If the courts had intervened to stop Brian Thompson before his healthcare murder spree then maybe Luigi wouldn’t be being prosecuted right now. This trial isnt about luigi, its about covering up the chain of political failures that led us here.
The amount of people who died as a result of Brian Thompson’s leadership of united healthcare should be investigated instead
Western democracy is at risk until this is done. We literally don’t deserve to exist if we can’t figure this basic stuff out - i.e. when our own people are dying, maybe the empty private hospital beds and ample staff resources should be used to save those lives. Because people are… gonna die otherwise. The fact that anything else needs to be said is the problem.
‘Western style democracy’ has never been truly democratic because of how money influences elections and politicians. True democracy isn’t possible as long as there exists a capital class in society. The capital class will not give up its wealth without a class war.
Hence the need to remove
- money as Free Speach
- corporations are people
- lobbying is legal
But changes to these policies won’t occur because these policies already exist.
And they are self sustaining, as long as money can buy politicians, no politician would ever be able to stop it on their own.
I asked chatgpt for a solution. It’s not promising:-
Even though U.S. policies like equating money with free speech, treating corporations as people, and legalizing lobbying are deeply entrenched, history shows that even long-established systems can change through persistent, multifaceted efforts. Here’s how such changes might occur:
- Constitutional and Judicial Pathways
Constitutional Amendments: The most sweeping change would come from amending the Constitution. For example, an amendment could clarify that money is not a form of free speech or that constitutional protections apply only to human beings, not corporations. Although amending the Constitution is difficult and requires broad political consensus, it would directly override existing legal interpretations.
Judicial Reinterpretation: Change can also occur gradually by influencing judicial interpretations. By electing or appointing judges who are open to rethinking established precedents—such as those set by decisions like Citizens United—legal opinions on campaign finance and corporate rights can slowly evolve.
- Legislative and Regulatory Reforms
Reforming Campaign Finance Laws: Even without a constitutional amendment, Congress and state legislatures can pass new laws to restrict political spending. Measures might include public financing of campaigns, strict spending caps, and full disclosure of contributions to reduce the outsized influence of large donors.
Regulating Corporate Political Activity: Statutory reforms can be introduced to redefine the role of corporations in politics. For instance, laws could ban corporate contributions to political campaigns or limit their lobbying activities, effectively reducing the political clout that comes with corporate personhood.
Tightening Lobbying Regulations: Legislatures can also impose stricter rules on lobbying—such as enhanced disclosure requirements, limits on the “revolving door” between government and private industry, or even temporary bans on certain types of lobbying. These measures would curb the direct influence that special interest groups can wield over lawmakers.
- Grassroots and Electoral Strategies
Building Public Pressure: Change often starts from the bottom up. Grassroots movements, advocacy groups, and citizen coalitions can mobilize public opinion, use social media to raise awareness, and pressure elected officials to prioritize campaign finance and corporate reform.
Electoral Reforms and Voting Engagement: Changes like anti-gerrymandering efforts, ranked-choice voting, and other electoral reforms can help shift political power towards a broader base of citizens. Increased voter participation and support for reform-minded candidates can gradually reshape the political landscape.
State-Level Innovations: States can act as testing grounds for reform. Successful state-level initiatives—such as stricter campaign finance laws or innovative transparency measures—can provide models that encourage national adoption of similar policies.
Summary
Though deeply entrenched, policies like “money as free speech,” corporate personhood, and legal lobbying can change. Through constitutional amendments, new laws to reform campaign finance and corporate influence, and powerful grassroots mobilization, we can reshape our political system to be more democratic and representative.
These avenues illustrate that while the current biases are strong, a combination of legal, legislative, and grassroots actions can pave the way for meaningful political reform.
And on that score, I often muse if we should be grateful that MAGA and Trump are accelerating the timetable as they have… Capitalism, world economics and geopolitical problems as they were 20 years ago could have been sustained well into the 22nd century. We are so good at avoiding change at all costs!
Now we are headed for a societal collapse, once the ruffians who instigated it are out of the way I think the future for humanity looks quite bright indeed. We may even beat climate change, so long as we… beat all the nasty billionaires, nazis, dictators and oligarchy first… holds head in hands
That’s an interesting thought. In the slow system we might’ve been boiled like a frog, but now that things are changing much faster, we may be able to jump out of the water before we die.
And land in the flames instead.
Capitalism is an inherently unstable system due to the contradictions that define it. Scapegoats are necessary to prevent working class from rising up, and economic conditions in the US have gotten so bad that most people no longer care about sustaining the status quo. So I don’t think the current rise of fascism could have been prevented without a socialist alternative.
Also Biden had already changed the geopolitical landscape when he openly funded an (even domestically) deeply unpopular genocide.
That’s part of the problem, we don’t have ample hospital beds nor staff resources.
I don’t know if and am not saying there are enough to cover the gap… But there are certainly plenty of unused resources in the private hospital system. Doctors, nurses, beds, medicines that could be put to use saving lives, preventing trauma and improving the livelihoods of people in the public system.
The private medical system has siphoned too much from the public for too long. It should always have been a premium tier for the wealthy to enjoy caviar and have cable TV in a private room after surgery. Instead, people who go to a public hospital for urgent emergency care are being sent home to die in error, instead of the ICU, because public emergency rooms are catastrophically overloaded.
In Australia we’ve taken the disadvantage of the poor a step further, like we often do, and have propped up the private system advantaging it even further, e.g. by forcing people to pay a tax for not having private insurance, labyrinthian bureaucracy of referrals that rack up consultation fees and achieve nothing for patients, etc.
In the US, the system is overwhelmed in large part thanks to the financial side pushing for ever increasing patient loads and reduced staff. So nurses are saddled with more patients than they can safely take care of because an empty bed is lost profit. This has a cascade effect because staff are leaving the industry as a whole because of the understaffing, stress, and poor pay/life balance.
I don’t know if the ACA has the same tax as your system does, but I know my state also has a tax penalty if you’re not covered by insurance. The upside to this, though, is that the state offers insurance. It’s not a great system (before you even get into the plague of issues with the finer points of the system), but it’s better than just leaving people to fend for themselves.
Gonna wanna see the source code on that “Pray” button. I don’t think it actually does anything.
dude is there a Pray Button on the various controllers. someone is about to try and convince you.
on desktop the button has a counter for how many people have pressed it, so it does something :)
Holy crap! Do we now have the technology to quantify thoughts and prayers?
don’t go too far into that one and yeah, we’re making progress
we have the technology!
I have it on good authority from my son that Luigi was in a haunted mansion that day.
Taking out the leader of an evil (corpo) empire is heroism, not subject to murder charges.
Lol, it’s the Schrödinger’s guilt. The news is supposed to be uplifting both because the guy is praised as a hero for killing someone and because he is presumed not guilty.
Personally, i don’t have any sympathy for him, regardless he’s guilty or not, some things he said are really disgusting.
Love to see it
Thats hot
I don’t want to dampen the good mood, but even if this is sent anonymously, is there any risk of the information of who is the donor being hacked, especially by corporate overlords who have every incentive to see Luigi and his supporters get punished?
Proxy account or donor is outside US, in a suitable country
Edit: There is legal protection, so if that donor doesn’t have any potentially problematic business it’s safe ig.
such a silly bunch a shit. YOU CAN’T DO THAT. unless you have the intelligence of a human.
Pathetic.
you don’t have to be into the whole killing part. me too. what’s up?
I just think that sending your own hard owned money to a murderer is pathetic, and everyone else upvoting this and encouraging this disgusting behaviour are also pathetic. This complete loss of all morals and integrity just because a victim was in a situation you politivally disagree with is completely embarassing.
But making donations to a convicted felon who claims to be super rich and is nothing more than a con man and sexual abuser is ok? I choosing to stand with Luigi.
Classic whataboutism. I never said donating to Trump was ok.
I, too, stand with Luigi, but that isn’t an argument; that’s whataboutism.
it ain’t no victim. it’s literally all of us.
edit; also, morals and integrity? seriously?
Slow clap we need more support
What does this mean, exactly? More resources to hire more lawyers or something?
Not really, Luigi already had tons of money.
What it means is a legislator who might have actually had a positive impact on changing US Healthcare did NOT receive a 30k donation.
We can’t outspend the health insurance industry, especially not in the long run. Legislators will always side with those who can continually give large donations and pay full-time lobbyists. It is incredibly naive - bordering on delusional - to think we can take on even just one sector of the oligarchy by working within their captured system.
Now is the time to apply pressure from the outside, organize and build our own mechanisms for affecting change. This will require solidarity, and for people to make collective and coordinated use of their agency with regards to their labor and spending.
The DNC literally passed laws against large campaign contributions decades ago, it was overturned by the SCOTUS citizens united decision years later, and has been a core DNC platform policy ever since to reverse citizens united.
So yes, you can, but people aren’t, because people are idiots.
it was overturned by the SCOTUS citizens united decision years later
So it was overturned decades ago, was never reinstated, and you think that’s an example of a win?
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No, it was overturned in 2010, not decades ago. The law the decision overturned was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, which was over 2 decades ago. The DNC had been trying to pass it since 1995.
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You people always complain about a party not changing things when we NEVER give them the power to do so.
President Barack Obama and Senator John Kerry called for an amendment to overrule the decision but it went ignored. In 2011, Senator Bernie Sanders proposed the Saving American Democracy Amendment, which would reverse the court’s ruling, LINK HERE. Bernie Sanders and others have repeatedly introduced bills to reverse it ever since.
The reason things are the way they are is because people vote Republican. Full Stop.
when we NEVER give them the power to do so
“We” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. I’m not voting Republican, you’re not voting Republican, and Luigi isn’t voting Republican.
“do nothing about it until the midterms at which point we will suddenly convince 200 million people to vote Democrat” isn’t going to cut it.
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I’m not really even arguing that people should give up working within the system, just that it very clearly isn’t enough. If you haven’t noticed, we’re losing big. Even when the Democrats win, can’t you see how little they are able to accomplish? When you play a game that’s rigged against you, you have to get creative and look for solutions that are outside the bounds of the rules that have been set before us.
Your misplaced faith in the Democratic party is blinding you to the reality of our situation. Even within the party we have lost ground to the oligarchs, meaning our access to political power has been compromised. To take it back will require us to fight on two fronts, both within and outside the system.
So yes, you can, but people aren’t, because people are idiots.
Stop this. You have become jaded and cynical, which is understandable, but it’s causing you to accept a very dangerous premise. We didn’t get here because people are just idiots, the ruling class out-organized us. To believe that people are simply too stupid to fight back is to accept defeat.
“Clearly isn’t enough” there is no other course. You’re just trying to steer the ship into rocks as a shortcut.
Let’s stop talking around the issue. I’m referring to union organizing, general strikes, boycotts, mutual aid, direct action, etc. Would you consider those things “steering the ship into rocks?” Do you really think our only viable course of action is to do nothing except show up to vote on election days? We have to organize, and the Democratic leadership is uninterested in helping. Grassroots liberal progressive groups like MoveOn and Indivisible have been doing that work for them, and the Democratic leadership has been actively hostile towards them.
No you aren’t, you’re in a comment section where people are being pushed to worship murder and you’re defending the murder worship. Nice try.
That one will be last against the wall
What are you saying here…?
How a 30k donation to a murderer counts as “uplifting news”? If anything it’s depressing
There is no evidence that Luigi killed anyone. Innocent until proven guilty.
You don’t get to celebrate him for doing the murder white also claiming he didn’t do it.
deleted by creator
Innocent until proven guilty.
Before we engage in name calling for this suspect, know that yesterday was blatantly clear the system is stacked against him to the point where the courts did not Los him to go into PA for another legal procedure.
See the thing here is that they were giving evidence even to MAX for the documentary and not his legal team, who correctly called some of the evidence inadmissible in court.
So before you feel like calling him a murderer see. The facts and wait for the events to unfold.
I mean, it would be more typical to only be charged in either state or federal for crimes like trespassing, but it’s also not unheard of for murder cases. For example, Michael White had charges in the state of West Virginia and was also sentenced for a murder in Federal court.
Just gonna gloss over politicians preening for HBO while denying the defense discovery material? It’s obvious they’re trying to railroad the guy before anyone else gets any ideas.
Mincing about “well ackshually it’s technically not unheard of” is dumb and hardly the point anyone was making.
You have evidence he murdered someone? Why haven’t you told anyone?!
He told the dude that made his Filet-o-fish.
How’s that boot taste?
That’s 30 grand to someone who was accused of murder who should be entitled to the best possible defense for such a serious accusation in such a hot political climate.
Under our current legal system, that means they are in severe need of funding to help ensure that the result is fair and just.
So you agree it’s not uplifting, it’s sad.
He didn’t murder anyone.
What are people calling him a hero for then?
He did a chore that needed doing and we’re all proud of him, that’s what.
So he did it.
If some immoral person was killing a child and someone came up behind them and shot them that wouldn’t be considered murder.
Did what?
The donation doesn’t go to a CEO who has murdered hundreds, possibly thousands of people.
It is going to someone who acted in defense of others. Or who might not be the person who even did that, which is why he deserves a fair trial.
Funny, if that hypothetical murderer really died wouldn’t that mean the “killings” would have stopped? Looks like nothing has changed.
So if someone else goes out and shoots the new CEO that would make arresting Luigi pointless? "Looks like nothing changed, another CEO got shot anyway.’
Profile picture matches this comment
Why are you lying? Nobody’s been convicted of murder.
They’ve already decided to play judge and jury, and I suspect would enjoy playing executioner.
You mean like Luigi did?
Lots of people enjoy probably-Luigi playing executioner too. When you kill people for profit and you’re otherwise untouchable, people are gonna figure out how to get back at you.
I don’t think Luigi made a profit off the murder, the $20,000 cash was probably his own to live off while on the run.
Oh, go lick a boot, dweeb.
It’s the best news all day, go back to Reddit corporate shill
What did he say that was corporate shillery?
If you don’t know, you won’t understand.
You’re asleep at the wheel.
this is like saying donating to a guy who killed someone actively killing others is never uplifting news. Sure leave the school shooters alone
If that man was really responsible for those deaths then the killing would have stopped.
The blood is on the hands of voters.
If that man was really responsible for those deaths then the killing would have stopped.
If Luigi was really responsible for killing that guy in New York then arresting him would have caused the killings in New York to stop. The fact that people have been killed in New York since Luigi was arrested proves his arrest was pointless.
as CEO, even if you arent the one who made the executive decision to make the denials, they still have the power to change the internal policy. It’s a FAR well known issue that UHC denied a lot of coverage. He was outright complicit with it, and unlike most people, actually had the power to overturn the problem.
Then we should be trying to solve that problem instead of throwing money at a rich kid murderer.
They’re saying that they find due process to be lacking and the prosecution to be political.
Do you think it’s depressing that someone would donate money to the defense of someone they think is being inappropriately prosecuted?
If you think they’re guilty, you should still want them to get the best defense possible, so that when they’re found guilty it’s airtight. Our justice system is based on an adversarial model. If the prosecution, with the resources of the state, can’t successfully argue that they did it and that their arrest and all procedures were properly followed, do you really want that to still mean someone faces the death penalty?Luigi has tons of money, though. He doesn’t need your money, and even if he did your money still isn’t helping anybody.
What does that have to do with anything?
Someone with resources gave money to aid the defense of someone they think is being treated unjustly after watching and seeing what they thought was mistreatment.
Are you just trying to aggravate people, or do you actually have a point?
My point is your money matters andit can do so much good.
And this isn’t it.
Do you think I made this donation?
I replied to someone saying it was sad someone gave money to a murderer.
I don’t think it’s sad someone gave money to help someone they think might not be a murderer, and even if you think they are one, it’s not sad someone had the impulse to help push back against what they saw as a biased application of the Justice system.I understand you think that’s misguided in this case. Do you understand how that’s kind of a nonsequitur?
Context is hard for you?
Yeah TBH I dislike Luigi a little bit more every time I see his face.
People are actually worshiping this guy for some reason.
Did you stop to consider the principles of why people feel that way?
The animalistic “unga bunga club problems to death” part of their brain combined with anarchist and tankie propaganda campaigns promoting insurgency and chaos, as well as just a general lack of understanding of why things are the way they are.
as well as just a general lack of understanding of why things are the way they are.
Then enlighten us and bring us out of our darkness.
I’m just going to stick to the most recent contributing events
In 2009-2011 the US Senate had 58 DNC seats and 2 caucusing IND seats totaling filibuster-proof 60 votes needed to pass reforms for 72 workings days, and they attempted to pass a method of funding treatment for people who could not afford it, sometimes referred to as singlepayer or public option healthcare. Due to one of the caucusing IND votes not voting with the DNC, and every single Republican voting Nay, it did not pass.
We gave them less seats in the next two elections. Every single year since 2015 we’ve given that party who wanted healthcare reform less than 50 senate seats.
We’ve created the system that Brian Thompson profited off of, and when we killed him all we did was free up a spot for yet another out of tens of millions of terrible people to hop into and do exactly the same thing, as has always been done since health insurance was conceived and always will do because we refuse to change it. No matter how many more people die, no matter how much blood is on our hands.
And because people don’t understand that they think the resistance is people like Luigi, who accomplish nothing, instead of the obvious solution right in front of us.
instead of the obvious solution right in front of us.
Sorry, what is that obvious solution?
If it’s voting I’ll remind you that in the last election one of the candidates directly stated they were going to be a dictator and less than a third of Americans voted against them. A third gleefully voted for the dictator, and a third didn’t bother to vote at all. What is this “obvious solution” that convinces 200 million people to vote the way you want them to?
Instead of giving your money to Luigi, give it to the DNC and to Bernie Sanders. Or better yet, use that money yourself and volunteer to help the parties who support the real solution.
I agree. I don’t think this sub should get political.
It’s uplifting news and has nothing to do with politics. Perhaps Reddit is a better place for you
I agree it isn’t political but it’s definitely not uplifting, unless you’re some kind of murder cultist.
You forgot the “victim” denies medical claims for a living, bankrupting people. If you think he’s the victim, you’re the problem.
That “victim” worked at a “company” which still denies medical claims for a living, paying for the majority of claim holders medical via distribution of wealth.
The “reason” this is allowed is because “voters” keep choosing this system, and most recently voted to expand it by removing socialized healthcare for an addition 79 Million Americans.
And Luigi has done fuck all to even toss a wrench in.
to add in the callousness, even his boss WITTY, and hemsely isnt to bothered by the news.
Lfmao. He was the one who made those calls. Now the next CEO needs a visit by Mario.
I think you’ll find your opinion on this matter in the minority on Lemmy, but keep on blaming the “company” who aren’t run by “people” apparently.
You will never kill all the evil people in this world as long as people exist. There will always at least be you.
I think you’ll find across the spectrum, people are frustrated to the point where it’s not a political issue
Everything is political. The sooner you get over this “I’m tired of politics, let me enjoy my doomscrolling” attitude, the more respectable you’ll be.
No it isn’t. This is how subs like r/technology got ruined, the whole thing got filled with “political post that involves technology” instead of just “technology”.
Everything is politically when you have people at the top wanting to take away your rights and be able to have their followers kill you in the streets.
It actually is.
Healthcare is only political to 1/3 of the country. Everyone else sees it for what it is: a human right
Unfortunately, human rights are political.
Funny, looks like 2/3 who think it’s some kind of human right keep voting for people to not have those rights.
this is uplifting but i agree
Yeah, because there’s surely not enough political communities on there already
