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Comment by tjic | Hacker News Reader

You don't understand why taxpayers are upset that government officials theoretically working FOR them can make idiotic decisions, and then get off consequence-free, and all the damages that they created are paid for by everyone but themselves?

What aspect of this should we elaborate on?

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There are so many other instances where this logic is usually not brought up, but it can apply far more readily. It's as if making this man destitute and the government winning is the better thing. It's the same logic of people implying people who get an non-guilty verdict are usually secret guilty.

It is the logic of being angry that someone (a prosecutor) breaks the law and they don't pay, the taxpayer do. No one is saying the prosecutor should have won.

It is difficult because I have heard this line of thought many times before when the person saying it did think that the person awarded money should not have won.

I lived in a school district adjacent to the Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania in 2004/2005 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School...) and I cannot count the number of times I heard people (people I knew to be ardent creationists that supported the defense) complaining about the award because the money was just coming from tax payers.

The message, as they expressed it, was not that we should be angry at the school-board for causing such a waste of money, but that we should be angry at the Plantiffs and the ACLU for 'wasting' that money. (Yeah, that is a crazy position. That was par for the course though.)

Why in the fuck don't a group of qualified investors and political hackers quietly mask their purpose to form a top-tier PAC to fuck with the system for the interests of private citizens? Fight fire with fire, because campaign finance reform is not going to happen in the US.

The reason why one would continue to wear the badge of "taxpayer" and not simply "extortion victim".

The man deserves his money back, and the prosecutor needs run out of town on a rail (if not imprisoned) for corruption.

It sucks we have to pay, sure, but I'd much rather the man get his money back than not.

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