"It’s not about typical corruption, it’s about the government making decisions while telling most of the public to fuck off."

 David Cearley
David Cearley
Jan 19
Lessig, I believe you’re misinterpreting people’s anger. People recognize that corruption exists in a government headed by either party, and that’s not really what they’re angry about. They’re upset that government has increasingly been making decisions completely divorced from the costs and impacts of their decisions. For example under this administration, the EPA began making decisions without regard to the financial impact of their decisions. The IRS chose to target conservative political advocacy organizations and slow walk their non-profit applications. Reams and reams of regulations were dictated by the executive branch. While income inequality is skyrocketing and the labor participation rate is at it’s lowest in four decades, government concentrated on enforcing complex rules only large companies can afford to comply with. The trillion spent on stimulus went to fortune 50 or fortune 500 enterprises, or public sector unions. shelved for How about the decision on a pipeline that meets all current legal requirements, and running to a refinery that just completed a five billion dollar upgrade was shelved for years, and then disallowed, was nixed solely because the president decided that the country (which runs on oil), no loger needs the stuff.
Virtually everything done in the past eight years has suppressed small business growth, suppressed borrowing (by punishing banks that actually make consumer and commercial loans), vastly increased compliance costs, exacerbated youth and minority employment, and in general been hostile to all but the most politically connected multi-billion dollar corporations. University campuses have become hotbeds of bullying and censorship, a law intended to protect women’s access to school athletics has morphed into a tool to force schools to adjudicate sexual assaults and rape while trampling on the rights of the accused. Entire police departments have been labeled as racist based on statistical sampling, and junior highs have had their funding threatened if they don’t open their girl’s locker rooms to transexuals with penises. Let’s not forget the Catholic Church being forced to fund birth control. These are simply examples of the federal government making decisions with complete disregard of tens of millions of citizens. It’s not about typical corruption, it’s about the government making decisions while telling most of the public to fuck off.