It’s also legal to give someone money after the fact for a job well done, and it’s definitely not a bribe.
From June 26 2024:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a federal anti-bribery law does not make it a crime for state and local officials to accept a gratuity for acts that they have already taken.
We live in the stupidest timeline.
Well he did make it so tha tnothing he does in office is illegal, even if it’s illegal.
Step 1: Have money.
Step 2: Rape children (and adults).
Step 3: Put an “R” next to your name.
Congrats, you are now immune from consequences.
In many countries it is legal to promise a tax rebate when you are in office. Many cons (oops, I mean conservatives) use this as voting bait for people with no critical thinking skills, and then turn around and give their corporate masters and billionaires huge tax cuts that make those same voters loose critical services that makw them pay out of pocket.
In other words, “Heres $200 to vote for me so i can make your life way more expensive on a yearly basis through medical care, less regulation, less infrastructure repair”.
This is the same grift, but more blatant and obviously something that would never get fulfilled, which is why the number is so big. Bigger numbers make critical thinking fail harder, especially when times are economically tough. It tends to get cons reelected even when they are not doing well in polls, speaking from the Canadian experience in this.
They won’t even let you stand outside a polling place and hand out water bottles to people waiting in line.
If you’re a Dem. Saw Maga groups outside our local voting polls last election. They were cooking and handing out water.
Law means nothing in a coup
The law only matters to us poor folks. It isn’t applied to the rich.
If no one prosecuted you for it, it might as well be.
Technically, the equivalent would be you standing outside a polling place with a sign saying “I will give every adult in the area $500 if Candidate X wins”.
Ostensibly, you could just be lying (just like Trump) - and that would probably be covered under your 1st Amendment rights.
It’s stupid, but there is enough of a disconnect between action and reward that it might skirt past.
No, that’s not how that works.
18 U.S.C. § 597 - U.S. Code - Unannotated Title 18. Crimes and Criminal Procedure § 597.
Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and
Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote—
Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.
“I will give you money if you vote for me”
Is different from
“I will give everyone money if I win”
The first is paying someone to vote and is outlawed by the law you cited. The second has a disconnect between the money and the vote. Everyone gets the money, even those that voted for the other guy. Thus it might be legal.
Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate;
“I will give everyone money if I win” is offering money to people for voting. Voting for the candidate is implied, yes, but offering to pay everyone is still offering money to people for voting.
Oh I’m REALLY playing devil’s advocate on this one
Promising everyone, no exceptions, 5k if you win, is kind of a campaign promise rather than a bribe.
I’m going to shower for 2 hours to get the stench off me now
Sounds to me like this has to be tried in court (unless it has not already) for a legal president to be made, and thus decided if it is legal or not. IANAL
That seems pretty straightforward. So the law is correct, it’s just useless because the system founded on these laws is broken.
I didn’t realize Ayn Rand’s ghost had a lemmy account.
This isn’t broken at all. Unless you think every form of government social spending should be illegal, then you shouldn’t try to make it a felony for politicians to run for office promising to establish government programs or give people money through acts of Congress. You’re advocating for full on libertarianism.
Though this becomes wishy with politicians/parties. You offering to pay for people’s healthcare costs if they vote for your favourite candidate would probably be illegal, but a candidate promising to institute universal healthcare is just a campaign promise, so this law leaves a very legitimate open question of when something a candidate says stops being a campaign promise and starts being a legally problematic bribe, because ultimately all campaign promises boil down to “vote for me and I will do something good for you/something you like”.
You could very much argue that a candidate promising UBI is effectively not very different from what Trump promised.
I should look forward to Trump getting charged with that, then?
But more seriously, there would be countless lawyers happy to argue that a general statement such as “$500 to every adult in the county if John Smith wins” does not technically break that particular law because it’s not explicitly targeted at any one individual recipient, nor is it contingent on them participating in an election whatsoever.
Just as I’m also sure there would be more than one sympathetic Trump-appointed judge to side with the defendant too.
US laws mean nothing if they aren’t actively being followed.
People in this thread forget that the Supreme Court already gave Trump immunity from prosecution.
If I stand outside a voting center and promise to give each person 1000$ a month for the rest of their life if they vote for a candidate I like, that’s illegal.
It I stand om stage at a campaign and promise that, it’s called Universal Basic Income, is a legitimate policy suggestion and perfectly acceptable campaign promise.
So where’s the line ?
I understand the answer. My question is simply, why isn’t the answer to my comment also the answer to OPs Post ? Legally, the questions are pretty much equivalent, yet I get downvoted to hell for mine, but OP finds nothing but agreement. You people are applying the law differently, because you dislike Trump, but like UBI. And whilst I agree that UBI would he good, amd Trump sucks major ass, the law does not, amd should not, care about that.
Both situations are a politician promising to pass legislation that gives voters unconditional financial benefit, if the politicians win their election.
You’re all hypocrites. Yes Trump is a piece of shit, yes he almost certainly has no intention of following through with this, and yes his motivations are absolutely disgusting, but purely legally it’s no different from any other direct financial campaign promise, and if you can’t accept that just because Trump is a piece of shit, then you have a problem.
One is just handing out money and the other is passing a written law on the books through the entire legislative process.
Edit: expanding on this since you seem genuine and not a concern troll:
The point of the legislative process is that there are checks and balances. If you write and pass a law, the courts can challenge it. In the end if the law stands it has a much more legitimate mandate from the people.
Also laws are not written and passed by one person, you have to get enough majority consensus from the entire legislative body. Skipping that process is called a dictatorship or monarchy.
So then what’s (legally) the difference between a candidate promising UBI and what Trump did ?
Trump is already in power and could give the money at any time. He is deliberately tying it to voting.
(He also has a long history of not paying, but that’s not relevant for the legal difference)
(He also has a long history of not paying, but that’s not relevant for the legal difference)
You don’t happen to know if other have successfully argued on court that since they had a history of not paying, it is understood by everyone that they were not genuine and would not pay?
So then why isn’t EVERY campaign promise by the encumbant president/party problematic in the same way ?
In my opinion️, they should be.
Australian politicians have been repeatedly making popular promises around election time, then quietly not doing anything about them after the election.
Candidates who are unlikely to be elected have also been making near impossible promises. They know that the promises don’t need to be realistic because they won’t be elected, but loft promises will still bring them more votes and more media time.There should be some form of penalty for not completing an election promise once in power, and any party already in power should only be promising things they’re already working on.
So the non encumbant party/candidate can promise to work on ALL problems in a country, but the encumbants are legally prevented from promising to do so, even if they genuinely and legitimately plan on doing so, and simply can’t start working on ALL of them at once, and therefore had to limit their current work ?
And wouldn’t this just encourage encumbants to start half baked unmotivated work on every issue imaginable, so they can use those issues when campaigning, instead of focsuing their effort on a few important issues, and actually doing something effective to fix those, because that would actually severely limit their campaign talking points.
In your system, governing effectively and efficiently becomes detrimental to a parties ability to campaign.
That’s shifting the goal posts a bit.
Some form of prevention for knowingly making false election promises is a good start.
The difference is that when someone campaigns on UBI, they are talking about laws that they want to pass, through the entire legislative process. Please also see my edit to my first comment that I wrote at the same time you were asking this question.
Holy fuck this is the stupidest take I ever heard. Congrats!
Edit because it’s stupid: universal basic income isnt a onetime bribe.
So you’re saying my comment is a worse take than literally everything MAGAt and Trump have done and said over the past years ? Really ?
Yes, UBI gives people much, much MORE money than a one time bribe.
If it’s so stupid, explain to me what is legally the difference between a politician promising to pass a UBI law of they’re elected, and a politician promising to pass a law governing a one time government payment ?
direct payment in exchance for a vote.
the former in your example benefits even those who do not vote for you.
Can’t tell the difference between “I will pay you to vote the way I want” vs “I will fight for progressive policies to set a minimum standard quality of life”, smh
Did you even read my comment ? I never even came close to claiming the two things are morally/ethically the same, I literally state exact opposite explicitly more than once.
But legally both situations are a politician promising to pass legislation that gives voters an unconditional direct financial benefit, if the politicians win their election. How are the situations differently LEGALLY ?
Yeah I agree. There’s a lot of campist motivated reasoning in these threads.
One difference is that you’d be lying avputbthe former whereas the latter would be a political thing you’d kinda have to do
A) who says I’m lying
B) in what utopia do you live where politicians never break campaign promises
It’s still illegal; it’s just that nobody will enforce the law against the orange bastard. The motherfucker was literally convicted of 34 felonies and hasn’t paid any fines or faced a minute of jail time, FFS.
He had a whole goddamn sentencing hearing where they sentenced him to nothing. Explicitly.
Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign on free medical and college?
Rather than tilt and rave let’s approach this from another angle: Trump promised funds from DOGE and balanced budgets on multiple occasions and you’re never going to see any of it. He is a liar.
Was it illegal for Bernie Sanders to campaign on free medical and college?
No because that would have been done through normal policy change and actually a thing an elected official should try and do. What Trump is doing (even if it is a lie) is bribery. It’s not even remotely the same, and it speaks volumes of your character that you would even try and equate them.
Trump’s and Bernie’s plans would both require congress because the president literally has no access to funds without it.
I worry about people spreading these lies because it is in fact a great policy stance.
If it’s a great policy stance, they should do it now when they know they have control of both legislatures. Why wait?
Your suposition is that the power of the purse still applies here. Trump has operated the executive as a collective slush fund, many times using horrible arguments that fail in court and then proceeding anyways. Also he’s allocated money from military coup projects like Venezuala to funds not under congressional control illegally.
Bernies plan is to first expand Medicare to all ages. Going off Trump’s logic this would be done by directing CMS by executive order to adjust the rates, the treasury department to allocate the necessary trust fund expenditures, the IRS to apply the necessary taxes, and the justice department to aggressively target every single possible violation in the private health insurance industry. Bernie’s actual plan is to use the bully pulpit as intended to pressure congress to act in accordance with those changes ahead of time, completely different. That’s because Trump moves to erode government into the pockets of the rich and Bernie seeks to build it stronger to benefit everyone. Executive overreach expansion has only been applied to benefit the rich effectively where everywhere else it had failed.
The DHS and especially ICE also lost funding and shut down a lot of offices for over a month until the GOP passed a reconciliation bill.
Even if overreach is occuring he is not going to pull 1.5 Trillion Dollars out of his ass.
What a moronic take. Like genuinely.
The guy is a huge troll, I have tagged them thusly and he has continued to live up to that moniker
rofl imagine being the fucking clown pretending free medicsl and college would be a bad thing.
Again: Fucking. Clown.
Welcome to America
It’s very different. One is “I will give YOU money if you vote for me” and the other is “I will give EVERYONE money if I win”. The main difference is that one is not discriminating against who people voted for. The first is buying votes, the second is a campaign similar to “I will retroactively lower taxes for this year if I win”, which I don’t think anyone would see as problematic but it’s exactly the same outcome as the one you’re finding problem with, i.e. give people money.
It’s a stupid campaign because anyone with half a brain understand that he’s not going to do it and that that money would have to come from someplace else, but it’s still a campaign promise similar to any other promise politicians make to ask you to vote for them.
do you have supreme court immunity?
