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Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

reason.com

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Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#211

Post by Retric »

stareatgoats wrote: post #200
Retric wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Party stances are always going to reflect the country they operate in. On an absolute scale Republican’s support for expanding Medicare drug coverage was left leaning compared to at the time current law even though it’s to the right of many countries and Democrat’s stance on the issue.

yeah, the left/right dichotomy is gradually becoming outright meaningless - usually just sloppily slapped labels that fit an agenda. Important nuances go completely unnoticed in the left/right universe, like libertarians siding with communists, and neocons siding with democrats - or whoever thinks regime changing from above is a good idea. Anarchism, militarism, libertarianism, conservativism, fascism, welfarestateis…

The Left-Right bias is more clear when you look at the general population vs specific interest groups.

Voters in low population states have outsized political power and therefore get handouts. Same deal with elderly voters because they vote more often and everyone expects to get old Meanwhile groups who vote less often like 18-24 year olds get fucked over.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/voter-turnout-rate-by-age...

Detailed data on 2022: https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/number-of-individu...

In Nebraska 14% of 18-24 year olds voted vs 63% of 60+ year olds. Wow I wonder who elected officials pay attention to.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#212

Post by eitland »

deno wrote: post #187
eitland wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Norway we have two different "not guilty" outcomes: - "frifunnet på grunn av bevisets stilling" (~"acquitted because of the situation with the evidence" my best translation at 00:02 in the night) which I think in practice means it wasn't proven that the person did it and so (s)he is acquitted. - "henlagt som intet straffbart forhold" (~"acquitted as no punishable offense" my best translation at 00:04 in the night)…

How is that better? "Insufficient evidence" verdict is basically slander. It shouldn’t exist. You’re supposed to be presumed not guilty unless proven otherwise. What recourse do you have if you end up with such a verdict? Should you then have to prove your own innocence? That’s exactly what we tried to avoid in the first place.

Insufficient evidence means you are free to go.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#214

Post by tptacek »

Like a lot of Elizabeth Nolan Brown's Backpage coverage, this feels misleading. To the extent Lacey succeeded in court, he did so on technical grounds; the decision is extraordinarily damning about Backpage itself, effectively casting it as a knowing and important link in the supply chain of human trafficking. Which, of course, is what it was. You don't so much get that analysis from Reason; you have to read the (quite long) verdict instead, which is linked from the story.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#215

Post by FireBeyond »

gnicholas wrote: post #82
FireBeyond wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is because we would rather have many guilty people go free than send an innocent person to prison No we wouldn't. Or we wouldn't utilize the plea deal in 93% of criminal cases. And we use it with little-to-no oversight. Unless what a prosecutor offers is so -utterly egregiously inappropriate- that it causes a judge to double take, they can pretty much do as they like. Which is why we use it more than 60x more…

> Oof. Not only is it "possible" you're not actually innocent, your attitude is "it doesn't even make sense to assume that". Screw it, why do we need a justice system? You were arrested, let's just take you straight to prison. Of course it's possible. But if someone is charged with 5 crimes and convicted of 4, why should we reimburse their legal fees? That is what GP proposed, and it would be nuts. If the prosecution…

I'll admit that your phrasing threw me. I thought you were saying that "let's be real, just because you were not convicted of a crime doesn't mean you didn't do it".

But yes, while not meeting the legal bar, you can as a private individual draw your own inferences - sometimes - about someone being convicted of 80% of charges... however, note still my comment on prosecution heavily over-charging people to improve conviction rates, either directly, or by contributing to fear/stress (cost of defense, consequences, risk) to bludgeon someone into a plea deal regardless of factual guilt.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#216

Post by hi-v-rocknroll »

huytersd wrote: post #204
hi-v-rocknroll wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're weaseling with the ambiguity of the word "cure". I already stated the extreme conditions that approach would require. It has resulted in deliberate, although incidental, cures several times. It was certainly a cure for them. CRISPR personalized approaches are more promising by precisely excising vDNA. There is no panacea here.

Based on your username, I’m not sure if you have HIV but EBT 101 has begun human trials as of last year and we should find out how it turns out before the end of this year. It’s from the same team that was able to eliminate SIV from primates using the same techniques.

Very cool!

Thanks, but don't need it. (Actually a platelet donor.) I couldn't fit a whole AC/DC title into hn's restrictions, and it originally had something to do with electricity.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#217

Post by brookst »

pjscott wrote: post #119
Retric wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reason’s libertarian bias sits outside the mainstream Left-Right axis of US political discourse. So what looks centrist or right leaning on a 2D scale is actually heavily biased in a different political direction.

Yes, thank you for pointing this out – but they do tend to report the facts correctly.

Except in this article, where they assert that the funds were correctly reported to the government with no explanation of what that claim even means. And they’re not saying that the defendant claimed to have reported; Reason themselves are making the claim.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#218

Post by listenallyall »

brookst wrote: post #217
pjscott wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, thank you for pointing this out – but they do tend to report the facts correctly.

Except in this article, where they assert that the funds were correctly reported to the government with no explanation of what that claim even means. And they’re not saying that the defendant claimed to have reported; Reason themselves are making the claim.

Like most publications, they have editorial constraints, and usually choose to discuss the breaking news rather than rehash older facts. Reason has been covering this highly complex and lengthy case for nearly a decade, they have published dozens of articles about it, unfortunately for you they did not address your specific question in detail in this particular article. I think if you dig a bit deeper you'll find answers.

edit - 2 minutes of searching past Reason articles:

That Lacey was convicted of "international concealment money laundering" is bizarre, since the money transfer was not concealed: His lawyer informed the IRS about it, as required by law. And it was not made for nefarious purposes, according to Scottsdale lawyer John Becker's trial testimony. Lacey had needed some place to park his savings after U.S. banks, scared by a years-long propaganda crusade against Backpage, had decided doing business with the company or its associates was a reputational risk. So Becker and another lawyer advised Lacey to deposit the money—$17 million, on which taxes had been paid—with a foreign bank.

It's hard to see how Lacey conducted a financial transaction "to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity," even if you accept the government's premise that this money was derived from unlawful activity. And, to be clear, I don't accept that premise, since Backpage's business should have been protected by the First Amendment (not to mention Section 230 of federal communications law).

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#219

Post by yieldcrv »

lazide wrote: post #207
vuln wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course nobody will care about stopping labor trafficking if it benefits them Same with sex work it seems.

The issue is that unlike cheap gardeners, where most of the population benefits and a small portion of the population loses (‘native’ gardeners - probably just a couple % of the labor force), approx. 51% of the population ‘loses’ with cheap sex work. Which is why, in almost every jurisdiction, prostitution is illegal. But since approx. 49% of the population ‘wins’, it is also why it still happens, just where it isn’t…

why does 51% of the population 'lose' with cheap sex work?

I'm not understand what is unsaid here or is being assumed to have a shared understanding.

Re: Judge acquits Backpage co-founder Michael Lacey on most counts

#220

Post by lazide »

yieldcrv wrote: post #219
lazide wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that unlike cheap gardeners, where most of the population benefits and a small portion of the population loses (‘native’ gardeners - probably just a couple % of the labor force), approx. 51% of the population ‘loses’ with cheap sex work. Which is why, in almost every jurisdiction, prostitution is illegal. But since approx. 49% of the population ‘wins’, it is also why it still happens, just where it isn’t…

why does 51% of the population 'lose' with cheap sex work? I'm not understand what is unsaid here or is being assumed to have a shared understanding.

The vast majority of customers for sex workers (95%+?) are men, with the vast majority of workers being women.

51% of most populations are women, 49% are men.

Seems pretty obvious?

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