Bankruptcy judge rejects The Onion’s bid to buy Alex Jones’ Infowars

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.
Nope
- It's true that Theology does have a lot in common with Law

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?
- 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.

“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?

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?

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.
Well, Rupert Murdoch lost control over the Fox's future.
- Not holding my breath until all appeals get denied
- Until he appeals...
- 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.
- Life is a lot less brutal today than it was 200 years ago, though.
- 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.