317 points

Day 30 of being fucking bewildered that I, a non-voting member of my city’s bicycle commission, have stricter ethical laws binding me than those for judges and politicians.

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108 points

It’s because the politicians make the laws. And they want their judges on the bench to rule in their favor. Laws forcing judges to recuse don’t help the politicians ignore the laws they find inconvenient.

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40 points

If you can get the street sweeper to get the bike lane near my house I’ll give you a half a can of chamois butt’r

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21 points

I’m trying to secure wholly separate bike lanes, or at least flexi-posts, anything but a sharrow or a line of paint. Tbh, I dunno how that’ll work with a street sweeper.

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16 points

There are little sidewalk sweepers about the size of golf carts that get used by colleges, it would work perfectly for a bidirectional bike lane.

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8 points

The mini sweepers work just fine in both Toronto and Montreal. Heck, in Montreal they clear the bike lanes even in the winter, often better than the roads. Additionally the local bike share is open 365 days a year now, they are equipped with studded tires between November and April.

Curious to hear about your experience.

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7 points

Can you get narrower car lanes? Trying to cross an 8 lane stroad that has 12ft wide lanes in the middle of town is hellish.

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5 points

They need the small ones, that’s for sure. I would work that into my plan if I were you.

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1 point

Because the rules governing you were made recently. The rules our government works off of were made by the most naive idiots 200 years ago… I can’t believe they were so stupid to think that the honor system was a good idea…

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212 points

This is fucking bullshit.

I review science proposals for the government that come from private companies responding to an announcement about grants for specific kinds of technology.

I have to submit a financial form every year disclosing stock that I own to make sure there are no conflicts of interest.

The fact that is guy is allowed to shrug and say “nah” and just keep going blows my mind.

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57 points

Congress critters straight up trade on insider knowledge. Welcome to America 🤡

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29 points
Removed by mod
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24 points

We are at a point where this is rapidly becoming the only solution left to combat the rampant corruption. Especially in regards to the courts.

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19 points

The system is working as designed.

Nothing to see here, move along.

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134 points

Gotta love that Conservative mantra:

  • I get to do what I want.
  • You have to do what I say.

The judge doesn’t have to recuse himself, because <insert specious reasoning> and fuck you. Also, he’s the big, bad judge, and he’s going to chide the plaintiff’s attorneys in a show of dominance.

Texas is basically a Conservative rubber stamp, at this point. I hope we get Kamala/Walz, because we desperately need judicial reform.

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74 points

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

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3 points

If this is the court i’m thinking of, this circuit is already trying to mandate a better lottery system because of shopping for this particular judge.

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2 points

We can only hope. Reform is likely going to have to come from within and without.

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125 points

The fact that we just left it up to them to recuse themselves is a major unchecked flaw.

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43 points

Our founding morons were the most naive idiots in existence… Sure they lived in a different time, but how could you possibly look back at any time in history and say “it’s ok only moral people get positions of power so we’ll play by the honor system.”

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30 points

US citizens give way WAY too much credit to their founders. Calling them “founding fathers” almost sounds like it’s a religion. I’m sure they were smart guys in their time, but they too were flawed and made a shit tonne of mistakes, like everybody else. Just fix those mistakes already.

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11 points
*

It’s totally cringe when people call those slavers their daddies. Definitely a symptom of a much larger, wacko cult.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_religion

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7 points

They were fans of Montesquieu, but they also thought the VP should be the runner up in the election and that self interest would prevent one group from attaining too much power

In this case for example: the judge would want to avoid being labeled as partial because he would ruin his family name and lose his profession

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1 point

yep. be specific - Committee of Five

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1 point

Most of them were barely old enough to be fathers. Sure you had a few old guys, but most of the idea men were in their 20s or early 30s.

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16 points

The Founding Fathers could not have anticipated that honor and shame would be totally foreign concepts to a sitting president and congress. In the 1790s for example, pistol duels were the leading cause of death for US navy midshipmen.

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This is curiously noteworthy in The Federalist Papers. Hamilton puts a lot of faith in the human conscience all the while pointing out that if men were angels we would need no government noting that we do need checks and balances.

The Electoral College is a dead giveaway that they didn’t trust the public to self-govern, and hence there needed to be back doors where gentlemen (men of means) could override the system should someone like Jimmy Carter get elected.

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7 points

The founding slavers were literally slavers. Their goal was simply to maintain their violent control. It’s worked great for 200+ years.

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6 points

I don’t think anyone born back then could’ve forseen the sheer stupidity that is MAGA

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9 points

The original dictator preceeded the existence of the US and refused to recuse himself once given power.

Their shortedsightedness is not excusable.

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4 points

Maga is the rightful heir to the founding slavers.

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5 points

Because they were the progressive ideologues of their day.

And were also often stymied from giving the constitution real teeth by the big slave holding states as well, don’t forget. The right wing was doing shenanigans at the very founding of the country.

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2 points

The right wing was doing shenanigans at the very founding of the country.

It’s almost like we’re literally never going to not be dealing with their bullshit…

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3 points

They had faith that people who got to power would use it in good faith (and get there in good faith) while or after having fought a war with a power that they believed wasn’t being used in good faith.

I just wonder how much longer this system can hold up for. It’s got different parts that conflict with itself but different people value different parts of it to the point that getting rid of any of it is going to be, ah, a bit rough.

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The reason to have courts at all is to have an alternative to violence to resolve conflicts of interest.

This is why black market negotiations are done featuring a lot of well-armed guys.

This is also why the public needs to be able to trust the courts are impartial.

This is why even the appearance of misconduct cannot be tolerated.

So at the time your goons kill their goons to resolve the dispute, kill the corrupt judge as well, because its his fault you had to resort to violence in the first place.

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28 points

If it matters, the judge is a Republican.

They seem to be in the news more often…

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21 points

You didn’t have to mention his party, everyone knew he was a Republican from the headline.

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When McConnell blocked the confirmation of Garland to SCOTUS, he also blocked over a hundred federal bench appointments, so many, that the Federalist Society was struggling to find enough to fill the seats, so yes they were scraping the dregs at the bottom of the conservative barrel. So in only follows that a lot of conservative appointments were given a position above their level of competence.

Curiously, in movements like the white Christian nationalist movement that had been commandeering the GOP since the 1970s (which is not to say they were much better before that), the shift from principle to personal loyalty results in brain drain, since competent officers with dissenting opinions are swapped out for incompetent ideologists. The German Reich also had to deal with this kind of problem.

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3 points

So gross… Lifetime appointments.

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-17 points
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Deleted by creator
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14 points

He’s stating the obvious smooth brain. History is full of instances where the system breaks down to violence due to the corruption of judges.

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8 points

(former) redditors and canned responses that get overdone to death

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7 points
*

Liberals and assuming the state is nonviolent

Edit: the coward above said “leftists and inciting violence, name a more iconic duo”

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5 points

The USA and committing political violence.

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4 points

Political violence and French aristocracy?

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Party like it’s 1789?

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My comment? Huh. I can still see it (which contrasts to previous times I’ve gotten controversial on Lemmy). I wonder if Lemmy has shadow-banning capabilities.

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