101–110 of 117 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do people who make ad hominem comments on the internet think that everyone makes ad hominem comments on the internet?
Not only was my comment in no way an ad hominem, it's pretty ironic that you attempt one to denigrate.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not only was my comment in no way an ad hominem, it's pretty ironic that you attempt one to denigrate.
Responding to "it's surprisingly easy to commit a federal offense" with "FWIW, criminals think everyone is a criminal" can be reasonably interpreted as an ad hominem. If that's not what you meant, what did you mean by that comment?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Responding to "it's surprisingly easy to commit a federal offense" with "FWIW, criminals think everyone is a criminal" can be reasonably interpreted as an ad hominem. If that's not what you meant, what did you mean by that comment?
It's a general comment relating to the general discussion of how law-breaking a peoples are. Maybe don't take every comment personally?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lol, don't wonder too hard. This is a pattern with the feds. If you go out of your way to piss off the public and be a flippant asshole to Congress, you're gonna have a hard time. Long before they announced any charges, I had a conversation with my dad about how the feds were likely to cook something up on this guy.
> cook something up on this guy. It was PONZI scheme. The only one who did the "cooking" was Shkreli himself.
Specifically, I think the law is sufficiently complex that it does allow for a significant degree of arbitrary enforcement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's disturbing that Skreli openly committed massive financial fraud and you're more concerned about the government doing its job. Skreli's investors didn't sue him because they profited from the fraud. It's the downstream investors who were harmed here, and they can sue Skreli...and the investors who profited from his fraudulent investments.
The only thing Shkreli is guilty of is risk laundering. Nobody was defrauded. Everyone got paid. He made a huge (relatively stupid) bet that could have hurt a lot of people, but he lucked out and was able to make everyone whole. Actually, a lot of his "victims" made a lot of money. > 4. How much did investors lose? > Nothing. Shkreli partly repaid them with Retrophin stock and several witnesses told the jury they end…
From a legal perspective, it's irrelevant that on a long-enough time frame the victims ultimately ended up better off. That would be like saying that an attempted murder is a victimless crime if the hospital discovers that the victim has a fatal but removable brain cancer while treating their wounds from the assault.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> automatic mechanism that operates independently Yes, but I think this is more metaphorical than literal. Of course there aren't literal automatic robots doing the work of rooting out corruption; it's a goal. I would argue that a high-functioning justice system should appear as close to automatic as possible, in order to most effectively create a sense of "if I do wrong, I know that I will be punished" rather than "…
Should or would aside, it's not an automatic system. Even if it were, the trials themselves would be adjudicated by federal district court judges, who are political appointees. If you've ever watched a Senate judiciary hearing, the questions posed to the candidate are often ideological in nature rather than legal. I probably seem pedantic, but I think it's important to reiterate the scale of human involvement and imp…
It hasn't always been this way [1]. There have been controversial candidates at times throughout history, but most candidates got supermajority votes. In modern times, things are incredibly, abnormally polarized.
[1] https://www.senate.gov/legislative/nominations/SupremeCourtN...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be great if the government more regularly caught, prosecuted, and convicted people at this level of criminality. Otherwise the entire society collapses under the weight of abject corruption, because prosecution is a selective enforcement tool used at the whim of corrupt politicians, rather than an automatic mechanism that operates independently.
He was prosecuted because his ego meant he alienated the fuck out of everybody, including what should have been his allies. If he'd been just a bit less outspoken theyd probably have left him alone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd be great if the government more regularly caught, prosecuted, and convicted people at this level of criminality. Otherwise the entire society collapses under the weight of abject corruption, because prosecution is a selective enforcement tool used at the whim of corrupt politicians, rather than an automatic mechanism that operates independently.
I have a strange opinion that it should be a lot easier to send people to jail and that more people should spend time in jail for real crimes. Ex. First time DWI - straight to jail. None of this "I'm rich and important" or "it's only my first time". But also that jail time should be short and absolutely not destroy lives. This whole "lottery" thing that jail has become is completely absurd. One person who does zero j…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> cook something up on this guy. It was PONZI scheme. The only one who did the "cooking" was Shkreli himself.
I don't disagree, but it is my opinion that the nature of financial regulation in the US means that if you own any significant amount of wealth, you reach a level of complexity where you are probably at least unwittingly guilty of a misdemeanor or felony, and few would withstand FBI scrutiny with agents motivated to find something to prosecute you with. Specifically, I think the law is sufficiently complex that it do…