Feb 21

Today’s News 21st February 2021

  • Once Upon A Presidency – From Populist To Dissident
    Once Upon A Presidency – From Populist To Dissident

    Authored by Joshua Hochschild via AmericanMind.org,

    Let’s say you’ve long been disaffected with political parties. You don’t trust them. You care about politics, but you don’t see much promise in the standard candidates.

    Let’s even say you have suspicions the two parties are more interested in their own power than in helping the country.

    Occasionally you see promising people come forward, challenging the conventions. Maybe your interest is piqued by an Andrew Yang or Tulsi Gabbard, a Marianne Robinson or Bernie Sanders. Or perhaps by a Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Ron Paul, or Herman Cain.

    Whoever they are, interesting people with interesting ideas show up, and somehow they speak to you. They seem to share some of your interests. But they never get a foothold in the game of national politics.

    Maybe you don’t understand politics, and these candidates always lose fairly on the merits. But you suspect the deck is stacked against them. They criticize Wall Street, the military-industrial complex, corruption in politics. You’ve heard them called “populists,” but they always end up getting labeled something like “fascist” or “socialist,” and cast aside.

    Or maybe you do understand politics. You long for an outsider, populist candidate, not because you are naïve, but because you are well-read. You’ve studied history and political theory. You don’t care much for pundits or journalists; you read thoughtful, literate writers who provide historical and philosophical perspective—thinkers most pundits and journalists have never heard of and wouldn’t understand.

    Or maybe you are a sincerely religious person and you know your beliefs are not, will never be, embodied in a political party. You know all politics is compromise. But you also feel an obligation to help improve the world through politics, and this only makes you all the more frustrated at the narrow range of options presented by the two parties.

    For whatever reason—naïve disaffection, intellectual aloofness, religious detachment—you don’t feel at home in mainstream partisan politics, and you suspect that the system, the two parties themselves, are stacked against you.

    There are economic and political explanations of why they might be stacked against you. Whether you are aware of these explanations or not, the evidence is clear: candidates who challenge them, candidates who are too “populist,” are always marginalized, ridiculed, suppressed.

    Then along comes Trump.

    The Renegade

    Is his candidacy a joke? Is he worth paying attention to? Is this a publicity stunt?

    He says things that seem to make sense to you, and moreover he says them effectively. He inspires followers. He beats opponents. He doesn’t put up with establishment bullshit. You don’t like him—almost everybody says this—but he shows an attractive charisma, a fighting spirit. Even his imperfections—“incivility,” strange mannerisms, shamelessness, a less than respectable past—seem to be part of his energy, his dynamism.

    And his actual policies? The things he says he wants to do? Well, maybe you don’t agree with every single one, but there is actually a coherence to them, a sense of priority and pragmatism. Energy independence. Non-interventionism. Revitalizing manufacturing. In substance, as well as style, he seems, well, populist.

    Sure he’s rich (maybe) and a celebrity (certainly), and so not what you expect as a populist. But unlike a lot of rich people, he’s not owned. He doesn’t seem to defer to anybody or anything. He doesn’t owe anything to anyone, least of all to the party whose nomination he seeks or the powerful interests that seem to pull the strings in Washington.

    So you find yourself one of tens of millions willing to give him a chance. What’s the worst that can happen?

    You notice he’s usually attacked not for his policies, but for his style. They say he is “dark.” They say he is “scary.” They say he’s a racist and misogynist. They even say he doesn’t have a sense of humor, or that he’s psychologically ill. You don’t see any of this—but you do see who is saying these things: his enemies in the two parties who would be threatened by his success. You don’t think the charges are fair—but even if they are, it’s what he’d do in office, not his style or his tweets, that matters.

    Maybe you see a rally on TV, or maybe you attend one yourself. It doesn’t seem “dark.” The tone is cheerful, patriotic. He’s funny, and also substantive. And the crowd—it’s diverse and friendly. Normal people. Truckers and plumbers and builders. Lawyers and dentists and accountants. Teachers and engineers, restaurant owners and waitresses, moms and grandmothers, people who haven’t been inspired by politics before, all sorts.

    The Unthinkable

    And then: Trump wins.

    Everybody is surprised. Some people even seem genuinely scared. You wonder if the media emphasis on how “scary” he is might be harming people’s mental health.

    The opponents obviously overplay their hands. They are hearing “dog whistles” that aren’t there (and they would only signal “dogs” if they were there, anyway). Maybe some of your friends call you a racist for supporting Trump, but you know you aren’t a racist, and you don’t think he is either.

    The racism charge is so common and people are so scared that a few smart liberals who opposed Trump beg for people not to lose perspective, to give him a chance, and to stop “crying wolf” about his racism.

    You wonder, “Why aren’t people more interested in understanding why Trump won?” They assume that since Trump is “dark,” his widespread support must be “dark.” Trump is a racist, they say, so his supporters must be racist. Or his supporters are brainwashed, the victims of manipulation. Or maybe there was foreign interference. Maybe the election was rigged.

    If you haven’t given up on the biggest media outlets by now, perhaps you find some traditional journalists that avoid this cheap, simplistic narrative—journalists doing serious work to explain the political landscape. Perhaps you find one of the honest, anti-Trump journalists, like Tim Carney or John Miller or Chris Arnade, covering Trump’s actual populist appeal, seeking to understand the kinds of people who voted for him, the real civic and economic conditions that Trump appealed to.

    But these hardworking, gumshoe journalists seem the exception, not the rule. And their stories, the ones that have a ring of truth to you, are subtle, complicated, and under-the-radar. They don’t play well on social media. They don’t make good memes. It’s outrage that sells. People who are afraid don’t want to be told not to be afraid. They want to be told they have good reasons for their fear.

    So cooler heads do not prevail. Trump is never given a chance. Though he evidently wants to work with Democrats—on major issues, like immigration, health care, and tax reform—the Democrats refuse to work with him.

    Then, at one point, there is supposedly proof that Trump is a racist. In the wake of tragedy in Charlottesville, he said that white nationalists, white supremacists, Neo-Nazis were “fine people.” Shocking. Smoking gun.

    But it’s not. You see it’s a lie, a lie started and propagated by journalists. Clever editing, willful misreadings, bad faith, outright dishonesty. You read the transcript, you watch the video, and it’s obvious: Trump said there were “fine people” on both sides of the debate about statues, but he clearly, unequivocally, and multiple times condemned white supremacists and neo-Nazis. The “smoking gun”…isn’t.

    The Lies

    Half the country never heard about this though. They fell for a hoax. They believed they really had “evidence” that Trump was an unashamed racist. Crazy, huh? Why? Why would this hoax be perpetuated? Political gain? Outrage clicks? Have the journalists convinced themselves? Who knows the motive: in any case, it proved a useful myth for politicians, an easy talking point. Joe Biden believed the “fine people” lie (or claimed to). Eventually, he identifies it as the basis of his campaign against Trump.

    Meanwhile, Trump’s very legitimacy as president has been challenged from the beginning. His opponents accused him of stealing the election. Foreign interference. “Russian collusion.”

    These charges are leveled for years. No evidence. Just allegation. Conspiracy mongering. No proof. For years, they say the election was rigged, illegitimate. But no evidence.

    Eventually the evidence that does come out is that the whole thing was made up. It’s not just a false allegation, but a contrived hoax, a political con-job. People high up in the FBI lied about it, fabricated evidence, entrapped people on false charges, testified falsely in Congress, hid evidence, and coordinated with the press to leak false information. It was an egregious abuse of surveillance powers. Maybe you see a popular documentary about it, or maybe you were able to put enough pieces together after seeing it argued about and dissected all over social media.

    You’ve long known that the media manipulates and lies, and you’ve seen it exacerbated on social media. The media has become masterful at manipulating narrative, framing things, hiding things. Maybe you also watched a documentary about that too (one of the top documentaries of the year, even after being suppressed by Amazon).

    You know your disaffection with “the establishment” isn’t partisan: Democrats and Republicans seem corrupt, liberals and conservatives are fed up with “the system.” The media seems systematically dishonest. These are basic civic and human rights you care about: the right to the rule of law, the right to a free press, the right to free and fair elections, the right not to be manipulated.

    Big journalism itself seems to be part of the problem, coordinating with the established interests in the two parties to push their narrative. Did they help dispel the “Fine People” hoax? No, they magnified it. Did they properly cover the collusion allegation? No. Did any evidence ever emerge that Trump stole the election? No. But it made for clickable headlines for four years. 

    “Trump stole the election”: it was literally a conspiracy theory, but it had traction because, of course, we all know about corruption and fraud in politics. We expect it. Heck, Kennedy’s theft of the election from Nixon was a plot-point in Mad Men.

    Perhaps you’ve also done a little digging and you know that there are questions about voting machines and how trustworthy they are. This was even a major Democratic complaint following the 2004 election. You’ve always wondered how those machines worked, how they could be secure. Potential for fraud has been widely recognized. Maybe you saw one of numerous stories, or even caught the HBO documentary, about how these machines are not only vulnerable, but suspiciously, intentionally vulnerable.

    You’ve also noticed that social media plays a role in manipulating people—not only bad actors on social media, but the social media companies themselves: they tweak their algorithms to manipulate your behavior. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature—it’s the business model.

    Twitter and Facebook and Google knew they had power to influence elections. People from these companies promised to use it more “responsibly” in 2020. Anti-Trump and pro-Trump politicians and pundits pressured big tech to wield their power more “responsibly.” How much could they influence? How many votes could they swing? Who knows, but these are questions worthy of study and political consideration. They are certainly not “partisan.”

    The Race

    So by now you don’t trust establishment politicians or establishment media. You don’t trust Big Tech. All of these institutions have shown a willingness to manipulate information.

    In September 2020, journalists lie about Trump’s executive order banning racial discrimination and scapegoating, saying (not only without evidence, but contrary to evidence) that it “bans diversity training” or “bans sensitivity training.” In October, right before the election, establishment media outlets cover up revelations about corruption in the Biden family. You are used to this now: the official press will hide truths if they’re embarrassing to Biden and make up lies to embarrass Trump.

    As the election nears, Trump seems more popular than ever before. After four years, people aren’t just taking a risk on an unknown quantity, they are voting for someone who presided over a robust economy, created jobs, reduced minority unemployment, kept us out of wars, brought troops home, reduced energy prices, reframed diplomacy in the Middle East, and so on. His opponent (who typifies the establishment choice) is uncharismatic and frail.

    Most polls say Trump doesn’t have a chance, but the polls were wrong last time, and most of them are connected to media sources you already don’t trust. The best poll (Rasmussen, the one that will turn out to be closest to the actual results, as in 2016) has it very tight.

    But another thing you don’t trust by the time of the election is the electoral process itself. You are aware of an unprecedented opportunity to rig or steal an election, unprecedented vulnerabilities in an already complicated system, magnified by controversial rule changes allegedly intended to accommodate a national health scare.

    Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg spent hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the election, mainly by making it easy for Democratic ballots to get cast and counted. Changing rules about mail-in ballots, voting early, and collecting ballots are justified as promoting access to voting, but are all known for increasing the chances for fraud.

    An early case about the constitutionality of rule changes even makes it to the Supreme Court, in response to which several justices acknowledge that there are serious constitutional questions which need to be resolved somehow. But you don’t need justices to tell you that you can’t change the rules in the middle of a game.

    So leading up to the election, you are aware of issues with questionable rule changes, all of which magnify the problems endemic to ballot harvesting, signature matching, unclean voter rolls, vulnerabilities in voting machines, and disputes about when and how ballots have to be returned.

    Still, you think Trump can win—that he could outperform the “margin of fraud.” That’s clearly his goal: not only to win by enough, but to win big.

    The Steal

    After the election, as news trickles in, you hear reports about:

    • Suspicious timing of ballots arriving.

    • Reports of suspicious ballots.

    • Suspicious treatment of election monitors.

    • “Software glitches” and “user errors” in voting machines.

    • Apparent anomalies in timing and distribution of vote tallies.

    • Anomalies in Trump’s performance relative to downballot Republicans.

    • Anomalies in swing counties.

    There are so many allegations that keeping up with them would be too much even if it were a full-time job. Will journalists try? Their common response to anyone raising questions about election integrity is to insist that “experts” say there is “no evidence” of election fraud. It is hard to even find serious non-partisan coverage of the allegations. “Fact checks” appear glib, vaguely citing “experts” and “courts” and “no evidence.” But you know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

    And even trying to find out information on your own, you notice Big Tech aggressively flagging any news that suggests irregularities. During the extended counting of ballots, for instance, any post on Twitter suggesting skepticism about election integrity triggers this warning:

    Voter fraud of any kind is exceedingly rare in the US, election experts confirm. With ballot counting continuing and the presidential race being called for Joe Biden, experts and officials say there has been no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 US election. The election process is secure and voter fraud of any type is incredibly rare according to The Associated Press and Reuters. Officials and experts warn that the most interference in US elections, whether from foreign or domestic players, comes in the form of misinformation campaigns, many of which are intended to create distrust in the US’s electoral process.

    You find the rhetoric conspicuously odd. Technically correct, but also evasive. “The election process is secure” (sounds confident!) “according to…” two newswires? The constant repetition of “experts” and “no evidence” is the opposite of reassuring; in fact, it makes you more suspicious. (It reminds you of when you knew early on in the pandemic that masks were a reasonable step to slow spread of disease. “Experts” at the World Health organization said there was “no evidence” supporting mask-wearing, only to change their messaging weeks later.)

    You aren’t the only one to notice that social media flags and warnings don’t seem so much about debunking the stories or helping you analyze them as about hiding them, not so much about leading to more information but stigmatizing skepticism.

    Maybe you keep trying to read deeply about this. Maybe you give up and rely on your intuition. Maybe you catch bits and pieces and assume that somewhere, lawyers and legislators and investigators are doing the work to actually figure out what is going on. But what you can’t miss is that supposedly authoritative media outlets (which you don’t trust) keep complaining about “conspiracy theories” and disinformation on social media. You know not to trust everything you read, but you also know you can be a judicious reader. It’s not all crazy trolls writing about the problems. There are liberal and conservative voices, independent journalists, thoughtful commentators, specialist experts in polling or election law or statistical analysis or Constitutional jurisprudence.

    You suppose you could ask a political scientist to explain why it all adds up to reasonable suspicion of an irregular election, but it’s intuitive, isn’t it? It’s intuitive—and yet hard to summarize. Do we even have a single word to capture it? Is it fraud? Is it ballot harvesting? Is it rigging? Is it stealing? Is it hacking? Is it vote-switching? Is it gaming the system? General lawlessness? Illegitimacy? Is there even a single word that can cover the multi-layered suspicion that has now accumulated about how the powers-that-be might seek to undermine a straightforward, legal, democratic process?

    Later, much later, when “the secret history” can be reported, you will learn that it can in fact be called an “unprecedented conspiracy” and “shadow campaign,” that they were not “rigging” the election, they were “fortifying” it.

    The Rally

    Stories about all these individual elements weren’t secret; they were so numerous they were aggressively “fact checked” by respectable media outlets, the same media outlets that propagated false storylines like the “fine people” hoax or hid the news about Hunter Biden’s corruption. Maybe here and there individual fact checks were right. Maybe they all were. But who knows? The problem by now is that, even with “fact checks,” each allegation of irregularities still seems plausible, and the fact-checkers, well—at this point you just don’t think they have much credibility.

    We can at least agree to trust the courts, but did the courts really adjudicate these questions? Did they even look at the evidence? Rarely. You know that, for good reason (usually), courts are loath to get involved in deciding elections. So most courts that received cases found procedural grounds not to hear them.

    If the courts wouldn’t review and consider the evidence, then the state legislatures themselves, those who certified electors, had to hear them. Sometimes they did. But sometimes they claimed they didn’t have to because “the courts” hadn’t been willing to.

    Meanwhile, Trump is doing his best to keep pressing these obvious, important questions—but in doing so, he is accused of trying to “steal” the election, though he was trying to use the very legal political processes intended to ensure election integrity that opponents had done four years earlier. At one point, for instance, it is reported as fact that Trump was trying to manufacture votes, as if he were caught openly soliciting fraud; of course independent thinkers could see through the spin, go back to the transcripts, and find he was only asking the Georgia secretary of state to acknowledge that a substantial number of votes are questionable.

    Then you hear that Trump’s last effort to address these questions, after the courts and state legislatures have failed him, is to endorse a rally in Washington. He and his supporters will seek to petition Congress to review evidence about whether the certified electors should be accepted. Trump is still playing the game that people say he’s not been playing: pointing out problems, asking questions, allowing democratic, Constitutional processes to take place. Taking advantage of basic rights to petition political bodies for justice.

    Scores of thousands of people attend, from all over the country. They are cheerful and patriotic, generous and civic-minded, orderly and polite. Responsible, proud citizens. They love their country and respect its lawful processes. They know that, even if the rally does not actually help Trump politically, it promises to draw attention to problems with our electoral system, and to testify to the importance of peaceful democratic protests. Maybe there will be a resolved will to reform the system, and to ensure that people can trust elections next time. The country can’t keeping having its winners suspected of “stealing” elections.

    Maybe you were there. Maybe you heard the speeches, were caught up in the peaceful, patriotic mood of the day, and then walked with most of the crowd from the rally at the Ellipse to the gathering at the Capitol, to petition Congress to take the possibility of fraud seriously.

    The Climax

    If you are close enough to the front of the very large crowd at the Capitol, you might see people scuffling with police, but you also see many more people asking them to be peaceful. You notice there aren’t that many police, and you assume it’s because Trump crowds are known to be peaceful. You might have seen people trying to get past police lines, but you also saw police letting people get closer to the Capitol building, letting people gather on the steps, letting them into the building.

    It was a protest, and some people apparently took it too far. On the way home, you hear about violence and arrests. Vandalism and thievery in the Capitol building. You hear about a woman, apparently unarmed, shot and killed. It is a sobering, gut-wrenching end to the day. Out of a massive crowd, it seems that a fraction was stupid, shameful, lawless. Hardly representative of the kinds of people who were there, or the purpose for which they gathered. A small fraction of a large civil rights event turned into a lawless mob. You are disheartened that a respectable event should be so stained.

    But you wake up the next morning to something far worse. Slanderous headlines. By your very presence in DC, you are accused of being a traitor, part of a dangerous movement. Every outlet is calling it an “insurrection.” The lawlessness was “incited” by Trump. There was a violent attempted “coup.” Obviously they have pushed too far. They will have dial this back. Won’t they? The words are wildly disproportionate: nobody had a strategy or opportunity for seizing power. Oh, and it was a racist insurrection, a manifestation of white nationalism. Despite the sea of American flags, news stories seem to always run a picture of a Confederate flag.

    You are used to ignoring the lying, outrage-seeking, politically manipulative media. But this time, they are spinning lies directly about you. They are exploiting the awful travesty of some people’s inexcusable violence to delegitimize and shame every responsible citizen who took reasonable and lawful means to raise legitimate questions about election integrity.

    Perhaps you hope you can offer some perspective, tell your side of things. But it’s too late. The media spin is overwhelmingly effective. Nobody will listen, they have made up their minds. They sincerely believe the lies, the disinformation, the emotional manipulation. They sincerely believe you are a dangerous traitor simply for going to DC and voicing reasonable skepticism.

    No, they won’t even acknowledge it is reasonable skepticism. They insist you are a foolish traitor. Your beliefs are unfounded, your questions misplaced. Your skepticism about the election is not only unpatriotic but irrational. It doesn’t even deserve to heard. It isn’t based on rightly-credentialed “evidence.” It doesn’t have properly authorized “sources.”

    The End?

    In a healthy democracy, populist skepticism could lead to bipartisan reform efforts to restore confidence in election procedures. But the powers that be do not even acknowledge the legitimacy of any skepticism. Even after Trump is out of office, they stage a show trial, a second impeachment. The idea is to shame Trump, but also to shame anyone who supported his efforts to highlight weaknesses in our system. Taken for granted in the article of impeachment is that challenging the legitimacy of the election is itself disloyal, an effort to overthrow the American government.

    The allegation that Trump “incited” an “insurrection” implies that anyone in the crowd that day was, if not actually criminal, at least dangerously stupid. Whose idea of unifying is this? Whose idea of political courage? In democratic political contests, winners need the losers to trust the fairness of the system. So why would winners demonize losers as disloyal and dangerous?

    This isn’t how you envisioned any political drama, much less your own role in one. In the story you imagined, skepticism and populism are not partisan issues, and protest and argument are messy but welcome. These are a regime’s natural mechanisms for improvement. But what happens when they are not accepted and addressed, when instead they are slandered and suppressed? That is not the story you imagined. And you aren’t sure where that kind of story can end.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 23:30

  • Erik Prince Busted In Illegal Libya Gun-Running Scheme That Included 'Assassination For Hire'
    Erik Prince Busted In Illegal Libya Gun-Running Scheme That Included ‘Assassination For Hire’

    Erik Prince is the wealthy scandal-plagued mercenary who seems never go away from the headlines. The founder of the notorious Blackwater private security company has since been involved in shady schemes and arms dealing everywhere from China to UAE to Syria to Venezuela. He currently heads the Hong Kong-listed Frontier Services Group, providing ‘security services’ across the globe.

    And now it’s been revealed that he’s deeply involved in the still-raging war in Libya. No less than the United Nations is alleging he’s overseeing a major arms dealing program in support of eastern Libya warlord Khalifa Haftar who has for years waged war to take over Tripoli. The findings are detailed in a confidential UN report.

    “The confidential report to the Security Council, obtained by The New York Times and The Washington Post, and partly seen by Al Jazeera, said on Friday that Prince deployed a force of foreign mercenaries and weapons to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar, who has fought to overthrow the UN-recognized Libyan government, in 2019,” according to the latest reporting.

    While Prince has typically avoided legal consequences for the past scandals he’s been at center of, the UN findings could bring potential international travel restrictions or even sanctions by the world body. This scenario is likely given there is currently a strict UN arms embargo on the country (something however that’s repeatedly violated by governments like France and the UAE and others).

    “The $80m operation included plans to form a hit squad to track and kill Libyan commanders opposed to Haftar – including some who were also European Union citizens,” The New York Times found in reviewing the UN report.

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    “The UN report raises the question not only of whether or not a close associate of the [former] president violated an international arms embargo, but also of whether or not the president himself was complicit in defying stated US policy,” Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey explained. 

    It was well-known that despite the US long formally recognizing the Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli, President Trump was personally supportive of Gen. Haftar. The UN report suggests Prince is complicit seeking to overthrow the GNA Tripoli government.

    Haftar actually holds dual US citizenship and lived for decades near CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Trump had previously touted he was helping to “secure Libya’s oil” in controversial statements.  It’s expected that the UN, and likely now the US Justice Dept. will explore links between Prince’s activities in Libya and Trump administrative operatives. 

    This past week marked ten years since the start of unrest which eventually led to US-NATO military intervention to topple longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi. The country has since been broken into competing warlords and governments vying for the oil-rich territory, and is still in a state of proxy war where rival external powers have lined up on either side. 

    * * *

    To review the US and NATO’s role in destroying the North African Arab country, see author Scott Horton’s short film “Enough Already: Libya”:

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 23:00

  • Greenwald: Congress Escalates Pressure On Tech Giants To Censor More, Threatening The First Amendment
    Greenwald: Congress Escalates Pressure On Tech Giants To Censor More, Threatening The First Amendment

    Authored by Glenn Greenwald via. greenwald.substack.com,

    For the third time in less than five months, the U.S. Congress has summoned the CEOs of social media companies to appear before them, with the explicit intent to pressure and coerce them to censor more content from their platforms. On March 25, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will interrogate Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebooks’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Sundar Pichai at a hearing which the Committee announced will focus “on misinformation and disinformation plaguing online platforms.”

    CEO of Twitter Jack Dorsey (R) and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg (L) are sworn in to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on September 5, 2018. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP) (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

    The Committee’s Chair, Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ), and the two Chairs of the Subcommittees holding the hearings, Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), said in a joint statement that the impetus was “falsehoods about the COVID-19 vaccine” and “debunked claims of election fraud.” They argued that “these online platforms have allowed misinformation to spread, intensifying national crises with real-life, grim consequences for public health and safety,” adding: “This hearing will continue the Committee’s work of holding online platforms accountable for the growing rise of misinformation and disinformation.”

    House Democrats have made no secret of their ultimate goal with this hearing: to exert control over the content on these online platforms. “Industry self-regulation has failed,” they said, and therefore “we must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.” In other words, they intend to use state power to influence and coerce these companies to change which content they do and do not allow to be published.

    I’ve written and spoken at length over the past several years about the dangers of vesting the power in the state, or in tech monopolies, to determine what is true and false, or what constitutes permissible opinion and what does not. I will not repeat those points here.

    Instead, the key point raised by these last threats from House Democrats is an often-overlooked one: while the First Amendment does not apply to voluntary choices made by a private company about what speech to allow or prohibit, it does bar the U.S. Government from coercing or threatening such companies to censor. In other words, Congress violates the First Amendment when it attempts to require private companies to impose viewpoint-based speech restrictions which the government itself would be constitutionally barred from imposing.

    It may not be easy to draw where the precise line is — to know exactly when Congress has crossed from merely expressing concerns into unconstitutional regulation of speech through its influence over private companies — but there is no question that the First Amendment does not permit indirect censorship through regulatory and legal threats.

    Ben Wizner, Director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told me that while a constitutional analysis depends on a variety of factors including the types of threats issued and how much coercion is amassed, it is well-established that the First Amendment governs attempts by Congress to pressure private companies to censor:

    For the same reasons that the Constitution prohibits the government from dictating what information we can see and read (outside narrow limits), it also prohibits the government from using its immense authority to coerce private actors into censoring on its behalf.

    In a January Wall Street Journal op-ed, tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Yale Law School’s constitutional scholar Jed Rubenfeld warned that Congress is rapidly approaching this constitutional boundary if it has not already transgressed it. “Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats,” the duo wrote, “Congress has co-opted Silicon Valley to do through the back door what government cannot directly accomplish under the Constitution.”

    That article compiled just a small sample of case law making clear that efforts to coerce private actors to censor speech implicate core First Amendment free speech guarantees. In Norwood v. Harrison (1973), for instance, the Court declared it “axiomatic” — a basic legal principle — that Congress “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” They noted: “For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action.”

    In 2018, the ACLU successfully defended the National Rifle Association (NRA) in suing Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York State on the ground that attempts of state officials to coerce private companies to cease doing business with the NRA using implicit threats — driven by Cuomo’s contempt for the NRA’s political views — amounted to a violation of the First Amendment. Because, argued the ACLU, the communications of Cuomo’s aides to banks and insurance firms “could reasonably be interpreted as a threat of retaliatory enforcement against firms that do not sever ties with gun promotion groups,” that conduct ran afoul of the well-established principle “that the government may violate the First Amendment through ‘action that falls short of a direct prohibition against speech,’ including by retaliation or threats of retaliation against speakers.” In sum, argued the civil liberties group in reasoning accepted by the court:

    Courts have never required plaintiffs to demonstrate that the government directly attempted to suppress their protected expression in order to establish First Amendment retaliation, and they have often upheld First Amendment retaliation claims involving adverse economic action designed to chill speech indirectly.

    In explaining its rationale for defending the NRA, the ACLU described how easily these same state powers could be abused by a Republican governor against liberal activist groups — for instance, by threatening banks to cease providing services to Planned Parenthood or LGBT advocacy groups. When the judge rejected Cuomo’s motion to dismiss the NRA’s lawsuit, Reuters explained the key lesson in its headline:

    Perhaps the ruling most relevant to current controversies occurred in the 1963 Supreme Court case Bantam Books v. Sullivan. In the name of combatting the “obscene, indecent and impure,” the Rhode Island legislature instituted a commission to notify bookstores when they determined a book or magazine to be “objectionable,” and requested their “cooperation” by removing it and refusing to sell it any longer. Four book publishers and distributors sued, seeking a declaration that this practice was a violation of the First Amendment even though they were never technically forced to censor. Instead, they ceased selling the flagged books “voluntarily” due to fear of the threats implicit in the “advisory” notices received from the state.

    In a statement that House Democrats and their defenders would certainly invoke to justify what they are doing with Silicon Valley, Rhode Island officials insisted that they were not unconstitutionally censoring because their scheme “does not regulate or suppress obscenity, but simply exhorts booksellers and advises them of their legal rights.”

    In rejecting that disingenuous claim, the Supreme Court conceded that “it is true that [plaintiffs’] books have not been seized or banned by the State, and that no one has been prosecuted for their possession or sale.” Nonetheless, the Court emphasized that Rhode Island’s legislature — just like these House Democrats summoning tech executives — had been explicitly clear that their goal was the suppression of speech they disliked: “the Commission deliberately set about to achieve the suppression of publications deemed ‘objectionable,’ and succeeded in its aim.” And the Court emphasized that the barely disguised goal of the state was to intimidate these private book publishers and distributors into censoring by issuing implicit threats of punishment for non-compliance:

    It is true, as noted by the Supreme Court of Rhode Island, that [the book distributor] was “free” to ignore the Commission’s notices, in the sense that his refusal to “cooperate” would have violated no law. But it was found as a fact — and the finding, being amply supported by the record, binds us — that [the book distributor’s] compliance with the Commission’s directives was not voluntary. People do not lightly disregard public officers’ thinly veiled threats to institute criminal proceedings against them if they do not come around, and [the distributor’s] reaction, according to uncontroverted testimony, was no exception to this general rule. The Commission’s notices, phrased virtually as orders, reasonably understood to be such by the distributor, invariably followed up by police visitations, in fact stopped the circulation of the listed publications ex proprio vigore [by its own force]. It would be naive to credit the State’s assertion that these blacklists are in the nature of mere legal advice when they plainly serve as instruments of regulation.

    In sum, concluded the Bantam Books Court: “their operation was in fact a scheme of state censorship effectuated by extra-legal sanctions; they acted as an agency not to advise but to suppress.”

    Little effort is required to see that Democrats, now in control of the Congress and the White House, are engaged in a scheme of speech control virtually indistinguishable from those long held unconstitutional by decades of First Amendment jurisprudence. That Democrats are seeking to use their control of state power to coerce and intimidate private tech companies to censor — and indeed have already succeeded in doing so — is hardly subject to reasonable debate. They are saying explicitly that this is what they are doing.

    Because “big tech has failed to acknowledge the role they’ve played in fomenting and elevating blatantly false information to its online audiences,” said the Committee Chairs again summoning the social media companies, “we must begin the work of changing incentives driving social media companies to allow and even promote misinformation and disinformation.”

    The Washington Post, in reporting on this latest hearing, said the Committee intends to “take fresh aim at the tech giants for failing to crack down on dangerous political falsehoods and disinformation about the coronavirus.” And lurking behind these calls for more speech policing are pending processes that could result in serious punishment for these companies, including possible antitrust actions and the rescission of Section 230 immunity from liability.

    This dynamic has become so common that Democrats now openly pressure Silicon Valley companies to censor content they dislike. In the immediate aftermath of the January 6 Capitol riot, when it was falsely claimed that Parler was the key online venue for the riot’s planning — Facebook, Google’s YouTube and Facebook’s Instagram were all more significant — two of the most prominent Democratic House members, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), used their large social media platforms to insist that Silicon Valley monopolies remove Parler from their app stores and hosting services:

    Within twenty-four hours, all three Silicon Valley companies complied with these “requests,” and took the extraordinary step of effectively removing Parler — at the time the most-downloaded app on the Apple Store — from the internet. We will likely never know what precise role those tweets and other pressure from liberal politicians and journalists played in their decisions, but what is clear is that Democrats are more than willing to use their power and platforms to issue instructions to Silicon Valley about what they should and should not permit to be heard.

    Leading liberal activists and some powerful Democratic politicians, such as then-presidential-candidate Kamala Harris, had long demanded former President Donald Trump’s removal from social media. After the Democrats won the White House — indeed, the day after Democrats secured control of both houses of Congress with two wins in the Georgia Senate run-offs — Twitter, Facebook and other online platforms banned Trump, citing the Capitol riot as the pretext.

    While Democrats cheered, numerous leaders around the world, including many with no affection for Trump, warned of how dangerous this move was. Long-time close aide of the Clintons, Jennifer Palmieri, posted a viral tweet candidly acknowledging — and clearly celebrating — why this censorship occurred. With Democrats now in control of the Congressional committees and Executive Branch agencies that regulate Silicon Valley, these companies concluded it was in their best interest to censor the internet in accordance with the commands and wishes of the party that now wields power in Washington:

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The last time CEOs of social media platforms were summoned to testify before Congress, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) explicitly told them that what Democrats want is more censorship — more removal of content which they believe constitutes “disinformation” and “hate speech.” He did not even bother to hide his demands: “The issue is not that the companies before us today are taking too many posts down; the issue is that they are leaving too many dangerous posts up”:

    When it comes to censorship of politically adverse content, sometimes explicit censorship demands are unnecessary. Where a climate of censorship prevails, companies anticipate what those in power want them to do by anticipatorily self-censoring to avoid official retaliation. Speech is chilled without direct censorship orders being required.

    That is clearly what happened after Democrats spent four years petulantly insisting that they lost the 2016 election not because they chose a deeply disliked nominee or because their neoliberal ideology wrought so much misery and destruction, but instead, they said, because Facebook and Twitter allowed the unfettered circulation of incriminating documents hacked by Russia. Anticipating that Democrats were highly likely to win in 2020, the two tech companies decided in the weeks before the election — in what I regard as the single most menacing act of censorship of the last decade — to suppress or outright ban reporting by The New York Post on documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop that raised serious questions about the ethics of the Democratic front-runner for president. That is a classic case of self-censorship to please state officials who wield power over you.

    All of this raises the vital question of where power really resides when it comes to controlling online speech. In January, the far-right commentator Curtis Yarvin, whose analysis is highly influential among a certain sector of Silicon Valley, wrote a provocative essay under the headline “Big tech has no power at all.” In essence, he wrote, Facebook as a platform is extremely powerful, but other institutions — particularly the corporate/oligarchical press and the government — have seized that power from Zuckerberg, and re-purposed it for their own interests, such that Facebook becomes their servant rather than the master:

    However, if Zuck is subject to some kind of oligarchic power, he is in exactly the same position as his own moderators. He exercises power, but it is not his power, because it is not his will. The power does not flow from him; it flows through him. This is why we can say honestly and seriously that he has no power. It is not his, but someone else’s.

    Why doth Zuck ban shitlords? Is the creator of “Facemash” passionately committed to social justice? Well, maybe. He may have no power, but he is still a bigshot. Bigshots often do get religion in later life—especially when everyone around them is getting it. But—does he have a choice? If he has no choice—he has no power.

    For reasons not fully relevant here, I don’t agree entirely with that paradigm. Tech monopolies have enormous amounts of power, sometimes greater than nation-states themselves. We just saw that in Google and Facebook’s battles with the entire country of Australia. And they frequently go to war with state efforts to regulate them. But it is unquestionably true that these social media platforms — which set out largely for reasons of self-interest and secondarily due to a free-internet ideology — have had the censorship obligation foisted upon them by a combination of corporate media outlets and powerful politicians.

    One might think of tech companies, the corporate media, the U.S. security state, and Democrats more as a union — a merger of power — rather than separate and warring factions. But whatever framework you prefer, it is clear that the power of social media companies to control the internet is in the hands of government and its corporate media allies at least as much as it is in the hands of the tech executives who nominally manage these platforms.

    And it is precisely that reality that presents serious First Amendment threats. As the above-discussed Supreme Court jurisprudence demonstrates, this form of indirect and implicit state censorship is not new. Back in 2010, the war hawk Joe Lieberman abused his position as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee to “suggest” that financial services and internet hosting companies such as Visa, MasterCard, Paypal, Amazon and Bank of America, should terminate their relationship with WikiLeaks on the ground that the group, which was staunchly opposed to Lieberman’s imperialism and militarism, posed a national security threat. Lieberman hinted that they may face legal liability if they continued to process payments for WikiLeaks.

    Unsurprisingly, these companies quickly obeyed Lieberman’s decree, preventing the group from collecting donations. When I reported on these events for Salon, I noted:

    That Joe Lieberman is abusing his position as Homeland Security Chairman to thuggishly dictate to private companies which websites they should and should not host — and, more important, what you can and cannot read on the Internet — is one of the most pernicious acts by a U.S. Senator in quite some time.  Josh Marshall wrote yesterday:  “When I’d heard that Amazon had agreed to host Wikileaks I was frankly surprised given all the fish a big corporation like Amazon has to fry with the federal government.”  That’s true of all large corporations that own media outlets — every one — and that is one big reason why they’re so servile to U.S. Government interests and easily manipulated by those in political power.  That’s precisely the dynamic Lieberman was exploiting with his menacing little phone call to Amazon (in essence:  Hi, this is the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee calling; you’re going to be taking down that WikiLeaks site right away, right?). Amazon, of course, did what they were told.

    (Along with Daniel Ellsberg, Laura Poitras and others, I co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation in part to collect donations on behalf of WikiLeaks to ensure that the government could never again shut down press groups that it disliked through such pressure campaigns and implicit threats, precisely because it was so clear that this indirect means of attacking press freedom was dangerous and unconstitutional).

    What made Lieberman’s implicit threats in the name of “national security” so despotic was that they were clearly intended to punish and silence a group working against his political agenda. And that is precisely true of the motives of these House Democrats in demanding greater censorship in the name of combating “misinformation” and “hate speech”: their demands almost always, if not always, mean silencing those who are opposed to their ideology and political agenda. As but one example: one is perfectly free to opine online, as many Democrats do, that the 2000, 2004 and 2016 presidential elections (won by Republicans) were the by-products of electoral fraud, but making that same claim about the 2020 election (won by a Democrat) will result in immediate banning.

    The power to control the flow of information and the boundaries of permissible speech is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. It is a power as intoxicating as it is menacing. When it comes to the internet, our primary means of communicating with one another, that power nominally rests in the hands of private corporations in Silicon Valley.

    But increasingly, the Democratic-controlled government and their allies in the corporate media are realizing that they can indirectly and through coercion seize and wield that power for themselves. The First Amendment is implicated by these coercive actions as much as if Congress enacted laws explicitly mandating censorship of their political opponents.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 22:30

  • Meet The Columbia Professor Who Says He Does Heroin For "Work-Life Balance"
    Meet The Columbia Professor Who Says He Does Heroin For “Work-Life Balance”

    Columbia University professor Dr. Carl Hart has an unusual way of unwinding after a tough day at work. While some may be out at happy hour and others may enjoy playing tennis or a jog, Hart, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, says he has a “fondness for heroin”. 

    His interest in the drug isn’t just for research, however – it’s also for personal use, according to the NY Post. The 54 year old has said she has snorted “small amount of heroin” for as many as 10 days in a row in his new book “Drug Use for Grown-ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear”. Hart says he experiences withdrawal symptoms 12 to 16 hours after the last dose. 

    He writes in his book: “There aren’t many things in life that I enjoy more than a few lines by the fireplace at the end of the day.”

    He claims the drug use leaves him “refreshed” and “prepared to face another day” and compares his use of heroin to be as normal as someone using alcohol. “Like vacation, sex and the arts, heroin is one of the tools that I use to maintain my work-life balance,” he writes.

    As an academic, Hart studies the effects of psychoactive drugs on humans. His push in the book is for decriminalizing possession of recreational drugs. “The demonization of drug use – not drugs themselves – [has] been a tremendous scourge on America, not least in reinforcing this country’s enduring structural racism,” he writes.

    He is hoping that President Biden can work toward federal regulation and licensing of substances like heroin, arguing that since people are going to do them anyway, they might as well do them safely and educated about the risk. 

    He said in a recent interview with Insider: “If you’re going to use opioids, don’t use alcohol as a background … [the combination] increases the likelihood of respiratory depression and death.”

    Hart also says he is “a fan” of MDMA and methamphetamine. “When I’m rolling, I just want to breathe deeply and enjoy it. The simple act of breathing can be extremely pleasurable,” he said of his use of MDMA. He even writes in his book about snorting bath salts, the NY Post writes. 

    The medical and addiction community’s take on Hart’s approach is skeptical. Christian Hopfer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told the NY Post: “Smoke a couple times a day and marijuana will knock off your memory. That is pretty certain. And there is no question that legalization has a normalizing effect on something that used to be against the law.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 22:00

  • The Trustees Have Failed
    The Trustees Have Failed

    Via Techno Fog substack,

    A Story of Generations

    I often reflect on the concept of generational responsibilities. That each generation, whether mine or yours, has the same type of supportive role to the other for the common good, although the obligations may be different. Let me put this another way:

    Every generation is the caretaker of the generations that came before, and the trustee of those who will come after. 

    To explain by example: a child enters this world under the care of their parents. And the parents leave this world being cared for by their children. These are general observations (and aspirations) that leave out everything in between and all those little moments that define care.

    To be more specific, and to hopefully state the obvious, caring for a child isn’t just a roof over their head and three meals a day. It’s teaching them values, being an example for them to follow, making them feel safe. It is making a marriage work for the benefit of the children and not divorcing for the convenience of the adults. Ensuring, as best we can, their future.

    Then as we age, we see our parents start to fight with the parts of their daily lives they once did with ease. Their struggle is our struggle, though the struggles are different. Each day a brush more diminished until we say goodbye.

    Both stages are touched by sadness, as if a gentle hand squeezed yours. Dare I say acute melancholy. Parents watching their children slowly grow up and children watching their parents slowly grow old.

    I say all that for a reason. Take the relationship of a parent and a child and put it in generational context: being a trustee of those who are here, and for those to come, means ensuring that the younger generations have the tools to build their future. The institutions established by our ancestors serve the same purpose. The common good endures when we pass.

    Do we judge trustees and institutions – and by extension, generations – by what they preserve and pass on?

    It’s dangerous to criticize a whole group in these times (accusations of stereotypes or whatever) and I hope you understand that a generation can be criticized even if every member of the generation didn’t do wrong. If the one generation sold out younger generations (and they did sell them out), it doesn’t mean they’re all greedy. It’s the forest and not the trees, the big picture and not each individual pixel. I’ll even concede this is the flaw of all generations, though perhaps some did it better than others.

    Greed and the Price of College

    With that said, turn your eyes to the trustees who abused their power. Over the past 30+ years the cost of attending college – both private and public – has grown exponentially. The numbers below are 2019 figures from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and reflect the increase of the cost of higher education.

    Per these Department of Education figures, students are now paying anywhere from approximately $72,000 to $170,000 to get a four-year degree. An increase of $39,000 to nearly $90,000 without taking into consideration the interest on the loans. Put into simple terms, a student may be billed $100,000 for college but over the long term the cost can double.

    Meanwhile, wages haven’t kept up.

    The Cost of Student Loans: The Numbers and Beyond

    The student loan horror stories are everywhere if you care to look. You probably know people struggling with student loans who endure in silence. These are college graduates giving plasma to pay for groceries. One woman I spoke with documented how her husband has paid twice the original balance of the student loan – and still owes an amount so large that they will likely pay through retirement.  These are debts that are never meant to end.

    There’s the story of a 1990s law school graduate borrowed around $55,000. He struggled to make ends meet and now owes “well over $300,000.” Maybe the servicing companies can rob his corpse when he dies. This is what happens when you start viewing people as objects: you extract from them everything you can and leave them to deal with the fallout. Servitude until death.

    Debt and Misery

    If you haven’t faced crippling student loan debt then it’s hard to understand what these young people face. Economically, they can’t buy homes because their savings – which would go towards a down payment – are paying the interest on the student loans. If we get creative with a driving metaphor, plans for the future take a backseat to high balances and high interest. In the worst cases the future is locked in the trunk, being driven beyond the city limits to be shot and burned in some remote field.

    Psychologically, the results of loan debt can be devastating. Hope is for the young – except for those with student loans. They just have resignation. It’s the anxiety of drowning, fighting to stay near the surface as the $100,000 weight around their neck pulls them down. It’s the hopelessness and despair of paying everything you can afford month after month after month and watching the principal barely move. It’s a week’s worth of bologna sandwiches and eggs and instant oatmeal so you can pay your bills or treat yourself to an actual meal at an actual restaurant. It’s walking outside and praying your car hasn’t been repossessed.

    The Greed Starts at the University

    All of this is a great profit machine for the colleges. The University of Texas at Austin has an endowment of $31 billion. An in-state student at that school can graduate with over $75,000 in debt, counting tuition and living expenses. The trustees – those running the universities – are doing well for themselves.

    Over on the east coast, Harvard’s endowment is an obscene $40.9 billion. It appears that the purpose of the endowment is to serve itself – to eat and grow to as large a size as possible, to expend as little as possible and get as fat as the market allows. Gluttony.

    Costs are only cut when the cuts serve their interests. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Harvard instituted austerity measures and caused quite the controversy within its student body when it considered laying off its dining workers (technically contractors) without some sort of compensation. It took a bit of protest for Harvard to cut them something – the school wasn’t exactly volunteering to help those workers living paycheck to paycheck. While this went on, Harvard’s president and investment team continued to earn millions of dollars a year. True compassion from a liberal institution where only 1% of its professors call themselves (perhaps privately, if not publicly) “conservative.”

    The United States government has been no help. In fact, they helped feed this monster – and have failed to stop students from being consumed by its appetite. In 2005, Congress exempted “all forms of student debt, public or private . . . from discharge in bankruptcy, absent a showing of ‘undue hardship.’” Not an easy task in bankruptcy court.

    The Blame Goes Around – and Comes Back to the College

    Contrary to popular belief in some conservative circles, however, all the blame for the increased cost of a college education doesn’t lie on Congress or the government as a whole. Certainly, the availability of guaranteed and loans allowed costs to increase and the student loan crisis to flourish. But the greed starts with the schools. The availability of loans didn’t require prices to rise.

    To this you may say that the students took out these loans and should be on the hook for their debt: “Personal responsibility!”

    I don’t necessarily disagree with that. There’s a moral duty to pay debts that we all recognize. Perhaps we should also consider there are moral duties governing lenders. If we continue on the path of personal responsibility, here’s another question to consider: What is the responsibility of those who created and benefit from this perverse system?

    I’ll also add that there’s danger in the extreme. We allow for credit card debt to be discharged at bankruptcy. We allow for corporations to go through bankruptcy and be restructured. Personal or corporate bankruptcy all involve bad decisions with debt or in some cases an economic downturn. Sometimes both. Sometimes shit just happens.

    Why treat student loans so different? Could it be to protect not the debtor, but the colleges making obscene profits and the institutions financing and collecting the debt?

    This isn’t to say that I’m proposing the answer right now, though the answer requires some concerns to be addressed. This is a societal problem that requires an equitable solution. One that allows for balances to be paid without the punishing interest. A solution that puts some of the burden on the colleges and not just the students. An easier forgiveness of debt for those who absolutely need it. There must be a better way to solve the problem the trustees created.

    Debt: The Inheritance of Future Generations

    Now consider that all generations have a duty to preserve our inheritance for those yet to be born. What will their inheritance be?

    Reckless government spending and the accumulation of national debt is the best example of a breach of that duty that will be paid by future generations. The U.S. national debt (as of February 2021) is nearly $28 trillion dollars. That comes out to $84,000 per citizen and $222,000 per taxpayer. The US federal debt to GDP ratio has increased from 34.72% in 1980 to 128.89 in 2020. And it continues to grow, as seen in these December 2020 figures.

    What costs will future generations bear for the extravagance of today? We have an idea of the answer, even if there are disagreements on the specifics. Those with forked tongues undoubtedly advancing the interests of their masters or their political allies take the counter-intuitive position that debt doesn’t matter.

    We know otherwise. The ancients told us debt is slavery. (Proverbs 22:7: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”) It is death: “To die is a debt we must all of us discharge.”

    Many experts at least agree that these dangerous levels of debt can lead to inflation, prolonged recessions, high unemployment, and in quite possibly the ruin of America. And our mediocre ruling class, those who are good at getting elected and bad at governance, continue to spend. They get all the benefits and incur none of the costs.

    A Contrast

    Yet as the younger generations get much grief (some of it being deserved) for taking loans and selfies, for entitled behavior, for demanding promotions with little experience, look what happens when they are asked give things up for the benefit of others. The COVID-19 pandemic and shutdowns, which are ongoing as I write this, have been a real-time demonstration of generational priorities and sacrifices. It is a generational contrast.

    The offerings of ordinary folks made during the pandemic– the sacrifices of the cooks, the janitors, the servers and bartenders, the small business owner – are substantial. This isn’t just a couple missed paychecks. This is about people getting no income when they already have so little. It’s auctioning restaurant equipment and locking the doors. This is paying half the month’s rent because you need the rest of your money for gas and groceries. It is the generation without wealth – in large part, the younger generation – making the sacrifices.

    And the sacrifices are for whom? The older generation, the generation that is most at risk from COVID-19. The “greater good.”

    When considering the sacrifices of the young during COVID – those sacrifices made for the “greater good” – how much worse is the older generation’s refusal to sacrifice small economic gains so younger generations wouldn’t be burdened with student loan debt for the next 20+ years?

    Where do we go from here?

    Things need to change. These are policies not based on the common good, or dare I say love, but on greed and cynicism. A country has no future if the future spends its life paying for the past.

    A hope emerges from this: that we one day relate to younger generations in the same way parents relate to children. That we look to ourselves as trustees. That we see ourselves as guardians of an inheritance. That we look to others not as objects but as fellow citizens.

    That we remember we are caretakers of those who came before and trustees for those who will come after.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 21:30

  • First Human Cases Of H5N8 Bird Flu Reported In Russia
    First Human Cases Of H5N8 Bird Flu Reported In Russia

    With reports of Ebola and bubonic plague now competing with COVID-19 as the next potential trigger for trillions in unrelated stimulus, bird flu has returned just in time for President Biden to confront his old nemesis, should it spread beyond Russia’s borders (and become even moderately deadly in humans).

    Russian authorities report that seven employees at a poultry farm in southern Russia have contracted H5N8 bird flu, however they stress that there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. The cases have been described as “mild” according to Interfax – however in birds symptoms can range from “asymptomatic and sub-clinical to highly lethal in some populations.”

    “Today, I want to inform you about an important scientific discovery made by scientists at the Vector scientific center,” said Anna Popova, head of Russia’s consumer health watchdog. “The first cases of human infection with [avian influenza A(H5N8)] have been laboratory confirmed.“

    “The virus can be transmitted from birds to humans, it has overcome the interspecies barrier,” she added. “As of today, this variant of the influenza virus is not being transmitted from person to person. Only time will tell how quickly future mutations will allow it to overcome this barrier.”

    In chickens, typical symptoms of respiratory illness include sneezing, coughing, wheezing or labored breathing and fewer eggs. H5N8 in particular has a 75% mortality rate in chickens.

    Popova says the discovery will help researchers prepare in case the disease mutates and becomes transmissible between humans, according to BNO News, which added that “detailed information about the seven cases has been submitted to the World Health Organization.”

    H5N8 has been found in birds since at least 1983 and outbreaks have occurred frequently since 2014, when it was found in breeding ducks in South Korea. Numerous outbreaks have been reported during the last 6 months, including in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, China, Japan, and South Korea. -BNO News

    “The H5N8 type influenza is regarded as pathogenic and is currently manifesting itself in a variety of ways, from asymptomatic and sub-clinical to highly lethal in some populations,” according to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) in a recent update.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 21:00

  • Newsweek 'Fact Check' Claims India Vaccine Ban "Mostly False" While Admitting De Facto Ban
    Newsweek ‘Fact Check’ Claims India Vaccine Ban “Mostly False” While Admitting De Facto Ban

    Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

    Newsweek published a “fact check” which labeled claims that India had banned the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine as “mostly false” despite admitting in the article that India has in fact temporarily banned the vaccine.

    Last week, discussion around the issue intensified after it was revealed that Indian health authorities had refused to give permission for the vaccine to be distributed.

    “On February 3, 2021, India’s Subject Expert Committee (SEC), a panel that advises the nation’s Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), a national regulatory body focused on pharmaceuticals and devices, ruled that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine should not be recommended for an EUA in the country “at this stage,” reports Newsweek.

    The report quotes India’s Subject Expert Committee (SEC), which ruled, “The committee noted that incidents of palsy, anaphylaxis and other SAE’s have been reported during post marketing and the causality of the events with the vaccine is being investigated. Further, the firm has not proposed any plan to generate safety and immunogenicity data in Indian population.”

    In response, after the meeting with the regulator, Pfizer Inc. withdrew its application for the vaccine’s use in India.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    The Newsweek report admits all this, including but then asserts that that the claim India banned the vaccine is “mostly false.”

    Indian authorities refused to allow the vaccine to be distributed in India. That’s also known as a “ban”.

    The ban might be lifted at a future date, but it’s a ban nonetheless.

    For Newsweek to claim that this is “mostly false” is completely erroneous.

    The Newsweek fact check itself is “mostly false.” The fact checkers have been fact checked.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    But it gets worse.

    Bill Gates owns stock in Pfizer Inc. and his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has donated significant sums of money to help Pfizer’s development of vaccines.

    Interesting to note therefore that a message which originally appeared at the bottom of the Newsweek ‘fact check’ article has now disappeared.

    The message read; “Microsoft and partners may be compensated if you purchase something through recommended links in this article.”

    It is not known why that message has now vanished.

    This is yet another example of how ‘fact checks’ are often completely devoid of facts and are merely a way of legacy media institutions and giant corporations shutting down narratives they don’t like.

    *  *  *

    New limited edition merch now available! Click here. In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, I urgently need your financial support here.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 20:30

  • Texas Blackouts Spark First Lawsuit; AG Vows Probe
    Texas Blackouts Spark First Lawsuit; AG Vows Probe

    A Corpus Christi man has accused the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the state’s primary electric grid, of ignoring repeated warnings that the state’s electric power infrastructure had weaknesses, according to a new lawsuit. In a statement by the Dallas law firm which filed the suit, ERCOT and American Electric Power utility are also accused of causing property damage and business interruptions as last week’s cold snap shattered water pipes and caused widespread power outages to millions of Texans, according to NBCDFW.

    Power lines in Houston (photo: David J. Phillip/AP)

    “This cold weather event and its effects on the Texas energy grid were neither unprecedented, nor unexpected, nor unforeseen,” states the lawsuit, filed by Donald McCarley. “In fact, similar cold weather events in 1989 and 2011 led to exactly the same type of rolling blackouts that have affected and continue to affect Texas residents and businesses.” The lawsuit also cites a clause in the Texas Constitution which holds that “no person’s property shall be taken, damaged or destroyed for or applied to public use without adequate compensation being made.”

    “The rolling blackouts ordered by Defendant ERCOT took, damaged, or destroyed Plaintiff’s property without adequate compensation,” the suit claims.

    The lawsuit filed Friday in a Nueces County court at law in Corpus Christi alleges the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, manager of the state’s main electric grid, ignored repeated warnings of weaknesses in the state’s electric power infrastructure. –NBCDFW

    “The resulting widespread property damage from blackouts was caused by their negligence and gross negligence. In addition, the disruptions rendered private property unusable and amounted to an illegal `taking’ of private property by the government,” the law firm said in a statement.

    The lawsuit also claims that utility companies should have winterized their plants and increased generation to meet skyrocketing demand, “but consciously chose not to do so.” Of course, frozen wind turbines in the middle of Texas may fall in the ‘unforseen’ category.

    Temporary outages began occurring last week and in the days and hours before the storm actually hit as temperatures across Texas began plummeting well below freezing. AEP Texas has not yet commented about the litigation but did post a series of tweets beginning Feb. 10 and continuing through the emergency offering winter storm preparation tips and urging energy conservation.

    ERCOT held numerous news briefings throughout the emergency to explain that the outages, intended to be temporary with power switching off and on for affected customers, were needed to prevent a catastrophic collapse of grid. Several giant generators tripped off line late Sunday and early Monday as demand for power spiked. –Caller Times

    Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued civil investigative demands to ERCOT, and says he’ll get “to the bottom of this power failure.”

    According to the report, the investigation will address power outages, emergency planning, energy pricing and other issues related to the winter storm.

    “The large-scale failure of Texas power companies to withstand the winter storm left multiple millions of Texans without power and heat during lethal, record-low temperatures across the state,” Paxton’s office said in a statement.

    Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called on ERCOT leadership to resign, and has vowed to reform the way the Texas grid operates.

    ERCOT says it’s reviewing the lawsuit and would not comment on specific allegations.

    “Our thoughts are with all Texans who have and are suffering due to this past week,” said spokesperson Leslie Sopko in a statement. “However, because approximately 46% of privately-owned generation tripped offline this past Monday morning, we are confident that our grid operators made the right choice to avoid a statewide blackout.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 20:00

  • Trump To Make First Public Speech Since Leaving White House At CPAC
    Trump To Make First Public Speech Since Leaving White House At CPAC

    Authored by Allen Zhong via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Former President Donald Trump likely will make his first post-White House appearance at the end of February.

    President Donald Trump speaks at the CPAC convention in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 29, 2020. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

    He will be a keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) 2021 in Orlando, Florida, CPAC Communications Director Ian Walters confirmed to The Epoch Times.

    The former president’s speech is scheduled for the afternoon of Feb. 28, the last day of the conference, Walters said.

    It will likely be Trump’s first public appearance since he left the White House on Jan. 20.

    American Conservative Union (ACU), the host of the conference, invited the former president to speak at CPAC.

    “I’d love to see him come to CPAC,” CAU Chairman Matt Schlapp told the Washington Examiner. Schlapp said he extended the invitation personally.

    “I think he deserves to be heard. I think even people who disagree with him will agree that he deserves to be heard. He should be uncanceled,” he added.

    An official close to the planning process told The Epoch Times that the invitation was sent out last year.

    Trump appears to be more active in the political arena after the conclusion of his second impeachment trial. He issued a lengthy statement confronting Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)’s speech against him and appeared on several media outlets to saluting Rush Limbaugh after the death of the iconic conservative radio commentator.

    The Senate acquitted the former president with a 57-43 vote in his second impeachment trial. Sixty-seven votes are needed to reach an impeachment conviction.

    Most Senate Republicans, 45 out of 60, regarded the second impeachment trial as unconstitutional mostly because Trump has left the White House and no longer holds any official position at that time, The Epoch Times reported.

    President Trump hugs the American flag as he arrives to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2019, in Oxon Hill, Md., on March 2, 2019. (Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)

    Trump is frequent of the CPAC, an annual event.

    He issued a dire warning to Americans about socialism in his 2020 CPAC speech.

    “Far-left radicals have become increasingly desperate and increasingly dangerous in their quest to transform America into a country you would not recognize—a country in which they control every aspect of American life,” he said. “Just as socialist and communist movements have done all over the world, they’re cracking down on all dissent and demanding absolute conformity. They want total control.”

    Trump warned that the result of implementing such policies would “turn America very quickly into a large-scale Venezuela.”

    CPAC describes itself as the largest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world.

    Top conservatives regularly appear at the conference. Scheduled speakers for this year’s conference include a number of officials from Trump’s administration, including former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

    Trump allies like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former acting national security adviser Richard Grenell are also slated to speak.

    The lineup also includes some lawmakers like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.), and Rep Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).

    With reporting from Jan Jekielek.

    Zachary Stieber, Bowen Xiao, and Emel Akan contributed to the report.

    Follow Allen on Twitter: @AllenZM

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 19:30

  • New Regulations Mean Japanese Whiskey Now Actually Has To Come From Japan
    New Regulations Mean Japanese Whiskey Now Actually Has To Come From Japan

    Nothing is more popular in the world of trendy alcohol right now than Japanese whisky.

    And the funny thing is that while normal whisky is usually revered for where it is casked and prepared – with local climates and soils often playing a role in helping shape the unique tastes that come with it – Japanese whiskey doesn’t even have to be made in Japan, as long as it is bottled in the country. 

    Stefan van Eycken, author of Whisky Rising: The Definitive Guide to the Finest Whiskies and Distillers of Japan, told Bloomberg: “To say that whisky-­making regulations in Japan are loose is a major understatement. If they were any looser, you’d be able to sell tap water as Japanese whisky.”

    But this is all about to change. The Japan Spirits & Liqueurs Makers Association (JSLMA), a nongovernmental trade group of the country’s major producers is about to make sure consumers have a clear understanding of what Japanese whisky is – and, of course, it will mean whiskey actually produced in Japan. 

    The new regulations, which take effect on April 1 and are expected to be adopted widely by the Japanese government, is already making shockwaves. Whiskey maker Nikka came right out already and said: “Certain Nikka products don’t meet the requirements of ‘Japanese whisky,’ as some blends contain whiskies from outside Japan, most notably Scotland. Nikka’s priority is creating distinguished and consistent taste profiles, which is likely why they’re deciding not to alter the liquid to fit the new standards.”

    Nikka has been popular in Japanese bars for nearly 40 years. It just arrived in the U.S. in 2018 and was almost immediately named the year’s best whisky by Whisky Advocate. 

    For some, the news that Nikka whisky didn’t all come from Japan was surprising. Shawn Kim, owner of 58 Wines in Midtown Manhattan, told Bloomberg: “I had no idea it contained whisky from outside of Japan. I was able to get 10 cases at a time before it got popular. I hate whenever something I love is named ‘whisky of the year,’ because then people start treating it like a trophy, and they stop actually drinking it.”

    Nikka’s experience with coming to the U.S. has matched that of many other Japanese whiskies. Products from Suntory has been praised for its single malts and blends.

    Hideki Kanda, chairman of the JSLMA, said that all major brands sold in the U.S. conform to the new standards. If they don’t they will have to remove the word “Japanese” from their label and will also have to “excise all references to the country, its culture, and language”. For example, a bottle won’t be able to have a photo of a Japanese flag on it. 

    In Japan, there isn’t a ton of grain distilleries, making it sometimes easier to import whisky. 

    Eli Raffeld, who used to live in Japan before making back to the U.S. to start an importer-exporter for craft beer, said: “In Japan, nobody is really misled by any of this. It’s common practice in Japan, he says, to be bottling and selling whiskies that include a component imported from another country, almost to the point of tradition. So people don’t really think about it.”

    Emiko Kaji, international business development manager for Nikka, concluded: “We do not make superior or inferior distinctions of flavor based on geographical indications. If using imported whiskies as a part of the formula is beneficial to create or maintain the flavors of our unique expressions, we will continue this practice.”

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 19:00

  • The High Cost Of Using The Minimum Wage As A Form Of Welfare
    The High Cost Of Using The Minimum Wage As A Form Of Welfare

    Authored by Martin Jones via The Mises Institute,

    In recent years a number of economic studies have concluded that small to moderate increases in the minimum wage do not necessarily cause a discernible decline in employment. Social activists have seized on these findings to argue that there are no job losses and that it is possible to increase mandated wages by almost any amount without ill effects.

    The result has been a rush to raise the minimum wage to $15 in a number of states and cities and now at the national level.

    The reality is that there is little consensus among economists about the effects of the minimum wage on aggregate employment.

    In their 2014 book What Does the Minimum Wage Do? Dale Belman and Paul Wolfson survey over two hundred minimum wage studies and conclude that moderate increases can raise the wages of low-income workers without significant employment effects.

    A 2019 paper by economist Jeffery Clemens is a shorter survey of many of the same studies. It concludes that the case for large increases (an increase from $7.25 to $15 would qualify) “is either mistaken or overstated” and adds that “[i]n contrast to the research emphasized by advocates, the broader body of work regularly finds that increases in minimum wages cause job losses for individuals with low skills.”

    In a January 2021 study, economists David Neumark and Peter Shirley assembled “the entire set of published studies in this literature” and conclude that “there is a clear preponderance of negative estimates“ and that the evidence is particularly strong for teens, young adults, and the less educated—exactly the results economic theory would predict.

    In the face of competing complex statistical analyses that may reach contradictory conclusions, voters and legislators should be aware that findings about the effects of wage increases on the unemployment rate often ignore or obscure other significant consequences. For example, small increases don’t always have a discernible effect on employment, because employers try to make other adjustments before laying off workers they are happy with and need. One of the first adjustments is to raise prices, the success of which depends on the competitive environment and the flexibility of demand for their products or services.

    Along with price increases, employers may reduce hours, and Belman and Wolfson note that “[i]t has long been suggested that employers may respond to minimum wage increases by reducing spending on training, fringe benefits and working conditions valued by employees.”

    Another important finding is that employers often respond to higher mandated wages by replacing low wage workers with those who have more education, skills and experience which make them more productive. This adjustment may have little effect on the observable employment numbers, but the effect is devastating for those who are replaced. Employers can be forced to pay higher wages, but they can’t be forced to hire or retain employees whose contributions don’t match the higher wage.

    Some studies (see Clemens 2019) suggest that the pace of job creation slows when mandated wages rise. The increases also accelerate automation, which reduces the number of entry-level jobs and further penalizes those whom the increases are meant to help. In coming years, the combined effect of substitution, slower job creation, and accelerated automation is likely to be a growing core of workers, many of whom are young and poorly educated, who are unemployed and unemployable.

    Social activists and progressive editorial boards now regard the minimum wage as another welfare program that can reduce the costs of programs like Medicaid and food stamps, and can reduce inequality. But the minimum wage is very poorly targeted for these purposes. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that “roughly 40 percent of workers directly affected by the $15 option in 2025 would be members of families with incomes more than three times the federal poverty level.” If the goal is to aid low-wage households, rather than teenagers and other part-time workers in middle-income and affluent families, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit would be far more effective, because it is designed to aid the working poor.

    The national minimum wage was established in 1938, and along with periodic increases has become widely accepted as desirable public policy. But it has also become a textbook example of the failure to think separately and equally about ends and means. If there is a public consensus that low-income families should receive additional aid, that policy should be paid for by the public, not by private businesses, many of which will try to offset the higher costs by raising prices to consumers and cutting employee hours and benefits, and some of which won’t survive with higher mandated costs that they can’t adequately offset.

    The notion that third parties can pick the right starting wage for every employee, in every job, in every business, in every industry is folly. Those who support increases in the minimum wage do so with the best of intentions, but they should be aware of the substantial hidden costs and negative consequences which are often ignored in the public debate and should be aware that there are much better alternatives for helping those in need.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 18:30

  • 92% Of NYC Restaurants Unable To Pay Rent In December, Study Finds 
    92% Of NYC Restaurants Unable To Pay Rent In December, Study Finds 

    Another week, another restaurant doomsday story.

    According to the latest NYC Hospitality Alliance survey, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for restaurants across the metro area to pay their rent in full and on time. The return of indoor dining couldn’t come soon enough as struggling eateries cling on for dear life. 

    The survey found 92% of more than 400 respondents couldn’t pay rent in December, a number that has exponentially moved higher during the pandemic. In June, 80% of restaurants couldn’t afford to pay rent; July 83%; August 87%; October 88%. The trend outlines the struggle Big Apple restaurants have endured since the pandemic began. 

    Before the pandemic, more than 25,000 restaurants, bars, and nightclubs employed 325,000 people across all seven boroughs. So far, thousands of eateries have closed permanently, and at least half are at risk of closing if government aid isn’t seen or restrictions aren’t lifted. The industry’s consolidation has been devastating for the labor force, with some 140,000 jobs lost.

    NYC Hospitality Alliance survey said 40% of respondents said landlords reduced rent, 36% said landlords deferred rent, and 14% said they could renegotiate leases. 

    The report’s release comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo eased restrictions on restaurants statewide last week. He said restaurants and bars could stay open longer and has allowed for indoor dining at 25% capacity in the city. 

    “We’re nearly a year into the public health and economic crisis that has decimated New York City’s restaurants, bars, and nightlife venues,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance. 

    Cuomo’s ban on indoor dining last fall produced a dark winter for many restaurants who had to build tents on their patios or sidewalks to house guests and protect them from the freezing temperatures. 

    In response to the ban, restauranteurs across the city prohibited the governor from dining at their eateries. 

    “He should be banned from every restaurant bar etc he’s a scumbag f**k you coumo and di blasio,” one owner said. 

    With indoor restrictions in place during the holiday season, many restaurants across the city saw a “dramatic loss of revenue” as New Year’s celebrations were canceled. 

    Some restaurants developed new revenue streams by selling frozen dinners. 

    OpenTable shows the percentage of restaurants in New York City accepting reservations from diners remains well under the 50% level, even worse than last October. 

    NYC Hospitality Alliance survey’s lined up with December’s Alignable Rent Poll, showing that more than half of the country’s restaurants couldn’t pay rent in December. 

    More than one year later since the pandemic began and the restaurant industry remains in shambles. No “V-shaped” recovery here. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 18:00

  • Learning To Live With Crypto
    Learning To Live With Crypto

    Authored by Sean Stein Smith via The American Institute for Economic Research,

    Accounting standards developed for the 20th century are not equipped to deal with 21st century crypto assets. Assuming otherwise creates inaccurate and diminished financial reporting. 

    Recent headlines by the likes of Tesla, Microstrategy, and BNY Mellon, as well as statements by market titans such as Ray Dalio and Jeff Gundlach illustrate one consistent point; crypto is part of the mainstream financial conversation. 

    Bitcoin especially has come a long way from its early days as a cypherpunk-themed movement to create an alternative financial and payment system. In the context of 2021, bitcoin and other crypto are actually starting to become somewhat boring; just another asset class and investment opportunity for institutional investors, financial institutions, and retail investors alike versus a world changing idea.

    If the story ended there, well, it would all sound pretty mundane. Unfortunately, that is only the surface, and these headlines obscure an extremely important problem that remains unaddressed; the accounting for crypto as it currently stands makes no business sense. That’s right, something as under-the-radar as accounting standards are quickly becoming a significant issue as crypto adoption and investment accelerates. 

    Let’s dig in. 

    The Problem 

    There is currently no widely accepted authoritative accounting guidance for crypto. Certain specific countries have implemented unique approaches that stand apart, but these are not widely adopted outside of these countries. In the accounting world, the two standard setting bodies are the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). It is true that the IASB has proven more flexible in terms of crypto accounting; there are no authoritative standards to that effect. In the US, and despite worthwhile efforts by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) to publish non-authoritative research, the FASB has so far refused to consider the issue of crypto-specific accounting guidance. 

    In the face of no authoritative standards, a consensus has developed that crypto should be treated as an indefinite lived intangible asset (like goodwill) for financial reporting purposes. At first glance this all seems fine since crypto is intangible and has no fixed expiration date. Peeling back the layers of this treatment, however, quickly reveals how inappropriate this classification is for crypto. 

    Following the rules of accounting for indefinite lived intangible assets, these assets are held on the balance sheet at the price paid for them (cost) less any impairment charges. Impairment, without getting overly technical, is a process by which assets are evaluated to see whether or not the book value is reflective of market value. If the market value has decreased, the asset is written down and an expense is recorded. Under US accounting standards, there is one other wrinkle to keep in mind; once an asset has been written down it cannot be written back up no matter what the market valuation becomes. 

    This accounting treatment might be fine for goodwill, an asset created due to paying more than the fair market valuation of an organization (think M&A) would imply, but does not work for crypto. Under this current treatment, any organization that invests in crypto will have to record this investment at cost, and mark it down whenever conditions trigger an impairment test, and would never be able to mark this asset back up. 

    Crypto is still a volatile market, and even just in 2021 there have been double-digit percentage swings in prices for bitcoin and innumerable other crypto. Treating crypto as the current consensus would indicate creates a situation where economic realities are not accurately represented. 

    Think about it, is any other widely traded and free-floating commodity or equity-like instrument treated this way? No. Why? Because it does not make business sense and diminishes the usability of financial reporting. 

    Potential Solutions 

    There are two possible solutions that could ultimately be implemented given the rapid proliferation of crypto on corporate balance sheets. Again, there is no widely implemented crypto-specific guidance, and these approaches do not align with current market consensus. 

    • Option #1 is the simplest approach, and would involve choosing to treat, record, and report crypto investments as a commodity-like instrument. This would allow the changes in market value to be reported as they occur on the balance sheet, and be reported on the income statement (or through other comprehensive income). Implementing this approach, modifying existing standards to reflect an emerging asset class, would increase the transparency and usability of financial reporting. 

    • A second option, and one that in a perfect world would already be in the pipeline at standard setters, is the development of entirely new standards for this entirely new asset class. Obviously this would take more time, require more input, and necessitate high levels of collaboration, but the following framework might make sense. Classifying different crypto depending on use case (currency alternative, commodity equivalent, or equity-like instrument) would allow new and more nuanced standards to enter the marketplace. 

    As far fetched as this might seem, a similar attempt was made to improve crypto reporting via the proposed (not passed) Token Taxonomy Act of 2019; a refreshing attempt by policymakers to encourage innovation and adoption of new technologies. 

    Takeaway

    Crypto has rapidly moved from a fringe topic, to a relatively minor investment selection, to an investment being adopted by some of the largest corporations and asset managers in the world. This is fantastic news for wider adoption, but the accounting simply has not kept pace. Accounting professionals need to learn to live and work with crypto, and standard setters need to be proactive in the creation of crypto-specific standards. Applying standards developed for the 20th century economy to 21st crypto assets is already causing issues, and should be rectified to avoid wider market disruptions.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 17:30

  • Biden Admin "Working Directly" With Big Tech To Crush Vaccine Dissent
    Biden Admin “Working Directly” With Big Tech To Crush Vaccine Dissent

    “In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship.”

    Those were the prophetic words of Caitlin Johnstone in 2018 warning of the slippery slope that Big Tech and its liberal minions were embarking on as the corporate-sponsored cancel-culture began.

    In 2018, representatives of Facebook, Twitter, and Google were instructed on the US Senate floor that it is their responsibility to “quell information rebellions” and adopt a “mission statement” expressing their commitment to “prevent the fomenting of discord.”

    “Civil wars don’t start with gunshots, they start with words,” the representatives were told.

    “America’s war with itself has already begun. We all must act now on the social media battlefield to quell information rebellions that can quickly lead to violent confrontations and easily transform us into the Divided States of America.”

    And now, 3 years later, all the ‘behind the scenes’ nods and winks are gone and conspiracy theories proved fact as Reuters reports The White House has been reaching out to social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google about clamping down on COVID misinformation and getting their help to stop it from going viral, a senior administration official said.

    “Disinformation that causes vaccine hesitancy is going to be a huge obstacle to getting everyone vaccinated and there are no larger players in that than the social media platforms,” a source with direct knowledge about the cooperation told Reuters.

    The White House previously acknowledged working with tech giants like Facebook and Google on the issue, but direct engagement was not confirmed, Reuters said.

    “We are talking to them … so they understand the importance of misinformation and disinformation and how they can get rid of it quickly.”

    The source told Reuters that the companies “were receptive” as they engaged with the White House. “But it is too soon to say whether or not it translates into lessening the spread of misinformation.”

    Every time the dangers of a few Silicon Valley plutocrats controlling all new media political discourse with an iron fist are pointed out, Democratic Party loyalists all turn into a bunch of hardline free market Ayn Rands.

    “It’s not censorship!” they exclaim. “It’s a private company and can do whatever it wants with its property!”

    Except now, that ‘private’ entity is working directly for the government as the Biden administration is not even trying to hide the relationship.

    So, it turns out Johnstone was right: “In a corporatist system of government, wherein there is no meaningful separation between corporate power and state power, corporate censorship is state censorship.”

    Be careful what you ‘think’ America… be wary of ‘questioning’ anything, and definitely be careful what you ‘share’.

    As John Whitehead warned this week:  This is the slippery slope that leads to the end of free speech as we once knew it.

    “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 17:00

  • "It's Raining Metal" – Boeing 777 Experiences Mid-Flight Engine Explosion Over Denver Suburbs
    “It’s Raining Metal” – Boeing 777 Experiences Mid-Flight Engine Explosion Over Denver Suburbs

    Update (1712 ET): The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a statement around 1700 ET about the incident concerning a Boeing 777-200 operated by United Airlines. The FAA says it’s “aware of reports of debris in the vicinity of the airplane’s flight path. Please contact local officials and the airline for further information about the passengers. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.” 

    * * * 

    9NEWS’ Chris Vanderveen reports United flight 328 has returned to Denver International Airport after passengers heard a “loud bang.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Vanderveen tweeted: 

    “Just spoke to passenger on United flight that had to turn around after passengers heard a “loud bang”. Flight was able to return to DIA. No injuries immediately reported on board. Plane was headed to Honolulu according to passenger.”

    He also tweeted a video from a passenger during landing. The video clearly shows the engine sustained damage. 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Twitter user Kieran Cain posted a picture of the “giant metal engine piece just landed in this Broomfield person’s yard after a plane flying over experienced explosion.”

    More images of the metal engine part.

    Engine parts landed in a sports field filled with people. No word if anyone was injured. 

    “Incredible photos by Hayden Smith of UA328 suffering an engine failure shortly after departing Denver,” tweeted Tamas K-L. 

    “Hollyyy crap, it is just raining engine parts across the world today. This piece, what looks to be the entire engine inlet of a United 777-200, rained down over Denver,” said Flightradar24’s Jason Rabinowitz

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Literally, parts of the aircraft were “raining down over Denver.” 

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    One Twitter user allegedly shows a video of the plane returning to Denver International Airport.

    Broomfield Police told 9NEWS “metal parts fell from the sky on Saturday, possibly from a passing aircraft in the the Broomfield area.”  

    FlightAware shows United flight 328 is a Boeing 777-200. Here’s the plane’s flight path this afternoon as it appears the aircraft took off from Denver International Airport and then immediately returned. 

    This can’t be good for Boeing shares come Monday…

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 16:29

  • "Rise Up, Fight Back!" – Detroit Rent Protest Erupts Amid Nationwide Eviction Crisis
    “Rise Up, Fight Back!” – Detroit Rent Protest Erupts Amid Nationwide Eviction Crisis

    At least 100 people gathered at a rent demonstration in Detroit on Saturday afternoon following a mother who was evicted with police assistance not too long ago. People walked the streets in the metro area, shouting, “no slumlords, no cops, all evictions got to stop!” This comes as millions of Americans are behind in rent and face eviction if the nationwide moratorium expires at the end of March.

    Independent reporter Brendan Gutenschwage captured the rent protest in a series of tweets Saturday afternoon. He said about 100 people turned up for the event to march through Detroit’s West Side. 

    The crowd was heard chanting: “When Black homes are under attack, what do we do? Rise up, fight back!”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Protesters also chanted: “No slumlords, no cops, all evictions got to stop!”

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    More views of the protest. 

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    During the demonstration, the crowd marched past a community food distribution and donation drive. Housing and food insecurities are huge issues in America right now with no resolution in sight. 

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    Protesters told people in the community to “come out of their houses and join them” in their march against evictions.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    What sparked the protest was when a mother was evicted from her home by police in December. 

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    Meanwhile, a nationwide eviction crisis is here, and there’s no way to stop it. 

    According to research firm Moody’s Analytics, about 12 million renters owe an average of almost $6,000, which includes past due rent, late fees, and unpaid utility bills. In total, some $72 billion is owed. 

    “These are low-income households,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics. “They’ve probably already borrowed as much as they can from family or friends. They have no resources left.”

    In New York City alone, tenants owe a whopping $2 billion in back rents. 

    COVID has severely impacted almost all Americans but has financially crushed those with the lowest incomes. 

    The federal government has yet to address the eviction crisis with a long-term solution. In December, Congress allotted $25 billion in emergency rental assistance. Frankly, the federal government and Federal Reserve don’t have a viable long-term plan to fix this socio-economic mess – all they care about is printing trillions of dollars and throwing free money at everyone, thinking it will somehow immediately repair the deeply scarred economy.

    With eviction courts already clogged up with cases, the big question that looms is if the Biden administration will extend eviction moratoriums… If not, prepare for more rent protests. 

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 16:00

  • Inflation Here, There, And Everywhere
    Inflation Here, There, And Everywhere

    Authored by Bryce Coward via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,

    What a week for price data! We have been writing about the possibility of higher inflation for months now, most recently here. We have also highlighted the most likely assets to benefit from higher inflation like copper, oil and energy stocks. So far so good on that front.

    While inflation of some kind – be it transitory or more lasting in duration – has been a high probability scenario for awhile, we are finally starting to see it clearly in the economic stats. This week alone we were given price data from the New York Fed’s Empire State survey, economy-wide producer price data from the Bureau of Labor Stats, and price data from the Markit PMIs. All of those data points recorded large gains and handily beat market expectations.

    For example, the Markit Services Input Price series went parabolic in February, recording the highest reading ever, by a long shot. The Output Price series also went up, but not as much as input prices. The difference between input prices and outprices implies margin contraction for services companies. We wouldn’t expect this level of margin compression to be sustained and thus expect output prices for services to rise handily in the months ahead, especially as covid vaccinations continue to chug along and reopening continues.

    Producer prices rose significantly in January too. Core producer prices (prices ex food, energy, and trade), recorded a 2% year-over-year gain, which was fully double the “Street’s” estimates.

    Finally, the Empire State manufacturing survey recorded a 10-year high in Prices Paid and a 9-year high in Prices Received.

    With these data all moving in one direction (up), it’s only a matter of time before the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation – the core personal consumption expenditure  (PCE) – catches up. The PCE is often the last inflation statistic to move, but movement in the upward direction is pretty much baked in the cake at this point.

    If history is a guide, the level of service company input prices (blue line) suggests we could see a core PCE reading above 2% within the next two months.

    Why does all this matter? Inflation impacts asset prices directly through the level of bond yields and indirectly through the increased volatility it brings to sales and earnings. The longer duration the asset, the more impact on that asset’s price as a result of inflation. For example, 30Y year Treasury yields (duration 20 years) are up nearly 40bps since the beginning of the year while 10 year Treasury yields (7 year duration) are only up 25bps. The Nasdaq 100 index (the longest duration major equity index) is up only 5% YTD compared to the Russell 2000 (a much shorter duration index), which is up 14.7%. Copper miners, which are among the shortest duration equities, are up 28%. To the extent the inflation data continues to come in hot, we would expect the above hierarchy of asset price returns to hold, generally speaking.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 15:30

  • "Two Weeks That Changed The World": A Goldman Post-Mortem On "The Squeeze"
    “Two Weeks That Changed The World”: A Goldman Post-Mortem On “The Squeeze”

    It was almost exactly three months ago, long before the Reddit short squeeze fireworks, when we were parsing through the latest quarterly Hedge Fund Tracker report from Goldman Sachs which famously breaks down the 50 most popular hedge fund long and short positions, when we repeated what we have said for much of the past decade:

    … since it is the most shorted stocks that end to do far better than the most popular ones, especially during market-wide squeezes such as the one seen since March, here is also the list of 50 most-shorted stocks. As usual, our advice is to go long the most hated names and short the most popular ones – a strategy that has generated alpha without fail for the past 7 years, ever since we first recommended it back in 2013.

    We said this on November 20, 2020, which we bring up because as everyone knows by now, what transpired since has been the biggest coordinated short squeeze in history, and anyone who listened to our advice and put on the abovementioned pair trade is now up some 40% in the past 3 months, an annualized return of over 160%.

    Actually, those who were reading us during this historic short squeeze meltup may already have retired, because while many were chasing Gamestop, one of our favorite squeeze trades was to go long a heavily shorted microcap, SRMX, as we revealed on Jan 27, and just two weeks later, SRMX was up 3,800%, double the peak performance of Gamestop.

    Yet while our readers profited handsomely from January’s epic moves, in many cases generating historic returns, there were also just as many who had a terrible month: they are better known as hedge funds. And it is their plight that Goldman’s latest Hedge Fund tracker focuses on.

    What follows below will not be surprising or new to any of our readers, who were presented with front-row seats to the historic events as they unfolded in January and early February. Still, what Goldman’s Ben Snider has done in his latest Hedge Fund Trend monitor (in which he analyzes the holdings of 820 hedge funds with $2.8 trillion in gross equity positions), is a good recap of some of the key catalysts and milestones behind what was to many financial professionals, two weeks that changed the world of finance starting with the January 22 breakout in Gamestop stock, and ending with the February 5 collapse in the most shorted names and the apparent return to normalcy.

    As Snider writes, January’s short squeeze showed the risk posed to both hedge fund returns and broad market performance by record leverage and a high degree of crowding, two factors (both the byproduct of years of “idea dinners”) which we have repeatedly warned in the past would one day come and bite the hedge fund industry in the ass.

    As we noted at the time…

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    … hedge funds entered 2021 with the highest levels of net and gross exposure on record. And although the average fund’s portfolio concentration and the degree of crowding across hedge fund portfolios declined in 2020, both of those measures remained elevated relative to history, Snider notes.

    As an illustration, the top five constituents of Goldman’s Hedge Fund VIP list of the most popular hedge fund long positions have remained unchanged for 10 consecutive quarters, including this quarter’s rebalance (although while 13Fs showed positions as of Dec 31, this may well have changed after the January fireworks).

    That’s because short covering that began following vaccine efficacy announcements in November accelerated in January, leading eventually to broad hedge fund de-grossing that weighed on popular hedge fund long positions and the aggregate S&P 500.

    Meanwhile, as we predicted well in advance, Goldman retroactively points out that a rolling basket of the Russell 3000 stocks with the highest short interest as a share of float rose 42% in January, capping a record three-month return of 98% for the most heavily-shorted stocks (to those who listened to us and put this basket on as a long, congratulations).

    As Goldman then notes, “this tipped a chain of dominoes that led to the largest week of active hedge fund de-grossing since February 2009, according to Goldman Sachs Prime Services, which caused our Hedge Fund VIP list to decline by 6%, the S&P 500 to dip by 4%, and an average January return of -1.2% for long/short equity hedge funds.”

    Conveniently, starting with the day Robinhood decided to block most purchases of most shorted stocks – effectively putting a stop to the process that “scared” Interactive Brokers CEO Thomas Peterffy said brought markets “frighteningly close” to breaking during the Reddit Raid – hedge fund performance has rebounded in the weeks since the short squeeze, and leverage – while off its peak – remains close to the highest levels on record. In fact, hedge funds are now even more levered:

    “Aggregate hedge fund net leverage calculated based on publicly-available data registered 58% at the start of 2021, surpassing the previous record level of 57% in early 2015. Higher-frequency exposures calculated by our colleagues in Goldman Sachs Prime Services also showed record leverage prior to the January short squeeze. According to their data, net and gross leverage each now register at the 99th percentile.”

    This should not be a surprise: consider that January’s short squeeze occurred against the backdrop of already extremely low aggregate short interest  – largely a function of the short extinction-level event unleashed by the Fed last year which sent stocks soaring to record highs – and which has continued to decline. In fact, the median S&P 500 stock has outstanding short interest equating to just 1.5% of market cap, matching the record low in 2000. In most sectors, short interest outstanding currently ranks in the bottom decile of the last 25 years, with Goldman noting that only Energy sector shorts registering above the historical average (this is why JPMorgan believes that the next massive squeeze will focus on energy names starting some time in March).

    Yet while most hedge funds suffered through a devastating January, where the alpha drawdown among the hedge fund universe was the worst on record leading to cascading VaR shocks…

    … Retail investors were by and far the big winners. That’s why Goldman writes next that the January short squeeze and apparent pockets of froth in the equity market have turned investor focus to the impact of individual retail traders: “Broker activity, trading volumes in penny stocks, and inflows into levered ETFs all reflect the surge in retail trading activity that contributed to the sharp recent rally in heavily shorted stocks.”

    In general, the most popular stocks among retail investors have performed well; a basket of Retail Favorites (ticker: GSXURFAV) has returned 18% YTD, outperforming both our VIP basket of the most popular hedge fund long positions (+8%) and the broad S&P 500 (+4%). Notably, the retail favorites have been positively correlated with the most heavily-shorted stocks, in contrast with the recent sharply negative correlation of our Hedge Fund VIP basket (Exhibit 10).

    The dramatic gains by retail investors also explain the substantial outperformance of value over growth names in 2021. Goldman explains:

    In general, the favorite retail trading stocks tend to be tilted toward Value as a factor, while hedge fund favorites are more correlated with Growth. Similarly, at the sector level, the largest weight and correlation of Hedge Fund VIPs is with Info Tech stocks, whereas retail favorites have been more correlated with cyclical value sectors like Energy and Financials.

    As a result, while hedge funds have shifted “slightly” toward Value in recent quarters, Goldman notes that they remain firmly in the Growth camp.

    This is similar to events in the second half of last year, when ahead of vaccine efficacy results and the 2020 elections, funds rotated modestly toward Value, including lifting positions in Financials. However, the rotations fizzled in the 4th quarter, as vaccine news surpassed expectations but Election Day 2020 failed to result in a large “Blue Wave.” At the factor level, funds continued to shift from Growth to Value, but changes in sector and subsector tilts generally favored secular growth over cyclicality.

    Of course, between hedge funds’ even higher (record) net leverage and continued bets on growth stocks, what happened in January may very well happen again – in fact it is virtually assured following the next big reflationary catalyst. We are starting to see that already, because as yields rise it is the growth and high-duration stocks that are getting hammered the hardest:

    Consistent with their factor tilt toward Growth, the most popular hedge fund long positions have recently been very negatively correlated with interest rates. Hedge Fund VIPs generally have higher implied equity duration and higher valuation multiples than both the retail favorite basket and the S&P 500. For more on equity duration and sensitivity to interest rates, see Q&A on rates and equities, February 7, 2021

    And yet despite their investing differences, hedge funds and retail investors do share some commonality in their portfolios. 12 stocks in Goldman’s Hedge Fund VIP basket also appear in the Retail Favorites basket: AAPL, AMZN, BABA, DIS, FB, GOOGL, MSFT, NFLX, NVDA, SQ, UBER, VTRS.

    Furthermore, Goldman notes that both investor groups have also contributed to the surge in trading activity among extremely high-growth, high-valuation stocks; each basket contains a number of stocks trading above 20x EV/sales, although none of those stocks appear in the overlap between the two baskets.

    Goldman concludes, as usual, by looking ahead in the rearview mirror, and in the table below lists the retail favorite stocks with the largest increases and decreases in hedge fund popularity last quarter….

    … while the next chart shows the entire Retail Favorites basket. The basket is rebalanced monthly to include the stocks with the highest dollar notional volume of small share trades during the previous month

    And while all of this information is great, what would have been far more practical – not to mention lucrative – is for Goldman not to do a “post mortem” but to predict ahead of time, that the most shorted stocks would explode and the most popular ones would collapse- you know, as analysts used to do once upon a time when they correctly called the future… like for example we did in our Nov 20 post.

    And since all of the above confirms that absolutely nothing has changed, we will end this post the same way we end all our hedge fund performance wraps – by telling our readers that the most profitable decision they can make is to once again go long the most shorted names…

    … while shorting the hedge fund hotel of 50 or so “VIP” names that have emerged after countless shadowy and collusive (if not collusive enough to warrant a Congressional hearing) idea dinners.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 15:00

  • Want To Prosecute Trump? It Will Require Proof Not Politics For A Viable Case
    Want To Prosecute Trump? It Will Require Proof Not Politics For A Viable Case

    Authored by Jonathan Turley,

    Below is my column in USA Today on the calls for criminal charges against former president Donald Trump and what is still missing from viable prosecutions.  In the meantime, civil lawsuits have been filed including one by Rep. Bennie Thompson alleging that Trump and others incited the riot on January 6th. Those civil lawsuits have the advantage a lower standard of proof than criminal prosecutions. If some cases can be sustained past motions to dismiss, they would also allow for discovery though those fights could draw out the litigation. However, Democrats may also be laying the foundation for Trump to claim vindication in defeating such cases in courts. Despite the assurance of the same legal experts of a strong case for prosecution, made-for-television cases do poorly in actual courts of law. What makes for good politics does not always make for good cases. However, bad cases can make for some really bad politics.

    Here is the column:

    With the acquittal of former President Donald Trump in the Senate, many are calling for criminal charges for everything from incitement to racketeering to bank fraud. Legal experts on CNN and MSNBC seemed to appear like crisis counselors after the acquittal to assure viewers that all was well because Trump can be clearly prosecuted and convicted.

    The question is how serious a prosecution threat is Trump facing. The answer is that the basis for such charges has been wildly overstated and that, without additional evidence, Trump is not looking at a trip to the hoosegow any time soon. According to The Associated Press, the Justice Department is not pursuing Trump on the much discussed campaign finance allegations tied to payments to porn star Stormy Daniels.

    So let’s look at the two major threats of prosecution and what it would take for a credible prosecution.

    Criminal incitement

    For weeks, the airwaves have been packed with legal experts assuring hosts that Trump clearly committed not just impeachable but criminal incitement. For example, Harvard professor Laurence Tribe (who previously declared a long list of impeachable or criminal violations) announced the core elements of the crime satisfied: “This guy was inciting not just imminent lawless action, but the violent decapitation of a coordinate branch of the government.”

    Such proclamations do better with MSNBC than the DDC (United States District Court for the District of Columbia). The public statements of Trump alone would not make for a credible case for criminal incitement under the controlling case law.

    Nevertheless, District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine garnered widespread acclaim by announcing soon after the Jan. 6 riot that he was investigating Trump for a possible incitement charge. Then nothing happened. That was strange given the insistence by legal experts that the crime was public and obvious on Jan. 6. Yet, more than a month have gone by without word of an interview for Trump, let alone a charge, on criminal incitement. Why?

    The reason is that while the crime is not clear, the case law is. In Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Supreme Court ruled in 1969 that even calling for violence is protected under the First Amendment unless there is a threat of “imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”

    Trump never called for violence and instead told his followers to go to the Capitol peacefully to “cheer” on those challenging the electoral votes. Such protests at capitals are common and, while reckless, Trump’s speech could as easily be interpreted as a call for protest rather than violence.

    Notably, the Ku Klux Klan leader Clarence Brandenburg also referred to a planned march on Congress after declaring that “revengeance” could be taken for the betrayal of the president and Congress. The Supreme Court still overturned the conviction.

    The court has consistently rejected the type of arguments by Tribe and other legal experts as a threat to free speech in our society. In Hess v. Indiana, the court rejected the prosecution of a protester declaring an intention to take over the streets, holding that “at worst, (the words) amounted to nothing more than advocacy of illegal action at some indefinite future time.” In another case, NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., the court overturned a judgment against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after one official declared, “If we catch any of you going in any of them racist stores, we’re gonna break your damn neck.” That was ruled as the hyperbolic language of advocacy.

    Trump could also point to the timeline:

    ►He ended his speech at 1:10 p.m.

    ►The first rioter entered the U.S. Capitol at 2:12.

    ►According to CNN, Trump had a heated call around 2:20 with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who told him of the breach.

    ►Around 2:26, Trump mistakenly called Utah Sen. Mike Lee instead of Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville. After Lee gave Tuberville his phone, he reportedly said that Trump did not appear to realize the extent of the rioting in the building.

    ►At 2:38, Trump called for his followers to be peaceful and to support police. 

    That would not make for a strong case for criminal incitement.

    What would be needed? Prosecutors would need testimony showing that Trump knew of the high risk of violence and wanted it to occur. They would also seek evidence that Trump actively delayed deployment of reinforcements or sought to block efforts at preparation. What is clear is that the speech (and prior public statements) would not be enough to sustain a conviction.

    Racketeering

    Like Racine, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has been lionized for opening criminal investigation into the phone call Trump made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger last month. Willis suggested that Trump’s pressuring of Raffensperger could constitute “solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.” 

    Again, the call itself does not clearly establish such crimes.

    While often omitted in news accounts, the call was actually a settlement discussion between the Trump team and the Georgia team. There were a variety of lawyers present, not some backroom arm twisting. The Trump campaign alleged there were uncounted votes that surpassed the 11,779 deficit, and Trump asserted, “I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.”

    Former prosecutor Daniel Goldman (who worked on the first Trump impeachment) tweeted that the smoking gun was the line by Trump, “ ‘It’s gonna be costly to you.’ I’ve charged extortion in mob cases with similar language.”

    In reality, the line was, “It’s going to be very costly in many ways,” which is very different.

    That is also a common point in a settlement negotiation. However, as a criminal defense attorney for 30 years, I would be eager to see Goldman’s prosecution of someone on such a statement in a case like this.

    So what would Willis need? She would need to show pressure outside of a settlement discussion in which both sides are expected to state their positions and demands strongly. That could take the form of Trump making or supporting threats, or making promises to Raffensperger to get him to violate the law. The call itself is not a smoking gun of criminality.

    That does not mean Trump does not face other threats. The most credible could come out of New York, where he is being investigated for bank and tax fraud predating his administration. While overreporting or underreporting assets is common in the real estate business, these tend to be crimes more easy to prosecute before a jury. It is also difficult to argue selective prosecution in such cases and prosecutors can portray missing or inaccurate reporting as cut-and-dried violations.

    Despite the drumbeat for prosecution, such charges could easily backfire. If Trump were to beat the charges at trial or on appeal, it would be cited as vindication not just on the charges but on the second impeachment. The former president could end up like the character of Big Jule in “Guys and Dolls” proudly proclaiming, “33 arrests, no convictions.” Indeed, absent new transformative evidence, prosecuting Trump on the cases in Washington or Georgia could result in a resounding victory just before the 2024 election. They could make Big Jule’s record not just a criminal boast but a presidential slogan.

    Tyler Durden
    Sat, 02/20/2021 – 14:30

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