HereAndGone2
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User ID: 4074
HereAndGone2
8d ago
Definitely she could have and should have, but of course he was full of excuses as to why he needed money and she was just throwing good money after bad because he was her baby daddy and gonna marry her soon as he came back. Everybody is an idiot in this case.
HereAndGone2
8d ago
I am amused to read this article on Tumblr today. From 1885, Chad and Becky have long antecedents!
"She knew I was married" "No, I did not!"
Gave her money for the wedding dress, showed her a furnished house he said was where they would live after the wedding, then the morning of the wedding called it off by telegram.
Jury awarded damages of £75 which, considering he claimed his income was £2 per week, was a hefty fine. I think there may have been some proto-Karens on the jury, but then again the jury at that time was probably all men? 😁
HereAndGone2
8d ago
Well, that was a swerve I didn't see coming. Start off with dogs (so I expect you will start in on women and female dating choices), segue to gay sex (okay?) then bam! hit me between the eyes with the race stuff!
And then we end up with - I honestly don't know what. Your fetish about domming/being dommed? We are all part of nature so... alpha males can and should rule? I don't know, but good luck to you, brother.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Given that the guy gets into bar fights and loses his government card so he has to borrow money off his girlfriend to pay for flights and lodging and meals while on deployment, maybe the court would be better off (for his case) not knowing where his pay/allowance went. Does this sound like a guy who possibly might have "hookers and blow" on a credit card or not? 🤣
Now, she too was dumb to give him a pre-paid card which he promptly uses to run up expenses, but love makes us do strange things (you. It makes you do strange things. I retain my sanity in that department).
I'm pretty sure he hired the same firm that did his divorce.
Of course he did 🤦♀️
So Chad hired the same guys who handled his divorce - and who got paid at least in part by the plaintiff in this case for divorce fees - to handle this case. No wonder the lawyer sat down and shut up. He already knew what a dumpster fire his client was.
I struggle to think if this man could open up an internet browser.
You said he was a gunnery sergeant. I know there are jokes about Marines being crayon eaters, but this guy was being sent on deployment for active service, and unless he was a desk wallah in the quartermaster's stores or something, he has to have some technical knowledge. Especially if he's in the stores, he would need to know how to open up a browser.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Well, I checked with the bots is there such a thing as civil fraud - "what is the difference between civil fraud and criminal fraud?" - and they told me yes there is and linked me to legal advice and everything:
The primary differences between criminal and civil cases are:
- Criminal fraud: These are actions deemed illegal by state laws or federal statutes. The state or federal government prosecutes the accused seeking penalties such as fines to punish the behavior.
- Civil fraud: Civil cases involve disputes between private parties, aiming to resolve conflicts and provide remedies, such as monetary awards allowing victims to recover losses due to deceit or misrepresentation. Civil fraud can also involve enforcement proceedings by government regulatory agencies
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Breach of Contract in this context sounds like the old-fashioned breach of promise, which seems to have been done away with as a civil offence. Becky seems to have been getting cold feet (rather too late into the relationship) but it was Chad who dumped her, after promising marriage, going ring-shopping, and entering into a lease for a house with her.
Unjust Enrichment doesn't seem to apply here, but IANAL.
Fraud - well, I guess does "pay my fees for the divorce, baby" on the implicit understanding this clears the legal path to marriage count as fraud, if he ends up not marrying her and not repaying the fees? Then again, did she take the money for this out of his account in the $22 grand withdrawals? Tough job trying to parse this one out, with the entangled finances and Chad handing over control of his money to Becky in the first place.
Notably they were also in child court for much of the other stuff, she was also just concurrently suing him in civil court for what appeared to be a vindictive last attempt at controlling him.
Weeeeelll... guy has demonstrated he has the sense of personal responsibility and reliability of a wet paper bag, so was that a vindictive last attempt at controlling him or last resort to get the damn finances sorted out, you bastard, after you stiffed me on the lease penalties?
HereAndGone2
9d ago
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Brian Eno is full of shit about music production. Well, golly gosh.
Other revelations:
Escoffier was full of shit about cookery, he couldn't boil an egg.
Newton was full of shit about physics, he had no idea what planet he was living on.
Pasteur was full of shit about microbiology, dude didn't even wipe the cow dung off his milk bottles.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Kind of like how there’s no sex restriction but male au pairs are quite rare.
Part of that is "do you really want a strange guy in your home around your young kids?" which may or may not be unreasonable, but is definitely a factor. Same reason childcare work is outstandingly female by a large margin, there are men who go into it but very few (and many of them then move on up into management or retrain for social work or the likes).
HereAndGone2
9d ago
even 30% discount on bread and potatoes would alleviate their plight
The average DSA voter? Or rather, I guess I should say party member going by this (college educated, but in poorly-paid job). "At last! Now I can afford to eat for the week, all week!"
Based on this grid, what is the most Democratic voting group in America? It’s voters with postgraduate degrees but lower-to-middle household incomes of $30K to $60K per year.
This is very much also the sweet spot for the DSA. In the group’s most recent member survey in 2021, 80 percent of members aged 25 or older had bachelor’s degrees, but 45 percent had household incomes below $60,000 per year.
This is unusual, because education and income are usually substantially positively correlated. In the composite CES data, only 19 percent of Americans with bachelor’s degrees or higher had household incomes of $60K or below. The DSA rate is around twice that. These voters aren’t necessarily “blue collar” in the sense of working with their hands. But that doesn’t mean they’re privileged. Common occupations among DSA members include teachers, non-profit workers, social workers, and public sector employees.
I shouldn't laugh. Lots of people relying on food banks and help from charitable organisations. Just that the Mamdani Marts (as I've seen a reference calling them) are not the solution.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
In many online spaces today it's a playful and informal term for a woman, the way I might use dudette, with no disrespect intended.
Foids and moids, we're all one or the other!
HereAndGone2
9d ago
You understand that, right? Nothing else bad happens.
Yes, we go back to the happy days when only men had the vote, and politics was a shining beacon of sober and grave rationality, carried out on behalf of the nation by public servants of unimpeachable integrity who thought only of the common weal and the public good, and the voters considered each matter and policy with precise, logical, analysis unbesmirched by partisanship, personal advantage, prejudices and preferences, or the faintest whiff of the pork barrel.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
it's not that Lauren is like LLMs in her habits, it's that LLMs are like (and have been trained to be like) Lauren.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Let me link an essay in defence of juries!
The other day, while I was meditating on morality and Mr. H. Pitt, I was, so to speak, snatched up and put into a jury box to try people. The snatching took some weeks, but to me it seemed something sudden and arbitrary. I was put into this box because I lived in Battersea, and my name began with a C. Looking round me, I saw that there were also summoned and in attendance in the court whole crowds and processions of men, all of whom lived in Battersea, and all of whose names began with a C.
...We settle down with a rollicking ease into our seats (for we are a bold, devil-may-care race, the C’s of Battersea), and an oath is administered to us in a totally inaudible manner by an individual resembling an army surgeon in his second childhood. We understand, however, that we are to well and truly try the case between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, neither of whom has put in an appearance as yet.
Just when I was wondering whether the King and the prisoner were, perhaps, coming to an amicable understanding in some adjoining public-house, the prisoner’s head appears above the barrier of the dock; he is accused of stealing bicycles, and he is the living image of a great friend of mine. We go into the matter of the stealing of the bicycles. We do well and truly try the case between the King and the prisoner in the affair of the bicycles. And we come to the conclusion, after a brief but reasonable discussion, that the King is not in any way implicated. Then we pass on to a woman who neglected her children, and who looks as if somebody or something had neglected her. And I am one of those who fancy that something had.
...The trend of our epoch up to this time has been consistently towards socialism and professionalism. We tend to have trained soldiers because they fight better, trained singers because they sing better, trained dancers because they dance better, specially instructed laughers because they laugh better, and so on and so on. The principle has been applied to law and politics by innumerable modern writers. Many Fabians have insisted that a greater part of our political work should be performed by experts. Many legalists have declared that the untrained jury should be altogether supplanted by the trained Judge.
Now, if this world of ours were really what is called reasonable, I do not know that there would be any fault to find with this. But the true result of all experience and the true foundation of all religion is this.
...The Fabian argument of the expert, that the man who is trained should be the man who is trusted, would be absolutely unanswerable if it were really true that a man who studied a thing and practiced it every day went on seeing more and more of its significance. But he does not. He goes on seeing less and less of its significance. In the same way, alas! we all go on every day, unless we are continually goading ourselves into gratitude and humility, seeing less and less of the significance of the sky or the stones.
Now, it is a terrible business to mark a man out for the vengeance of men. But it is a thing to which a man can grow accustomed, as he can to other terrible things; he can even grow accustomed to the sun. And the horrible thing about all legal officials, even the best, about all judges, magistrates, barristers, detectives, and policemen, is not that they are wicked (some of them are good), not that they are stupid (several of them are quite intelligent), it is simply that they have got used to it.
Strictly they do not see the prisoner in the dock; all they see is the usual man in the usual place. They do not see the awful court of judgment; they only see their own workshop. Therefore, the instinct of Christian civilisation has most wisely declared that into their judgments there shall upon every occasion be infused fresh blood and fresh thoughts from the streets. Men shall come in who can see the court and the crowd, and coarse faces of the policemen and the professional criminals, the wasted faces of the wastrels, the unreal faces of the gesticulating counsel, and see it all as one sees a new picture or a ballet hitherto unvisited.
Our civilisation has decided, and very justly decided, that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men. It wishes for light upon that awful matter, it asks men who know no more law than I know, but who can feel the things that I felt in the jury box. When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.
The problem with legal professionalism is that it has produced plea bargains, where an absolute scumbag can bargain their way out of deserved punishment because the courts are too full and the lawyers too cynical and burned-out to have a proper trial, so everything is tidied out of the way in order to free up the dockets. Even worse, someone can be condemned for a crime because they're advised "better take the bargain, if we go to trial there's no guarantee you'll win and the resulting sentence will be even worse than this offer".
That's not justice, either. We have decided that a man should be tried by a jury of his peers, and if his peers are fools, prejudiced, opinionated, or so secure in their self-esteem ("I'm an engineer, you know, I'm smart, I decide things out by reason and logic alone not emotion") as to be blind to their own biases then so be it. The ordinary man gets judged by the other ordinary men of the society.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Oh, there's no reason to think a judge making a settlement rather than a jury trial would have gone any better. Judges like to be bleeding-hearts in some cases, particularly when they think state or government money is involved. Chad being a Marine Sergeant might even influence a judge against him, depending on the judge and their biases. But if we go by what we're told in the original post, any judge faced with a fuckup like Chad would probably hammer him just on general principles.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Yeah, not questioning the financial transfers either is incompetence (and do we think Chad would put any time, effort, or consideration into hiring a lawyer?) or the reality was so bad, bringing it up would have made their client look even worse ("what was this withdrawal for?" "uh, I dunno, she handled all that shit" "did you know she was taking money out of your account?" "yeah, sure, I told her to do what she liked, saved bothering me about going to the bank and withdrawing it and paying her and shit" "have you any idea of the state of your finances?" "I get paid the end of every month?").
HereAndGone2
9d ago
First of, let me sincerely congratulate you on wanting to do your civic duty and holding the view that citizens do have duties and responsibilities as well as rights.
Six kids (that you know of) and he's not even forty yet? Chad is definitely doing his bit for the TFR!
Okay, that's the only funny part of this whole mess. The kids are definitely never going to have Dad in their lives, much less ever get to know their half-siblings. Misery all round there.
"They are in “love”."
I'm glad to see you share my cynicism around "being in love". Seeing the likes of many such cases and people going "but I love him!!!" (more rarely, "her"), this is the stupidest damn reason to blow up your life (and the lives of any kids), and I'd love to destroy with fire the entire romantic fantasy industry that has convinced people that Romantic/Erotic Love is the greatest and most important thing ever.
"Shortly after moving in together, he gives her access/control of both his personal bank account and the joint checking account he sets up."
And this is why commingling of finances is such a pain in the neck for divorce cases, because people when they're coupled up think of it as "our money" and then when they split up, it suddenly and bitterly becomes "my money". Though for working class/lower middle class people of older generations, this kind of arrangement isn't unusual; man brings home wages, hands them over to wife who runs the household budget, she reserves the money for the standard recurring bills and running the house and hands him back the remainder as an allowance to spend as he likes. This works when it's a married couple and neither are selfish or dumb (e.g. he would spend the rent money on booze or, today, party fun drugs; she squanders the housekeeping on treating herself).
But they weren't married, and that's the big problem here, and frankly Becky was an idiot. She was paying for his divorce? That says (a) you are the other woman in an affair, and they rarely end up married to the guy and (b) he was in no damn hurry to sort out his affairs. Why should he be? Ex-wife can waste her time chasing him through the courts, new squeeze is handling everything for him, he can go out and get into bar fights to his heart's content.
Absolutely right the defence lawyer should have gone after "what was this 22k you took out of his account?" Either they were extremely incompetent or they knew it would make their client look even worse if they revealed the details of what precisely these payments were for, maybe it was Becky getting money back that Chad had promised "just lend me X grand to cover this bill, baby, you know I'm good for it when my pay is deposited, yeah go ahead and take it out, you don't need me to sign anything". Can't say the guy was cheated or defrauded when it turns out he was a total idiot who gave blanket permission for her to do exactly this.
And then after all that, when she has paid his legal fees for the divorce and set up house with him and had two kids by him, all under the presumption that "once he's free we'll get married", he dumps her. For being controlling, which means "asking him to grow the fuck up and take accountability and responsibility for his life". I am not surprised she went after him in court, it's just a pity the light had not dawned on her before the first baby.
One was a stay at home military spouse of 32 years. She pretty much wanted to rake Chad over the coals.
I think you are not taking into account that being a military spouse of 32 years, she might be way more familiar with the Chads of this world and how that shakes out when they join the armed forces than you 😁 If the guy is a sergeant and he gets deployed, then on active service either he can get it together and be responsible, which doesn't let him off the hook for how he handled civilian life, or worse he is this slapdash and pushes responsibility off onto others, and that kind of carelessness gets people killed.
I think your conclusion is broadly correct: $35k that Becky paid into their joint finances less the $22k she transferred over leaves around $11k Chad owes her back. That lines up with the $12k you would have gone for.
I think the idea of punitive damages was some faint hope that this might make Chad grow up, but I imagine that he's already moved on to Partner Number Four and may be repeating the same old cycle all over again. Paying child support for three sets of kids by three different women is going to leave him even more broke, but since he clearly doesn't care about whether or not the new broad he's with gets knocked up, and there is always a new broad willing to run his life for him and pay his way, I have no reason to think that Baby Number Seven isn't on the way.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
I think, having looked a little at the notion and having had people discuss it with me, that the grocery stores are symbolic and really don't mean anything more than "Mayor Mamdani making good on campaign promises!"
There are going to be one store in each of the five boroughs, with the 30% below market price cap on certain staple goods. That's not going to do much of anything. For a family wanting/needing to reduce price of grocery bill, the expense and time in getting to the one store in the borough may well cost as much or more than going to the local big chain supermarket or grocery store and buying what's on offer there.
I won't say it's posturing but it's in the service of his 'man of the people' image and once he's out of office, I fully expect these stores to shut down and no more to be said about "groceries for the people, of the people, by the people".
I'd like to see the full review because blurb writers do cherry-pick and alter sentences. It might well be that James O'Brien said "Jason Arday is a remarkable and brilliant man - if you believe his self-report, but if you do believe it, here's a bridge I'd like to sell you" 🤣
Probably it was just "got sent a review copy, never heard of the guy, skimmed through it, wrote a few lines of praise and sent that back".
I looked up the author and book, and here's a corker of a Guardian review from seven years ago. Apparently Mr. O'Brien is a sucker for "them conservatives is all bigots" so the Arday story would have been catnip to him: son of immigrants bravely overcoming adversity and racism all the way to the top!
Here’s a question. How often have you come away from listening to a radio phone-in feeling educationally enriched or intellectually stimulated? Here’s another: did you notice how loaded that question was?
The loaded question is the preferred mode of expression of the radio talk show. It’s a variation on the prosecutorial “When did you stop beating your wife?” of legal legend. And James O’Brien, the LBC presenter, is something of a master of the form. He’s forever asking questions aimed at uncovering a caller’s underlying prejudice, the better to put them right.
Because that’s what O’Brien does. He puts callers right. Or, as LBC likes to put it, he “schools” people, which is not quite the same thing as educational enrichment or intellectual stimulation. Talk radio isn’t a medium best suited for either. But books are, and O’Brien has written a book called How to be Right... In a World Gone Wrong.
This book comes with a pained-looking O’Brien on the cover, with headphones and mic, presumably listening to another foaming caller, above a quote from the New Statesman declaring O’Brien “the conscience of liberal Britain”. It seems designed to suggest that O’Brien is a principled figure fighting a tireless battle against a tide of misinformed opinion.
Is O’Brien right? Well, I imagine I share at least 80% of his self-avowed liberal beliefs, but I’m not sure that he’s the person I’d trust to make the case for them. His speciality is putting members of the public on the spot for their ill-thought-out views.
HereAndGone2
9d ago
Tolkien did have differing views of what Orcs were, and how they came to be, because of the problem of evil and free will. But agreed, they were never happy, merry, folk just wanting to settle down with their families and raise crops. We know what Orcs want if they have a choice about it, and it's not "become a sheep-farmer and amateur poet":
‘No, I don’t know,’ said Gorbag’s voice. ‘The messages go through quicker than anything could fly, as a rule. But I don’t enquire how it’s done. Safest not to. Grr! Those Nazgûl give me the creeps. And they skin the body off you as soon as look at you, and leave you all cold in the dark on the other side. But He likes ’em; they’re His favourites nowadays, so it’s no use grumbling. I tell you, it’s no game serving down in the city.’
‘You should try being up here with Shelob for company,’ said Shagrat.
‘I’d like to try somewhere where there’s none of ’em. But the war’s on now, and when that’s over things may be easier.’
‘It’s going well, they say.’
‘They would,’ grunted Gorbag. ‘We’ll see. But anyway, if it does go well, there should be a lot more room. What d’you say? – if we get a chance, you and me’ll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there’s good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.’
‘Ah!’ said Shagrat. ‘Like old times.’
Orcs, whatever their origin, "before they became soulless, mindless slaves to Sauron's will" would be the uncorrupted animals/Men/Elves. They would not be Orcish but free to choose the better path.
HereAndGone2
11d ago
Lot of illegal Irish do it the same way; come on tourist visa, get job in pubs etc. via the local Irish community, then 'forget' to go home once visa is up.
HereAndGone2
11d ago
The idea is that an au pair is not a professional nanny or maid, she's a young woman (college student perhaps) getting to live with a host family and learn/practice the language while being paid pocket money/allowance for some light domestic work or childminding. It's not supposed to be "cheaper than legally hiring a live-in housekeeper" but often that's how it's used.
HereAndGone2
11d ago
Even worse layers of obfuscation.
Right now my internet is down and after logging the complaint, it will take seven days for them to send out an engineer to look at the box on the telephone pole outside my house. No LLM is going to make that experience easier for me.
Okay, so the prosecutor wasn't bringing criminal fraud charges, the plaintiff was bringing a civil fraud case. Happy now? Look, just admit you got hung up on the terminology and shouldn't have claimed OP was making it all up. No harm, no foul.
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