It's hard to take ignorant people seriously.

As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. But, if you enjoy watching fact-free people pontificate about stuff they know nothing about the comments section of any newspaper is the perfect place to entertain yourself.

In the comments section of this report on very serious allegations of fraud in the Seattle School District is this jem (among others)from Allan in Gig Harbor (emphasis mine):

a lot like the corruption that was investigated over at the Port of Seattle. It's way too easy to steal money from the taxpayers in this country. Non-tax-paying folks need not comment on the rest of us who do pay income and property taxes

I love this quote because, referring to examples of fraud and abuse at the local level, manages to imply that people who disagree with him don't pay taxes while at the same time demonstrating ignorance of what taxes we pay at the local level.

Everyone who has ever spent money in Washington state has paid taxes. That's cause we have a sales tax. On the otherhand, we don't have an income tax-- you are confusing state, local and federal taxes which pay for, well, different things.

Beyond that, fraud exists in the private sector so I don't see why we should expect the public sector to be any different. I guess I am not awesome enough to see why this is somehow worse than a bunch of private lenders paying off private appraisors to inflate the value of a house to convince borrowers to buy overpriced homes. Or setting up an extra-legal system of tracking mortgages to save on title recording expenses.

This seems like run of the mill fraud that combined one person or persons skimming money through a shell company enabled by executive management that didn't provide proper oversight. Sounds like a good candidate for a job at a major US Bank to me.