this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2024
271 points (97.2% liked)

News

23267 readers
4527 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A Pennsylvania judge ruled Monday that Elon Musk’s daily $1 million giveaway to voters can continue, in a victory for the tech billionaire and Donald Trump ally.

Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Angelo Foglietta rejected arguments from the city’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, who argued that the sweepstakes was an illegal lottery violating state law and must be halted immediately.

The ruling came shortly after an all-day hearing in a packed courtroom in downtown Philadelphia. The hearing was heated at times, with Krasner’s team calling Musk’s political team “shysters” who are running a “scam” and “grift” – and Musk’s team accusing the district attorney of pursuing a “dreadful violation of constitutional rights.”

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 234 points 4 days ago (4 children)

So electoral bribery is legal now, huh?

God bless America. Sigh.

[–] [email protected] 60 points 4 days ago (1 children)

🌎👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀 "Always has been"

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 days ago

Maybe always tolerated. Now it's official.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 days ago

Citizens United made it legal, nothing new in the country where Trump has a shot to win again.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 days ago

Only if you're a billionaire, since the law doesn't apply to them.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago (2 children)

FWIW, I think this injunction was not about election integrity, but gambling laws.

But yeah, bribery is legal if you have that third comma in your net worth.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 83 points 3 days ago (6 children)

But in GA you can’t bring water to people waiting in line to vote. Ok.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 95 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Probably time judges face consequences for their shit rulings and making a farce of the justice system

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago (4 children)

Call me a hippy but I've always had a problem with the very concept of a judge. As in, someone who gets paid (royally!) just to, well judge people. As we all know the law is anything but impartial, so my take was always that, say, the "wrong" type of people gravitate towards these posts. Keep this up for a few decades and you have a thorougly corrupt legal system (not remotely resembling a "justice" system).

It's not as if I have any workable alternatives, but still the very concept feels wrong to me somehow.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 days ago (3 children)

The problem is that a judge, by virtue of being human, is incapable of impartiality.

If there were some sort of computer code that turned the legal system into a hard science that would be amazing, but I doubt that’s even possible.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

No! I don't want a computer making the decisions!

A judge can be merciful. A judge can have empathy and understanding.

By virtue of being a human being, a judge can understand what it means to be human.

Although the current state of the Supreme Court is demoralizing, it should be noted judges get second-guessed all the time through the appeal process.

I see the judicial system as one of those things that may be terrible, but is still better than every alternative, much like democracy.

If you want to replace people with computers, start with the CEOs and work down from there.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

And a lot of judges run for office. You have to act tough to get reelected, which means "tough on crime".

Judges are a heavily flawed attempt on impartiality when poor people do crimes for different reasons than the state and rich commit them.

A rich man will never loiter, a poor person might have to. A state can declare war and pardon its commanders even with rape and murder illegal for everyone else.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 days ago

Everyone and everything can be corrupted. Your train of thought that the "wrong" type of people gravitate towards these posts is taking a biased approach. It's closer to reality to say that the vested interest in corrupting these positions will always be a strong contestant to the rule of fair and unbiased law.

No legal system can unflinchingly endure the internal and external manipulations seeking to exploit it because regardless of how much we intend its fairness, we ourselves are unfair and malleable - intentionally or not.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

public disembowelment

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Totally not corrupting the voting here with money, nothing to see here.

The US truely is effed

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

Yep. Democracy has left the building.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 4 days ago (6 children)

Can someone please eli5 me why this legal? This is truly above my pay grade apparently

[–] [email protected] 72 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Heard he doesn't give the money away as a lottery, but to pre-selected people, who plays "the random voter" guy.

But what a shit show regardless.

[–] [email protected] 95 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Oh so it's not campaign violations, it's just regular fraud.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 4 days ago (3 children)

It's still the same violation as originally brought before the court. Offering anything of value to someone for being registered to vote, explicitly including lottery entries, is illegal. That is what happened.

Lying about it being a lottery is an additional crime.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 days ago

Yes, but he is no mere mortal. He is the richest mortal, thus the law does not bind him.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Then why is the judge letting it continue?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

And they prove that they aren't just lying to the public by making them think it's a lottery they actually have a chance in, right? Right??

Yeah right... So as usual muskrat gets to have his cake and eat it too.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 4 days ago

It clearly is illegal, but the judge is allowing it anyway. Most likely because they are extremely corrupt.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 days ago

Somebody check that judge's finances!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It's not necessarily legal.

The judge hasn't ruled yet on whether Musk broke the law. He simply declined to issue a preliminary injunction.

A preliminary injunction tells someone to stop what they are doing while the court case plays out. In order to get a preliminary injunction, you have to convince a judge that there will be irreparable harm by letting someone continue.

In other words, a judge might rule against an injunction but nevertheless end up ruling against the defendant. Especially if the judge thinks the harm has already been done.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago

Fuck you, CNN. His "giveaway" can continue... That's not what it was being called yesterday.

Headline should speak to how his LOTTERY CANNOT continue, because it was never an actual lottery as advertised and was instead an active and intentional wide scale fraud of millions upon millions of American entrants.

[–] [email protected] 46 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

This ruling is just on the emergency order to shut down the lottery which would end tomorrow anyway because tomorrow is election day.

There is still a criminal case proceeding.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The judge’s ruling was on Krasner’s emergency motion to shut down the sweepstakes right away. There is still an underlying case on the merits of whether Musk’s giveaway is illegal under state gaming law.

Just to be clear, this wasn't the judge ruling that it was legal, it was the judge deciding not to issue an emergency order immediately halting the lottery. I'm honestly not surprised given the fact that there is only a day left and the damage is already done.

“Our intent all along is to only provide compensation to registered voters and US citizens, and avoid any chance that we are somehow providing funds to foreign nationals or someone with ill-intent,” Young said.

Young, the super PAC’s treasurer, said the group received plenty of sign-ups from people who weren’t registered to vote – and those people “received a follow-up opportunity and were encouraged to check their registration status,” Young testified.

If there was any doubt that they were using this to get people to register to vote, this added detail should make it pretty clear. They were telling people who weren't registered to register in order to get paid / enter a lottery.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

If there was any doubt that they were using this to get people to register to vote, this added detail should make it pretty clear. They were telling people who weren't registered to register in order to get paid / enter a lottery.

Which is super illegal, so they just admitted it in court. They don’t care though because if it works they just get the carrot to pardon them.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago

Phew! It's a Good Thing he's only offering $1MILLION! If he was offering something like Water THEN we'd have an issue!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Crucial context, the reason for the legality:

“The $1 million recipients are not chosen by chance,” Gober said Monday. “We know exactly who will be announced as the $1 million recipient today and tomorrow.”

~~I checked the wording and it appears it never said the choice was going to be random! Devious.~~

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 days ago (2 children)

In announcing the giveaway, Musk said: “We are going to be awarding $1 million randomly to people who have signed the petition,” referring to his petition in support of the Constitution.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 days ago (1 children)

struck, thanks. It's false advertising then.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 days ago

Which is civil rather than criminal.

I wonder if people that participated in this lottery will start filing suit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 days ago

Yeah so they randomly choose people, then pick from those people to announce later on and boom no longer random because loophole...

We really are the land of shitheads jumping through loopholes...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 days ago

Guess that judge was one of the "winners"

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 days ago

Election interference

load more comments
view more: next ›