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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   10489 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 20, 2026

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the ATF and DEA alone paid informants almost 260 million.

Surely there's a difference between the government doing something, and theoretically being democratically accountable for it, versus an NGO of questionable action and well beyond any form of normal accountability?

Though I'm not sure exactly where I fall on the question being "paying informants creates questionable incentives" versus "NGOs should be more accountable for self-interested and possibly fraudulent behaviors."

I struggle to come up with a more sympathetic NGO where I would find this acceptable. Like... if Worldvision was paying people to have more kids and put them in orphanages, I think we could agree that's perverse and insane.

As I said in another comment whether or not it's actually effective is a different question. It's not fraudulent to do a dumb idea that you genuinely think could work. If Tom accepts money on Kickstarter to make a new indie movie sequel, tries out a new editing technique for it and it turns out the sequel sucks because of that, Tom didn't commit fraud. Backers can be upset that the movie sucked but unless it was caused by purposefully wasting the money for something else then there's nothing illegal there.

The SPLC may or may not have been ineffective when using this strategy, but little proof has been actually presented as specific fraud. "I think their strategy is dumb or counterproductive" is not it.

My fondness for Batman would change significantly if I learned that the Joker was a contractor being paid by Wayne Enterprises in order to justify the costumed crime fighting budget.

If Batman really cared about crime, he’d kill Rick Scott The Joker.

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