Quote (bogie160 @ Oct 26 2020 05:00pm)
Is giving your political allies positions of power within your administration a bad thing? I don't recall that ever being a thing.
Accepting millions of dollars from private parties in return for political favors is graft and has been at the core of political corruption for thousands of years.
Giving political positions like ambassadorships as favors to donors is the accepted and normal, non-corrupt way of rewarding political allies- it doesn't grant them any actual political favors or go against our nation's interests. That's for the donors you just want to reward, whereas giving departmental positions is actually asking something from them, not giving it to them. That's the system our country was founded on, and indeed the spoils system was vastly more cronyist until the Pendleton Act of 1883 at least asked for apolitical merit for office rather than
just patronage- and only for the bureaucratic service, not ambassadorships / heads of departments / etc.
If a rancher goes out into his field and sets M44s to kill coyotes, that's the normal, accepted and lawful way to use cyanide to kill living creatures. If an investment banker pours cyanide into his wife's morning tea, that's not the same thing and you can't draw stupid comparisons between the two, because its not even remotely comparable.
Every single lens- moral, ethical, legal, political, media, common knowledge, etc- distinguishes between "taking personal bribes" and "getting campaign donations". Its not some subtle understanding that should require explanation