Hello there!

Links from the domain present in your post are known to present a soft paywall to users. As a result, some users may have difficulty reading the linked content.

It may be helpful to provide a comment containing a synopsis or a snippet of the major points of the article in order to help those who may not be able to see it.

In accordance with the subreddit rules, please do not post the entirety of the article's contents as a comment.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

Get fucked, Sinclair

I’m not even sure what their motive is here. Even in a recall Baltimore is like 90% Democratic. Their candidates wouldn’t have a chance.

Isn’t Baltimore more valuable as something they can point to and criticize?

Can we throw these assholes out of our state?

They just want to cause chaos.

I'm sure this will greatly improve the chances of Candace Owens for the next election /s

Destabilize Baltimore and weaken any future statewide candidates

Because discourse sells ads, gets eyeballs on your content and contributes to America’s sickening relationship with click-based media. In the end, Sinclair’s motives are clear: create division, cover it, sit back and profit.

Exactly. This is what I came to believe as well. Checking back and seeing your comment - yep - they want chaos. Problems. Gotta keep up that narrative.

I wish. Nobody wants to go down that road because they are a media outlet. The thing is, I don’t care if they would just promote republicans or do supposed conservative stuff, okay sure. But they warp everything, do underhanded shit, omit facts, cause chaos at every turn. But if we tried to get rid of them they would act like they were just trying to be good journalists poor ol them.

Maybe if the family had worried less about Baltimore politics and more about their own business, they wouldn't have been saddled with a cratering sports network?

They just blew off a $140 million payment on their $8 billion of debt a few weeks ago. Investors really ought to ask what the family is doing instead of looking at their bottom line.

https://www.businessinsider.com/sinclair-diamond-bally-sports-regional-networks-bankruptcy-cord-cutting-2023-2

>minding their own business

I mean aren’t they from this area…? If you live here it kind of is your business

I know there will be harsh criticism of this, especially on this sub, but if people vote for it, then isn't that democracy in action? Personally I don't think I support it, but I bet a lot people like the sense of control recalls seem to provide, especially for the perpetually disenfranchised. I mean, California has recall elections all the time.

As others have pointed out, there’s nothing wrong with recall votes inherently. The issue arises and seems to be the case here when the mechanism for these kinds of tools for democracy is abused and used for purely selfish political reasons, not any kind of specific reform or interest.

A recall vote suddenly creates the need for campaigning by any of the incumbent candidates in the government, which means less time to be spent towards actually trying to do any work for the sake of the city. Now, this could certainly be as malicious as trying to stop the government from doing work to help the city and be popular, or it could be as self-serving as to prevent the government from pushing forward with politics that certain groups disagree with.

Again, a recall vote isn’t necessarily bad, it’s just important that we look at the incentives that any one group may have to drive their actions and ask if it’s for the good of many or for the benefit of those with money and interest in causing trouble.

Agree with most of what you said. I guess I'm wondering why the motivation for the ballot measure even matters. If it passes and a recall election occurs at some point, then the people got exactly what they wanted.

It seems to me that the criticism of these ballot measures is a veiled admittance that the electorate is inherently dumb and will vote against their own self interest. I happen to agree with this, but let's hear the Ryan Dorseys of the world say that. They won't even though that's exactly why we have a representative democracy, and not a direct democracy, in the first place.

You know who doesnt skip their bond payments? Baltimore City.

Exactly. Fuck em.

My guilty pleasure…. I actually like Fox45’s Project Baltimore even though its a Sinclair puppet.

Isn’t she from the Virgin Islands or something?

We used to have a “media fairness doctrine.” Part of that was requiring a basic degree of honesty and nonpartisanship from journalist and news outlets.

If it was being pushed nationwide, sure. Almost 90% of the people being ‘represented’ by George santos have said they want him gone, I’m sure there are quite a few others

> If it passes and a recall election occurs at some point, then the people got exactly what they wanted.

Not necessarily, you can look at CA's rules, for instance--a recall petition only requires 12% of the voters in the prior election to trigger the recall.

> It seems to me that the criticism of these ballot measures is a veiled admittance that the electorate is inherently dumb and will vote against their own self interest

Not necessarily, you can look at CA's Chesa Boudin recall election, for instance, where the appointee who took his place (and won the special election) simply neglected to disclose that she'd earned 6 figures working as a consultant working on the recall campaign itself, and promptly fired everybody involved in addressing wrongful convictions and police misconduct. But hey, on the bright side, crime rates haven't come down either, so who's to say this isn't democracy in action?

It needs to be listed on the ballet as the "Sinclair Referendum" To high light the commercial insider that sponsors the bill.

You're saying you wouldn't have liked the option to recall any of the Baltimore mayors that ultimately resigned in disgrace, but only after dragging their feet on investigations for years? Could have been nice to speed that process up.

No, I would not like the option to recall the Mayor just so a right wing, GQP psychopath could be installed. Get fucked, Sinclair.

I'm not sure if you understand how recall elections work... you don't just ask Sinclair who they would like to be the next mayor. It doesn't give conservatives control over anything.

I’m not sure you understand Sinclair’s objectives, or maybe you’re just aligned with them. Gross.

You sound like you are as brain washed as their viewers. Zero critical thinking. Sinclair bad durrrr. You would rather have a corrupt politician just to spite them lol

They got their way on term limits sadly.

Recalls are often WAY too easy to get and then distract the elected official for an entire year while they raise money and campaign. It cuts their power and leads to a ton of infighting.

It is not like we have insane terms or anything. Even when Baltimore had lame duck mayors I didn't think things would be better if we were going through a recall.

>You're saying you wouldn't have liked the option to recall any of the Baltimore mayors that ultimately resigned in disgrace, but only after dragging their feet on investigations for years?

How long do you think recalls take broseph? Point me to all the states where recalls have worked well and not just lead to a ton of chaos and infighting.

Ahh so your solution is to replace corrupt politicians with traitors and insurrectionists? That’s what Sinclair is all about. Maybe do a little research next time, so maybe you’ll sound as smart as you think you do. You sound like you’d be happier living in Andy Harris’ district.

In California they used it to recall the judge that let Brock Turner off. They also recalled lots of politicians that failed to live up to their campaign promises, which seems awesome to me. Right now there is zero recourse for a politician that promises something and then does a 180 on it immediately upon getting elected.

Once again why do you think Sinclair gets to choose? You are so confused my guy. They have no impact on who the voters get to pick.

I don't have time today to go back and pull it all up but if I'm remembering correctly the exact wording of how the recall elections should happen would allow a very dedicated minority of voters to recall the majority winner of an election. So even if the mayor was popular, as long as you had a really strongly motivated opposition party, even if that party was much smaller, it would basically have a veto over the majority of voters. That's what they are going for with it.

How do we counter the constant stream of corrupt politicians we somehow end up with then? I was excited about Brandon Scott but now he is directly going against the voters and the city council to sell our conduits to BGE and we have no recourse. If we had the possibility to recall him I bet he would not be so brazenly corrupt.

That is not true. A minority can call the election (because you can’t be expected to get hundreds of thousands of signatures) but it still takes a majority vote to actually recall.

Recalling a politician every time they do something you do not approve of is exactly the issue. Tons of people think the action he is taking with BGE is good, and many do not. We elect people to make these tough choices, and we live with the consequences of our collective votes. Cutting every politicians knees off at every turn will make it so no politician ever makes an unpopular or difficult decision. No one will ever sacrifice short term for long term. And special interests (like Sinclair) will have a TON more power, since they have the money to organize a recall; a threat they can constantly dangle.

It is not like we elect people for life or anything. If you don't like Scott, you will have the chance to replace him soon. It is not like recalls are swift. They simply gum up the works.

And the answer to corruption is within the justice system, not by blowing up the elections system.

I have never seen a single person that wasn’t on his payroll say the move is good. He didn’t even try to justify to us why it would be good, he just forced it through over the objections of the comptroller and the city council. It seems like an obviously corrupt action that we are going to be reading about in two years when it comes out that BGE bought him a vacation house or something.

You make a very good point about short term vs long term goals, but what do we do then? How do we get politicians to actually do what they promise? How do we stop them from being so nakedly corrupt? It’s so frustrating.

Politicians are generally driven by the same thing as all of us: they want to keep their job. So elections are still the way to hold people accountable for their promises.

Corruption is a justice system issue. Blowing up the election system will not fix it. I think it will make it way worse because every mayor will know they are going to get kicked out of office in a year or two, or at the minimum have to raise money for constant elections (so we simply get more politicians in corps hands).

Yes that's why I said "really strongly motivated opposition", since once the minority gets the recall as long as they show up in strong numbers they have a better chance of 'winning' the recall then they did in the original election.

Let's say you have a minority party who's candidate get 30% of the vote and they lose to the 70% majority. That 30% will be able to force a recall election almost immediately, then the 70% that just voted originally for the winner will have to turn out again in almost the same numbers as for the first election to win (which they almost certainly won't).

They way it's setup basically allows the minority to force new elections until they get a low enough overall voter turnout to win. Like I said this allows for a dedicated minority to basically harass the rest of the electorate into perpetual campaigns and voting just to let the majority winner serve out the original terms even if they have majority support.

>Right now there is zero recourse for a politician that promises something and then does a 180 on it immediately upon getting elected.

We do not elect people for life.

Recalling a senator or judge might make some sense to me since they are elected for such long terms, but people on 4 years or less aren't going to serve a significantly shorter term than normal since recalls take so long (and how long do you need to judge that a person has "done a 180")?

For every one person you get removed from office you gum up how government works a ton and make special interests (like Sinclair) far more powerful, since they have the money to organize a recall and fund what would certainly turn into endless elections.

Considering that like 2/5ths of our last mayors are now convicted criminals and there is still a Mosby in power, I'd be good with having the ability to do recall elections.

>I know there will be harsh criticism of this, especially on this sub, but if people vote for it, then isn't that democracy in action?

Sure. But I think it is one of those issues with a ton of unintended consequences. People want more accountability from politicians, and this will end up giving even more power to special interests and corporations.

Does this happen in the 19 states that already have recall elections?

Not really, but the push for recalls like this is a relatively new tactic for the right-wing, so I'd guess we'll find out over time if it's as exploitable in other states as they push there.

One thing that did stand out to me was since this proposal is built off of language that's in Baltimores original charter it left a lot more room for exploitation from the minority party than if you'd build a recall system from the ground up (with the goal of being fair in the first place). But I think that's the point though.

And hey, sorry but I gotta drop out and get off reddit for the day. I do sometimes have a job...ha

It’s not about Sinclair choosing, it’s about them pushing their agenda

How does this let them push their agenda any more or less than before?

No doubt. Let’s get rid of Sinclair and NPR.They are both extremists with an agenda

You’re half right. Don’t think I’ve ever seen anything extreme, or even notably biased, from NPR.

you should probably do more research about the BGE thing. It's basically either have BGE take care of maintenance on them, or hire contractors that usually do a subpar job (at least, from what I understand)

If that’s true when why didn’t Brandon Scott come out and explain that to everyone? The only reason he would push it through over the complaint of literally everyone, without a statement, is because it must be some degree of shady.

I don't think anyone really knew the extent to which Nick Mosby would completely disregard ethics and lie and create endlessly stupid drama. He's got to go.

> In California they used it to recall the judge that let Brock Turner off.

That is a singular example in a sea of bullshit exampled as recently as 2021's Newsom recall campaign which did nothing more than cost the state hundreds of millions on that pointless stupidity.

Edit: adding source for cost -> https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-03/california-recall-election-cost-200-million-dollars

> ...and NPR.They are both extremists with an agenda

You drop a /s there, or were you actually serious?

Maybe, she ran in the last one. Also, I was being sarcastic which I guess people were not picking up on by the "/s"

NPR is so far left in its constant pandering it’s become a total joke. All while being funded by “think tanks”, pharmaceutical companies and defense contractors. Let not even pretend you are getting fair and balanced news reporting. It’s a shame, I was once a huge fan but it slowly digressed into the soft spoken anti-Fox. It’s easier to see if you don’t belong to the left or the right tribe.

Oh dear, he's actually being serious...

I guess I shouldn't blame you for such. When the overton window has continuously migrated to the right to the degree that it has, something right of center might actually manage to look "extremist" and "so far left".

After all, when the state is seizing money being legally carried from people (who are not charged with any crime) and the K-9s in use are given "high praise" by CBS News anchors - a network considered to by AllSides to be "Left Leaning" (where they also categorize NPR to be), well... I guess that civil asset forfeiture is, per your reasoning, a position held in a positive view by the "extremists [...] far left".

Likewise, per that chart, the New York Times is "Left" -- actually, further left than they have NPR positioned when their opinion section is taken into account. Right... okay, sure. I didn't realize that writing puff pieces for the LAPD after they shoot innocent bystanders was a feature of leftist media, but here we are.

Thanks for starting your reply with that condescending tone, it kept me from trying to decipher the rest of the word salad. I can’t hang with your superior intellect

If I am not mistaken, this is what is colloquially referred to as "willful blindless" - which, in and of itself, is ironic given the previous statement about things being "easier to see".

>he is directly going against the voters and the city council to sell our conduits to BGE and we have no recourse.

Wait, do I not understand the conduit deal? My understanding is that it wasn't a sale, just a change in who provides maintenance, which is currently leased out to a different company.

David Smith lives in the suburbs. Sinclair is based in Hunt Valley. City politics do not affect Smith.