Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought the price was $2M.
Ballpark, yes. I was being sarcastic. It's a gentle slap of the hand for him. Nothing more.
I think OP was referring to the rumors that Trump was shopping pardons around for $2M.
Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
931–940 of 996 posts
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#932Pardons should be strictly limited. Pardoning criminals who used their positions of power, wealth, and influence to do financial and legal harm like breach of contract or fraud is de facto corrupt.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#933Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 inte…
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 tha…
>Not sure you're supporting the point you think you are, or are addressing my points?
I think you are missing mine; I'm not making a blue/red distinction, I'm making a point about senate representation.
First, you are trying to prove that California, Texas, or New York could not be self sufficient. This is a meaningless point as today states like Wyoming are not self sufficient. I'm sure a state like Texas would figure out self-sufficiency much faster than Wyoming. Why do large states have to give up power to small states given that both would probably be screwed without the other, but small states would be likely screwed even more? The idea that large states must cede representative power in order to access resources is absurd - after all they are already paying them via federal budgets; surely there is no reason to double pay? The "they provide resources" argument is bullshit.
Secondly, coming back to senate representation & electoral power - there are vastly more people in rural California and conservative districts like Bakersfield than there are in Wyoming. Those voters have effectively 0 senate representation. Again, I don't care if they vote red or blue, but Wyoming gets outsized power. Why?
I don't naively believe that once California has more representative power that the whole country would turn into San Francisco. I believe states like Wyoming and other sparsely populated, deep red states, allows the Republican party to effectively ignore their voters in blue states as well. That's the reason the current system is upheld - it allows the GOP to effectively never have to answer to it's voters. It cuts both ways, the current system is bad for Americans; red & blue. There are more registered republicans in California than most other states have people and the state itself was solidly red until 1992; yet those voters don't have much of a voice.
The party affiliations do not matter - the notion that a Wyoming democrat has 4x the voice than a California republican just isn't right.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#934It's important to point out that the President's pardon does not apply to civil cases, only to criminal ones.
Given this, I find this pardon to be ok. Say what you want about Lewandowski, maybe he was the biggest scumbag, maybe he's worthless as a scientist and does not know the derivative of x squared, maybe (most likely) he stole millions of lines of cutting edge code from Google. But he did not physically harm anyone. He did not even cause monetary harm like Bernie Madoff. It's very doubtful he even caused any psychological harm to anyone. Does he deserve to be sentenced as a criminal?
Well, we all know IP is taken seriously in the US. We know cases as Sergey Aleynkov [1] and Aaron Swartz [2], cases that we consider despicable, where corporations or prosecutors pursued with an absolutely terrifying vengeance the minor transgressions of some unlucky but quite harmless members of our society.
I for one think Lewandowski (and other people like him) does not deserve the ordeal suffered by Aleynkov or Swarz. If I were in the jury, I would give serious consideration to jury nullification.
Don't get me wrong. In terms of civil penalties, I say let him be shirtless. Let him drive a Yugo, if the allegations against him turn out to be true. Google gave him a $100 million bonus, and he took some code and ran to the competition. Confiscate everything he's got. He doesn't deserve it.
But don't put him in prison.
Trump did many, many bad things. But pardoning Lewandowski was a good thing.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#935Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 mor…
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 va…
Ideas that make sense to people in cities don't always make sense in rural areas. Let's say for an overly simplistic example everyone in a city thinks it's a great idea to tax anyone who lives in a home that has more than 2000 sq ft of living space. In the country _everyone_ meets this criteria so thereforethey are unfairly taxed.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#936It'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?
A "campaign donation" was probably made at Mar-a-Lago.
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#937Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 replac…
There are shitty people of all walks of life. I'm sorry to hear that you didn't have a good family/upbringing. Glad you found a place that you are more happy in. The media has spent the last 4 years portraying Trump and his voters as evil racists. What is not mentioned is that his support among minorities increased from 2016 to 2020. He had more black and hispanic percentage of voters than any republican in in living…
Thank you, however I am not asking for your sympathy. I'm challenging your assertion that critics of Trump's supporters and OP are just "brainwashed by the TV", and your framing of this dynamic as just "both sides" seeing "themselves as the victim and the others as the attacker".
My experience was not some one off event, or story that applies to just my family, it reflects a culture of racism common in this country, particularly the South. We are talking about well documented multi-generational harm perpetuated by communities, businesses, and government.
"There are shitty people of all walks of life," is not sufficient to explain away the harms of institutionalized racism in the United States.
So, you do not need to call people "brainwashed" for recognizing the attitudes espoused by many Trump supporters. They have earned their reputation for good reason, though "some, I assume, are good people."
As for "the key question no one is asking is why did people vote for him in the first place and why did so many vote for him again?" In fact, many people have asked that question, have studied it extensively, and have found that racism and anti-immigrant attitudes were the strongest indicators of support for Trump (e.g. [1]). Yes, you're right that "because they're all racist" is a cop-out, there are other factors at play, but to say that "racial attitudes" is not a significant factor is to ignore the evidence.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2018/09/18/2016-election-race-class...
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#938Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would you say the same of Mark Felt? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt No I wouldn't. A, I don't have first hand knowledge of the situation, and B, it's a drastically different scenario. I'm not anti-whistleblower. I'm anti retaliation because you were told no.
You are against retaliation on the part of whistleblowers or organizations? It sounds like you are saying that if a person blowing a whistle is “told no” by the organization whose actions bring the whistle forth, that person should just drop the whistle. This doesn’t seem to make sense outside an incredible credulity for the organization’s ability to evaluate their own behavior. Is that a fair summary of your assertion?
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#939Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like I said, let them keep filing amicus briefs, not useless, stop adding hyperbole I said what I said.
>We are wasting our time and energy caring about either of those organizations. Direct quote by the way
> Let them stick to filing Amicus Briefs in courts
I get the impression people don’t know what an Amicus Brief is, about half of the replies are pretty off topic
Re: Anthony Levandowski Pardoned
#940Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 rememb…
So you're saying he was never in China? He literally fled to Hong Kong first. So again, what did I state that was a lie? I didn't say he wanted to be there, but he clearly wanted to be in Hong Kong, then move on... and ended up in Russia? Again, what part of this is false? Did you know him? I did, he's a fucking tool. The information leaked was piecemeal. Take the bible, leak random pages and one will say live a joyo…
> Did you know him? I did, he's a fucking tool.
This reads like you have an indiscrete level of personal animus. Aside from being lazily pejorative, it isn’t very descriptive. Still I’m so glad to know if I just had “all the information at the right scale” this wouldn’t go “over the head” of regular folk like me. Truly you are a federal bodhisattva.