• ameancow@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    12 days ago

    True facts I will never be able to purge from my accursed brain.

    The married couple who owned the house in the 80’s sitcom “Mr Belvedere” canonically met in Altoona. The premise of the sitcom was that a lower/middle class family ended up with a refined british butler who solved all their issues for them and brought them closer as a family. It was exactly how it sounds.

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
    11·
    12 days ago

    To be blunt, I don’t blame them.

    There was a price on his head, and while I understand why he would do what he did (though his direct intentions haven’t really been made public), and I agree that there are good reasons for what he did; the fact is, he committed a crime.

    While we’re all basically cheering on what he did, I’m sure that CEO that I don’t care enough about to remember his name, had family and friends and stuff who will miss him greatly.

    Those people, under the law, are entitled to justice, the same as you or I are entitled to justice when healthcare CEOs deny coverage that directly leads to someone’s death. Though, I don’t know how much of the latter has ever transpired. Regardless, the fact that we’re entitled to our day in court to get justice, so are they.

    Provided Luigi is guilty, of course. This fact has yet to be proven in a court of law.

    With all that in mind, and the monetary reward for basically turning him in, for someone working a minimum wage job at McDonald’s, that’s an easy call. You’re technically “doing the right thing” by tipping off police to the whereabouts of a suspect in a murder, and you also get a payday for it. Win-win ? I guess?

    Personally, I was hoping that, we the people (or at least the US people), would feel so strongly in support of what was done, that we would individually agree unanimously, that we don’t turn this person in, and we just carry on. Sure, authorities would keep looking for him because they’re paid to, but the general public simply isn’t helping them at all with it.

    IMO, that would have sent a very public and very clear message to the people in charge that “we the people” do not care about you. We have the power to do these things and suffer no consequences. We have the power that you think you hold. Do the right thing, or you’re next.

    Alas, not the case. Oh well.

    • Isthisreddit@lemmy.worldEnglish
      18·
      12 days ago

      The snitch probably will never see a dime from the reward, you need to provide info on very specific ways to be able to collect. What a dumb fuck. I hope we get to find out who the snitch was, I have my theories…

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
        14·
        12 days ago

        I think you’re right. The prospect of being rewarded may have been enough to push them to giving up Luigi.

        After the authorities apprehend him, there’s every chance that they’ll delay, deny, defend against giving out any kind of reward to anyone for their help in finding him.

          • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
            4·
            11 days ago

            Yup. And I hope this is a lesson that is well learned to the front line workers of the USA. I’m sure many don’t give enough of a shit to even notice, but hopefully the message is spread far and wide that this is what happens when we rat eachother out.

            Do not speak to police, ever. Exercise your right to silence always. Do not help them, do not correct them when they are wrong. Do not speak to them besides informing them that you are exercising your right to remain silent.

            Police are not your friend, they are a gang of armed thugs out to enforce laws put in by a system that is designed to actively work against you for the good of the 1%.

            I hope that message gets to all of those that would be a rat.

            The last I heard about the rat that outed Luigi was that he got doxxed, harassed, fired, and to piss on all of that, denied any compensation or reward by the pigs for being a rat. That sucks for him, but snitches get stitches.

      • boomzilla@programming.dev
        1·
        11 days ago

        I’m sure if FBI or NYPD will deny her claims UHC will jump in and approve the full amount and a bit more. It’s a premium health insurance for Thompsons co-CEOs.

        • Isthisreddit@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          11 days ago

          One would think the CEO class would want to pay the snitch, but they know they can just say “the snitch was taken care of very generously”, never actually give the snitch a dime - the general public will not follow up and will be convinced the snitch was payed good

    • tetris11@lemmy.world
      2·
      11 days ago

      Of course everyone is entitled to justice, but we do not live in that perfect world and haven’t lived in it for some time (or maybe ever?)

      When the systems that we have in place to protect us consistently fail to do so in favour of a rich minority, vengeance becomes the only available recourse.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
        3·
        11 days ago

        The system itself must regard itself as fair, therefore if there is a clear and present violation of the law, they must enforce the punishment for that violation.

        The problem is that the crimes if these healthcare CEOs, are indirect. They sign into policy that people should be denied coverage based on bullshit. This leads to damages in the form of unemployment (hard to work when you’re sick constantly), pain, suffering, and death.

        Since their actions didn’t immediately and directly kill the person, only by their inaction, or their refusal to act, did the person then succumb to their illness, there isn’t a clear violation of the law. It’s still there, it’s just not super clear. Since the burdon of proof is on the accuser, and the accused is “innocent until proven guilty” under the law, and these policies that get people killed are not public documents, and therefore difficult to acquire in a way that’s “admissible in court”, there’s a steep and stark uphill climb to meet that burdon of proof required to properly prosecute these jerkwads.

        Fact of the matter is, families wronged by insurance assholes generally don’t have the funds to support a long legal battle to first obtain, then submit the required evidence, and then see the case all the way through to the end against highly paid legal teams representing the insurance companies. If anyone in that position had enough money to do that, they would have long spent the money required on healing their family members before the idea of a case materializes.

        What I’m saying is, only the rich assholes have the resources to fight, and because they’re rich assholes, they’ll never end up in a situation where they would need to fight.

        Therefore, nothing will be done because nobody with the resources to do something will do anything, nor would they have reason to do anything. So the only recourse is… Well… Exactly what happened. You can try peaceful protests and trying to push legislation, but bluntly, it would take so long to get done, if it ever got done, that anyone you hoped to help with the changes, would be long dead by the time the legislation is put in place. Bearing in mind that everyone in government would be against you on it. They’re all rich assholes that either profit directly from health insurance being broken, or they know someone who benefits from it. So the chances aren’t good.

        What happened, especially if it becomes more of a trend, the single act that Luigi took… If people follow in those footsteps, changes will happen, and quickly, because above all, these jackoffs don’t want to die. They want you to die for their profit margins to go up, but they don’t want to die. Making death a real and credible risk from literally any stranger they meet on the street, will inspire them to make changes that minimize that risk. Fat lot of good the Justice system is to a corpse. Good for the family, sure, but the corpse isn’t going to be any less dead after the prosecution rests.

        If this becomes a very real and credible threat to their survival, one that could come from anywhere at any time, without warning… They’ll get the message really fucking fast.

        IMO, we only need it to happen once more, to get there.

    • Draupnir@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 days ago

      I appreciate your take on this and the fact that you’re considering more perspectives here. No doubt a take like this that isn’t immediately all in support of Mr. Luigi without thinking of anything else of is going to attract immediate down votes, but I feel like this is a pretty realistic view on why what happened, happened. We’re all doing what we can with what we have to survive. I think if any of us were in a bad spot and saw an opportunity to take action, and it had to be immediate, and in that moment before the opportunity passed, we would take it. If it wasn’t there, he could’ve been caught or found accused of this in some other capacity. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone try and consider what the McDonald’s worker situation was or what kind of people he was responsible for caring for. Him choosing to be the one this time may very well have saved some lives in his world as well.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        9 days ago

        That’s a trait of mine, to look at situations from different perspectives, not just mine, or what “I would do” or what I want to see happen.

        I’m a long time observer of people, and the most fascinating thing to try to understand is why. It’s impossible to know someone’s true motivations for doing something but most of the time you can reach a pretty good guess if you have enough of a picture of what’s going on with them.

        I don’t mind downvotes. I don’t hate what Luigi did, and I appreciate that he probably didn’t feel like he had another course of action, at the same time, I try to understand and be sympathetic regarding anyone else Luigi may have come into contact with.

        We’re all living a life, everyone’s life is a complex, interconnected mess of happenstance.

  • quantumantics@lemmy.worldEnglish
    8·
    11 days ago

    As someone whose family is from Altoona, let me say that the abomination that is that pizza is not widely available in the city (a number of people in my family didn’t even know of it’s existence until the last decade or so) and most locals find it as baffling and disgusting as the rest of us. I’m also unsurprised that someone there would rat him out in hope of a reward, that city is the corpse of what it used to be, now stuffed to bursting with low-wage retail and healthcare jobs. It’s also a conservative bastion, go figure.