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On December 15 2016 16:05 a_flayer wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 15:43 ChristianS wrote:On December 15 2016 15:25 LegalLord wrote:
We have a few of the Hillary Clinton speeches. She says some things that are insightful (into her own thought process that I disagree with in general), but far from exclusive or remarkable. It's basically just having a chat about foreign policy and foreign economic policy in particular. Nothing I would pay a quarter of a million dollars to hear. Furthermore, the talks were damn repetitive, which makes it questionable why you would need to hear a lot of them.
No, it's clearly more than that. GH has good insight there into what he thinks it is. So what is it? It's apparently not an actual quid pro quo, so it's just... what? Wall Street hoping that when she's in the White House she'll remember that one time she got $250,000 from GS? What are they actually hoping to receive? No, nevermind, somehow I've actually let you guys bait this discussion of Trump picking our pockets into a "but Hillary though!" discussion. I guess my guard was down because I didn't expect GH of all people to be the one defending Trump on corruption and shilling for big corporations. Why is it that Trump and Clinton both have shell corporations in Delaware? Why hasn't policy been adjusted to prevent that kind of absolute, total and inexcusable tax-evading bullshit from happening on a massive scale? And I don't need some tale about the sovereignty of individual states and such, because that's not the problem. It's not about Delaware specifically, it's this widespread soft-corruption where policy makers bend the policies implement to benefit themselves. Instead of representing the people, they represent themselves, large money donors and other privileged individuals.
Clinton is just as bad as Trump?!?!?!!?!?!?!?
Or you can take a look at the fact that she's actually released her taxes for the last whatever number of years so you can see exactly what's going on. I recommend reading about how corporations are used as legal entities to better organize one's activities, because you clearly have no fucking clue how this works and are just throwing some bullshit out about shell corporations. In a nutshell, Clinton has her speechgiving and writing organized just like any small business. Corporations are also typically located in Delaware for no nefarious purpose other than they have a whole shit load of case load governing corporate matters.
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On December 16 2016 00:15 Silvanel wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 23:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 18:58 Silvanel wrote:
Modern corruption doesnt look like some shady narco deal going on in the middle of night in some junkyard or quarry. No cash is directly exchanged. It happenes in front of everyone. For example: one party gives contract to company owned by wife/daughter of some official and in return that party wins bid to supply government with hardware or software or perform some analysis. There isnt even need for explicit agreement, You scrach my back i scrach Yours.
Or to be more on topic:
What exactly would be Clintons incentive to crack down on Wallstreet should it be called for? Somethings might be ok according to the law, doesnt make it ok in general sense. That's not corruption, that's literally how majority of business is run since humans first learned to communicate with each other. Trusting someone and hence willing to make trades and deals with that person does not equate to corruption. Corruption is also not you perceiving that an individual might or might not do something you disagree with in a possible future. You can't leave something corrupt when the corrupt action hasn't happened yet. I literally don't think you understand the meaning of the word corrupt and that you simply equate any exchange you disagree with as a mental shortcut to mean corrupt. I dont know how it is in US, but if such collusion would be proven in Poland person in question would go to jail. Thats exactly what corruption is. Sadly the situation i gave as example is very hard to prove so in Poland such people are usually hit with "criminal mismangament of public funds". I really dont get how public official giving preference to someone because they do buisness with their family member is ok in Your book.
Which is why government agencies in the US can only do business with the lowest bidder. They are not allowed to decide who they purchase from because giving that decision making power to agencies allows favoritism. But if the person who you had a good relationship with before, say you knew their family, also happens to have the best deal, say because you knew their family and are willing to give you a better deal, then that's simply business as usual.
Corruption would be if you literally payed someone to do something illegal or not allowed. Your country not having laws that pre-decides how the selection process is made is merely a limitation on your country not on the people running your country.
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On December 15 2016 23:58 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 23:36 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 23:29 zlefin wrote:On December 15 2016 23:24 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 23:19 zlefin wrote:
In terms of retaliation; I'm not sure what to do to russia. Could just mark it up as business as usual and do more espionage without anything clear or specific.
Perhaps a few well-placed insults/snubs. Putin cares alot about Russia's image/prestige; making them seem 2nd/3rd rate nobodies seems like it'd be the right kind of insult.
If Russia is allowed to decide who wins the presidency, what's to stop them doing even more attacks on the US? What does Russia have to do to warrant physical response? Or will they just annex American territories one at a time knowing the US is too cowardly to do anything about it. russia didn't decide who won the presidency; they did some espionage which had a mild effect on the outcome of a very close election. Espionage by hostile powers is a routine part of life w bad people. I don't think it warrants a physical response (assuming that means military). I'd rather respond economically, diplomatically, or with our own espionage. any attempt to annex US land would be a laughable pathetic failure, so it's not really apropos. basic strategy: we should choose a battlefield where we have an advantage. in this case battlefield would refer to whether we retaliate militarily or with espionage or what. your response seems kinda cray cray; as what russia did here is very far from trying to annex us lands. They've already began to annex EU lands so it's not that out of the ordinary. But seriously, what "spy shit" could we do to hurt Russia? The answer is nothing. And they will continue to attack the US because Americans go crazy over everything and are gullible as the day is long. If America cannot retaliate through hacking then what could we do to stop Russia from escalating? what EU lands have they annexed? they can't escalate much cuz they don't have the power to actually do much more than some moderate-grade espionage. And I'm sure we could do quite a bit of spy stuff to hurt Russia if we felt like it. the question is whether the move benefits us compared to alternatives; and how it all plays out in the geopolitical stage. re: corruption there's some good sites that cover corruption rates in various nations. I forget what they're called.
Blah, apologies.
EU and European are still synonymous in my head.
Not "The EU", what I meant was that Russia annexed European lands. Germany has not lost land to Russia yet. Well, not this century at least 
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On December 15 2016 18:32 Acrofales wrote:Why did you just spend the last 2 pages defending Russia in ways that range from "I'm not sure they did it" to "but Kennedy did it too"? Regarding whether Russia did it or not: you're reading articles that only go off the technical aspects and I agree, they only tell you so much. Presumably that's why the CIA seem confident that Russia did it to get Trump elected, whereas the FBI isn't. The CIA may be assumed to have human sources within Russia, tasked with finding this sort of thing out. It may not be the cold war anymore, but clearly there's still a use for spies. And spying on Russia is kinda the CIA's thing. So while the technical evidence only points to Russia probably doing it, there's probably other evidence that we are not privy to that points to exactly who and why. Or this is more WMD bullshit. That is also possible. As for the "hypocrisy": is it possible that these are not all the same people? For starters, Kennedy is dead...
Two general things I'm considering here, one separate from the other:
1. Did Russia hack, did Russia leak, and can you actually prove it? The answers, respectively, are probably but there's a lot of plausible deniability there, possibly but there's infinite plausible deniability there, and fuck if I know.
2. Do people care? And my argument is no, people don't care, it's just that Russia is a time-honored way to rile up sentiment for more active FP involvement. And funding for intelligence, and support for surveillance programs.
"CIA says it's true based on unavailable sources" isn't an argument, by the way. It might be so but they're also known for bullshitting so they have trust issues to worry about. WMDs and all.
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On December 16 2016 00:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2016 00:15 Silvanel wrote:On December 15 2016 23:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 18:58 Silvanel wrote:
Modern corruption doesnt look like some shady narco deal going on in the middle of night in some junkyard or quarry. No cash is directly exchanged. It happenes in front of everyone. For example: one party gives contract to company owned by wife/daughter of some official and in return that party wins bid to supply government with hardware or software or perform some analysis. There isnt even need for explicit agreement, You scrach my back i scrach Yours.
Or to be more on topic:
What exactly would be Clintons incentive to crack down on Wallstreet should it be called for? Somethings might be ok according to the law, doesnt make it ok in general sense. That's not corruption, that's literally how majority of business is run since humans first learned to communicate with each other. Trusting someone and hence willing to make trades and deals with that person does not equate to corruption. Corruption is also not you perceiving that an individual might or might not do something you disagree with in a possible future. You can't leave something corrupt when the corrupt action hasn't happened yet. I literally don't think you understand the meaning of the word corrupt and that you simply equate any exchange you disagree with as a mental shortcut to mean corrupt. I dont know how it is in US, but if such collusion would be proven in Poland person in question would go to jail. Thats exactly what corruption is. Sadly the situation i gave as example is very hard to prove so in Poland such people are usually hit with "criminal mismangament of public funds". I really dont get how public official giving preference to someone because they do buisness with their family member is ok in Your book. Which is why government agencies in the US can only do business with the lowest bidder. They are not allowed to decide who they purchase from because giving that decision making power to agencies allows favoritism. But if the person who you had a good relationship with before, say you knew their family, also happens to have the best deal, say because you knew their family and are willing to give you a better deal, then that's simply business as usual. Corruption would be if you literally payed someone to do something illegal or not allowed. Your country not having laws that pre-decides how the selection process is made is merely a limitation on your country not on the people running your country.
As you should well know, that kinda thing isn't nearly as simple as you make it sound.
(1) Demands can (and are) tailored to heavily favour certain contractors over others. For instance, "this product must be compatible with X". If you are also the producer of X, this makes such construction far easier, and thus cheaper. Who's to say that clause wasn't simply snuck in there in order to benefit said contractor? Compatibility with X might not strictly be necessary.
(2) Budget overruns are extremely common and (government) contracts are seldom canceled because of them.
On top of that, there's the fact that bids might not be straightforward and calls can be underspecified. Therefore you end up with a bunch of bids that offer different things at different prices and someone still has to evaluate which one best fits the bid for the lowest price. That someone is usually the person to be "influenced" by a weekend trip to the Bahamas.
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Ironically enough, within the hour and a half I spent writing that technical summary of the two hacks, I got an email from Yahoo saying that they done goofed and managed to leak all their account information to some hackers. What timing.
And their stock dropped five percent on that announcement, predictably enough.
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On December 16 2016 00:57 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2016 00:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 16 2016 00:15 Silvanel wrote:On December 15 2016 23:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 18:58 Silvanel wrote:
Modern corruption doesnt look like some shady narco deal going on in the middle of night in some junkyard or quarry. No cash is directly exchanged. It happenes in front of everyone. For example: one party gives contract to company owned by wife/daughter of some official and in return that party wins bid to supply government with hardware or software or perform some analysis. There isnt even need for explicit agreement, You scrach my back i scrach Yours.
Or to be more on topic:
What exactly would be Clintons incentive to crack down on Wallstreet should it be called for? Somethings might be ok according to the law, doesnt make it ok in general sense. That's not corruption, that's literally how majority of business is run since humans first learned to communicate with each other. Trusting someone and hence willing to make trades and deals with that person does not equate to corruption. Corruption is also not you perceiving that an individual might or might not do something you disagree with in a possible future. You can't leave something corrupt when the corrupt action hasn't happened yet. I literally don't think you understand the meaning of the word corrupt and that you simply equate any exchange you disagree with as a mental shortcut to mean corrupt. I dont know how it is in US, but if such collusion would be proven in Poland person in question would go to jail. Thats exactly what corruption is. Sadly the situation i gave as example is very hard to prove so in Poland such people are usually hit with "criminal mismangament of public funds". I really dont get how public official giving preference to someone because they do buisness with their family member is ok in Your book. Which is why government agencies in the US can only do business with the lowest bidder. They are not allowed to decide who they purchase from because giving that decision making power to agencies allows favoritism. But if the person who you had a good relationship with before, say you knew their family, also happens to have the best deal, say because you knew their family and are willing to give you a better deal, then that's simply business as usual. Corruption would be if you literally payed someone to do something illegal or not allowed. Your country not having laws that pre-decides how the selection process is made is merely a limitation on your country not on the people running your country. As you should well know, that kinda thing isn't nearly as simple as you make it sound. (1) Demands can (and are) tailored to heavily favour certain contractors over others. For instance, "this product must be compatible with X". If you are also the producer of X, this makes such construction far easier, and thus cheaper. Who's to say that clause wasn't simply snuck in there in order to benefit said contractor? Compatibility with X might not strictly be necessary. (2) Budget overruns are extremely common and (government) contracts are seldom canceled because of them. On top of that, there's the fact that bids might not be straightforward and calls can be underspecified. Therefore you end up with a bunch of bids that offer different things at different prices and someone still has to evaluate which one best fits the bid for the lowest price. That someone is usually the person to be "influenced" by a weekend trip to the Bahamas.
I understand that bids can be complex. Which means how strict you make the rules is a decision of expediency, flexibility, and accountability.
Make it strict enough to prevent corruption to some degree, then you end up paying for things you don't need or only having shitty quality goods. Make it too lax and you get favoritism.
However, products requiring strict specifications is going to always be a truism. You'd have to prove that that specification was unnecessary to the product and was only added specifically to enact favoritism. But if that specification is needed in the product regardless of where they get said specification--then is it really corruption?
If the product is non-specific enough that lots of loopholes can be made to make bids super close--then that simply means you send it back to engineers to make it more specific. NASA, for example, can only choose which one has the lowest cost to their budget without going under their strict minimum requirements. My friend there talks about the hoops NASA administration goes through to prevent themselves from firing fantastic contract staff simply because a year has passed and a cheaper bid came up for IT or admins or research vendors etc...
But yes, in the end decisions have to be made and usually people who trust each other are more likely to do business with each other than with others who don't trust each other as much.
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On December 15 2016 23:35 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 17:43 Tachion wrote:On December 15 2016 15:51 LegalLord wrote:On December 15 2016 15:49 Slaughter wrote:
Trump just doesn't know the meaning of subtlety or tact. Frankly that's what people actually like about him. Unfiltered. This is so silly to me. Not knowing how to behave or conduct yourself in a given situation should not be a boon. Showing composure and restraint should, at the very least, be expected of someone in a position of such dignity. Pence, despite lying and denying blatantly obvious facts for 90 minutes, was said to have been favored in the VP debate for his calm and collected demeanor over Kaine's belligerent outbursts. Yet Trump is praised for the exact opposite? There is some weird mental twister shit going on in some peoples heads. Composure and restraint had their day and will have it again. The fact beneath all that is when the distinguished tone yields two important messages: First is we're going to govern for what experts in DC think you should care about and support, regardless of the campaign promises made otherwise. Second is we're going to lie to your face every two or six years to convince you we're the only ones you should send back. You're right it *shouldnt* be a boon in a functioning political system and society. But when all you're getting is lies and all your concerns are blown off routinely (while you chuckle with your D.C. buds at those ignorant hicks), can you understand that the first person that confirms, "This is awful and worth getting mad about!" instantly resonates. Tea Party epic-rant style. Secondly, to your post, "denying blatantly obvious facts for 90 minutes" is square one for why Trump won. People like Tachion will sneer that Pence is a factless dishonest debater. If you thought Kaine was lying and Pence was mostly in target, sorry you've missed the obvious you're too dumb to understand he did nothing but this for ninety minutes you neanderthal. The tornado accused the hurricane of "weird mental twister shit." It's politics. People are upset with establishment status quo. They sent in an extremely flawed guy that at least thinks it's worth getting mad about, as opposed to the people that will accuse them of "mental twister" for judging things differently.
There is a reason Pence's "he never said that!" was such a highlight of the debate. It's because anyone who had been paying attention to the election thus far was surprised by Pence's dishonesty in denying well known quotes from Trump. The Clinton camp even made an ad out of some of it.
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On December 16 2016 00:50 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 18:32 Acrofales wrote:Why did you just spend the last 2 pages defending Russia in ways that range from "I'm not sure they did it" to "but Kennedy did it too"? Regarding whether Russia did it or not: you're reading articles that only go off the technical aspects and I agree, they only tell you so much. Presumably that's why the CIA seem confident that Russia did it to get Trump elected, whereas the FBI isn't. The CIA may be assumed to have human sources within Russia, tasked with finding this sort of thing out. It may not be the cold war anymore, but clearly there's still a use for spies. And spying on Russia is kinda the CIA's thing. So while the technical evidence only points to Russia probably doing it, there's probably other evidence that we are not privy to that points to exactly who and why. Or this is more WMD bullshit. That is also possible. As for the "hypocrisy": is it possible that these are not all the same people? For starters, Kennedy is dead... Two general things I'm considering here, one separate from the other: 1. Did Russia hack, did Russia leak, and can you actually prove it? The answers, respectively, are probably but there's a lot of plausible deniability there, possibly but there's infinite plausible deniability there, and fuck if I know. 2. Do people care? And my argument is no, people don't care, it's just that Russia is a time-honored way to rile up sentiment for more active FP involvement. And funding for intelligence, and support for surveillance programs. "CIA says it's true based on unavailable sources" isn't an argument, by the way. It might be so but they're also known for bullshitting so they have trust issues to worry about. WMDs and all.
1.) The sources say that the hack happened. The sources conflict as to the motivation or intent.
2.) Half the people care and half don't. Much like all public events that forces personal opinion.
3.) CIA saying is true is definitely an argument. How good it is at swaying you is a different beast altogether. For example, there are some out there who still believe that the WMDs were there and were simply moved out of the country since the US made such a spectacle on the decision to attack Iraq going to both the UN and having congress vote on it that it gave Saddam and his allies enough time to get the weapons out of there. Is it true? Not that I'm aware of. But know that there are many perspectives on things such as "How much can you trust the CIA."
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On December 16 2016 00:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2016 00:15 Silvanel wrote:On December 15 2016 23:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 18:58 Silvanel wrote:
Modern corruption doesnt look like some shady narco deal going on in the middle of night in some junkyard or quarry. No cash is directly exchanged. It happenes in front of everyone. For example: one party gives contract to company owned by wife/daughter of some official and in return that party wins bid to supply government with hardware or software or perform some analysis. There isnt even need for explicit agreement, You scrach my back i scrach Yours.
Or to be more on topic:
What exactly would be Clintons incentive to crack down on Wallstreet should it be called for? Somethings might be ok according to the law, doesnt make it ok in general sense. That's not corruption, that's literally how majority of business is run since humans first learned to communicate with each other. Trusting someone and hence willing to make trades and deals with that person does not equate to corruption. Corruption is also not you perceiving that an individual might or might not do something you disagree with in a possible future. You can't leave something corrupt when the corrupt action hasn't happened yet. I literally don't think you understand the meaning of the word corrupt and that you simply equate any exchange you disagree with as a mental shortcut to mean corrupt. I dont know how it is in US, but if such collusion would be proven in Poland person in question would go to jail. Thats exactly what corruption is. Sadly the situation i gave as example is very hard to prove so in Poland such people are usually hit with "criminal mismangament of public funds". I really dont get how public official giving preference to someone because they do buisness with their family member is ok in Your book. Which is why government agencies in the US can only do business with the lowest bidder. They are not allowed to decide who they purchase from because giving that decision making power to agencies allows favoritism. But if the person who you had a good relationship with before, say you knew their family, also happens to have the best deal, say because you knew their family and are willing to give you a better deal, then that's simply business as usual. Corruption would be if you literally payed someone to do something illegal or not allowed. Your country not having laws that pre-decides how the selection process is made is merely a limitation on your country not on the people running your country.
if not corruption then hardcore nepotism? buddy buddy?
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1. Russia likely hacked the DNC. The evidence suggests they could have hacked Podesta too but anyone could have done that. The question of who leaked is pretty much impossible to answer though. We only have guesses to that, much less intent.
2. Maybe "half the people who blame Russia don't care" is more accurate. A lot of the people who talk about Russia care about Clinton or FP or their own budgets.
3. Sure, I suppose "isn't an argument" is somewhat of a strong statement. But the CIA is an organization with its own political interests and it can fabricate stuff to support them. Remember the NSA's "these programs prevented terrorist attacks you never heard of" in response to Snowden? No one believed them, and frankly I don't blame them.
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On December 16 2016 00:50 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2016 18:32 Acrofales wrote:Why did you just spend the last 2 pages defending Russia in ways that range from "I'm not sure they did it" to "but Kennedy did it too"? Regarding whether Russia did it or not: you're reading articles that only go off the technical aspects and I agree, they only tell you so much. Presumably that's why the CIA seem confident that Russia did it to get Trump elected, whereas the FBI isn't. The CIA may be assumed to have human sources within Russia, tasked with finding this sort of thing out. It may not be the cold war anymore, but clearly there's still a use for spies. And spying on Russia is kinda the CIA's thing. So while the technical evidence only points to Russia probably doing it, there's probably other evidence that we are not privy to that points to exactly who and why. Or this is more WMD bullshit. That is also possible. As for the "hypocrisy": is it possible that these are not all the same people? For starters, Kennedy is dead... Two general things I'm considering here, one separate from the other: 1. Did Russia hack, did Russia leak, and can you actually prove it? The answers, respectively, are probably but there's a lot of plausible deniability there, possibly but there's infinite plausible deniability there, and fuck if I know. 2. Do people care? And my argument is no, people don't care, it's just that Russia is a time-honored way to rile up sentiment for more active FP involvement. And funding for intelligence, and support for surveillance programs. "CIA says it's true based on unavailable sources" isn't an argument, by the way. It might be so but they're also known for bullshitting so they have trust issues to worry about. WMDs and all.
If you are waiting for hard facts, you are going to be disappointed. You can't expect security and intelligence agencies to disclose their sources or methods of investigation to the public. I mean, when have they ever? The higher ups in the government are the ones who receive that information, and we rely upon them to act accordingly. Perhaps that is why congress is pushing to launch an investigation into it after the intelligence briefings they have received.
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I use Yahoo as well.
Not like I have much to lose
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On December 16 2016 01:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2016 00:57 Acrofales wrote:On December 16 2016 00:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 16 2016 00:15 Silvanel wrote:On December 15 2016 23:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 18:58 Silvanel wrote:
Modern corruption doesnt look like some shady narco deal going on in the middle of night in some junkyard or quarry. No cash is directly exchanged. It happenes in front of everyone. For example: one party gives contract to company owned by wife/daughter of some official and in return that party wins bid to supply government with hardware or software or perform some analysis. There isnt even need for explicit agreement, You scrach my back i scrach Yours.
Or to be more on topic:
What exactly would be Clintons incentive to crack down on Wallstreet should it be called for? Somethings might be ok according to the law, doesnt make it ok in general sense. That's not corruption, that's literally how majority of business is run since humans first learned to communicate with each other. Trusting someone and hence willing to make trades and deals with that person does not equate to corruption. Corruption is also not you perceiving that an individual might or might not do something you disagree with in a possible future. You can't leave something corrupt when the corrupt action hasn't happened yet. I literally don't think you understand the meaning of the word corrupt and that you simply equate any exchange you disagree with as a mental shortcut to mean corrupt. I dont know how it is in US, but if such collusion would be proven in Poland person in question would go to jail. Thats exactly what corruption is. Sadly the situation i gave as example is very hard to prove so in Poland such people are usually hit with "criminal mismangament of public funds". I really dont get how public official giving preference to someone because they do buisness with their family member is ok in Your book. Which is why government agencies in the US can only do business with the lowest bidder. They are not allowed to decide who they purchase from because giving that decision making power to agencies allows favoritism. But if the person who you had a good relationship with before, say you knew their family, also happens to have the best deal, say because you knew their family and are willing to give you a better deal, then that's simply business as usual. Corruption would be if you literally payed someone to do something illegal or not allowed. Your country not having laws that pre-decides how the selection process is made is merely a limitation on your country not on the people running your country. As you should well know, that kinda thing isn't nearly as simple as you make it sound. (1) Demands can (and are) tailored to heavily favour certain contractors over others. For instance, "this product must be compatible with X". If you are also the producer of X, this makes such construction far easier, and thus cheaper. Who's to say that clause wasn't simply snuck in there in order to benefit said contractor? Compatibility with X might not strictly be necessary. (2) Budget overruns are extremely common and (government) contracts are seldom canceled because of them. On top of that, there's the fact that bids might not be straightforward and calls can be underspecified. Therefore you end up with a bunch of bids that offer different things at different prices and someone still has to evaluate which one best fits the bid for the lowest price. That someone is usually the person to be "influenced" by a weekend trip to the Bahamas. I understand that bids can be complex. Which means how strict you make the rules is a decision of expediency, flexibility, and accountability. Make it strict enough to prevent corruption to some degree, then you end up paying for things you don't need or only having shitty quality goods. Make it too lax and you get favoritism. However, products requiring strict specifications is going to always be a truism. You'd have to prove that that specification was unnecessary to the product and was only added specifically to enact favoritism. But if that specification is needed in the product regardless of where they get said specification--then is it really corruption? If the product is non-specific enough that lots of loopholes can be made to make bids super close--then that simply means you send it back to engineers to make it more specific. NASA, for example, can only choose which one has the lowest cost to their budget without going under their strict minimum requirements. My friend there talks about the hoops NASA administration goes through to prevent themselves from firing fantastic contract staff simply because a year has passed and a cheaper bid came up for IT or admins or research vendors etc... But yes, in the end decisions have to be made and usually people who trust each other are more likely to do business with each other than with others who don't trust each other as much.
And now that bids are in the malleable area and "cheapest wins" is no longer clear, you realize that corruption isn't simply gone because your agency gives the bid to the lowest bidder. Hell, they do that in Brazil too. Everybody does that. It's just that "lowest bidder" just means they sent in a piece of paper with a number lower than anybody else's. Not that they will get the job done for that price, or that once done you'll actually get what you paid for.
As an example, because some of our company (in Brazil) projects were government funded, we had to follow government rules. And that included lowest cost for trips. Of course, the lowest cost flight from São Paulo to Manaus leaves SP at 2AM and gets to Manaus at 5AM (or something equally ridiculous). However, the rules don't specify "out of all options", they only specify that 3 quotes are needed. So the standard procedure is:
1. Find the flight with times that suit you.
2. Find 2 other flights that are more expensive.
3. Ask for a quote for these 3 flights.
GG.
Now there is clearly no corruption here. It's just making sure that all the rules don't get in the way of actually getting some work done. But if the same rules were to apply to all basic purchasing orders (and they did), then I could (1) ask my buddy how much X costs. (2) find 2 other companies that sell X at a higher price. Send in those 3 quotes.
Now clearly that could be corrupt. And it definitely is corrupt if my buddy told me that he had 2 sky box seats to FlaFlu for me and my wife if I got him that deal.
Just as a disclaimer: (1) I, and nobody I know, actually does this, and (2) large purchases required different rules, but I never had to deal with them, so am not sure of the details. It was a more official bidding process.
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On December 16 2016 01:38 Incognoto wrote:I use Yahoo as well. Not like I have much to lose
I use it for my personal email because once created, an email is hard to lose.
A few embarrassing correspondences between me and various former love interests is probably the worst of the contents there. I'd really hate to have a foreign nation-state read those because it would be really damning, or something. I'd hate for it to be leaked though.
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On December 16 2016 01:36 Tachion wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2016 00:50 LegalLord wrote:On December 15 2016 18:32 Acrofales wrote:Why did you just spend the last 2 pages defending Russia in ways that range from "I'm not sure they did it" to "but Kennedy did it too"? Regarding whether Russia did it or not: you're reading articles that only go off the technical aspects and I agree, they only tell you so much. Presumably that's why the CIA seem confident that Russia did it to get Trump elected, whereas the FBI isn't. The CIA may be assumed to have human sources within Russia, tasked with finding this sort of thing out. It may not be the cold war anymore, but clearly there's still a use for spies. And spying on Russia is kinda the CIA's thing. So while the technical evidence only points to Russia probably doing it, there's probably other evidence that we are not privy to that points to exactly who and why. Or this is more WMD bullshit. That is also possible. As for the "hypocrisy": is it possible that these are not all the same people? For starters, Kennedy is dead... Two general things I'm considering here, one separate from the other: 1. Did Russia hack, did Russia leak, and can you actually prove it? The answers, respectively, are probably but there's a lot of plausible deniability there, possibly but there's infinite plausible deniability there, and fuck if I know. 2. Do people care? And my argument is no, people don't care, it's just that Russia is a time-honored way to rile up sentiment for more active FP involvement. And funding for intelligence, and support for surveillance programs. "CIA says it's true based on unavailable sources" isn't an argument, by the way. It might be so but they're also known for bullshitting so they have trust issues to worry about. WMDs and all. If you are waiting for hard facts, you are going to be disappointed. You can't expect security and intelligence agencies to disclose their sources or methods of investigation to the public. I mean, when have they ever? The higher ups in the government are the ones who receive that information, and we rely upon them to act accordingly. Perhaps that is why congress is pushing to launch an investigation into it after the intelligence briefings they have received.
So it basically boils down to, "trust me, we're doing the right thing and we have the right conclusions." Unfortunately there is a substantial conflict of interest and the agency isn't one that has a spotless record on the truth.
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On December 16 2016 01:39 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2016 01:06 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 16 2016 00:57 Acrofales wrote:On December 16 2016 00:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 16 2016 00:15 Silvanel wrote:On December 15 2016 23:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 18:58 Silvanel wrote:
Modern corruption doesnt look like some shady narco deal going on in the middle of night in some junkyard or quarry. No cash is directly exchanged. It happenes in front of everyone. For example: one party gives contract to company owned by wife/daughter of some official and in return that party wins bid to supply government with hardware or software or perform some analysis. There isnt even need for explicit agreement, You scrach my back i scrach Yours.
Or to be more on topic:
What exactly would be Clintons incentive to crack down on Wallstreet should it be called for? Somethings might be ok according to the law, doesnt make it ok in general sense. That's not corruption, that's literally how majority of business is run since humans first learned to communicate with each other. Trusting someone and hence willing to make trades and deals with that person does not equate to corruption. Corruption is also not you perceiving that an individual might or might not do something you disagree with in a possible future. You can't leave something corrupt when the corrupt action hasn't happened yet. I literally don't think you understand the meaning of the word corrupt and that you simply equate any exchange you disagree with as a mental shortcut to mean corrupt. I dont know how it is in US, but if such collusion would be proven in Poland person in question would go to jail. Thats exactly what corruption is. Sadly the situation i gave as example is very hard to prove so in Poland such people are usually hit with "criminal mismangament of public funds". I really dont get how public official giving preference to someone because they do buisness with their family member is ok in Your book. Which is why government agencies in the US can only do business with the lowest bidder. They are not allowed to decide who they purchase from because giving that decision making power to agencies allows favoritism. But if the person who you had a good relationship with before, say you knew their family, also happens to have the best deal, say because you knew their family and are willing to give you a better deal, then that's simply business as usual. Corruption would be if you literally payed someone to do something illegal or not allowed. Your country not having laws that pre-decides how the selection process is made is merely a limitation on your country not on the people running your country. As you should well know, that kinda thing isn't nearly as simple as you make it sound. (1) Demands can (and are) tailored to heavily favour certain contractors over others. For instance, "this product must be compatible with X". If you are also the producer of X, this makes such construction far easier, and thus cheaper. Who's to say that clause wasn't simply snuck in there in order to benefit said contractor? Compatibility with X might not strictly be necessary. (2) Budget overruns are extremely common and (government) contracts are seldom canceled because of them. On top of that, there's the fact that bids might not be straightforward and calls can be underspecified. Therefore you end up with a bunch of bids that offer different things at different prices and someone still has to evaluate which one best fits the bid for the lowest price. That someone is usually the person to be "influenced" by a weekend trip to the Bahamas. I understand that bids can be complex. Which means how strict you make the rules is a decision of expediency, flexibility, and accountability. Make it strict enough to prevent corruption to some degree, then you end up paying for things you don't need or only having shitty quality goods. Make it too lax and you get favoritism. However, products requiring strict specifications is going to always be a truism. You'd have to prove that that specification was unnecessary to the product and was only added specifically to enact favoritism. But if that specification is needed in the product regardless of where they get said specification--then is it really corruption? If the product is non-specific enough that lots of loopholes can be made to make bids super close--then that simply means you send it back to engineers to make it more specific. NASA, for example, can only choose which one has the lowest cost to their budget without going under their strict minimum requirements. My friend there talks about the hoops NASA administration goes through to prevent themselves from firing fantastic contract staff simply because a year has passed and a cheaper bid came up for IT or admins or research vendors etc... But yes, in the end decisions have to be made and usually people who trust each other are more likely to do business with each other than with others who don't trust each other as much. And now that bids are in the malleable area and "cheapest wins" is no longer clear, you realize that corruption isn't simply gone because your agency gives the bid to the lowest bidder. Hell, they do that in Brazil too. Everybody does that. It's just that "lowest bidder" just means they sent in a piece of paper with a number lower than anybody else's. Not that they will get the job done for that price, or that once done you'll actually get what you paid for. As an example, because some of our company (in Brazil) projects were government funded, we had to follow government rules. And that included lowest cost for trips. Of course, the lowest cost flight from São Paulo to Manaus leaves SP at 2AM and gets to Manaus at 5AM (or something equally ridiculous). However, the rules don't specify "out of all options", they only specify that 3 quotes are needed. So the standard procedure is: 1. Find the flight with times that suit you. 2. Find 2 other flights that are more expensive. 3. Ask for a quote for these 3 flights. GG. Now there is clearly no corruption here. It's just making sure that all the rules don't get in the way of actually getting some work done. But if the same rules were to apply to all basic purchasing orders (and they did), then I could (1) ask my buddy how much X costs. (2) find 2 other companies that sell X at a higher price. Send in those 3 quotes. Now clearly that could be corrupt. And it definitely is corrupt if my buddy told me that he had 2 sky box seats to FlaFlu for me and my wife if I got him that deal. Just as a disclaimer: (1) I, and nobody I know, actually does this, and (2) large purchases required different rules, but I never had to deal with them, so am not sure of the details. It was a more official bidding process.
Levels of security is different for each organization. My company for example forces us to purchase through their system of dealers and contracts. If you want to use an outside source it needs to be cheaper than what they already have. If you want to do a work around you need sign offs from your manager, their director, and the VP of your department. And if an audit happens they make sure all the paperwork blames you for using outside vendors.
They do this because they want the people deciding which things we pay for to be a different department than the people who need to make the purchase. That way they can pressure that department to cut costs or be punished and forces researches to argue with that department of they need a new tool or resource.
Will corruption still happen? Yes, but they make sure you sign as many things to take the blame for them.
In the end people will always actively try to game the system they are in. Some are just better at it than others.
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On December 16 2016 01:12 Incognoto wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2016 00:47 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 16 2016 00:15 Silvanel wrote:On December 15 2016 23:31 Thieving Magpie wrote:On December 15 2016 18:58 Silvanel wrote:
Modern corruption doesnt look like some shady narco deal going on in the middle of night in some junkyard or quarry. No cash is directly exchanged. It happenes in front of everyone. For example: one party gives contract to company owned by wife/daughter of some official and in return that party wins bid to supply government with hardware or software or perform some analysis. There isnt even need for explicit agreement, You scrach my back i scrach Yours.
Or to be more on topic:
What exactly would be Clintons incentive to crack down on Wallstreet should it be called for? Somethings might be ok according to the law, doesnt make it ok in general sense. That's not corruption, that's literally how majority of business is run since humans first learned to communicate with each other. Trusting someone and hence willing to make trades and deals with that person does not equate to corruption. Corruption is also not you perceiving that an individual might or might not do something you disagree with in a possible future. You can't leave something corrupt when the corrupt action hasn't happened yet. I literally don't think you understand the meaning of the word corrupt and that you simply equate any exchange you disagree with as a mental shortcut to mean corrupt. I dont know how it is in US, but if such collusion would be proven in Poland person in question would go to jail. Thats exactly what corruption is. Sadly the situation i gave as example is very hard to prove so in Poland such people are usually hit with "criminal mismangament of public funds". I really dont get how public official giving preference to someone because they do buisness with their family member is ok in Your book. Which is why government agencies in the US can only do business with the lowest bidder. They are not allowed to decide who they purchase from because giving that decision making power to agencies allows favoritism. But if the person who you had a good relationship with before, say you knew their family, also happens to have the best deal, say because you knew their family and are willing to give you a better deal, then that's simply business as usual. Corruption would be if you literally payed someone to do something illegal or not allowed. Your country not having laws that pre-decides how the selection process is made is merely a limitation on your country not on the people running your country. if not corruption then hardcore nepotism? buddy buddy?
Is it nepotism if you referred someone you worked with before for a job position?
Is it nepotism if you trusted the referral of someone you trusted when you do a business deal?
Is it nepotism to continue working with organizations you've worked well with in the past?
Corruption is a fairly specific thing. Having good relations with someone you prefer working with is not in that definition. Now if you can show that they are actively taking worse deals, worse products, or worse whatever in an active attempt to follow the commands of someone who gave them some kind of "thing", then you can begin the dialogue of "why was that vendor/person used for ____"
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Due to the nature of this hack, there's just so much plausible deniability that we don't know whether it was non-governmental actors. Those claiming it was non-governmental actors are probably Verizon fanboys and non-governmental hackers who want to boost their notoriety.
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EPT
