Comment by jfengel
9 hours ago
It's bizarre seeing the outright bribery.
A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. You couldn't give money directly to the candidate for personal use. Donations went to the campaign of the guy who already agreed with you. The FEC used to take a dim view of outright pay-for-service, even dressed up.
This is new. And now people need to decide how they feel about that. They get one chance to say "no, that's not how we do things." Even if the administration suffers a blow this November, if they hear that this is mostly acceptable to their base, it will be what every politician does from here on.
>A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office.
Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.
Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery.
To the degree great inequality leads to this being decisive in elections, it is a corrupting influence, but the term for it is still not “bribery”.
But when a presidential candidate tells oil companies they should donate because he is going to help them, that’s solid bribery.
When companies pay to “settle” ridiculous accusations, or “donate” to a president’s causes, while their mergers or other business legal issues depend on an openly pay-for-play president’s goodwill, that’s solid bribery.
The country’s policies, discipline, reputation and competence (economic, diplomatic and political) are being sold off for a tiny fraction of what their future adjusted value is worth.
In actual functioning democracies political donations are capped severely.
Say, a single donor can contribute a maximum of €6,000 per parliament candidate per election.
Yes, that's a real limit.
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IANAL, IIRC: SCOTUS has very narrowly defined bribery as explicit quid pro quo. And sometimes not even then.
You recall correctly.
And they did so, so they could take bribes with no consequences as long as they take them the right way.
Trevor Noah pretty much nailed this in the first Trump admin:
https://x.com/thedailyshow/status/1177221786720559105
In what sense is this new, other than a different side cares about the optics?
OP explained it clearly: “you couldn’t $1, now you can”. It would be helpful if you explained which part did you not understand. Alternatively, that barking sound I hear might be a sea lion.