U.S. Auto Sales: Decimated In Disastrous And Dismal December
We have been covering the global automotive recession for the better part of 18 months now and, while a lot of our focus has been on the slowdown in China, the United States now appears to be spearheading the misery.
This revelation comes as a result of what can only be described as absolutely atrocious auto sales numbers for December, which were reported in scattered fashion, hitting the terminal in the appropriate red color, on Friday throughout the day.
Fiat Chrysler sales for Q4 fell 2% despite “robust” demand for the company’s Ram pickup trucks. GM deliveries fell 6% in the quarter and Toyota saw sales fall 6.1% in December, handily missing estimates for a 0.8% gain.
And Toyota wasn’t the only automaker that missed estimates in grand fashion: Honda was also expected to report a modest gain in sales, but posted an ugly 12% drop in sales for the quarter.
Expectations were lower for Nissan, who was expected to post a drop of 22.1% but missed even those pessimistic expectations by posting a monster 29.5% loss for the quarter.
Ford is expected to post results on Monday.
IBD offered some additional detail on the numbers behind the numbers:
GM deliveries declined 6.3% to 735,909 units in Q4, with fleet sales accounting for 19.7% of the total. For all of 2019, GM deliveries fell 2.3% to 2,887,046 units. North American wholesale sales fell roughly 25% year over year in the quarter. GM cited the 40-day autoworkers’ strike over labor contracts that brought factories to a halt. GM’s newly launched heavy-duty full-size pickups saw sales fall 17% in Q4.
Fiat Chrysler reported record Q4 sales for the Ram truck brand, Jeep Wrangler SUV and Dodge Charger passenger car. The Ram brand also posted record full-year sales, amid the launch of the redesigned Ram Heavy Duty pickup truck.
For all of 2019, Honda’s sales rose 0.2% to 1,608,170 vehicles. Honda saw declines of 11.3% in December for cars; 2.3% for trucks; 12.9% for the Honda division; and 3.8% for the luxury Acura division. Sales of electric and hybrid vehicles fell 31.4% for December but rose 17.2% for the full year.
Nissan auto sales crumbled 29.5% to 104,781 vehicles in December. For all of 2019, Nissan’s sales declined 9.9% to 1,345,681 vehicles. In December, Nissan saw sales plunge 23.4% for cars; 32.9% for trucks; 28.4% in the Nissan division; and 37.8% in the luxury Infiniti division.
Look at the year-long 2019 numbers paints an ugly picture, as well.
GM’s sales fell 2.3% in 2019, dented by the UAW strike that brought more than 30 U.S. factories to a halt toward the end of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal. Fiat’s sales in the U.S. were down 1% for the year and Toyota’s sales fell 2%. Nissan’s sales fell a whopping 10%.
Additionally, year end U.S. sales are expected by analysts to come in at a decrease of 1% to 2% for the year, totaling about 17 million sales. Industry forecasters are expecting a steeper drop, to a range of 16.5 million to 16.8 million vehicles.
Jonathan Smoke, chief economist of Cox Automotive, says that record amount of non-housing debt, slowing retail spending and rising severe delinquencies and defaults are continuing concerns for the industry, according to CNBC. He stated:
“Retail spending growth began to slow as we entered the fourth quarter. Collectively these trends suggest that the consumer may not be capable of single-handedly carrying the economy in 2020, which is why we are expecting another decline in new-vehicle sales.”
Like the 2011 Virginia earthquake, gun control proposals rumble through the Commonwealth once again. The latest is Governor Ralph Northam’s (D) budget proposal, which includes – among other things – what sure seems to be funding for a gun confiscation squad.
Democrats showed their intent to turn Virginia from a state that broadly respects the rights of its residents to bear arms to one that seizes and destroys those guns right after the November elections. Over 100 cities and counties have declared “sanctuary” pledges to uphold the Second Amendment rights of the people, but the state hasn’t backed down. This led to an opinion from the Democrat Virginia Attorney General proclaiming the sanctuary movement a big legal nothing. And now we have this very anti-gun budget proposal.
Guns Or Butter
Wars are fantastically expensive, especially those fought between two factions in the same nation. We essentially take 100% of the losses and pay for 100% of the cost, as was the case in our Civil War. Putting aside the notion of extreme violent opposition to the confiscation laws proposed by Governor Northam and the Democratic Caucus, even if resistance is more measured, taking so many guns from so many people will not be easy. According to an email blast raising the alarm in opposition, the Virginia Citizens Defense League* (VCDL), the state’s leading civil rights champion for gun rights, said:
The Governor has requested $4 million and 18 law-enforcement positions to enforce his gun ban – a request that could be the preparatory steps for confiscating the guns which would be banned by SB 16.
Moreover, the Governor is requesting another $3.5 million to enforce gun control that has NOT been passed by the legislature and is NOT even current law in Virginia: universal background checks, one gun a month limitations, so-called “red flag” gun confiscation orders, and more.
The group has encouraged its members to voice their opposition in regional meetings scheduled by various county delegations to the Assembly. If the turnout is anything like we’ve seen with the sanctuary movement, it will be impressive.
Elections Have Consequences
The precursor to the seismic waves now bouncing around Virginia was the November election. Virginians elected a new legislature for 2020 and gave Democrats a majority for the first time since 1994. With that, the Dems have decided to swing for the fences on their first up at bat in over 20 years, promoting controversial legislation on gun control, zoning, and gender equality. It’s the gun control bills that have produced the biggest response – an avalanche of opposition by Virginia gun owners. Senate Bill 16, which was filed 11 days after the election, bans many common firearms, including the AR-15, and does not grandfather them in. A more aggressive mission to destroy the guns – and the right to own them – of Virginians could hardly be devised. If the legislation were to pass, gun owners in Virginia would have to sell or surrender their firearms or become felons. Hence the backlash.
The first sanctuary county in Virginia was not established after the November elections, but before. These confiscation bills were introduced in previous sessions, but they had no chance to pass. This didn’t matter to the Carroll County Board of Supervisors, who started the trend with a resolution announcing they wished:
[T]o express its intent to stand as a Sanctuary County for Second Amendment rights and to oppose, within the limits of the Constitutions of the United States and the Commonwealth of Virginia, any efforts to unconstitutionally restrict such rights, and to use such legal means at its disposal to protect the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms, including through legal action, the power of appropriation of public funds, and the right to petition for the redress of grievances.
Since that measure passed in January of 2019, over 100 independent counties and cities have voted in their own sanctuary protections. Democrats in Richmond may very well be successful in banning guns in Virginia, but the movement between election day and now gives the lie to the notion that they can do so while claiming the will of the people.
Former Sequoia Partner Wins $10 Million Verdict Against Stripper Who Claimed He Gave Her An STD
Today on Wall Street’s version of the Jerry Springer Show, the saga of a former Sequoia Capital partner and an exotic dancer has finally come to an end, to some degree exonerating Michael Goguen after nearly a half decade of false claims and drummed up #MeToo-style publicity that cost him his career.
A Superior Court Judge in California ruled in favor of Michael Goguen and found that his former mistress, Amber Laurel Baptiste had committed fraud and extortion by threatening to publicize false claims about Goguen, including that he gave her an STD, according to Bloomberg. The judge ordered Baptiste to pay back $10.25 million she had gotten from Goguen after a three day trial that she didn’t attend.
The court also granted Goguen a restraining order.
Baptiste has until next week to file an objection to the ruling or it becomes final and ends the saga that ruined Goguen’s 20 year career at one of the world’s most prestigious venture capital firms. Baptiste’s allegations surfaced right around the same time as the #MeToo movement, which brought heightened scrutiny unto Goguen.
Baptiste says she stands by her claims and expects to file an objection to the ruling. She said she has already spent $5 million of the money Goguen gave her on legal fees and is in the process of hiring her sixth attorney. “I will continue to fight this all the way to the end,” she commented.
Goguen
Goguen says the ruling ends a “heartbreaking and devastating” chapter in his life and says many of his friends have treated him “like a leper” since the allegations became public in 2016.
“I’ve become jaded,” he said, noting that he couldn’t even celebrate the ruling as a victory due to the toll the legal process had taken on his life.
Goguen had previously worked on finding and funding technology startups that specialized in networking and cybersecurity for Sequoia. Goguen struck it rich with sales of some of these companies to names like Cisco Systems. But Baptiste’s suit in 2016 had immediate implications: Goguen was taken off the company website and was removed from the boards of 11 companies.
And despite Sequoia noting that they were “unproven and unrelated” allegations at the time, they said they had “decided his departure was appropriate,” according to the firm.
Goguen met Baptiste in a strip club in Dallas in 2002 where she was working. They then began spending time together and, in 2014, Goguen paid Baptiste $10 million to sever communication and keep the details of their affair under wraps. Baptiste claimed in 2016 that Goguen sexually abused her for more than a decade, infected her with an STD, and then reneged on a promise to pay her $40 million.
Goguen countersued, claiming the affair was consensual and that Baptiste was extorting him. Goguen said he stopped paying because she broke her end of the deal by continuing to contact him. Baptiste soon left her attorney and claimed that Goguen’s lawyers were working with a PI to spy on her.
Last year, Goguen beat Baptiste in court before it went to trial when a judge ruled that Baptiste failed to provide evidence of her claims and/or undergo examinations required by the court. In deciding Goguen’s countersuit in December, another judge ruled that Baptiste had forged the date and results of medical tests to try and prove her case. He found that Goguen had agreed to pay her to simply keep her false allegations out of the media spotlight.
Baptiste
The same judge also found that Baptiste solicited donations from Goguen for a non-profit she established, called Every Girl Counts. The organization was supposed to help feed, clothe and shelter 36 girls, but Baptiste could not prove these services and, instead, spent more than $40,000 of the non-profit’s funds to “to commission fantasy paintings of herself, according to the ruling.”
As for Goguen, who clearly got the short end of the stick in the deal having lost his career due to false allegations, what is his consolation prize?
Firms still won’t work with him.
Goguen said the conclusion had the opposite effect of what he expected. Silicon Valley Bank and an angel investing group refused to work with him because, even though the allegations weren’t true, they didn’t want to invite negative news coverage, Goguen said.
Goguen hopes the new ruling puts the matter to rest. He said if Baptiste pays back the money, he’ll donate it to charity. Goguen is now focused on his Montana-based VC firm, Two Bear Capital. He said he contributed $15 million to the initial fund, which has backed seven startups. He has no plans to return to Sequoia or Silicon Valley.
At the risk of sounding too simplistic and old fashioned, the moral of the story today seems to simply be: If you’re rich, steer clear of starting long-term relationships with strippers.
Oh, and if you’re a stripper that’s extorted $10 million from a customer, maybe it’s time to retire and walk away with your chips instead of pressing your luck.
Getting rid of Trump means taking seriously “shit-life syndrome” – and its resulting misery, which includes suicide, drug overdose death, and trauma for surviving communities.
My state of Ohio is home to many shit-life syndrome sufferers. In the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton lost Ohio’s 18 electoral votes to Trump. She got clobbered by over 400,000 votes (more than 8%). She lost 80 of Ohio’s 88 counties. Trump won rural poorer counties, several by whopping margins. Trump got the shit-life syndrome vote.
Will Hutton in his 2018 Guardian piece, “The Bad News is We’re Dying Early in Britain – and It’s All Down to ‘Shit-Life Syndrome’” describes shit-life syndrome in both Britain and the United States: “Poor working-age Americans of all races are locked in a cycle of poverty and neglect, amid wider affluence. They are ill educated and ill trained. The jobs available are drudge work paying the minimum wage, with minimal or no job security.”
The Brookings Institution, in November 2019, reported:
“53 million Americans between the ages of 18 to 64—accounting for 44% of all workers—qualify as ‘low-wage.’ Their median hourly wages are $10.22, and median annual earnings are about $18,000.”
For most of these low-wage workers, Hutton notes:
“Finding meaning in life is close to impossible; the struggle to survive commands all intellectual and emotional resources. Yet turn on the TV or visit a middle-class shopping mall and a very different and unattainable world presents itself. Knowing that you are valueless, you resort to drugs, antidepressants and booze. You eat junk food and watch your ill-treated body balloon. It is not just poverty, but growing relative poverty in an era of rising inequality, with all its psychological side-effects, that is the killer.”
Shit-life syndrome is not another fictitious illness conjured up by the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industrial complex to sell psychotropic drugs. It is a reality created by corporatist rulers and their lackey politicians – pretending to care about their minimum-wage-slave constituents, who are trying to survive on 99¢ boxed macaroni and cheese prepared in carcinogenic water, courtesy of DuPont or some other such low-life leviathan.
The Cincinnati Enquirer, in November 2019, ran the story: “Suicide Rate Up 45% in Ohio in Last 11 Years, With a Sharper Spike among the Young.” In Ohio between 2007 and 2018, the rate of suicide among people 10 to 24 has risen by 56%. The Ohio Department of Health reported that suicide is the leading cause of death among Ohioans ages 10‐14 and the second leading cause of death among Ohioans ages 15‐34, with the suicide rate higher in poorer, rural counties.
Overall in the United States, “Suicides have increased most sharply in rural communities, where loss of farming and manufacturing jobs has led to economic declines over the past quarter century,” reports the American Psychological Association. The U.S. suicide rate has risen 33% from 1999 through 2017 (from 10.5 to 14 suicides per 100,000 people).
In addition to an increasing rate of suicide, drug overdose deaths rose in the United States from 16,849 in 1999 to 70,237 in 2017, more sharply increasing in recent years. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that opioids—mainly synthetic opioids—were involved in 47,600 overdose deaths in 2017 (67.8% of all drug overdose deaths).
Among all states in 2017, Ohio had the second highest rate of drug overdose death (46.3 per 100,000). West Virginia had the highest rate (57.8 per 100,000).
The NPR story was about a study published in JAMA Network Open titled “Association of Chronic Opioid Use With Presidential Voting Patterns in US Counties in 2016,” lead authored by physician James Goodwin. In counties with high rates of opioid use, Trump received 60% of the vote; but Trump received only 39% of the vote in counties with low opioid use. Opioid use is prevalent in poor rural counties, as Goodwin reports in his study: “Approximately two-thirds of the association between opioid rates and presidential voting was explained by socioeconomic variables.”
Goodwin told NPR:
“It very well may be that if you’re in a county that is dissolving because of opioids, you’re looking around and you’re seeing ruin. That can lead to a sense of despair . . . . You want something different. You want radical change.”
Shit-life syndrome sufferers are looking for immediate change, and are receptive to unconventional politicians.
In 2016, Trump understood that being unconventional, including unconventional obnoxiousness, can help ratings. So he began his campaign with unconventional serial humiliations of his fellow Republican candidates to get the nomination; and since then, his unconventionality has been limited only by his lack of creativity—relying mostly on the Roy Cohn modeled “Punch them harder than they punch you” for anyone who disagrees with him.
I talked to Trump voters in 2016, and many of them felt that Trump was not a nice person, even a jerk, but their fantasy was that he was one of those rich guys with a big ego who needed to be a hero. Progressives who merely mock this way of thinking rather than create a strategy to deal with it are going to get four more years of Trump.
The Dems’ problem in getting the shit-life syndrome vote in 2020 is that none of their potential nominees for president are unconventional. In 2016, Bernie Sanders achieved some degree of unconventionality. His young Sandernistas loved the idea of a curmudgeon grandfather/eccentric uncle who boldly proclaimed in Brooklynese that he was a “socialist,” and his fans marveled that he was no loser, having in fact charmed Vermonters into electing him to the U.S. Senate. Moreover, during the 2016 primaries, there were folks here in Ohio who ultimately voted for Trump but who told me that they liked Bernie—both Sanders and Trump appeared unconventional to them.
While Bernie still has fans in 2020, he has done major damage to his “unconventionality brand.” By backing Hillary Clinton in 2016, he resembled every other cowardly politician. I felt sorry for his Sandernistas, heartbroken after their hero Bernie—who for most of his political life had self-identified as an “independent” and a “socialist”—became a compliant team player for the corporatist Blue Team that he had spent a career claiming independence from. If Bernie was terrified in 2016 of risking Ralph Nader’s fate of ostracism for defying the corporatist Blue Team, would he really risk assassination for defying the rich bastards who own the United States?
So in 2020, this leaves realistic Dems with one strategy. While the Dems cannot provide a candidate who can viscerally connect with shit-life syndrome sufferers, the Dems can show these victims that they have been used and betrayed by Trump.
Here in Ohio in counties dominated by shit-life syndrome, the Dems would be wise not to focus on their candidate but instead pour money into negative advertising, shaming Trump for making promises that he knew he wouldn’t deliver on: Hillary has not been prosecuted; Mexico has paid for no wall; great manufacturing jobs are not going to Ohioans; and most importantly, in their communities, there are now even more suicides, drug overdose deaths, and grieving families.
You would think a Hollywood Dem could viscerally communicate in 30 seconds: “You fantasized that this braggart would be your hero, but you discovered he’s just another rich asshole politician out for himself.” This strategy will not necessarily get Dems the shit-life syndrome vote, but will increase the likelihood that these folks stay home on Election Day and not vote for Trump.
The question is just how clueless are the Dems? Will they convince themselves that shit-life syndrome sufferers give a shit about Trump’s impeachment? Will they convince themselves that Biden, Buttigieg, Bloomberg or Warren are so wonderful that shit-life syndrome sufferers will take them and their campaign promises seriously? Then Trump probably wins again, thanks to both shit-life syndrome and shit-Dems syndrome.
“Calm, Cool & Collected”: How Trump’s Risky Decision To Kill Soleimani Unfolded
Multiple similar accounts have now come out over the inside the Situation Room decision-making process concerning the risky move to take out the IRGC’s Gen. Qasem Soleimani, as well as how the drone attack operation played out at the airport.
By all accounts, as Soleimani traveled to and through Baghdad airport US intelligence seized upon the “target of opportunity” and moved fast to brief President Trump, who was at Mar-a-Lago. Defense sources explained to Bloombergthat Soleimani wasn’t being monitored before it was known he was coming through Baghdad’s international airport.
Defense and intelligence officials believed the Revolutionary Guard Quds force leader was plotting attacks on Americans inside Iraq and the region — this based on an “intelligence assessment” — the contents of which haven’t been made public.
Via Kevin McCarthy/Instagram, and Daily Mail: “President Trump ate ice cream and meatloaf with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday when the Pentagon confirmed that a top Iranian general was killed in an airstrike. From left: Trump aides Hogan Gidley and Dan Scavino; McCarthy; and Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday night.”
From the moment Trump was briefed on the matter it was only known to a tightly restricted group of aides within the cabinet, as even White House communications officials “were excluded from the planning,” notes Bloomberg. And further Bloomberg’s sources reveal that:
The White House opted against notifying Congress ahead of the attack out of concern for security, a person familiar with the matter said. The Department of Homeland Security, which is partially responsible for deterring potential Iranian retaliation on U.S. soil, was only notified of the Soleimani strike after the fact.
However, select “friendly” Congressional leaders were let in on the discussions, most notably South Carolina Republican and outspoken Iran hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Inside ornate Mar-a-Lago suites commandeered as makeshift situation rooms, Trump hosted top advisers and certain friendly members of Congress on Tuesday to discuss a strike taking out the commander of Iran’s security and intelligence services.
In between rounds of golf and dinners with his family over the next 48 hours, he was updated on specific intelligence showing multiple threats to Americans from Iran in the region — and on the expected movement of Qasem Soleimani to Baghdad, where he was taken out by an American drone on Thursday.
Top advisers and military brass also sought to offer Trump a view of what the kill might mean for the region, for the United States and for his presidency.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been urgently flown in from Washington to advise the president based on the new intelligence.
Trump on New Year’s Eve. Image source: CNN via Getty Images
The ensuing debate over whether to act centered on the endless unforeseen consequences and “escalation risk” that assassinating Iran’s most influential military leader and close friend to the Ayatollah and Iranian president might entail.
“The morning after the strike, Trump abandoned plans to play a round of golf and instead spent time surveying his orbit of advisers on the kill order. He was defiant, according to some of the people he spoke with, and defensive,” Bloomberg reports. “But he also appeared to be freshly aware of the gravity of his role and the power he wields, unsure of how Iran would respond.”
During the whole affair, others who had attended holiday and New Year’s events with the president described him as “calm, cool and collected.” According to Politico, conservative radio host Howie Carr, who’d been among the first to speak to Trump at Mar-a-Lago moments after the news first broke, said “I had no idea there was anything out of the ordinary going on until I got home.”
Concerning initial questions of how Soleimani could have been traveling so visibly and “out in the open” through Baghdad’s large international hub, one Republican foreign policy analyst had this to say: “We’ve known every minute of every day where Soleimani is for years—there’s no moment of any given day where five or six intelligence agencies can’t tell you where he is,” according to Politico. “It’s been one of his talking points: The Americans can find me any time, they just don’t dare hit me.”
This despite Israeli officials and media for the past two years touting that Tel Aviv has given a ‘green light’ for his assassination should the opportunity present itself.
Via Associated Press, Iraqi Prime Minister’s office
As Politico aptly summarizes: “That calculation proved misguided in the wee hours of January 3 in Iraq, where Soleimani landed amid spiraling tensions between U.S.- and Iranian-allied factions.”
A senior defense official concluded, “He arrived at the airport and we had a target of opportunity, and based on the president’s direction, we took it.”
From A.W. v. I.N., decided yesterday by Nassau County (N.Y.) Judge Edmund M. Dane:
The parties were married on May 30, 2002 in a civil ceremony. There are two unemancipated children of the marriage. The Wife commenced the underlying action for divorce on May 30, 2017. The parties resolved issues of custody and parenting time pursuant to Stipulation dated November 9, 2018. A trial on the financial issues commenced on February 14, 2019 …. Prior to the conclusion of the trial, the parties resolved the outstanding issues of this action by Stipulation dated May 9, 2019 (“Financial Stipulation”). As part of the Financial Stipulation, the parties agreed that $100,000.00 from the Husband’s IRA would be transferred to the Wife.
Following the execution of the Financial Stipulation, the Wife’s counsel prepared a proposed Judgment of Divorce and ancillary documents for submission to the Court. According to the Husband, his attorney then contacted Wife’s attorney to request the proposed Judgment include a provision requiring cooperation with a GET. The Husband states that he was led to believe that the Wife was willing to accept a GET, but she has since ignored his requests to cooperate with same.
The Husband argues that because he is an Orthodox Jew, he cannot remarry under Jewish Law unless the Wife accepts a GET. He attaches an affirmation from a Rabbi in support of his request wherein the Rabbi states that a GET must be given by the Husband and accepted by the Wife for either party to remarry under Jewish Law. According to the Rabbi’s affirmation, the Wife’s refusal to appear before an Orthodox Beth Din and accept the GET will prevent the Husband from remarrying.
The Husband asks that the Court stay his obligation to transfer the $100,000 to the Wife pursuant to the Financial Stipulation until such time as she accepts a GET. The Husband argues that the Wife swore to remove all barriers to his remarriage but her refusal to cooperate with the GET is a refusal to remove all barriers to his remarriage…
In opposition, the Wife asserts that the parties were not married religiously nor was there any religious ceremony. Therefore, she argues, since there was no marriage according to Jewish Law, there is no religious divorce to be had.
The Wife states that she refused the Husband’s offers for a religious wedding ceremony because she wanted to avoid any religious divorce rituals. The Wife argues that in any event, the Husband is not a practicing Orthodox Jew. She states that he regularly communicates with others during both Shabbat and Sukkot, and socializes in a manner contrary to his alleged faith. The Wife asserts that the Rabbi who offers an affirmation in support of the Husband is from a “fanatic” and “extreme” faction of Orthodox Jews which discriminates against women. Furthermore, she argues that even if the parties were religiously married, a religious divorce is never a barrier to the Husband’s remarriage. Finally, the Wife argues that the $100,000 due to her under the Financial Stipulation was without condition and that forcing her to accept a GET violates her civil rights.
The Husband offers no personal affidavit to refute her claims in reply. However, his attorney argues that the Wife fails to provide any “admissible evidence” that the Husband does not need a GET to remarry. She argues that the Wife’s sworn statement that she would remove all barriers to the Husband’s remarriage was a fraud….
The constitutional limitations on the Court’s ability to intervene on religious issues are deeply rooted in law and it is well established that the Court may not consider religious doctrine in rendering a decision.
Nonetheless, Courts have resolved issues of religion by relying upon secular and neutral principles of law, primarily in the context of contract law. Where there is a contractual agreement to cooperate with a religious divorce, Courts have routinely enforced the agreement by imposing financial sanctions and/or withholding economic relief in the event of a party’s non-cooperation with same.
In this case, however, there is no agreement or contract between the parties regarding the GET. In fact, there exists a fully executed Financial Stipulation which is silent as to the need, or even the desire, for either party to obtain a GET. There is no contract that obligates either party to cooperate with any religious divorce, ritual or ceremony. Accordingly, this is not an instance where the Court can rely upon contract law to intervene on this religious issue.
Outside the context of contract law, the Second Department has determined that it is not an improper interference with religion for the lower court to fashion maintenance and equitable distribution awards to address a Husband’s withholding of a GET solely to extract economic concessions from the Wife. {“The legislative intent of Domestic Relations Law § 253(3) was principally to prevent the husband in the case of a Jewish divorce from using the denial of a ‘get’ as a form of economic coercion in a civil divorce action” Sieger v. Sieger (N.Y. App. Div. 2007), rev’d on other grounds, (N.Y. App. Div. 2008).} Under the unique circumstances of this case, it is the Wife who is refusing to cooperate with the GET, and there is already a fully executed Financial Stipulation resolving the economic issues of the marriage. There is nothing in the record to suggest that the Wife’s refusal to accept a GET had any impact on the terms of the Financial Stipulation or that her non-cooperation is for the purpose of extracting further economic concessions. Therefore, there is no basis for the Court to interfere with the economic settlement reached by the parties.
It would be a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution for the Court to order the Wife to participate in a religious ritual when she did not agree to do so nor may the Court impose a financial penalty against her. One party’s decision to follow a certain faith and/or faction of that faith cannot be the basis for the Court’s decision. As articulated in the recently decided Masri v. Masri (N.Y. trial ct. 2017):
“To apply coercive financial pressure because of the perceived unfairness of Jewish religious divorce doctrines to induce Defendant to perform a religious act would plainly interfere with the free exercise of his (and her) religion and violate the First Amendment.”
The Husband further argues that the Court may interfere in this instance because the Wife swore that she removed all barriers to the Husband’s remarriage, a claim the Husband asserts was false. Whether or not the Wife removed religious barriers to the Husband’s remarriage is an issue of religion, not within the Court’s purview.
While [Domestic Relations Law] § 253 requires a Plaintiff to swear that she has, to the best of her knowledge, taken all steps solely within her power to remove all barriers to Defendant’s remarriage following the divorce, subsection (9) of DRL § 253 states that: “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to authorize any court to inquire into or determine any ecclesiastical or religious issue. The truth of any statement submitted pursuant to this section shall not be the subject of any judicial inquiry, except as provided in subdivision eight of this section.” Pursuant to subdivision (8), “[a]ny person who knowingly submits a false statement under this section shall be guilty of making an apparently sworn false statement in the first degree and shall be punished in accordance with section 210.40 of the penal law.”
The Wife asserts that because she was married in a civil ceremony her refusal to accept a GET is not a barrier to the Husband’s remarriage, either religious or otherwise. Because the Wife maintains that she is in compliance with DRL § 253, the Court cannot grant the Husband the relief he seeks.
Here, the Court may not inquire beyond the Wife’s sworn statement that she has, to the best of her knowledge, removed all barriers to the Husband’s remarriage as same would constitute an impermissible decision on a religious issue. The parties are at liberty to follow whatever faith and religious beliefs they choose, but that does not mean the Court can or will interfere by imposing one party’s beliefs upon the other.
The analysis generally seems to me quite right, and it would of course apply to a husband who refused to give a get, as in Masri, which the decision above relies on.
Note that subsection 7 of § 253 also provides that, “No final judgment of annulment or divorce shall be entered, notwithstanding the filing of the plaintiff’s sworn statement prescribed by this section, if the clergyman or minister who has solemnized the marriage certifies, in a sworn statement, that he or she has solemnized the marriage and that, to his or her knowledge, the plaintiff has failed to take all steps solely within his or her power to remove all barriers to the defendant’s remarriage following the annulment or divorce, provided that the said clergyman or minister is alive and available and competent to testify at the time when final judgment would be entered.” But, whether or not that is constitutionally sound, it by its terms doesn’t apply when the marriage was solemnized in a civil ceremony.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2ZNWGN5
via IFTTT
Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our weekend roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, your finances, and your prosperity.
Professor Blames Private Property for California Wildfires
A public takeover of utility companies is not enough, according to Kian Goh, Professor of Urban Development at UCLA.
In order to combat California wildfires, we need to abandon “aspirations of home ownership, and belief in the importance of private property.”
Fueled by cheap energy– and of course the ever-present racism of the white middle-class– people expanded beyond cities, building little tinder-box neighborhoods into the forests.
Goh says that, “Expansionist, individualist, and exclusionary patterns of housing became synonymous with freedom and self-sufficiency.”
Ah yes, it’s not so hard to link the desire for freedom and self-sufficiency with every known evil on earth. You’re even responsible for burning down California.
But Urban Planners like Kian Goh would be happy to step in, and tell us how our lives should be designed.
For the greater good, we must collectivize and live on communal (i.e. government controlled) land.
Just a reminder– parents across the country pay top dollar each year so people like Professor Goh can teach their children.
In Early November, Oren Levy had his shipment of legal hemp confiscated by the New York Police. They even bragged about the “drug bust” on social media.
Too bad it was perfectly legal. Levy even had the documentation to prove it, included in every box of the shipment.
But police still lured Levy’s brother to the department under the guise that he could pick up the shipment, and arrested him.
After almost two months, and nearly destroying Levy’s perfectly legal CBD oil business, charges were dropped. The shipment was returned– though in a dry and deteriorated condition.
Levy is now suing the NYPD, the City of New York, and possibly FedEx for alerting the authorities in the first place.
Congress has a New Year’s Resolution: Destroy Facebook’s Libra Token
Two bills that the US Congress will consider this year seem aimed specifically at preventing Facebook from rolling out it’s digital token Libra.
One is called the “Keep Big Tech Out Of Finance Act.” It would ban “large platform utilities” from being, or being affiliated with, a financial institution.
It would also not allow large platforms to create or “operate a digital asset that is intended to be widely used as medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, or any other similar function.”
Violators would be fined $1 million per day.
The other bill is called the “Managed Stable Coins are Securities Act.”
Libra is intended to be a “stable coin” which is a digital currency tied to the value of existing currencies.
This bill would make it law that Libra would be considered a security, like a stock or bond, as opposed to a currency, like the dollar or Swiss franc.
Sounds like the US government doesn’t want any competition with their Federal Reserve Notes.
In September 2019, the media company Vox ran the headline, Gig workers’ win in California is a victory for workers everywhere.
They were referring to a new law in California which classified gig workers and contractors as employees.
The story was that by classifying workers as contractors instead of employees, companies like Uber and Lyft got away with not providing employee benefits required under California law.
Then, just before Christmas, Vox showed us what the law really meant when it fired 200 California-based freelance writers.
Vox helped sell the public the lie that laws like these force companies to absorb freelancers as employees. But in reality, it means they get fired.
From A.W. v. I.N., decided yesterday by Nassau County (N.Y.) Judge Edmund M. Dane:
The parties were married on May 30, 2002 in a civil ceremony. There are two unemancipated children of the marriage. The Wife commenced the underlying action for divorce on May 30, 2017. The parties resolved issues of custody and parenting time pursuant to Stipulation dated November 9, 2018. A trial on the financial issues commenced on February 14, 2019 …. Prior to the conclusion of the trial, the parties resolved the outstanding issues of this action by Stipulation dated May 9, 2019 (“Financial Stipulation”). As part of the Financial Stipulation, the parties agreed that $100,000.00 from the Husband’s IRA would be transferred to the Wife.
Following the execution of the Financial Stipulation, the Wife’s counsel prepared a proposed Judgment of Divorce and ancillary documents for submission to the Court. According to the Husband, his attorney then contacted Wife’s attorney to request the proposed Judgment include a provision requiring cooperation with a GET. The Husband states that he was led to believe that the Wife was willing to accept a GET, but she has since ignored his requests to cooperate with same.
The Husband argues that because he is an Orthodox Jew, he cannot remarry under Jewish Law unless the Wife accepts a GET. He attaches an affirmation from a Rabbi in support of his request wherein the Rabbi states that a GET must be given by the Husband and accepted by the Wife for either party to remarry under Jewish Law. According to the Rabbi’s affirmation, the Wife’s refusal to appear before an Orthodox Beth Din and accept the GET will prevent the Husband from remarrying.
The Husband asks that the Court stay his obligation to transfer the $100,000 to the Wife pursuant to the Financial Stipulation until such time as she accepts a GET. The Husband argues that the Wife swore to remove all barriers to his remarriage but her refusal to cooperate with the GET is a refusal to remove all barriers to his remarriage…
In opposition, the Wife asserts that the parties were not married religiously nor was there any religious ceremony. Therefore, she argues, since there was no marriage according to Jewish Law, there is no religious divorce to be had.
The Wife states that she refused the Husband’s offers for a religious wedding ceremony because she wanted to avoid any religious divorce rituals. The Wife argues that in any event, the Husband is not a practicing Orthodox Jew. She states that he regularly communicates with others during both Shabbat and Sukkot, and socializes in a manner contrary to his alleged faith. The Wife asserts that the Rabbi who offers an affirmation in support of the Husband is from a “fanatic” and “extreme” faction of Orthodox Jews which discriminates against women. Furthermore, she argues that even if the parties were religiously married, a religious divorce is never a barrier to the Husband’s remarriage. Finally, the Wife argues that the $100,000 due to her under the Financial Stipulation was without condition and that forcing her to accept a GET violates her civil rights.
The Husband offers no personal affidavit to refute her claims in reply. However, his attorney argues that the Wife fails to provide any “admissible evidence” that the Husband does not need a GET to remarry. She argues that the Wife’s sworn statement that she would remove all barriers to the Husband’s remarriage was a fraud….
The constitutional limitations on the Court’s ability to intervene on religious issues are deeply rooted in law and it is well established that the Court may not consider religious doctrine in rendering a decision.
Nonetheless, Courts have resolved issues of religion by relying upon secular and neutral principles of law, primarily in the context of contract law. Where there is a contractual agreement to cooperate with a religious divorce, Courts have routinely enforced the agreement by imposing financial sanctions and/or withholding economic relief in the event of a party’s non-cooperation with same.
In this case, however, there is no agreement or contract between the parties regarding the GET. In fact, there exists a fully executed Financial Stipulation which is silent as to the need, or even the desire, for either party to obtain a GET. There is no contract that obligates either party to cooperate with any religious divorce, ritual or ceremony. Accordingly, this is not an instance where the Court can rely upon contract law to intervene on this religious issue.
Outside the context of contract law, the Second Department has determined that it is not an improper interference with religion for the lower court to fashion maintenance and equitable distribution awards to address a Husband’s withholding of a GET solely to extract economic concessions from the Wife. {“The legislative intent of Domestic Relations Law § 253(3) was principally to prevent the husband in the case of a Jewish divorce from using the denial of a ‘get’ as a form of economic coercion in a civil divorce action” Sieger v. Sieger (N.Y. App. Div. 2007), rev’d on other grounds, (N.Y. App. Div. 2008).} Under the unique circumstances of this case, it is the Wife who is refusing to cooperate with the GET, and there is already a fully executed Financial Stipulation resolving the economic issues of the marriage. There is nothing in the record to suggest that the Wife’s refusal to accept a GET had any impact on the terms of the Financial Stipulation or that her non-cooperation is for the purpose of extracting further economic concessions. Therefore, there is no basis for the Court to interfere with the economic settlement reached by the parties.
It would be a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution for the Court to order the Wife to participate in a religious ritual when she did not agree to do so nor may the Court impose a financial penalty against her. One party’s decision to follow a certain faith and/or faction of that faith cannot be the basis for the Court’s decision. As articulated in the recently decided Masri v. Masri (N.Y. trial ct. 2017):
“To apply coercive financial pressure because of the perceived unfairness of Jewish religious divorce doctrines to induce Defendant to perform a religious act would plainly interfere with the free exercise of his (and her) religion and violate the First Amendment.”
The Husband further argues that the Court may interfere in this instance because the Wife swore that she removed all barriers to the Husband’s remarriage, a claim the Husband asserts was false. Whether or not the Wife removed religious barriers to the Husband’s remarriage is an issue of religion, not within the Court’s purview.
While [Domestic Relations Law] § 253 requires a Plaintiff to swear that she has, to the best of her knowledge, taken all steps solely within her power to remove all barriers to Defendant’s remarriage following the divorce, subsection (9) of DRL § 253 states that: “[n]othing in this section shall be construed to authorize any court to inquire into or determine any ecclesiastical or religious issue. The truth of any statement submitted pursuant to this section shall not be the subject of any judicial inquiry, except as provided in subdivision eight of this section.” Pursuant to subdivision (8), “[a]ny person who knowingly submits a false statement under this section shall be guilty of making an apparently sworn false statement in the first degree and shall be punished in accordance with section 210.40 of the penal law.”
The Wife asserts that because she was married in a civil ceremony her refusal to accept a GET is not a barrier to the Husband’s remarriage, either religious or otherwise. Because the Wife maintains that she is in compliance with DRL § 253, the Court cannot grant the Husband the relief he seeks.
Here, the Court may not inquire beyond the Wife’s sworn statement that she has, to the best of her knowledge, removed all barriers to the Husband’s remarriage as same would constitute an impermissible decision on a religious issue. The parties are at liberty to follow whatever faith and religious beliefs they choose, but that does not mean the Court can or will interfere by imposing one party’s beliefs upon the other.
The analysis generally seems to me quite right, and it would of course apply to a husband who refused to give a get, as in Masri, which the decision above relies on.
Note that subsection 7 of § 253 also provides that, “No final judgment of annulment or divorce shall be entered, notwithstanding the filing of the plaintiff’s sworn statement prescribed by this section, if the clergyman or minister who has solemnized the marriage certifies, in a sworn statement, that he or she has solemnized the marriage and that, to his or her knowledge, the plaintiff has failed to take all steps solely within his or her power to remove all barriers to the defendant’s remarriage following the annulment or divorce, provided that the said clergyman or minister is alive and available and competent to testify at the time when final judgment would be entered.” But, whether or not that is constitutionally sound, it by its terms doesn’t apply when the marriage was solemnized in a civil ceremony.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2ZNWGN5
via IFTTT
US Officials Say Soleimani Was Planning Attacks On Diplomatic Targets In Syria, Lebanon
Top Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani was plotting to attack American military, diplomatic and financial targets in Syria and Lebanon, and comprised the imminent threat used to justify Soleimani’s killing, according to NBC News, citing multiple US officials.
“When we start seeing extensive and very solid intelligence that [Soleimani] is plotting imminent attacks against the United States, the president as commander in chief has a duty to take decisive action,” said a senior State Department official, adding “If we had not taken this action, and hundreds of Americans were dead, you would be asking me why didn’t you take out Soleimani when you have the chance.”
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said he is confident Soleimani was actively planning attacks against the U.S. in the Middle East and those attacks were imminent.
“We had clear, compelling, unambiguous intelligence to indicate Qassem Soleimani was planning, coordinating, and directing a significant campaign of violence against the United States in the coming days,” said Gen. Milley. –NBC News
Soleimani’s targets are said to include US military outposts in eastern Syria, and diplomatic and financial targets in Lebanon. According to Gen. Milley, the US is confident that the “size, scale and scope” of the planned attacks constituted an imminent threat.
“By the way, it still might happen,” he added.
A Syrian boy looks at a U.S. convoy patrolling near the Turkish border on Oct. 31, 2019. (Delil Souleiman / AFP)
Should Lebanon come under attack, the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat team is on alert and prepared to deploy, should they come under attack. The deployment would consist of somewhere between 130 and 750 total troops.
A senior U.S. official said Soleimani had traveled to Syria, Lebanon and then to Iraq Thursday, and U.S. intelligence officials believe he was approving final plans for attacks in each location.
Milley said Soleimani had been directing attacks against the U.S. inside Iraq, including a Dec. 27 attack near Kirtkuk that killed an American contractor and wounded four U.S. service members.
“He approved it,” said Milley. “I know that. One hundred percent.” –NBC News
According to a senior Congressional aide briefed on the intelligence, however, lawmakers saw nothing linking Soleimani to an imminent attack – rather, what they saw was “exactly the sort of planning and coordination he has been doing for years,” according to NBC. The aide added that while nobody doubts Soleimani was a threat to the United States, the case for acting on an imminent threat was not made.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committe, said “I have real questions and want to get a full briefing from the intelligence community about the decision on this time and place.”
Today, as we step into the New Year, we reach down to turn over a new leaf. We want to make a fresh start. We want to leave 2019’s bugaboos behind. But, alas, lying beneath the fallen leaf, like rotting food waste, is last year’s fake money. We can’t escape it. But we refuse to believe in its permanence.
This is what “monetary stability in the Fed-administered fiat money regime looks like: in the year the Fed was established it took $3.80 to buy what $100 buy today – provided the government’s CPI data are actually a valid gauge of the dollar’s purchasing power. [PT]
Victorian economist William Stanley Jevons, in his 1875 work, Money and the Mechanism of Exchange, stated that money has four functions. It is a medium of exchange, a common measure of value, a standard of value, and a store of value.
No doubt, today’s fake money, including the U.S. dollar, falls well short of Jevons’ four functions of money. Certainly, it comes up short in its function as a store of value.
Hence, today’s money is not real money. Rather, it is fake money. And this fake money has heinous implications on how people earn, save, invest, and pay their way in the world we live in. Practically all aspects of everything have been distorted and disfigured by it.
Take the dollar, for instance. Over the last 100 years, it has lost over 96 percent of its value. Yet, even with this poor performance, the dollar has one of the better track records going. In fact, many currencies that were around just a short century ago have vanished from the face of the earth. They have been debased to bird cage liner.
This graphic is slightly dated by now (we downloaded it almost 20 years ago), i.e., a few more fiat currencies have joined the expired contingent by now. It also excludes a number of historical paper currency experiments in China, which failed without exception. Still, it can be estimated that no more than 20% of the paper currencies created so far still exist – and the strongest one of them has lost “only” 96% of its value! [PT]
Who Will Buy All this Debt?
The failings of today’s dollar are complex and multifaceted. But they generally stem from the unsatisfactory fact that the dollar is debt based fiat that is issued at will by the Federal Reserve. How can money function as a store of value when a committee of unelected bureaucrats can conjure it from thin air?
After President Nixon “temporarily” suspended the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971, the future was written. The money supply has expanded without technical limitations. This includes expanding the Fed’s balance sheet to buy Treasury debt. In a practical sense, Fed purchases of U.S. Treasury notes are now needed to fund government spending above and beyond tax receipts (i.e., fiscal deficits).
As an aside, the Fed’s charter prohibits it from directly purchasing bills issued by the U.S. Treasury. So to bypass this restriction, dealers – i.e. preferred big banks – purchase Treasury bills upon issuance and then several days later these same Dealers sell them to the Fed. What’s more, for providing this laundering service the Dealers pocket an unspecified markup. These indirect money printing operations have been going on for well over a decade, and last occurred about a week before Christmas – to the tune of nearly $23.7 billion.
Unbridled monetary inflation: TMS-2 (US broad true money supply), Fed assets and bank reserves. [PT]
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit for the first two months of fiscal year 2020 is $342 billion. At this rate, Washington is going to add over $2 trillion to the national debt in FY 2020. Who will buy all this debt?
Not China. Not Japan. Not Saudi Arabia. Not American citizens. Instead, the Fed will buy it via balance sheet expansion. Of course, there are natural consequences for these underhanded practices – and you will pay for them, you already are…
Thank God we have this bearded Nobel Prize winner to remind us we are completely wrong about fiscal deficits…[PT]
Subjective Evaluation
About a decade before Jevons outlined the four functions of money, he elaborated the idea of marginal utility. That the utility – the satisfaction or benefit – derived by consuming a good or service changes from an increase in the consumption of that good or service. This change in utility influences how goods and services are priced within the economy.
Stanley Jevons, Carl Menger and Leon Walras worked out the law of marginal utility independently from each other at roughly the same time. It revolutionized price and value theory, but evidently many people fail to grasp it to this day. For instance, the Wikipedia article on marginal utility is chock-full of arrant nonsense and has proved utterly resilient to correction since we first laid eyes on it ten years ago (here is an example illustrating that the author of the article simply does not know what he or she is talking about. Listing alleged “exceptions” to the law of diminishing marginal utility they write: “[…]marginal utility of a good or service might be increasing as well. For example: bed sheets, which up to some number may only provide warmth, but after that point may be useful to allow one to effect an escape by being tied together into a rope.” This is incorrect, for the simple reason that “bed sheets tied together into a rope” are a different good than bed sheets. As soon as they are tied together into a rope, they are no longer bed sheets, but a rope. The concept of marginal utility then applies to similar ropes. The rope’s previous incarnation as bed sheets is irrelevant. One would think this is obvious, but apparently it isn’t on Wikipedia, which one should definitely not rely on as a source for anything). [PT]
Yet Jevons went down the rabbit hole of simultaneous determination, which included modeling complex relationships as systems of simultaneous equations in which no variable “causes” another. The flaw in Jevons’ approach is that it relied on creating artificial, modeled representations of reality. Unfortunately, much of popular economics followed him down the rabbit hole where they still reside to this day… enamored with technical nonsense.
However, at the same time as Jevons, Austrian economist Carl Menger, from the University of Vienna, independently developed the concept of marginal utility. Menger, in contrast to Jevons, applied these principles through deduction and logic to explain the real world actions of real people. For Menger, the role of subjective evaluation was critical to the principle of marginal utility.
Menger, in Principles of Economics, published in 1871, explained prices as the outcome of the purposeful, voluntary interactions of buyers and sellers, each guided by their own subjective evaluations of the usefulness of various goods and services. Menger elaborated that the exact quantities of goods exchanged, and their prices, are determined by the values individuals attach to marginal units of these goods.
Menger also recognized that the first unit of consumption of a good or service yields more utility than the second and subsequent units, with a continuing reduction for greater amounts. Hence, the fall in marginal utility as consumption increases is known as diminishing marginal utility, and is commonly expressed as the law of diminishing marginal utility.
Money, like any other good, is subject to the law of diminishing marginal utility. Specifically, an increase in the quantity of money by an additional unit leads to a reduction in purchasing power per monetary unit. As people exchange the increased money against other goods, prices rise. Or, more aptly, the purchasing power of money falls.
How the Fed Robs You of Your Life
The inflation of the money supply, in effect, distorts the prices of goods and services. Subsequent units of a good or service may have a reduced utility, though, over time, their nominal cost increases. This also undermines individual savings… and robs savers – that is you – of their lives…
Highway robbers not only lurk at Epsom… these days they lurk in the Eccles building too. [PT]
When the Fed introduces new money to the economy to finance deficits it debases the dollar. Similarly, when the Fed provokes the over-issuance of credit by artificially suppressing interest rates, it further inflates the money supply and debases the dollar. This has the effect of reducing the dollar’s purchasing power. What does all this have to do with you?
Think of all the days you would have rather stayed home with your family than schlepping and slogging the day away for money. Think of all the time you spent on the road getting dumped on by clients while your kids were growing up. Think of all the sunny days you missed because you were at the office all day estimating and bidding on ridiculous jobs.
For what? So that after paying taxes on it all, what is left over is inflated away from your bank account? Remember, money, in addition to being property, also represents time and the sacrifices made to earn it.
When the Fed inflates your money away it not only robs you of your money. It robs you of your life.
