Friday Humor: Dozens Of Nations That Interfered In 2016 Elections Annoyed Russia Got All Credit

Via The Onion,

Complaining that U.S. investigations into foreign interference in the election have gotten almost everything wrong, officials from dozens of countries around the world expressed irritation Friday that all of the credit for meddling in the 2016 presidential race was going to Russia.

Resentful operatives from Serbia, Uruguay, Swaziland, and 45 other nations said they were incredibly annoyed that Kremlin-backed computer hackers and dark-money financiers were receiving all the media attention, while their own far superior efforts to undermine the U.S. electoral process had so far received no recognition at all.

“Do you have any idea how much more sophisticated our attacks on American democracy were than Russia’s?” Laotian president Bounnhang Vorachith said of his government’s efforts to spread misinformation about Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton on social media sites.

We spent millions building a sophisticated bot network that could craft false but believable stories portraying Trump in a good light.

“And it worked! It’s unbelievably frustrating to pull off something like that and then have all the glory go to someone else.”

“Do you really think Russia could’ve hacked into [Clinton campaign chairman] John Podesta’s emails?” Vorachith continued.

“Hell no. That was Laos.”

According to sources, every time the American media credits Russian oligarchs with funding election-tampering efforts, numerous foreign agents across the globe throw up their arms and storm out of the room, infuriated because Costa Rican and Nepalese money launderers reportedly did far more to finance such initiatives.

These agents have also been known to toss aside newspapers in anger, shouting that Mongolia’s work busing thousands of people with dead voters’ names to cast ballots for Clinton in New Hampshire was more deserving of attention than anything Russia had accomplished.

In addition, reports confirmed that scores of world leaders fly into a rage whenever members of Congress express grave concern over Russian president Vladimir Putin’s 2016 machinations but make no mention of anyone else’s schemes.

“Russia had a bunch of scrubs sitting in some warehouse putting out piddly-shit Facebook posts while we were actually purging voter rolls in over a dozen states, and yet no one’s calling us an enemy of democracy?” said Gambian operative Ndura Sanneh, remarking that the ninth-largest country in the world impacting a U.S. election wasn’t nearly as impressive as the 146th most populous nation doing it.

It’s such bullshit. We fed that ‘build the wall’ line to the Trump campaign three years ago, and it’d be nice to get some goddamn acknowledgment for it.

“But with the Russians grabbing all the headlines, how can we?”

“The biased coverage is completely disrespectful,” she added.

“It’s as if these American newspapers don’t even realize Jill Stein is a Gambian asset.”

Meanwhile, undercover agents from the island nation of Tuvalu were reportedly “climbing the walls,” upset they had achieved no notoriety despite successfully exploiting the growing political polarization in the United States with their clandestine planning of the 2017 Women’s March. And exasperated leaders in St. Kitts and Nevis—who claimed that without their onsite voter-intimidation tactics, Clinton could never have won Virginia or Minnesota—said the lack of attention given to their country’s efforts was enough to make them contemplate getting out of the election-rigging game altogether.

Throughout the international community, many leaders expressed similar sentiments.

“In 2016, we managed to shake Americans’ faith in their political institutions to its core, and yet there’s still no one hysterically calling for sanctions against us,” German chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters.

“It pisses me off that Russia got started at the last minute, copied everyone else’s ideas, and then got all the recognition for sticking America with President Trump.”

“I guess this is what we get for actually being discreet about our interference, unlike the Russians, who were literally stupid enough to let one of their operatives meet with the Trump campaign inside Trump Tower,” she continued.

“They’ll probably hog the spotlight after the 2020 election, too.”

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BofA: “This Is The Ultimate China-US Trade War Play”

BofAML’s Savita Subramanian notes that populism is gaining momentum around the world, exacerbated by mass population displacements and surging income inequality. Concerns over immigration, autonomy and global competition have played a role in political campaigns across the globe. The Trump administration’s latest announcement to levy tariffs on steel and aluminum imports is consistent with anti-globalist shifts seen in this presidency.

It’s “Autarky Malarkey” according to BofAML’s Michael Hartnett. Simply put, as global QE ends, protectionism begins; and the war on inequality will now be fought via Protectionism, Keynesianism, Redistribution. Monetary & Fiscal policy is now spent, leaving markets to discount protectionism & global tariffs.

And while Trump’s actions could impact many nations negatively, China is without doubt the most vulnerable to a US trade war, according to BofAML’s latest report.

So how to trade a trade war?

Hartnett concludes, the ultimate China-US trade war play is short the Hong Kong dollar (which, as we noted previously, is currently trading at weakest level since peg introduced October 1983).

For a little better context, HKD has cratered in recent months… (testing the lows of the peg band)

On the heels of capital outflows and an ever-growing carry trade, enabled by a hawkish Fed…

Selling Hong Kong Dollars is a more liquid, cleaner proxy on china outflows (and less easily manipulated than CNY), plus USDHKD has dramatic downside if the peg breaks… which it might because standing in the way of The Fed rate-hike-driven carry trade avalanche will be very expensive.

It is a traditional devaluation play (asymmetric to the CHF peg break)

 

And already it appears, some speculators are betting on the peg snapping.

Bloomberg reports that USD/HKD call options struck at 7.8730 have transacted today (upper right corner of chart below), suggesting that at least one punter sees the chance of the band (green-to-red lines on chart) breaking within the next year.

The pair hasn’t quite hit 7.8500 so far, but that could happen in the next few days as the HKMA shows no inclination to soak up excess HKD liquidity just yet, but instead told citizens who are seeing their currency lose value to “stay calm.”

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Does That JAMA Study Really Show That Advil Is Just As Effective As Opioids?

According to Vox, a JAMA study published this week “finally” provides “proof” that “opioids are no better than other medications for some chronic pain.” The results of the study are “devastating,” Vox says. To whom or what is not exactly clear, but the author of the article, Julia Belluz, seems to see the study as conclusive evidence against the notion that “opioids help patients with chronic pain in the long run” or that “they are worth all that risk” of “addiction and death.” Similarly, NBC News declares that the “jury’s in,” and its verdict is that “opioids are not better than other medicines for chronic pain.” Mother Jones likewise says “a new study shows that opioids are no better than other meds for chronic pain,” while Newser agrees that Tylenol and Advil “work just as well as opioids.”

The JAMA study—the work of a team led by internist Erin Krebs, a researcher with the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System—did not actually demonstrate any of that. But it did highlight journalists’ eagerness to believe that no one really needs narcotics for pain relief, which reflects the widespread desire for a simple solution to the “opioid epidemic.”

If opioids have no advantage over other analgesics, why prescribe them at all? Why risk “addiction and death” when over-the-counter pain relievers are just as effective? Even if we ignore the fact that the risks for pain patients are actually pretty small (and the fact that opioid-related deaths primarily involve illegally produced drugs), this study does not show what the headlines claim.

Krebs and her colleagues recruited 240 patients with moderate to severe chronic back pain or hip or knee osteoarthritis from V.A. primary care clinics and randomly assigned them to opioid or nonopioid treatment. The opioid group initially received immediate-release morphine, oxycodone, or hydrodone plus acetaminophen. If those medications proved inadequate, subjects were treated with sustained-action morphine or oxycodone, followed by fentanyl patches if necessary. The nonopioid group initially received acetaminophen and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen, followed if necessary by various other medications, including nortriptyline, amitriptyline, gabapentin, topical analgesics, pregabalin, duloxetine, and tramadol.

The main outcome measures were pain-related function (measured by a questionnaire, with higher scores indicating a bigger burden from pain) and pain intensity (also self-reported, on a scale of 0 to 10). After 12 months, both groups were significantly better off by those two measures. The mean pain-related function score fell from 5.4 to 3.4 in the opioid group and from 5.5 to 3.3 in the nonopioid group. Mean pain intensity fell from 5.4 to 4 in the opioid group and from 5.4 to 3.5 in the nonopioid group. The difference between the two groups was statistically significant only for pain intensity, and the researchers note that “the clinical importance of this finding is unclear,” since “the magnitude was small.”

In short, both groups fared about the same. “Treatment with opioids was not superior to treatment with nonopioid medications for improving pain-related function over 12 months,” Krebs et al. conclude. “Results do not support initiation of opioid therapy for moderate to severe chronic back pain or hip or knee osteoarthritis pain.”

People in pain vary widely in how they respond to medication, so the fact that opioids did not have an advantage, on average, for this particular sample with these particular types of pain does not mean they are not a better choice for some patients. The study sample was 87 percent male, and it was drawn from V.A. clinics, which may not reflect the general population. The conditions were limited to chronic back pain and chronic hip or knee pain caused by osteoarthritis, so the study does not speak to opioid treatment for other kinds of pain. The initial pain intensities were middling, so the study may not reflect the experiences of patients with more severe pain.

Notably, the researchers excluded patients who were on long-term opioid therapy, which means they ignored people who had already found they did not get adequate relief from other treatments. It seems reasonable to assume that people who are currently using opioids to treat chronic pain are doing so because they think these drugs work better for them than Advil and Tylenol, and they may even be right to think that. If you exclude those patients from a study of pain treatment, you are excluding precisely the people who are most likely to get more relief from opioids.

The bottom line is that patients should be able to get the medications that work best for them. Many people with severe chronic pain report going through a mind-boggling list of alternative treatments before finding that opioids were the only thing that kept the agony at bay and gave them a decent quality of life. A study like this one is utterly irrelevant to people in that situation, and to suggest otherwise is illogical as well as cruel.

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Armed Men Raid Iran’s Embassy In London

Four men dressed in black attacked the Iranian embassy in London minutes ago, menacing the staffers with weapons and taking down the Iranian flag. According to Iran’s Press TV, a Britain-based Shiite religious group was behind the stunt.

Twitter footage showed the men on the balcony of the embassy building. One is waving a blue and white flag with inscriptions in Arabic, just after the men apparently took down the Iranian flag.

According to early media reports, the raiders are four men who had opened their way into the embassy premises, while threatening people on the scene with machetes and baseball bats. The London Police have reportedly deployed around the embassy but took no action in the first couple of hours after the attack.

The slogans chanted by the raiders indicate that they are members of Sadeq Shirazi Shiite extremist sect. Iran’s Ambassador to Britain Hamid Baeedinejad confirmed the reports on the embassy attack minutes ago.

“A few followers of Shirazi have attacked the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Embassy in London and broke the flag mast,” the ambassador tweeted minutes ago, and added that the raiders are “chanting slogans against Iranian officials”.

He further confirmed that the raiders were carrying “sticks and machetes”, and said Police are deployed on the scene.

The Shirazi sect that has been labeled as “British Shiism” by Iran’s Supreme Leader, operates mainly from London. The sect also runs a satellite network called ‘Fadak’ from London and promotes Shiite extremism against Sunni Islam according to Fars News.  The sect is also known to be the religious opposition of the Islamic Republic.

Meantime, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi told FNA that “we are investigating into the case and will keep in contact with the Iranian embassy in London and the British embassy in Tehran”.

“The British government is duty-bound to seriously and decisively fulfill its responsibility to protect the Islamic Republic of Iran’s diplomats and diplomatic centers and immediately arrest and prosecute those who have trespassed the diplomatic sanctuary,” the spokesman reiterated.

The Metropolitan Police have reportedly confirmed the incident, journalist Nahayat Tizhoosh tweeted, citing fellow journalist Laura McQuillan. The men were reportedly on the roof and police are negotiating for them to come down, although according to subsequent unconfirmed reports, they may have been arrested

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Jeff Gundlach: “The Situation Is Set To Explode In 2019”

At the Strategic Investment Conference 2018, Jeff Gundlach said that we’re at a “moment of truth” that could break either way. So, now is not the time to have high conviction about the economy or markets. Showing a chart of the US budget deficit as percent of GDP, Gundlach warned investors about rising deficit without a recession.

Jeff Gundlach at Strategic Investment Conference

The deficit combined with with the Fed’s balance sheet roll-off, will mean $2–$3 trillion in new Treasury issuance. Gundlach thinks this “situation is set to explode in 2019” and also sees net tightening starting next year, adding that the market is starting to realize it. As such, sentiment is shifting. On housing, Gundlach says the fundamentals look “pretty darn bad” as mortgage rates start to rise.

All Indicators Point to Higher Inflation

Later Gundlach moved on to inflation. He said there are two key parts of inflation: core services and core good. And there’s a big disparity between the two in the US. However, the core CPI in the US is trending up. We’re also seeing rising inflation in Germany and Japan Further, Gundlach pointed out that there is a high correlation between core CPI and future GDP. A very high correlation between core CPI and ISM PMI also suggests a higher CPI ahead.

Bottom line: All of Gundlach’s indicators point to higher inflation.

Also, just like David Rosenberg the day before, he finds it comical that the Fed has been trying to get to 2% inflation, yet we are already there. So, if inflation does go higher, the question is not how it affects the economy, it’s how the markets will react to it.

Emerging Markets Look Promising

Gundlach then turned to emerging markets. In comparison to emerging markets, he noted, the PE ratio of the S&P 500 is at sky-high levels. Which means that either sales must take off or stock prices must come down (once the buybacks end of course).

He showed that the CAPE ratio for emerging markets (EM) is about half that of the S&P 500. It’s very likely that the ratios will eventually converge. That means EMs will go up, and the US will come down.

Over the past year, EMs have outperformed the US while Europe has underperformed. Gundlach thinks Europe and world markets are cheap now.

The Dollar Is Likely to Go Down

Gundlach also touched on the US dollar. He showed that dollar bull and bear cycles last about seven years. By this measure, he thinks the dollar is headed lower. If we look at a longer-term chart, the dollar sits right on a major support level. Will it hold?

The opposite is seen in gold price charts. Gold has been building a base for years, and is bumping up against a critical level. If it breaks out, it could begin a new gold rally.

As he has shown recently during his DoubleLine webcasts, Gundlach brought a series of charts showing that various asset classes have broken through crucial trend lines. In particular, he made a hard call on the long bond market, and gave us a line in the sand above which he says the bond bull market is over.

Readers can get live updates from the Strategic Investment Conference 2018 at the following link.

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Joe Biden Seriously Considering 2020 Run

Authored by Jim E via ThePoliticalInsider.com,

Uncle Joe is getting ready to run!

That’s the buzz around D.C. this morning, as former Vice President Joe Biden is putting our serious feelers for a 2020 presidential run against President Trump.

Politico just rocked Washington with the exclusive report:

Joe Biden knows that winning in 2020 would require a shoot-the-moon set of circumstances and luck. So his team is on the hunt for a moon shot.

Between stops on his book tour and in the ramp-up for what will be a heavy midterms campaign schedule, a tight circle of aides has been brainstorming a range of tear-up-the-playbook ideas for a White House run, according to people who’ve been part of the discussions or told about them.

The talk has gotten so serious that Biden is actually plotting campaign strategies, and is mulling whether or not to announce his candidacy early and be the front-runner, or announce late in the process to burst through what is shaping up to be a crowded field.

If Biden thinks he’s going to be the only all-star Obama Administration alumnus in the race, he may be surprised. Former Attorney General Eric Holder is seriously considering a run. Former Secretary of State John Kerry is doing the same. Even Julian Castro, the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Obama, is thinking about running. Honestly, it seems like everyone and everything left from the Obama White House is pondering a presidential bid, except for maybe the North Lawn gardener.

Then, of course, there are the slew of liberal senators champing at the bit to challenge Trump. Bernie SandersKirsten Gillibrand, Corey Booker, and Kamala Harris are all vying to be the upstart anti-Trump champion of angry Democrats. Then there’s Mark Cuban, a liberal billionaire who shilled for Hillary during the 2016 election.

Biden has his work cut out for him if he expects to waltz right into the Democratic Convention for a coronation ceremony where he receives the Party’s nod.

We all know how that worked the last time it happened.

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Martin Shkreli Sentenced To 7 Years In Prison

Today’s sentencing of Martin Shkreli was, as one would expect, a bit of a circus.

First, in a lengthy speech by Shkreli’s lawyer, Martin Brafman told a federal judge that he sometimes wanted to punch his client in the face, but he told U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto on Friday that Shkreli’s outspokenness should not be held against him during the sentencing phase for his fraud charges.

“I’ve got my begging voice on,” Brafman told the judge. He had previously argued for a lenient sentence in court filings partly on the grounds that his investors eventually made money after Shkreli paid them in stock and cash from Retrophin. On the other end, prosecutors had previously argued that Shkreli should not get any credit for what they described as stealing from Retrophin to pay off the investors and have said he did not show any genuine remorse. The Judged sided with the prosecution, earlier this week ordering Shkreli to forfeit $7.4 million in ill-gotten gains.

Then it was Shkreli’s turn to talk.

The “Pharma Bro”, in his last appeal to the judge ahead of his sentence, told the court that he understands his mistakes and begged forgiveness from the investors he lied to, saying, “I am terribly sorry I lost your trust. You deserved far better.”

  • MARTIN SHKRELI TELLS JUDGE HE’S EMBARRASSED AND ASHAMED
  • SHKRELI APOLOGIZES TO INVESTORS: `YOU DESERVED FAR BETTER’
  • SHKRELI, WEEPING, TELLS COURT: `THIS IS MY FAULT’

As Bloomberg adds, Shkreli choked back tears as he addressed Judge Kiyo Matsumoto. He was convicted last August of lying to investors in his hedge funds and manipulating shares in the biotech company he founded. The prosecution has recommended he serve 15 years, while his defense team has said a shorter term is warranted.

Shkreli said he made “gross, stupid and negligent mistakes,” and that while he disagrees with the picture the prosecution painted of him, “I am not going to be baited into going into the mud.”

In the end, the judge split the baby, and on Friday afternoon announced Shkreli’s sentence: 7 years (or 84) months in prison with credit for time served, “capping a saga that alternately captivated and enraged Washington, Wall Street and the tabloids” as Bloomberg summarized one of the most closely watch legal cases in recent years.

With the sentence coming at roughly half of what the prosecution had sought, we can only assume that Shkreli will be happy, relatively speaking, although we doubt the trademark smirk will be there…

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Facebook Sees 24% Drop In Average Time Spent On Site

While Facebook grapples with an explosion in overheadexpensive regulations in Europe (and possibly soon in the U.S.), a staggering decline in traffic, backlash over conservative purging and pedo questionnaires, and a former executive who went public in December with his “tremendous guilt” over helping to hook people on the “internet crack” that is social media – the Silicon Valley behemoth is facing a new challenge; a 24% drop in the average time spent on the site. 

Now new numbers have been released that go through December, and the problem only seems to be getting worse. The updated data shows that Facebook’s core platform lost 18% in time spent, which is a huge change from the month before. This, says Pivotal, reflects a 24% decline in time spent per person.Instagram, too, saw some poor engagement numbers. Though aggregated consumption went up, the user base went up at a higher clip, meaning that time per person went down 9%. –Fast Company

Recent changes to Facebook’s algorithms which prioritize posts from friends and family over promotions have been blamed for lower engagement – as Zuckerberg warned shareholders about in January.

Perhaps that’s why CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other insiders are dumping shares

Zuckerberg isn’t the only insider to sell Facebook stock during February, however. SEC filings reveal a long list of other insiders who also sold FB stock. VP David Fischer converted some restricted stock units this month and sold thousands of shares, including about 18,000 shares this week as part of his prearranged trading plan.

Other insiders who have converted and/ or otherwise moved around some FB stock this month include Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Financial Officer David Wehner, director Kenneth Chenault, Chief Technology Officer Michael Schroepfer, General Counsel Colin Stretch, Chief Product Officer Christopher Cox, and director Jan Koum. That’s quite a list, as usually insider sales of Facebook stock occur on a much smaller scale, based on the regulatory filings of insider transactions. Yahoo! Finance

Former Blackrock manager Ed Dowd of OceanSquare Asset Management – currently short the stock, thinks the “drumbeat of regulations” will put a dent in Facebook shares.

“Facebook has hired 14,000 people working on “community safety” to prevent “Fake News”,” notes Dowd. “They will be at 20,000 people by end of 2018. That is an absurd amount of overhead. FB opex/capex combined was +37% in 2017. They are guiding it to +45-60% in 2018!”

Perhaps users took former Facebook exec Chamath Palihapitiya’s advice from December to heart. Palihapitiya – Facebook’s VP for User Growth who left after a decade with the company, told a group of students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business that he feels “tremendous guilt” for his role in building the social media giant and warned  that “if you feed the beast, that beast will destroy you…” (you can view the relevant portion of the interview here).

Palihapitiya went on to criticize not only Facebook, but Silicon Valley’s entire system of venture capital funding saying that investors pump money into “s**tty, useless, idiotic companies,” rather than addressing real problems. Palihapitiya currently runs his own VC firm, Social Capital, which focuses on funding companies in sectors like healthcare and education.

You can watch Palihapitiya’s full interview below:

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Senate Dems Infrastructure Plan: A Tale of Tax Hikes and Transit Subsidies

Senate Democrats released their own infrastructure plan this week. It is both terribly conventional and just plain terrible.

The so-called “Jobs & Infrastructure Plan for America’s Workers” promises $1 trillion in direct federal spending—not just on traditional infrastructure line items, such as highways, bridges, and ports, but also on schools, housing, and high-speed internet.

“Our plan would create more jobs than the administration plan, build more projects, and build the infrastructure America actually needs, not just what crony donors and private investors can profit from,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.).

That White House proposal would spend $200 billion in federal funds with the hopes of spurring an additional $1.3 trillion in state, local, and private investment, while streamlining the federal permitting process and doing away with regulations that discourage the use of user fees and private infrastructure provision. The Democratic plan would instead overturn a host of recent tax cuts to fund a federal infrastructure spending binge while attaching even more regulations to that spending.

Their plan calls for jacking up the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent, raising the top income tax bracket back to 39.6 percent, and scrapping changes that the Republican tax bill made to the Alternative Minimum Tax and the Estate Tax. This, Democrats claim, will add up to a little more than $1 trillion in tax increases over 10 years.

A good portion of this would go toward what people might traditionally think of when hearing the word “infrastructure.” This includes $115 billion for water and sewer systems and $140 billion for roads. Some $40 billion of that road money would go toward building and repairing the nation’s bridges, with another $100 billion being spent on highways. An additional $140 billion would be put into the Highway Trust Fund.

Transit spending and grant programs would also get a big boost, with $115 billion going toward a plan to “repair and improve public transportation.” This would see federal taxpayers shelling out more for even the most routine local transit expenditures, including $30 billion for new buses and rail cars, $15 billion for “urgent repair projects,” and a $35 billion boost to grant programs that fund everything from maintenance to transit security.

The feds would also pony up another $3 billion to build recreational trails, bike paths, and other infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians.

A lot in the Democratic proposal is at best tangentially connected to infrastructure. This includes $50 billion in aid to local school districts and community colleges, $62 billion for affordable housing and “neighborhood revitalization” (including a call to expand the scandal-ridden Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program), and $40 billion for a “universal internet grant program.”

This raises the hackles of some pro-market transportation experts, including Baruch Feigenbaum of the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website. Truly federal priorities “like the interstate system, and the major arterial roads, the national highway system in the U.S., are incredibly expensive,” says Feigenbaum. It’s better for scarce federal transportation dollars to go there, he says.

The fact that Democrats are in the minority encourages lavish proposals like the ones in this document. When you don’t control the levers of power, it’s a lot easier to escape blame for not following through on your promises. But since the Trump administration will likely need some bipartisan backing to get his infrastructure proposal through Congress, the Democratic proposal may serve as an outline of the kinds of concessions that will be necessary to secure their support.

Says Feigenbaum, “The president laid out his vision. Now the Democrats are laying out their vision. The reality is its going to be something in the middle.”

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Today in History: SCOTUS Protects the Corporate Speech Rights of The New York Times

Do corporations have First Amendment rights? Many modern progressives think not. Former New York Times editorial board member Adam Cohen, for example, has argued that corporate speech does not deserve First Amendment protection because “the Constitution never mentions corporations or their right to speak.”

Fortunately for Cohen and his old colleagues at the New York Times Company, the U.S. Supreme Court reached a different conclusion. And no, I’m not talking about Citizens United.

Fifty-four years ago today, the Supreme Court issued its landmark First Amendment ruling in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. At issue was a libel complaint filed by Montgomery, Alabama, City Commissioner L.B. Sullivan against the New York Times Company because the Times had run a full-page advertisement that charged Montgomery police with violating the rights of civil rights activists.

The Alabama courts sided with Sullivan, awarding him $500,000 in damages for the alleged libel he suffered in his capacity as the city’s supervisor of police. But the Supreme Court reversed that outcome. “The rule of law applied by the Alabama courts,” the Supreme Court held, “is constitutionally deficient for failure to provide the safeguards for freedom of speech and of the press that are required by the First and Fourteenth Amendments in a libel action brought by a public official against critics of his official conduct.”

According to the Court, the First Amendment “prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with ‘actual malice’—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” To hold otherwise, the ruling said, would be to allow a “pall of fear and timidity [to be] imposed upon those who would give voice to public criticism” of public officials, an outcome that the Court described as “an atmosphere in which the First Amendment freedoms cannot survive.”

Which brings us back to former Times-man Adam Cohen. If Cohen is correct about the Constitution offering no safeguards for corporate speech, then the corporate New York Times Company should have never won this case. Thankfully for the freedom of the press, Cohen’s argument remains a losing one.

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