Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby mancityfooty » Sun Aug 27, 2017 4:41 pm

Trump is a moron in the ways of government, so I'm not alone in thinking that this is sending a message to those who could be subpoenaed in the Mueller investigations.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/348124-schiff-trump-pardon-sends-message-to-russia-investigation-witnesses
meh, it's just Schiff, but I've seen other people talking about it.
yeah, it's Maher, but still
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby cmsellers » Sun Aug 27, 2017 5:25 pm

@Doods: I read WSJ back before Murdoch took it over. The editorial page was idiotic, and when he decided to put up a paywall I stopped reading it. Then when he destroyed the independence of the news part (after pinky-swearing not to) I resolved never to read it. I do read [url]The National Review[/url] sometimes and The Federalist on occasion.

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Any rate, I've seen non-Trump-supporting commentators on those same sites suggest the same thing. I'm of the "Arpaio said nice things about him and Trump is rewarding that" camp. I don't think Trump explicitly had Manafort and Flynn in mind, though I do think he might have had the cops he'd promised to pardon for engaging in police brutality. (Of course the problem with this is that with Sessions refusing to prosecute civil rights cases, any police brutality convictions will be state convictions, which he cannot pardon.)
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby NoodleFox » Sun Aug 27, 2017 8:46 pm

I don't live anywhere near the border, so I cannot personally claim or deny the happenings in Arizona and if Arpaio is racist (which he could very well be, he's in his 80s and you know the stereotype about old people and ethnicities) - is there anyone here from Arizona or along the Mexican border?

I can listen to people who do live along the border (and Mexico itself) and from what I hear, it's not easy to explain away, the issues that could have escalated and ultimately arrived at this point.
With the murky waters of immigration reform, it seems to me that, despite all the things Arpaio has been accused of and admitted to doing (such as ignoring sexual assault cases), the people continue to vote for him regardless.

So why keep voting for an obviously flawed sheriff? Well, there's one guy I occasionally listen to, mostly for E3 coverage and his "creative" rants, who lives in Phoenix and has done humanitarian work in Mexico - he paints a picture that obviously makes him pretty disgruntled to the fact that people in other regions of America know what's best for border states and the issues that rise from immigration (illegal, as is the case there) and honestly, he backs up his words with evidence I can't exactly ignore.
Skip to the 10 minute mark where he regales of his childhood and eventually talks his way towards his humanitarian work and Arpaio (13:00 mark)

Thoughts?
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby cmsellers » Sun Aug 27, 2017 9:29 pm

Did you read even one of the links people here have posted about his malfeasance? The problem isn't just that he's racist. It's not even the biggest problem.

Bigger problems include the fact that is that he's corrupt, has misappropriated $80 million in public money, has violated people's civil rights on numerous occasions resulting in lawsuits costing at least $30 million more, has ignored sex crimes since at least two of his supporters were pedophiles (one a child-rapist, one "only" had pictures of children being raped), and most importantly: he willfully violated a court order to not violate people's civil rights.

His policies have been at best ineffective at reducing illegal immigration while ignoring pretty much all other kinds of crime to focus on that (and harassing his critics), but yes, he did win re-election five times despite all this. That's irrelevant, people vote for stupid things that make them feel good all the time. However all of his shit finally became too much (the revelations about all the money he wasted probably helped), and he lost re-election in 2016 in a landslide.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby Absentia » Sun Aug 27, 2017 9:45 pm

  • The people did eventually throw him out of office in 2015, so it's not like he was wildly popular with his constituents.
  • I don't live in Arizona, but here's a Twitter retrospective of Arpaio's excesses by a Phoenix magazine. Highlights include misappropriation of tens of millions in public funds, some pretty shocking police brutality complaints, and a mysteriously high rate of inmate deaths.
  • No matter how serious you think the illegal immigration problem is, it is simply not acceptable for a law enforcement official to ignore the rule of law. Being elected sheriff is not the same as being elected dictator.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby NoodleFox » Sun Aug 27, 2017 10:43 pm

Hah, I fluctuate between both sides of pretty much anything these days, as I can never seem to find straight up journalism without having it spun a certain narrative (both left and right) - I already saw him as a terrible person before all of this, but I also read and saw things that would make me...question what I already knew...so yeah, faulty reasoning in BotD (benefit of the doubt). could also be me unconsciously trying to get my dietary supplement of salt as a troll, too?

Doesn't this set a legal precedent though, pardoning someone before they were sentenced?
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby Tesseracts » Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:37 pm

When I began this thread, I knew very little about what Arpaio actually did. (I rushed through it because I didn't want the discussion to happen exclusively in the Trump thread.) I erroneously referred to him as a cop (he's actually a sheriff, and I still don't know what the fuck the point of this position is) and I knew nothing except he refused to stop racial profiling. But I just read this article, and holy shit, I am fucking terrified. He basically created a concentration camp for "criminals" who were never convicted of any crime. And did so much worse. I can say without exaggeration that he is probably the most evil sadist to hold US public office in this century. And he is never going to prison.

NoodleFox wrote:I don't live anywhere near the border, so I cannot personally claim or deny the happenings in Arizona and if Arpaio is racist (which he could very well be, he's in his 80s and you know the stereotype about old people and ethnicities) - is there anyone here from Arizona or along the Mexican border?

I can listen to people who do live along the border (and Mexico itself) and from what I hear, it's not easy to explain away, the issues that could have escalated and ultimately arrived at this point.
With the murky waters of immigration reform, it seems to me that, despite all the things Arpaio has been accused of and admitted to doing (such as ignoring sexual assault cases), the people continue to vote for him regardless.

So why keep voting for an obviously flawed sheriff? Well, there's one guy I occasionally listen to, mostly for E3 coverage and his "creative" rants, who lives in Phoenix and has done humanitarian work in Mexico - he paints a picture that obviously makes him pretty disgruntled to the fact that people in other regions of America know what's best for border states and the issues that rise from immigration (illegal, as is the case there) and honestly, he backs up his words with evidence I can't exactly ignore.
Skip to the 10 minute mark where he regales of his childhood and eventually talks his way towards his humanitarian work and Arpaio (13:00 mark)

Thoughts?

I know we have one Meixcan TCSer who lives around that area, and others who have probably been to the Grand Canyon at least once. However I believe personal experience and anecdote are something that is over-valued, especially by people in identity politics and populism. Both on the SJW side and the alt-right side. There isn't any reason why you should have to live in Arizona to understand the situation there.

But if you want personal experience, I have ethnically Mexican relatives out in Arizona. I've been to Arizona many times. I can promise you it's not being invaded by lawless, Spanish speaking psychopaths. Yes, we all know cartels exist. We have all seen Breaking Bad. But this is not a problem that a wall will solve, and it is not the reason we have crime in the United States.

I think the issues around illegal Mexican-American immigration are outside the scope of this thread, but I can't find any other thread on the subject. If anyone wants to start one go ahead.

This video is mostly baseless insults against liberals and Mexicans. I couldn't tolerate watching most of the video and I never got to the part where he explains how a giant wall will help Mexico, so somebody will have to explain that to me. I did however get to the anecdote about his Latina neighbor who allegedly threw bleach at people and killed his cat.

Regardless, like others have already said, nothing Arpaio did really has anything to do with immigration. Illegal immigrants are just a scapegoat he used to cover up his crimes. And it worked.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby Absentia » Sun Aug 27, 2017 11:53 pm

NoodleFox wrote:Doesn't this set a legal precedent though, pardoning someone before they were sentenced?


It's not really a legal precedent because the president is the only one who has the power to issue pardons for federal crimes, and that power is explicitly intended to be unlimited (or very nearly so). Normally it would make sense to wait until the sentence is handed down because pardons are typically unpopular and it would be preferable if the defendant got a lenient sentence from the judge without requiring a highly publicized intervention by the president.

In fact, this is exactly what the White House legal team was reportedly suggesting to Trump and to Arpaio's lawyers: he's going to get off light and there's really no reason for us to get involved. But Trump has never been one to shy away from needless self-inflicted wounds, so here we are.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby Marcuse » Mon Aug 28, 2017 12:01 am

Isn't the point with Arpaio that while he was busy rounding up everyone who looked a bit Mexican he was neglecting to prosecute adequately things like child sexual offences which are both more serious and more damaging than the potential crimes people might commit in the future? Even if we accept the premise (which we might reasonably dispute) that illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes and hurt people, the way in which he's reported to have gone about that is such that it's ineffective in catching illegals, and also leaves real ongoing crimes unaddressed as a result.

This idea that you somehow can't know just how awful it is to have illegal immigration unless you live there is a bit of a red herring I feel. Regardless of the severity of the crime of illegal migration, there's no justification for abandoning law enforcement to try to deal with that. Nor is there a reasonable reason to create a Victorian workhouse in Arizona either, it's just causing people suffering without doing anything to prevent or deter re-offending, especially when a lot of the people subjected to it weren't even guilty of a crime in the first place.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Mon Aug 28, 2017 12:16 am

Tesseracts wrote: (he's actually a sheriff, and I still don't know what the fuck the point of this position is)


As far as I can recall, it's basically the same position a chief of police would hold in a city. Sheriff's Departments usually run things in rural areas, then metro PDs in actual cities. From what I've seen, Sheriff's always tend to be a little more shady than Chiefs of Police (at least, from what I've seen of the sheriffs around here).
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby Absentia » Mon Aug 28, 2017 12:46 am

Around here we have both a police department and a sheriff's department, with different responsibilities. If memory serves, the sheriff's office is mostly concerned with civil/tax stuff: serving papers, seizing assets, etc., while the police primarily handle the criminal side. In rural areas with no PD, the sheriff does it all.

Of course that's Virginia, not Arizona. I'm sure the system varies between states.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby Learned Nand » Mon Aug 28, 2017 1:23 am

To the extent that living near the border actually does inform a person's views on illegal immigration, people living closer to the border tend to be less favorable to Trump's immigration policies, not more so. As an example, Republicans living near the border are less likely to support a border wall than are Republicans living far away from it. Along the Texan border, there was unusually high turnout against Trump.

The horrors of illegal immigration are largely fabrications by xenophobic politicians who don't live near the border. These include assertions by people like Jeff Sessions or Arpaio that undocumented immigrants bring crime into the United States, even though they're less likely to commit crimes. Illegal immigration is sometimes framed as an economic problem, even though undocumented immigrants probably have a minimal (or even slightly positive) effect on the economy, and even though a pathway to citizenship would, in the medium and long term, increase economic and wage growth.

In short, illegal immigrants do not pose a serious problem in terms of public safety or the economy, and people in border states don't think they do.

(As a note, I live within a few dozen miles of the border, and have to pass through an ICE checkpoint every time I go to work.)
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby cmsellers » Mon Aug 28, 2017 2:12 am

The most virulently anti-illegal-immigration people I've known are my late grandfather (who was otherwise a fairly reasonable person but thought illegal immigrants were ruining the country), and my cousin (who thinks that he's going to be forced to learn Spanish). Both spent pretty much their whole lives in Maine, which is as far away from the Mexican border as you can get in the continental US; I'm not sure either of them met an illegal immigrant in his life.

Meanwhile, I have three aunts living in Miami including a Democrat, a Democratic-leaning independent, and a Republican-leaning independent. At least two of them have plenty of complaints about the Cuban and Haitian population of the city, but they're all in the realm of "minor annoyances" (Cubans are noisy, Haitians build things without permits) and for none of them is controlling illegal immigration a major priority. So yeah, I'll buy what avi says. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that.

NoodleFox wrote:Hah, I fluctuate between both sides of pretty much anything these days, as I can never seem to find straight up journalism without having it spun a certain narrative (both left and right) - I already saw him as a terrible person before all of this, but I also read and saw things that would make me...question what I already knew...so yeah, faulty reasoning in BotD (benefit of the doubt). could also be me unconsciously trying to get my dietary supplement of salt as a troll, too?

Thing is, while the mainstream media gets a lot of things wrong when it comes to people they view as political opponents, the right-wing media is worse in that regard and the far-right media is a lot worse.

Arpaio is a good example of this. The narrative in mainstream sources has been: look at what a horrible sheriff he was, look at how he's unrepentant, look at how this sets a precedent. The far-right narrative has been "he's an eighty-five-year-old public servant who was just doing his job and had the temerity to question Obama's birth certificate and immigration policies, for which he was railroaded by a liberal judge and denied his right to a jury trial."

The problem with the right-wing narrative is that every part of it which tries to excuse his actions or justify his pardon is at best a distraction and in most cases misleading or wrong.

  1. His age is irrelevant, considering that he hasn't been sentenced and would have gotten at most a slap on the wrist. This is the only part of the pro-Arpaio narrative which is not misleading or wrong. It's just utterly irrelevant.
  2. The fact that he's a public servant means he should be held to a higher standard, particularly WRT the law, which he should known.
  3. I've already talked about the collateral bar rule, which explains why he cannot say "I think I'm required to do this so I'm going to ignore this injunction." He also didn't do his job when it came to sex abuse, and in fact misappropriated $80 million for his pet projects and personal vacations.
  4. Despite the narrative of Obama persecuting political opponents, that's not something there's any evidence he actually did. However there's plenty of evidence that "Sheriff Joe" did that.
  5. The judge in question was a George W. Bush appointee.
  6. He had no right to a jury trial since his maximum sentence was less than six months.
I can explain to you, point-by-point, why the pro-Arpaio narrative is wrong. The only response I've seen his defenders raise to the mainstream narrative is "but Marc Rich! But Chelsea Manning!" which is both a tu quoque fallacy and a bad analogy since Manning was not a campaign supporter of Obama, neither one of them abused the civil rights of their fellow Americans under color of office, and both had already been sentenced, with Manning even serving some time.

If you have a better argument in his defense I'd like to hear it, but so far I'd the fact that it's trivially easy for me to rebut most the claims Arpaio's defenders have made (the jury trial one was a bit more effort) and not so for his supporters with regards to the criticisms leveled against him should demonstrate clearly why Breitbart and the MSM are not two sides of the same coin.

NoodleFox wrote:Doesn't this set a legal precedent though, pardoning someone before they were sentenced?

Not a legal precedent: as Absentia noted he already had the right to do this. But it does set a precedent nonetheless. You know how Trump's defenders are shouting "but Marc Rich!"? Despite this being a flawed bit of whataboutery, they're absolutely right that that was an appalling and unprecedented thing to do. I'm pretty sure that Trump would have pardoned Arpaio whether Clinton had pardoned Rich or not (he's strongly suggested he'll pardon himself if it comes to that, which even Nixon didn't try), but whereas the Rich pardon was almost unanimously opposed by Democrats and Republicans, the Arpaio pardon is opposed by Democrats and independents but supported by a majority of Republicans, which suggests that partisan pardons like this in the future might be more acceptable at least among the president's partisans.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby tinyrick » Mon Aug 28, 2017 6:48 am

Quick question. Can Congress override a presidential pardon? Can anyone override a presidential pardon? I'm assuming the Supreme Court can override the President pardoning himself.
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Re: Trump pardons Joe Arpaio

Postby cmsellers » Mon Aug 28, 2017 7:43 am

tinyrick wrote:Quick question. Can Congress override a presidential pardon? Can anyone override a presidential pardon? I'm assuming the Supreme Court can override the President pardoning himself.

No.

The Founding Fathers thought about requiring Senate confirmation of pardons but ultimately decided against it, meaning that the presidential power of pardons (for federal crimes) is unlimited except possibly WRT the president himself. The Supreme Court can rule that a president cannot pardon himself, which is not the same as overriding a specific pardon. The issue has never come up because no president, not even Nixon or the two named "Andrew," has been as craven as Trump.
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Last edited by cmsellers on Mon Aug 28, 2017 7:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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