[HN Gopher] Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
___________________________________________________________________
Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
Author : aresant
Score : 533 points
Date : 2021-01-20 06:03 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov)
| wnevets wrote:
| and it only cost $2 Million [1].
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-associate-
| reportedl...
| sn_master wrote:
| Please do not propagate unproven rumors. Most of that 73 person
| list are people who clearly don't have anywhere near those
| amounts.
| wnevets wrote:
| Its not a rumor, its an outright accusation by former CIA
| operative John Kiriakou
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Therefore, all men are Socrates.
| wnevets wrote:
| No, therefore its not a rumor. Its an accusation.
| sn_master wrote:
| CIA operatives don't lie for political gain purposes?
| wnevets wrote:
| You're absolutely right, trading pardons for cash would
| be completely out of character for the previous
| administration. Anthony Levandowski's conviction was
| obviously a miscarriage of justice and its a good thing
| it was corrected at the very last minute.
| sn_master wrote:
| Your response shows the effect of the mainstream media
| which intentionally denied all the positive things Trump
| and his administration has done to the country.
| wnevets wrote:
| I don't what form of media you consume that would cause
| you to dismiss an entire profession as liars for
| political gain.
| sn_master wrote:
| So do I for you dismissing an entire administration as
| corrupt.
| wnevets wrote:
| How exactly would you describe Anthony Levandowski's
| pardon?
| sn_master wrote:
| Under the logic of picking a single bad example, every
| single US administration is corrupt.
| wnevets wrote:
| Bad example? It's the entire point of the original post.
|
| Keep moving those goal post tho. You've already went from
| it's mean to say that the previous administration was
| corrupt to every administration is corrupt.
| mastermojo wrote:
| My knee jerk reaction to this is also to be upset, but if I try
| to view his sentence from a perspective of rehabilitation vs
| punitive action ...
|
| His original sentence (6 months ago) was 18 months. I don't know
| if the extra 12 months here changes anything.
| nikanj wrote:
| He didn't serve time yet, his sentence was postponed due to
| corona.
| aikinai wrote:
| He didn't actually serve any of the time.
| kenneth wrote:
| Seems the comments here are mostly negative -- saying his pardon
| is an example of corruption and that he should be in jail.
|
| Personally, I think that the ability for gigantic corporations'
| ability to not only sue their former employees or influence
| justice to get them thrown in jail by the government is a much
| bigger problem.
|
| And generally I feel like prison sentences for white-collar and
| non-violent crime is in almost all cases excessive.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| In general you may be right, but stealing code from one
| employer to give to your next, and explicitly being paid for
| this and advancing your career, is not a good example. His
| actions were clearly wrong, and this is just an example of the
| way white collar crime, even when it causes massive damages, is
| not practically punished as badly as blue collar crime.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| I'm not really interested in seeing Levandowski sent to jail
| either.
|
| People like him are a menace to society and shouldn't be
| allowed to operate companies or deploy capital.
|
| Society blesses individuals with the privilege to form a
| _company_ and in exchange those company officers are expected
| to make a net positive contribution to society. Jobs,
| investment, progress.
|
| If you fail to do that -- through stealing, fraud, corruption
| -- the least you should expect is to _never be allowed to run a
| company ever again_.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| OK, but so many people go to prison for theft of much, much
| less. Why shouldn't he face at least that much justice?
| gorgoiler wrote:
| It's a good point. I'm resigned to the pardon happening,
| but won't accept this person being allowed to run a
| business again in the future. That's the line I draw in the
| sand, somewhat pragmatically.
|
| There are certain positions of trust that hopefully they
| will not be able to hold.
| draw_down wrote:
| Society blesses individuals with privilege?
| koolba wrote:
| The actual title is " _Statement from the Press Secretary
| Regarding Executive Grants of Clemency_ ". Took a second to
| realize that the editorialized title is referring to Anthony
| Levandowski[1] (of Waymo / Google / Uber).
|
| Upon first read I just saw the last name and thought it was
| related to his former campaign chair Corey Lewandowski[2]!
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corey_Lewandowski
| avs733 wrote:
| My partner and I were talking about this and honestly wondered
| if there had been either a mistake in reporting or a mistake in
| the actual process. The input of Thiel made it more clear.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Came here to say the same.
| boringg wrote:
| Paid a lot of money for that pardon I reckon even though he was
| clearly a criminal. The trump admin is such a sham. So glad that
| they are out of power - hopefully forever for the sake of the Us.
| tartoran wrote:
| That's what I was thinking too but it is possible he'd be
| pardoned by any other president for the right amount. I'd just
| think Trump would be the easiest to obtain a paid pardon from.
| tartoran wrote:
| That's what I was thinking too but it is possible he'd be
| pardoned by any other president for the right amount. I'd just
| think Trump would be the easiest to obtain a paid pardon from.
| (cash-for-pardon)
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| Well hopefully it will lead to the end of this 17th/18th
| century relic.
|
| Fully implementing the spirt of the civil service reforms and
| and have 99% of current presidential appointments done on merit
| instead.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| As opposed to Mark Rich, who was a much bigger piece of shit?
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| You're right, Steve Bannon is the better equivalent Marc
| Rich, except probably worse.
| lokar wrote:
| I read some reporting that the going rate was only $20k, 10 up
| front and 10 after.
| Strs2FillMyDrms wrote:
| I'm a little bit confused.. I am ecuadorian (efefctively 3rd
| world), we manage ourselves in dollars. I live in a somewhat
| affluent side of a main city, even tho I am not rich myself,
| and on a daily basis I see cars which are 50k+, one behind
| the other. Even though this people are corrupt (most of them,
| tax evasion, etc..), I'd argue that US corruption would be on
| another different scale... 20k for a presidential pardon from
| the president of the US, that's the price of a Chinese
| manufactured brand new car.
| boringg wrote:
| It is a function of the current corrupt president and his
| close aides. This would never be the case on any of the
| former presidencies - presidential pardons aren't bought.
| It's such a sham that it is apparently something that can
| be bought and really speaks to the depths of depravity and
| how low the Trump presidency can go.
|
| I think the OP has the numbers wrong but regardless, it
| isn't something that should ever be bought.
| perfmode wrote:
| link?
| lokar wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/trump-
| pardons...
|
| Sorry, it was 100k, 50 up front:
|
| "A onetime top adviser to the Trump campaign was paid
| $50,000 to help seek a pardon for John Kiriakou, a former
| C.I.A. officer convicted of illegally disclosing classified
| information, and agreed to a $50,000 bonus if the president
| granted it, according to a copy of an agreement."
|
| And this is not to trump, but rather to his groupies to
| talk to him on your behalf. At least on paper.
|
| Still, probably a good value if you actually get it.
| boringg wrote:
| I also heard that Rudy's aide float $2M ... it's got to
| be the aides/close confidents who were trying to milk
| power.
| audiometry wrote:
| Also in Trump's last hurrah is pardoning Kwame Kilpatrick.
| https://www.crimetownshow.com/ I have no idea how he fits in the
| profile of Trump's other pardons. Maybe just resonates with Trump
| as another shameless, corrupt politician.
| jmeister wrote:
| It's his way of getting back at Detroit/Michigan for not voting
| for him?
| pengaru wrote:
| No Shkreli?
| kevincox wrote:
| The link is now a 404.
|
| > Anthony Levandowski - President Trump granted a full pardon to
| Anthony Levandowski. This pardon is strongly supported by James
| Ramsey, Peter Thiel, Miles Ehrlich, Amy Craig, Michael Ovitz,
| Palmer Luckey, Ryan Petersen, Ken Goldberg, Mike Jensen, Nate
| Schimmel, Trae Stephens, Blake Masters, and James Proud, among
| others. Mr. Levandowski is an American entrepreneur who led
| Google's efforts to create self-driving technology. Mr.
| Levandowski pled guilty to a single criminal count arising from
| civil litigation. Notably, his sentencing judge called him a
| "brilliant, groundbreaking engineer that our country needs." Mr.
| Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions and
| plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.
|
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210120111121/https://www.whiteh...
|
| https://archive.is/H8vD1#selection-435.0-437.714
| chad_strategic wrote:
| Aside from Assange, Sownden and all the rich criminals.
|
| I find a small joy/comfort in knowing the non violent drug
| dealers/users got a pardon from a president... well you can fill
| in the rest. (US drug laws need to change!)
|
| Otherwise, I'm sick to my stomach.
| Permit wrote:
| I haven't seen it asked so I'll go: Why?
|
| I never imagined Trump and Levandowski being connected in any
| fashion. Does anyone have any insight into why Trump would pardon
| him?
| momothereal wrote:
| You don't have to be high-profile or the President's buddy to
| receive an executive pardon (you can realize this by going
| through the article's list). Anyone* can petition and receive a
| pardon.
|
| *: state offenses are handled by governors or a state pardon
| board, not the President
| [deleted]
| carlivar wrote:
| Levandowski but not Snowden or Assange. Sigh.
| hulitu wrote:
| > Levandowski but not Snowden or Assange. Sigh.
|
| Snowden and Assange have no value in the market economy.
| Lewandowski, on the other side, has some interesting skills
| nikanj wrote:
| And Lewandowski hurt Google, which makes him a good guy
| according to Trump.
| faitswulff wrote:
| This is much more likely than Trump putting any amount of
| reasoning into his decision.
| yalogin wrote:
| Will investors put money on him again? Or is he relegated to
| working on trump's personal Twitter replacement kind of
| projects now? Have a feeling this is the only thing he can do
| now, go deep maga and suck up to the cult
| throwaway22442 wrote:
| He has been working on Pronto.ai for the last few years.
| Nothing will change there.
| mikeryan wrote:
| He's radioactive though.
| sjg007 wrote:
| He will probably start a company.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Who in their right mind would work for him?
| tremon wrote:
| Who in their right mind would work for Trump?
| [deleted]
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Thielians in their normal mind
| _jal wrote:
| Snowden is earnest, so he won't get one.
|
| Assange won't, because Donnie doesn't think he'll be useful
| again.
| kolbe wrote:
| Assange has a knack for getting his hands on a lot of dirt.
| Trump is arrogant and short-sighted enough to believe it will
| never be dirt on him?
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yes, he is.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| I don't know what the current going rate is; we'll see if Joe
| Exotic met it. Supporters of Snowden and Assange have only a
| few hours to get the cash together.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Interesting perspective. What else besides cash would you
| suspect to be influential?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Obviously support their pardons but there was little
| expectation from me that they would considering the government
| is prosecuting them so aggressively.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm no fan of Levandowski's, but it did always seem to me that
| criminal penalties (including incarceration) for corporate
| espionage was a co-option of the criminal machinery of government
| for what should always have been a civil court affair.
|
| That having been said, the law is the law and I'm no fan of using
| the pardon to free some corporate spies while others with fewer
| political connections are bound by it.
| totalZero wrote:
| No better way to create positive sentiments about yourself than
| to generate a swath of people indebted to you for their
| unexpected amnesty.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Hmm. This is currently 404'ing. Did the whitehouse remove it?
| Like... post-transfer-of-power? That seems weird.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210120111121/https://www.white...
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| Happens every time we get a new president. Nothing unusual
| about it. Everything from Trumps whitehouse.gov site is now
| located at https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov
| dave5104 wrote:
| Yep, the site gets wiped in a new administration.
|
| The page linked is now hosted here:
| https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/st...
| jplevine wrote:
| Archived URL from the White House:
| https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/st...
| syntaxing wrote:
| I see these series of pardons but I don't get how it works
| logistically in terms of federal vs state. Let's say Anthony
| Levandowski was guilty for California charges, what would that
| mean?
| nostromo wrote:
| The president has no authority to pardon state or local
| convictions, only federal.
| hypervisorxxx wrote:
| I'm glad to see kodack black pardoned. He's a super genuine
| artist. His music changed my life. His crime was lying how many
| white boys have lied in court and served less than 46months in
| prison. He truly turned his life around for many years now and it
| reflects in his music.
| btilly wrote:
| Most of these are people accused of various drug crimes (many
| nonviolent).
|
| As much as I hate Trump, I support that.
|
| The worst one was this:
|
| _Paul Erickson - President Trump has issued a full pardon to
| Paul Erikson. This pardon is supported by Kellyanne Conway. Mr.
| Erickson's conviction was based off the Russian collusion hoax.
| After finding no grounds to charge him with any crimes with
| respect to connections with Russia, he was charged with a minor
| financial crime. Although the Department of Justice sought a
| lesser sentence, Mr. Erickson was sentenced to 7 years'
| imprisonment--nearly double the Department of Justice's
| recommended maximum sentence. This pardon helps right the wrongs
| of what has been revealed to be perhaps the greatest witch hunt
| in American History._
|
| Yeah, BS. Trump deserved to lose his Presidency then and there.
|
| I also didn't like the special treatment that Stephen Bannon
| received. There is another person who deserves to rot in hell.
|
| But my guess is that more than 2/3 of these commutations I
| support. And it has nothing to do with who commuted them.
| pldr1234 wrote:
| Just to note - they specifically added those other commutations
| to elicit your exact reaction:
|
| "Some look shady, but it's mostly good".
| btilly wrote:
| I am aware of that. But I was expecting Trump to issue a
| blank commutation for all "patriots" involved in any way in
| the Capitol riot. With the purpose of making it harder for
| legal consequences of the indictment to reach him.
|
| For a previous example, Bush Sr commuted the sentence of
| everyone involved in the Iran-Contra affair which prevented
| that investigation from potentially reaching him. (Given
| excerpts of his diary released after he was in office, it
| seems likely that the investigation would have been able to
| nail Bush in time.)
| cure wrote:
| I think you're assuming they are more competent/smarter than
| they really are.
| btilly wrote:
| It does not take a lot of brains to say, "Every outgoing
| President does this, you should do the same."
|
| And he didn't particularly abuse the power. The record for
| one day of pardons/commutations is 330, set by Barack Obama
| on his last day of office. I believe that the record before
| that was set by Bill Clinton.
| cletus wrote:
| I think it's really important for society as a whole that there
| exists the rule of law and not the rule of law for the poor only.
|
| This is just another blatant example of where being rich and
| having connections puts you above the law. Sadly this isn't an
| isolated case.
|
| Take Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort. Both plead guilty and both
| were somehow granted home detention due to the pandemic
|
| What Levandowski did was egregious. You walk out the door of a
| company. You take nothing. That's it. You don't own nor are you
| entitled to any of that work product. It's pretty simple.
|
| I'm not surprised to see Peter Thiel on that list. His politics
| are pretty appealing. I don't know most of the other names on
| that list who supported the pardon but that's not a list I'd want
| to be associated with, personally.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| It's not just egregious, it's soley to punish Google, which the
| president had a well publicized vendetta against.
| [deleted]
| dgellow wrote:
| No Assange, no Snowden. What a fool I am, I seriously envisaged
| that could happen...
|
| Instead it's just more and more corruption.
| watwut wrote:
| Honest question: why did you expected that? They don't fit
| profile of people Trump help or cooperates with at all.
| pavlov wrote:
| Last night Trump also revoked his own 2017 executive order that
| prevented federal administration officials from becoming
| lobbyists after leaving government:
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-lobbying-execu...
|
| This had been one of his only practical actions towards keeping
| his campaign promise of "draining the swamp."
| heelix wrote:
| The nice thing about executive orders is they can be added by
| the next guy. Would be nice to see this as actual law, and
| not an executive order -- but if Trump cancels anything on
| his last day, Biden can re-do it on his first day.
| rat87 wrote:
| But it won't apply to former Trump administration workers.
| That's the point, I'm sure Biden will have a better ethics
| policy but it can't be retroactive
| zzleeper wrote:
| I wonder how all the Trump supporters on HNs (maybe 30% or so
| of commenters, no idea about lurkers) are reacting to this.
|
| Levadowski pardon, the spy, the swamp, etc.
| santoshalper wrote:
| 95% of them are already reshaping facts to fit their
| narrative. Maybe a few will start to see how much they were
| hoodwinked. Even those few won't be able to admit it until
| they figure out a way to save their ego.
| rat87 wrote:
| I mean Trump has always been incredibly corrupt, way more
| corrupt then "old washington"
|
| Drain the Swamp simply meant get rid of anyone against
| Trump, including goverment ethics watchdogs
| throwaway876765 wrote:
| I voted for Trump because his policies more closely align
| with my beliefs than any other candidate on my ballot. I am
| very disappointed in his response to the election results
| after it was clear there wasn't proof of enough fraud to
| change the result, and I'm very disappointed in the
| pardons.
| augustt wrote:
| He telegraphed his intent to claim the election was
| rigged way before it happened so... I guess people just
| learn at different rates.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/tru
| mp-...
| diveanon wrote:
| I hope you are disappointed in yourself for having
| beliefs that align with a fascist who incited an
| insurrection against the United States.
| 1024core wrote:
| Not _that_ disappointed, I bet.
|
| Same old story. "I'm shocked, shocked that there's
| gambling going on!"
| diveanon wrote:
| Don't forget, this is a time for unity!
|
| I'm not forgetting about the last 4 years anytime soon.
|
| There is nothing virtuous about ignoring and
| rationalizing intolerance.
| fny wrote:
| Please stop down voting posts like this. If we want HN to
| remain a welcome space for civil discourse for everyone,
| we need to respect other people's candid statements.
|
| Remember, Trump won 47% of the popular vote which likely
| includes a large number of HNers. We should not alienate
| those people.
| supernintendo wrote:
| Trump supporters have done nothing but alienate and
| engage in acts of harassment and violence against non-
| white folks, religious minorities and members of the
| LGBTQ community for the past 4-5 years. Should we be
| civil toward members of the KKK as well? Why is it always
| on us to be nice to people who hate us and want us dead?
| barbacoa wrote:
| Just like how you've been brainwashed by the TV into
| thinking the "others" are evil, trump people are
| brainwashed into thinking you hate them and want them
| dead.
|
| Both sides see themselves as the victim and the others as
| the attacker.
|
| >Why is it always on us to be nice to people who hate us
| and want us dead?
|
| Do you see how this is perpetuating the problem?
| supernintendo wrote:
| Go read the comment section of any Fox News or Breitbart
| article about trans people. Go see what people on
| conservative YouTube channels or /r/conservative or
| 4chan's /pol/ have to say about us. How am I supposed to
| engage with people (including some members of my own
| family) who refuse to treat me with basic respect? How am
| I supposed to have a civil conversation with people who
| call me a disgusting, mentally ill tranny faggot to my
| face?
|
| This "both sides" talking point is naive, intellectually
| lazy bullshit peddled by people who have no interest in
| hearing the struggles of people who have to suffer this
| abuse. I've been emotionally and physically bullied my
| whole life by these people. I'm sick of it. Leave me the
| fuck alone.
| rirarobo wrote:
| I am from the Deep South. I have evangelical family
| members who have disowned others because of their
| beliefs. Who wish for the Kingdom of God to be realized,
| so that the non-believers can spend eternity in
| suffering. I grew up with peers who told me I would burn
| in hell for believing in evolution. Peers from middle
| class backgrounds with financial security, who then worry
| about "white genocide" and the "great replacement".
|
| I have not been brainwashed by the TV to think these
| types of people are evil. I know them intimately. I know
| that they are multifaceted human beings, capable of love,
| but also capable of hate and great harm. I have family
| members that do believe other races are below them, aunts
| and uncles old enough to have fought against civil rights
| and desegregation. Much like Trump, who was 22 when MLK
| was assassinated. Grandparents who mutter about the war
| of northern aggression. They are still alive today, there
| are millions of people like them, and they vote. They
| push real policies that present a real threat to many
| Americans.
|
| I have moved away from the South, and have new friends
| and family, who have directly been affected by the Muslim
| Ban, changes to immigration policy, and the rhetoric of
| Trump and his supporters these past four years. This is
| real harm.
|
| "Both sides" are not the same, and there are real victims
| of such bigotry. To deny this reality perpetuates these
| problems.
| diveanon wrote:
| We absolutely should alienate those people.
|
| People who support racism, bigotry, and outright fascism
| have no place in civil society.
| randylahey wrote:
| People who hold reprehensible ideas or support those who
| do, should be held to task, no matter how many of them
| there are.
| VLM wrote:
| Before the era of identity politics that was virtuous,
| not so much in an identity politics era.
| zzleeper wrote:
| I am op (asked the question) and even though I don't
| agree with throwaway, I appreciate him having the time to
| respond (so I upvoted.earlier to try to offset the
| downvotes).
|
| Im also downvoted btw, so this goes both ways.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| I didn't downvote in this case but I am highly likely to
| downvote anything that comes from an account called
| throwaway* unless it contains some whistleblowing info or
| similar. If you can't stand by your opinions even with a
| pseudonym because you are afraid of losing fake internet
| points then no one needs to see what you have to say.
| xpe wrote:
| I agree.
|
| But how do we get there?
|
| In my view, until Hacker News has a mechanism to capture
| different kinds of feedback; e.g.:
|
| 1. comment is well-written (even if I disagree)
|
| 2. comment is civil (even if not well-written and/or I
| disagree)
|
| we're going to have "lump all, some, or none of these
| factors together" voting.
| rat87 wrote:
| But we need to teach them the errors of their ways or we
| will see more tragedies
|
| There was literally no good reason to vote for Trump
| regardless of views (to be fair op didn't say he voted
| for Trump)
| [deleted]
| x1ph0z wrote:
| Not now, not ever. I will always call out those that
| supported racism, bigotry, violence and Trump's admin did
| all that. The voice and platform he gave to the most
| deplorable people, has made me and others lose faith in
| all Americans.
| mindslight wrote:
| "I invested with Bernie Madoff because his returns
| matched my investment goals". Yes, knowing why someone
| got conned is itself valuable information. But standing
| on its own, it reads as an endorsement.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| My Republican friends are all angry that the last minute
| pardons are white collar criminals and hip-hop stars. They
| were really hoping for an Assange/Snowden pardon to stick
| it to the "deep state". But honestly at this point they're
| acting like drained husks and just feel so let down.
|
| I personally look at the pardon list and I'm at a loss for
| words. What a weird mix of scammers and celebrities.
| hintymad wrote:
| Here is my wild speculation:
|
| - Trump can't afford making more enemies in the intelligence
| community, or simply does not want to.
|
| - Assange and Snowden are libertarians' heroes, but
| libertarians didn't even vote for Trump this time, right? The
| percent of libertarians voting for an independent candidate was
| larger than the gap between Trump and Biden, even though Trump
| was probably the most libertarian president in the past 30
| years. For instance, Trump refused to expand federal
| government's power during Covid, and he deregulated a lot to
| defer policies to states. Not that I like or dislike Trump's
| policy, mind you -- just my assessment. So, Trump may simply
| ignored the requests to pardon Assange and Snowden.
| rat87 wrote:
| Trump is the least libertarian/most authoritarian president
| we've had in a long long time
|
| Don't mistake incompetence for libertarianism.
| hintymad wrote:
| I'd love to update my understanding. Could you share the
| policies that Trump made that centralizes his or his
| government's power or reduces the rule of law?
| machinecontrol wrote:
| So, will you and others learn from this? The next time a
| politician asks for your money and promises that this time,
| it's different maybe we should all think twice before falling
| for the same game again.
| moocowtruck wrote:
| Why would their be a pardon for those treasonous terrorists?
| You really were expecting that?
| dgellow wrote:
| Yes, I did.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I don't think that Levandowski, Snowden, or Assange deserve
| pardons.
| fleshdaddy wrote:
| Why is that? Do you not believe in whistle blower protections
| or do you think that Snowden lied?
| thelastwave wrote:
| How is Levandowski a whistle blower?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I believe that once you leave the country with classified
| material then all bets are off.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| Snowden overdid it. He found illegal behavior in a spy
| agency, but he also exposed legitimate activity. Sure, NSA
| was spying on Angela Merkel and other allies. You might
| agree with Henry Stimson, that "Gentlemen do not read each
| other's mail", but the reality is that countries spy on one
| another. Snowden might deserve whistleblower protection for
| some of his revelations, but not all of them.
| adolph wrote:
| _Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws
| of England, 9th ed., book 4, chapter 27, p. 358 (1783,
| reprinted 1978), says, "For the law holds, that it is
| better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one
| innocent suffer."_
|
| Likewise could it not be said that it is better that many
| legitimate programs go exposed to expose the blatantly
| lawless mass surveillance of USA Persons?
|
| https://www.bartleby.com/73/953.html
| staunch wrote:
| The blame for what he was forced to do belongs with the
| officials that were violating the constitution. They
| should be exiled for failing to uphold their oaths.
| Instead, Snowden is in exile.
|
| Snowden was just the first honorable American to come
| across the information and he did his best to expose it
| safely, by giving it to journalists to release, after
| consulting with the government.
|
| We can't expect whistle blowers to do a perfect job.
| There will always be some mistakes. As long as they act
| in good faith and reasonably, they should be protected.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| > As long as they act in good faith and reasonably, they
| should be protected.
|
| I agree 100%.
| fleshdaddy wrote:
| You realize Snowden didn't just dump all of these
| documents on a torrent site right? Given that he's not a
| professional journalist and was risking his freedom he
| grabbed what he could and took it to reputable
| journalists to do the work of ensuring the leak doesn't
| endanger others without a good reason. What else do you
| expect him to do? If he'd gone to a superior he'd be
| rotting in jail and we would have no evidence of mass
| surveillance in this country.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| >If he'd gone to a superior he'd be rotting in jail and
| we would have no evidence of mass surveillance in this
| country.
|
| Everyone says this but it's pure conjecture. We don't
| know what would have happened and now we never will.
| neilparikh wrote:
| There are known cases of people trying to raise concerns
| through the correct channels and still facing
| retaliation. For example:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_A._Drake
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Okay? And people raise concerns that are taken seriously
| and do not face retaliation.
| mlazos wrote:
| HN loves Snowden so much it makes no sense to me. He
| could've gone to the Senate/House intelligence
| committees, and not been in trouble. Worst case nothing
| would've gotten done, but since they were lied to, I
| don't think he would've been ignored.
| dahfizz wrote:
| It's baffling to me how you could possibly trust the
| government to do the right thing and combat corruption.
|
| > I don't think he would've been ignored.
|
| He told the intelligence committees the same time he told
| _the entire country_ and he was still ignored.
| dgellow wrote:
| You don't remember the NSA director lying under oath in
| front of the Congress about the exact crimes Snowden
| revealed?
| mlazos wrote:
| Yes that's what I'm talking about when I said the
| committees were lied to. I'm sure they would've been
| interested to hear from someone working at the lower
| levels that the NSA director lied.
| fleshdaddy wrote:
| Your comment displays a bit of naivety on how power
| structures work in this country. There's a reason
| thousands of people knew about these programs, including
| his superiors, and it took Snowden going to the press.
| You believe a no name, low level, intelligence contractor
| can just walk into the intelligence committee and tell
| them they're spying on their own people? The same
| committee that despite knowing about it know hasn't made
| serious efforts to curtail these operations? I might have
| a bridge to sell you.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| They also leave out the fact that he had been reprimanded
| for his actions numerous times, to include being removed
| from roles and duties because of his negative actions.
| The fact that he moved from the CIA back to an NSA
| supported role without this being disclosed is ridiculous
| in of itself.
|
| Edward had a childish reaction to release documents that
| had nothing to do with Xkeyscore (of which the media
| claim as the reason for his release), particularly those
| of Tailored Access Operations [TAO]. This was the action
| of a petulant individual lashing out at the system
| however he felt he could. Don't let it be ignored that he
| was specifically working in a capacity supporting
| operations in China.. then fled there before moving on to
| Russia. No one talks about or acknowledges that Edward
| was in a support role and not an "Operator" at the agency
| either. He was pissed because he applied twice and was
| denied, in part due to his horrible support on operation
| plans.
|
| He wanted to act out and damage the NSA and their
| mission.
|
| The hero worship of Snowden is deplorable. I only wish
| the american public had a real understanding and grasp of
| what goes on to keep their "bubble" safe and sound.
| Edwards actions have had an outsized impact and
| unfortunately it won't be mad public in a nonclassified
| space for many years to come, because of further
| operational impacts.
|
| He was 100% a traitor.
| fleshdaddy wrote:
| What branch did you serve in? You seem really offended at
| the notion that some Americans are willing to take
| freedom and privacy over complete security. It's hard for
| you to believe but know that many, many people are
| willing to make that trade off. People have even died for
| it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It's childish to accuse them of being a military shill
| for posting something you disagree with.
| fleshdaddy wrote:
| It's more so the worship of the military that made me
| assume they're part of it. Couple that with referring to
| everyone as the "American public" and the knowledge they
| imply they have of classified documents that won't be
| made public for some time. Doesn't seem like a stretch.
| adolph wrote:
| Would you say the same of Mark Felt?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt
| dgellow wrote:
| > then fled there before moving on to Russia
|
| That's just a lie. He was in a plane on his way to
| Ecuador when the US cancelled his passport, resulting in
| him being blocked in the Russian airport for a while. At
| some point the situation created such a mess for the
| airport that Russia accepted to let him enter the
| country.
|
| All of this has been documented at length, and anyone on
| this forum is likely old enough to remember the events
| from when they happened live.
|
| At no point he wanted to be in Russia. The US forced the
| situation by canceling his passport mid-flight and
| putting pressure on any country that would offer their
| help (my home country did and was publicly pressured for
| this).
|
| In any case, you can forget about the guy, the
| information he gave demonstrate that the NSA under Obama
| was committing plenty of illegal surveillance of the US
| population (and of course other countries, but US
| citizens don't seem to care about non-US rights), created
| a system of hidden courts, and lied about all of it. That
| should be enough to consider him a whistleblower.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| He pardoned a literal spy who was convicted of espionage of
| state secrets but he did not pardon Assange. Incredible.
| thelastwave wrote:
| According to some sources he was informed if he pardoned
| Assange the Senate would vote to convict him following the
| House impeachment, quid pro quo.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > He pardoned a literal spy who was convicted of espionage of
| state secrets but he did not pardon Assange. Incredible.
|
| Assange and Snowden remain unpopular with Senate Republicans,
| and my understanding is that he was told pardoning them would
| hurt his chances of avoiding a Senate conviction in his
| second impeachment.
|
| He was also recently steered away from pardoning himself, his
| family, and some Republicans that may have helped the capitol
| rioters (and he apparently got the message), but who knows if
| he'll change his mind in the next couple hours.
| s0cur10us wrote:
| I was under impression that the self-pardon story was part
| of the information warfare campaign. Is there any proof to
| the story?
| jolmg wrote:
| "As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have
| the absolute right to PARDON myself" -- Donald Trump
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180604233027/https://twitte
| r.c...
| postalrat wrote:
| So he had no interest in pardoning himself because he did
| nothing wrong.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > I was under impression that the self-pardon story was
| part of the information warfare campaign. Is there any
| proof to the that?
|
| Part of the what?
| emreca wrote:
| Information Warfare
| ardy42 wrote:
| Just so you know, this isn't reddit, and joke replies are
| discouraged.
|
| I was looking for clarification about what "the
| information warfare campaign" was. I'm guessing it's some
| kind of post-hoc rationalization for a lot of Trump's
| bizarre statements and other distractions, but I'm not
| sure.
| s0cur10us wrote:
| There was a reliable information that Melania Trump is
| filing for divorce and many others like that.
|
| P.S.
| https://www.google.com/search?q=melania+trump+divorce
|
| P.P.S. Thanks for the downvotes, I appreciate that.
|
| P.P.P.S. "Fake news" is a trumpist lie, but some news are
| fake.
|
| P.P.P.S. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
| jolmg wrote:
| > He was also recently steered away from pardoning himself
|
| Is pardoning oneself legally possible?
|
| EDIT: Seems possible but never tested.
|
| > The Constitution provides little guidance on the issue of
| a potential presidential selfpardon. Only one sentence is
| dedicated to pardons: "The President . . . shall have Power
| to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the
| United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." Looking to
| historical precedent and case law likewise provides no
| dispositive answer. No president has ever issued a self-
| pardon, and very few Supreme Court cases have addressed any
| aspect of the president's pardon power.
|
| --
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3587921
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Even if he could, I don't think he would want to. It
| would mean admitting guilt and opening himself to give
| testimony on the crimes in prosecuting others as well as
| emboldening civil lawsuits. Also, since its an ex-
| President and leader of a political party there is no way
| to punish him without it being political, which means the
| next President is likely to pardon him anyways for
| expediency.
| CyberRabbi wrote:
| The funny part of this thread is that while there was hope
| Trump would pardon Assange, in comparison there is little to
| no hope that Biden will pardon Assange. I wonder why that is.
| rat87 wrote:
| Because Trump doesn't give a shit or care about anyone but
| himself so theoretically he could be persuaded to do
| something if he thought it might piss people off
| bgorman wrote:
| Probably due to Biden being the one who tried to get Edward
| Snowden extradited to the US.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I think people on the right and the left are perhaps skipping
| over just how much McConnell was manipulating the admin not
| just over the last four years, but esp since Jan 6th.
|
| I am fairly confident that even if Trump had specifically
| wanted to pardon Assange or Snowden he could not have.
|
| Edit: lol, this will have been the most successful lie by the
| media and GOP... getting people to believe the GOP and Trump
| were friends. They never wanted him. McConnnell picked
| Sessions and Barr both who did little for Trump. McConnnell
| picked the 3 Supreme Court justices, and the federal judges
| who when given the chance refused trumps election fraud
| cases, McConnnell dropped the mask the second it was clear
| Trump no longer had power. Ffs, they stuck him with Reince
| Preibus at first.
|
| This is the thing I'll never understand about GOP-Haters...
| not understanding Trump was fighting them too. Literally
| everyone had to pretend that wasn't the case including Trump
| if he wanted to get anything done at all.
| fny wrote:
| What you're saying here is contradictory. Sure the GOP
| hates Trump, and Trump also hates the GOP. And that's
| exactly why Trump didn't give a damn to GOP criticism of
| his pardons.
|
| McConnell has no influence. That's why Stone, Kushner, and
| Bannon are on the list among others.
|
| Trump decided not to pardon Snowden and Assange. Full stop.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > McConnell has no influence. That's why Stone, Kushner,
| and Bannon are on the list among others.
|
| Hang on, if you're certain about it being entirely trumps
| decision not to pardon Snowden or Assange... can we at
| least have a citation that McConnell cared at all about
| Stone Kushner or Bannon?
|
| You declaring that those names put together are in any
| way equal to the weight of Snowden -or- Assange?
|
| I never suggested Trump did want to. I suggested he could
| not.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| Not quite. Trump knows they're more or less okay with him
| pardoning Bannon - it pisses them off, but at the end of
| the day it's water under the bridge. Whereas Assange
| getting pardoned would absolutely infuriate the "deep
| state" to an extent that's hard to describe.
|
| Trump should have pardoned Assange, it's the only thing
| that would actually have taken a (small) chunk out of the
| "deep state" for real. Instead, as many of us saw coming,
| Trump's rhetoric about "draining the swamp" and "fighting
| the deep state" was always empty bluster.
|
| Now Assange will die in prison (there's not a snowball's
| chance in hell that Biden pardons him, to state the
| obvious).
| hobs wrote:
| If you were waiting until now for trump to prove that he
| was a righteous man who keeps up on his promises then you
| willfully avoiding reading the story that repeats ad
| nauseum for the man's entire existence.
| stretchcat wrote:
| What a senselessly uncharitable comment. Blockcipher said
| _" as many of us saw coming"_; clearly Trump's nature is
| not a recent realization for them.
| hobs wrote:
| Hence the "if you were" - if you weren't, feel free to
| ignore this comment.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| What evidence is there of McConnel having access to Trump
| after Jan 6? I have the impression that their relationship
| cooled. McConnel stated that Tump "provoked" the mob on the
| senate floor.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/politics/mitch-mcconnell-
| riot...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "Tell him we'll convict in the Senate if he fucks around"
| is access, even if it's not direct face-to-face.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Mcconnell does not leak, those quotes coming out in
| public were pressure campaigns. It's unknown obviously
| what was directly said to him.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Well for one; McConnell could have gone through with an
| impeachment vote had Trump started to burn things down on
| his way out the door.
|
| Do you think the House pushed through breakneck-speed
| impeachment vote, breaking almost all of the rules about
| witnesses, testimony, procedure all for fun? No, that was
| calculated to keep Trump in line I think.
|
| Removing all platforms from him, looming impeachment or
| other threats, publicly denouncing him after four years
| of pretending to be MAGA...
|
| Now, I don't have a CNN article to make my case. So maybe
| you are right.
| rat87 wrote:
| This is an amazingly ridiculous take especially on Sessions
| and Barr
|
| Sessions did everything he could for Trump just did the
| right thing once to avoid legal jeopardy for himself by
| recusing himself. In exchange he got nothing but abuse, I
| mean Sessions is a nasty little goblin so I don't feel to
| sorry for him but that's what loyalty to Trump gets you
|
| Barr did cross ethical lines anday have broken laws in
| making the justice department Trump's personal defense
| lawyers instead of the semi independent agency it's
| supposed to be.
|
| https://abovethelaw.com/2020/12/the-temptation-and-
| corruptio...
|
| Barr was the ultimate lacky Attorney General. But because
| he declined to support overturning the results of the
| election illegally, he's not Trump's loyal toady?
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| People who are still surprised by Trump not doing the right
| thing are confusing. I'm not judging, i just don't understand.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm sorry to say it was never in the cards.
|
| The enemy of Assange's enemy was never his friend. Nothing
| about Trump's conduct has ever suggested he wants more
| whistleblowers walking free, especially ones who may not feel a
| "professional courtesy" to refrain from leaking some things.
|
| The next thing Wikileaks reports on could have been shady back-
| dealing on Trump real estate projects, for all we know. Trump
| never saw pardoning Assange as a gain for himself.
| thekyle wrote:
| I believe you mean Wikileaks.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| (Thank you; corrected)
| knuthsat wrote:
| The fact that all a POTUS does after presidency is enrich
| oneself, it's quite clear where the motives are.
|
| The moment when POTUS is unable to profit off of his presidency
| is the moment where these things wouldn't happen.
|
| POTUS becoming a multimillionaire after presidency is just a
| sad display of moral corruption.
|
| Edit: Not talking about Trump, just in general about POTUS.
| It's my impression that in the last 50 years all of them
| benefited from the public, exerting their influence after
| losing the binds of the POTUS position to enrich themselves.
| Shows quite a lack of moral character in all of them.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| He was already a billionaire before he got elected. What I
| find particularly disgusting is how lifelong politicians with
| relatively meager (compared with the private sector) salaries
| can become so wealthy while in office. But yes the revolving
| door is a thing and it should be addressed. Yellen earned
| over 7 mil in speaking fees in the last two years. It is
| impossible that that will not have any influence over her
| decisions when she's back at the Fed.
| rchaud wrote:
| Pretty much every major figure in the Fed (and minor
| figures too) has come straight from from Goldman or
| JPMorgan or some other major bank. It's called a 'revolving
| door' for a reason.
| [deleted]
| Larrikin wrote:
| There's no evidence, besides self reporting to tabloids and
| magazines, Trump ever came close to being a billionaire.
| xpe wrote:
| The argument that "all Presidents have imperfect morals" is
| obvious and uninteresting. The quality of "moral character"
| varies tremendously among people.
| knuthsat wrote:
| Should have worded is as "lack in moral character"
| mattst88 wrote:
| Have you heard of Jimmy Carter?
| rchaud wrote:
| Would this be an example of the exception proving the rule?
|
| It still seems like an accident of history that Americans
| sent Jimmy Carter to the highest office in the land. For as
| much as they claim to want a regular Joe/Joe-ette as
| President (the mirage of the unpretentious 'I can have a
| beer with him' candidate) they seem to vote for people that
| are the polar opposite.
| rat87 wrote:
| Truman is an even better example
|
| Before they passed a presidential pension bill Truman was
| basically broke, living of his army pension
| tomComb wrote:
| If they get rich by selling books and speeches I have no
| problem with that, and am surprised by the number that do.
| People might not like that, but it isn't corruption.
|
| If, on the other hand, a president makes his presidency about
| doing favours for the rich and powerful then he won't have to
| write books and speeches afterwards.
| knuthsat wrote:
| I have a problem with that. It shows moral corruption. It's
| not corruption in the legal sense but outlines the issue of
| why the pardons do not make sense.
|
| ex-POTUS is still an influential individual and is just
| profiting after the binds of the position are lifted.
|
| I think it would be a pretty nice decree to disallow the
| president to become extremely wealthy X years after
| presidency. Let the influence slowly fade and let's see if
| POTUS as an individual, after being elected to do public
| good, can produce some value outside of benefiting from
| being elected.
| mlazos wrote:
| Honestly most former presidents do "good work" in this
| sense. The power is gone so now there's less outside
| influence. This law seems arbitrary and has no purpose,
| there's like 4-5 former presidents alive at a time? This
| "problem" is at the bottom of my list of problems that
| need solving.
| knuthsat wrote:
| Well, if a law was put I'd definitely include all of the
| public servants in executive positions, which includes
| congress, mayors and alike. It's going to be a much
| different crop of people wanting to work for the public,
| because eventually, now, they all become "consultants"
| for companies dealing with the public sectors, and enrich
| themselves.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| He was very clear about this goal even before his campaign in
| 2016.
|
| In 2000 Donald Trump told Fortune magazine, "It's very
| possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to
| run and make money on it."
| mywittyname wrote:
| Thankfully, he end up being the first presidential
| candidate bankrupted by the position. The dude's primary
| asset, his brand, is not completely toxic and can no longer
| be used to prop up his other failed ventures. And the only
| bankers wiling to finance him will the the predatory ones,
| who will all extract every penny left then leave him with
| nothing.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > is [now] completely toxic and can no longer be used to
| prop up his other failed ventures
|
| You are underestimating something. I remember how Bush
| was literally Hitler and Cheney was an impossibly evil
| name.
|
| But now Bush is a lovable cook, Biden admin was taking
| with Dick Cheney about foreign affairs and Liz Cheney was
| just celebrated by the left/media for dumping on Trump.
|
| Trump brand won't be what it was, but it's something
| different now. I think the political left did themselves
| a great disservice by not giving in to election fraud
| investigations, when people were asking for signature
| matching, observer access, proving compliance with
| Article2, scanned ballot uploads, whatever else was
| reasonable and we should expect our election system to
| provide without question. Even the most rabid
| TrumpHater5000 should have supported that because it
| would have proved he was wrong. Now in some people's eyes
| we will never truly know. For practically half the
| country Biden has an asterix by his name. That doesn't
| seem like a great start and it didn't actually tarnish
| Trump Brand except to the people who hated him already
| including the establishment GOP. His approval among
| supporters is not lower since Jan 6th, as difficult as it
| may be to understand.
| dgellow wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. With his crazy following if
| he creates his own online presence, a la infowars, he can
| make a lot of money.
| rtkwe wrote:
| That kind of remains to be seen there's a lot of people
| out there that are still very on board with Trump, it may
| not be a luxury lifestyle brand much going forward but
| it'll almost definitely still be a brand.
| CountSessine wrote:
| If there's anything that Trump is actually good at, other
| than carnival barking, it's shielding assets and wealth
| from bankruptcy, and remaining rich after "insolvency".
| Don't expect him to show up homeless on Venice Beach any
| time soon.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _And the only bankers wiling to finance him will the
| the predatory ones, who will all extract every penny left
| then leave him with nothing._
|
| Oh boy, are you going to be in for a nasty surprise.
| Trump is going to get _more_ powerful after this mess,
| but it will likely tear the GOP apart. And don 't kid
| yourself that the Democrats _love_ the idea of having him
| as an enemy if he ever runs again. Most of what you 're
| watching is political theatre.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Honestly, I get the impression that he's easily
| outflanked by smart people. And that something about his
| personality drives people to take advantage of him. That
| impression comes from his apparent business incompetence.
| He is capable of screwing up "sure things" such as
| casinos and hotels. Best I can tell, he ends up getting a
| raw deal, then proceeds to make the shit roll down hill
| by screwing over people down stream of him (i.e., not
| paying contractors).
|
| He's clearly a capable actor. He pretends, rather
| convincingly, to be this amazing, confident, shrewd
| businessman. And I think a lot of people idolize him
| because he embodies what they think of when they think of
| a smart, successful business person. But I think real
| smart, successful business people spend two minutes with
| him, and paint him as a rube.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| He seems, as an outsider (UK), to be fomenting racial
| divisions - around the World - just so he can play at
| being a big cheese. His motivation appears to be purely
| money, but he and those who voted for him don't appear to
| have a problem with the cost of that being democracy and
| racial unity.
|
| If he stays out of prison then the message is 'USA's
| political establishment endorses white power, and
| oligarchy' and given many nations rely on USA having at
| least a little morality as the greatest military
| superpower on Earth ...
|
| USA seemingly can't be trusted to keep even a semblance
| of Rule of Law, any country lead by those who don't
| themselves pretend towards megalomania has to find this
| problematic. Your (USA's) democracy is very broken.
| twox2 wrote:
| Why WOULD Trump pardon assange or snowden?
| dgellow wrote:
| For one, to piss off Democrats and Biden's administration.
| Snowden and Assange both revealed years of illegal activities
| and corruptions that occurred while a Democrat was president.
| mindslight wrote:
| To do what's right for Freedom and The People, as he
| continually claimed but never actually followed through on.
| twox2 wrote:
| That's kind of exactly my point.
| CalChris wrote:
| For money. The going rate was $2M [1].
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-associate-
| reportedl...
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Why WOULD Trump pardon assange or snowden?
|
| Because he has a grudge against the US intelligence
| community, so would enjoy using his power to piss them off:
|
| https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-flynn-pardon-matters:
|
| > The "own the intelligence community" pardons--pardons
| designed to offend and punish the intelligence agencies for
| their professionalism over the past several years and the
| inconveniences that professionalism has caused to Trump. A
| number of right-wing and civil liberties figures have
| suggested pardons for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden,
| though Axios suggests that Snowden will not get a pardon
| today. Such actions may have a certain appeal for a president
| --who, like both Assange and Snowden--has a tolerant attitude
| toward Russian intelligence activity that benefits him and
| who does not care overmuch about revealing American
| intelligence activity to adversary actors. There has also
| been talk of late about clemency for Ross Ulbricht, the
| founder of the "Silk Road" dark web market--who is serving a
| life sentence in connection with a murder-for-hire scheme.
| This would arguably be more of a "own law enforcement"
| clemency, but the concept is the same.
| vmception wrote:
| Pay attention to that list, each pardon has a list of people
| who supported each pardon.
|
| Nobody from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU is
| on that list.
|
| We are wasting our time and energy caring about either of those
| organizations. Let them stick to filing Amicus Briefs in
| courts, but they clearly have no pull or influence or
| backchannel despite our tech scene thinking they do.
| rtkwe wrote:
| What part of the EFF and ACLU should have gotten involved? He
| plead guilty to a trade secret theft charge which doesn't
| really seem like the ACLU's bag and only tangentially related
| to the EFF's.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| How many were on Obamas list?
| vmception wrote:
| I don't know, maybe there is a similar log with details on
| the whitehouse website. If you can find it a simply CTRL+F
| can help.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I thought your point was that the EFF and other great
| institutions would normally and successfully sponsor
| people to be pardoned and so this year was a notable
| exception?
|
| I'd be curious if there was a list of all unsuccessful
| applicants too. I think that would be very interesting to
| see and bring some transparency. We'd be able to see just
| how many businesses, shady and legit, how many political
| orgs and cultural institutions, millionaires lobby and
| for whom.
| [deleted]
| hawkice wrote:
| I think I'll be the one to stake out "influence within the
| Trump administration was highly unusual and doesn't reflect
| influence in more standard Republican or Democratic
| presidencies". I guess I wasn't aware this was controversial,
| but I feel I can support it with evidence.
| vmception wrote:
| When I go to a country to get a result, I don't say _" hey
| wait a minute, you're quite a bit more extreme than prior
| leaders and a lot of your citizens don't want to associate
| with you at all!"_ I just go to the mixers and try to get
| as much influence as possible and I'm glad to hang out in
| those circles.
|
| Like I said, EFF and ACLU are a waste of our energy because
| they failed to do that. The White House has published a
| list of the kinds of people and organizations that get
| results. Its an instruction manual.
| ctvo wrote:
| Yes, for this administration it's a manual. Did you read
| the list? Mobsters, corrupted politicians, etc..
|
| The ACLU and EFF should also find a way to give Trump
| money / favors under the table to get pardons too in the
| name of the ends justify the means?
| vmception wrote:
| A proactive organization that we spend energy on and
| think supports ideas we care about should have been able
| to adapt, correct.
|
| The world thinks our ideas are just memes with quizzical
| effect on the real world, and they're right.
| triceratops wrote:
| I'm quite happy they didn't lobby such a corrupt president
| for favors. I think I'll increase my donations.
| [deleted]
| vlod wrote:
| >but they clearly have no pull or influence or backchannel
| despite our tech scene thinking they do.
|
| These aren't some crappy organizations that do 'deals' to get
| their objectives. There's really (afaik) two ways to keep
| government in check. Voting and paying lawyers to sue the
| government when they do 'bad' things (read: against the
| law/constitution).
|
| Disclaimer: I am a member of both EFF and ACLU.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| What a strange criticism. That these orgs are useless because
| they couldn't get Pardons from a President more or less
| totally opposed to their goals? It's completely unreasonable
| to expect otherwise.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| And why would those organisations lobby for this its not
| like that trade secrets case was proven beyond reasonable
| doubt.
| vmception wrote:
| Like I said, let them keep filing amicus briefs, not
| useless, stop adding hyperbole I said what I said.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >We are wasting our time and energy caring about either
| of those organizations.
|
| Direct quote by the way
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I don't think I can think of any non-profit more deserving of
| donations than the ACLU in my opinion.
| listenallyall wrote:
| pre-2010 ACLU? sure. The current ACLU, where free speech
| isn't absolute, but must be weighed against upsetting the
| apple cart on other issues? nope.
|
| https://www.axios.com/aclu-leaked-memo-free-speech-civil-
| rig...
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Respectfully, fuck off. This article cites the origin of
| the memo as the ACLU defending white nationalists' rights
| to protest in 2017. This is a hard issue. They're not
| saying free speech isn't absolute, they're saying they
| have finite resources and a number of civil rights
| they're trying to protect- and they're clearly outlining,
| explicitly, the right of hate groups to say their
| bullshit even when it runs directly opposed the ACLU's
| values.
|
| I think the actual leaked memo is a phenomenal read and
| very well balanced. : https://online.wsj.com/public/resou
| rces/documents/20180621AC...
|
| Excellent quotes from that memo:
|
| > "although the democratic standardsin which the ACLU
| believes and for which it fights run directly counter to
| thephilosophy of the Klan and other ultra-right groups,
| the vitality of the democratic institutions the ACLU
| defends lies in their equal application to all."
|
| >We also recognize that not defending fundamental
| liberties can come at considerable cost. If the ACLU
| avoids the defense of controversial speakers, and defends
| only those with whom it agrees,both the freedom of speech
| and the ACLU itself may suffer.The organization may lose
| credibility with allies, supporters, and other
| communities, requiring the expenditure of resources to
| mitigate those harms. Thus, there are often costs both
| from defending a given speaker and not defending that
| speaker.Because we are committed to the principle that
| free speech protects everyone, the speaker's viewpoint
| should not be the decisive factor in our decision to
| defend speech rights.
|
| Considerations in prioritizing cases:
|
| > Whether the speaker seeks to engage in or promote
| violence
|
| > Whether the speakers seek to carryweapons
|
| > The impact of the proposed speechand the impact of its
| suppression
|
| > The extent to which we are able tomake clear that even
| as we defend aspeaker's right to say what they want, we
| reserve our right to condemn the views themselves
| mef wrote:
| you're saying because Trump's pardons weren't influenced by
| the EFF or ACLU, nobody should support those organizations?
| vmception wrote:
| I'm saying that the internet and tech culture needs an
| organization that is more inspired and proactive.
|
| For example, Peter Theil risked ostracizing himself from
| the broader tech community to gain massive leverage and
| influence, and it worked and continues to work.
|
| We should be supporting more flexible and crafty
| organizations to turn our _memes_ into reality.
| [deleted]
| MengerSponge wrote:
| "Wait, 45's administration is all corruption?"
|
| "Always has been."
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yeah, it's kind of funny that _this_ is what is making some
| people come to this realization. And not, you know,
| everything else that has happened over the past four years.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I just wonder why. It seemed like pardoning Assange and Snowden
| could win him a huuuge bonus to popularity among people all
| over the world. Perhaps that was considered "too much" and
| could probably imply worse consequences so he hesitated to.
| barbacoa wrote:
| I think Trump is afraid of pissing off the establishment. The
| FBI has been criminally investigating Trump literally his
| entire time as president. The Mueller investigation is over
| but the SDNY office is still investigating his finances
| hoping to find something they can nail him on.
|
| It's also been reported that Mitch McConnell threatened to
| support the impeachment if he pardons Assange. Though this
| claim has not been substantiated.
| usrusr wrote:
| I don't think that he could have gained much support by
| pardoning them: I'd expect the groups of people who might
| still be pulled (back) on Trump's side and the group of
| people who would celebrate a Snowden or Assange pardon to be
| mutually exclusive. And if Trump is good at anything besides
| golf, it's correctly assessing whom he might sway and with
| whom all efforts would be wasted.
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| He was investigated for 2 years and is still accused to this
| day for Russian collusion. Pardoning either Snowden, who is
| in Russia right now, and Assange, who is accused of being a
| co-conspirator in the Russia collusion accusations, would be
| like throwing gasoline on that fire. I don't see how he could
| do it without alienating most of his establishment support,
| which he still needs after leaving office.
| __blockcipher__ wrote:
| No, it's not about the Russia collusion hoax (yes it was a
| hoax btw).
|
| Simply put, Trump was threatened that if he pardons
| Assange, senate republicans (the establishment) would vote
| to convict.
|
| I wish he had the courage to call their bluff, because them
| convicting Trump would fragment the GOP to an extent that
| is irreversible, IMO. Most people who aren't Trump
| supporters don't appreciate the extent to which Trump's
| base is not overlapping with the establishment GOP base.
| rat87 wrote:
| Trump doesn't care about the GOP or the country or
| anything but himself(and he doesn't care about the law)
|
| That's one of the reasons he colluded with a hostile
| foreign entity(Russia). Cause he doesn't give a shit.
| Sadly I don't have much hope for senate Republicans to do
| the right thing regardless of what Trump did, even after
| his role in the attempted coup
|
| Trump doesn't have courage, he has bluster and self
| interest, he didn't see what was in it for him to pardon
| Assange
| triceratops wrote:
| Not a hoax.
|
| "there was knowing and complicit behavior between the
| Trump campaign and Russians that stopped short of direct
| coordination, which may constitute conspiracy."[1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Redacted_
| report...
| rat87 wrote:
| He's accused because it's pretty clear he colluded with
| Russia then tried to drop sanctions on them
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| IMHO nobody (including and especially members of the
| establishment) seriously believes Snowden or Assange are
| actually Russian spies, really. Snowden just had to flee to
| Russia because that was the only counterpart to the US
| which is sufficiently powerful and interested to possibly
| hide him and also just enough civilized&westernized to
| tolerate.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > IMHO nobody (including and especially members of the
| establishment) seriously believes Snowden or Assange are
| actually Russian spies, really.
|
| If there was a Trump pardon, I guarantee every major news
| outlet would bring up their Russian connections and
| Twitter would lose its mind. What people "seriously
| believes" changes rapidly.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > IMHO nobody (including and especially members of the
| establishment) seriously believes Snowden or Assange are
| actually Russian spies, really
|
| I think lots of people think Assange _has been_ ("is" is
| a murkier question) a Russian asset, but not so much a
| _spy_ (someone who serves as an agent for _collecting_
| information) as an active influence agent.
|
| For Snowden, I think that's probably less common.
| [deleted]
| r00fus wrote:
| Anthony Levandowski related at all to Corey?
| keiferski wrote:
| It's one of the most common last names in Poland.
| 2311ski wrote:
| Lewandowski would be the Polish spelling of it as there is
| no "v" in the alphabet
| frob wrote:
| I believe you're thinking of Corey Lewandowski, so no.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| As Smithers told Burns when asked if Homer and Richard
| Nixon were related, "I don't think so sir. They spell and
| pronounce their names differently."
| visarga wrote:
| The one who's awaiting his own trial can still give pardons other
| people?
| danans wrote:
| He's not yet been indicted criminally, and per DOJ rules he
| can't be until noon on Jan 20.
|
| His facing a Senate trial for impeachment doesn't remove the
| pardon power. That also expires at noon on Jan 20.
| khuey wrote:
| Him facing an impeachment trial _does_ remove the pardon
| power, but only for things related to the impeachment.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| So when we do get rid of presidential pardons?
|
| We've seen "an American president commutes the sentence of a
| person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very
| president." ~Mitt Romney
|
| And we've seen pardons put up for sale.[0]
|
| Is the US a nation of laws and due process or a Banana Republic
| where anyone can be acquitted of anything?
|
| [0]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/trump-
| pardons...
| getlawgdon wrote:
| I'm not sure we should get rid of them because a corrupt
| sociopath misused the power. We should have gotten rid of the
| sociopath far sooner however.
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| I think it's very good that you have them, so at least a select
| few people can get a second chance. Instead, you should get rid
| of ridiculous penalty stacking and plea deals, an often
| obviously unjust justice system, and a penal system that
| systematically violates the most basic human rights and
| standards of decency.
|
| No offence, but most of these pardons make perfect sense.
| Unfortunately, Snowden, Ulbricht, and Assange were left out.
| ric2b wrote:
| But do they have to depend on a single person? They should go
| through congressional approval to avoid such blatant
| corruption.
| paul_f wrote:
| Did you read the article? Are you opposed to the pardon of
| Davidson?
|
| President Trump commuted the sentence of Jaime A. Davidson.
| This commutation is supported by Mr. Davidson's family and
| friends, Alice Johnson, and numerous others. In 1993, Mr.
| Davidson was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in
| relation to the murder of an undercover officer. Notably,
| witnesses who testified against Mr. Davidson later recanted
| their testimony in sworn affidavits and further attested that
| Mr. Davidson had no involvement. Although Mr. Davidson has been
| incarcerated for nearly 29 years, the admitted shooter has
| already been released from prison.
| rsynnott wrote:
| That speaks to a broken justice system; that conviction
| should be overturned by a court.
| least wrote:
| It speaks to the inherent flaws in any justice system.
| Presidential pardons are just one check against that. This
| lies squarely in line with what a presidential pardon is
| intended for.
| rsynnott wrote:
| A few people saved largely at random from a broken
| justice system is no sort of real solution; if anything
| it may actually make things _worse_, as it acts as an
| escape valve for sufficiently scandalous cases.
| least wrote:
| In some cases it can be used to broadly pardon people due
| to injustice. Carter blanket pardoned all Draft dodgers
| [1]. It doesn't have to be a "real solution" as that
| isn't the duty of the president to create law, which
| falls squarely in the hands of congress.
|
| It doesn't make things worse. The only reason people
| think it makes things worse is because it at times serves
| to emancipate people they think are undeserving of it.
| This is a small price to pay for what broadly serves as a
| useful tool for justice.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclamation_4483
| rsynnott wrote:
| It's arguably a bit of a historical oddity that the US has them
| at all. In most countries, particularly former British
| colonies, a pardon power of some sort exists, but in developed
| ones it's typically not, de facto, wielded by an individual (in
| the UK, for instance, it's theoretically wielded by the Home
| Secretary, but in practice a Home Secretary who used it
| unilaterally would find themselves immediately looking for a
| new job, and the norm is that it's barely used at all).
|
| The UK used it a lot more at the time that the US became
| independent, which may be where the US got it from.
|
| I don't think _any_ developed democratic country has a pardon
| power as unrestrained as the US one (even in countries with
| executive presidencies it's usually constrained in some way).
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Maybe we should focus on fixing the broken justice system.
| There are many more people unjustly served than justly these
| days.
| [deleted]
| t-writescode wrote:
| These aren't problems with the power, they're problems with
| people that abuse the power.
|
| We've had presidential pardons for centuries, and they are both
| a carry-over from the time of kings, and they could arguably
| serve as a short-circuit against injustice at the hand of the
| legislature.
|
| Not everything illegal is wrong. Not everyone in prison is
| serving a just sentence, no matter what the legal system
| declares it to be.
|
| Left in the hands of the legislature, no one would ever
| experience mercy.
| user-the-name wrote:
| After the last 4 years, maybe it is time to realise that a
| working democracy can not rely on the assumption that those
| in power will just use their powers responsibly and
| honourably, and that "checks and balances" need to actually
| have the ability to both check and balance.
| Loughla wrote:
| If Trump taught this country anything, I hope that it is
| 'relying on long-standing norms of the office is a bad
| idea'. I think we need legislation to make sure the 'norms'
| are 'required'.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| It should also be a good example of the fact that the
| president of the US has an extremely and unusually large
| amount of power, which should probably be reduced by
| quite a lot.
| jfk13 wrote:
| If the argument here is essentially that we should trust the
| president to know better than the legislature and courts, why
| don't we just go with absolute dictatorship for all purposes?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The power the President is entrusted with here is solely to
| _remit_ punishment. The idea is that this is an area where
| going overboard is less harmful than the alternative.
| t-writescode wrote:
| To add, it's easier to throw somebody back in jail if
| they aren't rehabilitated than it is to get someone out
| of 400 year sentence if they are technically guilty, no
| matter how extreme or ridiculous the prison sentence is
| for the crime they committed.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > they are both a carry-over from the time of kings
|
| That's kind of the problem, though. Most countries didn't
| carry them over in the same way.
|
| > Left in the hands of the legislature, no one would ever
| experience mercy.
|
| In countries with highly regulated pardon powers, some people
| are sometimes pardoned (though many countries lean more on
| the power of the courts to overturn convictions).
| t-writescode wrote:
| > though many countries lean more on the power of the
| courts to overturn convictions
|
| What if someone _did_ commit the crime, and it's proven,
| but the sentence is wrong (way too extreme) or the crime is
| now seen as archaic?
|
| Think old homosexuality laws or blasphemy laws.
| bobby_bob wrote:
| There is considerable variation in how pardons are applied
| around the world. Many with simple checks and balances:
|
| - Require nomination or agreement by the AG. - Prohibit
| pardoning of political crimes or other self-interest. - Require
| approval by at least on other minister, or the whole cabinet,
| or some portion of the legislative body. - Require a published
| request for pardon, justification of the pardon, and the
| judiciary's comment about this justification. - Prohibited
| during lame duck or caretaker periods. - Allow commutations
| only. - Allow pardons only when someone is actually serving
| their sentence. - Eliminate mandatory sentences, allows judges
| to exercise mercy in sentencing.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| > So when we do get rid of presidential pardons?
|
| Not an American, but I just learned a few days ago that a good
| deal of presidential pardons are used to give citizenship
| rights back to people who have already served their sentence -
| sometimes decades ago.
|
| After the pardon they can actually vote and hold public office.
|
| Maybe you should, you know, stop taking away people's rights
| after they're served their court-appointed sentence?
| estomagordo wrote:
| Or stop taking them away at any point, including while they
| serve sentences.
| La1n wrote:
| To me this makes most sense, otherwise putting people who
| would vote for an opponent in jail makes it so you can stay
| in power.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| That's a separate issue. Some states like CA have done what
| you suggest and are supported by the VP of the US and most of
| the Democratic party.[0]
|
| [0]https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_17,_Voting_
| Ri...
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I'm not a US citizen, but to me it seems to be ridiculous to
| give one person the ability to unilaterally make decisions on
| the lives of individuals. Not just these pardons, but also the
| barbaric rushed executions Trump performed. It appears to me to
| be antithetical to a democracy that claims to have a separation
| of power.
| secondcoming wrote:
| > barbaric rushed executions
|
| Source?
| n4r9 wrote:
| Think they're referring to this:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55236260
| secondcoming wrote:
| Intersting, thanks.
|
| Is this not just a coincidence of scheduling though? Or
| do courts normally schedule executions for presidential
| transition periods?
| zimpenfish wrote:
| I believe the US Government (as opposed to states) hadn't
| executed anyone for something like 12 years (covering 3
| transition periods) and then in about 3 months, executed
| 13.
|
| It's definitely not scheduling.
| secondcoming wrote:
| Right ok, But what I'm trying to find out is if these
| execution dates were set when the people were found
| guilty, or if someone just decided the execution dates
| recently.
| n4r9 wrote:
| Propublica has a good behind-the-scenes take on it:
|
| https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-trump-and-
| barrs-la...
|
| In short, there has been a push to resume executions for
| nearly ten years, and it has accelerated during Trump's
| presidency (he campaigned on a strong pro-execution
| platform). In summer 2019 a shortlist was made of
| prisoners already on Death Row, whose appeals had failed.
| They then moved as quickly as they could to schedule the
| executions, quash further appeals and pass litigation to
| make them happen.
| severino wrote:
| https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/executions/execution-
| database?f...
|
| Look at the dates, from the beginning. To me, it doesn't
| look like a coincidence.
| astrange wrote:
| We normally don't execute anyone ever. People on the
| federal death row stay there for decades.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| I shouldn't have assumed everyone knew about this.
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/15/trump-
| admini...
|
| This story is especially sad.
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/05/lisa-
| montgomer...
| secondcoming wrote:
| The BBC article linked in this thread is far more
| informative. But thanks.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Funny how this gets downvoted without anyone giving a comment
| on why my statement deserves to be downvoted.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Or we could hold politicians accountable for failing to hold
| the president accountable through the systems that exist.
| lovecg wrote:
| People who elected these politicians evidently approve of
| their performance.
| koolba wrote:
| Pardons by the executive branch are a weapon of peace. It
| exists to allow the chief executive, whether the President or a
| Governor of a State, to settle _any_ matter in their
| jurisdiction.
|
| At the Presidential level, the power is absolute because the
| founders believed in the executive branch being centralized in
| a single individual, the President. Outside of Senate
| confirmation, there isn't much that limits the powers of the
| President and it's like that on purpose. The people get to have
| their say every four years.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Exactly - it's notable that the power of pardon is the tail
| end of the clause that give the president power over the
| military - that's not random phrasing.
|
| > The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and
| Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several
| States, when called into the actual Service of the United
| States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the
| principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon
| any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective
| Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and
| Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in
| Cases of Impeachment.
|
| https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/article-2/section-2.
| ..
| fumblebee wrote:
| Courts check presidential power all the time. A blatant abuse
| of the authority to pardon should be met with swift checks to
| limit that power.
| [deleted]
| hulitu wrote:
| > So when we do get rid of presidential pardons?
|
| This sholdn't happen to a dog say dogs.
|
| > We've seen "an American president commutes the sentence of a
| person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very
| president." ~Mitt Romney
|
| It's good to have friends.
|
| > And we've seen pardons put up for sale.[0]
|
| Free market at work.
|
| > Is the US a nation of laws and due process or a Banana
| Republic where anyone can be acquitted of anything?
|
| Taken into account that it uses it's military and secret
| service to promote a certain fruit company i will say the later
| is correct.
|
| > [0]https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/trump-
| pardons...
| plumeria wrote:
| Any updates on the case of Ross Ulbricht [0]?
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Possibility_of_p...
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Probably not. Assange and Snowden didn't get pardons so I
| wouldn't expect Ulbricht to get one.
| DataWorker wrote:
| This really undermines trust.
| asnyder wrote:
| Interestingly enough as I understand it, if the pardons haven't
| been delivered and executed yet they can still be withdrawn. But
| it might be too late already depending on the execution of them.
| benzible wrote:
| Apparently Trump screwed up many of the pardons [1]
|
| > The pardon for Paul Manafort (on Dec. 23, 2020), is
| illustrative. By its own terms, the pardon covers only the crimes
| "for his conviction" on specific charges and not any other crimes
| (charged or uncharged). [...] Manafort pleaded to a superseding
| information containing two conspiracy charges, while the entire
| underlying indictment -- containing numerous crimes from money
| laundering, to witness tampering, to violation of the Foreign
| Agents Registration Act -- now remains open to prosecution as
| there was no conviction for those charges.
|
| Not sure if this applies to Levandowski - I haven't seen the text
| of his pardon.
|
| Update: Levandowski's pardon [2] covers "those offenses against
| the United States individually enumerated and set before me for
| my consideration." Manafort's pardon [3] lists specific
| convictions with docket numbers. IANAL so... -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| [1] https://www.justsecurity.org/74241/the-gaps-in-trumps-
| pardon...
|
| [2] https://www.justice.gov/file/1357121/download
|
| [3] https://www.justice.gov/file/1349071/download
| tommoor wrote:
| 20 of the pardons on that list are for people that were convicted
| of fraud, I'm sure he feels a certain empathy/kinship with these
| folks.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Anthony Levandowski, 40, was sentenced in August to 18 months
| in prison after pleading guilty in March. He was not in custody
| but a judge had said he could enter custody once the COVID-19
| pandemic subsided._
|
| That's the part that caught my eye, not Trump's pardon.
|
| So that's how rich people are treated by the court system...
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is how all non-violent criminals are treated. Many many
| prisoners were even released in the early days of the pandemic.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _This is how all non-violent criminals are treated._
|
| Not, all. Some are shot on the spot, despite being non-
| violent, unarmed, or even a kid playing.
|
| Others get life for "three strikes" (non violent).
| koheripbal wrote:
| Anecdotes are not useful in deciding policy, and trends do
| not show an unusual number of people of color being shot.
|
| Also, three strikes laws apply to carrier criminals that
| commit repeated felonies, which in most states require at
| least one of those felonies to be violent and severely so.
|
| https://freebeacon.com/issues/study-no-racial-difference-
| pol...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-strikes_law
| mayankkaizen wrote:
| Legal system for rich and justice system for poor.
| bluelu wrote:
| According to https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/19/former-google-
| engineer-ant...
|
| "Instead, Alsup sentenced Lewandowski to 18 months, but delayed
| his prison time until the pandemic was under control. Levandowski
| also agreed to pay $756,499.22 in restitution to Waymo and a fine
| of $95,000."
|
| So he didn't even spend a single minute in prison. Wow
| tinyhouse wrote:
| To be honest I don't know the fine details about the
| allegations against him and what he already paid. His
| reputation would definitely never be the same. The fact he
| didn't spend time in prison might be a good thing. I recall
| seeing a horrifying doco about a guy in prison who stabbed
| another inmate like 100 times and killed him. The stabber was
| already doing life in jail for murder. But his partner who
| helped him by holding that inmate down is a guy who ended up in
| prison for a minor fraud of a check or something along those
| lines. The fact they mix those people in prison is crazy (that
| was a pretty old case, maybe today things are different).
| tartoran wrote:
| I doubt this type of crime would land in the same type of
| prison this type incident you mentioned happens. But I might
| be wrong. If anybody knows, What chances are for convicted
| white-collar criminals to end up with violent cellmates of
| non-white collar crimes?
| throwaway90434 wrote:
| As someone convicted of a low level white collar crime, who
| ended up in a prison with many violent criminals and saw
| people get stabbed, I would have to disagree. This is a
| totally incorrect speculation. BOP has no oversight and is
| totally wack. I'm glad he didn't go to prison: he's already
| suffered the reputation consequences he deserves.
| [deleted]
| 0goel0 wrote:
| This is by design. White collar crime is rarely prosecuted and
| convicted.
|
| https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/white-collar-crime...
| evgeniysharapov wrote:
| In this case though he was prosecuted and convicted.
| 0goel0 wrote:
| I know. I'm saying that the friction to conviction is high
| enough.
| refurb wrote:
| I mean serious criminals are being released from prison in CA
| due to Covid so I'm not sure he's getting special treatment in
| that aspect.
| 0goel0 wrote:
| What's not serious about stealing and selling trade secrets,
| jeopardizing life-saving R&D, blatantly disrespecting the
| law, and walking away with hundreds of millions of dollars
| expecting not to be caught?
| tomerico wrote:
| He declared bankruptcy, hence walked out much poorer than
| he started. At the end of the day it was IP theft, which
| for regular people creates more competition and can
| accelerate the "life-saving R&D".
|
| IP laws exist for a good reason, but it's hard to say that
| he has done serious damage to society.
| blackguardx wrote:
| He started a church and it is alleged that he funneled a
| lot of money into it. I think he is doing alright.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| (Joke)
|
| What, no pardon for Joe Exotic?
|
| How are we going to survive the lockdown without more of his
| antics on Netflix?
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| It's weird to see the Republican party embrace intellectual
| property theft. Levandowski stole from his employer and his
| colleagues at Google to enrich himself at Uber. Why would that
| possibly be worth a pardon?
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Can he be retried in state or local court?
| apozem wrote:
| Adam Serwer, an excellent writer, explained it: [1]
|
| > Law and order, for this president, simply means that he and
| his ideological allies are above the law, while others, such as
| [George] Floyd, are merely subject to it.
|
| Lewandowski's pardon request was endorsed by Peter Thiel, a
| huge Trump backer, so he gets to be above the law. Simple.
|
| [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/06/chauvin-
| di...
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I saw reporting that Thiel (and Palmer Luckey) also received
| a pardon. Anyone have a link to that, I'd like to see
| specifically what he was pardoned for...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's not correct. The reporting was that Thiel and Luckey
| lobbied Trump to get a pardon for Levandowski.
| thesausageking wrote:
| They're not justifying it. Thiel was a big supporter of Trump
| and lobbied to get Levandowski a pardon, so Trump is returning
| the favor.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Thiel also got a pardon.. for what exactly? Also Luckey?
| nlh wrote:
| No I think perhaps you are misreading the announcement.
| Thiel, Luckey et al were backers of the pardon for
| Levandowski and involved in the process, not recipients of
| pardons themselves.
| tsycho wrote:
| What's Thiel getting out of it though? How does pardoning
| Levandowski help him?
| dannykwells wrote:
| I guess we shall see.
| imglorp wrote:
| Maybe Thiel would like Levandowski to work for Luminar?
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-24/thiel-
| bac...
|
| Dumb question, if Levandowski used the (allegedly)
| purloined IP at a new employer, could he be charged with a
| new crime or would he be clear to proceed under double
| jeopardy?
| sn_master wrote:
| I can say similar things about many of the Obama pardons, but
| I'll get downvoted into oblivion if I do so. Pardon is by
| definition an admission of guilt, and Levandowski has already
| paid a steep price for what he did.
| abruzzi wrote:
| I suspect in this case that you are getting downvoted
| /because/ you didn't provide specifics. It's certainly
| possible that some Obama pardons were self serving, I didn't
| hear much about his pardons at the time, but I'm open to the
| idea that some are morally dubious, but I would need names
| and why it is dubious, rather than innuendo. Many people on
| both sides felt Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich was pretty
| iffy.
| tacon wrote:
| >Pardon is by definition an admission of guilt
|
| That is one of the oldest myths about pardons. While you do
| not have to accept a pardon, your acceptance is not an
| admission of guilt. All the soldiers in the Confederacy did
| not have to admit their guilt. All the Vietnam draft dodgers
| did not have to admit their guilt. And Caspar Weinberger did
| not admit his guilt when Bush 41 pardoned him, because
| neither thought he had committed a crime.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-
| myths...
| sanderjd wrote:
| Which ones?
| jshevek wrote:
| You may be correct, but complaining that you will be down
| voted often leads to additional downvotes.
| sn_master wrote:
| Not complaining, just pointing out the bias in this
| community.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| The 'bias' in this community is for demanding evidence,
| of which you have provided none. You said "I can say
| similar things about many of the Obama pardons" - well,
| if you can, do, otherwise, well, STFU.
|
| And I'm not being facetious. It's worth comparing Obama's
| (or any previous president's) process for granting
| pardons with Trump's.
| jshevek wrote:
| There are numerous simultaneous biases. IMO you are both
| correct.
| sn_master wrote:
| > or any previous president's
|
| You mean like Bill Clinton who pardoned his brother's
| drug charges?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Yes, exactly like that. That is a good, specific example
| that anyone can investigate and see how it compares to
| Trump's pardons. Still waiting on the examples from Obama
| that "you can say similar things about".
| sn_master wrote:
| James Robert Adelman? Teresa Clark?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| OK, great:
|
| James Robert Adelman: pardoned after being convicted of
| embezzling from his company, sentenced to 12 years
| imprisonment, _which he served_.
|
| Teresa Clark: convicted of "Knowingly disposing of a
| firearm to a person convicted of a crime punishable by a
| term of imprisonment exceeding one year (three counts);
| falsification of firearms purchase forms (two counts)",
| sentenced to 3 years probation and 1 year of house arrest
| _which she served_.
|
| I'm not sure what your point is in these examples. I
| couldn't find more details on the reasons for their
| pardons, but letting people clear their record well after
| they have served their time is a common use of pardons.
| None of that is true in the Anthony Levandowski case, or
| for that matter the slew of other pardons and
| commutations Trump gave to his close associates and
| cronies.
| sn_master wrote:
| Point of pardon is to restore one's rights such as voting
| and gun ownership and eligibility for public and other
| positions. Commutation is only one aspect of pardon.
|
| Most of yesterday's pardoned folks also either fully
| served or served a majority of their sentence.
| jshevek wrote:
| Revising my statement: mentioning the probability of your
| comment being downvoted can bring more downvotes,
| independently of other biases.
| rchaud wrote:
| Try to assume good faith in your responses.
|
| If your points about Obama pardons are valid, then they
| should stand on their own merits, and it shouldn't bother you
| if it's 'downvoted into oblivion'.
| franklampard wrote:
| Corruption
| coryfklein wrote:
| Donald Trump is not the Republican party.
| acdha wrote:
| You can say that when any significant percentage don't follow
| him in lockstep. Very few elected officials are willing to
| disagree with him in public, most backed dishonest claims or
| opposition to public health measures, and he has high
| approval ratings from Republican voters: it's his party.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Yes, but in the context of presidential pardons there is
| nothing the GOP can do to either back the president or not
| back the president. It doesn't make sense to attribute
| presidential pardons to The Republican Party when there is
| a sole individual who decides who to pardon and why.
|
| I'll point out that, now that Donald Trump is out of power,
| many in the GOP in general have been rather quick to turn
| their backs on him and outright criticize him. While he was
| in power, sure, Republicans politicians were politically
| savvy enough to side with him, knowing that the alternative
| was suicide. But there is now room to disagree with Trump
| and we're seeing many (like Mitch McConnell, and you don't
| get more Republican than him!) use that opportunity to
| distance themselves.
| acdha wrote:
| It's true that the direct decision was his but this
| doesn't happen in a vacuum. People talk beforehand --
| this is reportedly why he didn't pardon himself or his
| children - and especially now there's no reason why a
| member of Congress or other national leader couldn't
| speak against something like this. It practically writes
| itself -- "Republicans support private property rights,
| thievery isn't something we condone" - so if they want an
| easy way to show that Trump isn't the party, all they
| have to do is start.
|
| > While he was in power, sure, Republicans politicians
| were politically savvy enough to side with him, knowing
| that the alternative was suicide.
|
| It's not that easy: some people were making a cold
| political calculation but we're far enough down the Tea
| Party rabbit hole that there are members who earnestly
| believe what used to be fringe beliefs. I mean, think
| about how many right now are willing to unequivocally say
| that Biden legitimately won the election, which is almost
| the weakest sop to objective reality possible. That's not
| going to reverse itself quickly, especially without a
| hard fight from everyone else still in the party. I know
| some people who are trying to pull the party back from
| the edge and I wish them success but the odds aren't
| looking great.
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| Come on, suicide? If you loose your job for saying "this
| is unethical" do you call that suicide? It's called
| having a backbone. "If you are neutral in situations of
| injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
| These GOP folks who stood behind Trump but are now
| critical choose the side that's winning at the time
| rather than stand up for what's right.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Reportedly its "worth a pardon" for about $2M a pop. Much
| cheaper then paying the amount Levandowski owed in the
| settlement, so its just good business.
| choppaface wrote:
| It's not just he "stole the secrets," he was so reckless that
| while at Google he instigated perhaps the first self-driving
| car crash in California: https://jalopnik.com/the-engineer-in-
| the-google-vs-uber-stol...
| PascLeRasc wrote:
| I think some of it might be just schadenfreude for Google mixed
| with Uber's prop 22 pretending to be for the "free market".
| [deleted]
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions
| and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.
|
| What a laugh. Significant price? How so?
| [deleted]
| rjsw wrote:
| I thought the price was $2M.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Ballpark, yes. I was being sarcastic. It's a gentle slap of
| the hand for him. Nothing more.
| cush wrote:
| That's the going rate for Trump pardons
| darig wrote:
| That's what Giuliani is charging... he probably gets them
| wholesale at a rate.
| throw7 wrote:
| john kiriakou said he was seen by trump on tucker carlson and
| requested jared look into him. jared reached out and part of
| his pardon "application" was 1/4 of the single page dedicated
| to how being pardoned would help get trump reelected.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| After the election?
| villgax wrote:
| Way to go Peter Thiel & his lobbying money
| brunoTbear wrote:
| Nice to see Peter Thiel get one last jab in against common
| decency before Trump is out of office.
|
| Does anyone think Lewandowski's conduct is acceptable or
| defensible? He defrauded everyone involved in Le Affaire Uber.
| xutopia wrote:
| Law and order unless they're my friends or that I can make 2
| million with it.
| User23 wrote:
| The pardon power is enshrined in the highest law of the land
| and is thus lawful and orderly. There is no contradiction here.
| throwaway22442 wrote:
| Good news for his current self driving company, Pronto.ai.
| cairoshikobon wrote:
| Did they wipe out the entire old site? The link isn't working
| anymore and everything looks different.
| joncrane wrote:
| I believe up until noon the website was "whitehouse.gov" and
| now that he's no longer POTUS it's trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| boolean wrote:
| > Mr. Levandowski has paid a significant price for his actions
| and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good.
|
| As a thief, he should be in prison. He hasn't paid any price.
| He's still a millionaire, will probably start another company and
| raise billions in next 3 years.
| Cookingboy wrote:
| >paid a significant price
|
| Is that price a large sum of money to a particular SuperPAC in
| the near future?
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| You can take performance fees for raising money for a pac and
| not be licensed.
|
| Great way to make large sums of money if you have skills to
| raise money.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Not only this, but Mr. Levandowski has made it clear he thinks
| his car failing to cause the first self-driving fatality would
| mean they were _behind_.
|
| The man believes manslaughter is the cost of doing business for
| innovation. He should be in prison for much more than he got.
| maxlamb wrote:
| Source? That is pretty horrifying if true
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > Last summer, after a man died in a Tesla that was using
| the car's Autopilot system, which allows for autonomous
| driving on highways, Levandowski told several Uber
| engineers that they were not pushing aggressively enough.
| "I'm pissed we didn't have the first death," Levandowski
| said, according to a person familiar with the conversation.
| (Levandowski denies saying this.)
|
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/inside-uber-
| lawsuits...
| WalterBright wrote:
| The first death in a powered airplane was where one of the
| Wrights crashed carrying a passenger, and he died.
|
| Should the airplane have never been invented and the Wrights
| jailed for trying?
| user-the-name wrote:
| Where do you get this "the airplane should never have been
| invented" from? Nobody has made an argument even remotely
| like that.
|
| What was said, at the most, was that maybe the Wright
| brothers should have had to face consequences for
| endangering that passenger. That maybe they acted
| recklessly.
|
| I don't think that carrying that particular passenger was
| the one crucial step towards inventing airplanes.
| n4r9 wrote:
| There's a difference between accepting the costs of
| progress and actively wanting to be indirectly responsible
| for death.
| WalterBright wrote:
| >> The man believes manslaughter is the cost of doing
| business for innovation
|
| > There's a difference between accepting the costs of
| progress
|
| I'm not seeing the essential difference here.
|
| P.S. I know nothing about Levandowski, his beliefs, or
| his statements. Just commenting on what the parent wrote.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I'm also only commenting on what the parent wrote to be
| fair. My point is that being _disappointed_ not to be
| involved in a death - as that comment suggests - is a
| level of callousness that goes well beyond accepting the
| cost of progress.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Here's the context in question:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25847994
| WalterBright wrote:
| "Levandowski denies saying this."
| WalterBright wrote:
| Since I don't know the man, I prefer to be charitable and
| am willing to assume he was just being inept in his
| choice of phrasing rather than assuming he is evil.
|
| I worked on the stab trim gearbox design for the Boeing
| 757. That gearbox is "flight critical", meaning total
| failure of it means a crash. I'm very proud that the stab
| trim system has never caused an accident in the service
| history of the 757. (Of course, the design was an
| iteration on the highly successful 747 equivalent, not
| anything revolutionary.)
| n4r9 wrote:
| Ok, it's fine to make different assumptions about the
| context. I think you could have made it clearer in your
| initial response that that's how you saw it.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Yes, what is the difference between a passenger willingly
| getting on an experimental airplane that subsequently
| crashed and an entirely unrelated pedestrian mowed down by
| an Uber SUV as a fully predictable consequence of their
| trash engineering practices?
| hulitu wrote:
| > The man believes manslaughter is the cost of doing business
| for innovation. He should be in prison for much more than he
| got.
|
| Evil scientist Boo Evil scientist Boo
| Veen wrote:
| Although it might be tempting, you can't really send people
| to prison for disagreeing with your ethics.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| much imprisonment is based on just this, even if an action
| is required to send you on the road to prison your ethics
| are used as indicator of whether you should actually go
| there or not.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Reckless endangerment is a thing, you know.
| KSteffensen wrote:
| I truly hope that most laws have some basis in ethics where
| getting people killed is unethical.
| MrMorden wrote:
| He'll commit more felonies because criminals can't stop
| themselves from criming.
| franklampard wrote:
| Corruption
| koonsolo wrote:
| A democratic system should have separation of powers [1]. This
| clearly is a part where politics has power where it shouldn't
| have.
|
| I know the intend behind this 'pardoning' idea, but both in
| theory and practice this seems very bad.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_of_powers#Compariso...
| thro4234324 wrote:
| Trump really is quite shameless.
|
| Meanwhile, the US is illegally pursuing Assange, and is
| penalizing Snowden for following the very same values that the US
| ostensibly holds.
|
| The alt-media is calling Trumpers as the new "Liberty movt.", yet
| they call for American hegemony on Asia and elsewhere, and their
| policy directions are equally counter-indicative. Liberty my ass.
| yannis7 wrote:
| curious if this is a direct challenge to Google by people like
| Thiel who have had a historic beef with them [0] - according to
| the "Super Pumped" book [1], it was Larry Page who personally
| ordered the litigation against Levandowski - and he was pretty
| decisive about it.
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-15/thiel-
| urg... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Pumped
| gigatexal wrote:
| The Trump saga lasted 4 years though it will probably take the
| rest of my lifetime for the US to heal from Trump and all the
| acolytes his administration emboldened; from the radical right,
| to enabling grifters, to draconian and in humane immigration
| policies (kids in cages, wtf?!?), and a whole lack and mistrust
| of science, not to mention the rise of QAnon and just the overall
| tarnishing of any semblance of American leadership abroad
| (because he is such a joke and his administration, too).
| logicchains wrote:
| >kids in cages, wtf?!?)
|
| I'm sure you've heard this before, but Obama built the cages.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm sure you've heard this before, but Obama built the
| cages.
|
| I'm sure you've heard this before, but Obama implemented
| policies to limit the necessity for their use, while the
| Trump Administration deliberately maximized their use.
| techplex wrote:
| Source?
| croon wrote:
| Under Obama:
|
| If you commit a crime while having entered the country, you
| are charged in criminal court, meaning you are put in jail
| awaiting trial. Your kids can't be put in jail with you, thus
| they are taken care of separately.
|
| If you don't commit a crime, you are charged in civil court
| and not put in jail awaiting trial, so your kids aren't taken
| from you.
|
| Under Trump:
|
| Charge everyone in criminal court [0], take away everyone's
| kids, despite evidence that it doesn't deter [1], because we
| are evil vindictive (inferred from facts) [expletive]
| (assumed).
|
| [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/27/far-
| more-im...
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
| security/borde...
| almost_usual wrote:
| I guess that's one way to strike back at Google.
| refurb wrote:
| I'm thinking that's a big driver? Google must _be pissed_.
|
| But correct me if I'm wrong this has no impact on civil suits?
| So he's still on the hook for any damages.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| "Getting away with it" like this isn't something anyone else
| is likely to repeat so I doubt they're pissed.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Google steals intellectual property itself
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18566929 . No surprise one
| of it's own stole IP from them (where'd he learned to do such)
| and in the end they get what they give!
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Is that how it works? Multiple wrongs make a right?
| paul7986 wrote:
| karma .... which is how it should be no? You do bad ..no
| matter what you do it will come back at you!
| VikingCoder wrote:
| I'm confused how you can watch the actions of human people,
| and ascribe the outcomes to "karma."
| slg wrote:
| >This pardon is strongly supported by James Ramsey, Peter Thiel,
| Miles Ehrlich, Amy Craig, Michael Ovitz, Palmer Luckey, Ryan
| Petersen, Ken Goldberg, Mike Jensen, Nate Schimmel, Trae
| Stephens, Blake Masters, and James Proud, among others.
|
| I guess it pays to have rich friends.
| getpost wrote:
| Which Ken Goldberg? The UC Berkeley professor?
| https://goldberg.berkeley.edu/
| rijoja wrote:
| ... or maybe they are competent and knows how to advance the
| public good.
| chandra381 wrote:
| How does Anthony Lewandowski being pardoned advance any
| public good? I would argue it does the exact opposite.
| tomp wrote:
| His conviction is based on being a fall guy for Uber's
| corporate espionage.
|
| His pardon could be interpreted as a strike against "piracy
| is theft" mindset and the idea of "intellectual property"
| in general that HN often rallies against.
|
| I'm quite disappointed by Trump's pardons but this one is
| actually a good one.
| 0goel0 wrote:
| > His conviction is based on being a fall guy for Uber's
| corporate espionage
|
| Do you have any evidence that he didn't commit the crimes
| he is convicted of? Because his lawyers would've loved to
| talk to you last year.
| rijoja wrote:
| yeah it struck me as odd. Got downvoted like crazy for
| this, which is weird since I'd expect people to be
| leaning towards intellectual freedom here.
|
| It's not as if I said he was not guilty, but rather
| saying that he would have a lot of information on self
| driving cars. Which is what he was charged with in the
| first place.
| rijoja wrote:
| He co-founded three major self-driving car programs. How is
| it not obvious that having a well functioning car industry
| would be beneficial to USA?
| jrockway wrote:
| I guess it kind of "sticks it" to Google, who Trump thinks
| is "so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous!"
|
| I have no idea if there is such a thing as a "revenge
| pardon", but I guess it's a thing now.
|
| (Incidentally, I wanted to use an exact Trump quote in that
| first paragraph, and I found it here: https://www.nytimes.c
| om/interactive/2021/01/19/upshot/trump-...)
| rijoja wrote:
| or they recognizes the need for the US to have a modern
| and advanced car industry_
| jrockway wrote:
| How does stealing trade secrets from your employer
| advance the car industry? Nobody will pay for R&D if
| competitors can use it for free.
| olliej wrote:
| ah yes, so much public good comes from rich people being
| allowed to commit crime.
| rijoja wrote:
| mm sure do you think the USA would have beat the Soviets to
| the moon had it not been for this guy: Wernher von Braun?
| hulitu wrote:
| > ... or maybe they are competent and knows how to advance
| the public good.
|
| I think corrupt is the right word.
| rijoja wrote:
| how can you be so sure that he wasn't put there because of
| corruption in the first place
|
| If highly positioned people in the industry asks to have
| his competence back on the market, maybe it's the best if
| the president just listens
|
| He was sentenced to 18 months and served 6. Wouldn't he be
| out on good behaviour after 9 months anyways?
|
| Are you sure you are not just knee-jerking here?
| gowld wrote:
| Will anyone powerful in the tech industry have the strength of
| character to stop doing business with these corrupt cronies?
| hehehaha wrote:
| [Removed]
| befeltingu wrote:
| Peter Thiel is a white nationalist? Interesting.
| eplanit wrote:
| Accusations of racism are the first tool used to respond to
| anyone they disagree with, it seems.
| NDizzle wrote:
| At least 75 million people are now white nationalists
| according to lefties.
|
| They're even coming up with new terms. Terms like
| "multiracial whiteness" to fit the new narrative. Who knows
| how many lists I'm on now.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Cry some more
| jl2718 wrote:
| I'm confused by the term "nationalist". Does it imply
| violence? I've heard also "separatist". Is that more
| benign?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Buzzfeed claims there are links.
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/peter-
| thiel-d...
| bobsil1 wrote:
| Or powerful ones:
| https://twitter.com/rsingel/status/1351783622362030082
| slg wrote:
| I'm confused by this comment. It isn't an "or" situation.
| Thiel is a billionaire and Luckey is pretty close. Those two
| are powerful primarily because they are rich and they aren't
| the only two on that list with at least 9 digit fortunes.
|
| EDIT: Or did I completely miss that this was a joke and
| "powerful" was playing off "white power".
| kenneth wrote:
| The "ok" hand sign isn't a white power sign just because some
| people have decided it to be. It's meant ok since as long as
| anyone can remember. I'm not willing to accept I can't say
| okay now because some liberal thinkers have decided that
| that's now become racist. People need to lighten up a bit and
| not make everything an affront.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| The white supremacy sign is a white power sign because
| white supremacists use it to signal each other. It is
| called a "dog whistle" because people like you cannot hear
| it accurately.
| kazinator wrote:
| Whoa there, Roofus; have a Milk-Bone of information:
|
| _" In 2017, users on the message-board site
| 4chan[40][41][42] aimed to convince the media and other
| people that the OK gesture was being used as a white
| power symbol. According to The Boston Globe, users on
| 4chan's /pol/ ("Politically Incorrect") board were
| instructed in February 2017 to "flood Twitter and other
| social media websites...claiming that the OK hand sign is
| a symbol of white supremacy," as part of a campaign
| dubbed "Operation O-KKK".[37]_
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_gesture
|
| O-KKK? ... mmmmkay, whatever.
|
| You've been taken for a ride ... a wild-eyed ride with
| your head sticking out of a rolled-down passenger window.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Yes, that is how a dog whistle works.
|
| Why are _you_ taking the words of 4chan trolls at face
| value?
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| I have to give 4chan credits where it's due, the weakness
| of the human mind is fully exploited like what happens
| when nations use massive propaganda machines. A complete
| non-issue of people "accidently" making a hand gesture
| has turned into a full-blown conspiracy theory that
| validates itself by groups willfully coopting part of the
| ruse. Whats the use of knowing the hand gesture for white
| supremacy? we've always had gang signs and they were
| similarly irrelivant outside the groups that use them.
|
| Really makes one think what I believe to be true that
| just aint so.
| [deleted]
| smoe wrote:
| From the same section you quoted:
|
| "According to the ADL, by 2019 some white supremacists
| had begun using the OK symbol "as a sincere expression of
| White Supremacy", and many white supremacists have
| acknowledged using the symbol as a gesture of White
| Power."
| slg wrote:
| These are such weird arguments. The origins are
| irrelevant because it wasn't just a trick pulled on
| normies; white supremacists also fell for the joke. Once
| they started genuinely using the gesture it did become a
| symbol of hate. The Wikipedia article you linked says
| exactly that a few paragraphs below the paragraph you
| quoted.
| kazinator wrote:
| The origins are _totally_ friggin ' relevant.
|
| Firstly, the OK gesture is a deeply entrenched, familiar,
| everyday gesture--at least in North American culture.
| Only a complete moron could think that it suddenly has to
| do with white supremacy, and accept it for such use to
| the point of believing that it _is_ a white supremacist
| symbol and not the OK gesture any more, so that anyone
| using it is a racist.
|
| Secondly, anyone who has any doubts about it whatsoever
| can search for it, and learn about the 2017 4chan
| campaign in seconds.
|
| Therefore, thirdly, the situations in which the gesture
| refers to the hoax-induced meaning are very narrow, like
| someone pulling the gesture on camera behind a black
| man's back or something like that, or a _known_ white
| supremacist pulling it in courtroom. Then we know "oh,
| he's referring to that 4chan meme". Where by "we" I mean
| that minority of people who are informed about this.
|
| And that's all it is; some damned Internet meme, and a
| minor one. Nobody will remember it in 5, 10, 15 years.
|
| Do you know Dancing Baby? 1996 3D video meme of a 3D
| rendered dancing baby: probably the world's first viral
| video.
|
| Do you remember people saying a delayed "...not!" at the
| end of a sentence to negate it? "I wanna be your friend
| ... NOT!"
|
| Same thing, only smaller.
| slg wrote:
| Ok, let's try an example in which this issue is further
| heightened. Would you be comfortable displaying a
| swastika in the western world today? That symbol didn't
| originate with the Nazis. Most people simply don't care
| about the origin.
|
| Also I am not saying every use is racist or anything that
| extreme, but it is clear that in some instances there is
| a connection between this symbol and white supremacy.
| kazinator wrote:
| That symbol is associated with mass murder of millions
| and a world war.
|
| Previous to that, it was not a common, everyday symbol
| used in western culture.
|
| It's not a dumb little joke from 2017 from 4chan.
|
| The Nazis had a hand gesture: the raised arm Roman
| salute. You can use that salute today without being
| dubbed a supremacist or Nazi. Just maybe don't shout heil
| anything while doing it.
| rendall wrote:
| > _white supremacists also fell for the joke. Once they
| started genuinely using the gesture it did become a
| symbol of hate._ [citation needed]
| kazinator wrote:
| White supremacists didn't "fall" for the joke; they were
| obviously instantly infatuated with the idea of hijacking
| a thoroughly familiar, positive hand gesture for their
| purposes.
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| https://nypost.com/2019/03/15/suspected-new-zealand-
| shooter-...
|
| The Christchurch shooter, whilst likely in on the "joke",
| made the gesture in court. At that point, the difference
| between it being a joke made by a white supremacist, or a
| symbol of white supremacism evaporates. It is a symbol
| used by a white supremacist, therefore it is a white
| supremacist symbol.
|
| Context matters of course, but I don't feel you can truly
| deny it has taken on meaning outside of the original joke
| kazinator wrote:
| > _I don 't feel you can truly deny it has taken on
| meaning outside of the original joke._
|
| It hasn't. The supremacist using it in court room is
| using it entirely within the context of the original
| joke. Within the context of the joke, that is, but not
| within the joke. He's using it knowingly. The original
| joke is "get people to see the OK gesture as a racist
| symbol, so that people are then pranked in situations in
| which someone who fell for the hoax embarasses himself by
| calling out someone else who uses the gesture in the
| usual way and has no idea about the hoax. Hardy har har,
| hoo hoo."
|
| I'm not a white supremacist or neo-nazi. Can I put a
| swastika on my jacket, such that everyone understands
| it's not a symbol of nazism, because I'm not a confirmed
| nazi, not standing in a court room for crimes connected
| with my ideology?
|
| You have to start a war and kill at least a few hundred
| thousand people before you get to hijack a common hand
| gesture for your ideology.
| rendall wrote:
| _Context matters of course, but I don 't feel you can
| truly deny it has taken on meaning outside of the
| original joke_
|
| Oh I do deny. Nearly every example ever shown is
| indistinguishable from accident or people using it for
| other purposes. Mexican workers "flashes" it while
| driving around: fired. West Point cadets goofing off,
| punching each other: sanctioned. Random individuals in
| photos: obviously white supremacist.
|
| to inflate this non-issue, and then use the very fact of
| its inflation as justification for its further inflation
| is reprehensible, and then get actual innocent people
| labeled as racist. Truly despicable
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| You asked for an example, so I gave a particularly
| egregious example of exactly what you asked for. You
| suddenly switch your position to "nearly every example"
| and do not address the very specific and relevant example
| I gave at all.
|
| /shrug
| rendall wrote:
| I was very clear elsewhere what it would take to convince
| me that there is something to this nonsense. One guy
| using it in a courtroom ain't it. Did anyone interview
| him about it? Ask what it was, where he heard about it,
| what our who he was trying to signal, if he was? Or, did
| the journalist make up the association on their own?
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| I'm not here to read your entire comment history. I
| replied to a specific request of yours with a relevant
| example. You go off on a mostly irrelevant screed.
|
| Come on. Does it really need to be speculated on? That
| "one guy" is a white supremacist who killed 50+ people -
| I think it's pretty clear what his intentions were. On
| top of that, his written manifesto was a) steeped in
| 4chan memes and winks to those in the know, b) released
| on either 8chan or 4chan itself. So it is clear he would
| know the origins and was playing it up
| rendall wrote:
| > _I 'm not here to read your entire comment history_
|
| I wouldn't ordinarily expect that of anyone, except that
| you had already replied.
|
| Perhaps we should define terms. When people use the term
| "white supremacist symbol" I hear something that is used
| by everyone including white supremacists to unambiguously
| signal white supremacy. A Nazi flag. A burning cross.
| Shaved head, bomber jacket, combat boots, and most
| importantly, white laces.
|
| The content of these particular symbols stem self-
| consciously from their progenitors: putative Aryan
| heritage in the case of the swastika, the purity of
| Protestant Christian values for the burning cross, etc
|
| A symbol that everyone uses - including white
| supremacists - to mean something else - "OK" - is not a
| white supremacist symbol by that definition.
|
| Its history as a purported white supremacist symbol, a
| joke on a trolling board, doesn't follow that of actual
| such symbols
|
| The movement to turn it into a white supremacist symbol
| is now driven largely by serious, earnest, white
| leftists, curiously enough. I point to the people who are
| constantly pointing it out as evidence as my evidence.
| Why is this, I wonder? It's curious.
|
| > _his written manifesto was a) steeped in 4chan memes
| and winks to those in the know_
|
| Assuming that's true, then it's even more evidence to me
| that OK is not a "white supremacist symbol" his own white
| supremacy notwithstanding. He, your best evidence that it
| is, this fellow who used it, is well versed in its origin
| as a joke.
| [deleted]
| slg wrote:
| The very next sentence of that comment referred to the
| previously linked Wikipedia article with its own
| citations. You were one click away from being able to
| answer your own snarky comment.
| [deleted]
| refurb wrote:
| The reason you believe so strongly it's a white supremacy
| symbol is because it fits, no reinforces, your political
| views.
| apexalpha wrote:
| You really think people now use "OK", a sign used for
| years, to signal they are racist?
|
| I think you're the butt of the joke here...
| limaoscarjuliet wrote:
| A SCUBA diver here. Apparently we are all racist while
| submerged.
| Ardren wrote:
| Are you thick? Really. Can you not see the difference?
|
| It would only be an issue if you were SCUBA diving with a
| white supremacist and doing the hand sign.
| pygy_ wrote:
| When you read "inflammable", you can often, from the
| context, determine whether it means flammable or not.
| Sometimes you can't.
|
| The same applies to the OK sign.
|
| Flashing it surrounded by notorious racists after the
| 4chan hoax leaves no doubt about the intended meaning.
|
| Also, given that's it's now been coopted by nazis, you
| may want to be careful when flashing it if you want to
| avoid embarrassing ambiguities, yes. It was probably a
| fad in these circles, not sure it is still used, but
| still.
| prepend wrote:
| > Flashing it surrounded by notorious racists after the
| 4chan hoax leaves no doubt about the intended meaning.
|
| Trolling is a meaning. I think in that situation it's
| even more ambiguous since the "troll power" is so much
| greater then.
|
| I think it's unambiguous that the user is a shit-stirrer
| certainly, probably an asshole. But not necessarily
| racist. Or no more so than your average run of the mill
| "everyone is racist subconsciously" racist.
|
| I think what's hard is that it's a negative thing to do
| that brings more chaos and harm into the world. It could
| be racist/white power that is super bad, let's say 100 on
| the bad-o-meter. Or it could be trolling the pearl
| clutchers that is mildly bad, let's say 11 on the bad-o-
| meter. And for scale, punching someone in the face is 200
| and murdering someone is 1000.
| pygy_ wrote:
| Even if it is meant as a troll, it is still a way to
| signal kinship, among folks whose views are not exactly a
| secret.
|
| Haha, only serious...
|
| Hence, ultimately, a racist (if layered) symbol in this
| context. It's not been flashed as a joke by non-racist
| people.
| hairofadog wrote:
| I'm not disagreeing with your larger point, but FYI
| "inflammable" always means "easily catches fire" and
| never anything else.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I never thought I'd see the Simpsons Dr Nick joke in real
| life.
| pygy_ wrote:
| Not a native speaker, and I thought it was one of these
| words that are their own antonym... Must have crossed
| wires :-)
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Context matters in almost all human communication. And
| humans are pretty good at negotiating context. Scuba
| divers won't lose the symbol. But scuba divers also don't
| protect a bunch of people posing with Richard Spencer and
| making the gesture.
| unishark wrote:
| > And humans are pretty good at negotiating context.
|
| In politics? I think people are pretty bad at
| understanding context about people they see as having
| different values. The way you handle uncertainty is to
| fill in the blanks with prior knowledge, also known as
| bias. When someone has a bias against the person, that
| turns quite ugly.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Less well in politics, but still well enough. Certainly
| well enough not to be confused about its use when diving.
| coldtea wrote:
| "Dog whistle" is a term bat-shit-crazy people and
| opportunists use to mark whoever they like on anything
| they can drum up.
|
| "You think what he said was inoffensive? That's because
| it's a dog whistle!".
|
| It's not that some dog whistles don't exist (e.g. upon
| secret societies, etc). It's that it's used as a weapon
| with the flimsiest of excuses.
|
| It's the 2020 version of "Have you stopped beating your
| wife?" question.
| rendall wrote:
| To believe that dog-whistles exist as an actual thing
| used effectively, one would also have to believe:
|
| a) A group of people (e.g. white supremacists) do not
| already know that the dog-whistler (e.g. a politician) is
| a member or sympathizer of their group
|
| b) That this person who sympathizes with this secret
| group wants to signal sympathy with this secret group,
| but cannot do it directly (that is, by email or letter or
| direct contact), and so must somehow _signal_ through
| public words and deeds
|
| c) This signal will somehow, hopefully, be invisible to
| everyone who is listening except for members of the
| secret group
|
| The prototypical example is politicians talking about
| "thugs" and "welfare queens" as _dog-whistling_ a racist
| contempt for black people. I can definitely accept that
| using such language could be such a signal, especially
| with the context of aligned policy pronouncements, but it
| 's pretty blatant and not a _dog-whistle_.
| tomp wrote:
| Exactly. The only reasonable use of the word "dog-
| whistle" is _"'dog-whistle' is a dog-whistle used to
| signal support of political correctness and belonging to
| the left-wing elite and /or an unwillingness to engage in
| rational argument"_.
| gus_massa wrote:
| We can't let trolls and white supremacist steal the ok
| symbol. We must fight back. The problem is that whoever
| makes the the first step will get called a white
| supremacist, so nobody want to volunteer.
| rendall wrote:
| No, I'll volunteer. It's a stupid conspiracy theory, and
| I have nothing but contempt for it. I use it all the
| time, and always will, regardless of context or the
| presence of gullible idiots around me.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Why do you insist and insult the people who are agaisnt
| the racist people who call out the symbol. If the symbol
| is so important to you then your fight should be with the
| actual white supremacists who have co-opted the symbol
| and not the people who don't let racists get away with
| recruitment/trolling/owning the libs by flashing their
| co-opted gang sign.
|
| It's like you being furious at black people because your
| great grandparents used to always win their Halloween
| contest with their pointy hat ghost costume and you're
| not going to let stupid guillable people keep you from
| wearing it at parties.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Why do you insist and insult the people who are
| agaisnt the racist people who call out the symbol._
|
| Because they aren't against racist people. They are pro-
| idiocy. They're only _pro_ a good thing (being non-
| racist) by an accident of history and circumstance,
| certainly not because of sober reflection and empathy.
| These are the same idiots who would be all in on bullying
| the Satanic Panic preschool teachers in the 80s, or
| burning witches ye olden days, or hunting Communists in
| the 50s
| Larrikin wrote:
| I think it's a little telling that you're calling out
| historically conservative movements and trying to
| conflate them with a very progressive movement of not
| letting white supremacists use their favorite recruitment
| tool of "it's just a joke bro... unless you actually
| believe it"
| gowld wrote:
| If we remove white supremacists from positions of public
| power and view, then we can stop worrying about what hand
| signals mean. Help us out.
| Udik wrote:
| My issue with the term "dog whistle" is that it's being
| abused to attribute nefarious meaning to just anything
| you want irrespectively of the actual content of the
| message- by definition the "dog whistle" is something
| that the message doesn't obviously contain. It's a free
| interpretation license card.
|
| I think out-of-context interpretation is the major issue
| of our times: we got used to the idea that it's perfectly
| fine to report the most damning combination of words in a
| sentence as if it were the original full sentence; that a
| joke made on twitter is the same as a political manifesto
| sent to the press; and that a hand gesture can get the
| meaning it would have in its worst possible case. This
| has to stop.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes, agreed.
|
| Someone creates a weak troll, like "the OK symbol is now
| an alt-right symbol" and people go crazy over it.
|
| "Oh it's a dog whistle" no, it's an internet meme that
| got gratuitously amplified for free (this phrase could
| also be a summary of the Trump campaign).
|
| (Also "true" dog whistles are not explained - their
| meaning is extrapolated from context. Kinda like saying
| "yaml lovers" to indicate k8s users)
| bosswipe wrote:
| The question is, why has it become popular for white
| supremacists to flash this hand sign? If they are
| intending to convey that they are white supremacists and
| we are successfully understanding the message then that
| is what the hand gesture means. It's like a new word. The
| trollish origin doesn't change the fact that it has this
| new meaning in these contexts.
| pygy_ wrote:
| Getting photographed smiling next to two notorious white
| supremacists is already fishy. The picture was taken
| after the sign became a notorious rallying sign for
| racists. Do you really think that Luckey is aloof to the
| point of not not knowing what he's doing there?
|
| If you borrowed Occam's razor, you may need to sharpen it
| a bit before using it.
| Udik wrote:
| The "ok sign is a white power symbol" thing started as
| trolling on 4chan. It doesn't mean anything apart from
| being useful to infuriate other people. You're being
| trolled.
| pygy_ wrote:
| Notwithstanding its origins, it was subsequently adopted
| by racists as a rallying sign. Context matters.
| refurb wrote:
| Not going to lie but it's apparent you will see racism
| wherever you want to despite the evidence.
| pygy_ wrote:
| What evidence? That it used to be (and still is in many
| contexts) totally non-racist? I agree with that. But it's
| also been coopted (humorously, but it still is a rallying
| sign).
|
| To this day, the swastika is still a religious sign in
| Hindu and Buddhist cultures. It also carries a nefarious
| meaning in other contexts.
| user-the-name wrote:
| "It's just a joke bro" is what fascism has always done to
| mask its real intent.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-never-believe-
| that-...
| fredophile wrote:
| I agree that a bunch of people from 4chan spreading
| misinformation online could be considered trolling.
| Taking it into the real world is a step I have a hard
| time believing. What would the troll's logic be? "I'm
| going to make all these suckers think I'm a racist"? That
| seems like an unusual step from anonymous online
| activity.
| Udik wrote:
| Trolling, at least in its original meaning, is not
| "spreading misinformation". It's saying things for the
| sake of provoking anger in other people that you despise
| or you just don't connect emotionally with. So it makes
| perfect sense to me for rightwing trolls to excite anger
| and confusion in leftwing people by appropriating a
| completely innocuous gesture and using it as a
| provocation. It doesn't really have to mean anything or
| to capture or express your true beliefs- the important
| thing is just that others will go nuts over it.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| Supposed dog whistles and the extreme desire to
| immediately label people based on innocuous
| gestures/words is the new norm within certain parts of
| the puritanical left. I never thought I would see the
| day. It is shocking that what was once the bastion of
| liberal thought and open-mindedness has become this
| hyper-judgemental, crucify-all-that-don't-bow-to-our-will
| movement.
|
| Gems of the left:
|
| Do you want to be on the wrong side of history? Freedom
| of speech does not mean freedom from consequences!
| Acknowledge your privilege!
|
| And other deeply manipulative threats/concepts.
| Loughla wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite.
|
| >Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from
| consequences!
|
| How is that false? You can say what you want, outside of
| threats and the like, but you also get to live with the
| outcome of saying whatever it is.
|
| I don't see how that's puritanical. It's a statement of
| fact. I can tell my boss to go f** himself. I can also
| get fired for doing that.
| prepend wrote:
| I had to read the Scarlet Letter in high school. Hester
| Prynn had to live with the outcome of saying whatever it
| was. It was literally puritanical to make her wear a red
| "A." as the outcome of her speech (v-a-v extramarital
| sex).
|
| I think the point isn't that speech should have no
| impact, but that the response to speech should be
| proportional and what proportional means. The Puritans in
| Hawthorne's novel thought that making someone a pariah
| was a proportional response. They were wrong, I think.
|
| But the lesson, I think, is not that we should be more
| precise in meting out moral judgement, but that we should
| judge less.
| flippinburgers wrote:
| It is a trite stick hung above arguments that people want
| to silence before they even happen which makes it
| intellectually uninteresting and shallow. And more than
| anything it is used to further attempt to shame people.
| There is no compassion in the phrase.
| unishark wrote:
| I'm guessing their complaint is not about whether it is
| technically true, but the hypocrisy of the people saying
| this when they are the ones who create the consequences.
| Like if your boss tells you you are free to say anything
| you want then fires you if they don't like it.
| cauthon wrote:
| Some of the comments below are rather heated. I'd like to
| quote an excerpt from the Anti-Defamation League's page on
| the "ok" sign. [1] I think it is a reasonable take that
| acknowledges the validity of the perspectives posted here.
| Context is important.
|
| > Use of the okay symbol in most contexts is entirely
| innocuous and harmless.
|
| > In 2017, the "okay" hand gesture acquired a new and
| different significance thanks to a hoax by members of the
| website 4chan to falsely promote the gesture as a hate
| symbol, claiming that the gesture represented the letters
| "wp," for "white power." The "okay" gesture hoax was merely
| the latest in a series of similar 4chan hoaxes using
| various innocuous symbols; in each case, the hoaxers hoped
| that the media and liberals would overreact by condemning a
| common image as white supremacist.
|
| > In the case of the "okay" gesture, the hoax was so
| successful the symbol became a popular trolling tactic on
| the part of right-leaning individuals, who would often post
| photos to social media of themselves posing while making
| the "okay" gesture.
|
| > Ironically, some white supremacists themselves soon also
| participated in such trolling tactics, lending an actual
| credence to those who labeled the trolling gesture as
| racist in nature. By 2019, at least some white supremacists
| seem to have abandoned the ironic or satiric intent behind
| the original trolling campaign and used the symbol as a
| sincere expression of white supremacy, such as when
| Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant flashed the
| symbol during a March 2019 courtroom appearance soon after
| his arrest for allegedly murdering 50 people in a shooting
| spree at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
|
| > The overwhelming usage of the "okay" hand gesture today
| is still its traditional purpose as a gesture signifying
| assent or approval. As a result, someone who uses the
| symbol cannot be assumed to be using the symbol in either a
| trolling or, especially, white supremacist context unless
| other contextual evidence exists to support the contention.
| Since 2017, many people have been falsely accused of being
| racist or white supremacist for using the "okay" gesture in
| its traditional and innocuous sense.
|
| [1] https://www.adl.org/education/references/hate-
| symbols/okay-h...
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Thank you for injecting some sanity in this sub thread.
| refurb wrote:
| The fact you're trying to explain it away makes you sound
| like a Nazi.
|
| /s
| yread wrote:
| Or you can use context instead of absolute judgment. When
| done under water in a scuba suit, it probably means ok.
| When done when posing with Steve Bannon it probably means
| white power sign.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| "Paranoid dynamic of American politics."
| tjalfi wrote:
| Were you thinking of The Paranoid Style in American
| Politics[0]?
|
| [0] https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-
| style-in-am...
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Thanks!
| lldbg wrote:
| That's some hilariously vacuous reasoning. What's your
| thought process there? People are complex, just because
| you don't like them doesnt give you the right to judge
| their every action in the worst possible light. That's
| intellectually unsound.
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah, context is key. We played a game as kids where if
| you looked at one of us with the ok sign, the one doing
| the sign got to punch you in the arm. It was joke.
|
| Even though this new origin is a bit of the tail wagging
| the dog (it started as a joke on 4chan), the ok sign has
| taken on the meaning of a white power sign in certain
| situations.
|
| Unfortunately, people have trawled old pics and attacked
| people for using normal hand gestures. Context and nuance
| appears to be completely lost on many.
| rendall wrote:
| > _the ok sign has taken on the meaning of a white power
| sign in certain situations._
|
| >> _When done when posing with Steve Bannon it probably
| means white power sign._
|
| When a no-kidding, self-admitted, non-LARPing,
| Stormfront-reading, Klan- or Nazi-party member says "Yeah
| we've been using the OK symbol for years" then I'll
| believe it.
|
| But all I've ever seen about this is leftists of a
| certain type asserting that it's true, with some
| variation of "I know it's true because all my friends and
| thought leaders say it's true, and you can see yourself
| that such people as Steve Bannon use it, and people have
| even been fired for doing it. Definitely true. Your move,
| white-supremacy-denier!"
|
| So, no. It's a conspiracy theory, in which denial of the
| conspiracy is yet more evidence of the conspiracy.
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| How about the Christchurch shooter flashing it in court?
| He may have been doing it ironically still, but at that
| point does it even matter? He was explicitly associating
| himself and his actions with the symbol. Context matters
| of course, but what started as a joke has taken on its
| own life
| marton78 wrote:
| Wow, that game seems to be surprisingly common! It was
| played on my school in Munich, Germany.
|
| The rules were: if you look through the loop, you are
| punched in the upper arm. The puncher has to draw a
| bull's eye first, then punch, then the recipient must say
| "thank you" and the puncher must reply "you're welcome"
| (of course in German, i.e. bitte, danke). Any deviation
| from the rules is punished by a punch, to be administered
| in accordance with aforementioned ceremony.
|
| Where did you grow up?
| dharmon wrote:
| I grew up in South Carolina and we definitely did this
| (without the "please" and "thank you" part).
|
| If I recall, there was an additional requirement where
| the ok hand had to be held below your waist, though.
| mijoharas wrote:
| UK here, the sign also had to be below the waist.
|
| I have relatives my age in new zealand, and it was also
| common there.
|
| Memes have an amazing power to spread, huh?
| matwood wrote:
| In the southeastern US. I'm a bit older so things like
| minor scuffles and fist fights with friends wasn't
| uncommon. We certainly didn't have as many rules as you
| outlined, and just used it as another reason to pick on
| and bruise each others arms.
| secondcoming wrote:
| The rules were
|
| - the person had to look directly at the ok sign
|
| - the ok sign had to be below the waist
|
| Played it in Ireland too!
| roenxi wrote:
| Having researched the issue carefully [0] I would suggest
| there is an alternative symbolic interpretation. One that
| goes something like "our opponents believe anything they
| read on the internet".
|
| Even if it is used extensively as a political symbol, it
| doesn't represent white power. It represents a political
| sub-group disrespecting their opposition for being
| gullible.
|
| Insofar as it even could represent white power - white
| power to do what? Have political opinions? It isn't
| seriously associated with anything heinous.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_(gesture)#White_powe
| r_symbo...
| yread wrote:
| So, you're saying it either means "white power" or "we're
| trolling people to think we mean 'white power'"?
|
| As for white power not being associated with anything
| heinous, yeah "Hail victory" also sounds good. Who
| doesn't want victory?
| mechEpleb wrote:
| The whole thing was started as a deliberate meme by /pol/
| to take an innocent, commonly used hand signal and make
| the left treat it as a white supremacist dogwhistle. So
| it can mean anything ranging from "ok" to "this will make
| the libs angry" to "I am an actual nazi among like minded
| friends". Which one it is must be discerned from context,
| meaning that the symbol itself is largely meaningless.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Except using as 'this will make libs crazy' means the
| speaker is still intentionally and loudly embracing
| racism & racists, even if not their primary aim. So it is
| a symbol of two forms of racism: direct and supporting.
| Important to not give racists a free pass just because
| they are clever, delusional, or are a part of some
| popular political coalition.
|
| The sedition just happened, and it was because of exactly
| this kind of manipulative messaging by the same exact
| people. Breitbart's former editor Bannon even came out of
| hiding for helping with the riot's speeches and got a
| pardon in return. I'm hoping that will have been the last
| straw for most people for tolerating racist double talk
| and those promoting it.
| prepend wrote:
| I use the symbol to help identify people who believe
| anything they read on the Internet.
|
| I don't think I've used this symbol since I was a kid to
| mean "ok," and I certainly won't use it now due to
| potential association.
|
| But it is nice to be able to easily tell if someone is
| either stupid or duplicitous by reading them talk about
| this symbol always meaning white power.
|
| I'm sure if I went looking on nazi sites I would see it
| used in hate, but every story I've read about it has been
| a waste of time. I only see a few come through threads
| like this but when I read the link it's usually someone
| trolling or ambiguous.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| People in this thread must know what plausible
| deniability is.
|
| When someone is standing next to Steve Bannon posing
| intentionally with a symbol that could refer to white
| supremacy, being able to laugh it off as "haha, I just
| meant OK" gains them the benefits of deniability. (But
| not very plausible, I think)
|
| People use it _precisely for this reason_ - because it
| identifies them as a white supremacy sympathiser without
| being actionable: they keep a trolling or ambiguity
| defence in their back pocket, wherever that is needed.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Assuming that is true, they've succeeded in making it too
| toxic to use. Congrats, I guess?
|
| Are you going to flash a hand signal that might derail
| your career if someone "misinterprets the context"?
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| Personally, I don't care if someone is elaborately
| trolling or being ironic by displaying a swastika. They
| are still willing to display a swastika.
|
| White supremacists - Nazis, the KKK, Evropa - love Trump.
| They use this symbol. Who cares whether someone is
| "ironically" using a symbol indicating their support for
| that cause or sincerely?
| WickyNilliams wrote:
| My take is that Poe's Law is bidirectional. You can't
| tell irony from extremism, nor extremism from irony.
|
| It might have started as an ironic joke, but if it gets
| adopted earnestly by actual white supremacists (see the
| Christchurch shooter using it in court), then in some
| contexts it can be interpreted as a genuine symbol of
| white supremacy.
| roenxi wrote:
| Mr Christchurch Shooter doesn't have that much power. If
| he wrapped himself in a rainbow flag, it doesn't mean
| people should stop using rainbow flags. Ditto him using a
| thumbs up gesture or an OK handsign. His use or disuse of
| symbol sin his crime is distasteful, but unimportant.
|
| If he thought he could get people to stop using Islamic
| symbols by displaying them, he would have been festooned
| with them.
| jamespo wrote:
| Seems like you should do some more research
| inpdx wrote:
| Yep. That picture is 100% not flashing the ok sign. It's
| just so clearly not.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The ok hand sign can be a perfectly innocuous hand sign in
| some circumstances, or a white supremacist dog whistle in
| others. The very purpose why it was adopted by white
| supremacists is this confusion - this has been explicitly
| researched by human rights groups.
|
| Of course, the symbol itself carries no white supremacist
| overtones, just like the swastika in itself does not carry
| any nazi symbolism (as opposed to, say, a crosssed out star
| of David, which would be an explicitly anti-semite symbol).
| However, it's association with and repeated use by Nazi
| Germany is what gave it a nazi symbolism. Even for such a
| widely reviled symbol, there are still non-taboo uses. In
| particular, a left-facing swastika (sauwastika) is a common
| Buddhist symbol, found often in Asian media with no Nazi
| connotation. That means that a bald person waving a
| swastika flag could either be a nazi skin head, or a
| buddhist monk - context will usually tell you which.
|
| This is similar to "states rights" rhetoric - it has both
| its literal sense, the discussion of the amount of power
| states should have vs the federal government; but it also
| refers more specifically to the "right" to slavery the
| civil war was fought over. When you hear someone speak
| about it, you need more context to know which sense is
| being used.
|
| Human language is complicated like this.
| bobsil1 wrote:
| A right-facing svastika is a common Hindu blessing on
| wedding invites, Diwali prayers, etc.
| threatofrain wrote:
| And if you make the okay sign while posing next to
| celebrity Steve Bannon, it's up to you how you control your
| messaging, and it's up to the audience to make a judgment
| call on receiving your message.
|
| On a more lighthearted issue, Ray Bradbury once abruptly
| left a guest lecture because students wouldn't agree on
| themes for his novel. Does a man own his own words? And
| does a man's meaning belong to him as well? Or is it like
| sand through one's fingers?
| snakeboy wrote:
| In reality, these days -- along with most other so-called
| _dog whistles_ it 's quite effective in trolling
| reactionaries on the left. That's all. Everyone is in on
| the joke.
|
| If I'm Don Jr. or Charlie Kirk or whoever, my prerogative
| is to invoke liberal "tears" so yeah I'm gonna use all the
| _dog whistle_ words like "thugs" and flash the OK symbol,
| because it scores them points with the right, multiplied by
| the amount of outrage it causes from the left.
|
| Of course this dynamic only really exists in political
| contexts. Elsewhere it just means "OK" as always. However,
| it would be equally absurd to assume that politicians
| haven't caught on to public perception of this kind of
| stuff and are exploiting it for their advantage (via
| democrats clutching their pearls and republicans trying to
| induce said pearl-clutching)
| midasz wrote:
| Sounds like a really healthy mindset.
| snakeboy wrote:
| It sounds like cynical politicians doing what they always
| do: pitting their followers against "the enemy" for
| personal gain.
| [deleted]
| muldvarp wrote:
| You could use the exact same argument for the swastika. The
| swastika became the symbol of nazism because the nazis
| decided it to be. It was a religious symbol for thousands
| of years at that point.
|
| The key is to use context. A swastika on a temple that's
| older than nazism? Yeah, not a nazi symbol. A swastika on a
| flag at a right-wing protest in America in 2020? Probably
| not a religious symbol.
| levosmetalo wrote:
| > The key is to use context. A swastika on a temple
| that's older than nazism? Yeah, not a nazi symbol. A
| swastika on a flag at a right-wing protest in America in
| 2020? Probably not a religious symbol.
|
| What about an Indian student with a swastika tatoo
| passing by a right-wing protest? Is it a religious or
| political symbol then?
| muldvarp wrote:
| It is of course possible to construct fictitious contexts
| in which it is hard to tell what symbols mean. That
| doesn't mean that those symbols don't have meaning.
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| I didn't realize how many pardons are handed out by presidents.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...
|
| Without passing any judgement on the validity of the pardons the
| sheer number of them surprised me.
|
| Trump - 94 as of Dec 23, 2020 (going up obvs)
|
| Obama - 1,927
|
| Bush - 200
|
| Clinton - 459
|
| Bush Sr - 77
|
| ...
|
| The most interesting one to me was President Ford pardoning
| President Nixon. TIL.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The most interesting one to me was President Ford pardoning
| President Nixon. TIL.
|
| Done in the name and hope of "national healing". There were
| even talks about Biden pardoning Trump in order to prevent the
| precedent of a new administration pursuing an outgoing
| administration by legal overreach... was utter madness IMO even
| before the attempted putsch by his supporters, but now it's
| untenable.
|
| Personally, as a half German and half Croat I can only say one
| thing when I look at the histories of my home countries: for
| any form of healing to succeed, criminal actions by _any_
| government must be dealt with transparently and impartially by
| the appropriate institutions in a speedy manner, otherwise the
| only thing that will breed is resentment.
|
| The Nazi regime crimes were dealt with by the Nuremberg trials
| and the supporters were assessed under de-nazification, the
| result was that _every_ German could see that high crimes did
| not go unpunished and that our neighbor countries could trust
| us again.
|
| Contrast this to the post-Independence Wars Balkans, where half
| the war criminals of all sides were not prosecuted at all as
| they died and not much research happened into what they did,
| and of the other half the majority was protected by their
| respective ethnic's governments for sometimes decades. The
| result? Ugly nationalism and hatred are as alive as ever in the
| region.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Does he still have to pay the fines?
| wrnr wrote:
| Why so negative, a little bit of clemency even if people are
| guilty will do a great deal to help heal the nation. This list
| reads like an indictment of the justice system, life sentences
| for non violent drug offences, yikes. I'm glad for everyone,
| welcome back.
| avmich wrote:
| > will do a great deal to help heal the nation
|
| A counterpoint: Abraham Lincoln had some strong opinions about
| the events like on Jan. 6, and his opinions were not guided by
| an idea of "unity." Healing may involve some unpleasant
| medicine.
| wrnr wrote:
| I'm guided by the principle for universal love and
| forgiveness, it is time to leave the past behind, who cares
| what a dead person would thinks about something he never
| experienced. You are afraid and grasping at an illusion to
| keep up the self image of the victim, a powerful image yes,
| wash the hate from your heart, open the chacra of fear to
| drain the pool of resentment and let the light enter your
| soul. I will pray for you my child and I want you to know
| that I love your for all that you are irregardless of what
| you did.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Even in the kindest philosophies, forgiveness is
| conditioned on some kind of regret for the crime (if indeed
| a crime did happen). Almost none of the people on this list
| are repentant for their actions - if anything, many are
| defiant - and I see no reason to forgive them. It may be a
| kindness to them, but there is also a problem of kindness
| for their victims.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Healing can not happen without some form of holding the
| perpetrators to account. Otherwise, society has not shown
| that the behaviour was unacceptable and the perpetrators
| are not seeing any consequences for their actions. To give
| an example, hardly anyone would be able to forgive someone
| that has e.g. stolen your car, and continues to drive by
| your house with it and showing no remorse for taking it.
|
| It's also ironic that the demands for unity and forgiveness
| are now coming from a side who has made law&order a central
| part of their platform, in a country with one of the most
| broken judicial systems and one of the highest
| incarceration rates in the world.
| GordonS wrote:
| I support a lot of these pardons for non-violent drug offences,
| mainly because the US justice system issues such needlessly
| long sentences, and the US penal system is so harsh.
|
| But AFAIK, Trump hasn't done anything to address these while in
| power, and given his usual rhetoric about "law and order"
| targeted at a very conservative audience, the cynic in me can't
| help but wonder if a lot of these pardons are to detract from
| or excuse the pardons for cronies.
| logicchains wrote:
| >But AFAIK, Trump hasn't done anything to address these while
| in power
|
| https://www.npr.org/2018/12/17/676771335/how-trump-went-
| from...
| cs702 wrote:
| I wonder how much it cost to buy this pardon.
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Apparently only 2 million -
| https://www.businessinsider.com/giuliani-associate-reportedl...
| curiousgal wrote:
| If this is true, then Trump has made what? At least 100
| million dollars? I hate the man but I can't help but respect
| him on some level for gaming the system so well!
| arthurcolle wrote:
| Pretty sure Giuliani is just pocketing the money since
| Trump stopped paying him his legal fees and Rudy probably
| just wanted to come up with a new vertical.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I'm going to go around the interesting tech angle here and
| comment on how many people on this list have been pardoned for
| petty drug crimes.
|
| *Corvain Cooper - President Trump commuted the sentence of Mr.
| Corvain Cooper. Mr. Cooper is a 41 year-old father of two girls
| who has served more than 7 years of a life sentence for his non-
| violent participation in a conspiracy to distribute marijuana.*
|
| Life sentence for "conspiracy to distribute marijuana" -
| Unbelievable. There are dozens of similar examples on this list.
| jayd16 wrote:
| If the goal was real justice, why is this left to the 11th hour
| storm of bullshit pardons? Isn't this being used as an obvious
| distraction when it could have happened much sooner?
| koheripbal wrote:
| I'm not sure why either, but notably all presidents execute
| their pardon power on their last day - so it's not specific
| to Trump.
| t-writescode wrote:
| One theory: they're not in office anymore, so they won't as
| easily be bothered because [person pardoned] committed a
| crime, which of course they'll be chased like a hawk for
| doing, just in case, especially in the case of certain
| pardoned people.
|
| edit: removed some inflammatory text that was unfair to all
| involved.
| saalweachter wrote:
| You can't take the politics out of politics.
|
| The President is the head of the executive branch. The
| Department of Justice, on top of which the President
| ultimately sits, was responsible for prosecuting ~each and
| ~every one of the people the President pardons, on their
| first or last day. Someone inside the DoJ thought each and
| every one of them was guilty of a crime and deserved to be
| prosecuted for it. Weeks and months -- years, the work of
| dozens -- went into each and every one of those prosecutions.
| The convictions, when obtained, were hung like trophies on
| the walls of the individual careers. Proof they had done
| their job, proof their work had meaning.
|
| And then the President, with the stroke of a pen, throws it
| all away.
|
| We all have projects get canceled. We all have invested time
| and effort and then, through no fault of our own, had our
| efforts come to naught.
|
| It's bad for morale. Even when the reasons for the laws were
| outdated or absurd, even when the prosecutions unjust, even
| when perfidy played a role, even when the people who worked
| the case no longer fully believe in it ... it still hurts to
| have your work thrown away by your superior. It still damages
| the working relationship you have with your chain of command.
| Why should you work hard in the future, doing the tasks
| assigned to you, if your boss is just going to ignore it all?
|
| The President pardoning dozens, hundreds, thousands of
| individuals permanently damages their working relationship
| with the career employees of the Department of Justice, even
| (especially?) if the pardons are moral, deserved, merciful,
| just without a hint of corruption. Maybe that shouldn't defer
| justice, but it's a reason.
| slg wrote:
| It is honorable to pardon or commute the sentence of people in
| this situation. It seems Trump has only done it for a few dozen
| people. I can't help wonder why specifically these people
| deserve this and the hundreds of thousands of other people
| still in prison for similar charges don't deserve it. If he
| truly believed these laws were too harsh, he could have worked
| to change the laws as president.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Most pardon's are recommended to the President by the Justice
| department after reviewing cases. Currently, they have a
| mandate to go over all large sentences of non-violent drug
| offenders.
| wombatpm wrote:
| As one does not simply 'walk' into Mordor, Trump does not
| 'work' to do anything not in his immediate self interest
| cannaceo wrote:
| It was a grassroots effort and, in the end, lobbied through
| the right channels. He caught a lucky break. Now that Corvain
| is getting release he'll be lobbying for the release of other
| non-violent cannabis offenders. It will take time but we'll
| get all non-violent cannabis offenders released.
| cannaceo wrote:
| Didn't think I'd seen Corvain mentioned on HN. He's actually a
| great guy and a hell of an entrepreneur. Without trying to take
| any credit for his release my team was involved in the process
| of raising awareness of his incarceration for the last year and
| got deeply involved in bringing his cannabis brand to the
| California market. We've been early-celebrating all week about
| his pending release.
|
| I'll also add that his crime was trafficking 37 tons. He wasn't
| the seller or buyer.
| tobmlt wrote:
| Congrats! If only all inmates unjustly incarcerated could
| receive fair re-trials / pardons / relief / release depending
| on circumstances. There are so damn many people in need of
| justice in this way.
| crescentfresh wrote:
| > bringing his cannabis brand to the California market
|
| Could you explain? I'm not following and when I search his
| story news articles said he opened a clothing store. What was
| his actual business and was it connected to cannabis?
| cannaceo wrote:
| Corvain was imprisoned for trafficking and had no
| legitimate cannabis business at that time.
|
| Corvain's wife started 40tons with the help of a lot of
| industry folks in 2020. The effort was to bring cannabis
| revenue/profit back to support Corvain's two teenage
| daughters while he's incarcerated. That's the cannabis
| brand I'm referring to.
|
| https://40tons.co/about/
| lultimouomo wrote:
| > I'll also add that his crime was trafficking 37 tons. He
| wasn't the seller or buyer.
|
| Good for him that he was pardoned, but I find it sad that
| it's those 37tons that make the pardon unsurprising. I don't
| think he would ever be pardoned for trafficking 37 pounds.
| akhilcacharya wrote:
| Maybe he should have just commuted the sentences of offenders
| like him instead of the likes of Bannon, Levandowski, and
| Broidy. Makes Marc Rich look tame.
| chandra381 wrote:
| Trump pardons former Uber executive Anthony Levandowski on the
| recommendation of a panel that includes Peter Thiel and Palmer
| Luckey.. (EDIT: Palmer Luckey) -> who famously caught on camera
| flashing a white supremacy sign in a photo with the conspiracy
| theorist Chuck Johnson and Steve Bannon (who was also pardoned
| today)- just hilarious levels of corruption all around
| omeze wrote:
| do you have any evidence for these? I googled and couldnt find
| any photos of Thiel
| chandra381 wrote:
| https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/922563981826441216
|
| Here's the photo of Palmer Luckey with Bannon. He claims in
| this tweet that he was flashing the sign "ironically" as a
| hoax in this reply:
| https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey/status/922575384817950726
| blurp_ wrote:
| You've been bamboozled. Look up "Operation O-KKK". Next you're
| gonna tell me drinking milk is racist.
| Maken wrote:
| Who said deep state?
| blkhawk wrote:
| Is there an annotated list of this? I am pretty sure I cannot
| trust whatever is on that website describing the people pardoned.
| Terretta wrote:
| Look, all you need to know is the glorious philanthropy!
|
| The "/s" aside, if granting a pardon, perhaps it's fair not to
| go into depth under these names on the badness in their past,
| as part of the pardon concept is getting beyond that to move
| forward. Talking up their "good" supports that too.
| myth_buster wrote:
| Relevant:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/trump-pardons...
| ehsankia wrote:
| Well this is strange, this was up until a few minutes ago but it
| now 404s. Whitehouse took the page down (coincidentally at the
| same time Biden was sworn in).
|
| EDIT: Well whitehouse.gov itself was switched to Biden's page, so
| I assume the page may have been lost in the migration.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's important to note the reason the President has the power to
| pardon anyone for any reason is it's one of the checks and
| balances, the Constitution is full of them. It's meant as a check
| to blunt overzealous prosecutions.
|
| Note that the President does _not_ have the corresponding power
| to convict anyone.
|
| An interesting set of pardons was when Andrew Johnson pardoned
| all the rebels in the Confederacy, including Jefferson Davis.
|
| As far as I know, the only Confederate officers convicted and
| hanged were the ones running the POW camps. The crime was the
| brutal way they ran them, not rebellion.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| The issue is that the check on presidential power is Congress
| and it's plenary power to impeach a president for
| maladministration. Sadly congress has consistently and
| constantly surrendered both power and independent initiative to
| the president within living memory, leaving the presidency
| vulnerable to abuse.
| simonh wrote:
| Sorry to break it to you, but as with many things in the US
| constitution, the reason the President can pardon people is
| because it's a modified copy of the British constitutional
| system of the time. The House is Parliament, the Senate is the
| House of Lords, and the president can pardon people because
| King George III could and the office of the presidency is a
| limited term elected kingship.
|
| Executive orders are Royal decrees. The president signing laws
| is Royal Assent. Presidential pardons are Royal pardons. The
| power to adjourn Congress is proroguation. It goes on and on.
| Of course there are differences, but a lot of these things are
| still direct copies that never got reformed.
| philwelch wrote:
| Executive orders aren't in the Constitution and the President
| doesn't have the power to adjourn Congress.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Your point about executive orders is not quite correct.
|
| https://lawshelf.com/shortvideoscontentview/the-power-of-
| the...
| philwelch wrote:
| Wikipedia notes:
|
| > The United States Constitution does not have a
| provision that explicitly permits the use of executive
| orders. Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the
| Constitution simply states: "The executive Power shall be
| vested in a President of the United States of America."
| Sections 2 and 3 describe the various powers and duties
| of the president, including "he shall take Care that the
| Laws be faithfully executed"
|
| They're constitutional--in the sense that the President
| has the legal authority to issue orders to the rest of
| the executive branch--but they are certainly _not_ an
| explicit provision of the Constitution explicitly modeled
| after the royal decrees of the British monarchy.
| imbnwa wrote:
| Constitution also grants the power to suspend the
| constitution
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I thought I'd read the constitution, but I don't remember
| that. Where is it?
| anonu wrote:
| > it's one of the checks and balances
|
| > it's a modified copy of the British constitutional system.
| [...] Executive orders are Royal decrees
|
| Those things are not mutually exclusive. In other words,
| sure, you can look at the latest batch of pardons and think
| they are overzealous - but it doesn't mean the action does
| not have place in the US checks & balances system.
| cma wrote:
| Being able to pardon for things from your administration
| during your own term seems to erode checks and balances.
| Some kind of limitation on that or maybe at least some kind
| of congressional approval could keep out the truely
| egregious stuff. Aside from that the self-pardon question
| should be ruled out entirely or all checks and balances are
| basically gone.
| indymike wrote:
| The presidential pardon has allowed our country to move
| on from problems that would lead to decades of
| prosecutions and counter-prosecutions as power changes
| party. Nixon and the civil war are both examples.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Actually the "moving on" that Andrew Johnson enabled
| after the Civil War effectively terminated
| Reconstruction, launched nearly 100 years of Jim Crow,
| and gave permission for the South to regress (see "KKK").
|
| In other words, Black people would beg to differ.
| cma wrote:
| Congress already has tools for that (and the president
| has some sway through veto power):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_law#United_States
|
| There's no good reason to give all that power of
| unconditional pardons to one person.
| anonu wrote:
| I like to think that US democracy is self healing in the
| long run. Assume for a moment that pardons are, on
| balance, a good thing. This time around it was a little
| "too good".
|
| Net result: we rein in that power (hopefully). Dont get
| rid of it - keep it but instill rules and regulations
| like enforcing Justice Department oversight and review
| simonh wrote:
| Of course, that's a fair point. I suppose the elected
| nature of the Presidency certainly give the office a
| democratic legitimacy Georgie and his successors never
| enjoyed, and that insulates the office from reform.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And the power of Congress to override the presidential veto
| is... what?
|
| Any time you create a second system, you can see similarities
| to the first system. That doesn't make it a "modified copy";
| it makes it a "rewrite that has some similarities".
| simonh wrote:
| That's barely even a difference, the ultimate sovereignty
| of Parliament was established in the Civil War. We didn't
| need that mechanism because we had another end-run on the
| principle that the Sovereign cannot withhold consent
| against the advise of the Cabinet an d no sovereign ever
| did so since 1708.
|
| As I said there are differences but the overall system is
| basically the same shape. Specifically the Presidential
| Veto wasn't conjured up out of thin air as a cunning plan
| to implement a system of checks and balances, it was just
| carried along with the general cut-and-paste.
|
| The details do differ and have diverged over the centuries,
| for sure, but the basic executive role of the President in
| the US system today is that of George III in the 1770s. I
| also think there's a case to be made that the political
| relationships between your branches of government would be
| much more familiar to a 18th Century British politician
| than their contemporary counterparts.
| libria wrote:
| Origins for the creation of a practice need not be the
| reasons it continues to exist today, unless we're mindless
| lemmings just copying what every previous administration did.
| (That may well be the case though)
| danielrpa wrote:
| The track record of a practice should be taken in account
| when considering removing them. As mentioned, this one in
| particular is part of a very well designed system of checks
| and balances. As with any power, it can be misused; the
| president, however, has many other powers that can be
| misused in much more spectacular ways.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Here Herererererererrrrrreeeeererrerere!
|
| I personally think we should have kept the part where
| Parliament ceremonially slams the door in front of the Usher
| of the Black Rod every time. Cracks me up every time.
| cogman10 wrote:
| While pardon power originated from British law, the reason we
| kept it was what the OP referred to (see the federalist
| papers [1]).
|
| When forming the government the founders didn't just blindly
| copy British government. There was a lot of debate over what
| to keep and what to omit (For example, we don't have a king.
| Presidents were seen as servants not as rulers).
|
| Pardon power is mostly a direct copy of British pardon power.
| However, there was a reason for that beyond not getting
| around to reform.
|
| It should also be noted that presidential pardon power, while
| very powerful, isn't unlimited. The president can only pardon
| federal crimes, they cannot pardon state crimes. That's an
| important break from British law where royalty had(?)
| unlimited power to pardon any crime. Particularly when pardon
| power was first envisioned, the founders looked towards a
| very small federal government. In that case, the number of
| federal crimes were far fewer than what we have today. That
| means, the presidents pardon power was pretty much only for
| crimes such as treason.
|
| In other words, absolutely the founders were influenced by
| British government. They weren't, however, just blindly
| copying things. Everything went through debate.
|
| [1] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed74.asp
| WalterBright wrote:
| > they cannot pardon state crimes
|
| State governors have that power.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Correct, but that wasn't given to them by the US
| constitution. Rather, that power rests with each
| individual state constitution. Further, depending on the
| state, it can be anywhere from unlimited to completely
| bound. [1]
|
| The role of "governor" isn't defined by any federal laws
| or rules. It's theoretically possible for a state to
| decide that it doesn't need a governor.
|
| [1] https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-
| profiles/50-s...
| simonh wrote:
| That's a perfectly reasonable take especially on the
| federal/state separation which was novel, but is it really
| not possible there was some back-rationalisation going on?
|
| The British system was very familiar, and while it had
| potential flaws visible to them at the time they were known
| familiar flaws. I find it doubtful that someone coming up
| with an entirely novel and unfamiliar system would have got
| anywhere at all, no matter how rational and well argued it
| was. People like familiar and that can affect their
| judgement. Just worth considering.
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| > That's a perfectly reasonable take especially on the
| federal/state separation which was novel, but is it
| really not possible there was some back-rationalisation
| going on?
|
| Isn't this true of your own original post?
| cogman10 wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is.
|
| I'm not disputing the fact that they took ideas directly
| from the British government. I disputing the fact that it
| was done without consideration, reform, or reason.
| There's ample evidence that they heavily debated each
| part of the British government that they adopted.
|
| The fact is, the founders remedy for a corrupt president
| was impeachment. They made that perfectly clear.
| Corruption included things like misusing the pardon power
| (High crimes/Bribery).
|
| What they didn't anticipate was the fact that we'd end up
| with a 2 party system equally spitting the country where
| neither side would remove their president from office.
| The put a LOT of faith in "honor" and the fact that the
| general electorate would punish dishonorable leaders.
| They did not expect things like wedge issues.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| In addition, the US Constitution introduces another
| dimension to the idea of separation of powers - that the
| various branches of government should be able to counteract
| one another in certain circumstances.
|
| The British approach is more appropriately labeled not as a
| separation of powers, but a fusion of powers [0] - probably
| the strongest example of such a government currently around
| today.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_of_powers#United_K
| ingdo...
| tehjoker wrote:
| The pardon power should obviously at this point be severely
| limited, it has a purpose, but clearly its major use is
| corruption or the threat of corruption in order to secure
| deals. So many modern presidents have used it to do crimes
| and then pardon their helpers.
| mantap wrote:
| However much you may dislike the particular individuals
| that trump has pardoned, he has used the pardon in a much
| more restrained way than Obama, who gave an order of
| magnitude more. So far, the pardon power is still a net
| good.
| tehjoker wrote:
| Okay, but why should the President be able to pardon
| people close to him including himself? Shouldn't the
| power be circumscribed to things that aren't obvious
| corruption? GWB pardoned Scooter Libby. George HWB
| pardoned Iran-Contra conspirators. Ford pardoned Nixon.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Trump has pardoned far fewer people, but for the same
| reason the ratio of compassionate to corrupt pardons
| under Trump is much worse. Dozens of Trump's pardons had
| some direct benefit to him or his cronies. And among
| modern presidents he has pardoned strikingly few people.
|
| I am not aware of any corrupt pardons under Obama similar
| to that of Marc Rich under Clinton, much less more
| egregiously corrupt pardons like that of Ford by Nixon or
| Manafort by Trump.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| This is not so obvious to me. I don't think the evidence
| supports your claim that its "major use is corruption."
| The vast majority of pardons seem to be entirely
| unrelated to corruption.
| DevX101 wrote:
| Constitution has some excellent checks and balances but the
| blanket pardon isn't one of them. The pardon doesn't do
| anything to address systemic problems in the justice system and
| has become a channel for doling out political favors.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Well, when it is not used to cover up massive federal
| government misconduct making a mockery of "checks and
| balances" - think Watergate, torture and spies.
| mwigdahl wrote:
| It's not intended to address systemic problems in the justice
| system. That is the province of the legislature.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > The pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems
| in the justice system
|
| Of course. If the laws are rotten it's the court's job to
| tell the legislature don't do that.
| beervirus wrote:
| The pardon power--for federal crimes only--also comes from a
| time when there just weren't very many federal crimes. The
| framers did not predict the explosion of 18 USC that we've
| seen in the last century.
| briandear wrote:
| Which is probably an apt statement on the overgrowth of the
| federal government. The 10th Amendment has been so twisted
| and bent as to almost be unrecognizable.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It's meant to address individual problems, not systemic ones.
|
| Though I agree calling it a "check & balance" is pretentious.
|
| It's at best an instrument for mercy. Of course it can be
| abused, but if you have a bad president, that's not on the
| top 10 list of problems.
| emn13 wrote:
| This myth that the US constitution is in any way "good" is
| weird. It's one of the earliest; and fortunately others
| leared from its mistakes. Including the US itself, when it
| had considerable influence in drafting the WW2 losers
| constitutions, which uncoincidentally are quite different
| from the US.
|
| Checks and balances essentially don't work in the US. The
| best bit is simply a decent judiciary, but that was mostly
| copied from the British. And even that is more poorly
| executed than elsewhere, due to the political nature of
| judicial appointees, and esp. due to the tradition of direct
| elections of some judges. I'd say it's arguably worse than
| the British model it was copied from, not because the Brits
| were psychic geniuses, but because of the not entirely
| unrelated fact that the UK model is much more open to reform;
| it's aged better because it's less crufty. When lead by a
| dangerously populist government that might be risk, of
| course, but so far even populists have turned out not to do
| too much consitutional harm - might differ in the future.
|
| It's more like: the US constitution was grand it its aims,
| but pretty v1.0 in its execution. It's full of unintentional
| (or at least unfortunate) indirect effects that didn't work
| out too well; such as that congress is likely to deadlock;
| that the constitution isn't sufficiently amendable; that its
| form of democracy is subject to unproportional divergence as
| state population sizes diverge, that by contrast adding new
| states is way too easy, that elections at all are in no way
| shape or form necessarily fair (and I don't there there has
| ever been a particularly free&fair election in the states)
| due to gerrymandering, state size disparities, imbalanced
| voting registration requirements, and lack of constitutional
| protections for elections in general; the presence of
| systematic biased introduced by winner-takes-all approaches;
| the lack of a checks on the presidency (clearly not
| intentional, but impeachment is a purely hypothetical check).
| I'm sure actual scholars could name a bunch more. Then theres
| the more general flaws in legal republics, such as that there
| no systematic mechanism for reform; laws just accumlate
| leaving extremely outdated wordings on the books forever, and
| with ever increasingly large rulebooks.
|
| Seriously, name 1 check/balance that's actually particularly
| good! (I mean, I guess there by sheer scope might be one...
| but I can't think of one anyhow).
| ISL wrote:
| I strongly disagree.
|
| A check and balance has been on great display in recent
| weeks. A President has stated, "the election was a fraud, I
| should get another term". Congress has stated, "the
| election was correct. Moreover, we may choose to prevent
| you from holding office ever again." The judiciary agrees.
|
| That Congress is likely to deadlock is arguably a feature,
| not a bug. (That voters don't demand better from their
| congresspeople is, perhaps, a correctable bug.).
|
| There is only one exception to the amendability of the
| Constitution -- states cannot be deprived of equal suffrage
| in the Senate. See Article V.
|
| The disproportionate representation is by design. Without
| it, the country literally would not have formed. I am
| pleased to see states hacking around it without an
| amendment, thus, should the prior function be required, the
| states themselves can revert.
|
| Is adding states too easy? There are three million US
| citizens in Puerto Rico without representation in Congress.
|
| I am hopeful that we will find ways forward on
| gerrymandering. The only true beneficiaries of the existing
| system are the political parties.
|
| Impeachment is not just hypothetical. Though it was not
| fully realized against Nixon, it would have been had he not
| resigned.
|
| Regarding the endless accretion of laws: we get the
| government for which we vote. Speaking up, as you have done
| here, is the first step toward making it better.
| freewilly1040 wrote:
| > Is adding states too easy? There are three million US
| citizens in Puerto Rico without representation in
| Congress.
|
| "Statehood is too easy" is probably the wrong critique.
| The problem is that there is not clear enough guidelines
| for enforcing some criteria for what constitutes a new
| state. Thus we have a false positive like Wyoming, which
| shouldn't be a state with its minuscule population, and
| we a false negative in Puerto Rico, which is
| anachronistically governed like a colony .
|
| I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I don't
| think the original senate had states that had 80X the
| representation by population, as we have today between CA
| and WY.
| mcguire wrote:
| https://worldpopulationreview.com/states/thirteen-
| colonies (1770)
|
| Virginia: 447,016
|
| Georgia: 23,375
|
| About 19x.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > The problem is that there is not clear enough
| guidelines for enforcing some criteria for what
| constitutes a new state. Thus we have a false positive
| like Wyoming, which shouldn't be a state with its
| minuscule population, and we a false negative in Puerto
| Rico, which is anachronistically governed like a colony .
|
| Wyoming met the requirements when it was admitted, but
| its population hasn't grown as much as other states (e.g.
| no gold rush, etc). If you think this is somehow an
| incorrect result, what you're really arguing for is the
| abolishment of established states or periodically
| "redistricting" them in a way that would do more harm
| than good (given that states are more than just
| subdivisions for representative purposes).
|
| > and we a false negative in Puerto Rico, which is
| anachronistically governed like a colony.
|
| They've had many referendums on that question, and I
| think they voted against statehood until recently.
| war1025 wrote:
| > don't think the original senate had states that had 80X
| the representation by population, as we have today
| between CA and WY.
|
| I would argue the "false-positive" state that in this
| case is California.
|
| Imagine if the entire Eastern seaboard was divided into
| three States. That would be equally imbalanced.
| emn13 wrote:
| Texas is only slightly smaller. But perhaps splitting
| both in 3 (or whatever) would be a good start. Or split
| any state that has more than 4% of the nations population
| (that would include FL and NY).
|
| Practical hacks like that might mitigate the imbalance,
| but really - the senate needs proportional representation
| too. It's OK that small states are slightly over-
| represented, but the current state of affairs is pretty
| crazy. Also, the amount of people per senator is
| unbelievably high, making them less approachable than
| they once were.
|
| If the senate were proportional, we could simply abolish
| the electoral college with little loss; just let congress
| elect the president and be done with it.
| war1025 wrote:
| The House is supposed to represent the interests of the
| people. The Senate is supposed to represent the interests
| of the states.
|
| Each state is supposed to be an equal member of the
| union, which is why they each get equal voice in the
| senate. Up until the early 1900s senators were appointed
| by state governments rather than being popularly elected.
|
| It's sort of fallen out of fashion to identify strongly
| as a member of your state rather than just as a citizen
| of the United States, but I think this year has
| demonstrated that state governments still have a lot of
| influence and autonomy.
|
| I for one have been very pleased with my state's handling
| of the situation and have been glad to live here rather
| than somewhere else.
| eadmund wrote:
| > the senate needs proportional representation too
|
| No, the Seventeenth Amendment should be repealed and
| state legislatures should be required to appoint
| senators. The United States form a federal government,
| not a unitary state; that means the several states should
| be represented.
|
| > If the senate were proportional, we could simply
| abolish the electoral college with little loss; just let
| congress elect the president and be done with it.
|
| Alternatively, state legislatures could appoint electors.
| Or maybe they could appoint two electors, and the people
| of the state could vote for the rest.
| ucarion wrote:
| The guidelines are pretty simple. Congress can admit a
| state by simple majority.
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleiv#sectio
| n3
|
| As to what you consider a "false positive" state, that's
| a political question, and apportionment is not the only
| political consideration. Congress is just about the best
| option we have for settling such complex, interstate
| questions.
|
| Moreover, the US has always had lopsided state
| populations. The 65:1 apportionment population ratio
| between California and Wyoming
| (https://www2.census.gov/programs-
| surveys/decennial/2010/data...) is definitely big, but
| it's still within an order of magnitude of where we
| started in 1789.
|
| The first (pre-Census) apportionment, hard-coded in
| Article 1, Section 2, had a 10:1 Virginia:Rhode Island
| ratio in the House:
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei#section
| 2
|
| After the first Census, the largest difference ratio of
| apportionment population (i.e. population after
| implementing the 3/5 compromise, excluding "Indians not
| taxed", etc.) was about 11:1, between Virginia and Rhode
| Island:
|
| https://www.census.gov/history/pdf/ApportionmentInformati
| on-...
|
| If you were to undo that 3/5ths slavery effect, the
| Virginia:Delaware ratio becomes closer to 12.5:1.
|
| FWIW I agree Puerto Rico ought to be admitted, just as
| the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Mariana Islanders ought to
| be as well. France's DOM-TOM system seems like a better
| model to follow than America's, and it could still happen
| within our lifetimes; France made major reforms here
| within the last few decades:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_France
| cataphract wrote:
| > A check and balance has been on great display in recent
| weeks. A President has stated, "the election was a fraud,
| I should get another term". Congress has stated, "the
| election was correct. Moreover, we may choose to prevent
| you from holding office ever again." The judiciary
| agrees.
|
| It surely worked, but with the majority of the
| Republicans in Congress objecting. And one can't help but
| wonder what would have happened if the election had been
| closer (you'd just need to ramp up the voter suppression
| a bit more). We had a taste of it in Bush v. Gore, where
| the judiciary decided to stop a recount with a very poor
| justification. Now imagine it in the much more polarized
| environment of today. Or with someone actually competent,
| who managed to solidify power over 4 years rather than
| doing opposition to his own government half the time.
| emn13 wrote:
| On nixon: might well be. But it's never happened so far,
| and that's because congress is hyper deadlocked by design
| _and_ a ridiculously high bar of non-proportionally-
| represented senators need to agree to convict. Just
| compare that to other democracies that can switch their
| executive with a simple majority in one house, yet remain
| stable.
|
| As to congresses deadlock being a feature: it may well
| have been intentional; but it's pretty plausibly a long
| term fatal blow. Countries need to be able to evolve, and
| when small minorities can prevent that (and we're not
| their yet, but it's moving that way), you're creating
| really perverse incentives for horse trading, leading to
| really low quality law making, and thus low respect for
| congress. It's not out of the question that this might
| lead to the nation's dissolution in our lifetimes - what
| happens when elections are legally stolen?
|
| On impeachment: we'll see what happens with trump who
| happens to be a perfect case to check whether this
| feature of the constitution is more than hot air; but
| given how stacked the deck is against conviction, I'm not
| holding my breath - and if it's not going to happen now,
| it never will - not only was he utterly shameless in
| undermining the election (knowing full well that
| democracy is worth fighting for, i.e. raising tensions
| dangerously) and addition literally using combative
| language and calling for as close to a stormin of the
| capitol as possible while trying to retain plausible
| deniability, we're also just post election that shifted
| the balance of the senate against him. This is pretty
| much the _best_ case scenario for an impeachment, and it
| 's far from a sure thing.
|
| Additionally, the current election was upheld largely
| because of states still sticking to extra-legal solid
| traditions. Those however, are _not_ constitutionally
| protected; i.e. what worked was american culture &
| tradition (sometimes backed by state law), not really the
| american constitution. I mean, for scale: it's easier to
| throw out an election than a president, which is
| absolutely Not Ok.
|
| Some of your other objections relate to tradition, e.g.
| such as puerto rico not being a state. This has nothing
| to do with the constitution; this is purely a political
| tradition. And indeed; many traditions are fine - while I
| think there's no question on the specific instance of
| puerto rico deserving statehood, the point is that the
| constitutional bar is very low despite the fact that it
| allows senate packing. A malicious populist could easily
| abuse that, if convenient, were it not for the _real_
| protection: tradition &culture, _not_ the constitution.
|
| The US has a solid set of traditions and an extremely
| civic culture; and that's why it works - not because of
| the constitution.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The US has a solid set of traditions and an extremely
| civic culture; and that's why it works
|
| IMO this is something that I wish more citizens
| understood. They put way too much faith in the
| Constitution and don't realize that it's the tradition,
| the mythology of America that really holds this country
| together. If we lose that, we lose everything, and the
| Constitution won't save us.
| naniwaduni wrote:
| I mean, it would help if people didn't confuse the
| federal-level instantiations of social norms with
| restrictions on the power of said government
| specifically, too...
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| " _And even that is more poorly executed than elsewhere,
| due to the political nature of judicial appointees, and
| esp. due to the tradition of direct elections of some
| judges._ "
|
| How do you pick judges if you don't appoint them or elect
| them?
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Sortition
| mcguire wrote:
| From what pool?
|
| In Texas, Justices of the Peace have no particular
| requirements, and are (IIRC) the equivalent of small-
| claims courts in the rural counties, but have had some
| special powers, like acting as coroner in counties
| without access to one. I had a government teacher with a
| long list of amusing anecdotes---like the JP that
| determined that a body with like, 27 bullet wounds had
| committed suicide. Judge Roy Bean was a JP; at one point
| someone brought in a dead cowboy who had fallen down a
| cliff. The body was carrying $25 and a pistol. Bean found
| the cowboy to be carrying a concealed weapon, confiscated
| the pistol, and fined the body $25.
| hawkice wrote:
| >Seriously, name 1 check/balance that's actually
| particularly good!
|
| The person in charge with executing the law is different
| from the people in charge of crafting the laws to be
| executed.
| mamon wrote:
| Exactly! And the best thing is that, unlike most European
| countries, executive and legislative branches are
| actually elected in separate elections. European system
| with Prime Minister being elected by Parliament is
| pathological, because it does not provide full
| separation.
| angry_octet wrote:
| Hello deadlock! Come on down!
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Hello deadlock! Come on down!
|
| Deadlock is not the worst thing, and the solution to it
| is not necessarily to remove as many locks as possible.
|
| The actual problem in the US right now is that checks and
| balances are strong enough to allow one party to block
| things, but not strong enough to deter waiting until your
| party stochastically has enough power to get things done.
| This is exacerbated by having one party's ideologically
| committed to having the government do less.
|
| In previous decades, stuff like earmarks greased the
| wheels enough to get things done (but an effective PR
| campaign against them got them banned). You could also
| fix deadlocks by strengthening the checks to force
| compromise among factions, like by coupling automatically
| expiring legislation with requirements for big super-
| majorities.
| angry_octet wrote:
| I think we know that Mitch would have blocked every Biden
| appointment if the Dems hadn't won Georgia. Waiting
| 2/4/6/8 years to resolve a deadlock isn't a great idea.
| The checks and balances in the Senate were ignored by
| Mitch to get things done, rather than compromise.
|
| Since Congress makes its own rules, and 51/49 is enough
| to change a rule ('the nuclear option'), supermajority
| would have to be a constitutional amendment... And then
| 45% would be enough to halt government. I guarantee you
| this would then happen regularly.
|
| Other systems have mechanisms to force elections if
| deadlocks are persistent. Of course, you also need
| mandatory voting, PTO for voting, full franchise, etc and
| that isn't going to happen in America while this Supreme
| Court lasts.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Since Congress makes its own rules, and 51/49 is enough
| to change a rule ('the nuclear option'), supermajority
| would have to be a constitutional amendment... And then
| 45% would be enough to halt government. I guarantee you
| this would then happen regularly.
|
| That was the problem with the Senate's supermajoriy
| requirements: basically the only thing holding them in
| place was convention, so they fall in the face of someone
| willing and able to make unsentimental tactical power
| plays.
|
| IMHO, someone like McConnell would have behaved very
| differently if he knew his opponents could block him just
| as easily as he has blocked them. His apparent
| effectiveness is almost entirely a result of his greater
| willingness to hypocritically use then discard convention
| when it gets in his way. He'd never have gotten his tax
| cuts or judges if he wasn't able to bend the rules.
|
| > Other systems have mechanisms to force elections if
| deadlocks are persistent.
|
| I think something like that could be a genuine
| improvement.
| emn13 wrote:
| I don't believe this helps, at all. If anything it makes
| things worse, because it lets congress off the hook, and
| that's exactly what happens in the US - lots of
| congressional powers are abrogated to the executive,
| which is essentially a monarchy that hasn't devolved into
| a dictatorship simply because of tradition and popular
| unease at that route - but it's really unsafe.
|
| The real protection here is that a simple majority can't
| throw out the minorities voice entirely. But _that_ doesn
| 't require the separation of the executive to achieve, it
| merely requires either a supermajority, and/or a
| differently composed senate (which doesn't need to be
| unrepresentative either, the differing election schedule
| would suffice, and it doesn't even need a veto - an
| election-cycle delay would be enough).
|
| Incidentally, from memory, all sliding-into-dictatorship
| democracies I can think of did so behind a strong
| "executive". Empirically at least that would suggest that
| simply not having such a strong executive sounds like a
| sound protection against despotism. Intuitively, that
| would suggest that it's pretty hard to rally a country
| behind a dictatorship that originates in congress; a
| powerful figurehead matters. Finally, I'm not really sure
| to what extent a constitution really can or should
| protect against popular despotism - at best it can delay
| the process; but part of the point of democracy is self-
| rule; and taking away that rule to avoid despotism also
| takes it away for other reform - and it's not really
| going to work anyhow, because if enough people want to
| dump the laws, they will, even if the letter of the law
| begs to differ.
| lazide wrote:
| I sincerely hope that we all (the people of the US,
| Congress, the Judiciary) take what happened on Jan 6th as
| a concrete warning of this hazard and work to pare back
| and reign in the executive. It has been needed for a long
| time.
|
| All it will take is a stronger, more popular leader who
| feels 'bypassing the rules' is ok for 'the greater good'
| (aka themselves), and we're in deep trouble.
|
| If Trump hadn't spent all 4 years of his tenure actively
| disparaging, impugning, maligning, and throwing under the
| bus every military leader or hero he ran across, we could
| be in a very, very different country today. I'm still
| amazed how close he came to winning Arizona considering
| what he said and did to McCain.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| > the executive ... hasn't devolved into a dictatorship
| simply because of tradition and popular unease at that
| route > I'm not really sure to what extent a constitution
| really can or should protect against popular despotism
|
| Article II Section 1 of the Constitution?
| emn13 wrote:
| I was trying to get across the point that democratic
| freedoms necessarily imply the freedom to make mistakes;
| at best you can slow them down and make em less likely by
| historical happenstance. And as pointed out, no legal
| document matters if enough popular sentiment opposes it;
| people just throw it out (it's happened in other
| countries before). So perhaps this benchmark is too high
| a bar.
| scythe wrote:
| >such as that congress is likely to deadlock;
|
| The bicameral requirement for a concurrent majority is
| entirely by design and has plenty of supporters. It's
| pretty egregious to cite this first on the list of
| supposedly crucial flaws.
|
| >that its form of democracy is subject to unproportional
| divergence as state population sizes diverge, that by
| contrast adding new states is way too easy
|
| The one fixes the other, but adding new states turns out
| not to be that easy. From a political standpoint, larger
| states have an outsize cultural and regulatory influence
| (which is known to the state of California to cause cancer,
| but which cannot be mentioned in textbooks used in Texas
| schools) so compensating smaller states makes sense; voters
| in large states who feel their votes are diluted should,
| _in principle_ , be able to correct this with a split. Is
| it a perfect balance? Not at all, but it's something.
|
| But in practice, adding new states has become too hard and
| this may be a source of recent political problems! Puerto
| Rico should have been a state in the '90s. Movements to
| split large states may not be such a bad idea.
|
| >that elections at all are in no way shape or form
| necessarily fair
|
| A cultural and political flaw, not a Constitutional flaw.
| Maybe an omission, but you can't write all of the laws and
| practices necessary for a fair election into the
| Constitution; it would take up most of the document!
|
| >that the constitution isn't sufficiently amendable
|
| A risk-averse and historically motivated bias; we had one
| bad Amendment (the 18th) and the fallout really put a
| damper on amendment movements.
|
| >the lack of a checks on the presidency (clearly not
| intentional, but impeachment is a purely hypothetical
| check)
|
| Trump's impeachment trial was heavily impacted by the
| Democrats' primary season and not-so-subtle party
| establishment hopes that Warren would somehow pull out a
| win, so everything had to be rushed in order to avoid
| distracting her (and she lost badly anyway).
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Checks and balances essentially don't work in the US. The
| best bit is simply a decent judiciary, but that was mostly
| copied from the British. And even that is more poorly
| executed than elsewhere, due to the political nature of
| judicial appointees, and esp. due to the tradition of
| direct elections of some judges. I'd say it's arguably
| worse than the British model it was copied from, not
| because the Brits were psychic geniuses, but because of the
| not entirely unrelated fact that the UK model is much more
| open to reform; it's aged better because it's less crufty.
| When lead by a dangerously populist government that might
| be risk, of course, but so far even populists have turned
| out not to do too much consitutional harm - might differ in
| the future.
|
| That risk has been realized. Aren't the parliamentary
| governments of Hungary and Poland falling into "democratic"
| authoritarianism?
|
| I'm pretty sure the US system was mainly designed to
| prevent that kind of thing, and put up democratically-
| derived barriers against it. The Trump presidency would
| have been _way_ worse without them. Trump has been very
| effective at keeping his party in line behind him (even to
| the anti-democratic extremes). The things you complain
| about are mainly tradeoffs of that design.
| lazide wrote:
| You just saw the checks and balance function today - the
| sitting executive used every trick he could think of to
| keep himself in power. He was rejected by Congress (the
| other arm, who he does not control), and this was
| affirmed by the Judiciary (who he does not control
| because of the lifetime appointments and other history,
| despite appointing a number of people aligned with his
| party to it).
|
| In many countries he could have just insisted (or tell a
| crony he insists) and that would have been that.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > the sitting executive used every trick he could think
| of to keep himself in power.
|
| I agree. The checks and balances worked as they were
| supposed to.
|
| Note that if there _was_ evidence of widespread election
| fraud, the checks and balances on display here would
| (hopefully) provide a check on that.
| Isinlor wrote:
| Polish constitution has plenty of checks and balances.
| For example we had fairly well functioning constitutional
| tribunal. The difference is political culture. Especially
| the judicial branch of USA withstood the attack from
| Trump beautifully, but they were no more or less
| protected than Polish courts are. Polish culture is
| compromised by the communist mindset.
| emn13 wrote:
| Right, but how much of that is (a) coincidence, and much
| more critically, (B) US culture?
|
| The US works; and has excellent governance; that's not
| really in question (IMHO). The question is whether that's
| due to the constitution, or despite it.
|
| If the US were as uninterested in democracy and as
| accepting of an autocratic leadership as hungary (and as
| small as hungary) - do you think the constitution of the
| US would have made anything better?
| Metricon wrote:
| "It's more like: the US constitution was grand it its aims,
| but pretty v1.0 in its execution."
|
| The US Constitution would have really been 2.0 as the
| Articles of Confederation preceded it:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_of_Confederation
| emn13 wrote:
| Sure, I meant the qualitative feel by the entitled
| hindsight of somebody living the good life in 2021 which
| is possible because of it. It's definitely not all bad
| (certainly not for its age) nor was it an entirely novel
| creation in some sudden bolt from the blue. It's just
| showing its age.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > name 1 check/balance that's actually particularly good!
|
| The overarching one is the government being a triumvirate.
| If one branch overreaches, the other two can keep it in
| check. Triumvirates have historically been stable
| governments. Even in the Soviet Union - the Party, the
| Army, the Police.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Technically, a president could pardon all federal marijuana
| convictions, and announce that they will continue to do so
| for the remainder of their term. Basically, it could be used
| to address systemic problems in the federal court system. A
| large portion of Biden's term will probably be spent trying
| to return to norms, so I doubt anything like this would
| happen.
| DevX101 wrote:
| I'm for legalization of marijuana but think that's a
| terrible idea. This effectively makes one person the
| arbiter of law.
| ortusdux wrote:
| I'm not necessarily advocating one way or another, just
| using an example to address the claim that while "The
| pardon doesn't do anything to address systemic problems
| in the justice system", it could.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Most USA residents support marijuana legalization, and
| that has been the case for over a decade.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| If you have laws that are passed with racial control in
| mind, such as our drug laws, then mass pardoning is an
| act of justice and not someone becoming the arbiter of
| law.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Consider the alternative: a president who announces they
| will blanket pardon all white people and no one else.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That's...not the alternative.
|
| I mean, I suppose its one of a near-infinite number of
| possible alternatives, but I don't see how its an even
| _relevant_ one. The discussion wasn't about someone
| pardoning only black people, it was about pardoning all
| people convicted under a particular set of laws.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Right, but the point gp made was that large scale blanket
| pardons make a single individual the arbiter of law.
| That's true. (if you want a less charged example, instead
| imagine the president pardons everyone convicted on fraud
| charges).
|
| That power can then be used justly or unjustly. The
| constitutional balance for this is impeachment, but it's
| not clear that would work in practice or theory.
| jshevek wrote:
| I read the statement as "consider an alternative" or
| "consider this alternative". With this reading, the line
| of reasoning implied is correct and relevant.
|
| Typos happen (and this is an international community
| including people unfamiliar with some idioms). Obviously
| the alternative presented isn't THE alternative.
| jshevek wrote:
| > If [criteria], then mass pardoning is an act of justice
| and not someone becoming the arbiter of law.
|
| I dont understand your comment. Are you thinking that
| acts of justice, by definition, cannot also be the
| product of a person becoming an arbiter of law? That you
| perceive a decision as just doesn't change whether a
| person might or might not be acting as an arbiter of law.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm for legalization of marijuana but think that's a
| terrible idea. This effectively makes one person the
| arbiter of law.
|
| No, the Constitutional pardon power (in one direction,
| for criminal law only) does that already. The question is
| about how that position of arbiter will be used, not
| whether the President has it.
| erostrate wrote:
| Thanks for highlighting that, it's important to bear in mind
| Chesterton's fence. But it's also important to consider whether
| this particular feature is working as intended.
|
| For what it's worth I don't care much about Lewandowski's
| pardon and I suspect a large part of the outrage here is
| because his compensation was public and he is a tech worker.
| There are other more salient recent examples suggesting the
| pardon system is being abused.
| anonfornoreason wrote:
| Edited: oops sorry, I got it backwards myself.
|
| Original incorrect statement: Levandowski not lewandowski.
| Different people different offenses.
| xkjkls wrote:
| > It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions.
|
| The executive branch also controls the justice department,
| which did the prosecutions.
| Jabbles wrote:
| > It's meant as a check to blunt overzealous prosecutions.
|
| But aren't prosecutions done by the DoJ, as part of the
| executive branch, i.e. the decision to prosecute someone at
| all, or whether to offer a plea deal is already under the
| president's control?
| dboreham wrote:
| ...by previous administrations.
| chipsa wrote:
| There's at least 3 steps of bureaucracy between the president
| and the prosecution: Junior prosecutors->US
| Attorney->Attorney General->President.
|
| He may ultimately be in charge of the prosecutions, but for
| him to take that much control is considered unseemly. The
| closest the President will generally come to deciding whether
| to prosecute someone is to make a policy that certain crimes
| will get extra attention or no attention. Alternatively, he
| can fire the US Attorney.
| mbreese wrote:
| I think it was more intended as a check for "justice". Where
| someone could technically be guilty of a crime, but the
| conviction was considered unjust. You wouldn't necessarily
| want to repeal the law, but instead use the pardon to fix
| "edge cases".
| kjakm wrote:
| As a foreigner Presidential pardons + the appointment (and life
| terms) of Supreme Court judges baffle me. How can a country
| that claims to be a leader in democracy have these two wildly
| abused bugs?
|
| Edit: fixed use of election instead of appointment
| raldi wrote:
| As an American, I agree with everything you said. (Well,
| except that Supreme Court justices are appointed, not
| elected.)
|
| The other gaping flaw is the systemic, undemocratic bias that
| determines the makeup of our Upper House.
| marcusverus wrote:
| The issue you're referring to with the Senate is, of
| course, the fact that each state gets two senators,
| regardless of population. This means that the sparsely
| populated North Dakota has the same number of senators as
| California.
|
| This a feature, not a bug, and in fact the United States
| would not exist without it. The senate prevents small
| states from being dominated by large states, and is the
| only reason that smaller states like Rhode Island agreed to
| join the union in the first place.
|
| If we were to alter this configuration of the Senate, the
| same question would undoubtedly arise--why should small
| states like North Dakota, Vermont, and Oklahoma remain in
| the Union, only to be dictated to by the citizens of
| Florida, New York and California?
| raldi wrote:
| Same reason Bootjack doesn't secede from California just
| because it doesn't get the same representation as Los
| Angeles
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > This a feature, not a bug
|
| Perhaps. The problem I see is that state boundaries are
| pretty arbitrary. The real political division is between
| urban and rural, and whether or not a particular state is
| 'red' or 'blue' depends on how those boundaries have been
| created. There are a huge number of rural voters in
| California that share more with Wyoming rural voters than
| Wyoming urban voters, so why should they be
| disenfranchised simply by living within the state of
| California?
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _If we were to alter this configuration of the Senate,
| the same question would undoubtedly arise--why should
| small states like North Dakota, Vermont, and Oklahoma
| remain in the Union, only to be dictated to by the
| citizens of Florida, New York and California?_
|
| I don't know why _this_ is a valid argument, when you can
| turn it on it 's head. Why should states like Florida,
| Texas, New York and California, who (1) have the most
| amount of people and (2) generate nearly all economic
| activity, be dictated by the citizens of North Dakota?
| Why is it that this argument never considers the inverse?
|
| It's clear, by looking at Federal budget inflows and
| outflows, that states like North Dakota need California
| more than California needs them. If States were
| countries, and if The United States were more like the
| European Union, Texas would naturally have outsized
| power, much like Germany. It would be Texas citizens
| bailing out North Dakota.
| lazide wrote:
| Because of the resources those states provide. In almost
| all cases, resources (food, minerals, oil, energy) flow
| from those more sparsely populated states to feed, fuel,
| etc. the more densely populated ones.
|
| If you think NYC could be supported purely by NY state
| alone (or frankly even just 'Blue' states), you'd be in
| for a rude shock.
|
| That much of the value add/economic activity happens in
| the more densely populated states isn't that surprising -
| but cutting off the midwest from the rest of the United
| States would cause catastrophic famine in very short
| order, to name one example.
| nemothekid wrote:
| California produces, by far, the most food of any state,
| ($50B for California, $27B for #2 Iowa)[1]. Texas
| produces, by far, the most oil of any state (1.8B barrels
| vs 512M for North Dakota)[2]. Catastrophic famine? The
| data doesn't support that assertion at all. Rude shock? I
| guess I'm more shocked at how much California feeds the
| nation, but is ruled by sparse smaller states. Your
| initial claim is so wrong I'm interested where you got it
| - maybe I'm Googling the wrong information.
|
| [1] https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/714376/crude-oil-
| product...
| lazide wrote:
| Not sure you're supporting the point you think you are,
| or are addressing my points?
|
| CA's central valley produces fruits, vegetables, and
| nuts, much of which gets exported, and a bit of, but not
| a huge amount of staple foods - and if you add up all
| California's agricultural output, it is still only ~13.5%
| of the US total. [https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/#:~:
| text=California's%20a....]
|
| The areas in California that produce that food are solid
| red, through and through. Texas is red, ESPECIALLY the
| areas that produce that oil - but let's set aside the
| intra-state conflicts on this. None of the states
| mentioned are 'ideologically' self sufficient in their
| needs (CA for Oil, despite being a major food and oil
| producer, Texas for food - among literally millions of
| major and minor needs), and NY State or NYC are most
| decisively not in either category.
|
| [https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-
| gallery/gallery...]
|
| If you look at your own chart, you'll also see that ~90%
| of all of the remaining entries following California (who
| make up the bulk of production) would be called midwest,
| near midwest (definitely not blue), or 'flyover
| territory'.
|
| If you go to the link you had and filter by staples (as
| compared to expensive-per-calorie foods like almonds or
| strawberries), you'll see this reflected even more
| strongly [https://data.ers.usda.gov/reports.aspx?ID=17844
| #P7521943176f...]
|
| California has a LOT of people in it. 11% of the nation.
| While they might not personally feel the brunt of a major
| famine right away - running out of fuel for the
| harvesters, or the steel products to repair their
| equipment, or the equipment itself (predominantly
| produced in 'red' areas or imported), would mean it
| wouldn't be that long either.
|
| If we look at the wider context, losing 50%+ of the
| agricultural products aka inland 'flyover' areas and the
| midwest would definitely cause catastrophic famine. And
| that is at least how much is there from your own links.
| bananabreakfast wrote:
| Quick note, no matter how unfair states may think they
| have it, "remaining in the Union" is not a choice. This
| isn't the USSR.
|
| Statehood is eternal. Secession is quite literally
| treason and the Civil war was in that sense
| constitutionally mandatory.
| WkndTriathlete wrote:
| That's a feature, not a bug. I can get behind changing the
| presidential election to be based on the popular vote, but
| I don't think I want the Senate to be based on the popular
| vote given the terrible job done by the CA and TX
| legislatures.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > the election (and life terms) of Supreme Court judges
| baffle me
|
| SCOTUS judges are not elected; they are appointed by POTUS,
| after confirmation by the Senate.
|
| At the state level, only about half the states use elections
| for their Supreme Court judges. However, the highly-polarized
| and roughly-evenly-split Midwestern states (MN, WI, MI, OH,
| PA) are among these, so it definitely will come across as
| more visible.
| dkarl wrote:
| The people who created the system and decided on lifetime
| terms for Supreme Court judges had a lot of enthusiasm for
| democracy, but they could see it had flaws, and they wanted
| the judiciary to be much less sensitive to the mood of the
| public than the rest of the system. As disappointed (and
| angry) as I am to see the Republicans steal the Merrick
| Garland appointment and then replace RBG with someone who has
| flaunted her enthusiasm for overturning Roe v Wade, I'm glad
| Supreme Court justices can't be held politically accountable
| for their decisions. It means that power ranges from being
| accountable to the public on very short time scales
| (legislators in the House) to slightly longer (the president)
| to pretty darned long (senators) to extremely long (the
| Supreme Court, which reacts very slowly through presidential
| appointment after retirement or death.)
| mwigdahl wrote:
| While I agree with virtually everything you're saying here,
| I'm not convinced the Founders had a high opinion of
| democracy itself. The Federalist Papers are full of
| warnings about mob rule, and the goal of the Constitutional
| framework was explicitly to insulate government from
| populist and direct democratic influence, while setting up
| structures that were supposed to mold the government into
| the form of an aristocracy (in the sense of Plato's
| Republic).
|
| The Republic is actually quite prescient in its analysis of
| forms of government and how they decay from one form to
| another. The USA today very much resembles an oligarchy
| (class-based rule by the rich) being pushed rapidly into
| social media-driven democratic mob rule.
|
| Were we already farther down that path, Trump might have
| been enough to push us down the hill even farther, from
| democracy to true tyranny.
| dkarl wrote:
| What we call oligarchy now and what they called democracy
| then -- it's the same picture. Re democracy's weaknesses,
| I think the most important factor was that whatever their
| radical ideas, they were living in a country that had
| been born out of a revolution / civil war and were living
| through the failure of one attempt at creating a country
| (the Articles of Confederation) so they were primarily
| concerned with creating a system that could actually work
| for a while and maintain stability through turbulent
| times. They were true believers in (what they called)
| democracy, enough to bet the future of the country on it,
| but they also believed it had weaknesses, and they did
| not want to embarrass and discredit it by building a
| democracy that failed because of something that seemed
| inherent to democracy itself. That's one reason they were
| obsessed with its weaknesses. Another other reason is
| that they had to sell their new system to democracy
| skeptics. So, they had to convince both themselves and
| others that their system built around the idea of
| democracy was designed in a way that guarded against its
| weaknesses.
| csharptwdec19 wrote:
| > The USA today very much resembles an oligarchy (class-
| based rule by the rich) being pushed rapidly into social
| media-driven democratic mob rule.
|
| Agree with the first part, disagree with the second part.
|
| It's going to remain an oligarchy, but the circus of 'mob
| rule' will be utilized to make sure the oligarchs remain
| in power.
| cossatot wrote:
| It should be noted that the Federalist papers only
| represent the views of a few of the Federalists
| (Hamilton, Madison, Jay), i.e. from one of the two major
| parties. The Democratic-Republicans had a greater
| distrust of centralized government and were more
| supportive of democracy and rule by the better of the
| average Joes (Jefferson's 'yeoman farmers' and all that).
|
| This is quite similar to taking the views of Paul Ryan
| and Rand Paul and calling them representative of the US
| government. Those views are not extreme in the context of
| the time and are shared by a sizeable fraction but it's
| not a random or representative sample.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It should be noted that the Federalist papers only
| represent the views of a few of the Federalists
| (Hamilton, Madison, Jay), i.e. from one of the two major
| parties. The Democratic-Republicans had a greater
| distrust of centralized government and were more
| supportive of democracy and rule by the better of the
| average Joes (Jefferson's 'yeoman farmers' and all that).
|
| "Represent the view of" is misleading. The Federalist
| Papers were not an academic exercise of recording
| opinions for posterity, they were long form campaign ads
| for a targeted audience to sell the ratification of the
| constitution.
|
| Also, the Federalist Papers were written before the
| formation of the parties, and when that formation _did_
| occur, Madison was one of the founding leaders, along
| with Jefferson, of the Democratic-Republican Party, he
| wasn't a Federalist.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| The downside to this is people spend decades being ruled by
| people they didn't have a chance to vote against.
| ggcdn wrote:
| But the Supreme Court doesn't make the rules, it just
| interprets them. The rules are made by elected
| representatives.
| xxpor wrote:
| That's not how common law systems work. Things like
| executive privilege, qualified immunity, the fighting
| words doctrine, are all essentially just made up by
| judges.
| chipsa wrote:
| Statutory law over-rides common law, however. If Congress
| passed a law explicitly overriding any of those, those
| would cease to exist.
| Qwertious wrote:
| >But the Supreme Court doesn't make the rules, it just
| interprets them.
|
| The supreme court literally decides whether X real-world
| activity is made illegal by Y law. Interpreting the rules
| _is_ making rules.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Elected representatives get to try to make rules then the
| other side can chuck lawsuits at it for a decade trying
| to overturn it. The power to determine what rules are
| valid and how those rules are interpreted is a very
| powerful lever on how the country is run.
| jonp888 wrote:
| They might not be directly elected, but they are
| political. If they weren't political we wouldn't divide
| them into liberal and conserative jusices. It seems like
| everyone already knows how they would 'interpret' any
| case involving abortion.
|
| This doesn't seem to be such a problem in other
| countries. I don't really understand if that's because
| the judges are purposely appointed to be as partisan as
| possible, or whether the 'rules' are so badly written
| that they can be interpreted any way you like.
| xxpor wrote:
| >whether the 'rules' are so badly written that they can
| be interpreted any way you like.
|
| It's a philosophical difference in legal systems derived
| from the Napoleonic code (and more indirectly the Roman
| legal system, so it's common in continental Europe) vs.
| the English legal system (the US, Canada, India,
| Australia, etc)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law#Common_law_legal
| _sy...
| mamon wrote:
| That isn't as big problem as you paint it. Yes, Trump was
| particularily "lucky" (for the lack of the better word)
| that during his single term in the office 3 Supreme
| Justices died, so he could appoint replacements. But
| Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton, George Bush senior, they
| each appointed 2 Justices. So it seems to me that the
| system is deliberately designed to capture long-term
| political trends - Democratic presidents appoint
| democratic judges, Repliblicans appoint Republicans, and
| the net result is: Supreme Court reflects society's
| deeply ingrained values, not its current mood.
| hoka-one-one wrote:
| Eventually you have to break out of the mindset where the
| government is ever for "the people". It's very naive and
| in practice things have never worked that way.
| [deleted]
| riffraff wrote:
| head of state pardons are common even in the rest of the
| world.
|
| In France, Germany, Greece, and Italy it's also a prerogative
| of the president, for example.
| sittingplant wrote:
| If I understand correctly, the lifetime appointment is meant
| to avoid political pressure. Don't you think the judges might
| be swayed to vote one way or another if they knew there was a
| vote coming up in a couple years and they'd be on the
| chopping block?
| kjakm wrote:
| Couldn't this be mitigated by making terms a fixed number
| of years? e.g. UK Supreme Court - No life terms. Justices
| selected by peers + independent committees. There is one
| member of the government with a veto that is rarely used
| and highly scrutinised when it is.
| triceratops wrote:
| Single 15 year term with a guaranteed pension afterward.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| America: it's not a bug, it's a feature
|
| It's much better to be on an nth + 1 republic, let me tell
| you.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Regarding judges: How would you appoint them? Basically there
| are three options:
|
| - Have a public vote, direct legitimation (or via some extra
| electoral college or something) this means that judges have
| to be "popular" and run campaigns and question is, if that's
| really smart ...
|
| - Have the "juristical class" elect within, so judges from
| lower courts would lick somebody, or current judges elect
| additional ones. That would put judges into their own "class"
| and remove all democratic legitimation
|
| - or do what is done and have a democratically elected body
| do it. In the case of the U.S. it's done by a combination of
| president (nominating) and Senate (confirming) where the
| Senate represents the different states.
|
| It is one of the tough problems.
|
| For the pardon the idea comes from absolutist times where a
| King would pardon as he likes. The modern interpretation
| comes from correcting "blind" justice. Justice has to rule
| according to law. But sometimes one either might decide that
| a law was bad and than a pardon might be a way to correct
| that (ideally if law is rewritten as well) and sometimes
| there are hard cases, like the 90 year old who should get a
| chance to die outside of prison, for sake of family etc.
|
| Generally the system assumes the actors act mostly in good
| faith and were removed (impeachment etc.) otherwise.
| r00fus wrote:
| Lifetime appointments are the problem not the method of
| appointment.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Yes, they are an issue. The idea is to make them
| independent from future career things etc. and the rule
| is from a time where people didn't get as old as these
| days. This makes them independent from the politics of
| the day.
|
| I think Germany got that better: here we have a 12 year
| term (thus a single government can't easily swap them out
| - a learning from the time of 1933) and a max age of 68
| (for whatever reason that was picked)
| r00fus wrote:
| Maximum age is a great idea. Senators like Feinstein and
| Grassley should honestly be booted and replaced.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Well, the voters don't seem to agree...
| notdonspaulding wrote:
| Judges deciding cases based on what the law says, free
| from fear of political reprisal is the intended feature.
| Lifetime appointments get you that (or very nearly to
| it). If you know of a strictly better way to get the same
| feature, what is it?
| xienze wrote:
| > If you know of a strictly better way to get the same
| feature, what is it?
|
| Let them serve for a limited period of time, say 16 years
| max. Can't be removed before then. It's not that
| complicated and would prevent justices who literally sit
| on the bench until the day they die.
| jonp888 wrote:
| America surely does not have such a shortage of well-
| qualified lawyers that each justice needs to serve for
| decades. It's certainly not an argument anyone would
| accept regarding the President. Just have them serve a
| single long term, and then that's it.
|
| You might lose some expertise, but on the other hand, you
| don't have the tragic spectacle of Justices dieing in
| office whilst waiting for a 'safe' time to retire.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The point about having them "serve decades" is to ensure
| that a single government period isn't enough to swap out
| all judges. If a new political faction comes into power
| they can't after a short term replace all judges with
| whatever the view of the season is, but only when the
| movement is established over long period will gain those
| powers with election in between, which can rebalance.
|
| Taking again Germany as my example, since I know it best:
| There are 16 judges with a period of 12 years. Adding the
| age limit and other reasons that averages to about 2
| elections per year. Thus a bit more than 4 years till a
| new group can take over the majority. (Now they are
| elected alternating by the different chambers of
| parliament, where one of the chambers, Bundesrat, is also
| slower moving in replacement ... making it hard for a
| short term movement to take over control and if, impact
| is relatively short - unless they stay in power long
| enough to replace all.
| lostdog wrote:
| Let them serve a 16 year term on the supreme court, and
| then return them to a lifetime appointment on a circuit
| court.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| If you make it 18 year terms and stagger the appointments
| (as grandfathered-in justices die or retire) to every 2
| years, you can make it so that each presidential term
| appoints two justices, which at least removes some of the
| potential for luck to dramatically shift the balance of
| the court.
|
| If that were the case, and justices' terms started in
| January of even years (to avoid the election cycle), we
| would currently have 2 Trump appointees, 4 Obama
| appointees, and 3 Bush appointees, roughly matching what
| the balance of the court would be next month if Ginsburg
| had died 3 months later.
| fnbr wrote:
| Canada has appointments that last until the judge turns 75.
| Seems like a better system to me.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| See sibling comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25847810
| pokot0 wrote:
| You might want to look at the electoral vote and how 1 vote
| in Wyoming accounts as much as roughly 4 votes in Texas and
| California. Pretty serious bug that is enabling the far right
| to be over represented imo.
| briandear wrote:
| The federal government is the government of the individual
| states. A state is a sovereign entity. Each vote in the
| United Nations general assembly is identical regardless of
| the size of the country voting. Ireland's vote is just as
| valuable as India's. That's the point of the United States
| -- it's a republic, not a democracy.
|
| As far as 1 WY vote being worth 4 Texas votes, that's also
| irrelevant because the president is elected as president of
| the republic, not the president of individual people.
| pokot0 wrote:
| I never went as far as saying the the USA is not a
| democracy but you did. Goes far behind my point, but that
| was the direction.
|
| Saying that the president is not a president of the
| people when people literally vote directly for that
| person (unlike most of the wester republics) is frankly
| pretty weak. How can you argue he is not the most
| influencial political figure in a US citizen life?
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| The citizens don't vote directly for the president, the
| electoral college does. Usually the distinction doesn't
| matter but it does affect outcomes. States have different
| rules in how their electors vote for the president.
|
| Some states have tied their electoral votes to the
| national popular vote in the name of increases democracy.
| It will be interesting to see the first state that has
| its electoral votes changed due to this. I imagine those
| residents won't be so thrilled to have their votes go
| against their will and in favor of how other people in
| the country voted.
| pokot0 wrote:
| Yes, I am aware of how it works and indeed it would be
| interesting to see a change in the election laws.
|
| For all practical purposes though, people vote directly
| for the president (last election is the proof that even a
| full front effort won't sway the election outcome from
| the people's votes). The only practical difference is
| that one single vote has a different weight depending on
| what state you live in.
|
| Rural areas are incredibly over-represented imo. This
| should be addressed more than the tiny details that don't
| really change the outcome.
|
| Just imagine how different the left and right parties
| would be if the will of the people would be equally
| represented.
| russellendicott wrote:
| > Rural areas are incredibly over-represented imo. This
| should be addressed more than the tiny details that don't
| really change the outcome.
|
| So the most populous cities should have the unopposed
| power to decide all of the federal policies that could
| impact the lives of rural people? This sounds like the
| recipe for a Hunger Games classist uprising.
|
| This is the same as saying your vote counts less than
| someone with more friends than you.
|
| Might as well just throw out the whole state sovereignty
| idea which is an option.
|
| Our whole system was based on individual rights and that
| philosophy extends to states as equal members of the
| union.
| pokot0 wrote:
| Hmm.. I struggle to understand your logic. Embedded in
| the concept of Democracy is the fact that there is a rule
| by which a decision is made and once taken it impacts
| everyone lives.
|
| Just try to look from the other side of the fence. I can
| rephrase your question as:
|
| "So the few individuals living in rural areas should have
| the unopposed power to decide all of the federal policies
| that could impact the lives of the vast majority of the
| people in the USA?"
|
| So yes. I am sorry but with a democracy, you sometime
| lose and have to accept that the decision is different
| from your preference.
|
| In the US this only applies to federal, how much federal
| laws should impact states is not really in discussion
| here (and honestly I have no opinion on the matter. I am
| originally from Europe and have limited understanding of
| a lot of states laws and structures).
|
| Also, you are confirming my point that rural areas are
| over-represented. You seem to intend that it is rightly
| so, but I do find this criteria unjust, just like your
| example of voting power coupled with amount of friends
| is.
|
| To me, the only criteria that I find just is "every
| person has one vote with the exact same power". It's
| simple and naive, but only one I have seen that I
| consider fair.
| pokot0 wrote:
| Wait... I think I misread when I first answered: "Some
| states have tied their electoral votes to the national
| popular vote in the name of increases democracy."
|
| Is this a thing? I had no idea. Do you know what states
| do that ?
| cherrycherry98 wrote:
| See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vot
| e_Inters...
| lazide wrote:
| The people do not elect the president, that is what all
| the brouhaha around the Electoral College is about. By
| convention, each state has agreed that the people vote
| for who their state is going to vote for - but that is
| not constitutionally required.
|
| This turns out to be really helpful when someone starts
| claiming something like widespread voter fraud for
| instance, because there is no one institution to attack,
| or even identical set of rules that can be exploited.
| Each state runs it's elections as it sees fit, and then
| votes the way it deems necessary - and is strongly
| interested in making sure it's voice is heard.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The federal government is the government of the
| individual states.
|
| In that case, why aren't state legislatures or state
| governors voting for president and members of congress?
| chipsa wrote:
| Technically, the state legislatures are entirely in
| control of which electors are sent for the Presidency.
| It's just that all of them use the popular vote to
| determine that. They could pass a law that the governor
| decides who goes, or that the state legislature chooses
| exactly who. But they don't at this time.
|
| And prior to the 17th, Senator were chosen by the state
| governments as well.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| They did, originally. But then we passed the 17th
| amendment due to rampant bribery on the part of state
| leaders selling senate seats.
| jdsully wrote:
| That made sense before nearly everything was declared
| interstate commerce. The federal government now directly
| affects people on an individual level in a way it did not
| when the system was originally formed.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| If that's the issue then surely it's easier to reverse
| the judicial precedent than to amend the constitution.
| jdsully wrote:
| My understanding is the vast majority of Americans are in
| favour of harmonization at a federal level. In the
| original days of the USA I think citizens identified more
| with their state than the country as a whole. Outside of
| Texas that is no longer the case.
| ric2b wrote:
| > it's one of the checks and balances
|
| On the judicial, so it would be great if it was also subject to
| Congressional approval. It would still fulfill its purpose.
| saalweachter wrote:
| As much as I disagree with some pardons, I think the negative
| effects of looping in Congress would outweigh the positive.
|
| Sometimes pardons are _politically unpopular_ even when they
| are right or justly merciful. Pardoning someone who
| embarrassed the government, for instance -- I can easily
| imagine a majority of Congress choosing to deny Chelsea
| Manning 's commutation.
|
| It's a bit of a parallel to the "better a hundred guilty go
| free, than one innocent suffer" philosophy that is supposed
| to rule the court system -- I'd rather the pardon be flawed
| in being too generous than too stingy with its mercy.
| orblivion wrote:
| What if the president pardoned literally... everybody. I
| wonder what would happen. Maybe he got drunk and wrote
| something down and handed it to somebody. It's such a
| simple action, nobody can stop it, he can't take it back
| when he comes to his senses. Would the system even respond
| to it? Would they just open all the federal prisons?
| flowerlad wrote:
| > _What if the president pardoned literally... everybody_
|
| Or worse, had someone murder his political opponent and
| then pardoned him? This sort of thing was unthinkable a
| few years ago, but no longer.
| jerkstate wrote:
| We have had prior presidents commute sentences of people
| who bombed the senate while the other party had a
| majority, so your nightmare scenario has basically
| already happened (but the shoe was on the other foot)
| the_reformation wrote:
| Yeah who knows what Biden could get up to.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| Federalist Paper #69 Specifically mentions this over 200
| years ago.
|
| https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed69.asp
|
| > ...If a governor of New York, therefore, should be at
| the head of any such conspiracy, until the design had
| been ripened into actual hostility he could insure his
| accomplices and adherents an entire impunity...
| wl wrote:
| Pardons don't work like that. They have to actually be
| delivered to the recipient to be effective. Pardoning
| everybody would be a massive printing and mailing
| operation.
| ghaff wrote:
| "On January 21, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter grants
| an unconditional pardon to hundreds of thousands of men
| who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War."
| wl wrote:
| Carter was effectively offering a pardon to any eligible
| person who wanted it. Affected people still had to
| request the certificate for the pardon to have any legal
| effect.
|
| An example:
| https://www.dcourier.com/news/2019/nov/10/veterans-day-
| dan-f...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Considering the amount of junk mail I and everyone else
| get for free, it doesn't seem like a big hurdle.
| lumost wrote:
| A blanket pardon, unbounded pardon, issued without a
| backing legal theory would amount to overruling both the
| justice branch and the legislative branch.
|
| District Attorneys, the FBI and other agency's
| responsible for prosecuting crimes report to the
| President as part of the executive. Each has broad
| discretionary power on which crimes they prosecute, what
| sentence they seek, and what deals get cut. The president
| having some authority to wave crimes goes along with this
| ( and also short-circuits the president manipulating law
| enforcement for their own purposes ).
|
| If the president one day decided that he didn't want the
| executive branch to enforce the law and pardoned
| everyone... well they'd be impeached quickly, and the
| supreme court would almost certainly rule that the
| president doesn't have the power to pardon everyone.
| Assuredly an injunction would be issued to block the
| pardon coming into force.
| epage wrote:
| Maybe it should require a supermajority, like it does to
| override a veto. That way its only in more extreme cases
| that congress can interfere.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| The pardon and its exercise are yet another reason to be
| sure that the person you're sending in to the job will
| exercise the power responsibly.
|
| I agree that there should be no check on the power to
| pardon. There can't be because Congress does have the power
| to convict in some rare cases. The check is on the
| legislative as well as on the judicial branch.
| neaden wrote:
| I think you are overestimating how intentional this was. The
| King of England had pardon powers, which was delegated to the
| King's governors while the US were colonies. The US adopted
| common law as a system, so they brought in pardon's for the
| closest thing for a king.
| vmception wrote:
| > It's important to note the reason the President has the power
| to pardon anyone for any reason is it's one of the checks and
| balances
|
| Is it though?
|
| I went to school in America, I know what they teach and elevate
| as sacrosanct.
|
| The developed world laughs at our "checks and balances".
|
| This last term, the judiciary was the only "check and balance"
| left and it did its job, but it didn't have to.
| Bakary wrote:
| I have to say there is quite a lot to learn from Levandowski.[0]
| I am not a fan of corruption but it's undeniable that he played
| whatever cards he had in life and played them hard. He'll
| probably be a shadowy billionaire quite soon.
|
| One quote stood out to me at the very end of the article:
|
| "The only thing that matters is the future," he told me after the
| civil trial was settled. "I don't even know why we study history.
| It's entertaining, I guess--the dinosaurs and the Neanderthals
| and the Industrial Revolution, and stuff like that. But what
| already happened doesn't really matter. You don't need to know
| that history to build on what they made. In technology, all that
| matters is tomorrow."
|
| I've always been obsessed by history but always struggled with
| this same sentiment: that I was escaping reality and my
| responsibility to try interesting things by plunging into the
| past.
|
| [0]https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-
| steal...
|
| edit: to clarify my thoughts given the sudden replies: I don't
| mean to say I argue for a wholesale casting off of the past.
| Clearly, I understand the trivial observation that such a view of
| history has naive aspects, but that's not at all what I am
| interested in. For me and most other people here that enjoy
| history and such things, ignoring history would be impossible
| anyway because the draw is too great. I'm merely putting out a
| reminder that all our inner or outer debates about the finer
| points of politics or history or other such topics are often a
| way to escape seeing what we can do in the present.
|
| Looking at people like Levandowski, you might see yet another
| arrogant techie that has a blinkered view of the world, (and that
| is more or less true) but at the same time they are out there
| doing bold things and living life on the edge for better or for
| worse. They essentially act like the historical figures we read
| about, although I am not implying that he is some important
| figure as of yet (though who knows in the future) just that he
| shows the same zest for life.
|
| I'm essentially speaking for those whose main problem is the
| opposite of Levandowski: too much intellectual masturbation, too
| much thought as entertainment, and too little meaningful
| application of whatever lessons you may or may not have learned.
| You may harp on about how history matters, but how many of you
| have actually been presented with choices that mattered beyond
| the parameters of your own life?
| mulmen wrote:
| Bitcoin scams are a great illustration of how to monetize
| knowledge of history. Or I guess you could just use modern day
| regulations and emulate what they prohibit in new markets?
| keiferski wrote:
| Literally everything about the world we live in has been shaped
| directly and indirectly by historical events and ideas.
| _Everything_ , from what you wear, what you eat, the shape of
| the surface of the planet, the ideas you think, your conception
| of human beings in the universe, and the fact that you are
| reading this comment (and not listening to it or feeling it.)
|
| The idea that we all just "appear" on Earth from some formless
| void, then subsequently make totally independent decisions,
| devoid of any previous influence, is both highly naive and far
| too common.
| Bakary wrote:
| There is another layer to look at the problem. Studying
| history often does not do what it says on the tin for a few
| reasons
|
| 1. People are rarely in a position to effect changes or draw
| from historical lessons in the first place
|
| 2. Whatever lessons you can draw are often very contingent on
| the time and place and even taking into account patterns, we
| still end up in a situation where the lessons can't really be
| applied beyond general principles that are already well known
| without much study involved.
|
| 3. Often the understanding we think we have of historical
| events is hopelessly distorted anyway, and colored by the
| sources and narratives we have read or composed in our minds.
|
| In the end, the people who do change history tend to barrel
| away at problems without taking the past all that much into
| account beyond some general references. Even if we take into
| account survivorship bias this is still an important
| phenomenon to consider. Hence the conclusions that there is
| much to learn from history is either trivial or actually
| under its own layer of naivete.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| I don't remember the exact quote, but one thing that struck me
| that Alan Kay mentioned is that one of the best way to invent
| new things is to look at the past. And that our modern times
| are just a tiny view into the last 100 years. Lots got left
| behind. And there's a lot of genius inventions that lost out
| due to no real fault of their own.
| scotttrinh wrote:
| "The only thing that matters is HEAD+1. I don't even know why
| we use version control. It's entertaining, I guess--the commits
| and the bug fixes and the rewrites, and stuff like that. But
| what already happened doesn't really matter. You don't need to
| have the past snapshots to make changes to the current code. In
| technology, all that matters is tomorrow."
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I believe that the most useful parts of the history are the
| parts that are not taught in history classes. Especially
| monetary history and past enterpreneurs, inventors and
| scientists. Not history written by winners of wars.
|
| Here's an example:
|
| https://nakamotoinstitute.org/shelling-out/
| keiferski wrote:
| > winners of wars
|
| What do you think the global acceptance of capitalism is?
| xiphias2 wrote:
| While there are temporary monopolies, great products win
| long term. Without capitalism we would live like monkeys in
| the forest. That would be an interesting life as well, but
| far not as interesting than what we have now.
| keiferski wrote:
| Humans were living like monkeys in the forest prior to
| 1700?
| dionidium wrote:
| I'd go further. Most _current news_ is purely entertainment.
| You really don't need to know everything that's going on.
| Almost none of it is actionable. It's _fine_ as entertainment,
| but people are convinced they're doing something important when
| they read the news, when as far as I can tell it's just
| something they enjoy as a leisure activity.
| Bakary wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree. I am currently trying (and failing
| miserably) to quit news-watching altogether.
| dionidium wrote:
| My current approach, for whatever it's worth: I subscribe
| to the Sunday print edition of my city's daily newspaper.
| For those too young to remember, this is the week's largest
| edition, which includes summaries of many of the week's
| stories. I read it over coffee on Sunday morning (away from
| my laptop). I'm roughly as informed as anybody else about
| the events of the day.
| throwaway9191a wrote:
| I worked with a CEO who shared this sentiment about history.
| After two months with no paychecks, half truths about our
| funding, and the dev team quitting, he wanted me to start
| building up a crew of contractors.
|
| After asking what he would change, he told me he had no time to
| look at the past and could only look ahead.
|
| I learned if you have enough money and lawyers, the past
| doesn't matter because you can enforce trust through
| litigation. But if you have to take people on their word, then
| their history becomes important. I didn't rebuild the team.
|
| I'm sure there is some deeper lesson here between "smarmy
| business folks" and more principle driven individuals.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Is there a lot to learn from him? His amorality has left his
| reputation in tatters. Yes he earned some money but at what
| cost? Is being a reviled shadowy billionaire really worthy of
| praise or respect?
| Bakary wrote:
| I don't know what his personal life is like. But a person
| with the freedom to do the things they want and the energy to
| embark on ambitious projects will have no trouble having a
| genuine social circle and having great experiences barring
| some serious psychological obstacle in doing so like Howard
| Hughes.
|
| This is far more important than this vague idea of
| reputation. Just because a person has a good reputation
| doesn't mean they are respected or loved. It could just be
| that they do not figure at all in people's minds. You can
| live up to people's expectations and die having never really
| lived.
|
| Honestly it's somewhat reflective of the infamous slave
| morality vs. master morality debate
| xwdv wrote:
| Once you have all the money you need what value is a
| reputation?
| joeyo wrote:
| Your reputation only matters if you wish to have
| relationships with other humans.
| xwdv wrote:
| It doesn't matter. You can have a good reputation and
| zero human relationships simply because you are not
| extroverted enough to initiate or maintain them.
| josefresco wrote:
| When you've bought everything there is to buy, the only
| thing left is human relationships.
| curtis3389 wrote:
| Every single second of your life doesn't need to be dedicated
| to your work.
| drewcon wrote:
| This seems naive at best. The goal of studying history is not
| to be paralyzed and constrained by it, but to learn from it.
| Human behavior seems to be notoriously consistent across
| centuries, there is much to gain from understanding past
| mistakes.
|
| Nor is every goal of our existence is about "building stuff",
| it can also be about just living a just and considered life.
|
| These types of boorish egotistical statements from tech talking
| heads masquerading as cerebral contrarian thought are much of
| what's contributed to our current mess.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _Human behavior seems to be notoriously consistent across
| centuries, there is much to gain from understanding past
| mistakes._
|
| It strikes me that this an argument for the uselessness of
| reading history. People are basically the same as they always
| have been and just as you can't simply explain to a teenager
| that they'll feel differently about the world when they're
| thirty, every generation has to figure life out for itself.
| 0xdde wrote:
| > People are basically the same as they always have been
|
| And you came to this conclusion without reading any
| history? This is too absolutist a statement. Sure, some
| things need to be relearned through experience, but there
| are also plenty of cases where you don't want to waste time
| reinventing the wheel.
| dionidium wrote:
| The downvoters are thrashing a straw man. Obviously
| nobody believes you're supposed to recreate society every
| 20 years ex nihilo. What I'm arguing is that the case for
| reading history has been overstated. Specifically, I was
| reacting to the claim that, "Human behavior seems to be
| notoriously consistent across centuries." I agree. It is.
| Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives
| they always have and there's no library big enough to
| change that.
|
| This is like arguing about whether dieting "works." On
| the one hand, obviously, yes, it works. There's no
| credible debate about the efficacy of calorie restriction
| for losing weight. It simply works. On the other hand,
| most human beings can't actually follow a diet, so, no,
| it doesn't actually work, for any reasonable definition
| of "works."
|
| Reading history is probably a lot like that.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| > Human beings react to the same emotions and incentives
| they always have
|
| And we know this... how? Studying history!
|
| > and there's no library big enough to change that
|
| Who's trying to change human nature? This is a strawman
| _you_ are thrashing. Studying history is about
| understanding human nature, not changing it. Just like
| studying physics is about understanding projectile
| motion, not about changing the gravitational constant.
|
| The idea behind studying history is that we use the
| insights gained from it to try to solve new challenges in
| reasonable ways, instead of ways we'd know were likely to
| fail if we'd just cracked open a book.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Fine, but by your own argument, reading history gives you
| some insight into how the humans of today will react to
| certain situations. You can read history to find out what
| humans actually are like, not what theory says they're
| like.
| eloff wrote:
| He's got a point about history, it's just a story we tell
| ourselves that only resembles what really happened. There's
| value in that though, because there are many lessons that can
| be learned from history. Plus it's just fascinating. We like
| stories, and history is our story.
|
| However, people put way too much emphasis on history - their
| personal history - and it affects them in all kinds of
| unhealthy ways. In my opinion it's so much better to leave the
| past in the past and focus on making a better future. Learn the
| lessons that can be learned and then move on (easier said than
| done.) I'm not an expert, but that's my take on it from my life
| experience and also watching others struggle with their
| historical baggage.
| dsr_ wrote:
| If you don't study what people have done in the past, you're
| going to be severely disadvantaged when you have to deal with
| them in the future.
|
| Santayana was pithier.
| leto_ii wrote:
| > "But what already happened doesn't really matter. You don't
| need to know that history to build on what they made. In
| technology, all that matters is tomorrow."
|
| To me this is a mind-numbing display of ignorance. Once you
| understand that you're not the first human being to ever have
| existed and that the people that came before you (even way
| before) are not dumber than you, you will immediately realize
| that there's a lot to learn from what has happened before.
|
| This should be very obvious when it comes to political/social
| endeavors (e.g. how to push for substantial social change
| without having things degenerate into some form of
| totalitarianism), but it's equally as important for scientific
| and technological ones. For a simple and increasingly popular
| example just look at Sabine Hossenfelder's line of criticism of
| contemporary theoretical physics. A lot of it draws on the
| sociological and historical study of the scientific process.
| Bakary wrote:
| I've updated my post to clarify my argument as it missed some
| important details. To me the value of history is trivial to
| state, but it's the relationship people have with it that can
| become a problem. There's a lot to learn indeed, but it is a
| mental trap as well that causes people to overestimate their
| own importance.
| twox2 wrote:
| I don't think it's ignorant, it's just another framework of
| looking at the world. Consider a chessboard that's in the
| middle of a game. The moves up to that point don't matter.
| Only the current state of the board matters and you make the
| best move given the current position.
|
| This is how this person sees technological progress, and I'm
| inclined to believe he's right... within the context of
| technology.
|
| Beyond that, I do think history does matter for understanding
| how humans interact with each other and with our planet.
| Cybiote wrote:
| That is only because subgame perfect equilibrium is
| applicable to chess. An imperfect information game like
| Poker cannot have that. Technology is not a process with
| complete information therefore the chess analogy in the
| context of technology cannot work. And as bananabiscuit
| points out, Leela Zero can get away with considering orders
| of magnitude fewer positions than Stockfish because of the
| extensive experience from _past_ games encoded into its
| weights.
|
| Another argument against ignoring the past is it's
| important to identify what things remain invariant in
| society as technology evolves. Allowing for a fuller
| contextualization, understanding and perhaps somewhat
| anticipation of the on-going changes and their effects.
|
| Technology itself is based on leveraging libraries, tacit
| knowledge, internet threads and mathematical concepts
| decades to hundreds of years old. That's a kind of history.
| It's not uncommon for advancements to occur after
| revisiting old lines of research that were ahead of their
| time.
| leto_ii wrote:
| > Consider a chessboard that's in the middle of a game. The
| moves up to that point don't matter. Only the current state
| of the board matters and you make the best move given the
| current position.
|
| Since when is reality like a game of chess? Setting aside
| human history for a moment, just think about natural
| history (Levandowski mentioned dinosaurs and Neanderthals).
| Evolutionary biology is to a significant extent a
| historical discipline - it looks at the record and tries to
| come up with ways in which animals have changed over time
| under all sorts of pressures. Can that endeavor be done
| a-historically? How about even something like cosmology -
| the origins of the universe etc.?
|
| The universe is not a Markov process. Thinking of it as
| such is incredibly limiting as an intellectual paradigm.
|
| To be honest I'm not even sure I can think of a way you can
| completely ignore history and still be able to do useful
| work of any kind.
| Bakary wrote:
| A better analogy would be Taleb's "green lumber"
| story.[0] The narratives we assign to things don't
| necessarily correspond to what really moved the needle
| forward. The ability to get things done might sometimes
| be influenced by historical reading, but it is mostly a
| factor of reading the present, creating new knowledge,
| and spending most of your energy on the problems at hand
| as they actually stand. A person like Zuck might draw
| parallels from their reading of the classics (to name one
| notorious example) but in practice their success will be
| contingent on making decisions in real time with few
| helpful analogies, or general principles for which
| historical reading is not strictly necessary. The
| journalists then comparing Zuck to Augustus are then
| probably misattributing the causal relationship.
|
| There will be a historical post-facto rationalization of
| what went down for anything happening in the recent past,
| but the meat we draw from historical analogies is often
| poorly applicable since the divergence between the map
| and the territory is so large. The difference between
| reality and a game of chess is indeed paramount here, but
| for different reasons. The past is so complex that the
| lessons we draw from it are likely to just be distorted
| narratives that are already just a reflection of the
| present.
|
| >To be honest I'm not even sure I can think of a way you
| can completely ignore history and still be able to do
| useful work of any kind.
|
| In Levandowski's own example, he learned what existed in
| his time and then built useful things from there without
| worrying too much about the details of past beyond the
| directly visible iceberg spire in the present. This is
| broadly applicable to many fields and there are many
| people who did the same. It's tautologically true that
| disciplines that need to draw on the past to move on will
| do so, such as biology, but that doesn't say all that
| much about engineering for instance.
|
| [0]https://fs.blog/2016/11/green-lumber-fallacy/
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > I don't think it's ignorant, it's just another framework
| of looking at the world. Consider a chessboard that's in
| the middle of a game.
|
| Chess is an abstract turn-based zero-sum discrete 1-on-1
| board game with perfect information sharing. In other
| words, it's completely different from real life in every
| possible aspect, and thus any drawn parallel is likely to
| be worthless. Real life is not Chess.
| bananabiscuit wrote:
| In an ideal sense that's true, but to use your analogy to
| make the opposite argument: consider someone that has no
| knowledge of what kinds of moves where made previously in
| this chess game and other historic chess games, even though
| theoretically they can figure out a good move given enough
| time to read the board but that is prohibitively
| infeasible. On the other hand it is people who have studied
| games of chess played in the past that end up building an
| intuition for what a good move is and are much more likely
| to come close to making a good move in a reasonable amount
| of time.
| twox2 wrote:
| I do like this take.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > Consider a chessboard that's in the middle of a game. The
| moves up to that point don't matter. Only the current state
| of the board matters and you make the best move given the
| current position.
|
| That is an immensely myopic view. Analyzing the game up to
| now and understanding the opponent's style of play and
| tactical preferences are very useful in planning your next
| move, especially when you have multiple, equally weighted
| choices.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Also analyzing _your_ moves that got you to that point.
| Don 't like where things are now? Well, what did you do
| to get here?
|
| Levandowski may wind up convicted of something else if he
| doesn't learn from history... _his_ history. So maybe he
| really ought to look at it a bit.
|
| On the other hand, when you've messed up, and you
| understand that you've messed up, and you've learned what
| you can from it, then throwing away the past and moving
| on is perhaps a psychologically healthy thing.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| No argument there.
|
| The story of Levandowski appears to be a story about
| consequences being something other people experience.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >I am not a fan of corruption but it's undeniable that he
| played whatever cards he had in life and played them hard.
|
| His parents were a Diplomat and a Businessman and he graduated
| with 2 engineering degrees from Berkeley. So we should be
| lauding him for winning a game of poker when he was dealt a
| Full House? Lol
| dagw wrote:
| To stick to with the poker analogy, the measure success is
| not if you win the hand when you flop a full house, but how
| big a pot you walk away with. Anybody can walk away with the
| initial stakes in that situation, the real skill is to use
| that hand to walk away with all the money at the table.
|
| Lots of people start life with a lot more than he was given
| and walk away with a lot less.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| He was arrested and charged with ~30 felonies and plead
| guilty to 1 in a plea deal and was due to spend over a year
| in federal prison. So what exactly did he win?
| cronix wrote:
| In order to understand why things are the way they are, we
| first need to understand how they came to be.
| divbzero wrote:
| HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found Content-Type: text/html Last-
| Modified: Wed, 20 Jan 2021 03:48:59 GMT
| epicureanideal wrote:
| Disappointing list.
| hehehaha wrote:
| I really feel for all the prosecutors who worked so hard to catch
| these criminals.
| _jal wrote:
| Is this humor?
| mhh__ wrote:
| If it's any consolation Trump is probably going to be under
| investigation at the State level for probably the rest of his
| life unless he leaves the country - New York wants blood not
| even including the foundation, Georgia is probing along those
| lines etc.
| [deleted]
| wdb wrote:
| Looks like the US government supports stealing trade secrets. You
| would nearly avoid doing business in the US
| diveanon wrote:
| Time to do away with presidential pardons.
| nojvek wrote:
| At this point presidential pardons are being handed out almost
| everyday. It seems Trump wanted some cash and he sold pardons to
| the highest bidder.
|
| I mean it's a good way to make money and influence. Also shows
| that US is corrupt to the top seat.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| Does anyone have some honest insight on why?
| chrisjc wrote:
| An FU to Google?
|
| Just to clarify what I mean... YouTube has banned Trump's
| channel.
| buzzert wrote:
| Playing devil's advocate here; if you take many steps back and
| try to look at what's best for the country, you might want to
| look at citizens with great potential who are currently under
| lock and key.
|
| I don't think anyone is saying Levandowski is innocent (I saw
| somewhere else in the comments that a pardon is by definition
| an admission of guilt), but if he's as brilliant of an engineer
| as some people make him out to be, it would be best for the
| country if he was back at work instead of in prison.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I can see the abstract logic in there, but it is a really
| hard to believe that could be Trump's reasoning.
| joncrane wrote:
| I believe Trump's policy was that anyone that contributed
| something on the order of $1-2 million to whatever he's calling
| his slush fund these days (Re-election campaign? Legal defense
| fund?) is eligible for pardon.
| me_me_me wrote:
| The fact that even fox news was onboard with pardoning Julian
| Assange and then he pardons Levandowski is... well ironic is an
| understatement. I am failing to find a word that encapsulates my
| feelings.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I am failing to find a word that encapsulates my feelings.
|
| I don't know if there's a specific word for it in any language,
| but it's completely in character for trump to always pick the
| worst of two choices.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I believe it's called "4D Chess".
| odiroot wrote:
| Wait, but can't Biden pardon Assange now?
| thinkingemote wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure that it was possible to pardon Assange as
| he hasn't been convicted with anything yet?
|
| As in , I thought the extradition request was to be sent to USA
| for a trial.
| dabernathy89 wrote:
| The most famous pardon in history - Gerald Ford's pardon of
| Richard Nixon - involved no convictions or
| charges/indictments:
|
| > [I]... do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto
| Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States
| which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed
| or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969
| through August 9,1974.
|
| https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/speeches/740061.as.
| ..
| adventured wrote:
| You can pardon people before they're convicted of anything.
|
| Trump pardoned Steve Bannon for example and he has not yet
| been convicted (he has been charged). Assange has been
| charged with various things by the Feds, which is what Trump
| would pardon. The floated theory went that Trump could
| plausibly pardon himself as well, for any likely future
| charges.
| libria wrote:
| > You can pardon people before they're convicted of
| anything.
|
| Ford pardoning Nixon is the usual example.
| thinkingemote wrote:
| Thanks!
| astrange wrote:
| It's questionable if you can pardon yourself or your
| coconspirators, and you specifically can't pardon yourself
| for things you were impeached for.
|
| It's not questionable if you can pardon things that haven't
| been charged yet. You can. The pardon power is absolute,
| greater than laws that define specific crimes, and doesn't
| require accepting guilt or whatever.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > you specifically can't pardon yourself for things you
| were impeached for.
|
| The pardon power applies to offenses against the US
| "except in cases of impeachment" (Art. II SS 2 P 1). This
| uncontroversially means a pardon cannot affect the
| process of impeachment in the House and trial on charges
| of impeachment in the Senate. It is disputed whether it
| also somehow prevents pardons for criminal charges
| relating to the same act for which the recipient was
| impeached. The issue has never come up in a
| nontheoretical sense, so an authoritative resolution
| hasn't been handed down.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > can't pardon yourself for things you were impeached for
|
| That's because impeachment is a political process, not a
| judicial proceeding. Clemency does not affect
| impeachment.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That may be the rationale for the limit, but the _legal_
| reason is because the Constitution expressly limits the
| pardon power to exclude cases of impeachment.
| vharuck wrote:
| >It's not questionable if you can pardon things that
| haven't been charged yet. You can.
|
| For a specific example, Jimmy Carter pardoned everyone
| who dodged the draft for Vietnam[1]. This showed that
| pardons could both apply to actions which hadn't been
| charged _and_ categories of people.
|
| I think one of the only limits on the pardon power is
| that it can only apply to past behavior.
|
| [1] https://www.justice.gov/pardon/vietnam-war-era-
| pardon-instru...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This showed that pardons could both apply to actions
| which hadn't been charged and categories of people.
|
| It doesn't actually show that because the legal effect of
| thar pardon has never been challenged. If no one tries to
| charge someone subject to a pardon, or that pardon
| recipient never offers the pardon against the charges,
| nothing is resolved about the validity and effect of the
| pardon.
| ghaff wrote:
| If a president were to do something really nutty like
| "Everyone now has a clean slate with respect to federal
| crimes" I suspect the Supreme Court would find some way
| to invalidate it. Carter's pardon, while controversial,
| fell into the category of these weren't exactly serial
| killers and a lot of people in the country were ready to
| move on.
| rasz wrote:
| Im sure Biden will pardon Assange as the first thing he dos in
| office. After all its a good change, right?
| avs733 wrote:
| I would imagine pardoning assange was seen as a large risk to
| trump.
| adventured wrote:
| Trump isn't considered a Republican by any of the powerful
| people in the Republican Party, or most of its big traditional
| financial backers (the Kochs particularly dislike him). It's
| why people like Mitch McConnell turned on him when it was clear
| Trump's power was gone. It's why they did everything they could
| to prevent him from winning the party nomination in the first
| place. The other Republican candidates were very weak and Trump
| sensed that and proceeded to smash them one by one.
|
| The comedy of it all, is that Trump running was merely an
| arrangement with his former pals the Clintons (arranged in a
| phone conversation with Bill Clinton prior to declaring [1]).
| He was supposed to just target and knock off Jeb Bush as a
| favor. The reality TV style name attack gimmick (low energy
| Jeb, sleepy Joe, etc) worked so well that it became clear there
| was a runway to the Presidency and he took it.
|
| Trump is a populist opportunist narcissist, all in one. Party
| is irrelevant to him, he isn't a partisan at all. He would have
| happily run as a Democrat - which is what he was previously -
| if he could have gotten to the Presidency easier that way.
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20150819083634/https://www.washi...
| josefresco wrote:
| "Trump running was merely an arrangement with his former pals
| the Clintons"
|
| You're reaching.
| jshevek wrote:
| I cannot reply to the dead comment, so I'm replying to
| Jose's. Adventure: if you have any evidence I'd like to see
| it.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| Take your meds, schizo.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I was expecting a pardon for Assange if purely because he did
| Trump a solid during the campaign. I'm guessing it was killed
| by the national security types in his administration
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| > Trump is also not expected to pardon Edward Snowden or
| Julian Assange, whose roles in revealing US secrets
| infuriated official Washington.
|
| While he had once entertained the idea, Trump decided against
| it because he did not want to anger Senate Republicans who
| will soon determine whether he's convicted during his Senate
| trial.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/politics/trump-self-pardon-
| wa...
| paxys wrote:
| > Stephen K. Bannon - President Trump granted a full pardon to
| Stephen Bannon. Prosecutors pursued Mr. Bannon with charges
| related to fraud stemming from his involvement in a political
| project. Mr. Bannon has been an important leader in the
| conservative movement and is known for his political acumen.
|
| This one is hilarious. The "political project" was raising money
| for a border wall via crowdfunding and putting it into his own
| pocket. He scammed the most hardcore Trump supporters, and got
| pardoned by Trump for it.
| jmcguckin wrote:
| You should recite the facts correctly. Supposedly, Bannon
| represented to the public that 100% of donated funds were going
| to build the wall. In fact, prosecuters allege that 'hundreds
| of thousands' were diverted to pay Banon's personal bills.
| That's out of 25 million raised.
| dimator wrote:
| According to the unsealed indictment, bannon received $1m
| through a non-profit, which he used to transfer to pay for
| unrelated shit using fake invoices.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-
| release/file/1306611...
| [deleted]
| chandra381 wrote:
| He still stole and he's still a criminal. What are you trying
| to prove here
| paxys wrote:
| What part of what I said was incorrect?
|
| > Bannon and another defendant, Brian Kolfage, allegedly
| promised donors that the campaign, which raised more than $25
| million, was "a volunteer organization" and that "100% of the
| funds raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission
| and purpose," according to the indictment.
|
| > Instead, according to prosecutors, Bannon, through a
| nonprofit under his control, allegedly used more than $1
| million from We Build the Wall to "secretly" pay Kolfage and
| cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in Bannon's personal
| expenses.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/19/politics/steve-bannon-
| pardone...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Oh yeah, he only stole a million dollars of people's money,
| not the full 25 million. It's so unfair to pursue him!
| Hamuko wrote:
| I've seen some legal opinions that the pardon doesn't matter
| that much since he could apparently be tried on a state level
| anyways.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Whats up with sprinkling of "xyz is an upstanding citizen and
| father to n beautiful children." ? They are clearly not an
| upstanding citizen - otherwise they wouldn't require a
| presidential pardon. Being father to children is not an
| achievement and any two consenting healthy adult man and woman
| can produce them irrespective of their standing in society. And
| beauty of children is a criteria for pardon now? What if the
| children were ugly - "clearly he doesn't deserve a pardon, look
| at his children!" ?! What utter bullshit.
| devmunchies wrote:
| >They are clearly not an upstanding citizen - otherwise they
| wouldn't require a presidential pardon
|
| so snowden isn't an upstanding citizen either? law abiding
| citizen != upstanding citizen
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Good point - I stand corrected on that front.
| sn_master wrote:
| >They are clearly not an upstanding citizen
|
| Your sole argument here is that they were convicted by a court
| for violating the law.
|
| Are you saying everyone convicted by the criminal justice
| system is a bad human being? Because the pardon is by
| definition an admission of guilt, it doesn't exonerate them
| from what they did.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| The beauty thing is interesting, beauty is our way of assessing
| quickly if someone is a good mate (biologically). Good mates
| strengthen the species, by definition [assuming the system
| works, maybe it doesn't]. So, beauty of the children is an
| appeal to tribal instinct that it would be useful to society
| for this family to prosper.
|
| I'm absolutely not saying I agree with this manner of assessing
| people; but it's interesting to imagine how it fits into
| development of the species and how that 'works' with society.
| rmk wrote:
| It's a way of saying that person who is pardoned is a good
| parent (and therefore not irredeemably bad) and the (blameless)
| children will benefit from the pardon.
| eli wrote:
| Well it's not like they can argue he was innocent.
| totoglazer wrote:
| Doesn't even require consent :(
| [deleted]
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I would argue that creating a new human being is an act of
| charity. Most people are very happy to exist, and probably
| grateful that their parents chose to create them. Especially
| given the fact that parenting requires a huge investment of
| time and resources.
|
| That doesn't mean that parents can't be bad people, or that
| parenthood is the only criteria of goodness. But knowing that
| somebody chose to become a parent strongly updates my priors
| about their character.
| beaugunderson wrote:
| For a compelling opposing view see "Better Never to Have
| Been":
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Never_to_Have_Been
| dcolkitt wrote:
| I've read it. Benatar does a lot of mental gymnastics to
| arrive at his conclusion.
|
| But the simple argument, that he never overcomes, is how
| many people if given access to a time machine would use it
| to prevent their own birth? How many would use it to
| prevent the creation of life on Earth? Even after reading
| Benatar's carefully crafted tome, I doubt that very many
| readers would be convinced to change their answers to these
| questions.
| gfxgirl wrote:
| plenty of people don't choose or choose under a kind of
| duress (religious guilt)
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Sure, that's true. And in past times that was a stronger
| critique. But in the modern Western world, this only
| applies to a tiny fraction of parents. The vast majority of
| parents today willingly chose to become parents.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| This! Always baffled me. This probably is something from the
| colonial age when the population was tiny, conditions were
| harsh, labor hard, medicine nonexistent so producing a fellow
| colonist was considered an extremely valuable act, also
| requiring genuine dedication and courage.
| floatrock wrote:
| It sets the narrative on relatable humanizing neighborly fluff
| in order to dodge the messy grey reality of the world.
| godmode2019 wrote:
| George hotz said that Anthony Lewandowski was a real leader and
| the problem with real leaders is they do first and ask questions
| later. I don't know Anthony Lewandowski but I agree with the
| sentiment. Disruption is disrupting, and tends to be illegal. Its
| pretty hard to stay in the right side of the law, if you think
| you have not done anything this is because you are not big enough
| for someone to try find something.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Even if it were true that True Disruption => Illegality (it
| isn't), it does not follow that doing illegal things makes you
| a genius disruptor. Levandowski's crime was not his disruption,
| it was stealing code from his former employer for his own
| personal gain.
| [deleted]
| nelsonmandela wrote:
| Heartbreaking to see how long some of these people were locked up
| for their crimes. Some of them just don't match up.
|
| I wish it was an ongoing thing a president did every night before
| bed - get presented with a curated list of deserving prisoners
| and a rubberstamp. Far better than a splurge at the end of term.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| This is all so hilariously corrupt. I'm not sure I can even
| muster anger for this, just laughter. (I'll reserve the anger for
| the pandemic and this administration's callous, frankly criminal
| handling of it).
|
| (So Levandowski and Jared are going to launch a venture fund
| soon, right?)
| eplanit wrote:
| It was criminal to enable pharma to fast track development of
| vaccines, in half the most optimistic forecasts of how long
| that would take? It was criminal to invoke the defense
| production act to make ventilators -- far more than we needed?
| Building those field hospitals (that were never needed)... the
| ships?
|
| That's my kind of criminal, if so.
| paulgb wrote:
| It was deeply irresponsible to play into political divisions
| rather than promoting mask use. It was deeply irresponsible
| to undermine states' efforts to mitigate spread, to the point
| of encouraging "lock her up" chants about Gretchen Whitmer
| that encouraged a kidnapping plot.
|
| He did a few things right, but let's not pretend the last
| year hasn't been mostly political theatre rather than
| leadership and one man could have led with a different tone.
| dvaun wrote:
| Don't forget to have the additionally-pardoned Michael Liberty
| join the efforts to attract investors. Over $50 million
| defrauded [0][2] from investors, and it wasn't his first rodeo
| with the SEC[1].
|
| [0]:
| https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2018/lr24092.htm
|
| [1]: https://www.pressherald.com/2016/11/30/sec-charges-ex-
| maine-...
|
| [2]: https://www.pressherald.com/2018/04/02/liberty-in-sec-
| crossh...
| Proven wrote:
| Reminds me of Clinton's (that guy who escaped to Swiss) and
| Obama's pardons.
|
| Sad, all of them!
| salawat wrote:
| ...is a Presidential pardon final come the next
| Administration? Or has that not really been tested in court?
| wahern wrote:
| A pardon requires delivery and acceptance. (Actually, I
| think delivery is incomplete without acceptance.)
| Theoretically an incoming president could recall the pardon
| if it hasn't been delivered. Not sure what may constitute
| as delivery; or acceptance, for that matter. I don't think
| the manner of delivery or acceptance has been tested, let
| alone enumerated. If it's as simple as a phone call, then
| presumably nothing could be done.
|
| I think a more interesting question is whether there's a
| specificity requirement. AFAIU, that hasn't been answered,
| either.
| marmaduke wrote:
| There was an even more interesting question raised on
| r/NeutralPolitics about whether the pardon has to even be
| made public. It seems there's an interpretation of the
| law where the pardon only becomes public when the
| recipient makes use of it in a public court.
| gonesilent wrote:
| Also talk of putting it on the secret computer for
| national security until use.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Why would it need to be public? The Constitution does not
| stipulate that limitation.
|
| This is literally all it says...
|
| > he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for
| Offences against the United States, except in Cases of
| Impeachment.
| gowld wrote:
| Because "pardon" is not defined anywhere so the nation
| has to decide what it means.
| craftinator wrote:
| Is that before or after the coifing of the sacrificial
| goat?
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is not mentioned anywhere in the text of the pardon
| power of the Constitution.
|
| What gives you the impression pardons are limited to
| those that are "delivered" and/or "accepted". How would
| that even be legally demonstrated to a court.
| dagw wrote:
| _What gives you the impression pardons are limited to
| those that are "delivered" and/or "accepted"._
|
| The Supreme Court apparently ruled that way in a case a
| long time ago and that precedence has never been
| challenged (or come up again for that matter)
|
| See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9IRZ9FzWEA
|
| But realistically if they tried to revoke a pardon today
| it would certainly go to the Supreme Court again and they
| would almost certainly rule the other way.
| koheripbal wrote:
| A Youtube video of someone's opinion is not a reliable
| source.
|
| Looking up Grants revocation of Johnson's pardons - it's
| hard to find details, but it does seem like a Federal
| judge took issue that they were not delivered prior to
| the new president revoking them.
|
| Given that there's no such limitation in the
| Constitution, I wonder if it would hold up to SCOTUS.
| ...and maybe that's why they announce them publicly these
| days.
| amatix wrote:
| https://davidallengreen.com/2021/01/can-a-presidential-
| pardo... discusses -- in 1869 one got rescinded because the
| original was never delivered (but according to the post
| that isn't binding).
| viraptor wrote:
| There's a short from Legal Eagle about it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9IRZ9FzWEA
|
| There's also a difference between state and federal charges
| - even if they've been pardoned, they can still be charged
| for related crimes.
| koheripbal wrote:
| One thing to note - they cannot be charged with the SAME
| exact crime in state court (that would run afoul of
| double-jeopardy).
|
| As you said, though it's not clear, it need to be a
| different (though potentially related) crime.
| ModernMech wrote:
| This is not true -- double jeopardy applies to the same
| jurisdiction. You can certainly be charged in state and
| federal court for the same crime.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Actually, you are correct.
|
| https://www.wklaw.com/double-jeopardy-federal/
|
| Of course, there's still the limitation that the State
| would need to find it's own law that the accused violated
| - they have no jurisdiction over Federal law (and vice-
| versa).
|
| Still... it doesn't sit quite right with me. If someone
| is acquitted by a jury in, let's say, Rhode Island for
| murder. It doesn't seem right that the Federal government
| could step in and hold an entirely new trial thereafter.
| Seems to fly in the face of what Double-Jeopardy is
| supposed to prevent.
| saalweachter wrote:
| Isn't that exactly why federal hate-crime legislation
| exists? To allow a do-over in federal court if juries in
| some jurisdictions ignore crimes against some victims?
| ghaff wrote:
| And for that matter, even if acquitted in a criminal
| trial, someone can be found guilty in a civil trial (with
| a lower standard of evidence). See, famously, OJ Simpson.
| koheripbal wrote:
| I suppose, but for that you cannot be sued merely for
| committing a crime - you need to prove tangible personal
| direct damages.
|
| ...and that can happen regardless of criminal conviction.
| hypervisorxxx wrote:
| The most interesting pardons are the no name ones. Pardoned
| restaurant chain fraud for an italian not even charged in NY.
| Sounds like mafia related crime to me.
|
| The other no name money laundering criminals are all related to
| either his gambling businesses or his place of living in
| Florida.
|
| He's basically pardoning people he's been doing crimes with for
| a long time and then if course some big names.
|
| I'm happy to see some rappers pardoned though tbh. Their music
| has influenced my life, they've done great deal of good outside
| of music and none of them were in the can for things like
| harming women or animals etc.
| cascom wrote:
| Its interesting to me that gun crimes don't meet your
| threshold of offenses that should potentially carry a prison
| term
| jdanp wrote:
| Gun possession is a non-violent crime. It's insane that Lil
| Wayne can't possess a gun because he once possessed a gun
| in a place that only the rich, well connected, or retired
| police officers can possess a gun.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| There were some deserving pardons here...
|
| "The CAN-DO Foundation thanks President Trump for providing a
| second chance to numerous deserving individuals through the
| use of his Executive Clemency powers. Many defendants that
| receive draconian sentences are individuals who exercised
| their Sixth Amendment right to a trial and suffered the trial
| penalty phase by receiving harsh mandatory sentences many
| times greater than if they had taken a plea. These sentences
| were often based primarily on the testimony of other co-
| conspirators who received sentence reductions once they
| testified and were in many cases far more culpable. Executive
| clemency represented the last hope for many of these
| individuals to have a second chance at life since (with
| limited exceptions) there is no federal parole."
|
| https://www.candoclemency.com/can-do-thanks-president-
| trump-...
| syndacks wrote:
| IMO it was Lil Wayne's verse criticising Bush that earned him
| the pardon:
|
| "I gotta bring the hood back after Katrina / Weezy F Baby now
| the F is for FEMA"
| gowld wrote:
| They were pardoned because they paid Trump campaign favors,
| putting his corrupt administration and their own self
| interest over the good of a nation in crisis. That's far
| worse than their original crimes.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Many pardons are recommended to the President by the Justice
| department for various reasons. A lot are for non-violent
| drug crimes that someone in the department felt was too
| harsh/etc...
|
| It's not like they are all Trump's friends. But obviously
| conspiracy theories will prevail, sadly.
| CodeArtisan wrote:
| >Many pardons are recommended to the President by the
| Justice department for various reasons
|
| Most Trump's pardons bypassed DOJ.
|
| https://www.lawfareblog.com/trumps-circumvention-justice-
| dep...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/most-
| clemency-...
| gowld wrote:
| The "conspiracy theories" were in Trump's pardon documents,
| like the "Russia hoax".
| yonaguska wrote:
| You must have missed the declass on the origins of the
| Russia hoax, where Steele admitted that he intentionally
| leaked information and engaged in info-laundering because
| he saw Trump as being potentially damaging to UK/US
| relations.
|
| And where he admits that he leaked info in order to
| counter the effect of Hillary's emails on the 2016
| election. So, literal foreign interference in an
| election.
|
| You may have also missed the declass that showed Fiona
| Hill perjured herself when she stated she had no idea who
| Christopher Steele was- yet actually met with him while
| he was compiling his dossier.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Nobody was convicted on the basis of Steele's dossier.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Not to "both sides" this too much, because I do feel like
| there's a new, special level of corruption and self-dealing on
| display with this administration, but it's not uncommon for
| these guys to use pardons for personal gain or the benefits of
| their friends. For a little context and flavor, remember that
| Clinton pardoned some real winners on his last day too,
| including some guy who paid $200k to Hillary Clinton's brother
| for the pardon [0], Bill Clinton's own brother (codename:
| "headache" [3]) and a Democratic party loyalist who was
| convicted of child porn and sexual assault with a minor [2].
|
| _p.s. - if you wonder why the Clintons are especially hated in
| some circles, and if you wonder why people are so quick to
| believe those Q conspiracy theories, the kernels of truth exist
| and originate in simple corruption like this_
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almon_Glenn_Braswell#Unsubstan...
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_McDougal#Whitewater_affa...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mel_Reynolds
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Clinton,_Jr.#Conviction_...
| gfodor wrote:
| Pardons have an interesting characteristic in that you can be
| both angry at unnecessarily harsh punishment (therefore, be
| happy with it being undone) but also be angry at the
| corruption that leads to the pardon (therefore, be angry at
| it being undone.)
| jmull wrote:
| > Not to "both sides"
|
| What do you think you just did?
| unishark wrote:
| hence the "...but".
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Not to "both sides" this too much
|
| So not "both siding" too little or too much, but both
| siding a just right amount?
| jmull wrote:
| No "both siding" is the right amount.
|
| The "sides" we ought to be considering are corrupt
| politicians and those of us who object to corrupt
| politicians.
|
| Framing this as if there are two equivalent and corrupt
| sides effectively normalizes and excuses these corrupt
| pardons.
| preommr wrote:
| They framed a relevant point that furthers the discussion
| in a way that was less ambiguous and less likely to do
| harm.
|
| For me personally, it's frustrating to see comments about
| things like whataboutism when they're obviously just to
| deflect and distract.
|
| At the very least, with caveats like saying "I don't
| support this, but..." there's some level of acknowledgement
| of, "yes, this might be veering into sketchy waters".
| [deleted]
| tacitusarc wrote:
| I don't really think it's about "both sides", I think it's
| about contextualizing the action. Because the Trump
| administration was so insane in so many ways, we tend to
| forget (or maybe misremember) that there is a very real and
| persistent form of corruption in our politics that far
| predates Trump. The end of the Trump regime does not mean
| the end of political corruption, not by a long shot, and we
| would do well to remember that. I think one of my biggest
| fears with Biden is that because he isn't Trump, everyone
| will take a deep sigh of relief, and then ignore the more
| mundane "political corruption as usual" aspects of his
| presidency.
| newacct583 wrote:
| Not to agree too much with a both-sidsing of Trump
| corruption, but in fact I agree here.
|
| This pardon was... really pretty conventional. It's of a non-
| violent crime and a comparatively compartmentalized one that
| doesn't impact the nation as a whole. Incentivising
| industrial espionage isn't "not bad", but it's not _that_
| bad.
|
| This is routine Washington stuff, really. The genuinely
| corrupt pardons, of his family and associates (and
| potentially himself) for crimes committed during the
| administration don't seem to have materialized[1]. The list
| from yesterday is very long, but really pretty unsurprising.
|
| [1] But there is still an hour and a half left. A pardon can
| be scrawled on a napkin in 30 seconds and then shown to the
| media to deliver it. There's no formality requirement in the
| constitution. If he does it before noon then it counts.
| noelsusman wrote:
| If you're going to both sides this you should at least
| mention Clinton's most corrupt pardon (Marc Rich).
|
| I would say that it is uncommon for presidents to abuse the
| pardon power like this, it's just not completely unheard of.
| It's also worth noting that Trump multiplied the total number
| of corrupt presidential pardons in US history by something
| like 10 in his time in office. The scale is hard to fully
| grasp.
| akarma wrote:
| As of November 2020, Trump utilized both pardons and
| clemencies much less than any president in modern history
| according to Pew Research [1][2].
|
| He granted clemency to 143 more last night which places him
| closer in line to Bush and G.W. Bush, but there's no way
| your data here would include that (and that still places
| him at a very low number), so I'm wondering where you're
| getting this data, and how you qualify "corrupt."
|
| If we look at a handful of Bill Clinton's corrupt pardons
| on his last day in office alone as mentioned in the gp
| comment above:
|
| (1) Susan McDougal who went to jail for contempt of court
| for him, (2) Braswell who paid Hillary $200k for the
| pardon, (3) his brother Roger Clinton Jr, (4) Democrat Mel
| Reynolds who was granted clemency after being found guilty
| of sexual abuse of a minor.
|
| Thus, Trump must have had at least 40? Where is the source?
|
| [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/24/so-
| far-trum... [2] https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/11/FT_20...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| My second thought on this was "I wonder how much he paid".
| [deleted]
| amatecha wrote:
| Issued on January 20th, 2021.... Didn't Joe Biden just win the
| popular vote with 51.3% on... November 3rd, 2020, over two months
| ago? Why does the US political system wait months to enact the
| peoples' will? I don't understand this at all.
| refurb wrote:
| Is this a serious question? This is what most systems do right?
| Hold an election and then the newly elected sit at some later
| point in time.
|
| Or are you suggesting the second we know the winner the
| previous president should be booted out?
| bidirectional wrote:
| In the UK, a new Prime Minister will generally be in power
| within 24 hours of the election ending. Three months seems
| insane in contrast.
| refurb wrote:
| Huh, as a Canadian it's usually a month or more. Which is
| odd considering we adopted your system.
| kenneth wrote:
| I believe, in many parliamentary systems the parliament is
| dissolved first after which government becomes a caretaker
| government and cannot enact major new policy changes. After
| an election is held, new members of parliament are elected
| and must form a governing coalition that has a majority of
| the members (sometimes with one party, sometimes with
| multiple parties) can select a new prime minister and start
| governing in earnest. Sometimes, they cannot come to an
| agreement on a governing coalition and they continue without
| a government for a while until they can. Belgium is infamous
| for having gone years without a real government that can
| enact policy due to their failure to establish a majority
| coalition. This is however very unusual.
|
| Over the past couple years I'm strongly starting to believe
| that this is a better system of government than the US
| republican[1] model.
|
| [1] by republican, I mean of a republic, not the GOP
| triceratops wrote:
| > Or are you suggesting the second we know the winner the
| previous president should be booted out?
|
| I think GP is asking why it's 2 months instead of something
| like 2 weeks.
|
| > Or are you suggesting the second we know the winner the
| previous president should be booted out?
|
| It's not a terrible idea to prevent them from signing new
| legislation or doing anything else of massive importance. If
| it was worth doing, it should've been done before the
| election so that voters had all the information before
| casting their votes.
| rsynnott wrote:
| So, most developed democracies are parliamentary democracies,
| and don't have executive presidents. In that case, it's
| normally pretty rapid. For instance, Ireland held a general
| election on the 8th of Feb 2020, the 32nd Dail was dissolved
| on the 14th of Feb 2020, and the 33rd Dail convened on the
| 20th. In that particular case, the cabinet (the executive)
| stayed in power as a caretaker government for months
| afterwards (and took major decisions over covid) because the
| new Dail struggled to either appoint a new prime minister or
| call a new election (covid was unhelpful there), but that's
| very abnormal.
|
| In presidential and quasi-presidential systems, it typically
| takes a week or so. The US really is an anomaly here.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, it's a serious question. In the 2015 Canadian General
| Election[0] the new Prime Minister and cabinet were sworn in
| two weeks later (though others seem to be often about a month
| later). I recently saw someone talking about their country
| swearing in the new party the actual next day(!), though I
| can't seem to find what country that was. Two months seems
| crazy to me.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Canadian_federal_election
| dodobirdlord wrote:
| It's actually extremely unusual how long the period is
| between elections and elected officials taking office in the
| United States.
| matham wrote:
| It's an artifact of history, when 200 years ago it may have
| taken weeks for states to count votes, certify and send
| representatives with the results, assuming they made it to the
| capital and didn't die during travel when their horse fell into
| a river or something...
|
| Plus, once confirmed (on the 6th), it does take some time to
| change cabinets etc.
| renewiltord wrote:
| A. We did not know anything on Nov 3
|
| B. There is a process in the US that involves state electors
| having their votes counted and certified and the new government
| installed
|
| C. No country in the world instantly swaps governments at
| election result time.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It's pretty swift in a number of European countries, days not
| weeks.
|
| Fact is the civil service is not being swapped, just the
| political leaders of the departments. Perfectly fine to just
| swap ministers in a matter of days.
| zajio1am wrote:
| > It's pretty swift in a number of European countries, days
| not weeks.
|
| Unlikely. After election, coalition negotiation starts and
| that took weeks or months. Only after a new coalition is
| negotiated then a new government may be voted in by MPs.
|
| For example last EU elections was 2019-05, while new
| commission was voted in 2019-11.
| joveian wrote:
| The core of the issue is that the US president has way too
| much power and does replace a large number of civil service
| positions. "Just after the presidential election, a revised
| edition of the Plum Book is published, which lists over
| 9,000 federal civil service leadership and support
| political appointment positions which an incoming
| administration needs to review, and fill or confirm."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_presidential_transition
| KSteffensen wrote:
| Assuming the newly elected parliament can agree on a
| government. This is not always so easy, Belgium are famous
| for not having a government for years at a time.
|
| This is not a 'Europe is different from USA' thing. Each
| country/system is peculiar in its own way.
| khazhoux wrote:
| I'm disappointed in Michael Ovitz, who I've thought well of
| before now. Why would he stoop to this? Lewandowski was clearly
| very much in the wrong. Justice was in no way miscarried by his
| conviction.
| chandra381 wrote:
| I don't know if you've read Mike Isaac's book on Uber? Michael
| Ovitz very famously screwed over Travis Kalanick when he
| invested in Travis' first startup.
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