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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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that if you can’t afford to perform jury duty because of the financial hardship, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to vote but also be excused from jury duty

I’d be in favor of only net-tax payers being allowed to vote and serve on jury duty.

Here’s how I’d award the amounts:

Since he’s broke, they will “figure something out”, she ends up forwarding 7k through out the next year-ish in unevenly distributed sums as legal fees for the divorce. He never asked and states it was a gift, however he says “the benefit will be returned back 4x, 5x, 10x fold”*. After the relationship she contends it wasn’t a gift and he should pay her back

It indeed sounds like a gift. Without further context, “benefit” doesn’t necessarily imply “financial” benefit, so it’s not a promise of investment returns. However, given the ambiguity, I'll still award half of the amount, 3.5k from Chad to Becky.

Moving on, through out this relationship, she keeps forwarding money to him from her personal account. Sum total of about 10k. She provided evidence to the jury of these transactions but also labelled a bunch of them as to him, when they were actually to the joint account.

Also sounds like a series of gifts and her possibly committing perjury. No money awarded from Chad to Becky.

His account likewise sent her a bunch of money, about 5k. I say “his account” because under oath he testified that he never transferred her money. Which is to say she went into his account and payed herself back.

Likely criminal theft or wire fraud. 5k awarded from Becky to Chad.

She also transferred a total of about 22k from the joint account to her personal account, as illustrated in the evidence.

While she was technically a legal user this also has the whiff of theft/fraud. I’ll split the difference and award 11k from Becky to Chad.

He ends up spending about 5k over the 6 months. He promises he’ll pay her back once he gets his deployment per-diem. No evidence is ever presented to the jury that it happened or did not. All we have is the credit card statements.

2.5K awarded from Chad to Becky to make Becky whole on the agreement. It’d be 5K if not for the lack of evidence it was paid or not.

Eventually, the baby is born, there are hospital bills, OBGYN bills, the works. Becky pays for it all, Chad agrees he’ll pay half of what his insurance doesn’t cover. However Tri-care does not cover the birth expenses because Becky and Chad are not yet married. Becky has barely any insurance and so Chad racks up a 7k bill for the child.

7k awarded from Chad to Becky to make Becky whole on the agreement, assuming she paid for the bill.

The inferred gist is that Becky signed Chad’s signature on the lease without his consent. Somewhere during this process Becky gets pregnant with baby number 2. Chad breaks up with Becky citing the reason is that “she is controlling, vengeful, and manipulative”. Becky terminates the lease but has to pay a bunch of penalties. Amounting to about 6k.

Becky likely committed criminal forgery in the first place. No money awarded to Becky from Chad.

Total: $3.0K awarded from Becky to Chad.

Punitive damages for wasting people’s time with this nonsense and for inflicting more versions of themselves upon the country: $400,000 for Chad, $300,000 for Becky (one for each kid).

Problem is that we were strictly instructed that we could not charge the plaintiff with anything. There was a legal form we had to fill out. It's strictly Chad -> Becky damages and charges affecting Chad only. I agree that Becky probably committed criminal forgery but based on our instructions there was nothing we could charge her with. He'd have to counter sue, which I don't think would be our jury.

Likely criminal theft or wire fraud. 5k awarded from Becky to Chad.

Not if she was listed on the personal account and given access with his permission would be my guess. Don't give people your bank accounts sounds like a pretty basic common sense idea.

It indeed sounds like a gift. Without further context, “benefit” doesn’t necessarily imply “financial” benefit, so it’s not a promise of investment returns. However, given the ambiguity, I'll still award half of the amount, 3.5k from Chad to Becky.

This was actually my stance. The "benefit" bit he said under oath sounded suspiciously like something you get tithing church members to say. They don't believe God/Church will literally under contract pay them back, but the good deed of doing this act with benefit them. I wanted to award her half, I think she benefited from the divorce, I think he did too, sounds like a fair split. This was a very contentious argument, the karens wanted to give her 100% and refused to compromise on 75% at all.

Also sounds like a series of gifts and her possibly committing perjury. No money awarded from Chad to Becky.

I was able to talk them into this. but once they circled back to giving her a flat percentage of what she was asking for it essentially abrogated this.