‘One America News’ Claims Defamation In $10 Million Lawsuit Against Rachel Maddow
It looks as though liberals may never learn that just because they disagree with someone’s opinion, it doesn’t automatically make them a tool of the Russian government. And leading the charge of liberals disseminating Russiagate nothingburgers, of course, continues to be Rachel Maddow.
Conservative television network One America News (OAN) is suing Rachel Maddow for $10 million after she referred to the network as “paid Russian propaganda”. OAN filed the defamation suit in federal court in San Diego, according to AP. OAN is a small, family owned conservative network that is based in San Diego and has received favorable Tweets from the President. It is seen as a competitor to Fox News.
OAN’s lawsuit claims that Maddow’s comments were retaliation after OAN President Charles Herring accused Comcast of censorship. The suit said that Comcast refuses to carry its channel because “counters the liberal politics of Comcast’s own news channel, MSNBC.”
It was about a week after Herring e-mailed a Comcast executive when Maddow opened her show by referring to a Daily Beast report that claimed an OAN employee also worked for Sputnik News, which has ties to the Russian government.
Maddow said: “In this case, the most obsequiously pro-Trump right-wing news outlet in America really literally is paid Russian propaganda. Their on-air U.S. politics reporter is paid by the Russian government to produce propaganda for that government.”
Except Maddow, likely still upset from spending 3 years trying to promulgate a Russian hoax that didn’t exist, didn’t quite get her facts straight.Big surprise.
OAN said in its lawsuit that while reporter Kristian Rouz was associated with Sputnik News, he worked solely as a freelancer for them and was not a staff employee of OAN. And the lawsuit includes a statement from Rouz stating that while he has written some 1,300 articles over the past 4 and a half years for Sputnik, he has “…never written propaganda, disinformation, or unverified information.”
Skip Miller, OAN’s attorney stated:
“One America is wholly owned, operated and financed by the Herring family in San Diego. They are as American as apple pie. They are not paid by Russia and have nothing to do with the Russian government. This is a false and malicious libel, and they’re going to answer for it in a court of law.”
The lawsuit included an August 6th letter from an NBC Universal attorney who stated that “OAN publishes content collected or created by a journalist who is also paid by the Russian government for writing over a thousand articles. Ms. Maddow’s recounting of this arrangement is substantially true and therefore not actionable.”
Californians have had it with PG&E, a convicted felon infamous for sacrificing safety, maintenance, reliability, and people to enhance “shareholder value.” But is San Francisco overpaying? Take a look.
This – the offer made on Sunday – has been kicked around in San Francisco since the catastrophic wildfire in Butte County in Northern California last year that killed 85 people, the cause of which was determined to have been PG&E’s electrical transmission lines – how they’ve not been maintained, including not removing vegetation near them. PG&E is infamous for skimping on maintenance and investment to maximize “shareholder value.” PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January, and its shares have collapsed by about 84% over the past two years, a good example of the results of maximizing “shareholder value.”
On Sunday, the City announced a plan to bid for PG&E’s “assets” in San Francisco for $2.5 billion. These “assets” are poles, power lines, transformers, and other electrical equipment, some of it under ground, some of it above ground, infamously maintained in the manner of PG&E, including this power pole and transformer a few feet from our balcony:
This pole is just an example. Note how the pole is completely rotten, how old the transformer is, and the insulators, and the wires. The pole was placed over 100 years ago, the transformer decades ago. I’ll show some additional stunning details in a moment. These types of power poles are all over San Francisco.
As you can tell from the pole, there is no competition in the power transmission business. This is the only set of wires to the building. It’s the same all across the country. Whoever owns the wires has a total monopoly. In the transmission business, there is no free market – so forget relying on the “market” to fix this issue. All the market wants from PG&E is dividends and a high share price, which translate into cost cuts, shitty maintenance, and inadequate investment.
The city of San Francisco would buy the power from power generators, including PG&E, which is also buying power from other power generators. There is actual competition among power generators with something like a real market, including market manipulation.
The $2.5 billion purchase price would be funded by a revenue bond issue. Last November, voters approved Proposition A that authorized San Francisco’s public utilities commission to issue bonds for the purpose of acquiring PG&E’s power equipment in San Francisco. “Funding secured,” as Elon Musk would say.
PG&E is headquartered in San Francisco, but it no longer has a lot of friends here. Power outages, sometimes lasting for hours, are fairly common. I have never lived in a city where they were as common as those I have experienced in San Francisco. Some of the outages are planned and come with advance notice. Others are surprise outages because of equipment failure of some sort. I have bought extra equipment to deal with them because I can’t just shut my business down. So there is no love lost.
PG&E also provides gas in San Francisco, and this would continue.
PG&E’s 30-inch gas pipeline in San Bruno, a town near San Francisco International Airport, exploded in 2010, killing eight people and incinerating the neighborhood. A federal investigation found that the pipeline, installed in 1956, had many defective welds; but as demand grew, PG&E increased the gas pressure to force more gas through the pipeline, rather than putting a modern gas pipeline into the ground. And there were numerous other shortcomings and revelations. Shareholder value had priority.
In 2017, a federal judge convicted PG&E on six criminal charges related to the gas pipeline explosion and imposed the maximum fine of $3 million, a barely audible slap on the wrist. No one went to jail, obviously, not even the regulators that had been in bed with PG&E. But it turned PG&E into a convicted felon, for whatever that’s worth.
So, where I sit, in my WOLF STREET media mogul empire, headquartered in San Francisco, electricity service cannot get a lot worse, in terms of price and reliability, but it can get a lot better. Ultimately, the City is responsible to local voters. PG&E is responsible to its bondholders and shareholders. Those are very different priorities, from my point of view.
But is San Francisco overpaying for dilapidated outdated equipment?
Here are more photos of the utility pole out front of our global corporate headquarters. There are many of these poles around. What I want to show is just how old this thing is.
There are wooden protectors still on the pole. In modern times, protectors are made of other materials, such as plastics. But these are wooden half-pipes along the pole, put over cables to protect them. There are two types of these wooden protectors on the pole, a large one for a big cable and a small one for a small cable.
These photos show further how PG&E has handled its maintenance (“what maintenance?”) and how it has invested in its equipment. This is the same pole, seen from the bottom up. Follow the red arrows to the large wooden protector half-pipes (click to enlarge):
The photo below shows the same wooden half-pipes a little further down the pole:
In the photo below, follow the red arrows to the small wooden half-pipe:
The photo blow shows the whole rickety top. Note the large wooden half-pipe along the right side of the pole:
The question here: Is San Francisco paying too much for “assets” that will then turn out to be “liabilities” instead, namely accidents waiting to happen due to PG&E’s run-down equipment and negligent maintenance? Who is going to be toast when the ancient transformer blows up that is eight feet from our balcony? And how much would the City have to pay for this toast?
Separating out San Francisco’s electric infrastructure, for a population of about 880,000, is not going to be another fatal blow for PG&E, given that it serves about 16 million customers in much of California. But it would be a blow.
There are discussions under way at the state level to split up PG&E into smaller electric utilities and selling them to the various cities. And there are discussions underway to split the gas and electric utilities.
PG&E, has long had regulators in its pocket, as numerous investigations and scandals have shown, including the investigation into the San Bruno pipeline explosion.
California also forced ratepayers to bail out PG&E after its 2001 bankruptcy via forced above-market rates, which continue to this day, while its bond holders and stockholders were made whole at the time.
Now Californians have lost patience. And dismembering PG&E is a real option. Earlier this year, San Francisco’s public utility commission, in studying the feasibility of purchasing PG&E’s electrical equipment in San Francisco, found that a municipally owned utility could provide lower electricity rates due to lower funding costs in the bond market, and because the municipal utility would be a non-profit and would not have to make Wall Street happy. It might actually focus on its customers, who are voters.
Given the mess we’ve been in with PG&E, just about anything is better than the status quo of a monopoly whose bondholders and shareholders continue to get bailed out by rate payers, and whose rate payers in turn continue to get shafted and even killed by inadequate maintenance and investment. But that $2.5 billion looks like a lot of money for this crappy infrastructure.
* * *
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Over at The Atlantic, Derek Thompson mulls over whether we’re seeing a “great metropolitan exodus” because America’s top cities have recently begun losing population.
Chicago has been losing people for years now, but Los Angeles and New York City have also found themselves on the decline. Both cities had been seeing domestic outmigration (people moving out of the city to other parts of the country) for several years, but foreign immigration into the two cities have long made up for it.
But new census data shows that Los Angeles County is seeing a net loss of about 13,000 folks, and New York’s Bronx, Kings, and Queens counties (all containing parts of New York City) have seen a combined net loss of about 40,000 people, based on census data released back in April.
Thompson hits some of the big issues affecting these cities (housing problems in Los Angeles, crime and racism in Chicago), but he does so in a vague “maybe this is a contributor?” fashion. It’s partly understandable; because the trend is new (except in Chicago) the full nature of this population drain isn’t entirely clear, and it’s too soon to give firm answers without falling into confirmation biases, even if they do have statistical support. Still, each of these cities is facing some severe problems in the way they’re managed, their uncertain financial situations, and a general disregard for the welfare and liberty of the citizens who live there.
Chicago. What more is there to say about a city that is infamous for its corrupt police department (not to mention the rest of its government) as well as its growing financial crisis? The city and state’s pension crises continue to escalate as Chicago has—for years—failed to properly fund the pensions of its very well-paid employees. The city has responded to this growing crisis not by cutting back on spending but by desperately looking for revenueanywhere they can get it, which means trying to shake more change out of the pockets of city residents. Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella has documented how the city has been impounding people’s cars and attempting to soak them for thousands of dollars in fines.
Now the city is hoping that recently legalized marijuana sale revenue will help balance the budget, but the high taxes on recreational weed sales guarantee that (just like in California) a black market for pot will continue to thrive. The city cannot depend on that revenue to fix its problems.
As such, Chicago is seeking more and more money from its citizens to simply stay afloat. Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, noted in June that Chicago “cannot keep asking taxpayers to give us more revenue without the structural reforms that are fundamentally necessary to make our city and our state run better.” But then in July, Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker resisted her proposed solution to combine the state’s various pension systems under one umbrella out of fear it will hurt the state’s extremely troubled credit rating. Adam Schuster of the Illinois Policy Institute noted that Lightfoot’s plan was essentially an attempt to get a state bailout of Chicago’s pension debts, and the end result would likely be a massive state deficit and more calls for tax increases.
Chicago may well be in a financial death spiral. Given all the official city-sanctioned government pickpocketing, it’s not surprising that people are abandoning the Windy City.
Los Angeles. Thompson quite accurately notes that the city and the entire state of California is stuck in a crisis due to lack of housing, and it’s most certainly contributing to L.A.’s outmigration (not to mention the city’s expanding homeless population).
But Thompson doesn’t really delve into the deliberately destructive regulatory systems in California that keep big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco from being able to efficiently build more homes.
California gives its residents way too much power to attack and veto nearby housing developments by abusing state environmental regulations. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is invoked regularly by wealthier NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) types who may fret in public about the homeless crisis but will fight any solution that might bring more people to their neighborhood. CEQA is also regularly abused by construction unions to try to force developers to negotiate with them or risk long delays and court fights in order to build anything at all.
These fights naturally drive up the costs of housing, making it harder and harder for developers to actually build “affordable” housing, which then becomes another tool used to fight any housing development at all by people trying to hold back progress, complaining it will lead to gentrification and people (particularly poor minorities) getting shoved out of their homes. Research consistently shows that the idea that gentrification is caused by adding more housing to poor or minority communities is mostly nonsense. Yet it still gets used by NIMBY neighbors who are really just trying to protect their property values.
All of that is to say that the source of L.A.’s housing problem is easy to identify and solve. Instead, we’re seeing responses that will make the housing problem worse—like expanded rent control. Fortunately, though, there are some major housing developments currently under construction in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the city council seems to think the solution to the city’s homeless problem involves banning them from sleeping outdoors in more places.
New York City. It’s tempting to just say “Mayor Bill de Blasio” as an explanation of what’s ailing the Big Apple. There’s a reason that de Blasio is currently one of the least popular candidates vying for the presidential nomination: He is wildly unpopular in his own state.
De Blasio has pretty much no interest in what you, as a resident of New York City, would like to do with your property, your life, or your child’s education. He has said believes that the purpose of businesses and corporations are to serve the government and wants to seize and redistribute their profits if they make more money than he prefers. He has said he would like to seize poorly maintained propertiesto hand them over to the city’s Housing Authority, even though the agency has been ranked as the worst landlord in the Big Apple by the New York City Public Advocate, the city’s elected ombudsman.
De Blasio is also a massive enemy of school choice, unlike former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has donated his own money to support charter schools. De Blasio is fighting charter schools and gifted schools all to pander to unions and other politically powerful city residents. This attack isn’t going to hurt wealthy families—they will send their kids to private schools regardless. Instead, he’s hurting talented children in poor and minority families who see charter schools as an alternative when their kids are not being served well by traditional public schools. Instead of attempting to actually improve the quality of public schooling, he’s trying to institute demographic quotas to decide which children attend which schools in some misguided attempt at “fairness,” which will level the playing field by dragging everybody down to the city-approved level of mediocrity.
Despite de Blasio’s vocal attacks against the wealthy and connected, as mayor, he’s mostly served the entrenched city government power base at the expense of his own citizens. And we see the same in Los Angeles and Chicago. Is there any wonder people might be packing up and moving out?
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‘We Believe Him’: Desperate Farmers Blame USDA – Not Trump – For Their Problems
Of all President Trump’s critical constituencies, none have been asked to sacrifice as much as America’s farmers. Many midwestern farmers were already in a difficult spot when President Trump first came on the scene, hammered by low crop prices and farms teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.
But in the nearly three years since Trump’s inauguration, the situation for most farmers has gone from bad to worse. In retaliation for President Trump’s trade war, China has cut off imports of American soybeans. And even Trump’s farm bailouts haven’t quite made up for the damage to the midwestern economy that has occurred under his administration.
Despite this, most farmers remain loyal to Trump, and plan to vote for him again in 2020. Instead, Reuters reports, many farmers are directing their anger not at the Trump Administration, but at the USDA and the Washington bureaucracy, which believe is working to thwart President Trump’s true agenda.
Unfounded conspiracy theories have reportedly been circulating online and among farmers that the USDA is the true source of American farmers’ financial malaise. This has led to farmers threatening a USDA employees during a crop study earlier this year, prompting the agency to withdraw its personnel from the field.
According to a Reuters poll, Trump’s approval rating in rural areas has fallen slightly to 71% from a peak of 79%. Still, many farmers are struggling to “emotionally process” their pain.
Farmers are struggling with how to emotionally process their pain from the Trump administration’s policies, and anger at the USDA may be a coping mechanism, said Ted Matthews, a Minnesota psychologist who has spent 30 years counseling farmers and rural residents across the Midwest.
“The question I hear from farmers who voted for (Trump) is, ‘We believed him when he said he would help make the farm economy better, that we could save our farms. Now, who do we blame?'” Matthews said.
Of course, directing their rage at the faceless Washington bureaucracy is easier than directing it at Trump – someone they supported and voted for.
“It’s much easier to be angry at a faceless Washington bureaucracy than at the man you voted for,” said Jere Solvie, 69, grain and hog farmer from west-central Minnesota who voted for Trump and still supports him.
According to Reuters, the USDA enjoyed a brief honeymoon with farmers thanks to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue’s southern charm. But the secretary was booed last month in Minnesota, after his agency made a few critical missteps, including releasing a crop estimate that prompted the biggest drop in corn futures in three years.
This is a sharp contrast to early days in the administration, when Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue was a reliable point person. His folksy southern charm and his appeals to patriotism helped sell Trump’s policies to farmers, even the trade war.
But Perdue’s honeymoon in farm country has ended. Farmers booed the agriculture secretary in Minnesota last month after he joked: “What do you call two farmers in a basement? A whine cellar.”
“He’s supposed to support us, especially during times of distress,” said Gary Wertish, a fourth-generation Minnesotan who farms 500 acres of corn, soybeans and navy beans, and heard the remarks in person.
Grain farmers were already furious that corn futures prices Cv1 posted their biggest drop in three years after USDA estimated a bigger-than-expected crop on Aug. 12, despite floods that slowed planting.
As desperation sets in, more farmers might finally turn on the president, particularly after a difficult harvest season.
Wes Hitchcock, a corn farmer and Trump supporter in Sparks, Nebraska, wrote a 1,700-word paper titled “USDA vs. Trump” and has repeatedly posted it on Facebook in a grain market discussion group with 13,000 members.
Hitchcock said he was unable to plant about 30% of the 2,200 corn acres he had planned to grow because of heavy rains this spring. The corn he did manage to plant is not looking great, either, he said.
“I’m going bankrupt and everybody else will this year too,” he said in a phone interview with Reuters.
After all, farmers might change their minds if they end up bankrupt.
National Security Advisor John Bolton is out. President Donald Trump tweeted today that the stridently interventionist Bolton was asked to resign this morning over continued policy differences with the president and other members of his administration.
“I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service,” the president declared in a tweet. Trump said a new national security advisor would be named next week.
….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
The public nature of his White House departure seems to have come as a surprise to Bolton. The outgoing national security advisor tweeted that he had offered his resignation last night but was told by Trump that they’d discuss it today.
I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, "Let's talk about it tomorrow."
Trump’s mention of differences between Bolton and “others in his administration” appears to be a reference to the conflict between Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Pompeo has been overseeing peace negotiations with the Taliban as a prelude to a U.S. drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.
According to reporting from The Washington Post, Bolton had opposed these talks, preferring a unilateral, partial withdrawal of U.S. forces.
This was not the first disagreement between the ultra-hawkish Bolton and the occasionally more intervention-skeptic Trump. Time and again, Bolton has appeared to undermine the president’s efforts to scale back U.S. interventions abroad.
In April 2018, for example, Bolton seemingly attempted to sabotage his boss’s peace overtures to North Korea by suggesting that the U.S. would pursue the “Libyan model” of disarming the country. (The U.S. helped to overthrow Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi after he had agreed to give up his country’s nuclear program.)
Bolton also helped to stall a U.S. exit from Syria. In December 2018, Trump announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing military forces from the country, only to have Bolton condition that withdrawal on a Turkish agreement to not attack Kurdish forces in Syria.
To be sure, Trump himself has been—at best—an erratic and fair weather dove. He suggests troop withdrawals one day and then makes bellicose threats the next.
Trump has certainly needed no encouragement to take a hostile line on Iran. Nevertheless, Bolton clearly helped to raise tensions with that country during his time in the White House. In May, for instance, Bolton made a very public show of dispatching an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf in order to send Iran “a clear and unmistakable message” of U.S. resolve.
Bolton’s departure from the White House is being greeted with a collective sigh of relief from non-interventionists everywhere.
John Bolton never should have been hired. I hope the president’s next national security adviser will focus on securing peace, not expanding war.
It’s unlikely that Bolton will disappear from the scene completely. Having been unceremoniously let go from the Trump administration, he may well become a professional Trump critic on cable news.
Still, the fact that Bolton will no longer have a direct role in setting U.S. foreign policy is a huge win for those who think the U.S. should be fighting fewer wars.
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Over at The Atlantic, Derek Thompson mulls over whether we’re seeing a “great metropolitan exodus” because America’s top cities have recently begun losing population.
Chicago has been losing people for years now, but Los Angeles and New York City have also found themselves on the decline. Both cities had been seeing domestic outmigration (people moving out of the city to other parts of the country) for several years, but foreign immigration into the two cities have long made up for it.
But new census data shows that Los Angeles County is seeing a net loss of about 13,000 folks, and New York’s Bronx, Kings, and Queens counties (all containing parts of New York City) have seen a combined net loss of about 40,000 people, based on census data released back in April.
Thompson hits some of the big issues affecting these cities (housing problems in Los Angeles, crime and racism in Chicago), but he does so in a vague “maybe this is a contributor?” fashion. It’s partly understandable; because the trend is new (except in Chicago) the full nature of this population drain isn’t entirely clear, and it’s too soon to give firm answers without falling into confirmation biases, even if they do have statistical support. Still, each of these cities is facing some severe problems in the way they’re managed, their uncertain financial situations, and a general disregard for the welfare and liberty of the citizens who live there.
Chicago. What more is there to say about a city that is infamous for its corrupt police department (not to mention the rest of its government) as well as its growing financial crisis? The city and state’s pension crises continue to escalate as Chicago has—for years—failed to properly fund the pensions of its very well-paid employees. The city has responded to this growing crisis not by cutting back on spending but by desperately looking for revenueanywhere they can get it, which means trying to shake more change out of the pockets of city residents. Reason‘s C.J. Ciaramella has documented how the city has been impounding people’s cars and attempting to soak them for thousands of dollars in fines.
Now the city is hoping that recently legalized marijuana sale revenue will help balance the budget, but the high taxes on recreational weed sales guarantee that (just like in California) a black market for pot will continue to thrive. The city cannot depend on that revenue to fix its problems.
As such, Chicago is seeking more and more money from its citizens to simply stay afloat. Chicago’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, noted in June that Chicago “cannot keep asking taxpayers to give us more revenue without the structural reforms that are fundamentally necessary to make our city and our state run better.” But then in July, Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker resisted her proposed solution to combine the state’s various pension systems under one umbrella out of fear it will hurt the state’s extremely troubled credit rating. Adam Schuster of the Illinois Policy Institute noted that Lightfoot’s plan was essentially an attempt to get a state bailout of Chicago’s pension debts, and the end result would likely be a massive state deficit and more calls for tax increases.
Chicago may well be in a financial death spiral. Given all the official city-sanctioned government pickpocketing, it’s not surprising that people are abandoning the Windy City.
Los Angeles. Thompson quite accurately notes that the city and the entire state of California is stuck in a crisis due to lack of housing, and it’s most certainly contributing to L.A.’s outmigration (not to mention the city’s expanding homeless population).
But Thompson doesn’t really delve into the deliberately destructive regulatory systems in California that keep big cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco from being able to efficiently build more homes.
California gives its residents way too much power to attack and veto nearby housing developments by abusing state environmental regulations. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is invoked regularly by wealthier NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) types who may fret in public about the homeless crisis but will fight any solution that might bring more people to their neighborhood. CEQA is also regularly abused by construction unions to try to force developers to negotiate with them or risk long delays and court fights in order to build anything at all.
These fights naturally drive up the costs of housing, making it harder and harder for developers to actually build “affordable” housing, which then becomes another tool used to fight any housing development at all by people trying to hold back progress, complaining it will lead to gentrification and people (particularly poor minorities) getting shoved out of their homes. Research consistently shows that the idea that gentrification is caused by adding more housing to poor or minority communities is mostly nonsense. Yet it still gets used by NIMBY neighbors who are really just trying to protect their property values.
All of that is to say that the source of L.A.’s housing problem is easy to identify and solve. Instead, we’re seeing responses that will make the housing problem worse—like expanded rent control. Fortunately, though, there are some major housing developments currently under construction in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the city council seems to think the solution to the city’s homeless problem involves banning them from sleeping outdoors in more places.
New York City. It’s tempting to just say “Mayor Bill de Blasio” as an explanation of what’s ailing the Big Apple. There’s a reason that de Blasio is currently one of the least popular candidates vying for the presidential nomination: He is wildly unpopular in his own state.
De Blasio has pretty much no interest in what you, as a resident of New York City, would like to do with your property, your life, or your child’s education. He has said believes that the purpose of businesses and corporations are to serve the government and wants to seize and redistribute their profits if they make more money than he prefers. He has said he would like to seize poorly maintained propertiesto hand them over to the city’s Housing Authority, even though the agency has been ranked as the worst landlord in the Big Apple by the New York City Public Advocate, the city’s elected ombudsman.
De Blasio is also a massive enemy of school choice, unlike former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has donated his own money to support charter schools. De Blasio is fighting charter schools and gifted schools all to pander to unions and other politically powerful city residents. This attack isn’t going to hurt wealthy families—they will send their kids to private schools regardless. Instead, he’s hurting talented children in poor and minority families who see charter schools as an alternative when their kids are not being served well by traditional public schools. Instead of attempting to actually improve the quality of public schooling, he’s trying to institute demographic quotas to decide which children attend which schools in some misguided attempt at “fairness,” which will level the playing field by dragging everybody down to the city-approved level of mediocrity.
Despite de Blasio’s vocal attacks against the wealthy and connected, as mayor, he’s mostly served the entrenched city government power base at the expense of his own citizens. And we see the same in Los Angeles and Chicago. Is there any wonder people might be packing up and moving out?
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Tapero made his regards during an interview with business news outlet AlphaWeek published on Sept. 10. He said:
“What it is is an invention, and I think it should be referred to as an invention rather than all the other things. It’s a, you know, what it really is […] It’s a truth machine. […] It’s a way to eradicate all fraud or lying by human beings.”
Bitcoin is a reward for network maintenance
He also noted that the system is now ten years old and has a good track record, all of which contributes to his will to ask “what is a security platform like that, with that track record,” worth. In the end, he concluded:
“Bitcoin, really, is just the reward that miners get for guaranteeing the security of the framework of the network, that’s what it is. ”
BTC is worth hundreds of billions of dollars
Tapero also asked what it would cost for a company to develop such a system. He said that he believes it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, touching on the number of work hours dedicated to the development and maintenance of Bitcoin and its ecosystem.
He also added:
“Could a company even develop that? You know, maybe Satoshi realized it can only be developed slowly over time in a decentralized way.”
As Cointelegraph reported earlier today, Blockstream CEO said that Bitcoin is reverting to its historical 90%+ market dominance at altcoins’ expense.
National Security Advisor John Bolton is out. President Donald Trump tweeted today that the stridently interventionist Bolton was asked to resign this morning over continued policy differences with the president and other members of his administration.
“I disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions, as did others in the Administration, and therefore I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service,” the president declared in a tweet. Trump said a new national security advisor would be named next week.
….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.
The public nature of his White House departure seems to have come as a surprise to Bolton. The outgoing national security advisor tweeted that he had offered his resignation last night but was told by Trump that they’d discuss it today.
I offered to resign last night and President Trump said, "Let's talk about it tomorrow."
Trump’s mention of differences between Bolton and “others in his administration” appears to be a reference to the conflict between Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Pompeo has been overseeing peace negotiations with the Taliban as a prelude to a U.S. drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.
According to reporting from The Washington Post, Bolton had opposed these talks, preferring a unilateral, partial withdrawal of U.S. forces.
This was not the first disagreement between the ultra-hawkish Bolton and the occasionally more intervention-skeptic Trump. Time and again, Bolton has appeared to undermine the president’s efforts to scale back U.S. interventions abroad.
In April 2018, for example, Bolton seemingly attempted to sabotage his boss’s peace overtures to North Korea by suggesting that the U.S. would pursue the “Libyan model” of disarming the country. (The U.S. helped to overthrow Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi after he had agreed to give up his country’s nuclear program.)
Bolton also helped to stall a U.S. exit from Syria. In December 2018, Trump announced that the U.S. would be withdrawing military forces from the country, only to have Bolton condition that withdrawal on a Turkish agreement to not attack Kurdish forces in Syria.
To be sure, Trump himself has been—at best—an erratic and fair weather dove. He suggests troop withdrawals one day and then makes bellicose threats the next.
Trump has certainly needed no encouragement to take a hostile line on Iran. Nevertheless, Bolton clearly helped to raise tensions with that country during his time in the White House. In May, for instance, Bolton made a very public show of dispatching an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf in order to send Iran “a clear and unmistakable message” of U.S. resolve.
Bolton’s departure from the White House is being greeted with a collective sigh of relief from non-interventionists everywhere.
John Bolton never should have been hired. I hope the president’s next national security adviser will focus on securing peace, not expanding war.
It’s unlikely that Bolton will disappear from the scene completely. Having been unceremoniously let go from the Trump administration, he may well become a professional Trump critic on cable news.
Still, the fact that Bolton will no longer have a direct role in setting U.S. foreign policy is a huge win for those who think the U.S. should be fighting fewer wars.
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China Vows To ‘Crush’ Pro-Democracy Separatists; Hong Kong Warns Against Foreign Influence
Beijing warned on Monday that Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China and any form of secessionism “will be crushed,” after pro-democracy demonstrators begged US President Trump to intervene in the ongoing anti-government movement now in its 14th week.
According to the China Daily newspaper, Sunday’s pro-democracy rally proves that foreigners have been behind the protests, and warned that participants should “stop trying the patience of the central government,” reports Reuters.
Chinese officials have accused foreign forces of trying to hurt Beijing by creating chaos in Hong Kong over a hugely unpopular extradition bill that would have allowed suspects to be tried in Communist Party-controlled courts.
Anger over the bill grew into sometimes violent protests calling for more freedoms for Hong Kong, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” formula. –Reuters
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, meanwhile, warned the United States and other countries that it was “totally unacceptable” for the United States or anyone else to intervene in the situation.
“The Hong Kong government completely disagrees and expresses deep regret that foreign parliaments are interfering in our internal affairs through legislation,” Lam said during her weekly news conference, adding “We will never allow them to be stakeholders in Hong Kong’s internal affairs.”
Protesters on Sunday expressed support for the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 introduced by US Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) in June. The bill calls on the US government to protect the rights of Hong Kong protesters, including an assessment of whether “sensitive dual-use items subject to the export control laws of the United States are being used to develop the “social credit” system of China.”
“Democrats and Republicans continue to stand united with the people of Hong Kong in demanding the hopeful, free and democratic future that is their right,” said US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week in a show of bipartisan support for Smith’s bill.
According to Lam, approximately 1,400 Kong Kong companies benefit from Washington’s relationship with the city and that “any particular provisions applied to Hong Kong by the Americans are not exclusively for the benefit of Hong Kong,” according to CNN. The passage of the US bill would undoubtedly harm the city’s economy, which has already taken a hit due to the protests.
On Tuesday, she called for the public to stop resorting to violence, saying “Escalation and continuation of violence cannot solve the issues faced by our society now. It will only deepen the conflict, contradiction, splits, and even hatred in society.”
“To mend the society and to bring back peace, we are very willing to engage people directly in a dialogue.”
The Hong Kong protests began with opposition to a controversial extradition bill which would allow suspects to be taken to mainland China for trial in PRC-controlled courts. It has since evolved into a general anti-government / pro-democracy movement which shows no signs of abating.
Saudi Arabia plans to have uranium produced and enriched in the future for a civil nuclear power program, the newly-appointed Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said on Monday.
“We are proceeding with it cautiously … we are experimenting with two nuclear reactors,” Reuters quoted the minister as saying at a conference in Abu Dhabi in bin Salman’s first official appearance since he was named to replace Khalid al-Falih at the helm of the powerful energy ministry of Saudi Arabia.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia has been planning to begin building a nuclear power plant with the help of U.S. technology. Last year, now former energy minister al-Falih said that the U.S. was not the only option for the Kingdom when it comes to developing nuclear energy projects.
Cooperation with the United States in the field of nuclear power is only possible for countries that sign the so-called 123 agreement, which stipulates a clear distinction between using nuclear technology for civil and for military purposes, and binds the signee to utilizing the technology for civil purposes only.
Referring to oil policies, the new Saudi energy minister assured markets on Monday saying thatthere would be no “radical” change in Saudi Arabia’s oil policy.
Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer and de facto leader, will continue to work with other producers to reach oil market balance, adding that the OPEC+ coalition of producers would stay for the long term.
Asked if deeper cuts are needed to support oil prices—as analysts have suggested— Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said, as carried by Reuters:
“It would be wrong from my end to pre-empt the rest of the OPEC members.”
The new Saudi minister called on all members of the pact, however, to comply with their share of the production cuts. Saudi Arabia has been over-complying with the deal by more than half a million barrels a day, while other members such as Iraq and Nigeria have frequently exceeded their output caps.
