I would say it affects the whole world – by doing its own little part to accelerate global warming, if nothing else. And provides a bad example.
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So true. They count on outrage fatigue and the simple inability to address all the awful things they’re doing. I sometimes wonder if a leftist congress and president could just pass a bill that said “Reset all laws and regulations to their pre-Trump regime settings.” Or pre-Reagan.
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I see things like this, and I really wonder what the point of borders is.
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“Accenture” formerly know as Arthur Anderson, btw.
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Sooo… Apparently, there is precedent:
Read the whole thread. Trump would a) not act like Grant because b) the entire scenario would make his head explode.
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Old joke:
A woman is eating at a cafe when she drops her spoon. Before she can call the waiter over, the waiter is already there with a fresh clean spoon. “That was quick,” she said.
“Thanks,” replied the waiter. “Arthur Anderson is giving us efficiency tips, and I really think we’ve improved a lot.”
“So you carry utensils in your apron now?”
“No, not all the utensils, that would be inefficient. Because the spoon is the most dropped utensil, we only carry spoons.”
She enjoys her soup and calls the waiter over to settle her bill. “Um, sir?” She says. “There’s a loose string hanging from your fly”
“Oh no, it’s not loose. Us waiters waste a lot of time washing our hands after using the bathroom. So, Arthur Anderson says to tie a string around our, well, around it, so we don’t touch it. If we don’t touch it, we have no reason to wash our hands.”
She thinks about this awhile, and the waiter goes off and returns with her change. “Sir, you can’t push a string.”
“Huh?”
“You can’t push a string, so how do you get it back in there once you’re done peeing?”
“Oh. Arthur Anderson says use the spoon.”
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One thing you can say about Illinois: it might take a bit of time, but at least we DO prosecute our politicians who commit fraud.
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“It’s a very dirty business when these prosecutors, with their unchecked power and no oversight at all, can go after any politician,” Patricia Blagojevich argued.
Obviously, any investigation of a politician should be overseen by that same politician, for fairness’ sake.
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This is Patricia Mell Blagojevich, after all, of Chicago’s Mell political family. If prosecutors went after corrupt politicians, most of her family and friends would be in jail.
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You know what they say: heaven for the weather, prison for the company.
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We need a rule permanently prohibiting anyone related to a current or past politician from running for office.
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Or just make anyone running for public office forfeit any family assets to the government, and provide them savings, residence, and salary, equal to the median wealth, home value, and annual income, respectively, of the area they represent.
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Yes, if only there were a provision in the constitution requiring people who take the presidency to let go of all of their private ownership of companies.
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But how would you attract the job creators who have been blessed for their holy victorious winning lives?
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Matthew 19?
I think what we really need is a law that absolutely prohibits (as in “felony offence”) politicians *and* civil servants from working, or otherwise deriving income, in the areas they regulated once they retire from public office. Add that to strict election finance laws, and a lot of what we are facing these days would start clearing up. We already have laws regarding bribery and emoluments, so what happens while they are in office is already covered. I’m more concerned with tacit understandings that lead to things like Chris Dodd running the MPAA after leaving the Senate, or the constant Goldman Sachs shuttle into the Treasury and the SEC. The power of the relevant regulations and regulatory agencies has been gutted because there is considerable personal incentive for politicians and agency heads to do so.
Unlike most, I don’t bitch about their “padded pensions”: if they worked for us, they should be well-paid. Good pensions can offset the measures I propose, and they’re a drop in the bucket anyway. I have nothing against divesting assets to family members either, provided those family members don’t arrange an “allowance” after retirement.
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And vice versa: you also need to prohibit anyone who has derived income from a regulated area from regulating those areas if they ever run for office or are hired as a civil servant.
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Not sure. People within the industry often have the best understanding of the industry, and expertise is not to be sneezed at. What does happen is that you get, say, someone leaving Goldman Sachs to become the SEC chair, and then being hired on again at GS after retiring from the SEC. This person may well know just how divergent the interests of GS are from those of the country, but he (predominantly “he”) also knows that he’ll receive a warm homecoming if he represents GS’s interests while in the SEC. There is currently nothing stopping him.
It’s that leg of the shuttle that constitutes the weak link of the chain. If the person is genuinely interested in national policy, he’ll accept the financial hit and will probably do a good job. If not, well there is nothing in the job for him if he can’t get his reward on retirement. Besides, if the job starts opening up outside the old boys/oligarchs network, we might even get a chance to use other personal pronouns. Bonus! 
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Expert testimony is not to be sneezed at. However, people whose point of view that [field of expertise] exists only to be made money off of, and to hell with consumers (the dominant point of view within most industries) should not be placed in a position to deregulate [field of expertise]. In addition, that person has a built-in network of people within the industry who will already have their ear, where consumer advocate groups will not.
For instance: Betsy DeVos. Scott Pruitt. Tom Price. Andrew Puzder.
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