Saipan claims ComputerLand founder owes taxes | Hacker News Reader

Saipan claims ComputerLand founder owes taxes

finance.yahoo.com

76 pointsvipivip49 comments

Saipan is indeed one of the most corrupt backwards places on Earth. I know because I've actually been there and got to know some of the locals and politics of the place while there.

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.

A negative outcome for all of us would be to have a 20+ year tax cheat end up owing nothing. You can bet the plutocracy will be watching this case closely.

Excuse me, but why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion? The fact that the WSJ claims him to be does not make it so. Here is some more information about Millard, you can find it by restricting your google search to items published before 9/1/11 - http://articles.latimes.com/1986-08-25/business/fi-16194_1_t...

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

"why do you believe Millard to be guilty of tax evasion?"

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?

I worked on a US Government contract to help the local colleges. Saipan is THE most corrupt and backward place on the planet, no question about it. I've spent about three months there over several years, and while the locals not in positions of power are pleasant, the politicians and others are the laziest group I've ever known. They do whatever they can to scam the US government into giving them "grants" for all sorts of line-their-own-pockets kinds of gigs.

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.

Structurally this article reads like one that has been "placed" by a PR firm. That combined with e.g.

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.

Agreed. The guy may be a crook, but something about that piece doesn't sit well.

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.

I remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who earned his success.

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.

If I earn $1.00 and owe 20 cents in taxes, I’ve earned my success in the amount of eighty cents’ worth of financial prosperity.

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.

did you not read the part where they backdated the changes? So if you owe 5 cent in taxes and pay that and then a few years later the gov't says "we changed the code you owe us 50 cents and this retroactively applies to the last few years." You would be perfectly okay with that?

As a citizen, I would be perfectly ok with hiring a lawyers and tax accountant and disputing the charges using the existing system we have for disputing taxes and/or having unjust laws stricken off the books.

Downvoted purely for "Keep downvoting this, monkeys!". HN would be better off without that sort of nonsense.

That's part of the edit after an extremely useful post with insight into the reality started getting downvoted because it didn't conform with the political or whatever beliefs of the downvoters. HN would be better without the pathetic reactionary losers who use downvoting to promote their political beliefs.

I imagine the downvotes have a lot more to do with the way you wrote and not what you wrote.

Perhaps, but again - there is some seriously messed up stuff going on there. It's hard to not be outraged and have that spill over. He's outraged at the situation (in addition to being downvoted for the TRUTH), so I think it's understandable.

> (in addition to being downvoted for the TRUTH),

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.

Well, elevating form over content is a hallmark of the superficial. Formalism dictates that the way something is said is more important than the meaning of the words.

And ignoring form causes negative reactions that are best avoided, particularly in cases like this where they are unnecessary.

What's better is a happy medium, wherein one does not go overboard in either direction.

But form is content in its own right; in a forum, the tone, diction and precision of someone's contribution contains a lot of metadata about their own emotional investment in the topic, relevant background knowledge, and willingness to participate in constructive discussion.

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.

I wouldn't say we've elevated form over content. Only that we require form to meet certain minimal standards. This requirement allows us to keep discussions productive and evidence-focused -- in other words, our standards for form result in improved content.

Ignoring those requirements leads to low-content discussion like, for example, this one.

HN would be better without Ad Hominem Abuse such as calling people “monkeys” or “pathetic reactionary losers.” I don’t normally respond AND downvote, but these words have earned an exception.

In fact abusive language is against the HN guidelines[1] under "In Comments":

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."

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Bugsy, I don't doubt that a lot of really horrific stuff has gone down in Saipan, owing in large part to the US's willingness not to enact labor laws there until just recently. But can you see how your method of saying this out overshadows the point your trying to make?

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.

I didn't downvote but I do agree with you. It's much better IMHO if you take the downvotes on the chin and leave it to someone else to point out (as a reply) that the downvotes were not deserved.

I think the OP is correct, despite all the people downvoting him for his tone. All these allegations have been been documented.

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...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff_CNMI_scandal

Yes, yes and yes. Absolutely. Key parts of the sordid, brutal and shameful history of american slavery in the 20th century. US slavery in the last 100 years, and the support and defense of that slavery by the certain groups of interest, should be taught in every social studies and US history class in every credible school. But it isn't. Instead we get propaganda about how that was all in the past and the US is free. Ha. The truth is very different.

I didn't downvote you, while I don't think you did the best job of making your point, everyone who clicked downvote should take a minute and read the Wikipedia page on it Saipan because it does sound like a seriously messed up place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saipan

TBH that link is next to useless - look at the talk page someone has a huge axe to grind there.

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 ...

There are lazy and corrupt people everywhere, saying "one of the most corrupt backwards places on earth" and "the Saipanese are mostly incredibly lazy" tells me more about you then the N. Marianas. Tacking on "this is just about the people in charge" doesn't work either, paint with a thinner brush in the first place.

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 wouldn't have downvoted you, but then your edit included some incredibly bigoted and unwarranted stereotypes:

>...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.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

Saipan is inhabited by the Chamorro, who are mostly Roman Catholic. Quite the opposite of Calvinists.

Same, had no problem until I read the edit. I'm not an evangelical and certainly have my qualms with them, but I have some serious issues with bugsy's characterization. Living in the (mainland) US, you are exposed to many Christians of many denominations, and I don't know of a significant group yet that can be characterized as entitled, lazy, mad, etc. That may be an appropriate characterization for some of their oppressive false priests, but it definitely doesn't apply to the generality of congregants of any major religious group in the US of which I am aware.

Keep in mind that "Christian Fundamentalism" didn't even exist until the end of the 19th century. Trying to pin anything that happened in the 17th or 18th century on "fundamentalism" is a mistake.

In the modern sense of the term, that is true. However, one could certainly make an argument that Oliver Cromwell, et al were fundamentalists, as well as the original settlers of Plymouth. You could go back even further in time and apply the term to various Catholic orders at certain points in history.

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 am unfortunately familiar with the CNMI/Saipan and what you say was true 8 years ago; no reason to think it has improved.

How the USA treats trust terriories is pretty shameful.

rdl: "what you say was true 8 years ago" //

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."

Yes. They are an isolated small community which takes horrible advantage of people in their own society who can't defend themselves, and then they started importing even less empowered people to oppress. Similarly to how rich white plantation owners oppressed both other poor white people and imported African slaves.

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.

>Yes. They are an isolated small community which takes horrible advantage of people in their own society who can't defend themselves //

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.

In response to your edit, I've downvoted & flagged you. I've never flagged a comment before.

I have no use for such vitriol in my communities.

Just so you know why I did it.

I downvoted you for your tone, not your facts - which are entirely correct.

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.

Really, the whole history of the Trust Territory is a sordid, disgusting mess.

I also remember ComputerLand stores. Sounds like he was a hard working guy who earned his success... who then decided to use it to become a tax cheat for the rest of his life.

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.

Stories like this convince me that many of the most sophisticated cases of tax evasion are actually the product of an OCD-like behavior.

A devotee of est, a faddish self-empowerment regimen of that era

What is est? Google and Wikipedia seem quite unhelpful.

Edit: found it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training

Est was big in the 70s and attracted a lot of celebrities. For example, there's a video on Youtube of John Denver guest-hosting the Tonight Show and interviewing Werner Erhard. His teachings were a mixture of Eastern religion, 60s ideas about psychotherapy (e.g. Gestalt and encounter groups), and the early 20th century American self-help movement that used to be called New Thought and that gave rise to such writers as Napoleon Hill. Est was controversial because its groups had a confrontational style that some people found reminiscent of a cult, and because Erhard got unapologetically rich from it. Eventually he was attacked by mainstream media. In one famous case, 60 Minutes did a hatchet job on him and were later forced to retract all of it.

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.

Now there's a blast from the past!

it might be bad form to just be unabashedly for anyone or anything in this world, and, the way the whole thing occurs to me is that werner erhard is one of the GREAT misunderstood mysteries of our time. He is just an average guy who really got into what he was into which was empowering others effectively, I have never met e person who was more compassionate and useful and humble and not caring about $ than this guy, yet the media and anyone with a grievance promoted and repromoted and repromoted a view quite the opposite of him and that is what stuck and what gets repeated when referring to him. Just as well, being in the public spot light sucks and is one of the most useless grotesque phenomenas in society today in my opinion. what artist or politician or person exercising some kind of leadership in life does not inevitably experience the "crowned" turning on them?

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.

"crowned"? "war" Freudian slips, meant crowd and were.

Ah, a blast from the past. I was reading Once Upon a Time in Computerland by Steven Levy. Not a bad book, but I wondered what happened to Millard. Now I know!

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