If the INS showed up to interview people it is probably because of someone using someone else's identity or SSN so the company could submit W2s to the IRS. What happens is that the victim of this scam realizes that he or she has a bunch of income being reported to the IRS, but never worked at the place. It was an illegal alien who is creating income and using your SSN for tax purposes. The victim is responsible for the taxes and in most cases they just pay it because you cannot fight the IRS.
Palermo's knows that they can hire illegals and pay them less. They also know that they need to file W2s on each employee, but that the employee isn't really paying any federal taxes because in many cases they used someone else's SSN. So they pay them at a much reduced rate, but they withhold zero, and then the victim of the identity theft would be on the hook for the full amount (instead of getting a refund) from the IRS.
The only time the INS even pretends to care is when they catch these kinds of tax games, and the only way these things are discovered is when one of the victims gets a lawyer to fight the government. Otherwise the Feds could care less, the victim receives a Tax Due Notice from the IRS, and frequently they just pay it off to make it go away. This is a criminal accounting practice which the IRS is aware of but does nothing to curtail.
Palermo's should be shut down. The company should be seized just like what they do during drug raids. All corporate assets should be auctioned by the state, and the management belong in prison. ALL of them.
A doctor friend says that although he'd preferably have his smoking patients quit completely, he'd rather have two smoking patients switch to snus, than one of them quitting completely and the other one keep smoking. Nicotine is bad, but the whole regularly-inhaling-smoke-into-the-lungs thing is also a stupidly dangerous way of getting the fix.
It's all a trade off. Introducing snus will probably make fewer people kick nicotine completely. It could also mean fewer already addicted people dying of nictotine addiction related diseases, and it would reduce second hand smoke.
One thing is for sure though: this should not be decided with tobacco companies by the table.
Nicotine have many properties, the most significant for human health being that it is extremely addictive. It's also a potent poison, but arguably the worst consequence of nicotine addiction is the fact that it makes us consume tobacco smoke, which also contains a multitude of other poisons and carcinogens. Claiming nicotine, on balance, is beneficial, is crazy talk.
The NATURAL thing you so gleefully tout is also utterly irrational. Arsenic is natural, so is radon, and ebola, and uranium, and rape. On the other hand, paracetamol, cutlery, sit-coms and antiseptics are not.
Pages