Less than an hour after former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was sentenced to an additonal 43 months in prison in the second of two trials – bringing his total sentence to 90 months, or 7.5 years for tax fraud, bank fraud and conspiracy, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. slapped Manafort with a new indictment.
Manafort will face 16 charges, including an accusation that he committed residential mortgage fraud by falsifying loan documents “in the first degree.”
Of note, President Trump would not have pardon power over a state conviction.
While Mr. Trump has not said he intends to pardon his former campaign chairman, he has often spoken of his power to pardon and has defended Mr. Manafort on a number of occasions, calling him a “brave man.”
The new state charges against Mr. Manafort are contained in a 16-count indictment that alleges a yearlong scheme in which he falsified business records to obtain millions of dollars in loans, Mr. Vance said in a news release after the federal sentencing.
“No one is beyond the law in New York,” he said, adding that the investigation by the prosecutors in his office had “yielded serious criminal charges for which the defendant has not been held accountable.” –NYT
Developing…
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Testimony provided to Congress from former FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveals contradictions as to when she learned about former British spy Christopher Steele’s anti-Trump dossier, sheds light on the “insurance policy” and exposes the Obama Justice Department’s decision not to charge Hillary Clinton with allegedly violating the Espionage Act.
Page’s testimony, which was delivered behind closed doors last July before a joint task force of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees, reveals the internal machinations between senior bureau leadership and the DOJ. Basically, her testimony adds more depth to what happened during the critical months during the FBI’s investigation into President Trump’s election campaign and the bureau’s “Midyear Exam” investigation into Clinton.
As for the Clinton investigation, Page said the bureau “did not blow over gross negligence.” She told Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, there were ongoing discussions with former FBI Director James Comey and other senior officials about the issue. She said “on its face, it did seem like, well, maybe there’s a potential here for this to be the charge. And we had multiple conversations, multiple conversations with the Justice Department about charging gross negligence,” she said.
She added “the Justice Department’s assessment was that it was both constitutionally vague, so that they did not actually feel that they could permissibly bring that charge.”
Page’s testimony does coincide with what former FBI General Counsel James Baker’s told the committee on “gross negligence.” In testimony he stated that he originally believed Hillary Clinton’s mishandling of highly classified information was “alarming” and “appalling,” as first reported at SaraACarter.com. He also believed her use of a private server to send the classified emails was sufficient enough to secure an indictment to possibly charge her for violations under the Espionage Act, for mishandling sensitive government documents.
However, her testimony focuses on the DOJ’s push not to charge Clinton, whereas Baker puts the onus on Comey. He said Comey did not believe the charges would stick and that he argued with Comey until just before the public announcement not to charge Clinton. Baker suggested he changed his mind shortly before Comey announced publicly on July 5, 2016 not to charge the then presidential candidate.
Crossfire Hurricane
Page also expands on the FBI’s controversial “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into members of the Trump campaign and links the investigation to controversial text messages made between her and former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok regarding the “insurance policy” against Trump. Strzok and Page were removed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation after their anti-Trump text messages were discovered. Page left the FBI and Strzok was fired shortly after DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz report was made public last year.
Page expresses in her testimony that during the investigation into the Trump campaign there was a sentiment at the time among bureau officials regarding the president’s electability: nobody believed he would win.
“So, upon the opening of the crossfire hurricane investigation, we had a number of discussions up through and including the Director regularly in which we were trying to find an answer to the question, right, which is, is there someone associated with the [Trump] campaign who is working with the Russians in order to obtain damaging information about Hillary Clinton,” states Page.
She adds, “and given that it is August, we were very aware of the speed and sensitivity that we needed to operate under.”
“[W]e don’t need to go at a total breakneck speed because so long as he doesn’t become President, there isn’t the same threat to national security, right,” Page added.
“But if he becomes President, that totally changes the game.”
Ohr and Page Testimony On Steele Don’t Match Up
Moreover, Page contradicts Ohr’s testimony regarding when she first knew about former British spy Christopher Steele’s dossier. She claims in her testimony that she did not know about the dossier in August 2016, however, Ohr’s testimony reveals that he delivered Steele’s information to the bureau shortly after meeting with Steele. In fact, he met with former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and specifically, Page at the bureau to deliver the information.
Ohr reveals this during an exchange with then-Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Trey Gowdy, R-SC.
“Why? Why did you meet with them,” asks Gowdy.
“To pass the latest information that I had received,” Ohr responds.
“How did you find out who to meet with? Who did you call to find out,” questions Gowdy.
Ohr explains that prior to that meeting with McCabe and Page he had met with Steele on July 30, 2016.
“After the July 30th meeting with Chris Steele, I wanted to provide the information he had given me to the FBI. I reached out for Andrew McCabe, at that time, Deputy Director of the FBI and somebody who had previously led the organized crime, Russian organized crime squad in New York and who I had worked with in the past, and asked if he could meet with me,” he said.
“I went to his office to provide the information, and Lisa Page was there. So I provided the information to them. And some point after that, I think, I was given Peter Strzok, or somehow put in contact with Peter Strzok.”
Gowdy then asks when exactly did Ohr meet Strzok and Page.
“I don’t recall the exact date,” Ohr says.
“I’m guessing it would have been in August since I met with Chris Steele at the end of July, and I’m pretty sure I would have reached out to Andrew McCabe soon afterwards.”
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Something very strange has been taking place in the market over the past three days: as we showed on several occasions earlier this week, while stocks are once again soaring, led by the old faithful tech sector, and perhaps facilitated by the low-volume flux ahead of this Friday’s quad-witching which tends to always inflict ‘max pain’ on established derivative positions, bonds are not only not “buying it” quite literally, but are telegraphing further economic weakness ahead. Nowhere is this more visible than in the latest divergence between stocks and bonds shown below.
This morning, BMO’s chief technical analyst Russ Visch makes just this observation and in his daily action report writes that “the divergence between the S&P 500 and the U.S. 2-year yield (which have traded in lockstep for many months now) is only getting worse. Either the bond market has it wrong here, or equity markets do.”
The bond market certainly hasn’t been buying into this week’s strength in equity markets either. The divergence between the S&P 500 and the U.S. 2-year yield (which have traded in lockstep for many months now) is only getting worse. Who has it wrong here? Bonds or equities?
We couldn’t agree more, and while we reserve judgment on who is right and who is wrong – although the historical track record has shown time and again that it is bonds that virtually always end up being correct in the long- or even medium-run – Visch has no such qualms, and writes that “despite the recent price strength our short-term equity timing model remains negative so we’re willing to bet it’s the latter.”
And speaking of BMO’s market timing model, Visch notes that “while the trend for equities has been positive so far this week”, it remains a “bit of a head scratcher since coming into the week our short-term timing model was just about as negative as it ever gets” and adds that “there’s not a lot to like outside of the price action in the major averages” bringing attention to the lack of participation, saying that “volume has been nonexistent during this latest bounce.“
Meanwhile, he points out that composite bullish sentiment ticked lower for the first time in nine weeks.
So what can make Visch – and his model – turn bullish? As he caption the S&P chart below, while “the short-term trend remains negative. Only a close above 2815 negates the near-term negative outlook” and similarly for the Nasdaq, only a close above multiple resistance levels in the 7650-7675 zone “negates the short-term negative call here.”
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Lobbyist and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was sentenced to more than six years in prison by a federal judge in the District of Columbia on two conspiracy counts. Manafort pleaded guilty last fall to the two charges which encompass a host of crimes – including money laundering and obstruction of justice.
Manafort was sentenced to 60 months on count one, with 30 months of that overlapping a 47 month sentence handed down last week in a separate trial – and 13 months on count two.
BREAKING: Paul Manafort has been sentenced to:
– Count 1: 60 months, with 30 months concurrent with EDVA sentence
– Count 2: 13 months, to run consecutive to count 1 and the EDVA sentence
During the hearing, Manafort asked Judge Amy Berman Jackson for leniency during Wednesday’s hearing, saying that the criminal charges against him have “taken everything from me already,” and asking that Berman Jackson not impose any additional prison time beyond the sentence handed down last week.
Jackson agreed with Manafort that the original 19-24 year sentencing guideline “overstates the seriousness of this offense.”
“I am sorry for what I have done and all the activities that have gotten us here today,” said Manafort in a calm and steady voice as he read from a prepared statement. “While I cannot undo the past, I will ensure that the future will be very different.”
The 69-year-old Manafort – who arrived to court in a wheelchair, said that he was his wife’s primary caregiver and wanted to be able to resume their life together.
“She needs me and I need her. I ask you to think of this and our need for each other as you deliberate,” said Manafort. “This case has taken everything from me already — my properties, my cash, my life insurance, my trust accounts for my children and my grandchildren, and more.”
In response, prosecutor Andrew Weissmann suggested that Manafort should be given no quarter.
“I believe that is not reflective of someone who has learned a harsh lesson. It is not a reflection of remorse,” said Weissmann. “It is evidence that something is wrong with sort of a moral compass, that someone in that position would choose to make that decision at that moment.”
His plea for leniency followed prosecutor Andrew Weissmann’s scathing assessment of crimes that the government said spanned more than a decade and continued even while Manafort was awaiting trial. He said Manafort took steps to conceal his foreign lobbying work, laundered millions of dollars to fund a lavish lifestyle and then, while on house arrest, coached other witnesses to lie on his behalf. –AP
Before reading her decision, Berman Jackson reamed Manafort – saying that there was no good explanation for granting the leniency Manafort had requested.
Manafort’s “disregard for facts” has continued throughout the case, Jackson says. Says Manafort still isn’t being straight with court now about his contacts with witnesses.
“What you were doing was lying to Congress and the American public,” said Berman Jackson, adding that Manafort had “contempt for” and “believed he had the right to manipulate these proceedings.”
“Saying I’m sorry I got caught is not an inspiring plea for leniency,” the judge said, adding that Manafort’s defense that there was “no collusion” with Russia is not related to the case.
Manafort “squandered his chance to plead for a lighter sentence.” Judge Berman Jackson
Jackson also blasted Manafort for being “dissembling” and “less than candid” about multiple issues, and that “A significant portion of his career has been spent gaming the system.”
Judge Jackson blasts Manafort for “dissembling” and being “less than candid” about multiple issues throughout the case. “It’s all very problematic to me,” she said, “because court is one of those places where facts still matter.”
Jackson: The defendant’s own conduct makes it impossible to assess the value of the information that he did provide. How do they know if he’s being truthful?
Last week’s case in which Manafort received 47 months in prison was overseen by Judge T.S. Ellis of the Federal District Court in Alexandria, VA. He was found guilty on eight felony counts of tax evasion, bank fraud and failing to disclose a foreign bank account.
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Following reports that Boeing asked Trump directly not to ground the 737 Max 8, Canada’s Transport Minister Marc Garneau is grounding all Boeing 737 Max 8 airplanes in Canada over safety concerns based on new information received this morning.
Garneau ordered that 737 Max 8 and 9 are barred from taking off, landing or flying through the country’s airspace as a precautionary measure.
Garneau has faced a dilemma over the aircraft that has been ordered out of the skies for the time being by the European Union, China, New Zealand, and Australia, among other countries.
Canada and the United States had been notable outliers as more and more jurisdictions have restricted the use of the planes, but now that Garneau has folded, the FAA is alone among the world’s largest regulators in not banning the aircraft.
In 2018, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor in Arkansas, Mark West, received 2.9 percent of the vote. Early this year, Arkansas state lawmakers and Governor Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, teamed up to raise the threshold for automatic ballot access for third parties.
The new mark: 3 percent.
For candidates and political parties outside the Republican/Democratic duopoly, one of the biggest impediments to winning elections is simply getting your name in front of the voters on Election Day. Thanks to state laws that require parties get to a certain amount of the vote to automatically qualifiy for the ballot in future elections, and other rules that often mandate third party or independent voters must collect thousands more signatures than their major party opponents to be included on the ballot, smaller parties are forced to spend valuable and scarce resources to gain simple ballot access.
As what happened in Arkansas this year demonstrates, these rules are always arbitrary, often unfair, and usually set by the very interests that benefit from them: the two biggest political parties.
A bill introduced in Congress this week by libertarian-leaning Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) would put an end to that practice—at least for congressional elections, over which Congress has final authority. His proposal, the Ballot Fairness Act, would prohibit unequal ballot access rules in congressional elections, meaning that third parties and independent candidates could not be held to different standards than Democratic and Republican candidates.
“Laws should not advantage particular political parties or discriminate against candidates who choose not to affiliate with a party,” says Amash. “The Ballot Fairness Act helps equalize the treatment of candidates so elections will be fairer and voters will have more options.”
His bill would also prohibit straight-ticket voting—an option available to voters in some states that allows the ability to cast a vote for a party’s entire slate of candidates by making a single choice, rather than casting votes in each race individually—in congressional elections. Amash has previously said that the existence of straight-ticket voting makes it “prohibitive to run outside of the major parties.”
Like unequal ballot access laws, straight-ticket voting provides an obvious advantage to major party candidates, and it does change the outcome of elections. As Reason‘s Matt Welch has previously noted: Where it’s available, citizens are more likely to vote a straight-party ticket. They are also considerably more likely to cast a vote in down-ballot partisan races, but considerably less likely to vote in nonpartisan races or for ballot initiatives.
Both reforms included in Amash’s proposal would be beneficial to American democracy by eliminating tools that Democrats and Republicans wield against upstart candidates and parties. With a majority of Americans unhappy with both major parties, it would appear that the electorate is clamoring for additional options—options that are often denied because of structural impediments facing alternatives.
“Amash’s bill, if enacted, would be a huge benefit to the Libertarian Party, removing the unfair ballot access hurdles our Congressional candidates face all across the country,” Nicholas Sarwark, chairman of the Libertarian National Committee, tells Reason. “It also is a good test for which members of Congress really want more participation in the political process, since it would allow more voices from across the political spectrum to participate in elections without unfair barriers created by the two old parties.”
That’s also why the bill probably doesn’t have much of a chance of getting a hearing or a vote. Amash is a rare and welcome outlier, but most members of Congress are probably unlikely to support a bill that does away with structural advantages they could take advantage of in the next election.
The decision to introduce this bill could also raise more questions about whether Amash plans to jump ship from the Republican Party from which the five-term congressman seems increasingly alienated. Whether he’s concerningly quoting Adele lyrics on Twitter, or being profiled by CNN as the “loneliest Republican in Congress,” Amash’s committment to small government and free markets stands in stark contrast to a Trumpified GOP that seems to have little interest in either. There has been speculation that Amash could seek the Libertarian Party nomination for president in 2020—and Amash says he won’t rule it out.
Indeed, if you were putting together a list of things Congress could do to make life a little easier for America’s downtrodden third parties, a bill like Amash’s would be at or near the top. Ballot access fights are time-consuming and expensive, and every hour spent collecting signatures or every dollar spent on lawyers to challenge unfair access laws (as the LP is currently doing in several states) takes away from what could be used to campaign.
Is Amash acting as a third party mole in Congress? Is he symbolically flipping the bird to the GOP that has abandoned him, as he tries to weaken the major parties’ structural advantages in elections? It’s Justin Amash we’re talking about, so the right answer—if not the most provocative one—is that he’s probably just doing what he thinks is right, even if it means he’s all alone.
Over 80 percent of American voters support the Green New Deal (GND), or so claim its backers citing a recent survey by a group of academic pollsters. Furthermore, this public endorsement is supposedly bipartisan, with 92 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans indicating that they either strongly or somewhat support the Far Left package to reshape the entire American economy around “green energy” in the course of the next decade.
A very different story lurks beneath the surface of these impressive-looking statistics. Although the survey was conducted by a team of professors at George Mason University in Virginia and Yale University in Connecticut, it was essentially a “push poll” designed to bias respondents in favor of the proposition.
The trick behind the outcome may be seen in the question’s wording. Rather than asking voters directly about the GND, the pollsters first presented them with a glowing paragraph-length synopsis that touted the proposition’s fantastical claims:
Some members of Congress are proposing a “Green New Deal” for the U.S. They say that a Green New Deal will produce jobs and strengthen America’s economy by accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. The Deal would generate 100% of the nation’s electricity from clean, renewable sources within the next 10 years; upgrade the nation’s energy grid, buildings, and transportation infrastructure; increase energy efficiency; invest in green technology research and development; and provide training for jobs in the new green economy.
Note that this paragraph intentionally leads the respondents toward a favorable view of the program.
It extols the GND promises of a “green energy” conversion on a scientifically impossible 10-year timeline as if it is a given. It promises an abundance of jobs and economic growth without revealing that these features depend upon the simultaneous adoption of an unprecedented federal jobs-guarantee program that would effectively place large swaths of the economy under direct federal government management.
It offers no indication that the same jobs-guarantee program would likely culminate in an unwieldy bureaucratic disaster of centralized economic planning. It makes no mention of the proposal’s extremist calls to phase out air travel in favor of trains, or to subject every building in America to costly renovation and reconstruction in order to meet new energy-efficiency rules. And it says not a word about the extreme price tag of the entire package, which certainly breaks into the tens of trillions of dollars and may reach as high as $93 trillion when all is said and done.
Instead, all of the pitfalls of the GND are conveniently brushed aside while all of its promised benefits, no matter how unrealistic or expensive, are presented to the survey’s respondents as if they were neutral and factual truths.
This combination of intentional omissions and leading questions exploited public ignorance to produce a skewed result. As a relatively new proposition, the details of the GND are still unfamiliar to the vast majority of Americans. The pollsters confirmed this finding in a separate question that showed 83 percent of respondents knew “nothing at all” about the program’s details. After supplying them with an overly rosy and biased synopsis of those details, they unsurprisingly found large majorities in favor.
Loaded opinion polling of this type is a commonly encountered dirty trick in partisan political campaigns, where marketing firms associated with a certain candidate or policy try to build the illusion of public support (or hostility to the opposing party’s candidate) by asking intentionally loaded survey questions and then reporting the results as if they contained an accurate measure of public opinion. Long controversial, these tactics violate standard practices in survey design and question construction.
Unfortunately, the pollsters in this case are not political campaign consultants – they’re university professors at research institutes specializing in “climate change communication.” Given the way that they skewed their poll results toward the GND with biased and loaded questioning, it’s reasonable to ask whether their research output crossed the ethical line separating scholarship from politically motivated advocacy.
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The S&P 500 has staged a dramatic recovery in the last few days – on the back of further declines in earnings expectations and macro-economic data disappointments…
Testing the key 2815/17 range for the fifth time…
Quintuple-Top?
Bonds think it’s over…
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Investigators from Spain’s National Intelligence Center (CNI) and the Spanish police have linked a February 22 attack on the North Korean embassy in Madrid to the CIA, according to El Pais.
On February 22 at approximately 3pm, 10 masked men carrying fake weapons broke into the embassy, tied up eight people, put bags over their heads, and proceeded to beat and interrogate them for two hours. One woman was able to escape through a second-floor window, and police were called after a neighbor heard her screaming.
When officers arrived at the embassy, a man opened the door and told them that nothing was going on. “Minutes later, two luxury vehicles sped out of the embassy,” according to the report. The getaway cars – belonging to the diplomatic mission, were abandoned in a nearby street.
According to the report, at least two of the 10 assailants have been identified and have connections to the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA has denied any involvement, however Spanish government sources say their response was “unconvincing” according to El Pais.
If it is proven that the CIA was behind the attack, it could lead to a diplomatic spat between Madrid and Washington. Government sources say that it would be “unacceptable” for an ally to take such action. Not only would it mean that the US agency had operated on Spanish soil without asking for authorization or informing the authorities, it would also be a violation of the international conventions that protect diplomatic delegations. –El Pais
Investigators from CNI and the General Information Office (GNI) ruled out common criminals – instead saying that it was a perfectly planned operation as if it were carried out by a “military cell,” according to sources close to the investigation. “The assailants knew what they were looking for, taking only computers and mobile phones,“ reports El Pais.
Spain’s High Court – the Audencia Nacional, will review the highly secretive investigation. That said, government sources admit that it may prove difficult to prove the CIA was involved.
Kim Hyok Chol
According to the report, the intended goal of the attack was to obtain information on former North Korean ambassador, Kim Hyok Chol – who was expelled from Spain on September 19, 2017 over ongoing North Korean nuclear tests, by then-Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis.
Kim Hyok Chol, who was declared persona non grata by Spain and was invited to leave the country before the end of the month, is currently one of Kim Jong-un’s highly trusted diplomats, and one of the architects of the failed nuclear summit between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jon[g]-un in Vietnam. The meeting, aimed at securing North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, ended in failure without any agreement on a timetable for disarmament or on future negotiations. –El Pais
Kim Hyok Chol also led the North Korean delegation which negotiated a nuclear disarmament plan with US special envoy Stephen Biegun in exchange for easing sanctions.
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“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend,” Olivia Jade, a Youtube star and daughter of Full House actress Lori Loughlin, told her fans just before she moved to the University of Southern California (USC) to begin freshman year. “But I’m gonna go in and talk to my deans and everyone, and hope that I can try and balance it all. But I do want the experience of like game days, partying…I don’t really care about school, as you guys all know.”
With that attitude, one might have hoped Jade could not earn admission to USC. But her parents paid half a million dollars to a man named William Singer, and Singer bribed all the necessary officials so that Jade’s dream of going to college for the partying could come true.
Now Loughlin is one of 50 people facing federal fraud charges for participating in Singer’s schemes to trick various colleges and universities into admitting wealthy but underqualified applicants. The perpetrators—which include another actress, Desperate Housewives‘ Felicity Huffman—gave Singer millions of dollars to guarantee their kids would be admitted to first-choice schools like Yale, Stanford, University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Texas at Austin.
Singer’s scheme was stunningly deceitful. His two main strategies were bribing test-taking officials so that they would give his clients more time to take the SAT or ACT—or even supply the correct answers directly—and bribing athletic officials to falsely claim the client was a high-value recruit for a certain sport. This often involved sending fake photos of the kids engaged in athletic activities—pole-vaulting, swimming, etc.—for sports they didn’t play. Jade, for instance, gained admission after submitting a photo implying she was a talented coxswain on the crew team. She was not. But a $50,000 payment to a USC senior athletic director was all it took to facilitate the lie.
Indeed, athletic administrative bloat appears to be a significant contributing factor to the success of this scam. Many of the bribe-takers were coaches, and it’s fairly worrying they have so much sway over the admissions process. One downside of forcing universities to hire a bunch of administrators—something federal guidance has encouraged for decades—is that there are more potential targets for Singer’s schemes.
Unfortunately, colleges and universities routinely prioritize factors other than academic ability when making admissions decisions. Athletic considerations matter far too much, as do legacy connections. And of course, donating a new wing to the university’s hospital or library is a good way to make sure your kid gets a second look. Singer took things much further, but it’s a difference of degrees. As Frank Bruni wrote in The New York Times, “It may be legal to pledge $2.5 million to Harvard just as your son is applying—which is what Jared Kushner’s father did for him—and illegal to bribe a coach to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars,but how much of a difference is there, really? Both elevate money over accomplishment. Both are ways of cutting in line.”
The best remedy to this problem might be to admit that college is, to some degree, a scam. Note that these parents were evidently unconcerned that their kids—who were often coached to fake learning disabilities so they could get more time on the ACT and SAT—might struggle with their course loads. It’s because college is a joke, and it’s easy enough for an academically disinclined grifter—an Olivia Jade, if you will—to get by studying nonsense subjects. They’re paying for the experience and the diploma, not the actual education.
This is a point that Bryan Caplan raises in his excellent book, The Case Against Education. Caplan argues that most of the value of a college education is signaling rather than skills. Students don’t learn very much that will be useful to them in the job world, and even if they do, they quickly forget it. But a diploma signals to employers that the diploma-holder is competent in some abstract way—they jumped through a bunch of impressive-looking hoops, and are thus more worthy of a job than people who didn’t. The implication of Caplan’s research is that public funding of higher education is therefore a waste: It doesn’t actually benefit society to subsidize a signaling mechanism if there’s little relevant skill-gaining along the way. It just punishes everybody who, for whatever reason, doesn’t have access to the right hoops.
If we are going to continue to publicly fund higher education, taxpayers might rightly ask whether institutions that receive federal dollars should be permitted to privilege the wealthy, the donor class, the athletes (both faux and actual), and certain racial groups (resulting in abject discrimination against Asians) over applicants who might actually be interested in checking a book out of the library. But if higher education is really just about celebrity scions pretending to play water polo in order to gain admittance to an exclusive partying club, maybe it’s long past time to hit the defund button.
In 2018, the Libertarian Party candidate for governor in Arkansas, Mark West, received 
“I don’t know how much of school I’m gonna attend,” Olivia Jade, a Youtube star and daughter of Full House actress Lori Loughlin,