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You seem to dislike powerful rich men. It comes thru loud and clear in all your posts. The sum total of your last post can be summarized as: "They both lost La

You seem to dislike powerful rich men. It comes thru loud and clear in all your posts. The sum total of your last post can be summarized as: "They both lost Lawfare Fair and Square, because the system works how it works, and their lawyers failed, and thus they probably deserved to lose, especially because of their wealth and fame, making them probably bad people." I disagree. The biggest weakness in our Legal system is that people who think exactly like you do get themselves onto Juries, by saying all the right words, and appearing unbiased when you're absolutely not.

shadowgovt 2y ago
Juries are the worst system except for other systems. There's a reason defendants have the option in many cases to waive trial by jury. But do we like them more or less than one judge deciding facts and sentencing? Do we believe a judge would be more or less forgiving of a defendant who just skips his deposition? (https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24/1088639577/alex-jones-skipped-his-sandy-hook-deposition-again https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24/1088639577/alex-jones-skipped...) The biggest stumbling block to Alex Jones prevailing in the civil case against him was Alex Jones, by treating a legal proceeding as a minor inconvenience. Anyway, I wouldn't put much worry in my opinion of powerful rich men. Neither of us will ever be enough of one for it to matter. (FWIW... Jones losing a civil suit doesn't make him a bad person. Accusing the families of eight dead kids of making up that their kids were massacred, then profiting off of that lie, would have made him a bad person whether or not he ever saw justice over it.)
- quantadev 2y ago
  I agree there may not be a better system than a Jury based one. The problem is that humans are fallible, and there are people who want other people in jail for being "bad people". My position is that being bad isn't a crime. Telling lies isn't a crime. Insulting people isn't a crime. etc. Trump and Jones were treated badly because people like you are willing to wage lawfare against the powerful and the wealthy simply because they hate people for being powerful and wealthy. Since you bring up my own wealth, I indeed am in the top 1% of population, so speak for yourself.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Then lawfare is the most effective tool 99% have to keep your otherwise-relatively-unbridled power (and mine, actually, if you're calling top 1% "wealthy") in check. The alternatives are much messier and make our lives much shorter. And to be clear: you're right. None of the things Jones did were crimes. If they were, he'd have been in criminal court. Civil court is for restitution of wrongs between individual parties and resolution of disputes. When the strictures of law are broken, criminal court is involved; when someone is wronged, civil court is involved. And make no mistake: you can wrong someone with words. It is not a violation of one's freedom of speech that if a party goes around telling everyone you cheated someone out of a million dollars and you didn't, you can sue that person to (a) compel them to cease to lie and (b) make restitution for the damage those lies did to your reputation and opportunities. This is an old feature of the American judiciary, at least a thousand years old and inherited from England... And it's there because the alternative is more crime (because if you can't be made whole when someone's wronged you, you must logically take steps to prevent further harm by doing ill to the threat). The legal system handles more than crime. Nobody's "been bad" in every divorce or an estate settlement. And when someone is harmed by another individual in a way that doesn't have a specific stricture against it, we have civil courts to make the harmed person whole. (I'm a lot more interested in talking about Jones than Trump. Trump is a separate case entirely... For example, he was in criminal court, he was charged with falsifying business records, a crime because it strikes at the process of truth that the law depends on to regulate business, and he was convicted of doing so. Trump's circumstances are different enough to Jones's that there isn't any productive discourse to have in lumping them together. If you disagree with the criminal process of the courts of the State of New York, you are welcome to your opinion but you can discuss it with someone else. I hope the first question they ask you is what makes his case special as opposed to the other people in New York who were found guilty of NY Penal Law § 170.10).
    - quantadev 2y ago
      > lawfare is the most effective tool Wow, I didn't expect you to openly admit you're in favor of lawfare, especially based on wealth discrimination; but after reading that stark confession in the first sentence it saved me some time, because I didn't keep reading past that.

shadowgovt 2y ago

Juries are the worst system except for other systems. There's a reason defendants have the option in many cases to waive trial by jury. But do we like them more or less than one judge deciding facts and sentencing? Do we believe a judge would be more or less forgiving of a defendant who just skips his deposition? (https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24/1088639577/alex-jones-skipped-his-sandy-hook-deposition-again https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24/1088639577/alex-jones-skipped...) The biggest stumbling block to Alex Jones prevailing in the civil case against him was Alex Jones, by treating a legal proceeding as a minor inconvenience. Anyway, I wouldn't put much worry in my opinion of powerful rich men. Neither of us will ever be enough of one for it to matter. (FWIW... Jones losing a civil suit doesn't make him a bad person. Accusing the families of eight dead kids of making up that their kids were massacred, then profiting off of that lie, would have made him a bad person whether or not he ever saw justice over it.)

quantadev 2y ago
I agree there may not be a better system than a Jury based one. The problem is that humans are fallible, and there are people who want other people in jail for being "bad people". My position is that being bad isn't a crime. Telling lies isn't a crime. Insulting people isn't a crime. etc. Trump and Jones were treated badly because people like you are willing to wage lawfare against the powerful and the wealthy simply because they hate people for being powerful and wealthy. Since you bring up my own wealth, I indeed am in the top 1% of population, so speak for yourself.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Then lawfare is the most effective tool 99% have to keep your otherwise-relatively-unbridled power (and mine, actually, if you're calling top 1% "wealthy") in check. The alternatives are much messier and make our lives much shorter. And to be clear: you're right. None of the things Jones did were crimes. If they were, he'd have been in criminal court. Civil court is for restitution of wrongs between individual parties and resolution of disputes. When the strictures of law are broken, criminal court is involved; when someone is wronged, civil court is involved. And make no mistake: you can wrong someone with words. It is not a violation of one's freedom of speech that if a party goes around telling everyone you cheated someone out of a million dollars and you didn't, you can sue that person to (a) compel them to cease to lie and (b) make restitution for the damage those lies did to your reputation and opportunities. This is an old feature of the American judiciary, at least a thousand years old and inherited from England... And it's there because the alternative is more crime (because if you can't be made whole when someone's wronged you, you must logically take steps to prevent further harm by doing ill to the threat). The legal system handles more than crime. Nobody's "been bad" in every divorce or an estate settlement. And when someone is harmed by another individual in a way that doesn't have a specific stricture against it, we have civil courts to make the harmed person whole. (I'm a lot more interested in talking about Jones than Trump. Trump is a separate case entirely... For example, he was in criminal court, he was charged with falsifying business records, a crime because it strikes at the process of truth that the law depends on to regulate business, and he was convicted of doing so. Trump's circumstances are different enough to Jones's that there isn't any productive discourse to have in lumping them together. If you disagree with the criminal process of the courts of the State of New York, you are welcome to your opinion but you can discuss it with someone else. I hope the first question they ask you is what makes his case special as opposed to the other people in New York who were found guilty of NY Penal Law § 170.10).
  - quantadev 2y ago
    > lawfare is the most effective tool Wow, I didn't expect you to openly admit you're in favor of lawfare, especially based on wealth discrimination; but after reading that stark confession in the first sentence it saved me some time, because I didn't keep reading past that.