US Court Vindicates Snowden Leaks – Rules NSA Mass Surveillance “Illegal” & Officials Lied Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 15:30
Though we doubt the broader public needed convincing, this is a significant milestone nonetheless, also after last month Trump shocked reporters by suggesting he could take a look at pardoning Edward Snowden:
Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful – and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth.
From the cover of September 2014 issue of Wired.
From the start supporters of Snowden and the journalists who assisted in breaking the story internationally, such as Glen Greenwald, Laura Poitras and others, said the NSA program was a massive violation of citizens’ 4th Amendment protections.
National security state hawks, however, attempted to focus the story on Snowden himself, saying his ‘traitorous’ actions compromised American spies and assets abroad, and also that it was a boon to Washington’s enemies and rivals like Russia.
“I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them,” Snowden said on Twitter.
Seven years ago, as the news declared I was being charged as a criminal for speaking the truth, I never imagined that I would live to see our courts condemn the NSA’s activities as unlawful and in the same ruling credit me for exposing them.
And the ACLU said “Today’s ruling is a victory for our privacy rights,” adding that it “makes plain that the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records violated the Constitution.”
Crucially, the three judge panel on the 9th Circuit specifically credited Edward Snowden for exposing it, as Politico notes:
Judge Marsha Berzon’s opinion, which contains a half-dozen references to the role of former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden in disclosing the NSA metadata program, concludes that the “bulk collection” of such data violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
If Trump were to move on pardoning Snowden, who is still a fugitive in Russia facing US espionage charges, this could actually help Trump make the argument politically, despite AG Barr recently saying he’d vehemently oppose such a pardon.
It was only a couple weeks ago that Trump said“I’m going to take a very good look at it” when asked about a possible Snowden pardon.
The president raised eyebrows and anxiety across the D.C. beltway with his unprecedented remarks: “There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gTUzhp Tyler Durden
Evercore Analyst Explains Why TikTok Will “Go Dark” As A Sale Is Delayed Until After The Election Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 15:12
When CNBC and a handful of other media outlets reported that a deal to sell TikTok to an American suitor would be announced within days, if not hours, we almost immediately called bs. We reasoned that China’s decision to nudge its Department of Commerce to require ByteDance to obtain a license before it can sell TikTok’s core algorithm, a piece of technology that’s critical to the app’s appeal was deliberately done to push the deal past the Nov. 3 election, in an attempt to create political problems for President Trump.
Although they didn’t delve into the CCP’s motivation, one Wall Street analyst from Evercore ISI declared in a recent research note that TikTok would not be sold before the election, before walking readers through the steps that ByteDance must now take to receive a waiver from Beijing.
Evercore’s Donald Straszheim explained that negotiations have likely halted, as BD must jump through a series of carefully constructed hoops. While Straszheim doesn’t expect Beijing to scuttle the deal, he wouldn’t be surprised if the app “goes dark” in the US, like it did in India, as President Trump’s promised ban takes effect. An executive order handed down three weeks ago would force Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, among other restrictions.
As of Sept. 3, Straszheim said, TikTok negotiations appear to have hit pause, which is necessary so BD can follow through with the procedures outlined by Beijing and the Chinese Department of Commerce.
“ByteDance is preparing documents for Chinese authorities,” Evercore wrote. This is required to obtain a “letter of intent for export license” which the company must obtain before “substantive” talks can take place.
Straszheim expects ByteDance will file with Commerce Sept. 7. That in turn will kick off the “within 30 days” clock for approval or disapproval (this is 30 working days, so with with weekends and holidays off, the end is Oct. 27).
He added that Oct. 27 is the “latest possible day of ruling on ByteDance intention to sell”. While a decision could come earlier, Evercore doubts that very much.
Then, once an agreement is signed, the Dept. Commerce in China will still require a final ruling and review. That should take another 15 days, which would move us past the Nov. 3 election.
Teenagers beware: With Trump again insisting that Sept. 15 is a hard deadline for a sale, Straszheim fears that the app will “go dark” during the run-up to the election, forcing many influencers to migrate to Instagram.
But – fortunately for ByteDance – as the US deal talks stall in the US, a group of bidders is emerging to make an offer for ByteDance’s shuttered India business. India barred the app on national security grounds, one of more than 100 Chinese apps that have been barred by Narendra Modi’s nationalist government, as relations between the world’s two most populous countries deteriorate. Now, SoftBank, with its shares suddenly riding high again after the WeWork fiasco, is reportedly working on assembling a deal group to take a run at BD’s India business, according to Bloomberg.
Anybody who thinks Trump won’t ban the app should look at what’s happening in India, even as BD sues the administration in the US in a legal challenge that could let it off the hook.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3gUgd5q Tyler Durden
To much fanfare, the DOL this morning reported that in the week ended Aug 29, there were “only” 881K new initial jobless claims filed, better than the 950K expected, down from 1.01 million the week prior and the lowest since the covid lockdowns.
The Trump admin was quick to praise these numbers which coming just one day before the suddenly important payrolls report, suggest that August payrolls would be far better than whisper numbers.
There is just one problem: the latest claims report was nothing more than the latest goalseeked government propaganda, boosted this time by a brand new “seasonal adjustment.”
As Goldman explains, the DOL switched from a multiplicative to an additive seasonal factor in this release. If one had applied the historical, multiplicative, seasonal factor, the seasonally adjusted initial claims would have decreased by only 17k to 994k, 44k worse than expected.
Stripping away the seasonal adjustment factor entirely revealed an even uglier picture, as actual initial claims rose from 826K to 833K, a level that has been virtually unchanged for the past 4 weeks.
Furthermore, due to the unprecedented disruption from the covid shutdowns, it is bizarre why one would seek to “seasonally smooth” a historic outlier event which has no precedented in history, and certainly no recurring seasonal component.
And while a state-by-state drilldown showed a modest improvement, with claims decreasing by 12k in Florida, 6k in Georgia, and 5k in Michigan, they soared by 41k in California. These are real claims, not statistically smoothed for political purposes.
It gets worse: when looking at the initial applications under the separate federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program which targets the self-employed, gig workers and others who don’t typically qualify for state programs, here the number jumped by about 152,000 to 759,000, led almost entirely by an increase in California, and some 86% of the entire traditional Initial Claims print.
Meanwhile, on an NSA basis, continuing claims fell by 765k to 13,104k last week, yet applying a multiplicative seasonal adjustment (i.e., the one that was replaced) implies that seasonally adjusted continued claims increased by 368k to 14,860k.
Separately, when adjusting for biweekly filing schedules in Florida and California, Goldman estimates the level of continuing claims was also slightly higher at 13,389k, while for the week ended August 29, initial Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claims increased by 152k to 759k.
Finally adding across all the various continuing jobless claims categories, where pandemic benefits have emerged as the biggest component with nearly 15 million in claims between Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Pandemic Emergency Claims, the total number of persons claiming benefits across all programs rose by 2.2 million, from 27.0 million to 29.2 million. This number was unadjusted so there was no politically-biased jiggering that the DOL could apply to it, although we should note that figure has been likely inflated by states counting multiple retroactive weeks by one person instead as multiple people.
Putting it all together, Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at Maria Fiorini Ramirez said that “It’s very difficult to make any hard conclusions about what one particular week’s worth of data means” adding there’s “still quite a huge amount of people out there that are receiving benefits.”
Yes, 30 million certainly qualifies a “quite a huge” number.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YYJeqr Tyler Durden
We are not going to know the winner of the presidential election on the night of November 3rd. Sadly, we almost certainly won’t know the winner the next day either.
In fact, it may be many weeks before a winner is formally declared.
Laws have been passed all over the country to make voting by mail much easier, and it is being very heavily promoted in many states. It is being projected that at least 83 percent of all U.S. voters will be eligible to vote by mail in November, and that is an astounding number. If all of those people actually did vote by mail, more than 190 million votes would go through our postal system. But of course many people will continue to show up in person and vote the old-fashioned way. We will get the results from those that vote in person on election day very rapidly like we normally do, but it may take a very long time before all of the mail-in votes are tallied.
As I will explain in this article, this has the potential to create some enormous problems.
It is being generally assumed by the political “experts” that Trump will do very well among those that show up in person to vote and that Biden will do very well among those that vote by mail.
If that assumption is true, some Democrats are warning that it could look like Trump will win the election based on the results that we are given on the night of November 3rd, but once all of the mail-in votes are counted Biden will actually be the true winner.
Specifically, this is a narrative that Democratic pollster Josh Mendelsohn is now pushing heavily. According to a “scenario” modeled by his firm, the results on election night could show Trump winning 408 electoral votes…
“We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump,” HawkFish CEO Josh Mendelsohn said in an interview with Axios on HBO.
One scenario modeled by Mendelsohn’s polling firm even shows Trump prevailing in the Electoral College on election night, winning 408 electoral votes compared to just 130 for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Could you imagine the euphoria of Trump supporters if this is what the numbers actually show on the night of November 3rd?
Everyone would be talking about a “Trump landslide” and there would be wild dancing in the streets in many red states.
But Mendelsohn is anticipating that only about 15 percent of all mail-in votes will be counted by election night, and he believes that once all of the mail-in votes are counted that Biden will be declared the true winner…
That scenario accounts for the idea that just 15 percent of mail-in votes will be counted by election night. In that event, the model suggests, Biden could prevail days later — if counting goes smoothly — by 334 electoral votes to 204 for Trump.
“When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage,” Mendelsohn said.
I don’t even want to imagine the uproar that would be created if such a scenario actually played out.
Even if there was no vote fraud, and even if every single vote was counted accurately, tens of millions of people would still be absolutely convinced that the election was stolen from Trump.
Personally, I think that mail-in voting is such a bad idea no matter which party it favors. It opens up so many opportunities for potential vote fraud, and the delay in getting the results is very bad for our nation.
I believe that we will see some precincts in some swing states with a voter participation rate of more than 100 percent this year. In other words, I believe that in some precincts the number of votes cast will actually outnumber the true number of actual voters.
Let’s keep a close eye on the results as they come in throughout the month of November and see if I am actually correct. In my opinion there is going to be quite a bit of monkey business going on with mail-in ballots, and President Trump has been greatly concerned about mail-in ballots as well. In fact, on Wednesday he once again expressed his concern that the upcoming election could be rigged…
Wednesday: Trump retweeted an article from a conservative publication that raised questions about the impact of mail-in voting on the upcoming election and added his own editorial comment. “Rigged election?” he asked.
I have always believed that voters should be required to vote in person as much as possible and that paper ballots should always be used. Those two measures alone would certainly not completely fix our system, but they would definitely go a long way toward restoring integrity to the voting process.
As it stands now, we are heading into a nightmare election. We all know that it is exceedingly unlikely that Trump will concede on election night, and Hillary Clinton continues to insist that Joe Biden should not concede under any circumstances…
In a rare joint interview with American Urban Radio Washington Bureau Chief April Ryan, Hillary Clinton added to her demands that Democrat Joe Biden not concede on election night, and Bill Clinton suggested that Trump will reinforce the White House to keep officials from pulling him out on Inauguration Day.
“Do not concede under any circumstance because I believe the other side is going to cheat and sneak and try everything they possibly can,” said Hillary Clinton in the “#COVID Conversations” interview broadcast via Instagram.
So we are probably going to have to wait for weeks before every vote is finally counted.
And then if it is still very close, there will probably be legal challenges which will have to work their way through the courts.
If things are tight enough, we may not have a formal winner until some time in 2021.
No matter who ends up being victorious, I believe that the election of 2020 is going to be a nightmare for America. It is likely that we will see vote fraud on a scale that we have never seen before, millions of those on the losing side will probably never accept the final result as legitimate, and the chaos caused by a contested outcome could result in even more violence in our streets.
We will see what happens, but right now I have a very, very bad feeling about what is going to happen in November.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3lMvWaf Tyler Durden
The Trump administration’s new nationwide moratorium on evictions is attracting heated opposition from some Republicans in Congress, who say it is legally shaky and sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations.
“I think the legal authority is a real stretch,” says Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Penn.). “I don’t know what the limiting principle is.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which issued the moratorium on Tuesday, cites its authority under the Public Health Services Act to issue regulations to stop the interstate spread of disease. That argument doesn’t impress Toomey.
“If the CDC has the authority to force landlords to effectively give away their product for free, I don’t know where that ends,” Toomey tells Reason. “Can General Motors be forced to give people cars unless they otherwise crowd into subways?”
Other congressional Republicans have raised similar concerns. Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) said on Twitter that the “CDC does not have the authority to do this. It’s dangerous precedent and bad policy.”
“Rental contracts are governed by state law. There is no federal authority to overturn them,” tweeted Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.). “The CDC order is an affront to the rule of law, and an emasculation of every legislator in this country—state and federal.”
In addition to the legal issues it raises, Toomey argues that the CDC’s eviction moratorium is bad policy.
“There’s not some mass wave of evictions going on,” he argues. “It is in the interest of landlords to work out agreements with tenants going through difficult circumstances.” A moratorium on evictions, he suggests, would encourage non-payment of rent and disincentivize deals between tenants and landlords.
According to data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab—which tracks eviction filings in select cities—evictions are currently below historic averages in almost every city, including in places where local and state eviction moratoriums have expired. Thus far, rent payment rates have remained pretty steady during the coronavirus pandemic and are only slightly below where they were last year.
The federal eviction moratorium does nothing to relieve tenants of the responsibility to pay rent, instead only limiting landlords’ ability to evict tenants for non-payment. Housing advocates have argued that the moratorium is a half-measure that needs to be coupled with rental assistance to tenants. Not doing so, they argue, will leave renters vulnerable to eviction once months of back rent come do.
A $3.5 trillion relief package passed by the Democrat-controlled House in May included $100 billion in emergency rent relief.
Toomey thinks that assistance to renters isn’t warranted given the relief measures that Congress has already enacted, including the $1,200 stimulus checks and the federal $600 unemployment bonus.
“I think we have to ask ourselves how much expansion of the welfare state, how many different layers, how many different programs are we going to do. When is it enough?” the senator says.
Toomey says that he has expressed his concerns about the federal government’s eviction moratorium to senior administration officials. A legislative remedy isn’t practical, Toomey argues, given that House would never sign off on a bill repealing an eviction moratorium.
Meanwhile, he worries that the effort sets a dangerous precedent.
“What future administration, what future president, certainly what future Democratic president is going to want to be accused of being less generous than Donald Trump?” asks Toomey. “Are we to expect that the standard response of the government to an economic downturn is an eviction moratorium? We’ve never done that before.”
The CDC’s eviction moratorium goes into effect Friday.
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Hilton Times Square Set To Close As COVID Kills Hospitality Industry Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 14:19
Hilton Times Square is the latest causality of the virus-induced downturn that has crushed the global hospitality industry.
A filing with the New York State Department of Labor on Aug. 31 said the iconic 478-room hotel situated on 234 West 42nd Street would ‘permanently close’ on Oct. 1.
WSJ reached out to Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc., the real estate investment trust which manages the hotel for more color on the upcoming closing.
A Sunstone spokesperson responded in an emailed statement by indicating the filing to New York state officials “was not intended to imply that there is a permanent closure.”
The spokesperson said the filing was intended to inform state officials that layoffs would be seen in the coming months as a result of the closing, adding that a “definitive reopening date has not been determined or established and will be impacted by negotiations with our lender, as well as market conditions.”
Last month, Sunstone revealed in an SEC filing that it had missed several months of mortgage payments on the property. The REIT has at least $77 million mortgages coming due on the property in November. It wrote down the value of the property by $107.9 million, to $61.3 million.
The closure of the hotel is an ominous sign of how the virus pandemic has wrecked not just the New York City hotel market but the worldwide travel industry.
A slow recovery is expected for the worldwide hotel industry, with a full recovery not expected until the midpoint of the decade. Readers may recall as travel and tourism remains in a bust cycle, the next Big Short, or Big Short 3.0, is CMBX 9. This is what we wrote:
… with CMBX 6 now done, keep a close eye on CMBX 9. With its outlier exposure to hotels which have quickly emerged as the most impacted sector from the pandemic, this may well be the next big short.
CMBX 9 has the highest concentration of hotel loans with 16.7%…
Could the closure of Hilton Times Square be the domino that ripples across the industry?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3lNCOEs Tyler Durden
Hedge Fund Manager Arrested For Fraud & Extortion After Admitting To Witness “Maybe I Should Go To Jail” Tyler Durden
Thu, 09/03/2020 – 14:05
After being forced to close his fund, Marble Ridge Capital, after a Jeffries trader and former Navy SEAL reported his dubious conduct to Jeffries General Counsel, who informed the authorities, prompting the trader to record some seriously incriminating and embarrassing phone calls, It looks like Daniel Kamensky is finally in custody.
Prosecutors in New York announced Thursday afternoon that Kamensky had been arrested and charged with securities fraud, obstruction of justice and extortion for allegedly trying to rig a bidding process involving bankrupt Neiman Marcus as Marble Ridge bid to supply the floundering retailer with a high interest loan.
The news was expected. Just last week, in a Houston courtroom, lawyers for Neiman Marcus pressed a judge to order Marble Ridge to pay out more than $50 million into an escrow account so that Neiman could collect the money promised from the firm before Marble Ridge dissolves.
More than a week ago, we reported the salacious story of Kamensky’s downfall. Joe Femenia, the head of distressed-debt trading at Jefferies Financial Group, is the man who, per court filings, taped conversations that brought down Kamensky and his hedge fund down. The proverbial crap hit the fan after Kamensky urged Femenia to not submit a bid for part of the bankrupt retailer, nicknamed “Needless Markups”.
Legal filings show Kamensky telling Femenia to “Stand DOWN”. Probably not a bright thing to say to a Navy SEAL…
When Kamensky realized that he had made a “grave mistake”, and tried to fix things, he only made things worse for himself.
By the time Kamensky urged Femenia, on a second phone call, to “treat the conversation off the books” and to “change his recollection” of how their first call went, Fermenia was recording.
In one, Kamensky pleaded: “[I]f you’re going to continue to tell them what you just told me, I’m going to jail, OK? Because they’re going to say that I abused my position as a fiduciary, which I probably did, right? Maybe I should go to jail. But I’m asking you not to put me in jail.”
That’s not a great look.
The charges were brought by Audrey Strauss, the acting head of the Southern District of New York.
Here’s the full press release:
Audrey Strauss, the Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and William F. Sweeney Jr., the Assistant Director-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”), announced today that DANIEL KAMENSKY, the founder and manager of New York-based hedge fund Marble Ridge Capital (“Marble Ridge”), was charged in a Complaint in Manhattan federal court with securities fraud, wire fraud, extortion, and obstruction of justice. KAMENSKY’s alleged criminal acts occurred in connection with his scheme to pressure a rival bidder to abandon its higher bid for assets in connection with Neiman Marcus’s bankruptcy proceedings so that Marble Ridge could obtain those assets for a lower price. KAMENSKY then attempted to persuade the rival bidder to cover up the scheme. KAMENSKY was arrested today and is expected to be presented before Magistrate Judge James L. Cott this afternoon.
Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss said: “As alleged, Daniel Kamensky disregarded his fiduciary responsibility to unsecured creditors of Neiman Marcus – and broke the law – when he attempted to coerce a competitor to withdraw a higher bid for assets of the bankruptcy estate. As further alleged, acknowledging the illegality of his actions, Kamensky then attempted to obstruct an investigation by trying to persuade the competitor to change his account of the coercion, telling the competitor that otherwise ‘this is going to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.’ As today’s charges show, Kamensky was right about that.”
FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William F. Sweeney said: “As alleged, Kamensky intentionally violated his fiduciary duty as a member of the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the Neiman Marcus bankruptcy by preventing the sale of securities to an investment bank so he could acquire the same securities at a significantly lower price for his own fund. In a conversation with an employee of the investment bank, Kamensky went as far as to say, ‘Maybe I should go to jail.’ Today, we’ve removed the ‘maybe,’ and forced him to answer for his conduct.”
As alleged in the Complaint unsealed today in Manhattan federal court:[1] DANIEL KAMENSKY was the principal of Marble Ridge, a hedge fund with assets under management of more than $1 billion that invested in securities in distressed situations, including bankruptcies. Prior to opening Marble Ridge, KAMENSKY worked for many years as a bankruptcy attorney at a well-known international law firm, and as a distressed debt investor at prominent financial institutions.
The Neiman Marcus Bankruptcy.
Neiman Marcus, an American chain of luxury department stores with stores located across the United States, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas (the “Bankruptcy Court”) in May 2020. At the outset of the bankruptcy, Marble Ridge, through KAMENSKY, applied to be on the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors (the “Committee”) and was thereafter appointed to be a member of the Committee. As a member of the Committee, KAMENSKY had a fiduciary duty to represent the interests of all unsecured creditors as a group.
During the bankruptcy process, the Committee had negotiated with the owners of Neiman Marcus to obtain certain securities, known as MyTheresa Series B Shares (the “MYT Securities”), and ultimately, the Committee was successful in coming to a settlement to obtain 140 million shares of MYT Securities for the benefit of certain unsecured creditors of the bankruptcy estate. In July 2020, KAMENSKY was negotiating with the Committee for Marble Ridge to offer 20 cents per share to purchase MYT Securities from any unsecured creditor who preferred to receive cash, rather than MYT Securities, as part of that settlement.
KAMENSKY’s Fraudulent Scheme
On July 31, 2020, KAMENSKY learned that a diversified financial services company headquartered in New York, New York (the “Investment Bank”) had informed the Committee that it was interested in bidding a price between 30 and 40 cents per share – substantially higher than KAMENSKY’s bid – to purchase the MYT Securities from any unsecured creditor who was interested in receiving cash.
That afternoon, KAMENSKY sent messages to a senior trader at the Investment Bank (“IB Employee-1”) telling him not to place a bid, and followed those messages up with a phone call with IB Employee-1 and a senior analyst of the Investment Bank (“IB Employee-2,” and collectively the “Employees”). During that call, KAMENSKY asserted that Marble Ridge should have the exclusive right to purchase MYT Securities, and threatened to use his official role as co-chair of the Committee to prevent the Investment Bank from acquiring the MYT Securities. KAMENSKY also stated that Marble Ridge had been a client of the Investment Bank in the past but that if the Investment Bank moved forward with its bid, then Marble Ridge would cease doing business with the Investment Bank.
The Investment Bank thereafter decided to not make a bid to purchase MYT Securities, and informed the legal adviser to the Committee of its decision. The Investment Bank further told the legal adviser they made that decision because KAMENSKY – a client of the Investment Bank – had asked them not to.
Advisers to the Committee informed counsel for Marble Ridge of their call with the Employees, and after speaking with KAMENSKY, counsel for Marble Ridge falsely informed the advisers that KAMENSKY had not asked the Employees not to bid, but instead had told them to place a bid only if they were serious. Later that evening, KAMENSKY contacted IB Employee-1 and attempted to influence what IB Employee-1 would tell others, including the Committee and law enforcement, about KAMENSKY’s attempt to block the Investment Bank’s bid for the MYT Securities. KAMENSKY said at the outset of the call, in substance, “this conversation never happened.” During the call, KAMENSKY asked IB Employee-1 to falsely say that IB Employee-1 had been mistaken and that KAMENSKY had actually suggested that the Investment Bank bid only if it were serious, and made comments including the following: “Do you understand…I can go to jail?” “I pray you tell them that it was a huge misunderstanding, okay, and I’m going to invite you to bid and be part of the process.” “But I’m telling you…this is going to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. This is going to go to the court.” “[I]f you’re going to continue to tell them what you just told me, I’m going to jail, okay? Because they’re going to say that I abused my position as a fiduciary, which I probably did, right? Maybe I should go to jail. But I’m asking you not to put me in jail.”
During a subsequent interview with the Office of the United States Trustee, which was conducted under oath and in the presence of counsel, KAMENSKY stated that his calls to IB Employee-1 were a “terrible mistake” and “profound errors in lapses of judgment.”
After this series of events, Marble Ridge resigned from the Committee and has advised its investors that it intended to begin winding down operations and returning investor capital.
* * *
KAMENSKY, 47, of Roslyn, New York, is charged with one count of fraud in the offer or sale of securities, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, one count of extortion and bribery in connection with a bankruptcy, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and one count of obstruction of justice, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The maximum potential sentences in this case are prescribed by Congress and are provided here for informational purposes only, as any sentencing of the defendant will be determined by the judge.
Ms. Strauss praised the work of the FBI. Ms. Strauss further thanked the Office of United States Trustee and the Securities and Exchange Commission for their cooperation and assistance in this investigation. She added that the FBI’s investigation is ongoing.
This case is being handled by the Office’s Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Richard Cooper and Daniel Tracer are in charge of the prosecution.
The allegations contained in the Complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.
The New York Times cheered Stalin and constantly reported that this was the way to the future.
Their top journalist, Walter Duranty (1884-1957), was their man in Moscow. The New York Times promoted him to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for that reporting.
When Gareth Jones (1905-1935) in March 1933 reported this was all a lie, the truth finally began to appear.
It took the New York Times until 1990 to admit to fault in failing to report that there was a famine in Ukraine where Stalin killed so many people.
The New York Times wrote that their reporting on the Russian Revolution constituted “some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.”
Duranty was doing this also to support Roosevelt’s New Deal. He helped install drastic progressiveness in taxation.
In 1932, the top marginal tax rate was increased to 63% during the Great Depression under the Republicans. It steadily increased, finally reaching 94% in 1944 on an income of over $200,000. Under Socialism, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the 1935 Act, which introduced the payroll tax on everyone. However, the Socialists marketed it as the “Soak the Rich” tax, but payroll taxed everyone but the rich who did not work for a wage. Today, the majority of low-income earners pay more in Social Security than they do in taxes.
Are we supposed to trust these people again?
The leftist media is continuously supporting the overthrow of our democracy.
They remain dishonest propaganda artists who threaten our very way of life. Once again, we have the media trying to convince us to surrender all our freedoms to create a better world that they dream of along with all other Marxists. They are once again doing everything in their power to destroy our freedoms.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2F1Tnvq Tyler Durden
The Trump administration’s new nationwide moratorium on evictions is attracting heated opposition from some Republicans in Congress, who say it is legally shaky and sets a dangerous precedent for future administrations.
“I think the legal authority is a real stretch,” says Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Penn.). “I don’t know what the limiting principle is.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which issued the moratorium on Tuesday, cites its authority under the Public Health Services Act to issue regulations to stop the interstate spread of disease. That argument doesn’t impress Toomey.
“If the CDC has the authority to force landlords to effectively give away their product for free, I don’t know where that ends,” Toomey tells Reason. “Can General Motors be forced to give people cars unless they otherwise crowd into subways?”
Other congressional Republicans have raised similar concerns. Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) said on Twitter that the “CDC does not have the authority to do this. It’s dangerous precedent and bad policy.”
“Rental contracts are governed by state law. There is no federal authority to overturn them,” tweeted Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.). “The CDC order is an affront to the rule of law, and an emasculation of every legislator in this country—state and federal.”
In addition to the legal issues it raises, Toomey argues that the CDC’s eviction moratorium is bad policy.
“There’s not some mass wave of evictions going on,” he argues. “It is in the interest of landlords to work out agreements with tenants going through difficult circumstances.” A moratorium on evictions, he suggests, would encourage non-payment of rent and disincentivize deals between tenants and landlords.
According to data from Princeton University’s Eviction Lab—which tracks eviction filings in select cities—evictions are currently below historic averages in almost every city, including in places where local and state eviction moratoriums have expired. Thus far, rent payment rates have remained pretty steady during the coronavirus pandemic and are only slightly below where they were last year.
The federal eviction moratorium does nothing to relieve tenants of the responsibility to pay rent, instead only limiting landlords’ ability to evict tenants for non-payment. Housing advocates have argued that the moratorium is a half-measure that needs to be coupled with rental assistance to tenants. Not doing so, they argue, will leave renters vulnerable to eviction once months of back rent come do.
A $3.5 trillion relief package passed by the Democrat-controlled House in May included $100 billion in emergency rent relief.
Toomey thinks that assistance to renters isn’t warranted given the relief measures that Congress has already enacted, including the $1,200 stimulus checks and the federal $600 unemployment bonus.
“I think we have to ask ourselves how much expansion of the welfare state, how many different layers, how many different programs are we going to do. When is it enough?” the senator says.
Toomey says that he has expressed his concerns about the federal government’s eviction moratorium to senior administration officials. A legislative remedy isn’t practical, Toomey argues, given that House would never sign off on a bill repealing an eviction moratorium.
Meanwhile, he worries that the effort sets a dangerous precedent.
“What future administration, what future president, certainly what future Democratic president is going to want to be accused of being less generous than Donald Trump?” asks Toomey. “Are we to expect that the standard response of the government to an economic downturn is an eviction moratorium? We’ve never done that before.”
The CDC’s eviction moratorium goes into effect Friday.
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Yesterday, I flagged an email from Gregory Washington, the President of George Mason University. He announced some a high-level program for accreditation titled “Transformative Education through Equity and Justice: Anti- Racist Community Engagement.” The email was vague on specifics. In July, Washington sent a follow-up email to the George Mason community with very specific initiatives. (Update: I was forwarded this email today, but it was dated July 23). He explains, “My vision is nothing short of establishing George Mason University as a national exemplar of anti-racism and inclusive excellence in action.” Washington explains that anti-racism will be incorporated into Curriculum and Pedagogy, Campus and Community Engagement, University Policies and Practices, and Research Training and Development. I have pasted the entire email below the fold. Here are four high points.
First, the most significant change concerns hiring. The email explains:
Equity Advisors are senior faculty members, appointed as Faculty Assistant to the Dean in their respective schools. Equity Advisors participate in faculty recruiting by approving search committee short lists and strategies and raising awareness of best practices. Additionally, they organize faculty development programs, with both formal and informal mentoring, and address individual issues raised by women and faculty from underrepresented groups.
If I am reading this policy correctly, these equity advisors could have a veto at every stage of the hiring process.
Second, the University will now consider “implicit bias” for tenure decisions.
We will develop specific recommendations for the renewal, promotion, and tenure processes that address implicit bias, discrimination, and other equity issues (e.g., invisible and uncredited labor) to support faculty of color and women in their professional work.
This policy is framed as a way to “support faculty of color and women.” But could an applicant’s failure to abide by implicit bias justify a denial of tenure? That is, a junior faculty members refused to comply with the implict bias re-education program. Would he be penalized by the University?
Third, the University will “require an anti-racism statement on all syllabi.” We should be clear. Anti-racism is not some sort of mundane statement favoring diversity. Nor is it a legal disclosure required by federal law (Title IX or ADA). Anti-racism is a political viewpoint. George Mason is a public institution. This requirement is likely a violation of the First Amendment. Consider an analogy that my colleague Jon Adler has raised elsewhere. In the 1950s, a public institution required faculty members to include anti-communism statements on their syllabi. That would be a 9-0 case at the Supreme Court.
Fourth, the University will consider names of buildings:
We will convene the University Naming Committee to evaluate names of university buildings and memorials to ensure they align with the university’s stated mission to serve as an “academic community committed to creating a more just, free, and prosperous world.”
Umm, the University is named after a slaveholder. Yesterday, I predicted that George Mason University would simply rebrand itself as GMU University–where the initials do not stand for anything. George Washington University will also rebrand at GW–where the initials do not stand for anything.
Throughout this entire email, Washington does not define “antiracism.” Antiracism is not the opposite of racism. I worry about my my alma matter, Scalia Law School. Declaring independence is looking better by the day.
Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2020 8:37 AM Subject: President Washington Announces Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence
Hello Fellow Patriots,
In the days that followed the murder of George Floyd, I sent you a message that promised action to address racial inequities that persist here at George Mason University.
As I enter my fourth week as president, I want to share with you the actions we will begin to take, as a community of Patriots.
George Mason University enters this national conversation with an admirable track record as a pace-setter of action for racial justice, and for truth-telling about our own past.
We are proud to draw upon the expertise of
The Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Campus Center, one of the first of its kind in the nation.
The Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, one of the nation’s few schools dedicated to social justice and peace, and one of the very best.
The Enslaved People of George Mason research and memorial project, the ground-breaking undertaking by our own faculty and students to tell the full truth of our university’s namesake so that we may learn and grow from it.
And of course, we take pride in hosting Virginia’s largest and most diverse university student body, with a majority of our students representing communities of color, and our Black student population in particular recognized as among the nation’s top academic performers.
These are just some of the many examples of excellence and inclusion around racial justice that the Mason community has undertaken. They make us proud.
But we have work to do if we are to ensure that every student, faculty, and staff member is welcomed and respected as a full equal in this community of learning.
And the uncomfortable truth is not everyone at Mason feels equal, or is treated equally.
So, today I am creating the President’s Task Force on Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence, and giving its members some big assignments.
We need to know where systems, practices, and traditions of racial bias exist at George Mason University so that we may eradicate them.
We must build intentional systems and standards of anti-racism that will keep racial injustices from regenerating.
I want George Mason University to emerge from this exercise as a local, regional, and national beacon for the advancement of anti-racism, reconciliation, and healing.
This task force will have a broad focus, with particular areas of emphasis including short-term and long-term improvements to how we approach:
Curriculum and Pedagogy
Campus and Community Engagement
University Policies and Practices
Research
Training and Development
The task force will comprise many of Mason’s luminaries in racial justice, who will be joined by national experts in this topic. Members will be announced over the course of the coming weeks, and they will represent the full diversity of George Mason University, including racial, ethnic, gender, sexual identity, and religious identity.
The recommendations that we act upon will be incorporated into the university’s planning and budgeting process to ensure they have the priority and resources to take root and flourish. I am not interested in reports that sit on a shelf, only to collect dust.
Many reforms at Mason will require thoughtful consideration over time by the task force and university leadership. Others are obvious, overdue, and simply require executive leadership.
So, in keeping with my pledge to deliver actions and not just words, I am announcing immediate steps that we are taking to advance systemic and cultural anti-racism at George Mason University.
The many steps that we have identified are available in their entirety on my website, president.gmu.edu. The categories of immediate steps we are taking include:
Policing
In addition to state-mandated anti-racism training for all police personnel, we will convert the existing Community Police Council into a Police Advisory Board that actively monitors the nature of police activity and reports its findings to me.
University Policies
A number of university policies and practices that carry racist vestiges in their practices will be examined and/or curtailed, including:
Faculty salary equity – We will complete and act upon a faculty salary equity review and work with the schools and colleges toward correcting any issues over a three-year period.
Inclusive excellence planning – At the college and school level, we will establish Inclusive Excellence Plans that articulate the vision and definition of anti-racism and inclusiveness for that unit. The task force will develop a metric-driven template for units to use.
Implicit bias training – Mason will establish an Inclusive Excellence Certificate Program that certifies that the schools and colleges have completed Implicit Bias Training and have established Inclusive Excellence Plans.
Implicit bias recognition in faculty promotion and tenure – We will develop specific recommendations for the renewal, promotion, and tenure processes that address implicit bias, discrimination, and other equity issues (e.g., invisible and uncredited labor) to support faculty of color and women in their professional work.
Equity Advisors in every academic department – Equity Advisors are senior faculty members, appointed as Faculty Assistant to the Dean in their respective schools. Equity Advisors participate in faculty recruiting by approving search committee short lists and strategies and raising awareness of best practices. Additionally, they organize faculty development programs, with both formal and informal mentoring, and address individual issues raised by women and faculty from underrepresented groups.
Recognizing and rewarding adversity barriers in promotion and tenure – We will develop specific mechanisms in the promotion and tenure process that recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional labor that people of color expend to learn, teach, discover, and work on campus.
Racial Trauma and Healing
We will increase the support provided students, faculty, and staff through Mason’s Counseling and Psychological Services for students, and Human Resources for faculty and staff.
Curriculum/Pedagogy
We will finalize development and implementation of required diversity, inclusion, and well-being coursework.
We will require an anti-racism statement on all syllabi.
Buildings and Grounds
We will convene the University Naming Committee to evaluate names of university buildings and memorials to ensure they align with the university’s stated mission to serve as an “academic community committed to creating a more just, free, and prosperous world.”
Community Engagement
We will grow our K-12 and community college partnerships by 50 percent, and become a true partner in the development of our region.
We will establish a lecture series on anti-racism and inclusive excellence to establish a collective consciousness among the campus community.
Resource Commitments:
We will identify associated budget to achieve above immediate actions, beginning with an initial $5 million commitment over three years to strengthen initiatives already underway and to fund critical priorities that need immediate attention.
We will identify an Executive Director for the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Campus Center.
Leadership in an anti-racism environment demands that we recognize how our history has shaped our view of the world and how our own actions can reshape it.
My vision is nothing short of establishing George Mason University as a national exemplar of anti-racism and inclusive excellence in action. Given the considerable head start we have on most of our sister institutions in the United States, this is a vision we can realize.
So, Patriots, let’s get to work.
Gregory Washington
President
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