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Based on my observation, a lot of the PPP money was just a welfare for the rich program. Hopefully there will be conditions on loan forgiveness like a limit on personal net worth
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I had to threaten a lawsuit of my previous employer because despite getting a waiver from the governor, even management did not follow mask guidelines.
I had people daily walking within a foot or so of me without masks.
I was laid off mid August, I still wonder if it wasn’t just the workload loss they laid me off for.
I outright quit my job in 2016 a couple days before Christmas because my employer then made my working environment hell once they found out I hated Trump. I told my boss to go fuck himself and walked out.
My experiences in manufacturing are that both of those places were union shops. Yet most of the members of the union were conservatives that hated, yet still benefited from the union. How that works in their heads, I’ll never know
I hate my field and the typical idiots that work in it.
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Trust me- Boeing’s idiocy around the 737 max and Trump’s insurmountable malfeasance allowing covid to spread are what has already done that job.
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The majority of the folks who write our laws don’t look or act like they care about the best interests of workers or people without privilege. For decades, we’ve been seeing the average person get victimized by the system, and whatever advantages they had from banding together stripped away. Based on that, I’d rather have a judge ruling on the spirit of the law than one who uses all the technicalities baked in there against us (and to the advantage of employers/businesses).
I once met a corporate lawyer whose job involved watching employees and keeping files on what they took from the office. If the company decided to fire people, they would check the files first. That was just insurance in case someone didn’t want to go quietly, but I can easily imagine what would happen if the employee fought it in court. In the worst case, the judge might be forced to rule a certain way, because sometimes the penalties are also in the code.
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Um, no. It was not a lot of money for us, and I know some some people gamed it, but it was absolutely critical and allowed us to rehire people we’d laid off. You had to have a viable business pre-covid, you had to have a payroll and paperwork to prove it, but it was the pretty much the easiest loan my business ever got. We need to worry a lot less about fraud and a lot more about making sure small businesses survive.
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Wow, I’d never heard this described before. In PA, that’s the Court of Common Pleas. The thing that’s most worrisome to be now is the contracts employers use to avoid the courts completely: non-binding arbitration and mediation clauses.
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I’d argue that this would cut against the non-elite significantly more than it would benefit them. Here’s an example: Let’s say police pull over a car with two people in it for going 31 mph in a 30 zone. The driver has a gun in his pocket that the passenger, who is on parole. Both are members of the same gang. Now let’s say that the police have no reasonable suspicion, but search the occupants and the car, and find drugs in the driver’s duffel bag in the trunk.
Now, let’s say that the prosecutor decides, and the judge agrees, that the “spirit” of the law should matter here more than the “technicalities,” and the passenger gets charged with possession of the gun and the drugs, because the “spirit” of the law is to combat drugs and violence and “technicalities” in the law shouldn’t stand in the way. Now let’s also say that a majority of people in the state agree with the prosecutor, and they have a bunch of statements made by the legislators agreeing with that position, even though the letter of the law doesn’t actually support the conviction.
In that case, what’s more important, the “spirit” of the law, or the “technicalities?”
When folks point out that our legal system is not impartial, they are correct! I simply believe giving that legal system more power to ignore the law as written would likely make that injustice worse, not better. Of course, our system is far from perfect, and it’s a straw man to pretend that anyone is saying it is, but that doesn’t mean proposed changes are necessarily wise or even well-thought out.
ETA:
i.e. literally the worst things to happen to consumer rights in this country in the last 50 years. A pox on our legal system.
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Right? Who writes the law and the circumstances of that matters. People pretending like our legal systems are impartial are missing the lived reality, which very much does matter. There have been attempts historically to correct the history of various kinds of injustice, some of which has helped to somewhat level the playing field, but in recent years, those gains ahve been continually eroded, often via judicial actions, especially from rulings of the Supreme Court. SCOTUS has become less willing to protect the less powerful from the most powerful, under he assumption that “equality before the law” is a reality rather than ideal that we should continually be striving for.
I don’t see how anyone finds this an acceptable state of affairs and is willing to pretend like things have not been moving in the wrong direction in recent years. The only way things progress to be more fair and equitable is if we demand it. If we assume what we have is the best we can do, then nothing will change.
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You’d be wrong. Technicalities and loopholes are written into the law for the benefit of those who can afford $$$$ lawyers and accountants. It’s done by design.
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Can I ask what you think of my hypothetical? I’m not trying to be argumentative, but what some folks consider “technicalities” may be more appropriately considered "the actual law’ by others.
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And it’s precisely how it works, too. Sometimes the less powerful/monied individual can game the system in this manner, but usually not. It often takes a team of lawyers to find and exploit loopholes, and the average person can’t really afford to hire a team of lawyers nor do they have the time to read up on the law enough to be able to exploit these loopholes.
The law (generally speaking) was written for and by the elite to keep the rest of us generally disempowered. The fact that it has worked out this way is not some goof, it’s the end goal. Working as intended. 
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If the law supposes that," said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, "the law is a ass — a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.
Charles Dickens, [Oliver Twist]
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Your hypothetical has already been considered and is, in fact, the default state of both Amerocan and Canadian laws. Also keep in mind that in the United States, Parallel Construction is very much a thing; police sometimes wind up with illegally obtained evidence gifted to them from state security agencies or private partners, which many judges have upheld as long as the police can give the flimsiest pretense of a quasi-legal alternernative route they “took” to obtain the questionable evidence.
The system as it stands is greatly unjust; a aystem that does not allow for “i’m not technically touching your nose” is actually a major improvemeny.
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Sorry, I couldn’t imagine anyone making it to court in this scenario. We’ve got too many cases of people being killed during traffic stops or charged with assaulting officers fists with their faces and bodies during protests of those shootings.
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Your hypothetical doesn’t actually get to the root of the subject, because it pits multiple laws against SCOTUS rulings and the Constitution, not whether there are technicalities involved.
The concepts of due process and illegal search and seizure are from the Constitution and were implemented through SCOTUS rulings, not law, to counter police, prosecutor, and judicial over-reach. They aren’t technicalities written into the law.
An example of a technicality written into the law would be to exempt someone from all personal income taxes if they reside on a Christmas Tree farm that posts an operating loss for the year, regardless of the magnitude of the loss or income. Yes, that’s a real law!
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The real danger with saying something like that is that the word “improve” is subject to your perspective: it’s how you get kangaroo courts and the aforementioned knives, blood and fire.
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I’m going to grow some Norfolk Pines on my window sill for sale this holiday season!
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Can I ask how you believe that to be contradictory to anything I’ve written here? Because if you’re looking for someone to commiserate about poorly written or poorly conceived legislation, I’m willing to bet I have a longer list than just about anyone around these parts.
Hmmm…perhaps it would be better if the officers were held to the “technicalities” of the law and faced some consequences for those actions, rather than getting a pass from the judicial system eager to ignore the letter of the law when it comes to favored classes.
If you had a nickel for every time someone argued the exact opposite regarding these principles, you’d have a pile, my friend.
Let’s be clear here: no one, especially me, is arguing that court’s should ignore the spirit of the law. What was proposed, however, was a system where the “spirit” of the law supercedes the “technicalities,” which I am arguing is rife with danger
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Whenever I hear someone claiming that judges and juries should hew precisely to the letter of the law without taking into account its spirit because that somehow benefits all citizens equally, I’m reminded of Anatole France’s comment on the topic:
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
Or, in the context of Scalia twisting the letter of the law to reflect the goals of his party’s ideology:
The Citizens United decision, in its majestic equality, allows both poor people and rich people (including corporations, too, my friend) to donate millions of dollars to candidates they want to influence and to use their control over livelihoods and health insurance to bully their employees into voting for the candidates of their choice.
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