WizardMarks wrote:
WM: This is a truly unfortunate, oft repeated line. Ralph Bruins did time (2 years) over twenty years ago for his part in a banking scandal. He's kept his nose clean for a over two decades. Yet there are those who want to remind us that this man made a mistake once. Since, under our system of justice, he's long since paid for his mistake, why is it necessary to bring it up repeatedly to wider and wider audiences? Let the man enjoy his reformed status in peace. It's little enough to ask.So often those who would defend someone, and often even the person themselves, will frame what they did in terms of "making a mistake." While deliberately criminal behavior can be considered to be within the very large and flexible category of mistakes, it seems disengenuous to excuse such a behavior as simply a mistake.
WM: Under our laws, prison is where they send you to think over the mistake you've been found guilty of and vow to not do it or anything else grossly illegal again. After sentence is performed, you have "paid your debt to society." I do not excuse the behavior, I do think that he did the time and that's the end of it so long as he does not reoffend. For over 20 years he has not reoffended. There comes a time when a person who committed a crime has paid his debt and should be left alone. He did two years, that satisfied the law. What more would you ask? This was not a crime of violence.
Embezzlement and fraud are not victimless crimes.
WM: I made no such claim.
The perpetrator specifically knows they are hurting someone financially and who that someone is. They make a conscious choice to break the law, intentionally inflict financial pain and commit a bad deed. Is that a mistake?
WM: Yes, a conscious mistake, but still a mistake. We know that because he did not get life with no possibility of parole.
Compare it to a parking ticket, a speeding ticket, statutory rape and unintentional manslaughter while driving drunk. Where does it fit in the range of those "mistakes?"
WM: That is why laws are divided into misdemeanors, gross misdemeanors, and felonies. Bruins, from what I understood from the newspapers at the time, was a very minor player in a group of felony commiters.
Has Ralph Bruins really kept his nose clean, or has he just not been arrested? That is, has he gone out of hiw way to make amends and exhibited true regret -- something it appears that Brian Herron has done? Or just avoided run-ins with the law? Is he today in a position of fiduciary responsibility for other people's money? Maybe they have a right know about his past before they give their hard-earned dollars to an organization where Mr. Bruins is charged with its safe keeping.
WM: So once a guy is found guilty and punished, we are to assume that he stays negative, continues to violate the law, continues to be a problem to society, even though he has a clean record for over 20 years? Society should carry a grudge?
I'm making no claim or intention one way or the other, having never heard of the guy until Eva posted. But I'm pretty sick and tired of politicians, power brokers, corporate bigwigs and celebreties "excusing" their behavior as simple mistakes and insisting that the public just immediately forget and forgive. They should have thought about those kinds of repercussions before they acted.
WM: But you seem to have made a lot of assumptions, if you are assuming that the man is sneaking around the law in some way and just has not been caught, or if you assume that once a felon, there is no chance of redemption, no chance a person will change.
I'm not asking for perfection, here. I've made my share of "mistakes" and I regret them every single day.
WM: Is the man supposed to get on this list and daily request forgiveness? Give an accounting of his time? Show us the books from UV? What would satisfy you that the man has reformed his behavior, this 20+ years later?
Or do you believe Eva is simply trying to smear Urban Venturs and Ralph Bruins good names?
WM: I don't believe one way or another, believing doesn't mean jack squat without real information. My point was that there is a time to let go your bile and quit citing the reformed ex-con as proof that the organization is evil.
Urban Ventures has had a mixed reputation all of its existence. Much of that mix has to do with its leader, who has a tendency to wear on people's last nerves, to grind their grits as it were, to honk them off. The leader is not Ralph Bruins.
WizardMarks, Central _______________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy
Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
REMINDERS:
1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait.
For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
