Atheists require faith to believe that there is no God, and nothing else outside their perceived world. In reality, this viewpoint requires more faith than any religion, because all religions offer "proof" that they are true.
Nonsense - you simply need analytical ability and a basic grasp of logic.
Using your "logic", you would likewise require proof in order to believe that there is no Santa Claus. In fact, NOT believing in Santa Claus would actually require more faith than believing in Him, since the TV shows Him to us all the time, and we even see Him at the mall during the Christmas season.
The absence of theism is not an absence of faith. For that you want agnosticism.
Also wrong. Agnosticism is the way you approach a problem, not an answer to a problem. If you're agnostic about a question, that means that you accept that it can never be 100% proven or disproved. It doesn't answer the question of whether you think there is a god, though. It just means that your willing to consider both possibilities, and weigh them in a fair manner.
Technically speaking, I'm agnostic about the existence of Santa Claus. I can never prove for certain that he DOESN'T exist. But that doesn't mean that the chances of him existing or not existing are 50/50. I can use logic, observation, and deductive reasoning to come to the most likely conclusion, and I can even assign it a rough probability.
In the end, everything does come down to belief, since no question can be answered with 100% certainty. But there is a WORLD of difference between belief based on scientific observations and critical thinking, and a belief based on blind faith.
You're SO close! If you had just clicked the link to Psychological fallacy you would have found that:
The Historical fallacy, also called the psychological fallacy, is a logical fallacy originally described by philosopher John Dewey.
Psychological fallacies are simply a subset of logical fallacies.
Moving on:
Regardless, there may indeed be things that may make one candidate better than another, which somebody not familiar with the intricacies would not understand.
Nobody's arguing otherwise, so congratulations, you just provided a good example of a straw-man fallacy. It's also an "irrelevant conclusion" fallacy, since, while in itself being a perfectly logical argument, it does nothing to address the original question - namely, the idea that the average person is not qualified to judge the amount of relevant experience which a politician has had.
There are certainly nuances which will not be understood by everyone, but that in itself does not mean that most people are unqualified to pass judgment on the situation. Suggesting otherwise is a logical fallacy in itself - it's essentially an argument from ignorance. It's like saying "well, you don't understand ALL of the science behind the theory of Evolution, therefore you are not qualified to judge it's merits". Better yet - it's like the people who argue that atheists cannot possibly discuss the concept of a "god" since they've never read the bible.
Lastly, while you can certainly make the argument (as you seem to be doing) that the average voter has no business deciding who's going to run the country, you're going to need to offer a better alternative if you expect anyone to pay attention to you.
* assertion that the opponent lacks the qualifications necessary to comprehend a point of view
Example: I know you think that I should be giving my money to the poor, but you've never been rich before. There are things about wealth that you don't understand.
His argument is, basically, that anyone who doesn't posses a great deal of political experience can not possibly be an effective judge of Obama's qualification to run the country. That is, in a word, absurd. It essentially dismisses the entire concept of democracy. If you can't see the fallacy in his logic, I suggest you take a course on critical thinking, or at least get yourself a subscription to Skeptic magazine.
Uhm, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not running for president.
Your argument is just silly. According to that line of logic, I couldn't question some homeless guy's qualifications to be the head of CERN, since I'm not a scientist. It's a logical fallacy of the highest order.
It could also be argued that the aim was to get everyone used to living in constant fear/panic...
Yes, it could. It could also be argued that the aim was to prepare future interns for service under the desk of Bill Clinton.
Just because an argument COULD be made, doesn't mean it should. If you truly think that your suggestion is a rational one, I'm willing to bet you'd feel right at home with those weirdos from ANSWER.
That... that was incredible. I can't figure out whether his performance was a parody, or if he is truly the most messed-up conspiracy theorist of all time...
I will go back to believing that Corporations have my best interest in mind(more so then myself) and just accept everything they tell me as gospel.
His comment had absolutely nothing to do with corporations. You're simply trolling.
The only reason 100% recycling doesn't work is because some people are too fucking lazy to do their part.
Nonsense - recycling fails when there's no financial incentive to do it, not because of "laziness". Haven't you ever seen a homeless person with a cart full of pop-cans? Why do you think that happens? I'll tell you why: because you can actually make a profit by selling aluminum cans. You'll never see a homeless guy carting off a load of used newspapers though, because there's no money to be made in recycling paper.
None of that has anything to do with CO2 either. Recycling doesn't reduce CO2 emissions.
You're right about the dependence on foreign oil, though, but there are many ways to deal with that. The current US Oil Shale reserves are larger than all the crude in the middle east, plus there are oil sands, and ultimately coal-to-oil conversion. You can ease your dependence on foreign fuels simply by growing your domestic production, just like we're doing in Canada now by massively increasing the exploitation of the Alberta oil-sands.
In the long run (VERY long run) we're going to need to switch to alternate fuels anyway, but in the meantime there's no reason to waste money on inferior products. The Prius is a piece of junk anyway, and you can get similar mileage out of a small gasoline (or better yet, diesel) powered car. I'll stick to my nice big Dodge, thanks:)
Ah, but that's why you have to read what they actually said. It states quite clearly:
they have not replaces a single battery for wear and tear.
Your "stinkers" would be considered a manufacturing defect, so even if they replace 5,000,000 crappy batteries every year, their statement would still technically be correct.
In the TV business, as in all forms of art, "novelty" is usually the biggest draw. The effort involved in creating a novel product/show doesn't actually cost much - the problem is that large companies see anything new as risky. They generally consider it much safer to stick to the same formulas which have worked in the past.
Um, no. This is just basic economics, really. Why put forth any more than a minimum level of effort when you have plenty of demand for your most craptastic halfassery?
Do I really have to explain capitalism to you?
Fine, here goes:
Certain products sell better than others. Whether a particular product sells better because of quality, customer ignorance, or advertising is largely irrelevant. Companies which put in minimal effort generally see lower profits than those which put in more effort.
It depends on your level of income, of course. A Canadian at the lowest end of the tax scale tends to be better off than an American at the lowest end because American medical insurance premiums don't vary based on income. On the other hand, someone with my income would be a bit better off in the US, and someone raking in $250,000 a year or more would be MUCH better off in the US.
The downside is that if you have any SERIOUS medical conditions, you're much better off going to the US and paying for it yourself. Those who can afford it do so all the time. Those who can't afford it get to sit in long lines and pray that they get treatment before their condition worsens.
The other part of the problem is that "free" health care encourages abuse. I've been to an emergency room three times in my life, and each time I've seen dozens of people who had no business being there. When you offer people a service which is paid for by taxes, they're much more likely to abuse it than if they're paying for it out-of-pocket or if using it will increase their insurance premiums.
(and no, in case you're thinking it, I wasn't abusing it when I was there. once was for a gushing head wound, the second time for a spinal injury, and the third was arterial bleeding. don't ask.)
As for me personally... I'm an employee of the government, and as part of my job I'm covered under a federal Blue Cross policy. I'm not even allowed to use the regular health plan that's available to all other Canadians. So I'd be quite happy if they stopped taxing me to pay for the medical system:)
Just how much of my daily life is subsidized by others when, earlier in this same thread, someone is claiming to earn more than 3x my income while I'm paying 3x the taxes, at a rate of nearly 18% while he is paying 1.8%?
He's probably full of shit, but that's besides the point. You make some decent arguments, but the fact of the matter is that a person who makes 2 mil a year, even if he were only to pay 1.8% taxes, would be paying out $36,000 a year, or $360,000 at your tax rate. More likely he'd be paying out even more than that, since tax rates are higher for the rich than the poor. If you think that anyone can do enough driving in a year to justify that, you're nuts:)
And no, I wasn't calling you an idiot - sorry if it came out that way. I find your argument to be quite rational, and I can't say I necessarily disagree with too many parts of it - I just don't think it's fair for anyone to be be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes per year, regardless of how much they make. It might be a good idea - it might even be necessary - but it's certainly not fair.
FYI, here in Canada I pay about 25% tax. That's without getting into sales taxes and property taxes, which also happen to be much higher than yours. My parents, on their combined income, pay about 33%. So you Yanks aren't too bad off.
Sure, if he also accounts for 99% of the school allotments, road usage, fire and police responses, and medicaid and welfare payouts.
I know, I know... in our system we NEED the rich to support the poor, otherwise everything starts to fall apart. I just get pissed off when I see idiots attacking the rich for being "lazy" or "greedy". So yeah, I've got no problem with the rich paying on a percentage basis just like the rest of us, but let's not pretend it's "fair", and let's not pretend that they're not paying enough... and it'd be nice if people would stop and think about how much their daily lives are subsidized by others.
Most of the data is anecdotal, however, it does seem to indicate that an increase in minimum wage always results in layoffs - the only question is "how many". As for law-breaking... yeah, that's "theoretical", but the rapid growth of under-the-table immigrant labor in the US certainly suggests that there's something to it.
You're right to point out that there's no hard statistics to back these analysis, but when it comes to economics and socioeconomic policy... statistics aren't everything:) Otherwise we'd have no more communists in the world!
Yes, I was over-simplifying a bit. There's no long-term effect because eventually inflation corrects for the initial problem. There certainly is a short-term effect, though. I'm not sure that the person who gets laid off thanks to your well-intentioned raising of the minimum wage will be at all comforted by the fact that his situation is "short-term".
You're obviously trolling, but I'm bored, so what the hell:
Well ass hat the easiest solution to that is double or triple or even , heaven forbid quadruple the minimum wage and they will end up paying far more taxes.
Minimum wage laws generally only result in layoffs and law-breaking. They also make it much more difficult for students and youth to find part-time and summer jobs, which not only deprives them of spending money and experience, but also seems to correlate with increased youth crime and delinquency. The idea that we could simply pass a law to make employers pay everyone 4 times as much is so ridiculous that only a moron (or a troll) would suggest it.
Only a true republican would point the finger at poor bastards on minimum wage for not paying enough tax, that is really disgusting.
I never said anything about them not paying enough tax - I said that they suck up more government resources than they pay for. I didn't even suggest changing that, I was simply pointing out that it's ridiculous to suggest that the rich aren't paying their fair share.
The rich have perverted the system to ensure those at the bottom get paid bugger all
The people at the bottom of the system have always gotten "bugger all". Apparently you're not only ignorant of economics, but history also. The difference in our society is that we've redefined "bugger all" to mean "can't afford a Lexus".
in fact with out two jobs not sufficient to live ie. buy a house, pay hospital bills and buy food and clothes (pick one as they can't afford all three).
Actually, that was four, not three. I guess we can add basic counting skills to the list of abilities you don't possess.
Also, your sob-story would be a lot more convincing if I were some rich snob who's never seen a poor person in his life. Maybe that description suits you better than it does me since, apparently, you don't actually know how the "poor" live. Either way, your description of their living conditions is ludicrous. When even "poor" families can own a fridge, a car, and a TV, you're not going to be very successful in guilt-tripping me about their "horrible" condition.
As for your linked article, it's an interesting study, but without raw data it's impossible to asses it's credibility. Certainly the first sentence is so misleading as to suggest that the entire article is most likely worthless. They state that:
"Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes"
and then follow it up with:
"More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period"
Which, of course, completely contradicts the opening statement. Of course, YOU probably can't see why those two statements are contradictory. I'm going to leave you to work it out yourself. Who knows, maybe the mental exercise will kick-start a few of your neurons.
GP is perhaps less crazy than you think. Warren Buffet....
One outlier does not a trend make. All the statistics I've ever seen show clearly that "the rich" carry a disproportionately high tax burden, not just in absolute figures but on a percentage basis also.
By and large, tax fraud is a crime of wealth because the poor simply don't have enough money to either accomplish it or seriously gain from it.
That's certainly true, but they're also taxed at a much lower rate.
I mean, seriously, the top 1% of income earners in the US pay more income tax overall than the "bottom" 90% combined. I can't really blame them for wanting to skim a bit off the top. The bottom 40% don't even pay enough income tax to cover the benefits which they get back in the form of services.
The world as we know it today doesn't have a shortage of food, we could feed everybody on the planet. But look at what "money" does. If a farmer makes too much milk, he's gotta trash it. Can't even take his extra milk and donate it for the poor.
Ah, yes, those Federal Milk Inspectors and their evil White Helicopters have had an awful effect on milk donation in the US. Why, just yesterday I saw a little old lady getting her ass kicked by 4 "Milk Men" for trying to give a homeless guy some creamer packets. It's horrible, I tell ya...
As I said above, I think most people will choose to act ethically. IMHO I don't believe that "everyone has their price," but I could just be naive.
Depends on what's being "purchased".
Many people see tax evasion as a victimless crime, or are happy to do it because they don't like the government. Others, who may realize it's wrong, justify it by telling themselves that "everyone else is doing it".
Now if you were talking about crimes which we all can agree are immoral - murder, rape, Microsoft, etc - then you'd have a point. But when it comes to tax evasion, EVERYONE has their price.
Since the first term of Ronald Reagan, the rich and super-rich have used the Republican party and the religious right to constantly lower their tax rate. Now they pay a significantly less percentage than working people.
That's probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on slashdot, even including some of the stuff over in the NIST/WTC7 thread. I'd have modded you "funny" if I had the points!
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense - you simply need analytical ability and a basic grasp of logic.
Using your "logic", you would likewise require proof in order to believe that there is no Santa Claus. In fact, NOT believing in Santa Claus would actually require more faith than believing in Him, since the TV shows Him to us all the time, and we even see Him at the mall during the Christmas season.
Also wrong. Agnosticism is the way you approach a problem, not an answer to a problem. If you're agnostic about a question, that means that you accept that it can never be 100% proven or disproved. It doesn't answer the question of whether you think there is a god, though. It just means that your willing to consider both possibilities, and weigh them in a fair manner.
Technically speaking, I'm agnostic about the existence of Santa Claus. I can never prove for certain that he DOESN'T exist. But that doesn't mean that the chances of him existing or not existing are 50/50. I can use logic, observation, and deductive reasoning to come to the most likely conclusion, and I can even assign it a rough probability.
In the end, everything does come down to belief, since no question can be answered with 100% certainty. But there is a WORLD of difference between belief based on scientific observations and critical thinking, and a belief based on blind faith.
Fine, how about a new mantra? If atheism and religion were sex ....
Atheism would be like masturbation - you know you're there by yourself, but hell, you're having a good time!
Religion would be like masturbating with a happy face drawn on your hand - it's still only you, but you like pretending that you're not alone.
Oh, well if that's all it takes, then great! Just don't let me hear you complain about GW again, since he's fully qualified!
Apparently you put no thought into your comments, whatsoever. Thank you for making it so readily apparent, I'll keep that in mind in the future.
lol
You're SO close! If you had just clicked the link to Psychological fallacy you would have found that:
Psychological fallacies are simply a subset of logical fallacies.
Moving on:
Nobody's arguing otherwise, so congratulations, you just provided a good example of a straw-man fallacy. It's also an "irrelevant conclusion" fallacy, since, while in itself being a perfectly logical argument, it does nothing to address the original question - namely, the idea that the average person is not qualified to judge the amount of relevant experience which a politician has had.
There are certainly nuances which will not be understood by everyone, but that in itself does not mean that most people are unqualified to pass judgment on the situation. Suggesting otherwise is a logical fallacy in itself - it's essentially an argument from ignorance. It's like saying "well, you don't understand ALL of the science behind the theory of Evolution, therefore you are not qualified to judge it's merits". Better yet - it's like the people who argue that atheists cannot possibly discuss the concept of a "god" since they've never read the bible.
Lastly, while you can certainly make the argument (as you seem to be doing) that the average voter has no business deciding who's going to run the country, you're going to need to offer a better alternative if you expect anyone to pay attention to you.
Try "Special Pleading":
His argument is, basically, that anyone who doesn't posses a great deal of political experience can not possibly be an effective judge of Obama's qualification to run the country. That is, in a word, absurd. It essentially dismisses the entire concept of democracy. If you can't see the fallacy in his logic, I suggest you take a course on critical thinking, or at least get yourself a subscription to Skeptic magazine.
Uhm, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not running for president.
Your argument is just silly. According to that line of logic, I couldn't question some homeless guy's qualifications to be the head of CERN, since I'm not a scientist. It's a logical fallacy of the highest order.
Yes, it could. It could also be argued that the aim was to prepare future interns for service under the desk of Bill Clinton.
Just because an argument COULD be made, doesn't mean it should. If you truly think that your suggestion is a rational one, I'm willing to bet you'd feel right at home with those weirdos from ANSWER.
The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Well you got the date right, but the name wrong. Actually, 2038 is the year that Obama finally accrues enough experience to make himself electable :)
That ... that was incredible. I can't figure out whether his performance was a parody, or if he is truly the most messed-up conspiracy theorist of all time ...
His comment had absolutely nothing to do with corporations. You're simply trolling.
Nonsense - recycling fails when there's no financial incentive to do it, not because of "laziness". Haven't you ever seen a homeless person with a cart full of pop-cans? Why do you think that happens? I'll tell you why: because you can actually make a profit by selling aluminum cans. You'll never see a homeless guy carting off a load of used newspapers though, because there's no money to be made in recycling paper.
None of that has anything to do with CO2 either. Recycling doesn't reduce CO2 emissions.
You're right about the dependence on foreign oil, though, but there are many ways to deal with that. The current US Oil Shale reserves are larger than all the crude in the middle east, plus there are oil sands, and ultimately coal-to-oil conversion. You can ease your dependence on foreign fuels simply by growing your domestic production, just like we're doing in Canada now by massively increasing the exploitation of the Alberta oil-sands.
In the long run (VERY long run) we're going to need to switch to alternate fuels anyway, but in the meantime there's no reason to waste money on inferior products. The Prius is a piece of junk anyway, and you can get similar mileage out of a small gasoline (or better yet, diesel) powered car. I'll stick to my nice big Dodge, thanks :)
Ah, but that's why you have to read what they actually said. It states quite clearly:
Your "stinkers" would be considered a manufacturing defect, so even if they replace 5,000,000 crappy batteries every year, their statement would still technically be correct.
Sneaky bastards ....
For some reason that reminds me of this comic.
And the author's Canadian! Perfect!
Money and effort aren't the same thing.
In the TV business, as in all forms of art, "novelty" is usually the biggest draw. The effort involved in creating a novel product/show doesn't actually cost much - the problem is that large companies see anything new as risky. They generally consider it much safer to stick to the same formulas which have worked in the past.
Do I really have to explain capitalism to you?
Fine, here goes:
Certain products sell better than others. Whether a particular product sells better because of quality, customer ignorance, or advertising is largely irrelevant. Companies which put in minimal effort generally see lower profits than those which put in more effort.
Any further questions?
It depends on your level of income, of course. A Canadian at the lowest end of the tax scale tends to be better off than an American at the lowest end because American medical insurance premiums don't vary based on income. On the other hand, someone with my income would be a bit better off in the US, and someone raking in $250,000 a year or more would be MUCH better off in the US.
The downside is that if you have any SERIOUS medical conditions, you're much better off going to the US and paying for it yourself. Those who can afford it do so all the time. Those who can't afford it get to sit in long lines and pray that they get treatment before their condition worsens.
The other part of the problem is that "free" health care encourages abuse. I've been to an emergency room three times in my life, and each time I've seen dozens of people who had no business being there. When you offer people a service which is paid for by taxes, they're much more likely to abuse it than if they're paying for it out-of-pocket or if using it will increase their insurance premiums.
(and no, in case you're thinking it, I wasn't abusing it when I was there. once was for a gushing head wound, the second time for a spinal injury, and the third was arterial bleeding. don't ask.)
As for me personally ... I'm an employee of the government, and as part of my job I'm covered under a federal Blue Cross policy. I'm not even allowed to use the regular health plan that's available to all other Canadians. So I'd be quite happy if they stopped taxing me to pay for the medical system :)
He's probably full of shit, but that's besides the point. You make some decent arguments, but the fact of the matter is that a person who makes 2 mil a year, even if he were only to pay 1.8% taxes, would be paying out $36,000 a year, or $360,000 at your tax rate. More likely he'd be paying out even more than that, since tax rates are higher for the rich than the poor. If you think that anyone can do enough driving in a year to justify that, you're nuts :)
And no, I wasn't calling you an idiot - sorry if it came out that way. I find your argument to be quite rational, and I can't say I necessarily disagree with too many parts of it - I just don't think it's fair for anyone to be be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes per year, regardless of how much they make. It might be a good idea - it might even be necessary - but it's certainly not fair.
FYI, here in Canada I pay about 25% tax. That's without getting into sales taxes and property taxes, which also happen to be much higher than yours. My parents, on their combined income, pay about 33%. So you Yanks aren't too bad off.
Sure, if he also accounts for 99% of the school allotments, road usage, fire and police responses, and medicaid and welfare payouts.
I know, I know ... in our system we NEED the rich to support the poor, otherwise everything starts to fall apart. I just get pissed off when I see idiots attacking the rich for being "lazy" or "greedy". So yeah, I've got no problem with the rich paying on a percentage basis just like the rest of us, but let's not pretend it's "fair", and let's not pretend that they're not paying enough ... and it'd be nice if people would stop and think about how much their daily lives are subsidized by others.
Most of the data is anecdotal, however, it does seem to indicate that an increase in minimum wage always results in layoffs - the only question is "how many". As for law-breaking ... yeah, that's "theoretical", but the rapid growth of under-the-table immigrant labor in the US certainly suggests that there's something to it.
You're right to point out that there's no hard statistics to back these analysis, but when it comes to economics and socioeconomic policy ... statistics aren't everything :) Otherwise we'd have no more communists in the world!
Yes, I was over-simplifying a bit. There's no long-term effect because eventually inflation corrects for the initial problem. There certainly is a short-term effect, though. I'm not sure that the person who gets laid off thanks to your well-intentioned raising of the minimum wage will be at all comforted by the fact that his situation is "short-term".
You're obviously trolling, but I'm bored, so what the hell:
Minimum wage laws generally only result in layoffs and law-breaking. They also make it much more difficult for students and youth to find part-time and summer jobs, which not only deprives them of spending money and experience, but also seems to correlate with increased youth crime and delinquency. The idea that we could simply pass a law to make employers pay everyone 4 times as much is so ridiculous that only a moron (or a troll) would suggest it.
I never said anything about them not paying enough tax - I said that they suck up more government resources than they pay for. I didn't even suggest changing that, I was simply pointing out that it's ridiculous to suggest that the rich aren't paying their fair share.
The people at the bottom of the system have always gotten "bugger all". Apparently you're not only ignorant of economics, but history also. The difference in our society is that we've redefined "bugger all" to mean "can't afford a Lexus".
Actually, that was four, not three. I guess we can add basic counting skills to the list of abilities you don't possess.
Also, your sob-story would be a lot more convincing if I were some rich snob who's never seen a poor person in his life. Maybe that description suits you better than it does me since, apparently, you don't actually know how the "poor" live. Either way, your description of their living conditions is ludicrous. When even "poor" families can own a fridge, a car, and a TV, you're not going to be very successful in guilt-tripping me about their "horrible" condition.
As for your linked article, it's an interesting study, but without raw data it's impossible to asses it's credibility. Certainly the first sentence is so misleading as to suggest that the entire article is most likely worthless. They state that:
"Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes"
and then follow it up with:
"More than half of foreign companies and about 42 percent of U.S. companies paid no U.S. income taxes for two or more years in that period"
Which, of course, completely contradicts the opening statement. Of course, YOU probably can't see why those two statements are contradictory. I'm going to leave you to work it out yourself. Who knows, maybe the mental exercise will kick-start a few of your neurons.
One outlier does not a trend make. All the statistics I've ever seen show clearly that "the rich" carry a disproportionately high tax burden, not just in absolute figures but on a percentage basis also.
That's certainly true, but they're also taxed at a much lower rate.
I mean, seriously, the top 1% of income earners in the US pay more income tax overall than the "bottom" 90% combined. I can't really blame them for wanting to skim a bit off the top. The bottom 40% don't even pay enough income tax to cover the benefits which they get back in the form of services.
Ah, yes, those Federal Milk Inspectors and their evil White Helicopters have had an awful effect on milk donation in the US. Why, just yesterday I saw a little old lady getting her ass kicked by 4 "Milk Men" for trying to give a homeless guy some creamer packets. It's horrible, I tell ya ...
Depends on what's being "purchased".
Many people see tax evasion as a victimless crime, or are happy to do it because they don't like the government. Others, who may realize it's wrong, justify it by telling themselves that "everyone else is doing it".
Now if you were talking about crimes which we all can agree are immoral - murder, rape, Microsoft, etc - then you'd have a point. But when it comes to tax evasion, EVERYONE has their price.
That's probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever read on slashdot, even including some of the stuff over in the NIST/WTC7 thread. I'd have modded you "funny" if I had the points!