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Barr’s Russiagate Origin Probe Pivots To ‘Smoking Gun’ Tapes With Exculpatory Evidence

A DOJ internal review of the Russia investigation is now focusing on transcripts of (not-so) covertly recorded conversations between former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and ‘at least one government source’ during an overseas conversation in 2016. 

In particular, DOJ investigators are focusing on why certain exculpatory (or exonerating) evidence from the transcripts was not included in subsequent FBI surveillance warrant applications, according to Fox News, citing two sources familiar with the review. 

“A source told Fox News that the “exculpatory evidence” included in the transcripts is Papadopoulos denying having any contact with the Russians to obtain the supposed “dirt” on Clinton,” according to the report. 

And while Fox doesn’t name the ‘government source,’ it’s undoubtedly Australian diplomat and Clinton ally Alexander Downer, who was “idiotic enough” to spy on Papadopoulos with his phone, according to the former Trump aide. 

But Papadopoulos did not only meet with Mifsud and Downer while overseas. He met with Cambridge professor and longtime FBI informant Stefan Halper and his female associate, who went under the alias Azra Turk. Papadopoulos told Fox News that he saw Turk three times in London: once over drinks, once over dinner and once with Halper. He also told Fox News back in May that he always suspected he was being recorded. Further, he tweeted during the Mueller testimony about “recordings” of his meeting with Downer. –Fox News

“These recordings have exculpatory evidence,” one source told Fox, adding “It is standard tradecraft to record conversations with someone like Papadopoulos—especially when they are overseas and there are no restrictions.“

The recordings in question pertain to conversations between government sources and Papadopoulos, which were memorialized in transcripts. One source told Fox News that Barr and Durham are reviewing why the material was left out of applications to surveil another former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.

“I think it’s the smoking gun,” the source said. –Fox News

Also under review  by AG Barr and US Attorney John Durham of Connecticut is the actual start date of the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the US election. 

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) first revealed the existence of transcripts documenting the secretly recorded conversations earlier this year. 

“If the bureau’s going to send in an informant, the informant’s going to be wired, and if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there’s going to be a transcript of that,” Gowdy said on Fox News in May. 

“Some of us have been fortunate enough to know whether or not those transcripts exist. But they haven’t been made public, and I think one, in particular … has the potential to actually persuade people,” he continued, adding “Very little in this Russia probe I’m afraid is going to persuade people who hate Trump or love Trump. But there is some information in these transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it’s ever made public.“

According to the report, the transcripts are currently classified – however President Trump’s May order to approve declassification at AG Barr’s discretion means they may see the light of day. And even if not, the declassification allowed Barr to barge in on DNI Director Dan Coats’ office and demand the files. 

A source told Fox News that without the declassification order signed by Trump, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was not going to give anyone access to the files—over concerns for protecting sources and methods. But another source told Fox News in May that Coats, along with CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Chris Wray, are all working “collaboratively” with Barr and Durham on the review.

Barr and Durham are also trying to pinpoint the actual “start date” of the investigation, according to a source. –Fox News

As eloquently laid out by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) during this week’s Mueller testimony, the FBI officially opened the Russia investigation after Papadopoulos told Downer about a rumor (told to him by Clinton Foundation member Joseph Mifsud) that Russia had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. 

That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer’s report to intelligence agencies. 

On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., challenged former Special Counsel Mueller over when the investigation started.

“The FBI claims the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began on July 31, 2016, but in fact, it began before that,” Nunes said. “In June 2016, before the investigation was officially opened, Trump campaign associates Carter Page and Stephen Miller were invited to attend a symposium at Cambridge University in July 2016. Your office, however, did not investigate who was responsible for inviting these Trump associates to the symposium.” –Fox News

“Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started,” said Jordan on Wednesday, adding “Here’s the good news—that’s exactly what Bill Barr is doing and thank goodness for that.” 

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Tulsi Gabbard’s $50 Million Lawsuit Against Google Is Another Attack on Online Free Speech

Tulsi Gabbard took a cue from conservative conspiracists Thursday, when the Hawaii congresswoman and Democratic presidential hopeful filed a $50 million lawsuit against Google for allegedly violating her right to free speech. The suit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, argues that Google infringed on her First Amendment rights when it suspended her campaign advertising site for six hours, briefly impeding her ability to raise money right after a well-received debate performance.

Many people on the right have made social media companies Public Enemy No. 1 recently, claiming that they discriminate against conservative points of view. Ironically, Gabbard’s suit throws some cold water on the accusations coming from her Republican counterparts, casting doubt on the idea that Google and its subsidiaries are systematically ostracizing Wrongthink along party lines.

“Google’s discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values,” Gabbard said in a statement. “This is a threat to free speech, fair elections, and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans.”

Similar contentions were most recently placed under the spotlight during a Senate hearing last week on Google censorship. Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host and the hearing’s star witness, lamented YouTube’s decision to restrict about 20 percent of his videos, meaning they are invisible to the 1.5 percent of viewers who opt not to see mature content. Prager claimed that YouTube—a Google subsidiary—had targeted his video-making nonprofit PragerU because of a corporate bias against conservatives, notwithstanding the fact that the tech giant restricts much larger portions of content from various liberal organizations.

“I promise you, one day you will say, first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing,” said Prager, referencing Martin Niemöller’s famous poem. “And then they came after me—and there was no one left to speak up for me.” It’s a puzzling claim, considering that the remaining 98.5 percent of YouTube’s 1.3 billion users can still engage with all of his videos.

Although Gabbard and Prager’s recent gripes center on Google, the social media sphere in general has been a rife target for censorship claims. In a similar hearing in April, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.) said that social media was the new “town square”—one that requires a sheriff (see: the federal government) for proper policing. She cited Twitter’s brief removal of her Senate campaign announcement video in 2017; although it was reinstated soon after, she chalked the debacle up to anti-conservative bias in big tech.

In another sign that this isn’t a Republican-specific phenomenon, a near-identical scenario struck Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) on Facebook. The platform recently removed an ad for Warren’s presidential campaign for violating its terms of service.

While conservatives seem to be somewhat unified in their skepticism of social media, Democrats as a whole will likely be harder to convince, as many have spent ample amounts of time refuting such claims from the right. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D–Hawaii), for one, said in last week’s tech hearing that the bias bickering is “baseless.”

Many of these companies have been obnoxiously opaque about their business practices, leaving users to play guessing games about why certain bits of content have been removed. That lack of transparency, and their sometimes over-aggressive content regulation, has opened a wide gate for complainers to make assumptions about what’s going on. Hence the charges of politically motivated bias.

Gabbard likely stands no chance in court. But, if anything, her lawsuit provides an excellent example of the perpetual misunderstanding surrounding what constitutes protected speech, and what does not. While the First Amendment certainly shields Gabbard, Prager, and everyone else from government censorship or retaliation based on words alone, it does not mean Google, Facebook, or Twitter cannot remove content. They are private companies, and, as such, can choose not to publish something if it doesn’t align with their values—an argument that, until recently, resonated with conservatives.

Google denies any such bias. “In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter,” Jose Castanada tells The New York Times, explaining that an automated system works to prevent potential fraud by flagging accounts with large spending changes. “We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”

If her suit is any proof, that answer did not satisfy Gabbard, who has now joined hands with her conservative colleagues in decrying tech “censorship.” Who said bipartisanship was dead?

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Tulsi Gabbard’s $50 Million Lawsuit Against Google Is Another Attack on Online Free Speech

Tulsi Gabbard took a cue from conservative conspiracists Thursday, when the Hawaii congresswoman and Democratic presidential hopeful filed a $50 million lawsuit against Google for allegedly violating her right to free speech. The suit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, argues that Google infringed on her First Amendment rights when it suspended her campaign advertising site for six hours, briefly impeding her ability to raise money right after a well-received debate performance.

Many people on the right have made social media companies Public Enemy No. 1 recently, claiming that they discriminate against conservative points of view. Ironically, Gabbard’s suit throws some cold water on the accusations coming from her Republican counterparts, casting doubt on the idea that Google and its subsidiaries are systematically ostracizing Wrongthink along party lines.

“Google’s discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values,” Gabbard said in a statement. “This is a threat to free speech, fair elections, and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans.”

Similar contentions were most recently placed under the spotlight during a Senate hearing last week on Google censorship. Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host and the hearing’s star witness, lamented YouTube’s decision to restrict about 20 percent of his videos, meaning they are invisible to the 1.5 percent of viewers who opt not to see mature content. Prager claimed that YouTube—a Google subsidiary—had targeted his video-making nonprofit PragerU because of a corporate bias against conservatives, notwithstanding the fact that the tech giant restricts much larger portions of content from various liberal organizations.

“I promise you, one day you will say, first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing,” said Prager, referencing Martin Niemöller’s famous poem. “And then they came after me—and there was no one left to speak up for me.” It’s a puzzling claim, considering that the remaining 98.5 percent of YouTube’s 1.3 billion users can still engage with all of his videos.

Although Gabbard and Prager’s recent gripes center on Google, the social media sphere in general has been a rife target for censorship claims. In a similar hearing in April, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.) said that social media was the new “town square”—one that requires a sheriff (see: the federal government) for proper policing. She cited Twitter’s brief removal of her Senate campaign announcement video in 2017; although it was reinstated soon after, she chalked the debacle up to anti-conservative bias in big tech.

In another sign that this isn’t a Republican-specific phenomenon, a near-identical scenario struck Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) on Facebook. The platform recently removed an ad for Warren’s presidential campaign for violating its terms of service.

While conservatives seem to be somewhat unified in their skepticism of social media, Democrats as a whole will likely be harder to convince, as many have spent ample amounts of time refuting such claims from the right. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D–Hawaii), for one, said in last week’s tech hearing that the bias bickering is “baseless.”

Many of these companies have been obnoxiously opaque about their business practices, leaving users to play guessing games about why certain bits of content have been removed. That lack of transparency, and their sometimes over-aggressive content regulation, has opened a wide gate for complainers to make assumptions about what’s going on. Hence the charges of politically motivated bias.

Gabbard likely stands no chance in court. But, if anything, her lawsuit provides an excellent example of the perpetual misunderstanding surrounding what constitutes protected speech, and what does not. While the First Amendment certainly shields Gabbard, Prager, and everyone else from government censorship or retaliation based on words alone, it does not mean Google, Facebook, or Twitter cannot remove content. They are private companies, and, as such, can choose not to publish something if it doesn’t align with their values—an argument that, until recently, resonated with conservatives.

Google denies any such bias. “In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter,” Jose Castanada tells The New York Times, explaining that an automated system works to prevent potential fraud by flagging accounts with large spending changes. “We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”

If her suit is any proof, that answer did not satisfy Gabbard, who has now joined hands with her conservative colleagues in decrying tech “censorship.” Who said bipartisanship was dead?

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Trump May Slap Tariffs On French Wine, Hints At No Trade Deal Until After Election

Speaking to reporters on Friday afternoon at the White House, President Trump said he “might” impose tariffs on wine from  France as a “substantial reciprocal action” after France imposed a new digital tax that affects U.S. technology companies.

“It might be on wine, it might be on something else,” Trump, clearly in his element, told the press corps.

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron signed into law a 3% tax on the revenue of technology giants like Facebook and Amazon; the tax, which is retroactive to January, affects companies with at least 750 million euros in global revenue and digital sales of 25 million euros in France. About 30 businesses would be affected; while most are American, the list also includes Chinese, German, British and even French firms.

“We tax our companies, they don’t tax our companies,” Trump said; France’s tax, and Trump’s response, threaten to further strain trans-Atlantic ties as the U.S. and European Union prepare to negotiate a limited trade agreement on industrial goods.

Last month Trump promised to do “something” about French wine that he said is allowed into the U.S. virtually tariff-free while France imposes duties on U.S. wine, calling the arrangement unfair. In reality, Bloomberg reports that the US charges a tariff of 5 cents per 750 milliliter bottle of imported still wine and 14 cents for sparkling wine, according to the Wine Institute, an advocacy group for California winemakers. European Union tariffs for imported wine range from 11 cents to 29 cents per bottle, according to the group.

For now, France hasn’t indicated it will back off from its planned digital tax even after the U.S. suggested it may use trade tools against the levy.

Also on Friday, the U.S. said it will examine whether the tax would hurt its tech firms, using the so-called 301 investigation, the same tool Trump deployed to impose tariffs on Chinese goods because of the country’s alleged theft of intellectual property. Trump’s tweet was followed by a White House statement saying the U.S. is “extremely disappointed” by the tax. In addition to the 301 probe, the Trump administration is “looking closely at all other policy tools,” said spokesman Judd Deere.

“The Trump administration has consistently stated that it will not sit idly by and tolerate discrimination against U.S.-based firms,” Deere said.

France – which argues that the structure of the global economy has shifted to one based on data, rendering 20th-century tax systems archaic – became the first country in the EU to impose such a tax with other nations, including the U.K. and Germany, contemplating similar taxes. France had pushed for a EU-wide digital levy that was scrapped when four countries – Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Ireland – declined to sign off on it.

* * *

Separately, Trump also touched on the ongoing US-China trade conflict, strongly hinting that a trade deal may not be reached until November 2020, if then.

Trump said that China may wait until after the 2020 U.S. presidential election to sign a trade agreement because Beijing would prefer to reach a deal with a Democrat.

“I think that China will probably say, ‘let’s wait,’” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. “When I win, like almost immediately, they’re all going to sign deals.” Which, of course is wonderful news for stocks which will rally for almost a year and a half on hopes of an “imminent” trade deal, much as they have rallied for the past year.

U.S. Trade Rep Robert Lighthizer and Steven Mnuchin are set to travel to China (Shanghai, not Beijing) Monday for the first high-level, face-to-face trade negotiations between the world’s two biggest economies since talks broke down in May. It will be the first encounter between officials from the two nations since Trump and Xi Jinping met at the G-20 summit in Japan last month and declared a tentative truce in their year-long trade war.

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D.C. Metro Spent $500,000 Maintaining a Self-Cleaning Toilet That Hasn’t Flushed Since 2017

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority—Metro for short—can barely run its train system. You’d think keeping its toilets operational would be an easier task.

You’d be wrong, according to a new semi-annual report from Metro’s Office of Inspector General, which found that between 2003 and 2017, Metro spent $416,789.32 maintaining a toilet that hasn’t flushed since 2017. The report notes that the $416,789 figure is likely an underestimate, as Metro staff were unable to provide investigators with maintenance invoices for 2007, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

“Based on spending from the previous years, it is probable that [Metro] spent over $500,000 on the self-cleaning toilet that has been out of service since the fall of 2017,” reads the report.

This was not the only instance of waste listed in the report. Metro also spent $35,755 on two special silt-filtering pumps for use in its drainage pumping stations. The hope was that these new pumps would reduce the need to hire outside contractors to remove silt from the stations. However, after one of the pumps failed an initial test, a supervisor “had the pumps stored at two different underground locations.” The reports says that Metro “personnel did not consult the manufacturer to troubleshoot or repair them. Both pumps have remained in storage for the past four years—one still in its original packaging.”

The report also says that, during the solicitation process for a $44 million contract, a Metro employee was using a personal Gmail account to provide a vendor seeking that contract with “sensitive and confidential” information. The OIG’s investigation into the matter is ongoing.

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“Unprecedented, Wasteful & Obscene”: House Approves $1.48 Trillion Pentagon Budget

Authored by Jake Johnson via Common Dreams

In a bipartisan deal that one anti-war critic said demonstrates how thoroughly “broken and captured Washington is by the Pentagon,” 219 House Democrats and 65 Republicans on Thursday voted to approve a budget agreement that includes $1.48 trillion in military spending over the next two years.

Just 16 Democrats — including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) — voted against the two-year, $2.7 trillion budget agreement. Largely due to expressed concerns about the deficit, 132 Republicans and Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) also voted no. The final vote was 284-149. (See the full roll call.)

The House passage of the budget deal, which President Donald Trump quickly applauded on Twitter as a victory for the military, comes after the Congressional Progressive Caucus threatened in April to tank the measure in opposition to its out-of-control Pentagon outlays. But most of the Progressive Caucus voted for the agreement on Thursday, pointing to increases in domestic spending.

President Donald Trump arrives to speak after touring the Lima Army Tank Plant at Joint Systems Manufacturing in Lima, Ohio, March 20, 2019. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

“It’s not a perfect deal by any means,” Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, said in a statement ahead of the vote. “This deal does not address the bloated Pentagon budget, but it does begin to close the gap in funding for families, by allocating more new non-defense spending than defense spending for the first time in many years.”

Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War, took issue with the latter claim in a series of tweets Thursday.

“You’re no doubt hearing a lot of crowing from Democrats about how the deal they struck with Trump gives more money to ‘non-defense’ spending than to ‘defense,'” Miles wrote. “Let’s be clear that by every measure, save the one they’re using, that’s simply not true.”

“Under this deal, the Pentagon and its affiliated programs will get $1.48 trillion over the next two years. The entire rest of gov’t, including the VA btw, will get $1.30 trillion. That’s $178.6 billion more for the Pentagon than the whole rest of gov’t,” Miles wrote. “So, for the love of god, can we all stop pretending like this is somehow anything other than a continued orgy of unprecedented, wasteful, and obscene spending at the Pentagon.”

William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, wrote for Forbes this week that the budget deal “vastly overpays for the Pentagon.”

“At $738 billion for Fiscal Year 2020 and $740 billion for Fiscal Year 2021,” wrote Hartung, “the agreement sets the table for two of the highest budgets for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy since World War II.”

“The proposed figures are higher than spending at the height of the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and substantially more than the high point of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s,” Hartung added. “And the Fiscal Year 2020 and Fiscal Year 2021 numbers are only slightly less than spending in 2010, when the United States had 180,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, roughly nine times the number currently deployed.”

The sweeping 2020 budget agreement is expected to pass the Senate next week, and Trump has signaled he will sign the measure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined the president in celebrating the increase in military spending, which is significantly more than the Pentagon requested. The deal, McConnell said, “achieves the No. 1 goal of the Republican side of the aisle, providing for the common defense.”

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) came under fire from progressives for striking the budget agreement with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Specifically, critics highlighted the deal to suspend the debt ceiling until 2021, a move that could give Republicans power to cripple the next president’s agenda.

“If you really listen,” wrote Splinter‘s Paul Blest, “you can almost hear [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz yelling on the floor of the Senate that Congress shouldn’t raise the debt limit by one more dollar unless President Bernie Sanders promises to drop his demand for Medicare for All.”

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D.C. Metro Spent $500,000 Maintaining a Self-Cleaning Toilet That Hasn’t Flushed Since 2017

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority—Metro for short—can barely run its train system. You’d think keeping its toilets operational would be an easier task.

You’d be wrong, according to a new semi-annual report from Metro’s Office of Inspector General, which found that between 2003 and 2017, Metro spent $416,789.32 maintaining a toilet that hasn’t flushed since 2017. The report notes that the $416,789 figure is likely an underestimate, as Metro staff were unable to provide investigators with maintenance invoices for 2007, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

“Based on spending from the previous years, it is probable that [Metro] spent over $500,000 on the self-cleaning toilet that has been out of service since the fall of 2017,” reads the report.

This was not the only instance of waste listed in the report. Metro also spent $35,755 on two special silt-filtering pumps for use in its drainage pumping stations. The hope was that these new pumps would reduce the need to hire outside contractors to remove silt from the stations. However, after one of the pumps failed an initial test, a supervisor “had the pumps stored at two different underground locations.” The reports says that Metro “personnel did not consult the manufacturer to troubleshoot or repair them. Both pumps have remained in storage for the past four years—one still in its original packaging.”

The report also says that, during the solicitation process for a $44 million contract, a Metro employee was using a personal Gmail account to provide a vendor seeking that contract with “sensitive and confidential” information. The OIG’s investigation into the matter is ongoing.

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Stocks Soar To Record Highs As Corporate Profits Hit 8 Year Lows

GDP beat, record high stocks, tumbling VIX… but corporate profits are weakest since 2011, global bond yields are at record lows, and delinquencies are on the rise… Still , forget all that, it’s all Powell baby!!

 

Chinese stocks managed gains on the week thanks to a big buying panic Tues/Weds

 

European stocks ended the week green, thanks to a bounce today after yesterday’s Draghi-driven dump…

 

The Nasdaq and S&P both reached new record highs as The Dow flatlined on the week…

 

Let’s hope Powell delivers because global liquidity is starting to diverge again…

 

Alphabet’s outsized gains led Nasdaq to new record highs

 

Oh and while we are talking about GOOGL…

 

FANG stocks were up on the week, retracing about half of last week’s NFLX losses…

 

BYND is insane!

 

Today’s gains were dominated by defensives…

 

“Most Shorted” stocks ended the week unchanged…

 

VIX dumped back towards an 11 handle today but on the week, HY spreads really collapsed relative to IG…

 

Bonds and stocks continue to diverge ahead of next week’s FOMC…

 

Treasury yields were higher on the week, mainly driven by Draghi’s disappointment (with barely any reaction on GDP)…

 

10Y Yields spiked up to pre-FOMC levels but twice tested 2.10% and faded…

 

The market’s expectation of what The Fed will do in 2019 tightened quite significantly this week…

With a 17.5% chance of a 50bps cut next week…

 

Despite all the talk about weak dollar policies and sources claiming WH discussions, the dollar spiked back to 6-week highs around the pre-FOMC levels…

 

Yuan ended the week unchanged…

 

Mixed picture in cryptos this week with Bitcoin worst and Bitcoin Cash best…

 

Bitcoin is down for the 3rd week in a row and closed the week below $10k…

 

And just in case you think Bitcoin is in another bubble… “that’s not a bubble, this is a bubble”

 

Ugly week for Dr.Copper and a down week for gold as silver outperformed…

 

What is Dr.Copper telling us?

 

After a 10-day run of silver outperformance, gold has gained more than silver in the last two days…

 

Hedge funds have held a net-long position in Gold since April, and the options markets registered a bullish skew for 48 sessions — the longest run since 2009.

 

Finally, with stocks spiking to new record highs ahead of next week’s FOMC meeting, we note that today’s historical GDP data revisions indicate that revised numbers of corporate profits show that operating profits peaked in Q3 2014 and have been moving sideways ever since… dipping to the lowest since 2011.

Operating profits in the GDP accounts and S&P 500 operating profits over the long run track fairly close to one another, although there can be large differences in any given year… and they don’t tend to end well.

Like in 2007…

And in 2000…

Allocate accordingly!

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Presidential Candidate Tulsi Gabbard Co-Sponsors “Audit The Fed” Bill

Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Luke Rudkowski of “We Are Change,” a libertarian media organization, that Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard has just signed on as a co-sponsor of Audit the Fed bill, officially known as H.R.24 The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2019.

The bill authorizes the General Accountability Office to perform a full audit of the Fed’s conduct of monetary policy, including the Fed’s mysterious dealings with Wall Street, central banks and governments.

During the interview, Massie said the latest development in attempting to audit the Federal Reserve is that Gabbard signed on as co-sponsor. He believes the topic will “get some airtime” in the upcoming presidential debates.

He said there are four Democratic co-sponsors and 80 Republican co-sponsors for the bill; it was recently passed in the House of Representatives as it heads to the Senate. Massie said:

“We have passed it in the House but have never passed it in the Senate. Because of a lot of these people in the House of Representatives who vote for it and support it in the House go to the Senate and decide it’s not such a good idea.”

Rudkowski then tells Massie about interesting parallels between some presidential candidates (Gabbard and Bernie Sanders), who have an anti-interventionists view along with being critical of the Federal Reserve.

Massie responds by saying, “Well if you’re just trying to sorta tie the anti-war people to the Federal Reserve. I think the closest connection is the Federal Reserve enables the endless Wars that are being funded by controlling the value of our currency and without the massive borrowing and printing of money and controlling of interest rates – we wouldn’t be able to sustain a permanent state of war.“

Last week, Ron Paul recently wrote that Massie needs to “expedite passage of their Audit the Fed legislation should the Federal Reserve decide to disobey the will of its creator – Congress – by involving itself in real-time payments. After all, their bipartisan legislation came just seven votes shy of passing not long ago. With the Fed extending its wings even further and the president finally making good on his promise to push the bill through, it should be all but certain of arriving on his Oval Office desk for signing.”

With the US infected by a global industrial slowdown, and in President Trump’s view a Federal Reserve-caused economic downturn, support for auditing the Fed will continue to increase among Americans across all political ideologies. It’s not just Republicans who demand the audit, but now Gabbard and even Sanders (Democrats).

Auditing the Fed is the first step in changing monetary policy that has created a debt-and-bubble-based economy; promoted the welfare-warfare state; created the most massive wealth inequality crisis in history; led to an affordable housing crisis; transferred all the wealth to the top 1% of America, and could lead to the collapse of the American empire if not corrected in the next several years.

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Short Circuit: A Roundup of Recent Federal Court Decisions

Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.

Last month, a divided Seventh Circuit panel overturned a $4 mil jury verdict against Polk County, Wisconsin. The jury had faulted the county for failing to prevent repeated sexual assaults of inmates by one of its guards, but the Seventh Circuit noted that the guard had violated county policy forbidding such assaults. This week, IJ filed an amicus brief urging rehearing en banc. From the brief: “If the panel’s decision stands, municipalities in this Circuit will be able to skirt liability for constitutional infringements simply by promulgating policies they have no intention of ever enforcing.” Over at Forbes.com, IJ’s Nick Sibilla has more.

  • Man parks his car in a reserved parking spot, for which he lacks a permit, about 1,000 feet from the U.S. Capitol. After cops discover three guns in the car, man is convicted of possessing a firearm while on the Capitol grounds. Following a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, the case returns to the D.C. Circuit for a ruling on the man’s Second Amendment and due process defenses. Which lack merit, the court affirms. The conviction stands.
  • Seeking to escape the murderous wrath of a Mumbai mobster, Indian man enters the U.S. on a visitor’s visa with his wife and two children. Over the next 20 years, he has two more kids and builds a successful business that enables him to be the sole provider for the family and put his kids through college. Yikes! He’s arrested during a routine traffic stop, and the gov’t seeks to deport him. Board of Immigration Appeals: Sure, it would be difficult for his U.S. citizen children if he were deported, but it wouldn’t be substantially more difficult for them than what one would expect in such a situation. And he’s 19 years too late to seek asylum. Send him back. Third Circuit: Indeed.
  • Allegation: Forced by a federal injunction to permit a “far-right advocacy group” to hold a rally, Charlottesville, Va. police adopt a stand-down policy for the rally and refrain from intervening in the violent confrontations that ensue. Counter-protestor is maced, beaten, and soaked with bottles of urine by white supremacists while police stand by and do nothing. And the counter-protestor cannot sue the police for failing to protect him, affirms the Fourth Circuit.
  • Allegation: Officer points gun at Waverly, W.Va. family dog that is restrained and can’t reach the officer. A 113-pound woman steps between him and the dog. He grabs her arm; she struggles; he flings her to the ground, arrests her. He then enters the home without a warrant or consent and seizes electronic devices, including a phone with video of the incident. The officer makes statements that “were not entirely truthful,” and the woman is charged with obstruction. (A jury acquits.) District court: Can’t sue over that. Qualified immunity. Fourth Circuit: Reversed.
  • Allegation: Attala County, Miss. officer gives man, whose speech is unintelligible, a lift, drops him off at county line at dusk—per county custom of removing vagrants to other jurisdictions. Shortly after, the man is killed by a passing motorist. Fifth Circuit: No qualified immunity for the officer. (The district court denied qualified immunity to the county as well.)
  • A sexagenarian is raped and murdered in her Kalkaska, Mich. home in 1996. Following a tip from a jailhouse informant, police home in on 22-year-old suffering from brain damage and mental illness. He confesses after nine interrogations and multiple lie detector tests. Two DNA samples are on the victim—the inmate does not match one, and the other cannot be tested using then-available technology. He’s convicted anyway. After improvements in DNA technology, the other DNA sample is tested in 2013, and it also excludes the inmate. His conviction is vacated, he’s released, and he sues the officers who interrogated him for coercing the confession, plus the county. Sixth Circuit: No qualified immunity for two of the officers. (Click here for some local journalism.)
  • The Sixth Circuit determines that Tennessee’s General Assembly lacks standing to pursue its lawsuit alleging the feds violated the Spending Clause and the Tenth Amendment when Congress enacted laws requiring states to provide Medicaid to eligible refugees.
  • Allegation: Kansas City, Mo. police apprehend homicide suspect. (Turns out he’s innocent.) Nonetheless, detectives then send SWAT into his home to search for evidence. Yikes! The suspect hasn’t lived there for months; there’s no evidence to be found. Instead, there are four innocent occupants, including a 2-year-old who suffers a significant development regression after officers ignite a flash-bang grenade in the room she’s in. Eighth Circuit (over two partial dissents): No qualified immunity for the SWAT officers; qualified immunity for the detectives.
  • The Koala—a student newspaper at the University of California, San Diego—publishes an article satirizing safe spaces and trigger warnings. The student government (triggered, perhaps) promptly votes to eliminate student-organization funding for all print media. The Koala sues. District court: Case dismissed. The Koala‘s claims are barred by the Eleventh Amendment. Also, its Free Press Clause claim fails on the merits. So does its Free Speech Clause claim. And its retaliation claim. Ninth Circuit: We disagree with literally everything the district court said. The case can proceed.
  • Montana prison officials allegedly mistreat mentally ill inmates, keeping them in solitary confinement for months and years at a time, denying them medication, among other things. Cruel and unusual punishment? Ninth Circuit: The case should not have been dismissed. Reassigned to a different district judge.
  • Allegation: Caldwell, Idaho police threaten to arrest woman for harboring a fugitive if she doesn’t consent to search of her house. She consents but isn’t told they’re sending in a SWAT team. The raid leaves gaping holes in ceilings and walls and saturates the house with tear gas, rendering it uninhabitable for two months. (The fugitive isn’t there.) Can she sue? Two-thirds of a Ninth Circuit panel says no.
  • The feds intercept package of meth headed to man’s Honolulu condo. They replace nearly all the meth with rock salt and deliver it. But it’s unclear if the man will pick up the package from the building’s mail room and take it to his condo or if the package will be picked up and taken somewhere else, so officers don’t think they can get a warrant to search the condo. The man takes the package to his condo, and officers knock down the door when he declines to open it. Ninth Circuit: The search wasn’t unreasonable. He could have been destroying the evidence. Dissent: Destroying the rock salt? They needed a warrant.
  • NPR publishes an unflattering story about a quixotic musician, including such highlights as the time the man pretended to be Jimi Hendrix’s son and the time he attempted to sell his own album to himself on an internet auction for $18k (besting the previous record of $15k set by an original 1987 promo copy of Prince’s The Black Album). After NPR refused to pull the article, he filed a 93-page pro se complaint alleging the piece was defamatory. Tenth Circuit: Nope.
  • Allegation: Barber County, Kan. officers give man inconsistent orders (hands up, get on the ground). Eight seconds later, an officer shoots him in the chest with a beanbag from close range, killing him, even though he was unarmed, standing still with hands at his sides. Tenth Circuit: Video from bodycam doesn’t show everything but doesn’t contradict the allegations. A jury should decide if this was excessive force.
  • Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) limits state and local legislators’ power to levy taxes; such measures must instead go to a popular vote and any revenues raised in excess of the prior year’s spending must be refunded to taxpayers. Legislators: Which violates the federal law that gave statehood to Colorado. Tenth Circuit (2016, after a trip to SCOTUS): Legislators, suing on behalf of the legislature, don’t have standing to challenge TABOR. Tenth Circuit (2019): But local gov’ts do.

Charlottesville, Virginia imposes a business license tax on freelance writers. Which is weird because business license taxes are meant to defray the cost of infrastructure that businesses and their customers use, and freelancers like Corban Addison and John Hart don’t have storefronts or walk-in customers; they sit at their desks and write. And it’s also unconstitutional. The First Amendment prohibits the gov’t from treating speakers unequally without a good reason, and the traditional press is exempted from the tax. Moreover, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits vague laws, and no ordinary freelance writer could know from reading the ordinance that they are subject to the tax. So earlier this week, Corban and John sued the city and surrounding Albemarle County. Click here to read more.

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