Ordinarilly, when the rights of peaceful honest people are abridged, they ought to be restored to their original position and compensated for any expenses or trauma that resulted from the tyranny. And ordinarilly, the person who has to pay ought to be the tyrant.
But when the tyrant’s purse is filled with loot that has been seized by force, whether with or without the consent of its rightful owners, a whole new conundrum arises. What accounting has been made when a man may pay his debt with another man’s money, despite the will of that other man?
I mean, hey, if I shoot a man fourty-one times, but you have to pay for it, will I exercise as much discretion as when I might have to pay for it myself? But if I am held to account for my own actions, and the actions of those under my orders, won’t I give long, serious, and sober thought to how I set my policies?
So which one is it? Is it that someone is paying with money he has stolen, or will pay with money he will steal? Once someone has stolen money, the best thing to do is to get them to return it. If that can’t be done, it is certainly better to deprive them of the use of their stolen money than to simply let them do with it as they will. Not that any of this has anything to do with the Rampart scandal or tobacco.
Not that you hadn’t decided that a priori, either.
From the other Rampart Scandal thread:
When I read this, I thought immediately of the fact that the “tobacco settlement” is loot that has been pillaged from America’s poorest people in order to fulfill a covenant between business politicians and government politicians. The men who committed the fraud before Congress were given a slap and a wink. They then turned around and squeezed the money from their victims to pay their own fine! That is outrageous. Why aren’t those men in prison for their fraud?
Since I would have been drawn and quartered for making that statement in the original thread, I started this one. For your information, I have the documented approval of both Gauder and RT to open new threads to express my views on matters of ethics.
It is my way of compromising, thank you.
Therefore, there is no accounting by the tobacco executives because they paid their debt to Congress with their victims’ money. Riordan wants to use that same extorted loot to pay another debt on behalf of another set of tyrants — rogue cops.
So, as you can see, it is obvious what this has to do with both the Rampart scandal and tobacco.
No, it was pillaged to satisfy the tobacco companies’ greed. Do you seriously believe that if it hadn’t been for this judgement, the tobacco companies would have returned all this money to their customers?
Do you think I was doubting your right to start a new thread? I was simply stating my belief that the term “theft” is not appropiate in the tobacco cases, and therefore my comments would not apply to that situation.
You’re really stretching my ability to believe you’re not trolling. My point was that there wasn’t any refund. Of course you haven’t seen a refund. That’s because there hasn’t been any. Sheesh. Haven’t you ever encountered the subjunctive mood before? I’ll ask very slowly and in as simple words as possible:
Do… you… belive… that… if… the… tobacco… companies… hadn’t…been…forced… to… shell… out… money,… that… money… would… have… gone… to… their… customers… instead?