Texas judge who bought Tesla stock won’t recuse himself from X v. Media Matters
Judge dismisses Tesla/X link, accuses Media Matters of seeking "backdoor recusal."
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.
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.
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...
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.
Congress critters straight up trade on insider knowledge. Welcome to America 🤡
The system is working as designed.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Gotta love that Conservative mantra:
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.
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.
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.
We can only hope. Reform is likely going to have to come from within and without.
The fact that we just left it up to them to recuse themselves is a major unchecked flaw.
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."
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.
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.
The founding slavers were literally slavers. Their goal was simply to maintain their violent control. It's worked great for 200+ years.
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.
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.
If it matters, the judge is a Republican.
They seem to be in the news more often....
You didn't have to mention his party, everyone knew he was a Republican from the headline.
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.
Right wingers in the US have decided to collectively do whatever the hell they want.
Judges in East Texakistan have been doing it for decades.
If memory serves the suffix Stan in a name means land of. Meaning it would be Texanistan.
There needs to be a ban on any judge presiding over something within at least one or two degrees of separation of relationships with said judge. Any direct relationships, either direct relatives or friends or direct investment, and possibly second degree relationships like a relative or friend being invested, or a relative/friend of a relative/friend.
For anyone confused by this headline, there are two trials this judge is considering for X
[O'Conner] was overseeing two lawsuits filed by X and recused himself from only one of the cases.
This isn't the new case about the "illegal boycott" O'Conner has recused himself from that trial (likely) because he also owns stock in Unilever, one of the defending companies
Oh, so if a judge has a vested interest in more than 1 party, then they should recuse themselves from the case.
Good to know where the line is
The judge's argument is that Tesla, which he owns stock in, isn't a party in the suit against Media Matters, just X. It's a pretty stupid argument, but he wouldn't be able to hurt Media Matters if he recused himself.
Ah this makes more sense. I thought I had heard about a recusal.
Yeah the news of this non-recusal came too soon after the other recusal. Very confusing timeline if you didn't know there were two cases
Judges really shouldn’t be allowed to own stock. And if they do it should be blind trusts.
Democracy in America in a nutshell.
"American Style" Democrqcy
Democracy with USAian characteristics.
Does the American law still not have an auto-recuse system that does not even put you on a case of a company you own stock of?
LOL what? they actually allow people to literally shop for an agreeable judge
I don't know, but considering the US's track record...
Of course not, that would make the justice system a little more fair.
It does not. You need to ask a judge to recuse themselves and if that doesn’t work ask the court above them to reassign. If they even take it up. Usually the biased judge hears the case then it gets appealed. Which wastes a lot of time and a lot of money.
We should've let them secede.
I mean, there was also the slavery thing, and it not actually being legal thing.
However the Constitution doesn't say you can't kick someone out.
I totally agree. I was just being obtuse for effect lol
Papa Clarence would be proud
There needs to be a system in place that removes any judge from presiding over a conflicting case
Of course it’s fucking Reed O’connor
This will get overturned on appeal. He’s frequently overturned for shit like this.
how many times do they need to be overturned before it becomes a judicial competency / ethics case?
because fuck. this guy.
also see: eileen cannon
accuses Media Matters of seeking "backdoor recusal."
As opposed to the "front door judge shopping" which he clearly does agree with?
Title seems to be of low relevance
Media Matters argued in a July court filing that Tesla should be disclosed by X as an "interested party" in the case because of the public association between Musk and the Tesla brand. O'Connor rejected the Media Matters motion in a ruling issued Friday.
O'Connor wrote that financial interest "means ownership of a legal or equitable interest, however small, or a relationship as director, adviser, or other active participant in the affairs of a party." His ruling said the standard is not met in this case and accused Media Matters of gamesmanship:
Can someone explain the conflict they see here? X and Tesla are 2 different companies.
A strong point for sure, thank you.
Same owner, pretty simple.
"If you help my X then your T goes up in value"
Does it though?
If you can show me some strong correlation between x and Tesla stock, that doesn't also correlate with the market as a whole, it would go a long way to proving that point. Other than that, it's just speculation that it might influence the price of his own stock, which seems like an extremely tenuous claim as to why it's reasonable to believe he should recuse himself.
The issue here is because they're linked by the owner. If one stock goes up/down, the other does too. This has happened repeatedly with these two companies specifically, even.
So although they don't own stock in the company in question, they still have a stock in seeing it succeed. Its success will bring about their own financial gain.
The fact that this issue was voiced and they specifically took the action that raises questions about authenticity also means we must question if that's even the goal. If this went to a different judge, after all, one with no bias, then if this judge is unbiased, he should expect the same outcome. Of course, if he were biased and intended to give a biased ruling to take advantage of the chance to directly increase his wealth, then we'd expect him to be reluctant to let another judge rule on it. He could miss his financial opportunity, after all.
If one stock goes up/down, the other does too. This has happened repeatedly with these two companies specifically, even.
This should be easy to prove that their correlation to one another is significantly more than to the market, or maybe more accurately to tech stocks as a whole. do you have these numbers or is it just speculation?
The other poster makes a much stronger argument, pointing out how some investors in Tesla are concerned about musk having to sell stock to support x, which could lead to a fall in x prices.
In my opinion, it comes down to the wording of the U.S. judges' code of conduct
A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned
While the link between Musk's two companies might be debatable, it definitely raises "reasonable questions" about whether or not the judge can be impartial. It is much easier to recuse oneself then to try to deal with a mistrial, so the judge not recusing themselves is extremely suspicious.
Also, as to evidence to whether Musk's involvement with X has impacted Tesla stock, that has been a matter of debate for a while. X is in a dire financial situation because of the loans taken out during the buyout. If they cannot get advertisers back on the platform, then either X goes bankrupt or Elon has to chip in his own money. Musk's money is mostly locked in to Tesla stock, and if he sells a large number, the stock will inevitably go down. Therefore, if Elon loses this case, it is very possible that the judge will lose money.
As I noted elsewhere, the latter argument about him having to sell to bail out x is a compelling argument. That their values are inherently tied together by virtue of him being owner I'm less convinced about because people claim the stock prices are linked, but have no provided no evidence that it is the case, despite it being a relatively easy thing to prove mathematically.
The former was bought with stock from the latter and possibly needs more funding via stock sales from Tesla to stay running since they lost their advertisers.
Why do people downvote others who are just asking questions? I’ll never understand the mindset. You ask an honest and genuine question and people just downvote it for no reason. I don’t get it.
Because disingenuously asking loaded questions (not saying this is one) has become a favorite tactic of conservatives and other trolls. It's so common now that people automatically assume the questioner is acting in bad faith.
As a Brit, we just had riots due to a rightwing posh dickhead "just asking questions". Look for "Farage riots". (Something Elon made worse)
Some questions aren't questions but dog whistles and conspiracy theories.
Of course owning stock in one Elon company compromises you judging another Elon company. You don't even have to look hard to see how he leverages one for another. Or could if he hadn't already. Not seeing it is done willfully.
I'm sure it's a bunch of things, but people are so used to rushing to conclusions without giving it some real thought, myself included, that when someone doesn't immediately take a side...well, they must be taking the opposite side as me.
How dare you interrupt the circle jerk.
