Month: April 2017

Democrats Falsely Claim Gorsuch Resists Endorsing Landmark Desegregation Ruling

One telling measure of Democrats’ desperation to find reasons for opposing Neil Gorsuch’s nomination to the Supreme Court is the extent to which they have misrepresented his statements regarding Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that said racial segregation in public schools violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. On March 27, during a meeting at which the Senate Judiciary Committee discussed Gorsuch’s nomination, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) claimed “he wouldn’t say” when asked whether he “support[ed]” Brown. On CNN yesterday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said he had “asked [Gorsuch] repeatedly to say whether he agreed” with Brown, and “he refused to say whether it was correct or not.” The New York Times quotes Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) as saying, “My understanding was he wouldn’t even vouch for Brown v. Board of Education.”

Warner’s understanding is wrong, and so are Feinstein and Blumenthal’s recollections. Blumenthal first asked Gorsuch about Brown on March 21, the second day of his confirmation hearing:

Blumenthal: Do you agree with the result in Brown v. Board of Education?

Gorsuch: Senator, Brown v. Board of Education corrected an erroneous decision—a badly erroneous decision—and vindicated a dissent by the first Justice Harlan in Plessy v. Ferguson where he correctly identified that separate [but equal] to advantage one race can never be equal.

Blumenthal: And do you agree with the result?

Gorsuch: In Plessy? No.

Blumenthal: Do you agree with the result in Brown v. Board?

Gorsuch: Brown v. Board of Education, Senator, was a correct application…of the law and precedent.

Blumenthal: By the way, when Chief Justice Roberts testified before this committee and he was asked by Senator Kennedy, quote, “Do you agree with the Court’s conclusion?”— meaning in Brown, that the segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race is unconstitutional—Judge Roberts answered unequivocally, quote, “I do.” Would you agree with Judge Roberts?

Gorsuch: Senator, there’s no daylight here.

Blumenthal: OK…

Gorsuch: Justice Harlan got the original meaning of the Equal Protection Clause right the first time. And the Court recognized that belatedly. It’s one of the great stains on the Supreme Court’s history that it took it so long to get to that decision.

In short, Gorsuch said Brown was “a correct application of the law and precedent,” which means it was properly decided; he said his position on Brown was the same as Chief Justice Roberts’; and he said Brown rightly vindicated Harlan’s view of the Equal Protection Clause. That seems pretty unequivocal to me. But it did not satisy Blumenthal, who repeated his question the next day:

Blumenthal: I want to go back to some questions I asked you yesterday, which perhaps you didn’t get a chance to clarify. And I want to give you that opportunity. You recall we were talking about Brown v. Board of Education. And you said, I believe, that you agree with that decision. Do I have it correctly?

Gorsuch: Senator, it is a seminal decision of the United States Supreme Court, interpreting the 14th Amendment, maybe one of the great moments in Supreme Court history.

Blumenthal: You said, and I quote, that it “corrected an erroneous decision, a badly erroneous decision,” end quote, and you called it, quote, “a correct application of the law of precedent,” end quote. And you said also that it vindicated a dissent, quote, “that got the original meaning of the Equal Protection [Clause] right.” That sounds to me like you agreed with the result in Brown v. Board of Education.

Gorsuch: Senator, you can characterize it however you want. I’ve said what I said….I stick by what I said.

Blumenthal: So unlike Justice Kennedy and Justice Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts, in their confirmation hearings, you will not say that you agree that it was the right result.

Gorsuch: Senator, I’ve said it’s a seminal decision of the United States Supreme Court that corrected a badly erroneous decision. It vindicated the original understanding and the correct original meaning…of the 14th Amendment. It is one of the shining moments in constitutional history in the United States Supreme Court. That’s what I’ve said.

Blumenthal: So why will you not say that you agree with the result?

Gorsuch: Senator…I’m not sure what we’re arguing about here.

Blumenthal: We’re not arguing. I’m just asking why you are so averse to saying “yes, it was the right result”?

Gorsuch: I’m saying, as a judge, it was a seminal decision that got the original understanding of the 14th Amendment right and corrected one of the most deeply erroneous interpretations of law in Supreme Court history: Plessy v. Ferguson, which is a dark, dark stain on our court’s history. And it took way too long for the United States Supreme Court to get the 14th Amendment right. It’s an embarrassment in our history. That’s what I’ve said, Senator.

Blumenthal: And Chief Justice Roberts, in response to Senator Kennedy’s question, quote, “Do you agree with the court’s conclusion that the segregation of children in public schools, solely on the basis of race, is unconstitutional?” [said] quote, “I do.” You said yesterday, and I’m quoting you now, that there’s “no daylight” between you and Justice Roberts.

Gorsuch: Respectfully, I don’t see any daylight between what I’ve just said and what you’ve just quoted from the chief.

Blumenthal: OK.

Gorsuch:I just don’t, Senator. We’re on the same page on Brown v. Board of Education, Senator.

Blumenthal: OK.

Gorsuch: It’s a great and important decision.

Blumenthal apparently was frustrated by Gorsuch’s failure to phrase his agreement with Brown (and with Blumenthal) in exactly the way that Blumenthal preferred. But these exchanges leave no doubt that Gorsuch believes Brown, which he called “a great and important decision” and “one of the shining moments in constitutional history,” was correctly decided. In fact, that was Blumenthal’s understanding at the time. The next day, the fourth day of the confirmation hearing, Blumenthal said, “Yesterday, when I asked Judge Gorsuch about Brown v. Board of Education, he said in effect that that decision was correctly reached, that the result was correct. He agreed with it.” Yet 11 days later, there was Blumenthal on CNN, insisting that Gorsuch “refused to say whether it was correct or not.”

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Six Years Ago Today, Obama’s Education Department Made All Sex Unsafe on Campus

DormToday marks six years to the day since the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights released the infamous “Dear Colleague” letter obligating universities to investigate sexual assault and harassment.

The letter that launched the recent phase of fact-free investigatory proceedings and one-sided tribunals was just 19 pages long. It began with the assertion that sexual violence is a form of sexual harassment and is therefore prohibited by Title IX, which mandates gender equality at educational institutions that receive federal funding. In its letter, OCR also asserted that the sexual violence problem on college campuses was out of control, as evidenced by the 1-in-5 statistic.

“The statistics on sexual violence are both deeply troubling and a call to action for the nation,” wrote then Assistant Secretary Russlyn Ali.

We know, of course, that the 1-in-5 statistic is misleading at best: while many women admit to experiencing nonconsensual contact at colleges, they don’t see themselves as rape victims and very few are subjected to forced sex. But even if the sexual assault problem on campus was as severe as OCR claims, this would not justify any reduction of due process protections.

Unfortunately, the Dear Colleague letter established three important precedents that would harm the quest for fairness in college disciplinary proceedings.

First, it enshrined the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard. OCR’s letter explicitly prohibits universities from using a higher standard of proof to determine responsibility in sexual misconduct disputes.

“Grievance procedures that use this higher standard are inconsistent with the standard of proof established for violations of the civil rights laws, and are thus not equitable under Title IX,” wrote Ali.

If this had been the only change to misconduct hearings, it might not have been a complete disaster. Accused students who are afforded other fundamental rights—the right to an attorney, the right to confront the accuser, etc.—might still be said to have received due process, despite the lower burden of proof.

But OCR stopped short of recommending such protections.

“While OCR does not require schools to permit parties to have lawyers at any stage of the proceedings, if a school chooses to allow the parties to have their lawyers participate in the proceedings, it must do so equally for both parties,” wrote Ali. “OCR strongly discourages schools from allowing the parties personally to question or cross-examine each other during the hearing.”

OCR thus passed on the opportunity to guarantee that accused students would be competently represented and enjoy the absolute right to cross-examine their accusers. The letter speculated that “allowing an alleged perpetrator to question an alleged victim directly may be traumatic or intimidating, thereby possibly escalating or perpetuating a hostile environment.” But the entire purpose of the hearing is to determine whether the victim is alleged or not—administrators can’t know whether there is a hostile environment to perpetuate until they decide the case.

Lastly, the letter established the right of complainants to appeal an unfavorable outcome—a departure from the norms of Western justice, which traditionally hold that not-guilty verdicts are final.

In the six years since the letter was released, OCR has doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on its general sentiments, reaching settlement agreements with dozens of universities stipulating that due process will take a backseat at campus tribunals. The universities, for their part, have risen to the challenge of expelling more alleged rapists, and have initiated investigations into scores of male students—often athletes, often people of color—who engaged in drunken sex with female students. That these hook-ups were sometimes deemed consensual by all participants involved matters little to Title IX investigators who read OCR’s guidance. It is the job of the university, not the alleged victim, to determine whether a sex crime has taken place.

An increasing number of legal experts admit that there’s something deeply disturbing about the approach championed by OCR. The American College of Trial Lawyers recently expressed concerns about the preponderance of evidence standard. The Association of American University Professors, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the faculty of Harvard Law School are similarly concerned about Title IX enforcement. It’s an issue that President Trump’s Education Department should certainly revisit—and soon. Six years is a quite a long time.

For more on this subject, read Northwestern University Professor Laura Kipnis’s account of the Title IX witch hunt against Peter Ludlow.

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A Heightened Sense Of Vulnerability

Authored by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The gap between the happy-story fantasies of easy fixes to institutionalized corruption and systemic stagnation and the fraying-rope reality is widening, straining the bonds holding the whole contraption together to the breaking point.

Am I the only one sensing an increase in systemic vulnerability? I'm not talking about TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) so much as a sense of things fraying beneath the surface of normalcy.

I for one have never seen the outpouring of negative emotional energy from partisan political disagreements. It has become more a matter of quasi-religious faith than a matter of fact as to whether the Russians "hacked" the U.S. election and the Democratic National Committee. The "facts" are highly dependent on one's faith in this quasi-religious conflict; if you're anti-Trump, the now-discredited report by a private firm reporting to the FBI (red flag #1–doesn't the FBI have its own digital forensics assets? Why hire a flaky contractor to do this critically important national security work?) is the gospel truth.

if you're in the other camp, Julian Assange's declaration that the DNC material was offered to him by an insider is the obvious gospel truth.

There doesn't seem to be any neutral ground left in this quasi-religious divide, and that in itself creates a heightened sense of vulnerability: if we've reached the point where verifiable facts no longer matter, and one's faith in a partisan narrative is the deciding factor in what each citizen declares as "true," we are vulnerable to a breakdown not just of consensus but discourse.

We have reached the state where you have to be as cautious in revealing your political views or doubts as any Catholic or Protestant revealing their faith and doubts in the Reformation wars, in which faith alone decided life or death if you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That the issues dividing the nation into these faith-based camps are fundamentally unimportant no longer matters. Is it really consequential to the nation who sent the DNC emails to the media via Wikileaks? The answer is no: the DNC is not a governmental agency, it is a private-sector political organization.

Does it really matter if Russia attempted to influence the U.S. elections? There are a few ways this could be consequential, but they are speculative and lacking factual evidence.

One is a very unsavory hypocrisy. Has the U.S. government ever attempted to influence elections in other nations? Please don't even try to claim the answer is "no." There is simply too much documentation to claim the U.S. has a saintly policy of never attempting to influence the domestic views (and thus the election results) in other nations.

Since the U.S. constantly seeks to influence public opinion and elections in other nations, how falsely do our protests ring to international ears? How many observers in other nations are reckoning the U.S. is deservedly reaping a tiny shred of its own karma?

The other consequential possibility is if Russian government (or government sanctioned) hackers actually modified election results in voting machines or official tallies. To date, there is no evidence whatever of such direct tampering.

This quasi-religious conflict has blown unsupported speculations about Russian influence into the critical deciding factor of whether you are a member of the hated "other side" or not. Simply casting doubt on the criticality of this issue slips a noose around your neck in the so-called "Progressive" religion.

Does anybody else feel that the financial ropes holding the whole contraption together are fraying? When I post data-based charts illustrating the impossibility of paying all the promises that have been made to hundreds of millions of Americans without borrowing destabilizingly vast sums of money from future generations, some readers dismiss it as "doom and gloom." In other words, where's your American optimism that all challenges can be met and all problems solved, without any adjustment or sacrifice in our lifestyles or socio-economic systems?

Remember switch grass? This miracle weed was touted as the "solution" to the low energy yield on bio-fuel replacements for fossil fuels. We don't hear about it any more because it was a chimera, a PR "solution" as opposed to a real-world solution.

We have already reached the state of joyously embracing delusional PR "solutions" rather than grasping the nettle of addressing our systemic problems. Technological advances will not only solve every problem, we're assured, these advances will generate unprecedented wealth and prosperity.

Well, maybe so. That would certainly be convenient for us all. But I am not so sure technology will dislodge the systemic corruption of our economy and machinery of governance, the cartel-state status quo that smothers any advances that threaten its profits and/or power.

If there is a cheap and easy techno-fix to wealth and income disparity and declining productivity (i.e. declining profitability of labor and capital invested), then I'm all ears.

But it seems to me that the gap between the happy-story fantasies of easy fixes to institutionalized corruption and systemic stagnation and the fraying-rope reality is widening, straining the bonds holding the whole contraption together to the breaking point.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join Charles in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of his work via patreon.com. Check out both of his new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print). For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

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Silver; Bottoming process nearly complete here?

 

Hard to believe that Silver hit $50 an ounce in 2011? Even though Silver is off to a good start in 2017 (up near 14%), it remains over 50% below the highs of 6-years ago.

Below looks at Silver on a monthly basis, over the past 40-years.

Silver Monthly

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Silver hit the 1979 highs in 2011 (Double Topped) and then proceed to create a series of lower highs and lower lows. The decline took Silver down to its 23% retracement level of the 1993 lows/2011 highs. It is possible that Silver created the “Head” of a multi-year reversal pattern (inverse head & shoulders) at (1).

If Silver is making a long-term bottoming pattern (inverse head & shoulders), the ideal price action would be; create a right shoulder above the left shoulder, where a rally takes off and breaks above the falling neckline, in the $20 zone. At this time the neckline comes into play as resistance. To prove the read correct, breaking above the neckline is a must!!!

Full Disclosure- Even though Silver has done well in 2017, Premium and Metals members have been playing this sector via GDX & GDXJ. If this read for Silver would happen to be correct, Gold, Silver and Miners should do well.

 

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Watch Live: Donald Trump Hosts Town Hall With Business Leaders

On Tuesday morning, President Donald Trump is hosting a town hall meeting at the White House Tuesday to discuss the “American Business Climate”, where dozens of high-profile CEOs will discuss a verity of business-related topics. The one hour and 45 minute-long meeting is an “opportunity to discuss policies to create a pro-business climate with top Partnership CEOs from all industries,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters told Reuters.

Chief executives of Citigroup, Blackstone Group, JetBlue Airways, Mastercard, and the New York Stock Exchange and senior executives from General Electric, Hearst, HSBC Bank USA, Interpublic Group, Vornado Realty Trust, Centerbridge Partners and Paulson & Co. are among those who will be present, according to Reuters.

White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said the town hall is an “opportunity to discuss policies to create a pro-business climate with top Partnership CEOs from all industries.”

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US Factory Orders Rise At Fastest In 3 Years (Thanks To Global Warmongery)

Great news – US factory orders grew 7.3% YoY, the highest since July 2014, surely showing the Trumpian hope translating into economic reality? However, adjusted for non-defense and aircraft orders, year-over-year growth was just 0.3% – not exactly what the record high levels of sentiment would have hoped for.

 

 

Unless Washington can keep the global wormongery up, this spike will be short-lived just as in 2014. Time for some more Putin bashing, or is North Korea now the focus.

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Ralph Lauren To Close Flagship Fifth Avenue Store; Cut Jobs

The ongoing retail massacre claimed its latest victim this morning when iconic luxury retailer Ralph Lauren said it would shut its flagship Polo store on Fifth Avenue in New York City, among other office and store locations, and cut jobs as part of a cost-cutting plan. The company also said on Tuesday that it would integrate its products from the Fifth Avenue store into the Ralph Lauren men’s and women’s flagship stores on Madison Avenue and its downtown locations.

From the press release:

As part of Ralph Lauren’s continued commitment to optimizing its store footprint, the Company will close its dedicated Polo store at 711 Fifth Avenue and integrate its product into the Ralph Lauren Men’s and Women’s flagship stores on Madison Avenue and its downtown locations. The Company will continue to operate its seven additional store locations and its flagship Polo Bar Restaurant in New York City.

 

These decisions, together with actions to continue to streamline the organization, cost structure and real estate portfolio, will result in approximately $140 million in annualized expense savings, which will also help fund investments for future growth. These savings are in addition to the $180-$220 million of annualized expense savings announced at the Company’s June 7, 2016 Investor Day and are a part of achieving its financial objectives. Ralph Lauren expects to incur restructuring charges of approximately $370 million as a result of these new activities.

 

The Company will also explore new retail concepts, including leveraging Ralph’s Coffee, and developing new store formats that connect the brand to loyal and new consumers.

The retailer also said its e-commerce business would move to Salesforce.com Inc’s cheaper and more efficient Commerce Cloud platform. Ralph Lauren had said last year it was building an in-house global e-commerce platform.

Ralph Lauren said it expects to incur about $370 million in charges and save about $140 million from the new measures, which are part of a cost-cutting plan announced in June. The retailer did not specify how many jobs it would cut.

Last June, Ralph Lauren said it would cut 1,000 jobs and close 50 stores to lower costs and revive sales growth. As Reuters adds, Ralph Lauren, like other luxury brands, has been struggling as Americans spend lesser on apparel and accessories, resulting in falling sales in the last seven quarters.

Is was not immediately clear which CMBS loan would be impacted as a result of the imminent rent shortfall from Ralph Lauren’s vacancy, or whether a new renter had already signed up to take over the soon to be vacant space.

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Chelsea Clinton Answers If She Will Run Against Trump In 2020

Having become more vocal – especially on Twitter – since her mother’s crushing defeat in the election last year, Chelsea Clinton expressed doubt that her mother would ever run for public office again during a CBS interview:

“…I don’t think so,” she said. “I think right now she’s focused on her book. She’s focused, thankfully, on her grandchildren. She’s focused on what she can do to help support work that she’s been engaged in for longer than I’ve been alive, around children, around women, around families.”

Then went to discuss the possibility of her own run for The White House…

“I’m definitely not the right person to run to defeat [President Trump] in 2020.

 

Right now, the answer is no, but I think we all need to be asking ourselves that question periodically,”

So, is that a maybe? One can only imagine the nicknames Trump would have for her.

Full interview below:

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Stocks: a Kiss Before We Roll Over?

The markets are talking but few are listening.

Historically, the start of the second quarter is an EXTREMELY bullish day for stocks. But despite this seasonality the market struggled yesterday. It was only through a dramatic intervention from Central banks that we closed marginally down.

This is a major warning sign.

Indeed, the S&P 500 has broken out of a bearish rising wedge pattern. And even worse, it has FAILED to reclaim critical support. Instead, it has just “kissed” it and then rolled over, which is usually called “the kiss of death.”

This is extremely bearish. What’s about to hit won’t be pretty.

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Best Regards

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

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Guns, Privacy, and Freedom Benefit From New Tech Tools: New at Reason

If you want to be a successful subversive, you probably shouldn’t take on the moniker “Dr. Death” as you publicly tout your establishment-challenging ways. That’s what Daniel Crowninshield did with regard to the unfinished firearm receivers he sold, to be completed on computer numerically controlled (CNC) mills in his North Sacramento, California, machine shop. Theoretically, customers operated the mills themselves, making the finished firearms legal. But an undercover agent insisted that shop employees did the honors, and Crowninshield got three and a half years in prison.

What’s remarkable about this story isn’t just Crowninshield’s excessive enthusiasm in marketing his services, writes J.D. Tuccille. More important is what this story illustrates about the unenforceable nature of laws that people find oppressive—and the growing vulnerability of such restrictions.

View this article.

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