Discussion
Noem Can’t Explain Why She Hired 8-Day-Old Company for Ad Campaign
lawn: Nothing to see here, just a regular $143 million corruption deal made completely in the open.The US is operated like a banana republic.
fzeroracer: I'm sure DOGE and all of its fans have a lot to say about this. After all, we all know fighting waste and corruption in the government is exactly why it was formed.
actionfromafar: Where we are going, approved media like Fox will explain how everything is just fine and how much we are winning.
nandomrumber: > including having once employed her alleged beauWhat does this sentence mean?
arunabha: I'm suprised the powers that be on HN allowed this to reach the frontpage. Usually these kind of stories are flagged off the front page in seconds.
PunchyHamster: just wait few minutes
pamcake: Hush, now.
huddert: Reportedly this raised some flags when it was noticed that taxpayer money was going to an entity in the US rather than being sent to Israel.
beaker52: I imagine that it’s because the rug is becoming insufficient to cover the growing dirt pile.I’m here for it. Corruption is a problem worth solving, so I’m happy to bother intelligent, free-thinking tech and science readers with.
28304283409234: "Drain the swamp." Uhuh.
ElProlactin: Into a new one.
mohragk: When will the current administration be punished for their corruption and illegal activities?Trump is prosecuted for 34 felonies. His ICE regime is unlawful. Tariffs are deemed illegal. They siphon tax payer money to their own friends and family.When will the people rise up against this?
mothballed: At some point the government is corrupted enough that you realize the people there just to fleece the people with favored contracts and affair force one are the most rational actors involved. Our government is now essentially another private corporation, just one the people are brainwashed to obey through a religious like belief that their taxation isnt in practice theft and their law enforcement in practice isn't a mobster racket.
hackingonempty: Trump is going to pardon every single person in his administration and his entire family on his way out of office. They will all ride off into the sunset with the millions they made. There will be no punishment.Nobody is going to rise up against it, because "both sides." Biden pardoned his son.
expedition32: When people stop voting Republican. So never.
Alejandro9R: Me being a non-US reader, it’s honestly a bit frustrating to see how often people from the US forget that a large portion of HN readers are from other countries and don’t share the same context for posts like this. It ends up assuming US context as universal.And don’t get me wrong. I agree that corruption is horrible. I live in a country where corruption was and still is rampant. Political discussions related more closely to, let’s say, AI companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic when it comes to the Pentagon do spark interest, since they are somewhat more directly connected to decisions we can make as tech professionals in other countries, whether for moral, ethical, or practical reasons. That is not really the case for posts like these, however. To your point, I would love to see the tech/hacker community come up with ideas about solving corruption, even if it’s just philosophical discussion.If my point still doesn’t make sense, imagine seeing posts about corruption cases from any other non-US country being posted on HN. What would you think about those?
jiggawatts: > Biden pardoned his son.Yes, that's bad.It's not even remotely the same.Biden pardoned his son to protect him from being hounded for the rest of his life by rabid Republicans that still can't shut up about Hillary's emails (despite Trump doing 10x worse with the top secret files in his toilet), Benghazi (with 4 deaths, far less than the current Iran boondogle), etc...Trump has weaponised the pardon power, which was previously used by other presidents to pardon people who didn't deserve their punishment. Non-violent drug crimes like possession of a bit of weed, life imprisonment over a technicality, that kind of thing.Trump instead enables rampant corruption coupled with blind obedience with the promise of a pardon as the get-out-of-jail-free card.He's also made pardons pay-for-play, letting out crypto scammers, drug lords, and anyone else willing to pay him a few million each.It's obscene. It's corrosive. It's destroying your democracy, so very very visibly that the rest of the world is staring with slack-jawed horror.Seriously.Over here on the other side of the little pond we call the Pacific, we're worried about you yanks.
danaris: I don't think the answer to that is to discourage posting US-centric stories about serious political issues. I think the answer is to encourage people from other countries to post theirs, too.We need more understanding of each other and of each other's situations, not less. The more we tech people bury our heads in the sand about politics—every country's politics—the more likely we are to create more situations like the one we're in today.