Feds Demand Prison For Guns N' Roses Uploader 590
Defeat Globalism writes with this excerpt from Wired:
"Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles are pursuing a 6-month prison term for a Los Angeles man who pleaded guilty in December to one misdemeanor count of uploading pre-release Guns N' Roses tracks, according to court documents. Kevin Cogill was arrested last summer at gunpoint and charged with uploading nine tracks of the Chinese Democracy album to his music site — antiquiet.com. The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought — including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it — underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material."
He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't put him in prison for stealing the album. Shoot him for promoting it. 17 years and GNR gives us, what, a big pile of overrated crap.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:4, Insightful)
To be fair, he did disrespect a major record label. Isn't that a corporate offense that requires jail time?
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other countries, "Disrespect for the president, legislature, or government" is grounds for jail time. In America it's "disrespect for a CEO, the board, or corporation" that leads to jail time.
(shrug). If I was jailed for "stealing" works off the internet, then I'd figure I might as well go ahead & steal the real thing. Walmart here I come.
You should (Score:5, Insightful)
Less risk. Is WalMart going to claim each track on that CD you stole is worth $750? [afterdawn.com]
Steal a CD, you're guilty of a $20 crime. But if you do it with a computer somehow you're liable for (14*$750=$10,500) dollars worth of damage.
Or in this poor sap's case, 6 months in a federal lockup for daring to offend his corporate masters.
Amazing, isn't it? That the feds and corporate America are actually making the case that it's better to physically rob a store rather than simply downloading an mp3? It's unreal.
Re:You should (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno, I thought the ironic part was that this is the punishment for pirating an album entitled 'Chinese Democracy'... Doesn't this sound kind of like how the chinese handle democracy? :D
Re:You should (Score:5, Insightful)
At least the laws about copyright infringement here were passed by a popularly elected, semi-almost-functioning legislature. We should be blaming ourselves for electing politicians that pass laws mandating criminal penalties inthis instant.
Re:You should (Score:4, Insightful)
..who were receiving millions in campaign donations from the "music" industry.
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..who were receiving millions in campaign donations from the "music" industry.
Funds they use to buy advertising that has a huge effect on undecided voters. If we stopped voting for the guy with the convincing advertisement, there would be no need use for any of that money.
Politicians get money because voters chose to be influenced by the things money buys. Fancy consultants, advertising gurus, branding specialists -- they pay big bucks for these things because they work, which is no one's fault but our own.
A democracy is defined by giving the populace the government that it richly d
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That's a matter of debate; power in the US congress tends to get wielded by people supported by less than 20% of eligible voters. That's on par with what former one party system rulers tend to get when countries move to democracy.
We should be blaming ourselves for electing politicians
With first past post systems there isn't enough choice to put much blame on the voters. With only two or three realistic choices any candidates with a chance can easily be bought, and any unbuyable candidate smeared enough to n
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You are correct in just about every way but you do not state the problem strongly enough. In almost every state and district, the laws related to how people get on the official ballots are heavily slanted to favor the two big parties and work very hard to prevent third parties from appearing at all. Typically, the highly twisted laws are used to aggressively prevent or to remove candidates of third parties and independents from ballots. In the last election cycle, however, we saw attempts at turn-about w
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When is the "Average Joe" American going to get it through their thick skulls that they don't live in a "Free" country, the US gummermint just has a different way of distributing oppression that other authoritarian regimes do!
Due Process? we don't need no stinking due process!
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It is a political act first and foremost. The person who uploaded the tracks almost certainly did not profit from it, unlike the record company and the RIAA. Of the three, I'd say that only one party cares a bit for music.
I will only buy music directly from the artist. I don't want one penny of my money going to support the RIAA or the people who support them. I never, ever go to any concerts organized by Live Nation or any other cong
Re:You should (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't being punished for stealing music, he's being punished for distributing it without authorization.
Go ahead and steal a CD from Walmart - but then also advertise that you'll give a copy to anyone who asks, and give a copy to thousands. That's an apples to apples comparison.
Re:You should (Score:5, Insightful)
Slight difference: He uploaded the songs to his website. That's not something you can do accidentally. He knew exactly what the hell he was doing. These were also pre-release tracks, which makes it harder to argue it won't have an impact on sales.
Finally, his "too cool for school" pose in front of the courtroom isn't doing much to generate sympathy from me. Excessive punishment? Yeah, it is. But I still don't feel sorry for him.
I think I'll save my concern for some housewife, grandmother, or student who gets financially ruined by the RIAA just for downloading a few songs.
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"In other countries, "Disrespect for the president, legislature, or government" is grounds for jail time. In America it's "disrespect for a CEO, the board, or corporation" that leads to jail time."
That's really silly and some of the complaints about capitalism here on Slashdot are really poor.
First of all, you're completely equivocating on what is meant by "disrespect" here. "Disrespect" for the RIAA in this case is due to dogmatic adherence to an outdated view of property rights and even worse the idea th
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Businesses getting more influence is not democracy. That is a slide towards corporate government, commonly known as Fascism.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
People here in our county know for most crimes they will "maybe" spend a single night in jail for anything other then murder before they are let go the next day.
It's a joke around here when litterally there is no room for rapists, drunk drivers, and other 'violent' criminals in jail, but some one uploads some MP3s and OH MY GOD, get him.. Give me freakin' break.
It's like they talked about on that movie, on COPS (tv show) they'll have 3 cops chasing a guy down the street and beat him to the ground because he just stole $85. But some corporate criminal that steals $85,000,000.00 and well they treat him with kid gloves.
Some people need a reality check.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like they talked about on that movie, on COPS (tv show) they'll have 3 cops chasing a guy down the street and beat him to the ground because he just stole $85. But some corporate criminal that steals $85,000,000.00 and well they treat him with kid gloves.
Well, to be fair, that $85 won't get you much of a lawyer. But the $85 mil will get you a few good lawyers, and if you work it right, a congressman or two.
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But the $85 mil will get you a few good lawyers, and if you work it right, a congressman or two.
That's why the guy that stole $85 million dollars gets to see the guy that stole 85 dollars thrown into jail.
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lets be fair here. congressmen are a lot cheaper than that...
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Amiga - Remember when computing was fun?
I sure do. Back then, it was PERSONAL computing, not NETWORK computing.
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:5, Funny)
The police were probably simply told that they were arresting a pirate. They thought he might whip out a cutlass or try to shoot them with a musket.
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Re:He should go to prison, but not for... (Score:4, Informative)
The article is inflammatory BS. You don't go to prison for misdemeanors. You go to jail for misdemeanors. They are entirely different places and if you had been to either, you would know how different they are. The six months sentence hanging over his head will not be a prison sentence at all and that is half the maximum time which is also the minimum time [fda.gov] anyone can face for a class A misdemeanor offense. (1 year for federal misdemeanors and mostly 6 months max for state misdemeanors)
Now according to the original offense which wasn't a misdemeanor, it was a felony charge, he could have been facing 10 years in prison (not jail), because of the supposed retail value of the songs he distributed or caused to be distributed.
The was actually a treated as a mass bootleg case and not a file sharing case because he supposedly "willfully infringed a copyright for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain." The problem he laid in front of them is that he admitted to doing it and helped identify where he got the files from. But this case isn't the ordinary "junior put the new album on the lime wire interweb".
His lawyer has a different take on it [wired.com] which would follow the pre-sentencing guidelines that recommended 1 years probation. He makes some pretty good points in it and I think this will probably be closer to what happens.
You have to understand that this case is a big political charade. Obama has brought in some RIAA lawyers to help run the hope and Change you can believe in but I don't think they are the problems here (could be but it's just me). It's more of a- they made a big issue out of his site being a commercial venture in order to force information out of him. They offered a reduced charge based his cooperation in telling them everything he knew to help the government in finding who originally released the songs. (according to his lawyers, it could have been the record industry itself or axel rose himself). He took the deal and now in order for there to be a "deterrent" the government has to appear like they are wanting the most they can get in order to have the deterrent factor be present. The judge will likely claim that his cooperation with investigators and mitigating factors like his actions to prevent down-loaders supersedes the Deterrent factor and sentencing guild lines and either negate any jail time with probation or list his jail time as the time he spent waiting bail after they raided him and credit him with time served. If he spent a week in jail, he would probably get 7 days- time served and 1 year probation or possibly 6 months suspended sentence on the completion of 1 years probation or something of the sort. But the point is to keep up appearances. The judge has quite a bit of leeway on this despite that class A misdemeanors have a minimum of 6 months.
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And don't get me wrong, I am not against "the police", I have a family and thank god for the Police men/women that brave the streets everyday..... but you have to admit when they pull up to someguy on the street and grab him and force against their cruiser before he says or does anything, well, lets just say it would be fun to see it just one time to one the corporate guys that '
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Watch COPS sometime. People get man handled & 'beat down' while they are following all the commands the police are giving.
I do, regularly.
...and I've yet to see the illegal beatdowns for compliant suspects. I've seen LOTS of people try to argue, pull their hands away, fight the cops, or run. As for unwarranted beatdown? Nothing yet, unless you can present an episode number that I missed.
Don't get me wrong, crooked cops ARE out there; I've run into a few... But the cops *I* know are solid, want to help their community, and aren't in it for a power-trip. Y'know, the real cops.
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RIAA got its wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Now tax dollars will be used to keep them in business instead of producing decent products. Federal criminal agents will be involved in what is a civil court issue.
Tho many will say 'good, jail him he's a bad person', few will understand what is really going on here.
Freedom takes another hit.
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Prima fascia, this does seem like a civil issue, but IANAL. Wouldn't it be ironic to hold corporations' Directors criminally liable for the shit they are culpable of?
For those who don't know Italian, (Score:4, Funny)
If YANAF, you might not understand the Italian fashion term prima fascia, which means "the belt is the best," a motto used by designers who favor sashes, cummerbunds, and other such accessories.
However, such obscure phrases are subject to much misunderstanding and misuse, which constitute prima facie ("on its face") evidence that such linguistic frippery is better left unused when possible.
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Tho many will say 'good, jail him he's a bad person', few will understand what is really going on here.
Yeah, really bad. Tell me again: how many bankers, ex-presidents and the like have been arrested at gunpoint for fucking up the economy?
Re:RIAA got its wish (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, really bad. Tell me again: how many bankers, ex-presidents and the like have been arrested at gunpoint for fucking up the economy?
Yes, none so far. Madoff is gone, and if Jon Stewart has any say more will follow him. There is a disproportionate use of the justice system in the USA. Upload some songs or smoke a little weed and you are a federal criminal. Steal millions or billions from the people's pocket and you simply made a mistake, one that deserves more money to help you out.
Justice might be blind, but fairness doesn't seem to come with that particular malady.
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Re:RIAA got its wish (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't care what you call it (Score:3, Insightful)
Changing laws to convert a civil corporate issue into a criminal issue also fall within my statement.
Its still industries buying laws. Its still misuse of public funds/resources.
And i don't care what the purchased laws say, its still not a 'crime against society'.
Re:I really don't care what you call it (Score:5, Interesting)
Its still industries buying laws. Its still misuse of public funds/resources.
You know, I'm pretty strong anti-current copyright, I think the copyright lengths are way out of whack; DRM circumvention laws are wrong; fair use should allow more sharing than the industry wants, etc.
But I also think that (were everything to reach a reasonable compromise one day) that uploading an unreleased album to wide availability (where even its sale hasn't yet been permitted by the rightsholder) could reasonably be called a misdemeanor theft on the level of shoplifting, and that (minor, short-term) incarceration rates could be reasonable as a maximum penalty. Whether or not a judge should grant the maximum sentence on first offense is another matter.
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See, i don't see a problem with offering a file ( or downloading it after its offered ), and don't equate it to shoplifting in the least.
Now, if he was selling access or making $ off banner ads due to the downloads, then we would be on the same side of the fence. Tho i would still argue against a *criminal* charge since the original object was not harmed and is still in 'sale-able condition', I fully agree its illegal in that case.
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Currently, the Federal Government hasn't taken jurisdiction on shoplifting enforcement.
Has beens (Score:2)
Re:Has beens (Score:5, Funny)
That's exactly why he's being prosecuted. The corporation's constitutional right to sell expensive crap is being trampled!
WARNING: If you upload Chinese Democracy (Score:3, Funny)
You will get a taste of Chinese Democracy.
And you will not be hungry for it an hour later.
Gun Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Gun Point? (Score:5, Insightful)
ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This has got to be one of the most excessive police actions ever. Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense. I hate this country's legal system.
Going to jail for nonviolent crimes [wikipedia.org] isn't new and it certainly isn't an exclusive feature of the U.S.'s judicial system. At least, he's not very likely to die during his time served. Y'all might want to send him some soap-on-a-rope though.
Re:Gun Point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Our country really needs to take a look at the purpose of government before we do anything else. We are becoming closer and closer to a dictatorship, we already have (basically) a one-party system (for all intents and purposes, democrats and republicans are the same party), government-censored media, in some cases government controlled media, our constitution is becoming nothing more then an illusion, the bill of rights seem to be disappearing faster then ever, and our government is pursuing part-ownership in several businesses (the media calls it a bailout).
Re:Gun Point? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Gun Point? (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>This has got to be one of the most excessive police actions ever. Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense.
We've been doing that for a long time. Like imprisoning those who steal someone's property. We also jail people for tax fraud, or investment fraud (like that Madoff guy). So yes jailing people for non-violent offenses is acceptable.
Now that we got that out of the way, the question is: did this person commit a crime? IMHO he did. He did the equivalent of taking somebody's work without payment. If you disagree, consider this: You spend a year of your life developing a program, with plans to sell it for income, but instead I simply TAKE the program off bittorrent. I have stolen your labor without just compensation.
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Okay, we'll call that a simile since it's not quite precisely what the perp did. I suggest a civil court should determine the amount of damages, and award the copyright holders with X dollars, which debt can't be erased through bankruptcy, &c. The difference between stealing a loaf of bread and copying bits of data is profoundly greater than the difference between stealing a wallet at knifepoint vs: swindling widow's pensions, which our Fearless Leaders have actually differentiated. In other words, I di
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So yes jailing people for non-violent offenses is acceptable.
No, no, no, just because our country seems to think that all bad people should go to jail, doesn't mean that its right. Tell me, what is the purpose of jail? It is not a "time out" like our country seems to think it is, it is where you should put violent criminals so they no longer terrorize the street until they are reformed. Yes, as in, full civil rights, etc when they get out. We wonder why we have overcrowded prisons, well this is why.
Is what they are doing good? No. But put them on house arrest,
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Now that we got that out of the way, the question is: did this person commit a crime? IMHO he did. He did the equivalent of taking somebody's work without payment. If you disagree, consider this: You spend a year of your life developing a program, with plans to sell it for income, but instead I simply TAKE the program off bittorrent. I have stolen your labor without just compensation.
What if the world has changed in such a way that intending to "sell" some easily-copied series of ones and zeros is no longer
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This post is so misleading and so wrong... you managed to put together all the fallacies there are about intellectual property.
Please take a look at this, and start forgetting about the labor theory of value (or property)
http://tinyurl.com/5c4289 [tinyurl.com]
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Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense.
It isn't even a crime. Civil suit at best.
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STOLE (yes stole)
Copied. Or did he delete the original after he was done?
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How is it not a crime?
He STOLE (yes stole) material that was not released to the general public from its makers.
If you want to get technical about it, stealing (theft) is depriving someone of their property. Unless you are counting money (lost income) as the property, (and legally it doesn't usually work that way) nothing was stolen. copyright infringement is not theft
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ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This has got to be one of the most excessive police actions ever. Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense. I hate this country's legal system.
Are you kidding me? So you think Bernie Madoff should walk? Plenty of people who commit nonviolent crimes deserve prison, some even the chair.
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ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This has got to be one of the most excessive police actions ever. Sending a man to jail for a non-violent offense. I hate this country's legal system.
Bernard Madoff, the people who ran Enron, and other perpetrators of massive fraud shouldn't go to jail? Someone who runs an oil tanker aground, destroying wilderness, shouldn't go to jail? Someone who launches massive DOS attacks shouldn't go to jail?
Wow, you're an idiot.
Shouldn't this be a Civil matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm confused: all the merits of the case are civil in nature. How in hell do they justify prosecuting this man in criminal court? I don't understand: can someone please explain (and prove I'm just dumb)?
(My logic is that he made no money off his actions, and they were of absolutly no benefit to him.)
Re:Shouldn't this be a Civil matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. And that is why we have moved out of the US to a more civilized country. We release all of our material--audio, video and written--under a Creative Commons license, and urge both artists and consumers to boycott the mainstream content providers. They are simply trying to maintain a business model that has been obsolete since Napster. Just let them die.
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>>>We release all of our material--audio, video and written--under a Creative Commons license
How much money do you make doing that? Enough to support yourself without resorting to a second job? And how do you deal with those who taken your creations without compensating you for your labor?
Re:Shouldn't this be a Civil matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
What do you mean by "deal with those who have taken your creations without compensating you for your labor"? That's the whole point of releasing under a CC license - if people choose to compensate you, great; if not, they wouldn't have bought your material anyways so suck it up.
The record industry is just a promotional vehicle anyways - you only make money on concerts after getting famous. Even bigger artists are usually lucky to break even on CD sales. Releasing under CC removes that overhead, though obviously at the expense of losing the industry's promotion skills. Word of mouth is still king.
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Re:Shouldn't this be a Civil matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Pre release of copyrighted works, or release of limited distribution works (like a movie still only in theaters), has always been considered criminal, both in case law and the law as written. The logic is that in these cases the amount of damage is substantially more than more mundane piracy, since it creates a single point of release (he is responsible not just for the people he distributed it to, but every single person who downloads it prior to release).
ANY album (Score:2, Insightful)
years (Score:5, Funny)
That 17 years can be broken down as follows for Axl:
16 years, 10 months: lying around drugged out of his mind
2 months: working on music
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Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll... Baby!
All the best music is made when the artists are one high away from suicide... as long as you ignore the 90% that suck shit when high.
No time for commenting, I got an album to download!
If you don't like it (Score:2, Insightful)
then organize a nation-wide boycott of music sales.
Whiners.
Mind you, I think the police are becoming an occupying force in this country, an arm of the Dept. of Commerce. But Slashdot makes nothing happen, so log the hell out and go organize.
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What is the use of prison time? (Score:2)
I't just like that Babylon 5 guy said (Score:4, Interesting)
Like J.Michael Straczynski said:
First, having talked to distributors, I can tell you straight up that
if a show [or music album] has had too much online exposure and too many downloads, if it's too much out there, they won't distribute it because the market that would want to see it already has. Second, when you download a show, it's not just that you're denying the producers/distributors of that movie or TV show the "price" of the DVD... you're also having a direct impact on the creative people who made that show, and taking from them as well. Actors, writers and directors get paid a fee to make a project, and then they get residuals, which are not a bonus, they are deferred compensation.
Free downloading ultimately destroys the financial structure for artists of all kinds, and will, if left unchecked, eventually make it impossible for any artist to make a living doing what they do. Downloaders think there's no difference between data and entertainment, that everything should be free. Great, it's free to YOU. Now, how do you propose paying the people who need to put food on the plate when they are getting nothing in return?
jms [/quote] From: "jmsatb5@aol.com"
Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:36:27 -0700 (PDT)
Re:I't just like that Babylon 5 guy said (Score:5, Insightful)
Or there's this quote:
"The DVDs grossed roughly half a BILLION
dollars (and that was just after they put out S5, without all of the S5
sales in).
So what does my last profit statement say? We're $80 million in the
red.
Basically, by the terms of my contract, if a set on a WB movie burns
down in Botswana, they can charge it against B5's profits."
Is it really pirates who are harming actors, writers and directors, or is it the studios?
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Pot kettle black.
One entity of leeches is video pirates. They have no lawyers, and can't hire JMS, and have a short memory.
2nd entity of leeches is the MPAA members. They have lawyers, might hire JMS in the future, and have long memories.
JMS has commented on the games Hollywood plays with DVD sales--how they avoid turning a profit--to avoid paying creative royalties.
One of the two entities mentioned has little power, so he blasts them.
Some future model of low-cost video downloads might eliminate the MPAA mi
Re:I't just like that Babylon 5 guy said (Score:5, Interesting)
I lost some respect for JMS when he wrote that. The thread was in connection with some scripts that he had written for Crusade episodes, which had not been produced. He was complaining about people distributing them online, even though the only studio that had the rights to produce them, wouldn't. His email basically said to me 'I have no more creative output to contribute. Don't advertise my talents as a writer and demand more shows written by me, because I can't create anything new anymore.'
Babylon 5 was created by someone with a story to tell, who was willing to work hard and struggle to tell that story. Crusade was created by someone who wanted to make money from a franchise. That the two were the same person is a tragedy.
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Poetic justice (Score:5, Insightful)
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Time Served (Score:2, Funny)
This is utterly disgusting. It makes me sick. (Score:2, Insightful)
Brilliant (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it's not like we have enough people in prison now [usdoj.gov].
Our corporate run detention facilities will start losing money is we don't find new reasons to fill them up with relatively minor offenses.
Half of people in prison are there for violent offenses. That half stays. The other half we need to take a good hard look at just why we're so gung ho remove people from their ability to make a living and pay to warehouse them.
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http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/02/13/pennsylvania-judges-plead-guilty-in-juvenile-center-kickback-scheme/ [wsj.com]
"Once in a while, a story comes along that defies intellectual discussion or debate and just sort of slugs you right in the solar-plexus.
Such is the case with this story that broke yesterday out in Scranton, Pa., where two judges pleaded guilty to operating a kickback scheme involving juvenile offenders. The allegations: the judges, Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, took more than $2.6 million in k
At that price... (Score:2, Funny)
The album, which cost millions
No wonder people pirate music. I'd pay 20 bucks tops.
Who's really to blame? (Score:4, Insightful)
The album, which cost millions and took 17 years to complete, was released November 23 and reached No. 3 in the charts. The sentence being sought -- including the calculation of damages based on the illegal activity of as many as 1,310 websites that disseminated the music after Cogill released it -- underscores how serious the government is about punishing those for uploading pre-release material.
Are they trying to insinuate that because this album cost millions of dollars more to develop than most albums should, that pirating it is in some way worse because it will take even longer for them to recuperate such losses?
News flash big business: if you spend 10x as long, and 10x as much money as anyone else in that industry would on creating a product, it is not society's responsibility to compensate you. You deserve to lose money, and probably deserve to go out of business over the project.
Besides the ridiculous cost and timeline for developing the album, it seems the primary stakeholders were determined to tank this project regardless (see: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/axl-rose-blamed-for-band-missing-no-1-album_100126311.html/ [thaindian.com]). Blaming piracy for any financial difficulties this album has suffered is more ridiculous than usual.
Pirates and Bankers (Score:3, Funny)
Good news. He can rot in jail along with all the bankers the feds arrested for stealing hundreds of billions via fraud. Oh wait...
Restitution + public service announcement (Score:3, Funny)
Re:fp (Score:5, Funny)
Re:fp (Score:4, Informative)
And you think the first is, or ever has been, a healthy kind of relationship between a citizen and their country?
Re:fp (Score:5, Insightful)
It's worth giving your life for a worthy cause, like protecting you & your neighbors' freedoms from a tyrannical non-representative British government, as the man who uttered that quote was doing.
Otherwise, no.
Re:fp (Score:4, Funny)
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MacArthur wasn't it?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
No, Patton.
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Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
an administration that is walking us down the path of socialism
No, you have an administration that is walking you down the path of corporatism. The difference is that in socialism, the government takes your tax money and spends it on things that everyone needs, like schools, medical facilities and infrastructure, but in corporatism, the government takes your tax money and gives it to people who already have more money than you can possibly imagine.
The clever bit comes when they tell you that giving money to *everyone* is communism and is bad, but giving money only to people who are already rich is good. That way they can train you to bark like a good little Pavlovian doggie at the eeevil socialists that try to steal money from your corporate masters. Work hard and bark, little doggie, and maybe they'll let you have some scraps.
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Question: If the plan to bailout/assist people with upside-down mortgages goes through, it will cost about $1000 per taxpaying home. Why should I spend $1000 to pay somebody else's mortgage? And would this be considered corporatism, socialism, or communism?
IMHO whatever it's called, it's a human rights violation.
Taking my money to pay somebody else's housing bill is theft of labor. It's no different than if my neighbor bought a Lexus, and then demanded everyone in the area throw-in money to pay the bill. Nobody has a right to demand I help buy them a car. Or pay their mortgage.
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Your not paying $1000 for someone else's mortgage. You're paying $1000 so the criminals who put people up to their eyeballs in debt so they could enrich themselves won't have to five up their bonuses and Manhattan penthouses. They could care less about peoples mortgages as they have amply demonstrated these past few years.
The problem is finding a way to rescue the working class without putting money in the pockets of the parasites.
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Taking my money to pay somebody else's housing bill is theft of labor.
I think a financial sector that systematically deregulated any oversight and pisses away over one third of our GDP on derivatives, where nobody knows who owes what to who, is theft of labor. Up another notch if they keep on demanding their executive bonus money from taxpayers, "or else the economy will collapse".
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is demanding anything more than has been demanded for the life of this country, as well as others, and that is that the people pay for the benefits of the government. In this case we also pay for the faults of that government, one which we chose I might add. This is the government of the US paying for it's past mistakes of unregulated distribution of resources, thank you Reagan and Greenspan (who at least admitted his mistake and apologized, unlike the rest of the free market economists of the world).
Oh and since you consider debt relief to be a human rights violation I can't wait to hear what you call forced homelessness and starvation.
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Democrat Party
Its called the DEMOCRATIC party [wikipedia.org]. I don't know where this "democrat" party meme came from, but I'm sick of it. All it does is make the speaker sound uninformed and ignorant of the thing they rail against so jingoistically.
Perhaps I should start calling the republican party "wepubwican party", that would make me sound mature, and make all the attached arguments so much more worthy of attention.
As to the meat of your statement, I half agree, people should be held responsible for their loans, th
Re:Skewed Priorities (Score:5, Insightful)