imaqtpie @ imaqtpie @sh.itjust.works

Posts

19

Comments

1,264

Joined

2 yr. ago

Moderating

---

clear case of corruption (on an outcome basis)

First of all, this makes zero sense. That's like saying

clear case of murder (on an outcome basis)

You can't prove murder based on the fact that someone is dead. You need to demonstrate that the killing was premeditated, the killer planned to kill the victim and executed their plan. Otherwise it's manslaughter or negligent homicide. Similarly, how the fuck can you claim a case is a clear example of corruption just based on the outcome? Do you need me to provide the dictionary definition of corruption?

The Sackler family are scum, but your understanding of that case seems limited. They utilized financial engineering to move the money offshore, thus placing it beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. As far as the legal system is concerned, that money doesn’t exist, because it can’t be proven that they possess it. This is frustrating, but it’s legally sound. It’s not an issue with the courts, it’s an issue with the legislature and their inability/unwillingness to craft laws to prevent rich people from hiding their money like this.

Furthermore, the achieved settlement of $40 billion over 9 years is absolutely massive, and it would be difficult to argue that anything else would be more beneficial to the victims of the opioid epidemic. Getting the Sacklers sent to prison would feel good, but it wouldn’t directly help anyone suffering from opioid addiction. Additionally, the Supreme Court already overturned the original settlement earlier this year, ruling that the Sacklers were still liable and that the settlement could not proceed as previously agreed. So whatever bothered you about that ruling, it has been overturned. It’s strange how American judges can never seem to agree with each other, despite your claim that they are compromised/corrupt.

Did you have difficulty understanding what I wrote? Let me clarify.

THE SUPREME COURT OVERRULED THE RULING THAT YOU CLAIM DEMONSTRATED CORRUPTION. IF THE COURT IS CORRUPT, WHY ARE THEY OVERRULING THE OTHER COURT THAT YOU CLAIM MADE A CORRUPT DECISION? WHICH COURT IS CORRUPT? BASED ON WHAT EVIDENCE?

Because he's the exception that proves the rule. If he in fact is corrupt, it indicates that it's very easy to catch a corrupt justice, because they have to disclose all of their gift, income, etc.

Look into Alito? You look into Alito, bitch. Have a report on my desk first thing tomorrow morning.

Because I don’t like ignorant Americans calling Ukraine (or any other country) a “corrupt shithole” while arguing that’s it’s OK that criminal oligarchs (who organized a massive drug cartel with deaths in the 10s of thousands) should avoid all criminal liability and retain enough money to live opulent lifestyles. You are really in so deep that you can’t understand this?

No one has said any of this. You're arguing with an imaginary straw man. None of this is okay, but if it were simply due to the American justice system being corrupt, it would be a much easier fix.

You're basically looking at the roof of a house leaking water, and your proposed solution is to put a bucket under the leak. While I'm trying to explain to you that the whole damn roof is falling apart and just putting a bucket in one place isn't really going to help in the long run.

Of course it doesn't preclude corruption, it just makes it incredibly difficult to pull off. There's no way to make it illegal for Supreme Court justices to have friends and family, is there? But when they start trying to bend the rules, they get caught very easily. Clarence Thomas is certainly suspicious but that's why there's public outrage and he's being investigated.

Indeed, FixTheCourt, an organization dedicated to greater court transparency, found that Justice Clarence Thomas had received some $4.2 million in gifts and luxury trips over the past 20 years, much of it from Republican megadonors. In contrast, FixTheCourt reported that the other eight justices, plus the eight retired or deceased justices got gifts that altogether were valued at roughly $600,000 over the same 20-year period.

So aside from Thomas, the other judges received an average of $37,500 in gifts each over the past 20 years. Not nearly enough to claim widespread corruption. The reality is that corruption is unecessary, the judges argue in a certain way because that's what they believe.

They were appointed to the Supreme Court in the first place because of their established judicial records which go back decades. There are several justices that frequently argue against government oversight because that's the kind of judges that Republican presidents have decided to appoint, because they believe in the same things. It doesn't always need to be some grand conspiracy, it's usually a much more banal form of dysfunction.

I never equated anything lmao. Are you incapable of responding with anything besides inane gotchas and straw men? Jfc

4.5B X 9 years = 40.5B

Of course it's not fair that they still have generational wealth. But if you have no way of tracing the money, there's nothing that the courts can do about it. Again, that's the realm of the legislature, FBI, CIA, NSA, IRS, etc. It's not that the prosecutors didn't want to take away all their money. It's that it's literally impossible to trace.

The 9/11 attack and Islamic terrorism in general is well known to be partially funded by wealthy Muslims, many of whom reside in countries which are nominal allies of the US. Pakistan was sheltering Osama bin Laden for nearly a decade, during which time they received around $10 billion in economic and military aid from the US. We were sending them billions of dollars which they were using to train more Taliban fighters and send them into Afghanistan to fight US troops. There's no need for pretend excuses, there is the very real excuse that this planet is insanely massive and complex and even the mighty US government can't control and dictate more than a fraction of what is going on.

You have a very naive view of the world if you think the judges are merely implementing the law. There is a massive feedback loop between the oligarchs, politicians and the judicial system. It’s a bit supremacist to think that Americans are inherently incapable of such corruption constructs.

Judges are charged with interpreting the law, the police are the ones who implement it. The feedback loop between politicians and big business is very real, but there are a ton of restrictions in place that make it difficult to influence the judicial system in the same way. Judges are subject to intense scrutiny and they're not allowed to do anything that might even suggest the possibility of a conflict of interest.

As I continue to read, you're making less and less sense, so I'll just leave you with this. If I started expounding on the intricacies of the Ukrainian government, you would rightly call me out. Why do you feel so confident in your understanding of the American government based solely on what you've read online? Ukraine is corrupt, I get it. But stop talking out of your ass regarding America.

Yes you are. If the allegation is false, then you're actually the one who is victim-blaming right now. But that's a possibility that you refuse to consider, because you seem to think it's sexist to suspect one individual woman of making a false accusation. If it was a man filing a lawsuit that he got beat up or robbed 25 years ago at that same party, I would be equally skeptical of his claims.

I don't want to. You could stop trying to avoid the topic at hand, but I understand that you find it very hard to ever admit to being wrong or making a mistake. You should try it some time, it actually feels good.

Because the allegation is either true or false. Either it happened, or it didn't. If it didn't happen, then there's no reason for you to be disappointed in Jay Z.

I didn't say he probably did it. I said I wouldn't be surprised. I said I don't know the facts.

Yes? Who's on the payroll? Conservative judges ruling according to conservative doctrine isn't evidence of corruption.

Every single case that happens in the Supreme Court is documented by an army of scribes. It's all publicly accessible.

I actually have no idea about the details of that case. Given what I know about Trump (the grab em by the pussy line), I certainly wouldn't be surprised to hear that he is a rapist.

That's completely irrelevant to my point in this case though.

How can you be disappointed when you don't even know if it's true?

I can actually explain why. Refraining from judgment causes the human brain to experience cognitive strain, so people tend to settle on a judgment even without evidence, in order to reduce the emotional stress caused by being undecided between two extreme possibilities. We feel insecure when we haven’t yet made a decision, because we are exposed to attacks from both sides. By aligning ourselves with one side, we gain allies and also gain the ability to disregard the humanity of our enemies. This is a universal weakness to human rationality, and lawyers are experts at exploiting it.

That's all random hearsay, it literally counts for nothing legally. Jay Z came from the ghetto, I'm sure he has done plenty of sketchy shit in his time.

But like why do you seem to think Diddy and R Kelly were going around bragging about their sexual perversions? They were coworkers in the same industry; I'm sure I have plenty of coworkers who have done heinous shit in their personal lives as well. But that doesn’t even remotely imply that I knew about it or was a part of it.

I don't think there is very much smoke at all, I haven't really heard any major accusations about Jay aside from this one. But also you're falling right into the trap. They would plan to accuse him because they know random people are going to use the heuristic of "where there's smoke there's fire", and generally assume that he is guilty without even a shred of evidence. They know people will see Jay Z and Diddy in the same headline about sexual assault and that's the only piece of information they'll remember from the whole article, assuming they even bother to read it. I'm going to bat for due process and common sense, two things which are in increasingly short supply nowadays.

Isn’t it reasonable to assume the judiciary in an oligarch run state is going to be compromised (I am referring to the US civil vs. criminal distinction and the inability of winning criminal lawsuits)?

Not really, no. What do you mean by compromised? The American judicial system is set up in such a way that it's largely transparent, so large scale corruption would be nearly impossible to sustain.

It's perfectly possible to win a criminal case if/when you have hard evidence that a crime was committed. If you wait 25 years before bringing the case before the law, then it becomes nearly impossible for either the prosecution or defense to construct a convincing case. How do you go about calling witnesses and checking alibis for an event that happened 25 years ago? People aren't going to remember, and even when they do, it becomes a he said she said, because there is little to no possibility of verifying the accuracy of their memories. Witnesses are notoriously unreliable even when interviewed mere hours or days after the crime.

The Sackler family are scum, but your understanding of that case seems limited. They utilized financial engineering to move the money offshore, thus placing it beyond the jurisdiction of the courts. As far as the legal system is concerned, that money doesn't exist, because it can't be proven that they possess it. This is frustrating, but it's legally sound. It's not an issue with the courts, it's an issue with the legislature and their inability/unwillingness to craft laws to prevent rich people from hiding their money like this.

Furthermore, the achieved settlement of $40 billion over 9 years is absolutely massive, and it would be difficult to argue that anything else would be more beneficial to the victims of the opioid epidemic. Getting the Sacklers sent to prison would feel good, but it wouldn't directly help anyone suffering from opioid addiction. Additionally, the Supreme Court already overturned the original settlement earlier this year, ruling that the Sacklers were still liable and that the settlement could not proceed as previously agreed. So whatever bothered you about that ruling, it has been overturned. It's strange how American judges can never seem to agree with each other, despite your claim that they are compromised/corrupt.

And I hate to tell you this if this wasn’t your intention, but this is some real “women are lying gold diggers” territory.

Fuck off dude. The comment you replied to didn't say anything whatsoever about women. You're the only one being sexist here.

Filing a civil lawsuit 25 years later alleging a crime of this magnitude is extremely suspicious. Occam's razor dictates that it's very likely to be a cash grab.

Y'all are so incredibly biased, predictable and easily manipulated it's embarrassing. If it makes someone rich and powerful look bad, Lemmings will literally eat the steamiest piles of shit and call it a wholesome meal. And that's why the plaintiff knows they can possibly get a settlement out of this, because most people are absolute sheep and believe whatever gets shoved under their noses without a second thought, and Jay Z can afford to just pay to make it go away if he doesn't want to deal with the harassment from the "Guilty until proven innocent" mob.

Lol okay champ. Impeccable critical thinking skills.

Diddy was affiliated with every rapper in NYC back then. I don't think we can assume that everyone who ever associated with him shared his predelictions.

I think Jay probably got looped in on the lawsuit because they know he was at the party and he is filthy rich.

Burden of proof is much higher in a criminal case. It's very hard to prosecute people for crimes that occurred 20+ years ago, but with a civil suit they are probably hoping for a settlement. Based on his statement, sounds like that's not going to happen.

I'm on the side that wants to produce meaningful change for human society. I want to help people.

If you just want to kill people without thinking or caring about the consequences, then I guess we aren't on the same side.