Does Anyone Else Do This (laughing at sovs)?

[davids]

Hello All -

I seem to go back and forth between periods of activity and non-activity on this site. I for years have found the sovs and some of the ludicrous internet-centered scams to be hilarious. However, at times reading about it and laughing about it, I sometimes feel a little guilty. Like it's slightly mean-spirited. I mean, some of these people are real true blue believers. And thanks to the internet, they can go online and have a constant new supply of new believers who will continuously reinforce their (false) ideas about birth bonds and driving without registration, lawyers being secret members of the British government (I was told this one recently and had a good laugh about it). So, it's easy to think that their quasi-education is valid, for some.

Does anyone else ever get a guilty conscience about laughing at these folk? Or is it just me?

[Famspear]

.....Does anyone else ever get a guilty conscience about laughing at these folk? Or is it just me?

I never get a guilty conscience about laughing at these folk.

In fact, it's what I live for.



It must be just you.

[Hyrion]

Laugh at them: check

Feel guilty about it: not in the slightest

Since they are totally responsible for all the pain and suffering they bring upon themselves (while, whether they realize it or not, deliberately trying to harm others) and won't let anyone with any sense talk them out of it - I don't feel any guilt at all.

Is it uncivilized to laugh at a bad person hurting him/her self?

Philosophically I'd say it is - but I couldn't for the life of me tell you why. As a result, I do not have any valid reason at all for such a position so my answer really should be "unknown".

Laughing at them - per se - does not harm them. It may make them feel foolish... but then a person who does something foolish should feel foolish. It may make them feel guilty.... but then if they are responsible for something, they should feel guilty.

Do I laugh at a child who is running and playing, trips, and bangs their knee into the sidewalk? Nope! Absolutely not. That's definitely not a nice thing to do. Accidents happen to everyone so laughing at someone getting hurt by accident = not nice at all.

Would I laugh at a child who is play-acting about falling down? Yup! Even if they actually get hurt? Yup... till I realized they really had got hurt - something they didn't intend. But we're talking about a situation where the individual isn't doing something that will harm someone else in some way. So I'd say that's an important factor - which is why it'd be "a bad person doing something that hurt themselves".

But then, it should be noted, I've never much understood "politically correct". The concept seems to be an exercise in "saying something that will offend no one". Given the factor that you can not control other peoples perspectives combined with the factor that some people will find fault with anything, it's not possible to please everyone. Additionally, when you're "trying to avoid hurting the liars feelings by calling them something other than a liar" the individual often misses the point that what they did was wrong/bad/etc. They're supposed to understand what they did was wrong. As a result, I prefer to call a spade a spade. Tell it like it is, and it's harder for people to claim they didn't understand the message.

I have been described by others as being brutally honest.

[Famspear]

Mind you, some of them make it very easy for us to laugh at them without any substantial reason for feeling pangs of guilt.

I'm more interested in the tax protesters than in the sovereigns (although there is of course some overlap).

I'm not sure which ones are worse: The ones who should know better because of their training and experience in tax or other legal or accounting areas, such as Joe Banister, Jeff Dickstein, Sherry Jackson, or Oscar Stilley.....

......................or the arrogant ones -- who clearly have no rational basis for claiming to "know" what they claim to know, such as Peter E. ("Video Arcade Blowhard Manager Man") Hendrickson, Doreen ("I'll get the phosphorus for the bomb"/"I'm so drunk the police will have to user a Taser on me to get me out of the car") Hendrickson, Marc ("I hightail it out before the jury gets back") Stevens, Larken ("anarchist"/"you're not the boss of me") Rose, or Lindsey ("odometer fraud") Springer.

[AndyK]

It's easy to laugh at their inane antics and court filings.

But, then I take a mental step back and ask myself "How did they get there and why? How were they able to discard all their education and common sense experience and dig such a deep hole for themselves?"

It all comes back to the self-professed gurus; always willing to acept a few FRNs for their proven advice or to just dish it out for free.

The victims -- yes, they are self-inflicted to an extent -- deserve something other than laughter.

But, they make it SO hard to keep a straight face.

[Hyrion]

The victims -- yes, they are self-inflicted to an extent -- deserve something other than laughter.

How do you define: victim?

I ask, because from what I've seen so far, the "victims" have not been in the definition I would understand the word.

Take the Volks as an example. I do not see the Volks as victims. They chose to defraud the bank. Whether or not "John Dillinger convinced them to rob the bank" doesn't change the reality they committed the act fully knowing, if their plan worked out, they would receive something of value that they were not entitled to.

The proof is in the math.

I recall one of their claims (and my memory could be wrong on this point) was that they had paid enough to fully pay for the property.

According to the court filings, the property was worth $380,000, the mortgage was entered Mar 5, 2007, the outstanding principal calculation by the bank was $264,561 on Oct 7, 2013, the interest rate on the mortgage started at prime + 3% then eventually moved to prime - 2.7%.

Let's assume they paid all the way from Mar 5, 2007 through Oct 5, 2013. That's 77 months. To pay off $380,000 in 77 months (without interest), one has to pay $4,935 per month.

Based on the bank filing, they paid $115,439 in principal. For the 77 months covered, that works out to $1,499 per month.

That leaves a balance between the two of $3,436. That would be the theoretical interest paid. That amounts to $41,230 per year which works out to an interest rate of 10.85% per year, from 2007 through 2013 (or an avg through that time frame).

Current prime mortgage rate as listed by Bank Of Canada is 4.84%. I've been following the mortgage interest rates of CIBC the last 2 years because I'll be picking up a mortgage. I find it really hard to believe British Columbia banks (or at least the one the Volks went through) were setting such a high prime interest rate relative to the rest of Canada.

The numbers simply do not add up for their story. As a result, I reasonably conclude they were active, conscious participants in Fraud. They absolutely knew they originally agreed on a $380,000 value. They absolutely new (or reasonably should have known) the total they paid in both principal and interest did not cover that amount. And yet they expected not to have to pay anymore and keep the property as though it was fully paid.

It may very well be a situation of a con conned by another con. But they certainly do not fit what I would consider to be the reasonable definition of victim.

Analogy:

2 Criminals decide to get together to rob the bank, 1 will plan the robbery, the second will commit the act. They both share in the proceeds. The planner cons the second to give money up front providing the committer the plan. The committer then commits the robbery, gets caught, and goes to jail for the crime.

Sure... in a pure philosophical sense, in the narrow view of the committer paying for a plan that was supposed to work, the committer was a victim of the planner. But this no innocent with clean hands.

[wserra]

It depends on whom you're laughing at. Some of the main players are mentally ill. Several have been judicially found incompetent. Mental illness is hardly a shield from criticism. But continually mocking such people is cruel. You know about whom I'm talking.

Others - especially the promoters - are fair game. Even so, we have to keep in mind the reaction of the casual browser. The board does sometimes seem to pile on, especially from the point of view of someone who hasn't seen the morons for years, the way we have. Little is gained when fourteen posters make the same sarcastic point.

Just my view.

[Pottapaug1938]

To the extent that I participate in this, my goal is not so much to try to change the attitudes of the sovruns, which is generally a futile gesture; it's more for the benefit of those who may be about to sip the kool-aid, in the hope that seeing the sovrun's fantasies challenged with facts or with pointed questions might alert the "sovrun newbies" that "here be dragons" of they choose to sail into those waters.

[Dezcad]

It depends on whom you're laughing at. Some of the main players are mentally ill. Several have been judicially found incompetent. Mental illness is hardly a shield from criticism. But continually mocking such people is cruel. You know about whom I'm talking.

Others - especially the promoters - are fair game. Even so, we have to keep in mind the reaction of the casual browser. The board does sometimes seem to pile on, especially from the point of view of someone who hasn't seen the morons for years, the way we have. Little is gained when fourteen posters make the same sarcastic point.

Just my view.

I concur, FWIW.

[NYGman]

I do think it is sad sometimes, especially some of the poorer folks taken in by tax promoters. It is the shops that set up in the poorer parts of town, offering the highest possible refund, only to file fraudulent returns, often claiming credits the flier is not entitled to. They take a Percent of the refund, don't sign the return, and vanish right after tax season. These are the lowest of the low, and they got me into this area of research. The fact that some of these folks would have qualifies for EIC, and may have received decent legitimate refunds, but end up owing the entire refund, plus P&I, really pisses me off. The Tax scammers are long gone, and not always caught. They sell the reparations credit, income is not taxable, the 1099OID scam, or just make up stuff to claim inflated refunds. Some use churches to recruit more victims. In the end, it is those that can least afford it, that will suffer the most, because of unscrupulous tax scammers.

While these folks are not in the same class as tax protestors, these tax scammers are just as bad, if not worse, as many of the people they scam are actually honest people, just trying to get the best refund they think they are legally entitled to.

I also think there are some of these people who do seek out this stuff, and buy in to what these Guru's are selling. There is a general feeling that the rich don't pay the same proportion of tax as the average person, and they can do this because they know secrets that only the rich can know. Guru's promise to share these perceived secrets with the common man, and this is a tempting proposition for people who consistently hear that the rich do not pay their fair share of tax. Unfortunately, these people do not understand that the reduced tax rate is do to legitimate tax positions, that were designed to stimulate investment. The more we talk about the tax imbalance, the more the common person will seek out a way to pay less, the more likely they are to be tempted by a tax Guru selling his snake oil.

We have the perfect environment for these guys to thrive. Sites like this allow people to find a counter point to the crap being sold by these charlatans, and hopefully persuade people of the errors of their ways. The only problem is, that as these people begin to be exposed to these Guru's and their tax concepts, the more they are exposed to the other far out ideas some of these people have, and that is where I think you see the transition from TP to Sovrun.

At some point, my sympathetic views shift, and then their actions start to become foolish, and their behavior comical. Their logic disappears, and they lose the ability for rational thought.

So, while I do find some humor in this, ,all in all, it makes me quite sad that people are needlessly ruining their life due to the actions of some self appointed guru

[Duke2Earl]

The essential problem is that many people want to blame their real, actual problems on the government, the courts, the immigrants, the jews, dark skinned people, or you name it. Yes, in many cases, life has dealt some of these people a bad hand, but blaming it all on these others not only doesn't fix it and indeed makes it worse.

[notorial dissent]

Particularly not when the problems begin and end with them.

[Number Six]

I can't recall ever getting a sick glee over the plight of confused people fighting the tax or legal system, but have seen some truly deserving of legal problems due to how badly they have treated other people, ripping them off, how badly they treat their wives (or husbands), their kids, and others; and then burdening the legal system with nonsense. Some of them are projecting their parental conflicts earlier in life on to the law as a type of transference. The sad thing is that the proper resources are not being devoted to the top tax cheats and instead are being wasted on nincompoops and whack jobs.

Judges are a pretty humorless group when they have to deal with violent and other bad people on a daily business. And the tax and legal systems perform many functions as torturous as they are for those who are dealing with intractable problems. Once when I was in D.C. for the Smithsonian, I checked out the federal courts, was curious as to what Royce Lamberth's court looked like. Many of the accused there are kept behind glass, I guess with the violent ones they have a special protocol.