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Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez is from Texas and first got an MA in Theology before going into law – if that gives you any useful context.
Jesus would want the Onion to buy Infowars
Jesus was always saying punchy one liners. He’d be a brilliant satirist.
Depends on which “Jesus” you are talking about.
The gospel of Supply Side Jesus clearly states that it is easier for a rich man to pass through the gates of heaven seated comfortably on the back of a camel than it is for a poor man to enter the eye of a needle. So I don’t see the issue - more money = more gooder
According to Supply Side Jesus, Rich men pass through those gates on the backs of the people they mercilessly exploit.
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If only; that would be some tasty irony for a theology degree-holding judge
Nope
It’s true that Theology does have a lot in common with Law
Ah I see!
Nah I just meant, “Nope it doesn’t give me any extra context because I’m too lazy and stubborn to read an article about that brain-damaged obese piece of shit”
They are both about studying non-material things thought up by humans.
A rival bidder associated with Jones, First United American Cos., offered $3.5 million in cash, or twice as much cash as The Onion’s parent company. First United American is a limited liability company affiliated with Jones’ dietary supplements business, and its bid had Jones’ blessing.
How the fuck can that company possibly win a bid when it ought to be getting auctioned off to pay the Sandy Hook families too‽
They are business partners with Jones, they aren’t actually owned by Jones.
So Alex Jones is transferring Infowars to his pals so he can continue running the show under them?
He is trying to. I don’t think he will succeed.
Pretty sure this is the first step to that succeeding, so I wouldn’t be so sure.
This is the first step to failing twice.
FUAC might get another chance to bid, but so will the Onion. And the Onion will outbid FUAC, because they have up to $965 million available if necessary.
The Onion is buying it to kill it. They won’t want to recklessly spend a good chunk of their valued worth just to cut off the head of a hydra. Even if it’s better for the family’s true intentions of silencing Jones.
The Sandy Hook families have agreed to reduce the amount they are owed in the settlement in order to make up the difference between The Onion and the highest bidder. This allows other creditors to end up getting paid more despite The Onion’s bid being less because the families are taking less of a cut.
So it’s not The Onion paying more money, it’s the families taking less, and the families aren’t doing this for the money.
Nobody wants to spend much money on it. That’s why the Onion will win the auction, they can use $965 million of Alex Jones’s own debt, courtesy the Sandy Hook families, to pay for it.
Not kill it, but invert the messages it sends.
Please explain why you don’t think he will succeed. This seems like exactly what the fascists would do.
The Sandy Hook plaintiffs are owed $975 million. They are supporting the Onion’s bid by pledging as much of that as necessary to beat the opposing bid (remember, they have rights to most of the auction proceeds).
An analogy: you put something on eBay, and then decide you want to keep the item for yourself. You can easily outbid anyone else, because in the end you are (mostly) paying yourself. The only question is how much eBay’s tiny cut will be.
Well, Sandy Hook plaintiffs are basically putting Infowars on eBay but determined to win the auction. The winner of the auction is a foregone conclusion, so the only question is what small cut some other folks are going to get.
Then the question is, why weren’t they just given full contol of the infowars business in the first place if that’s what they really wanted?
Because there remains an unanswered question: what small cut some other folks are going to get.
The only way to answer that is with an auction. Just like in the above analogy, the only way to determine your eBay fees is to actually have an eBay auction.
And they did have an auction, but the presiding judge didn’t like the auction rules. They can change the rules and thus change the cut, but the winners won’t change.
Honestly this is straight out of the Infowars playbook. AJ has been fleecing racist morons with his pals for decades.
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Sounds like a bullshit asset-hiding scam to me.
Yeah, I really buy that. About as much as him saying he had nothing to do with AEJ holdings, or had no stake in the companies that his parents owned with him.
If he’s not got a direct financial stake in this, he’s got an under the table one. No one affiliated with Jones should be able to buy InfoWars.
Because it isn’t?
I’m pretty sure “because” isn’t a reason.
How the fuck can that company possibly win a bid when it ought to be getting auctioned off to pay the Sandy Hook families too‽
They’re not the company being auctioned. I honestly don’t know how to make that simpler…
They didn’t say it was. But his companies are being auctioned of because he didn’t have enough money to pay the fine. But if one of his other companies is buying those company of his… There’s some shenanigans going on.
Okay? The court is ordering the bankrupt companies to be auctioned to pay for legal settlements. The other company is not part of that deal. So it can do what it wants. If you’re still confused then I can’t help you. But I’d start by realizing the judges involved probably know a lot more about the process than you do.
No one here is confused, but you.
“I know you are but what am I”? That’s your response? Holy shit. 😆
Lemmy really is a hole…
“I don’t even think the $3.5 million is enough,” [the judge] said.
Cool judge, so you gonna put up the cash? Because last I checked there were only two bidders and the victims wanted the Onion out of the two.
Not only did they want them, the onion agreed to pay more to another lawsuit filed by a different group of parents than would have been given by the second bidder. This wasn’t the highest amount bid, but the highest payout to families.
I’ve been following this closely.
The normal way bankruptcy auctions go is basically some version of this:
- Everyone who wants to bid has to sign an NDA about the assets.
- Everyone who signs the NDA can perform their due diligence, look at financial statements and other confidential information about the assets in the auction, to figuratively kick the tires. If there’s actual physical property involved, bidders are generally allowed to physically inspect it (if it’s a tractor, for example, you can bring a mechanic to help sort out the tractor’s condition).
- Before the deadline, every bidder submits a secret bid to the trustee.
- The trustee evaluates the bids, looks to see which is best, and decides whether the top bids are close enough to hold a live public auction or allow topping bids for the bidders to say “hey you’re only $1 million short from the current top bid, you want to throw more money at this?,” and going around and around until the trustee is sure they’ve gotten the best and final bid from everyone.
The judge is upset that the trustee didn’t really do step 4, which in the bankruptcy process is designed to squeeze out the highest possible price for the sale. The losing bidder says they submitted a lower bid than their absolute top “best and final” they would have, because they thought they’d have an opportunity to improve the bid in a step that never happened.
So they’re going back to do it again. Presumably the trustee will propose a new auction process that explicitly puts out well defined rules on how creditors (like the Sandy Hook families) can credit bid with credit against their own claims, instead of actual cash. They’ll need to calculate exactly how much each dollar of credit bid brings to the non-participating creditors (like Sandy Hook families who don’t want to credit bid), and make sure that for each creditor who isn’t credit bidding gets the most money out of the sale.
I don’t think it’s over. The judge specifically said that he believes the trustee tried to do the right thing, but ultimately didn’t follow a process that was designed to raise the most money.
He thinks they didn’t do enough to get more from the bidding. The point of this bankruptcy option is not to punish Jones, it’s to liquidate his assets to pay creditors. The job of the person selling those assets is to get as much money as they can for those creditors.
So if the creditors stated they want the desk with the onion… Why not?
Law is 90% like process (number made-up). You need to follow the same process for everybody. You follow the same process and nobody sues later claiming “I was mistreated”. This is an entirely reasonable decision by the judge.
But this is not what happened.
but he said the trustee did not run a transparent process and should have given a rival bidder associated with Jones another chance to improve its bid.
They are not telling the onion to offer more money, they are giving the one with the highest bid the chance to make it even bigger.
This is highly unusual to be honest. But it was unusual from the beginning.
They are not telling the onion to offer more money, they are giving the one with the highest bid the chance to make it even bigger.
No, the Jones-affiliated bidder had a smaller bid, but should’ve been given the opportunity to try to outbid the then-highest bid from the Onion.
Basically the judge said that the trustee, as auctioneer, should’ve gotten the two bidders into a bidding war to maximize the price.
A rival bidder associated with Jones, First United American Cos., offered $3.5 million in cash, or twice as much cash as The Onion’s parent company. First United American is a limited liability company affiliated with Jones’ dietary supplements business, and its bid had Jones’ blessing.
The Jones one was the largest of the two, but the onion was favored by the families
The value of the Onion’s bid was $7 million ($1.75 million in cash, $5.25 million in credit), when you include the credit bids from the families. That’s where you’re getting tripped up in trying to understand what the court was ruling.
They are not telling the onion to offer more money, they are giving the one with the highest bid the chance to make it even bigger.
It doesn’t sound like that’s happening - just that they should have known about what was happening more.
Honestly the reporting on this sucks. We’ll need to wait for some legal commentators to weigh in on how unusual or standard this is and what happens next.
A rival bidder associated with Jones, First United American Cos., offered $3.5 million in cash, or twice as much cash as The Onion’s parent company. First United American is a limited liability company affiliated with Jones’ dietary supplements business, and its bid had Jones’ blessing.
The reporting is OK, you need to read past the headline
Piss off? I read the rest of the article. In fact it says this:
It was not immediately clear whether there would be a new auction in which The Onion could bid again for Jones’ assets. Lopez said he would leave the decision about what to do next in the hands of the trustee, Christopher Murray, who had overseen the auction.
That is a far cry from
they are giving the one with the highest bid the chance to make it even biggerby a long shot.So no need to be weirdly aggressive about my reading skills. The reporting so far is thin and being done by reporters who don’t know the law enough about what happens next.
Bullshit!
Well, see, it’s supposed to be the highest bid that wins an auction.
That wasn’t the issue here. The issue here was inconsistency in the way the trustee handled the auction. An auction the trustee was given complete control over how to run by the court.
Even though there were no complaints at the time of the auction, from either party when the process was explained and processed. Only after the auction was over did the losing party (Jones’ puppet bidder) complain about it.
Found the person who doesn’t read the article
Weren’t they?
No, they had a lesser bid with the Sandy Hook victims taking lesser settlements to push up the value of TheOnions bid
Doesn’t that make it the highest bid?
Originally, yes, but this judge decided no
That’s not the issue - the losing company wasn’t given an opportunity to counter bid
Ftfa
The judge said Murray had acted in good faith in running the auction in which The Onion’s parent company initially appeared to prevail, but he said the trustee did not run a transparent process and should have given a rival bidder associated with Jones another chance to improve its bid.
It depends on how you count. Jones is unlikely to ever pay the full value of his debts, so the value of the victims forgoing their portion should be discounted proportionally.
I would comment on how the calculation was actually done, but federal courts do not allow for public recordings, and this court does not appear to make it’s written orders public either.
Yes it is the highest bid by millions!
Imma be honest, between this and the CEO killing we’ve only really had two pieces of good news all fucking year and the same dipshits ruining everything are ruining this too. This plus being nonstop sick since August with several colds is really making 2024 the shittiest year (so far).
Can someone at least give us a piece of good news before the end of the year? Maybe something that tops both?
No matter what, that CEO is still dead.
They will just promote the claims denial Ai or a human that can out-perform it.
Not holding my breath until all appeals get denied
Yup. All Rupert has to do is find one of the many corrupt justices installed by TrumpCo and, Bob’s your uncle, he gets to revoke his irrevocable trust.
Until he appeals…
He’s ancient. He might keel over from old age before the appeals process finishes.
Don’t worry, Muskie-poo will buy it and Trump will give him taxpayer money to run it as the official maga propaganda station.
Unions are getting completely overwhelmed with the number of active organizing efforts going on in the country.
Interesting the press missed that one.
That is promising news, at least. Thanks
Not your main point but for the past few years I’ve spent half of the months sick. I got a cold 3 weeks ago, everyone else in the house is better, my throat is still halfway swollen shut, my nose is a broken faucet, my heads still filled with helium. I’ll start feeling better just in time for the Christmas party where I’m almost certain to get sick again.
I went to a doctor to see if there was something wrong with me and got a bunch of test done, got a nice ~$800 bill and haven’t been able to get in touch with the doctor since. I missed 2 calls from them about a week after my tests and since has been calling in a couple times a month to find out if there’s something up but I keep getting “the doctor will call you back later”.
I would like to assume the fact that no one is calling me back means I’m don’t have anything seriously wrong, but I still would like to know for certain.
Yeah that’s my fear of what will happen if I get a bunch of tests done. This cough is awful but nothing mysterious, I just think my kids are just getting me sick repeatedly but only showing mostly minimal signs (except pneumonia my daughter had that we did successfully got treated since our pediatrics are OK).
But I can’t ever know for certain because it’s just expensive and inconvenient to check, and at the end of the day it’s likely “oh, looks like you had RSV followed by COVID followed by the Flu, each a week before their respective vaccines were available this year and within days of each other. Womp womp.”
I think evil has always had the upper hand in history, in some way or another. We didn’t get to this point on the backs of our best people.
What makes this new era so weird is that the bad guys have won so hard that it’s begun to trickle down to the stupidest, least creative, most inept evils in our society. They used to be the fodder we chewed through as a society to distract from the worse stuff higher up the chain.
Evil used to be clever.
Been wandering if greed/power is actually the Great Filter of the Fermi paradox looking at the world we live in. The “evils” just keep getting worse…
looks at the 40k Universe
…I dunno.
I guess it kinda depends on how much greed was around in the dark age of technology
Life is a lot less brutal today than it was 200 years ago, though.
Wait for the environmental changes and the mass extinction event to break your knees because you’re overdue on your vig
I’m not saying the “evils” won’t get worse in the future, just saying that for a long time they’ve actually been lessened dramatically.
We can acknowledge that things have been getting better for a long time, and work to keep that going for the future, without diminishing or downplaying the serious issues we face today.
Things haven’t been getting better, we’ve just gotten a lot better at deferring the negative consequences of our actions. In many cases entire generations can go by now without having to suffer the consequences of their actions, but those consequences are still coming.
As mentioned elsewhere, global child and infant mortality has gone from around 50% to around 5%. That counts as an example of something getting a lot better in my book.
But fair if that’s not what you mean. What would better look like for you?
Massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and pollution in general, massive reduction in both poverty and homelessness (ideally homelessness would be eliminated, there’s literally nothing stopping that from happening), access to healthcare as a fundamental human right, and massive reduction in wealth inequality would be a good start. On top of that we need better democracies (nothing has fundamentally improved on that front in hundreds of years), and equal protection of rights and access to justice for everyone, not just for the rich, those with the “right” color of skin and who happen to believe in the “right” delusion.
The EU has done a bit for a lot of these points in theory but the execution in many cases has been sloppy, haphazard, and generally ineffective. The rest of the world is looking a lot worse and in many cases is actively regressing. While individual countries at various points in time have seen improvements in individual areas in many cases those improvements were short lived as the various elements of humanity that oppose progress for selfish reasons chip away at and eventually destroy these small gains.
Our science, technology, and medical knowledge do constantly improve, but when all of that is then used for warfare and squeezing profit out of the suffering and misfortune of others the net effect is negative.
It seems like it’s almost a law of nature that for every gain and improvement humanity makes in one area, we must have an equal negative impact in another.
You say that as someone rich enough to be posting on Lemmy and therefore probably part of the global 1%, or close to it. Remember that the worldwide median household income is still only around $3,000/year.
For sure, I’m not saying this based on my own privileged experience, I’m saying this based on the data. 200 years ago even the richest countries had around 50% child and infant mortality. Now the global average is 4.3%. We can acknowledge the tragedies of today while also celebrating the immense progress we’ve made at a global level.
But most of its “brutal-ness” of contemporary life is not about natural disasters, diseases or circumstances that go way beyond our reach.
It’s because us humanity. We (stilñ) are brutal and cruel and unforgiving and relentless.
And we have the courage of calling ourselves “civilization”.
And yet it is through compassion and the progress of civilization that we have defeated the brutality of the past.
Uhhh pretty sure we haven’t defeated brutality. At all. If you don’t believe me just ask Palestinians, the Uyghurs, inmigrants.
Most of what you call “civilization” has been build thanks to wars.
Not all brutality is defeated, but if you consider children dying a brutal thing, we have significantly lessened the brutality, and at a scale much greater than the tragedies of the Palestinians and other persecuted peoples.
Some of civilization is built with compassion, understanding and collaboration. Possibly even most. We can celebrate and emulate those victories without belittling the suffering still happening.
I was thinking of this recently too. Even if there was life out there, maybe they’re just watching to see if we can make it past the Great Filter or not and destroy ourselves.
deep down i had a feeling it was too good to be true
Now that’s some serious bullshit…
Boooooo!
Boooooooooo!
Booooooooooooooooooo!
Booo… urns
“I was saying boo-urns”
God fucking dammit
dammit. fucking windows 98!
The good timeline peeked into this one for a second there. Can’t have that threat to Traditional Family Values Brand ™️ dystopia
It is on all of us to make a good timeline. A chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link.
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What total shit!
Booooooooooo the justice system is corrupt AF in the US.
