Quote:
Originally Posted by Nebe
Sometimes I think you are autistic man....
Here we have Trump saying that he is going to drain the swamp of corruption in DC and boot out all of the corrupt money taking influences when he is elected, but here is his tobacco puppet vice president pic. Why did he make this announcement in the first place?? Because the tobacco industry gave him a #^&#^&#^&#^& load of money to say it.
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Right. Because the tobacco industry gave him a #^&#^&#^&#^& load of money to say smoking is bad for you and you should quit smoking. I admit that I don't know what actually prompted him to say those words. You're, apparently, certain of why he did. I did not comment on whether Pence was bribed or not. I tried to point out that your post was not good evidence that he was bribed to say those words. It even contradicted the idea that Pence was pimping for the tobacco industry. It seemed to me that what Pence was getting at was what his last paragraph stated--that a government big enough to go after smokers is big enough to go after you. If he was influenced by $100,000 to say that, I doubt that the $100,000 intended that he also say that smoking is bad for you and that you should quit smoking.
Was accepting donations from tobacco, or pharma, or trial lawyers, or industry, or unions, or banking and finance, or from wealthy individuals, or from little folks wrong and corruptly influential? Probably. Arguments could be made either way. The influence can cut both ways--using government to beat competitors or get financial preferences; or to fend off government control or government favoring the opposing competitors who also "donate."
Government power can also be corrupt. Fighting against that corruption takes money. And it takes a lot of money to get elected in order to fight government corruption. There's no way to get around that. Not in a free society. Pence's announcement was made back when he was running for Congress. How he thinks about the "swamp" now or then, I don't know. Trump doesn't need the huge donations to get elected. Most everyone else, unfortunately, does. Perhaps you're right. Maybe freedom is overrated. It would cost a lot less to eliminate the democratic process and to be run by some kind of dictatorship.
Perhaps I am somehow autistic because I keep pointing out that saying that smoking is bad for you and that you should quit smoking is not advantageous to the tobacco industry. And that paying someone to say that would be a stupid waste of the tobacco industry's money. If saying that a government big enough to go after smokers is big enough to go after you benefits the tobacco industry, it also benefits the rest of society including the marijuana industry.
How big do you want the government to be?