Three Years? Three Years? Are you f’in kidding me?
Wesley Snipes skips out on a few taxes and he gets three years in prison? Three years?!?
The prisons are overcrowded. There are too many people taking up space inside them on drug charges. And now they want to make an example out of Wesley Snipes for not paying his taxes. Yo, it’s just money folks. It’s not like he hurt anyone. Oh, but wait, he showed disdain for the U.S. government.
Um… doesn’t everybody?
Meanwhile, in Manhattan, cops are acquitted after gunning a man down.
Did I miss something? Did the world temporarily stop at some point recently and then start spinning backwards?
Or could it be that these things happening so close together was the universe’s way of proving inequality in our ”justice” system? If that was your intention, well played, universe, well played.
Let me write this down somewhere.
I can do all the killin’ I want just so long as I meet my yearly April 15th deadline.
Check.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Isn’t that a rather outrageous apples and oranges comparison? The cops were acquitted; snipes was convicted of a crime. I wasn’t on the jury for the cops, and while I know the system breaks down spectacularly much too often, I’m not going to second guess a jury of peers who met for a long while, heard evidence and acquitted. The real question is should white collar crimes like tax evasion and tax fraud carry jail terms. My question is: why not? My first reaction when I heard the news about Snipes was a rather indignant “What!?!” much like yours. Then I thought about it. He whips out the checkbook and offers to pay 5 million at the sentencing hearing? Niiiiice. Seems to me it’s a damned if you do/damned if you don’t proposition. How many times have we heard complaints that the rich and famous get away with anything? I’m not too upset on his behalf after giving it some thought. Don’t forget, those taxes are supposed to go to the common good, eh? (Let’s overlook for now how very fiscally broken our various levels of government are). Flaunt the law, pay the price. I’m sure he’ll get a nice comfy country club minimum security prison, write a book about the ordeal and then use it to make a whole new kind of action movie when he gets out of the pokey.
April 27th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Yes it is a somewhat outrageous comparison, but I’m writing from emotional outrage in the moment, not for the Huffington Post
Come on, you can get well thought out, intelligent commentary anywhere. Wouldn’t you rather just see me rant? That is, after all, why I am here.
As for the comparison, clearly these things are far apart on the spectrum of crimes, but they just happened to occur within a day of each other, which had me thinking about both.
Personally, I find it easy to second guess a jury of peers, whether I heard the evidence or not. It’s kind of a “hm, how’d they come to that” reaction.
And since taxes are for the common good and he whipped out his checkbook and offered money, wouldn’t it have been better for everyone to take it? How does his being in jail help me? Especially if he is in a “nice comfy country club minimum security prison”.
And should white collar crimes like tax evasion and tax fraud carry a jail term? Let’s go ahead and add embezzlement and insider trading to the list too. No, they shouldn’t. Why? Because it costs tax dollars to put them in jail, and I don’t want to pay for it. I would rather them hit these people where it hurts them most. The crime involves money. Take away the money. Ouch. That’ll smart.
April 29th, 2008 at 12:54 am
To add to what you’re saying, how many famous people have been convicted of drunk driving, with the potential to actually kill someone, and served a couple of days, a few hours, or even less than an hour?