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‘Ranting, rambling, and paranoid’: Federal appeals court suspends 96-year-old judge until she passes mental exam (lawandcrime.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Judge Newman has threatened to have staff arrested, forcibly removed from the building, and fired. She accused staff of trickery, deceit, acting as her adversary, stealing her computer, stealing her files, and depriving her of secretarial support. Staff have described Judge Newman in their interactions with her as “aggressive, angry, combative, and intimidating”; “bizarre and unnecessarily hostile”; making “personal accusations”; “agitated, belligerent, and demonstratively angry”; and “ranting, rambling, and paranoid.” Indeed, interactions with Judge Newman have become so dysfunctional that the Clerk of the Court has advised staff to avoid interacting with her in person or, when they must, to bring a co-worker with them.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm "so fixated on physical well-being" because there are folks in this discussion saying that no one should be working at all over 65. Let me reiterate my points, low attention span listicle style:

There is an industry with a mandatory retirement age. Airline pilot. 65 years old.
This limit is largely in place for cardiovascular health reasons aka we don't like pilots having heart attacks and less about cognition.
Many retired airline pilots continue to fly smaller planes, often offering flight instruction, demonstrating mental wellness beyond the age of 65.
Since many governmental roles such as judge etc. aren't as immediately safety critical as airline pilot, much of the reason for an age limit can be relaxed, but I still feel that senility (or just plain being out of touch) is a significant factor in such cases.

So there needs to be some practical limit to the age of government officials.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I will say this one last time. Equating the necessity for certain jobs to require physical fitness with the requirement for other jobs to have mental fitness makes no sense. This does not mean we shouldn't remove people from their jobs because they are old, but because they are unfit. When there is a strong correlation between fitness and age, such as physical well-being, and a failure to perform your job puts lives on the line, age limits make sense. When there is a much weaker correlation between age and fitness, such as mental acuity, other tools will achieve better results.

All of this is tangential to setting a retirement age. If you as a nation are going to require people to stop working at a specific age, then you as a nation should be willing to guarantee the financial well-being of people over a certain age. If you don't want to support them, then you shouldn't mandate they stop being able to support themselves. Currently, about a quarter of the American workforce is over 65. I guarantee a significant number of them aren't doing it out of preference rather than necessity.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I don't believe our nation should guarantee the financial well-being of people over a certain age, I believe there are lots of old people who deserve to starve to death for the harm and destruction their unchecked greed has caused.

But they might not be who we're talking about (though we're on the subject of greed, they probably are.) If a fucking JUDGE can't retire at 70 on a pension we might as well starve us ALL to death because I'd take that as mathematical proof that hope doesn't exist.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

~~I don't think it will be the judge, or those with enough power to cause harm to society to the planet or society who would suffer under your grand plans. More like the old lady working at Wal-Mart who would love to be able to retire and still be able to afford food and shelter. This is why sweeping generalizations while focusing on only a tiny part of the outcome both lead to bad policies and makes you look like a ghoul.~~

I missed the context of government officials. I still think a simple age requirement is a poor choice, but certainly better than no retirement options at all within that context.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

On the topic of "Should GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS have mandatory retirement ages, I don't see what the little old gramma working at Walmart has to do with anything, other than trying to dishonestly build false sympathy for a group of people who has overwhelmingly voted Republican demonstrating a strong hatred of social safety nets, so as far as I'm concerned no social safety nets is what they should get. It's called consequences.

this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023

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