You are correct. My country does not have the similar separation of powers the US has. I do not understand why Americans have a hard time realizing this: the President and other elected officials work for YOU. They literally run for office to get the position, and they get voted in. Why would someone let an elected official enrich themselves and their friends with your money? Why would the legislative branch allow that?
A populace with a functioning representative democracy deserves its leaders.
There is no mechanism for citizens of the united states to recall a president or member of congress. They must wait 2, 4, and 6 years depending on who they'd like to replace. This contributes to the the current woes as as many members of congress and some presidents (like this one) would certainly undergo recall battles or be immediately recalled. Since we can't though, and elections in this country are a 12-16 month barrage of lies, propaganda and ads by the time voting does come around people just check which ever box matches their team, zero thought given and are thankful the whole mess is over with so they can mostly ignore politics until its time to start complaining again about how poorly they're represented. Repeat.
Another issue is that you actually need a lot of money to meaningfully run for most federal office roles, so that's one filter which promotes rich guys who don't care about doing the job well.
To put it another way, I have not participated in a federal election where I was excited about my options, ever. I have always been triage voting in federal elections ever since I was old enough to vote.
So yes, we do vote for our clowns, but only because we're not given any decent options to vote for.
Fortunately, the US giving a lot of power to states means that our more local elections are a lot more interesting to participate in and at least in my state, I have several decent options to vote in people who will make a real difference.
>”Why would someone let an elected official enrich themselves and their friends with your money? Why would the legislative branch allow that?”
Let is a heavily loaded term here. The most an individual can reasonably do is cast their single vote in an election year. I could attempt to bring a lawsuit against a politician, but it would almost certainly be thrown out due to a lack of standing. Activism is certainly an option, but that is really just an effort to convince others to cast their single vote differently. Outside of those options, one would have to break some laws.
About 30% of our electorate consists of so-called "deplorables" who are geographically distributed in a way that gives them outsized influence. The deplorables were happy to set aside their own best interests at the voting booth because Trump promised to hurt other people more.
Promises were made, and as far as the deplorables are concerned, promises were kept. They continue to approve of his actions wholeheartedly.
There is probably no way back for us, unfortunately. Please keep in mind than a healthy majority of American voters either voted against Trump or chose to sit out the election. We are largely powerless, though, due to system-level weaknesses that have been present since the nation's founding but couldn't effectively be exploited until recently.
>Why would someone let an elected official enrich themselves and their friends with your money? Why would the legislative branch allow that?
Republicans in Congress were elected expressly to allow Trump to do as he wishes.
>A populace with a functioning representative democracy deserves its leaders.
Yes. Despite Trump himself being a fascist, the government continues to operate as a representative democracy. Most Congresscritters have their thumbs up their asses waiting for things to get much worse, which mirrors the vast majority of voters.
Is it national apathy? Decadence? Addiction to the drama, anger and depravity of Trump TV?
I don't know what "equally annoying" would be for a company and its customers, i.e. a fair compromise. But we need a law requiring companies open source their hardware within X days of end of life support.
And somehow make sure these are meaningful updates. Not feature parity with new hardware, but security parity when it can be provided by a software only update.
Otherwise a company in effect takes back the property, without compensation.
The battery has very little capacity now, so I'm planning on buying a new iPad air with the M chip. It's really a game changer in terms of performance and efficiency.
This law overrides any prior contractual agreements with banks/processing companies that prohibit surcharges. This is previously how MasterCard and VISA coerced merchants into absorbing the processing fee, by contractually requiring credit same as cash pricing.
Our city council voted 5-0 to install more. A unanimous vote which includes democrats who ran on disrupting a council that had the same members for decades.
The medical and financial predators targeting elderly makes me wonder how to constrain it. The law doesn’t really help, short of having a court determine there’s some level of incapacity.
In theory the law doesn’t require victim cooperation. In practice, I’ve found local prosecutors won’t touch a case with an uncooperative victim. And most victims don’t cooperate whether out of humiliation or rejection pf the very idea they can be scammed. Because to them all scams are obvious, and only morons are scammed. They consistently lack imagination for the sophistication and manipulation component of scams, thinking it’s all about obviousness.
I’m sure it’s not only a case of “save the children”. Saving grandma’s retirement accounts is also important. The internet is a cesspool.
Federal court orders (judicial branch) are enforced by federal law enforcement such as marshals, FBI, ATF, and so on (executive branch).
If the executive branch is lawless, then there’s selective enforcement. We are seeing the emergence of the dual state. Authoritarianism that follows the law sometimes so it sorta looks legitimate but sometimes isn’t at all legitimate.
America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State (theatlantic.com)
Hold on. That ballroom is ostensibly funded by private investors including Apple, AMD, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Google, Nvidia, Palantir, Booz Allen Lockheed Martin, Zoom, Coinbase, Ripple ...
Therefore the customers of these companies are contributing some of their hard earned money to help these companies grovel to a would-be dictator, and build his precious ballroom.
I'm not a big fan of the general strike idea whereby people forego income to send a message. Why not stop spending money with these companies for some period of time? I think telling these companies to go fuck themselves will put more money in everyday people's pockets than not showing up for work.
Apple consumers would be on more ethical grounds paying a tariff than what Tim Cook has committed them to. He showed up at the White House on Saturday well after the reporting that the government had murdered a law abiding citizen, while that government protected the assailants, and smeared the victims.
It's disgusting. I find him disgusting. I find all of these companies disgusting.
If they refuse, sue them in small claims court.
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