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Tesla Shares Tumble After Company Cuts Model S, X Production

Elon Musk, and Tesla stock, are facing gale force headwinds today, so to speak.

Shortly after we reported that the SpaceX “Starship Hopper” space ship had been blown over by a 50mph gust of wind – reportedly the kind a space ship will never encounter as it enters low earth orbit – and which has since been unofficially renamed to the Starship Potemkin, moments ago TSLA stock tumbled following a Bloomberg report that, confirming the bulls worst fears, demand for the Model S and X is simply not there, and as a result the company has reduced production of the two key products:

“We recently announced that we are no longer taking orders for the 75 kWh version of Model S and X in order to streamline production and provide even more differentiation with Model 3,” Tesla said in an emailed statement. “As a result of this change and because of improving efficiencies in our production lines, we have reduced Model S and X production hours accordingly.”

As Bloomberg adds, Tesla “reduced the amount of hours it’s producing Model S sedans and Model X crossovers after getting rid of the option for customers to order the vehicles equipped with entry-level batteries, according to a spokeswoman.”

Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk announced earlier this month that Tesla would no longer take orders for the 75 kilowatt hour version of the Model S or Model X starting Jan. 14. At that time, there was at least a $15,000 difference between the 75D and 100D versions for the two models.

The news also comes just hours after we reported that Porsche has decided to double production of its “Tesla Killer” model, the Taycan.

We have a sinking suspicion that the two events are linked.

The news sent Tesla stock tumbling over 5%…

… to the lowest price since October.

Finally, adding insult to 50mph wind gusts, RBC this morning downgrading TSLA to Underperform, with a new price target of $245 down from $290 previously, with analyst Joseph Spak noting that “the company seems to be more tactful with messaging which is a long-term positive, but means downward pressure to growth expectations – which in our view are too high to justify current levels, let alone to add to positions.“

In light of the company’s press announcement, Spak was spot on.

Here are the other key highlights from today’s RBC note:

  • For years, Tesla sold the dream of transportation disruption and fantastic growth. This served the stock well turning Tesla into a top 6 (at times top 3) valuable auto OEM despite delivering a fraction of units of others and nary a profit. A stock should of course discount future cash flows and the market took the promises of Tesla and their future growth potential to justify lofty valuations while Tesla took capital needed to support their endeavors.
  • But the rubber appears to be hitting the road as the realities of Tesla becoming a volume player, the challenges to scale and deliver high volume at high ASPs/margins are coming to a head.
  • Whether its cutting the price of their lineup by $2k/unit, admission the federal tax credit expiring will hurt, acknowledgment that Tesla can’t sell at $35k Model 3 profitably and costs need to come down, or language around full-self driving – we’d classify recent commentary and actions by the company as more realistic. This is likely to cause a review of model assumptions leading to negative expectation revisions.
  • A review of potential supply capacity and demand raises concern. On supply, we believe a reasonable max Model 3 production range for Tesla 260-312k. On demand, the $2k price cut and talk about having to lower cost further as federal tax incentives subside confirms our view that the bulk of demand is at a lower price point that Tesla can’t access yet profitably. Consensus is expecting 300k M3 deliveries, so near all out. RBC at 260k deliveries. A review of 2021 potential expanded capacity and expected deliveries also reveals a rosy scenario. At the end of the day, Tesla is trying to manage luxury profitability levels towards volume units. We believe this will prove difficult. Stronger unit growth assumptions require lower ASPs/margins assumptions (and likely more capital).
  • Given 2019 deliveries are likely to be close to 4Q18 run-rate, but with a price/mix headwind, 3Q18 may have been peak profitability  this decade.
  • It’s not that we don’t believe Tesla can grow over time, our model shows solid LT growth. But the current valuation already considers overly lofty expectations. For instance, let’s assume 1mm units @$55k ASP, 12% EBIT margins, no interest/equity raise all by 2025. This is undoubtedly solid earnings, but at a more “mature” 15x P/E, the discounted back value is ~$195, meaning even in an optimistic case at least 1/3rd of today’s price is an “Elon premium”.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2S7FdO0 Tyler Durden

Trump Tells Pelosi He Will Deliver State Of The Union Speech As Planned

President Trump has rebuffed Speaker Pelosi’s politically-charged threat to delay his speech due to the shutdown, saying in a letter that he plans to deliver the State of the Union Address at the House chamber as planned on Tuesday as scheduled.

Pelosi had suggested Trump consider delaying the speech if the shutdown continued, citing security concerns because Secret Service agents and Department of Homeland Security staff aren’t being paid during the shutdown.

However, both have reassured Trump that security will not be a problem and so he sent the following letter to the California Democrat:

Dear Madam Speaker:

Thank you for your letter of January 3, 2019, sent to me long after the Shutdown began, inviting me to address the Nation on January 29th as to the State of the Union.

As you know, I had already accepted your kind invitation, however, I then received another letter from you dated January 16, 2019, wherein you expressed concerns regarding security during the State of the Union Address due to the Shutdown. Even prior to asking, I was contacted by the Department of Homeland Security and the United States Secret Service to explain that there would be absolutely no problem regarding security with respect to the event. They have since confirmed this publicly.

Accordingly, there are no security concerns regarding the State of the Union Address. Therefore, I will be honoring your invitation, and fulfilling my Constitutional duty, to deliver important information to the people and Congress of the United States of America regarding the State of our Union.

I look forward to seeing you on the evening on January 29th in the Chamber of the House of Representatives. It would be so very sad for our Country if the State of the Union were not delivered on time, on schedule, and very importantly, on location!

So what will Nancy do next?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2R9lZD2 Tyler Durden

Arizona Legislator Wanted To Tax Online Porn To Pay for Border Wall

Last week, while so many of us were obsessively parsing images of a confrontation between a Native American elder and a Kentucky high school junior like David Hemmings losing his mind in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up, way out west another form of insanity was brewing, one that shifted the discussion from race to another classic American dilemma: sex.

An Arizona state legislator introduced a bill that would have required all new devices that connect to the internet to proactively block access to porn sites. Arizonans who wanted to watch dirty videos or view images online of, among other things, “HUMAN MALE GENITALS IN A DISCERNIBLY TURGID STATE” and “LESS THAN COMPLETELY AND OPAQUELY COVERED HUMAN GENITALS, PUBIC REGION, BUTTOCK, OR FEMALE BREAST BELOW A POINT IMMEDIATELY ABOVE THE TOP OF THE AREOLA” would have had to pay a fee of at least $20 to remove the blocking software.

That was what HB 2444, introduced by Republican Rep. Gail Griffin (R-Hereford), was all about.

Under the legislation, distributors and retailers of computers, phones, tablets, and other devices would have been responsible for certifying that the software was in place and for collecting fees. The money thus raised would have gone into “The John McCain Human Trafficking and Child Exploitation Fund,” whose chief purpose, oddly enough, would have been to pay for a border wall between Arizona and Mexico. The fund would have also paid for programs to “prevent and protect victims of human trafficking, domestic violence, prostitution, divorce, child abuse and sexual assault.” And yes, of course, some of the money would have “assist[ed] school districts.”

The proposed legislation was, according to one free speech activist, “pretty clearly unconstitutional,” but not uncommon. “Similar bills have been proposed in recent years in Virginia, Kentucky, Alabama, Utah, Rhode Island and South Carolina,” according to the AZ Mirror, but the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says that “more than 15 state legislatures” have considered similar laws in recent memory. Arizona’s is the only one to date that has tied blocking porn to funding a border wall rather than solely concerns about prostitution, sexual assault, and the like.

The good news? Griffin pulled the bill after just a few days, telling the press, “The language was submitted by a constituent, it’s not going anywhere so there’s no story there.” At least for time being, Arizonans don’t have to worry about their porn being taxed.

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Dems Agree To $5.7 Billion For Border Security… But No Wall

So, presumably, they are negotiating now?

Having whined and complained that President Trump was not playing fair with his so-called “one-sided” offer over the weekend, Politico reports that House Democrats are preparing a counteroffer to President Donald Trump’s border security proposal.

Democratic leaders have drafted their own plan to reopen the Department of Homeland Security that boosts border security funding by more than the $5.7 billion, according to Bloomberg but, according to multiple Democratic lawmakers and aides, won’t include any additional money for Trump’s “wall” focusing instead on new technology and more staff to stem the flow of illegal drugs through ports of entry.

Politico reports that Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Calif.), chair of the Appropriations subcommittee that funds DHS, spent the weekend working on a bill that will “reflect the consensus of House Democrats,” one aide said.

“We are hoping to roll that out this week,”

“That it will be setting forth a path forward out of this, and building on what we have been trying to put forward.”

Of course, the bill stands little chance of becoming law in the face of likely GOP opposition, but is seen as “something to work with” in negotiations with the White House.

Given President Trump’s tweets from earlier:

…we suspect this Democrat offer will be met with an angry tweet or two and not move the ball forward at all on the longest government shutdown ever.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2DuSB6O Tyler Durden

Elon Musk’s Cartoonish Spaceship Blown Over By A Gust Of Wind

Elon Musk’s latest widely covered SpaceX venture – a spaceship that the company envisions could take 100 passengers at a time to and from the moon and Mars – a ship that is supposed to compete with Boeing, Lockheed Martin and NASA’s Space Launch System… has run into a slight bit of technical difficulty. It was blown over by the wind. 

The cartoonish design of the Starship Hopper, plastered around social media over the last couple of weeks and Tweeted out by Elon Musk himself, has been something of a talking point. Musk posted this image of the completed spaceship weeks ago.

According to Space.com, the company had been “on target” for test “hopping” flights using the prototype:

The construction milestone seems to keep SpaceX on target to begin short “hopping” flights with the prototype vehicle soon. Musk said earlier this week that SpaceX aims to start such trial runs, which will take place at the Texas site near Brownsville, in the next four to eight weeks.

These flights will be similar to those that SpaceX performed in 2012 and 2013 with its Grasshopper test vehicle, Musk added in another tweet Thursday night. The Grasshopper runs, which helped SpaceX get ready to land and re-fly Falcon 9 rocket first stages, reached a maximum altitude of about 2,500 feet (700 meters). 

According to Musk, he had recently switched the material for the Starship Hopper from carbon fibre to stainless steel. Why? Because it was cheaper. In an interview with Popular Mechanics, Musk also mentioned that it was “actually the lightest” material he could have used.

“The design of Starship and the Super Heavy rocket booster I changed to a special alloy of stainless steel. I was contemplating this for a while. And this is somewhat counterintuitive. It took me quite a bit of effort to convince the team to go in this direction. But now I believe they are convinced—well, they are convinced. We were pursuing an advanced carbon-fiber structure, but it was very slow progress, and the cost per kilogram of $135,” Musk stated when asked why he switched.

He followed up by saying: “The thing that’s counterintuitive about the stainless steel is, it’s obviously cheap, it’s obviously fast—but it’s not obviously the lightest. But it is actually the lightest. If you look at the properties of a high-quality stainless steel, the thing that isn’t obvious is that at cryogenic temperatures, the strength is boosted by 50 percent.”

Well, carbon-fiber is indeed light. And in the case of a spaceship that, one would expect, can resist a gust of wind, perhaps too light. Presenting Exhibit A.

Naturally, social media has been having a blast reacting to the news that what is supposed to be the world’s most advanced space ship was blown over by the wind.

If SpaceX was able to test its Starhopper quickly enough, there would be mounting pressure on similar projects by NASA, that are over budget and behind schedule. But unfortunately, who could have predicted a set back like, oh we don’t know, wind?

Good luck with that next round of financing, Elon. Just remind your investors there’s no wind in space.

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

Bill Bonner: Is AOC A Danger To The Nation?

Authored by Bill Bonner via InternationalMan.com,

A big, new danger appeared in Congress this month: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the newest representative of New York’s 14th district.

At 29, she is the youngest woman ever elected to Congress; she will doubtless be there for decades to come.

Eighteen months ago, she was working as a waitress. Then, even though her opponent outspent her 15-to-1, she won the race to sit in the House of Representatives.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has a pleasant look about her. We’d probably like her if we met her. But she is clearly a danger to herself, her constituents, and to the nation.

When the mainstream flim-flam financial policies fail, people look for scapegoats and solutions on the edges.

Now, they turn their sore eyes to New York’s 14th district, where Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has been elected to Congress. The product of the Puerto Rican Enlightenment, she believes there is no problem that a government program can’t solve.

Got healthcare issues? She would offer Medicare for All.

Need a job? She proposes a Job Guarantee.

Want to go to college? Get ready for Tuition-free College.

Worried about global warming? How about a large-scale “green infrastructure” program?

Wait a minute… You’re probably wondering, how can we afford all these things?

Well, in a few months, we won’t worry about such problems… not with the economy melting down.

Besides, the new Congresswoman from Queens has a solution: Tax the Rich! Squeeze them until the pips squeak!

Yes, it’s a “Green New Deal,” she calls it. And a cornerstone of it is the idea of raising income taxes on the super-rich to 70%.

It might only apply to people who earn more than $10 million a year, so most people would be for it.

Still, most sober observers dismiss the idea. “It will never pass,” they say. “It’s crazy… It’s absurd… It will harm the economy…”

But crazy plans that hurt the economy have a way of becoming the law of the land. Especially when the laws of the land are already crazy and absurd.

And when the existing laws of the land cause bankruptcy and chaos, people look for crazier, more absurd ones.

That’s how the first New Deal got put into practice. In the panic and despair of the 1932 elections, people were ready for a change. Franklin D. Roosevelt offered to shuffle the deck. And when in office, he pulled a few aces out from his sleeve and put into place a series of costly programs.

Our guess is that the next crisis will be severe and long-lasting, too. Stocks will fall hard. The economy will go into recession.

The Trump Team will pull out all the stops to make it go away (that is, it will spend beaucoup money it doesn’t have). The Fed will push rates into negative territory and buy up stocks as well as bonds.

But come the elections of 2020, the U.S. economy will be deep into stagflation – with rising prices (caused by runaway federal disaster spending) and little, or negative, growth (caused by the huge overhang of debt left over from previous bailouts and stimulus programs).

By 2020, people will be getting pretty tired of it. Donald Trump says it is “his economy” and “his stock market;” so he and his fellow Republicans will take the blame when “his disaster” doesn’t go away.

And the rich – who gained so much from the crackpot fake money system – will be held to blame, too.

Economists will point out that raising marginal rates on the rich to 70% will backfire, producing less income, not more.

But the masses won’t care; they will be eager to punish the rich, not just exploit them.

Radical Democrats

No one will have time to sit through our explanation of what went wrong… and how the Fed mismanaged the economy… and how the fake money system was doomed to fail… and why a boom founded on fake-money credit was bound to explode into a monetary/economic meltdown.

Nope… Instead, they will want simple-minded solutions. And Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and her fellow progressives will have them. Free tuition! Free medical care! Jobs for everyone!

Her programs may seem lame and loopy today, but they’ll be a hit – we predict – in the future. With the Republicans discredited by the financial disaster, radical Democrats will be elected all over the country.

And then, the intellectuals will explain why their programs “make sense.” In fact, they’re already on the case.

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner, says that “far from showing her craziness, [Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s tax proposal] is in line with serious economic research.”

Celebrity economists Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez say the “optimal” rate is more like 73%, while Christina and David Romer put it at 84%!

Besides… it will “help alleviate inequality.” It will “help stimulate the economy.” It will “help avoid social tensions.”

Yes, gentle reader, as goofy and fumbling as federal policies are today… they could get even worse.

As far as we know, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was a competent server. Which is too bad; the nation lost a decent waitress and gained what it least needed: another delusional, incompetent, and menacing member of Congress.

*  *  *

Clearly, there are many strange things afoot in the world. Distortions of markets, distortions of culture. It’s wise to wonder what’s going to happen, and to take advantage of growth while also being prepared for crisis. How will you protect yourself in the next crisis? See our PDF guide that will show you exactly how. Click here to download it now.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Dtekw7 Tyler Durden

Crime Did Fall, So We Don’t Need a Wall

President Donald Trump this morning on Twitter hit at his typical theme that his pet border wall is vital to fighting crime and protecting national security. Can you spot the flaw with this argument?

We blog about crime stats enough here at Reason that this is an easy one: Crime has been going down steadily (with a few recent bumps) since the 1990s. Here’s a nice handy selection of charts from Pew Research Center showing the actual truth:

Crime stats

If crime has been going down steadily throughout much of America without this wall, isn’t that evidence we actually don’t need it? Or evidence that whatever influences crime rates, it’s most certainly not illegal immigration numbers? The illegal immigration population in America actually increased as the crime rate was dropping (now both crime rates and illegal immigration numbers are dropping slightly):

Illegal immigrant numbers

Trump is both a reflection of and a contributing factor to a common attitude among Americans: People think there’s much more crime than there actually is. In polling, huge numbers of Americans—we’re talking more than 50 percent of those who were polled—believe that crime is up over previous years’ numbers even when the exact opposite is true:

Crime polling

So, in that sense, Trump’s tweets are wildly out of step with the facts, yet also likely compelling to a certain number of Americans, and that’s frustrating. He’s far from the first politician who uses fear as a way of selling bad policy prescriptions, and he won’t be the last. But he’s also completely and utterly wrong about crime and what’s causing it.

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Bridgewater Co-CIO: It Will Be Worse Than Everyone Expects

One day after Bridgewater founder and billionaire Ray Dalio told a Davos panel that the “one thing that scares him the most”  is that during the next downturn in global growth, which will hit both markets and the economy, central banks will have virtually no ammo to spark another rebound, Dalio’s top lieutenant, Greg Jensen, who is co-chief investment officer of the world’s biggest hedge fund (excluding various central banks, of course) said “he sees a more negative outlook for growth than the markets and policy makers.”

“While people have certainly diminished their growth expectations and you’re hearing all about that at Davos, we don’t think they’ve done it enough,” he told Bloomberg TV during an interview from the World Economic Forum, effectively warning that the coming drop will be worse than (virtually) everyone expects. Echoing concerns first voiced by Morgan Stanley’s Mike Wilson, Jensen said that “earnings expectations particularly in the U.S. are too high, and generally the Fed and other policy makers are still expecting stronger growth than we see.”

As a result of what may soon be an earnings recession, Jensen said that he expects to see lower interests rates, particularly on the short-end of the Treasury curve, or in other words, he expects the Fed to make monetary easing great again; he also warned that regions that have priced in high growth expectations will be hurt the most, and no region has priced in more “growth” than the US, with the decoupling between US stocks and the rest of the world now absolutely historic.

And while Bridgewater is clearly bearish on developed markets such as the US, he said that some emerging markets that have already suffered from the U.S.’s tighter monetary policy will benefit as policy makers resume easing, he said.

Curiously, Jensen does not thing the next big market swoon will emerge in the US; instead he said European markets will be the first test as the region is “starting from a worse level in terms of the economy, lower inflation – close to deflation in many places – and already have negative interest rates” adding that “their movement will be kind of a leading indicator because they’re going to struggle more with easing” than the U.S. or China, which have “more tools available to them.”

One of the reasons why Bridgwater did so well in 2018, when its Pure Alpha fund returned 12%, is because the fund apparently turned bearish just ahead of the December swoon (and about a year after Dalio said that “If you’re holding cash, you’re going to feel pretty stupid”). Last December, Jensen said growth in 2019 would be near recession levels at about 1 percent in the U.S., and slightly lower for the rest of the developed world; ironically, and in a stark U-turn to what Dalio said one year ago today, Jensen said “cash continues as a viable alternative to U.S. stocks and bonds.”

As we reported yesterday, on Tuesday Ray Dalio criticized monetary policy makers for an “inappropriate desire” to tighten monetary policy faster than the capital markets could handle, but expressed hope that they were now looking to shift more slowly. And while it remains to be seen whether the Fed’s rate hiking process is now over, one look at the risk-parity funds’ exposure to stocks…

…. reveals that while CTAs, algos and short covering may have sent stocks sharply higher in the past month, the world’s biggest hedge fund will have none of it.

Jensen’s Bloomberg TV interview is below.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Du7QNu Tyler Durden

John McAfee Takes to the Seas, Fleeing a Feared Indictment; Intends to Pursue his Libertarian Presidential Race Via Masked Surrogates

John McAfee, the cybersecurity founding father, subject of a forthcoming feature film starring Michael Keaton about his adventures in Belize (which ended with him suspected of murdering a neighbor), and international adventurer (and consensual whale sex advocate) has announced his intention for a second run for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination. In 2016, he came in third with 14 percent of the delegate votes at the Libertarian National Convention on the first ballot.

In a phone interview yesterday, from what he told me were international waters after having visiting a U.S. consulate in the Bahamas, McAfee announced his campaign will be run in exile. He’s currently living on a boat, and expects he might be for the foreseeable future.

He’s certain a federal grand jury out of Tennessee has convened that will likely indict him for charges related to income taxes and cybercurrency. “I’ve known it’s coming for well over a year,” he says. “There are no secrets in the world; how ridiculous to think a grand jury is secret? If more than one person knows something, it’s not a secret. I’ve been preparing to get out of town well ahead of the IRS collecting me.”

McAfee insists he, his wife Janice, and four unnamed associates will be indicted by a grand jury, an institution he considers barbaric and finds curious that only the U.S. and Liberia still use (though many argue that at least a jury of peers, even if highly manipulable by prosecutors, is better than just allowing state prosecutors to directly indict).

McAfee is cagey about how often and where he might have to hit land in his oceanic exile. “The nice thing about a large boat is we can cruise anywhere, and pull in anywhere. We are flexible; the IRS is not. We are quick; the IRS is slow. We are well ahead of the curve, and the IRS are well behind it.” He believes his recent run as a promoter of cybercurrency, which promises to limit the government’s ability to identify and take our assets, has marked him for punishment.

But his campaign for the L.P. nomination will do just fine; he intends to have an army composed of what he says are over four thousand volunteers appear in McAfee masks on “street corners, in parks, amusement parks, hotel lobbies” around America at the same time “once a month or more frequently” and deliver messages direct from him.

“I will say, ‘clone in New York, turn on the camera’ and I will look at someone and answer questions, then move to someone in L.A.” He expects to send such masked spokespeople to conference and candidate debates as well. He’ll instruct his surrogates via smartphone as to what to say and where to turn and whose hand to shake.

He has nothing he wants to say about any potential opponents, either within the L.P. or outside it. “I’m not running against anyone, please,” he says. “I’m standing here talking about life in America as I experience it, and that’s all” his campaign is about. “I have nothing positive or negative to say about Trump, Hillary, [or any other] what’s his name nobody [who might be his opponent in the Libertarian race]. Who gives a shit? I’m 73 years old, I may have seen something at a level of subtlety maybe you have not seen.”

He fervently hopes the party and its voters will not think less of him or punish him if he can’t actually show up to campaign at any convention or event on U.S. soil while he’s on the lam, to accept his surrogates and “not expect me to risk absolute and certain arrest by forcing me to show up at debates.”

Does he think being a (so far self-created) fugitive might be a plus to a Libertarian audience? “Is it not?” he snaps back. “Aren’t we supposed to be standing up and risking things, putting ourselves on the fucking line” for freedom? “Well I’m doing it. Please God give me credit for that.”

His campaign web page winningly admits that “since our insane government keeps massive secrets from us and is masterful at disinformation, there is not a single National issue that we know the true state of….So do not ask me about immigration, foreign relations, education etc. I have no idea. Those claiming that they do are lying to themselves, or if not, they are purposely lying to you.”

He expanded on that point, after complaining that a U.S. consulate official in the Bahamas he just visited refused to even give McAfee his full name. “The bigger problem is we don’t have a clue what our government is doing,” he says. “Government keeps all these secrets while it gets all this information from us. How the fuck do I solve a problem I don’t know the truth about? We have to solve that problem first.”

“Let’s not even talk about the Middle East. Do you speak Farsi? Neither do I. Do you understand the nuts and bolts and nuances of their religion, culture, history, political alliances? No. Yet you want me to solve their problems? Fuck that. Don’t even ask me that question. It’s rude.”

McAfee seems aware this sort of talk isn’t election-winning, and he wants you to know he knows and that it doesn’t matter. “Libertarians are not going to get elected this year, maybe forever, and if we pretend we are we are fools in the eyes of those whose support we are trying to get. Questions like ‘what are you going to do your first day in office?'” asked of Libertarian candidates in public shouldn’t be answered seriously, he insists. “It makes me vomit. Serious people are watching us here. Please, God, get real with yourself.”

He’s running not for fun but, as he told me last time as well, out of a sense of duty toward America and the future. “I didn’t want to run. I don’t. But I do what I have to do. Good God, I have children and grandchildren and I have to do something, do I not? This time if I can stay ahead of the long arm of U.S. injustice, I will be able to say the truth. Please, God, wake up! I will tell you about government as I see it. My God, what has happened? America is not here anymore. I need to bring it back.”

While at one time he was reputed to have a fortune of over $100 million, at this point he merely says “certainly for the next month I’m not going to starve” and that he anticipates that some sort of defense fund might be set up for him; “I have enough firm believers I don’t think people will let me starve.”

Videos from his boat featuring McAfee discussing many of these matters can be found on his Twitter feed. In the latest from last night, he says he is reading comments from others about how they have “never seen anyone livecast their evasion of U.S. authorities before. Why not? I have nothing to hide. With one exception: Me, the person, this body, and hiding it from those who want to collect it.”

Elsewhere at Reason: McAfee on his inevitable victory in 2016, on realizing it might not be inevitable, and a feature profile on his fight for the nomination against Austin Petersen and winner Gary Johnson.

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A Man Will Take $1.25 Million Home After Police Tackled Him for Allegedly Stealing His Own Car

|||Screenshot via YouTube/Chicago Sun-TimesIn 2015, 25-year-old Lawrence Crosby was pursuing his engineering doctoral degree at Northwestern University. The young black man never could have predicted that in October of that year, police in his college town would use excessive force to arrest him under the suspicion that he was stealing his own car. A little more than three years after the ordeal, Crosby is set to see compensation from the city of Evanston, Illinois, on behalf of their error.

Evanston City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz confirmed that the city reached a settlement following the use of excessive force in the arrest of Crosby. Crosby’s lawyers also confirmed the settlement and told reporters that the city agreed upon $1.25 million. The city council is set to give final approval for the amount during an upcoming meeting on January 28.

Crosby was arrested in 2015 after a woman saw him entering his vehicle in the Chicago suburb. She called 911 and told dispatch, “somebody’s trying to break into a car,” after passing him on the street. Dashcam footage, which was released in 2017 following a third-party Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, showed Crosby exiting his vehicle with his hands high in the air. Officers prompted Crosby to get on the ground. When he hesitated, at least five officers swooped in to knee, tackle, and punch him while shouting, “Stop resisting.” Crosby is heard saying, “I’m cooperating,” while the officers pile on top of him. He was then arrested and later charged with disobedience to police.

The charges were eventually dismissed by a judge and, in 2016, Crosby filed a suit against the city for making a false arrest and using excessive force.

“Every time I see the video from that October 2015 encounter, I experience fear, anger and terror. Fear that the color of my skin will make me out to be a criminal when I have broken no laws. Anger at the blatant disregard for human life and rights that the Constitution is supposed to guarantee to all citizens,” Crosby wrote in the Chicago Tribune last year.

Both city and university police have since implemented body camera programs. A study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used traffic data to determine that in 2014, Evanston police were seven times more likely to search a black driver during a traffic stop than a white driver.

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