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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33569 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 15, 2025

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DHS Secretary Homan was alleged to have been caught on video taking a bribe from undercover FBI agents. In the fog of war politics, who knows if this is actually true, maybe eventually we'll see the video and can make an informed judgment.

But forgetting whether or not it happened, the thing that always gets me on these cases is the paltry sums involved: $50K. By comparison, my landscaper drives an F150 Raptor, an $80K truck. Hard to imagine that he's driving around in something more expensive than a Cabinet member in the US government.

That got me into a rabbit hole of bribery cases across the political spectrum

  • MA State Senator Dianne Wilkerson: an amount of cash that fit in her bra (really)
  • USC basketball coach: $4100
  • Mayor of Portage, Indiana James Snyder: $13,000
  • US Representative Michael Myers: $50,000
  • US Representative William Jefferson: Found with $90K cash in his freezer

The lack of ambition here is starling. I've heard cases of embezzlement in the billions (e.g. 1MDB) or at least the mid-millions.

Not sure I have an actual point here, but I guess it's that if someone is going to bribe you, insist on a real sum.

I haven't seen the meat of this story yet. What is the bribe allegedly for? Allowing a terrorist to get a VISA? Given the FBI's recent track record I am highly skeptical that they did good enough police work to have actually made America safer via a sting operation against a Trump Cabinet Official.

In PPP terms, are these greater or lower amounts than typical bribery schedules in countries where that's normal?

Bribery is a business, and setting prices is done by the market. It stands to reason that a smaller market leads to cheaper bribes for supply and demand reasons(after all, we can expect that upwards outliers just get rejected- presumably, bribery in eg Russia is done at the highest price the market will bear, so exceeding the market clearing price with bribery demands just leads to getting nothing at all).

There’s no way there’s enough information for this to be clearing.

I think that one key difference is that your landscaper worked hard to be able to afford that 80k truck, and the fact that it's probably a business expense if he's using it for landscaping and he's making payments that come out of company revenues complicates matters further; relatively poor people who own businesses often have surprisingly expensive pieces of capital equipment or real estate that they wouldn't otherwise own. But even if that's your landscaper's personal vehicle, he didn't just get the money for it as the result of one meeting that didn't involve him doing anything other than making a few phone calls. Asking for preferential treatment during a bidding process probably doesn't result in much more work, if any, than the person with authority has to do anyway. Your landscaper probably does a lot more work for a lot less money in the normal course of business than a corrupt public official does. $2,000 requires at least a solid week of work for most people. There's obviously a premium if the work is illegal, but how much do small-time drug dealers make? What's the overall risk of being caught? The Homan case didn't even involve as much risk as a normal case—if Trump wins and he's in a position to act on the bribe, there's a good chance Trump will kill the investigation. If Harris wins or he doesn't get the position in the Trump administration, then there's no case against him because you can't bribe someone who doesn't have the power to do anything (I will gladly accept $50,000 from anyone here to give them favorable treatment in government contracts). When you break down all the contributing factors and ignore the moral dimension, it would be more surprising if he didn't do it for the relatively large sum of $50,000, which is a good chunk of most Americans' annual income.

It's a good chunk of most Americans' annual income, but it's not a lot in the tier of people we assume are running the upper end of world's most powerful government.

Your landscaper probably does a lot more work for a lot less money in the normal course of business than a corrupt public official does

Indeed. But the idea that he's doing so with capital worth more than the corrupt public official costs is the jarring part.

A provincial premier in BC was brought down (in part) a while ago because some shady builders in his neighbourhood built him a porch and then wouldn't send him a bill -- it was never clear whether or not there was actually anything in it for the builders, but I remember being like, "man, I could build a deck too -- is that really all it takes to get politicians on your side"?

For those of you who would like a link, everything I've found originates from this New York Times article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/us/politics/tom-homan-fbi-trump.html

The video is not public.

The sources are described thusly:

according to people familiar with the case

spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the case

One person familiar with the case

This is the conclusion:

Justice Department officials ultimately decided that the evidence against Mr. Homan was insufficient to support charges of wire fraud, bribery or conspiracy

This does not feel particularly organic nor genuine to me.

DHS Secretary Homan was alleged to have been caught on video taking a bribe from undercover FBI agents. In the fog of war politics, who knows if this is actually true, maybe eventually we'll see the video and can make an informed judgment.

This certainly sounds pretty sketchy. But at a meta-level, how often are undercover FBI agents running sting operations on current (or likely future?) cabinet members? This feels like it could go a lot like the Russiagate fiasco, which wasn't the slam-dunk Democrats thought it would be because the takeaway for at least some on the right was "Wait, you decided to wiretap your political rivals? On that basis?".

Give it a day or two, but I predict a lot of "Why did you spend $50K of taxpayer dollars to try to entrap a high-level Republican on the basis of 'an unrelated investigation'?" takes.

Give it a day or two, but I predict a lot of "Why did you spend $50K of taxpayer dollars to try to entrap a high-level Republican on the basis of 'an unrelated investigation'?" takes.

The obvious answer is that they did the same for Menendez and Jefferson, despite the D in their name.

Obvious in what way? The FBI's recent track record is not even mildly indicative that they are nonpartisan in their targets.

The congressmen who take actual bribes tend to be the dumbest, so it’s still useful to weed them out.

For the smarter ones it’s better to build connections ‘for free’ with lobbyists and then be guided into board and advisory roles when you retire from politics that pay far more than any naked bribe.

What is the incentive to follow through with the plum advisory role after they leave power and aren't worth anything anymore?

Why would anybody take the deal again if you show you don’t follow through?

Building credibility so you can make the same offer to the next set of influential legislators

I think the basic problem there is that being in the top 500 or so most powerful officials in the most powerful state to ever exist in world history is a less attractive/well compensated position than do nothing advisory work, but the public would tar and feather anyone who tries to change that so instead we have this weird system of tacit bribery.

Right, all above board. It's so ridiculous.

Across the board most Americans, even smart ones, regularly misestimate the sums involved in politics. For example, many are under the impression that even everyday candidates are getting giant payouts from massive corporations left and right, who lean on them hard to buy their votes. This is very frequently not the case. I challenge you to look up your local US House rep on opensecrets. Don't just look at top donors, click it and look at all donors. I don't particularly care about doxxing myself, so here is mine, a safe republican seat, which IMO is a classic angle for officially laundered bribery (little accountability if races aren't close). A bunch of PACs giving 10k apiece, but not even that many. Only 7. The rest is a lot of individuals. Far cry from the millions that people seem to get the impression about. No, a lot of these races are more small-dollar than you'd expect.

I've disagreed with people about this before, but in my eyes this suggests bribery isn't actually nearly as common as the median American believes it to be. If corporations have outsized influence, it's through lobbyists. And lobbyists are effective partly because they are effective persuaders and salespeople, quite loud and persistent and charming, and armed with industry facts and inside knowledge and expertise that cows the inexperienced. In short, they present themselves as subject matter experts, and congresspeople find themselves in little mini-bubbles of partisan opinion. Yes, congresspeople read the same news you and I do, and they probably get fired up about partisan issues more than you or I do, at least most of them. The median American thinks of them as pure egotists, ambitious people without morals. I think this is fiction. Most congresspeople are incredibly ambitious, but they also - many of them - at least to some degree initially entered politics because they were fired up about something, and had a big social network of wealthy peers (or their own money) who they could ask for money to make the first leap, not because they felt it was a good career to obtain bribes.

Politicians are people too, and vulnerable to similar psychology.

I think you misidentified the source of bribes. Money given to campaigns are subject to FEC rules attempting to preclude the person running from using the funds privately. It’s why the lawfare against Trump was dumb (ie mixed expenses are not campaign expenses).

In contrast, the real way to bribe someone is doing things like “speaking fees” or “board seats after they leave Congress.” Maybe a good job for the spouse or kid. And industry is careful never to fuck over loyal congresscritters because it is a trust business.

Yeah, that's fair, those are also common avenues of influence. There's also indirect real estate stuff. I just wanted to point out that personal outright bribes strongly imply that personal enrichment is a major and primary goal of lawmakers. I want to challenge that assumption. Many lawmakers are already independently wealthy and being e.g. a congressman often actually slows opportunities to gain more money. Furthermore, evidence suggests that although eye-popping sums do get thrown around in elections, those sums are usually the exception rather than the rule, and many of those sums are in fact intended to win the election and not cover for personal enrichment, at least not on the scale many people imagine. Thus, I take the opinion that personal enrichment is usually a secondary and more minor life goal, given that one is a lawmaker or government official.

With that background understanding, when I see the occasional congressperson get caught with smaller sums in bribery allegations, that makes perfect sense to me. After all, bribery was essentially a side-gig stemming from poor personal judgement, not their primary occupation. So of course the sums will be small, and the methods amateurish.

To understand a small population, you need to understand the pipelines to it. Most early-stage political jobs, that lead to later more powerful ones, don't have the same immediate potential pay-off and definitely don't have a guarantee of advancement. The major exception, of course, is when you enter the field due to notable nepotism, backstabbing, or personal connections leapfrog you up the ladder faster. Those are more suspicious and susceptible to bribery, at least it seems to me.

Across the board most Americans, even smart ones, regularly misestimate the sums involved in politics.

Relevant SSC

Sure, during the 2018 election, candidates, parties, PACs, and outsiders combined spent about $5 billion – $2.5 billion on Democrats, $2 billion on Republicans, and $0.5 billion on third parties. And although that sounds like a lot of money to you or me, on the national scale, it’s puny. The US almond industry earns $12 billion per year. Americans spent about 2.5x as much on almonds as on candidates last year.

For bribery specifically, I think that there might be a selection effect where illegal bribes are mostly the ones where people forgo the trappings of legality. If you want to bribe an official for 20M$, giving them a suitcase full of cash is a terrible way to go about it. Instead, you just hire them as a consultant for 2M$ a year after their public career ends -- the famous revolving door. The quid pro quo part of that is just as illegal, but also much harder to prove, and the ex-official can actually use the money without having to launder it first.

By contrast, for 10k$ that is too much overhead. You do not need to launder it, just spend it on coke or whatever.

Of course, the risk-reward ratio is much more favorable for bigger bribes. But people are not entirely rational. Bribes on the 10k$-100k$ level may seem "not a big deal" to the official unless they get caught.

Far cry from the millions that people seem to get the impression about. No, a lot of these races are more small-dollar than you'd expect.

If American politics are anything like Australian politics in this regard (which it certainly is), of course this is not how bribes work. No, it takes the form of "not bribes" where while in office, corporations and donors will invite them to galas and events with fine dining, ridiculously high "speaking fees" and so on.

But the important part is when they leave office. You can expect a nice cushy job on a corporate board paying 7 figures, or a lucrative "consulting" role. The revolving door, as they say.

That's only if you're unwilling to abuse your position outright though, unlike a particular former US Democratic Speaker of the House.

I’ve thought this for a long time. But you need to at the same time create strict rules precluding them from speaking fees / going to industry for a significant time thereafter.

A Google L8 can pull down 1.5M per year in liquid comp. Would it be so crazy to pay politicians similarly to reduce any temptation they might have towards corruption?

Yeah, you try to bribe them with $50K and they're gonna laugh. Their annual bonus is 5x that.

Sure, after each congressman personally selects 100 bureaucratic grifters they've added to the deep state to fire and cancel the pensions of.

This is a good idea but will take decades to yield results at the top of government. It’s also true that even in Singapore most of the top politicians and government officials being paid this much are essentially the children of leading PAP members, they just happen to be a highly competent group and so have smart, capable kids.

Yup, and the world's best governed country has shown that it works.

The US government has much more money than Google, you should pay them even more.

But only if you can fire a politician as easily as you can fire a FAANG worker.

Didn't Bob Menendez take bribes of at least 500k?

There's selection bias at work here - it's the dumb politicians who get caught begging for scraps. The smart ones, dealing with real movers and shakers, get paid in really hard-to-prove (and possibly not even illegal) favours and tips. The Pelosis and the Clintons didn't get 9-figure bank accounts from their government salaries, that's for sure.

Some are now even getting paid in crypto.

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