“Do you understand what I’m saying?” shouted Moist. “You can’t just go around killing people!”
“Why Not? You Do.” The golem lowered his arm.
“What?” snapped Moist. “I do not! Who told you that?”
“I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,” said the golem calmly.
“I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!”
“No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
[/QUOTE]
True, but equally applicable (with the appropriate sartorial and sport-selection upgrades) to Czarcasm’s Fortune 500 company scenario.
sigh No, it’s not. Killing someone (or in this case lots of someones) is generally considered by society a larger crime than stealing money. And, of course, rarely do boards of directors meet to deliberately plot to steal large amounts of money. It was a hyperbolic and tongue in cheek statement by Czar to make a point while being funny and I responded in kind.
I’m not sure what the problem is. The bikers will get their day in court and if the government can’t prove their case they ride away. If you’re a member of a group known for violence and/or narcotic trafficking, you’re not going to get the initial benefit of the doubt from the legal system when you’re in the middle of a large violent incident such as this. So let’s throw the book at who we can and free those against whom there is no case.
(1) Even those bikers who are never convicted (or even charged) will likely never get their property back.
(2) If the police arrested more people than they have probable cause to arrest, then they just ruined a whole bunch of lives as a result of their unconstitutional conduct. If you think it’s no big deal to be arrested and stuck in jail until your charges are dismissed a few weeks later (or at trial a few months later), then you’re wildly wrong. It’s a huge deal.
I assume those, if any, who are innocent can hire lawyers to reclaim any illegally seized property. If you don’t want to be mistaken for a criminal, don’t dress as a criminal and don’t hang out with criminals.
[QUOTE=billfish678]
If you are a rider with a “group” I am pretty sure you know damn well if you are part of a gang with questionable legal activities or part of a group of guys who like to ride around showing off leather and beer bellies.
[/QUOTE]
It was a *Sons of Anarchy *reference.
Of course not ! Not steal. Never steal. That’d be shameful. Little people stuff.
On the other hand, if we could find a marginally legal way to unload those toxic mortgages on unsuspecting buyers, then use *that *prospective cash to secure further loans through shell companies, possibly to loan money for folks to pay the selfsame mortgages that started this whole cycle at punitive rates… why, that’d not be stealing per se. It’s not in the same league as stealing. Stealing cannot even afford the socks required to attend *that *party.
It’s very much like the Stalin quote. Steal from one man and you’re a criminal. Steal from ten thousand and you’re a NASDAQ chairman.
Word. The outlaw clubs that are criminal organizations are not something that one accidentally, or casually, joins. They thoroughly vet their prospective members and initiation into the gang may, itself, involve the commission of crimes. Membership in such a club is not easily or quickly obtained. Once it is obtained, there is an expectation that one will support the organization regardless of consequences. Further, one does not wear such an organization’s colors unless one is a member (or suicidal). The odds that anybody swept up in this particular shitnami was just some clueless innocent out for a weekend ride are very small indeed.
There were two links in the OP. I didn’t bother specifying which because one of them was connected to the words “other biker clubs” so I thought it was obvious that this was the one meant. But your quote is from the other one.
In addition, as noted, you can see from the pictures of the arrested people that other gangs were arrested (e.g. here.)
By this logic, you don’t have to stop at the guys who were present. You could arrest every member of these gangs across the country (or every member of the Bloods, Crips, and so on whenever any members of these groups commits a crime). Hard to believe.
Then it’s not the same thing at all.
My guess is that these guys routinely travel with weapons (and if anything, the fact that they didn’t have them on them would indicate that they were not expecting things to play out the way they did, at the least).
Your assumption is wrong. The property isn’t illlegally seized. It can be legally seized from people who did nothing criminal. If Texas is like most states, it can be seized if it is “related to” to crime. And even if an individual had evidence to disprove that, it would often cost them more money to hire the lawyer than the property is worth. And guess who keeps the proceeds?
As for the rest…you can’t be serious in thinking it appropriate to lock people up for looking like criminals.
[QUOTE=Kobal2]
Of course not ! Not steal. Never steal. That’d be shameful. Little people stuff.
On the other hand, if we could find a marginally legal way to unload those toxic mortgages on unsuspecting buyers, then use that prospective cash to secure further loans through shell companies, possibly to loan money for folks to pay the selfsame mortgages that started this whole cycle at punitive rates… why, that’d not be stealing per se. It’s not in the same league as stealing. Stealing cannot even afford the socks required to attend that party.
It’s very much like the Stalin quote. Steal from one man and you’re a criminal. Steal from ten thousand and you’re a NASDAQ chairman.
[/QUOTE]
For a throw away one liner this certainly has gotten a lot of mileage. But, ok…are you seriously contending that stealing, even stealing a lot is worse than killing people? Because that’s what this boils down to. No one is saying that stealing is right or good, or that if it’s some CEO doing it that makes it ok, only that the police are probably going to take a bunch of folks dead on the ground a bit more serious than any alleged and theoretical ‘NASDAQ chairman’ and his or her board plotting to swipe billions.
In this particular situation, there is a demonstrable link. Outlaw motorcycle gangs are insanely protective of their colors. You don’t wear them if you aren’t a member. At a gathering like this one, if your colors say you are a Bandido, then it can be taken to the bank that you are a Bandido.
I suppose it depends on what one’s looking at as the base value of “good”/“bad”, innit ? What’s the criterion for “worse” ? Personnal depravity or cruelty ? I’d say the killer is the worse man, sure. But from a consequentialist POV, the idiot pumping another idiot full of lead over a pair of sneakers (or whatever) is less bad than the guy who stole a thousand bucks from a thousand families, depriving all of them of a new pair of sneakers - or a new little brother.
That’s the whole Thing about white collar crime : it’s boring. It’s easy. It’s one of them “victimless” crimes. It’s not as smashy as some good and gruesome 'orrible murder. But it’s much more damaging to society, when it comes right down to it and you do the math. The evil is just more… spread ? Diffuse ? Homeopathic ?
ETA : BTW, the NASDAQ chairman thing wasn’t just amusing hyperbole, it was also a sharp poke. Bernie Madoff was chairman at NASDAQ.
Where does one of your links say that they arrested members of someone other than the 2 named clubs? I don’t see what anywhere. And which picture do you think establishes it?
You might be misreading something I wrote, but what you say here is generally true–i.e., they can be arrested whether present or not–if they conspired to commit some other crime that is related to the crime committed by other members.
Society sets the value. As far as I know, murder is pretty much always considered a more serious crime by everyone who is not trying to argue some obscure point on a message board. However, if you think that at some arbitrary point of stealing that it becomes more horrible than a few dead bodies then that’s fine by me. I never said it was ok to steal whether it’s shoplifting or some evil CEO twirling his mustaches while lighting his fine cigars off the backs of the peasantry while saying MUAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA! a lot.
ETA:
The guy doing a life prison sentence? That guy? Yeah, society really let HIM off the hook! Or did you want the death penalty?
The one guy who called his wife from jail was a member of the “Vise Grip Club”. One of the pictures shows (and identifies in the caption) members of Pirados, Veterans, and the Leathernecks.
Well that’s not what you wrote earlier. What you said was (emphasis added):
If “knowing the kind of crimes they are regularly engaged in” is enough then you could arrest the entire Bloods, Crips and all (1%) motorcycle gangs even if they did not “conspire[] to commit some other crime that is related to the crime committed by other members”.