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Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

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Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#801

Post by btilly »

pldr1234 wrote: post #48
btilly wrote: post #17

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 Russ…

Just to note - they specifically added those other commutations to elicit your exact reaction: "Some look shady, but it's mostly good".

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.)

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#802

Post by kevincox »

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

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#803

Post by deeeeplearning »

dagw wrote: post #550
deeeeplearning wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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

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.

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?

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#804

Post by nlh »

sleepybrett wrote: post #756
thesausageking wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thiel also got a pardon.. for what exactly? Also Luckey?

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#805

Post by johannes1234321 »

r00fus wrote: post #617
johannes1234321 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maximum age is a great idea. Senators like Feinstein and Grassley should honestly be booted and replaced.

Well, the voters don't seem to agree...

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#806

Post by emn13 »

war1025 wrote: post #740
freewilly1040 wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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.

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#807

Post by danielrpa »

libria wrote: post #734
simonh wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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)

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#808

Post by cataphract »

ISL wrote: post #506
emn13 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 copi…

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 c…

> 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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#809

Post by btilly »

cure wrote: post #314
pldr1234 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to note - they specifically added those other commutations to elicit your exact reaction: "Some look shady, but it's mostly good".

I think you're assuming they are more competent/smarter than they really are.

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.

Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned

#810

Post by ardy42 »

freewilly1040 wrote: post #691
ISL wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> 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…

> 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.

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