It's what we regularly accuse China of, right?

While we're on the topic, why is it that we love to point the finger at other countries' corruption and we completely ignore the very obvious, rampant corruption in our own government? And I mean on both sides - Democrat and Republican. Insider trading, revolving door policies, etc. That's not even mentioning why we have people like Luigi Mangione. That's a whole separate elephant in the room.

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zzleeper 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Please don't "both side" this. As much as there is corruption in any administration, R or D, the levels we are seeing now are completely unprecedent and blunt. EG: https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/trump-fundraise-emai... (from earlier this morning on the HN frontpage)

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fhdkweig 3 hours ago | parent [-]

On that topic, how many presidents in the past have had merch stores after elected? I can understand fundraising during a campaign, but after winning or losing, the fundraising usually stops.

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jfengel 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The fundraising never stops, not even for lame ducks, because the money can always be delivered into related war chests.

But here it is going directly to the President's pockets. That has never happened before.

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bcrosby95 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Merch. NFTs. Playing cards. Crypto coins. A phone. It's like we have Dennis Duffy as POTUS. If it were 40 years ago it would be like Reagan starting his own MLM.

	▲	fhdkweig 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		And the worst part is, I don't think we will ever close this door. Even if the Democrats are in charge of the next presidency, the temptation of easy money will be too strong to resist. It wasn't done in the past, because it was assumed that the people would push back severely, but now that it is clear that they won't, it is full speed ahead.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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tomrod 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not accuse. Observed.

This is a lot of similar-sounding-but-different problems.

EDIT:

For those not realizing that China has a long history of less-trustworthy stats, along with Iran and some other governments, here is some reading you can consider

[0] https://sites.pitt.edu/~tgrawski/papers/2001%20What%27s%20Ha...

[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29349/w293...

[2] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/epr/2...

[3] https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/245398/1/cesifo1_wp9...

[4] https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/350051528721174623-0050...

[5] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf

[6] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5140733

[7] https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/13/22/4620

[8] https://www.imf.org/en/publications/wp/issues/2022/06/03/mea...

[9] https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10630.pdf

[10] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23323/w233...

[11] https://www.jstor.org/stable/26372649