“We think this particular minion has reached the end of his usefulness, so here’s one satisfying but ultimately very small victory to distract you from the gutting of anti-bribery laws, industry regulations, protections for unhoused people against arbitrary arrests, etc.”

The ACLU are savvy litigators and picked a client our Supreme Court might be sympathetic to

Jails and prisons also purchase a ton of goods and services from for profit companies, who are all too happy to upcharge (“you can’t put a price on safety!”), and the wardens just sign on the dotted line and hand the bill over to taxpayers

This documentary from about 20 years ago went to one of their tradeshows, and even back then they were talking about how it corrections was a billion dollar industry

e; mirror link for Up the Ridge

I should re-phrase - I’d like to be able to scroll through this community’s posts sorted by controversial or new, find a downvoted to hell (as it should be) Epoch Times article that’s getting positive traction on other sites (or even other Lemmy instances), and find within the comments on that post one pointing out why the article/source is bullshit that I can copy and paste elsewhere. Searching through comments is a pain on my preferred mobile app (idk about the desktop web interface, but I can’t imagine it’s a lot better), and it would be just about impossible to know which post’s comments would have the comment saying “oh, btw the Epoch Times is out with some fresh nonsense this morning, they’re claiming x y and z, but in reality a b and c”.

with moderate politics

They’ll do great for one campaign until they actually have to govern and then it’s going to be 1996 and 2012 all over again and we’ll barely scrape by (if we’re lucky) against extremely beatable candidates. Moderates run good campaigns and terrible administrations because the average American voter has been propagandized into believing they want bipartisanship and small government when what they actually want is some affordable healthcare and housing which moderate politics are not going to deliver to them.

e; and actually the “do great for one campaign” thing might be optimistic or antiquated thinking based on how Biden barely won in 2020

Because when some false and propagandizing crap from the Epoch Times starts blowing up on telegram or twitter or facebook or wherever I’d like to be able to come to this community and find a comment pointing out the lies and bullshit (ideally with links to sources) that I can up vote here and copy and paste to where it’s needed

I disagree strongly, this is actually more of an issue with lawmakers because working in the legislature is all about building political coalitions and cutting deals. Republicans’ political coalition since the 1960s has been economic conservatives (who I think are extremely misguided but I accept will likely be a part of any representative government) and klan members (who should never ever understand any circumstances ever be allowed anywhere near the levers of power). Even if Mitt Romney is a good person in the abstract, when he wants to get a bill gutting Social Security over the vote margin he’s going to be partnering with the Louis Gohmerts and Gym Jordans and MGTs of the world, who are going to expect something in return. Moreover, the Mitt Romneys of this world are capable of learning a lesson, and the lesson the electorate should teach them is that partnering with nazis and klan members leads to crushing political defeats.

There are no good Republicans for any elected office, period. Conservatives can spend a generation or two wandering in the woods asking themselves how they ended up where they did and come back with a new political party, but it’s about forty years past when the grand old one should’ve been thrown on the ash heap.

A bot scans for new posts and notifies the mods if there is a low credibility rating.

Could it leave a comment visible to the general community on the article in question alerting the rest of us to low credibility sources?

I don’t like this proposal, but I would love a bot that automatically comments with a link to this Wikipedia page anytime something from one of these sites gets posted here

Banning from this community won’t make them disappear from site like facebook and twitter that have millions of more visitors, but it will keep people in this community from seeing the kinds of things facebook and twitter users see.

Bad articles from bad sources are a problem that should be solved by an intelligent and active community that downvotes and leaves comments pointing out the article and/or source’s weakness. If the moderators don’t think we have a strong enough community for that this might be necessary, but I don’t think it is.