Paul Manafort sentenced to 47 months in prison in Virginia trial, sentencing in Washington DC case next week

Ah, but you see, he made her do it. That’s fine to these people. It’s about power, nothing else.

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Since he is showing now remorse and keeps his game of lies up till the end, it is very likely he would continue with his criminal activities after he got out of prison.
So arguably, for everyone potentially suffering from his wrong doings, him potentially dying in prison (because of his age/health status), it would make “everything better”.
In the late 90ies I’d simply called your “Be a good christian” analogy “totally lame”.

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It has always surprised me that so many judges in the USA are appointed politically.

In the UK, our judges are chosen by panels of judges. This results in a judiciary which is legally and socially conservative, but politically pretty neutral. Social conservatism in the judiciary can be modified in action by new laws, such as gay marriage.

It’s also clear that Trump’s frantic quest to stuff the US judiciary with conservatives is causing the appointment of a lot of people who don’t know as much actual law as they should.

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Not so. Not for a long time.

It’s now a staggeringly dull and tedious bureaucratic exercise.

Essentially because there were concerns that the old way of doing meant that a) only white, old, male barristers got the nod and b) Masons! (Remember when people worried about them rather than ISIS?)

Politically neutral was hardly applicable.

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What was it the Trump supporters were yelling about Hillary Clinton? Something about “Lock Her Up?” Despite literally years of investigations that ended in no charges, no indictments, and no convictions. Lock her up for her opinions, I guess. Fortunately that’s not (yet) a crime (for most people).

BTW, projection could be a symptom of something more insidious that should be checked out by a competent professional.

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I agree that 47 months seems like a substantial sentence. If this were Iceland or Sweden I’d say that the sentence seemed appropriate. The problem is that US prisons are full of people doing 10 years for a first offense drug possession charge. So the issue is inequality, and the reasons for the inequality - race and preferential treatment for the wealthy.

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“it’s wrong, but not immoral”-- what the hell does that even mean?

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"Manafort spoke briefly about how prayer and faith have helped get him through this time. "

I hope Jesus appears to him in prison and tells him “bro, you got it all wrong, you allied yourself with the same kinds of people who had Me killed-- crucifixion is being tortured to death. And you haven’t even shown any remorse for that. I don’t know what you think you have faith in, but it isn’t anything I ever taught.”

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Was this judge a Murray County, Georgia Ellis from the convicted heroin distributor’s family? The Manafort sentence sure does make him look like one.

You’re seeing Onstruction of Justice writ large. Both judge and jury were intimidated:

When all this calms down the FBI should dig into the source of these threats.

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I can agree with you about that… The Prison Reform bill to release and shorten sentenced for non violent drug offenders is a great start. Manafort’s sentence comes down tax fraud. Yes, it’s a deserving sentence, but I don’t think the guy should have been locked up for the rest of his life… He’s already up there in years.

He actively chose to live his life the way he did; his privilege & wealth protected and are STILL protecting him from any real consequences.

No sympathy and no fucks given that he’s getting the equivalent of a slap on the wrist.

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If I was to be convicted of crimes that could send me to prefer for decades, I’d MUCH prefer to get that sentence near the end of my life than near the middle of my life. I’m in my 40s, so if I was sentenced to 20+ years of prison now I’d miss seeing my kids grow up, miss the remaining years of a career or any chance of owning a home. If I was sentenced to 20+ years at age 70 I’d basically just miss out on my retirement and probably wouldn’t even end up living long enough to serve out the full sentence. Many people spend their final years in some kind of care facility anyway, so prison isn’t even that much of a step down.

“Dying in prison” isn’t necessarily a bad deal if it means you get to live out a full life first.

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We have a pretty harsh crowd here I see for any dissenting viewpoints I see… Fair enough…

Give it a name; Manafort and those of his ilk have lived a better quality of life than most people on the entire face of the earth can ever even imagine having.

Long story short: your ‘sympathy’ is wasted on someone who neither needs it nor deserves it, and who likely would never have any for you if the roles were reversed.

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I feel it just needed just a tad bit of clarification. Hope I didn’t step on your toes.

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Not at all; thanks for helping to elaborate, since some folks seem to need to have it spelled out for them as clearly as possible.

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Then there’s this option:

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