I regret not voting for Trump. Hopefully most of his BS will be contested and the good stuff he does sticks.
Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
431–440 of 1001 posts
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
Madoff got 150 years for non-violent charges (and he didn't even try to have anyone killed). Died in prison.
Madoff stole $20-35B, but by some measures a human life is only worth $10M. I am not really asserting those figures are comparable, just that Madoff stole a lot of money.
Nah, it's more that you do not fuck with the money system. SBF is learning that same lesson.
Jeff Skilling (Enron) served 12 years in jail for insider trading and securities.
Not saying that Skilling, Maddoff or SBF shouldn't have gone to jail. They deserved it. But I do find it interesting that financial crimes can tend to be the most harshly judged, likely because of who they impact (the people with money) and because they cause distrust of the financial system as a whole.
> Madoff stole $20-35B
Not to defend Madoff, but it's not like he made off with that money himself, so I'm not sure "stole" is the correct term. Most of that money went to investors -- it just went to a different set of investors than the ones who had put that money in (the nature of a Ponzi scheme).
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#433Any non-twitter reporting on this? Edit: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-silk-road-fou...
It seems a lot of reddit communities are starting to block xitter as it's painful to use now without an account. Should HN do the same?
Of course not, the tweet here is _the_ original source for that news
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#434For all his many defects and cloudy motives for doing it, Trump deserves applause for this. It's with actions such as this that he also shows why he's a genuine maverick of a president, with who it's genuinely possible to expect deeply unexpected actions (for better or worse). For all his talk of being progressive and cultivation of a youthful maverick image of his own, you would have never seen such a move from Obam…
> you would have never seen such a move from Obama
you forgot Chelsea Manning; so I stopped reading there
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#435Is this president extremely concerned about drug dealers and gangs in the US? Why is he pardoning a drug trafficker?
A drug trafficker sells drugs A developer builds a platform like eBay but without censorship that can be used by the drug trafficker It's not the same thing
I make and sell soap. The soap contains an ingredient that anyone can use to make bombs. Some people buy my soap only for that purpose. I know because they literally tell me how they use my soap. I can remove that ingredient but I would loose a lot of sales.
The police finds my soap in the lab of someone who blew up a building. Some people died. Was it my fault, knowing how it was being used? Did I do anything illegal? Unethical? Immoral?
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#436Just a reminder: the condition for accepting a pardon is acknowledging that you did commit the crime in question and accept the court's finding of guilt. In contrast: Biden didn't pardon Leonard Peltier, the president commuted his sentence. Peltier maintains his innocence.
Do you have a source for that condition? How does that work for Biden pardoning Fauci for crimes that havent been revealed yet?
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#437I really wonder who benefits from this. Trump only does things that are good for him, or those close to him. I realize he's been making connections to the crypto world, and has his own meme coins. Does pardoning Ross somehow make crypto more valuable?
Partisan caricature is not a reliable starting point for logical inference or deduction. To answer your question - on the campaign trail he attended a convention of libertarian organizers and promised them that if he won he would free Ross, and has followed through on that promise today.
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#438Is this president extremely concerned about drug dealers and gangs in the US? Why is he pardoning a drug trafficker?
No no no, my friend. Ulbricht was not a lowly drug trafficker (also, incidentally, not black or latino). He was an _entrepreneur_ who built a _marketplace_ that would bring together buyers and sellers, cutting out the middleman, and driving _efficiency_! Basically trustedhousesitters.com, just for illegal drugs instead of pets ;)
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#439Any non-twitter reporting on this? Edit: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-silk-road-fou...
It seems a lot of reddit communities are starting to block xitter as it's painful to use now without an account. Should HN do the same?
The main reason all the subs made this change today is because of the elon nazi salute, not the fact that twitter is hostile to unauthenticated user agents.
Re: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
#440DPR is free!! I'm very happy for him and hope he makes good on this second lease on life.