Rov_Scam
11hr ago
It's my genuine viewpoint. I get the impression that most Republicans are stuck in a bubble where they don't pay attention to what rank and file Democrats actually do, or who they actually vote for. There were a few woke reps who managed to get elected in 2020, and a couple more from earlier, but a lot of them were primaried out before the Biden administration ended. The 2020 primary showed that beyond certain limited areas, there was no national appetite for woke politics. Black church ladies aren't woke. Neither are Hispanics, by and large. Suburban Democrats aren't. Rural granola types aren't. Wokeism only ever appealed to a certain segment of urban voter, who Republicans try to paint as being representative of the party, precisely because they're an easy target.
Rov_Scam
11hr ago
Woke ended in 2019 after the presidential campaigns of Beto O'Rourke and Kirsten Gillebrand fizzled out before the primary season even started. The final nail was put in the coffin when the Democrats nominated Joe Biden, possibly the least woke candidate in the race apart from possibly Michael Bennett. After that, woke was no longer an identifiable phenomenon and a boogeyman that stood for whatever conservatives were opposing at the moment.
Rov_Scam
12hr ago
They're called collusive suits, where the parties aren't actually in opposition and are using the court to achieve some objective other than redressing a legitimate wrong. They may be permitted at the state level in certain circumstances to achieve various policy objectives, but they're prohibited at the Federal level due to the case and controversy requirement, and are considered a form of fraud.
To give an example, suppose I'm the sole director of a nonprofit, and there's an elderly volunteer who is going through some hard times and I want to help him out. The law says that I can't just give him the money, since it has to be used for legitimate business, and I don't want to hire him as a full time employee because that opens up all kinds of bullshit with insurance, taxes, and the like.
He injures himself while volunteering. The injuries aren't serious, but there's a legitimate claim worth about a thousand dollars . I tell him to sue the nonprofit, and I agree to settle the case for ten thousand dollars. As far as the accounts are concerned, it just looks like a settlement for a lawsuit, nothing to see here. But if the State AG finds out, you're in trouble.
There are other kinds of collusive suits, some of which are entirely fraudulent, and if you're expecting something exactly on point, keep in mind that in most knotty legal issues, there isn't going to be one. I rarely do legal research in my practice, but when I do I don't expect to find some showstopper, because if one existed I wouldn't be arguing in the first place. All we can go by is general principles.
The Social Security Administration discovers nearly 2 million instances of overpayment per year, about 30% of which are administrative errors. While you may argue that they weren't entitled to the money, the point I'm trying to make is that these people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing, yet they are still required to repay the money.
When a court vacates a settlement due to fraud, what they're saying is that the recipient wasn't entitled to the money. It's as simple as that. The settlement never existed, legally speaking. It was illegal. It's not as if Congress came back and passed a law that retroactively invalidated the settlement. Realistically, my scenario isn't going to happen, because I don't see any money being distributed. Somebody will file a suit, a judge will issue an injunction preventing the funds from being distributed, and the issue will be tied up in litigation until the sun expands into a red giant and swallows the earth.
Rov_Scam
14hr ago
Those two cases are class actions and subject to strict court supervision before settlement can be finalized. The Trump ban only applied in cases where the government was plaintiff, and would have no applicability here.
Rov_Scam
14hr ago
Perhaps, but most of them aren't interviewed by respectable journalists or profiled on NPR. That's a media phenomenon.
Rov_Scam
14hr ago
J.J. McCullough put out a video a few weeks ago where he talks about a "Freak of the Year" phenomenon he's observed this decade. Since at least 2022, there has been someone who becomes famous out of nowhere for reasons that range from irrelevant to reprehensible, before dropping off the face of the earth. During their brief period of celebrity, the public will gawk at them while various smart people try to argue that they're representative of some larger trend. If you're on the left, Clavicular is representative of toxic masculinity. If you're on the right, he's representative of the insane lengths men feel the need to go to to be attractive to women in our emasculated age. Since nobody actually likes the freaks, you can feel free to use them as punching bags because nobody will come to their defense when push comes to shove, except maybe their online followers, whom the smart people all believe are morons. Clavicular is Freak of the Year 2026; previous freaks have included Nick Fuentes, Hawk Tua Girl, and Andrew Tate. If I were king of this forum, my policy would be to ignore the freaks, because anything that can be said about them is ultimately irrelevant and only feeds into the dumb media narratives that sustain the freaks' existence. Ignore them.
Rov_Scam
15hr ago
This is about the fiftieth time I've seen this brought up in this thread alone and my head is about to explode because people evidently don't understand the difference between a plaintiff and a defendant in litigation. These aren't just arbitrary labels we give the parties, but important distinctions. They indicate who initiated the litigation and delineate various burdens and obligations. The plaintiff is the person who initiates the suit, alleging that they have been wronged by the defendant. The plaintiff has the obligation of producing evidence to support their claim and to meet the burden that the law requires. If the case involves money damages, a jury decides if the defendant is liable and if so, how much he owes. But juries can be unpredictable, and in most cases, the parties involved have a good idea of what the case is worth, so usually they'll agree to settle the case before it gets that far.
In the cases you're referring to, the government was the plaintiff. They thought certain companies had broken the law, and sued them to collect money damages. the government did not control these companies, and the only way they could get them to pay anything is if they either got a judgment against them or the threat of a judgment induced them to settle. In these cases, the companies had the option of either settling or letting a jury decide how much they would pay, and they decided that they were better off settling. In the Trump case, the government was the defendant. Full disclosure: I am an attorney who represents defendants in civil suits. We almost always settle these suits before trial. I can confidently say that, at no time in my firm's history have we ever settled a case for several thousand times the previous highest settlement for the same cause of action, let alone without seeing any of the evidence.
Another important thing is that, in the cases you're referring to, no one in the Justice Department who was involved in the litigation was also working for the companies who were sued in a position where they could sign off on the settlement. When that happens it's called a conflict of interest. If, for instance, the attorney handling the Volkswagen case was also on the board of directors for Volkswagen, that would be very bad. You see, government lawyers work for the American people, and as much as we may disagree with the current administration's priorities, most of us agree that that it would be very bad if he let Volkswagen off easy because he didn't want it to affect the stock price too much. On the other hand, he also has a duty to Volkswagen shareholders, who wouldn't want him to make a bad deal so that he can curry favor with his politician bosses. For this reason, governments and companies have policies in place that discuss what to do if one of these conflicts exists. Generally speaking, you want to be as up-front about a conflict as you can, and there are very strict ethical guidelines that must be followed.
For example, I used to represent a company that my dad worked for. That's not a conflict in itself, but if my dad sued the company, I wouldn't be allowed to defend them, because I might not be fair. In a similar vein, even though I don't represent the company anymore, I can't represent someone who is suing them for certain things, because I was entrusted with certain knowledge of their legal strategy that wouldn't be fair for the plaintiff to have. If I represent the company in my dad's suit, and we settled, and the company were to find out about it, that would be grounds for them to vacate the settlement agreement. I would also get sued for malpractice and find myself in front of an ethics panel, but that's another story. Luckily, as far as I know, nobody who was involved in the cases you refer to had a conflict of interest. We can thus assume that these settlements were made at arm's length, which means that both sides were negotiating in good faith and not trying to sandbag their cases.
In the Trump IRS case, Trump was the plaintiff, meaning that he was trying to get as much money as possible. He was also the defendant, in the sense that he was the immediate supervisor of the person authorized to spend the defendant's money. But that money wasn't his to spend however he wanted; he owed a duty to the people to spend it in accordance with the law and not simply take it for himself. When politicians take public money for themselves, that's called corruption. We usually don't have to worry about corruption in these cases because most of the attorneys who work for the government have traditionally taken their jobs very seriously and tried to make sure that the money was only spent if absolutely necessary. When Todd Blanche announced a deal where Trump would be paid approximately 500 times the largest tax disclosure settlement in IRS history despite not seeing any evidence that it was warranted, that's called the appearance of impropriety. When Obama, or Eric Holder, or whoever, wanted to make their deals, they had to persuade their adversaries that they would lose in court and were better off agreeing to a deal. They didn't have the luxury of simply instructing the CEO of Volkswagen or whoever to make the payments. The fact that Trump did have that kind of power is why this case is more concerning than anything Obama did.
I apologize for the condescending tone, but I get frustrated when I see an understanding of civil procedure below that of the average People's Court viewer and an understanding of ethics that would get them fired from any normal job.
Rov_Scam
17hr ago
I'm sorry to have to put it this way but I think you're missing my point. They differ in many ways, yes, but none of which are important. The only principle that matters here is that the attorney general has the authority to appropriate arbitrarily large amounts of money provided they are done under the guise of a settlement, regardless of whether there is a conflict of of interest. None of the differences you point out are limiting factors in any legal sense, and part of the reason I selected the example I did was to make it clear how wide-ranging the implications of this are. You shouldn't have to think too hard to find examples of how this process can be abused for ends you vehemently disagree with even if you insist on a more apt comparison. I can think of a few myself right off the bat, but I'm not going to play a game where some irrelevant difference is nitpicked as though disproving the example shoots down my entire argument and means that this maneuver can only be used for pro-MAGA aims. As I said, the consequences are wide-ranging.
Rov_Scam
17hr ago
One of the underappreciated tragedies of the second Trump administration is the wholesale destruction of the credibility the Justice Department had spent 200 years building. What was once one of the most respected institutions among attorneys and judges alike has been reduced to having the reputation of the kind of lawyer you hire out of the yellow pages, and the only people who are willing to work for them are those who would otherwise be practicing divorce law in West Virginia. Judges as recently as two years ago gave the government wide deference because it was assumed that they wouldn't launch a prosecution unless the case had merit, wouldn't make an argument that didn't have merit, and would comply with judicial orders.
When you come up with a set of seven criteria and tell me that unless meeting all of them is something the government regularly does, then doing so this time will meet some broad definition of "escalation" conveniently ignores the fact that six months ago the president would use a bullshit collusive lawsuit to get personal access to taxpayer money that hadn't been appropriated by congress would have seemed completely unthinkable. Settlement agreements are voidable if there was a conflict of interest. The Federal government regularly goes after people who received funds that were improperly distributed, even when those people aren't at fault. Putting two and two together and letting a court decide isn't escalation.
Rov_Scam
19hr ago
In this specific case, we have to look at the statute that was violated. It calls for either actual damages or statutory damages of $1,000 per disclosure. Since the latter would only get him $36,000 or thereabouts, he obviously wants to go for the former (the complaint asks for both, however the statutory damage claim relies on a theory that it's a separate violation for everyone who saw the records, a theory that the Supreme Court has previously rejected). This is rarely done in the real cases, and is especially difficult here, since it's difficult to assign an amount certain to the losses. A fact pattern where actual damages would be proven would be if a guy owns a business, it's leaked to customers that the IRS is investigating the business, and there's an obvious dropoff in earnings following the disclosure. This is where things get really difficult for Trump, since in a properly adversarial proceeding you wouldn't discuss settlement until after discovery is substantially complete.
I've settled a lot of cases and most economic damage claims are pretty straightforward. Assuming you have medical/repair bills, a normal salary, and a condition that prevents you from working. More speculative damages are a fucking mess. I have a case that's been going on forever where a guy is claiming damages from a business that he and his brother were going to start but couldn't because of his injury. The Plaintiff was deposed for 9 days, the brother for 17 days, another brother and the elderly mother were deposed, we deposed the brother's sketchy, unlicensed accountant/business advisor. The Plaintiff produced a business analysis document he had prepared before the suit. The defense hired their own economic expert to refute the report, which was hearsay anyway because it wasn't prepared for preparation and he can't produce a rep from the company that produced it. The case was filed in 2013; I took it over in 2023 and it's currently listed to go to trial in September but it's been on many trial lists and I would be shocked if it doesn't get removed again.
Now take a guy like Trump whose wheelings and dealings are a lot more complicated than a guy who wanted to open a fucking gas station and subject his finances to this kind of scrutiny. Considering that the leaked tax returns showed he had been claiming business losses for decades, proof of actual damages would likely require that he was losing even more money after the disclosures, unless he could point to a deal worth a certain amount that got cancelled or something like that. In other words, all of the sensitive financial information that Trump didn't want to disclose to begin with would now be at issue, along with information from years that weren't disclosed. If you don't think this is fair, keep in mind that the defense wouldn't be trying to get this information from him; they would just as soon not see it entered into evidence. He would have to submit it voluntarily and put himself up for deposition or the court would just dismiss the damage claim for lack of evidence. Assuming he can prove actual damages, punitive damages are a possibility in this case, though it's hard to estimate what they would be. (It's a matter of dispute, for complicated reasons, whether punitive damages would be available if the plaintiff were only able to prove statutory damages).
So what's it worth? Assuming a pre-discovery settlement, spitballing based on the assumption that discovery is going to be long and costly and unlikely to prove anything definitive, and that a jury is going to be unwilling to give Trump (who isn't exactly doing badly) more money than they would to a personal injury plaintiff who suffered serious damages, I'd probably throw 3 million out there and see what their counteroffer is. If it's something in the ballpark, say 10 million or under, I'd start negotiating. But anything more than that and I'd ask counsel if he had a case management order in mind or if he wants me to make a proposal first. I don't think there's any way Trump sticks with this if he actually has to go through with litigation. I don't think there's any way Trump is going to be able to prove that he's anywhere close to 1.8 billion dollars poorer because of these disclosures.
Rov_Scam
23hr ago
It isn't an escalation if all they're trying to do is get the money back. While going after people who had nothing to with the impropriety of the payments may seem unfair, it's something the government does all the time. In this case, though, the government might not have a choice. If Trump had structured the settlement so the money went directly to him, and he then gave the money away, it would be a straightforward case of suing him to get the money back. But instead, he wants to implement a complicated system where he creates a quasi-government agency that he controls and uses it to distribute the money. If he gets sued in the future he's going to argue that since he never took any of the money he's not on the hook to pay it back. If this agency or commission or whatever still has the money, then it's easy, but if they've already given it away, then the government has to go after whom it was given to. Any litigation surrounding this is going to be incredibly complicated, and any attorney is going to have to sue anyone whom they plausibly have a claim against. Given that the money is to be distributed by what is a quasi-government agency, this takes on a similar tenor as going after any other government benefit overpayment.
In other words, it's not escalation, just the nature of litigation. I'm currently defending a case where we forced the plaintiff to sue his daughter. He's not asking for any damages, but I have an argument that she's liable for contribution (which I probably won't use). She still had to hire her own attorney, and the claim isn't covered by insurance. Whenever you file a lawsuit, you have to account for the possibility that there is going to be some blowback that can affect third parties you didn't intend to involve.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Ironic or not, it's not like these kind of clawbacks aren't par for the course. If a welfare recipient gets an overpayment, even if it was because of a cockup on the government's part, the government still expects them to pay it back. They might cut them a break due to financial hardship, but they still have to go through the process. When I was doing bankruptcy, I regularly had to tell clients that no, you can't pay your brother the money you owe him before you file, because the trustee will sue your brother to get it back, and no, you can't offer your best friend your hunting camp as part of a deal too good to be true, or the trustee will have that transfer undone. But as I plan to elaborate on in another comment, the government might not have a choice.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Except that's the complete opposite of what happened here. The government did not sue Trump.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
To be clear, I'm not actually in favor of reparations. But why compromise when the power of the bullshit lawsuit is at your disposal?
Rov_Scam
1d ago
I understand what you're saying but that's all besides the point. Whether it's a one to one comparison or not, a bullshit lawsuit is a bullshit lawsuit,.and unless the courts undo this, you're opening up the possibility that anyone can use a bullshit lawsuit to fund whatever pet projects you can't get congressional appropriation for.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Only Donald Trump could pardon the January 6 defendants and then ruin their lives under the guise of charity. Here's how I see this playing out:
- Independent Democratic group sues the government to stop the payments
- Long fight over standing ensues
- Democrats win White House in 2028; DOJ takes over case
- In the meantime, a bunch of January 6 defendants have received checks from the fund
- DOJ files new lawsuit against the fund's administrators, along with everyone who received a check
- Having spent the money before the Democratic takeover, the fund is now administered by stooges who have no money or interest in actually fighting the suit and are only named as an essential party
- The suit is now an unwieldy mass of defendants, most of whom have hired local counsel who aren't in a position to litigate the complex, novel legal issues involved
- January 6 defendants who didn't immediately put their money into escrow are forced into the Hobson's choice of spending it on legal representation or settling by paying a large amount of their meagure fortune to the Preschooler's Trans Education Fund.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
Those were real lawsuits that the government filed where the defendants were going to have to pay someone no matter what, the only question being how much and to whom. It's not a practice I endorse, but it's in a totally different league than personally suing an entity you control in a case that would go nowhere for no reason other than extracting money out of them that they wouldn't have to pay if the suit actually went forward.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
It's rare that I agree with you but you're 100% right about this. It's a travesty that groups who are subject to wrongs perpetrated by the very governments that are supposed to protect them are often left with no recourse and no compensation. While I can certainly sympathize with a small group of conservatives who were unfairly targeted by the IRS under the Obama administration, that is unfortunately nothing compared with the millions of Black Americans who are still suffering as the result of official government policy. First, after being brought here against their will to perform manual labor, slavery was enshrined within the US Constitution for the first 80 or so years of our nation's existence. Following abolition, things didn't get much better, as they were routinely discriminated against, often as a matter of official government policy, and routinely denied the very rights the Reconstruction Amendments sought to recognize. Even in areas where discrimination was not enshrined into law, they were still almost universally denied the opportunity to work in good jobs, live where they wanted to, and otherwise be treated like any other member of society. The results of these centuries of discrimination have been nothing short of catastrophic for Black Americans; even as we enacted legislation to address these wrongs in the 1960s, Blacks still lag behind others in almost every metric.
Given these circumstances, one would think that providing some sort of reparation for the harms the government has inflicted upon blacks would be a no-brainer in these more enlightened times, but that has unfortunately not been the case. Fully half of the country seeks to blame Blacks themselves for their own plight, arguing that if they only were willing to work a little harder things would magically improve for them. Some even wave their hands and explain the situation through the simple intellectual and moral inferiority of Blacks, echoing the slave masters of 200 years ago. Even on the left, the more wishy-washy white people voice concerns about what reparations would look like, who would qualify for them, and a host of other practical concerns that would threaten to sink any program from the beginning. Righting these wrongs has become all but politically impossible.
Luckily, though, Donald J. Trump has unlocked the cheat code to get around an ineffective, even hostile Congress. All that is needed in the next Democratic administration is for a civil rights group to file a class action suit against the US government. No legitimate claim? No problem! This will never get close to an actual courtroom, as president AOC will be more than happy to offer a generous settlement package before the first motion is filed. No debate, no working out the messy details, just pick a strategy and go for it. Because when you look at all that's happened, $1.619 trillion is getting off easy.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Nah, the Black Album was a total sellout. ...And Justice for All would have been good except you can't hear any bass. The last good Metallica album was Master of Puppets /s
Rov_Scam
2d ago
I don't know if it would have cost a fortune, at least not compared to what they already paid. I don't think they bought all the rights, just that they paid a little extra to use the songs in the game indefinitely and not for five years or whatever. I doubt the agreement even would allow them to use the songs in another game.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Most brokers are probably already asking those questions, and if they aren't, I'd wonder why their attorneys haven't developed a standardized form yet. The only suspect one is the last one, since English comprehension would only be relevant if the driver misread a sign or something. You could still ask at the deposition, but probably not at trial.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
If you're talking about '99 onward it was an entirely different situation as Napster made a whole world of music available that hadn't been accessible before, and the internet made music discovery a lot easier. I had heard of Joy Division in the '90s, but only because as a music nerd I had a bunch of record review guides (which are sitting on a bookshelf behind me as I type this). I had no particular interest in them, but trying to find well-reviewd records from major bands was a chore because you were at the mercy of what the record store had in stock. Floor space was limited, and they had to stock CDs and cassettes, so they were only going to carry what they could sell, which meant mostly new releases and compilations. It seems odd to think about now, but as someone who was a huge Beatles fan I don't recall any record store having all their studio albums in stock at the same time, even after the surge in interest generated by the Anthology documentary. The Anthology compilations, which are collections of unreleased material that nobody cares about any more, were always well-stocked, on the other hand. What people liked was largely defined by what was available, and unless there was some big cultural change, catalog releases that didn't sell well to begin with weren't likely to be available outside of special order, which was usually limited to independent shops in urban areas that high school kids didn't shop at.
Suburbanites comprise a large portion of my social circle, ranging in age from 20s to 70s, and I can assure you that none of these things is true.
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