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Wall Street Is Now Buying College Students Like Stocks

Shortly after we wrote about an online software engineering school that was allowing students to pay their tuition by forfeiting 17% of their income after they graduated, it’s becoming clearer that the model of selling an “equity stake in yourself” to fund tuition is making its way to the mainstream.

Equitizing students was the topic of an in-depth Bloomberg Businessweek look into the details of what Americans are doing to combat the $1.6 trillion in higher education debt that they owe. Specifically, the article followed the path of 23 year old Amy Wroblewski, who has been literally turning over a set percentage of her salary to investors – and will do so for the 8 1/2 years after graduating college. 

Wroblewski (Photo: Bloomberg)

Wroblewski makes about $50,000 a year as a higher education recruiter and surrenders about $279 a month to investors who helped pay for her tuition. If she winds up doing extremely well in her field, she may wind up paying twice as much. But if she loses her job, she won’t have to pay anything and investors will be stuck with the bill until she finds work. Wroblewski is part of a new program at Purdue University that sidesteps regular student loans in favor of allowing students to hand over future earnings through an “income sharing agreement”. The agreement turns students into equity investments, instead of debt notes.

And like any investment in equity, students require some amount of due diligence. Wroblewski’s history of always holding down two jobs and rising to vice president of Delta Sigma Pi, a business fraternity, attracted a company called Vemo Education, who made her the offer after vetting her as a “potential investment”.

Chuck Trafton, who runs hedge fund FlowPoint Capital Partners LP, which has invested in ISAs said: “I envision a whole new equity market for higher education in the next five years where today there’s only debt.” 

The market for these types of agreements is now only in the tens of millions, a very small sliver of the $170 billion in outstanding asset backed securities from student loans. And only some some select schools are allowing outside investment firms to buy a stake in students. Others seek out individual donors, wealthy alumni or use money from their endowment. Purdue is the most high-profile school to implement such a program so far. 

ISA investors ask for a smaller “piece of the pie” from students with more lucrative majors. For example, at Purdue, English majors pay 4.52% of their future income over 10 years, whereas chemical engineers paid 2.57% in a little over seven years.

The program is set up to be competitive with student loans:

Consider a junior economics major who needs $10,000. Through a private loan, she’d likely pay $146 a month, or $17,576 over the course of 10 years. Through an ISA, a student with a starting salary of $47,000, Purdue’s estimate for its 2020 economics graduates, would pay $15,673, assuming 3.8 percent annual salary increases. That would be a good deal. But, if she found a $60,000-a-year job, she’d have to fork over $20,010.

But financial firms and for-profit colleges are, naturally, still trying to turn a buck. These ISAs may have a luster to them now, because they are a new instrument, but students still wind up paying back more than they borrow.

Julie Margetta Morgan, a fellow who studies higher education at the Roosevelt Institute said: “There’s a level of enthusiasm that’s overstated. It’s pretty darn near impossible to say whether an ISA is better or worse for an individual.”

The last time something like ISAs were tried, at Yale in the 1970s, it wound up in many students defaulting, leaving borrowers waiting for longer than they had anticipated to get paid. The goal then was to pool all borrowers and have them pay the school a percentage of their income for 35 years. Yale ultimately wound up bailing out the borrowers (preparing them for their futures on Wall Street) and winding down the program in 2001. And the terms of some of these plans weren’t capped in any way. One graduate, Juan Leon, borrowed $1500 through the program and wound up paying back $8000.

“We didn’t read the fine print. It was quite, quite onerous,” Leon said. 

Under these new plans, like Purdue’s, students have more protection. Purdue caps total payments at 2.5 times what a student borrows, so that the most successful students don’t feel like they’re being gouged. Students making less than $20,000 a year aren’t charged at all, as long as they are working full-time or in the process of seeking work. These payments are instead deferred.

So far, Purdue has arranged about 700 of these contracts worth about $9.5 million and they have closed $17 million in investments from two funds. David Cooper, the chief investment officer for Purdue, hoped to develop the program and pitch it to investors after overseeing Indiana‘s retirement system. 

“We feel like we’ve got the pricing for the students at a pretty good spot. At the same time, it’s a reasonable return for the investors,” he said. 

Charlotte Hebert graduated from Purdue in 2017 and doesn’t share Cooper’s enthusiasm about the $27,000 she took to pay for her schooling costs. She’s going to be required to shell out 10% of her income for the term of her deal, which is about 2.5% more than what an engineer would pay. She makes about $38,000 a year as a writer and pays investors $312 a month.

“I don’t think it’s the perfect solution. I am of the opinion that in a society where most of its workers need a college education, nobody should be paying this much to be what is considered a functional member of society,” she concluded. 

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Nein Nein Nein: 4th GOP Senator Comes Out Against Cain, Sinking Fed Board Nomination

Whether it’s because of his support for “fringe” monetary policy prescriptions like a return to the gold standard, or lingering disgust over the sexual harassment scandal that sunk his 2011 presidential bid – or simply the memory of his infamous campaign-ad ‘smile’ – enough Republican Senators have now publicly opposed former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain that his nomination for a seat on the Fed board has been sunk before the official vetting process had even finished.

Cain

The Hill reports that Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican and a close ally of President Trump ally, told reporters that “if I had to vote right now, there’s no way I could vote for” Cain.

And of course Chuck Schumer has confirmed that he doesn’t know any Democrats who would back Cain.

Ostensibly, the Republican opposition to Cain is the second presidential snub by the Republican controlled senate in as many months (it also backed a measure to try and terminate his national emergency, which Trump ultimately vetoed). However, we wouldn’t be surprised to learn some day that Trump only floated Cain to make Steve Moore look better by comparison, bolstering the chances that the former Trump campaign advisor would be confirmed by the Senate to fill one of the two empty board of governors seats for the ‘non-partisan’ central bank.

 

 

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Vulnerable To Failure – Boeing 737 Sensors Linked To Over 140 Incidents

In their preliminary report, the team investigating the crash of ET302 determined that while there were actions that the pilots could have taken to avert the crash, the confusing alarms triggered by a faulty sensor ultimately proved too confusing, even as the pilots followed the steps laid out by Boeing in its safety manual.

As the focus of the investigation shifts to sensors that have been installed on all planes (not just those made by Boeing) – though the company has said it will include an additional sensor on 737 MAXs as part of its revamp of the plane’s anti-stall software – Bloomberg has published  chilling report that raises serious questions about how these sensors managed to avoid scrutiny, given a history of malfunctions that stretches back to the 1990s.

Boeing

Some 140 incidents involving faulty or damaged sensors have been reported in that time, according to a review of publicly available data by Bloomberg. Of those, 25 cases involved the same type of faulty alert that led to the crash of ET302, and all 157 people on board.

Though the investigation into the Lion Air crash is ongoing, it’s believed a faulty sensor was also to blame in that crash.

Pilots have for decades relied on the weather-vane-like “angle of attack” sensors to warn them when they near a dangerous aerodynamic stall. But investigators are probing Boeing’s decision to enable the sensors on the Max model to go beyond warning pilots and automatically force the plane’s nose down.

A review of public databases by Bloomberg News reveals the potential hazards of relying on the devices, which are mounted on the fuselage near the plane’s nose and are vulnerable to damage. There are at least 140 instances since the early 1990s of sensors on U.S. planes being damaged by jetways and other equipment on the ground or hitting birds in flight.

In a chilling revelation that raises questions about why these sensors weren’t more heavily scrutinized, an Airbus SE crashed in 2008 while on a demonstration flight. All seven people onboard died as the plane plunged into the ocean. Moisture inside the sensors was eventually blamed for the accident, but strangely, nothing was done.

Before the 737 Max crashes, the most recent accident involving the sensors occurred when an Airbus SE A320 on a 2008 demonstration flight went down off the coast of France killing all seven people aboard. Moisture inside two of the plane’s three angle-of-attack vanes froze, confusing the aircraft’s automation system, according to France’s Office of Investigations and Analysis. The report also faulted the pilots for multiple errors.

Examining such previous episodes is all the more important because of Boeing’s decision to use a single sensor as the trigger for the anti-stall mechanism on the Max known as MCAS, or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.

“With that many pilot reports and with the unknowns that we’re dealing with in these two accidents, that’s an important area to be investigated,” said James Hall, the former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

In an amusing twist, many of these malfunctions were caused by incidents where birds collided with the sensors, damaging them (and killing the birds).

On April 1, 2012, a United Airlines 767-300 was taking off from San Francisco when it struck a flock of western sandpipers, according to a Federal Aviation Administrationdatabase. The birds damaged the left sensor, scrambling the speed readings and auto throttle. The plane returned to the airport.

A Republic Airlines Inc. flight was struck by a tundra swan as it neared arrival into Newark, New Jersey, on Dec. 5, 2016, according to the FAA. It damaged the angle-of-attack sensor and other equipment on the Embraer SA EMB-170, rendering unreliable airspeed and altitude readings on the regional jet. It landed safely.

Though these incidents represent a minuscule fraction of the hundreds of millions of successful flights that have happened in that time, the fact that they sensors weren’t investigated before now comes as a shock, according to some experts.

Examining such previous episodes is all the more important because of Boeing’s decision to use a single sensor as the trigger for the anti-stall mechanism on the Max known as MCAS, or Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System.

“With that many pilot reports and with the unknowns that we’re dealing with in these two accidents, that’s an important area to be investigated,” said James Hall, the former chairman of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.

The FAA was aware of previous angle-of-attack failures and considers such incidents when it evaluates aircraft designs for certification, the agency said in a statement.

“As part of the FAA’s oversight of the continuous operational safety of our nation’s aviation safety system, the agency continues to monitor, gather and evaluate all available information and data regarding the performance of aircraft and related components,” the agency said.

Even more chilling: BBG’s investigation turned up one flight with circumstances eerily similar to those that led to the deaths of everyone aboard both the Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights. However, since the plane involved was an older model 737, it wasn’t equipped with MCAS, and thus the nose of the plane wasn’t automatically forced lower.

One March 2016 incident closely resembled the recent crashes, except that the plane, an earlier 737-800 model, wasn’t equipped with MCAS and the pilots maintained control.

As soon as the plane got airborne, the captain, seated on the left side, got the loud thumping noise and vibrating control column warning that the plane was about to stall, according to the NASA report. The captain’s airspeed and altitude displays disagreed with the copilot’s, indicating an error and setting off additional alerts. All of those symptoms occurred on the two recent Max crashes.

The pilots opted to continue onto their destination in spite of the multiple failures. Both the captain and the copilot said that they regretted continuing the flight and didn’t realize that they had violated their airline’s procedures by disabling the stall warning.

“A return, while considered, should have been accomplished,” said the captain.

Despite this report, Boeing shares rebounded on Thursday as worries about more order cancellations failed. But the report raises an interesting question about the Airbus crash: Since the deaths of seven people likely didn’t make a splash in the headlines, did that make it easier for regulators at the time to ignore?

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He Was Tased, Arrested and Totally Innocent. Now He’s Suing.

|||Screenshot via YouTube/WRCB Chattanooga

Nate Carter is bringing a $3 million lawsuit against the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee, its police department, and the officer responsible for his tasing and wrongful arrest.

According to the complaint, the April 2018 incident began when police responded to a 911 call about a man threatening the caller with a gun. The caller described the suspect as a black man with short hair, who was heavy-set and wearing green and black pants.

The suspect had fled by the time police arrived. Instead, they saw Carter, who was wearing a purple t-shirt and black shorts. Officer Cody Thomas asked Carter to identify himself. Carter, who said he was checking his mail outside, responded that Thomas was not welcome to come to his house. The situation escalated with Thomas telling Carter, “How about you watch your mouth before your ass gets thrown in the back of my car.”

Thomas pulled out a Taser and threatened to shoot Carter’s “fucking dog,” which was barking in the front yard. Carter attempted to go into his house, at which point Thomas shot Carter in the back with his taser, causing him to fall on his front porch. Carter managed to make his way inside, and Thomas called for backup. Carter then re-emerged from his home with his family while several officers, including Thomas, pointed guns and tasers toward Carter, his family, and his dog. After the family was out of the way, the officers moved to arrest Carter.

Body camera footage shows Carter’s arrest.

(The arrest begins after 3:27)

Thomas later claimed that Carter was standing in the street and “bolted” prior to the incident. He charged Carter with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. Those charges were thrown out by a judge in November and Carter is now suing.

This is not the first incident involving Officer Thomas. In February 2018, Thomas and other officers entered the home of Dale Edmonds after a neighbor told emergency services that someone was sitting in a black vehicle in Edmonds’ driveway. The person in the vehicle was a Department of Child Services agent who was waiting while a second agent was meeting with Edmonds inside of the house. Though the agent explained to officers the purpose of their trip, Thomas and others entered the house through the backdoor without a warrant. The officers led Edmonds, his housemate, and the agent outside of the house at gunpoint, but not before Thomas “manhandled” Edmonds, who was recovering from a gunshot wound.

Robin Flores, an attorney and former police officer who works on police brutality cases, is representing Carter. Their suit argues that the city “has long-established patterns of overlooking or providing excuses and reasons to justify the misconduct of its officers.” Flores told Reason that the complaint highlights how the city fails to “discipline and supervise” officers. The complaint lists other reports of bad policing by Chattanooga police dating back to 2003, including excessive force, lingering investigations, domestic abuse, and sexual harassment.

Flores told Reason that the Supreme Court has ruled that the language Carter used during his arrest is a form of protected speech. In 1974, the court ruled against a Louisiana statute that criminalized the use of obscene language while an officer is performing their duties. Justices argued that the law was too broad to fit within the legal definition of “fighting words” and had the potential to be abused in instances lacking a valid reason for an arrest.

Though Thomas’ body camera was rolling during the incident, he turned his cruiser’s dash camera off in violation of the department’s policy. At one point, Thomas’ hand covers his body camera. The complaint argues that this was done either in an attempt to turn it off or conceal his interaction with Carter.

Flores says that the footage available in both Carter’s case and in the Edmonds case is “critical enough to bring a claim” against Thomas, the department, and the city. In other instances, footage has been enough to drop charges and reopen the cases of offending officers. He also mentions another case where he dismissed a suit after his client’s version of events did not match the camera footage. This, he says, also protects police officers.

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US Treasury Growth Expectations Tumble To 6-Month Lows

Authored by Steven Vanelli via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog,

The IMF made news yesterday by announcing its latest updates to 2019 GDP growth around the world. It guided global growth down and made an especially large cut to Eurozone growth estimates, bringing them down 30bps since January to 1.3%.

They also took their estimates down a touch for the US as well. In the chart below, I show the various “official” forecasts for US GDP growth in 2019. There a couple observations that stand out here:

  1. The Federal Reserve has cut its 2019 GDP forecast by 40bps in the last four months and is the most bearish official forecaster.

  2. The IMF was earlier than the Fed to bring its rosy growth estimates down in September 2018, but they have also trimmed their estimates by 40bps total too.

Private forecasters are also a bit behind the Fed on their 2019 US GDP estimates. The Bloomberg Contributor Composite forecast for 2019 growth is 2.4%, having come down only 20bps since November. Interestingly, private forecasters raised their estimates in November by 10bps just before the wheels came off the stock market in December. The net here is that private forecasters are still a bit optimistic relative to the Fed, raising the risk that private estimates need to come down some more.

In all fairness, economic data has been pretty volatile lately, especially after the drop in rates. In February, weak consumer spending started dragging down its expected contribution to first quarter growth, according to the Atlanta Fed. But, then in early March, likely a result of the drop in mortgage rates, the expected contribution to residential investment picked up.

In the last three weeks, first quarter growth got another boost when it became clear the economy was not purging inventories, but was instead building inventories. This swing in inventory contribution alone is 75bps since mid-March.

The Atlanta Fed’s GDP Nowcast for the first quarter is now back to 2.27% as a result of these swings in housing and inventories. This is about spot on the IMF’s annual target.

Given the latest data points, the Fed is clearly not on the same page as everyone else… it is more negative on growth. This is a pretty decent signaling mechanism of patience and gives quants some numbers to play with in assessing the attractiveness of US Treasuries.

Perhaps this explains why 10-Year US Treasury growth expectations are making a new break lower for the year as 10-Year TIPS are ticking to new low yields for the year as of this writing.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2USGnyn Tyler Durden

Comey On Barr ‘Spying’ Claim: “No Idea What The Heck He’s Talking About”

Former FBI Director James Comey told an audience at the Hewlett Foundation’s Verify Conference that he has “no idea what the heck he’s talking about” – adding that “The FBI conducted court-ordered authorized surveillance. I don’t consider that spying.“

Barr admitted on Wednesday during congressional testimony that the Obama administration ‘spied’ on President Trump – a claim which he has vowed to investigate. 

“I think spying did occur,” said Barr during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing – expanding on comments made the day before. “But the question is whether it was adequately predicated and I’m not suggesting it wasn’t adequately predicated, but I need to explore that.“

We know about the Carter Page FISA warrants – but did a court authorize the Obama administration’s use of longtime spook Stefan Halper to infiltrate the Trump campaign and surveil both Page and aide George Papadopoulos? And why was Halper paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Obama Defense Department?

Comey added of Barr: “I think that his career has earned him the presumption that he will be one of the rare cabinet members who will stand up for things like truth.” 

When asked if the FBI might have done anything differently going back to 2013 in preparation for 2016, Comey said “Going back to 2013, can I decline to accept the appointment of FBI director?”

And who could blame him based on all the money he made before entering public office! Prior to heading up the FBI, Comey earned $6 Million dollars in one year as Lockheed’s top lawyer – the same year the over-budget F-35 manufacturer made a huge donation to the Clinton Foundation. He was also a board member at HSBC shortly after (then NY AG) Loretta “tarmac” Lynch let the Clinton Foundation partner slide with a slap on the wrist for laundering drug money.

Lastly, when asked by MSNBC‘s Natasha Bertrand about the Thursday arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange – who reportedly scuttled a deal with WikiLeaks for Assange’s testimony in the Russia investigation in exchange for redactions in the “Vault 7” document dump. 

Comey’s Boy Scout philosopher routine is wearing thin…

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2P4yC3d Tyler Durden

High School Suspends 2 Students for Posting Gun Range Photos on Snapchat, ACLU Files Suit

ConroyTwo male students at Lacey Township High School in New Jersey posted photos of guns on Snapchat. One of the boys captioned his photo with “hot stuff” and “if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, you know where to go.”

The photos were not taken at school. They were not taken during school hours. They did not reference a school. They auto-deleted after 24 hours, which was well before the school became aware of them. And yet, administrators at Lacey Township High School suspended the boys for three days, and also gave them weekend detention.

This was a clear violation of the students’ First Amendment rights, and the American Civil Liberties Union has now filed suit.

“Young people have the right to express themselves, and, with rare exceptions, they shouldn’t face punishment by school administrators for it,” said C.J. Griiffin, a partner at the law firm Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, who is representing the students along with the ACLU.

The two students had visited a gun range owned by an older brother on Saturday, March 10, 2018. They practiced shooting with “legally purchased and properly permitted” guns, according to the lawsuit. They also took a few photos and posted them on Snapchat. None of the snaps were threatening, and none of them referenced a school.

Nevertheless, a parent of another student heard about the photos and contacted school authorities. On Monday, the boys were forced to meet with an assistant principal and an anti-bullying specialist, who quickly decided to punish them for clearly constitutionally-protected speech.

“Sharing our completely legal weekend activities on Snapchat should not result in three days of in-school suspensions,” Cody Conroy, one of the two students, told Reason in an interview. (The other student was a minor at the time and is not named in the lawsuit.)

The Supreme Court has held that public schools may not arbitrarily infringe on student’s free speech rights unless the speech in question is substantively disruptive to classroom proceedings. That clearly was not the case here.

Conroy, who is now a freshman at Rutgers University, hopes the lawsuit will deter his former school district from trampling students’ rights in the future.

“My school seemed to not know what it was doing,” he said.

Teenagers should not lose their First Amendment rights when they set foot in school, and they certainly shouldn’t be punished for exercising those rights off campus. Kudos to the ACLU—which has been a little skittish about defending speech that relates to guns in the wake of Charlottesville—for taking this case.

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Democratic Senator: Assange Is “Our Property” Now

Both Democrats and Republicans celebrated the arrest of Julian Assange on Thursday. But amid the flood of praise for his arrest and detainment, which the UN has denounced as a violation of human rights, one lawmaker’s comments stood out as particularly repellent.

During an appearance on CNN, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Thursday praised UK police for apprehending Assange (nevermind that critics have blasted his arrest as a violation of national sovereignty) and said that it will “be really good to get him back on United States soil.”

To be clear, Assange is an Australian citizen, and before seeking refuge in the embassy, it’s unclear when he was last in the US. Our best guess would be this hacking conference in 2010, where he gave the keynote address.

Manchin

Joe Manchin

Nevertheless, Manchin added that Assange is now “our property. We can get the facts and the truth from him.”

One would think a Democratic senator from the south would avoid allusions to slavery. But Democrats will likely never forgive Assange for the role in played in sinking the candidacy of Hillary Clinton by publishing the DNC and Podesta leaks.

Assange has defended his actions as journalism, but US NatSec hawks have insisted that the publication of the emails was tantamount to Wikileaks working in concert with Russia.

Assange was arrested Thursday after Ecuador revoked his asylum, claiming that he had violated its terms by attacking President Lenin Moreno. He was charged with skipping bail in the UK when he initially sought asylum back in 2012. He has also been charged by the US with helping and encouraging Chelsea Manning to break into a government computer and steal classified documents.

If extradited, he will face a maximum of 5.5 years in prison.

 

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The Washington Establishment Seems Pretty Happy About Julian Assange’s Arrest

The bipartisan consensus following WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest Thursday morning was that justice is finally being served. Few, if any, politicians defended Assange or suggested that it might be wrong to prosecute him.

British police arrested Assange, who had been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London after Ecuadorian officials reportedly got tired of harboring him. Federal prosecutors in the U.S. are now trying to extradite Assange so he can face a “charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion for agreeing to break a password to a classified U.S. government computer,” according to a Department of Justice press release.

The response from elected officials in Washington, D.C., was almost universally celebratory. While President Donald Trump has yet to comment on the situation (we will update this post if he does), plenty of Republican and Democratic members of Congress praised Assange’s arrest.

“I’m glad to see the wheels of justice are finally turning when it comes to Julian Assange,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham (R–S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “In my book, he has NEVER been a hero.”

Lawmakers pointed to Assange’s involvement in leaking thousands of Democratic National Committee emails prior to the 2016 presidential election. Assange has been accused of working with the Russian government to release the messages.

“Whatever Julian Assange’s intentions were for WikiLeaks, what he’s become is a direct participant in Russian efforts to weaken the West and undermine American security,” added one of Graham’s Democratic colleagues, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia. “I hope British courts will quickly transfer him to U.S. custody so he can finally get the justice he deserves.”

It’s worth noting, as Reason‘s Nick Gillespie did Thursday morning, that there are indeed valid questions about Assange’s relationship with the Russian government. However, the charge he’s currently facing relates to WikiLeaks’ efforts to release hundreds of thousands of classified documents about the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and has nothing to do with the 2016 election. Back in 2010, prosecutors say Assange helped crack a password stored on government computers in order to access classified information.

“Julian Assange has long been a wicked tool of Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence services. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R–Neb.) wrote on Twitter.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R–Colo.), meanwhile, praised British police for taking Assange into custody and called for Assange to be extradited so he could “answer for aiding & abetting a foreign power to undermine US democracy & laws.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) put it even more bluntly. “He is our property, and we can get the facts and the truth from him,” Manchin said on CNN’s New Day.

Republican Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Richard Burr (N.C.) also criticized Assange. Cotton claimed he “endangered the lives of American troops in a time of war,” and said that “since Assange is used to living inside, I’m sure he’ll be prepared for federal prison.”

Burr, meanwhile, said Assange “engaged in a conspiracy to steal classified information, putting millions of lives at risk all over the world.”

Members of the House expressed similar sentiments. Rep. Eliot Engel (D–N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Assange “a tool of Vladimir Putin and the Russian intelligence service,” and expressed hope that he’ll be extradited to the U.S. to “finally face justice.”

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D–Fla.), referred to WikiLeaks as “a menace to American national security” and said Assange’s arrest “is an important development and a condition precedent for justice to prevail in this matter.

Perhaps just as notable as the widespread cheering of Assange’s arrest was the silence from advocates for government transparency and critics of U.S. intervention abroad.

Libertarian-leaning Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), for instance, suggested in August that Assange could be given immunity if he testified before Congress about the DNC leaks. Reason reached out to Paul’s office for comment on Assange’s arrest, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii), a 2020 presidential candidate, said in February that “the information that has been put out [by WikiLeaks] has exposed a lot of things that have been happening that the American people were not aware of and have spurred some necessary change there.” A spokesperson for Gabbard did not provide an official response to Assange’s arrest prior to publication.

Reason also reached out to the offices of Reps. Justin Amash (R–Mich.) and Thomas Massie (R–Ky.), as well as Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah). None of them provided a response.

The widespread criticism of Assange and the silence of some lawmakers highlights the bipartisan consensus that Assange is a criminal who deserves to be locked up. This perception can be dangerous because it ignores the fact that the information WikiLeaks has released, particularly in regard to America’s actions abroad, has shone a light on important secrets that regular citizens otherwise wouldn’t have known about.

It’s easy to dunk on Assange, but it’s important we remember his actions have, in fact, helped erode government secrecy and shined a bright light on the violent excesses of the American government.

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Walmart Responds To Bezos: “How About Paying Your Taxes?”

Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s EVP of Corporate Affairs, blasted Amazon during the afternoon Thursday, sharing an article on Twitter about Amazon paying nothing in federal taxes on more than $11 billion in profits it raked in during 2018. Bartlett wrote: “Hey retail competitors out there (you know who you are) how about paying your taxes?”

The jab was in response to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ letter to shareholders, where he challenged his competition to raise their minimum wage for workers.

“Today I challenge our top retail competitors (you know who you are!) to match our employee benefits and our $15 minimum wage. Do it! Better yet, go to $16 and throw the gauntlet back at us. It’s a kind of competition that will benefit everyone,” Bezos wrote.  

Walmart pays a minimum wage of $11 that it set in January of 2018 and Amazon recently hiked its minimum wage to $15 in November of 2018. However, inclusive of benefits, Walmart claims that its workers make $17.55 on average. Walmart has offered its workers perks like subsidizing education and loosening its dress code to allow staffers to wear jeans. 

Amazon received a $129 million tax rebate from the government last year in addition to not paying any Federal taxes. The tax benefits were a result of the Republican tax cuts of 2017, carryforward losses from when the company was not profitable and credits for investments in R&D and stock-based employee compensation. Walmart, in contrast, paid $3.2 billion in Federal taxes in 2018. 

Amazon had long been under fire from politicians like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren prior to hiking its minimum wage last year. Early this morning, we documented Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ challenge to Walmart. 

But we’re not sure that this is an altruistic case of Bezos looking out for the everyday Walmart worker. As we said earlier today, we’re sure Bezos would love its competitor to have even lower margins while he enjoys AWS’ 30% profits – he’s not the richest man in the world by complete accident.

However, what caught our eye most in Bezos’ letter was the irony of his claim that “much of what we build at AWS is based on listening to customers”, coming just a day after Bloomberg broke a story that Amazon employees were listening in on what customers were saying to their Alexa devices. 

You can read Bezos’ full letter to Amazon shareholders here.

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