- Electile Dysfunction: From Landslide To Loser
Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,
This is the strangest presidential election in my memory. Despite the polls, the outcome is utterly unpredictable. This was true even before Hillary Clinton's recent health issue. Just consider this: it was only a month ago that the Washington Post declared a landslide victory for Hillary Clinton,
"[A] dispassionate examination of the data, combined with a coldblooded look at the candidates, the campaigns and presidential elections, produces only one possible conclusion: Hillary Clinton will defeat Donald Trump in November… Three months from now, with the 2016 presidential election in the rearview mirror, we will look back and agree that the presidential election was over on Aug. 9th."
On August 24, Slate, a liberal online magazine owned by the Washington Post, similarly declared, "There is no horse race: it's Clinton by a mile, with Trump praying for black swans" — only to "predict" one week later "Trump-Clinton Probably Won't be A Landslide." A few days ago, in a desperate attempt to analyze the new polls showing Trump closing in on Clinton, Slate explained sheepishly, "Things realistically couldn't have gotten much worse for Trump than they were a few weeks ago, and so it's not a shock that they instead have gotten a little better of late." Some current polls even show Trump with a slight lead.
The reality is that polling is incapable of accurately predicting the outcome of elections like this one, where so many voters are angry, resentful, emotional, negative, and frightened. In my new book, Electile Dysfunction: A Guide for the Unaroused Voter" I discuss in detail why so many voters now say they won't vote at all, or will vote for a third-party candidate. As the New York Times reported, "Only 9% of America Chose Trump and Clinton as the Nominees." Or to put the voter's frustration with the candidates more starkly, "Eighty-one percent of Americans say they would feel afraid following the election of one of the two polarizing politicians."
(Image source: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
Despite their perceived lack of agency, these voters may, of course, end up voting for one of the two major candidates when Election Day comes around.
This may depend in part on whether the Johnson-Weld ticket does well enough in the polls to be included in the presidential and vice presidential debates. The rules require that a third-party candidate reach 15 percent in five national polls. This number is difficult to achieve because many of the polls do not include third-party candidates. But it is not impossible, and if it were to occur, and if the Johnson-Weld ticket outperformed or held its own against Clinton and Trump, then people who had decided not to vote or who couldn't make up their minds might cast ballots for the Libertarian candidates.
It is unlikely that the Stein/Baraka ticket will be included in the debates or that it will garner any significant number of voters in key states, because the candidates are so extreme in their views and so out of the mainstream of American political beliefs. However, if a significant number of voters do vote for a third or fourth party, this could impact the election, as the votes for Ralph Nader in 2000 may have determined the Florida outcome, which in turn determined the general election outcome.
The bottom line is that in a bizarre election like this one — with so many variables and so much emotion — polls may well under- or over-predict votes for the two major candidates. Think about the vote on Brexit. Virtually all the polls — including exit polls that asked voters what they had voted for — got it wrong. The financial markets got it wrong. The bookies got it wrong. The 2016 presidential election is more like the Brexit vote in many ways than it is like prior presidential elections. Both Brexit and this presidential election involve raw emotion, populism, anger, nationalism, class division, and other factors that distort accuracy in polling. So anyone who thinks they know who will be the next president of the United States is deceiving themselves!
To be sure, the Electoral College vote is sometimes less difficult to predict than the popular vote, because it generally turns on a handful of closely contested critical states, such as Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. But in this election, there could be surprises in states that are usually secure for one party or the other. So even the electoral vote will be more difficult to predict than in previous elections.
One reason for this unique unpredictability is the unique unpredictability of Donald Trump himself. No one really knows what he will say or do between now and the election. His position on important issues may change. Live televised debates will not allow him to rely on a teleprompter, as he largely did in his acceptance speech or in his speech during his visit to Mexico City. He may once again become a loose cannon. No one can predict what he will say or do next. This may gain him votes, or it may lose him votes. Just remember: few, if any, pundits accurately predicted how far Trump would get when he first entered the race. When it comes to Donald Trump, the science of polling seems inadequate to the task.
Hillary Clinton is more predictable, but her past actions may produce unpredictable results, as they did when FBI Director James Comey characterized her conduct with regard to her emails as "extremely careless." It is also possible that more damaging information about her private email server or the Clinton Foundation may come from WikiLeaks or other such sources (whether these "revelations" are actually incriminating seems to be beside the point for those 54% of voters who, without first-hand knowledge of the investigation, suspect that the FBI engaged in a preferential treatment by not seeking criminal charges against Clinton.) Finally, it is difficult to assess what impact, if any, her recent health issues may have on voters.
Another unpredictable factor that may impact the election is whether there are terrorist attacks in the lead-up to the voting. Islamic extremists would almost certainly like to see Trump beat Clinton, because they believe a Trump presidency would result in the kind of instability on which they thrive. If ISIS attacks American targets in late October, that could turn some undecided voters in favor of the candidate who says he will do anything to stop terrorism. If voters were to change their votes based on terrorist acts, that would only encourage more terrorism in the run-up to elections.
A final reason why this election is so unpredictable is because voter turnout is unpredictable. The "Bernie or bust" crowd is threatening to stay home or vote for the Green Party. Young voters may do here what they did in Great Britain: many failed to vote in the Brexit referendum and then regretted their inaction when it became clear that if they had voted in the same proportion as older voters, Brexit would likely have been defeated. Some Clinton supporters worry that black voters who voted in large numbers for Barack Obama may cast fewer votes for Clinton in this election. Voters who usually vote Republican but can't bring themselves to pull the lever for Trump may decide to stay home. Turnout is unpredictable, and the effect of low voter turnout is also unpredictable.
So for all these reasons and others, no one can tell how this election will turn out. It would be a real tragedy and an insult to democracy if the election were to be decided by those who fail to vote, rather than by those who come out to vote for or against one of the two major candidates.
- Deutsche Bank Slapped With $14 Billion Fine By DOJ Over Mortgage Probe
Blowback? Just a few weeks after the EU slapped Apple with a $14 billion bill for "back taxes," the U.S. has apparently responded with a $14 billion fine of their own to Deutsche Bank to settle an outstanding probe into the company's trading of mortgage-backed securities during the financial crisis.
Shareholders are not happy…
According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposed settlement would be largest fine paid by any of the banks related to similar charges. Unfortunately for DB, the fine is roughly equal to it's entire market cap and the stock is plunging nearly 8% in after hours trading.
The U.S. Justice Department proposed that Deutsche Bank AG pay $14 billion to settle a set of high-profile mortgage-securities probes stemming from the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the matter, a number that would rank among the largest of what other banks have paid to resolve similar claims and is well above what investors have been expecting.
The figure is described by people close to the negotiations between Deutsche Bank and the government as preliminary, and they said it came up in discussions between the bank and government lawyers in recent days. It hasn’t been previously disclosed. Deutsche Bank is expected to push back strongly against it, the people said, and it is far from clear what the final outcome will be.
It is also unclear how much of that amount is proposed to be paid in cash, and how much could be in consumer relief, as past deals have been structured.
A DB spokesman confirmed back in July that negotiations had been initiated with the DOJ though no estimates had been provided on the size of any potential settlement before today. That said, the Wall Street Journal notes that DB's attorneys had privately suggested that a $2 – $3 billion settlement with the DOJ was probably in the ballpark. Meanwhile, wall street analysts had estimated settlements in the $2-$5 billion range. Any fines paid pursuant to current negotiations would be in addition to the $1.9 billion already paid in 2013 to settle other U.S. claims related to mortgage-backed securities.
Per the table below, as of June 30, DB had reserved a total of €5.5 billion for civil litigation and regulatory penalties on it's balance sheet.
The size of the proposed settlement is also bad news for other European banks that remain under investigation by the DOJ including Barclays, Credit Suisse, UBS and RBS. Lawyers working with other banks have indicated that DB's settlement would likely set the precedent for what other Euro banks might be expected to pay.
Just when you thought DB was safe…
- Chaos Has Never Been Closer: "Obama May Suspend Election" If She Is Too Sick
Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,
The events are all lined up, and the system is geared for chaos. At any moment, a despotic leader could take control.
But how could it ever happen in America?
With economic collapse again on the horizon, and a basket of issues coming to a head, several factions of the population are tipping towards revolution. Much of it has played out in the election cycle; the establishment has lost all credibility, and the people are seeking anti-establishment voices. Alternate means of maintaining control are implemented.
Homeland Security is taking control of the election process, making a fair election completely impossible. Optics and careful PR is used to script the election, and maintain a favorable narrative – and one that is explosive enough to produce radical and unexpected results that might drive anger over the edge.
Millions of people have been driven by the media to violently oppose Trump, and may well start riots across the country if he wins the election, that is, if Obama doesn’t stop the elections first. Likewise, if Hillary is elected and take office, it could spawn a civil war, of words… or worse.
Any number of pretexts could theoretically come into play, but no scenario has become more likely than Hillary dropping from the race and stirring, well, a shitstorm like politics has never before seen.
If Hillary is too sick, President Obama could opt to suspend the election, and it could make any number of groups unleash, giving way to civil unrest.
The police state is ready to contain economic/food riots, and are also poised to use martial law to maintain order, using an iron fist.
Chaos and order will repeat in cycle, and everything will become unstable, decline and render the population depraved and vulnerable.
Radio host and political expert Michael Savage appeared on the Alex Jones Show and warned that the new Hillary card could be the unexpected reason for one of the most dangerous scenarios on the books.
If these events came to pass, would the Constitution and rule of law ever be restored?
Michael Savage: Hillary Is In Free-Fall, Obama May Suspend Election
Steve Quayle has also been watching for the type of emergency events that could be used to alter reality and cancel the elections, or allow a martial law scenario to take hold. He, too, sees an uncertain election ahead.
Steve Quayle: Election May Not Take Place
What do you think is going to happen to this country in the next two months?
Stay vigilant, and get ready for literally almost anything.
- Former Treasury Secretary Warns Banks Riskier Now Than In 2008 Crisis
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
“Sir. SIR! This your bag,” the TSA agent barked at me last week, more as a statement than a question.
“It is.”
“Are you carrying any liquids?”
I knew immediately; I had forgotten about the bottle of water that I had shoved in my briefcase before checking out of my hotel.
They opened my bag and confiscated the water bottle immediately with an extra harrumph to make sure I knew that I had wasted their time.
Yeah, I get it. I broke the rule. But it’s such a ridiculous rule to begin with.
Are we really supposed to pretend that Miami International Airport is any safer because there’s a brand new, unopened Dasani bottle in the TSA wastebin?
You may recall how Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport was attacked on June 28th by men armed with automatic weapons and explosives.
Ataturk was already one of the most security-conscious airports in the world– you actually have to go through a security checkpoint just to enter the building, followed by a second security checkpoint on your way to the gate.
And yet, despite all of this extra security, 41 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in an attack that shows just how ineffective airport security really is.
Airport security isn’t real security. It’s merely the illusion of security– a bunch of busybodies in uniforms enforcing pointless rules to make people believe that they’re safer.
Candidly, our financial system has borrowed the same principle. There’s no real safety in our financial system– merely the illusion of safety.
Leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, most people thought the banks were safe.
After all, we’ve been told our entire lives that the banks are rock solid. What could go wrong?
This turned out to be an illusion. Banks had loaded up their balance sheets with toxic assets, rendering themselves completely insolvent. They started dropping like flies.
Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Washington Mutual, Wachovia… some of the most established banks in the US collapsed. Poof.
Ever since then, the banks, the US government, the Federal Reserve, and other financial regulators in the United States have been working to rebuild the illusion of financial safety.
Most notably came a bunch of laws and regulations like the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, signed into law in 2010, designed to make the banks safer…
… or at least give the appearance that banks are safer. As you can imagine, these regulations have merely created another illusion of bank safety.
Today, former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers published a new paper that slams these regulations for not having made the US banking system any safer:
“To our surprise, we find that financial market information provides little support for the view that major institutions are significantly safer than they were before the crisis and some support for the notion that risks have actually increased.”
This is important. Most people have handed over their entire life’s savings to financial institutions that are far, far riskier than we are led to believe.
Ask yourself– does it really make sense to keep 100% of your savings in a financial system that goes through great pains to deliberately conceal the truth?
Why take the risk? Especially when all you really gain is a whopping 0.01% interest?
There are better options for your money.
We’ve talked about holding physical cash and precious metals– which, in combination, is a great way to hedge risks in the banking system as well as the overall monetary system.
If these banking system risks ever do erupt into another financial crisis, having some physical cash means that at least a portion of your savings will be immune to the consequences.
Should that crisis turn into a full-fledged currency crisis, having some physical gold will shield you from those consequences as well.
And even if neither of those scenarios unfolds, it’s hard to imagine you’ll be worse off holding cash and gold.
Again, when interest rates are this low, there’s almost zero opportunity cost in holding cash.
And gold remains one of the only major asset classes recognizable and marketable around the world, yet still FAR below its all-time high.
- Spot The (Book Review) Difference
With health concerns mounting, email leaks hurting, and poll numbers tumbling, Hillary Clinton has had a tough couple weeks (poor thing)… but the news just got a little worse as Hillary’s newest book, “Stronger Together,” which provides a policy blueprint for where she hopes to take the country if she is elected president, sold just 2,912 copies in its first week on sale, according to Nielsen BookScan.
As The New York Times reports, both Mrs. Clinton and her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, have promoted the book on the campaign trail, but the sales figure, which tallies about 80 percent of booksellers nationwide and does not include e-books, firmly makes the book what the publishing industry would consider a flop.
“Stronger Together,” whose cover shows Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kaine waving, arrived closer to Election Day than most of these types of books.
Named after the campaign’s slogan, “Stronger Together” offers readers, according to the book jacket, “specific and practical solutions, while also articulating a bold and expansive vision of change and renewal.”
Its roughly 250 pages intersperse bullet-point policy ideas, like “launch a national initiative for suicide prevention” and “humanely address the Central American migrant crisis,” with photographs of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kaine on the campaign trail, charts in the campaign’s signature chunky font and highlights from Mrs. Clinton’s speeches.
But, it appears, from a cursory glance at Amazon.com, that even the 2912 people that read the book were unimpressed by its contents (with 83% giving it 1 Star)… slightly different from Donald Trump’s “Great Again” book’s reviews…
Some of the 1-Star reviews…
As ‘UrbanLegend’ wrote…
I have to start by saying I am a registered independent voter, and more importantly, a life-long independent thinker. I have voted for more D’s than R’s in my life, as well as several third-party candidates. This is the lamest, weakest, most politically-absurd book ever written, as far as I know. Save your money for food for your family just in case she is elected.
As Daniel B noted…
I was going to read this book…..I really was. But just as I got started, I found myself under sniper fire, passed out, and fell and hit my head. After that I got double vision and had to wear glasses that were so damn thick I couldn’t even see to read. Then I had an allergic reaction to something and started coughing so hard I spit out what looked like a couple of lizard’s eyeballs, my limbs locked up, and I passed out and fell down again, waking up only to find out I had been diagnosed with pneumonia 2 days earlier. It’s a good thing I was able to make a small fortune making this random small trade in the commodities market (cattle futures or some such thing) and then, miracle of all miracles, a few banks offered me a few million to just talk to their employees for a few minutes – and all that really helped out because I swear I was dead broke and couldn’t figure out how I was gonna come up with the 6 bucks to pay for this book, let alone pay the $1,500 for my health insurance this month. I still want to read it, but, hell, what difference at this point does it make? I hear it sucks anyway.
Paul A. Bedish’s review was short and sweet…
What a horrible book. I got brain damage after 4 pages and lost my shoe
And finally “Amazon Customer” concluded…
How are we to believe that the book was written by Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Kaine? They’ve been a bit busy lately. Obviously ghost-written campaign drivel. If she really believes we’re “stronger together” perhaps she should stop dividing us. Not calling her opponent’s supporters “deplorable” might be a good start.
There were some 5-Star reviews…
From Bestatchess…
This is a great book. The chapters on “How to screw up everything you touch with hubris” “How to write the perfect doctor’s note” and “D**ing bimbos at home” were worth the price of admission.
And finally…“I would give this book 10 stars if I could!”
Why? Because it’s a fantastically well-written, witty, insightful and informative book that was written by a person who is easily the most important female political leader since Queen Elizabeth I. And her impact on world history is liable to be much, much greater. Please do yourself, your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren a favor and beg, borrow, or steal this book, but whatever you do – READ IT!!! In it you will find Hillary’s plan for making this world of ours a much better place – more peaceful, more prosperous, more just, more environmentally sustainable. And as an aside, way, way more fun! This book is in fact so chock full of great ideas that if it contained any more, they would literally leak out the sides! I always felt that, compared to anyone else on the scene, Hillary Clinton was a modern day Colossus of Rhodes, but now I’m more inclined to think of her as the political equivalent of the Great Pyramid. They just don’t come any better! After her eight years in office are finished, I predict the only remaining controversy will be which one of those dead guys immortalized on Mount Rushmore should have his features rearranged in her image. (I vote for Alexander Hamilton – way overrated if you ask me.) But I digress. In sum, if you don’t read this book, you will regret it – maybe not today, but soon, and for the rest of your life. Please, don’t make that tragic mistake!
- Infrastructure Spending Does Not "Grow The Economy"
Submitted by Patrick Trombly via The Mises Institute,
In a new twist, the presidential nominees from both major political parties have fallen for (or hope that the voters have fallen for) a time-worn fallacy, and have proposed government spending on infrastructure “to grow the economy and create jobs.” As David Stockman has shown, infrastructure in the United States is not “crumbling,” nor is spending on infrastructure disappearing.
What is equally important to our analysis, though, is the fallacy that government spending, on infrastructure or anything else, creates jobs or economic growth in the aggregate. This fallacy and related myths need to be dispensed with before anyone begins to take them seriously. Murray Rothbard addressed the issue in great detail in his article “The Fallacy of the ‘Public Sector.’” Below I seek to summarize, in simple terms that even Donald Trump and Paul Krugman can understand: there is no such thing as the Infrastructure Fairy that takes government spending and magically turns it into economic growth.
Government Spending: A Zero-Sum Game
The money to be spent on infrastructure would have to be borrowed, taxed, or printed (a tax not called a tax) out of the non-government economy. One minus one equals zero. That’s not conservative economics or liberal economics. It’s not Democrat economics or Republican economics. It’s just economics.
Once upon a time, politicians used to promise to “bring home the bacon.” Voters upset at the system would bemoan the fact that the system took funds from the whole country so that politicians from different districts could fight over how much of that money they could bring back to their districts to spend on things that the voters probably would not have bought with the money had they been allowed to keep it. But, given the realities of taxation, it seemed that the only choice available was to hold one’s nose, play the game, and try to vote your representative or senator back to Washington to bring back more “bacon” than was being taxed from your state to begin with.
But, the political class is now telling us that our money, taken from us and then spent by them, will actually grow the economy. We’ve come to expect this sort of thing from politicians, but many economists inside and outside of DC are more than happy to give the political class intellectual respectability under the new version of alchemy that is the “multiplier effect.”
If we dig deeper into the realities behind government spending, however, we can see that an “infrastructure stimulus program” would probably make matters worse than they are. After all, private investment is done at least with the goal of producing something that consumers want to buy, at a price that will generate a profit. These activities, if successful, would enable continued reinvestment in the same enterprise, and continued employment of the individuals therein.
The government, via taxation, produces something that the consumers have not already chosen to buy. If they were already producing and buying such things, no government intervention would be “necessary.” Thus, whenever the government spending program — on infrastructure or anything else — ends, we end up with workers who took the “stimulus” jobs instead of the jobs that would have been created by the private economy’s spending or investing the same money. Those workers will have invested their time and energy in the development of skills not actually in demand by the consumers. This is a form of malinvestment, and it impacts employees of these firms in a manner similar to the workers who were misled by Fed-created malinvestment booms into the home construction fields in the 2000s or the oil drilling fields in the 2010s. Of course, workers need not worry about other employment if interest groups can convince politicians to keep pouring billions into these industries indefinitely, even though the taxpayers couldn’t be bothered with voluntarily investing in those industries to the same degree.
The Myth of Stimulus
Nevertheless, old lies about stimulus spending never quite seem to go away. It is telling that there is only one example of “fiscal stimulus” that is popularly believed to have been successful — the myth that “World War Two brought us out of the Depression.” This sole empirical example held up to justify taking and spending more of your money on politicians’ donors’ priorities is also a fallacy. During World War Two, the government not only spent more money, it conscripted half the male population into the army and navy, sending them halfway around the world to kill people — and to be killed. Obviously, you no longer count as unemployed if you’re dead. Even among the living, a command economy cannot be maintained perpetually, whether for war or any other purpose. War simply does not add value, but rather subtracts value. Centralized war planning cannot be considered an improvement over a free economy, at least if the goal is meeting consumer demand. “GDP” includes all economic activity, though, whether consumer needs are being met or not. Thus, war-related “GDP growth" cannot be considered “economic stimulus.”
Moreover, the post-war growth in GDP often cited by stimulus proponents wasn’t a refutation of Bastiat’s Broken Window Fallacy, as is commonly thought. To continue Bastiat’s analogy: we had simply spent the 1940s breaking everyone else’s windows, which created a temporary advantage for American glaziers. This advantage peaked in the 1960s and in all probability came at the expense of other potential avenues of growth more closely aligned with meeting consumers’ actual demand. After all, if Europeans were spending their money on new windows, they couldn’t spend that money to buy other things the Americans produced. Remember that we also eliminated, in the late 1940s, some of the war-time rations and price controls, and paid down government debt — undoing things that the government had been doing for years to stifle private sector growth.
The “World War Two” case is often argued in conjunction with the related myth that the war-related expenditure was “needed” to combat a “liquidity trap,” which, the infrastructure fairy advocates contend, exists again today.
But, there is no “liquidity trap” and never has been one. In the 1930s, after the leveraging up of the 1920s, the most popular phrase was “brother can you spare a dime.” Now, after the leveraging up of the 2000s, 40 percent of Americans don’t have enough put aside to cover a surprise $500 expense. An extremely high percentage of millennials live with their parents and those parents are working to a later age to make up for low retirement savings and the meager return on what savings they have. The “liquidity” problem is and was that everyone found himself to be illiquid after a credit-expansion-driven boom-bust cycle. Even the “liquidity” now held by the banks is just central bank “Quantitative-Easing” money, printed after 2008. The “stress tests” are passed only because the central banks believe that enough of their funny money remains on reserve to cover the losses that will ensue when the central banks’ latest bubbles burst. And the supposed $3 trillion of non-financial-corporation “cash on the sidelines” adds up to one sixth of the federal debt. This is a low cash position relative to the rest of the economy’s balance sheet, even without considering unfunded federal obligations, state and city debt and unfunded obligations, and corporate and household debt. The idea that we are so flush as to be too flush is just not true.
Ultimately, spending on infrastructure no more “creates wealth” than any other kind of government spending. Like all other government spending, it’s a matter of taking money from some people to give to others. The money taken from the taxpayers must be subtracted from the money spent, and we’re left with no net gain. Of course, after the politicians and the government contractors take their cut, they’ll do pretty well. The rest of us won’t be so lucky.
- YouTube Has Quietly Begun "Censoring" Journalists Who Criticize Government
Submitted by Alice Salles via TheAntiMedia.org,
Earlier this month, YouTube, the behemoth video-sharing website was accused of censoring users.
Claiming some of their videos had been barred from making money through the company’s ad services, YouTube hosts like Philip DeFranco spoke out against the policy, claiming over “a dozen of his videos had been flagged as inappropriate for advertising, including one dinged for ‘graphic content or excessive strong language.’“
In a video entitled “YouTube Is Shutting Down My Channel and I’m Not Sure What To Do,” DeFranco called YouTube’s policy “censorship with a different name,” since users touching on what the company considers to be controversial subjects end up losing money. “If you do this on the regular, and you have no advertising,” DeFranco added, “it’s not sustainable.”
While YouTube has already confirmed its policy regarding what it considers unfit for monetization hasn’t changed, the issue might lie elsewhere now that the company seems more efficient in enforcing its own rules. As a matter of fact, the content policy changed in 2012, when YouTube first introduced its “ad-friendly” guidelines.
But while an algorithm is allegedly used to spot and “de-monetize” videos that break the company’s rules, many continue to accuse the company, currently owned by Google, of having “vague” descriptions of what its leadership considers ad-friendly.
YouTube rolled out its monetization tool in 2006, when ads consisted of videos that would pop up at the bottom of the user’s screen. If the user did not click on it, it would roll for about ten seconds before going away. But as ad executives pressured YouTube to “to do a better job at promoting its creators,” the relationship with its advertisers changed. As better and even more intrusive ads were added to YouTube videos, the company allegedly became more concerned with the content.
Those who are affected often complain about copyright claims, but some complain about another type of targeting — one that involves power players.
YouTube Content Creators Speak Out
Derrick J. Freeman, the host of FR33MANTV, told Anti-Media that he monetizes all of his videos, “and every day some video — even much older ones — gets slapped with some kind of warning or another because of music playing in the background somewhere. Usually a public place.”
While Freeman’s work is often political in nature, he hasn’t seen any of his videos being flagged for breaking YouTube’s rules concerning subjects related to war or political conflicts.
Mat Bars, another YouTube user, also complained about copyright claims.
Asked about the alleged censorship problem, Bars told Anti-Media that “what it really most likely comes down to is advertisers not wanting their ads to be associated with certain things.” To the YouTube host, the company is “mostly blameless in this. The site isn’t even profitable, so letting advertisers push them around like this suits their best interests.” Instead of complaining about censorship, Bars added that what affects him personally is “the copyright system.”
But to more radical political figures who gather a considerable number of followers on YouTube, things are slightly differently.
To Luke Rudkowski, the man behind the popular channel We Are Change, YouTube’s policy of nixing monetization on some of his most popular videos has been a problem for a long time.
“For years,” he told The Anti-Media, “I have monetized and still get f*cked from it.” Especially, he continued, “[when I launch a video about] Hillary, or war and foreign policy.” When his videos touch on drugs or guns, however, he says ads remain in place.
“When the videos only have ‘Hillary Clinton’ they do fine,” he added, “however, when we add ‘FBI’, that’s when YouTube” springs into action.
Anti-Media journalist and senior editor Carey Wedler got her start on Youtube and has had a similar experience with her channel.
She explained the first time she realized the site had singled out her videos was “a couple of weeks” after she “posted a video about how America’s culture of militarism is an underlying contributor to domestic mass shootings.”
She continued:
“The video was released shortly after the Orlando shooting, which occurred in June. By July 6, I had received an email saying the video was not ‘advertiser friendly.’ Two days later, I received another email about a video I released at the beginning of June — before I released the mass shooting video. This video, which pointed out inconsistencies in Bernie Sanders’s record and questioned his ‘revolutionary’ status, was also stripped of monetization.”
While the mass shooting video’s monetization has been restored without her appealing the company’s decision, her Sanders video remains ineligible. The Sanders video focused largely on his record of supporting war and the military-industrial complex.
Her other videos affected by YouTube’s policy include “What Every American Needs to Know About Radical Islam,” a video “that challenged rampant Islamophobia and jingoism right after the Paris terror attacks last November,” and “Why I’m “Ready for Hillary!,” which the creator claims to be an “extremely sarcastic indictment of Hillary Clinton published before she announced her candidacy early last year.”
Other videos by Wedler that suffered the same fate include “How America ‘wins’ the wars in Syria & Iraq” and “How I became a “self-hating Jew.” All of the de-monetized videos contain anti-war sentiments.
According to the prolific writer and vlogger, YouTube only bothered to email her notifications regarding the changes in monetization for the Sanders and the mass shooting videos:
“I noticed the [other] videos had all been stripped of monetization when I logged into Youtube to check out the two that had been officially flagged. However, when I checked my settings following receipt of the two emails regarding mass shootings and Bernie, my overall monetization setting had been switched off — meaning none of my videos were monetized.”
She claims to have “never selected that option” prior to learning about the issues with the videos mentioned previously, yet when she turned the monetization option back on, “the monetization reactivated — but only for videos that hadn’t been specifically flagged.”
“I also noticed that my videos before the self-hating Jew video hadn’t been rejected for monetization at all,” she said.
In cases involving YouTube’s decision to flag her videos that included notifications, Wedler added, YouTube failed to give her “a specific reason as to why the videos were stripped of monetization. I’ve seen some screenshots of those emails from other Youtubers … and some contain reasons. Mine didn’t, though it’s pretty clear to me that in my case, it’s because they are considered ‘controversial.’ Some discuss war and some contain images of war, and they are always questioning military violence.”
While Wedler agrees that this type of policy is “not direct censorship … it does amount to an implicit attempt to discourage me and others from saying controversial things.”
She added that while YouTube is a “privately owned company that can decide which content is appropriate for its advertisers, … if they are deciding [which of] my videos shouldn’t be allowed to generate revenue, they are effectively removing much of my incentive to continue producing content on the platform.”
Despite the company’s policy, Wedler vows to continue making these videos simply because the message is what matters.
Google and Its Addiction to Buying Influence
As Wedler stated, YouTube is a private company and it has the right to set its own policies. But it’s undeniable that the site’s owner, Google, has, on a number of occasions, shown its favoritism through lobbying, prompting many to highlight the company’s appearance of favorable bias toward Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
Google went from spending $80,000 on lobbying in 2003 to over $16 million in 2014. After 2014, Google, Inc. became Alphabet, and in 2015, Alphabet invested over $16 million in lobbying. To date, the company has spent over $8 million on Washington politicians.
Alphabet’s top recipient this election cycle is, unsurprisingly, Hillary Clinton.
But despite its knack for influence buying, Google has, over the years, created relationships with think tanks that would have criticized the tech giant’s crony capitalist ways under different circumstances.
According to the Washington Post, Google has embarked on a quest to woo free market organizations by populating “elite think-tanks such as the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the New America Foundation” with its fellows, including “young lawyers, writers and thinkers paid by the company.”
From the Post:
“To critics, Google’s investments have effectively shifted the national discussion away from Internet policy questions that could affect the company’s business practices. Groups that might ordinarily challenge the policies and practices of a major corporation are holding their fire, those critics say.”
Claiming to be defenders of privacy, Google successfully waged an aggressive lobbying campaign within Washington to defeat a congressional effort that could have put Google in the middle of a very nasty antitrust fight.
After supporting the European Union’s antitrust prosecution of Microsoft, Google found itself the target of the same type of scrutiny, being accused of unfairly discriminating against users.
With the excuse of going after companies like Google for antitrust law violations, Congress came up with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill disguised as an anti-online piracy fix that would have allowed the federal government to target “illegal copies of films and other forms of media hosted on foreign servers.” The bill would have hurt Google the most because the search engine would have several results deleted from its database, requiring “ISPs to remove URLs from the Web, which is also known as censorship last time I checked,” Google chairman Eric Schmidt said.
Just one month before SOPA was unveiled by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Schmidt appeared before Congress during a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hearing where a Republican senator “accused the company of skewing search results to benefit its own products and hurt competitors.” As this hearing took place and Google was grilled by lawmakers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Motion Picture Association of America lobbies pushed Congress to pass harsh anti-privacy legislation, accusing companies like Google of giving users access to pirated music and movies.
Afraid of the backlash caused by the hearing, Google feared the Hollywood lobby would end up hurting many of its partners, as well as smaller organizations directly tied to Google. But the search engine giant had a way out — its aggressive lobbying and partnership building skills.
As SOPA appeared poised for passage, Google and several other tech firms stood in opposition and the bill finally failed.
While SOPA was, indeed, a farce — and privacy advocates in Washington were happy the bill didn’t see the light of day — it’s important to note how hard Google worked to keep it from becoming a reality, putting the Silicon Valley giant closer to powerful institutions that, in theory, are against crony capitalism.
But after SOPA, the FTC went back to the drawing board, threatening to investigate Google’s alleged antitrust violations further. At the time, the “company’s rivals, including Microsoft and Yelp, were aggressively pressing arguments that Google was exploiting its dominance in the search business.”
Reaching out to another partner, George Mason University’s Law & Economics Center, Google and the university put together “the first of three academic conferences at the GMU law school’s Arlington County campus,” which, according to the Washington Post, helped to shape the FTC’s approach to the Google probe from then on.
At the third academic conference held at GMU, Google remained present as a silent partner. As “[a] strong contingent of FTC economists and lawyers were on hand for the May 16, 2012, session,” the Washington Post reported, research financially backed by Google was presented by GMU lawyers and economists. And “[i]n January 2013, after an investigation that spanned more than a year and a half, the FTC settled the case with Google, which agreed to give its rivals more access to patents and make it easier for advertisers to use other ad platforms.”
From the publication:
“But when it came to the charges that Google biased its search results to promote its own products, the five FTC commissioners all voted to close the investigation, saying there was no evidence the company’s practices were harming consumers.”
As Google became more involved with politics, other lobbying opportunities would arise.
More recently, Google got involved in yet another powerful lobbying effort, which started when the company hired the former administrator of the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to serve as the company’s Director of Safety for Self-Driving Cars, proving the revolving door that presidential candidate Barack Obama promised to nix is still alive and well. The effort paid off, and personal injury attorneys are now concerned that Google may try to push still more regulations, forcing regulators to stick the human driver with the blame for crashes and getting Google’s autonomous driving system off the hook.
Whether YouTube’s ad policy has anything to do with its parent company’s politics is impossible to determine. But as we analyze Google’s influence in Washington, it’s important to note that, whether you agree with the tech giant on none, some, or all issues, governments create the incentives for companies like Google to continue rent-seeking.
As the economist David R. Henderson puts it, individuals “are said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves through the political arena. … licensed electricians and doctors [for instance] often lobby to keep regulations in place that restrict competition from unlicensed electricians or doctors.” Companies like Google are champions of this practice, which has helped to protect the brand’s popularity by keeping competitors at bay.
So it’s not a surprise to see many claiming their content is being censored by Google’s YouTube. After all, with the amount of power the company holds in Washington, it’s as if Google – or Alphabet – is an actual wing of the government.
- Clinton Foundation CEO Admits To Pay-For-Play: "No Question" That "Courtesy Appointments" Were Made
Yesterday, the CEO of the Clinton Foundation, Donna Shalala, went on MSNBC and openly admitted to engaging in “pay-for-play” activities saying there is “no question” that Foundation donors received “courtesy appointments” during Hillary’s tenure as Secretary of State. Somehow, Shalala would like for us to believe that so long as appointees weren’t put in a position to impact policy decisions then there is no real issue. I guess we should just ignore that taxpayers are funding the salaries of those appointees and paying for their government-related travel all over the world while Hillary gets to accrue “political capital” and her Foundation gets to continue raking in the donations?
Shalala also seems to invoke the Donna Brazile (new DNC Chair) defense who previously told ABC that “someone who is a donor..saying I want access” isn’t an issue and anyone who suggests otherwise is just attempting to “criminalize behavior that is normal” (see out previous post “New DNC Chair Says Outrage Over Clinton’s Pay-To-Play Is Attempt To ‘Criminalize Normal Behavior’“).
“First of all there is no question there were phone calls made to get appointments for people.”
“There were also business people. There is no question about that.”
“I don’t see evidence that there was policy decisions made as a result of that other than courtesy appointments. And people in public life are used to doing that kind of — that is, making courtesy appointments for people. I certainly did it as secretary [of Health and Human Services] with requests from Republicans in Congress so I don’t find it unusual. We have to be careful that it’s not linked to policy decisions as opposed to simply seeing prominent people that ask for appointments.”
Of course, according to LifeZette, the Trump camp took issue with the statements with Jason Miller, Trump’s communications adviser, releasing the following statement:
“It speaks volumes that the Clinton Foundation’s CEO would casually admit on national television that its donors received access and ‘courtesy appointments’ at Hillary Clinton’s State Department. This is emblematic of the corrupt pay-to-play culture Hillary Clinton and those in her orbit bring to the table, where it so pervasive it is actually uncontroversial to those involved.”
“This is why a special prosecutor needs to be appointed to independently investigate the growing evidence of corruption between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department while Hillary Clinton was serving as secretary of state,”
But the following morning, Shalala went on CNN and seemingly walked back her previous statements made on MSNBC saying that a “courtesy meeting” request made by Doug Band of Huma Abedin “never happened.”
“Guess what. That never happened. Never happened. I don’t care who asked for what. It never happened. It just did not happen.”
When asked whether she was comfortable with Clinton Foundation staff requesting favors, even if they were never fulfilled, Shalala stopped short of a blatant confirmation, which she offered on earlier on MSNBC, saying instead that “no one should cross any line.”
“Well, you know, no one should cross any line.”
And, just for good measure, here is the clip of Donna Brazile from back in August where she assures us that “someone who is a donor..saying I want access” isn’t an issue and anyone who suggests otherwise is just attempting to “criminalize behavior that is normal.”
Fast forward to the 3:45 mark for the relevant exchange:
Well, we guess there is nothing to see here then. Just some more smoke people…move along.
- SHe'S BaCK!
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