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Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

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Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#731
post #723

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.

For better or worse, the US constitution does not have provisions or a process for dissolving itself and developing a new constitution. The closest thing we have is the amendment process. In theory we could use that to rewrite the entirety of the constitution[0], but good luck getting the required votes in place on any possible replacement. The bar is pretty high: amendments need to be proposed by either a vote of 2/…

It's worth noting that Article V, Section 5 doesn't prohibit itself from being amended away. So you just need the constitutional convention to refer two new amendments: the first one stripping the restriction itself, and the second one to do what the restriction prohibited being done.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You believe the US on the path to killing tens of millions of its own citizens for the sake of some ideology like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler because a non-violent white collar criminal was given a shortened sentence? Interesting.

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Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#733

There should be a limit on the number of pardons a president can do during their tenure so that they have to at least think a bit before using it. It is a very powerful tool that actually allows a last resort. But this kind of egregious abuse of it's power means it needs to be kept in check.

I get it but it is imperative that this never happen. The reason is that a pardon is the only recourse the people have against the supreme court

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Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#734
post #584
post #233

The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether.

> these past few administrations I remain amazed at how, again and again, no matter how specific and unique an abuse by the Trump administration is, it is always, invariably, Really Joe Biden's Fault. Like, the frame has been adopted by the MAGA base, but also the cranky left. The media does it too. Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack". But it leads to…

When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." Now we're seeing unpopular, not sane pardons.

When democratic norms erode like pardons becoming more acceptable, it's like laying tinder and kindling for a fire. You still need a fire; a bad actor who is willing to light the material on fire. That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him. Now we need to survive him.

When we look back at Roman Senators and Emperors, it's often hard as modern people to point to one, single bad figure because we don't have a lot of contemporary thought or reading from the time. But when we look back we can see the seeds of "decline" in eras rather than single figures.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.

Yep. We might have been the first PC, but we're running windows 3.11 while the rest of the world runs a new OS. We need ranked or approval voting, elimination of gerrymandering. Strongly prefer elimination of Citizens United and the Senate.

Unfortunately, eliminating the Senate (or more precisely, each state's equal representation in the Senate) is the one and only thing that the constitution forbids an amendment from doing (see Article V, Section 5):

> Provided that no Amendment [...] no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

(Awkward ellipsizing, but the elided text is another thing that's not allowed, which expired in 1808, and is otherwise thankfully no longer relevant.)

Better voting systems can be implemented, but since the states run federal elections, each state would have to pass legislation requiring a different voting system. Of course I expect all 50 would not agree on which alternative system is the best, which may or may not matter. And I doubt red states would want to change, as voting systems that better reflect the will of the electorate tend to disadvantage the GOP.

Eliminating gerrymandering is difficult, because it's hard to objectively define what is and isn't a gerrymandered map. There have been some attempts to do so, and I would say they've even been somewhat successful, but people can reasonably disagree with the methodology and thresholds used.

The Citizens United SCOTUS ruling and precedent absolutely needs to be reversed; agreed. Corporations are not people and should not get first amendment protections. Or any kind of protections outside any that are defined in regular law.

Another thing we need to do away with is the Electoral College. Presidents should be elected based on the national popular vote, not by per-state winner-take-all proxies, with vote apportionment that wildly advantages some states over others. The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact would effectively do away with the EC if states "owning" at least 270 electoral votes were to all sign it, but that's unlikely to ever happen. (Then again, it's more likely that the Compact would achieve that threshold than the passing of a constitutional amendment to abolish the EC.)

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#736
post #50

Coffeezilla video about this is up already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4

What do you think of this counterpoint from Balaji? "CZ deserves his pardon. His show trial of a prosecution was a combination of regulatory railroading and ethnic persecution for being Chinese-Canadian. Imagine if Macron was held personally responsible for every crime committed by the 67M citizens of France, and you'll get the absurdity of holding CZ personally responsible for the actions of a few of the 250M+ Binan…

The law says he should have prevented those bad apples from moving dirty money around, and he did not follow the law.

Do you have a rebuttal for coffeezillas assertion that 2 billion dollars of Abu Dhabi money was invested in Binance using the Trump family coin in order to buy a pardon?

The president is clearly pro crypto and doesn't think this dude did anything wrong, but he also wasn't gonna give a pardon away for free. It's a disgusting abuse of office he should be impeached over. Selling pardons, what a shit show.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was of two minds about that pardon. On the one hand it seemed like an abuse of pardon power. On the other hand, it was also reasonable at the time to expect abuse of presidential power to prosecute political enemies. So on balance I was OK with it. I think the compromise I'd like to see is to curtail both powers.

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Have you ever heard of Whitewater?

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#738
post #50

Coffeezilla video about this is up already https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4

What do you think of this counterpoint from Balaji? "CZ deserves his pardon. His show trial of a prosecution was a combination of regulatory railroading and ethnic persecution for being Chinese-Canadian. Imagine if Macron was held personally responsible for every crime committed by the 67M citizens of France, and you'll get the absurdity of holding CZ personally responsible for the actions of a few of the 250M+ Binan…

Changpeng Zhao broke the law and got caught. Everyone agrees on that. What you present above is revisionist history about "political persecution," which is the favorite justification of the current administration for pardoning convicted felons, even in the total absence of any evidence supporting a conclusion of political persecution. See also George Santos, J6 rioters, etc.

I don't think it's really necessary to pretend that this pardon was deserved. The pardon happened because (a) Trump wants the support of crypto billionaires and (b) Trump received a large bribe. It's really not complicated.

Painting Trump as sympathetic to ethnic discrimination is really ridiculous. No one believes that, even people who cynically use that justification to support his lawlessness.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#739

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you accept it, what are you going to do? Violence is not an acceptable option for most people. So, we carry on.

So you're saying that if people do accept it then nothing can be done, so better not to accept it and continue to live in a fairy tale controlled by criminals? I don't get it.

No. To make changes you have to participate or vote. But, if you dont like what we have now you are stuck with it until elections come up. No amount of complaining on the internet is going to change that. So, you just keep doing what you are doing because now is not the time we can make changes.

Re: Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

#740
post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. We might have been the first PC, but we're running windows 3.11 while the rest of the world runs a new OS. We need ranked or approval voting, elimination of gerrymandering. Strongly prefer elimination of Citizens United and the Senate.

Unfortunately, eliminating the Senate (or more precisely, each state's equal representation in the Senate) is the one and only thing that the constitution forbids an amendment from doing (see Article V, Section 5): > Provided that no Amendment [...] no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. (Awkward ellipsizing, but the elided text is another thing that's not allowed, which…

> Article V, Section 5

We should amend it [0] so that any state may subdivide within its own borders without the consent of the Senate, provided that no subdivision is smaller (less-populous) than the smallest current state.

In other words, small states don't have to give up their disproportionate representation in the Senate... but they cannot use that power to monopolize being small either. Any state above a certain size (>2x the smallest) may decide that its constituents are best-served by fission.

This adheres to Article V, Section 5, since no state is being deprived of "equal suffrage": Each state has 2 senators, just like always.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admission_to_the_Union

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