• SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    6 hours ago

    Like most problems, this one is also solved by wealth redistribution from the billionaire class to regular people.

    Every dollar that the local government should have had to pay that settlement is sitting in some offshore account, it makes more sense to pick a random billionaire and force them to pay out than it does to increase property taxes on people who live in their homes.

  • skisnow@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    5 hours ago

    Paying for public schools from city-level budgets and local taxes is one of the many things that I don’t think most Americans realize is weird about America. Normal countries fund their public schools from a national or regional budget.

  • F_State@midwest.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    13 hours ago

    Small town in Oklahoma…they’re probably blaming their misfortune on the people that sued.

  • fodor@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    48
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    16 hours ago

    This headline is shit. It’s just a masked type of victim blaming. What actually happened is that many town employees must have known about the SA, considering there were 14+ victims and SA doesn’t happen overnight, and they did nothing for quite some time… So the real story is that the town faces a huge tax hike because its employees decided to cover up SA.

    If they’d caught the shady bastard after the first or second assault, the legal bills would have been millions of dollars less. But they didn’t, because it wasn’t a priority.

    As for who knew or should have known but did nothing, we don’t know, but the town residents might want to dig into that.

  • treesquid@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    16 hours ago

    I’d bet many members of this community ignored, dismissed and even helped cover up these abuses because that’s what little conservative communities do: ignore and enable sexual assault because they can’t admit that it’s happening, and they’ll sacrifice their vulnerable community members to keep up appearances for as long as possible.

  • Maeve@kbin.earth
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    17 hours ago

    This is why comprehensive, single payer public health (and education, infrastructure, police de-escalation and oversight, jobs, transportation, food, and and and) are an investment with incalculable ROI. This is why “render to Caesar.”

  • deathbird@mander.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    91
    ·
    1 day ago

    14 claimants, town of 800… This guy molested 1.75% of the population, or 3.5% of the women/girls in town if averages hold. Jesus.

    • limonfiesta@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      38
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      22 hours ago

      What are the odds there is another victim, or two, who were too embarrassed, ashamed, or traumatized, to come forward?

      • dermanus@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        19 hours ago

        It could even be they were brave enough and there wasn’t enough evidence. These are the ones that the prosecution could prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

        I mean, there are probably some who didn’t come forward too.

        • homura1650@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          6 hours ago

          The rapist pled guilty to 10 criminal counts. It’s not clear from the article how many victims that represents, as a single victim often results in multiple counts.

          The 14 claimants come from a civil suit. The prosecutors have no say in who gets to sue. Further, the standard in a civil suit is propendrrance of evidence, which is far lower than beyond a reasonable doubt. And the defendant is the school, so it is likely that both sides would try to throw the rapist under the bus.

  • ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    48
    ·
    23 hours ago

    The former coach and alleged abuser

    … then goes on to document a guilty plea and some horrific detail, I think at this point “alleged” is a bit

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    21 hours ago

    We here in Kansas City are voting today to potentially recall our county executive over massively inflated property taxes.

    This seems to be happening all over the place.

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      18 hours ago

      This specifically is literally a town of 800 still owing 6 million dollars after they spent their little coffers and their insurance paid out what it was going to pay. They are literally taxing the home owners exactly what it cost to pay the settlement I doubt that is happening all over the place.

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        13 hours ago

        This particular situation is a little more extreme, but you’d be wrong. Homeowners are seeing their property taxes raised by criminal percentages nationwide. Thankfully most are fighting back.

        • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          6 hours ago

          This mfer not knowing how municipality finances work…

          Fight back against corporate greed making every part of your life more expensive, including your cities and counties work and maintenance projects, which requires them to raise taxes to stay solvent.

          • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            5 hours ago

            I know how they are supposed to work, sure.

            But here in KC people saw 100% to 150% increases, which was so ludicrous that the state tax commission stepped in and capped increases. We also just voted to recall our county executive who defended the assessments

            And our scenario is not unique. It’s happening everywhere in this country.

            Even though there is a legal process for tax assessment, that doesn’t mean it isn’t abused or corrupted. Also doesn’t make it okay for the county to levy unfair taxes to homeowners.

        • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          8
          ·
          10 hours ago

          What you actually mean is that the housing market is hot dumping a bunch of unearned wealth on every asshole who bought a house in the last 50 years meaning that with the extra wealth you get to pay additional taxes.

          • _stranger_@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            6 hours ago

            Fuck you for shitting on people who own a house to live in.

            Fuck you for shifting the blame away from corporate house flippers and other people who buy houses as investments instead of as a fucking place to live.

            Fuck you in general for implying that economically forcing people out of their homes because some rich fucks want them is the fault of the homeowners.

    • w3dd1e@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      17 hours ago

      I don’t think Frank White was raising taxes for sex abuse tho right? Probably just all those police lawsuits. -_-

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        13 hours ago

        Probably, but the bigger point here is that it’s a tactic being used across the country for various reasons.

  • Dorkyd68@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    20 hours ago

    How much longer can the people be robbed by the 1% before we take a stand? We’re already at a tipping point and I believe things are only going to get more violent and deadly. This is trumps America and his administration is gutting the working class. While this isn’t directly related to him, the town is taking a play out of his sex scandal playbook

    • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      8 hours ago

      I think this is more of a sexism thing than a class struggle. It’s 2025 and people still think it’s OK to cover for rapists. Trump isn’t the first, he’s just shining a light to what we’ve tolerated.

      Our culture has been completely fine with the occasional rape for centuries, and its enablers are angry and surprised that we don’t respect their communities more.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    85
    ·
    1 day ago

    The amount set a new record for abuse cases against school districts in Oklahoma, topping a $5-million settlement reached by Kingfisher Public Schools in 2023. […] the district paid $500,000 from the school’s general fund toward the settlement, while their liability insurance paid $1 million.

    Sounds like they were under-insured. The Catholic Church got away with it by having their insurance pay everything, and then declaring bankruptcy whenever someone went against the Church’s actual assets.

    • bizarroland@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      1 day ago

      Which is such bullshit because I remember reading in the early 2000s that the Catholic Church had over $4 trillion in assets, they could afford to settle all of their claims for a fraction of that, a very small fraction of that, less than 1% of that.

      • aramis87@fedia.io
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        45
        ·
        1 day ago

        The thing that pisses me off is that, back in the late 1970’s / early 1980’s, the Church became aware they had a sex abuse problem and could be held liable. And instead of mocking the priests to places where they couldn’t commit harm, they:

        • Increased their movement of assets away from individual churches and dioceses info separate ownership, so those assets wouldn’t be forfeit in case of lawsuits;

        • Purged a bunch of documentation about abusive priests, shredding, burning, or throwing it away;

        • Moved the documentation that remained to secret local archives supposedly sealed by the confessional and clerical privilege, and then away from local churches and dioceses to the Papal Nunciature (Embassy) in DC where they’re covered by diplomatic immunity;

        • Went out and bought a massive amount of specific insurance to cover any sex abuse claims that might arise - and got a very cheap price for it, too.

        • Continued their practice of moving abusive priests between dioceses and parishes, denying there was a problem to anyone who might ask and giving those priests the opportunity to give other victims.

        Probably other shitty stuff, but those are the points I remember offhand (and it’s more than enough). They never cared about their victims, only preserving their money and power.

        • MangoCats@feddit.it
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          21
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 day ago

          Over a thousand years of experience in legal maneuvering, they existed before the laws and watched them form over the years.

          They’ve got the asset strategy down pat, what they’ve never had a handle on is their human factors - since we’re all such flawed and sinful individuals, and they have a tendency to recruit from the damaged end of society to start with… denial is their weapon of choice against the Devil.

        • grue@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          1 day ago

          Never mind Citizens United; the fact that corporate entities (and yes, churches count) are able to do shit like this just proves that they’ve been out of control going way further back.

          Limited liability, as a concept, is a moral hazard. It should be abolished in all but a very limited set of circumstances where it serves the public’s (not the shareholders’ or any other private entity’s) interest.

        • Optional@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          21 hours ago

          There are no Epstein files.

          Er, I mean, it’s a hoax.

          That is, only Epstein is in the Epstein files.

          Signed, Epstein’s mom.