7 ms·

This was a fine. The plaintiff is accusing the government of being unconstitutional after being fined $38,083.20 (of unpaid wages) plus a penalty of $16,000.

• kristopolous 2y ago
  reason.com doesn't really do journalism or reporting. They're an advocacy group run by a "think tank" which is a nice way of saying "propaganda company". This is like seeing a story "Big Macs are delicious sandwiches (mcdonalds.com)". Their only obligation is to their ideology I know a lot of people reading this are sympathetic to that ideology. Having sympathies doesn't somehow make my description of the purpose of the organization less accurate. https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/b5fb809a409cd25c948e7bf4ca96ed03.pdf https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/b5fb809a409cd25c... There's nothing in there about say, valuing accurate journalism that informs the public with relevant information.
  • bende511 2y ago
    and their ideology is dismantling the administrative state
    • woooooo 2y ago
      They're OK on civil liberties and foreign wars, typically, so at least they're consistent with an ideology over pure partisanship.
    • WeylandYutani 2y ago
      They want to go back to the days when rich people could basically do anything they wanted.
      • nickthegreek 2y ago
        Go back?
  • cyanydeez 2y ago
    Your comment is mostly useless. It's like saying facts are being produced by fact makers and there's something wrong with making facts. Looking at all the media right now, point to a non propaganda outlet, so we can better understand your facts.
    • 373864483647 2y ago
      This is like saying criticism is useless
    • kristopolous 2y ago
      404media? Wikileaks? Project Brazen? Motherboard? Bellingcat? Quanta magazine? Rest of world? Intercept? Techdirt? Even things like BBC, CBC, NHK, NPR - you can whine about their politics but they're journalists at a news organization, trying to do their job as reporters instead of forwarding a particular agenda. If you think sensationalist bad faith pushers who are trying to persuade an ideology are the same as journalists trying to abide by ethics, accuracy and codes of conduct who value responsibility and integrity then I can't help you.
      • walterbell 2y ago
        Bellingcat has stated that their funding sources include Open Society and US National Endowment for Democracy. Rest of World is funded by Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Eric Schmidt, former President of Alphabet/Google. Intercept was originally funded by Pierre Omidyar.
        • kristopolous 2y ago
          Open society did things like fund xerox machines in the eastern block to make zines and literature proliferate more (samizdat). Their work on pro-democracy groups, independent media, and civil society organizations in Eastern Bloc country's journalism is often credited by scholars to be part of the collapse of the Soviet Union. There's a lot of antisemitic trolls who think it's edgy to call them secretly pro-communist somehow. Claiming eastern European Jewish billionaires are secretly polluting the commons with communist propaganda is definitionally Nazi bullshit. It's really hard to be more of a bulls-eye on the dartboard. Again it goes back to the media literacy question. If you can't see a difference in purpose and objective between funding independent media organizations and white supremacist antisemites, I can't really help you.
  • rayiner 2y ago
    Isn’t advocacy that pushes an ideology more or less what “journalism” means? At least Reason is open about its ideology.
    • autoexec 2y ago
      Journalism is often used as a means to advocate for an ideology, but that's certainly not the definition of the practice. Accuracy, fairness, and avoiding bias are ideals that make for much better journalism, which is why it's a shame that so much of what we actually get was written and publicized by people who don't worry very much about any of those things. That said, if someone wants to promote an ideology then reporting on events related to what concerns them in order to inform their supporters or gain new ones seems like a very good idea.
      • kristopolous 2y ago
        The classic example is when cable news has on "retired generals" that advocate for war and when you look them up on linkedin they have current jobs like "Distinguished Fellow at Lockheed Martin Corporation". There's so many of these "what the fuck man?" moments you have with cable news you forget there's professionals out there than don't do that kind of shit.
    • Ferret7446 2y ago
      Is that a sarcastic observation of the state of news media in recent years? Because that is not at all what journalism means. Journalism is about reporting the truth as objectively as possible, and there used to be a journalist "creed" of sorts, much like doctors have. NYT and other trusted publications built up that trust by (mostly) upholding such principles in the past, and have lost a lot of that trust by violating them.
      • rayiner 2y ago
        I’m not being sarcastic. There is a changing norm within the field of journalism itself, and researchers are openly advocating abandoning objectivity as a creed. https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/objectivity-in-journalism-is-a-tricky-concept-what-could-replace-it/ https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/04/objectivity-in-journalism-... “To find out, we read every article mentioning the word from 2020 to 2022 in three publications where journalists talk to each other: Columbia Journalism Review, Nieman Journalism Lab, and Poynter. We coded each of these 195 articles on a five-point scale from ‘very negative’ to ‘very positive,’ and found that when American journalists speak about objectivity, they are three times more likely to speak negatively of it than positively (our count is 111 to 38).”
  • skissane 2y ago
    > There's nothing in there about say, valuing accurate journalism that informs the public with relevant information. I think your criticisms of them are unfair (at least with regards to this specific article) – and I'm speaking as someone who actually doesn't have a huge amount of agreement with their ideology (I'm no libertarian). The grandparent is pointing out that the case was about a "fine" – the article itself doesn't use that specific word, but it is obvious to anyone who reads it that is what it is talking about. It links for more information to another page – https://ij.org/case/c-s-lawn-administrative-appeal/ https://ij.org/case/c-s-lawn-administrative-appeal/ – which does use that word. But I think, the author of this article (Rob Johnson) not using the term "fine", is not due to some attempt to mislead the reader – it is because the US government doesn't technically call it a "fine", calling it a "liability" is the language it uses, and being a lawyer he naturally gravitates to using the most technically correct language regarding the case. Part of the reason why it is called a "liability" not a "fine", is fines are ultimately kept by the government, whereas at least some of this $50,000 is allegedly unpaid wages which are to be ultimately paid to the employees, but the employer disputes the government's claim they underpaid them to begin with. What the court case is actually about, is whether someone who is having a $50,000 liability imposed on them (whether as a fine or as back-payment of underpaid wages) has the constitutional right to have a proper trial before an independent judge and jury before having the liability imposed, or whether a "trial" before a "judge" who actually works for the executive agency issuing the liability is sufficient. Whatever is the right answer on that one, I don't think Johnson's position is per se unreasonable. And Johnson is picking on one of the several counterarguments to that contention that DOJ lawyers make in a brief – that constitutional protections against expropriation don't apply to money because money isn't property – and calling it out as unreasonable. I don't think Johnson is necessarily wrong here. Rejecting this contention wouldn't necessarily win the case for the non-government side, since this is really a threshold issue – are those constitutional limits even in scope here? Just because (contrary to this argument in the brief) you conclude "yes they are", doesn't mean that when you go into their details, you won't find that some exception to them applies. But if the whole thing is out of scope, you don't even reach consideration of the exceptions.
    • kristopolous 2y ago
      If someone at reason is doing unbiased investigative serious journalism then they aren't doing their job because that's not what that organization does. It'd be like an employee of McDonald's marketing department posting press releases about what a great choice meal prepping is from local farmers markets. A core, essential part of media literacy is understanding what the goals of the organization are and that the people working there are doing their job. Some do journalism and everyone else knows the value of wearing it as a costume.
• bende511 2y ago
  no one ever reads the actual complaint, smh.
  • skulk 2y ago
    If I was a zillionaire with an interest in dismantling safeguards against me exploiting the commons to earn more zillions, I'd be dumping huge amounts of money into Reason. They're so incredibly good at what they do (see: comments on this post).
  • johnnyanmac 2y ago
    TBF, I did read the article. The article obfuscates the complaint to a link to the DOJ website and just runs off the crazy rationale of the defendant.
• commandlinefan 2y ago
  According to the article, though, he doesn't have any option to appeal the fine (because money is not property).
  • kristjansson 2y ago
    They had several opportunities to appeal, which they took advantage of, and which _reduced_ their liability at each step
• HamsterDan 2y ago
  Why do you think calling it a fine changes anything?
  • EMIRELADERO 2y ago
    Excessive fines clause of the 8th Amendment?
    • kristjansson 2y ago
      Explicitly considered. The ultimate fine is much _less_ than it could have been under the controlling law.
  • neaden 2y ago
    Personally because my first thought when I saw the title was that it was going to be another case of the police confiscating cash from someone because they thought it was "suspicious". I think this title is purposefully trying to mislead people.
    • autoexec 2y ago
      I don't think your assumptions make the article misleading. I think it's a reasonable concern that if the government views money as not being property that view will make it easier for them to engage in civil-forfeiture and prevail in challenges to the practice.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • int_19h 2y ago
      The title accurately describes the government's legal argument, though.
  • ty6853 2y ago
    It makes it easier to dismiss and thus solidify as precedent, even if nonbinding precedent. The government is quite sly. They like to introduce evil new techniques on cases or people others will have no sympathy for, in hopes they can build new powers without resistance.
• JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  Why did the DOJ need to footnote this in the first place?
  • johnnyanmac 2y ago
    because someone lost a case of multiple appeals, and their hail mary when those all fell apart was "you can't fine me, that's taking my property". Mind you, this is returning the money he stole + a $16k penalty. It's absurd, but judges have had to rationally argue against crazier things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_against_supernatural_beings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawsuits_against_supernatural_...
• pie_flavor 2y ago
  Fines are a punishment imposed as a sentence by a judge. The plaintiff may have broken rules, but only the judicial branch is permitted to judge when you have broken the rules. When the administrative branch seems to be creating rules or imposing fines, it is actually an elaborate act of prosecutorial discretion, unless Congress has specifically permitted it to do so, unless the permission is unconstitutionally broad. Just because the guy broke the rules doesn't make it unimportant if the government is ignoring procedure and justifying itself doing so with totally nonsense arguments (which it may or may not be doing, IANAL).
  • mrkeen 2y ago
    Do judges decide speeding tickets and parking fines on a per-defendant basis?
    • pie_flavor 2y ago
      Yes! You can contest any one of them you like in court and waste the issuing officer's time making him show up to give testimony. You probably shouldn't, but you can!
• gaze 2y ago
  It sounded a lot like a typical sovereign citizen argument
• nelox 2y ago
  Yes, the government's position in this case is that the enforcement actions against the plaintiff, including the imposition of back wages and penalties, fall under the public rights doctrine, which allows administrative adjudication without infringing on constitutional protections related to private property or jury trials for legal actions. This argument frames the monetary penalties not as a deprivation of property but as a regulatory measure within the government's authority over public matters.
• kristjansson 2y ago
  The $38k isn't even truly a fine, its back-pay to the workers.
• cameldrv 2y ago
  But this is not a “takings” case, it’s due process. The fifth amendment says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. Since it was just an administrative decision, he’s saying it’s not due process, and they’re saying they don’t need to give him due process because money isn’t property, which is ridiculous.