Month: December 2016

50 Days in Jail for Waiting on a Ride

Erika Elias claims she was waiting for a ride outside a Columbus, Georgia, trailer-park last month when a local police officer spotted her. Because Elias had been been picked up for prostitution nearby previously, and the neighborhood is one where cops regularly make prostitution arrests, Police Officer Ryan Vardman assumed she was there selling sex again that morning. Elias was arrested for “loitering for the purposes of prostitution” and now faces nearly two months in county jail.

Elias was also charged with giving false information to a police officer after initially identifying herself as “Stephanie Elias.” She later told State Court Judge Michael Cielinski she had lied about her name because she was afraid her past criminal record would lead the cop to suspect her of prostitution, even though that wasn’t her purpose when Vardman spotted her around 9:45 a.m. that Thursday. “I was really not prostituting, but [Vardman] said I was prostituting,” she testified.

That she was arrested regardless “means I can’t stand anywhere,” Elias complained to the court. “I can’t even stand there and wait on a ride. … I’m trying to change my life and you can’t change your life, because you got people who just want to ride around and randomly take people to jail for nothing.”

Elias’ testimony highlights the problem with prohibitions on “loitering for the purposes of prostitution.” Under these and similar laws, one needn’t indicate a willingness to exchange sex for money in any sort of verbal form, whether explicitly or in coded language. Nor must a guilty party engage in any actual sexual activity, attempt to engage in such activity, or have any direct interaction with supposed customers. The criteria for this crime is entirely subjective: does a cop think you look like someone selling sex?

In practice, this means that people who have previously been arrested for prostitution, areas where cops have previously made prostitution arrests, and anyone not dressed classy enough for a particular cop’s taste are targeted. As Melissa Gira Grant recently detailed in a Village Voice feature, New York City cop criteria for such arrests (about 1,300 from 2012 through 2015) might include the fact that someone in a “prostitution prone” area was wearing “tight jeans” and showing cleavage, was carrying condoms, or had talked to someone passing by. For people with previous prostitution arrests, simply going about their daily lives can (and does) lead to subsequent arrests, especially if they live in the same area as the initial arrest.

How do authorities get away with this? Because the people most often arrested for prostitution pre-crime—poor women, transgender women, people without identification—tend to be those least equipped to fight the charges, for a host of reasons. And they are up against a charge which is incredibly hard to disprove, since it’s based mostly on not actions or words but some cop’s vision of their intent.

As for Elias, she plead guilty to both charges against her, and was sentenced to either 50 days in jail or a $700 fine. Asked by Judge Cielinski why she was pleading guilty if she hadn’t been loitering for prostitution purposes, she told the court: “Let’s be honest judge, I really don’t have time to just argue with y’all. I’m wrong if I’m right. If I’m right, I’m still wrong.”

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The Role Of Technology In Limiting Privilege And Bias

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Technology cannot eliminate human bias or poor decisions, but it has the potential to eliminate systemic bias and privilege.

Technological skills are often viewed as the dividing line between globalization's "winners" and "Losers." Those with high technology skills tend to be paid considerably more than those with lower skills, and have more opportunities to advance.

In this view, technology is the purview of the highly skilled, highly paid "winners" of the 4th Industrial Revolution, and "the rest of us" are merely consumers of technology.

I think this overlooks the great potential of technology to flatten privilege and reduce institutional bias. I discuss this in my new book Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege. Here is an excerpt from the book:

What kind of system eliminates social privilege and opens equal opportunities to all?

The answer I describe in my book A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology & Creating Jobs for All is technology-based: each member of every Community Labor Integrated Money Economy (CLIME) group is paid the same for every hour of work as every other member in the region. Every member and group has the same opportunity to buy and sell goods and services on their own in the CLIME marketplace. Different groups will earn different outcomes, but the opportunities for advancement will be equal for all participants, as individuals can switch groups, join multiple groups or start their own group.

Software, if properly programmed, is blind to human bias. A software-based system can eliminate bias and privilege by treating every member and organization equally.

Imagine a city in the near future that only allows self-driving rental cars on its streets: human-driven privately owned vehicles are banned as hazards. Every rented vehicle obeys all traffic rules, and accidents are rare. (Recall that vehicle speeds are low in congested cities.)

Why would the city waste valuable police time cruising streets filled with vehicles that cannot deviate from traffic rules? The only time it would make sense to send a traffic officer out is to file a report on the rare accident.

If an officer did pull a car over for a defective tail light, the driver would be blameless, as the responsibility for repairing the tail light would fall to the rental car agency, not the driver. Since the vehicles would record all activity, there would be readily available evidence if police officers pulled over vehicles with no ticketable defects because the driver happened to be African-American.

Not only would it make no sense financially for the city to pay police officers to monitor self-driving rental cars, any city government that persisted in driving while black bias would open itself to punishing civil lawsuits. The data collected by the rental car fleet would be undeniable in court.

 

Technology cannot eliminate human bias or poor decisions, but it has the potential to eliminate systemic bias and privilege, and collect data that makes any remaining bias transparent to all—not just to the unprivileged who experience the bias first-hand.

Technology has the potential to offer everyone the same opportunities for individually tailored advancement. While software cannot eliminate differences in wealth-based opportunities—for example, the children of wealthy families get private lessons, while the children of disadvantaged families do not—technology has the potential to level the playing field (for example, by enabling nearly free lessons tailored to each student), and provide transparency at levels that are unreachable in systems riddled with human bias.

While there is no substitute for caring, encouraging parents and mentors, technology can open the path to the advantaged class that is currently a thicket of obstacles for the disadvantaged.

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House Republicans Want to Make the Wrong Change to the Corporate Tax: New at Reason

Paul RyanEconomic research shows that the corporate tax is harmful to workers’ wages and overall economic growth. If left to their own devices, politicians still wouldn’t be likely to reduce or eliminate the destructive tax. They only act when tax competition—whereby taxpayers shop around for favorable tax environments—forces their hand.

That’s why it is alarming that House Republicans—I repeat, House Republicans—are talking about a change to the corporate tax that would insulate it from competitive pressures going forward. The change in the Ryan-Brady blueprint (as in Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee Kevin Brady) would turn the corporate income tax into a “destination-based cash flow tax” with many similarities to European-style value-added taxes. To be sure, it would also lower the U.S. corporate tax rate—which is currently higher than any other in the developed world—and move to a common-sense territorial system in which income would be taxed only in the country where it was earned. It would also alleviate some of the double taxation of savings and somewhat simplify the tax code, even as it could become a compliance nightmare for companies.

But it would be simpler to just do away with the corporate tax altogether, writes Veronique de Rugy.

View this article.

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Live Stream: Donald Trump Speaks At Carrier Plant In Indiana

After securing a deal to save 1,100 jobs at a Carrier plant in Indiana from being exported to Mexico, Trump is set to kick off his Midwest “Thank You Tour” with a speech there which is expected to get started around 2pm EST.

 

As we pointed out earlier this morning, Trump’s deal reached with Carrier keeps 1,100 jobs in the U.S. in return for $700,000 in annual tax breaks for a period of 10 years.  Per the Wall Street Journal, the heating and air conditioning company will also invest about $16 million into a furnace plant in Indianapolis that it had previously planned to close and move to Mexico.

As Fortune reports, citing a source close to the company, Trump called Greg Hayes, CEO of Carrier’s parent company United Technologies, two weeks ago and asked him to rethink the decision to close the Carrier plant in Indiana. Hayes explained that the jobs were lower-wage and had high turnover, and the move was necessary to keep the plant competitive, according to the source. He said the plan would save the company $65 million a year.

 

Trump then replied that those savings would be dwarfed by the savings UTC would enjoy from corporate tax-rate reductions he planned to put in place. During the recent campaign, Trump threatened to slap tariffs on Carrier imports from Mexico.

 

So what were the “incentives”? In the end, UTC agreed to retain approximately 800 manufacturing jobs at the Indiana plant that had been slated to move to Mexico, as well as another 300 engineering and headquarters jobs. In return, the company will get roughly $700,000 a year for a period of years in state tax incentives. Still, some 1,300 jobs will still go to Mexico, which includes 600 Carrier employees, plus 700 workers from UTEC Controls in Huntington, Ind.

 

In summary, the “math” works out to $636 per year per job saved in tax savings: hardly an egregious sum, and one which could likely be extended to other companies (unless, of course, those other companies decide to hold Trump hostage and demand escalating pay schedules) if and when Trump’s fiscal stimulus package is implemented. It remains to be seen if the popular response, outside of conservative groups, will interpret this trade off as taxpayer funded “moral hazard.”

 

After the speech at Carrier, Trump is expected to make several more stops across the Midwest beginning with a rally later tonight as the U.S. Bank Arena in Cincinnati, OH scheduled to begin at 7pm EST. 

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President Obama Just Made it Easier For Donald Trump to Wage War

What, me need Congressional approval to wage war?President Obama’s term in office began, oddly, with winning a Nobel Peace Prize and will end with him handing over to Donald Trump the reins of an executive branch whose powers to make war he has dramatically expanded.

Strangely, unlike in 2012 when Obama thought he might lose to Mitt Romney and thus created a “drone rule book” to discourage future presidents from abusing the power to wage clandestine war, the president has recently expanded the power and scope of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) to conduct combat operations outside of the fields of battle in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

The Washington Post reports that JSOC’s newly created “Counter-External Operations Task Force” can “can sidestep regional commanders…for the sake of speed,” instead reporting directly to the Pentagon.

Writing in Foreign Policy, Micah Zenko explained that this change elevates JSOC “to a truly global combatant command, with the resources and authority to strike targets seemingly anywhere, rather than only after being placed under the authority of a regional combatant command.” Zenko adds:

Obama administration lawyers and officials have always contended that there are no geographic limits to where U.S. forces may conduct operations against terrorism, with the battlefield being anywhere “from Boston to the FATA [Federally Adminstered Tribal Areas of Pakistan]” Now, it appears that it has set up an organizational command structure to support such limitless targeting.

Though the Obama administration has repeatedly tried to play up its role in ending the Iraq War, the fact is, we are still at war in Iraq, even if the name of the enemy continues to change. What’s more, the Obama administration has expanded combat operations in Somalia to fight the Al Qaeda-offshoot Shabab, including “self-defense” airstrikes to assist foreign allies even when American troops face no risk.

Zenko notes that with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) forces deployed to 147 countries, the U.S. could invoke “self-defense” with an airstrike pretty much anywhere in the world.

While Obama’s “kill list” hasn’t led to any sustained mainstream concern (lawyers who work for the president can make just about anything “legal”), even when drones meant for “terrorists” kill civilians, the fact that these powers to make war will soon be in Donald Trump’s hands is beginning to make people take notice that the executive branch has assumed far too much power.

Unfortunately, Obama will leave office much as he entered it, by expanding and consolidating executive authority even further than George W. Bush had, and thereby making it far easier for Trump to do the same.

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Meet The Man Who Made The OPEC Deal Possible

Going into the Algiers OPEC meeting in late September, the prevailing sentiment among the analyst community was that there is no way any deal will get done: after all there was no secret that the recent animosity between Iran and Saudi Arabia had recent reached unprecedented levels, with both side directly involved across from each other in the Syrian proxy war.

However, the deal did happened, surprising virtually everyone, and based on a new Reuters report, it was thanks to one man.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was the mediator who played a crucial role in helping OPEC rivals Iran and Saudi Arabia set aside differences to forge the cartel’s first deal with non-OPEC Russia in 15 years.

The interventions ahead of Wednesday’s OPEC meeting came at key moments from Putin, Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani, OPEC and non-OPEC sources said. According to Reuters, Putin’s role as intermediary between Riyadh and Tehran was pivotal, and is a “testament to the rising influence of Russia in the Middle East since its military intervention in the Syrian civil war just over a year ago.“

It started when Putin met Saudi Prince Mohammed in September on the sidelines of a G20 gathering in China. The two leaders, who realized they stand to benefit more from cooperating in order to push prices higher, agreed to work together to help world oil markets clear a glut that had more than halved oil prices since 2014, pummeling Russian and Saudi government revenues. 

The financial pain made a deal possible despite the huge political differences between Russia and Saudi over the civil war in Syria.  

“Putin wants the deal. Full stop. Russian companies will have to cut production,” said a Russian energy source briefed on the discussions. Of course, Russia’s energy minister Novak has already said that it will take a long time before Russia’s fulfills its production cut quota of cutting 0.3tb/d from its current production level of 11.2tb/d due to “technical complications” suggesting that Russia is perfectly happy to sit back and watch how the world reacts to the OPEC cut first before engaging following through on its promises. After all, there is potential Saudi market share to be gained.

But first, prices had to go up.

The back story is familiar to all who have followed the endless OPEC melodrama of 2016: in September, OPEC agreed in principle at a meeting in Algiers to reduce output for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis. But the individual country commitments required to finalize a deal at Wednesday’s Vienna meeting still required much diplomacy.

Recent OPEC meetings have failed because of arguments between de facto leader Saudi Arabia and third-largest producer Iran. Tehran has long argued OPEC should not prevent it restoring output lost during years of Western sanctions. Then there is raging animosity between the two nations: proxy wars in Syria and Yemen have exacerbated decades of tensions between the Saudi Sunni kingdom and the Iranian Shi’ite Islamic republic.

Threatening a repeat of the April OPEC meeting which achieved nothing, heading into the Vienna summit, the signs were not good. Oil markets went into reverse. Saudi Prince Mohammed had repeatedly demanded Iran participate in supply cuts. Saudi and Iranian OPEC negotiators had argued in circles in the run-up to the meeting.

And, then, just a few days beforehand, Riyadh appeared back away from a deal, threatening to boost production if Iran failed to contribute cuts.

That’s when the Russian leader stepped in.

Putin established that the Saudis would shoulder the lion’s share of cuts, as long as Riyadh wasn’t seen to be making too large a concession to Iran. A deal was possible if Iran didn’t celebrate victory over the Saudis. A phone call between Putin and Iranian President Rouhani smoothed the way, Reuters reports. After the call, Rouhani and oil minister Bijan Zanganeh went to their supreme leader for approval, a source close to the Ayatollah said.

“During the meeting, the leader Khamenei underlined the importance of sticking to Iran’s red line, which was not yielding to political pressures and not to accept any cut in Vienna,” the source said.

“Zanganeh thoroughly explained his strategy … and got the leader’s approval. Also it was agreed that political lobbying was important, especially with Mr. Putin, and again the Leader approved it,” said the source.

On Wednesday, the Saudis agreed to cut production heavily, taking “a big hit” in the words of energy minister Khalid al-Falih – while Iran was allowed to slightly boost output.

Iran’s Zanganeh kept a low profile during the meeting, OPEC delegates said. Zanganeh had already agreed the deal the night before, with Algeria helping mediate, and he was careful not to make a fuss about it.

As we showed yesterday, the resolution culminated in an oil production table with a deliberate “error” in it” – while Iran’s reference level was picked based on directly communicated data, at just under 4mmb/d, the adjustment was applied to the “secondary” reported data, some 400kb/d lower, allowing Iran to present the deal as a victory to the people as it was the only nation that had a “positive” adjustment, while Saudi Arabia would demonstrate that Iran’s effective production level was 200kbpd lower than its reference point.

After the meeting, Reuters notes, the usually combative Zanganeh avoided any comment that might be read as claiming victory over Riyadh. “We were firm,” he told state television. “The call between Rouhani and Putin played a major role … After the call, Russia backed the cut.“

There was one problem: a last-minute quarrel threatened to derail the deal when Iraq became a problem (just as we warned would happen in September).

As ministerial talks got underway, OPEC’s second-largest producer insisted it could not afford to cut output, given the cost of its war against Islamic State.

But, facing pressure from the rest of OPEC to contribute a cut, Iraqi Oil Minister Jabar Ali al-Luaibi picked up the phone in front of his peers to call his prime minister, Haider al-Abadi. “Abadi said: ‘Get the deal done’. And that was it,” one OPEC source said.

* * *

Will the deal last? It is unclear – many say that due to the inherently unstable game theory involved in the deal, there is very little chance that some or all deal participants won’t cheat, dooming the agreement to failure.  However, one thing is certain: with oil up over 4% today, following yesterday’s 9% gain, the head of the world’s largest oil exporter – having masterminded the Vienna deal at a time when both OPEC and Russia are pumping record amounts of oil – is smiling.

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Jeff Gundlach Warns Yields And Stocks Have Peaked: “The Trump Rally Is Losing Steam”

Having predicted the Donald Trump victory, and nailing the upturn in US Treasury yields as well as the concurrent stork market rally, DoubleLine’s Jeffrey Gundlach appears to have once again taken the other side of the trade after riding it for the past 3 weeks, and is now considerably less exuberant on Trumponomics.

Speaking to Reuters, Gundlach said that markets could reverse the recent momentum in equities (something they appear to be doing this very moment), and at the very latest by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s Jan. 20, 2017 inauguration.

The new bond king said that the strong U.S. stock market rally, surge in Treasury yields and strength in the U.S. dollar since Trump’s surprising presidential victory more than three weeks ago look to be “losing steam,” Gundlach told Reuters in a telephone interview.

“The bar was so low on Trump to the point people were expecting markets will go down 80 percent and global depression – and now this guy is the Wizard of Oz and so expectations are high,” Gundlach said. “There’s no magic here.”

Putting money where his mouth is, Gundlach – who has been bearish on bonds for the past three months – said he had purchased Treasuries and Agency MBS as yields rose. 

In terms of specific forecasts, Gundlach said that the “dollar is going down”, bond yields and stocks have peaked, and gold will move up in the short term.

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LGBT Lives Are Better Than Ever, Yet The Culture War Grows Louder

Joanna and Chip GainesMy public reaction (on Twitter) when I saw BuzzFeed’s strange, now-viral piece about a couple of HGTV hosts going to a church whose pastor doesn’t support gay marriage was to wonder if the media outlet was going to write a similar piece about every single Catholic in America or just the famous ones.

Whatever the stated intent for running a story about the church attendance of some C-list home improvement show hosts (they do well in cable ratings, anyway), the subtext is clearly intended for us to look askance at Chip and Joanna Gaines for belonging to a church whose pastor preaches against gay marriage. The weirdest part of the piece is that it’s entirely speculative. The Gaineses didn’t respond to requests for comment, so it’s a piece that cannot even tell the reader whether the Gaineses themselves support or oppose gay marriage.

Robby Soave noted this morning a couple of media outlets like Jezebel and Cosmopolitan running with the story. There’s also been a much larger blitz of responses that are critical of the BuzzFeed piece. Here’s some critical analysis over at the Washington Post from an engaged gay man who worries that the digital media environment under the Donald Trump administration is going to end up as “four agonizing, tedious years of ‘gotcha’ non-stories like this one.”

There is some possible good news here amid the media feeding frenzy surrounding the story: At the time that I’m writing this, a host of outlets have written about and linked to the BuzzFeed story. But I haven’t seen a peep at the major blogs or media outlets (such as The Advocate) that specifically cater to LGBT readers. I may have missed a blog link somewhere given the size of the internet, but this “controversy” doesn’t seem to be a focus of sites that are narrowly focused on LGBT lives and issues.

Why is this good news? Because it’s a sign that the people who are actually affected by cultural attitudes toward gay marriage recognition understand where the battles truly are (to the extent that there are any battles left). Whatever the Gaineses and their retrograde preacher believe about gay marriage is not relevant to whether the practice will continue. There is no indication that any of these people in this story have influence to alter the state of legal recognition (or any interest in doing so).

There is a lot of focus at LGBT sites about who will be serving the Trump administration and fears about what they may do. Trump actively courted LGBT voters, which is remarkable on its own for a representative of the Republican Party. Let’s not forget that the Republican Party’s opposition to gay issues hasn’t been just a plank in the platform—it’s also historically been an issue to campaign with, something largely absent from this year’s race. Trump nevertheless did terribly with gay voters, according to exit polls.

But while Trump doesn’t seem to personally have much opposition to the LGBT agenda, the same cannot be said for the people he’s selecting for his administration, and that’s where all the power will be. I’ve noted previously fear over Trump’s selection of Rep. Tom Price to head the Department of Health and Human Services, given his record of opposition on gay issues. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, didn’t just oppose legal recognition of gay marriage; she actually bankrolled ballot initiatives to block it. Her family has significant connections to organizations that have done everything they could to halt the legal normalization of same-sex relationships, and it’s worth analyzing how that might affect what she does in Trump’s cabinet.

So having said that, what I’m seeing from pieces like this bizarre one from BuzzFeed, and from things like a gay politician’s attempt to promote a boycott of a beer company owner for supporting Trump, is an inability to accept a norm that we live side-by-side in a world with significant ideological diversity, and an inability to place an emphasis on policy-making over signaling and culture war judging. Debate over DeVos’ actual anti-gay background and how that might or might not affect federal education policy (libertarian disclaimer: we shouldn’t even have a federal education policy) shouldn’t be fighting for attention with the church habits of a couple of televised home renovators.

I’ve said repeatedly while watching this election play out that one of the primary attitudes driving the culture of these campaigns has been the desire to punish one’s foes. It’s kind of remarkable seeing responses to the Trump election like this one at Out Magazine that is so certain that LGBT folks are going to be the ones punished under the incoming administration, yet is completely blind to the motivations of pro-Trump voters who think that they are the ones who were being punished and would continue to be punished in a Democratic administration. Why didn’t Shawn Binder’s parents think about his self-interest and those of his LGBT friends, Binder asks, while failing to detail or explain in any way what self-interests prompted his parents to vote for Trump. He wants to know whether he can forgive them, but doesn’t consider whether “forgiveness” is an attitude that should factor into a response to somebody using his or her vote in a way you don’t like. (Maybe that’s the libertarian in me talking: I go through life surrounded by people who vote in ways I don’t like and have managed to not have a nervous breakdown or wonder if I need to “forgive” people)

Self-segregation and social punishment seem to be the order of the day as the left and the right drift further and further apart culturally, even as policy differences seem less pronounced than they used to be. As a member of neither side, I’m hard-pressed to figure out the end game in BuzzFeed’s report other than page views and yet another thumbtack marking a point of cultural hostility on the map of the Internet.

I don’t want to suggest the false choice that covering the Gaineses comes at the expense of covering DeVos. I do want to suggest that journalists at BuzzFeed seriously start thinking about the motives behind cultural reporting like this because it is very clearly influencing people’s perceptions of politics and the media in ways that have already come back to haunt the press. Defensive responses by BuzzFeed’s editor grasping desperately for an explanation as to why the couple’s church attendance was considered newsworthy is not helping.

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Massive Explosion Rocks One Of Italy’s Largest Oil Refineries

According to local press, a massive explosion has rocked one of Italy’s biggest oil refineries in Sannazzaro de’ Burgondi, near Pavia, about 40km south of Milan. Local authorities have ordered residents to stay indoors while an emergency plan is activated.

 

 

The Department of Civil Protection in the Province of Alessandria says nearby emergency centers have been activated for monitoring and supervision, but people are advised to remain indoors in the meantime.

Local authorities are warning that the clouds of smoke are being pushed by winds towards Voghera, about 30km (19 miles) south of Sannazzaro, and are expected to remain over the site for the coming hours.

The fire at the Eni refinery broke out at around 3.40 p.m. generating a ball of fire tens of meters high, according to eyewitnesses cited by Il Giorno. Images and footage from the scene show an enormous column of black smoke rising overhead.

Eni has issued a statement saying efforts are underway to extinguish the fire and there have been no reports of any injuries. The company also said the cause of the blast is under investigation.

The fire, which broke out in the East Shipyard refinery area according to Il Fatto Quotidiano, comes after a similar incident in July where a worker suffered burns following an explosion at an older part of the plant.

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General Market Topics Discussion (Video)

By EconMatters


We discuss Dennis Gartman in this video, Risk, Financial Markets, Viewer Comments, and several other topics. You always have to ask yourself: Are you the “Fool” in a given market? Risk evaluation is a given regarding anything in financial markets these days, and has been the case forever taking into account the multiple market crashes and “Melt-Ups” in almost every asset class for the last century of historical price data.

Always protect capital at all cost, even if this means taking “cautious losses” to protect financial capital for the long haul. And extrapolating from this idea, you can see why timing is one of the most important concepts of making money in financial markets. Getting the timing right makes your work a whole lot easier, all else being equal in markets.

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