past, look at whatever the hell this casino thing is.
  • Chicago is dominated by democrats to an even greater extent than New York City
  • Therefore, while we may not be able to pinpoint who exactly is responsible for each individual instance of corruption, it is rather safe to assume that for the vast majority of cases, they are a democratic politician.
  • So, any of these unnamed but real Chicago democratic politicians could be reasonably considered more corrupt than Eric Adams

This is, of course, not definitive proof, because you might dispute the following assumptions:

  • That this Adams' only instance of corruption: I don't know about only, but it is probably the worst, because nothing else seems to have come out after the indictment.
  • That Chicago is very corrupt: I admit I haven't provided a lot of evidence for this; I am, after all, but a simple terminally online foreigner, but by all accounts, it does seem to be true. Would you dispute this claim?
  • That this instance of corruption is not particularly bad. Maybe you're working with a different assumption from mine: that a very obvious, but small, instance of corruption is worse than diffuse and opaque networks of favors and beneficiaries.

I don't know what you'll take for proof, but let's break it down:

  • Despite it being very obvious, Adam's corruption is hilariously trivial: some nice plane tickets and hotel stays for fast tracking a building.

...

This is, of course, not definitive proof, because you might dispute the following assumptions:

  • That this Adams' only instance of corruption: I don't know about only, but it is probably the worst, because nothing else seems to have come out after the indictment.

I don't know of another allegation of prior corruption, off the top of my head, but committing a second quid pro quo changing mayoral policy in exchange for the Feds dropping the charges for the first quid pro quo, as seems to be the case, would be pretty fucking corrupt.

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