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Bitcoin Democrats Government

Elizabeth Warren's Anti-crypto Crusade Splits the Left (politico.com) 123

Democratic lawmakers are entering a crypto collision course. Politico reports: Questions around how to police digital currency and whether to support its adoption are driving a rift not just between the party's liberal and centrist wings but also among progressives who often see eye-to-eye on financial regulation. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts -- who has long led the left's charge to crack down on banks and Wall Street -- has emerged as one of the party's most vocal cryptocurrency critics, warning that it exposes consumers to danger, is ripe for financial crimes and is an environmental threat because of its electricity usage. But a new generation of progressives -- and a number of other senior Democrats -- are embracing the startup industry. They're arguing against regulations that could stifle what proponents say is a new avenue for financial inclusion and a breakthrough alternative to traditional banks. "The project of radically decentralizing the internet and finance strikes me as a profoundly progressive cause," Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. "You should never define any technology by its worst uses. ... There's more to crypto than ransomware, just like there's more to money than money laundering."

The simmering conflict is set to intensify in the coming months. President Joe Biden last week asked federal agencies to start solidifying the federal government's approach to crypto, framing the step as supportive of innovation rather than an industry crackdown. The price of Bitcoin surged on the news. Separately, Democratic lawmakers have started to draft a host of crypto regulation bills that are also exposing a wide range of views on the government's role in the $1.7 trillion market for digital assets. The lack of consensus among Democrats means it's unlikely Congress will act anytime soon to pass major legislation laying out the direction of regulation of the new market. Some Democrats and lobbyists had expected initial votes early this year, but that timeline has slipped.

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Elizabeth Warren's Anti-crypto Crusade Splits the Left

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  • Call it cryptocurrency. There's sufficient establishmentarian rage against actual crypto[graphy] itself that the distinction is important.

    • Except the stuff isn't a currency, fails all the tests of money. crypto gambling token is good name.

      • The problem is it's been a good gamble. Slashdot posters were very anti-cryptocurrency early on (and still often are per the above), when BTC was $5. Had those people just invested a few hundred dollars instead of making an anti-crypto post they'd have at least a down payment on a house by now.
        • September 3, 1929: If you'd invested ten years ago you could be buying a house instead of complaining about how the Dow is overvalued right now.

          • Let's compare Apples to Apples, by comparing cryptocurrency to legal currency at the time.
            September 3, 1929: If you invested today in American Gold Eagles at $20/troy oz, today it'd be worth over $2,000 for each coin. Pre-1933 gold sells at a premium today!
            • That's because private ownership of gold was illegal for 30 years, from 1933-1964. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
              • Well, slashdot doesn't let you edit posts, but I worded the above poorly. Yes, pre-1933 gold would be valuable today. But the only way you'd have owned it continuously would be by breaking the law for literal decades.
                • Well, that's also one of the main advantages touted by cryptocurrency advocates, to give you an ability to hold a commodity of value regardless of government manipulation of currency prices. The fact you can so easily buy pre-1933 gold means that many, many Americans had hordes and some mega-hordes of gold and kept it. The pre-1933 gold that was confiscated or came back to the mint was destroyed.

                  The increase in price of gold is actually related to the US going off the gold standard and moving to a fiat

            • But people were mostly buying stock rather than gold in 1929, on the basis of the Dow's performance over the previous ten years. September 3rd was the high point, and then October 24th, 1929 was when the doubters were proved right. I was comparing "things that people were exuberant about in 1929" and "things that people are exuberant about in 2022", with the same backing of past performance and FOMO.
              • You're still comparing apples and oranges. People are mostly buying stock rather than cryptocurrency in 2022. In 1929, gold was easier to come by than crypto is in 2022, just go to literally any bank and trade your paper money for American Eagles.
          • September 3, 1929: If you'd invested ten years ago you could be buying a house instead of complaining about how the Dow is overvalued right now.

            I think the implied comparison is unfair. Investing your life savings in BTC when you're already 75 is stupidity to the max. Buying a couple hundred of dollars of BTC when you're still young enough to post in Slashdot is, at worst, merely stupid, just like buying a flagship smartphone when all you do is call and send SMS.

            As always, the trick to "investing" in BTC or tulips is never to invest more than you can afford to lose. I haven't bought a single satoshi, so I don't mind if BTC crashes a couple of thous

        • Slashdot posters were very anti-cryptocurrency early on (and still often are per the above), when BTC was $5.

          IIRC, when BTC was $5, buying it involved wiring money to some sketchy ass exchange. By the time more legitimate sites started dealing in it, it was no longer nearly as cheap. Also, it seemed likely that one of the many alt-coins which were sprouting up would eventually dethrone Bitcoin, and you'd be left with the virtual money equivalent of a MySpace page.

          • Sort of, if you wanted to buy it you'd have to MoneyGram etc money to someone like Bitinstant at that early stage. They also accepted bank deposits at bank of america, but again, that's somewhat shady. At the $15-$30 BTC price point, more mature exchanges like Coinbase came about.

            But, this is Slashdot, filled with technical people. Back then just mining BTC was also far easier, and if people had ran BTC miners instead of SETI-at-home or ElectricSheep then that could've been highly profitable.

            • by Rhipf ( 525263 )

              Hindsight is great isn't it.
              Back then you could have mined Bitcoin and it could have been worthless a week later based on the knowledge at the time. Today, with hindsight, we can see that it would have been a good investment in time and energy but at the time with knowledge available at that time you were just as well off running SETI-at-home or ElectronicSheep or BTC miner as you were doing nothing at all.

              • I think the lesson of hindsight is that the slashdot-nerd "bah!" negative reaction to BTC was sorely mistaken. By 2012's founding of Coinbase, it was clear the cryptocurrency space was on the rise. Still, this attitude persists amongst posters here where they still seem to think BTC will be worthless in a week.

                I learned my lesson on this geeky negativity the first time with Facebook, where I had the "bah! I used to have to send people malware to get this kind of info!" reaction. Then I ended up working

          • Upto $1 type of rates I remember it was getting mined pretty nicely on say a headless desktop hidden under your desk which u didnt return to IT after you got a laptop. Which was also running seti@home

        • by dan325 ( 1221648 )

          There is only one reason people like cryptocurrency: the values have been going up. It has no other positive attributes that I'm aware of.

          It's the new subprime mortgage. It's good because OMG LOOK AT THE LINE GRAPH!

        • The problem is it's been a good gamble

          No, it hasn't. On a roulette table, in each round people put money on the table, then some win and some lose, the money gets paid out and the next round starts. With crypto currency, the money that is on the table right now is 100s of billions, and there will be / can be no payout unless new buyers are found willing to pay 100s of billions as well. Meanwhile, a lot of the money that should be on the table has disappeared in the pockets of fraudsters, and in the enormous transaction costs.

      • I don't really care whether it resembles a traditional currency. It is a currency, just a very shitty one. Not all banks exchange all national currencies, some businesses accept some specific other national currencies with which they're familiar and that their bank will exchange for them gracefully, some currencies are not very stable... all the things people say makes it not a currency are sometimes true of other currencies. Granted, with cryptocurrencies it is true that many of these things are true at on

        • Fuck, now I'm doing it. This is what happens :D

        • by PPH ( 736903 )

          It is a currency, just a very shitty one.

          Or not. Call it what it is (and how regulators define it). An asset. And it's an asset traded in an unregulated market. Which makes it a bad fit for banks (as we know them). It was designed to operate outside of the regulated banking system.

          We had a similar situation up until 2008 or so. Assets (mortgage backed securities) were exempted from many securities regulations at the behest of their creators. And with Alan Greenspan's acquiescence. Currently, it appears that cryptocurrencies are going down the sam

        • Here is the problem: all currencies are shares in an underlying economy. What share of what real economy do I purchase with bitcoin?

          • Here is the problem: all currencies are shares in an underlying economy. What share of what real economy do I purchase with bitcoin?

            The money supply is expanded or contracted irrespective of the underlying assets in order to control inflation based on the economic activity of the time, so currencies are not actually shares of anything real.

            • based on the economic activity of the time

              I'm not saying the economy is just fixed assets. The economy is made up of all economic activity. The money supply expands or contracts to be synchronized with that, and also have a moderate rate of inflation. It's still based on the economic activity of a given currency area. Which is why the Euro and Dollar are both problematic: their area of influence is too big to allow for precise control. Hence you see Euro-funds to support Italy, Spain, Greece and Portugal.

              I agree that currency does not reflect under

      • Except the stuff isn't a currency, fails all the tests of money.

        Really? Let's drill in. The common attributes of money I've heard are a unit of exchange, a value store, and a unit of accounting.

        Unit of exchange? I can give you bitcoin and you give me real products. Not every merchant or every customer but check.

        Value store? I can give you dollars in exchange for cryptocurrencies and a year later, do the reverse. Sounds like a value store to me. Check.

        Unit of accounting? Nope, I don't know anyone who does their books in cryptocurrency. Bzzzzt.

        So by my measure, cryptocurr

        • > Unit of exchange? I can give you bitcoin and you give me real products

          And by the time I process that transaction, which can be several hours (or sometimes even DAYS), the value of the "currency" has changed and I'm no longer getting the same transaction. If that happens to fiat currency everyone considers that a big problem but somehow cryptocurrencies get a pass? No; As a unit of exchange, cryptocurrency fails.

          > Value store? I can give you dollars in exchange for cryptocurrencies and a year later,

          • by the time I process that transaction ... the value of the "currency" has changed and I'm no longer getting the same transaction.

            I can give you dollars in exchange for cryptocurrencies and a year later, do the reverse

            But it will not be worth the same.

            Sounds like these problems only exist because you're converting cryptocurrency into USD, presumably because you value things in USD.

            If you get paid 1 BTC, that's still worth 1 BTC next week. The value is 1 BTC. Its purchasing power can change, including its purchasing power of other currencies, but that's true for all currencies. If I send a $1000 remittance payment to my mom in Mexico, the value of the payment in pesos will vary depending on when she picks it up from Western Union. This doesn't mean the do

            • Well, purchasing power is a thing, so if your imaginary currency deviates a lot over a short time span in ways totally unrelated to the economy, it's not really usable. A supermarket basket full of groceries better cost more or less the same a few months later. In bitcoin it may be 10% more expensive or cheaper in just a few days.
              • Well, purchasing power is a thing, so if your imaginary currency deviates a lot over a short time span in ways totally unrelated to the economy, it's not really usable.

                No doubt. I didn't say cryptocurrencies are good forms of money, just that they are forms. Personally, I think they're pretty bad forms and don't use them. Others have different opinions.

                A supermarket basket full of groceries better cost more or less the same a few months later. In bitcoin it may be 10% more expensive or cheaper in just a few days.

                *caugh*gasoline*caugh*.

                Inflation or deflation can occur in any currency. IMHO, much of the volatility of cryptocurrencies is because they're used mostly as financial instruments and not widely used as actual currency. If their value was more directly tied to the exchange of real goods, I think the price would stabalize.

                • Individual products have always had the possibility of getting more expensive. Gasoline is no exception. Also, the mechanism is quite clear. Currency devaluation, or inflation, is also a known aspect of money. The wild de- and appreciation of bitcoin and other crypto coins which are not directly related to the economy are a sign that they are more alike stocks of a company than currency. Except that it's a company without assets that will not ever pay out dividends, has no strategy, board of directors, prod
            • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              World cares about USD, because it's a de facto reserve currency of the world. If you want to buy products in bulk on international markets, you don't buy in whatever currency you want.

              Instead you typically denominate trade value in USD, convert buyer's currency into USD, then convert USD into seller's currency. Because USD is the reserve currency against which all other currencies are ultimately measured.

              This is done to protect the trade against things like changes in currency value and ability to use eithe

            • >Sounds like these problems only exist because you're converting cryptocurrency into USD

              Neither transaction time nor purchasing power have anything to do with exchange rate.

              > If you get paid 1 BTC, that's still worth 1 BTC next week.

              If you get paid $1M Zimbabwe dollars, it's still worth $1M Zimbabwe dollars next week. The problem is you can't buy the same amount of goods and services with $1M Zimbabwe dollars a week from now because the value of the currency went to shit.

              In other words, if what you're

        • Crypto miner manufacturers often use Bitcoin as the unit of account. Because miners are at the mercy of OEMs, they pre-order way ahead of time. Since the cryptocurrency market is so volatile in USD, the whole sales cycle is much more stable by using Bitcoin.

        • One of the major uses of money that often gets overlooked on here is paying down debt contracts. Nobody wants debt contracts payable in BTC, because the deflationary nature of the currency would horribly screw over the debtor. Imagine if back when one BTC was worth $3k, you agreed to a fixed 30 year home mortgage, to be repaid at 0.5 BTC per month. How's that mortgage payment looking now?

      • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

        There are different kinds of cryptocurrency. One mentioned in the link from the article is stablecoin, which is pegged to the UD dollar;

        "backed by dollar-denominated assets of at least equal fair value to the USDC in circulation in segregated accounts with US regulated financial institutions. Such accounts are attested to (i.e. verified publicly) by an independent accounting firm"

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. The name is completely demented. "Crypto" is an abbreviation for cryptography and has been forever. You cannot abbreviate it a second time by using "crypto" for "cryptographic currency", because if you use the term "crypto-currency", you have already accepted that "crypto" abbreviates "cryptography".

  • The trouble is that cryptocurrency appears to be rarely (in volume) used for anything "good" / noncriminal, and when it is, it's hardly ever doing anything that couldn't be done more quickly, easily and efficiently by existing options.

    Cryptocurrency's unique abilities to do evil greatly outweigh its unique abilities to do good.

    • Appearances can be deceiving. You're certainly seeing reporting bias in the types of stories that hit. You're certainly seeing the unfortunate fact that with a small user base, many people are only introduced to it when they are hacked. But the reality is most transactions are perfectly legitimate and above board. Some analysts have suggested the percentage of the economy that is fraud and such is on par with the USD.

      • Let's say that 80% of BTC transactions are the same sort of thing you could do with Visa, Paypal etc, while the other 20% is ransomware payments and industrial-scale theft by North Korea. How would the 80% that could be done with traditional payment systems, probably better and certainly more efficiently, justify the 20%?

        I mean if I make a nailgun that runs on bunker fuel but can otherwise nail as well as any average nailgun, but it also works well as a submachine-gun, why should my nailgun be allowed to be

        • But what if the real number is less than 1%, as has been suggested by actual analysts? If it's no worse than USD, then what are we really talking about here besides propping up a legacy currency system against competition?

          • You mean the hilariously low estimate from a company with a vested interest in downplaying criminal uses of cryptocurrencies? The one where any trade not involving known criminal wallets is considered legit? The same one that counts wash trading, which makes up 70% of all trades, as legit activity?

            https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]

            And if the legacy currency system is the alternative to a standalone environmental megadisaster, then we're also talking about the planet's future habitability.

    • The trouble is that cryptocurrency appears to be rarely (in volume) used for anything "good" / noncriminal, and when it is, it's hardly ever doing anything that couldn't be done more quickly, easily and efficiently by existing options.

      Maybe you live in Argentina.

      The local currency is inflating >50%. The government has instituted capital controls to prevent more stable foreign currencies from leaving the country, and maintains an "official rate" of currency exchange that is far from the international market rate. You're only permitted to convert $200 of pesos to USD per month [aljazeera.com]. You've got $30k in savings, and want to flee before things get worse.

      So:
      - You couldn't have had your savings in pesos in the bank, since convertin

  • “There’s a reason that crypto takes hold in some areas because the banks have continued to impose fees on transactions at a time when the cost of transactions should be dropping fast. However, substituting an unregulated, unverified system in which scammers and cheats and terrorists mix in with ordinary consumers and no one can tell who’s on the other side of a transaction is not a safe substitute.” -Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, and Brad Sherman

    Sounds like a sensible objection to

    • Not really. Because no one is substituting Coinbase for Chase. They're different things.

      • That sounds like an indictment against the merits of cryptocurrency rather than against Senator Warren's statement. There is really no debating that cryptocurrency is definitely a shit-show of rampant criminality [pcgamer.com], to say nothing of how virtually everything blockchain-based other than BTC and ETH has been proven to be one form or another of a pump-and-dump. When traditional banks dabble in the cryptocurrency marketplace they're basically discarding any flimsy remaining pretence of being part of the economy's
    • You can see which account was used for what transaction but how are those tied to a valid individual? Also, say if hostile Russian oligarchs had their way with it, how would you freeze their assets?
  • I'm an Elizabeth Warren supporter, but I think she has gone a bit off the rails recently. Her attacks on Elon Musk for not paying taxes were just plain dumb and it seemed to start around that time. Maybe it started earlier and just wasn't visible before then.

    • I'm a fan of her stance on cracking down on the banks and making federal student loans interest free.

    • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

      She has very legitimate concerns about crypto, and Musk as well.

    • Her attacks on Elon Musk for not paying taxes were just plain dumb and it seemed to start around that time.

      Both her and Bernie are big on the whole "the rich need to pay their fair share" thing. I completely agree with that, though. The rich have a responsibility to pay it forward, back into supporting the society which enabled them to become wealthy in the first place. You're not gonna sell many Teslas in a society with no roads.

      What did sour me a bit on Warren is her misunderstanding of social media. They are privately owned companies and are under no obligation to provide anyone with a free platform. If

      • Both her and Bernie are big on the whole "the rich need to pay their fair share" thing. I completely agree with that, though.

        I agree with that too and so do most sane people but if you are going to attack someone why not go after someone who actually avoids taxes? Musk's wealth is indeed stupendous but the vast majority of it is not realized. He didn't hide it or move it offshore or do some tax-evading trick not available to mere mortals. He simply hadn't sold his stock yet at the time she called him a "freeloader." She was reacting to the "Time Person Of the Year" article.

        As it gamed out he did sell a large parcel of his

    • Re: Elon Musk - I recently did a 'fact check' (in quotes because it wasn't exhaustive) and came to the conclusion that not only has he fallen off of his acorn, but he was the perfect example of tax-avoidance.

      I would call myself conservative except the word seems to be in use for completely satirical means; many people I associate with lament over being 'overtaxed'. Physically speaking, it seems that a fair share of wealth accumulation could possibly be under-taxed. I'm not defining anyone or anything sp
  • Methinks politico exaggerates a bit on this one. It's difficult for me to imagine a lefty that doesn't get that it's a good idea to ban a completely non-productive if not completely pernicious technology that's wasting a substantial chunk of electricity and making global warming worse.
    • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

      That's bitcoin. There are a number of other cryptocurrencies that don't get their value by burning through compute resources.

  • This can summarize one of the many, many problems we see with politics in America. For a start, we only have two real parties. While others exist, we're constantly reminded that a vote for them is a vote for the worse of the two major parties, so please, PLEASE don't vote off grid.

    Second, we have a "right" party, the Republicans, that are hell-bent on fucking shit up and they will flat out tell you to your face they want to fuck your shit up because it stands a chance of hurting $group_we_hate, and people s

  • Warren is not just on an anti-crypto crusade. She is on an anti-tech crusade. She's made it very clear on repeated occasions that she's jumped on that tired old: "If you make your living working with computers, you're an evil person ruining everything good." bandwagon that the hipper-than-thou "nerds get out" mob built in SOMA and the Mission back during the Dotcom boom.

    • And you have citations of these comments? From my viewpoint she is very much opposed to "big tech" not tech: Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. especially when it comes to consumer protection and privacy.
      • Yeah, you must be right. I guess she's only against "successful tech". She's probably fine with shitty products that don't succeed, so totally valid viewpoint lol.
        • So you have citations where she's against "tech" then? Please present them. Or has she been against big tech and the power these few companies have today?
          • Contrary to popular modern belief, slapping "big" on something doesn't make it de facto evil. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tech, all meaningless loaded terms.

            Name a highly successful tech firm she is not against. That might be easier - her main issue seems to be size, which is a necessary byproduct of success. So she's just against successful tech companies, and shrilly I might add.

            • Contrary to popular modern belief, slapping "big" on something doesn't make it de facto evil. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Tech, all meaningless loaded terms.

              She specifically cited Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. She was not vague about it.

              Name a highly successful tech firm she is not against. That might be easier - her main issue seems to be size, which is a necessary byproduct of success. So she's just against successful tech companies, and shrilly I might add.

              Again, she specifically cited why she is against certain companies. For Google she feels it has too much power over the industry. But you have not presented any citations have you?

              • Lol, what would I cite? Warren is demonstrably a rabble rouser and has come out against all the biggest tech firms. That's literally what I'm saying - it doesn't matter what they do, she just resents their success and size.
                • How about backing anything that you have posted? Please cite anywhere where Warrren is against big tech because "she resents their success"
                • I can just say stuff and it's true! /s
                • Lol, what would I cite?

                  I don't know. I assume you must have something you can cite? If it's demonstrable, that means you can demonstrate it. What leads you to believe she resents big tech companies for being successful, not for being anticompetitive?

    • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

      Utter bullshit.

  • I wasn't sure if I liked cryptocurrencies or not. Now that I know Senator Warren opposes them, it's clear they must be a good thing.

    Glad to have that all sorted out.

  • The left hates crypto. The hard left hate it for using tons of electricity, water and electronics. Conservative leftists like me hate it for those reasons and also because it risks becoming a dangerous unregulated security that'll crash our economy like Mortgage Back Securities did in 2008.

    I think folks are confusing the left and "libertarians", which in the United States at least are on the right wing except for a handful of social issues (and they'll usually look the other way on those issues) and dru
    • Liberty is a conservative value in the U.S., where it was enshrined in the founding documents. It's a progressive value in places like France that started off as autocracies. The baseline is important. And arguably should be shifted periodically, but that would confuse the conversation even more.

    • by jwdb ( 526327 )

      The anarchist left loves crypto, for obvious reasons.

    • It's more generational than partisan. Gen-Z loves crypto on both sides.
  • Most liberals that I personally know, think crypto is sheer lunacy. It doesn't solve a pressing problem people have, uses enormous amounts of electricity to keep running. And shares some traits with pyramid schemes. The scheme has run for a long time. And that gives it an air of authenticity. But, in the end, the house of cards will come crumbling down.
  • and crypto is the polar opposite of stability. It lacks the government backing of a fiat currency, is expensive to create by design, is difficult and expensive to exchange (and attempts to fix that have stalled) and in many if not most cases is either a ponzi scheme or a money laundering scheme.

    It doesn't even get you freedom, as I've pointed out elsewhere the exchanges and mining pools can collude to seize control of pretty much any chain. And that's before we talk about fun stuff like currency manipul
    • by Klaxton ( 609696 )

      You appear to be lumping all crypto into the same bucket as BTC whereas there are different kinds.

      The article specifically mention stablecoin;
      Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who has authored industry-supported legislation that would establish rules for cryptocurrency known as stablecoins, whose value is tied to an underlying asset like the dollar.

      • So yeah I'm lumping them all into one. Those things people call stable coin have been repeatedly shown to not be backing the number of coins with the amount of currency that they're generating. It's not even hard to do the math to figure out they're lying. It's the kind of scam like the Nigerian prince thing where the goal is to weed out people who are smart enough to spot the scam because you don't want to waste your time on those people who you can't scam.

        I probably wouldn't care but the size of the s
    • They can't let these new crypto experiments become IRA funds or part of mutual funds etc like it was a stable legitimate real thing. It's bad enough already without something that should need decades of stable history to be even considered.

      I'm sure none of you will be happy when your retirement fund drops a huge amount suddenly because crypto was incorporated into it. At least the housing bubble was a tangible fraud that some could see coming and a fraud where the perps might have been punished; not a tuli

  • Cryptocurrency has nothing to do with decentralizing the web, he's mixing up the grifts.

  • Just sell all the "crypto currencies" to Russia, and let them do with it whatever they want. Good riddance.
  • If you really want to protect consumers, offer a stablecoin that's actually backed by the Fed. Otherwise STFU.
  • IMHO they would do the world a favour if cryptocurrencies get banned. I perceive no advantages. I see only profit from criminal enterprises and speculating. It puts the creation of money into shady hands (shady even when we compare it to the governments that currently do the job).

  • Looks like the Dems have some smart people and also some who are heavily invested, this is why the US is on it's way out, greed over all else.

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