Saipan claims ComputerLand founder owes taxes(finance.yahoo.com) |
Saipan claims ComputerLand founder owes taxes(finance.yahoo.com) |
To say more eloquently what bugsy was trying to express, while it is unclear if Mr. Millard did commit a crime, you must take into account that the people chasing him for supposed tax abuse are some of the most corrupt people on Earth. Much of that information is available on Wikipedia, but just read some of the websites of ex-pats and such and you will get a good idea. Thus, I would take anything said by anyone in the Saipanese government with a large grain of salt. Furthermore, even if Mr. Millard is guilty, if the Saipan government gets his money, it will be a negative outcome for everyone.
I thought then when I was doing this project I was "helping" these folks who didn't have all we have. BS! I wasted my time and my life helping ungrateful people who ripped me off. I would not trust Saipan in any dealing with money involved.
It seems there was more talk about the fact that Saipan was trying get his money by changing their tax laws, not that he fled the US because he was wanted for tax evasion as the WSJ article makes it sound.
edit: for clarity
http://www.google.com/search?q=saipan+corruption
makes me feel like whatever the truth is, it's not exactly as described here. I'm not saying the guy hasn't done anything wrong, just that I suspect we're not getting the whole story.
For instance, why are all these private law firms spending all this time and money chasing this guy around? Certainly not out of some kind of goodwill on their part. Do they get a cut of what's collected? Are they being paid by somebody? I don't ask because I want to impeach their motives -- it's just a critical part of any story. Any "chase" story has a chaser and a person chased. We're missing key details.
I would also want to hear from the guy in question. What's his side of the story? Even horrible wartime criminals end up on CNN telling us all their side of the story, but this guy gets nothing.
Plus, it's obvious that as a reader I am supposed to have a reaction. Something like "That cheap bastard! I hope they jack the jail up and put him underneath" or some such. Maybe it was just me, but I felt the author trying to push my buttons along those lines. I find being manipulated like that uncomfortable.
Not a quality article in my book. But heck, that's not saying the guy didn't do something wrong. From this article, I just don't know one way or another. All I know is that he has money and that people are chasing him for it.
Saipan is one of the most corrupt backwards places on earth. As a US trust territory, for many years they had slave plantations that produced clothing for chinese companies which was labelled "Made in USA". Many workers were kept under brutal conditions, raped, beaten and killed. The Saipanese are mostly incredibly lazy and loved this system as it allowed them to have houses full of slave servants and great wealth without ever having to work for it. It all collapsed a few years ago, but there's a close to 100% chance that they are the ones running the scam in this current case.
edit: Keep downvoting this, monkeys! I have no doubt I am one of a small handful of people on HN that has intimate experience of how Saipan works and how corrupt this place is. My post gives true insight to what is going on there. Imagine the worst fundamentalist christian ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend town straight out of the movie Deliverance, but then give them dictatorial control over outsiders, a total lack of desire to work and a strong desire to dominate control and cheat others and you have Saipan. It's like a stereotypical town thought to exist in the backwoods of Arkansas, but it's real, slavery is still legal, and it's part of the US. Absolutely anything involving Saipanese officials that has a money angle for them is a total scam. Since their slave factories collapsed, they have been in desperate straits to steal what they can. I totally believe the CEOs explanation that they backdated their tax code specifically to target him, and then never served him of any real notice of it until now, after they've gotten a bunch of judgements against him in which he had no chance to represent himself because he didn't even know there was a case about this. That is exactly how they work. They are incredibly conniving and will work every system to get what they want. Typical small town american fundamentalist hillbillies, but in a pacific island trust territory. These comments apply to the people in control there. There's also the regular people who hate what has been done to their island over the years, many are ostensibly good people. It's the corrupt people in power that are the troublemakers, and dealing with them is exactly exactly like Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist - which the Saipanese basically are. The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar sort of madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that belief system. And if you had no idea about the slavery and corruption and you are downvoting this you are only proving how mentally you are exactly like them. This post tells you the truth about Saipan, a place that until just now you probably never heard of. Ignorant fools.
Regardless of what you think about the Northern Marianas, this guy doesn't deserve anyone's pity, he's been a tax cheat for well over 2 decades.
And no I don't "believe the CEO's story that he was never served", that's horseshit. He left Saipan for a reason, to continue to dodge taxes any way he could.
What is est? Google and Wikipedia seem quite unhelpful.
Edit: found it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training
It might be an ok approximation to describe Erhard as the Eckhart Tolle of the 1970s. But Erhard was more aggressive and perhaps less delicate about making money. He eventually sold Est to a group that became the personal development outfit known as Landmark, which is still going and subject to the same criticisms.
the world would be a better place if there war more werner erhards, people who made the success of all humanity as their own personal business.
Don't forget this is the same Saipan that hired Jack Abramoff and lobbied Tom Delay (before BOTH went to jail on other corruption charges).
We turn now to Abramoff’s special relationship with the South Pacific island of Saipan and how it connects to his ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Saipan is an American territory in the South Pacific also known as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. In the mid-1990s Abramoff was on the payroll of Saipan officials aiming to stop legislation that would crack down on sweat shop conditions, which run rampant on the island. In 1997, Abramoff arranged a lavish trip to the island of Saipan for Delay.
The Delay trip was originally reported by Brian Ross, Chief Investigative Correspondent for ABC News. We are going to play 2 excerpts from the report that aired on ABC’s 20/20 on March 13th, 1998. In this first excerpt, Ross interviews Allan Stayman, a Clinton administration official in the Department of Interior who was investigating labor conditions in Saipan. Brian also talks to a worker in one of the factories and ends with Eric Gregoire, a human rights worker. Most of the workers in these factories are from mainland China.
http://www.democracynow.org/2006/1/4/forced_abortions_sweats...
>...fundamentalist christian [sic] ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend town...
>Typical small town american [sic] fundamentalist hillbillies...
>Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist
>The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar sort of madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that belief system.
This last one takes the cake. Even if I take it at your word that the Saipanese are as lazy and corrupt as you make them out to be (which seems to be the general consensus here and on Wikipedia, so I'll accept that for now), you have absolutely zero proof that they became that way because of "fundamentalist missionaries," rather than being that way to begin with. You say that these negative attitudes come "with that belief system." What belief system? It sounds like you're blaming the problems of Saipanese culture on some chimerical theology that doesn't really exist.
If those missionaries were protestants (especially if they were Calvinists) in the 17th, 18th, or 19th centuries, they most likely did their best to instill the indiginous people with a solid work ethic[1], exactly the opposite of the vices you are trying to pin on "fundamentalism."
Here's my anecdotal evidence: In college, I briefly dated a Samoan girl who was working on a graduate degree at a nearby university, with her research subject being the colonial history of the South Pacific. Samoa was proselytized by Calvinists in the 19th century, and she told me that when the missionaries first arrived, the Samoans were pretty much the way you describe Saipan today, and that the Calvinist influence helped bring about a more egalitarian and less corrupt culture (with unscrupulous European traders often at odds with the missionaries because they sought to profit from the native corruption). Samoa isn't Saipan, but it is an example of "fundamentalist missionaries" having exactly the opposite effect on a South Pacific culture from what you blame them for in Saipan.
If I keep the entire dollar, I have earned my eighty cents AND I owe 20 cents in unpaid taxes.
This gentleman has not been convicted of any crime, but it is certainly possible that he has “earned his success” AND that he owes money for unpaid taxes.
However I did note:
'"These factories have all closed down. (See "Economy"). The CNMI came under Federal minimum wage regulations in 2007 and immigration law in 2008. In June 2009, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security takes over the CNMI’s immigration and border controls.'
Also it mentions nothing about Bugsy's "fundamentalist christian ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend[s]" that he claims are running the shop and enslaving everyone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Mariana_Islands reads as a better less emotionally charged and leveller article. The talk there appears to indicate that the problems of slavery and poor worker conditions were brought on by criminal or unlawful factions operating in the society. This contradicts the tone of Bugsy's comments that seem to suggest there was a malevolent Christian organised and government sanctioned (by the US) use of slavery ...
However, I will say that Millard knew all this about Saipan and still located there so he wouldn't have to pay his taxes. If they turn on him, that doesn't make him a hero, no matter how "earned" the money was to start with. It makes him a fool.
How the USA treats trust terriories is pretty shameful.
So you put your name to this?
">...fundamentalist christian [sic] ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend town...
>Typical small town american [sic] fundamentalist hillbillies...
>Southern Bible Thumping Fundamentalist
>The fundamentalist missionaries infected them with the peculiar sort of madness, entitlement, laziness and corruption that comes with that belief system."
It's just an internet board, don't get worked up if you get downvoted now and then. Try not to call everyone monkeys and ignorant fools, we're mostly human beings and above average here.
I have no use for such vitriol in my communities.
Just so you know why I did it.
Why wouldn't I believe it?
As you yourself mention, the WSJ said so.
At least one jury decided he did.
Judges have reviewed the facts and issued a number of gag order backed subpoenas.
50+ shell companies.
Disappears from view for 20 years.
etc.
Occam's razor, QED.
Cmon, you're going to bat for this guy with a 25 year old article that predates the "alleged" evasion?
All that being said, I was just using his term (in quotes) for the sake of continuity of conversation, and it was not my intent to lend credence to his application of the label "fundamentalist" to 18th- and 19th-century missionaries.
I don't hate Saipanese people due to their ethnicity or anything, and I'm not opposed to Christians as a group (I know good and bad ones); it is just the way Saipan works that I hate.
Just to be certain. You put this down to the work of Christian missionaries? (Your point that you know some good Christians is noted, irrelevant as it is to the current question).
Presumably either you or Bugsy know the names of these notorious sex fiend missionaries that have so transformed Saipan, I'm always curious about such reports.
As an aside WRT your note on "white plantation owners" I'm sure you know that black and coloured plantation owners too have exploited their slaves and workers.
If someone were to walk up and say "Mexicans are lazy," most of us would consider that person racist. Nevermind that "lazy" is a culturally relative term, but you go way beyond that when you describe the Saipanese as "the worst fundamentalist christian ignorant half retarded hillbilly sex fiend town straight out of the movie Deliverance...", and you only hedge that toward the end by saying your comments apply to the people in power.
You getting downvoted has nothing to do with people trying to promote political beliefs. (Most of us didn't have any opinion on Saipan until now.) It's about maintaining the otherwise typically high quality of discussion on HN.
Want to point out that Saipan's lack of labor laws led to terribly exploitative behavior up into this decade? Please do. Want to share your personal frustration in dealing with Saipan's corruption? Sure, I'm interested. But please leave the abusive ranting for someplace else.
Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
How do you know why he's being downvoted? I'd guess that he's being downvoted for his ignorant bigotry towards "hillbillies".
> He's outraged at the situation ..., so I think it's understandable.
Sorry, but outrage, legit or not, is not an acceptable excuse for slaming people who have nothing to do with whatever it is you're outraged about.
Bugsy's comment may have included some factually accurate content, but his form of expression is a signal of questionable credibility and a potential conversational rathole (such as this has become) should one choose to engage him further.
What's better is a happy medium, wherein one does not go overboard in either direction.
Ignoring those requirements leads to low-content discussion like, for example, this one.