Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) has threatened to sue a publication after it revealed details of his tax returns, which he had sent to them by mistake.
According to Lagniappe Daily, which broke the original story, “In a cease-and-desist letter emailed Saturday afternoon, the former Auburn coach’s attorneys demanded the article be removed, accused Lagniappe of ‘unlawfully accessing’ the information.” The letter further “claimed it was illegally published without Tuberville’s consent, and … it was not protected speech under the First Amendment.”
Hard disagree. Politicians represent the people, their finances - including investments - should be transparent and immediately available.
That is the only way to ensure corruption is reduced.
Yep. Politicians’ (and candidates’) tax returns should be public … and so should ALL their financial information as well. We should be looking at any politician’s bank statements and stock transactions and credit card transactions and utility bills anytime we want, available instantly, as soon as they happen. They should be required to report how much cash is in their wallet on a daily basis. We should be able to tell whether or not they’re subscribed to Netflix and where they stopped for breakfast this morning. And if you don’t want that huge invasion of privacy: no problem – just don’t run for office.
No, that’s fucking stupid. People, even politicians should be allowed a level of privacy. It doesn’t matter to you at all if they have netflix, and if it does, go see a therapist.
Tax statements and any trade information should absolutely be public knowledge. Monitoring someone’s cash and credit card statements is some predator level shit.
You’re acting like becoming a politician isn’t an active choice.
No, not politicians. They should have to sacrifice their privacy in return for power. Because the risk of corruption is too high. Leave nowhere for it to hide, nowhere at all.
Yes, corruption via their Netflix subscription. Dumb take.
Why collect taxes either? Before you know it they’ll just take 100% of your paycheck!
You see how stupid the slippery slope fallacy is as a rhetorical device?
What does this have to do at all with what I said? There are things that should be transparent, and others that don’t matter. If someone has Netflix, that doesn’t matter. This isn’t about slippery slopes, it’s about common sense privacy that every person is entitled to.
Just in case, because you keep referencing it, the listing that we should be able to peek in their wallet and whether they have Netflix are likely illustrative of the granularity of inspection rather than actual, strict metrics for checking a politician’s financial transparency.
As an actually metric, I would say that politicians should not be able to move funds larger than a $1000 without reporting on it.