Cool model. Can’t get over the size of the bow though… that guys compensating for something.

Whats up with all the weird spelling in that article? The = signs in place of letters are very prominent.

Is it some sort of anti-ai thing they’re trying?

I think the convening power of Billionaires is hard to ignore to get things started. The US is a country run very much for that class, so working within and alongside that system may be wise.

So, i’d organise a group, possibly using some organised people of the disaffected Virginia federal government lay-off group. ;) But ideally people who can navigate their way to set up the PACs whoever they may be.

Set out clear and importantly actionable definitions of corruption and corrupt behaviour and steps taken for different degrees of corruption and how its determined. Don’t forget its not a court, its a PAC so ‘balance of probabilities’ when it comes to possibility of corruption may even be too high a standard, certainly ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ would hurt the viability of weeding out corruption, ie set the bar of corrupt behaviour for withdrawing funding low and tested against regularly.

Work on ensuring all public faces are about the positive side, so instead of the negative proposition ‘we are anti-corruption’, err on the side of the positive proposition ‘we support integrity and honesty’. Avoid the doom and gloom messaging, people like to have a positive vision especially if they’re going to be required to pay for, and/or sacrifice their time in doing.

Once the PACs, at least two separate structures, are set up, ready to launch reach out to the billionaire class. Three that come to mind would be Nick Hanauer (along with Civic Ventures), Mark Cuban (Dallas Mavericks), and Anthony Scarramucci (TRIPUS, Skybridge capital), these three have all demonstrated, publicly at least, the ability to understand what corrupt behaviour looks like and crucially its ethical implications, not saying any are perfect ethical creatures themselves, they don’t have to be to understand and respect the concept of the PACs.

Bring that class in, use their ‘star power’, but don’t allow them to invest in both PACs, one needs to be kept separate from oligarchs, maybe spokespeople for the other PAC can be well known and known to be honest figures in sport, or entertainment, and well known people in local areas.

Crucially it cant matter what side of politics the participants hail from, when PAC business is being discussed or acted on the only principles are honesty and integrity and the charter which sets those out, donors and volunteers pursuing other agendas are asked to continue that in other parts of their life.

It also needn’t take a representative, senator, judge, sheriff etc to call the PAC, the assessment criteria can be run and then offered to elected representatives, with an explanation of why.

When it comes to candidates, thats when it can get harder, because donors will naturally try to stack in their own political appointees. I don’t have an answer for that yet, because new candidates will need some sorting mechanism.

Anti corruption PACs with tight and unvariable definitions of corrupt behaviour especially when it comes to money.

Small donation style like that Bernie Sanders campaign for some PACs, but others should allow billionaire whales. The key is to make the PACs impervious to outside influence on the key mission to only fund politicians demonstrating honesty and integrity.

Do multiple PACs, so theres no one point of failure. When an Honesty and Integrity PAC is corrupted, shut it down or exit it, taking the people with integrity with you. Leave the corrupted behind.

Do this for decades, make donors aware its a long term project and to build their donations into their yearly budgets. This will need communitarian bridge builders, something US people do very well when they’re given the support to. Have yearly AGMs, promote them and make them easy to access, and easy for donors to ask questions of the PAC, a bit like Superannuation industry funds are supposed to do ‘on paper’ in Australia.

Finally there might be enough patriotic Americans in positions of power again that they start looking after the country and not oligarchs, and hey, maybe stop undermining every flower of hope that sprouts in the rest of the world to.

I think the role of money in US society needs to change. And i’d love to see US citizens decide, on their own terms, to demote its importance; rather than the hammer of poverty brought on by increasing wealth inequality forcing the demotion.

Middle powers need to come to a settled policy position around a bancor-like policy. I think its unlikely a major power would take the lead instead of favouring their own currency as reserve. After half a century the idea probably needs updating. Then they need to coordinate as blocs to make it painful for China and USA to resist.

If middle powers can peel one major away from their own more position of self regard, maybe in a moment of strategic weakness, then that could make it far more likely to be successful. So a situation not unlike what the USA did with the Russia-China partnership under Nixon.

Without the major economies of the world all signing on, i’m not sure if a bancor could be done with middle powers and developing nations alone. Maybe theres a model between this set of nations that works without setting off recurring imbalance of payments crises? I’m not sure.

Professor Steven Keen speaks very well on the bancor, he and Phil Dobbie get into it on their Debunking Economics Podcast.

Sorry u/dustycups, had to follow you along here and have a sticky beak. :)

After reading that, I feel a need to say,

“and thanks for the fish!”

That is horrible situation to placed in. Helping save someone who is actively trying to ruin your life and hurt you. They did the right thing, but there must be little satisfaction in helping these oppressors.

I’ll never get over old mate putting the whole whisk in his mouth! 😂

Isn’t the enforcer based on Alastair Campbell, now does Rest is Politics Podcast, or at least his reputation from the Blair period.

One element of Lemmy that is being underutilised by many people is the ‘together but separate’ nature of this social media.

This is probably due to a lot of the user interfaces, be it desktop or mobile, not prioritising showing a distinction between servers.

The app ‘sync’ is one example that does prioritise this, (although its not been updated for ages so is slowly breaking).

This app allows you to visit each server individually, not just single communities. This means you can spend your time on some of the country specific, or special interest servers where the very ‘reddity’ US politics posting is minimal, if present at all.

So my advice, go explore some specific servers. I don’t know what DB0’s server is like. Just had a quick look, seems like a tonne of bots posting on the local, so maybe not the best example of what I mean.

Try my home instance (aussie.zone) theres a group of regular posters, and while we have an ‘overseas news’ community, it isnt the most popular community on the server, and US stuff is far from the top three of subjects.

Other examples of what I mean are,

Lemmy.NZ Feddit.UK Programming.dev Slrpnk.net

We have the ability to have whole servers dedicated to niche topics, and their different facets, while still being connected to the whole, its quite fantastic.

So go explore different servers, maybe even move to a server that particularly interests you, that way when you can’t do the content on ‘all’ or ‘subscribed’ communities, theres the ‘local’ or ‘favourite’ servers there as well.

Barbaric humans. Give food, shelter, medecine, and fuck off your jack boots from children’s necks.

Looks like the same shoot from a different angle. Not the same guy.

Not just the hair, but the stripes, and the hat are the same as well. I suppose these were all very common though.

That looks like the back of one of the actors from Dads Army. I suppose it would have been a fairly standard haircut.

Thats really sad you say that considering your home instance is slrpnk.net, which is based off a movement that reaches for a genuinely positive outlook.

Holy fuck, my bookbpule just got a lot larger! Cheers!

That is so cool. I just want to know everything about this place!

Lame duck isn’t a popularity contest.

Your suggestions of what he could have done are all what a Lame Duck could get through, so i think you’rethinking a Lame Duck presidency is more useless than it is.

Its the big policies, like that Inflation Reduction Act, or Jan 6 commission, that would have been much harder to even get started. I know, I know, so much for those.

Maybe. I don’t know. People have a lot less rights in other countries than their own. Theres a clear propaganda line I can see there, maybe it’d be flimsy, but it doesn’t seem to take much ‘justification’.

😂