#Political corruption

[jangillman]

[eugenedebs1920]

This is an ominous sign. Not since the fall of the third Reich has Germany bolstered its military to this extent.

The U.S. (Trump) abandoning Ukraine and standing with countries such as North Korea, Iran, Belarus, and of course Russia, has left a void in Europe and emboldened dictators across the globe to pursue their worst impulses. Do not kid yourself, this is the beginning of WWIII.

While Donald Trump cozies up to authoritarians he has further abused and neglected our oldest allies, praising Putin while insulting Canada and the European Union.

Open your eyes! Russia Russia Russia was a much a hoax as “signalgate”. Trump is a Russian asset, has long been in the side of the Soviets. It is not hard to see, all you have to do is look.

[aster-spiral-30]

Kneecapping cancer research to own the libs.

Fuck this.

Republican 'race to the bottom - make more dumb people' politics is the worst.

47 is unilaterally doing this. Republicans pass no bills, make no demands. They just let a Trump U con man attack higher education.

[reasonsforhope]

"The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas, has announced plans to ban political donations from state elections, paving the way for nation-leading electoral reforms.

The state’s electoral amendment bill announced on Wednesday [June 12, 2024] night will ban electoral donations and gifts to registered political parties, members of parliament and candidates. The state will provide funding to allow parties and candidates to contest elections, run campaigns and promote political ideas.

Malinauskas said his bill would put South Australia on the “cusp of becoming a world leader in ending the nexus between money and political power”.

“We want money out of politics. We know this is not easy. These reforms may well face legal challenge,” Malinauskas said.

“But we are determined to deliver them, with this bill to be introduced in the parliament in the near future.”

In a subtle challenge to his federal and state counterparts, the premier told Guardian Australia he thought it was “something that democracies everywhere should be pursuing”.

The Albanese government pledged to introduce spending and donation caps, and truth in political advertising laws, as revealed by Guardian Australia after the 2022 federal election and confirmed by a parliamentary inquiry that reported last July.

The special minister of state, Don Farrell, said last month an agreement between the major parties and the crossbench had not yet been reached. An amendment bill is still expected by the middle of the year.

In order to level the playing field for newly created parties and independent candidates, the South Australia bill will allow candidates to receive donations up to $2,700, although they will remain subject to campaign spending caps.

Those spending caps have been set at $100,000, multiplied by the number of candidates up to a maximum of $500,000.

If the bill is passed, a registered political party will be entitled to a one-off payment of $200,000 before 31 August 2026. Whichever is lower out of $700,000 or the number of party members of parliament multiplied by $47,000 will also be given to parties for operational funding.

Membership fees will be allowed to continue but will be capped at $100 or less a year.

To deter attempts to circumvent the proposed changes, a maximum penalty of $50,000 or 10 years’ imprisonment will apply.

The guide acknowledges the proposal would lead to a rise in the cost of South Australia’s electoral system, but says a tightening of expenditure and party registration rules will keep costs to a minimum.

The Albanese government is under crossbench pressure to introduce electoral reforms before the next federal election.

Lower house independents, including Kate Chaney, Zali Steggall, the Greens, David Pocock, Lidia Thorpe and the Jacqui Lambie Network, joined forces to introduce a bill for fair and transparent elections in March [2024].

The bill contained a suite of reforms including truth-in-political advertising, a ban on donations from socially harmful industries including fossil fuels, and tightening the definition of gifts to capture major party fundraisers, including dinners and business forums."

-via The Guardian, March 18, 2024

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

The following are all undeniable facts:

The judge donated money — a tiny amount, $35, but in plain violation of a rule prohibiting New York judges from making political donations of any kind — to a pro-Biden, anti-Trump political operation, including funds that the judge earmarked for “resisting the Republican Party and Donald Trump’s radical right-wing legacy.” Would folks have been just fine with the judge staying on the case if he had donated a couple bucks to “Re-elect Donald Trump, MAGA forever!”? Absolutely not.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg ran for office in an overwhelmingly Democratic county by touting his Trump-hunting prowess. He bizarrely (and falsely) boasted on the campaign trail, “It is a fact that I have sued Trump over 100 times.”

The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever.

Standing alone, falsification charges would have been mere misdemeanors under New York law, which posed two problems for the DA. First, nobody cares about a misdemeanor, and it would be laughable to bring the first-ever charge against a former president for a trifling offense that falls within the same technical criminal classification as shoplifting a Snapple and a bag of Cheetos from a bodega. Second, the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor — two years — likely has long expired on Trump’s conduct, which dates to 2016 and 2017.

So, to inflate the charges up to the lowest-level felony (Class E, on a scale of Class A through E) — and to electroshock them back to life within the longer felony statute of limitations — the DA alleged that the falsification of business records was committed “with intent to commit another crime.” Here, according to prosecutors, the “another crime” is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate “unlawful means”: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents. Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial. (This, folks, is what indictments are for.)

In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else.

-----------

source

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

13th July 2014: Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel chat at the World Cup final.

russia had invaded Ukraine five months earlier.

Four days after this picture was taken russia shot down civilian flight MH17 over Donbas.

Merkel still refuses to express regret over her years of close ties to russia.

[rollerska8er]

I believe that because of recency bias people think of Trump as a uniquely corrupt president, and like, yeah, he's really, genuinely evil, but I think a lot of people upset about U.S. politics right now were not alive or were very young in the 2000s, and it shows in their rose-tinted view of how things were pre-Trump.

The Iraq War was a war founded on a shoddy rationale purely to reassert America's standing as the world's only superpower following the horror of 9/11. Part of this rationale was that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction.

In July 2003, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson wrote an opinion piece challenging the Bush administration's claim that Iraq sought to procure uranium from Niger, which was key to this justification.

In retaliation, officials under the employ of Vice President Dick Cheney leaked the identity of Wilson's wife, who was a covert CIA asset, to the Washington Post. This became known as the "Plame affair".

"Scooter" Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff, ended up taking the rap for the whole mess, and later had his sentence commuted by President George W. Bush. (Trump fully pardoned Libby during his first term in 2018.)

The shit that's happening right now is corrupt and shot through with fascism, yes, but it's following a Republican playbook that goes back decades. If anything, they're pulling the rubber band so taut this time that it's bound to snap.

There's lying respectably and politely, with a smile on your face, like Bush and Cheney. Then there's lying the way Trump and Vance lie, crudely and profanely, with a malicious grin on your face.

[hayquetenerpatience]

That's about right!

[jangillman]

It is unbelievable to think that ANY patriotic American would ever consider voting Democrat when the truth and depth of their corruption is being revealed to the World! Leftist brainrot personified

[eugenedebs1920]

Nothing to see here folks. Just the richest man in the world influencing the removal of those investigating his company for unethical animal cruelty. Nope! No conflict of interests whatsoever… 😐

[hellomortals]

Signs from student protests against corrupt government in Serbia 2025

Ruke su vam krvave

📍vršac

[reasonsforhope]

Note: I super don't like the framing of this headline. "Here's why it matters" idk it's almost like there's an entire country's worth of people who get to keep their democracy! Clearly! But there are few good articles on this in English, so we're going with this one anyway.

--

2024 is the biggest global election year in history and the future of democracy is on every ballot. But amid an international backsliding in democratic norms, including in countries with a longer history of democracy like India, Senegal’s election last week was a major win for democracy. It’s also an indication that a new political class is coming of age in Africa, exemplified by Senegal’s new 44-year-old president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye.

The West African nation managed to pull off a free and fair election on March 24 despite significant obstacles, including efforts by former President Macky Sall to delay the elections and imprison or disqualify opposition candidates. Add those challenges to the fact that many neighboring countries in West Africa — most prominently Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, but other nations across the region too — have been repeatedly undermined by military coups since 2020.

Sall had been in power since 2012, serving two terms. He declined to seek a third term following years of speculation that he would do so despite a constitutional two-term limit. But he attempted to extend his term, announcing in February that elections (originally to be held that month) would be pushed off until the end of the year in defiance of the electoral schedule.

Sall’s allies in the National Assembly approved the measure, but only after security forces removed opposition politicians, who vociferously protested the delay. Senegalese society came out in droves to protest Sall’s attempted self-coup, and the Constitutional Council ruled in late February that Sall’s attempt to stay in power could not stand.

That itself was a win for democracy. Still, opposition candidates, including Faye, though legally able to run, remained imprisoned until just days before the election — while others were barred from running at all. The future of Senegal’s democracy seemed uncertain at best.

Cut to Tuesday [April 2, 2024], when Sall stepped down and handed power to Faye, a former tax examiner who won on a campaign of combating corruption, as well as greater sovereignty and economic opportunity for the Senegalese. And it was young voters who carried Faye to victory...

“This election showed the resilience of the democracy in Senegal that resisted the shock of an unexpected postponement,” Adele Ravidà, Senegal country director at the lnternational Foundation for Electoral Systems, told Vox via email. “... after a couple of years of unprecedented episodes of violence [the Senegalese people] turned the page smoothly, allowing a peaceful transfer of power.”

And though Faye’s aims won’t be easy to achieve, his win can tell us not only about how Senegal managed to establish its young democracy, but also about the positive trend of democratic entrenchment and international cooperation in African nations, and the power of young Africans...

Senegal and Democracy in Africa

Since it gained independence from France in 1960, Senegal has never had a coup — military or civilian. Increasingly strong and competitive democracy has been the norm for Senegal, and the country’s civil society went out in great force over the past three years of Sall’s term to enforce those norms.

“I think that it is really the victory of the democratic institutions — the government, but also civil society organization,” Sany said. “They were mobilized, from the unions, teacher unions, workers, NGOs. The civil society in Senegal is one of the most experienced, well-organized democratic institutions on the continent.” Senegalese civil society also pushed back against former President Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to cling to power back in 2012, and the Senegalese people voted him out...

Faye will still have his work cut out for him accomplishing the goals he campaigned on, including economic prosperity, transparency, food security, increased sovereignty, and the strengthening of democratic institutions. This will be important, especially for Senegal’s young people, who are at the forefront of another major trend.

Young Africans will play an increasingly key role in the coming decades, both on the continent and on the global stage; Africa’s youth population (people aged 15 to 24) will make up approximately 35 percent of the world’s youth population by 2050, and Africa’s population is expected to grow from 1.5 billion to 2.5 billion during that time. In Senegal, people aged 10 to 24 make up 32 percent of the population, according to the UN.

“These young people have connected to the rest of the world,” Sany said. “They see what’s happening. They are interested. They are smart. They are more educated.” And they have high expectations not only for their economic future but also for their civil rights and autonomy.

The reality of government is always different from the promise of campaigning, but Faye’s election is part of a promising trend of democratic entrenchment in Africa, exemplified by successful transitions of power in Nigeria, Liberia, and Sierra Leone over the past year. To be sure, those elections were not without challenges, but on the whole, they provide an important counterweight to democratic backsliding.

Senegalese people, especially the younger generation, have high expectations for what democracy can and should deliver for them. It’s up to Faye and his government to follow."

-via Vox, April 4, 2024

[relaxedstyles]

AOC at the DNC

[godfamilyandcountry]

[troythecatfish]