Trans man wins $4.7 million from school district that didn't let him use the restroom - eviltoast
  • Dagwood222@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    This is the problem when we ‘win’ lawsuits like this.

    The money doesn’t come out of the pockets of the police or the politicians who are doing wrong; the taxpayers foot the bill.

    I’m saying not to sue, I’m saying we need to change the way people are held responsible.

    • qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website
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      5 months ago

      In California, the major utility provider was found guilty in relation to wildfires, and fined.

      Guess what happened to electricity rates…

      • bradv@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        That’s an argument for making utilities publicly-owned again more than anything else.

        • dan@upvote.au
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          5 months ago

          At least in the Bay Area, there’s a few cities that have municipal utilities (owned and ran by the city). Usually this is because they installed power lines before PG&E existed.

          In those areas, the electricity rates are less than 1/3 of PG&E’s rates. Residential electricity is around $0.16/kWh in Palo Alto and Santa Clara (city, not county), compared to something like $0.55-0.60/kWh in summer peak with PG&E.

          One of the things with PG&E is that customers in city areas subsidise customers in rural areas, since it’s quite a bit more expensive to service customers in rural areas. Most of the price difference is greed, though. PG&E have record profits every year. The municipal electricity providers are non-profits and have an incentive to keep prices low.

      • dan@upvote.au
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        5 months ago

        The thing that confuses me is that California bailed out PG&E when they declared bankruptcy, yet PG&E are still operating as a for-profit company? They essentially just got free money from the government. Why didn’t the government take over the company?

    • MsPenguinette@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Eh, if the government fucks up then it has to pay, the taxpayers should pressure the government to not fuck up again if they don’t like having to pay for making people whole

      • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        I agree with you, but to the average citizen, they are unaware of the direct consequences of those who they are voting for, especially when it relates to taxes. To some, this could be seen as a direct result of the “woke agenda” and would be anti-woke tax. They might double down and reelect their candidate who got them into this mess to “fix” the system and stop the tax increases, since that’s easier than actually creating meaningful changes in society.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          It should be the job of the opposition politicians to let the citizens know that was the consequence of who they were voting for.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The point here is that they and everyone else in the state has to correct their behavior now and one person was made whole.

      • tatterdemalion@programming.dev
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        5 months ago

        And how has this penalty incentivised any change in behavior? I assume the money will come from the school district, which is earmarked from local and federal taxes. So now there’s less money to pay for schools. In practice the school board may do as they wish with less funding until they are not reelected. Do you think they will be firing or docking pay of the people who are actually to blame?

        • stoly@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Because a court just said that they can’t do that. That’s what incentivized change.