Wikipedia’s nonprofit status questioned by D.C. U.S. attorney

Remember when people pretended it was the scandal of all scandals that the IRS was reviewing PACs who were forbidden from doing political activity for political activity? And now many of those same people are cheering this, and the act blue ‘investigation’, and the threats against Harvard’s tax exempt status for nakedly corrupt reasons? Man I wish shame still had some stopping power.

I’m sure you’d find the exact same thing if some grifty billionaire funded a fake investigation into those people who were contributing money to WinRed and yet, only one of the two is facing investigation.. it is so far past the time when this DOJ should be given the benefit of the doubt and steel manning their obvious corruption doesn’t make anyone seem scholarly, just credulous.

Now imagine a sitting President personally saying 'the highest holders of my grift coin get a personal visit with me'. That would seem odd, wouldn't it?

Go ahead and read some of the thousands of 1-star reviews on TrustPilot for WinRed:

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/winred.com?stars=1

It turns out the name of the political donation game is recurring donations and spammy messages. I 100% believe people donated to some random cause via act blue and didn’t realize they were signing up for recurring donations through there —- like all political fundraising arms do as evidenced by all the people complaining that WinRed incessantly removes money from their account that they didn’t authorize. But again, only 1 of the 2 is being investigated and it’s obviously a corrupt investigation so here we are.

It's not true that only one of the two is facing investigation. Multiple state AGs are investigating WinRed, and rightly so - there's substantial evidence that they're using dark patterns to trick people into recurring donations when they intended to donate only once. The controversy is that a political official is ordering an investigation of ActBlue, not that political fundraising platforms ought to be above scrutiny.

Accusing others of whataboutism is a way to dodge the real point: if identical behavior is excused for allies but condemned for opponents, the outrage isn't about ethics it's about weaponized partisanship.

Edit in response: The broader conversation is about weaponizing government power against political opponents, ActBlue was just one example give in many being discussed. You narrowed to ActBlue to have something you felt you could condemn safely, while ignoring the larger pattern. That selective focus is the weaponization your argument is trying to distract from.

Edit: Stepping back and noting the pattern there is no need to go into specifics of ActBlue. Especially when this VERY administration is blatantly selling access with their shill coin. Your hyper focus is a weaponized distraction, a 'gotcha' from the larger discussion. The administration does not care about corruption in fundraising, they care about targeting their opposition and shutting down any influence they have via fundraising, via information/knowledge sharing on the web, via universities with students willing to challenge the status quo.

You started this (soon to be flagged to nonexistence) chain with whataboutism.

I don't think those accusations need to be taken seriously while they're being hyped by people like Jim Jordan. If they have evidence of wrongdoing they should forward it to the DoJ and write it up in an indictment, where it can be reviewed by a court and jury that will evaluate the claims made therein.

Federally it certainly is true. And I agree, they shouldn’t be above scrutiny which is why it’s so important for the DOJ to maintain their independence and to avoid partisanship.. but Elon was loudly claiming they were funding the Tesla protests a few weeks ago and the rest of the administration got in line to encourage this pretextual nonsense.

While ActBlue was the first example mikeyouse bought up, and it happens not reflect very well on the Democrats, we can just as easily discuss Harvard racially discriminating and violating title 9 to control campus admissions, hiring and speech if you like.

I have. People donate once and have trouble cancelling the donation. It’s bad but the people donating actually are republicans and have donated before - which is a different situation from the people who aren’t democrats, haven’t donated to democrats and have repeatedly been donating to ActBlue.

Likewise, I have not heard that winred don’t use CVVs, which HN, having many people with experience in handling online payments would agree is bizarre.

I have no idea who Jim Jordan is but your logical fallacy is nut picking.