Do we investigate Wall Street and the Banks?

[Lost User]

Stan Shannon wrote:

If no such evidence exists than no investigations should take place.

Unless you investigate, or at least have an inquiry, how do you know if evidence exists or not. The concept of "no smoke without fire" is not relevant as evidence has a habit of hiding itself away from prying eyes. And especially so when money is involved.

Stan Shannon wrote:

bad financial decisions

Your bank is supposed to be a place of trust and a safe haven for your savings etc. Small value errors happen all the time but big stonking errors of the magnitude of the very recent times beggars belief. Incompetence may be part to blame but greed also has it place there as well alongside some rather dubious, perhaps border-line illegal, and downright illegal activities. As such, there exists adequate suspicion that not everything is hunky-dory and prime for investigations. Freedom can indeed be a dangerous thing to have but it must also be transparency and tinged with responsibility.

[Stan Shannon]

So, you're saying that the government should have the power to investigate any private exchange of wealth, anytime, anywhere, for what ever goddamend reason it likes? No warrent necessary? I sure hope you weren't one of those complaining about Bush wire tapping people.

Richard A. Abbott wrote:

Incompetence may be part to blame but greed also has it place there as well alongside some rather dubious, perhaps border-line illegal, and downright illegal activities. As such, there exists adequate suspicion that not everything is hunky-dory and prime for investigations.

And 'greed' is a reasonable justification for government intruding into your private life? Precisely who gets to define when simply pursueing a profit constitutes greed?

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

The answer is to engender a society where elected representatives do not aid and abet a bunch of crooks and where crooks are dealt with in a forceful, certain manner

Gee, and here I thought you were saying we shouldn't look into the doing of these bankers.

Stan Shannon wrote:

and the way you do that is to have a society which encourages traditional moral values and principles

I take it you mean the ones you agree with, is that correct? The fact that the citizens of the U.S. up to and including presidents, "traditionally" smoked marijuana until it was outlawed in the thirties doesn't count, right?

Stan Shannon wrote:

If a civilization cannot do that, it really doesn't matter much how you try to deal with the inevitable consequencies

Yeah. I think the first time the human race was warned about abandoning traditional values was when we started cooking our meat.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

Gee, and here I thought you were saying we shouldn't look into the doing of these bankers.

We shouldn't. We simply expect people to behave in appropriate, honorable, moral ways, and they will.

Oakman wrote:

I take it you mean the ones you agree with, is that correct? The fact that the citizens of the U.S. up to and including presidents, "traditionally" smoked marijuana until it was outlawed in the thirties doesn't count, right?

Thats merely another example of your study of silly, self serving, history. Yes, it was a legal product, but any study of history idicates quite easily that it was not widely used as a drug.

Oakman wrote:

I think the first time the human race was warned about abandoning traditional values was when we started cooking our meat.

Jon, you and your compatriots a blithering idiots. Your political principles are never going to work. They are, in fact, going to destroy our civilization for both economic and social reasons. Frankly, thats all fine with me. I'll take pictures to show all the christian fundamentalists who will replace you.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

We simply expect people to behave in appropriate, honorable, moral ways, and they will.

Yeah, take that up with Bernie Madoff, will you? He's one of your heroes, isn't he?

Stan Shannon wrote:

Yes, it was a legal product, but any study of history idicates quite easily that it was not widely used as a drug

You have got to be kidding me. The U.S. Army during the Mexican war, smoked more dope than it did during the Vietnam war. Franklin Pierce - who was a helluvalot better general that he was a president - used to smoke it with his men. You really have got to stop reading your history out of grammar school books.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Your political principles are never going to work.

Coming from a guy who thinks that America only hope is to go back to being a largely agricultural, small town collection of largely independent states, that is hilarious. :laugh:

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.

[soap brain]

Stan Shannon wrote:

I'll take pictures to show all the christian fundamentalists who will replace you.

They're too stupid to replace anybody.

[soap brain]

Oakman wrote:

Coming from a guy who thinks that America only hope is to go back to being a largely agricultural, small town collection of largely independent states, that is hilarious.

I'm sure he wouldn't like it very much, should it ever happen. Civilisation progresses for a reason.

[Lost User]

Warrants - don't need a warrant to START an investigation no more than you need a warrant to commence the investigation of a murder. However, to search property, including personal and business records, you need a warrant, although in UK law there are certain specific exceptions to this rule. Regarding financial and corporate crime, and in that I include all forms of money laundering, in Britain there exists legislation that enables bank reporting of suspicious transaction and transactions generally where larger quantities, or frequent activities of largish sums of money, of funds enter/leave/moved around the banking system. And warrants are not required for that reporting, however, warrants would be required to conduct proper investigations of such activities. Reference your wire tapping issue, the law in UK is rather different than applies in the USA. AFAIK, unless the Home Secretary signs a particular order to the effect, wire tapping is illegal. As such, to hide white collar crime is fairly easy but this requires a certain kind of meticulous investigation where clarity of deeds is not always transparent. Greed - In the 1970's, the late Premier Ted Heath accused Tiny Rowland of "Unacceptable face of Capitalism". This is not the only occurance of such. This article is relevant A Repulsive Farce - The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism By BRIAN CLOUGHLEY [^]

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

Yeah, take that up with Bernie Madoff, will you? He's one of your heroes, isn't he?

WHich part of 'punish those who break the law' don't you understand?

Oakman wrote:

The U.S. Army during the Mexican war, smoked more dope than it did during the Vietnam war. Franklin Pierce - who was a helluvalot better general that he was a president - used to smoke it with his men. You really have got to stop reading your history out of grammar school books.

I seriously doubt any of that. A better example in any case is the American Civil War. MOst of the more senior officers on both sides were veterans of the Mexican War, and there is damned little evidence of hemp smoking among them. There is tons of evidence of soldiers on both sides trading coffee for tobacco, for exampole, but few stories of hemp being as popular on either side. Even as legal as it was, it was not a popular commodity for any thing other than making rope. There was certainly some hemp smoking as it was completely legal, but it was not an altogether common vice. Now, opium became very popular in the decades after the war, but hemp was never that commonly used. There was certainly no great hue and cry among the general public when it was made illegal. MOst people hardly even noticed. My dad (born 1913) didn't even know what marjiuana was when it started being used in my home town c. 1970. It continues to be quite humorous that you consider yourself to be educated on this period of history, Jon. Not only do you not know anything, you don't even know how to approach the field of study in order to actually learn anything. Your true ignorace is very much exposed every time you open your mouth on the topic. You might impress some of your equally poorly educated breathern on the internet, but you come off as nothing but a fool to someone who has actually read some real books in a real university.

Oakman wrote:

Coming from a guy who thinks that America only hope is to go back to being a largely agricultural, small town collection of largely independent states, that is hilarious.

And I'm right about that.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

WHich part of 'punish those who break the law' don't you understand?

The part about expect them to be honest and they will be.

Stan Shannon wrote:

I seriously doubt any of that.

So? Your opinion is suddenly worth something?

Stan Shannon wrote:

A better example in any case is the American Civil War

Because you know nothing about the Mexican War?

Stan Shannon wrote:

but hemp was never that commonly used

Marijuana was used in many patent medicines after the Civil War. Its use was so prevalent that after 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act required labels to carry that ingredient.

Stan Shannon wrote:

My dad (born 1913) didn't even know what marjiuana was when it started being used in my home town

Too bad he never read the newspapers, or listened to the radio. There was quite a hue and cry about it in the thirties as Elliot Ness, and others, campaigned to have it made illegal.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Not only do you not know anything, you don't even know how to approach the field of study in order to actually learn anything

Stan, I am so much better informed than you are, on so many subjects, that I not only know more than you do, I have some inkling of how much I don't know. You on the other hand think you have learned everything of any importance (back when you were reading real books in a real university, maybe?) and no longer need to study, do any research, or -- most tragically - think. Like Ilion, you are secure in your ignorance, and you have shown over and over again that it is impossible for you to learn anything. This exchange is a perfect example - because you have read a bit on the Civil War, you think to refute my information about the Mexican War with factoids about something that took place in a different time and a different country, rather than going out and learning anything yourself, or at least demanding my proof. It is easier, I suppose to rail at me as if your words mean much more than a dog yapping at my vehicle when I drive down the road. And I guess, for a moribund mind, it's more comforting, too. By the way, I might be more impressed with your erudition, if you learned to spell. That was something I di

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

Stan, I am so much better informed than you are...

The only thing you are informed on at all are those things that reinforce your preconcieved biases. At some point you were studying some book on why we were supposed to be a libertarian nation but that the evil social/religious/capitalistic zealots destroyed our precious libertarian rights. In that process you came across some book that made some kind of inane point on the use of marijuana in the Mexican war which you thought was really cool. You did no further research to verify that information. YOu read it, it reinforced your prejudices, so you believed it. So, Jon, let me set you straight. The use of marijuana was not twice as much (or whatever ridiculous figure you used) during the Mexican war as it was during Vietnam. That assertion is even more ludicrous than your "Southern Aristocracy" claim. In fact, it probably was not even twice the rate of the WWII generation. That is a made up, unsupportalbe lie created specifically to be promulgated by simple minded true believers such as yourself. It isn't true, Jon. If it were than certainly the use of the product a mere 12 years later would have been far more significant than it was.

Oakman wrote:

Its use was so prevalent that after 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act required labels to carry that ingredient.

SO was opium and cocain. So what? There simply was no huge consumer base for those substances even though they were perfectly legal for a very long period of history.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

As H.L Mencken once said about someone like you: "It is the dull man who is always sure, and the sure man who is always dull." Why don't you admit that you know little or knothing about the Mexican War - or for that matter, the use of marijuana in Mexico during the 1840's and let it go? Are you really that afraid of admitting you don't know something?

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

Why don't you admit that you know little or knothing about the Mexican War - or for that matter, the use of marijuana in Mexico during the 1840's and let it go? Are you really that afraid of admitting you don't know something?

The only thing I know about the Mexican war is what I learned in reading the biographies of the Civil War officers who served there. I readily admit that. I have very little interest in that episode, or in the history of marijuana for that matter. But I do know how to think about and analyze such claims. It is highly unlikely that the information you claim is true could be. And, for that matter, even if it were true, it has no significance to any subsequent history of AMerican society. If the entire American force spent its time in Mexico in a drug induced coma (ALthough you would think that Lee, at the very least would have made mention of it) they certainly did not bring the habit back home with them. The notion that you would even promote it as some kind of accepted historic fact is far more significant than the information itself. How could such a claim be verified even if it were true? Hell, how much marijuana was smoked in vietnam? Were you counting baggies or something? I will remain happy to be dull if the alternative is to latch on to every possible bit of propagandistic information for the purpose of promoting an entirely inane and intellectually indefensible world view.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

That was something I did in a real grammar school, with real spelling lessons.

So, you have no university experience? I thought so.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

So, you have no university experience? I thought so

You pompous little twit. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I went to a very highly regarded and expensive university on the east coast. Not to the local state teacher's college over in Mentone. I'm sure that at jerkwater U, you weren't required to spell well, or have a decent vocabulary. After all, it was wonder enough that the son of an illiterate redneck like you could get into college. Sorry to burst your bubble, but I'm also better educated. :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

a very highly regarded and expensive university on the east coast

Where? I have degrees from the University of Oklahoma and the University of Alabama.

Oakman wrote:

it was wonder enough that the son of an illiterate redneck like you could get into college.

Indeed.

Oakman wrote:

but I'm also better educated

You certainly don't act like it.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

University of Oklahoma and the University of Alabama

I just knew you were a state college kind of guy! Bet you learned all about how to grow corn and raise chickens. I went to Boston University. (Tuition there, per year, is about what it is for four years at the U of Alabama, isn't it?) Then did some post grad at Princeton until I realised I realised I had better things to spend my trustfund on. Later my employer sent me back to the trade schools to get advanced training as a programmer - Hey, I bet your "web designer" experience is buying a copy of Front Page. :laugh:

Stan Shannon wrote:

You certainly don't act like it.

And what, pray tell, does a guy selling car parts in a jerkwater town in Indiana know about what truly educated people act like? Have you ever met one?

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

better things to spend my trustfund on

What the hell is a trustfund? And if it is what I think it is, what the hell was someone with one of those doing in Vietnam?

Oakman wrote:

Hey, I bet your "web designer" experience is buying a copy of Front Page.

Actually, I'm not a web designer, per se, although I suppose I do a little from time to time. I sell myself more as an all around windows application developer. But yes, I am self taught on most of the technologies I use on a daily basis these days. But then, who isn't?.

Oakman wrote:

And what, pray tell, does a guy selling car parts in a jerkwater town in Indiana know about what truly educated people act like? Have you ever met one?

Yes, I've met several. I consider many of them to be among my closest friends. And most of them would know that "marijuana use in the Mexican war was twice that of vietnam" is not a verifiable assertion to base an actual historic thesis upon. So, apparently, you wasted your trustfund money on an education you could have gotten by simply goggling libertarian web sites.

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.

[Oakman]

Stan Shannon wrote:

What the hell is a trustfund

Until I was 21, it was a large amount of stocks and bonds overseen by my mother and my lawyer and paying any bills I ran up. When I reached my majority it became an annuity that paid off every month until I was 35 - by which time my grandfather (Yale, Exec VP of NYC) and father (Princeton, Duke, History Professor at Groton) figured I should be doing all right on my own. They were right :cool:

Stan Shannon wrote:

what the hell was someone with one of those doing in Vietnam?

Killing gooks. It's an adrenaline high.

Stan Shannon wrote:

Yes, I've met several.

With degrees from (snort) The University of Oklahoma? I bet you think veggieburgers are just like ground angus sirloin.

Stan Shannon wrote:

And most of them would know that "marijuana use in the Mexican war was twice that of vietnam" is not a verifiable assertion

There's one thing that's quite clear. You have done no research on this at all. You remain complacently, fatuously, sure of yourself, in spite having admitted you know nothing about the time and place. Is that the hallmark of an educated man down at the U of "Alabamy?"

Stan Shannon wrote:

So, apparently, you wasted your trustfund money on an education you could have gotten by simply goggling libertarian web sites.

I knew about libertarianism before there was a Google; before there was a Netscape. By the way, Vietnam is the proper name of a country. It's always capitalized in educated circles.

Jon Smith & Wesson: The original point and click interface Algoraphobia: An exaggerated fear of the outside world rooted in the belief that one might spontaneously combust due to global warming.

[Stan Shannon]

Oakman wrote:

History Professor at Groton

What was his doctoral thesis?

Oakman wrote:

You have done no research on this at all. You remain complacently, fatuously, sure of yourself, in spite having admitted you know nothing about the time and place.

Yes I tend to rather enjoy being complacently and fatuously sure of myself about things that aren't true.

Oakman wrote:

I knew about libertarianism before there was a Google; before there was a Netscape.

And I'm sure you also knew all about the history of marijuan use by US troops during the American-Mexican war. (Was that your dad's thesis by any chance?)

Chaining ourselves to the moral high ground does not make us good guys. Aside from making us easy targets, it merely makes us idiotic prisoners of our own self loathing.