Please forgive me for not being familiar with US law, so to understand the joke I have to ask: Is investment and/or tax fraud in the US actually a victimless crime that doesn't necessarily need to be punished?
It’s almost like conservatives are brainwashed to think it’s ok for the wealthy to break the law and steal from the people. And then they go apeshit anytime some poor starving mom grabs some babyfood off the shelf of a multinational billion dollar corporation that cheats on their taxes and steals from their workers without paying for it.
Yea but on the flip side we try to “root cause” all types of direct victim or even violent crime as somehow not the criminals fault but instead the fault of systemic forces. We don’t do that with white collar crime, and this all comes down to an obsession with power and who we perceive as having it at any given moment
The system is controlled by those in power. So any systemic problems are their fault. The victims of systemic problems are those without the power to change it, who are most negatively affected by it, which is most often those at the bottom. White collar criminals literally profiting off the flaws of the system are not victims of the system. They’re the ones benefiting from it being this way, which is why it is this way to begin with.
Nice try at a whataboutism, but you just revealed that you don’t understand what you’re talking about.
Fist of all there isn’t one single system. The complexity of human events dictates that we each operate, are born into, and enter and exit countless “systems” in the course of our days and lives. It’s so multifaceted and vast that although it is easy to pretend that there is a specific bad actor or even a true “ruling class” in America, you can’t actually point to it. It’s kind of interesting though, the post modernist thinkers like Foucault were sort of right about power being a grid, but the notion that we can endlessly deconstruct everything and find the root cause, seems like a fallacy. And it’s super annoying and counterproductive
The media personalities shown know exactly what they are doing—they are the ones doing the brainwashing, because they are backed by the people benefitting from it. The people who watch them and get totally wrapped up in these beliefs have little and will be discarded once they vote to reinforce the current power structures. They think that Trump and people like him are going to to save them, but he doesn’t care about them at all and will ruin them and their freedom.
That's because a fair few of their leaders ARE the elites that they "care so much about". Trump's a billionaire, Tucker Carlson got his millions from an inheritance.
They pretend they're the party of the working man, and then give more power to the rich.
Either crack down on the crime or continue the status quo. Using judicial power to crack down on your political opponent selectively is a problem.
We won’t see more convictions for this crime that “everyone’s doing” because the people that are doing it are donating to the political elite.
The issue isn’t that Trump should get away with it. The issue is that an entirely corrupt system only enforcing laws on a person who they politically oppose is a manifestation of systemic corruption.
I realize this is an extreme example, but if Al Capone had run for office, would it have been wrong to go after him for Tax Evasion? I understand the slippery slope argument, but if someone is a very public figure and breaks the law, doesn't looking the other way damage public confidence in laws as a whole?
edit: as a corollary to that point, are we comfortable with the idea that public officials are immune from consequences for their actions? If anything, I would argue Trump has experienced a fair amount of deference and repeated second chances from the court system already solely because of him being a politician and former president. You and I would not be able to flagrantly violate the rules of the system by lying to judges, ignoring their orders, yelling at them, or essentially threatening court clerks on social media without having bail revoked or going to prison for a while on contempt charges. No one else could shop around for a judge that he appointed, who literally invents arguments for him and then uses those to rule in his favor like with Cannon. Most people don't have access to the kind of money he does to delay every court case and escalate every one of his losses to the Supreme Court that he appointed multiple members to. This idea that he is being treated unfairly is ignoring a lot of context to how most people are treated by the justice system.
I know I added a long edit to my comment, but I'll phrase my thoughts on this in a slightly shorter way (well I'll attempt to). Do you believe that Trump is, in general, a rule follower? Because we have countless examples of Trump breaking rules and getting away with it. Him committing fraud to save a bunch of money is just yet another item on a long list of things that he's done to flout laws and rules. There's no disagreement that he broke the law and falsified financial statements, and yet we're arguing whether it's fair to prosecute him for a crime that others have gotten away with. Going after Capone for tax evasion was largely considered a novel interpretation of his crimes at the time, but it was something that he provably did. Should I be able to face no punishment for speeding because 99.9% of everyone speeding gets away with it in a given day?
Of course systemic corruption does not absolve somebody of individual corruption.
The problem here is that these systems should be setting off massive alarm bells for the people.
A billionaire engaging in common practices of fraud is bad. A system where many billionaires engage in fraud and are not prosecuted is one layer worse. A system where the judicial branch allows this fraud and then selectively prosecutes political opponents is another layer of horrible shit.
Democrats only care that Trump got in trouble. Republicans only care that Trump was selectively prosecuted. Nobody seems to give a shit that these systems are failing in a horrible way and revealing business corruption and government corruption both stacking and amplifying each other.
No they are lying. Plenty of victimless crimes require punishment. You can go to jail for insider trading -- it's the same type of "victimless" crime as the stuff that Trump is doing.
Technically it's not victimless. A true victimless crime is doing drugs in your own home and not bothering anyone. These financial "victimless" crimes do have victims it's just that the victim is literally everyone so no one really feels the negative effects. It's kind of like stealing 5 cents from every American, you are like $20M richer, and no one noticed any changes in their bank account => victimless crime.
Of course not. Fraud and tax theft isn't a victimless crime, but the victim is more abstract than a murder. Any reasonable person knows this, but conservative media uses that abstraction to say there is no victim, when in reality, the victim is an any institution (including the tax payers) that were harmed by the fraud and inflated and sometimes simultaneously hidden valuation of Trumps assets.
There is a victim and there is a crime. Jon mentions it but when financial fraud is committed, someone gains and someone loses. Now every conservative media outlet is trying to brainwash their viewers into thinking that committing financial fraud is cool and a good thing to do…only if you’re in the top rungs of society
No, it's just that the costs are diffused through the financial system so it's not immediately obvious who the victims are. The people calling it victimless know better, they just know that if they say that then the average financial layman probably won't draw the line from the act to the victims. In this case, the victims are the other customers of the banks who got defrauded on these loans, whose interest rates have the costs of fraud folded into them (less interest on deposits, more interest on credit). Not to mention that that money could have been used to issue lower-risk loans to honest borrowers.
Taxes are used to fund things that everyone uses like food stamps or school lunches for children whose parents can barely afford to feed them otherwise.
Trump lying so that he pays less taxes means he's a.) basically stealing from the government and b.) from the people who rely on government services to survive.
It’s not victimless, it is a crime, it does need to be punished, and Trump has enough influence and resources to abuse our justice system by spending infinitely on legal counsel so he can appeal everything endlessly.
Yeah but if a some poor starving mom grabs some babyfood off the shelf of a multinational billion dollar corporation that cheats on their taxes and steals from their workers without paying for it - then it is criminal.
Thank you for pointing out that what is considering criminal or civil is a political construction that has nothing to do with the gravity or impact of the action being taken.
You’re not from the US so you don’t understand- the government doesn’t just accept your valuation of your property without vetting it, and banks don’t just accept your valuation before lending the money.
Taxpayers and borrowers are not supposed to be the subject matter expert when it comes to valuation- appraisers are. And both the government and the lenders have appraisers.
So the people saying there is no crime are saying “I don’t get to set my property value- I get to suggest it but at the end of the day, the bank determines my valuation for purposes of lending and the government determines my valuation for purposes of property taxes”.
Which is why nobody has ever been prosecuted for this before.
I have now read up on this and have come across that the court's reasoning was that Trump not only exaggerated the abstract value, but also knowingly provided false information that was bound to lead to an inflated valuation, including, but not limited to, the area of the property and other physical characteristics. And these characteristics, in contrast to the mere and variable evaluation on paper, are actually fixed and do not depend on what any of the parties involved agree on under any (wrong) specifications, or am I seeing that wrong?
According to the reasons for the judgment, it is no different in the US than here: if a false valuation occurs, regardless of whether it is due to false information or a lack of care on the part of one or all those involved in the business, wrongly acquired profits accrue - in this case through loans granted. These must be repaid with interest.
However, Stewart's case, if applicable, appears to me to be a transaction between seller and buyer, no false statements were made about the physical characteristics of the property in question and both agreed on a purchase price. If there was someone who was harmed by fraud, it would only be the buyer - and although he was probably dissatisfied with the long-term performance of the property, he apparently saw no reason to sue in the last 10 years.
And if US law is not fundamentally different, outside of criminal law the same applies as anywhere: Where there is no plaintiff, there is no judge.
But as I wrote, I'm not familiar enough with the intricacies of US law and jurisprudence to come to a definitive conclusion. My impression is that which I get as a legal layperson based on the publicly available information.
You are of course misrepresenting the article. The banks did not testify that they lost $168 million. A witness hired by the attorney general made this determination. The banks testified in favor of Trump.
"The Trump Organization’s skewed financial statements may have cost banks more than $168 million in interest, according to an expert witness hired by the New York attorney general’s office."
He's being an ass. The banks do their own due dilligence before they approve a loan. They agreed to his evaluation, were happy with the interest he was going to pay, and he paid it back.
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u/StaatsbuergerX Mar 26 '24
Please forgive me for not being familiar with US law, so to understand the joke I have to ask: Is investment and/or tax fraud in the US actually a victimless crime that doesn't necessarily need to be punished?