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Donald Trump is in court again today, facing a civil trial that could cost him his business empire. Trump, his sons, and his company stand accused of falsely inflating property value prices in order to obtain favorable loans.
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@georgetakei Him loosing everything would make me happy.
I guess its a mental disorder to want evil cruel people to have the level of success they truely deserve.
Ahh right lets make up phrases that in no way resemble anything said and then put quotes around it so I can argue with it and make it look like im arguing with the person I quoted when in reality im just arguing with ghosts my imagination made up....
Carry on.
The reason he's in court is because The Oligarchy doesn't like him. It's been that way since 2016.
Whether you side with him or with them is kind of a personal decision, and who is really in the right or in the wrong is probably something we mere mortals will never know.
But lets not be silly and pretend like all these different court cases are being brought by completely different and unrelated people for entirely different reasons.
I mean sure, the oligarchy doesnt like him and im sure thats making it much worse on him...
But the fact that he is an evil, racist man who lies through his teeth and does illegal things at every turn might have a tiny bit to do with it too.
Did you deduce that from first principles, or did you fall asleep with the TV on and wake up knowing it ?
I have no access to TV or cable... so first principles is the only answer
They and their little "free trade agreements" turned vast swaths of America into an unlivable hell-scape the likes of which are not seen anywhere else in the world. Then you have 9/11, patriot act, and Bush's forever wars and dumping of heroin on the people, in addition to destroying America's credibility in the world by wanton embrace of torture.
I don't know how you measure "evil" but if it's by the amount of human suffering created, 1000 Trumps couldn't even hold a candle to what the Clinton or Bush families have been capable of.
@cjd @freemo @thatguyoverthere @georgetakei eyo. Free trade is good.
Unironically, I stand for it.
Patriot act bad, and I stand against it.
I guess what is meant by free trade...
Some use it to mean no regulation, in other words, your free to manipulate the markets all you want so long as you dont make any laws to enable it...
Others mean free trade as minimally regulated where those regulations are generally limited towards preventing hijacking, manipulation, and control of the market.. For example someone would argue a monopoly forming and being able to price-fix the market would not be free trade, in which case the govt would be expected to step in and address the monopoly.
@freemo @jeff @cjd @thatguyoverthere @georgetakei I believe the latter is a free market. Price choices are business freedom if they choose to sell at said price.
Yea I'd disagree, a completely unregulated market leads to a non-free market where a few large players can dominate the natural equilibrium of prices by engaging in price-fixing.
The people get to decide. And we have quite a few examples of free speech with legal consequences... libel, slander, calls to violence, etc.
I'm not here arguing for absolute free speech, I'm just saying that if the government puts you in a cage for exercising your "freedom", it isn't freedom.
Virtually all freedoms have limitatiosn where it infringes on other freedoms..
You have the freedom to self determination. That doesnt mean you can self-determine you will be a murderer because that infringes on other peoples rights..
Rights with well defined limits are still rights, and still imply freedom. Freedom does not suggest there are no limits to that freedom.
Words Mean Things.
Yes words do mean things, and here my words were choosen carefully.
The limitations on free speech are not direct.. you have the freedom to say the things you say.. but you also hold the risk of the effects.. It is the effects, and your intent around it, not the speech itself. But it effectively limits speech indirectly.
For example if i engage in slander/libel, but there is no actual harm that comes of it, my freedom of speech had no ill effects and i was legal allowed to say the slander/libel I said, since it is only illegal should there be harm caused.
However if harm caused you can be held guilty and sued. However it is not the speech itself that is illegal, but rather the consequences of that speech and knowing engaging to create those consequences.
So yes free speech there is legal, but the consequences are not. That is still freedom of speech, its just not freedom to cause intentional harm through deceit. One freedom ends where another begins.
If you say something and as a result nobody likes you and you don't get invited to parties, that IS a consequence of you exercising your freedom of speech, just as you said in the beginning.
But if you say something and then by some legal mechanism the government attacks you, then you were not exercising your freedom of speech, that freedom does not actually exist.
Civil suits by non-government or quasi-government entities are a big grey area.
> But if you say something and then by some legal mechanism the government attacks you, then you were not exercising your freedom of speech, that freedom does not actually exist.
Yea, no...
If i say "Here is 100$ go murder Bill".. it is absurd in my opinion to say that simply because that speech was necessary to initiate the events that being arrested for hiring a hitman is a violation of free speech.
No, the speech itself isnt illegal, the consequences (known) of that speech is. That doesn't eliminate free speech or make it less free.
In this case the judge asks himself "did you intend for Bill to die?" and if the answer is yes then you committed conspiracy to murder.
These are not limitations on freedom of speech, nor even consequences of exercising free speech, they are *other* acts which are forbidden (conspiracy, fraud, ...) and whether or not you did the act is a question of intent.
> In that case the speech not the crime at all, but is part of the act of committing a crime. The classical example of this is fraud.
Which is exactly what I just argued... freedom of speech is always allowed, its just sometimes the **Consequences** of that speech is illegal.
As I already stated as an example libel/slander makes the consequences of free speech illegal, the speech itself is legal (as in if someone uttered the same speech in a different context it very well may be legal even if it is still a lie about someone, because the actual result of the actions are what matter).
Even if you believe what you say (not fraud), even if you aren't obviously expecting people to carry out a specific action (not conspiracy), speech can STILL be suppressed if it is deemed too likely it is to result in violent / criminal actions.
Another one is espionage (what Julian Assange is likely to be charged with), that is purely speech/press, acting as a news organization. The United States asserts that THAT speech is illegal because the information contained is military secrets.
Even then the speech itself is not illegal, it is the action, or potential actions is illegal.
This is clear because if you say "Everyone should rise up and kill Bob"... that is **only** illegal if it is likely to produce the action of people **immenetely** rising up and killing bill. In other words, a reasonable person must expect that such speech will have a particular illegal outcome.
If, for example, that exact same phrase were uttered to a group where a reasonable person would expect the group would not actually follow the instructions, then there are no legal consequences.
In other words the speech is always legal, it is the consequences, or the **intent** that makes it illegal, not the words themselves.
