A San Francisco judge on Wednesday ordered a Berkeley Antifa organizer to pay Judicial Watch $22,000 in legal fees and $4,000 in litigation costs, while her co-plaintiffs were ordered to pay $1,000 each to the conservative legal watchdog.
Judge Vince Chhabria, an Obama appointee, called Yvette Felarca‘s lawsuit against Berkeley Unified – in which Judicial Watch was named as a party – “frivolous” and “unreasonable.”
Felarca is a prominent figure in By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), a group founded by the Marxist Revolutionary Workers League that protests conservative speaking engagements. In 2016, Felarca and two of her allies were arrested and charged with several crimes, including felony assault, for inciting a riot in Sacramento. Earlier this year, Felarca was ordered to stand trial for assault.
U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria, Northern District of California, who had previously ruled that Felarca’s lawsuit was “entirely frivolous,” wrote in his ruling awarding legal fees to Judicial Watch that Felarca and her co-plaintiffs’ First Amendment claims were “premised on the obviously baseless assumption” that the First Amendment condemns the speech of some while condoning the ideological missions of others. –Judicial Watch
Chhabria also said that “The plaintiffs also mischaracterized the documents under review” and had “failed to grapple with the role Ms. Felarca played in making herself a topic of public discourse through her physical conduct at public rallies and her voluntary appearance on Fox News.”
Fox News‘s Tucker Carlson took Felarca to town in 2017 over her definition of a “fascist” – challenging her to explain what she thinks should be done to people she disagrees with.
In 2017, Judicial Watch filed a California Public Records Act (CPRA) request seeking public records information about Felarca’s Antifa activism and its effect within the Berkeley Unified School District. In her lawsuit aimed at keeping the Berkeley school district from furnishing the records, Felarca alleged that Judicial Watch was misusing the law for political means and the district should refuse to provide the information.
In January 2018, a separate judge ordered Felarca to pay more than $11,000 in attorney and court fees for her frivolous attempt to get a restraining order against Troy Worden, the former head of the University of California (UC) Berkeley College Republicans. –Judicial Watch
Embarrassingly, Judge Chhabria also pointed out that “a significant portion of the documents the plaintiffs initially sued to protect from disclosure had been publicly disclosed months earlier in another suit brought by Ms. Felarca against BUSD, where she was represented by the same counsel. (See generally Felarca v. Berkeley Unified School District, No. 3:16-cv-06184-RS). The plaintiffs, therefore, had no reasonable argument to protect those documents from disclosure.”
In other words, Chhabria has a really crappy lawyer.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EoavZ4 Tyler Durden
In his State of the Union address on February 5, U.S. President Donald Trump said that his administration was “holding constructive talks with a number of Afghan groups, including the Taliban… [in order] to be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counter-terrorism.”
Trump continued, “We do not know whether we will achieve an agreement — but we do know that after two decades of war, the hour has come to at least try for peace.”
On April 26, following a meeting in Moscow on the status of the Afghan “peace process,” representatives of the U.S., China, and Russia released the following joint statement:
The three sides respect the sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Afghanistan as well as its right to choose its development path. The three sides prioritize the interests of the Afghan people in promoting a peace process.
The three sides support an inclusive Afghan-led, Afghan-owned peace process and are ready to provide necessary assistance. The three sides encourage the Afghan Taliban to participate in peace talks with a broad, representative Afghan delegation that includes the government as soon as possible. Toward this end, and as agreed in Moscow in February 2019, we support a second round of intra-Afghan dialogue in Doha (Qatar).
The three sides support the Afghan government efforts to combat international terrorism and extremist organizations in Afghanistan. They take note of the Afghan Taliban’s commitment to: fight ISIS and cut ties with Al-Qaeda, ETIM, and other international terrorist groups; ensure the areas they control will not be used to threaten any other country; and call on them to prevent terrorist recruiting, training, and fundraising, and expel any known terrorists.
The three sides recognize the Afghan people’s strong desire for a comprehensive ceasefire. As a first step, we call on all parties to agree on immediate and concrete steps to reduce violence.
The three sides stress the importance of fighting illegal drug production and trafficking, and call on the Afghan government and the Taliban to take all the necessary steps to eliminate the drug threat in Afghanistan.
The three sides call for an orderly and responsible withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan as part of the overall peace process.
The three sides call for regional countries to support this trilateral consensus and are ready to build a more extensive regional and international consensus on Afghanistan.
The three sides agreed on a phased expansion of their consultations before the next trilateral meeting in Beijing. The date and composition of the meeting will be agreed upon through diplomatic channels.
This statement was released a mere week after a summit between the Taliban and officials from the government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was postponed indefinitely, after the Taliban objected to the number of delegates that Kabul wanted to send to the meeting.
That spat was only one example of why negotiations with the Taliban have not been going smoothly. Another is concern on the part of high-ranking Afghan diplomats and intelligence officials that their American counterparts may be betraying them. Afghan National Security Adviser Hamdullah Mohib, for example, publicly accused Zalmay Khalilzad — the U.S. State Department’s Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation — of having ambitions to become president of Afghanistan.
Sadly, no amount of blood, money or time spent in Afghanistan has been, or possibly will be, able to fashion it into a peaceful, united and democratic country. Pictured: U.S. Army soldiers carry a critically wounded American soldier on a stretcher to an awaiting helicopter, on June 24, 2010 near Kandahar, Afghanistan. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
“Our [the U.S.’s] agreement w/ China & Russia yesterday along w/ previous one w/ Europeans means we have emerging intl consensus on US approach to end the war AND assurances [that] terrorism never again emanates from #Afghanistan. More to do but important milestone. #Momentum”
Trump should be lauded for working toward a withdrawal from Afghanistan, where 14,000 U.S. troops still remain. But he should not expect to leave behind a peaceful situation in the failed state, which is made up of a complex web of tribal divisions and hostilities.
The ethnic Pashtuns, who comprise most of the Taliban’s recruits, account for about 40% of Afghanistan’s population. Taliban Pashtuns are largely from the Durrani Pashtun clan from southern Afghanistan in the Kandahar Province region, along the Pakistani border. The Durrani are historic enemies of the Ghilzai Pashtun clan, which inhabits the region east and south of Kabul.
President Ghani is closely allied with the Ghilzai Pashtun from eastern Afghanistan, and may have somewhat isolated himself by viewing his presidential responsibilities primarily through a Ghilzai lens.
The rivalry between Pashtun clans further complicates efforts to arrive at a negotiated settlement between the Taliban and the Ghani administration. There is a lack of trust even within the largely Pashtun Taliban.
Yet another factor militating against national unity is that Pashtun clans appear not to view Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic minorities as equal partners in a future Afghanistan. Pashtuns assume that Afghanistan is synonymous with “Land of the Afghans (or Pashtuns).”
Perhaps the most debilitating factor of all is that millions of Pashtuns also live in Pakistan, courtesy of the Durand Line. This dysfunctional demographic reality is a consequence of the late 19th century decision by imperial Britain to establish the border between Afghanistan and British India (which included today’s Pakistan) and Afghanistan. To the Pashtuns, however, the Durand Line is only a line on a paper map, to be ignored.
The point is that whatever the final terms of a negotiated U.S. withdrawal, Afghanistan’s strife will probably continue unabated.
The Taliban will still be able to count on a sizable supply of manpower — from Pakistan-based Pashtun males attending madrassas (schools for Islamic study). The Taliban may also rely upon continued support from Pakistan, unless Islamabad alters its strategic assessment that a pro-Pakistani regime in Afghanistan is a necessary wedge against India, its regional rival.
In addition, the Taliban and its Pakistani supporters are undoubtedly assured of an uninterrupted flow of financial support from Islamist sources in the Gulf States, as the strict Sunni nature of the Taliban brand of Islam is well-aligned with some of the Gulf State Islam.
Afghanistan’s remaining population consists of Tajiks (25%), Hazaras (19%), Uzbeks (6%) and various tribal peoples. Respectively, these Persian, Mongol and Turkic peoples, based upon their past armed resistance to Pashtun attempts to control the whole of Afghanistan, will most likely fight to maintain their autonomy. This historical reality alone should be sufficient cause for U.S. policy-makers to abandon the seemingly impossible task of building a unified, democratic, pro-Western Afghanistan.
Yet another reason not to harbor fantasies of a unified Afghanistan is the utter lack of what Mideast scholar Dr. Mordechai Kedar calls a “shared national consciousness.”
Even a superpower with good intentions such as the United States cannot accomplish the impossible. Sadly, no amount of blood, money or time spent in Afghanistan has been, or possibly will be, able to fashion it into a peaceful, united and democratic country.
* * *
Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EzxIaX Tyler Durden
The native American organizer from the Fort Peck reservation in Montana has fears that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline could break and spill, destroy her tribe’s water, and desecrate sacred Native American sites. But environmental catastrophe is not the most immediate threat.
The government has characterized pipeline opponents like her as “extremists” and violent criminals and warned of potential “terrorism”, according to recently released records. The documents, revealed last year, suggested that police were set to launch an aggressive responses to possible Keystone protests.
And now, that threat to what some have dubbed as “eco-terrorism” has become reality, at least in one US state. According to Bloomberg, oil pipeline protesters who interrupt operations or damage equipment could face up to 10 years in prison under legislation approved by Texas lawmakers.
Under the bill that was approved by both chambers of the Texas legislature, protesters found guilty of halting service or delaying construction of an oil or natural gas pipeline could be charged with a third-degree felony punishable by two to 10 years of incarceration. That’s on a par with the sentences handed down to drive-by shooters who fail to hit their mark according to Bloomberg.
The measure, which was originally authored by Republican Representative Chris Paddie, cleared the Texas House on May 7 and the Senate on Monday.
The delighted Texas Oil & Gas Association applauded the bill’s passage and said the bill provides property owners and pipeline companies “greater protections against intentional damage, delays, and stoppages caused by illegal activity.”
The bill still needs Governor Greg Abbott’s signature to become law, although that is only a formality.
Predictably, environmental groups, meanwhile, called the measure an assault on free speech. “The bill was never about safety and security,” Cyrus Reed, interim director for the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, said in an email. “It was about silencing protesters trying to protect their water and land.”
That… and also preventing rampant vandalism. Other projects, including Energy Transfer LP’s Dakota Access crude pipeline and EQM Midstream Partners LP’s Mountain Valley gas conduit, have also drawn on-the-ground protests. Even in Texas, which is considered friendlier to the oil and gas industry, activists have staged opposition to the Trans-Pecos pipeline, which runs through the Big Bend region in the western part of the state.
Texas may be the first, but it will hardly be the last: as noted above, states have long been taking action to prepare for pipeline protests as environmental groups increasingly target infrastructure as part of their opposition to fossil fuels, becoming true “eco-terrorists” in the process; there should thus be little surprise that officials are cracking down.
As Bloomberg notes, while South Dakota has yet to pass a similar crackdown on eco protesters, earlier this year the state advanced legislation to allow the state to seek money from pipeline companies to help cover expenses related to protests. That bill aims to ready South Dakota for the contentious Keystone XL crude oil pipeline, which is held up in court but recently scored a new presidential permit from the Trump administration.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WWPlbK Tyler Durden
Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which the negation of Catholicism and the negation of Liberalism meet and keep high festival, and the end learns to justify the means.
– Lord Acton
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
– Buckminster Fuller
If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the past several years, you’ll be acutely aware of my belief that human civilization is currently in a major transition period between two great paradigms of world history. The old world we all grew up in no longer works for most people, yet is being relentlessly propped up by the powerful and their minions who benefit from its parasitic and destructive nature. Despite their best efforts, a system so poisonous, decrepit and corrupt cannot and will not last. At this stage, it’s little more than a Potemkin village fraud barely kept standing courtesy of increasingly intense deception, manipulation and the sheer will of those who profit handsomely from it.
By stating we’re in the transition period, I want to make it clear I believe things are very much already being disrupted and altered beneath the hood of a world which appears indistinguishable from what it was a decade ago on a superficial level. Specifically, I think there are two core aspects of human existence that will be completely transformed in the years to come. First, within the monetary and financial systems that define how commerce, savings and entrepreneurship function. The emergence and continued momentum of Bitcoin offers evidence that disruption in this realm is already very much underway, albeit still in its infancy. The second realm I expect will experience massive transformational change relates to forms of human governance. We’ve barely scratched the surface on this one, but nascent signs have started to appear, and I suspect a push towards political systems more defined by direct democracy will become increasingly common in the years ahead. I’ve spent many hours writing about the financial and monetary system, so today’s piece will focus on what appears to be coming with regard to human political evolution.
“Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country,” US president Donald Trump announced in his State of the Union address in February. His base, as he had hoped, cheered him on in setting himself up as foil to Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In the three months since, though, Trump has doubled down on his own socialist policy proposals. On trade and immigration, he’s 21st-century America’s most strident – or most empowered, anyway – advocate of an indispensable tenet of state socialism: Central planning of the economy by the government.
Trump wants the government to control what you buy and who you buy it from. Thus, his “trade wars” with Canada, Mexico, the European Union, and China, powered by tariffs intended to advantage “Made in America” goods (and their politically connected makers) over others.
Now he’s announced a plan for “merit-based” government control of immigration under which bureaucrats in Washington decide how many, and which, immigrants the American economy “needs,” instead of leaving such decisions to markets and individuals.
In the past I’ve bemoaned the fact that “socialism” has come to mean such different things to so many different people. From its 19th century definition of “worker ownership of the means of production,” it’s been continually re-defined to characterize everything from Marxist-Leninist totalitarianism to a more all-embracing “democratic socialist” welfare state powered by heavy taxation on “the rich.”
That’s a pretty broad net. But except among anarchist socialists, state control of the economy is the axis on which all versions of socialism turn, and Trump is clearly all-in on the idea.
He even lends a socialist cast to the excuses he makes for his economic policies. He continually positions himself as protecting workers from the “dog-eat-dog” competition of capitalism (while avoiding using that word negatively). By adding an emphasis on political borders to those excuses, he changes the discussion from “labor versus capital” to “American labor versus foreign capital.”
That approach is nothing new. See Stalin’s “socialism in one country,” for example, or the marriage between central economic planning and nationalism characterizing the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler.
America’s Republican president campaigns against socialism while attempting to implement it. Meanwhile, America’s progressives campaign for socialism while attempting to thwart actual worker ownership of the means of production (e.g. the “gig economy”). Talk about cognitive dissonance!
Notice what’s missing from the discussion on both major “sides”: Freedom.
Freedom to move within and across political borders.
Freedom to trade within and across political borders.
Freedom to plan our own lives and live them instead of turning that power, and that responsibility, over to the state.
Neither major political party even convincingly pretends to care about those fundamental human rights anymore.
The entire public discussion revolves around what the politicians should “allow” or “forbid” the rest of us to do next, based on an unquestioning assumption of their moral authority to make such decisions for us.
Unless we break that cycle, we’re on our way into the next Dark Age.
* * *
Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VWK3R9 Tyler Durden
Today the state of California filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after the feds cut off funding for California’s high-speed rail project.
Neither the funding cut nor this lawsuit should come as a surprise. This doomed boondoggle is billions of dollars over budget and years (possibly even decades) behind schedule. Voters originally approved setting aside $10 billion in bond money, yet the project now exceeds $75 billion. In February, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged that it wasn’t a realistic plan and suggested some scaling back of the longer-term prospects of the whole thing.
But not all the money was coming from the state. The Department of Transportation was providing about $3.5 billion in federal stimulus. California has spent $2.5 billion of this money. Last week, the feds announced that, due to the California High-Speed Rail Association’s poor management and oversight, they were cutting off the remaining $929 million that hasn’t been provided yet. And the feds may even attempt to demand back the money that California has already spent.
This, of course, is not sitting well with officials in California, and today the state filed its promised legal challenge. Newsom’s office filed suit in U.S. District Court and is seeking a restraining order to keep the Transportation Department from shifting the promised money to a different purpose or project. Reuters notes that California is going to try to make it about political differences:
The state will argue that the withholding is aimed at punishing California for opposing President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the southern U.S. border. The suit also names Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)and FRA chief Ron Batory.
The problem with trying to make the narrative about Trump vs. California is that there is extensive, documented history of mistakes, excesses, and mismanagement originating from within the Golden State itself. The term “scathing audit” was tossed around to describe the state auditor’s report last November detailing the bullet train’s budget overruns and extensive delays. That’s not an exaggerated Trump tweet, folks.
I’m not going to make any guesses about the fate of this legal fight. I will, however, point out that several Democratic presidential contenders are showing support for the Green New Deal, which encourages the development of high-speed rail routes across the country as an alternative to highways. It would not surprise me if the ultimate plan is to try to just tie this up in the courts until next year in the hopes that a friendlier president will sweep into the Oval Office and turn that federal money spigot back on.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Qes8iN
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Today the state of California filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration after the feds cut off funding for California’s high-speed rail project.
Neither the funding cut nor this lawsuit should come as a surprise. This doomed boondoggle is billions of dollars over budget and years (possibly even decades) behind schedule. Voters originally approved setting aside $10 billion in bond money, yet the project now exceeds $75 billion. In February, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom acknowledged that it wasn’t a realistic plan and suggested some scaling back of the longer-term prospects of the whole thing.
But not all the money was coming from the state. The Department of Transportation was providing about $3.5 billion in federal stimulus. California has spent $2.5 billion of this money. Last week, the feds announced that, due to the California High-Speed Rail Association’s poor management and oversight, they were cutting off the remaining $929 million that hasn’t been provided yet. And the feds may even attempt to demand back the money that California has already spent.
This, of course, is not sitting well with officials in California, and today the state filed its promised legal challenge. Newsom’s office filed suit in U.S. District Court and is seeking a restraining order to keep the Transportation Department from shifting the promised money to a different purpose or project. Reuters notes that California is going to try to make it about political differences:
The state will argue that the withholding is aimed at punishing California for opposing President Donald Trump’s proposed wall along the southern U.S. border. The suit also names Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Federal Railroad Administration (FRA)and FRA chief Ron Batory.
The problem with trying to make the narrative about Trump vs. California is that there is extensive, documented history of mistakes, excesses, and mismanagement originating from within the Golden State itself. The term “scathing audit” was tossed around to describe the state auditor’s report last November detailing the bullet train’s budget overruns and extensive delays. That’s not an exaggerated Trump tweet, folks.
I’m not going to make any guesses about the fate of this legal fight. I will, however, point out that several Democratic presidential contenders are showing support for the Green New Deal, which encourages the development of high-speed rail routes across the country as an alternative to highways. It would not surprise me if the ultimate plan is to try to just tie this up in the courts until next year in the hopes that a friendlier president will sweep into the Oval Office and turn that federal money spigot back on.
from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2Qes8iN
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From a decision yesterday by U.S. District Court Judge Dee Benton in Seaver v. Estate of Cazes (D. Utah):
This action arises from the death of G.S., a 13 year-old boy, caused by ingesting the illicit drug U-47700. The parents of G.S. have brought suit against the website that sold the drug to G.S., the service provider that created the network through which G.S. was able to access the website on the dark web (Tor), and the mail service that sent the drug to G.S. Plaintiffs have brought claims for strict products liability, negligence, abnormally dangerous activity, and civil conspiracy….
Tor provides software for enabling anonymous communication and transactions on the internet. To use the Tor Browser, an individual must visit Tor’s website to download the software. When downloaded, installed, and used by an end-user such as G.S., the Tor Browser automatically starts Tor background processes and routes Internet traffic through the Tor network, which relays traffic through a worldwide network. The Tor network provides security to a user’s location and Internet usage to anyone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis.
The Tor Browser operates through a group of volunteer-operated servers whose users employ the Tor network by connecting through a series of virtual tunnels, or relays, rather than making a direct connection. Tor estimates, on average, between 350,000 and 400,000 directly connecting users in the Unites States over the past three months. Information regarding the location of these users and relays is not publicly available. Via its website, Tor invites users to run a relay in order to help the network grow….
Plaintiff’s claims are barred by the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230 …. The CDA provides that “[n]o provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” The CDA further provides that “[n]o cause of action may be brought and no liability may be imposed under any State or local law that is inconsistent with this section.” Through these provisions, the CDA “creates a federal immunity to any state law cause of action that would hold computer service providers liable for information originating with a third party.” … The purpose of this immunity is to “facilitate the use and development of the Internet by providing certain services an immunity from civil liability arising from content provided by others.”
First, Tor qualifies as an interactive computer service. An “interactive computer service” is “any information service, system, or access software provider that provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server, including specifically a service or system that provides access to the Internet….” 47 U.S.C. § 230(f)(2). Tor fits this definition squarely because it enables computer access by multiple users to computer servers via its Tor Browser.
Second, Plaintiff seeks to hold Tor liable for information regarding the illicit drug U-47700 that G.S. was able to access through the Tor Browser. In other words, Plaintiff seeks to treat Tor as the “publisher or speaker” of third party information—”a result [the CDA] specifically proscribes.”
Third, the content that provides the basis for liability here—information regarding U-47700 and the ability to purchase it on the dark web—was not created by Tor. Rather, a third party provided the information and G.S. accessed it through use of the Tor Browser. “A service provider must ‘specifically encourage[ ] development of what is offensive about the content’ to be ‘responsible’ for the development of offensive content. Plaintiff has not alleged that Tor played any part in the creation of the content accessed by G.S.
All of Plaintiff’s claims are state law causes of action that would hold Tor, an internet service provider, liable for information originating with a third party. Those claims are barred by the CDA. Accordingly, Plaintiff’s claims against Tor are dismissed.
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Drug-sniffing dogs in states that have legalized marijuana should be worried about their job security in light of a decision that the Colorado Supreme Court issued yesterday. Confirming the 2017 judgment of a state appeals court, the justices said an alert by a dog trained to detect marijuana as well as other drugs no longer provides probable cause for a search in Colorado, where possessing an ounce or less of cannabis has been legal for adults 21 or older since 2012. Furthermore, the court ruled in Colorado v. McKnight, deploying such a dog itself counts as a search and therefore requires probable cause to believe a crime has been committed.
The case involved Kevin McKnight, who in 2015 was pulled over in Craig, Colorado, by Cpl. Bryan Gonzales, ostensibly for failing to signal a turn. Gonzales had been following McKnight because of behavior he deemed suspicious: He saw McKnight’s pickup truck parked the wrong way in an alley near an apartment complex as a man stood by the passenger door. Although Gonzales “saw no behavior consistent with an exchange or transaction,” he followed the truck to “a residence where police had found drugs almost two months earlier, and it remained parked there for approximately fifteen minutes,” during which time no one left the house or the truck. When Gonzales stopped McKnight, he “recognized the passenger as someone who had used methamphetamine ‘at some point in the past,’ but he wasn’t sure how recently.”
Gonzales called Sgt. Courtland Folks of the Moffat County Sheriff’s Office, who arrived with Kilo, a dog trained to bark when he smells marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, or MDMA. Kilo barked at the driver’s door, prompting a search that discovered a pipe with methamphetamine residue in a storage compartment under the rear seat. After McKnight was convicted of possessing methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, he appealed, arguing that Kilo’s barking could not justify a search and that police needed more evidence to use the dog in the first place. The Colorado Supreme Court agreed on both points, overturning his convictions.
The U.S. Supreme Court, whose Fourth Amendment reasoning the Colorado Supreme Court has largely followed in applying the state constitution’s ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” has long maintained that an olfactory sweep by a drug-detecting dog does not count as a search because it reveals only the presence of contraband, a fact that people have no legitimate privacy interest in concealing. The Court has also held that such a dog’s alert by itself is enough to justify a vehicle search, which requires probable cause but not a warrant (under the “automobile exception” to the warrant requirement).
As the Colorado Supreme Court observed, neither of those assumptions holds true any longer in Colorado. “Marijuana is not only decriminalized in Colorado, it is legalized, regulated, and taxed,” the court said. Furthermore, Colorado’s legalization initiative amended the state constitution to say that possessing an ounce or less of marijuana in public is “not unlawful and shall not be an offense under Colorado law.” Hence cannabis consumers “have a state constitutional right not guaranteed by the federal constitution.”
Since Kilo’s barking could have indicated nothing more than a legal quantity of marijuana, the court said, it did not provide probable cause for a search, even when combined with Cpl. Gonzales’ vague suspicions (and leaving aside all of the other reasons to question the accuracy of a police dog’s purported response to car odors). Since Kilo’s sniffing can reveal information about legal (but potentially sensitive) conduct, the court added, it qualifies as a search in itself.
“Because persons twenty-one or older may lawfully possess marijuana in small amounts, a drug-detection dog that alerts to even the slightest amount of
marijuana can no longer be said to detect ‘only’ contraband,” the majority said. “An exploratory sniff of a car from a dog trained to alert to a substance that may be lawfully possessed violates a person’s reasonable expectation of privacy in lawfully possessing that item. Because there was no way to know whether Kilo was alerting to lawful marijuana or unlawful contraband, Kilo’s sniff violated McKnight’s reasonable expectation of privacy. Therefore, under state law, Kilo’s sniff was a search that had to be constitutionally justified.”
Since it wasn’t, the court reasoned, the sniff was illegal under Colorado’s constitution. So was the ensuing car search, meaning that the evidence it discovered should not have been admitted and McKnight should not have been convicted. “We are the first court to opine on whether the sniff of a dog trained to detect marijuana in addition to other substances is a search under a state constitution in a state that has legalized marijuana,” the justices noted, but “we probably won’t be the last.”
If Colorado police officers continue to deploy marijuana-detecting dogs, they will not be very helpful as an end run around privacy protections, since cops will need probable cause to justify the use of a tool that is supposed to provide probable cause but no longer does (except in conjunction with other evidence). In theory, a dog can be trained to stop alerting to marijuana, but it is not easy or cheap, and to be reliable a retrained dog requires periodic testing to show it continues to ignore pot. Alternatively, pot-sniffing dogs can be replaced by newly trained animals that are not taught to detect marijuana. Lest you think that the need for such expenditures means marijuana legalization is costing taxpayers money, note that drug dogs cost up to $10,000 each, or roughly what the government spends on a couple of pot busts.
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Reckless global monetary policy, led by the Federal Reserve, has literally forced the smart money to try and think stupid in order to make money. While fund managers are calling it “a new strategy”, we can’t help but see it for what it really is: anything but a vote of confidence for the central banking status quo.
For instance, despite running a $500 million hedge fund, manager Tom Zhou spends most of his time trying to “think like a novice investor,” according to Bloomberg. He has has degrees in civil engineering, economics and finance but, for him, the key to figuring out the $6.6 trillion Chinese stock market isn’t higher education, it’s dumbing things down.
Since the Chinese market is 80% driven by mom and pop investors, quants and fund managers are stuck trying to literally “predict where the dumb money is heading”. It’s a tougher task than some might think, especially because of China’s market volatility and price swings that often defy logic.
So now quants comb through social media posts and use AI to try and anticipate how 147 million retail investors will collectively act. They perpetuate the self-fulfilling prophecy of technical indicators, trying to predict when investors will use them as cues to buy and sell. And they’re spending tons of money buying data from companies like Tencent to gauge sentiment.
As the country is now part of the MSCI Global Indexes, the “strategy” makes light of how global participants in the Chinese market may need to tailor their thinking to adapt to different market psychologies.
Zheng Xu, a former portfolio manager at Millennium Partners said: “In the U.S., quants are trying to make money off other institutional investors with complex models or automated transactions at lightening speed, but in China many strategies don’t work well and quants’ arch rivals are retail investors. Understanding retail investors’ behavior and sentiment is extremely valuable here.’’
Some quants detailed how they have been modeling the impact of retail investors on China’s stock market. For instance, Chinese traders have a tendency to lock-in profits more quickly than their peers, Zhou said. As it relates to an investment thesis, this means that short-term price reversal factors tend to perform better in China than momentum factors.
High Flyer Quant, a firm that manages $870 million in Hangzhou, uses AI to anticipate as many as two days in advance when technical indicators will prompt investors to buy or sell. BlackRock tracks changes in sentiment by analyzing about 100,000 chat room posts a day on websites like Eastmoney.com and Xueqiu.com. The firm tailors its buys to names that attract growing attention in these rooms and sells stocks that fall out of favor.
Wang Pei, chief executive officer of Shenzhen-based Focus Technology Ltd., said his fund netted an additional 7% to 8% annually by incorporating data on the most viewed stocks in trading apps owned by Tencent and Hithink RoyalFlush Information Network Co. This strategy failed to work in 2015, as competitors adopted the same strategy.
China’s unique rules can sometimes make it frustrating for quants, too. For instance, abiding by a rule that prevents investors from buying and selling the same shares in a single day can make some high-frequency trading tactics difficult. Additionally, the country’s censorship of social media is a challenge for those looking to monitor it for investor sentiment.
The median return for funds linked to China’s CSI 300 Index beat the benchmark by 3.63% in 2018. In Q1 of this year, funds underperformed the benchmark by 3.22%.
And other international shops, like Boston-based PanAgora Asset Management Inc., are experimenting with new models based on trying to find these outsized returns.
Mike Chen, who works for PanAgora, developed a model to identify the slang Chinese retail investors use on online message boards. His interest was piqued after he noticed some “strange” moves in Chinese stocks after the 2016 election:
He became interested in the challenge in part because of some quirky moves in Chinese stocks in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. When the result became clear, a listed Chinese company whose name sounds like “Trump Wins Big’’ in Mandarin surged, while a firm that sounds like “Aunt Hillary’’ slumped.
Chen concluded: “There are a lot of inefficiencies, and many of these are driven by retail investors. You want to understand what they think, but you can’t do it through the traditional financial statements.’’
We can’t help but think that’s a nice way of saying: “The financials don’t matter anymore and, even if they did, you’d be too stupid to read them.”
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2EkPAWI Tyler Durden
