<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>jpk</author><text>You seem to be arguing that we have a system where theft and bribery are &lt;i&gt;necessary&lt;/i&gt; in some way, and therefore we shouldn&amp;#x27;t prosecute it aggressively.  Wouldn&amp;#x27;t we rather reform the system such that it makes theft and bribery less attractive?</text><parent_chain><item><author>appleskeptic</author><text>This would be awful. Theft and bribery are already prosecuted aggressively. If anything, too much. It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to &lt;i&gt;be&lt;/i&gt; lobbied. Here they are, some of the most powerful people in the world, paid barely enough to live an hour drive away from DC, having to spend a fair bit of their personal income to go to lunch and dinner with leaders of private industry.&lt;p&gt;As for criminalizing “waste”, you start to get dangerously close to criminalizing politics itself. Then it just becomes about controlling DOJ and using it to go after your enemies (this is already too true).&lt;p&gt;The better thing to do would with regards to intelligence agency abuses would be to have more review of the decisions, mandatory discipline of rulebreakers, and prosecution of specific crimes committed for egregious cases. No need to generally criminalize every time a government official makes a bad judgment call.</text></item><item><author>underseacables</author><text>I could not think of something more that America needs. The government accountability office publishers reports all the time about government waste and malfeasance, but it is consistently, dare I say, pointedly, ignored. Having a separate independent agency, cast with investigating and prosecuting crime and criminals within the government itself would be amazing.&lt;p&gt;Same with congress.</text></item><item><author>CoastalCoder</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m sure it would end badly, but sometimes I fantasize about the U.S. citizens having a LEO that actively investigates &amp;#x2F; prosecutes government officials who violate the constitution.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections</title><url>https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/21/fbi-director-admits-agency-rarely-has-probable-cause-when-it-performs-backdoor-searches-of-nsa-collections/</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>tehwebguy</author><text>&amp;gt; It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to be lobbied.&lt;p&gt;Good! But also, not true!</text><parent_chain><item><author>appleskeptic</author><text>This would be awful. Theft and bribery are already prosecuted aggressively. If anything, too much. It’s gotten to the point that high government officials can’t afford to &lt;i&gt;be&lt;/i&gt; lobbied. Here they are, some of the most powerful people in the world, paid barely enough to live an hour drive away from DC, having to spend a fair bit of their personal income to go to lunch and dinner with leaders of private industry.&lt;p&gt;As for criminalizing “waste”, you start to get dangerously close to criminalizing politics itself. Then it just becomes about controlling DOJ and using it to go after your enemies (this is already too true).&lt;p&gt;The better thing to do would with regards to intelligence agency abuses would be to have more review of the decisions, mandatory discipline of rulebreakers, and prosecution of specific crimes committed for egregious cases. No need to generally criminalize every time a government official makes a bad judgment call.</text></item><item><author>underseacables</author><text>I could not think of something more that America needs. The government accountability office publishers reports all the time about government waste and malfeasance, but it is consistently, dare I say, pointedly, ignored. Having a separate independent agency, cast with investigating and prosecuting crime and criminals within the government itself would be amazing.&lt;p&gt;Same with congress.</text></item><item><author>CoastalCoder</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m sure it would end badly, but sometimes I fantasize about the U.S. citizens having a LEO that actively investigates &amp;#x2F; prosecutes government officials who violate the constitution.</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>FBI director admits they rarely have probable cause for using NSA collections</title><url>https://www.techdirt.com/2023/11/21/fbi-director-admits-agency-rarely-has-probable-cause-when-it-performs-backdoor-searches-of-nsa-collections/</url></story>