Molly WhiteI wonder if Coinbase routinely calls up newsrooms to try to blackball people who criticize them, or if I'm just special
This is what they're mad about:
https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/
Coinbase appears to have violated campaign finance laws with a $25 million super PAC donation
Actively involved in contract negotiations with a federal government agency, Coinbase was likely prohibited from making its $25 million contribution to the Fairshake cryptocurrency-focused super PAC in May 2024.
Glyph@molly0xfff reading this it occurs to me that there is a second loophole but perhaps I am just being a doomer here — it seems extremely likely to me that the Trump administration just shuts down the FEC completely or at least blows up every complaint against republican donors somehow. But I don’t know the mechanics here. Are there safeguards in place that could stop that from happening?
@glyph unfortunately it might not even take that — the FEC is fairly toothless and partisan
damnthefilibuster@molly0xfff @glyph never understood why that is the case. In both the biggest democracies of the world- India and the US, the election commissions are pretty much rubber stamps for all kinds of terrible behaviors by parties and donors.
Gilbert Pilz@damnthefilibuster @molly0xfff @glyph "never understood why that is the case" Flip the argument around and ask yourself what it would take for that *not* to be the case? What would a system need to look like in order to have a strong election commission?
overstrike@gpilz @damnthefilibuster @molly0xfff @glyph well, the US had a stronger one when both parties thought it was in their best interest to win elections fair and square — (Gen Z might not believe it, but there was nontrivial bipartisan support at one point for reducing the influence of money in US elections — look up McCain-Feingold).
@overstrike @damnthefilibuster @molly0xfff @glyph Not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems to me that any system that depends on a commitment by political parties to play fair is pretty fragile. All it takes is one party to renege on the implicit contract and the others would follow suit in their own self-interest.
@gpilz @damnthefilibuster @molly0xfff @glyph the US system doesn't expect or even require fair play -- it expects the parties and the voters to remain tethered to reality. It breaks down when grifters manufacture their own reality and there's insufficient pushback.