Noem Can't Explain Why She Hired 8-Day-Old Company for Ad Campaign
newrepublic.comNothing to see here, just a regular $143 million corruption deal made completely in the open.
The US is operated like a banana republic.
I'm sure DOGE and all of its fans have a lot to say about this. After all, we all know fighting waste and corruption in the government is exactly why it was formed.
Where we are going, approved media like Fox will explain how everything is just fine and how much we are winning.
You don’t even need to go so far—plenty of posters here are happy to carry water for this administration.
This happened much sooner than I expected and living through it, believe me it can happen to you.
Oh, so you don't like corruption?
Too bad they didn't follow the legal way and instead lobby that decision. This way it would be so much different!
That the proper way is not good is no reason to do it in an even worse way.
Are you literally defending corruption? Why?
No, they're pointing out the "right" way is also corrupt and the problem is deeper-rooted. It being done plainly is obviously worse, but the corruption runs deeper than just this.
Did it though?
Supposedly DOGE was to fight corruption. We were all going to get checks back!
Not only did they find zero cases of corruption that were referred to prosecution, they ended up costing us MORE money even than they hypothetically “saved”.
That’s before we even add in “stupid wars of choice” to the “savings” mix.
The idea that “well everything is corrupt so it doesn’t matter” really needs to be confronted, especially when it’s so easily dismantled as an argument.
(I agree though that this administration has massive corruption, and see how you were explaining the above, so I’m talking generally.)
When government procurement bypasses the GSA process it should immediately be considered suspicious. The GSA exists to prevent this exact problem.
My understanding is that Trump in early 2025 pushed all procurement toward GSA. For Noem to demand spending authority seemed prone to self-dealing.
When will the current administration be punished for their corruption and illegal activities?
Trump is prosecuted for 34 felonies. His ICE regime is unlawful. Tariffs are deemed illegal. They siphon tax payer money to their own friends and family.
When will the people rise up against this?
When people stop voting Republican. So never.
Trump is going to pardon every single person in his administration and his entire family on his way out of office. They will all ride off into the sunset with the millions they made. There will be no punishment.
Nobody is going to rise up against it, because "both sides." Biden pardoned his son.
*billions, the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars
I understand Presidential pardons are abused but I wouldn't say at least this is not "both sides", this is worse.
For years there were corporate overlords lobbying and corruption. That was "both sides".
Now this "side" has been railing against corruption by the "other side" and how they are going to put every corrupt person in jail and most "transparent" government.
Turns out they are much worse. Don't even know how to be corrupt properly. Just blatantly corrupt. When corned keep doing whataboutism - forgetting that even if the "other side" was corrupt it doesn't mean they can be corrupt too. Worse yet they still get support from their base.
Make no mistake - this is making US a low trust society on par with a third world country.
That was the OP's intent -- it's meant to be sarcastic. That's why "both sides" was in quotes. It's a common form of argument: I can do (very bad thing) because you did (slightly bad thing).
It even has a Wiktionary entry:
> Biden pardoned his son.
Yes, that's bad.
It's not even remotely the same.
Biden pardoned his son to protect him from being hounded for the rest of his life by rabid Republicans that still can't shut up about Hillary's emails (despite Trump doing 10x worse with the top secret files in his toilet), Benghazi (with 4 deaths, far less than the current Iran boondogle), etc...
Trump has weaponised the pardon power, which was previously used by other presidents to pardon people who didn't deserve their punishment. Non-violent drug crimes like possession of a bit of weed, life imprisonment over a technicality, that kind of thing.
Trump instead enables rampant corruption coupled with blind obedience with the promise of a pardon as the get-out-of-jail-free card.
He's also made pardons pay-for-play, letting out crypto scammers, drug lords, and anyone else willing to pay him a few million each.
It's obscene. It's corrosive. It's destroying your democracy, so very very visibly that the rest of the world is staring with slack-jawed horror.
Seriously.
Over here on the other side of the little pond we call the Pacific, we're worried about you yanks.
Pacific, or Atlantic… I can’t tell if you’re a Brit or an Australian.
Does it matter?
Our British mates are equally appalled.
The president has full discretionary pardon powers with no check or balance. It was inevitable that the power would be abused. You have an old system bursting at the seams of the maximalist modern world. Trump took advantage of your inadequacies.
Nothing felt inevitable about having such an arch traitor to the US in power. With all of congress turning their backs on America & our constitution, and a Supreme Court rabidly helping him.
There were lots of checks built in. But all three branches of government are bolstering this worship of vice, death, chaos, disease, and suffering
> Nothing felt inevitable about having such an arch traitor to the US in power.
I vehemently disagree. The US has been headed towards authoritarianism for close to a century.
You could maybe impeach them both fast enough to prevent it. We are no where close to the first step of that though (electing a Speaker of the House that has not partnered in the corruption).
Impeaching without conviction won't do jack. We need 67 senators to convict. I honestly don't know what it would take for that many rep senators to vote to convict.
The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. ... And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.
I sort of thought success was implied in my comment about using impeachment to eliminate the current 3 highest people in the order of succession.
We are not near the first step and will never be near the second step. Conviction requires a 2/3 majority.
The only way that could ever happen is for the Republicans themselves to decide that they're done with the administration. Whatever could possibly cause that, the composition of the House wouldn't matter.
It matters a little bit. Easier to not let Mike Johnson ever be president.
Billions not millions
The pardons should be ignored.
Not sure if they'll be ignored, but there's an effort to rein them in
https://olszewski.house.gov/media/press-releases/olszewski-i...
Correct. Trump set the precedent by claiming that pardons made with "autopen" are invalid, based on nothing. Accordingly, pardons made by a senile president who just blindly signs whatever's placed in front of him¹ are also invalid.
¹ Trump on Binance cryptocurrency tycoon he pardoned: "I don't know who he is" -- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-binance-cryptocurrency-ty...
At some point the government is corrupted enough that you realize the people there just to fleece the people with favored contracts and affair force one are the most rational actors involved. Our government is now essentially another private corporation, just one the people are brainwashed to obey through a religious like belief that their taxation isnt in practice theft and their law enforcement in practice isn't a mobster racket.
Corruption is a lot about ties between politics and companies. I always found it weird how many people believed that having the government run by the very same business people that have corrupted the government would improve the situation.
It only makes corruption more efficient, as we can beautifully see in this case.
I'm suprised the powers that be on HN allowed this to reach the frontpage. Usually these kind of stories are flagged off the front page in seconds.
I imagine that it’s because the rug is becoming insufficient to cover the growing dirt pile.
I’m here for it. Corruption is a problem worth solving, so I’m happy to bother the ycombinator readership with it.
Me being a non-US reader, it’s honestly a bit frustrating to see how often people from the US forget that a large portion of HN readers are from other countries and don’t share the same context for posts like this. It ends up assuming US context as universal.
And don’t get me wrong. I agree that corruption is horrible. I live in a country where corruption was and still is rampant. Political discussions related more closely to, let’s say, AI companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic when it comes to the Pentagon do spark interest, since they are somewhat more directly connected to decisions we can make as tech professionals in other countries, whether for moral, ethical, or practical reasons. That is not really the case for posts like these, however. To your point, I would love to see the tech/hacker community come up with ideas about solving corruption, even if it’s just philosophical discussion.
If my point still doesn’t make sense, imagine seeing posts about corruption cases from any other non-US country being posted on HN. What would you think about those?
When i browse sites based in other countries, i don't complain when there's a lot of talk specific to that country. I didn't know what Eurovision was until last week, but now LMNC is representing the UK. A lot of talk about how it should be boycotted because of Israel. How a bunch of people i never heard of are corrupt. i'm just there to cheer on LMNC, but i get why it's being overshadowed by the current politics.
Well, when it came to news about Silvio Burlusconi in Italy, I was incredulous that any established democracy would tolerate such corruption.
Which is why I owe Italians an apology nowadays.
given what we know about trump, "bungabunga" parties with consenting adults sounds positively pedestrian
I don't think the answer to that is to discourage posting US-centric stories about serious political issues. I think the answer is to encourage people from other countries to post theirs, too.
We need more understanding of each other and of each other's situations, not less. The more we tech people bury our heads in the sand about politics—every country's politics—the more likely we are to create more situations like the one we're in today.
They're asleep until Pacific time.
just wait few minutes
Silicon Valley is still asleep. Give it a few hours.
Hush, now.
> including having once employed her alleged beau
What does this sentence mean?
Employed her boyfriend
"Drain the swamp." Uhuh.
Into a new one.
a bigger one with more sewage