A second major sponsor has dropped the Fresno Grizzlies after the team aired a Memorial Day video during a recent game which compares Democratic Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to other “enemies of freedom” such as Antifa, Kim Jong Un and Fidel Castro.
The Netherlands-based Heineken International told the Fresno Bee on Thursday that both Dos Equis and Tecate – brands it owns, will no longer sponsor the team following the broadcast.
“Both Tecate and Dos Equis were sponsors of the Fresno Grizzlies,” said the company, adding “We do not support those views expressed in the video, that was aired during the Fresno Grizzlies game on Memorial Day. For that reason, we have ended this relationship, effective immediately and have let the team know of our decision.”
We are disheartened to learn of the views expressed in the video that aired during Monday’s Fresno Grizzlies game, as they do not reflect our core values. We have ended our relationship with the team, effective immediately, and we have informed them accordingly.
The first sponsor to drop the Grizzlies following the video was Sun-Maid, which said in a statement: “We are deeply disappointed by the Memorial Day tribute video the Fresno Grizzlies aired on Monday,” adding “Sun-Maid does not support the views or sentiments expressed in the video, nor does it condone the airing of it.”
Grizzlies president Derek Franks said in a Wednesday statement that the employee responsible for the montage was reprimanded, but declined to say what the punishment was. Franks also said that an incorrect tribute video was downloaded, and that nobody from the team’s front office actually watched the whole thing before it aired.
“Based on their investigation, it is clear to us that this was an honest mistake by a long-time employee and was not politically motivated,” said Nationals VP of communications, Jennifer Giglio. “They have put processes in place to ensure it does not happen again and we are comfortable with those procedures.”
The Grizzlies are a minor league Pacific Coast League team and Triple-A affiliate of the Washington Nationals.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JP9a1E Tyler Durden
A 22-year old female University of Utah student reported her business professor to campus administrators for, among other things, assigning too many historical texts written by influential male economists of the past.
“I understand the importance of studying the work of those before us and the importance of context,” wrote the student in a complaint to the university’s bias reporting system, where she labeled the professor’s transgressions “derogatory,” “degrading,” and “intimidating,” thereby causing a “hostile learning environment.”
The report also accused the professor of frequent sexist language, but the bulk of the complaint centered on his assigned readings for the business course.
“I believe it to no longer be necessary when teaching the foundations of our country’s economic system and those who helped build [its] ideals to be presented in conjunction with their sexist beliefs that have already planted their roots within our global and local communities,” the student stated in her complaint, filed in December 2018 and recently obtained by The College Fix through a public records act request.
The complaint was among 27 bias reports lodged at the public university in the Fall 2018 semester, according to the results of the request. The documents provided by the University of Utah redact all personal identifying information.
In the female student’s bias report, she stated that while her professor “never applauded these philosophers on their sexist beliefs,” he “never outright said they were wrong” and “continued to place them upon a pedestal.”
The report does not cite the scholars assigned in the business course, although typical economists discussed in such a class might include Adam Smith, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
The student continued: “Many of these figures are of great importance. But at what cost do we continue to plant the seed of sexism in the minds of individuals? But especially in a course and college that is already deemed to be a ‘boys club’, continuing those teachings, and those teachings being delivered by a professor of [his] character is dangerous.”
“As a top university in the nation, I believe we have a duty to lead by example. Pave a new path and right the wrongs of those before us. Some may argue enduring this type of behavior is what needs to be done to play in the ‘big leagues’ of male-dominated fields, such as business. And I can agree to play the game to some degree, but if an opportunity to help change the game presents itself, you take it. [My] professor’s behavior and certain choice of text have greatly affected me both emotionally and academically.”
She continued that she began to “fear” his sexist banter and said she “also began to fear the readings and I could not even finish one assigned reading due to its clear sexist message.”
According to the complaint, the student was especially disturbed by a conversation that took place on the last day of class about robots taking jobs from working Americans. The professor allegedly claimed that “while all our jobs will be taken by robots,” he will be “retired living in Tahiti surrounded by 40-45 beautiful women feeding him grapes.”
When a student asked why he chose Tahiti, he allegedly responded: “That’s where most of the available women are, at least from what I’ve heard. I also don’t like the competition on the other islands.”
“Not only did Professor willingly and openly objectify women,” complained the female student, “but he also objectified women of color. Women of another culture.”
This conversation became even more problematic after the professor told the class he became a vegan at age 30 because he couldn’t stomach the idea of killing another sentient being.
“I sat in my class yesterday, a class I had tried my best to endure and keep my head up as I know myself to be a strong, intelligent, woman entrepreneur,” reported the student. “But I sat there in shock as I had just witnessed a man in a position of power at an educational facility, give more respect to animals that he refers to as sentient beings than women. As though animals are the only sentient beings, and a woman’s purpose is to satisfy his taste buds.”
“I would be lying if I said this experience hasn’t left me with a bad taste in my mouth and utterly exhausted,” wrote the student in her summary. “I’ve debated coming back to the University of Utah next semester largely due to this experience and other personal reasons including finances.”
In addition to her complaint, other bias incidents reported last semester include:
· A student in the College of Social Work complaining about racial bias by a professor who indicated students of color should be able to speak first in class in order to “decenter the whiteness” of the classroom.
· When a black male student walked into the student union office, an employee appeared “visibly taken aback” and called out, “can we help you?” The student responded he had a meeting scheduled there, and he had never had to explain himself when he previously walked into the office.
· A Utah alumnus witnessed the owners/managers (a man and a woman) of a campus coffee/snack shop bullying an employee, calling their actions “horrifying and disrespectful.” The alum reported the managers were “treating their employee like a slave,” calling it a “Shameful spectacle.” The color of the employee is not disclosed, although the complaint is classified as bias against “race and ethnicity.”
· A female student complained about a professor singling her out in class as needing special help. The same day, the student’s parents also filed a complaint, replicating the daughter’s report almost verbatim.
· A communications professor discussing concealed-carry of weapons likened the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to the First Amendment, arguing that since a university can set up “free speech zones” on campus, he would be setting up a “Second Amendment zone” in his classroom. The professor had taped off a three-foot by three-foot square in the back of the room that he said students can “share with all other gun carriers.”
“As a person who has my CCW and carries a weapon daily, this is discriminatory and illegal under Utah Code 76-10-500,” wrote the student.
· On September 7, a group of four male students were sitting at a table studying. A female student just finishing up a group project noticed the table of male students being “loud and distracting.” At one point, a young man wearing a black shirt and khaki shorts complained that his laptop computer battery was dying. One of the other men at the table offered his charger to the student but he says the charger is incompatible with his laptop. The student offering the charger says it will definitely work if you “just force it.” The student put his hands around his mouth and loudly whispered, “That’s rape. I’m not raping my computer.”
According to the university’s Office of Inclusive Excellence website, an act of “bias” is “any act of intolerance, motivated wholly or in part by bias or prejudice against an individual’s race, color, ethnicity, age, religion, size, disability, national origin, language, gender, veteran status, identity expression, sexual orientation or age—regardless of severity.” The university’s bias reporting system was initially created in 2013, and the Office of Inclusive Excellence is currently assigned one permanent staffer.
“Each incident is handled on a case-by-case basis depending on the type of incident that was reported and any specifications made by the person who submitted the report,” said university spokesperson Annalisa Purser in an e-mail to The Fix. “These may include following up directly with individuals involved, developing trainings, working with the department or office’s leadership, partnering with other campus offices and resources, etc.,” she said.
“Ultimately, The Office for Inclusive Excellence does not have authority to conduct investigations or uphold sanctions. Instead, it is focused on professional development around creating inclusive spaces,” said Purser.
Of the 27 reports filed with the university, eight were redacted in their entirety when provided to The Fix.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Xj5rMO Tyler Durden
Thirteen years after it last aired, HBO’s revisionist Western Deadwood has returned for an encore. Any fears that creator-writer David Milch or his characters may have mellowed during the hiatus are assuaged in the first moments, when arch-villain mining magnate George Hearst rides into town to the heartfelt greetings of the local citizenry. “You murdering, thieving cocksucker!” calls out one, while another salutes him as “You bald-pated cunt.”
And, yes, murder is still the leading strategic tool for mergers and acquisitions in Deadwood, and the town’s pigs still the most popular recourse for the disposal of inconvenient corpses. The whores still outnumber the preachers, the language is still a mixture of the oddly baroque and the profoundly obscene, and most importantly, Deadwood: The Movie is as a provocative, intelligent, and funny place to visit as the series ever was.
That said, Deadwood: The Movie is not really a movie at all, at least in the sense of being a self-contained production. It will be practically incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t watch the original series, which ran for 36 episodes from 2004 to 2006. HBO’s abrupt and unexpected cancellation left a number of dangling threads, and this edition is best understood as an attempt to snip them.
The series was set during the late 1870s during the Black Hills gold rush, when Deadwood was a lawless boom town. The movie picks up 10 years later, as South Dakota is becoming a state, but in many ways, it might as well be the next day.
Hearst has just come riding back into town, to stir up trouble by acquiring land—by fair means or foul—for the telephone lines he wants to run into Deadwood. He succeeds effortlessly at the stirring-up-trouble part, not so much at getting the land. And, soon enough, those hungry pigs are back at work.
Virtually all the characters who were still alive at the end of Deadwood‘s final season season—and even some who were dead, via flashbacks—return for the movie. (Notable exception: cold-blooded casino owner Cy Tolliver, who was played by the late Powers Boothe.) Rage-prone Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) is still sheriff, thoughtful prospector Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) still his deputy. And though Bullock’s former illicit lover, the twice-widowed businesswoman Alma Ellsworth (Molly Parker) has moved away, she’s returned to tend to her bank.
Another recent returnee is the drunken frontierswoman Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), back to mourn her murdered pal, Wild Bill Hickock, and seek reconciliation with her old girlfriend, moody madame Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickerson).
Murderous but somehow lovable saloonkeeper Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), though he’s nearly obliviated his liver, is still running whores in his upstairs rooms, though he leaves most of the details to his aide-de-coitus Trixie (Paula Malcomson).
The only significant newcomer on the scene is a mysterious woman named Caroline (Jade PettyJohn), who may or may not be the daughter of a hooker Al Swearengen murdered to pass her corpse off as that of Trixie, who George Hearst wanted badly to kill.
Though Swearengen was the one who actually cut the hooker’s throat, practically all the main Deadwood characters knew of the murder and gave tacit approval by not giving it away to Hearst. The arrival of Caroline, the victim’s maybe-daughter, sends a collective spasm of guilt through the town elders. “Make friends with her ghost,” Swearengen urges Trixie. “It ain’t fuckin’ going anywhere.”
His remark is just one element of the hazy streaks of nostalgia and regret that inhabit Deadwood: The Movie. The future is inexorably arriving in Deadwood—Hearst’s telephones being the literal incarnation—and most of the characters are closer to the ends of their chapters than the beginnings. Says Swearengen, vowing that no phone will ever darken his place: “A saloon is a sanctuary. Any man worth the name knows the value of being unreachable.” Increasingly, the world is too much with the citizens of Deadwood.
This engaging and melancholy farewell to them has long been rumored, and even longer denied. Milch supposedly had a deal for two films to wrap up Deadwood, but every time he was reported ready to begin production, he forged into some other project: the inscrutably weird theological ramblings of John from Cincinnati, or the ill-fated horse-racing drama Luck, canceled after three horses died during the shooting of its first nine episodes.
The report of a two-movie deal may have been true. The final moments of Deadwood: The Movie are ambiguous and indecisive and could easily lead to a second film. But if so, it won’t be with Milch, who is drifting into the mists of Alzheimer’s disease. Like Al Swearengen, he’ll soon be unreachable. His last words to us were fine ones.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2JQnJSO
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Election season is heating up, which means Republicans and Democrats are ready to sell you the candidate of your dreams. Whether it’s government intrusion into your private life or government intrusion into your economic life, they’ve got you covered.
Written by Austin Bragg. Starring Andrew Heaton and Bragg. Video produced by Bragg.
Happy Happy Game Show Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://bit.ly/oKTIFM
Thirteen years after it last aired, HBO’s revisionist Western Deadwood has returned for an encore. Any fears that creator-writer David Milch or his characters may have mellowed during the hiatus are assuaged in the first moments, when arch-villain mining magnate George Hearst rides into town to the heartfelt greetings of the local citizenry. “You murdering, thieving cocksucker!” calls out one, while another salutes him as “You bald-pated cunt.”
And, yes, murder is still the leading strategic tool for mergers and acquisitions in Deadwood, and the town’s pigs still the most popular recourse for the disposal of inconvenient corpses. The whores still outnumber the preachers, the language is still a mixture of the oddly baroque and the profoundly obscene, and most importantly, Deadwood: The Movie is as a provocative, intelligent, and funny place to visit as the series ever was.
That said, Deadwood: The Movie is not really a movie at all, at least in the sense of being a self-contained production. It will be practically incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t watch the original series, which ran for 36 episodes from 2004 to 2006. HBO’s abrupt and unexpected cancellation left a number of dangling threads, and this edition is best understood as an attempt to snip them.
The series was set during the late 1870s during the Black Hills gold rush, when Deadwood was a lawless boom town. The movie picks up 10 years later, as South Dakota is becoming a state, but in many ways, it might as well be the next day.
Hearst has just come riding back into town, to stir up trouble by acquiring land—by fair means or foul—for the telephone lines he wants to run into Deadwood. He succeeds effortlessly at the stirring-up-trouble part, not so much at getting the land. And, soon enough, those hungry pigs are back at work.
Virtually all the characters who were still alive at the end of Deadwood‘s final season season—and even some who were dead, via flashbacks—return for the movie. (Notable exception: cold-blooded casino owner Cy Tolliver, who was played by the late Powers Boothe.) Rage-prone Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) is still sheriff, thoughtful prospector Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) still his deputy. And though Bullock’s former illicit lover, the twice-widowed businesswoman Alma Ellsworth (Molly Parker) has moved away, she’s returned to tend to her bank.
Another recent returnee is the drunken frontierswoman Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), back to mourn her murdered pal, Wild Bill Hickock, and seek reconciliation with her old girlfriend, moody madame Joanie Stubbs (Kim Dickerson).
Murderous but somehow lovable saloonkeeper Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), though he’s nearly obliviated his liver, is still running whores in his upstairs rooms, though he leaves most of the details to his aide-de-coitus Trixie (Paula Malcomson).
The only significant newcomer on the scene is a mysterious woman named Caroline (Jade PettyJohn), who may or may not be the daughter of a hooker Al Swearengen murdered to pass her corpse off as that of Trixie, who George Hearst wanted badly to kill.
Though Swearengen was the one who actually cut the hooker’s throat, practically all the main Deadwood characters knew of the murder and gave tacit approval by not giving it away to Hearst. The arrival of Caroline, the victim’s maybe-daughter, sends a collective spasm of guilt through the town elders. “Make friends with her ghost,” Swearengen urges Trixie. “It ain’t fuckin’ going anywhere.”
His remark is just one element of the hazy streaks of nostalgia and regret that inhabit Deadwood: The Movie. The future is inexorably arriving in Deadwood—Hearst’s telephones being the literal incarnation—and most of the characters are closer to the ends of their chapters than the beginnings. Says Swearengen, vowing that no phone will ever darken his place: “A saloon is a sanctuary. Any man worth the name knows the value of being unreachable.” Increasingly, the world is too much with the citizens of Deadwood.
This engaging and melancholy farewell to them has long been rumored, and even longer denied. Milch supposedly had a deal for two films to wrap up Deadwood, but every time he was reported ready to begin production, he forged into some other project: the inscrutably weird theological ramblings of John from Cincinnati, or the ill-fated horse-racing drama Luck, canceled after three horses died during the shooting of its first nine episodes.
The report of a two-movie deal may have been true. The final moments of Deadwood: The Movie are ambiguous and indecisive and could easily lead to a second film. But if so, it won’t be with Milch, who is drifting into the mists of Alzheimer’s disease. Like Al Swearengen, he’ll soon be unreachable. His last words to us were fine ones.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2JQnJSO
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A bill would have closed a notorious loophole that lets Texas police departments hide records of jail deaths. But it failed to pass the Texas legislature, thanks to fierce opposition from one of the most powerful police unions in the state.
Texas enacted a statute in 1997 exempting records of police investigations that didn’t end in a conviction from the state’s public record law. The aim was to protect the privacy of innocent suspects, but police departments soon figured out they could also use it to withhold information on deaths in police custody, since you don’t convict a suspect who’s dead.
A Reasoninvestigation published last December found at least 81 instances where police departments cited the so-called “dead suspect loophole” to withhold records of deaths in police custody from reporters, lawyers, and family members of the deceased.
A separate investigation by news outlet KXAN focused on Texas’ 21 largest police departments. It identified at least 154 public information requests, related to 52 in-custody deaths, where the authorities cited the exemption to withhold records.
State Rep. Joe Moody (D–El Paso) introduced legislation in January to close what’s become known as the “dead suspect loophole.” But this week he stripped the language from a larger transparency bill, following intense lobbying by the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) and a veto threat from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The bill would not survive, he realized, if it included the language.
“Those are supposed to be public records, and the people deserve the truth—good, bad or ugly—about situations where their government is involved in a death,” Moody wrote in an open letter after he pulled his legislation. “A deliberate disinformation campaign by the very people fighting transparency made it impossible to advance this legislation.”
CLEAT argued that Moody’s Bill was “pushed by anti-police groups who want access to the information so they can post it on social media and trash officers who are involved in high profile incidents.”
But the current law allows police to hide video and other records from families of those who die in police custody. The most infamous case is that of Graham Dyer, an 18-year-old who died in 2013 after being arrested in Mesquite, Texas, while having a bad acid trip. Dyer’s parents fought unsuccessfully for years to get video footage of their son’s final hours, but Mesquite police refused to hand it over, citing the loophole.
Dyer’s parents eventually got the footage from the FBI through a federal Freedom of Information Act request. It shows Dyer repeatedly slamming his head against the interior of a police cruiser after he wasn’t properly restrained. An officer repeatedly tases him in the testicles to try and make him stop. The Mesquite Police Department neglected to mention the tasings in the incident report filed after Dyer’s death.
The report also claims it took several officers to subdue Dyer, who was 5 feet 4 inches and 110 pounds, and put him in a restraint chair in a padded cell. The video shows Dyer being left handcuffed on the concrete floor of the jail’s sally port, where he continued to smash his head against the ground. Jail officials didn’t request medical assistance until he was found unresponsive in his cell.
After the footage became public, the Dallas County district attorney reopened the case and declared there was sufficient evidence to charge Mesquite police officers with negligent homicide—if the statute of limitations hadn’t already passed.
Dyer’s parents have gone to the state capital two years in a row to testify in favor of Moody’s bill. “If the law stays as it is, the police will continue to deny families those records,” Graham Dyer’s mother, Kathy Dyer said in her testimony.
CLEAT’s opposition to bill was so strong that it destroyed its working relationship with Moody and led to the fairly rare sight of a politician publicly denouncing a police union. Moody said CLEAT “stabbed me in the back and waged an outrageous campaign of outright lies and character assassination.”
CLEAT also sunk another one of Moody’s pieces of legislation: an amendment that would have allowed judges to dismiss low-level crimes if police officers didn’t explain why they arrested someone for an offense that is punishable only by a fine. CLEAT complained it would discourage officers from arresting suspects in serious cases like voyeurism or groping—a misleading claim, Moody says. The legislation was part of a slate of reform measures introduced in response to the 2015 death of Sandra Bland, who was found hanging in her Waller County jail cell after being arrested after being pulled over for a minor traffic violation.
Earlier this month, a local news outlet published never-before-seen cell phone video by Bland of her arrest, obtained through a public records request to state investigators. As Texas Department of Public Safety attorney Phillip Adkins testified during a legislative hearing earlier this month, the department could have kept the video secret if it had wanted to, although it chose to voluntarily disclose it.
Because of an obstinate police union, families of those who die in police custody in Texas will continue to have to rely on law enforcement agencies’ good will to find out what happened to their loved ones.
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Vice President Mike Pence may have assured Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the Trump administration was “absolutely committed” to passing USMCA this summer, but that was before Robert Lighthizer infuriated Democrats by starting the clock on bringing legislation to ratify the treaty before Congress – and also before President Trump revealed his plans to impose tariffs on Mexican imports.
Millennials better stock up on their avocados before June 10.
The chances of USMCA passing were already looking tenuous, as Democrats have appeared reluctant to work with President Trump to facilitate what would be his biggest trade triumph to date. But now that Trump has angered Mexico and Democrats with the new tariffs, chances of USMCA passing have fallen from ‘low’ to ‘nearly zero’, according to a team of analysts at Goldman Sachs.
In a note to clients published on Friday, Goldman explained that it believes Trump will move ahead with 5% tariffs on Mexican imports on June 10 – at least that’s the bank’s base case, even as its analysts concede that Trump never followed through on threats to close the southern border.
And, assuming the tariffs do take effect, Democrats in the House will likely slow consideration of USMCA – likely missing the 90-day window for consideration triggered by Lighthizer on Thursday – and greatly increasing the chances that the deal won’t be ratified until after the 2020 election (thought Goldman still believes ratification is likely in the long run, given the support from the business community).
Read Goldman’s full note below:
* * *
BOTTOM LINE: President Trump has announced the intent to levy a 5% tariff on all imports from Mexico effective June 10, rising by 5pp July 1 and every month thereafter until it reaches 25%. The President states he will remove the tariffs when Mexico “substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory.” The White House yesterday (May 30) also submitted draft USMCA text to Congress; Canada and Mexico also just took steps to begin legislative consideration of their implementing legislation. We view this as an attempt to show action on the immigration issue while also pressuring congressional Democrats to pass USMCA. While still possible, enactment of USMCA prior to the 2020 election would no longer be our base case if these tariffs are implemented as proposed.
MAIN POINTS:
1. President Trump has announced the intent to levy a 5% tariff on all goods entering the US from Mexico effective June 10. The tariff would increase by 5pp on July 1 and every month thereafter until the President determines that Mexico “substantially stops the illegal inflow of aliens coming through its territory.” Given the specific and near-term implementation date the President cites, we believe at least the first tariff at 5% is likely to be implemented as stated. That said, we note that another of the President’s proposed immigration actions – closing the US-Mexico border – was also threatened but never implemented. The odds of this tariff are at least somewhat higher, we believe; while the tariff would be highly disruptive, it would be less so than full closing of the border would have been, and also has been proposed in a more specific way.
2. This action is also linked to congressional consideration of USMCA, in our view. While there had long been a possibility that the President would announce the intent to withdraw from NAFTA as a means of pressuring Congress to pass USMCA—and it is still possible he could do this—the proposed tariffs might also be intended to put pressure on Congress to pass USMCA. The White House sent draft text to Congress yesterday (May 30) to trigger the first procedural step for consideration. However, it is extremely unlikely that Congress would take any action on USMCA prior to June 10. Congress must wait 30 days to introduce the formal legislation, and would likely need at least a few more weeks to pass it (the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) process limits consideration to 90 legislative days).
3. If the tariffs take effect, we believe this would make USMCA ratification less likely to occur prior to the 2020 election. We have believed that House Democratic leaders would be inclined to eventually allow USMCA passage – primarily with Republican votes but a substantial number of Democrats – because of substantial support from the business community and because the TPA process requires the House to vote on the measure, so simply declining to address the matter is not an option. However, if these tariffs take effect, we expect Democratic leaders to slow USMCA consideration, which would lower the odds of enactment this year and, we believe, prior to the 2020 election since enactment in an election year is likely to be difficult. Moreover, we expect that Mexico will slow its ratification process if tariffs are in place.
4.The US imported $352bn in goods from Mexico in 2018, and exported $265bn. At a 5% tariff rate, this would generate roughly $18bn in tariff revenue annually, well under the $62bn that the 25% tariffs already in place on $250bn in imports from China will raise at an annual rate. The largest categories of imports from Mexico are autos and auto parts ($93bn), computers ($27bn), routers ($10bn), and other electronics ($17bn), and other categories shown below in Exhibit 1. Some products from Mexico account for a substantial share of imports in that category, such as air conditioners (44%) and TVs (35%). If tariffs on imports from Mexico as well as tariffs on List 4 imports from China are imposed, then a significant majority of US imports of some products would be subject to additional tariffs, such as computers and equipment (79%), TVs (84%), personal electronics (79%), and others.
* * *
And for reference, here’s a breakdown of what the US imports from Mexico (it’s unclear which line encompasses the avocado trade, but in 2017, the US imported $2.6 billion of avocados from Mexico).
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Z0nlok Tyler Durden
Rape cases have gone underreported in New York City because of a glaring omission by the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
Newsy, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and ProPublica have been investigating law enforcement departments all across the country to find flaws in crime reporting. Their project has already found several cities where rape cases are prematurely closed, allowing them to enjoy artificially high clearance rates. Among them: Wichita, Oakland, Baltimore, and Austin.
The most recent findings focus on an overly narrow definition of rape, which has led to a 38 percent discrepancy between the NYPD’s rape reports and those of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In 2012, the Department of Justice expanded the definition of forcible rape to cover any “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” The previous definition, which had been in place since 1927, only considered penile penetration of the vagina. The new definition is more favorable to victims of all genders and assault situations.
Several months later, the NYPD’s leadership sent out a memo announcing that the department would update its definition in compliance with the new federal understanding. But in the seven years that have passed since then, the NYPD’s crime-tracking system, CompStat, has failed to update its definition.
As a result, acts that are now recognized as rape are merely classified—and investigated—as “criminal sexual activity.”The NYPD ended up underreporting the crime by 38 percent.
During an appearance this morningon WNYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the NYPD would update its CompStat website to reflect the federal definition “later this year.”
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A bill would have closed a notorious loophole that lets Texas police departments hide records of jail deaths. But it failed to pass the Texas legislature, thanks to fierce opposition from one of the most powerful police unions in the state.
Texas enacted a statute in 1997 exempting records of police investigations that didn’t end in a conviction from the state’s public record law. The aim was to protect the privacy of innocent suspects, but police departments soon figured out they could also use it to withhold information on deaths in police custody, since you don’t convict a suspect who’s dead.
A Reasoninvestigation published last December found at least 81 instances where police departments cited the so-called “dead suspect loophole” to withhold records of deaths in police custody from reporters, lawyers, and family members of the deceased.
A separate investigation by news outlet KXAN focused on Texas’ 21 largest police departments. It identified at least 154 public information requests, related to 52 in-custody deaths, where the authorities cited the exemption to withhold records.
State Rep. Joe Moody (D–El Paso) introduced legislation in January to close what’s become known as the “dead suspect loophole.” But this week he stripped the language from a larger transparency bill, following intense lobbying by the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) and a veto threat from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The bill would not survive, he realized, if it included the language.
“Those are supposed to be public records, and the people deserve the truth—good, bad or ugly—about situations where their government is involved in a death,” Moody wrote in an open letter after he pulled his legislation. “A deliberate disinformation campaign by the very people fighting transparency made it impossible to advance this legislation.”
CLEAT argued that Moody’s Bill was “pushed by anti-police groups who want access to the information so they can post it on social media and trash officers who are involved in high profile incidents.”
But the current law allows police to hide video and other records from families of those who die in police custody. The most infamous case is that of Graham Dyer, an 18-year-old who died in 2013 after being arrested in Mesquite, Texas, while having a bad acid trip. Dyer’s parents fought unsuccessfully for years to get video footage of their son’s final hours, but Mesquite police refused to hand it over, citing the loophole.
Dyer’s parents eventually got the footage from the FBI through a federal Freedom of Information Act request. It shows Dyer repeatedly slamming his head against the interior of a police cruiser after he wasn’t properly restrained. An officer repeatedly tases him in the testicles to try and make him stop. The Mesquite Police Department neglected to mention the tasings in the incident report filed after Dyer’s death.
The report also claims it took several officers to subdue Dyer, who was 5 feet 4 inches and 110 pounds, and put him in a restraint chair in a padded cell. The video shows Dyer being left handcuffed on the concrete floor of the jail’s sally port, where he continued to smash his head against the ground. Jail officials didn’t request medical assistance until he was found unresponsive in his cell.
After the footage became public, the Dallas County district attorney reopened the case and declared there was sufficient evidence to charge Mesquite police officers with negligent homicide—if the statute of limitations hadn’t already passed.
Dyer’s parents have gone to the state capital two years in a row to testify in favor of Moody’s bill. “If the law stays as it is, the police will continue to deny families those records,” Graham Dyer’s mother, Kathy Dyer said in her testimony.
CLEAT’s opposition to bill was so strong that it destroyed its working relationship with Moody and led to the fairly rare sight of a politician publicly denouncing a police union. Moody said CLEAT “stabbed me in the back and waged an outrageous campaign of outright lies and character assassination.”
CLEAT also sunk another one of Moody’s pieces of legislation: an amendment that would have allowed judges to dismiss low-level crimes if police officers didn’t explain why they arrested someone for an offense that is punishable only by a fine. CLEAT complained it would discourage officers from arresting suspects in serious cases like voyeurism or groping—a misleading claim, Moody says. The legislation was part of a slate of reform measures introduced in response to the 2015 death of Sandra Bland, who was found hanging in her Waller County jail cell after being arrested after being pulled over for a minor traffic violation.
Earlier this month, a local news outlet published never-before-seen cell phone video by Bland of her arrest, obtained through a public records request to state investigators. As Texas Department of Public Safety attorney Phillip Adkins testified during a legislative hearing earlier this month, the department could have kept the video secret if it had wanted to, although it chose to voluntarily disclose it.
Because of an obstinate police union, families of those who die in police custody in Texas will continue to have to rely on law enforcement agencies’ good will to find out what happened to their loved ones.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2W7Z5hY
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You’d think that Robert Mueller might know what any licensed attorney-at-law in the land tells a client in a tight spot with a lame alibi: better keep you mouth shut. Instead, Mr. Mueller crept Sphinx-like out of the Deep State woodwork on little cat’s paws and in a brief nine minutes blabbed out a set of whopperish riddles much more likely to get himself in trouble than the target of his hinky inquisition.
The key whopper was that he could not make “a determination” on an obstruction-of-justice charge against Mr. Trump because guidance policy from the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel had said some years ago that a sitting president can’t be indicted. That is not what he told his boss, Mr. Barr, the Attorney General (and a roomful of the AG’s staffers who heard it), in person when he delivered his final report a few weeks ago.
Upon receipt of that report, Mr. Barr asked the Special Counsel three times whether his inability to conclude anything on an obstruction charge was due to the OLC guidance, and three times Mr. Mueller answered “no.” Mr. Barr relayed this on-the-record in testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and, as averred above, he has plenty of witnesses. It should not be hard to reach a determination on who is telling truth here.
In fact, Mr. Mueller could have declared that he found chargeable obstruction crimes were committed based on the evidence, and also demurred to press them at this time — leaving them available to federal prosecutors until after the president was out of office, one way or another. The reason he didn’t is that Mr. Mueller does not want the case to come to trial, ever, because he would lose badly and his reputation would be destroyed. Consider that in any trial, the defendant gets to call witnesses and make his own case. The evidence for gross prosecutorial misconduct on the part of Mr. Mueller and his associates is mountainous compared to the molehill of Mr. Trump’s temper tantrums over the seditious hoax he was subject to. And that matter is now moving in the direction of adjudication.
So instead, Mr. Mueller has set in motion a potential political crisis as momentous as the Civil War, but completely unlike it. Knowing that congress can impeach the president on just about anything — especially this president, publicly reviled like no other before him — he served congress the platter of material to use in the form of his final report, and pretty much dared them to not go forward with it. Get this: it is a ruse. The object is solely to divert the nation’s attention with an impeachment circus, allowing Mr. Mueller to slip away harmlessly into history without sacrificing his own reputation in a courtroom.
Do you have any idea what a fiasco this set-up is? I will tell you.
The US government itself will be discredited and crippled. At one end of Pennsylvania Avenue, you’ll have the impeachment circus in which the misdeeds of the RussiaGate perpetrators will be revealed in all their naked political indecency; and at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue you’ll have many of the same government officials involved in all that indecency marched into courtrooms to be tried by Mr. Barr’s prosecutors on charges possibly as grave as treason. On the sidelines, you will see something like a fight to the death between the White House and the rogue leviathan that the nation’s “intel community” has grown into — like the ghastly, slime-dripping creature that stowed away on the spaceship Nostromo in the horror movie Alien.
In his farewell performance, Mr. Mueller declared that he considers himself unavailable to testify before congress in whatever proceedings they convene going forward. That’s rich. If you take him at his word, he said that if called, he would simply refer to his 448 report, where all the mysteries of existence may be found — like the Old Testament Yahweh laying his Good Book on the table before the cringing multitudes. It will surely come as a surprise to Mr. Mueller that he is actually not Yahweh with such supreme powers, but a mere mortal who has fucked up mightily in the service of an earthly political conspiracy. In the event, he may find himself citing not his fabulous RussiaGate report, but the Fifth Amendment to the constitution.
That’s what we have to look forward to in the months leading up to the 2020 election, if it can even take place during what may be an epic paralysis of government verging on sickening collapse.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2QH2W4I Tyler Durden
