Somebody was asking about a poll on the Occupy America thread, and that person's wish has been granted. But I would like to run a poll about a combination of popular threads. Here is the situation: It's the year 2013. A special committee has been convened to investigate the financial crisis, and they have identified several key individuals who clearly defrauded the people and basically caused this mess we're in for their own personal gain. Nearby, a court has just convicted Jerry Sandusky of several counts of child rape; apparently some tapes were found that prove that it happened beyond a doubt. The President of the United States, Mordecai Sholom (a surprise dark horse compromise candidate from the Green party), invokes an ancient Passover custom, and decides to use his presidential power to free one of these two - either the financial meddlers or Sandusky. He turns to the populace for advice. One will definitely be freed and pardoned of all past offenses, the other will be jailed, probably for life. FOCUS: Vote and debate.
Free the rapist and then watch what happens when he tries to you know...live. The fraudsters need justice to deter future fuckery, so a stint in Riker's would seriously deter fraud. The pedo needs to be removed from a society with children. I'm sure a more than a handful of socially minded bikers would be happy to oblige us.
Considering scumbags like Sandusky are completely fucked in the head it's doubtful that a prison sentence will act as a deterrance to other pedophiles. And even if he's released he's getting put on the sex offender registry and all that entails, to it's not out of the question that some of downndirty's biker buddies find him and administer some street justice. On the other hand prison probably is somewhat of a deterrance to assholes thinking of ripping other people off, so we can't send the wrong message and let those assholes out of prison, ever. Furthermore, while there's a sex offender registry for sex offenders is there a fraudster registry for fraudsters? Would they be banned from reading the WSJ or opening up an E-trade account? What would stop them from going right back to fucking up our entire country? As loathesome as it is for me to say it, Sandusky's release would be the lesser of two evils.
A convicted pedophile who has racked up a list of partners that would make Wilt Chamberlain blush vs. some assholes in nice suits who temporarily hurt an economy based upon the greed and other principles they acted on.... Throw that child touching fuck in the clink and melt the key. You can regulate those 1%ers to make sure they never touch anybody elses money ever again. They can be stripped of their credibility and monitored so that they never get in position to do damage again.... But a child rapist who seems to have racked up the pedophile high score? How do you monitor that? How do you reform him? You can't. So throw him away and forget about him 'til he's dead. Then parade the corpse out to be defiled and melted in a vat of acid. Money comes and goes. Its a man made system of visible power. Humanity would still exist and find ways to thrive without monetary systems. Some think we would do better without it. But children? Humanity depends on them. Fucking them up means fucking everything up. Irreplaceable. Honestly, if you had a choice between giving up all your assets to protect your child, or having your child defiled by some piece of shit, which would you choose?
I'm of the mind to free Sandusky. Only because inside or outside of the clink, somebodies going to kill the bastard. He may go free, but not for very long. The only issue I would have with this, is I am very uncomfortable with idea of him having a clean record. It isn't fair to those he abused.
Free Sandusky, but not for the cop-out reason that he'd get street justice anyway. I'm looking at this from a maximizing-utility standpoint. If you think high powered execs, once discredited, don't get a second chance to ruin companies and waste billions of dollars, please read a couple recent news articles on John Corzine and MF Global. In my mind, the theoretical "guys that ruined the economy" (the idea that there is an identifiable group is dubious, but that's another thread), would be far more likely to have an opportunity to do it again. No one is going to let Sandusky near their kids, on the other hand.
This, basically. The powerful have a way of remaining powerful. On the other hand, Sandusky would be made out of fucking Kryptonite. No one would knowingly hire or deal with the guy ever again.
I don't think everyone is looking at the full situation. It's already been outlined that in this hypothetical, we did find out that a few select people caused the economic collapse for their own gain. It wasn't a faulty system, but a few people directed by greed, who became very wealthy by throwing other people under the bus essentially. In no way do I mean to belittle the trauma Sandusky has caused, or the many lives he has ruined, but if we learned that the financial crisis could be pinned to a few people I don't see how can you pick Sandusky over them. These would be people directly responsible for ruining hundreds of thousands of peoples' lives. Criminals that would have robbed hard working people of pensions and retirement plans, many people of their homes, and contributed to the starvation and maybe even death of others. Weighing on an objective scale for who's done more harm I think you'd find no doubt it would be those key figures. Right now it's easy to pick Sandusky as someone to hate because he's someone you can visualize. It's not a complex matter to judge him; he touched kids, he's an evil man. There's no "well maybe he meant to do good by what he did", but I mean, given you could prove a few people caused the recession, and without their actions it wouldn't have happened? Throw those fuckers away forever. Mordecai for '16.