2010+Unspun+Chapter+5+Precis+and+Powerpoint+Period+8

Getting the facts right can save your money, health, and freedom. Good people can get taken advantage of without even knowing it and sometimes the consequences these people face can be horrible and life altering. Many people looking to save money can fall victim to scams that promise a legal way to avoid paying taxes called 'tax schemes". However not only are these illegal but the consequences for being caught are no laughing matter, including fines, big penalties, the interest on top of the taxes they have yet to pay, and sometimes even prison. Even if the people engaged in these tax schemes had no idea they were participating in illegal activity they can still be held accountable for their actions. A quick and easy way to avoid falling victim to these schemes would be to look up tax schemes on the internet where there are official warnings about various types of tax schemes and what are the likely repercussions are for a person involved in these kinds of activities. The information society has received and relied upon may actually cost us more money in the end. The "Grey Goose Effect" aka the Chivas Regal Effect, causes customers to think that higher priced items are better than those that are priced lower. This is in fact false. Most of the time, lower priced items are just as good, if not better than those that are priced higher. This not only happens with the products in stores but also when considering colleges in America. By checking the facts before you buy the product, you may save money and get a better deal. Not only can losing money or getting into trouble be repercussions of not knowing all the facts, sometimes your health can fall victim as well. Sometimes people will fall into the trap of buying alternative medicine that is not prescribed by doctors or controlled by the FDA, because they are promised that it will help to cure their ailments. Seriously ill people looking for hope in curing their disease are often the victims of these traps because they are willing to try anything. Medical fraud activity can sometimes further damage to the patient’s health and also cost the family even more money because medical practices such as these would not be covered by insurance. There is a lot of information that we are given about our bodies and health that is false. Women are more likely to die of a heart attack or strokes than they are from breast cancer, but many people think breast cancer is the number one cause of death for women. Knowing the correct facts can save your life. Media has a strong influence on what society thinks or worries about. By putting the correct information in the media, we can influence society in a positive way. Misinformation is a big cause of death. Without the correct information, people don’t know how to save themselves or are not aware of the problems that lie before them. Being uneducated about sexual behavior can prove harmful to teens and college students. Ignorance about risks associated with participating in sexual acts can lead to contracting dangerous and harmful diseases that could have easily been prevented if they had know the facts about how to prevent such things from happening. Another area where teens and college students tend to construe their own ideas as opposed to what is actually factual is the area concerning the pressure to have sex. It has been shown in many studies that teens and college students believe that more of their peers are sexually active then there are in truth. The idea that so many people are engaging in these sexual activities often pressures others to do so as well. Not only does this pertain to peer pressure to have sex, but peer pressure is also apparent in other social events like drinking and drugs were the perception that doing such activities is a commonality, where in reality participation in these activities is much less than it may appear. Individuals within society interpret the views of the public and incorporate those ideas and views into their own lives. The way we think other people live affects the way we live. Because of this, our ability to advance as a society has diminished. If people hadn’t been mistaken about how the majority felt, they would have been more likely to speak their opinion instead of hiding the ideas they shared with the majority. Often times getting the facts wrong can be devastating. One case in particular where getting the facts wrong can cause unwanted repercussions is when this misinformation leads to war. More than once the United States has gone into war based on false information most apparent with the war in Vietnam and currently the war with Iraq. False information such as this has lead to thousands of deaths over something that was not even true in the first place. Commanders in the Military are willing to misinform or lie to the public in order to save their troops. In several cases, the public has been used by the military to throw off the enemy. The truth of the history of war is usually hidden until many years later after the war has ended. Also, some of the major wars America has endured are based on lies. Information that is wholly true is not hard to find. The information seekers just have to look in the right direction. The internet, for example, is a very useful tool that people rely on to receive the information they are looking for. This does not mean, however, that all the information that is given out on the internet is completely true. The good news is that it is not hard to obtain accurate information concerning matters that affect our lives. There are many reliable sources that are quick and easy to access on the internet such as the Food and Drug Administration’s website where you can look up all the side effects of a certain medications with the touch of your mouse. The information is out there so you can avoid becoming wrapped up in a world of misleading information and flat out lies.
 * Precis**

You wake up in the morning because that’s what you were told to do. You go to school Monday through Friday because that’s what you were told to do. And eventually you will grow up and move on to bigger and better things because that’s what you were told to do. These are just a few of the many simple facts that we live by in society today, but what happens if these facts are not always so truthful. In George Orwell’s 1984 the facts may contain no truth whatsoever, but they are the facts, and the people of Oceania will live by them. "And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed, if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” (Orwell) In 1984 the truths of the past were constantly being changed so that eventually the factual records of the past, or at least what everyone accepted as the factual data of the past was a lie. By controlling what appeared to have happened in the past The Party was able to control the way people thought about the present. If all the information you had present was pointing to a single conclusion such as in 1984 there would be no reason to contest that it was not the truth, or at least that is what The Party and many businesses and companies in our own society want to happen. “Tell them what they want to hear.” is a familiar quote to many people. This quote is has been used in countless movies by businessmen who are trying to encourage the purchasing of their product. This simple quote may be one of the most dangerous for consumers. The idea that lying sells products is completely factual. Every minute people are being conned into buying or investing in things that are either not as good as they thought they would be, or not what they wanted at all. All this is because they were told what they wanted to hear. A patient dying of cancer would want to believe that a special blend of herbs could really help to save their life, but in reality they are just being conned into buying cilantro because someone told them what they wanted to hear. There are many people out there willing to cash in on a natural human tendency to hear what we want to hear and as consumers we need to be aware of medical scams like this one and many other scams that upon first glance also seem too good to be true. In 1984 the Party told everyone what they wanted to hear. The said that the war was going good, chocolate rations were up, and the way of life for everyone was improving, all of which were false. These lies may have worked out great for The Party but for everyone else, everyone they conned into believing their story, the ramifications were so bad that one might say that they were lucky they didn’t know how bad they had it. Our section of Unspun covered how falling into deceptions, misleading arguments, and flat out lies can cause loss of money, dignity, freedom, and even your life. By fully researching and understanding a topic before any decisions are made can usually prevent scam artists, the masters of deception and lies, from intervening in your life. According to the Unspun article by investing a little time into finding out the true facts of the matter you are able to make a more informed decision on what politician to vote for, what car to buy, or whatever you are planning to associate yourself with. In 1984 the people of Oceania did not have the luxury we do to find out what the true facts of the matter are. This is due to the fact that almost anything that may have been true in the past would no longer fact in present day, and any record of the truth of the past would have been eliminated. The people of Oceania only had one source for their information, The Party. The fact that The Party is the only source of information available means whatever The Party says is fact, is fact, whether or not it is true. The difference between fact and truth in 1984 can be compared to the difference between what is inferred and what is truth in our society. Many times businesses or companies will not lie, but mislead their audience to avoid penalties that would cost them money. For example a juice ad may claim that their juice is made with real fruit, but what they forget to tell you is that only 5% of the juice is real fruit, the rest is sugar-water and other flavorings.(Liebman) This advertisement is not a lie, but they led you to believe that the juice is helping you achieve better health or another serving of fruit, when in truth it wouldn’t even count has half a serving of fruit. This may seem like a simple lie, but to a mother with an already hyperactive child the extra sugar from that juice box is probably not only detrimental to the child’s health, but mom’s health too. Being informed about the facts of what was contained in the juice box could have been obtained by reading the really, really, really tiny print on the back of the box, but many consumers fail to waste time doing this, and in turn fall into the juice company’s trap. There are even worse things than falling for false or misleading advertisements, and that can be falling for false ideas. Tax schemes can cost those involved in them not only their money, but if caught and found guilty of participation in a tax scheme you could spend some serious time in prison. On January, 8, 2010 Brice Carrington was sentenced to four years in prison, three years of supervised leave, and an order to pay nearly five million dollars in restitution and back taxes for wire fraud and tax evasion. Mr. Carrington had convinced thirteen people to invest their money with him that he then wired to offshore accounts promising to double or triple their investments and help them avoid paying taxes on these investments. The idea that Mr. Carrington had the intent to pay his investors back had he not been caught is highly unlikely. This may seem fair, the bad guy is getting put away and he has to pay for his crimes, but what is also mentioned is that the thirteen victims that he had taken the money from were participating in this crime as well. They were not paying taxes on the money that they had gave to Carrington, and when you don’t pay taxes on something the taxes don’t just go away, they increase. The victims of this tax scheme ended up paying not only their taxes from over a four year period but also the interest (“IRS.gov”). There are many ways available today to find out what is truth and what is just un-truth (as they would say in 1984). We have access to so much information with the internet today where if the fact is out there you can find it. We have an advantage that we can challenge and identify misleading or false information that is presented to us, an advantage that The Party took away in 1984. The Party succeeded for the most part in controlling the minds and actions of their subjects through lies. We must not let business, our government, or anyone else control us by lying to us any longer. That is why getting the facts is so important, because without the facts what chance do we have for the future?
 * Reader Response**

Works Cited "Examples of General Tax Fraud Investigations." //IRS.gov//. 04,Feb,2010. Web. 8 Feb 2010. . Orwell, George. //1984//. First American ed. . NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1949. Book 1 Chapter 3. Print.

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