Author: admin

Authored by Joe Jarvis via The Daily Bell,

Government creates a problem. Government becomes more authoritarian to solve that problem. This creates more problems. Government becomes even more authoritarian…

This is basically the story of the war on drugs, the oppression of teens, the wars in the middle east, every bubble, burst, and bailout, ad infinitum.

Where the government intervenes, you can be sure that bigger problems will spring forth.

Like the Hydra of Greek Mythology, two more serpent heads sprout each time one is severed.

Denmark Considers Draconian Measures to Assimilate Immigrants

European countries have been quite liberal in accepting immigrants from the middle-east. In itself, this is not a problem. But the countries also liberally dole out public benefits, costing taxpayers ballooning sums to support the new population.

But now many countries want to attach strings after the fact.

Denmark has proposed new rules that could land immigrant parents in prison if they take their children on extended vacations to their homeland which interfere with schooling. The legislation leaves “extended” open to interpretation.

Other rules require children from any of 25 identified “ghettos” to attend 30 hours of daycare per week until age six. Parents will lose welfare benefits if their kids miss too much school.

Another rule would make penalties for the same crime in certain areas. So if you shoplift in a predominantly Danish area of a city, you might get a fine, while a shoplifter from a predominantly Muslim area could get jail time.

All of this is an attempt to integrate new immigrants. It is a backlash from vastly different cultures clashing.

But why would the government of Denmark think forced integration would produce the desired results? It seems more likely to produce a counter-backlash from immigrants who resent having different rules than the Danes.

Immigration wouldn’t be such an issue if it weren’t for governments’ collectivist policies. We are artificially grouped together by governments when we live within particular borders. So then suddenly we have a common interest with people who might share none of the same goals and values.

This obviously creates problems. But the problem is not the immigrants. The problem is that the government wants one cohesive block of citizens to govern.

And that the government redistributes money from one group to another… And that the government fails to protect citizens from violent criminals while preventing citizens from protecting themselves!

Private property solves these problems. It means people can make rules that apply to their own land. For businesses, this means allowing the market to dictate what rules customers are willing to put up with. For individuals, it may mean grouping with other like-minded people to live in a neighborhood which matches your wants and needs.

This is what happened with many past waves of immigrants to the United States. Many Italians, Irish, Chinese, and Cubans settled in particular areas. These areas were not integrated by force, but a couple of generations smooths out most differences.

Ohio Wants to Force Teachers to Out Trans Kids

I’ve made my opinion clear: allowing kids to get sex changes or take body altering hormones is child abuse.

Advocates intentionally confuse the difference between gender and sex. They say gender is a social construct, and then they attempt to alter biological sex. That is not possible at this stage. You cannot change the chromosomes in your DNA which determine sex.

However, lawmakers in Ohio reacted to this movement with absurdly authoritarian legislation.

They want to threaten teachers with prison if they don’t immediate out trans kids to their parents.

The law says that if a public educator finds out that a student identifies as transgender, they must tell the parents in writing at the earliest possible opportunity.

If a teacher fails to disclose this sensitive piece of information, they can be charged with a felony.

This is completely over the top.

The bill is aimed at preventing teachers, social workers, and other government workers from delivering slanted or harmful “treatment” for gender dysphoria.

This is understandable. I certainly wouldn’t want the public education system filling my kid’s head with anti-science propaganda about gender and sex.

But even being a supportive listening ear can get a public employee in trouble if they don’t rat out the kid to the parent. “Treatments” also include literature about the disorder.

But none of this would be an issue without public education. This wouldn’t be an issue if governments were not promoting the lie that you can choose and alter your sex (as opposed to gender).

And it certainly wouldn’t be a problem if parents were not threatened by the state for refusing to allow life-altering surgery and medications for their trans children.

And that is what is aggravating about the draconian aspects of the law. Otherwise, it makes sense. The law seeks to “prohibit a court from using a parent, guardian, or custodian’s refusal to allow a child to undergo gender-based treatment as a basis for determining custody of the child.”

Basically, you can’t have your kids taken away for refusing to allow them to mutilate their bodies with surgery and chemicals.

But forcing teachers and guidance councilors to rat out any transgender kids to their parents, regardless is of the consequences, is too much. They’ve gone beyond rational, and are making inaction a crime.

But this is the type of friction inherent in anything that involves government. When you force people to fund an education system and force parents to send their kids, you get legislative reactions like these.

The Solution

These problems stem from shared resources like public land, public schools, and government welfare.

First, the government says it will solve a problem with government funds. But that means everyone gets a say. Well everyone isn’t going to agree!

Better to allow individuals to allocate their own resources. That way individuals choose what issues they will have a say in.

Send your kid to a school that matches your ideas about gender and sex.

Live in neighborhoods that match your idea of community.

Patronize businesses you agree with. Deal with customers you like.

Make the rules for your own private property, and take your protection into your own hands. Decide what kind of charity you will support.

Of course, the government makes it difficult to do all this. But that doesn’t mean it is impossible. You have more power today than individuals ever have.

You don’t have to play by the rules of the corrupt politicians, manipulative media, and brainwashed peers.

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Polls are closing in Ohio’s special House election on Tuesday as voters in the 12th district choose a replacement for Representative Pat Tiberi, a Republican who resigned in order to go into private industry.

President Trump has gone all-in for Troy Balderson – appearing at a Saturday rally to drum up support for the Republican candidate – reiterating his support in a subsequent tweet and claiming that his opponent, Democrat Danny O’Connor would be “a total puppet for Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters.”

…Danny O’Connor is a total puppet for Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters – Danny wants to raise your taxes, open your borders, and take away your 2nd Amendment. Vote for Troy on Tuesday!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 5, 2018

As such, the 12th district race – expected to be tight, will be used by some to gauge whether Republicans will ride a “Red Wave” this fall as Trump has predicted, or if the much talked about “blue wave” will give Democrats back their power in one or both chambers of Congress. 

The race shouldn’t be this close: Trump won the suburban district in 2016 by 11 points. And the seat, previously held by retired Rep. Pat Tiberi (R), has been held by Republicans since 1980.
 
But Trump’s popularity is stuck in the mid-40s nationally, giving hope to Democrats they can win the Ohio seat. Democrats need to pick up 23 seats to take over the House in November.
 
The Ohio race has therefore become a key part of Trump’s appeal, and turned into a must-win for Republicans who are seeking to tie O’Connor to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). –The Hill

A few considerations: 

• Democrats typically dominate early voting, so the first results are likely to favor O’Connor

Democrats got an early advantage by sending out their “request for absentee ballot” forms earlier than Republicans, and the hard work paid off: As of Thursday, 12,579 Democrats in the district had requested early ballots, with 10,565 actually returning them. By contrast, 11,398 Republicans had requested ballots, while 7,757 had returned them.

Through Friday, 55 percent of the early votes had come from registered Democrats in Franklin, Delaware and Licking counties — which contain about four-fifths of the 12th District’s population — compared with 30 percent from Republicans, according to figures compiled by election statistics guru Mike Dawson. Compare that to a Republican advantage of 35 percent to 26 percent in the November 2016 vote, and the Democratic turnaround is obvious. –WHIOTV7

–Don’t even think about the OH12 early vote tonight. It’s going to be wild for O’Connor, and it’s not remotely representative
–A benchmark: if this is like prior specials, turnout would be appx 220k and Franklin Co. will be appx 34% of the electorate. Will be fun to compare

— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) August 7, 2018

• Crappy timing; the Ohio election is being held in the dead of summer, the week before school begins in much of the state. It’s a “lousy” time to hold an election, according to one GOP operative, WHIOTV reports, as it’s also a key week for vacations. 

• Delaware County is key – while Republicans concede that O’Connor will most likely win Franklin County – the “X-Factor” is Delaware County, which is a large reason Trump visited there on Saturday. 

The county supported Trump over Democrat Hillary Clinton by 15 points in 2016. But while that seems a solid lead, it was narrower than in most other counties in Ohio. The county is also heavily populated by a more business-friendly, moderate breed of Republican than the populist Trump. –WHIOTV7

• A Balderson win means that the Republican establishment – Trump supporters and never-Trumpers alike, came together to defend a long-held GOP district. A loss will not look good for the “red wave.” 

“The 12th is the canary in the coal mine for Republicans,” said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron. “And if the canary dies, I think many Republican Congress people are going to be looking for jobs.” –WHIOTV7

 

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Authored by Nigel Farage, op-ed via FoxNews.com,

The big tech giants are moving fast against the political right, the libertarian radicals, and those walking away from the Democrat Party in the United States. The same applies in my country, the United Kingdom, too.

Over the weekend we saw Candace Owens, a strong, young, black woman suspended from Twitter for daring to point out the allegedly algorithmic hypocrisy of Twitter by replacing the word “white” with “Jewish” in a series of tweets modeled on those by New York Times editor Sarah Jeong.

While the social media giant quickly backtracked, the same cannot be said for its treatment of right-wingers or globalist opponents in other regards.

Recently we discovered that activists, politicians, and even political party leaders were being shadow banned by Twitter — meaning that their accounts or their tweets were not immediately searchable, unlike those of their left-wing counterparts.

Twitter’s response to the allegation was the bizarre statement: “People are asking us if we shadow ban. We do not…” followed by: “You are always able to see the tweets from accounts you follow (although you may have to do more work to find them, like go directly to their profile).”

If that’s not shadow banning, I don’t know what is.

Are we going to stand idly by as friends, allies, or even political enemies have their speech curtailed or their lives threatened by these modern publishers? Or are we going to demand that they can only have it one way or another?

And while many on the libertarian right and within the conservative movement have their issues with Alex Jones and InfoWars, this week’s announcement by YouTube, Facebook, Apple, and Spotify represents a concerted effort of proscription and censorship that could just as soon see any of us confined to the dustbin of social media history.

These platforms that claim to be “open” and in favor of “free speech” are now routinely targeting — whether by human intervention or not — the views and expressions of conservatives and anti-globalists.

This is why they no longer even fit the bill of “platforms.” They are publishers in the same way we regard news outlets as publishers. They may use more machine learning and automation, but their systems clearly take editorial positions. We need to hold them to account in the same way we do any other publisher. 

Just as you cannot libel someone on the pages of the Wall Street Journal, if the Silicon Valley cartel wants to act like a publisher, they should have to assume the same burden.

If someone — anyone — publicly defames me on Twitter, why isn’t Twitter accountable for publishing damaging untruths?

If the glorification of terrorism, or calls to violence are spread on Facebook or YouTube — perhaps we need to ensure they, as any book publisher would be for instance, are liable for such content? 

After all, in banning people like Jones, or even more farcically, Candace Owens, aren’t these new media publishers trying to tell us that they can, do, and will take firm action against this sort of thing? Unless they’re admitting it is mercurial, or that there may be double standards at play, then we should expect no less of Antifa-linked accounts, or ISIS-linked accounts, or even accounts belonging to left-wing activists (who often masquerade as journalists) who routinely libel public figures on the right, or worse, cause them to be harassed and attacked. 

The conversation surrounding whether or not these utilities are “private companies who can make their own decisions” is becoming irrelevant as they tighten their stranglehold on public discourse.

The most avowed First Amendment, free speech defenders must surely be on the side of those — like me — who believe it is not within the gift of corporations to decide what is acceptable speech or not, especially when they harvest and sell data about all of us en masse as the underlying business model.

This is no longer up to them. It is up to us. Are we going to stand idly by as friends, allies, or even political enemies have their speech curtailed or their lives threatened by these modern publishers? Or are we going to demand that they can only have it one way or another?

That they cannot profess to be neutral, open platforms while being illiberal, dictatorial, and hiding behind the visage of a private corporation (which are more often than not in bed with governments around the world at the very highest levels). 

This isn’t capitalism. It’s corporatism.

This isn’t “liberal democracy” as they keep pretending.

It’s autocracy. 

That’s why I believe we urgently need to prosecute this issue in the public square and campaign for a social media bill of rights in our respective countries. And for those that don’t take issue with the latest censorship of right-wingers by big social media — unless we take a stand now, who knows where it could end.

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Following revalations from Politico that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) employed a Chinese spy for 20 years – identified as her driver by the San Francisco Chronicle in a subsequent article and filed under “no big deal” by the MSM, the Daily Caller‘s Peter Hassan has a new theory; descriptions fit longtime aide and former Feinstein office director, Russell Lowe. 

All the details of a former, longtime Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer who’s accused of relaying information to Chinese intelligence services while working for the California Democrat point to Russell Lowe, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has determined.

Lowe worked for 20 years in Feinstein’s San Francisco office, where he was a staff liaison to the Asian-American community before leaving approximately five years ago. All those details match up with the descriptions of the Chinese spy Feinstein reportedly employed. –Daily Caller

“Chinese intelligence once recruited a staff member at a California office of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, and the source reported back to China about local politics,” reported Politico on July 27, which described the staffer as “a liaison to the local Chinese community” who was secretly “reporting back” to Chinese intelligence agencies.

The Chronicle‘s reporting added that the former staffer worked for Feinstein for 20 years, and “attended Chinese consulate functions for the senator,” before being fired five years ago. And as Hassan notes, “All of those details point to Lowe, who was listed on Feinstein’s payroll as an “office director” in 2013, according to records maintained by the Sunlight Foundation.”

Lowe joined then-San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and other California politicians at a farewell reception hosted by the Chinese consul in March 2013.

Lowe and six other attendees “awarded proclamations in recognition of Consul General Gao’s contributions to the friendly cooperation between China and Bay area cities,” according to the consulate’s event recap.

By 2014, Lowe was gone from Feinstein’s staff. When he spoke at an April 2014 conference on Chinese investment in the United States, he was introduced as a “former assistant to Senator Feinstein.” –Daily Caller

Awarding procamations and attending Chinese consulate functions in place of the Senator doesn’t exactly sound like a driver’s job. In fact, Twitter researcher @almostjingo has compiled quite a bit of information on Lowe, including;

#RusselLowe has known @SenFeinstein for way more than 20 years, here he is helping register voters in the 1970’s as Feinstein’s assistant. https://t.co/TSB8esRprN

— Rosie Perpetually Potentially Sensitive (@almostjingo) August 6, 2018

IMPORTANT Lowe is the name listed on distribution list of government material for Feinstein, this is a report from Department of Defense housing in 1997. pic.twitter.com/20X6fedmp5

— Rosie Perpetually Potentially Sensitive (@almostjingo) August 6, 2018

Some new names, always look at the spouse. So #RussellLowe is a trained engineer, photojournalist, community organizer and aide to Feinstein 2007. pic.twitter.com/9NSYHBoFoT

— Rosie Perpetually Potentially Sensitive (@almostjingo) August 7, 2018

A bio of Lowe from a Feb. 2017 event he participated in reads as follows: 

Since President Nixon went to China in 1972, Russ has followed the development of China, its people and leaders.

He recently retired after 26 years as a senior staff of the United States Senate. 5 years with Senator Alan Cranston and 21 years with Senator Dianne Feinstein of California. He was the Office Director of the Senator Feinstein’s San Francisco office and State liaison for Asian and Asian American affairs. Russ has provided many seminars for visiting Chinese officials.

Russ first went to China in 1975, then in 1979 and several more times in the 80’s and early 90’s on US-China trade related activities. Since 1997, he has visited China every year for a month at a time.

In 2017, South Korean news publication Hankoryeh described Lowe as “a Chinese-American who spent 20 years as the aide to Dianne Feinstein,” after Lowe visited the publication’s officer in Seoul along with former Democratic California Rep. Mike Honda – who lost a 2016 election to progressive challenger Ro Khanna.

While Feinstein refuses to name the spy, she claims he had “no access to sensitive information,” and fired him as soon as the FBI notified them of their concerns. 

(1/2) The FBI told me 5 years ago it had concerns that China was seeking to recruit an administrative member of my Calif staff (despite no access to sensitive information). I took those concerns seriously, learned the facts and made sure the employee left my office immediately. pic.twitter.com/qpVyPanpJk

— Sen Dianne Feinstein (@SenFeinstein) August 4, 2018

 That said, as Breitbart noted on Saturday: 

“Think about Diane Feinstein and what she had access to,” security analyst and former FBI agent Jeff Harp told KPIX. “One, she had access to the Chinese community here in San Francisco; great amount of political influence. Two, correct me if I’m wrong, Dianne Feinstein still has very close ties to the intelligence committees there in Washington, D.C.

Other Feinstein staffers also had links to foreign intelligence. A former Feinstein staffer who worked on the Democratic Senate Intelligence Committee hired former British spy Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS after Donald Trump was elected president to “expose Russian interference.”

That former staffer is former FBI investigator Daniel J. Jones – who was revealed in an April House Intelligence Committee report footnote to have spearheaded an ongoing, private investigation into Trump-Russia claims is being funded with $50 million supplied by George Soros and a group of 7-10 wealthy donors from California and New York.

This effort was originally revealed in February and reported on by The Federalist, after a series of leaked text messages between Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and lobbyist Adam Waldman suggested that Daniel J. Jones – an ex-FBI investigator and former Feinstein staffer, was “intimately involved with ongoing efforts to retroactively validate a series of salacious and unverified memos published by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, and Fusion GPS.“

In short, Jones is working with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to continue their investigation into Donald Trump, using a $50 million war chest just revealed by the House Intel Committee report. Also recall that Feinstein leaked the Congressional testimony from Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson.

Who knows what else Feinstein, the second-wealthiest serving senator, has got her fingers in?

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Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

A ‘food freedom’ revolt against the government is starting…

This week, we welcome back Joel Salatin to the podcast. Labeled by The Washington Post as “the most famous farmer in America”, Joel has spent his career advocating for sustainable farming practices and pioneering models that show how food can be grown and raised in ways that are regenerative to our topsoils, more humane to livestock, produce much healthier & tastier food, and contribute profitably to the local economy.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Well, the government and Big Ag for starters. Joel refers to himself as a ‘lunatic farmer’ because so many of the changes he thinks our food system needs are either illegal under the current law or mightily resisted by the deep-pocketed corporations controlling production and distribution.

And this anti-competitive restriction and stifling of small sustainable food producers is only getting worse. While dismayed at this, Salatin finds hope in the burgeoning rebellion of the “rogue food” resistence breaking out:

I’m not optimistic at all about where the government and all its bureaucracy is headed. It is getting more and more stifling. The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) that Obama put through, it’s absolutely stifling. It’s size prejudicial. It’s putting an inordinate price pressure on smaller producers. That’s a fact all the way across the board. And the cost of compliance is escalating — the amount of paperwork, the amount of licensing, the amount of testing and procedural stuff that’s happening on farms — is through the roof.

So on the federal level, I think it’s getting worse. Now, I think what’s happening on the local level, the other thing that’s a pushback that’s happened, is what’s now known as the food sovereignty movement. And that started in 2015 maybe, two or three years ago in Sedgewick, Maine. And that was a township that passed a half page food sovereignty law that said, in our township if a neighbor wants to do food commerce with another neighbor it’s none of the governments business and no bureaucrat has to be involved. So if you want to come to my house, look around, smell around, and operate as freedom of choice, as voluntary adults, as consenting adults – and I’m using very strong language here – to practice your freedom of choice, then two consenting adults should be able to engage in food commerce without a bureaucrat being involved. Well, very quickly six other townships in Maine took up the mantra and passed the regulation, the law, as well.

Then, of course, Maine pushed back and said, no, you can’t do that. And it continued to build in Maine until finally the legislature and the governor passed it and said, okay, if a township wants to do that it’s okay with us. Well, then, the USDA quickly responded and said we’re going to pull all of your federally inspected slaughter houses and food processing plants. Maine, you won’t be able to sell to anybody because the federal government is pulling out if you do this. Then the governor called an emergency session. They went back in, and it’s still being negotiated. It’s a big hoo-ha. Believe me, there are a lot of us around the country that are watching what’s going on in Maine, and we’re very interested in it.

And if that were duplicated around the country it would almost be like local food secession. There’s a place to say, at some level, we should be able to engage in food commerce at our own risk and our own freewill. And that is definitely gaining momentum. We see it in the expansion of the Farm-to-consumer Legal Defense Fund, which is essentially a home-schooled legal defense association for food. In two years, they’ve grown from a network of collaborating attorney’s in something like 5 states to collaborating attorneys in 40 states. That’s phenomenal growth for a little non-profit organization.

And so as attorneys find out about how little farmers get treated by SWAT teams that come in and confiscate their food and different things like that, there’s a backlash to it. And now the beauty of the internet is that these things can be documented on iPhones. People can see the bureaucrat, the SWAT teams coming in and throwing out the perfectly good food from a freezer. They can see the raid; they can see people’s rights being violated. And so there is definitely a backlash. It’s a food freedom backlash in the country, and I’ve been an advocate of this all my life. I’ve always said when Americans become as interested in defending their right to acquire the food of their choice as they are the gun of their choice, we’re going to have a whole different food paradigm in this country.

Rogue food is on the rise. One of the most successful examples in the in country is in Louisville, Kentucky. It’s a food club that operates essentially under the same kind of a charter as a golf country club. It’s not public, it’s completely private. If you’re not a member you can’t go play in that club or on that course. And so what this is is a dues paying, nonpublic, members-only food exchange model. And these guys in Louisville actually have a store front and everything in there is illegal. I mean, they got everything from raw milk to homemade pepperoni. I mean, it’s all illegal. And nobody can touch them because it’s a private club.

Click the play button below to listen to my interview with Joel Salatin (52m:32s).

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If even half of the accusations are legitimate, the current United States secretary of commerce could rank among the biggest grifters in American history. –Forbes

Forbes is out with a fascinating Tuesday read detailing allegations that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who the magazine estimates is worth around $700 million, engaged in a series of ruthless business practices prior to joining the Trump administration – including former employee David Storper who claims Ross “stole his interests in a private equity fund, transferred them to himself, then tried to cover it up with bogus paperwork,” writes Forbes’ Dan Alexander. 

Two weeks ago, just before the start of a trial with $4 million on the line, Ross and Storper agreed to a confidential settlement, whose existence has never been reported and whose terms remain secret. –Forbes

Highlights and allegations, while keeping in mind that Forbes has a long-running feud with Ross over what they claim are outright lies about his net worth: 

• Forbes spoke with 21 people who know Ross and gathered that “Many of those who worked directly with him claim that Ross wrongly siphoned or outright stole a few million here and a few million there.”
• “all told, these allegations—which sparked lawsuits, reimbursements and an SEC fine—come to more than $120 million“
• Workers at his house in the Hamptsons used to call Ross’s colleagues, claiming they hadn’t been paid for work.
• Ross once pledged $1 million to charity, yet never actually gave them the money.

Past business associates have attested to Ross’s ruthless nature. “He’ll push the edge of truthfulness and use whatever power he has to grab assets,” said Asher Edelman, a New York Financier. A former colleague of Ross’s was more direct: “He’s a pathological liar.”

Ross defended himself in a statement, claiming “The SEC has never initiated any enforcement action against me,” while failing to mention the $2.3 million fine it slapped his firm with in 2016. 

The commerce secretary also noted that one lawsuit against him got dismissed, without saying it is currently going through the appeals process. Ross confirmed settling two other cases, including the recent one against Storper, but declined to offer additional details. –Forbes

Forbes also points out that Ross’s appointment to Trump’s cabinet – where he was heralded as a “legendary Wall Street genius,” couldn’t have come at a more perfect time for Ross, as “The future cabinet secretary’s private equity funds were underperforming—one on track to lose 26% of its initial value and another two dribbling out mediocre returns—and the accusations were starting to pile up.” 

Around two months before the 2016 US election, the SEC announced that WL Ross had been slapped with a fine and refunding $11.9 million “it allegedly skimmed from its investors, including interest,” reports Forbes. 

The scheme was complex. Like other private equity firms—including several that coughed up money to the SEC around the same time—WL Ross derived much of its revenue from management fees charged to its investors. With funds as large as $4.1 billion, management fees of 1.5% could alone bring in more than $60 million a year for Ross’ firm—serious money. 

But WL Ross promised that it would give its investors something like a rebate. For example, when Ross and his colleagues got certain fees for working on deals, they were supposed to give at least 50% of that money back to investors. But, according to SEC investigators, the firm gave back less than it suggested it would and pocketed the difference, leading the feds to conclude Ross’ firm broke laws that prohibit defrauding and misleading clients. WL Ross paid the big settlement but never admitted guilt. –Forbes

And according to authorities, WL Ross charged many of the inapprorpriate fees prior to the firm’s sale to Invesco for $100 million up front and a potential $275 million in the future. As such, Ross ostensibly would have cahsed out at a larger valuation than he deserved – an amount Invesco has never clawed back according to a statement by Ross. 

Oh, it gets worse…

According to those Forbes spoke with, WL Ross was also charging investors fees on money the firm had lost them, collecting fees based on the principal amount invested – not the amount lost. 

If WL Ross made an investment of, say, $100 million that declined dramatically, in the final years of the fund the firm was supposed to charge management fees on the actual value of the investment, not the $100 million starting point. However, WL Ross allegedly continued collecting fees on the amount invested, taking more than it deserved. WL Ross was allegedly even charging fees on one investment that was essentially worthless. –Forbes

“There are all sorts of fee issues,” said one investor, “but it was just the most egregious that I’ve seen.”

Ross insisted his firm had been calculating fees correctly. 

Ross is also alleged to have “skimmed money by serving on corporate boards of his firm’s portfolio companies,” money which was supposed to have been passed back to his investors as rebates. 

Instead, Ross “was like a kid in a candy store,” says one of his former employees. “He pilfered it.”

Read the rest here

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Authored by Elizabeth Nolan Brown via Reason.com,

All your base are belong to us.

A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news.

To save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including “comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation” of the sort enacted in the E.U.

Titled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” the draft policy paper – penned by Sen. Mark Warner and leaked by an unknown source to Axios – the paper starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when “the Soviets tried to spread ‘fake news’ denigrating Martin Luther King” (here he fails to mention that the Americans in charge at the time did the same). But NOW IT’S DIFFERENT, because technology.

“Today’s tools seem almost built for Russian disinformation techniques,” Warner opines. And the ones to come, he assures us, will be even worse.

Here’s how Warner is suggesting we deal:

Mandatory location verification. The paper suggests forcing social media platforms to authenticate and disclose the geographic origin of all user accounts or posts.

Mandatory identity verification: The paper suggests forcing social media and tech platforms to authenticate user identities and only allow “authentic” accounts (“inauthentic accounts not only pose threats to our democratic process…but undermine the integrity of digital markets”), with “failure to appropriately address inauthentic account activity” punishable as “a violation of both SEC disclosure rules and/or Section 5 of the [Federal Trade Commission] Act.”

Bot labeling: Warner’s paper suggests forcing companies to somehow label bots or be penalized (no word from Warner on how this is remotely feasible)

Define popular tech as “essential facilities.” These would be subject to all sorts of heightened rules and controls, says the paper, offering Google Maps as an example of the kinds of apps or platforms that might count. “The law would not mandate that a dominant provider offer the serve for free,” writes Warner. “Rather, it would be required to offer it on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms” provided by the government.

Other proposals include more disclosure requirements for online political speech, more spending to counter supposed cybersecurity threats, more funding for the Federal Trade Commission, a requirement that companies’ algorithms can be audited by the feds (and this data shared with universities and others), and a requirement of “interoperability between dominant platforms.”

The paper also suggests making it a rule that tech platforms above a certain size must turn over internal data and processes to “independent public interest researchers” so they can identify potential “public health/addiction effects, anti-competitive behavior, radicalization,” scams, “user propagated misinformation,” and harassment – data that could be used to “inform actions by regulators or Congress.”

And – of course – these include further revisions to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, recently amended by Congress to exclude protections for prostitution-related content. A revision to Section 230 could provide the ability for users to demand takedowns of certain sorts of content and hold platforms liable if they don’t abide, it says, while admitting that “attempting to distinguish between true disinformation and legitimate satire could prove difficult.”

“The proposals in the paper are wide ranging and in some cases even politically impossible, and raise almost as many questions as they try to answer,” suggested Mathew Ingram, putting it very mildly at the Columbia Journalism Review.

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European firms that cut ties with Iran over new US sanctions which kicked in at Midnight might find themselves subject to sanctions of their own, warned an EU official. 

“If EU companies abide by U.S. secondary sanctions they will, in turn, be sanctioned by the EU,” Nathalie Tocci, an aide to the EU’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, told BBC Radio 4 on Monday, according to NBC News.

The EU is helping Iran “In order to signal, diplomatically, to the Iranians that Europeans are serious” about trying to salvage the Iran nuclear deal – which President Trump pulled out of in May, sending former US Secretary of State John Kerry running around Europe and the UN to try and nurse his baby back together. 

At midnight Monday, the U.S. began targeting oil-rich Iran’s automotive industry and civil aviation sector, as well as trade in gold and other metals in a set of punitive measures that had been eased under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.

Trump has called for a wholesale overhaul of Iranian regional policies, such as an end to its military support for the Syrian government and regional militant groups like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The 2015 pact did not curb these actions, one reason Trump has called the agreement “the worst deal ever.” –NBC News

Early Tuesday morning, President Trump tweeted “Iran sanctions have officially been cast,” adding “Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!” 

The Iran sanctions have officially been cast. These are the most biting sanctions ever imposed, and in November they ratchet up to yet another level. Anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States. I am asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 7, 2018

German car manufacturer Diamler announced on Tuesday that it had halted its activities in Iran. 

“We will continue to closely monitor the political developments, especially in connection with the future of the nuclear agreement,” the company said in a statement.

And in June, Peugeot’s parent company PSA took steps to suspend a joint-venture in Iran, while rival Renault also agreed to follow the US sanctions. 

French oil giant Total has said it would quit a multibillion-dollar gas project if it cannot secure a waiver from the sanctions — a request the French government says had been rejected. –NBC News

The move follows comments made in May by US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who warned firms against continuing to do business with the Islamic Republic or risk consequences. 

“U.S. sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately,” he tweeted.

As @realDonaldTrump said, US sanctions will target critical sectors of Iran’s economy. German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately.

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) May 8, 2018

International inspectors, meanwhile, say Iran has been complying with the nuclear deal to cut back its nuclear program as the US prepares to reimpose the remainder of sanctions lifted in the agreement – targeting Iran’s oil sector and central bank. 

America has also pressured allies to stop importing oil from Iran before the November deadline. Top buyers of Iranian oil include China, India, Turkey and South Korea.

The effects on Iran of Washington’s hardening stance have been stark, with Iran’s rial currency losing two-thirds of its value in six months. –NBC News

***

As a reminder, on Tuesday, following an executive order signed by Trump, the U.S. imposed new restrictions intended to stop the purchase of dollar banknotes by Iran, prevent the government from trading gold and other precious metals and block the nation from selling or acquiring various industrial metals. The measures, which took effect at midnight in Washington, also targeted the auto industry and banned imports of Persian carpets and pistachios to the U.S.

There were some signs Trump’s aggressive policy was already working. Yesterday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, under rising economic and political pressure, spurned President Donald Trump’s suggestion for talks with “no preconditions.” However, in a televised address on Monday night, Rouhani also said Iran is open to negotiations if the U.S. is “sincere,” but he added that such talks would be meaningless while his nation is being hit with sanctions. Trump and his top aides have raised the possibility of face-to-face discussions with Rouhani with “no preconditions.”

“Negotiations at the same time as sanctions, what meaning does that have?” Rouhani said. “It means someone is facing a person who’s a rival and enemy, if they use a knife and they stick the knife in their arm and then they say, ‘Let’s negotiate and let’s talk.’ The response to this is first all, they have to take the knife out and put the knife back in their pocket.”

Rouhani also scoffed that despite his offer for talks, Trump “is someone who, without any negotiation, has withdrawn from all of his international commitments,” from trade accords to the Paris climate agreement.

Iran’s Foreign Secretary Javad Zarif tweeted that the “Trump Administration wants the world to believe it’s concerned about the Iranian people. Yet the very first sanctions it reimposed have canceled licenses for sales of 200+ passenger jets under absurd pretexts, endangering ordinary Iranians. US hypocrisy knows no bounds.”

At the same time, Europe condemned Trump’s action saying it would block their effect for European companies. “We deeply regret the re-imposition of sanctions by the U.S., due to the latter’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” according to a statement Monday from the foreign ministers of the U.K., Germany, France and the European Union. “Preserving the nuclear deal with Iran is a matter of respecting international agreements and a matter of international security.”

Meanwhile, in an attempt to halt its sharp economic deterioration, Iran’s central bank scrapped most currency controls introduced this year on the eve of the U.S. move, in a bid to halt a plunge in the rial that has stirred protests against the government. As Bloomberg reports, under the measures, Iran’s central bank will let the market determine the rate of foreign-exchange transactions except the imports of essential goods and drugs, Governor Abdolnaser Hemmati told state television Sunday night. Licensed currency houses whose trading had been halted will be allowed to resume operations from Tuesday.

But the policies backfired, with the rial weakening from 40,000 at the start of the year, to more than 100,000 to the dollar on the black market this month.

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Completing the latest round of tariffs pledged against China, the US Trade Representative announced on Tuesday (after the close of course) it will impose 25% tariffs on $16 billion-worth of Chinese imports starting August 23. The new round of tariffs completes Trump’s previously disclosed threat to impose $50 billion of import taxes on Chinese goods. The first $34 billion-worth went into effect on July 6th.

According to the USTR statement, customs will collect duties on 279 product lines, down from 284 items on the initial list; as Bloomberg notes, this will be the second time the U.S. slaps duties on Chinese goods in about the past month, overruling complaints by American companies that such moves will raise business costs, tax US consumers and raise prices.

On July 6, the U.S. levied 25% duties on $34 billion in Chinese goods prompting swift in-kind retaliation from Beijing.

Of course, China will immediately retaliate, having vowed before to strike back again, dollar-for-dollar, on the $16 billion tranche.

The biggest question is whether there will be a far bigger tariff in the near future: as a reminder, the USTR is currently also reviewing 10% tariffs on a further $200 billion in Chinese imports, and may even raise the rate to 25%. Those tariffs could be implemented after a comment period ends on Sept. 5. President Donald Trump has suggested he may tax effectively all imports of Chinese goods, which reached more than $500 billion last year.

Over the weekend, Trump boasted that he has the upper hand in the trade war, while Beijing responded through state media by saying it was ready to endure the economic fallout. Judging by the US stock market, which has risen by $1.3 trillion since Trump launched his trade war with China, which has crushed the Shanghai Composite, whose recent drop into a bear market has been duly noted by Trump, the US president is certainly ahead now, even if the market’s inability, or unwillingness, to push US stocks lower has led many traders and analysts to scratch their heads.

Full statement below:

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