Lmao today I learned US supreme court judges are allowed to hold stocks in such a way that it'd present a conflict of interest, and this is just fine for some reason. Moron shithole country.
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
Basically there were anti-corruption Laws, but they didn't account for the fact that the Supreme Court gets to interpret the laws, so they then "interpreted" the anti-corruption laws so that they weren't beholden to them.
bribing supreme court justices is entirely legal lmao. as long as its not direct, in writing, one to one exchange, it is perfectly fine to give massive gifts to supreme court justices and receive favorable rulings, and the judge will see no consequences. that actually fully happened.
america is just fully a looter country, insider trading, bribes, cushy corporate retirements. not only can you buy almost any political body in the country, if you have half a brain you can do it fully legally. power in this country just wants to loot the world, including their own people.
like we have had actual studies done showing that in a democracy the actual will of the american people has almost no actual impact on the actual laws and decisions made, but you can bet your bottom dollar that corporate lobbying has a truly beautiful success rate. lobbying is such a funny term
It helps that the court has also established that basically nothing short of having "I am giving you this money so you will corruptly use your government power for me" "thank you, I will corruptly use my government power for you in exchange for this money"in writing counts as bribery
yup yup. and in a post-Citizens United world (where the Supreme Court explicitly overturned congressional legislation that limited campaign financing by dark money groups and corporations), both aisles of Congress have been thoroughly bought and paid for.
The kicker is when they refuse to recuse themselves from a case despite the open conflict of interest and there isnt a higher court to call bullshit and i think a supreme court justice has been impeached at most once or twice in our country's history.
The entire concept of checks and balances in Amerikkan governance is such a farce and rests almost entirely on a near totemic belief in our institutions as platonic ideals of themselves and not anything resembling their actual historical functioning
It was all built without the concept of political parties in mind and the notion that you could just casually discourage people from forming them instead of accounting for their likelihood from the get-go.
Once, in 1804, and he was acquitted by the Senate. Even impeachments of lower court judges are extremely rare (though there have been some convictions in these cases).
One time I was walking home from buying two sandwiches and a guy opened fire on a crowd exiting a concert at the local church so I had to to crouch behind a block of granite while he was shot to death by the police department. I distinctly remember wondering if my life was worth a Cuban sandwich.
I live in objectively, one of the safest places in the United States in regards to gun violence. We have the strictest laws in the country by many measures. A man opened fire with two handguns a thousand ft from my house. My neighborhood is one of the safest in my whole city. This place is broken.
The other sandwich was roast beef and cheddar. It had pickled jalapenos on it. It was called the NYPD. I don't go outside much anymore. You can find the story in the paper but I don't feel like doxing myself. I just remember sitting in my room eating my sandwich, wondering if it was worth my life.
I woke up to news one day that they had found a severed head thrown into the yard of my neighbors just across the street from me. Another time there was a shooting so bad that it made the building (a few houses down) look like it had acne pockmarks. That was at the previous place I lived in Oakland
At my current place, I have a very visibly Mexican family to houses down that plasters their house and cars in Jesus and Trump flags and stickers, and across the street there’s a bunch of white supremacists with a big truck with a metal band font decal for a white supremacist brand
I used to live in Seattle and now I live in Denver and those are both relatively decent areas on the scale of American cities to live in but they still suck in so many ways
It’s pretty actively horrifying. Public health has fallen apart, we aren’t doing food safety anymore, the federal government is actively sending swarms of agents into more lawful areas to disrupt things and abduct immigrants and some citizens, and all public coverage of trans health is about to end
It’s wild to me that we’re now at the point where I completely forgot to add the ever present fear of being shot in my classroom when teaching, but like… that not new
considering that I tried to "ration" my e and am now Suffering The Consequences... yes lol.
there's some beautiful and cool places you can visit, and depending on the location ppl can be *mostly* nice and chill but the exceptions that may occur aren't worth it.
thank you. I'm not in the worst position, although current events are trying to change that lol.
I just won't be considering that as an option and I'm glad that I tried it before my next appointment b/c now I know how to approach this going forward.
I used to teach history, as I've said before, and yeah. Our schools are so full of porpaganda that you basically have to ignore all the evidence of your eyes and ears in order to believe it's a decent place to live.
Basically no one who doesn't have to will do that, though, and there are quite a number of people who will never know there's something wrong until shit directly happens to them.
When I talk to family friends or my own father etc. about the state of law here, like... there's a direct, fully legal line you can draw between 'be using the bathroom as a trans person when a child steps in' to 'being executed by the state by simple majority decision', they're flabbergasted.
i'm in Texas and have an enby kid, a genderfluid transmasc kid, and a cis kid. Texas is a shithole. The people have been fine, the government is a band of ghouls
I mean, not really?
Growing up in this environment desensitizes you to it, I suppose.
Like, *I* am stressed out by how horrible it is, but I'm choosing to pay attention, which most Americans deliberately aren't.
Well, the landscape is to die for, but I don’t travel outside of the the Interstate-5 corridor without a gun, and it’s not because of the mountain lions.
yeah. a car just crashed into a wall across the street from our apartment like half an hour ago, and that's probably the most positive thing to happen here in weeks
it varies WILDLY depending on where you are to a degree that is kind of hard to quantify if you weren't steeped in it. like, its always a scam-hole everywhere, but some places have other stuff going on that makes the background scams livable while others are worse than you're already imagining.
oh absolutely. right now you're still learning what I like to call, starting now, the background scam static of america. there are places that go far beyond that. look up the failed libertarian enclaves in new hampshire that are now overrun with man-eating bears. that's what I like to call "level 3"
In all seriousness, though? Yes and no. Take trans rights. Most USians have a sense that trans people are weird, but whatever. But with all the coverage being given to hate-mongers, their ambivalence has shifted to being mostly negative.
Also, ask a USian how many mass shootings have happened this year, and you'll get a shrug and a guess of a double digit number. Politicians refusing to do ANYTHING to stop gun violence has led to USians just becoming numb about it. Have accepted it as another part of their lives, like the weather.
Due to the US being so massive, you'll have pockets that are... livable. But even those will have their own scams. Houston, for instance, has some nice people. However, the state govt has basically decreed that the city isn't allowed to pass laws that make it more walkable or increase public transit
the food is really, really good. parts of the country are still devastatingly beautiful. There are a lot of nice and cool people. The government is a rotting, racist nightmare that has basically gotten worse my entire life
in my time as an adult professional I have seen families rise and fall from housed to marginally housed to homeless as the government toys with how many scraps they get to support themselves. Everyone is sicker for no reason and works too hard at bad jobs.
in some ways the “covid years” (of admitting it exists) were good because the fed cash was flowing and peoples’ care and even housing improved. womp womp
People talk about how it's American exceptionalism to say how bad the US is exceptionally, but I don't think 'well at least it's not as bad as living in an active warzone' is much of a recommendation. I live in a middle-income country with 99% universal healthcare coverage and no mass shootings.
I don't see how it's Amerikkan exceptionalism to point out that Amerikkan empire is the principle exporter of human misery at a global scale right now. That's not to say other neo-fascist states don't exist, but Amerikka produces so much horror both domestically & abroad. No one else compares.
It’s super cool that every time you get sick here, you think, “Cool, I’m either gonna die, go bankrupt, or both”. It floats in the back of the American mind.
I don't even know where to begin. The longest period we've gone without getting sick from eating out. We got to go to the Thailand open (badminton) a long time dream of mine. The audience was incredible, a small tournament but fuuuuuuuck Thai and Black people share a music gene or something
Comments
Also we think the white trash are the same people who drove past my family on a walk and Hard-R’d my meat before zooming off
I’m in one of the bluest places
I've also lived in Oregon California and Florida
there's some beautiful and cool places you can visit, and depending on the location ppl can be *mostly* nice and chill but the exceptions that may occur aren't worth it.
especially right now.
stay away lol.
I just won't be considering that as an option and I'm glad that I tried it before my next appointment b/c now I know how to approach this going forward.
I still wish things were better but it'll be ok.
Sadly, many many Americans do
Basically no one who doesn't have to will do that, though, and there are quite a number of people who will never know there's something wrong until shit directly happens to them.
I didn't buy drugs from anyone, and I went in and out of my house with multiple firearms (I taught queers gun safety) on the regular. Got left alone.
Growing up in this environment desensitizes you to it, I suppose.
Like, *I* am stressed out by how horrible it is, but I'm choosing to pay attention, which most Americans deliberately aren't.
In all seriousness, though? Yes and no. Take trans rights. Most USians have a sense that trans people are weird, but whatever. But with all the coverage being given to hate-mongers, their ambivalence has shifted to being mostly negative.