Month: July 2019

Martin Armstrong Warns Epstein Case Could Shake Global Confidence

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,

Legendary geopolitical and financial analyst Martin Armstrong says America’s economy is like being “the prettiest ugly sister in the family” of nations.

So, if the U.S. economy is so good, why the rush to cut interest rates? Armstrong explains,

“It’s really the world economy which is in serious trouble. You really have to look closely and pay attention to the words (Fed Head) Powell said. The economy is strong, unemployment is fine. Why would you cut interest rates when the stock market is making record highs? Powell said basically because it was things happening outside the country.

The Fed, as I have said before, has become the central bank for the world… This is the problem, and Europe is a complete basket case. They don’t get it, and they keep trying to hold onto their power and punish anyone who disagrees with them…Why is the U.S. economy so good? Why is the Dow at a record high? China is in trouble. Europe is in trouble. Japan is a basket case. The capital is coming here.”

Back in February, Armstrong pointed out in an interview on USAWatchdog.com,

“Gold has been rallying right along with the U.S. stock market. This is what I’ve said all along. Eventually, towards the end, they have to align. Why? Because at that stage of the game, it’s us against government. So, tangible assets rise.”

Armstrong says gold catching a bid well above $1,400 per ounce is the beginning of people losing faith in governments around the world. Armstrong says, “What makes gold go up? That’s when the confidence in government declines,“

“…and we are no talking about just the gold bugs. We are talking about the average person on the street. They have to reach that point where they question what is going on in government. We are getting close to that. Gallup put out, and I put it on our blog, that 35% of Americans now say that government is the number one problem. When we reach about 45%, things are going to get a lot hairier…

When gold is not on a gold standard, and it’s a commodity like everything else, then basically gold goes up against the currency and so does the stock market. So, you have the stock market at highs, and you have gold that caught a bid.”

On the U.S., dollar Armstrong says, “The U.S. wants a lower dollar, and the dollar is being pushed higher.“

“People don’t get this. They say, ‘oh, the dollar has got to crash.’ If the dollar crashes, Trump is having a great day on trade and etcetera. You take the dollar up, and that is what puts pressure on world trade. . . . If the dollar goes down, they are licking their lips and say this is fantastic because they will sell more stuff. When the dollar goes up, that is when you start getting trade friction…

The dollar going up is the only thing that is going to break the system. A lower dollar is not going to break it. It is only going to prolong it.”

On Jeffery Epstein and his criminal sexual spider web of underage girls and the global elites, Armstrong says, “It’s an issue of confidence…”

“Could it contribute to the confidence and the faith in government? Yes. It depends on what these prosecutors want to do. Are they going to try to implicate President Clinton with it, or are they just going to try to hush it up as they usually do? You have the Deep State, and it’s really, really deep, and people don’t realize how bad this stuff is…

If you start taking down more and more political leaders, then you are going to start to undermine the confidence in the establishment. That’s what our computers have been showing.”

Armstrong says, “Look for inflation to pick up starting in 2020.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with renowned economic and political cycle analyst Martin Armstrong.

*  *  *

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Why Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax Won’t Work

Elizabeth Warren wants the federal government to provide free healthcare for every American, college for every student who wants it, childcare for every parent, and housing for low-income families. 

 And she wants to pay for it all with a new tax on the richest of the rich. She calls it the “Ultra-Millionaire Tax.“

Skimming a bit more off the top of the bank accounts of the ultra-wealthy might sound like a good deal for working- and middle-class Americans who feel like they’re falling behind, but the reality is that wealth taxes have been tried before. And they haven’t worked the way Warren promises. 

Warren wants to levy a 2 percent annual wealth tax on all households with a net worth of over $50 million and a 3 percent annual tax on those households with a net worth of more than $1 billion. 

A 2 or 3 percent tax on multimillionaires and billionaires might not sound like much, but wealth taxes are different from other taxes like an income tax or a sales tax, both of which tax money when it moves around. A wealth tax, on the other hand, taxes the same pot of money every year, meaning that over time it becomes smaller and smaller. It’s essentially a tax on large savings — the money that investors and entrepreneurs rely on to start new businesses. 

Unlike Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Warren has never said that the very existence of billionaires is immoral, but her plan to tax 2 to 3 percent of their wealth on an annual basis is clearly motivated, at least in part, by a desire to reduce their wealth and what she perceives as a power imbalance in our society. 

The economists who helped Warren design her plan have said that the idea is to make rich people less wealthy: “If very rich people have to pay a percentage of their wealth in taxes each year, it makes it harder for them to maintain their wealth.”

In analyzing her plan, they wrote that “One of the key motivations for introducing a progressive wealth tax is to curb the growing concentration of wealth.”

It’s not really about raising tax revenue. It’s about using government power to make sure rich people have less. 

Still, Warren has often pitched her plan as a way to raise money from the ultra-rich to pay for more government entitlements. And on that count, it’s likely to fall short. 

Warren says her tax plan will raise $2.75 trillion over a 10-year period. But other countries have tried wealth taxes and found that they raise far less money than expected. 

In 1990, there were twelve OECD nations with wealth taxes similar to Warren’s. Today, only four remain. 

Despite the tendency of politicians like Bernie Sanders praise Denmark and Sweden as paragons of democratic socialism that the US should emulate, the reality is that both nixed their wealth taxes in the ’90s because too many rich citizens were just pulling their money out of the country. This capital flight resulted in lower rates of entrepreneurship and relative economic stagnation. 

Not only did the wealth tax hurt the economy, it didn’t even raise the money it was supposed to. When Sweden eliminated its wealth tax, it had virtually no effect on government finances, according to the Financial Times.

France tried a wealth tax for more than a decade starting in 2000. It helped push an estimated 42,000 millionaires out of the country. They didn’t pay the tax. They just left.

But Warren wants to get around the capital flight problem by taxing the money no matter where in the world it’s located and imposing a 40 percent exit tax on anyone in this category who wants to renounce his or her citizenship.

Warren’s plan relies on hiring more IRS agents, partly to deal with the complexity of evaluating total individual wealth. 

But throwing more tax collectors at the problem isn’t going to change the fact that the wealthy are very good at protecting their money by offshoring it or putting into unique, hard-to-value assets like artwork.

Austria was one of the countries that used to have a wealth tax. One of the reasons the country ended it was because the cost of enforcement was so high.

Based on its failure in other countries, and her outlandish and vague proposals for addressing those failures, there is no compelling evidence that Warren’s “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” will raise the revenue she claims.

The wealth tax is best understood not as a targeted revenue raiser, but as a symbolic declaration of opposition to the existence of outsized wealth, regardless of how it was obtained. 

Warren has described The Ultra-Millionaire Tax as a tool for addressing inequality, but really it is a presidential candidate’s way of saying, “I oppose the existence of very rich people.” She could have just said it.

Watch the full video above. The original article upon which this video was based is available here.

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76 Billion Opioid Pills: Bombshell Report Unmasks Who Is Responsible For Epidemic 

US District Judge Dan Polster presiding over nationwide opioid litigation dismissed an order that now allows the general public, for the first time ever, to examine opioid sales from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) that details how the opioid epidemic exploded into almost every community across the US from 2006 through 2012.

“The public release of pre-2012 ARCOS data, which shows how prescription opioid pills flooded American communities, is a positive and transparent step forward,” plaintiffs attorneys Paul Hanley, Paul Ferrell and Joe Rice said in a statement released Monday.

“The data provides statistical insights that help pinpoint the origins and spread of the opioid epidemic.”

As per The Washington Post, the ACROS data showed big pharmaceutical companies pumped 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills from 2006 through 2012 into nearly every zip code across the country.

The data provides an unparalleled view of how legal opioid pills from big pharma fueled the opioid epidemic, which has resulted in approximately 100,000 deaths in those 4 years. 

Only six companies distributed 75% of all the painkillers during the six years: McKesson Corp., Walgreens, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen, CVS, and Walmart.

Only three companies manufactured 88% of the opioids: SpecGx, a subsidiary of Mallinckrodt; ­Actavis Pharma; and Par Pharmaceutical.

The database shows how pills were transported from manufacturers to distributors, then administered in towns.

In lawsuits against big pharma companies, lawyers allege companies deliberately pumped legal opioid to reach the streets of communities despite signs the pills were being sold and diverted to the black market.

Plaintiffs have accused drug manufacturers and wholesalers of fueling the opioid crisis by distributing billions of pain pills for a profit, ignoring ethics and sometimes violating federal law. Big pharma has already paid out more than $1 billion in fines to the Justice Department and Food and Drug Administration over opioid-related issues.

The Post noted that government and corporations wanted to shield the public from ARCOS data.

During the past two decades, Florida transformed into the country’s top pill mill. Corrupt doctors opened up pain management clinics across the state, that worked with drug dealers to sell pills on the black market. People from around the country would flock to Florida to load up on oxycodone and hydrocodone, and they were sometimes referred to as “prescription tourists.”

Highways from Florida to Georgia, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Ohio became known as “Blue Highway,” after the most popular pill on the street were blue oxycodone tablets made by Mallinckrodt. Between 2008 and 2012, more than 500 million of those pills were shipped by manufacturers to Florida.

Peter J. Mougey, a lawyer for the plaintiffs from Pensacola, Fla., said “the depth and penetration of the opioid epidemic become readily apparent from the data.”

He added:

“This disclosure will serve as a wake-up call to every community in the country. America should brace itself for the harsh reality of the scope of the opioid epidemic. Transparency will lead to accountability.”

The harsh truth behind the ARCOS data is that it’s not Mexico and China who are responsible for the opioid crisis, as the Trump admin likes to scapegoat frequently, it’s the corporate elitists who control big pharma, led to the overdose deaths of so many Americans over the last decade without government doing a damn thing about it.

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Mike Flynn Judge Hauls Former Lawyers Back Into Court; Accused Of Withholding Case Files

A DC federal judge has ordered Michael Flynn’s former attorneys to appear in court next month after Flynn’s current legal counsel claims they haven’t been given the entire case file by the team at Covington & Burling. 

Judge Emmet Sullivan, and Obama appointee, scheduled a status conference for August 27 at 11 a.m., and has invited a Senior Legal Ethics Counsel to weigh in on the conversation. 

“In light of the representations made by defense counsel regarding the delay in receiving the client files, the Court hereby gives notice to the parties of the Court’s intent to invite Senior Legal Ethics Counsel for the District of Columbia Bar to attend the status conference and explain on the record the applicable District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct,” wrote Sullivan. 

In a filing on Thursday, Flynn’s new attorneys Jesse Binnall, Sidney Powell and William Hodes wrote that they “do not yet have the entire file” from Flynn’s former lawyers and said they had been advised “it will be several weeks before all the information can be transferred.”

Flynn’s attorneys also reiterated that they already have a “massive” amount of files to review — spanning four hard drives that exceed 253 gigabytes of documents — and noted they had identified “crucial and troubling issues that should concern any court” without going into detail. –The Hill

Flynn’s former attorneys have responded, saying they will have the rest of the case files delivered by July 26, per Politico. 

Meanwhile, Flynn’s former attorney testified on Tuesday against Flynn’s former business partner, 67-year-old Bijan Rafiekian, an Iranian-American who has been charged with illegally acting as an unregistered agen of a foreign government. 

Bijan Rafiekian

Prosecutors called ex-Flynn attorney Robert Kelner as a witness Tuesday at the trial of Bijan Rafiekian, 67, an Iranian-American businessman who was Flynn’s key counterpart in a lobbying and consulting firm the retired Army general opened after leaving government, Flynn Intel Group.

During about two-and-a-half hours on the witness stand in federal court in Alexandria, Va., Kelner appeared to do some damage to Rafiekian by telling jurors that the Flynn associate never shared key information about links between the lobbying work and Turkish government officials.

Kelner also said Rafiekian, better known as Kian, seemed upset by the lawyers’ recommendation in early 2017 that the firm make a retroactive filing about the work Flynn’s firm did to try to build support for the extradition from the U.S. of a dissident Turkish cleric, Fethullah Gulen. –Politico

“My recollection is that he was not happy about it. In part, he was not happy about the suggestion that FIG’s work primarily benefited the Government of Turkey,” said Kelner. 

Attorney Robert Barnes raises the question: “Why was Covington firm ever representing Flynn given it knew it might be a material witness in a case related to Flynn? Did the government knowingly profit from this conflict?” 

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John Paul Stevens Was a ‘Liberal Champion,’ Except When He Wasn’t

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who died yesterday at the age of 99, is routinely described as a “liberal champion,” “the outspoken leader of the court’s liberal wing,” and “the court’s most liberal justice.” Those quotes are all from Linda Greenhouse’s New York Times obituary, but they reflect a journalistic consensus.

In some respects, the “liberal” label is apt, at least as that descriptor is understood in contemporary American politics. But in several important ways, Stevens not only failed to defend but actively undermined principles that are conventionally viewed as liberal. His liberal credentials are even less impressive if you define the term in the classical sense, implying a general skepticism of government power and consistent support for civil liberties.

Stevens opposed the death penalty, supported affirmative action and abortion rights, and resisted attempts to try terrorism suspects before military tribunals or detain them indefinitely without charge or recourse to the federal courts. But in cases involving the Fourth and First amendments, he was far from a “liberal champion.”

Stevens played a significant role in whittling away at the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” to facilitate the war on drugs. He sided with the majority in decisions saying that a sniff by a drug-detecting dog is not a search, that police may search closed containers in cars and observe backyards from the air without a warrant, that a suspected drug smuggler can be detained until she defecates under supervision, and that a driver’s unusually long wait at a stop sign justifies stopping him and peering into his car. He dissented from a 2001 decision that said police need a warrant to conduct infrared surveillance of a home, and in 2005 he wrote a decision that allowed police to use drug-sniffing dogs during routine traffic stops.

Nor is Stevens’ record on freedom of speech especially liberal. He wrote both the 1978 decision that upheld regulation of broadcast indecency and the 1997 decision that overturned regulation of online indecency. He voted to uphold censorship of student newspapers and to overturn censorship of student banners. In 1989 and 1990 he dissented from decisions overturning state and federal bans on flag burning. In 2010 he angrily dissented from a decision that said people organized as corporations, including nonprofit interest groups, have a right to talk about politics, even at election time.

In cases involving property rights, protected by the Fifth and 14th Amendments, Stevens generally sided with the government. Although he once agreed that the government owes property owners compensation for a “taking” when its regulations reduce or destroy the value of their land, he later repudiated that principle. In 2005 he wrote the notorious decision in Kelo v. City of New London that upheld the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another in the name of economic development.

While contemporary liberals tend not to get very worked up about violations of property rights, Kelo prompted dismay across the political spectrum, because it so clearly empowered wealthy, politically influential interests to literally bulldoze over the plans and expectations of ordinary people with less pull. Stevens nevertheless continued to defend that decision after leaving the Court, saying he had “a duty to give deference” to “the state courts’ evaluation of the particular development plan that gave rise to the litigation,” no matter how half-baked or thinly justified it might be.

Stevens also wrote the 2008 decision in Gonzales v. Raich, which held that the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce extends to the the tiniest trace of marijuana anywhere in the country, even if it is produced at home, never crosses state lines, and is used by a cancer patient for medical purposes authorized by state law. While federalism is usually perceived as a “conservative” issue, Stevens’ position in Raich can hardly be described as liberal in the contemporary or classical sense. Yet Greenhouse thinks his liberal tendencies are illustrated by his determination to resist “what had appeared to be the unstoppable states’-rights tilt of the Rehnquist court’s federalism revolution.”

In Kelo, Stevens approved the use of eminent domain for redevelopment because he thought the Supreme Court should not second-guess the decisions of state and local officials. In Raich, by contrast, he insisted that the federal government had the authority to override state policy. The unifying theme is not a preference for state autonomy or federal control; it is deference to the government, at whatever level, when its actions impinge on individual rights that Stevens did not view as important.

Speaking of which, Stevens dissented from the landmark 2008 decision that overturned the District of Columbia’s handgun ban as a violation of the right to armed self-defense. He thought the majority was mistaken in concluding that the Second Amendment “protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense,” arguing that it only “secure[s] to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.”

In a 2018 New York Times op-ed piece, Stevens reiterated his criticism of District of Columbia v. Heller. “Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment,” he said, “would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.” While many modern-day liberals join Stevens in treating the Second Amendment as a nullity, denying the basic human right of armed self-defense hardly seems consistent with liberal concerns about minorities and people of modest means, who tend to live in places where that right really matters.

When Stevens retired from the Court in 2010, a Washington Post editorial claimed “his voice was consistently raised on behalf of those vulnerable to government excesses.” That evaluation is hard to square with his record.

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How Justice John Paul Stevens Shaped—and Misshaped—American Law

John Paul Stevens, the liberal justice who spent 35 years on the U.S. Supreme Court before retiring in 2010, has died at the age of 99.

Appointed by President Gerald Ford, Stevens played a central role in some of the biggest legal conflicts of the past four decades, from the clashes over gun control and eminent domain to the battles over free speech and medical marijuana. Unfortunately, he had a tendency to vote against the constitutional protections spelled out in the Bill of Rights.

Take the First Amendment. In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court held that burning the American flag in protest is a constitutionally protected form of free expression. The “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment,” declared the majority opinion of Justice William Brennan, is that “government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

Stevens disagreed. Outlawing “the public desecration of the flag,” Stevens argued in dissent, amounts to little more than a “trivial burden on free expression.” He maintained that a ban on flag-burning easily passed constitutional muster.

And that was not the only form of political expression that Stevens was willing to ban. In his 2011 book, Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir, Stevens wrote that if he had not retired in 2010, he would have gladly joined Justice Samuel Alito’s lone dissent in Snyder v. Phelps, the case in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of Westboro Baptist Church members to stage noisy and offensive protests outside of military funerals. According to the 8-1 majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts, “such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”

Stevens, like Alito, favored a more censorial approach. “The hate speech during the funeral” was rightfully prohibited, Stevens wrote, because “the speakers intended to use their speech to cause severe harm to a grieving family during a funeral.”

Stevens had an equally deficient view of the Second Amendment. Dissenting in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), in which the Supreme Court recognized the Second Amendment as securing an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, Stevens asserted that the amendment should offer no protection whatsoever for what he called the “right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting.” In other words, unlike most advocates of gun control, who typically concede that hunters should still have the constitutional right to own at least some weapons, Stevens’ view of the Second Amendment did not even recognize that longstanding aspect of civilian gun possession.

Stevens’ most controversial opinion is perhaps his 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, which allowed a municipal government to bulldoze a working-class neighborhood and then hand the land over to a private developer. The Fifth Amendment requires that any taking of private property by the government be for “public use.” But Stevens’ Kelo opinion rested on the more lenient requirement of a “public purpose.”

In response to criticism from myself and others, Stevens later defended Kelo on the grounds that it “adhered to the doctrine of judicial restraint” and was rooted in “Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ broad reading of the text of the Constitution—which allows the states the same broad discretion in making takings decisions that they possess when engaging in other forms of economic regulation.”

Running a close second in controversy was Stevens’ 2005 ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, which upheld the federal ban on medical marijuana even as applied to local medical marijuana patients whose use was perfectly legal under state law. The Controlled Substances Act “is a valid exercise of federal power,” Stevens held, “even as applied to the troubling facts of this case.”

Some Supreme Court justices serve for decades without ever really having any impact on the law. But that cannot be said about John Paul Stevens, who undeniably left his mark. His long, impressive record will be studied by judges, lawyers, scholars, and students for many years to come. Regrettably, that record includes a number of opinions that truly shortchanged the Bill of Rights.

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John Paul Stevens Was a ‘Liberal Champion,’ Except When He Wasn’t

Former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who died yesterday at the age of 99, is routinely described as a “liberal champion,” “the outspoken leader of the court’s liberal wing,” and “the court’s most liberal justice.” Those quotes are all from Linda Greenhouse’s New York Times obituary, but they reflect a journalistic consensus.

In some respects, the “liberal” label is apt, at least as that descriptor is understood in contemporary American politics. But in several important ways, Stevens not only failed to defend but actively undermined principles that are conventionally viewed as liberal. His liberal credentials are even less impressive if you define the term in the classical sense, implying a general skepticism of government power and consistent support for civil liberties.

Stevens opposed the death penalty, supported affirmative action and abortion rights, and resisted attempts to try terrorism suspects before military tribunals or detain them indefinitely without charge or recourse to the federal courts. But in cases involving the Fourth and First amendments, he was far from a “liberal champion.”

Stevens played a significant role in whittling away at the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures” to facilitate the war on drugs. He sided with the majority in decisions saying that a sniff by a drug-detecting dog is not a search, that police may search closed containers in cars and observe backyards from the air without a warrant, that a suspected drug smuggler can be detained until she defecates under supervision, and that a driver’s unusually long wait at a stop sign justifies stopping him and peering into his car. He dissented from a 2001 decision that said police need a warrant to conduct infrared surveillance of a home, and in 2005 he wrote a decision that allowed police to use drug-sniffing dogs during routine traffic stops.

Nor is Stevens’ record on freedom of speech especially liberal. He wrote both the 1978 decision that upheld regulation of broadcast indecency and the 1997 decision that overturned regulation of online indecency. He voted to uphold censorship of student newspapers and to overturn censorship of student banners. In 1989 and 1990 he dissented from decisions overturning state and federal bans on flag burning. In 2010 he angrily dissented from a decision that said people organized as corporations, including nonprofit interest groups, have a right to talk about politics, even at election time.

In cases involving property rights, protected by the Fifth and 14th Amendments, Stevens generally sided with the government. Although he once agreed that the government owes property owners compensation for a “taking” when its regulations reduce or destroy the value of their land, he later repudiated that principle. In 2005 he wrote the notorious decision in Kelo v. City of New London that upheld the use of eminent domain to transfer property from one private owner to another in the name of economic development.

While contemporary liberals tend not to get very worked up about violations of property rights, Kelo prompted dismay across the political spectrum, because it so clearly empowered wealthy, politically influential interests to literally bulldoze over the plans and expectations of ordinary people with less pull. Stevens nevertheless continued to defend that decision after leaving the Court, saying he had “a duty to give deference” to “the state courts’ evaluation of the particular development plan that gave rise to the litigation,” no matter how half-baked or thinly justified it might be.

Stevens also wrote the 2008 decision in Gonzales v. Raich, which held that the federal government’s power to regulate interstate commerce extends to the the tiniest trace of marijuana anywhere in the country, even if it is produced at home, never crosses state lines, and is used by a cancer patient for medical purposes authorized by state law. While federalism is usually perceived as a “conservative” issue, Stevens’ position in Raich can hardly be described as liberal in the contemporary or classical sense. Yet Greenhouse thinks his liberal tendencies are illustrated by his determination to resist “what had appeared to be the unstoppable states’-rights tilt of the Rehnquist court’s federalism revolution.”

In Kelo, Stevens approved the use of eminent domain for redevelopment because he thought the Supreme Court should not second-guess the decisions of state and local officials. In Raich, by contrast, he insisted that the federal government had the authority to override state policy. The unifying theme is not a preference for state autonomy or federal control; it is deference to the government, at whatever level, when its actions impinge on individual rights that Stevens did not view as important.

Speaking of which, Stevens dissented from the landmark 2008 decision that overturned the District of Columbia’s handgun ban as a violation of the right to armed self-defense. He thought the majority was mistaken in thinking that the Second Amendment “protects the right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting and personal self-defense,” arguing that it only “secure[s] to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.”

In a 2018 New York Times op-ed piece, Stevens reiterated his criticism of District of Columbia v. Heller. “Overturning that decision via a constitutional amendment to get rid of the Second Amendment,” he said, “would be simple and would do more to weaken the N.R.A.’s ability to stymie legislative debate and block constructive gun control legislation than any other available option.” While many modern-day liberals join Stevens in treating the Second Amendment as a nullity, denying the basic human right of armed self-defense hardly seems consistent with liberal concerns about minorities and people of modest means, who tend to live in places where that right really matters.

When Stevens retired from the Court in 2010, a Washington Post editorial claimed “his voice was consistently raised on behalf of those vulnerable to government excesses.” That evaluation is hard to square with his record.

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How Justice John Paul Stevens Shaped—and Misshaped—American Law

John Paul Stevens, the liberal justice who spent 35 years on the U.S. Supreme Court before retiring in 2010, has died at the age of 99.

Appointed by President Gerald Ford, Stevens played a central role in some of the biggest legal conflicts of the past four decades, from the clashes over gun control and eminent domain to the battles over free speech and medical marijuana. Unfortunately, he had a tendency to vote against the constitutional protections spelled out in the Bill of Rights.

Take the First Amendment. In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court held that burning the American flag in protest is a constitutionally protected form of free expression. The “bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment,” declared the majority opinion of Justice William Brennan, is that “government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”

Stevens disagreed. Outlawing “the public desecration of the flag,” Stevens argued in dissent, amounts to little more than a “trivial burden on free expression.” He maintained that a ban on flag-burning easily passed constitutional muster.

And that was not the only form of political expression that Stevens was willing to ban. In his 2011 book, Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir, Stevens wrote that if he had not retired in 2010, he would have gladly joined Justice Samuel Alito’s lone dissent in Snyder v. Phelps, the case in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of Westboro Baptist Church members to stage noisy and offensive protests outside of military funerals. According to the 8-1 majority opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts, “such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”

Stevens, like Alito, favored a more censorial approach. “The hate speech during the funeral” was rightfully prohibited, Stevens wrote, because “the speakers intended to use their speech to cause severe harm to a grieving family during a funeral.”

Stevens had an equally deficient view of the Second Amendment. Dissenting in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), in which the Supreme Court recognized the Second Amendment as securing an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, Stevens asserted that the amendment should offer no protection whatsoever for what he called the “right to possess and use guns for nonmilitary purposes like hunting.” In other words, unlike most advocates of gun control, who typically concede that hunters should still have the constitutional right to own at least some weapons, Stevens’ view of the Second Amendment did not even recognize that longstanding aspect of civilian gun possession.

Stevens’ most controversial opinion is perhaps his 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London, which allowed a municipal government to bulldoze a working-class neighborhood and then hand the land over to a private developer. The Fifth Amendment requires that any taking of private property by the government be for “public use.” But Stevens’ Kelo opinion rested on the more lenient requirement of a “public purpose.”

In response to criticism from myself and others, Stevens later defended Kelo on the grounds that it “adhered to the doctrine of judicial restraint” and was rooted in “Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ broad reading of the text of the Constitution—which allows the states the same broad discretion in making takings decisions that they possess when engaging in other forms of economic regulation.”

Running a close second in controversy was Stevens’ 2005 ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, which upheld the federal ban on medical marijuana even as applied to local medical marijuana patients whose use was perfectly legal under state law. The Controlled Substances Act “is a valid exercise of federal power,” Stevens held, “even as applied to the troubling facts of this case.”

Some Supreme Court justices serve for decades without ever really having any impact on the law. But that cannot be said about John Paul Stevens, who undeniably left his mark. His long, impressive record will be studied by judges, lawyers, scholars, and students for many years to come. Regrettably, that record includes a number of opinions that truly shortchanged the Bill of Rights.

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El Chapo Gets Life Sentence For Moving “Mountains Of Cocaine”; Likely Headed To Colorado ‘Supermax’

The notorious Mexican drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman has been handed a life sentence to be served out in a US prison by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday, five months following his initial conviction after the 2017 extradition from Mexico which grabbed world headlines. 

The 62-year-old drug lord had previously twice escaped Mexican prisons before being brought to the US to face drug trafficking charges, given his reportedly cozy relationship with corrupt well-placed Mexican officials while being supported by “an army of gangsters”. 

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, via Reuters

During sentencing El Chapo voiced vehement complaints about the conditions of his confinement, adding further he’d received an unfair trial. 

“My case was stained and you denied me a fair trial when the whole world was watching,” Guzman told US District Judge Brian Coga, speaking through an interpreter.

“When I was extradited to the United States, I expected to have a fair trial, but what happened was exactly the opposite.”

His defense team also complained about juror misconduct.

According to a breaking AP report:

The sentence— life plus 30 years— was pre-ordained. The guilty verdict in February at Guzman’s 11-week trial triggered a mandatory sentence of life without parole . Cogan also ordered Guzman to pay $12.6 billion in ill-gotten proceeds— money his drug-trafficking organization made distributing cocaine and other drugs around the United States.

The evidence showed that under Guzman’s orders, the Sinaloa cartel was responsible for smuggling mountains of cocaine and other drugs into the United States during his 25-year reign, prosecutors said in court papers re-capping the trial. They also said his “army of sicarios” was under orders to kidnap, torture and murder anyone who got in his way.

Given his prior spectacular high risk elaborate escapes from Mexican prisons where he was helped by his extensive cartel network, and potentially by compromised insiders, he’s expected to be sent to ADX Florence. 

ADX Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado

The Florence, Colorado prison is widely considered to be the country’s most secure “Supermax” prison, where 9/11 terror mastermind Zacarias Moussaoui is being held, and other famous terrorists like the “Shoe Bomber.”

Other well-known criminals are also serving out life sentences there, including former FBI agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States, Robert Hanssen, whose life was chronicled in the Hollywood film Breach.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JMnyW8 Tyler Durden

Tesla Claims Secret Project Has Fallen Into Chinese Rival’s Hands

Authored by John LeSage via OilPrice.com,

Tesla and Apple both suspect that their self-driving car technology has been stolen by engineers who went over to a Chinese competitor. That’s a very time-sensitive claim, with intellectual property theft being a central issue in President Donald Trump’s intense trade war against China.

The electric carmaker filed a lawsuit against XMotors.ai, the U.S. research arm of China-based Xpeng, and included a subpoena for Apple to cooperate in the suit. Tesla accused an engineer who worked on its Autopilot system of stealing thousands of highly confidential files when he left the company for a new job at XMotors.ai.

Last year, prosecutors charged a hardware engineer with downloading Apple’s proprietary files as he left the company to go over to the Chinese competitor. He’d been part of the Silicon Valley-giant’s autonomous, electric car secretive development project. The engineer has pleaded not guilty to these charges.

The former Tesla engineer, Guangzhi Cao, responded in a court filing that he downloaded copies of Tesla’s Autopilot-related source code to his personal iCloud account, but denies any illegal maneuvers. According to his lawyers, Cao “has done precisely nothing with Tesla’s IP,” having “diligently and earnestly” tried to remove all of Tesla’s proprietary source code from his personal devices — and he offered to turn over his devices for inspection.

XMotors.ai’s parent company, Xpeng, has yet to be included in the investigations, but the company did respond to the allegations. Xpeng, which is backed by China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology Group, has denied having any part in the former Tesla engineer’s alleged intellectual property theft. The Chinese company said it had been notified in June 2018 that U.S. authorities were investigating the Apple engineer, his computer, and office equipment.

Xpeng is one of the startups that’s pushing for China to lead the world in autonomous and electric vehicles (EVs) — and has been tapping into China’s “new-energy vehicle” campaign for global domination as the auto industry continues to transform.

There’s also the sore subject of oil imports to China, with the national government wanting to cut back on this dependence through alternative fuels, EVs, buses, and self-driving vehicles.

The Trump administration has made intellectual property theft and spying a benchmark of its trade war. While Trump could care less about electric vehicles and transfers the issue of autonomous vehicles over to his Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the president does see another economic battle to be much more important.

The cutting-edge 5G technology coming out in smartphones tells that story well, with Trump’s ban of Chinese company Huawei being a hot spot lately. Huawei will be one of the dominant suppliers as 5G enters the global market.

5G, powering the next generation of wireless smartphones and tablets, is expected to ramp up wireless data transfer by leaps and bounds. Users will be able to download movies and TV series in just a few minutes. It will also become the foundation of wireless’ next generation of infrastructure that will guide the development of smart cities and autonomous vehicles.  

National security experts say that Huawei’s close ties to the Chinese government could lead to espionage or a traumatic episode such as shutting down critical communication networks during a future conflict. 

For Tesla, Apple, and many other companies, playing a leading role in autonomous vehicles is a high priority. Tesla has had a number of fatal car crashes tied to its Autopilot semi-autonomous system, but has been working hard at perfecting its fully autonomous system being build into new Tesla vehicles.

Tesla wants to make sure its bases are covered as CEO Elon Musk just released another teaser about the next phase of the electric carmaker’s self-driving car system being announced soon. Musk said that the company could be offering its new Fully Self Driving chip, as an upgrade to more than 500,000 older-model Tesla vehicles, by the end of this year.

“End of Q4, most likely,” Musk said in reply to a question on when the company would be retrofitting its autonomous vehicle system that Tesla started adding nearly three years ago to new vehicles coming out of its factory. That system includes what it calls Hardware 2 (HW2), a set of sensors, radars, and cameras. Musk has made his share off comments since the initial launch about Tesla leading the way in fully autonomous vehicles.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32oNake Tyler Durden