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Canadian Court Orders Gov’t to Let Medical Marijuana Users Grow Their Own

But how does it taste on pancakes?Medical marijuana users in Canada have a constitutional right to grown their own pot. That’s what a federal court in Vancouver determined this morning in a ruling striking down a ban.

Canada allows marijuana use for medical use but requires patients to buy the drug from licensed suppliers. Some residents objected to this restriction and took the government to court in 2013, saying the government system was too expensive and didn’t give them control over their own treatment.

Today Judge Michael Phelan ruled that this requirement violates Canadian citizen’s charter rights and freedoms under the country’s constitution. In particular, he finds two sections apply in the case:

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in its subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society … [and]

Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

Phelan determined that the regulations violate citizens’ rights to liberty and security and that laws restricting access to homegrown medical marijuana “have not been proven to be in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

Nothing will happen immediately. The judge gave Canadian government six months to figure out what to do and whether it will appeal. According to CBC News he kept in place a previous injunction that allows Canadians with pre-existing medical marijuana prescriptions to grow their own, but it doesn’t cover new patients. The ruling, just to be clear, also has nothing to say about whether bans on recreational use are constitutional.

The judge, apparently, didn’t think much of the experts who argued against home cultivation:

In his decision, the judge noted that “many ‘expert’ witnesses were so imbued with a belief for or against marijuana — almost a religious fervour — that the court had to approach such evidence with a significant degree of caution and skepticism.”

In particular, he called one RCMP witness for the Crown, Cpl. Shane Homequist, “the most egregious example of the so-called expert.

“He possessed none of the qualifications of usual expert witnesses. His assumptions and analysis were shown to be flawed. His methodologies were not shown to be accepted by those working in his field. The factual basis of his various options was uncovered as inaccurate,” he wrote.

“I can give this evidence little or no weight,” the judge concluded.

Phelan also dismissed many of the federal government’s arguments concerning the risks home grow-ops could pose to homes, noting mould, fire, break-ins and insurance concerns can be addressed within existing laws and regulations.

He found the rules which “limited a patient to a single government-approved contractor and eliminated the ability to grow one’s own marijuana or choose one’s own supplier” were an untenable restriction on the plantiffs’ liberties.

Read the full decision here.

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What Could Go Wrong? Brazil Plans To Kill Zika With Gamma Radiation Burst

Having "nailed it" with the feces-infused water for the Olympics, killed the golden goose of its economy, and unable to crackdown on widespread corruption, Brazil now has a 'great' idea to solve its utterly disastrous Zika epidemic… by zapping millions of male mosquitoes with gamma rays from drones to sterilise them.

 

As The Telegraph reports, Brazil is planning to fight the Zika virus by zapping millions of male mosquitoes with gamma rays to sterilise them and stop the spread of the virus linked to thousands of birth defects.

Called an irradiator, the device has been used to control fruit flies on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday it will pay to ship the device to Juazeiro, in the northeastern state of Bahia, as soon as the Brazilian government issues an import permit.

 

"It's a birth control method, the equivalent of family planning for humans," said Kostas Bourtzis, a molecular biologist with the IAEA's insect pest control laboratory.

Brazil is scrambling to eradicate the Aedes mosquito that has caused an epidemic of dengue and more recently an outbreak of Zika, a virus associated with an alarming surge in cases of babies born with abnormally small heads.

 

The new epidemic threatens to scare visitors away from the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in August. A Brazilian non-profit organisation called Moscamed will breed up to 12 million male mosquitoes a week and then sterilise them with the cobalt-60 irradiator, produced by Canadian company MDS Nordion, said Dr Bourtzis.

After an initial programme in a dozen towns near Juazeiro, the Brazilian government would have to decide on scaling up the sterile mosquito production with more funding for use in cities, where they would be released from the air, possibly from drones, said Dr Bourtzis.

 

With no cure or vaccine available for Zika, which has spread to more than 30 countries, mostly in the Americas, the only way to contain the virus is to reduce the mosquito population.

 

Brazilian researchers are also experimenting with radiation. The Fiocruz biomedical research institute has released 30,000 sterile mosquitoes on an island 217 miles off the coast of northeast Brazil.

What could possibly go wrong? And the question now is – will Olympic athletes be 'tested' for performance-enhancing gamma-radiation?


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U. Michigan LGBT Center Creates Safe Space to Protect Students from Offensive Speakers—Both of Whom Are Gay

The University of Michigan’s libertarian and conservative students held a debate on free speech and feminism featuring conservative media personality Milo Yiannopoulos and leftist activist Julie Bindel last night. Their views are apparently so terrifying that the campus’s Spectrum Center—an LGBT awareness group—provided a safe space for students who felt “threatened” by the debate. 

It’s a tad ironic that a gay group would feel the need to protect gay students from Yiannopoulos and Bindel—both of whom identify as LGBT. While it’s certainly true that venomously anti-gay gay people exist, humoring the idea that Yiannopoulos and Bindel represent some kind of existential threat to anyone is indulging in hysteria. 

Nevertheless, the Spectrum Center touted its “supportive alternative space” in a statement on the university’s website: 

It has come to our attention that an event titled, “Does Feminism Have a Free Speech Problem?” is taking place this evening on our campus. We recognize that the rhetoric of the speakers featured in this event is incredibly harmful to many members of our campus community. The Spectrum Center will be providing a supportive alternative space this evening and holding extended staffed hours until 9pm. There will be no program; our intent is to offer a relaxing, positive space for students who want to gather in community. 

Yiannopoulos and Bindel have made controversial, even offensive statements (Bindel once joked about putting men in camps). I have no doubt they did so at the event last night as well. Would it not have been a more useful exercise for students who despise them to actually attend the event, rather than cowering in fear in a so-called safe space? There was a Q and A period. Critics could have pushed back against Yiannopoulos and Bindel. Some kind of genuine learning, or exchange of ideas, might have taken place. 

I don’t know how else to ask this: Students, if you don’t want to engage people with whom you disagree, why are you in college? 

Regarding the event itself, it’s interesting to note that the speakers were temporarily interrupted by a protester storming the stage. Supporters of Yiannopoulos responded by chanting, “Trump!” Indeed, “Students for Trump” flyers adorned the chairs of the event. Student-organizer Hunter Swogger told The Michigan Daily: 

After the event, Swogger said while the things both figures said were controversial, he hoped students realized it was all in good fun. 

“They’re mainly just screwing around; they’re mainly just comedians,” he said. “They love making people laugh, they love making each other laugh and they don’t take themselves too seriously.” 

Seems like good evidence to support my thesis that a lot of Trump’s supporters aren’t actually interested in his policies—rather, they are signaling their enthusiasm for the anti-political correctness spectacle he is performing. As Yiannopoulos told me, “Trump’s becoming an icon of irreverent resistance to political correctness. It’s why people like him.” 

[Related: How Political Correctness Caused College Students to Cheer for Donald Trump.] 

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A Different Policy Agenda Won’t Win Over Donald Trump’s Supporters

If you want to understand the essence of Donald Trump’s appeal, look to California Republican Duncan Hunter endorsement.

“We don’t need a policy wonk as president. We need a leader as president,” Hunter told Politico this morning. Hunter’s endorsement, one of the first for Trump from a sitting representative, makes explicit a point I tried to make yesterday: Policy is utterly irrelevant to Trump’s campaign.

It’s not that Trump’s supporters don’t have issues they care about; immigration is certainly a priority, as are jobs, health care, and trade. But even the most basic policy details are unimportant to both Trump and his fans. Instead, they are attracted to his attitude and to his rhetoric. As New York GOP Rep. Chris Collins said in his endorsement yesterday, he likes Trump because he has “guts and fortitude.” Trump’s supporters view him as strong and capable and direct, and that’s enough.

That is why I am somewhat skeptical when I see pundits and political analysts argue, as Ross Douthat of The New York Times does today, that, in the aftermath of a Trump nomination, the voters Trump is now winning could be brought over to a more conventional Republican party candidate through the advocacy of a policy agenda.

So in a post-Trump-as-nominee landscape Republicans will face a pretty clear choice: Either continue to ride the tiger, or try to actually craft an agenda that might appeal pan-ethnically, to middle-class Hispanics and blacks as well as Rust Belt whites. And for all that I make mock of the party’s donors and consultants, at bottom I’m confident they don’t want Trumpism, they don’t want to work for a trending-toward-ethno-nationalism party, they don’t want to go through this agony every four or eight years. So I think there will be some real impetus, in the wake of a Donald-wrought degringolade, to actually try some new things — things that might not work, yes, but if they did work could actually succeed in bringing a better Republican Party out of the Trumpian wreckage.

Douthat is right, I think, that a Trump victory in the GOP nominating contest could spur panic and innovation in the Republican party, a willingness amongst politicians, donors, and intellectuals alike to experiment, and perhaps even to reexamine some of the party’s most cherished and long-held ideas. And that sort of experimentation and change, born from hitting bottom, could be interesting and perhaps even valuable for a party too stuck in its ways.

The problem is that there’s precious little evidence that policy-focused experimentation would be successful at winning over the Trump enthusiasts who are currently driving his primary wins. Yes, it’s true that a Trump victory in the primary would prove that sticking with party dogma on key policy issues isn’t necessary to winning the GOP nomination. But what Trump’s campaign really suggests is not so much that the GOP agenda is wrong but that policy agendas don’t matter much at all.

Trump barely understands the policies he talks about, blatantly lies about the positions he’s held and the policies he has proposed, and he has cynically switched positions enough times on enough issues that anyone who is looking for a particular policy or coherent policy agenda, or even the suggestion of one, would have jumped off the Trump-train a long time ago.

But as Hunter’s endorsement makes clear, Trump’s supporters are looking for no such thing. They are backing Trump based on generalized dissatisfaction with the political status quo and long-simmering cultural resentments that cannot be easily satisfied with white paper solutions and legislative tweaks.

Indeed, what many of his supporters appear to like about Trump is that he is not running a policy-focused campaign. So the problem with trying to win his voters over with a new and better policy agenda wouldn’t be the specifics of the agenda but with the basic fact that it’s a policy agenda.

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Norway Warns Sweden Will Collapse, PM Will Defy Geneva Convention To Protect Border

As you might have heard, Sweden has a refugee problem.

We’ve spent quite a bit of time documenting the country’s trials and travails over the course of the last 12 months during which time Sweden has taken on more than 160,000 asylum seekers.

Last month, on the heels of reports from Germany that men of “Arab and North African” origin assaulted women in central Cologne during New Year’s Eve celebrations, Swedish media alleged that police orchestrated a massive coverup designed to keep a string of similar attacks that allegedly occurred at a youth festival in Stockholm’s Kungsträdgården last August from seeing the light of day.

Meanwhile, a 22-year-old refugee center worker was stabbed to death by a Somali migrant at a shelter for asylum seekers and at the Stockholm train station, “gangs” of Moroccan migrant children reportedly spend their days attacking security personnel and accosting women.

Sweden plans to deport some 80,000 of the refugees this year but according to Norwegian PM Erna Solberg, it may be too little too late to keep the country from collapsing. So concerned is Solberg that she’s now crafted an emergency law that will allow Norway to refuse asylum seekers at the border in the event “it all breaks down” in Sweden.

“It is a force majeure proposals which we will have in the event that it all breaks down, the power just comes, and all end in Norway because we are at the top and most of Europe. Norway is the end point, is not it,” Solberg said, in an interview with Berlingske whose Tinne Knudsen adds that “the legislation will soon be presented to the Parliament and is expected to meet broad support.”


Here’s how the proposal is being presented by the anti-immigration Swedish online magazine Fria Tider: “Norway is now preparing to denounce the Geneva Convention and to secure the border with Sweden by force – without letting people apply for asylum.”

Norway’s Bar Association says the move would violate the country’s international obligations as well as basic human rights. But Solberg isn’t backing down. “When we make such a proposal, we know that it is quite a big break with how things have been, but we must have some measures that are preparing for the worst case scenarios,” she insists.

Yes, “worst case scenarios,” like what Sweden’s Foreign Minister Margot Wallström described last October when she said “most people feel that we cannot maintain a system where perhaps 190,000 people will arrive every year – in the long run, our system will collapse.” 

Expect other countries to make similar threats as the international order breaks down amid the cascade of Mid-East refugees. Once everyone’s borders are closed the question becomes this: will animosity push member states in Merkel’s “harmonious” union to the brink of war with one another?


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Gangster Tactic – Pro Hillary Union Threatened to Pull Funding if Labor Official Spoke at Sanders Rally

Screen Shot 2016-02-24 at 1.12.43 PM

We’ve all seen Hillary’s shadiness on display time and time again throughout the campaign, but one thing that hasn’t been said enough is that with the Clintons, you don’t just get the Clintons. You end up electing a cadre of some of the most villainous and corrupt corporate criminals, manipulators and unethical political mercenaries America has to offer.

With Hillary in the White House, the American people are also signing up for an all-star roster of associated cronies who have spent much of the last few decades raping and pillaging both Americans at home, and innocents abroad.

– From the post: Madeleine Albright Says “There’s a Special Place in Hell for Women Who Don’t Help Each Other”

As I pointed out in the post above, the Clintons are basically white collar gangsters. You don’t attain the kind of political and now financial power that they have in modern America without your fair share shadiness.

Of course, everybody knows this, which is why she’s considered to be untrustworthy by 60% of the American public. It’s not just her though. It’s the people who have climbed the ladder with her, and who hope to climb it further once she becomes President, that we need to be concerned about. These people can be just as vicious, power hungry and unethical as Hillary.

Yesterday, the Huffington Post highlighted the latest gangster move perpetrated by Hillary supporters:

continue reading

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Even The Average Joe Gets It: “They’re Winding Us All Up For A Minsky Moment”

With global central bank policy in disarray following the Fed’s now admitted “policy error” of tightening just as the US and global economy are heading for recession, while the rest of the world desperate to cut to ever more negative rates, not to mention Japan’s abysmal foray into NIRP, there was hope that this weekend in Shanghai the G-20 would “bail us out” and unveil some miraculous rescue for risk takers at least one more time.

However, as Jack Lew explained earlier today, this won’t happen, leaving traders in a state of limbo and cognitive shock – after all if not even the central banks have your back, then who does?

Still something has to happen, or otherwise the world will careen into a deflationary, NIRP collapse and the Fed’s 25bps “recession buffer” will have absolutely no impact before the US itself plunged into economic contraction.

One proposal comes from BBG trader Richard Breslow, who like most others, is sick and tired of the constant market manipulation, endless central bank jawboning, and who like us, is hoping that one day markets will once again be free and efficient, not for any other reason but because as Breslow notes, even the average Joe gets it: “if you really want to see people spend and invest there has to be some belief this won’t all end in tears.”

His full note:

Parole For Prisoners With A Dilemma

If the U.S. wants to really do some good at the G-20, they should try to get their heads around the concept of embracing a stronger U.S. dollar. That would be showing a commitment to global leadership, both economic and moral, which has been long absent. It’s a bet on a stronger global economic tide raising all boats.

Even the largest economy in the world has been unable (unwilling) to export growth sufficient to generate momentum anywhere else. We’re left with a negative feedback loop where global policy makers are competitively circling each other rather than constructively driving toward the goal of sustainable growth.

Meanwhile, the Fed is desperately hoping to raise rates. Their version of saving for a rainy day. They’re doing so when the rest of the world’s central banks are on a diametrically opposed trajectory. This introduces conflicting volatility shocks into the financial system giving off signals the FOMC can’t interpret.

Their response has been to hide behind data dependence. Yet given the volatility they themselves are creating and the hurried press conferences to address every short-term move, it looks suspiciously like total lack of conviction. After years of driving down price swings they’re winding us all up for a Minsky moment.

Imposed long-term stability breeds bad habits that lead to instability. Sound familiar? Get short some more convexity, nothing can go wrong.

If the Fed really does believe the economy is okay then, for now, let the tightening come from a higher dollar. Do some good for the world, because cycling through “raise”, “on- hold” “maybe cut” is counterproductive.

Take the pressure off countries feeling forced into the horribly misguided policy of negative rates. They’re the biological warfare escalation of the currency war everyone purports to be against.

Everyone is hoping consumer spending will save the day. Main Street to the rescue again. But the average Joe isn’t as gullible as he once was and the personal savings rate remains high and is rising. Get out and buy something you don’t need, your kids can pay for their own education. If you really want to see people spend and invest there has to be some belief this won’t all end in tears.


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Citi: “We Have A Problem”

In his latest must read presentation, Citigroup’s Matt King continues to expose and mock the increasing helplessness and cluelessness of central bankers, something this website has done since 2009 knowing full well how it all ends (incidentally not in a deflationary whimper, quite the opposite).

Take Matt King’s September 2015 piece in which he warned that one of the most serious problems facing the world is that we may have hit its debt ceiling beyond which any debt creation is merely pushing on a string leading to slower growth and further deflation. Or his more recent report which explained why despite aggressive easing by the BOJ and ECB, asset prices continue to fall as a result of quantitative tightening by EM reserve managers and China, which are soaking up the same liquidity injected by DM central banks.

Overnight, he put it all together in a simple and elegant way that only Matt King can do in a presentation titled ominously “Don’t look down: You might find too many negatives.”

In it he first proceeds to lay out how things have dramatically changed in recent months compared to prior years: first, the “appalling” asset returns and the “rising dislocations” between asset prices in recent months and especially in 2016, or a broken market which is not just about Crude (with correlation regimes flipping back and forth), or China (as YTD bank returns in Japan and Switzerland are far worse than those in the China-exposed Eurozone), as appetite for risk has effectively disappeared. Worse, as the Japanese NIRP showed, incremental easing in the form of QE actually triggered ongoing weakness, sending both the Nikkei and the USDJPY plunging, suggesting that central bank grip on markets is almost gone.

King then notes that while spreads are at recessionary levels, yields – courtesy of record low interest rates – are still quite affordable and “in principle there is nothing to worry about”, perhaps it is just the market overshooting: he points out several lagging indicators such as employment and loan demand which do not suggest that a recession is imminent and all that needs to happen is to “replace fear with greed.“

That is easier said than done, though, because despite all the “adjustments” data is already rapidly deteriorating, not only in manufacturing where the entire world is in a recession, but also in services as today’s contractionary Markit report showed.

King then begins his conclusive tour de force by noting that “None of the his is supposed to be happening” – inflation and economic growth are supposed to be rising in a world as manipulated by central bankers as this one. Instead, the opposite is taking place.

 

So where does that leave us? Having laid out the issues ailing the market, he note that “maybe it all fizzles out by itself”…

 

Actually, it’s not just one problem. Many problems.

Problem #1: the world finds itself in the aftermath of a series of bubbles inflated by central banks, compounded by the market’s own realization that “we are now running out of greater fools.”

Problem #2: “Whenever we’ve had these spread levels… we’ve always been rescued by central banks.” This time, however, they are either late, or their interventions are failing.

 

Problem #3: The marginal effect of easing is no longer positive, and “everything QE was supposed to have done, it hasn’t“

 

Problem #4: as a result of coordinated, global intervention, central banks are now forced to fight not just local but global demand shortfalls.

 

Problem #5: As a result of this global coordination, countries that withdraw liquidity such as EM and China, offset the “favorable” impact of central banks which contribute to liquidity.

 

Problem #6: as global central banks now operate as a cabal, this has “serious implications”, namely 1) individual CBs not in control of their own destinies; 2) Everything ECB and BoJ are doing is being offset by outflows from EM, and 3) What do these correlations imply for
herding?

Problem #7: As a result of this required, but failed coordination, the world is left with a global problem that desperately needs a solution. “What should be done”, King asks, and provides the following menu of policy actions, however as he adds, “the things which mught make a difference feel miles away”… and even further after today Jack Lew warned not to expect anything out of this weekend’s G-20 meeting in Shanghai.

 

And the final Problem: the “next phase” will likely be a crisis of confidence in central banks.

King, at his most ominous, concludes with the only possible response should it come to this: “Sell what hasn’t moved against what has.”

To this we would add one minor tangent: once we get to the “next phase“, sell everything whose value only exists as a result of confidence in central banks.


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Is This The Death Of The American Political Establishment?

Authored by Robert Reich,

Step back from the campaign fray for just a moment and consider the enormity of what’s already occurred.

A 74-year-old Jew from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist, who wasn’t even a Democrat until recently, has come within a whisker of beating Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucus, routed her in the New Hampshire primary, and garnered over 47 percent of the caucus-goers in Nevada, of all places.

And a 69-year-old billionaire who has never held elective office or had anything to do with the Republican Party has taken a commanding lead in the Republican primaries.

Something very big has happened, and it’s not due to Bernie Sanders’ magnetism or Donald Trump’s likeability.

It’s a rebellion against the establishment.

The question is why the establishment has been so slow to see this. A year ago – which now seems like an eternity – it proclaimed Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush shoe-ins.

Both had all the advantages – deep bases of funders, well-established networks of political insiders, experienced political advisors, all the name recognition you could want.   

But even now that Bush is out and Hillary is still leading but vulnerable, the establishment still doesn’t see what’s occurred. They explain everything by pointing to weaknesses: Bush, they now say, “never connected” and Hillary “has a trust problem.”

A respected political insider recently told me most Americans are largely content. “The economy is in good shape,” he said. “Most Americans are better off than they’ve been in years. The problem has been the major candidates themselves.”  

I beg to differ.

Economic indicators may be up but they don’t reflect the economic insecurity most Americans still feel, nor the seeming arbitrariness and unfairness they experience.  

Nor do the major indicators show the linkages Americans see between wealth and power, crony capitalism, declining real wages, soaring CEO pay, and a billionaire class that’s turning our democracy into an oligarchy.

Median family income is lower now than it was sixteen years ago, adjusted for inflation.

Most economic gains, meanwhile, have gone to top.

These gains have translated into political power to rig the system with bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, special tax loopholes, trade deals, and increasing market power – all of which have further pushed down wages and pulled up profits.

Those at the very top of the top have rigged the system even more thoroughly. Since 1995, the average income tax rate for the 400 top-earning Americans has plummeted from 30 percent to 18 percent. 

Wealth, power, and crony capitalism fit together. So far in the 2016 election, the richest 400 Americans have accounted for over a third of all campaign contributions.

Americans know a takeover has occurred and they blame the establishment for it.

There’s no official definition of the “establishment” but it presumably includes all of the people and institutions that have wielded significant power over the American political economy, and are therefore deemed complicit.

At its core are the major corporations, their top executives, and Washington lobbyists and trade associations; the biggest Wall Street banks, their top officers, traders, hedge-fund and private-equity managers, and their lackeys in Washington; the billionaires who invest directly in politics; and the political leaders of both parties, their political operatives, and fundraisers.

Arrayed around this core are the deniers and apologists – those who attribute what’s happened to “neutral market forces,” or say the system can’t be changed, or who urge that any reform be small and incremental.

Some Americans are rebelling against all this by supporting an authoritarian demagogue who wants to fortify America against foreigners as well as foreign-made goods. Others are rebelling by joining a so-called “political revolution.”

The establishment is having conniptions. They call Trump whacky and Sanders irresponsible. They charge that Trump’s isolationism and Bernie’s ambitious government programs will stymie economic growth.

The establishment doesn’t get that most Americans couldn’t care less about economic growth because for years they’ve got few of its benefits, while suffering most of its burdens in the forms of lost jobs and lower wages.

Most people are more concerned about economic security and a fair chance to make it.

The establishment doesn’t see what’s happening because it has cut itself off from the lives of most Americans. It also doesn’t wish to understand, because that would mean acknowledging its role in bringing all this on.

Yet regardless of the political fates of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, the rebellion against the establishment will continue.  

Eventually, those with significant economic and political power in America will have to either commit to fundamental reform, or relinquish their power.

 


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