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Notes -
Is presidential corruption still culture war?
You may or may not remember that back in January of this year President Trump, in his personal capacity, sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion in damages related to leaks of his tax returns by a contractor back in 2018-2020. I don't want to dig into the merits of the case as such, except I'll note the legal discussion I've read seems to have a consensus that the case is very weak. It is also very unusual for a sitting President to be suing the government he is in charge of. There are obvious conflicts of interest involved. So much so the judge in that case issued an order for the parties to explain how they are actually adverse to each other, how they disagree, so that the cases and controversies requirement of the constitution is satisfied.
As of today, it seems we may never find out how good the claims are or aren't, how adverse the parties are or aren't. Trump filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss his lawsuit, pursuant to the establishment of a $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund". It's not even clear to me the fund is going to be administered by the United States government, as paragraph C provides:
Is this going to be the new normal? If you're President and Congress won't give you the money you want to pay your friends and allies you can get however much you want with this one weird trick!
ETA:
ABC reports that the fund will be overseen by a five-member commission appointed by the Attorney General, but the members will all be removal at-will by the President.
The IRS under Obama targeted conservatives. They looked at your political action group and determined if you were conservative before deciding if you would get an audit or not. This is all public knowledge and nobody was made to suffer for this except Lois Lerner eventually losing her job.
We even had a fight a few years later in the Biden years over expanding the IRS and adding more agents so they could audit more people. Nothing was ever done to make sure they won’t target conservatives again, but we will just pretend that that isn’t related because those are two separate storylines so connecting those two dots is a non-sequitur. Result: the IRS that targeted conservatives and was never punished for it got more powerful.
Now that the government reaches a settlement every Trump critic wants to call this a Trump corruption case. ? Well, what is the federal government supposed to do? In fact, we now have a richly-established norm of NGOs and activists suing the federal government and so that their political allies who run the government can settle. Welcome to the world you made. This kind of thing happened all the time under Obama, all the time, all the time! — remember when companies were made to pay settlements directly into DOJ slush funds?— and I still hear about how the only scandal Obama ever had was his tan suit.
It’s very unusual for the government to target conservative political groups! And the sitting president over made-up stories that he colluded with Russia. And all of his allies for process crimes such as entrapment while being interviewed by FBI agents who didn’t tell you they were investigating you. And et cetera et cetera etc. It would have been really easy for Trump not to sue the government if they hadn’t wronged him in the first place!
I would really actually enjoy a good argument about why exactly this is even corruption. All I see online is a lot of pointing from people very selectively not mentioning the government’s extremely well-documented political campaigns against conservatives, Trump, and Trump’s allies. What else did we think would happen? People who were harassed by the government actually have a right to settle to make themselves whole, and this is what happens when those same people win control of that government. What did you think would happen after spying on his campaign? $1.776 Billion is getting off easy.
It's rare that I agree with you but you're 100% right about this. It's a travesty that groups who are subject to wrongs perpetrated by the very governments that are supposed to protect them are often left with no recourse and no compensation. While I can certainly sympathize with a small group of conservatives who were unfairly targeted by the IRS under the Obama administration, that is unfortunately nothing compared with the millions of Black Americans who are still suffering as the result of official government policy. First, after being brought here against their will to perform manual labor, slavery was enshrined within the US Constitution for the first 80 or so years of our nation's existence. Following abolition, things didn't get much better, as they were routinely discriminated against, often as a matter of official government policy, and routinely denied the very rights the Reconstruction Amendments sought to recognize. Even in areas where discrimination was not enshrined into law, they were still almost universally denied the opportunity to work in good jobs, live where they wanted to, and otherwise be treated like any other member of society. The results of these centuries of discrimination have been nothing short of catastrophic for Black Americans; even as we enacted legislation to address these wrongs in the 1960s, Blacks still lag behind others in almost every metric.
Given these circumstances, one would think that providing some sort of reparation for the harms the government has inflicted upon blacks would be a no-brainer in these more enlightened times, but that has unfortunately not been the case. Fully half of the country seeks to blame Blacks themselves for their own plight, arguing that if they only were willing to work a little harder things would magically improve for them. Some even wave their hands and explain the situation through the simple intellectual and moral inferiority of Blacks, echoing the slave masters of 200 years ago. Even on the left, the more wishy-washy white people voice concerns about what reparations would look like, who would qualify for them, and a host of other practical concerns that would threaten to sink any program from the beginning. Righting these wrongs has become all but politically impossible.
Luckily, though, Donald J. Trump has unlocked the cheat code to get around an ineffective, even hostile Congress. All that is needed in the next Democratic administration is for a civil rights group to file a class action suit against the US government. No legitimate claim? No problem! This will never get close to an actual courtroom, as president AOC will be more than happy to offer a generous settlement package before the first motion is filed. No debate, no working out the messy details, just pick a strategy and go for it. Because when you look at all that's happened, $1.619 trillion is getting off easy.
Eh, not a great comparison.
Trump is a case of a specific wrong against specific people perpetrated by specific agencies. Its then a general payout from the government to the conservative movement in general.
Black slavery was also all of those levels of specificity. But with enough time removed it is instead all moved to generalities. Its black people in general that were wronged, its white people in general that carried it out, and its supposed to be paid for by all americans in general.
The areas where I say "general" are the problem.
For IRS targeting: I would have liked to see specific people in the IRS or the Obama administration sent to jail for the IRS tax targeting. I'd like to see unconstitutional orders treated the same way the military treats illegal orders. "I was ordered to break the constitution so its not my fault" should be an admission of guilt not a defense against prosecution. Bribing off the republicans seems like something that politicians on both sides are happy to take as a "compromise" rather than handing out punitive sentences and discouraging similar things in the future.
For slavery I'll give you a very specific example. I'll remove as many generalities as I can.
My ancestors owned slaves. We are close to a 100% certain that we know some of the descendants of those slaves (slaves tended to take on the last names of their former masters when they were freed). Lets say we can identify approximately 100 descendants of both the slave owner, and 100 descendants of the slaves. Its been about 5 generations. Assume no intermarriage so everyone is generally tracing only 1/32ndth of their ancestry to this generation.
None of the wealth acquired from the slave owning is still around. There is one house that was the former plantation house, but it was lost in bankruptcy and then re-bought. Nearly all other wealth of the slave owning family was also lost in that bankruptcy (took place in the 1880s).
How much do I a descendant of the slave owner owe to a descendant of the slave?
I believe you are making an accelerationists argument. The issue is the right believes this is only the second move in the process. Tat was already played the last decade in their view. So playing tit is now necessary. If your going to threaten acceleration for a perceived past wrong then you still need to punish in the second round.
These things are all fairly bad but before you go to a new equilibrium you needed to follow thru with your vengeance.
I am very much not an accelerationist. I have a family, a home, and a stable life. If there is such a thing as a "freezist" that is what I am.
Norms violations in politics are handled are handled in one of two ways. One way is that you punish the violators. The other way is that you imitate the violators. The first one protects the norm, the second one fully destroys it.
If you want norms to remain you have to punish people who violate them. This is an anti-accelerationist stance.
Actually meant to reply above you. But I do think some of the let Trump do these things come from accelerationists type views.
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