Month: December 2017

German Sci-Fi Show Dark Invites Comparisons to Better Choices: New at Reason

'Dark'“We trust that time is linear,” says the narrator in the early moments of Netflix’s new sci-fi series Dark. But what if “yesterday, today and tomorrow are not consecutive”? A few minutes later, a young boy is showing his newest magic trick to his dad, a variant of the venerable street hustle in which a pea moves from under one cup to another, unseen. “How did it do that?” wonders the dad. “The question is not how,” replies the magisterial young kid. “It’s when.”

From these snapshots, you can tell a good deal about Dark: that it’s about time travel. That the producers read a screenwriting textbook that contained a chapter or 10 about foreshadowing. And that watching this thing will require a degree of patience that would make Job look like somebody who accidentally took crystal meth in place of his OCD medicine. Television critic Glenn Garvin explains more.

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Expect Desperate and Insane Behavior From Government in 2018 – Part 1

I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe — “That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

– Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

As we head into 2018, I believe governments around the world will become increasingly insecure about their positions of power and control, which will result in increased paranoia about whether or not they have the consent of the governed.

Being a global empire in decline, the U.S. power structure has the most to lose, making it particularly vulnerable to such panic. I suspect forces within the U.S. government are likely to engage in various attempts to reestablish authority via desperate and authoritarian moves as 2018 unfolds. I don’t say this to spread fear; rather, I think such moves will result in considerable pushback from the population at large, particularly from younger generations who are intimately aware of how spectacularity the status quo has failed them. Panic and desperation from those in control shouldn’t be feared, it should be expected and contemplated ahead of time. That’s why I’m writing this series. I want as many people as possible to start thinking about this now so we aren’t caught off guard.

The areas I’ll be diving into with these pieces consist of cannabis, Bitcoin and war against Iran. I’m sure there are plenty of other areas government will target in its last ditch effort to exert control over a populace sick and tired of these busybody, corrupt authoritarians, but these are issues I follow closely and have a certain degree of familiarity with. As such, they’ll be the focus of this series.

Today’s topic is cannabis. This seems the least likely area for government action, specifically because it would be such a monumentally stupid move. That said, just because something’s idiotic doesn’t mean we should simply discount it, particularly with human fossil Jeff Sessions continuing to chirp on the issue every chance he gets.

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Stock Market Acceleration Reaches Terminal Stage

Via KesslerCompanies.com,

Secular stock-market bullish trends tend to accelerate as they mature.

The last three big bull moves in the Dow Jones Industrial Average look very similar and suggest a near-term major correction.

See below:

DotCom Bubble:

Global Financial Crisis:

'Everything' Bubble:

 

It's different this time though.

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Watch Live As Democrats Force Another Procedural Vote To Send Tax Reform Back To Committee

Tune in below as the Senate takes yet another vote on a procedural motion to force the GOP tax reform legislation back to committee.  As we noted earlier, this last ditch effort by Democrats comes after Mitch McConnell confirmed that Republicans have the votes required to pass their tax bill after working through the night to make a series of substantial changes.  Here’s more from Bloomberg:

Senate agrees to hold another procedural vote from Democrats on the tax bill at 2pm, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will speak on the floor after the vote.

 

Vote is the latest effort from Democrats to send the bill back to cmte; all previous attempts to delay the bill have failed

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Title IX Amok at RPI: New at Reason

Clinging to Obama-era Title IX guidelines, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute pursued rape charges against a male student that were later tossed out in court. The kicker, Lindsay Marchello writes, is the student wasn’t enrolled at RPI.

Even had the university had jurisdiction, Elliott said, “the procedure followed by RPI in this case was arbitrary, capricious, and in clear violation of [the] Petitioner’s rights.”

According to court documents, there was a possible language barrier between John Doe and the Title IX investigators. The university requested a meeting with John Doe without informing him that he was under investigation. It wasn’t until he arrived at the meeting that he was told he was the subject of a sexual misconduct complaint. His Title IX inquisitors gave him only a few minutes to review documents pertaining to the charge before questioning him. Without counsel.

The court ordered RPI’s findings overturned and the statements John Doe gave to RPI purged from the record.

“The court has spoken, and actions taken by universities without jurisdiction and in excess of their sexual misconduct policies and Title IX will not be tolerated,” Brent French, one of John Doe’s attorneys, told the Times Union.

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Reason Is THE Libertarian Voice in National Debates About Politics, Culture, and Ideas

Note: This is Reason’s annual webathon week, during which we ask our audience to support our activities with tax-deductible donations. If you like what we do, please consider supporting us. More details here.

Check out this novel take on the sexual harassment and assault scandals that are clear-cutting vast parts of Hollywood, the news business, and private companies:

We’re rightfully concerned about how the internet gives corporations more opportunities to exert power over consumers, but we talk far less about the flip side: We have more power over companies now, too. For better or worse, we’ve all become remarkably effective at mobilizing it to our own causes.

In contrast, look at Washington. If either Representative John Conyers Jr. or Senator Al Franken were in today’s corporate world, they’d be long gone. And just imagine if Roy Moore was a candidate for a C-suite job this month. He’d have no shot….

The modern American capitalist system is far from perfect. But for all its flaws, our system — and the digital communication channels it enabled — has delivered social justice more swiftly and effectively than supposedly more enlightened public bodies tend to.

As we observe and adjust to the sociosexual storm we’re all in, let’s appreciate the powers and paradigms making it possible: feminism, but also free markets.

That’s an op-ed written by Reason’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown and published in The New York Times earlier this week. It’s not simply a sharp, bold, and provocative take on changing social mores, it’s an explicitly libertarian take that stresses individual agency and responsibility, the ways in which new forms of communication empower the voiceless, and why even powerful corporations can be brought to heel by market forces.

Brown’s piece, titled “NBC Didn’t Fire Matt Lauer. We Did,” exemplifies one of the major services Reason provides for its readers and like-minded libertarians. Not only do we publish dozens of articles every day, hundreds of videos and podcasts every year, and an award-winning magazine every month, our writers and editors appear all over the place, representing libertarian views where they are mostly lacking.

We don’t just preach to the choir at Reason, we go into the dragon’s lair and do battle with right-wingers, left-wingers, and everyone in between who wants to limit the way you can live your life. We strive to be your voice in national debates about politics, culture, and ideas, a voice that argues for hard-core libertarian principles such as autonomy and self-ownership, the right to be left alone, and the ability to live without having to ask permission for every deviation from the “norm” when it comes to lifestyle, business, or whatever.

Editor-at-Large Matt Welch is a one-man wrecking crew when it comes to appearing on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC, making sure that “Free Minds and Free Markets” have a seat at the table; he’s a regular on satellite radio to boot. He and I have both had memorable appearances on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, where libertarians are greeted the way Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheikh were greeted by professional wrestling crowds in the 1980s. In recent months, Liz Brown has been joined in the Times’ pages by colleagues Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Robby Soave. We show up in The Washington Post, too, which employs a couple of former Reason staffers (David Weigel and Radley Balko), The Daily Beast, The Week, and just about every place in print, online, or on air that you can think of.

Later today, for instance, you can catch me on NPR’s wildly popular show On the Media, where I’ll debate net neutrality with Tom Wheeler, the former Federal Communications Commission chairman who implemented those very rules.

We’re not shrinking violets when it comes to representing, that’s for sure. We take our ideas, beliefs, and policies seriously. And we take seriously our role as the leading libertarian organization advocating not simply for reducing the size, scope, and spending of government but for a world in which individuals are free to pursue happiness as they define it.

I’ll leave you with more recent example of how Reason is taking its message—and yours—to the streets. Or at least to people who haven’t been exposed to libertarian ideas. On November 3, Katherine Mangu-Ward and I debated the editors of the socialist magazine Jacobin about the ethics and effects of capitalism at New York City’s Cooper Union. It was packed house (900 tickets were sold!) and mostly hostile not simply to laissez-faire but to even the idea of private property or wage work.

This sort of missionary work is part and parcel of what we do. In advertiser-speak, it’s part of our unique-selling proposition: We go out into the world spreading the good word of Reason wherever and whenever we can create an opportunity. Even and maybe especially in hostile territory.

Note: This is Reason’s annual webathon week, during which we ask our audience to support our activities with tax-deductible donations. If you like what we do, please consider supporting us. More details here.

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“Surrender Your Firearms” Hawaii Police Plan To Confiscate Guns From All Medical Marijuana Users

Authored by Alex Thomas via SHTFplan.com,

The Honolulu Police Department has sent a series of letters to local medical marijuana patients that directly orders them to surrender their firearms or, presumably, face state sanctioned violence to remove them.

Signed by Honolulu Police Chief Susan Ballard, the letters “inform” patients that upon receipt of the confiscation order, a citizen has 30 days to turn over their guns to the police. This stunning move amounts to direct gun confiscation for people who have no history of violent crimes.

As Leafly noted,

“The existence of the notices, first reported early today by Russ Belville at The Marijuana Agenda podcast, was confirmed to Leafly News this afternoon by the Honolulu Police Department.

 

“The startling order comes just three months after the state’s first medical marijuana dispensary opened in Hawaii’s capital city.”

Courtesy of Russ Belville, The Marijuana Agenda

Although federal law prohibits all cannabis consumers from purchasing firearms, this is the first time that a local law enforcement agency has “proactively” sought to confiscate weapons from state-registered medical marijuana patients.

Despite the law being confirmed in multiple federal courts, any rational human being knows that this is nothing short of tyrannical overreach by an overzealous police chief who most likely is against private gun ownership in the first place.

Literally no one in the history of marijuana smoking as specifically killed someone because they have smoked a joint yet people like Police Chief Susan Ballard are apparently so caught up in their own power trip that they are willing to use violent force to strip the legitimate Second Amendment rights of citizens who legally use marijuana for a variety of aliments.

Make no mistake, if a local resident in Hawaii refuses this order, you can almost guarantee that the next step is forced gun confiscation at the barrel of a gun.

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Kushner Said To Have Ordered Flynn To Contact Russia

When commenting on the Flynn plea deal with Mueller, we said that while hardly evidence of collusion between Trump and Russia, especially since all events took place after the election, the real question is who was the “senior member of the transition team” that instructed Flynn to call Russia. Now, according to Bloomberg’s Eli Lake we may have the answer: none other than Jared Kushner, who as Lake says, “could be one of the next dominoes to fall.”

According to the Bloomberg report, “one of Flynn’s lies to the FBI was when he said that he never asked Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, to delay the vote for the U.N. Security Council resolution. The indictment released today from the office of special prosecutor Robert Mueller describes this lie: “On or about December 22, 2016, Flynn did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution.” At the time, the U.N. Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements was a big deal. Even though the Obama administration had less than a month left in office, the president instructed his ambassador to the United Nations to abstain from a resolution, breaking a precedent that went back to 1980 when it came to one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N.

This was the context of Kushner’s instruction to Flynn last December. One transition official at the time said Kushner called Flynn to tell him he needed to get every foreign minister or ambassador from a country on the U.N. Security Council to delay or vote against the resolution. Much of this appeared to be coordinated also with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose envoys shared their own intelligence about the Obama administration’s lobbying efforts to get member stats to support the resolution with the Trump transition team.  

As Lake correctly notes, “for now it’s unclear what to make of all of this” especially since th most important part of a case is missing: motive.

We also know from Flynn’s “statement of the offense” that he lied to FBI agents as the bureau was investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election and any links between Russia and the Trump campaign in this period. Nonetheless, nothing in the Flynn plea sheds any light on whether the Trump campaign actually colluded with Russia to influence the election.

Here there are two possibilities: one bad for Trump, and one innocuous. As ABC News reported on Friday, Flynn is prepared to tell Mueller’s team that Trump had instructed him to make contact with Russia during the campaign itself.

“If those contacts involved the emails the U.S. intelligence community charges Russia stole from leading Democrats, then Mueller will have uncovered evidence of actual collusion between the president and a foreign adversary during the election. Impeachment could then be in the cards.”

That’s the bad case. But, Lake concedes, it’s also possible that the Justice Department became interested in Flynn’s initial conversation with Kislyak on other, less explosive grounds.

One leading theory pushed Friday by Democrats involves a violation of a 1799 statute known as the Logan Act. A relic of the John Adams administration, this discredited law makes it illegal for a private U.S. citizen to undermine the foreign policy of a sitting president in contact with a foreign power. No American has ever been successfully prosecuted under that law.

This path is likely a dead end: some conservatives urged the George W. Bush administration to prosecute former House speaker Nancy Pelosi under the Logan Act in 2007 when she visited the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, when the White House was trying to isolate him. Nothing ever came of that.

Still, a Logan Act investigation would explain the bureau’s interest in Flynn’s conversations about the U.N. Security Council resolution on Israel. This is what Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Friday: “This shows a Trump associate negotiating with the Russians against U.S. policy and interests before Donald Trump took office and after it was announced that Russia had interfered in our election. That’s a stunning revelation and could be a violation of the Logan Act, which forbids unauthorized U.S. citizens from negotiating with a foreign power.”

If that is the extent of Mueller’s charges, it’s nothing and Trump walks away scott free. As Lake notes, “if that’s all there is, then the whispers of collusion will look foolish. Nonetheless, it may be enough to take out not only Flynn, but also the man who married the president’s daughter.“

Of course, if Kushner is the last casualty of all this, it is likely safe to say that not many tears will be shed.

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Who Will Win The Self-Driving Taxi Race?

Authored by Jon Lesage via OilPrice.com,

Ride-hailing firms Uber and Lyft have become transportation platforms for automakers and tech giants to someday bring automated, electrified mobility to the mass market. It’s still years in the making, but both companies are gaining significant support during a year when it looked like Uber could be coming to an end.

This year, Lyft has benefited from its solid reputation and service level, while Uber’s lion share of the market has been softened by a wave of crises starting earlier this year.

Uber faces another serious challenge with admission last week that it paid off hackers $100,000 over a year ago to destroy stolen data on more than 57 million customers and drivers. That’s brought up a few class- action lawsuits and a federal probe. Uber could be losing a wave of loyal riders enraged about having their personal date violated.

The latest scandal didn’t get in the way of Indian automaker Mahindra and Mahindra and Uber announcing a pilot project on Friday to test out electric vehicles on the Uber platform in India. Hundreds of EVs will roll out in Delhi and Hyderabad starting in March, and other Indian cities will be under consideration.

One of Uber’s rivals in India, Ola, earlier this year launched a pilot project in Nagpur that will lead to a larger rollout of electric cars in India. That initiative has found backing from Japan’s Softbank Group, which ironically is leading the way to head an investment group putting down about $10 billion on Uber. Softbank revealed that it had found likely sellers for the tender offer with shares valued at $48 billion, which is about 30% less than the previous private valuation around $70 billion.

So far the hacker data theft scandal hasn’t put the Uber funding round to a halt.

Ola has an agreement with Mahindra to buy 40,000 vehicles, with some of them being EVs. Mahindra will be adding two new EVs to its fleet, with one being jointly developed with its South Korean unit, Ssangyong Motor Co, India is working on a new policy for EVs that government officials have claimed will follow China, UK, and France in banning fossil-fuel powered vehicles. EV sales are slight in India, which is one of the world’s fastest growing auto sales market with about 3 million units sold last year. Automakers are skeptical about India taking a leading role in EV adoption due to the high cost of batteries and lack of charging infrastructure in the country.

The national government continues to push forward on the plan for clean vehicles and energy, with some of it being deployed through public transportation. Uber and Mahindra will work with public agencies and private companies to establish charging stations, starting in Hyderabad.

While Lyft is getting most of the attention these days for forging alliances in developing autonomous vehicle rides, Uber is not out of the game. The company had taken the lead two years ago with test runs in Pittsburgh with Volvo vehicles, some of them plug-in hybrids. The company has been sidetracked by serious internal strife and executive turnovers, and an expensive and convoluted lawsuit with Google’s Waymo self-driving car unit over claims of intellectual property theft. Pittsburgh had stalled out for Uber, and efforts to start test projects in California were put on hold. But that’s taken a new turn.

Uber will be buying up to 24,000 self-driving cars from Volvo, with most or all of them being the XC90 SUV equipped with autonomous technology. The deal will go on at least from 2019 through 2021. Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group is developing an automated system to be used in the Volvos.

Uber has been testing out autonomous Volvo vehicles for more than a year in Tempe, Ariz., and Pittsburgh. Drivers are still included in the front seat to take over the vehicle, if necessary, for safety. The companies had already committed to a $300 million alliance to develop self-driving vehicle systems, including steering and braking features and sensors.

Lyft is in a stronger position to lead the way with electrified autonomous vehicles deployed in mobility services through its partnership with General Motors and its Maven car-sharing unit; a research partnership with Alphabet Inc.’s Waymo; and agreements with Ford and startups Nutonomy and Drive.ai to incorporate self-driving cars into Lyft’s fleet.

While Uber is the largest ride-hailing company in the world, Lyft doesn’t seem to have an intention for going that route. Perhaps becoming the largest, or a close second, ride-hailing company in North America, would be sufficient. The company is gaining private equity funding, lately seeking to raise an additional $500 million in a round led by CapitalG last month, an Alphabet venture subsidiary. Lyft is being valued around $11.5 billion, much lower than the peak Uber had reached last year, but much closer to its competitor’s new market valuation. Some of the funding will go toward Lyft entering the Canada market.

It’s been a big year for Lyft. The company now covers 95% of the U.S. population, with over 100 new markets being added. Lyft was also granted permission to test autonomous vehicles in California. It came two months after the ride-hailing firm announced plans to offer a self-driving car as a ride option in the San Francisco bay area.

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Turkey Turmoils: Erdogan Exposed In Trial, Leaked Docs; Seeks Arrest Of CIA Analyst Over Coup Attempt

Turkish President Erdogan's week just went from bad to worse…

After yesterday's Zarrab trial confirmed Erdogan was responsible for the secret gold trade with Iran that enabled the nation to evade US sanctions…

"What I’m saying is that the prime minister at that time period Recep Tayyip Erdogan and minister of the treasury … had given orders to start doing this trade."

The opposition party released documents today, including bank receipts, which it alleges show off-shore transactions by people in President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's inner circle.

The names mentioned on the documents include Erdogan's close relatives and inner circle. dpa cannot independently verify the documents.

 

The Turkish president, leading the country for 15 years, has staunchly rejected the claims about off-shore transactions worth millions to evade taxes.

 

His lawyer says they are lies. The president pledged to resign if the claims were proven true.

 

CHP spokesman Bulent Tezcan showed the documents at a press conference that was broadcast online, saying: "Everything is written here." He promised to hand the bank documents, which are said to show transactions in the Isle of Man, to a prosecutor.

 

On Thursday, a prosecutor's office in Ankara announced it was investigating the CHP claims.

 

However, the AKP blocked a parliamentary investigation.

 

Erdogan and his relatives launched a 1.5 million lira (380,000 dollars) lawsuit against Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the head of the main opposition People's Republican Party (CHP), over the allegations, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.

And so, in what seems like an attempt to distract, Turkish authorities are seeking the arrest of a former top CIA analyst allegedly involved in last year’s failed coup. (as AP reports)

Anadolu Agency reported Friday that Istanbul prosecutors issued a detention warrant for Graham Fuller, a former vice chairman of the CIA’s National Intelligence Council.

 

The agency says the prosecutors suspect Fuller of being in contact with people who have been accused of participating in the coup attempt in some way.

 

Anadolu says Fuller is being sought on charges that include attempting to violate the constitutional order.

 

The Turkish government blames a Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, for allegedly orchestrating the takeover attempt, an allegation Gulen denies.

 

Turkish officials think Fuller was instrumental in obtaining permanent U.S. residency for Gulen.

Interestingly, while the Lira is hovering at record lows, Turkey bond yields have plunged in the last week…

 

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