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Seventh Circuit Recognizes that McGirt v. Oklahoma Departed From Longstanding Precedent

In The Atlantic, I criticized Justice Gorsuch’s two most prominent majority opinions of the term: Bostock and McGirt. I described his approach as half-way textualism. In Bostock, he purported to be a textualist, but was actually following non-textualist precedent. In McGirt, he purported to follow a non-textualist precedent, but was actually being a textualist.

In the past, the Court looked to many factors to determine whether Congress had disestablished an Indian reservation. But McGirt required far more conclusive, textualist evidence. Mike Dorf describes the test as a “clear statement rule.” I think that label works. However, Justice Gorsuch insisted he was simply following precedent. That insistence was no doubt appreciated by the four progressives who joined him. They have long treated stare decisis as the primary force to hold back future conservative rulings. In my view, the progressive quartet that joined the Obergefell majority are permanently estopped from talking about stare decisis. At least in McGirt, they could pretend they were standing by precedent.

Now, the lower courts have begun to interpret McGirt. And they have stated the obvious: it altered precedent.

Consider Chief Judge Sykes’s opinion in Oneida Nation v. Village of Hobart. She wrote:

The Reservation was created by treaty, and it can be diminished or disestablished only by Congress. Congress has not done either of those things. The governing legal framework—at least when the issue was decided in the district court and when we heard oral argument—was clear. Under Solem v. Bartlett, 465 U.S. 463 (1984), we look—from most important factor to least—to statutory text, the circumstances surrounding a statute’s passage, and subsequent events for evidence of a “clear congressional purpose to diminish the reservation.” Id. at 476. After this case was argued, the Supreme Court decided McGirt v. Oklahoma, 140 S. Ct. 2452 (2020). We read McGirt as adjusting the Solem framework to place a greater focus on statutory text, making it even more difficult to establish the requisite congressional intent to disestablish or diminish a reservation. The Oneida Nation prevails under both the Solem framework and the adjustments made in McGirt.

“Adjusted” is code for “overruled.”

Chief Judge Sykes lists other ways in which McGirt altered precedent:

Last, we consider the later demographic history and the United States’ later treatment of affected areas, which have “some evidentiary value” and can “reinforce” a conclusion suggested by the text. Neither this court nor the Supreme Court has ever found the requisite congressional intent to diminish based on only this last factor.4

FN4:We read McGirt as adjusting this framework by establishing statutory ambiguity as a threshold for any consideration of context and later history.

And McGirt created tension with circuit precedent:

Our reasoning in Stockbridge–Munsee seems to be in tension with McGirt. We concluded that the key act of Congress “included none of the hallmark language suggesting that Congress intended to disestablish the reservation.” We did not identify an ambiguity in the text before concluding that “the circumstances surrounding the act show that Congress wanted to extinguish what remained of the reservation when it passed the act.” Id. This approach is consistent with Solem but is in tension with the adjustments to the Solem framework made by McGirt.

Justice Gorsuch should acknowledge where he is deviating from precedent. It serves no purpose to pretend these cases were textualist all along.

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Iowa Governor Restores Voting Rights to Tens of Thousands With Felony Records

kim-reynolds

Three months shy of the 2020 presidential election, Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order today restoring voting rights to tens of thousands of Iowans with felony records.

Iowa was the last state in the U.S. with a lifetime voting ban for anyone with a felony record.

“Quite simply, when someone serves their sentence and pays the price our justice system has set for their crimes, they should have their right to vote restored, automatically, plain and simple,” Reynolds said.

A 2016 report by the Sentencing Project found that there were roughly 52,000 Iowans barred for life from voting because of a felony record. At the time of the report, Iowa was one of four states with lifetime felony disenfranchisement. However, last December Kentucky restored voting rights to an estimated 140,000 residents. The last two Virginia governors have issued executive orders similar to Reynolds’, and Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment in 2018 restoring voting rights to those with felony records who completed the terms of their sentences.

“Disenfranchising people with criminal convictions is a vestige of Jim Crow laws,” said Eliza Sweren-Becker, counsel with the Voting Rights and Elections Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, in a statement. “As of today, this shameful policy has no place in the United States.”

Civil liberties groups have been whittling away at felony disenfranchisement laws for decades, but there’s been an added urgency to those efforts as the 2020 election draws closer. A number of civil liberties groups are currently fighting a protracted legal battle with the state of Florida over felon voting rights that could impact an estimated 775,000 residents in the crucial swing state.

The language of Florida’s constitutional amendment didn’t specify whether felony offenders had to pay off their court fines and fees to regain voting eligibility. Florida Republicans passed legislation making the restoration of voting rights contingent on paying off fines and fees. However, Democrats and civil liberties groups say that amounts to a poll tax.

A federal judge ruled in May agreed with them, in part, and ruled that Florida’s law was unconstitutionally discriminatory because it blocked those who couldn’t afford to pay their fines from voting. However, that ruling is temporarily stayed pending a hearing before the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals later this month.

Notably, Reynolds’ order does not make paying fines and fees a requirement for regaining voting eligibility. It does, however, exclude those convicted of homicide and manslaughter offenses, as well as those still completing probation or parole.

Civil liberties groups and local activists have been pressing Reynolds on the issue for months. Their ultimate goal is an amendment to the state constitution to keep a future governor from reversing the order.

That’s exactly what happened the last time Iowa governor restored the right to vote. In 2005, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack issued an executive order re-enfranchising all state residents who had completed their sentences. His successor, Gov Terry Branstad, reversed that executive order in 2011.

“While we’re delighted that immediately so many Iowans are eligible to register and vote, it’s important that we continue to pursue a more permanent fix to the problem of felony disenfranchisement in our state,” the Iowa chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.

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The Cops Took This Guy’s Car Because He Unwittingly Rented It to an Alleged Drug Dealer

Manni-Munir-MM

On a Tuesday evening last April, a black 2015 Chevrolet Malibu with Texas plates was traveling west on Interstate 10 in Mississippi when Hancock County Sheriff’s Deputy Danny Gilkerson pulled it over, ostensibly for exceeding the speed limit by about eight miles per hour. Based on an alert by a drug-sniffing dog, the cops searched the car, finding “numerous Tupperware containers containing numerous controlled substances,” including methamphetamine, heroin, MDMA, Adderall, and Xanax, along with three loaded firearms: an AR-15, a revolver, and a pistol. The driver, Rohith Mathew, was arrested on drug and gun charges, and his car was seized as the instrumentality of those crimes.

Except it wasn’t his car. Mathew, an executive at a Houston-based supply chain management company, had rented it from Manni Munir, who owns a small Houston car rental business with a fleet of about two dozen vehicles. Munir, who described Mathew as “a giant nerd” who was “very chatty” and “very friendly,” said he had no idea what his customer was up to. Munir, whose business specializes in serving people who come to Houston for medical treatment, said he did not even know that Mathew, contrary to the rental contract, had taken the car out of Texas. But under federal civil asset forfeiture law, none of that mattered.

While this case might seem like small potatoes compared to many other forfeiture outrages, it vividly illustrates the dilemma faced by innocent owners who find that challenging a forfeiture can cost more than their property is worth. It also shows how civil forfeiture encourages cops to prioritize profit over public safety.

As Giacomo Bologna reports in the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, Munir found out that his car had been seized after Mathew failed to return it on time and a GPS tracker showed the car was parked at the Hancock County Jail. When an alarmed Munir called the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office, Deputy Fred Eagan matter-of-factly informed him that he would not be getting the car back. Munir said he offered to share his GPS data, seemingly relevant to the case against Mathew, but investigators were not interested.

“What is the accusation?” Munir wondered in an interview with the Clarion-Ledger. “If the accusation is that I’m involved, then the burden should be on them to prove it.” But that is not how civil forfeiture works.

Munir faces a couple of options, neither of them palatable. He can let the government keep his car, which he bought for $7,500 a few years ago—a significant loss for a small business like his. Or he can challenge the forfeiture in federal court via the “innocent owner” defense, which requires him to prove by “a preponderance of the evidence” that he “did not know of the conduct giving rise to forfeiture” and, after learning of it, “did all that reasonably could be expected under the circumstances to terminate such use of the property.” Munir said a lawyer he approached told him challenging the forfeiture would cost at least $5,000, and there is no guarantee he would win.

“If I was Hertz, if I was Avis, they wouldn’t try to seize the car,” Munir told the Clarion-Ledger. “This is a huge hit.”

Why did the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office refer the case to the Justice Department instead of pursuing the forfeiture under state law? The Clarion-Ledger notes that Eagan, the deputy who filed the federal criminal complaint against Mathew (whose first and last names are reversed in that document), is a member of a Drug Enforcement Administration task force. But that is not the only explanation for pursuing federal “adoption” of the case, which offers clear advantages for cops seeking to keep an innocent owner’s property.

Mississippi’s forfeiture law is not exactly friendly to property owners. The Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that has been challenging forfeiture abuses for years, gives Mississippi a grade of C–. Like the Justice Department’s forfeiture program, the Institute for Justice notes, Mississippi promises local law enforcement agencies 80 percent of the proceeds, “creating a troubling conflict of interest and a strong incentive to seize.” But federal adoption allows police to claim their cut without going to the trouble of obtaining a warrant, which has been required in Mississippi since 2017, or pressing their case in court. And in Mississippi “the government bears the burden of disproving an innocent owner claim,” while federal law requires victims like Munir to prove their innocence.

In addition to the burdens that civil forfeiture imposes on people whose property can be taken even if they are never charged with a crime, this case shows how the prospect of easy money perverts policing. The Clarion-Ledger says Munir’s car “caught the eye” of Deputy Gilkerson—possibly because it was a relatively new model with out-of-state plates and a dark-skinned driver. According to Eagan’s affidavit, Gilkerson “paced the vehicle” and found it was traveling at “78-80 MPH” on a highway where the speed limit was 70. That was enough to stop the car, although the offense was so minor that Gilkerson gave Mathew a written warning rather than a citation carrying a fine. But Gilkerson was just getting started.

When Gilkerson asked Mathew about his itinerary, the criminal complaint says, Mathew said he was returning to Texas after visiting his girlfriend in Panama City, Florida. Unsatisfied with that response, Gilkerson grilled Mathew further, noticing that he was “very nervous” and that “his lips were shivering/shaking.” Gilkerson asked Mathew to get out of the car, ostensibly “so he could hear his response[s] to the questions better.” As Mathew exited the car, Gilkerson “noticed that he tucked something between the seats.” Gilkerson patted Mathew down and asked if he had any weapons. Mathew said he had a gun in the car, which Gilkerson retrieved.

According to Eagan’s affidavit, Gilkerson asked Mathew about “the track marks from injecting illegal narcotics on his arms.” Mathew said he had been a drug user but had recently quit, then admitted that “I’m not that clean.” Gilkerson asked for consent to search the car, which Mathew declined to give. But that did not matter, because Gilkerson summoned a K9 officer, who conducted “a free sniff of the exterior of the vehicle.” The dog “showed a positive indication on the vehicle,” which prompted the search that discovered the drugs and the two other guns.

If you want to know how Gilkerson was able to turn a routine traffic stop into an investigation that led to a drug bust, you can ask the Supreme Court. The Court has not only upheld pretextual stops like this one; it has allowed police to interrogate motorists without any evidence of criminal activity, let cops order drivers out of their cars based on general concerns about officer safety, ruled that inspection by a drug-detecting dog requires no special justification, and declared that such an animal’s behavior by itself provides probable cause for a search, even though that signal may be invented, imagined, erroneous, or triggered by the handler’s subconscious cues. The upshot of those decisions is that police have carte blanche to pull over pretty much anyone (since it is very difficult to drive for any length of time without violating one of the myriad rules governing the maintenance and operation of motor vehicles) and search it for contraband after getting permission from a dog.

If you want to know why police go on these fishing expeditions, the profit motive created by forfeiture laws provides a powerful explanation. In this case, the cops got a car worth about $7,500. But if a search happens to discover a large amount of cash, the cops can (and do) take that too, even if they find no contraband, based on the bare allegation that the money is somehow related to drug trafficking. They get to keep the cash unless the owner mounts a successful (and expensive) challenge to the forfeiture.

Mathew might have a basis to challenge the search that led to his arrest. While the Supreme Court has upheld the use of drug-sniffing dogs during routine traffic stops, it also has said police may not prolong a stop to facilitate such inspections unless they reasonably suspect the driver is involved in criminal activity.

Since everything that came after the warning for speeding that Gilkerson gave Mathew undoubtedly prolonged the traffic stop, Mathew could cite the latter decision to argue that the ensuing search was unconstitutional. Gilkerson no doubt would say that Mathew’s nervousness, the track marks on his arm, and the stashed gun provided enough evidence to continue detaining him. But that evidence did not appear until after Mathew got his warning, at which point he was theoretically free to go.

If the search was illegal, a 1965 Supreme Court decision seems to suggest, so was the seizure of Munir’s car. In One Plymouth Sedan v. Pennsylvania (the very name of which illustrates the absurdity of such cases, which accuse things rather than their owners of wrongdoing), the Court held that the exclusionary rule, which bars the use of illegally obtained evidence in criminal trials, also applies to civil forfeiture proceedings. But that decision noted the “quasi-criminal” nature of the forfeiture, which involved an owner who was charged with violating Pennsylvania’s liquor laws.

Since Plymouth, the Court has decided whether the exclusionary rule applies in civil cases by weighing the deterrent benefit against the social cost, always concluding that the latter outweighs the former. It has not squarely addressed the issue of whether the rule applies in civil forfeiture cases where the owner faces no criminal charges. Several federal appeals courts have said it does, while the Texas Supreme Court concluded in 2016 that it does not.

Whether or not Munir could successfully use the exclusionary rule to recover his car, that argument faces the same obstacle as the more straightforward innocent owner defense: While Mathew, as a criminal defendant, has a right to legal counsel even if he can’t afford it, Munir has to weigh the cost of hiring a lawyer against the cost of giving up, which might turn out to be lower. Mathew, the guy who was caught with drugs, is therefore better positioned to fight the government than Munir, the guy who unwittingly rented his car to an alleged drug dealer.

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Seventh Circuit Recognizes that McGirt v. Oklahoma Departed From Longstanding Precedent

In The Atlantic, I criticized Justice Gorsuch’s two most prominent majority opinions of the term: Bostock and McGirt. I described his approach as half-way textualism. In Bostock, he purported to be a textualist, but was actually following non-textualist precedent. In McGirt, he purported to follow a non-textualist precedent, but was actually being a textualist.

In the past, the Court looked to many factors to determine whether Congress had disestablished an Indian reservation. But McGirt required far more conclusive, textualist evidence. Mike Dorf describes the test as a “clear statement rule.” I think that label works. However, Justice Gorsuch insisted he was simply following precedent. That insistence was no doubt appreciated by the four progressives who joined him. They have long treated stare decisis as the primary force to hold back future conservative rulings. In my view, the progressive quartet that joined the Obergefell majority are permanently estopped from talking about stare decisis. At least in McGirt, they could pretend they were standing by precedent.

Now, the lower courts have begun to interpret McGirt. And they have stated the obvious: it altered precedent.

Consider Chief Judge Sykes’s opinion in Oneida Nation v. Village of Hobart. She wrote:

The Reservation was created by treaty, and it can be diminished or disestablished only by Congress. Congress has not done either of those things. The governing legal framework—at least when the issue was decided in the district court and when we heard oral argument—was clear. Under Solem v. Bartlett, 465 U.S. 463 (1984), we look—from most important factor to least—to statutory text, the circumstances surrounding a statute’s passage, and subsequent events for evidence of a “clear congressional purpose to diminish the reservation.” Id. at 476. After this case was argued, the Supreme Court decided McGirt v. Oklahoma, 140 S. Ct. 2452 (2020). We read McGirt as adjusting the Solem framework to place a greater focus on statutory text, making it even more difficult to establish the requisite congressional intent to disestablish or diminish a reservation. The Oneida Nation prevails under both the Solem framework and the adjustments made in McGirt.

“Adjusted” is code for “overruled.”

Chief Judge Sykes lists other ways in which McGirt altered precedent:

Last, we consider the later demographic history and the United States’ later treatment of affected areas, which have “some evidentiary value” and can “reinforce” a conclusion suggested by the text. Neither this court nor the Supreme Court has ever found the requisite congressional intent to diminish based on only this last factor.4

FN4:We read McGirt as adjusting this framework by establishing statutory ambiguity as a threshold for any consideration of context and later history.

And McGirt created tension with circuit precedent:

Our reasoning in Stockbridge–Munsee seems to be in tension with McGirt. We concluded that the key act of Congress “included none of the hallmark language suggesting that Congress intended to disestablish the reservation.” We did not identify an ambiguity in the text before concluding that “the circumstances surrounding the act show that Congress wanted to extinguish what remained of the reservation when it passed the act.” Id. This approach is consistent with Solem but is in tension with the adjustments to the Solem framework made by McGirt.

Justice Gorsuch should acknowledge where he is deviating from precedent. It serves no purpose to pretend these cases were textualist all along.

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Cliff Maloney Says Young Americans for Liberty Event Was Canceled for Political Reasons

cliffmaloney8-5

Cliff Maloney, the president of the libertarian student group Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), is hopping mad. Just three days before YAL’s Mobilize 2020 conference—an event with 1,400 attendees from all over the country—the city of Dallas pulled the plug on the meeting, citing worries about the spread of Covid-19.

“We had been working hand in hand with the Omni Hotel, which was our host, and the city of Dallas,” says Maloney, who explains that his group had agreed to abide by a host of conditions insisted on by health officials, including the wearing of masks, social distancing, and serving box lunches. Though the group received a refund from the hotel, Maloney estimates YAL is out around $200,000 for other vendor and non-refundable travel fees.

He’s especially irked that months ago, he switched the location from Austin to Dallas on the assumption that the latter would be more business-friendly and that COVID-19 hospitalizations are declining in the Dallas metro area. “The fire marshall approved all of our plans a week and a half ago [and] nothing has changed in the state” in terms of new lockdown orders, says Maloney. Though he has no evidence for it, he claims that politics played a role in the last-minute cancellation, citing Mayor Eric Johnson’s praise for large police-reform rallies.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Maloney talks about YAL’s focus on state-level races in the November election and why he is optimistic about electing a slate of “liberty legislators” who will help shrink the size, scope, and spending of government at the state and local levels. He’s also keen on outreach to younger Americans, saying that Millennials and Gen Z are particularly interested in ending wars and protecting civil liberties. “The issues of civil liberties and peace are typically where we get people to open the door for conversation,” Maloney tells Nick Gillespie.

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Pompeo Offers $10 Million Reward For Information On Foreign Election Interference

Pompeo Offers $10 Million Reward For Information On Foreign Election Interference

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/05/2020 – 16:20

In his latest speech excoriating China and the American tech industry for helping to enable untrustworthy Chinese companies by including their apps in various app stores, the Secretary of State warned Wednesday that the US was working to rein in Chinese cloud providers, while encouraging US tech firms to drop certain Chinese-run apps from their app stores.

Pompeo also revealed the state department would offer $10 million reward for the identity or location of “any person who acting at the direction of a foreign government interferes with US. elections by engaging in certain criminal cyber activities.”

Asked about Alex Azar’s upcoming trip to Taiwan, a move that has infuriated Beijing, Pompeo insisted there was some precedent for sending a US cabinet official to China.

“Cabinet members have traveled to Taiwan previously,” Pompeo said. “This is consistent with policies of previous times. In 2000, then Pres. Bill Clinton’s Transportation Sec. Rodney Slater visited Taiwan.”

 

He urged the world to join together to confront the CCP’s “coercive” behavior.

And also took a few shots at TikTok.

He also said the US would introduce a resolution next week before the UN Security Council to bar Iran from resuming its weapons program. He also said the US has “made progress” with Russia in moving toward a new arms control treaty, however, the US “hopes the Russians will urge China to participate”.

Pompeo’s speech comes hours after a State Department Inspector General looking into Pompeo abruptly decided to “return to the private sector”, months after his predecessor was fired.

Akard’s departure comes just as his office finalizes a report on Pompeo’s controversial decision to bypass Congress to sell $8.1 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia and other Arab allies by using an emergency tied to Iran as an excuse to override concerns that the sales would worsen the situation in Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthis have been fighting a lengthy proxy war against the central government, backed by Saudi Arabia and its allies.

President Trump fired Akard’s predecessor, Steve Linick, back in May on Pompeo’s advice. Linick was also reportedly looking into allegations that Pompeo abused his power asking employees from the state department to run his personal errands.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3iaBWXz Tyler Durden

Gold, Nasdaq Soar; S&P Just Shy Of All Time High In Mad Dollar-Destruction Dash

Gold, Nasdaq Soar; S&P Just Shy Of All Time High In Mad Dollar-Destruction Dash

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/05/2020 – 16:03

A body in motion will remain in motion.

These days Newton’s first law is as applicable in physics as it is in capital markets, because despite growing concerns about a new wave of covid infections, chaos and confusion over the passage of a new stimulus wave, a V-shaped surge in projected earnings, not to mention the all too real possibility that Joe Biden will be US president in 3 months, stocks continue to move in an upward motion, unperturbed by anything, with the Nasdaq hitting its 31 new all time high of 2020 and rising above 11,000 for the first time ever on the back of the 5 FAAMG stocks but mostly the AAPL juggernaut, which despite taking a rest today on a BofA downgrade is up a staggering quarter of a trillion dollar in market cap just since its earnings report last Thursday.

And while tech bulls will pounds the table and vow that the current tech bubble is far less dangerous than the dot com bubble of 2000, the reality is that that fwd multiples are now exponential and it is only a matter of time before this particular law of Newton encounters a sufficient painful “external force” that will burst the current tech bubble too.

But don’t take our word for it: here is a quick and dirty “fundamental” analysis of Apple from Ben Mackovak:

“It’s essentially the same story. $AAPL enterprise value +90% over past 2 yrs despite no net income growth. 100% driven by multiple expansion, which I think is driven by Fed policy. When the Fed Funds rate was 2.4% in 2019, AAPL had a PE of 15x. Today Apple PE ratio is 32x.”

Of course none of this matters, as the generic argument one hears from the permabulls is a familiar one: as long as real interest rates continue to sink – and 10Y TIPS just hit a record low negative 1.07% – equity investors have no choice but to buy.

Which is absolutely correct… however it now appears that equity investors have a choice of what to buy, and in lately they have been buying a lot of gold, whose inverse correlation with real rates is effectively 1:1.

And with gold surging on Tuesday, blasting above $2000 and hitting a new all time high earlier today, increasingly more investors are turning their attention to silver, which just hit $27/oz…

… and which according to BofA, is set to double from here to $50 “in the short term.” More importantly, it increasingly appears that the biggest market moving force of today’s batshit insane market, the Robinhood army, is getting on board with both gold and silver…

… which very soon will be in the top 10, then top 5 of most popular daily names traded on the retail platform, at which point watch out above (and get read to sell). Of course, once we go vertical in gold, that’s when the Fed will have no choice but to crash everything as that’s the kind of meltup in investor conviction that everything is about to collapse that keeps central bankers up at night.

One place where Newton’s First law was not in full force today was in the rates market, where after hitting an all time low of just above 0.50% overnight, the 10Y yield backed up by 4bps, and the 30Y rose just above 1.20%…

… although as Rabobank’s Michael Every notes, even at this rate, the 30Y bond is pricing in no more than 4 rate hikes over the course of the next generation!

Another place where Newton got a bit of a break was in the S&P500, which is now just 2% below its all time high, and finding some modest resistance in the  3,328 level, which marks the top of the gap that opened on Feb. 24. As Bloomberg’s Andrew Cinko reminds us, that was the day may when stocks dropped as much as 4%, the Dow sank over 1,000 points and the VIX skyrocketed as it became clear the coronavirus was going to circle the globe.

Also it is worth noting that today is another of those days when all the gains came overnight, with the index unchanged for the duration of the day session.

One final point, and perhaps the explanation for all of the above – the devastation of the dollar continued apace, with the BBDXY sliding sharply as traders frontrun what now appear to be trillions in fiscal stimulus coming from US congress in 2020 and coming years.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2DxdYa5 Tyler Durden

Calm Before The Storm? – Gundlach Points Out Treasury Volatility At Record Lows 

Calm Before The Storm? – Gundlach Points Out Treasury Volatility At Record Lows 

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/05/2020 – 15:55

Another record low was recently made in Bank of America’s MOVE Index (considered Treasury Market ‘VIX’), falling to an unprecedented 40.66 last week, has since turned up to 44.11 in early August. 

With the five-year Treasury yield hitting a record low on Tuesday and the 10-year Treasury yield falling to a five-month low, the demand for treasuries has surged as the U.S. economic recovery slows. Treasuries traders get it, and there are considerable risks to the economic outlook in the medium term. 

DoubleLine Capital’s Jeffrey Gundlach pointed out the recent plunge in Treasury volatility on Monday, tweeting: “After being at a ten year high just weeks ago, the MOVE index (a measure of expected future volatility of long term U.S. interest rates) is now at a ten year low. There it is again!   Mount Whitney is near Death Valley for a reason.  Many layers of meaning in this.“

A move lower in MOVE suggests investors in the world’s biggest bond market aren’t paying for protection against price swings, and they don’t care about getting paid for time risk. Maybe complacency is a byproduct of the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented monetary cannon to save the U.S. economy from near-death following the virus-induced recession. However, the current move down is unsustainable. 

Bloomberg spoke with Ben Emons, head of global macro strategy at Medley Global Advisors, who said: “Historically when real yields reach a new bottom, it is followed by a higher MOVE.” 

“Inflation-adjusted yields have the potential to go even more sharply negative as the market adjusts its expectations for a U.S. economic slowdown,” Emons said.

We noted Tuesday that “deflation remains the more credible risk, not inflation,” suggesting treasury rates can still hit zero. 

If treasury volatility returns, as Treasury yields are expected to move lower, this could lead to an upswing in equity volatility. 

But again, what do bond traders know?

Bond traders get it, the recovery has faltered, though stock traders are in pure euphoria mode. All eyes on treasury volatility… 

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Facebook’s Fact-Check Board Gets a Lot of ‘Likes’ From Soros

Facebook’s Fact-Check Board Gets a Lot of ‘Likes’ From Soros

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/05/2020 – 15:35

Authored by Sharyl Attkisson via RealClearInvestigations

In announcing the formation of an independent oversight board with authority to allow or remove content from Facebook and Instagram, the board’s four co-chairs stressed the body’s diversity.

“The board members come from different professional, cultural and religious backgrounds and have various political viewpoints,” they wrote in a New York Times op-ed on May 6. “Some of us have been publicly critical of Facebook; some of us haven’t.”

Contemporaneous news articles reinforced this message, reporting that the board’s ideologically and geographically diverse members criss-cross the ideological spectrum.

A closer look, however, reveals that 18 of its 20 members collaborated with or are tied to groups that have received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations – which is one of the most well-funded and influential progressive organizations in the country.

Open Society’s reach is so vast that simply receiving support from the institution is not a proxy for political leanings – one member has received support from Soros and the Charles Koch Foundation. But the fact that 90% of the board’s members have ties to that progressive group raises questions in an environment where conservatives complain about big-tech bias and internet censorship.

Here’s a list of the oversight board’s members:

  • Afia Asantewaa Asare-Kyei: A program manager at Soros’ Open Society Foundations in West Africa.
  • Evelyn Aswad (University of Oklahoma): U.S. law professor. Recipient of a grant from Knight Foundation, which has partnered with Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Aswad says corporations should align their “speech codes with international human rights law” and be guided by “international law on freedom of expression.”
  • Endy Bayuni: Jakarta Post editor. On the board of the Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict in Jakarta, headed by a “George Soros visiting practitioner chair” who previously worked at a Soros-founded group.
  • Catalina Botero-Marino (co-chair): Dean of a Colombian law school that received $1.3 million over two years from Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Serves on an expert panel of Inter-American Dialogue, funded in part by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Also serves as an expert for Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression Project, funded in part by Open Society Foundations. Served as a board member of Article 19, which received $1.7 million from Open Society Foundations over two years.
  • Katherine Chen: Academic professor, journalist. Often retweets material critical of Donald Trump and supportive of Barack Obama.
  • Nighat Dad: Founder and executive director of the Digital Rights Foundation, which receives money from Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and is a project of Artists at Risk Connection, a project of Pen America, which is sponsored in part by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Served on the board of the Soros-funded Dangerous Speech Project. Adviser on Amnesty International’s Technology and Human Rights Counsel, funded in part by Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
  • Jamal Greene (co-chair): Columbia University law school professor. (The Soros family and Foundations are well known funders of and partners with Columbia.) Recently served as aide to California Sen. Kamala Harris, who counts Soros among her donors. His Twitter account shows that he has sided firmly against President Trump.

Anti-Trumper Jamal Greene, Former Danish Prime Minister and Socialist, Helle Thorning-Schmidt

  • Pamela Karlan: Stanford University Law professor. Member of the Soros founded and funded American Constitution Society, which takes a “progressive” view of the U.S. Constitution. Supported Trump impeachment of and has contributed to Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren.
  • Tawakkol Karman: Her organization, “Women Journalists Without Chains,” receives funds from Soros’ Open Society Foundations. She serves on the advisory council of Transparency International, which also receives funds from Soros’ group.
  • Maina Kiai: Director of Human Rights Watch’s Alliances and Partnerships Initiative, which received $100 million from Open Society Foundations. She was founding leader of the Kenya Human Rights Commission, which received $615,000 from Soros over two years.
  • Sudhir Krishnaswamy: Law school vice chancellor. Co-founder of progressive nonprofit Centre for Law and Policy Research, which receives major funding from Soros-funded Center for Reproductive Rights, and the lesbian rights group Astrea; editor of the International Journal of Communications Law & Policy (IJCLP), which received grants from Open Society Foundations. Also connected to the Soros-supported Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University.
  • Ronaldo Lemos: Brazilian law professor. Co-founder of the Soros-supported Institute for Technology and Society. Serves on the board of the Open Society-funded Mozilla Foundation. Was board member at Soros-funded Access Now.
  • Michael McConnell (co-chair): Stanford University law professor. Head of the Constitutional Law Center, funded by the Soros Open Society Foundations-funded American Constitution Society.
  • Julie Owono (Stanford University, Harvard University): Head of Internet Sans Frontieres, a member of the Soros-funded Global Network Initiative.
  • Emi Palmor: Former head of the Israeli Ministry of Justice.
  • Alan Rusbridger: Former editor in chief of The Guardian. On board of the Open Society Foundations-funded Committee to Protect Journalists.
  • Andas Sajo: Professor. One of the founders of Soros’ Central European University. Formerly on board of Soros’ Open Society Justice Initiative in New York. Former judge of European Court of Human Rights, criticized for its alleged conflicts of interests and Soros ties. (An investigation found that nearly all the judges on the court received funding from Soros’ Open Society Foundations.)
  • John Samples: Founder of Libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government, founded by former Congressman Lee Hamilton (D) who was head of Woodrow Wilson Center, which is funded, in part, by Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Cato opposes Trump’s positions on illegal immigration and sees eye to eye on the issue with Soros, who has contributed to Cato through Open Society Foundations. Cato is also funded by Google, Ford Foundation, and the libertarian Koch interests, who also favor more open borders.
  • Nicolas Suzor: Law professor at Queensland University of Technology, which collaborated and co-funded projects with Soros’ Open Society Foundations.
  • Helle Thorning-Schmidt (co-chair): Denmark’s socialist former prime minister who advocates “rethinking” democracy. On board of the Open Society Foundations-funded European Council of Foreign Relations. Trustee at the Open Society Foundations-funded International Crisis Group where George and Alexander Soros sit on the board. Advisory board member of Open Society Foundations-funded Atlantic Council. Also sits on the Atlantic Council’s International Advisory Board, which received approximately $325,000 from the Open Society Foundations-funded Center for Global Development.

  • Facebook did not respond to an emailed request for an interview with CEO Mark Zuckerberg or a representative.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Pr6aJH Tyler Durden

“Our House Is On Fire, We Need Help” – COVID-19 Deaths Pile Up In Texas Rio Grande Borderland

“Our House Is On Fire, We Need Help” – COVID-19 Deaths Pile Up In Texas Rio Grande Borderland

Tyler Durden

Wed, 08/05/2020 – 15:35

Generally speaking, the worst-hit states along the American Sun Belt, including Texas, Arizona, Florida and California, have seen new cases and hospitalizations decline. But across Texas, where deaths are just beginning to peak, some of the areas with the highest mortality rates are among the poorest and most rural in the state.

In a feature piece published Wednesday, the Associated Press sent a team of reporters and photographers to Hidalgo County, part of Texas’ sparsely populated borderland.

Down here, not far from the banks of the Rio Grande, the state’s failures to suppress the virus are starkly visible. Yet, nobody seems to care. The county with a population of 2 million people in South Texas has pleaded for a field hospital for months. But after two potential providers backed out, an operating field hospital was only just brought online to accept patients yesterday.

At DHR Health, one of the largest hospitals on the border, nearly 200 of the 500 beds belong to coronavirus patients isolated in two units, while an expansion for a third unit is in the works. There’s also a maternity ward where mothers routinely test positive while going into labor (though mothers passing the virus along to children is, as far as we know, extremely rare). Per the Texas state dashboard, the county has the 6th-highest tally of deaths in the state, ranking right behind Travis County, the home to Austin, Texas. In terms of deaths, Hidalgo has the fourth-highest count, with a total of 483. The rural county regularly pops up alongside Houston and Dallas and Austin, cities that have far larger populations.

As the AP reported, aside from being poor and mostly Hispanic, the county suffers from higher rates of obesity and diabetes, along with other health problems.

Health officials say the worst of a summer resurgence appears to be behind the state as a whole, but the border is a bleak exception. Doctors fear another punishing wave is around the corner.

This predominantly Hispanic region is cruelly vulnerable to COVID-19. The prevalence of diabetes here is roughly three times the national average, and households have among the lowest incomes in America, adding to the difficulty of thwarting the virus.

Even the weather has added to burden. The first hurricane of the season barreled over the border two weeks ago. At first, local officials hoped that the storm named Hanna would wash out family gatherings and bar crawls, slowing the spread. In reality, the system knocked out power to thousands of homes for days, driving families into closer contact with relatives whose lights remained on.

Local authorities are extremely frustrated and feel like they have been abandoned by Gov. Greg Abbott.

“We need the help. Our house is on fire,” Rio Grande City Mayor Joel Villarreal said. “We are no less American than other people in other parts of the country.”

Some nurses spend entire shifts calling around the state, searching for free ICU beds for the most critical patients. By the time a bed is found, it’s typically too late. Many patients don’t survive the helicopter ride.

Martha Torres, a nurse at Starr County Memorial Hospital, knows about searching in vain for help. She has spent entire shifts calling other ICUs in Texas to accept helicopter transfers out of her 29-bed unit. Some patients are sent as far away as Oklahoma City, and few survive after the long flight — leaving families with the burden of getting the bodies back home.

One entrance to the hospital’s COVID-19 ward resembles an off-the-shelf patio door, the kind sold at big-box hardware stores. Last week, Alex Garcia, 26, visited his father by peering through the outside window of his room. Both men are pipeline workers.

That same night, Emily Lopez was preparing for her mother’s funeral only weeks after her aunt died of the virus. The two had been playing bingo together before becoming ill, and two other family members were also hospitalized. “In this area, it’s not a joke. It’s life or death,” she said.

A Christian relief charity that opened a coronavirus field hospital in New York’s Central Park visited the border in mid-July with an eye toward building another facility. That never panned out, and neither did another idea to send patients to hotels. Last week, Gov. Abbott announced that a convention center in the county would be converted.

According to JHU, Texas’ outbreak ‘peaked’ on July 16, roughly 3 weeks ago.

But even with the overflow capacity now on-line, health care workers are skeptical that the virus curve in the county can be so easily tamed. Maritza Padilla, DHR Health’s assistant chief nursing officer, there’s “no chance” of flattening the region’s infection curve.

Let’s hope for their sake that Padilla is wrong.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3a0vIqy Tyler Durden