Rov_Scam
3hr ago
To be clear, my argument that it isn't contempt isn't that the plaintiffs did something scummy, but that intervening legislation mooted the order. Suppose A sues B because B built a structure that doesn't conform to setback requirements in the zoning ordinance, and the court issues and order that B demolish the structure within 90 days. If within that 90 days the municipality changes the zoning ordinance so that the structure now conforms to the setback requirements, the issue is mooted. You can ask that the court vacate the order, but as a strategic matter it's probably better to ignore it since there's no reason to incur additional legal fees if you don't have to. Wait for A to sue you for contempt and lose; no judge is going to impose sanctions in a case like that.
The one thing I will say about the plaintiff's failure to respond is that, theoretically at least, their non-response turned the state's motion into an unopposed motion, and while there's no mechanism akin to a default, they could have just submitted it to the court for a judge's signature, and he could have granted it regardless of the merits of the case. Realistically the judge will probably schedule a hearing, and only automatically grant the motion if the plaintiff fails to respond after being noticed, but it is something that can happen. Most of the unopposed motions I file, including motions for summary judgment that get us out of a case entirely, simply go to the judge without a hearing. But those are motions where the opponent has already told us they don't plan on opposing it, because most lawyers actually respond to our motions, and even if they don't, we deal with the same lawyers all the time and prefer to maintain cordial relations with them. But I'd have no problem being aggressive if it's some out of state firm that's being dickish and I don't care how much I piss them off.
Rov_Scam
4hr ago
((I first want to apologize for not getting to your other question yet. It's kind of a complicated answer and I thought I had answered it already but I've been too busy lately to give a proper response. But I haven't forgotten about it.))
I'm not going to comment on the merits of the underlying arguments, but I'm addressing @magicalkittycat's assertion that this isn't just an AG blatantly ignoring a court order. I've looked at the docket and there's more going on here than the VCDG is claiming in their press releases. When the state filed their motion to vacate on May 4, they took the position that the order was already mooted by intervening legislation and that they were only filing the motion out of an abundance of caution. I can't read the individual filings, but the court granted an order on May 5, which I'm presuming was an administrative order reopening the case. In Virginia you have 10 days to respond to a motion. VCGA did not respond to this motion. They did not request an extension. There is nothing but radio silence on the docket. On May 27, after more than 20 days have passed, the AG directs the state police to begin enforcing the law. A day later VCGA is ready to roll with a motion to show cause. That same day, the state filed an objection to the plaintiff's motion and a hearing was scheduled for today at 1:30 pm. Yesterday, VCGA filed a response to the state's May 4 motion to vacate.
From where I sit, it looks like the VCGA deliberately failed to respond to the motion because their own motion which is heavy on bombast and light on substance asking for sanctions looks better in a press release than a boring reply brief that addresses the scintillating topic of mootness. Especially if they don't have any good arguments and know the case is dead in the water. They certainly didn't issue a press release when they filed the response yesterday. My guess is that after they moved to show cause the state objected that they weren't in a position to do so because they hadn't responded to the motion to vacate. Normally if a party opponent doesn't respond to a motion I'd get them on the horn and ask if they'd made a mistake or need more time, and if I went straight to a judge the judge might cut them some slack. I don't know what attempts the state made here, but if their position was that a vacation wasn't necessary then it could undermine their argument if they go too far out of their way to seek a court order, like scheduling a hearing, for example.
So things are pretty clear when it's crickets for three weeks and as soon as enforcement begins the plaintiff is ready to go with a show cause motion the next day. I don't know if the hearing scheduled for today was on the show cause motion or just on the objection. Since the plaintiffs filed their response to the May 4 motion after the hearing was scheduled, the hearing may have just been on the objection, and the parties may have worked out among themselves that they could cancel it if the plaintiffs filed a response.
I want to refrain from looking at the merits of this case, but based on VCGA's behavior, they probably aren't great for them. At least, this isn't the way one acts in front of a court when they have a winnable case. If they had responded to the original motion and the court held a hearing and determined that the order was still in effect, I'd support your position that the AG is acting in bad faith and deliberately disobeying it. It's quite a different thing if the AG takes a position that a motion isn't necessary but gives you the opportunity to have your day in court anyway, and your response is to ignore him and then try to get sanctions later. This is the kind of behavior that pisses off judges.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Finishing up Chuck Klosterman's Football, which isn't so much a book about football as a series of essays about the phenomenon of American football as it exists in 2026. Most of these are at least somewhat controversial: The fact that the game only has eleven minutes of action counterintuitively is what makes it ideal for television, that Jim Thorpe is actually the greatest player of all time, a brief diversion on how the US customary system is superior to metric. The assertion that received the most press during the book tour was that football as the country's most popular sport would end sometime within the next fifty years, and nobody would notice or care.
I've often said that I generally don't like books written by journalists, but Klosterman is an exception, mainly because he knows how to write a book that doesn't come across as a magazine article. His worst books are the anthologies that include a combination of new and previously released material, and it's always clear what the new material is, because he's writing about theoretical concepts that wouldn't make sense in most magazines.
The best book about football is The League, which is also by a journalist but reads as if it were written by a historian. While Football is ultimately too lightweight to reach that height, they share the one singular virtue that all great nonfiction writing has—the ability to interest the reader in a subject they didn't expect to find interesting. I've read a ton of books about hockey and they were all obviously written for someone who was already into hockey . Klosterman is primarily known as a music writer who almost apologized every time he writes about sports, so while I'm obviously already inclined to read a book about football, it's clear that he's aiming for a broader audience, as one of the book's themes is that football is so pervasive in American culture that nobody can avoid its influence, as even not liking it says something about who you are. The main reason The League is better is because its subject, the machinations of NFL ownership in the 1970s and 1980s, is so esoteric that most football fans probably aren't interested in 800 pages on it, but the story he tells is so intriguing that it obviously doesn't matter if anyone was predisposed to read the book.
The only other football book I would say is better is Pat Kirwan's Keep Your Eye Off the Ball, which is an in-depth look at how the game is actually played. Unlike the other two books, the only person who could live it is someone who is so into the game that they want to learn all the esoteric stuff that allows one to watch the game not like a fan but like a coach (the second edition was spiral bound and contained extra margin space for notes, a feature included by popular request). It has the position it does because the only conclusion one can draw after reading it is that 95% of fans and sports journalists simply do not know what they're talking about. It's the kind of thing you can't unsee and completely changes your relationship with the sport. It's no surprise that Kirwan's radio show is one of the few I can enjoy listening to.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
When people talk about postwar prosperity in general there's a tendency to overstate it and align it with contemporary values, which doesn't work. Primarily for the reason that a typical 1960s lifestyle involved an amount of thrift that would seem foreign to the average young person talking about how we used to be able to get ahead. The first time my mother ate in a restaurant was on her first date with my father. What was my grandfather's job? He owned an HVAC company. Granted, it was a small residential HVAC company with just him and his brother, but the idea of someone like that not eating in restaurants would be completely foreign to contemporary society. Even when I was a kid in the 90s, eating in a restaurant was a rare treat. Nowadays I cannot even go to McDonald's on a Sunday morning unless I want to wait for an hour due to the sheer number of Doordash orders from people willing to spend $30 on an egg McMuffin because they're too damn lazy to leave the house. The same people who rhapsodize about how much better things must have been in the 60s are the same ones who give me funny looks when I tell them I haven't done any international travel. Growing up, I felt rich because we went on a big family beach vacation every year. For most kids I knew, a vacation wasn't a yearly thing. For some, it was a never thing. Now it seems like people take their kids on multiple trips per year. A paralegal at work flies with his wife and kids to Disney World multiple times per year. Either his wife is pulling in big bucks or they just live on the cusp of nothing because I make significantly more than him, but I wouldn't dream of spending that much on travel.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
While there has certainly been inflation, people also don't use cash as much as they used to. I'm an outlier among my friends in that I usually have a couple hundred dollars in cash on me, but 20s are much more convenient for everyday purchases, I still make larger purchases with a credit card, and it would be a very rare situation indeed where even a $100 would make sense to carry. If people were still going to the bank every week and getting cash to cover most of their purchases, then it might make sense to create a $250 bill. But even in the 90s when a lot of people were still doing it, $100s were rare enough.
Rov_Scam
4d ago
To be clear, my endorsement of primogeniture was sarcastic, but anyway...
I am hoping that, after my grandmother dies, I will be able to convince my mother to start a partition action in order to convert her share of this albatross into cash.
Any time you're contemplating a situation like this, you have to consider whether something is worth paying a large amount of money in hopes of getting a larger amount, or paying a small amount of money to be rid of the thing entirely, and this looks like one of the latter cases. I am not your lawyer, nor am I licensed in USVI, but I've done partitions before, and they are not a quick, easy process. What you describe is even more expensive because the division goes back 50 years and we don't even know what kind of title your grandfather had when he died. I know you seem pretty sure of who owns what, but 40 years is a long time, and you've already alluded to the possibility of an unrecorded transaction, which means that if I'm handling this the first thing I'm doing is a title search to make sure that I don't leave anyone out of the suit or misstate the interests, which could make things more expensive or even get the case dismissed. And that's before you can even file.
You're probably looking at a retainer somewhere in the 5k–10k range just to get a suit started, though since it's an heirs property you're probably looking at the higher end of that range. This is all out of pocket before you've recovered any money from the property. If someone, say the half-brother living in the house, decides to contest the partition, it could cost several times more than that. If your lawyer wants to take a deposition, that's a few grand right there. If the opponent's lawyer wants to depose your mother, they'll just send a notice telling her to appear at the Hampton Inn in Charlotte Amelie on October 9. Sure, you can get it rescheduled to be taken remotely, but you will still get billed for the rescheduling, and billed again for a copy of the transcript. The key thing here is that the distribution of the proceeds isn't a straight "1/6 ownership gets 1/6 the money", but an equitable distribution. What's equitable? The court will appoint a master to decide. He will charge for this service.
Realistically, if nothing else, somebody has been paying property tax on this house, and that person is entitled to credit for the amount they paid. If the half-brother has done necessary repairs, he's entitled to credit for them. You can argue over what repairs are necessary. You can argue over whether he has sufficient proof. You can argue over a lot of things. You will be charged for this service. And unless you can convince the brother to move out prior to listing the house, the market value is practically zero, since nobody is going to pay fair market value for a property that requires an ejectment action to get possession. There was some talk yesterday about how difficult evictions have become in some places, but trust me, they're a breeze compared to ejectments. Obstinate tenants can hold up evictions, sure, but the process is designed to be streamlined, and a diligent landlord can get the guy out within a couple months. The ejectment process is not streamlined and operates on the same schedule as any other lawsuit, meaning you need to hire a lawyer, conduct discovery, have pretrial conferences, etc. It's no 15 day notice then off to the magistrate.
At this point you may be thinking "That's not going to happen. My family gets along, and the half-brother has no case and no money to fight it, and he'll leave well in advance of the judgment if the house is sold." To which I say "Great! You don't need to file a partition!" If you were to come to my office with your situation I'd tell you that for a small fraction of the cost of a partition I could draw up a sale agreement and if you could get everyone to sign it we'd list the property. The buyer can worry about the title. And if you can't get everyone to agree on that, then you can be assured that a partition is going to be a long, expensive endeavor for everyone involved. Based on the value of the property and the number of shares, a contested partition action is likely to cost your mother more money than she could expect to make from the sale. If I were in her shoes and those were the options I'd offer to convey my interest via quitclaim deed to anyone willing to pay for drafting and recording fees, and disclaim any interest from your grandmother's inheritance. It's much easier that way.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
I think the bigger deterrent is that there's simply no reason for anyone to participate in such a scheme. I neither live in Fenwick Island nor own property there, and as a consequence, I do not care about who sits in local government offices. I doubt you care either. Someone may theoretically be able to hatch a scheme where they subdivide their property a thousand ways and give votes to 999 people who otherwise wouldn't be able to vote, and structure the transactions so that these minority owners wouldn't have any rights to the property that would prejudice the controlling owner, but I don't know how I could be induced to participate. Rental income split that many ways isn't much of an inducement. If a property rents for $10,000/week on average, which is generous considering that in the off season there are likely going to be several weeks where it doesn't rent at all, and half of that income goes to the rental company and to pay taxes and maintenance costs, a 1/1000 owner is getting about $5/week. If it's not being rented, try coordinating use with 1,000 other people. In exchange for that $5/week and the right to vote in local elections, you're taking on liability.
Of course, you're not actually going to get that $5/week, because no rental company is going to agree to leasing a property with a thousand owners, and no insurance company is going to underwrite such a property. Even if it's vacant property, and the controlling owner agrees to pay the property taxes, what do you do if he doesn't pay? The taxing authority doesn't give a shit about your agreement, so you'd better be prepared to pay the taxes yourself and sue him for reimbursement. What do you do if someone injures themself on your uninsurable property and sues you?
Getting to your concerns, though, even if somebody did that and somehow found thousands of participants, why would someone structure a transaction for the sole purpose of giving votes to out-of-towners? It would certainly look like the controlling owner was giving these shares away under the presumption that the minority owners would vote for his preferred candidate, at which point one wonders if any other inducements were used to encourage participation, which makes it look less like a real estate deal and more like a sophisticated form of electoral fraud, in which case having the registrations invalidated would be the least of their concerns. One expects that even if the registrations are allowed to stand, such a scheme would only invite an investigation from the attorney general before the first vote is even cast. I am not willing to subject myself to such an investigation and possible prosecution for the privilege of being able to vote for Fenwick Island town council or whatever, and I doubt most other people would be willing to either.
Rov_Scam
5d ago
Partitions are generally governed by the common law of property. The act you cite is a relatively recent reform that has only been adopted in about half the states and only applies in specific situations. One unfortunately common issue, particularly among lower income populations, is when a property owner dies and no estate is opened, and the property they own simply continues to be occupied by whatever family members happen to occupy it. After a few generations, some long lost relative finds out they own an interest and files a partition suit, whereby the property is sold at a cash auction for less than market value, often to an investor, with the result often being that someone who has been living in the house a long time finds themselves dispossessed. The model act is intended to keep the property in the family by allowing an heir to purchase at market value in a normal transaction, which has the side effect of preserving the full value of the property.
From what I cal tell three states have applied this process to all partition actions, but Delaware never enacted the model legislation to begin with. And from what I can tell, it's unlikely that any additional states will, because there's some controversy over how effective the legislation is. One unintended side effect is that all of the additional safeguards have added expense to the process, which was already expensive to begin with.
Generally speaking, you need to be careful when relying on model uniform legislation. Some things, like the Uniform Commercial Code, have been adopted nearly universally and can be cited chapter and verse without too much concern of running afoul of some local variation. Others, like the Uniform Probate Code, have only been adopted by a minority of states, with reforms being incorporated piecemeal in others. And then there are cases like the Model Penal Code, which is considered successful model legislation since the spirit of the reforms have been adopted, but the actual legislation varies widely among jurisdictions, with no state that I'm aware of adopting the actual statutory language.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
And what's the motivation for the majority owner to do this? He'd be giving equal access to the property to 9999 other people while being prepared to do unilateral maintenance, and if they don't contribute he's going to pay a 5-figure sum to conduct a partition action where he might not even be the high bidder. So he can...give his friends votes for the Fenwick Island town council? If I'm one of the 9999 I'm there to get access to the property and I could probably care less about some local election.
Rov_Scam
6d ago
It wouldn't be practicable. The more people who own a piece of property, the harder it gets to make decisions about the property, and get the owners to contribute money for upkeep. A dispute would inevitably develop, and the result would be that one of the owners files a partition action and the whole property is sold.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
You can slice statistics any way you want, it just depends on what factors you actually care about. The black vs. white disparity is about the same as the male vs. female disparity, but I doubt you'd recommend the alternative scenario where we say that guns and men don't mix well.
None of the articles you linked to said that prosecution was still being deferred under the diversion program for the 2021 offenses. I checked the docket, and it looks like he was convicted and sentenced under them, so I'm not sure what the point of this post is. He got into a diversion program, failed, and was sentenced to jail.
Edit: The sentencing guidelines, assuming all the enhancements I think might apply actually do apply, call for 17–34 months, at least some of which would be jail time. The docket shows that when he was granted HYTA status he was given credit for 532 days he served in jail while waiting trial and sentenced to an additional 3 years of probation. When you take the sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender into consideration the sentence doesn't look unreasonable, and even if I underestimated the sentence it still isn't unreasonable when you take into consideration the possibility of a plea to lesser charges. It's not clear to me that going to trial would have resulted in a more substantial punishment, and he probably would have been released for time served in any event. The only advantage he got was the opportunity to escape without a record if he completed his probation, and if he were able to do that then nobody would have any problem with the outcome.
Since he could barely make it 3 months without committing another crime, the judge revoked his HYTA status, meaning the prior convictions go on his record, and they didn't have to arraign him for months because they were holding him on the probation violation. He was remanded to custody following his second arraignment, and eventually plead guilty to the 2021 charges.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
If American workers are only 20% of the population (and the 80% are people actually looking for work, not children, retirees, housewives, etc.), then I don't think normal political considerations will matter much.
Rov_Scam
9d ago
I'm not sure that this is entirely true. Very low-skilled people are unemployable period, and lowering the pay rate doesn't do anything. For example, there's a guy I know who isn't the brightest, retired now but comes off as someone who was definitely in special education back in the 60s and 70s. He worked as a janitor at a local elementary school. In Pennsylvania the minimum wage is the Federal $7.25. Someone in his position would be making $22.62 this yer and $24.35 next year. Of course, that's because he's been there for 35 years, but even a new hire makes $16.60 on the current contract and $18.60 on the next. Grocery, retail, and fast food wages aren't much lower, even for 16-year-olds with no experience. The only exceptions I'm aware of are for people with disabilities, but that's more because they can only make so much before they lose their benefits. I don't think there is a significant population that's employable but for minimum wage laws.
Rov_Scam
10d ago
I understand what you're saying, but that feeds into my point: If an industry is going gangbusters companies can't be too picky about who they hire. I saw it myself when I was doing oil and gas titles; some attorneys would be the kind who would go into excruciating detail about every possible title defect and track down every piece of supporting documentation. Others would slap something together that vaguely resembled a title report and required substantial modification to turn into anything we could submit to a client. Everyone starts off in the second category, but when the industry is hot, we were willing to tolerate a lot more people like that because it was cheaper to correct their work and hope they got better than it was to turn down business due to lack of staff. When the industry's in a slump, even the first type of employee will have a hard time finding work. The difference is that the energy industry has no problem admitting when it's in a slump, and will openly state that as a reason they had to lay a bunch of people off. They don't try to bullshit investors to make them think it's about efficiency, because anyone can look at the price of oil. Tech companies can't seem to admit that demand for their products may be declining. Or that advertising and data harvesting for free products aren't as valuable as they thought.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
Having incorporated the rest of your comments to get an idea of what you are looking for, I think I may have a solution for you. A few preliminary items:
- I'm assuming that when you say "Colonial" you are referring to what is known as "Colonial Revival", which is a 20th century update of the Georgian and Federal styles that were popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Basically, I'm assuming you aren't referring to French Colonial, or Spanish Colonial, or Dutch Colonial, or any of the other "Colonial" styles which may exist in North America.
- As a 20th century American style, this type of house would have no need for a mudroom per se. Most of these were built in auto-centric suburbs beginning in the 1920s, meaning the front door would not be used much. Early examples of this style were mostly built in more upscale neighborhoods, and once it became more common after World War II most people would have had a car. Prewar suburbs with these houses would have likely had detached garages behind the house, and later examples would have had attached garages. In Pittsburgh, the terrain is hilly and the garage is usually integral and opens into the basement. What I'm getting at is that the home's occupant's wouldn't normally use the front door, so a mudroom would be built in the back, off the garage, or it would have an unfinished basement to use for that purpose.
- Despite the ever-ballooning American house size, the dimensions you've proposed aren't modest. I don't use foreign units without conversion so you'll have to bear with me here, but 100 sq. meters is about 1076 sq. feet. Since this is a two-story house, doubling that gets you to 2152 sq. ft., which is plenty big.
To give an example to tie it all together, this is a 5-bay Colonial Revival home in a suburb of Pittsburgh. It was built in 1968 by Bryan, who is a reputable local builder that mostly focuses on custom homes these days but was doing tract houses in the 1960s and 1970s (not to be confused with Ryan Homes, a national developer of tract houses that's been building junk since at least the 1970s). The total area is 1890 sq. ft., though the footprint is only 875 as the second story slightly overhangs on both sides. It has 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths. You will notice that the driveway goes down the hill behind the house and the garage is integrated into the basement. Ignore the assymetrical front layout. Here's a more upscale example from 1910. While it precedes the era of widespread automobile ownership, at 6900 square feet, it owner would have probably had a car, or at least a horse. [Note how the driveway leads to a carriage house in the rear [https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4513598,-79.9114955,3a,24.5y,311.56h,95.08t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s_vxsZmkSMf0FSWoXMHGrIw!2e0!5s20220901T000000!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D-5.0819782887585205%26panoid%3D_vxsZmkSMf0FSWoXMHGrIw%26yaw%3D311.55661009264486!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyMC4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D]. The owner would not have entered through the front door.
I initially intended to tell you that your problem was hopeless if you wished to remain architecturally correct, so I consulted The Bible, namely Virginia Savage McAlester's indispensible A Field Guide to American Houses and consulted the sections on Colonial Revival, Georgian, and Federal houses. What I discovered was that, contrary to my mental image of a colonial house, there is a rare variation with a centered gable. While these gables are usually small, and may not protrude from the central mass at all, it would be possible to bump this out and create a large enough area for a mud room. Unfortunately, since, per the book, this occurs in fewer than 5% of Colonial Revival houses and 10% of Georgian and Federal houses, it's hard to find pictures, and bump-outs of sufficient size are less common still. But I don't see why it couldn't be done. This House only bumps out slightly, but you could extend this by 5 feet or so and get a small mud room out of it. Some people build small mudrooms on their houses and they always look tacked-on, but with a central gable running all the way up it would be an integral part of the house, and from there you could just use a standard floor plan.
Beyond this, I don't see why there would be a problem with the stairs. Every house like this I've been in (and I can almost guarantee the layout of the first example) has the stairwell in the center of the house. Basically you'd walk in and there would be an entryway with a foyer leading down the center of the house to the kitchen in the back, with the stairwell running parallel on whichever side you want. To the right there's a family room, and to the left a living room and dining room. You can sacrifice some family room space for a half bath or hide one under the stairs. These houses almost always have four bedrooms.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
As an architecture fan I'd be interested if you could find any pictures of what you're describing, and if you're really generous letting me feel free to use those terms if I find them apt. Especially since I'm guessing the "Wright Style" has only the most superficial resemblance to anything actually designed by Wright.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I think it's more that the tech industry feels that normal growth is unacceptable and that the massive growth of the 80s and 90s is what's to be expected. They can't come to grips with being a mature, boring industry that makes incremental advancements; there aren't any 25-year-old multimillionaires who made their fortune starting a construction machinery company out of their bedroom. So when the industry starts contracting, it can't be because their growth projections were overoptimistic, but because they're actually doing a lot better! Their products are so advanced that they don't need employees anymore, and your job is next, even if they don't know what that job is. I don't think it's a coincidence that LLM hype coincides with tech employment peaking.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
I'm talking about realistic configurations, not theoretical ones where you use office furniture in the living room and people always keep doors closed.
Rov_Scam
11d ago
which, being immovable, needlessly constrain the rearrangement of furniture
And yet you design floor plans that only allow for one reasonable arrangement of furniture, if that
Rov_Scam
12d ago
Since you've evidently blocked me for some reason, you won't see this, but your framing of the matter is rather boo-outgroup. Nonetheless, I don't think this is going to have much of an effect on anything. There's literally nothing this report could have contained that would have stopped critics of the party cold, so everyone sees what they want to see. Critics of the party were certain that it said bad things about Biden's senility and Kamala's incompetence and that they didn't want the report to get out because it would be too devastating. Instead it turns out that the report wasn't released because it was so poorly done the guy who wrote it got fired. It will make Ken Martin look bad to both people who know who Ken Martin is for about 2 days until Trump audibly farts on camera and the nation's attention moves elsewhere. By the time people start announcing their candidacies it will have about as much relevance as that time Amy Klobuchar allegedly threw a salad at an aide.
Rov_Scam
12d ago
The issue that led to the Jones awards being so high was his refusal to participate in the process in good faith. He ignored the suit rather than defend it and got a default judgment against him, and when the case went to trial for damages he played games with regard to discovery. If the jury thinks you aren't taking things seriously and are trying to hide assets, they're going to punish you for it, and there's nothing you can do about it, because the time to do something about it was before you got soaked.
Thanks for the comment, but I don't know that I'd read too much into it as far as synergy is concerned. Enough places have greater than 10% Irish ancestry that the map you linked to is really just a map of places with large Italian populations. I think the supposed affinity comes more from being Catholic, as Italians around here seem closer to Slavs than anyone else, and if you look at historical settlement patterns Italians and blacks tended to live in closer proximity than Italians and Irish.
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