> SBF blamed his erratic appearance in old interviews on being distracted by tech devices.
Really, the excuses this guy is throwing around remind me of little children.
> Carlson kept acting throughout the interview as though it’s just normal and reasonable for wealthy people who donate to politicians to expect corrupt favors from those same people in their time of need.
> > Carlson kept acting throughout the interview as though it’s just normal and reasonable for wealthy people who donate to politicians to expect corrupt favors from those same people in their time of need.
> That's just being realistic, isn't it?
For Carlson - a wealthy politically connected person who I would be unsurprised if he is the recipient of favor - I'm sure it's realistic.
But there are more of us who don't have the wealth or political connections to get favors than there are those who do.
So it's weird that people who claim to care about corruption keep voting for and snuggling up to extremely wealthy obviously-favor-trading conmen. The president doesn't even try to hide the games. So after that it's unsurprising that someone like Carlson is starting to drop the pretense too.
Will the people he gets his power from - his audience - care, though?
If you believe all politicians are by definition corrupt, then the ones who are openly corrupt are at least "honest" about it.
But that's overall a problem because it means the political system just gets more corrupt over time. I wonder how long until wannabe presidents are paying off the Praetorian Guard.
The general problem is that honest politicians are uncommon. If you have to choose between corrupt politician who is going to do X and corrupt politician who is going to do Y then you're going to choose on the basis of X and Y rather than corruption because "honest politician" isn't on the ballot.
Go ahead and change that if you can figure out how.
As evidenced by this situation it's not true that any criminal can give money to any politician and expect favours. Perhaps some criminals curry more favour, and perhaps some politicians are more transactional.
No. Not in a society that values the rule of law. I keep seeing amoral "do whatever you can get away with" sociopathy masquerading as "realism" in our discussions of politics. I wish it would stop.
You’re right. But in this case SBF engaged in an external interview, without permission, over a link normally reserved for access to attorneys.
When the interview came out, it’s safe to assume the prison had no idea how it happened. He was in solitary for 24 hours, possibly so they could ensure there were no smartphones or anything else.
It also may have been just to punish him. But there’s at least one reasonable reason, given that it was only 24 hours.
This seems extremely authoritarian. Obviously prisoners lose many rights due to their conviction, but I see no reason that freedom of speech or of the press should be among them. Unless he is communicating with a former co-conspiritor or otherwise in furtherance of some crime, I think a prisoner should be able to speak with whoever he wishes.
I broadly agree with this but it raises a bigger question -- how do you punish someone who is already in a process of punishment?
That's an especially important question when someone is going through a very long punishment process, like what does another life sentence mean to someone who has a life sentence? You can't execute someone twice, right?
If someone breaks a very important rule in prison there needs to be some way to put an immediate stop to that behaviour and to disincentivize them from doing it again and in a situation like this is seems like solitary confinement is the most effective way to do that.
Surely prisoners still have some privileges that could be taken away as a punishment (going outdoors, books, tv, computers, phone, visits, classes/work...
A simple middle ground would be confinement to your cell with a book or two, but still in the presence of people. You'd take your meals there, not in the cafeteria. You wouldn't get to hang out with people or go outside. The jail equivalent of a time out. Not fun, probably boring, but not literal psychological torture.
If SBF was able to get a smuggled phone, as the article speculates, to do an unauthorized interview, then he is clearly using his connections to sidestep aspects of his incarceration. Putting him in solitary is an appropriate way to cut him off from engaging in further such corruption, and it should be repeated for any further violations. The only problem here is that it took this long for them to identify that he had the ability to do things like this.
Billionaires like him should serve the same time in the same manner as any other citizen.
you don't have to be particularly well connected in prison to get access to a phone. Just knowing who to talk to and being able to give them something they want. phones are right up there with drugs and tobacco being smuggled into prisons.
Have you ever sat in a small room, by yourself, with nothing to do, for 24 hours? It's no picnic.
But regardless, what length of time do you think is needed before it could be termed torture? And whatever your answer is, I hope you'd agree that opinions might differ on what that length of time is.
What would you suggest to solve the problem solitary is aiming to solve? Chesterton's Fence was built for a reason. Solitary isn't torturous in the traditional sense of the word. It is consistent with the idea of prison--it's just a worse version of prison. It acts to disincentivize rule breaking within the system. What other ways can we attack this problem with high enough confidence that removing the proverbial "fence" will not result in a total disaster.
The story here is that a criminal that stole billions is staging a prison escape through an openly corrupt political administration and their subservient media apparatus.
As an inmate in a terrible county jail who chose solitary confinement for mental health reasons - and to avoid the 4 Tray Crips who effectively run general population in Tarrant County Corrections - I’m glad he’s going in. I have several stories of hearing entitled and “tough” men absolutely crumble when forced to sit out punishment in that environment. There’s a recent phrase that goes “fuck around and find out” which totally fits here.
Yes, solitary confinement is akin to forced mental distress in most incarceration systems. No, it’s not randomly doled out.
The fact remains if he wanted to do an interview with Tucker Carlson he could have accomplished it in writing using the mail. He chose not to do so. No sympathy here.
I live in Tarrant County. I’ve heard horrible things about the deaths in our county jail. Maybe slightly off topic, but anything you can share from your time there?
Yes and I’m working in earnest to write it up on my Medium account (in profile). The Corrections Officers are legitimately over worked and in numerous chats I found 3 of 5 officers highly disapprove of Sheriff Waybourn’s handling of the department. This includes Sheriff Deputies tasked with Warrant Enforcement pulling Medical Transport duty.
I am a handicapped person with an incurable chronic blood condition. The standard of care at TCC, via contract with JPS, is appalling. When I had blood pouring out of my mouth / skull from improper after care treatment following a tooth extraction, the responding “Nurse” brought two (2) Tylenol and mouth rinse and a gauze pad. Only due to a favor by the 3rd shift guards was I able to be sent over to the Tower (I was in Lon Evans) to be seen by a Provider and get my necessary medication to stop the bleeding. The staff completely disregarded the documented / listed after care protocol written in my file by the Specialist at JPS.
Furthermore, between January and February of 2024 I lost 25 pounds - to 124.6 from 150 at 5’7” - because they refused to acknowledge my daily repeat vomiting from a bacterial infection was deserving treatment. It’s a frustrating situation to be in for sure, but I hope by appropriately documenting my suffering and pain, something positive may be done about Sheriff Bill’s “they deserve to be abused” espoused mentality. Thank you for being concerned, I do mean that!
Sidenote: Voidzilla did a 6 minute video about this interview [1]. Tucker focused on injustice, but not the billions SBF stole from people, but the fact that the people who took SBF's political contributions didn't get him off. The implications seem to be that Tucker values transactional justice rather than unbiased justice. This is a sea-change in American (and indeed Western) jurisprudence that is (to me) some combination of shocking and expected at this point.
If Bankman-Fried does somehow get a pardon, I will be amazed that the bitter debate on HN about whether he would get off scott free or would be thrown in prison somehow resulted in both parties being correct.
I doubt he will, I'd think it would be to curry favor with the crypto crowd, but I don't think they have a lot of love for Bankman-Fried. But it's a spicy administration so it's not a 0% chance. Maybe a 1% to 5% chance.
He did start to donate more to Republicans, by 2022 it was quite even.
Trump does not care if you used to openly hate him. If you pledge allegiance to him, he is cool with it. Might need a small bribe, depending on the case.
I don't know if Trump will pardon him but I also wouldn't be surprised. Doing things simply to spite liberals, no matter how stupid they are, is one of his few guiding principles. Most liberals correctly think the SBF should be in prison and some percentage would get vocally upset about a blatant criminal walking free for no reason.
It's not the strongest case for SBF so I don't know if it will happen, but I'd put it at more like 30-40% than the something like 1-5%.
You don’t understand Trump’s transactional instinct.
If this guy offered to pay him $5B at some point, maybe he will have a better offer later? It’s best to pardon him and see what he comes up with. As long as he’s motivated by “how can I pay more money to DJT,” it doesn’t matter who else he tried to bribe.
wait, is trump being a complete moron not accepted by most people?
All it takes for SBF to be pardoned is someone to talk to Trump about it at the right time and offer him something.
Trump pardoned the Silk Road guy, a drug dealer, while claiming he was going to be the hardest president ever on drug dealers because crypto bros convinced him to do it.
Fortunately SBF has burned a ton of bridges. Most folks, even in crypto, dont like him.
When you have money, you can always find one lawyer willing to help, and that's all you need.
It offends judges, and that's a risk, but most judges try extremely hard to avoid the appearance of favoritism. (I realize that seems unlikely, since the judges we hear about most are selected for their favoritism.)
Meantime, hating on lawyers is a popular pastime. It makes you seem sympathetic to people who feel that the government is oppressing them. Which, bizarrely, includes the government right now.
> Every man has three hearts: one in his mouth, for the world to know; one in his chest, just for his friends; and a secret heart buried deep where no one can find it
The path to success is keeping your strategy secret until long after you've executed it.
Sadly this dude was afflicted with verbal diarrhoea, he just couldn't stop talking and writing. How much more effective the same strategy would be if he had just kept his mouth shut. He's made it needlessly difficult for himself.
Still, it's not a huge issue. All he has to do is cozy up to Trump and get his pardon. I can already hear it - "he was treated very horribly, very unfairly. Believe me, I know."
SECTION 1. The President shall not have the power to grant pardons and reprieves to—
(1) the President’s self;
(2) any person, up to a third degree relation, of the President, or a spouse thereof;
(3) any current or former member of the President’s administration;
(4) any person who worked on the President’s presidential campaign as a paid employee;
(5) any person or entity for an offense that was motivated by a direct and significant personal or pecuniary interest of any of the foregoing persons; or
(6) any person or entity for an offense that was at the direction of, or in coordination with, the President.
Any pardon issued for a corrupt purpose shall be invalid.
SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
It is unlikely that any amendment to the Constitution that would pass (or even a new order of government instituted without amending the Constitution, e.g., by autocoup or violent revolution) would eliminate the pardon power, though it is somewhat more plausible that it might be made either subject to some kind of after-issue review or made non-unilateral, either generally or in particular circumstances.
The president can only pardon for federal crimes. I imagine if/when people are tired of federal pardons, that many things will become both state crimes and federal crimes, where that's possible.
Some crimes clearly fit only under the federal umbrella, but some are meerly not currently addressed by state law because federal law was seen as sufficient. There's a recent supreme court decision that says trying someone for the same conduct in state and federal courts is fine [1], so it just becomes a question of if the federally pardoned conduct also violates a state law of a state that's relevant.
In this case, where the victims are numerous, if SBF were pardoned, the question would be do any of the 50 states have a fraud law that was violated. Or indeed, if any other countries do and if they can get an extradition arranged. I don't know if a federal pardon would prevent US cooperation in extradition?
It's essentially impossible to get the consensus needed in such a partian era. Maybe if and when we're in a different era, but that could be an awfully long time coming.
Prison is mostly just warehousing people for a prescribed amount of time. I've read that people start to develop PTSD after about 7 days of confinement. Sometimes incarceration is all you can do with violent people and fraudsters. I'm sure most inmates are deteriorated by their 'correction'.
My friend would rather be in jail than in a psych ward, so that's one positive take on incarceration. [I have videos proving she was misdiagnosed. Arizona's psych wards implement an obsolete approach to 'mental health', using palliative drugs. In 2022 Chris Palmer published his book about the 80 years of science establishing that mental disorders are caused by metabolic problems, but the standard of care is still palliative treatment.]
Readit News
Really, the excuses this guy is throwing around remind me of little children.
> Carlson kept acting throughout the interview as though it’s just normal and reasonable for wealthy people who donate to politicians to expect corrupt favors from those same people in their time of need.
That's just being realistic, isn't it?
> That's just being realistic, isn't it?
For Carlson - a wealthy politically connected person who I would be unsurprised if he is the recipient of favor - I'm sure it's realistic.
But there are more of us who don't have the wealth or political connections to get favors than there are those who do.
So it's weird that people who claim to care about corruption keep voting for and snuggling up to extremely wealthy obviously-favor-trading conmen. The president doesn't even try to hide the games. So after that it's unsurprising that someone like Carlson is starting to drop the pretense too.
Will the people he gets his power from - his audience - care, though?
But that's overall a problem because it means the political system just gets more corrupt over time. I wonder how long until wannabe presidents are paying off the Praetorian Guard.
Go ahead and change that if you can figure out how.
> Really, the excuses this guy is throwing around remind me of little children.
That's not what he says though, https://youtu.be/dN1CR2dyfo8?feature=shared&t=169 "My mind was racing because there were a billion things to keep track of [with the company]"
(Not defending SBF here, he deserves his sentence)
As evidenced by this situation it's not true that any criminal can give money to any politician and expect favours. Perhaps some criminals curry more favour, and perhaps some politicians are more transactional.
Prisons should need a strong medical/safety justification for putting prisoners into isolation, which is torturous for many people.
When the interview came out, it’s safe to assume the prison had no idea how it happened. He was in solitary for 24 hours, possibly so they could ensure there were no smartphones or anything else.
It also may have been just to punish him. But there’s at least one reasonable reason, given that it was only 24 hours.
Dead Comment
Solitary confinement is torture, plain and simple. I'm not a fan of SBF, but no one should have to endure it, even just for 24 hours.
That's an especially important question when someone is going through a very long punishment process, like what does another life sentence mean to someone who has a life sentence? You can't execute someone twice, right?
If someone breaks a very important rule in prison there needs to be some way to put an immediate stop to that behaviour and to disincentivize them from doing it again and in a situation like this is seems like solitary confinement is the most effective way to do that.
Billionaires like him should serve the same time in the same manner as any other citizen.
Are you by any chance familiar with prison?
But regardless, what length of time do you think is needed before it could be termed torture? And whatever your answer is, I hope you'd agree that opinions might differ on what that length of time is.
"Traditional" is irrelevant; psychological torture is just as much torture as physical torture is.
I think it might actually be. It can break people.
That's why it's used as a punishment.
Yes, solitary confinement is akin to forced mental distress in most incarceration systems. No, it’s not randomly doled out.
The fact remains if he wanted to do an interview with Tucker Carlson he could have accomplished it in writing using the mail. He chose not to do so. No sympathy here.
I am a handicapped person with an incurable chronic blood condition. The standard of care at TCC, via contract with JPS, is appalling. When I had blood pouring out of my mouth / skull from improper after care treatment following a tooth extraction, the responding “Nurse” brought two (2) Tylenol and mouth rinse and a gauze pad. Only due to a favor by the 3rd shift guards was I able to be sent over to the Tower (I was in Lon Evans) to be seen by a Provider and get my necessary medication to stop the bleeding. The staff completely disregarded the documented / listed after care protocol written in my file by the Specialist at JPS.
Furthermore, between January and February of 2024 I lost 25 pounds - to 124.6 from 150 at 5’7” - because they refused to acknowledge my daily repeat vomiting from a bacterial infection was deserving treatment. It’s a frustrating situation to be in for sure, but I hope by appropriately documenting my suffering and pain, something positive may be done about Sheriff Bill’s “they deserve to be abused” espoused mentality. Thank you for being concerned, I do mean that!
1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BLzWTRmq2k
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
Trump does not care if you used to openly hate him. If you pledge allegiance to him, he is cool with it. Might need a small bribe, depending on the case.
It's not the strongest case for SBF so I don't know if it will happen, but I'd put it at more like 30-40% than the something like 1-5%.
Whether or not pardoning SBF would be a good deal for him is another question, though.
If this guy offered to pay him $5B at some point, maybe he will have a better offer later? It’s best to pardon him and see what he comes up with. As long as he’s motivated by “how can I pay more money to DJT,” it doesn’t matter who else he tried to bribe.
All it takes for SBF to be pardoned is someone to talk to Trump about it at the right time and offer him something.
Trump pardoned the Silk Road guy, a drug dealer, while claiming he was going to be the hardest president ever on drug dealers because crypto bros convinced him to do it.
Fortunately SBF has burned a ton of bridges. Most folks, even in crypto, dont like him.
I mean there are laws against straight cash but getting a stake of ftx2 could be promised.
I'd rather he was bought by the crypto crims than by Putin.
"Go on Tucker Carlsen, come out as a republican
a) While public contributions show one thing, you see another thing including super pacs
b) Come out against the woke agenda
c) Talk about how the cartel of lawyers is destroying value and throwing entrepreneurs under the bus in order to cover up the incompetence of lawyers"
Picking a fake fight with lawyers seems like the sort of thing you'd do if you were desperate to go back to jail...
It offends judges, and that's a risk, but most judges try extremely hard to avoid the appearance of favoritism. (I realize that seems unlikely, since the judges we hear about most are selected for their favoritism.)
Meantime, hating on lawyers is a popular pastime. It makes you seem sympathetic to people who feel that the government is oppressing them. Which, bizarrely, includes the government right now.
It seems SBF had a hard time listening to his laywers, and apparently continues to do so
> Every man has three hearts: one in his mouth, for the world to know; one in his chest, just for his friends; and a secret heart buried deep where no one can find it
The path to success is keeping your strategy secret until long after you've executed it.
Sadly this dude was afflicted with verbal diarrhoea, he just couldn't stop talking and writing. How much more effective the same strategy would be if he had just kept his mouth shut. He's made it needlessly difficult for himself.
Still, it's not a huge issue. All he has to do is cozy up to Trump and get his pardon. I can already hear it - "he was treated very horribly, very unfairly. Believe me, I know."
I can't see anything sad about a pathological liar outing himself.
b) Say the right things so Trump has cover to grant you a pardon
c) Say the right things so Trump has cover to grant you a pardon
Dead Comment
Here's the proposed text:
SECTION 1. The President shall not have the power to grant pardons and reprieves to—
Any pardon issued for a corrupt purpose shall be invalid.SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Some crimes clearly fit only under the federal umbrella, but some are meerly not currently addressed by state law because federal law was seen as sufficient. There's a recent supreme court decision that says trying someone for the same conduct in state and federal courts is fine [1], so it just becomes a question of if the federally pardoned conduct also violates a state law of a state that's relevant.
In this case, where the victims are numerous, if SBF were pardoned, the question would be do any of the 50 states have a fraud law that was violated. Or indeed, if any other countries do and if they can get an extradition arranged. I don't know if a federal pardon would prevent US cooperation in extradition?
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamble_v._United_States
Prolonged use of Solitary confinement is a humans right abuse: https://www.aclu.org/documents/abuse-human-rights-prisoners-...
Prison is mostly just warehousing people for a prescribed amount of time. I've read that people start to develop PTSD after about 7 days of confinement. Sometimes incarceration is all you can do with violent people and fraudsters. I'm sure most inmates are deteriorated by their 'correction'.
My friend would rather be in jail than in a psych ward, so that's one positive take on incarceration. [I have videos proving she was misdiagnosed. Arizona's psych wards implement an obsolete approach to 'mental health', using palliative drugs. In 2022 Chris Palmer published his book about the 80 years of science establishing that mental disorders are caused by metabolic problems, but the standard of care is still palliative treatment.]