611–620 of 633 posts
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Al Capone wouldn't have had to evade taxes if he wasn't obtaining his income through illegal means. I also see a distinction between Capone and Shkreli in that Capone's other actions which may have influenced his trial were myriad illegal activities that they couldn't get evidence for. Shkreli is just believed to be an asshole.
Is the illegality of the other activities really relevant if they can't be prosecuted? The justice system is meant to punish specific crimes, which it did done in both cases, but that doesn't prohibit you as a human to see it as karmic justice, for someone being a garbage human, wether legally or illegally.
Normally, no (which I said explicitly in another comment here). In this case, the activities are linked. There's no need to evade taxes if your income isn't illegal.
Even so, I don't subscribe to the argument that it's entirely a good thing that we prosecuted Capone for tax evasion. We were unable to prove the actual criminal activities, so we instead looked at the fruits of those activities and used that.
Another way to look at it is that the justice system completely failed initially. We couldn't build a case for the major crimes, but we could for the lesser crimes. He was still guilty of both (this is of course assuming his guilt).
In Shkreli's case, we failed to prosecute originally because it's not a crime. The current case isn't related in the same way, and linking them and punishing in the latter because of people's perception of the former is akin to levying a harsher sentence on someone because of their interracial marriage in a region and time when that was legal but frowned upon. Social pressure unrelated to the issue at hand should not be relevant in court. Even if it's related to the issue at hand in the case, it should be restricted to sentencing (where it likely can't be removed anyway).
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Ah, the #1 go to defence for terrible people when they get called out for their actions, "it's just a joke, I was just kidding, don't be so sensitive."
You are way too sensitive though. The virtue signaling is through the roof. All you're doing here is "trying to make sure a terrible person gets their comeuppance." Like really? You've never pulled a prank in your life? I notice you and a lot of people like you have around 100-500 karma. I wonder if it's just newbies trying to find some way of differentiating themselves. Virtue signaling is in fashion, so it makes se…
I'm so tired of this buzzword. Why not take people at face value that they are actually expressing their own moral opinion on an issue and not assume they're doing it for "social standing"... on an anonymous internet forum.
If you're looking for other behaviour that "makes the community worse" I think you should consider your own. Starting discussions with the assumption one side's opinions aren't valid opinions and using user's comment karma as a barometer of their sincerity will lead only to flame wars.
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>When fraud happens those affected don't usually get their money back much less a return on that money. That will be a footnote at sentencing. Federal sentencing is generally based on intended or actual loss, whichever is greater . Further, the judge is allowed to take into account intended losses from his entire course of conduct, not just the intended losses from the specific counts on which he was found guilty. In…
> In other words, the fact that his investors lost no actual money will have little bearing on his sentence AFAICT, the Retrophin investors lost actual money. The losses came out of gains and reduced them, and they still had net gains from Retrophin, but they lost money to the fraud.
> Shkreli said during a press conference after the jury's announcement that he was "delighted by the verdict" since he was found not guilty on a key charge regarding his former drug company Retrophin.
http://www.businessinsider.com/martin-shkreli-verdict-securi...
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You are way too sensitive though. The virtue signaling is through the roof. All you're doing here is "trying to make sure a terrible person gets their comeuppance." Like really? You've never pulled a prank in your life? I notice you and a lot of people like you have around 100-500 karma. I wonder if it's just newbies trying to find some way of differentiating themselves. Virtue signaling is in fashion, so it makes se…
> virtue signaling I'm so tired of this buzzword. Why not take people at face value that they are actually expressing their own moral opinion on an issue and not assume they're doing it for "social standing"... on an anonymous internet forum. If you're looking for other behaviour that "makes the community worse" I think you should consider your own. Starting discussions with the assumption one side's opinions aren't…
The issue is that expressing your own moral opinion is fashionable. It's considered acceptable to hold someone else's head under water just to raise your own. And that's toxic.
Note that anyone who calls out virtue signaling soon ends up in the crosshairs. I don't mind though.
Also, they were quite serious. And that's the problem. The fact that they're serious in calling out someone as a "terrible person" (when they're not) is what makes it dangerous.
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Not claiming any knowledge on the subject, just wanted to back up suggestions of his expectations with evidence. We'll see what happens. Personally I'm rooting for him, I think he's misunderstood.
I'm curious, what part of his message is misunderstood to you?
Granted his social awkwardness and attention seeking threw a lot of fuel on that fire, so he's partially at fault for encouraging it. But if you look past those immature antics he's a smart and productive member of society. It would be a shame, in my opinion, if he winds up in prison for several years. I think a fairer sentence would be a big fine and parole.
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What's wrong with Congress questioning someone about legal but shady activity? If he broke the law, he'd just be prosecuted. No reason for Congress to have anything to do with it. But if what he did was legal but wrong, then maybe the law should be changed, and that's exactly what Congress is for.
Because Congress didn't need to find out any facts. They just wanted to put on a show to sway public opinion. Remember when they questioned Toyota over unintended acceleration? That made Toyota apologize and generally made the public believe that Toyota was at fault. Now, consider that at the time Congress questioned Toyota they were the largest shareholder in Toyota's biggest competitor (GM) and, when NASA examined…
Well they found plenty of issues. The code was unreadable. They didn't find anything that would cause unintended acceleration.
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True, and if it comes out that Turing knowingly blocked people from getting it despite knowing their eligibility, then he deserves derision. But so far he's just pointed out the huge issues and laughed, driving up awareness. At some point if your system is so terribly busted and no one is fixing it, eh, maybe you lose the right to hate people abusing it. Or maybe his wit and charisma is making me blind to the issue h…
I found a rule loophole that allowed me to wear an Iron Man suit while playing in the NFL, so I made a career making millions of dollars a year. Aint I brave and admirable for pointing out the issue? I'm getting increasingly annoyed at the culture of praising exploiters of the system instead of promoting constructive players (who are less profitable, ie less sexy). I understand that the contrarian view to "The Man" i…
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Also, according to the NYT article, all investors tripled their money. "The investors who invested all made money — by the defense’s tally, more than triple what they invested."
So, it is okay to lie to investors, as long as you eventually pull a success off? And you make those investors you were lying to money by committing fraud on the investors in your new company (Retrophin), so they make money, but not as much they would have if you weren't secretly taking profits to pay off the investors you previously defrauded?