Monsanto?!

[Andrew Schreiber]

Originally Posted by Lil' Lavery

The statement was intentionally hyperbolic to provoke thought and discussion of the issue here. It was in response to the post above it, regarding "tainted money," and contained a direct analogy to real world events. I prefaced it with "speaking hypothetically" for a reason.

I'll say the same thing I said privately then: That argument is flawed. It means that any arguments (or at least any parallels we could draw) are based on the assumption that Monsanto has done something illegal (or, has not paid the court ordered penalty for illegal actions if they DID do something illegal). You may call them morally repugnant (and there's a chance I'd even agree with that) but to claim they have broken the law and not paid all legally required penalties is a dangerous road to tread on.

Now, what discussion should we be having here? A discussion about whether a company that makes its profits in ways that some of us call questionable should be allowed to donate to groups? A discussion whether FIRST should have turned away funding from a company that makes its profits this way? Or can we just be happy that some of this, in your opinion, ill gotten money is being given back to a group that isn't bad?

I'm cool having any of those discussions, but if this is going to turn into comparing a legal company to an organization focused on illegal activities or in attacking specific companies I'm not so sure that this is the proper forum.