Child Sex Trafficking Prosecutions Down Under Trump

U.S. sex-trafficking prosecutions have fallen since Donald Trump took office, according to a new analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

“Prosecutions for sex trafficking of children under a law used against financier Jeffrey Epstein last week are down 26.7 percent over the past fiscal year,” TRAC reports. “This is the second year in a row that prosecutions for sex trafficking of children under [federal criminal law] have fallen—a reversal of the grown trend during the Obama years.”

Federal prosecutors brought 49 percent of underage sex trafficking cases referred to them in Obama’s final full year, according to TRAC records. For the 2017 fiscal year (October 2016 through September 2017), it was 46 percent; for fiscal year 2018, it was down to 42 percent.

For October 2018 through May 2019, the rate had fallen to 39 percent.

This is not necessarily to the discredit of the Trump-era Justice Department. It’s possible that greater efforts by state and local prosecutors mean the feds feels comfortable letting them handle it. There could be a greater number of referrals overall, and simply not enough federal manpower to handle them. A greater percentage of the cases being referred to federal prosecutors could be no good, or prosecutors might feel more empowered to reject bad fits.

The ratio of federal prosecutions to convictions for sex trafficking has long been uninspiring—a sign that prosecutors were taking on too many cases that they shouldn’t have. Much of the ramp-up of “sex trafficking” prosecutions during the Obama and Biden years involved targeting a wider and wider array of conduct as sex trafficking in a way that seemed to come down hardest on sex workers.

Alternately, the recent drop in prosecution numbers and falling rate of referrals to prosecutors could signal that priorities or commitments for U.S. attorneys have been tied up elsewhere during the Trump administration. It’s possible that efforts on immigration, the Russia probe, or whatever else may be coming at the expense of prosecuting sex traffickers.

In any case, last year was hardly a low point in terms of overall number of cases prosecuted. So far, there have been 108 federal prosecutions for underage sex trafficking in fiscal year 2019. If things continue as projected, there will be about 162 total for the year, TRAC says. That’s down 27.6 percent from last year and down about 32 percent from 2014—but up 90.6 percent from a decade ago.

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Pentagon Fears Turkey To Retaliate Against US Troops In Syria Over New Sanctions

As expected, Turkey blasted the White House’s prior day announcement that it has killed Turkey’s involvement in the F-35 joint strike fighter program after Ankara received a first batch of S-400 Russian-made air defense components starting last week. Turkey’s foreign ministry called on the US to rectify its “mistake”.

“This unilateral step is incompatible with the spirit of alliance and does not rely on any legitimate justification,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a strong-worded statement immediately following the White House press release. “We call on the United States to come back from this mistake that will cause irreparable wounds in our strategic relations,” it said.

Image source: AFP/Getty

The White House had stated  while confirming it would indefinitely block transfer of the F-35: “Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible,” and added, “The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities.”

Turkey has responded to Trump’s firm stance by staying it’s “unfair”. According to state-run TRT World: “Excluding Turkey, one of the main partners from the F35 program is unfair, and the claim that S-400 system will weaken the F-35s is invalid,” the foreign ministry said.

Meanwhile, at a moment that looming military conflict between Turkey, the Syrian Army and Damascus’ ally Russia is heating up near Idlib, the Pentagon issued a separate statement Wednesday demanding that the Turkish army avoid striking US troops in the region amid a Turkish build-up of forces along the border.

The statement warned the US would consider any “unilateral actions into northeastern Syria,” particularly targeting US troops, as “unacceptable”.

Northern Syria situation in 2018, via NYT. American presence has stayed the same in the northeast since then.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Sean Robertson said:

Unilateral action into northeastern Syria by any party, particularly as U.S. personnel may be present or in the vicinity, is of grave concern. We would find any such actions unacceptable.”

Over the past week Turkey appears to have been amassing its forces near the border for an upcoming assault on US-allied Kurdish forces in Syria’s northeast

American defense officials fear Turkey’s military could be tempted toward retaliation against US forces currently assisting Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) over new US sanctions related Turkey’s S-400 deal with Russia. 

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Child Sex Trafficking Prosecutions Down Under Trump

U.S. sex-trafficking prosecutions have fallen since Donald Trump took office, according to a new analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.

“Prosecutions for sex trafficking of children under a law used against financier Jeffrey Epstein last week are down 26.7 percent over the past fiscal year,” TRAC reports. “This is the second year in a row that prosecutions for sex trafficking of children under [federal criminal law] have fallen—a reversal of the grown trend during the Obama years.”

Federal prosecutors brought 49 percent of underage sex trafficking cases referred to them in Obama’s final full year, according to TRAC records. For the 2017 fiscal year (October 2016 through September 2017), it was 46 percent; for fiscal year 2018, it was down to 42 percent.

For October 2018 through May 2019, the rate had fallen to 39 percent.

This is not necessarily to the discredit of the Trump-era Justice Department. It’s possible that greater efforts by state and local prosecutors mean the feds feels comfortable letting them handle it. There could be a greater number of referrals overall, and simply not enough federal manpower to handle them. A greater percentage of the cases being referred to federal prosecutors could be no good, or prosecutors might feel more empowered to reject bad fits.

The ratio of federal prosecutions to convictions for sex trafficking has long been uninspiring—a sign that prosecutors were taking on too many cases that they shouldn’t have. Much of the ramp-up of “sex trafficking” prosecutions during the Obama and Biden years involved targeting a wider and wider array of conduct as sex trafficking in a way that seemed to come down hardest on sex workers.

Alternately, the recent drop in prosecution numbers and falling rate of referrals to prosecutors could signal that priorities or commitments for U.S. attorneys have been tied up elsewhere during the Trump administration. It’s possible that efforts on immigration, the Russia probe, or whatever else may be coming at the expense of prosecuting sex traffickers.

In any case, last year was hardly a low point in terms of overall number of cases prosecuted. So far, there have been 108 federal prosecutions for underage sex trafficking in fiscal year 2019. If things continue as projected, there will be about 162 total for the year, TRAC says. That’s down 27.6 percent from last year and down about 32 percent from 2014—but up 90.6 percent from a decade ago.

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Camouflaged Israeli Ex-PM Pictured Entering Epstein’s Mansion The Same Day As Hotties Show Up

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was photographed entering Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in January, 2016 wearing a camouflage scarf around his face – the same day that a bunch of young women showed up, according to the Daily Mail.

…the women included long-time Epstein friends Sue Hamblin and Jennifer Kalin as well as Russian model Lana Pozhidaeva.

A fourth, unidentified, woman was seen joining Epstein on a trip to Teterborough Airport in New Jersey, where Epstein keeps his plane and where he was arrested on the tarmac on July 6 after he flew in from France.

At the time, the identity of the man seen with his own security detail going to Epstein’s mansion on East 71st Street was unclear. Now DailyMail.com has confirmed it was Barak. –Daily Mail

Of note, the 77-year-old Barak says he’s planning to sue the Daily Mail for libel, and rejects the report’s ‘loathsome’ insinuations. 

The former PM – who has formed a new party to try and unseat current Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu – admitted to the Daily Beast that he had indeed been to Epstein’s NY residence, and the financier’s infamous ‘pedophile island’ in the Caribbean, but insists that he’s ‘never met Epstein in the company of women and young girls.’  

DailyMail.com has obtained exclusive pictures of one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s main challengers hiding his face as he entered the convicted sex offender’s Manhattan townhouse.

A bevy of young women were also seen going into the multi-millionaire’s lavish seven-story home on the same day that Ehud Barak was snapped.

The photographs were taken in January 2016 after Epstein, now 66, had returned to New York after an overseas trip. 

Within hours at least four young women had gone to the home that the federal government wants to seize as part of its new case against the financier. –Daily Mail

Of note, the Mail does not say if the women were inside Epstein’s mansion at the same time as Barack. 

Barak, who served as Israel’s PM from 1999 – 2001, and later defense minister from 2007 – 2013, received millions of dollars from Epstein as an investment in his company, Carbyne, which makes geolocation software for emergency services. Barak wrote on Facebook last weekend that he is trying to break off relations with Epstein. 

“For almost five years, a company associated with Epstein has been a passive investor in a limited partnership, legally registered in Israel and under my control,” he wrote, adding “Every investor in this partnership is bound by the same commercial contract. As soon as the present charges related to Epstein became known, I instructed my lawyers to examine the options we have for expelling the company associated with Epstein from this partnership.” 

At the weekend, Barak told the Israeli version of Meet the Press that he had no idea that Epstein’s charges involved underage girls. ‘He’d served his sentence for soliciting prostitution — the indictment didn’t say she was a minor,’ he said.

‘The American system itself did not label him as a persona non grata,’ Barak added. ‘The secretary who just resigned in the Trump administration was the prosecutor and he said he’d been negligent — so you expect me to have noticed [anything wrong]?’ he added, referring to Alex Acosta who resigned as labor secretary last week. –Daily Mail

Of course, Barak still took money in 2014 from the convicted pedophile and registered sex offender – which was publicly available information at the time. 

According to the Mail citing the Miami Herald, Carbine also received a $2.5 million investment from Epstein’s former close friend, Les Wexner.

Netanyahu pounces

The Israeli PM’s party has called for a criminal investigation into Barak’s ties to Epstein – while Netanyahu tweeted that he should be investigated ‘immediately.’ In a July 9 tweet, he posted a video of Barak’s ties to Epstein, asking in Hebrew, “What else did the sex offender give to Ehud Barak?”

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Trump’s Asylum Ban Violates Standing American Law

This week President Donald Trump summarily eliminated almost all asylum protections for Central Americans and other migrants seeking to enter the United States from the Southern border. The president’s move is legally questionable for a host of reasons, the most important being that he is attempting an end run around Congress and doing by administrative fiat what he couldn’t through normal legislative channels.

The rule, which will go into effect immediately, basically says that anyone—men, women, children, even unaccompanied minors—who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border unless they first apply for and are denied asylum in the countries on the way. Migrants already in America will be exempted, even if they entered without authorization between ports of entry. But perversely, Central American migrants who listened to the administration and waited in Mexico to come in legally through an official port of entry will be out of luck.

The administration hopes this change will end the recent rush of migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—never mind that one reason for said rush is precisely that these migrants feared Trump would pull some stunt like this and wanted to get here first.

Can Trump’s new rule withstand the court challenges that have already been filed? It’s unlikely.

For starters, this is not just a rule: It is an “interim final rule” jointly issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. As such, it dispensed with normal rule-making niceties—minimum notice requirements, comment periods, etc. —that are typically required before a change of such magnitude.

The administration says it can do this because the country is facing a border emergency. Attorney General William Barr insists the border is “overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens.” But to the extent that border resources are “overwhelmed,” it is because of the administration’s zero tolerance policy. Under this approach, the administration puts everyone—even asylum seekers who pass the initial “credible fear” screening—in detention rather than releasing them to wait with their friends and family in the country while immigration courts hear their asylum claims, as previous administrations have done. So this “emergency” is of the Trump administration’s own making.

The administration has repeatedly tried to use the emergency argument to persuade Congress to close the alleged loopholes in asylum law that it claims have made America a migrant magnet (such as the 1997 Flores settlement, which requires migrant parents with kids to be released from detention within 20 days). So far, Congress hasn’t bought any of this. If Congress ain’t buying it, the courts probably won’t either. As Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer with the Federalist Society, tells me, President Harry Truman couldn’t even persuade the Supreme Court that the Korean War was enough of an emergency to let him seize private steel mills to preempt a strike and keep wartime production going. The Trump administration’s asylum move will raise similar concerns, Stock notes.

Furthermore, the new rule will run afoul of long-standing international and American legal requirement that asylum seekers be given a due hearing. America is required to hear migrants’ cases unless they are coming through countries with whom the U.S. has a Safe Third Country Agreement. Such a country has to offer a similar level of safety, security, and due process as the United States. The only country that currently has such an agreement with America is Canada. The agreement makes it incumbent upon Canada to consider the asylum petition of migrants on its soil rather than just letting them into the United States. Only if Canada denies their petition can they apply for asylum in America.

The administration is trying to strong-arm Mexico and Guatemala into signing similar agreements, which would require these countries to offer permanent asylum to migrants rather than merely temporarily warehousing them. But even if these countries agree, U.S. courts are unlikely to be convinced that the new rule is kosher. Why? Because these countries, particularly Guatemala, aren’t “safe.”

The U.S. government’s own assessment shows that Guatemala, through which migrants from El Salvador and Honduras must pass when moving north, is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Women in Guatemala face extremely high rates of murder, and children are often targeted for sex trafficking or forced to join gangs. Things are so bad that in the past nine months, around 190,000 Guatemalans fled to neighboring countries—and about half of the Central American migrants flocking to America are in fact Guatemalans. So even under the new asylum rules and a Safe Third Country agreement with Guatemala, the administration couldn’t send fleeing Guatemalans back to their country; that would be refoulement, or a forcible return to an active danger zone, which is legally prohibited. And if America can’t send Guatemalans back to their own country because it is too dangerous, how can it send Hondurans and Salvadorans there?

Trump thinks he can make America safe by turning it into a fortress. In fact, he is creating the conditions for major continental upheavals that will turn a fake emergency into a horrendously real one. If fleeing Central American migrants are “overwhelming” America’s border to the point of a crisis, what will happen to Mexico and Guatemala, far less prosperous and stable countries, if they are forced to absorb all of them?

Courts are going to have a hard time keeping a straight face listening to some of the administration’s tortuous legal rationales. So why is Trump doing this? He is grandstanding to stir up his base and keep alive the notion that America is under siege. He hopes to translate a legal loss into a political victory—asylum seekers, America, and the region be damned.

A version of this column originally appeared in The Week

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Trump’s Asylum Ban Violates Standing American Law

This week President Donald Trump summarily eliminated almost all asylum protections for Central Americans and other migrants seeking to enter the United States from the Southern border. The president’s move is legally questionable for a host of reasons, the most important being that he is attempting an end run around Congress and doing by administrative fiat what he couldn’t through normal legislative channels.

The rule, which will go into effect immediately, basically says that anyone—men, women, children, even unaccompanied minors—who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border unless they first apply for and are denied asylum in countries they pass through on the way. Migrants already in America will be exempted, even if they entered without authorization between ports of entry. But perversely, Central American migrants who listened to the administration and waited in Mexico to come in legally through an official port of entry will be out of luck.

The administration hopes this change will end the recent rush of migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras—never mind that one reason for said rush is precisely that these migrants feared Trump would pull some stunt like this and wanted to get here first.

Can Trump’s new rule withstand the court challenges that have already been filed? It’s unlikely.

For starters, this is not just a rule: It is an “interim final rule” jointly issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. As such, it dispensed with normal rule-making niceties—minimum notice requirements, comment periods, etc. —that are typically required before a change of such magnitude.

The administration says it can do this because the country is facing a border emergency. Attorney General William Barr insists the border is “overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens.” But to the extent that border resources are “overwhelmed,” it is because of the administration’s zero tolerance policy. Under this approach, the administration puts everyone—even asylum seekers who pass the initial “credible fear” screening—in detention rather than releasing them to wait with their friends and family in the country while immigration courts hear their asylum claims, as previous administrations have done. So this “emergency” is of the Trump administration’s own making.

The administration has repeatedly tried to use the emergency argument to persuade Congress to close the alleged loopholes in asylum law that it claims have made America a migrant magnet (such as the 1997 Flores settlement, which requires migrant parents with kids to be released from detention within 20 days). So far, Congress hasn’t bought any of this. If Congress ain’t buying it, the courts probably won’t either. As Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer with the Federalist Society, tells me, President Harry Truman couldn’t even persuade the Supreme Court that the Korean War was enough of an emergency to let him seize private steel mills to preempt a strike and keep wartime production going. The Trump administration’s asylum move will raise similar concerns, Stock notes.

Furthermore, the new rule will run afoul of long-standing international and American legal requirement that asylum seekers be given a due hearing. America is required to hear migrants’ cases unless they are coming through countries with whom the U.S. has a Safe Third Country Agreement. Such a country has to offer a similar level of safety, security, and due process as the United States. The only country that currently has such an agreement with America is Canada. The agreement makes it incumbent upon Canada to consider the asylum petition of migrants on its soil rather than just letting them into the United States. Only if Canada denies their petition can they apply for asylum in America.

The administration is trying to strong-arm Mexico and Guatemala into signing similar agreements, which would require these countries to offer permanent asylum to migrants rather than merely temporarily warehousing them. But even if these countries agree, U.S. courts are unlikely to be convinced that the new rule is kosher. Why? Because these countries, particularly Guatemala, aren’t “safe.”

The U.S. government’s own assessment shows that Guatemala, through which migrants from El Salvador and Honduras must pass when moving north, is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Women in Guatemala face extremely high rates of murder, and children are often targeted for sex trafficking or forced to join gangs. Things are so bad that in the past nine months, around 190,000 Guatemalans fled to neighboring countries—and about half of the Central American migrants flocking to America are in fact Guatemalans. So even under the new asylum rules and a Safe Third Country agreement with Guatemala, the administration couldn’t send fleeing Guatemalans back to their country; that would be refoulement, or a forcible return to an active danger zone, which is legally prohibited. And if America can’t send Guatemalans back to their own country because it is too dangerous, how can it send Hondurans and Salvadorans there?

Trump thinks he can make America safe by turning it into a fortress. In fact, he is creating the conditions for major continental upheavals that will turn a fake emergency into a horrendously real one. If fleeing Central American migrants are “overwhelming” America’s border to the point of a crisis, what will happen to Mexico and Guatemala, far less prosperous and stable countries, if they are forced to absorb all of them?

Courts are going to have a hard time keeping a straight face listening to some of the administration’s tortuous legal rationales. So why is Trump doing this? He is grandstanding to stir up his base and keep alive the notion that America is under siege. He hopes to translate a legal loss into a political victory—asylum seekers, America, and the region be damned.

A version of this column originally appeared in The Week

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Cryptos Suddenly Panic-Bid, Bitcoin Back Above $10k

Following further selling pressure overnight, someone (or more than one) has decided to buy-the-dip in cryptos this morning, sending Bitcoin (and most of the altcoins) soaring…

A sea of green…

Source: Coin360

Bitcoin surged back above $10,000…

Ethereum bounced off support at its flash-crash lows…

But Litecoin is outperforming on the day…

As CoinTelegraph notes, Bitcoin recovered more swiftly from its bear cycles than Amazon did during the boom and bust of the dot com era, data from crypto analytics firm Messari reveals.

Bitcoin’s 2019 breakout ‘extremely bullish’ by comparison

Fellow industry analytics firm Ceteris Paribus shared Messari’s findings in a tweet on July 17:

“The latest $BTC cycle mirrors $AMZN during the dot-com bubble, but the recovery has been much more swift. Even with the recent sell off, bitcoin is 54% down from its high, vs. the 85% Amazon was trading at over a similar timeframe.”

Bitcoin and Amazon ‘bubbles’ comparison, 2015-2019. Courtesy of Messari via @ceterispar1bus

In a further tweet, Ceteris Paribus argues that while the two assets are markedly different, they have both allegedly “traded on pure speculation” at different points in their histories. 

A comparison of the two reveals that Bitcoin’s breakout following crypto winter has been “extremely bullish” as compared with Amazon’s own tumultuous past, with Ceteris Paribus noting that the coin is “much further ahead than most people imagined in Dec. 2018.” 

Industry perspectives 

Interestingly, veteran trader Peter Brandt has this summer compared the likely fate of altcoins to the casualties of the dot com era, predicting that Bitcoin’s bull rally this will not extend to the cryptocurrency sector as a whole — unlike the historic rally of winter 2017. He remarked that:

“Following 2001-02 tech collapse, dotcoms with real value exploded. The ‘alt’ .coms went bankrupt.”

Meanwhile, Blockstream CEO Adam Back — the inventor of the hashcash proof-of-work (PoW) system later used in Bitcoin’s mining algorithm — has favorably compared the coin with earlier periods of innovation.

“Bitcoin has come much further and much faster than people expected,” he said. “There was a saying in the early dotcom era about ‘internet time,’and […] bitcoin time […] seems to be moving even faster.”

This April, Cointelegraph published an expert’s take on the so-dubbed Bitcoin bubble and its historical cousins — both the 17th century Tulip mania and the  dot-com bubble of 1999-2000.

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Trader Warns, Uniformly-Spooked Central Banks “Is Not Bullish”

China has almost incessantly eased monetary and fiscal policies this year (to no avail judging by the weakest economic growth in three decades). The Bank of Korea (somewhat surprisingly) cut rates overnight and South Africa‘s central bank just cut rates this morning. The Bank of Japan‘s Kuroda reassured investors overnight that they “will continue powerful easing persistently,” which follows Draghi’s reassurance that ‘whatever it takes’ is alive and well at the ECB (and uber dovish Lagarde is coming soon) and finally, despite improving macro data and record high stocks, The Fed is cornered into cutting rates no matter what.

As BlackRock recently wrote, if we connect the dots between the macroeconomic data and the “big data” read of analyst sentiment, we arrive at one key conclusion: Market expectations for central bank easing may be too lofty.

Does this level of “easy” financial conditions globally warrant almost universal easing?

One has to wonder, as former fund manager and FX trader Richard Breslow points out, their across-the-board overt dovishness, is simultaneously supporting markets and spooking traders – an uncomfortable mix that will potentially have implications for trading…

Via Bloomberg,

Unknown unknowns tend to have quite an impact when they spring themselves upon markets. But they aren’t something you can plan for other than having a well-balanced portfolio. Balance is a subject that is getting much more air time these days. The heightened interest in precious metals and the unwillingness of bond yields to extend any corrections are a sign that investors get the idea. Receding steadily are the days when pedal to the metal on risk was an aggressive, but arguably defensible, strategy.

Given the tone of the central banks, however, it somehow feels like there is a known unknown out there that clearly has them spooked. While whatever it is may be under-appreciated in the market, it isn’t lost on them. It sure isn’t fear of earnings season. Or a sudden realization that inflation, as they choose to measure it, has failed to rise to the level of their mandates.

Their across-the-board overt dovishness, is simultaneously supporting markets and spooking traders — an uncomfortable mix that will potentially have implications for trading.

It’s generally a really bad idea to try to fight city hall. Other than on a strictly tactical basis. “Whatever it takes” has proven to be an extraordinary tour de force of forward guidance. When markets deviate from official forecasts they have almost invariably taken this message to heart, not pushed back against it. Further emboldened by the just as effective, but far more dangerous, knowledge that calm in financial conditions isn’t anymore even an unspoken extra mandate.

Trading has been very quiet recently. Obviously, there is the summer effect. It’s also likely because, after what has been a tremendous start to the year for a lot of investors, they are weighing the efficacy of staying in-it-to-win-it or putting some of their gains in the bank in an environment where “uncertainties have increased.”

Paper versus booked profits is a real, not theoretical, consideration. Especially if portfolio managers become unnerved. And you get the sense they may be. Which, to be fair, is an issue that has periodically come and gone.

But this is a world where we must rightly debate how much fuel really is left in the monetary policy gas tanks. There is a distinct possibility, especially if the central banks go for what they think is a shock-and-awe approach that will keep the ball rolling indefinitely, that they are taken as the proverbial greater fools. Providing the liquidity for private investors to take the opportunity to lighten up rather than to buy more of the same.

That wouldn’t make for a placid August. But it will be a case study in liquidity, if not risk, management.

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Dennis Prager, Who Boasts 1 Billion Video Views a Year, Decries YouTube ‘Censorship’

Dennis Prager, the right-leaning radio host and pundit who runs the widely successful nonprofit PragerU, testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. His subject was Google’s alleged censorship of conservatives.

“I promise you, one day you will say, first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing,” opined Prager, invoking the famous post-Holocaust era poem by Martin Niemöller. “And then they came after me—and there was no one left to speak up for me.”

YouTube—Google’s video-sharing subsidiary—houses PragerU free of charge. The nonprofit has more than 2.2 million subscribers there, and its YouTube videos receive more than a billion views a year, according to Prager, who concurrently says the tech giant is censoring him.

To back that up, he cites YouTube’s decision to restrict approximately 20 percent of his online 5-minute video shorts on the grounds that they contain mature content—thus hiding those videos from the approximately 1.5 percent of users who elect for restricted control. Karan Bhatia, formerly a conservative political operative and now Google’s vice president for government affairs and public policy, testified that the approach allows users and institutions to filter out content with adult themes.

Prager begs to differ. “Of course we know why,” he said during Tuesday’s hearing. “Because they come from a conservative perspective.”

Unfortunately for this argument, Google records show that the Huffington Post, Vox, Buzzfeed, NowThis, and The Daily Show all have much larger swaths of content restricted under YouTube’s policy. Seventy-one percent of videos from The Young Turks—a leftist channel—are blocked, dwarfing PragerU’s share:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas), who chaired the hearing, pressed Bhatia on Prager’s restricted videos. “Among those that are censored include a video on the Ten Commandments,” Cruz said. “Another one censored includes a video on the history of the nation of Israel. The restrictions are purportedly for blocking things like pornography, but apparently in YouTube’s world, talking about the Ten Commandments and the nation of Israel is comparable and should be blocked.”

“Respectfully, senator, that’s not right,” replied Bhatia, explaining that those videos contained mature topics—murder, rape, etc. He reiterated that they are still visible to the “98.5 percent” of YouTube users who do not opt for restricted mode.

That falls far short of censorship. Would Cruz prefer that the choice to hide certain bits of content—an option provided by a private company—be taken away from free-thinking individuals and institutions?

Ironically, Cruz does support censorship—when it fits within his ideological wheelhouse. “If someone uses [Google or YouTube] to commit slander, or to transmit classified material, or to traffic guns or drugs, far too often Google is off the hook,” he said in his opening statement. As such, he suggested amending Section 230 to make social media sites criminally and civilly liable for every post published on those platforms. Cruz is casting himself as a defender of free speech, but the actual policy change that he’s proposing would give tech giants an incentive to suppress more speech.

Cruz also accused Google of heavily weighing its search results toward liberal perspectives. “Google’s control over what people hear, read, watch, and say is unprecedented,” the senator said. “When we search on Google, we see only the web pages Google decides we should see.”

Google News may well skew left: A study by the media company AllSides found that approximately 65 percent of the company’s search engine results come from left-leaning sources. (Full disclosure: I used to work at AllSides.) But that doesn’t mean the platform is rigged against any one ideological standpoint. Its results can be explained by the company’s popularity algorithm—which, true to its name, showcases the most popular results—as well as the fact that there are more liberal sources available for the parsing. What the government would do to rectify this remains unclear.

Cruz and his conservative cohort also fail to reckon with the fact that right-leaning media conglomerates are often masters of using online algorithms—the very ones they lament—to their advantage. Francesca Tripodi, a sociologist at James Madison University, gave an example of that when she testified that Fox News is 6.7 times more likely to use “AOC”—the moniker for socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.)—as a search engine optimization tag than the liberal outlet MSNBC, “thereby increasing the probability that searching for the phrase will link audiences to conservative news coverage of a liberal politician.”

Tripodi adeptly unmasked the root of the problem among right-leaning lawmakers. “Privately-held corporations, like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, are not the new public square. They are sophisticated advertising firms designed to profit from the data we provide to them,” she testified.

“Simply put, if content is readily available, it is not being suppressed,” Tripodi continued. “What conservatives who are arguing censorship are frustrated with is not the constitutional right to free speech, but is actually a grievance against a free market economy.”

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Dennis Prager, Who Boasts 1 Billion Video Views a Year, Decries YouTube ‘Censorship’

Dennis Prager, the right-leaning radio host and pundit who runs the widely successful nonprofit PragerU, testified Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution. His subject was Google’s alleged censorship of conservatives.

“I promise you, one day you will say, first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing,” opined Prager, invoking the famous post-Holocaust era poem by Martin Niemöller. “And then they came after me—and there was no one left to speak up for me.”

YouTube—Google’s video-sharing subsidiary—houses PragerU free of charge. The nonprofit has more than 2.2 million subscribers there, and its YouTube videos receive more than a billion views a year, according to Prager, who concurrently says the tech giant is censoring him.

To back that up, he cites YouTube’s decision to restrict approximately 20 percent of his online 5-minute video shorts on the grounds that they contain mature content—thus hiding those videos from the approximately 1.5 percent of users who elect for restricted control. Karan Bhatia, formerly a conservative political operative and now Google’s vice president for government affairs and public policy, testified that the approach allows users and institutions to filter out content with adult themes.

Prager begs to differ. “Of course we know why,” he said during Tuesday’s hearing. “Because they come from a conservative perspective.”

Unfortunately for this argument, Google records show that the Huffington Post, Vox, Buzzfeed, NowThis, and The Daily Show all have much larger swaths of content restricted under YouTube’s policy. Seventy-one percent of videos from The Young Turks—a leftist channel—are blocked, dwarfing PragerU’s share:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas), who chaired the hearing, pressed Bhatia on Prager’s restricted videos. “Among those that are censored include a video on the Ten Commandments,” Cruz said. “Another one censored includes a video on the history of the nation of Israel. The restrictions are purportedly for blocking things like pornography, but apparently in YouTube’s world, talking about the Ten Commandments and the nation of Israel is comparable and should be blocked.”

“Respectfully, senator, that’s not right,” replied Bhatia, explaining that those videos contained mature topics—murder, rape, etc. He reiterated that they are still visible to the “98.5 percent” of YouTube users who do not opt for restricted mode.

That falls far short of censorship. Would Cruz prefer that the choice to hide certain bits of content—an option provided by a private company—be taken away from free-thinking individuals and institutions?

Ironically, Cruz does support censorship—when it fits within his ideological wheelhouse. “If someone uses [Google or YouTube] to commit slander, or to transmit classified material, or to traffic guns or drugs, far too often Google is off the hook,” he said in his opening statement. As such, he suggested amending Section 230 to make social media sites criminally and civilly liable for every post published on those platforms. Cruz is casting himself as a defender of free speech, but the actual policy change that he’s proposing would give tech giants an incentive to suppress more speech.

Cruz also accused Google of heavily weighing its search results toward liberal perspectives. “Google’s control over what people hear, read, watch, and say is unprecedented,” the senator said. “When we search on Google, we see only the web pages Google decides we should see.”

Google News may well skew left: A study by the media company AllSides found that approximately 65 percent of the company’s search engine results come from left-leaning sources. (Full disclosure: I used to work at AllSides.) But that doesn’t mean the platform is rigged against any one ideological standpoint. Its results can be explained by the company’s popularity algorithm—which, true to its name, showcases the most popular results—as well as the fact that there are more liberal sources available for the parsing. What the government would do to rectify this remains unclear.

Cruz and his conservative cohort also fail to reckon with the fact that right-leaning media conglomerates are often masters of using online algorithms—the very ones they lament—to their advantage. Francesca Tripodi, a sociologist at James Madison University, gave an example of that when she testified that Fox News is 6.7 times more likely to use “AOC”—the moniker for socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.)—as a search engine optimization tag than the liberal outlet MSNBC, “thereby increasing the probability that searching for the phrase will link audiences to conservative news coverage of a liberal politician.”

Tripodi adeptly unmasked the root of the problem among right-leaning lawmakers. “Privately-held corporations, like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, are not the new public square. They are sophisticated advertising firms designed to profit from the data we provide to them,” she testified.

“Simply put, if content is readily available, it is not being suppressed,” Tripodi continued. “What conservatives who are arguing censorship are frustrated with is not the constitutional right to free speech, but is actually a grievance against a free market economy.”

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