I have no problems with the loans. I have issues with forgiving the loans if the business owner is extremely wealthy.
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Seems like: He already knows his business is failing. He also knows Trump is going to lose. What better way to handle this situation than to blame his and his business’ failure on an enemy force like the Democrats? (God forbid he use Covid, Trump, and the general business slowdown as an excuse.)
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Just so you know, the business owner’s personal wealth has absolutely nothing to do with this nor should it. PPP loans were only available to companies, not individuals. Companies operate on debt, costs, revenue and profits, not the owner’s wealth.
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Ha. Yeah. I haven’t read through this entire thread to see if someone said this before me, but I looked up the company, and according to their “About” page, they’ve been providing aerospace tools as a government contractor since 1971. I can only assume that they’ve been repeatedly going out of business during the Carter, Clinton, and Obama years, only to arise phoenix-like during the other administrations.
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They changed their business plan from automobile manufacturing to time travel research
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Without knowing the details, that sounds like a situation where it would be ripe for appeal. But it also sounds like it might be more than ignoring a “Simon Says” kind of technicality.
Going back to your hypothetical, any judge who ignores “technicalities “ like Miranda, due process, illegal search & seizure, etc. is going to find themselves back benched eventually.
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what an asshole
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The way you get violent revolution is when those in charge of the justice system ignore the “justice” part. That includes lawmakers, police, prosecutors, and judges.
Sounds familiar, no?
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FWIW, this isn’t one incident I’m talking about. This is how a bad system makes itself worse, by ignoring what the law says.
This does not comport with my experience, and I’d wager that if you asked 100 defense attorneys the vast majority of them would say the same thing. To be sure, no judge always tosses these things aside as “technicalities,” but a lot of judges are willing to disregard the letter of the law because they know better then the plain language of the statute what the better outcome should be. That’s what I’m pointing out is dangerous, and purposefully basing a system on something other than the letter of the law is even more dangerous.
It may be worth considering that many of the high-profile injustices of the last couple years involve judges and prosecutors ignoring the clear letter of the law to let those in positions of authority go unpunished. I’d argue that the “justice” part often demands the impartial application of the law, rather than changing it depending on the “spirit” one wishes to elevate.
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To me that says more about the practices of the business owners than anything. If your business model is so shaky that you can’t be profitable without big tax benefits or deregulation, maybe you’re not operating in a sustainable or honest way.
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In the case of a private company, some sort of financial statement for loan forgiveness should be required. Here is an example of the prerequisites for obtaining food stamps.
For most households, resources must be under $5,000 to qualify for SNAP. Resources include, but are not limited to:
Cash
Bank accounts
Stocks and bonds
Property
Household and recreational vehicles
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I’m reading this from the other side of the pond (I have VERY strong reading glasses!) and I wonder, from my layman’s point of view, whether this is legal. Sounds like a bit of Mafia-type blackmail to me, i.e. “Vote for who I want, otherwise you lose your job”. Surely this is on teetering on very dubious ground?
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why punish a business owner who has successfully kept wages down to a bare minimum, and extracted all of the wealth of worker labor for themselves?
that’s just not the american way(!)
im very mixed on those loans. the european model of funding workers directly in order to offset the costs of keeping people employed seems much better
same way tarp should have bailed out homeowners rather than the banks
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There are probably pieces of parchment with effs instead of esses stating that if you vote for Thomas Jefferson (or John Adams depending) you could lose your job.
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And you think the owner’s wealth should be tied up with PPP? I can see, maybe, making highly profitable companies pay back loans that struggling businesses can’t, but what does that have to do with owner’s wealth? The whole point to a corporation is that the owners assets are separate from the business. A corporation could have one owner living in a mansion and the other living in a cardboard box - none of it matters but the books.
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I think you’re leaning too hard on a distinction that doesn’t really exist. We live in a common-law system (with minor exceptions like the roots of some of Louisiana’s law). In that system, judicial precedent forms a substantial portion of the law. SCOTUS rulings are the law, and they also embody many of the things we colloquially think of as technicalities. For example, Miranda rights are the law. I think that it’d be well within the common understanding of the term to say that a criminal who wasn’t read his Miranda rights and had his case dismissed regardless of whether he committed the crime in question got off on a technicality.
(And a minor quibble: due process doesn’t come from the Constitution, but predates it and forms part of the common law we inherited from England.)
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No. Voter intimidation is illegal. Full stop.
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Huh, so the individualized damages to go up with the fine and prison rank…myriad? Is that good for a x1000 multiplier once the graft bleach and pareto share start?
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I don’t have a background in history or law, but I’ve had the suspicion that since the formalization of economics in the past 50+ years the legal system has shifted away from fuzzy things like fairness since one is “quantifiable” (those are scare quotes) and the other isn’t. Ignoring the externalities that aren’t accounted for or are difficult to measure.
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And making economics the basis of your legal system isn’t equitable, as it gives the rich an advantage.
We have the intellectual capacity as a society to figure out more equitable solutions. I think we can all look at what we currently have and understand who it benefits, why that’s the case, and then to think on solutions to those inequities. Despite arguments to the contrary, we have done that historically and we can stop eroding those gains and instead seek to reinforce them. Much of this is not even reinventing the wheel, it’s simply looking at what exists now in law that sought to level the playing field and building on that.
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