General Politics Discussion [ARCHIVED] • Page 327

Well, Hogan was almost definitely not going to pursue the case as devotedly without Thiel bankrolling him. It also seems likely that Thiel is bankrolling mutliple other, much more frivolous, lawsuits against Gawker Media. The outcome of Hogan's lawsuit was extraordinary in the most literal sense - the amount of money he was awarded was borderline comical, totally out of line with what may have been expected.

The problem is that by allowing a shadow figure to fund these cases - regardless of merit, or subject matter - we are setting an informal precedent (via a relatively recent legal loophole) where a billionaire can bankrupt businesses solely by virtue of attrition and more significant resources.

It's also hard for me to sympathize with Hogan when he didnt care about the sex tape and was really trying to keep the video of him being blatantly, virulently racist from coming out (which happened anyway).

Gawker was wrong to publish the hogan video in any form, just as they were wrong to write that article last summer about the financial exec who was seeking male escorts, and they were wrong to out Thiel in the first place.

But overall? Gawker did good work. They were less afraid of institutions than many other outlets, which is good. They were never licking the boots of the new plutocrat class like their contemporaries.

 

Yeeah, the attrition aspect is the one that gives me pause. I hate Gawker personally, but it's a bummer that one very rich person can literally drain a publication / group solely because he has a personal vendetta against them.

 

Trump adviser accused of making anti-Semitic remarks

Edit wow Mary Kay Letourneau is his sister

 

I mean, yeah, Gawker wrote awful pieces. But so does like every outlet. How many of them also devote pages and pages of their outlet to advocating for a minimum universal income? Or confronts the stories of Cosby raping women long before any other major outlet? Or any of the other things outlined here, which are only a few: http://gawker.com/heres-what-gawker-media-does-1779858799

The thing about Gawker is that everyone hates it, but everyone reads it. I dunno. I'll kinda miss it. It always felt brutally honest, even when it stepped over bounds and norms.

 

Wish I could respond with ... it's "you're" ... x2.

 

The Internet?

 

His argument is specious as fuck, but here it is in his own words:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/08/1...line-privacy-debate-wont-end-with-gawker.html

 

I assume your email is filled with similar responses regarding your harsh treatment of Modern Baseball on your podcast.

 

Meh, because the case would have turned out the way it did, though perhaps not in amount awarded, if it were sufficiently (not exceedingly) financed, I'm not ready to panic about it.

The funding frivolous lawsuits would be the more concerning trend, but recent pleading standards post-Twombly-Iqbal have sharply cut down on the ability to file those (if I remember correctly, failure to state a claim dismissals has jumped up almost 200%). You still need a meritorious case in addition to those significant resources. Until that is no longer the case, and money can actually make/break cases, I'll, again, reserve panic. If anything, it's my opinion that it's currently far too hard to make cases against corporations, which is what Gawker is.

It's less about sympathy for me. And there were certainly reasons to oppose its airing besides his merely saying he didn't want his daughter dating men of color [sic]. He also showed sexual incapability and made a lot of really sad, personal admissions about being old and washed up and no one caring about him anymore, talked about the difficulties he was going through with his wife and kids, and other stuff I don't remember but that had no public being broadcast to millions.

Either way, being racist doesn't affect my opinion on those matters all that much, and certainly doesn't excuse legal misconduct. I had a similar stance on Donald Sterling's case a few years ago, although that was on different bases (but at least that exposed the slaveowner complex present in American sports ownership).

You think this was defiantly principled? They broke the law in the pursuit of sleazy profits. Let's not act like this was some moral crusade against the shocking revelation that white senior citizen meatheads are racist. Maybe I'm biased by always having been offended by paparazzi capitalism and its commodification of private lives, but I certainly did not and do not infer any moral rightfulness.

This isn't WikiLeaks. It's tabloid yellow journalism.

 

White Thugs Destroy Gas Station, Fight Attendant, but Will Get Away With It Because White Privilege

 

i find this one amusing

 

I liked that one. Cause ... uh ...

 

Modern Baseball fans are not nearly as awful as State Champs fans. I think that the bro-mentality of State Champs brand of pop-punk brings out the worst in people.

 

You read Wikileaks lately? Cause ... it's basically an arm of the alt-right now. Pretty awful shit.

 

I mean, Assange is a rapist. Whatever good works he has done is eclipsed by that fact. He has spent years in isolation as a result, which, I think, lends itself to the alt-right mentality.

 

I for one will be hosting a pizza party at lunch when Gawker shuts down. Yall are invited.

All their authors write like they're the kid who thinks they're the wittiest snarkiest person on their local online forum.

Obligatory: fuck Peter Theil tho

 

But the way they describe how they have chosen to not repatriate funds yet, and the motivation for that decision, is completely dishonest. The very headline "Tim Cook thinks it's unfair to pay corporate taxes" is patently dishonest and false. That's not at all what he said. My issue is with how the article is presented, first, and then with the idea that a company has an obligation to bring money made outside of the country back into the country on a specific timetable, second.

I don't give Apple a pass. When they do things that are wrong, they should be called out on that. But not bringing money they won't spend, and don't need, into the United States yet because they don't need to, and can wait, is not one of those things. The idea that a US company should be forced to bring money they make into their country of origin, within a specific time frame, just because makes no sense at all. Now, if there's a tax code change to make, fine, that can be made and changed, but a company is not doing something wrong by paying the tax they owe and are legally required to do that within the law. If they are not paying the taxes they owe, and are committing fraud, that is absolutely a different thing. However, the board would be grossly negligent to stock holders to, for literally no reason, decide to just lose money they don't have to lose.

I want to see Trump's taxes not because I want to see the legal loopholes he uses to minimize his taxes, I assume literally everyone that files taxes does all they can to minimize what they pay, but because I believe we have a right to know where his investments lie and who has investments in him, and how truthful he has been with us.

I don't see how a company delaying when they bring the money they made outside of this country, into this country, would increase anyone's tax burden. Why would any individual then pay more?

 

I have not. But they've done some good work for the public and at great potential expense and for what I would assume are far lesser financial gains. Attacks on cronyism and neoliberalism are two things I very much support.

You can appreciate someone's work irrespective of your opinion of them as a person. To this day, I enjoy listening to "Billie Jean". Even though, that story about Ian Watkins did actually ruin "Last Train Home" by Lost Prophets for me.

 

I generally try to be accommodating of all body types and refrain from body shaming of any sort, but the picture I just saw of one of those naked Trumps statues was fucking blood curdling.

 

We Found Another One: Trump In '08 Said "Fantastic" Hillary Should've Been...

 

Jason, this is semantics. Is it legal? Yes, but Cook put it outside that frame when he said it was unfair. That isn't the framework I'm using. Putting that aside, the actual content is that those things abroad are merely tax havens and shell companies, which are being utilized to not pay taxes. One can invoke shareholders and that sort of thing if one wants, however, it has been shown that that is not what this is about. This is what rich individuals do as well. The tax burden falls upon working people more heavily and it is in that way that they are making explicit political choices with their actions. You may separate the economic from the political, but I do not and this adds to the culture of evading taxation on the basis of legality. They may not be doing anything wrong legally, yet they are doing being immoral in their practices.