Month: September 2022

New York Housing Plan For Illegal Migrants Bused From Texas Falls Apart

New York Housing Plan For Illegal Migrants Bused From Texas Falls Apart

New York is struggling to come up with a plan to deal with thousands of illegal immigrants being bused in from Texas, and the costs are starting to pile up.  It’s another interesting development in the ongoing saga of the reverse Cloward-Piven strategy being used against open-border progressives in New York and Washington DC.  So far, the tactic appears to be working.  

The obvious irony of the situation is that leftist elites have long demanded that southern border states like Texas ignore constitutional laws on citizenship and take on the job of processing, feeding, housing and transporting millions of illegal immigrants every year (well beyond the efforts of federal border patrol) while New York can’t even handle 6000 of them.  

Currently, costs for the ongoing surge in migrants bused into NYC are estimated at around $300 million.  This is not accounting for the city’s plans to create a large processing center next to a hotel or housing facility designed to accommodate thousands of people at a time.  New York’s Department of Homeless Services has been struggling to stay afloat and the so far their plans to open the processing center have fallen apart according to officials. 

City planners had hoped to use the Midtown Homeless Shelter for intake of bused in migrants, but it was slated to open on August 15th for operations and there have been no new developments since.  DHS also admitted that it has yet to select and rent any of the 5000 hotel rooms it was originally seeking to house migrants across the city.  Most likely, they have realized they don’t have the funds to absorb the extra costs, and, the “sanctuary city” may have even realized that if they do pay for the housing of the current wave of illegal immigrants, then many thousands more will follow in the assumption that a government subsidized life awaits them.    

   

Suddenly, New York progressives are beginning to understand the conundrum of illegal immigration – The more you help, the more you hurt.  Immigration laws exist for a reason; they have nothing to do with race issues and more to do with cultural and economic protection.  

Central and South American governments have long used the US southern border as a steam valve to release unhappy citizens as well as sizable criminal element; because the longer they stay bottled up within poorly run countries with limited resources the higher the chances of civil unrest and regime change.  Instead, the discontented masses are sent here, and after decades of federal government sabotage of border protections (mostly under leftist politicians) the influx of migrants is taking it’s toll.  

Official estimates for the illegal population within the US stand at over 11 million, which is likely a conservative stat.  In 2021 alone, at least a million illegal immigrants attempted to cross the border. 

The mayors of both New York and Washington DC have publicly admonished Texas for busing migrants to their backyards (the hypocrisy is astonishing), and have even demanded that the federal government step in and allow the national guard to handle the situation.  For now this demand has been ignored. 

The political optics of calling in military elements to deal with a mere 6000 to 10000 migrants when border states have been dealing with millions a year are intensely negative.  New York and DC have been utterly embarrassed by the situation.  This fact illustrates the level of desperation among leftist cities facing the consequences of their own sanctuary policies and open border politics.  

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki famously chided Texas Governor Greg Abbott for his plan to relocate illegal immigrants to the region in protest of Joe Biden’s continues refusal to address the border crisis, stating that:

“It’s nice the state of Texas is helping them get to their final destination, as they await their outcome of their immigration proceedings and they’re all in immigration proceedings…” 

She also stated that:

“I’m not aware of what authority the governor would be doing that under. I think it’s pretty clear this is a publicity stunt…”

Abbott’s reasoning was simple:  “President Biden refuses to come to the southern border to see the chaos he has created. So, we’re taking the border to him.”

Psaki and others that mocked Abbot have been silent recently, or, they are now playing as if they are victims as they are buried in a mess of their own making. 

Tyler Durden
Sat, 09/03/2022 – 12:00

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The Western-System Is More Fragile Than Ever… Here’s What Comes Next

The Western-System Is More Fragile Than Ever… Here’s What Comes Next

Authored by Chris MacIntosh via InternationalMan.com,

Two things I want to point out.

One is that John Locke was right.

Government has no other end than the preservation of property. Tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right… there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.” -John Locke

If ever there was a catalyst to galvanize and accelerate an alternate system or systems to provide relief from the tsunami of oppression coming at us, then surely this is it.

And secondly… the galvanizing of current existing alternative systems, which, if I’m even half right, will morph during the course of the decade resulting in something that will be unrecognizable from its current state.

While the Western “democratic” world focuses on ensuring the gender confused have tampons in the boys’ loos, dramatic changes are afoot in that world outside of the narrow Western dominated MSM scope.

At the recently convened St Petersburg International Economic Forum Vladimir Putin put it like this:

To reiterate, these changes are fundamental, groundbreaking and rigorous. It would be a mistake to assume that at a time of turbulent change, one can simply sit it out or wait it out until everything gets back on track and becomes what it was before. It will not.

Now think what you will of Vlad but to discount his views is foolish. If nothing else his grasp of history, economics and realpolitik is vastly superior to any of the podium donuts in literally any western country today.

Differing ideologies, differing economic, political and social systems

As the central planners at the WEF, NATO, EU, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and US administration press ahead with what can only be described as a tyrannical evil agenda, this creates a greater synergy and connectivity for those systems which are in disagreement, even if only marginally so.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend”

Remember… The Allies joined with Stalin in World War II in order to defeat Hitler.

Go back to what we’ve seen taking place over the last, 40 odd years.

The Western-led system has been de-industrializing, shifting manufacturing to Eurasia (China in particular), India, South East Asia and Latam (Mexico in particular).

Raw material production, especially in energy, has been shifted… largely to Russia from the Western Europeans, and from North America to the Middle East. The latter being both a reduction in North American energy production as well as leaving a power vacuum in the Mid-East, now rapidly being filled by China, Iran and Russia.

This has now formed a system whereby the Eurasian leadership now controls vast amounts of the marginal manufacturing, energy and raw materials supplies.

A look at “our” system. That of the liberal West

Here, infrastructure is largely privatized and forms a natural monopoly, extracting rent from citizens directly while the taxes paid, ostensibly for said services, remains high. It is a double taxation system which has eroded the middle class, together with the de-industrialization mentioned which eroded the working class, offshoring their jobs while increasing the profits of the 1%.

The situation we find ourselves in now is one where the West finds itself burdened with an over indebted economy, where the middle-class rely on credit to finance their living standards, and the government relies on debt issuance to finance these living standards. I can’t think of a more fragile system than credit being used for consumption rather than production.

The result in the West is an extraordinarily high-cost system where housing, education, and everyday consumption is debt financed. The costs to businesses, (minimum wage, taxes, red tape, insurance, legal etc.), especially industrial production, are simply too high – and hence the “offshoring” of this work.

Keeping this unsustainable system going, has led to the US ensuring – or more accurately, attempting to ensure – that other major economic blocs don’t seek better terms with the Eurasian bloc.

Those economic blocs that are now under this system and collapsing with it are principally Western Europe, the UK and Japan.

Towards a Global Conflict

And for those who say “meh… look at Russia. Stupid, ignorant Ruskies. Their GDP is the same as Italy (3rd largest in Eurozone) and then look at the US. They’re massive.”

What these academics entirely miss is how GDP is measured. The GDP of the US in particular is based on companies such as Apple, Tesla, Facebook and Twitter, sprinkled with a healthy dose of mortgage backed securities, and an alphabet soup of “credit instruments”.

Fine, but let me know how your Tesla drives when you can’t source the copper, lithium or various petrochemicals to manufacture it, let alone the electricity to power it. How great is that iPhone with Facebook and Twitter when food can’t get to your door because the fact is all this stuff just doesn’t work without oil, gas, petrochemicals and metals… all the things that Russia has.

The Western world is rapidly finding out where stuff actually comes from, and while that’s a painful experience, it is nothing compared to the grand picture here and how these competing systems are leading us towards a global conflict.

*  *  *

Disturbing economic, political, and social trends are already in motion and now accelerating at breathtaking speed. Most troubling of all, they cannot be stopped. The risks that lie ahead are too big and dangerous to ignore. That’s why contrarian money manager Chris Macintosh just released the most critical report on these trends, What Happens Next. This free special report explains precisely what’s coming down the pike and what it means for your wealth and well-being. Click here to access it now.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 09/03/2022 – 11:30

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Cyberstalking Conviction for E-Mails to Nebraska Legislature Candidate Reversed

From U.S. v. Sryniawski, decided yesterday by the Eighth Circuit (Judge Steven Colloton, joined by Judge Bobby Shepherd and Chief Judge Lavenski Smith):

Dennis Sryniawski was charged with federal offenses of cyberstalking and extortion after he sent a series of e-mails to a candidate for the Nebraska legislature. A jury acquitted Sryniawski of extortion but convicted him of cyberstalking, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2261A(2)(B)…. We conclude that the evidence was insufficient under a proper interpretation of the cyberstalking statute, and therefore reverse the conviction….

Section 2261A(2)(B) is potentially quite broad, on its face something like the criminalization of the intentional infliction of emotional distress tort, limited to electronic communications, but with no exception for speech on matters of public concern (even though the Court held in Snyder v. Phelps and Hustler v. Falwell that speech on matters of public concern is protected against emotional distress liability by the First Amendment):

A defendant is guilty of cyberstalking if he (1) “with the intent to … harass [or] intimidate,” (2) uses “any … electronic communication system of interstate commerce … to engage in a course of conduct,” that (3) “causes, attempts to cause, or would be reasonably expected to cause substantial emotional distress to” the victim or his immediate family.

The court concluded (I think generally correctly) that the statute must be read narrowly to avoid First Amendment problems:

The mens rea element, as charged in this case, requires that a defendant act with the intent to “harass” or “intimidate.” If these terms are construed in their broadest sense, however, they would infringe on rights protected by the First Amendment. Broadly defined, “harass” can mean simply “to vex, trouble, or annoy continually or chronically.” “Intimidate” can mean “to make timid or fearful.”

Even where emotional distress is reasonably expected to result, the First Amendment prohibits Congress from punishing political speech intended to harass or intimidate in the broad senses of those words. The Free Speech Clause protects a variety of speech that is intended to trouble or annoy, or to make another timid or fearful. In Snyder v. Phelps (2011), for example, the Supreme Court held that protestors at a serviceman’s funeral had the right to display signs that read, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” “God Hates Fags,” and “You’re Going to Hell.” In R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), the Court declared unconstitutional a criminal ordinance that prohibited the display of burning crosses, Nazi swastikas, and other symbols that the perpetrator had reasonable grounds to know would arouse “anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion or gender.” Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell (1988), held that the First Amendment protected a parody that depicted a prominent minister having drunken sex with his mother. See also Saxe v. State Coll. Area Sch. Dist. (3d Cir. 2001) (Alito, J.) (“There is no categorical ‘harassment exception’ to the First Amendment’s free speech clause.”). For this reason, the cyberstalking statute cannot be applied constitutionally to a defendant who directs speech on a matter of public concern to a political candidate with intent merely to trouble or annoy the candidate.

To sustain the conviction in this case, therefore, the government must identify sufficient evidence for a jury to find that Sryniawski acted with intent to “harass” or “intimidate” in a sense that is not protected under the First Amendment. For example, “criminal harassment” is unprotected where it “constitutes true threats or speech that is integral to proscribable criminal conduct.” “Intimidation in the constitutionally proscribable sense of the word is a type of true threat,” where the speaker intends to place the victim “in fear of bodily harm or death.” The government does not maintain that Sryniawski’s e-mails contained a true threat against Parris or his family, but suggests three categories of harassing speech that are unprotected: speech integral to criminal conduct, defamatory speech, and obscenity.

First, the government argues that Sryniawski’s e-mails were integral to the criminal conduct of cyberstalking itself. That argument is circular and unpersuasive. Congress may not define speech as a crime, and then render the speech unprotected by the First Amendment merely because it is integral to speech that Congress has criminalized. To qualify as speech integral to criminal conduct, the speech must be integral to conduct that constitutes another offense that does not involve protected speech, such as antitrust conspiracy, extortion, or in-person harassment…. In this case, however, the jury acquitted Sryniawski of extortion, and there is no other identified criminal conduct to which the jury could have found that Sryniawski’s e-mail communications were integral.

Second, the government contends that Sryniawski’s first e-mail contained three defamatory statements that are not protected by the First Amendment. The government asserts that Sryniawaski communicated “false accusations” that Parris’s wife had falsely reported childhood molestation and a psychological condition, that Parris’s wife was addicted to prescription medication, and that Parris’s step-daughter was a pedophile….

Under prevailing law, where an alleged victim of defamation is a public figure, a speaker’s assertions are unprotected speech only if the speaker acted with “actual malice”—that is, with knowledge that his statements were false or with reckless disregard of their falsity. Diane Parris was actively involved in Jeff’s campaign, and served as campaign manager for a time. Spouses of candidates for public office who are actively involved in the campaign have been considered public figures. The government does not dispute that Diane was a public figure or argue that Sryniawski acted with actual malice. Without a showing of actual malice, an allegedly false assertion alone is insufficient to make Sryniawski’s comments about Diane defamatory.

The government argues briefly that Sryniawski defamed Parris’s step-daughter, a non-public figure, by negligently asserting that she was a pedophile—i.e., a person “sexually attracted to children.” But the case was not tried on a defamation theory, and the record does not establish that Sryniawski’s alleged statement was false. It was a matter of public record that the step-daughter had been charged in a criminal case with sexual assault and online solicitation of a minor. The step-daughter referred to those charges as “false allegations,” and testified that they were “dismissed for lack of evidence.” But the government did not present evidence that Sryniawski knew that the charges had been dismissed. Nor did the prosecution ask the step-daughter to deny that she is sexually attracted to minors, independent of whether she was guilty of making an online solicitation. On this record, therefore, the evidence is insufficient to support a finding that Sryniawski harassed Parris and his family with defamatory speech.

Third, the government contends that a reasonable jury could have found that Sryniawski intended to harass the victims by causing them distress through the transmission of obscene materials. The government also did not advance this theory at trial, and the jury was not asked to determine whether the attachments to Sryniawski’s fourth e-mail were legally obscene under the standard of Miller v. California (1973).

But even considering obscenity on the assumption that this unspoken theory could support the verdict, the transmission of explicit photographs attached to one e-mail is not sufficient to sustain the conviction. The cyberstalking statute as charged here requires proof that a defendant engaged in a “course of conduct” that consists of “2 or more acts, evidencing a continuity of purpose.” The transmission of one e-mail with obscene attachments is not a course of conduct. Lawful acts like logging onto a computer, opening an internet browser, and sending other e-mails cannot be aggregated with criminal conduct to establish a “course of conduct.” Each “act” must be taken with the requisite criminal intent and reasonable expectation of causing substantial emotional distress. The government did not charge Sryniawski with the separate offense of transmitting of obscene materials via the internet, and its belated obscenity theory is insufficient to sustain the cyberstalking conviction….

The facts:

Jeff Parris ran for the Nebraska legislature in 2018. At the time of the campaign, Parris was married to Diane Parris and was the step-father of Diane’s adult daughter from a previous marriage. Jeff and Diane married in 1992, divorced in 1994, and then remarried in 2007. Between the two marriages, Diane was married to Dennis Sryniawski from 1994 to 1995.

In October 2018, during the legislative campaign, Sryniawski sent an e-mail to Parris’s official campaign e-mail address from the name “Isaac Freely.” The subject line of the e-mail was “Check your skeletons?” The e-mail called Parris’s step-daughter a pedophile, and hyperlinked to two websites showing that she had been charged with online solicitation of a minor and sexual assault of a minor in Texas. The e-mail included a hyperlink to the step-daughter’s sexually explicit weblog, and asserted that the step-daughter’s ” ‘Pansexuality’ does not recognize age either.” Sryniawski also implied that he might report the step-daughter for fraudulently crowdfunding tickets to see a concert. The message was signed “Until next time, Exposing the Hypocrites!”

The e-mail message also referred to Diane Parris’s relationship with her father. When Diane and Sryniawski were married, Diane told him that her father had molested her, and that she took prescription medication to address her emotional condition. Referring to Diane’s disclosures about her father’s conduct, the e-mail said: “Which did he really? Or was the Multiple Personality Disorder all a hoax to be a Pharm Addict?” The e-mail warned that “this is only just the beginning,” and that there was “[m]ore to come,” especially because Jeff and Diane had a “dozen” exspouses between them who did not want to see Jeff in politics. The e-mail concluded with a “suggestion” that Jeff should “bow out of the race.”

Two days later, over a period of eight hours, Sryniawski sent five more e-mails to the Parris campaign address. The first of these, the second e-mail overall, bore the subject line “Gone But Not Forgotten.” Sryniawski again sent this message from the name “Isaac Freely,” and signed “Sincerely, Exposing the Hypocrisy” at the bottom. The e-mail attached a screen shot of a comment that Sryniawski had posted on the Parris campaign Facebook page under the name “Nicole Jacobs.” The comment contained one of the same hyperlinks that Sryniawski sent in the first e-mail about the step-daughter’s arrest for sexual assault and online solicitation of a minor. The body of the e-mail said that “the Ghosts will continue to haunt you,” and included a statement as follows: “All we are asking, is Quit the Race. Step down from running for State Legislature, Never run for any Political Office again, & All will be Sweet, especially for the ‘Good Life’.”

The third e-mail was from “Dennis Sryniawski” with the subject line, “Good Day?” The entire text of the e-mail read, “I so see the resemblance in Mother and Daughter!” The e-mail contained four broken-image thumbnails, but no images.

Sryniawski sent the fourth e-mail under the name “Joe Poluka.” Like the third e-mail, it bore the subject line “Good Day?” and contained the text, “I so see the resemblance in Mother and Daughter!” The fourth e-mail included four photographs as attachments. The first showed Diane Parris campaigning, and the second showed Parris’s step-daughter wearing a camisole. The third photo purportedly depicted the step-daughter performing oral sex on a male, and the fourth photo depicted Diane Parris performing oral sex on a male.

Sryniawski sent the fifth e-mail as a reply to the fourth e-mail using the pseudonym “C Payne,” who is an ex-husband of Diane. The body of the e-mail said only, “Do We Have Your Attention Now?” Sryniawski sent the sixth and final e-mail as a reply to the preceding two e-mails using the step-daughter’s name as the sender. The text read: “Are we not entertained?”

Jeff Parris shared the e-mails with his family. Jeff testified that the e-mails hurt him and his family “immensely,” and that the photographs were “devastating.” His step-daughter described the e-mails as “jarring,” “unsettling,” and “messed up.” When Diane saw the e-mails, she became “very emotional” and was “obviously upset.” Diane was also “horrified” and “afraid,” because she inferred that Sryniawski must be the sender. Sryniawski was one of only a few people to whom Diane had disclosed the abuse that she suffered as a child, her diagnosis with a psychological condition, and her use of medication for that condition. Diane testified that after seeing the e-mails, she became frightened for her safety.

The post Cyberstalking Conviction for E-Mails to Nebraska Legislature Candidate Reversed appeared first on Reason.com.

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What Would You Do If You Had To Go Through The Economic Horrors Of 2008 Again?

What Would You Do If You Had To Go Through The Economic Horrors Of 2008 Again?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

If you knew for certain that we were about to plunge into another massive economic downturn like we experienced during the “Great Recession”, how would you respond?  The events of the second half of 2008 took almost everyone by surprise, and the vast majority of the population was completely unprepared for what happened next.  Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and that meant that they were suddenly unable to pay their bills.  Countless households got behind on their mortgages and rent payments, and we witnessed a dramatic spike in foreclosures and evictions.  I wish that we would never have to see such suffering again, but unfortunately it is already starting to happen right in front of our eyes.

The Biden administration keeps insisting that the U.S. economy is in good condition, but if that is the case why are so many large companies now laying off workers?

On Wednesday, we learned that Snap Inc. will be laying off approximately 20 percent of their entire global workforce…

Snap Inc., the parent company of the popular app Snapchat, announced plans to lay off some 20% of its more than 6,400 global employees.

The news will impact the jobs of more than 1,200 staffers at the tech giant, and comes as broader economic conditions have deteriorated in recent months amid rising inflation and the Federal Reserve’s interest rates hikes. The recent market downturn has especially pummeled the tech sector, where news of hiring freezes, layoffs, and other cost-cutting measures have dominated headlines for months.

Of course it isn’t just the tech industry that is getting monkey-hammered these days.

It was also just announced that Bed Bath & Beyond will be permanently closing 150 stories and will be getting rid of about 20 percent of their corporate employees…

Bed Bath & Beyond is in deep turmoil. The company is trying to rescue itself and stay out of bankruptcy by shrinking.

The chain said Wednesday that it will lay off approximately 20% of corporate employees, close around 150 stores and slash several of its in-house home goods’ brands.

Crucially, the company also said it secured more than $500 million in financing to shore up its ailing financial straits.

Normally, retailers wait until after the lucrative holiday season before announcing store closings.

So this move seems highly unusual.

Sadly, this is all part of a “layoff tsunami” that has now started.  As I discussed the other day, approximately half of all U.S. companies anticipate that they will be eliminating jobs over the next 12 months.

Needless to say, a “tsunami of layoffs” is only going to accelerate the new housing crash that we are now witnessing.

Last week, total mortgage application volume was 63 percent lower than it was during the same week in 2021…

After falling back earlier this month, mortgage rates began rising sharply again to the highest level since mid-July. That caused mortgage demand to pull back even further.

Total mortgage application volume fell 3.7% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Volume was 63% lower than the same week one year ago.

63 percent!

What a catastrophe.

And many other recent numbers confirm the fact that we are now past the peak of the housing bubble and are now on the way down…

Sales volume of existing homes plunged by 20% from a year ago across the US, and by 31% in California, and by 41% in San Diego. Median prices in the West have begun to drop, and in the San Francisco Bay Area fell below year-ago-levels, including by 8% in San Francisco. Sales of new houses plunged by nearly 30% year-over-year across the US, and in the West by 50%, as the supply of new houses has exploded to 11 months, the highest since the peak of Housing Bust 1. And big institutional buyers have started to pull out of this market because they don’t want to overpay. This has been going on for months.

Home prices have only just begun to drop.

They could potentially go down a lot further, because soaring mortgage rates have put home ownership out of reach for a huge chunk of the population at this point.

What we really need is for the Federal Reserve to stop hiking interest rates.

But Fed officials have already told us that they aren’t going to do that.

So the housing crash that we are currently experiencing is only going to get worse.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of renters are getting behind on their rent payments.  In fact, it is being reported that 3.8 million renters believe that it is likely that they will be evicted within the next two months…

For the first time ever, the median rent in the U.S. topped $2,000 a month in June — and the increases show no sign of stopping.

Those rising rents mean that households representing a total of 8.5 million people were behind on their rent at the end of August, according to Census Bureau figures. And 3.8 million of those renters say they’re somewhat or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.

If things are this bad already, what will conditions look like once millions more Americans have lost their jobs?

Just like we saw in 2008, huge numbers of evictions and foreclosures are on the horizon, and the middle class is going to be absolutely eviscerated by this crisis.

Last time around, the Fed was able to reduce the severity of the crisis by pushing interest rates to the floor and by pumping trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system.

This time around they are unlikely to implement such measures because they are deathly afraid of causing even more inflation.

So the stage is set for an economic meltdown of absolutely epic proportions, and there is no hero that is going to come riding to the rescue.

We are about to experience the consequences of literally decades of exceedingly foolish decisions.

Enjoy the rest of the summer while you still can, because the U.S. economy is only going to go downhill from here.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 09/03/2022 – 10:30

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Pilot Circling Mississippi City Threatens To Crash Plane Into Walmart

Pilot Circling Mississippi City Threatens To Crash Plane Into Walmart

A plane has been circling a Northeast Mississippi town since early morning. The pilot is threatening to intentionally crash into a Wal-Mart store.

According to local news WTVA, the Tupelo Police Department received reports about a pilot of an airplane (possibly King Air type) circling above Tupelo. The pilot contacted 911 and threatened to crash the plane into a Wal-Mart on West Main. 

“TPD has worked with Wal-Mart West and Dodges on West Main to evacuate the stores and disperse people as much as practical. TPD also has been able to begin talking with the pilot directly,” WTVA said. 

Flight data via FlightAware shows the plane’s current position (as of 0949 ET). 

Video of the plane has surfaced on social media. 

“The pilot of the hijacked private plane from Tupelo is making his way closer to MEM airspace & rain moving in. At some point he’s going to get in the way of commercial aircraft arriving/departing there. He’s been around 1,000-1,500 ft. Someone is going to have to make a call…,” one Twitter user said. 

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said law enforcement and emergency managers are “closely tracking this dangerous situation.”

*Developing

Tyler Durden
Sat, 09/03/2022 – 09:39

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The Biden Administration Finally Taps a Regulatory Czar

Yesterday, the White House announced that President Biden will nominate Professor Richard Revesz to be Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House Office of Management and Budget, a position often referred to as “regulatory czar.” It is, by some accounts, the most government important job you may may not have heard of before.

This is a long-awaited, and quite significant, announcement.  OIRA is the White House office that oversees the development and promulgation of new federal regulations and ensures that federal agencies comply with applicable Executive Orders on the issuance of regulations. Among other things, OIRA makes sure agencies conduct adequate cost-benefit analyses and consider the likely consequences of proposed regulations, and that agency regulations are as consistent with administration policy as relevant statutes allow.

Given OIRA’s responsibilities, Revesz was always an obvious choice for this position. As the former Dean of the NYU School of Law and Director of the American Law Institute, he is immensely well respected, and much of his scholarship has honed in on issues central to OIRA’s responsibilities. Among other things, he co-authored two books making a progressive defense of cost-benefit analysis (which I reviewed here and here), and he founded NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity, which focuses on many regulatory process issues and hosts conferences and produces reports buttressing the analytical case for more aggressive federal environmental regulations.

Some preliminary news reports suggest the Revesz nomination represents a triumph of the “establishment” over the progressive wing of the Democratic party. The Biden Administration had apparently considered another legal academic for the position, Vanderbilt law professor Ganesh Sitaraman, a former Elizabeth Warren staffer who was favored by progressives, but who could not be assured of attracting the support of all fifty Democratic Senators. It seems efforts to corral fifty votes for a potential Sitaraman nomination were one reason for the delay.

I was hardly privy to any of the internal debates, but I would think progressive organizations should be happy with the Revesz pick. If the goal is to have an OIRA administrator who supports an aggressive regulatory agenda, but will also force agencies to conduct rigorous analyses and bulletproof new rules from legal challenges, it would be hard to do better. Indeed, I suspect that if Revesz had been in the position a year ago, some Biden Administration efforts might have fared better in court. One thing is for sure, those hoping to challenge Biden Administration regulations will have a harder time once Revesz is confirmed.

The post The Biden Administration Finally Taps a Regulatory Czar appeared first on Reason.com.

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The Biden Administration Finally Taps a Regulatory Czar

Yesterday, the White House announced that President Biden will nominate Professor Richard Revesz to be Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House Office of Management and Budget, a position often referred to as “regulatory czar.” It is, by some accounts, the most government important job you may may not have heard of before.

This is a long-awaited, and quite significant, announcement.  OIRA is the White House office that oversees the development and promulgation of new federal regulations and ensures that federal agencies comply with applicable Executive Orders on the issuance of regulations. Among other things, OIRA makes sure agencies conduct adequate cost-benefit analyses and consider the likely consequences of proposed regulations, and that agency regulations are as consistent with administration policy as relevant statutes allow.

Given OIRA’s responsibilities, Revesz was always an obvious choice for this position. As the former Dean of the NYU School of Law and Director of the American Law Institute, he is immensely well respected, and much of his scholarship has honed in on issues central to OIRA’s responsibilities. Among other things, he co-authored two books making a progressive defense of cost-benefit analysis (which I reviewed here and here), and he founded NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity, which focuses on many regulatory process issues and hosts conferences and produces reports buttressing the analytical case for more aggressive federal environmental regulations.

Some preliminary news reports suggest the Revesz nomination represents a triumph of the “establishment” over the progressive wing of the Democratic party. The Biden Administration had apparently considered another legal academic for the position, Vanderbilt law professor Ganesh Sitaraman, a former Elizabeth Warren staffer who was favored by progressives, but who could not be assured of attracting the support of all fifty Democratic Senators. It seems efforts to corral fifty votes for a potential Sitaraman nomination were one reason for the delay.

I was hardly privy to any of the internal debates, but I would think progressive organizations should be happy with the Revesz pick. If the goal is to have an OIRA administrator who supports an aggressive regulatory agenda, but will also force agencies to conduct rigorous analyses and bulletproof new rules from legal challenges, it would be hard to do better. Indeed, I suspect that if Revesz had been in the position a year ago, some Biden Administration efforts might have fared better in court. One thing is for sure, those hoping to challenge Biden Administration regulations will have a harder time once Revesz is confirmed.

The post The Biden Administration Finally Taps a Regulatory Czar appeared first on Reason.com.

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Food Trucks From Colorado to Alabama Are Still Struggling With Red Tape and Protectionism


Classic green food truck on yellow background

Record food and fuel prices and ongoing supply-chain issues are causing many of the same problems for food trucks that brick-and-mortar restaurateurs, grocers, and consumers now face. Coupled with the impact of rising crime rates, those issues have caused some truck operators to cut back on their operations, Trib Live reported last week, with some, for example, electing to vend only at high-density events where customers are plenty in number.

In Denver, large numbers of food-truck customers are the problem—at least according to city police. And officials’ claims of rising crime leave many food trucks caught in the middle. As Reason’s Fiona Harrigan reported in August, Denver police moved to bar food trucks from operating in the Lower Downtown (LoDo) section of the city, popular with late-night revelers, after a shooting on July 21. Denver police shot a man seen fighting outside a popular beer hall at 1:35 a.m. The man, 21-year-old Jordan Waddy, had a gun that he dropped on the ground while putting his hands up in response to police. Denver police shot Waddy and six innocent bystanders in the crowd near the beer hall.  

How exactly is a police shooting the fault of food trucks? And why, many of their operators wonder, is the city “punish[ing] vendors who have nothing to do with violence”? While those are the right questions to ask, the Denver Gazette reported last week that the city has moved to restrict most food truck operations in LoDo on Friday and Saturday nights for the next six months. Denver police, for their part, claim the restrictions were in the works before they shot six unarmed people.

While police violence is a concern for food truck owners in Denver, in other cities the challenges faced by food trucks are more familiar. For example, in Long Beach, California, the Press-Telegram reported last week, the city council may decide, boldly, to “simplify and consolidate regulations governing the trucks and—eventually—create rules about where food trucks can operate.”

As the paper explains, various city departments—including health, business, and permitting—currently regulate food trucks in the city, independent of each another. While the city is looking to streamline that process, it’s also planning to add new requirements. One new rule would require food trucks to obtain a city health department permit in addition to the existing county permit. The report also notes a plan to discuss new rules with “stakeholders,” including not just food trucks and residents but also brick-and-mortar restaurants, which raises the familiar threat of rules that would protect brick-and-mortar restaurants at the expense of food trucks.

In Spanish Fort, Alabama, near Mobile, city planners have recommended allowing food trucks to operate in the city, where they’re currently banned. But one city council member, Carl Gustafson, Jr., openly admits he’s opposed food trucks operating in the city because he wants to protect the city’s brick-and-mortar restaurants.

“So, it was out of an abundance of respect for the people that have invested money in Spanish Fort in brick-and-mortar restaurants we didn’t want to have a lot of competition coming in against them and setting up right across the street,” Gustafson told NBC 15 last week. “I think we need to maintain a healthy respect for them and their invest[ment] in Spanish Fort by setting a distance parameter that the food trucks are allowed to go within a certain distance.”

While officials in Denver, Long Beach, and Spanish Fort are making a mess for food truck owners and their customers, Seattle lawmakers are bucking that trend. The city council is looking to make permanent many of the improvements they introduced in food-truck regulations during the pandemic, My Northwest reported last week.

As the report details, Seattle introduced regulations on food trucks in 2011. Those rules stunk. Trucks couldn’t park near any brick-and-mortar restaurant, school, or park, My Northwest notes. Food trucks were also prohibited from parking in most areas of the city and were limited from parking near other legally parked food trucks. During the pandemic, though, the city relaxed those idiotic rules, “removing restrictions on distances from permanent locations, schools, and parks and restrictions on the number allowed on each block.” It’s those good, new rules the city is looking to adopt permanently.

Though food trucks today still face evolving challenges—from inflation to violence—many of the greatest threats to the industry’s existence and growth continue to take the form of regulations that would hamper their success even in the best of economic climates.Since the pandemic’s early days, I’ve written dozens of columns—as here—in which I’ve identified many needlessly burdensome food regulations governments had chosen to lift or relax temporarily. Seattle’s pitch to make permanent the looser, Covid-inspired food-truck regulations the city implemented early in the pandemic is a welcome development. Denver, Long Beach, Spanish Fort, and other cities and towns that treat food trucks like crap are hurting their own food scenes, residents, and economic recoveries.

The post Food Trucks From Colorado to Alabama Are Still Struggling With Red Tape and Protectionism appeared first on Reason.com.

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Food Trucks From Colorado to Alabama Are Still Struggling With Red Tape and Protectionism


Classic green food truck on yellow background

Record food and fuel prices and ongoing supply-chain issues are causing many of the same problems for food trucks that brick-and-mortar restaurateurs, grocers, and consumers now face. Coupled with the impact of rising crime rates, those issues have caused some truck operators to cut back on their operations, Trib Live reported last week, with some, for example, electing to vend only at high-density events where customers are plenty in number.

In Denver, large numbers of food-truck customers are the problem—at least according to city police. And officials’ claims of rising crime leave many food trucks caught in the middle. As Reason’s Fiona Harrigan reported in August, Denver police moved to bar food trucks from operating in the Lower Downtown (LoDo) section of the city, popular with late-night revelers, after a shooting on July 21. Denver police shot a man seen fighting outside a popular beer hall at 1:35 a.m. The man, 21-year-old Jordan Waddy, had a gun that he dropped on the ground while putting his hands up in response to police. Denver police shot Waddy and six innocent bystanders in the crowd near the beer hall.  

How exactly is a police shooting the fault of food trucks? And why, many of their operators wonder, is the city “punish[ing] vendors who have nothing to do with violence”? While those are the right questions to ask, the Denver Gazette reported last week that the city has moved to restrict most food truck operations in LoDo on Friday and Saturday nights for the next six months. Denver police, for their part, claim the restrictions were in the works before they shot six unarmed people.

While police violence is a concern for food truck owners in Denver, in other cities the challenges faced by food trucks are more familiar. For example, in Long Beach, California, the Press-Telegram reported last week, the city council may decide, boldly, to “simplify and consolidate regulations governing the trucks and—eventually—create rules about where food trucks can operate.”

As the paper explains, various city departments—including health, business, and permitting—currently regulate food trucks in the city, independent of each another. While the city is looking to streamline that process, it’s also planning to add new requirements. One new rule would require food trucks to obtain a city health department permit in addition to the existing county permit. The report also notes a plan to discuss new rules with “stakeholders,” including not just food trucks and residents but also brick-and-mortar restaurants, which raises the familiar threat of rules that would protect brick-and-mortar restaurants at the expense of food trucks.

In Spanish Fort, Alabama, near Mobile, city planners have recommended allowing food trucks to operate in the city, where they’re currently banned. But one city council member, Carl Gustafson, Jr., openly admits he’s opposed food trucks operating in the city because he wants to protect the city’s brick-and-mortar restaurants.

“So, it was out of an abundance of respect for the people that have invested money in Spanish Fort in brick-and-mortar restaurants we didn’t want to have a lot of competition coming in against them and setting up right across the street,” Gustafson told NBC 15 last week. “I think we need to maintain a healthy respect for them and their invest[ment] in Spanish Fort by setting a distance parameter that the food trucks are allowed to go within a certain distance.”

While officials in Denver, Long Beach, and Spanish Fort are making a mess for food truck owners and their customers, Seattle lawmakers are bucking that trend. The city council is looking to make permanent many of the improvements they introduced in food-truck regulations during the pandemic, My Northwest reported last week.

As the report details, Seattle introduced regulations on food trucks in 2011. Those rules stunk. Trucks couldn’t park near any brick-and-mortar restaurant, school, or park, My Northwest notes. Food trucks were also prohibited from parking in most areas of the city and were limited from parking near other legally parked food trucks. During the pandemic, though, the city relaxed those idiotic rules, “removing restrictions on distances from permanent locations, schools, and parks and restrictions on the number allowed on each block.” It’s those good, new rules the city is looking to adopt permanently.

Though food trucks today still face evolving challenges—from inflation to violence—many of the greatest threats to the industry’s existence and growth continue to take the form of regulations that would hamper their success even in the best of economic climates.Since the pandemic’s early days, I’ve written dozens of columns—as here—in which I’ve identified many needlessly burdensome food regulations governments had chosen to lift or relax temporarily. Seattle’s pitch to make permanent the looser, Covid-inspired food-truck regulations the city implemented early in the pandemic is a welcome development. Denver, Long Beach, Spanish Fort, and other cities and towns that treat food trucks like crap are hurting their own food scenes, residents, and economic recoveries.

The post Food Trucks From Colorado to Alabama Are Still Struggling With Red Tape and Protectionism appeared first on Reason.com.

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The SEC Versus Ripple Labs – XRP’s Fight Against Administrative Overreach

The SEC Versus Ripple Labs – XRP’s Fight Against Administrative Overreach

Authored by Rahul Tora via The Epoch Times,

It’s been nearly 20 months since the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Ripple Labs for selling XRP as unregistered securities. John Deaton, who represents Ripple in the SEC vs. Ripple Labs court case battle, believes there’s major evidence of overreach by the SEC.

In December 2020, the Ripple case was launched by Jay Clayton, then-chairman of the SEC, which is now being led by Gary Gensler. Gary Gensler recently wrote on Twitter that “there’s no reason to treat the crypto market differently from the rest of the capital markets just because it uses a different technology.” John Deaton responded to the tweet by claiming Gensler is expanding the “Howey Test” beyond recognition, in reference to the U.S. Supreme Court case that determines whether a transaction qualifies as an “investment contract.”

Classifying XRP as an investment contract would therefore deem XRP a security, which would result in disclosures, registration requirements, and an overall much stricter regulatory scrutiny process for Ripple.

The lawsuit charges Ripple and two executives for selling $1.3 billion worth of securities. The accusation alleges that in the beginning of 2013, CEO Brad Garlinghouse and co-founder Christian Larsen raised capital to finance the company’s finances and exchanged XRP for non-cash considerations.

In short, the SEC alleges that Ripple was treating XRP like a stock instead of a currency; therefore, the SEC claims it has jurisdiction.

Ripple Labs aims to assist financial institutions and payment providers to move money quickly and at low cost, which would entail replacing the current SWIFT system if widespread adoption was initiated. The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) banking method is the primary form of transferring money by institutions, which account for nearly half of all international wires. SWIFT moves $5 trillion each day, but can take several business days to fully complete transfers.

Ripple is separate from XRP. XRP is the cryptocurrency representing Ripple Labs to facilitate the transfers. Unlike the SWIFT system, XRP’s settlement speeds range from three to five seconds. Users would be able to convert their fiat currency into XRP, and then easily convert it back to the preferred fiat currency. XRP can handle up to 1,500 transactions per second, with a potential to eventually match Visa’s transaction level of 6,000 transactions per second.

XRP has a finite supply of 100 billion units, which were all fully created at the time of inception of the cryptocurrency. There are roughly 45 billion XRP in circulation, with a majority of the XRP tokens owned by RippleLabs and Ripple owners, while a large percentage of the XRP supply is sitting in escrow.

During a hearing of the SEC vs. Ripple court case early in the year, it was suggested that XRP has a currency value along with a utility that differs from cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. XRP’s market capitalization sits in the top 10, among the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum. Unlike XRP, Bitcoin struggles to hold as a utility other than being a storage of value. Ethereum offers decentralized applications as its currency through smart contracts. XRP holds the edge over Ethereum and Bitcoin in terms of transaction speed and associated fees, which is crucial for what Ripple is looking to address, which is mass adoption of cross-border transactions in nearly real-time speeds.

The SEC vs. Ripple lawsuit is an important lawsuit because the verdict can set the precedence for all cryptocurrencies. If XRP is classified as a security, all other cryptocurrencies will also be deemed “unregistered securities” by the SEC.

John Deaton and the 72,000 XRP holders feel confident a verdict will be made by the end of the year that will favor Ripple. At the time of writing, the XRP price is sitting at $0.34, which is 90 percent below from its all-time high back in early 2018. Once the SEC lawsuit ends, CEO Brad Garlinghouse fully plans on taking Ripple public with an initial public offering.

Tyler Durden
Sat, 09/03/2022 – 09:20

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