Elon Musk Is Committing a Crime—but It Doesn’t Matter Because He’s Rich

P_P@lemm.ee to politics @lemmy.world – 978 points –
Elon Musk Is Committing a Crime—but It Doesn’t Matter Because He’s Rich
thenation.com
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Like, seriously, are these people new here?

wage theft is always worth it for the boss

stealing from work never is worth it for the worker though

Merrick Garland needs to be removed and replaced by someone who cares about the rule of law.

He ain’t it. He’s asleep at the wheel.

He’s so terrified of anything appearing to be “political“, he will absolutely do nothing as long as the criminal is in some way politically connected.

He would have made a decent Supreme Court justice but he's just not cut out to be attorney-general.

His cowardly inability to pursue justice fairly forces me to disagree with you here. He may have been better than the alternatives, but that hardly makes him any good at all.

You do not need to "pursue justice" as a judge. You just need to allow others to pursue justice through you and possess an ability to apply the law. There are no political repercussions for judges that can harm their career. He acts the way he does because he doesn't want political backlash about it. If he's a judge, he has the ability to not care about others' opinions of his rulings.

The position of attorney-general requires a different skillset and mindset. An effective attorney-general is willing to take risks to pursue justice. Judges play a more passive role. That's why he's not a good attorney-general, but I still maintain he'd be a very good judge.

Lemmy has the tendency to think that because a person is bad in one aspect, they must be bad in every related aspect as well. Of course, nobody will admit they think like that, but I pray you don't.

I cannot and do not, in any way, support - not agree with - your defense of this man.

The only fair application of justice is to be blind to anything but the facts of the crime and to properly adjudicate them in accordance with the law. No person who is too scared (or corrupt) to do the job of the top criminal prosecutor in this country should never hold the position.

Your position and view towards the law is admirable and very worthy of respect, but you are holding him to a standard that is not applicable within a legal system based on the traditions English common law, like the American one. You're describing the role of a judge in an inquisitorial system, not an adversarial system.

The role of a judge in an inquisitorial system is to answer the questions "Did they do it? Do they deserve to be punished?"

In the traditional English system, the is the role of the jury. The judge is just there to ensure everyone is playing by the rules of the court.

Of course, it is impossible for anyone to be truly divested from personal opinion and bias. We are all human, after all. The guiding design principle of an inquisitorial system is that judges are expected to be as neutral as possible, and then the legal system presumed they succeeded. An adversarial system, on the other hand, is aware of the inherent biases of mankind and attempts to design around them.

Which approach is more valid is a long-running topic of debate in philosophy.

Thank you for a solid, informative explanation. Any judge must be impartial and resistant to their own biases, which is not an easy task.

I just can’t countenance your open and blatant endorsement of cravenness and corruption running the DoJ. Oh, and your patronizing tone is nothing short of insulting.

If your best argument is that there’s no legal requirement to do this correct and just thing - the moral and ethical thing - you’ve only made yourself look as inept and corrupt as Gorsuch.

You're free to disagree with the way the American legal system is structured. I'm not here to argue with you, and in many ways, I actually agree with you wholeheartedly that Garland would make a terrible judge in my notion of an ideal legal system.

The role of a judge in an inquisitorial system is to answer the questions "Did they do it? Do they deserve to be punished?"

In the traditional English system, this is the role of the jury. The judge is just there to ensure everyone is playing by the rules of the court. And in that role, Garland is pretty suitable. And yes, a sense of fairness and impartiality is not strictly required. Just a sense of logic, which Garland definitely has. You can correctly describe that as a fault of the legal system.

I apologise if you find this insulting.

Think of the judge in My Cousin Vinny. Do you think that he walked into that courtroom every day thinking "these idiots definitely did it"? It's very likely he did. But he also recognised it wasn't his job to broadcast that to the court. He had to put on a mask of neutrality because he recognised that it is the jury's role to determine guilt, not his. He doesn't need to be truly impartial to the defence's case; he just needs to make the correct evidentiary and legal rulings. Which he mostly did.

Contrast that to the role of the prosecutor, which is what the attorney-general is. It's the prosecutor's job to come into court thinking "these guys are guilty" and convince the jury of the same.

That’s a lot of words I’m not gonna read— but I don’t need your permission nor your approval to disagree with you.

And, since your patronizing tone has graduated to condescending, don’t bother replying. Nothing you have to say hold the value to me, so I’ll just downvote your comment without reading it.

Enjoy voting for Trump.

Garlands inability to execute the duties of his current job don't indicate to me he would have been a inadequate as a Justice. It's a different job with different duties and by all indications he would have likely performed fine.

As outsider, following events happening in US, its never been more obvious that if you're rich/powerful you cant be touched.

Trump has made this so hard to refute, that many of his followers are literally embracing fascism. It's very bad news.

It really seems like not only can't they be touched, but everyone else is also so jaded by the situation that no one is even fucking trying.

There goes the trust in US institutions for even more people.

How can I trust my government?

As a trans man, my state strips more rights from me everyday. I can be discriminated against in housing or employment. With a recent executive order, I could be arrested for having the “wrong” letter on my drivers license. The federal government is doing NOTHING to keep LGBT folks in southern states safe.

Fuck, in Oklahoma, a transgender child was murdered and the state government was allowed to cover it up! They can kill us and there will be no consequences.

3 more...

Another confirmation that this is a plutocracy ... or an oligarchy

"Potato potatoe". Debating over whether it's an oligarchy, plutocracy, corporatocracy, kakistocracy, etc is splitting hairs. All that matters is the masses understand that voting does not equal democracy when who you can vote for — your choices — are predetermined entirely by wealth and campaign financing; that what we have is not "democracy".

I consider what we have to be a neo-feudalist fusion of all of them, so it's best to think of it like the Kings and Queens of old. There are always significant power plays amongst them, and the US election is merely one of many. The only major difference is that they've had to maintain the illusion of freedom and choice, and make a more educated peasant believe they have super-duper for realz democracy. They use to only have to indoctrinate everyone with religion, then associate the feudalists with the cult, saying they are "chosen to god".

What Trump and MAGA represent is a reversion to the religious level of indoctrination — the cult like indoctrination of China, Russia, or NK —where they can remove the entire system that would enable legitimate democracy (if our options weren't predetermined by wealth), while maintaining the belief of freedom™️ and democracy™️... with thunderous applause.

too bad the cops can't arrest him badly and tase him while he aready has a knee pressing down his neck and get a full gun unloaded at him after an acorn hits a cybertruck, setting it on fire.

And the cops execute the warrant at the wrong address, unloading all their rounds into him because he's wearing a hoodie while playing with a toy gun in a public park in Cleveland.

he’s wearing a hoodie while playing with a toy gun in a public park in Cleveland.

The weird thing is... this is something that I could see him doing.

Get the guillotine.

The guillotine was designed to minimize suffering.

I would like to posit a 275 kilo power hammer that goes off as many times as you have been "slammed" in headlines.

Hung, drawn and quartered is quite effective at maximizing the suffering.

Having your cock cut off and stuffing in your mouth while you're still alive is a pretty brutal final fuck you.

If we really want to maximize suffering, I might suggest a mandolin for the testicles.

Let’s just pick a day. Everyone punches the richest person they can get their hands on.

Even though the federal Department for Justice has a standing policy against prosecuting election-related offences within two months of an election, there's still the possibility that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can prosecute him for offences committed under Pennsylvania's state election law.

The governor of Pennsylvania has expressed some openness to this happening.

So when you commit a crime, do they like, arrest your ass prompty and shove you in the legal system for potentially years or do they express some openness to it happening.

Well, you see, that depends on whether you have a team of highly-paid defence lawyers that can get you off if the prosecution makes even the slightest mistake in their case.

Or by making no mistake at all and taking advantage of the legal system, or worse the presidency..

It still makes the point of the article and it absolutely shouldn't be this way.

I feel like this headline is like The Onions' "No Way To Prevent This"; they can just keep on reusing it.

Land of the robber barons! What the founders would have intended.

The feel of a battleground text spam is well crafted. By Elon. The subsequent Harris spam today was “meh” at best.

I’m already voting for Harris but this text spam from MAGA absolutely will hit chords with folks. The latest one made a claim then linked to an article that said as much. Sort of. But if you’re only reading the headline and the first line it’s a real gotcha. Theirs has pictures. Hers is a single run on sentence.

More “we’re not going back” would resonate better, but it’s just not there. And today was the first Harris text that didn’t ask for money.

If you are still being swayed, on October 28th, by MAGA spam texts, then you can fuck off.

Edit: Obviously, I could have been more clear: I meant "you" as in the person reading these texts. To be clear, I do not disagree with anything you said. I made this comment out of frustration of the idea that there are people out there who will get a text from Trump one week before the election, and have it sway them.

They said they are voting for Harris, and are offering feedback that the Harris texts could be done differently to make them more effective. It's not the same as being "swayed"

Read the post, don’t just skim over key words and react. They’re effective texts, probably, it’s an observation.

I didn't mean you, I meant "you" as in the reader of said texts. I was not disagreeing with you. Should have been more clear.

Bold headline considering free speech is about to die with democracy

Holy hyperbole batman

I don't think it's going to hyperbole when the candidate running on "I'm going to jail my political opponents because they spoke out against me can called me mean names." Wins.

Articles criticizing the government could cease to exist if the tariffs proposed by that candidate don't ruin the economy and stop them from printing anything at all.

I’ll play the advocate here. What good would persecution do now? They wouldn’t stop him in time. All that would do is allow Trump and Musk to claim political persecution.

And if they did start an investigation, would it be complete before the election? What if they filed charges before? So what.

Smart play is to wait. Win. Prosecute with four years of time ahead.

Basically… maybe they will do something still?

There are three decisions a leader can make: Yes, no, not right now.

It would, bare minimum, let people know the equivalent of "if you come for the king you better not miss"

But getting an injunction for something as blatant as this would be a day or two in front of a judge, at most.

Yep. That's how the court system works in this country.

The nation is so close to being an anagram of the onion I almost didn't eat it.

So many people seem to forget Obama nominated him for the open Supreme Court seat because he hoped he was so the GOP wouldn't block his nomination.

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