Local reports are describing a total communications blackout in Indian states Jammu and Kashmir that’s so bad many don’t even know New Delhi revoked the region’s political autonomy early this week. The region has essentially been cut off from the rest of the country and the outside world, with a security blockade and checkpoints also set up by the military.
Preceding Monday’s unprecedented revocation of the over 50-year old constitutional Article 370 which gave Indian-administered Kashmir special autonomous status, a massive Indian troop surge had been observed entering the country’s most restive and politically sensitive Muslim-majority region.
Monday is also when a broad government-imposed internet, cellphone, and landline services shutdown went into effect, which has lasted all week. Various reports have described an Indian troop surge into the tens of thousands ostensibly to root out Islamic militants, with estimates putting it close to 40,000 additional soldiers deployed.
Security personnel stand guard on a deserted street in Jammu on Tuesday. Image source AFP
At least 300 local politicians and pro-independence activists have been detained, many under house arrest, by security services, Reuters reported. Any public assemblies or events have also been outlawed, essentially tantamount to martial law in Indian-administered Kashmir, with schools and local government buildings shuttered.
Local news services have ceased functioning, and there’s growing concern that medical access is increasingly unavailable, with people unable to call for ambulances or contact doctors during emergencies. According to a Time report, this has left “some 7 million people stranded without any way to contact family and friends.”
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata leadership in New Delhi, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, revoked J&K’s status quo ability and rights to maintain their own local governance, which also included laws preventing non-Kashmiris from buying property.
Astoundingly, Time reported that the information blackout is so all encompassing many Kashmiris still don’t know about it nearly a week later:
But few Kashmiris will know about that. Many of them will not even know that on Monday morning, Indian Home Minister Amit Shah announced to Parliament that the Indian government would strip their state of the special status that it held under the Indian Constitution for the last 70 years.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Khan, meanwhile, suggested in an address to parliament this week that there’s a “risk of genocide”as India’s army initiates its clamp down.
Pakistan has also declared itself ready to support Kashmiris with “all possible options” at a moment which the two nuclear armed rivals and neighbors along the volatile ‘Line of Control’ could be again hurtling toward direct conflict.
“Kashmir has been turned invisible even inside Kashmir,” Muzamil Jaleel, an Indian Express editor summarized of the dire situation this week.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KpmcSB Tyler Durden
New York City’s $15 minimum wage, which began to take effect Dec. 31, 2018, was meant to bolster earnings and quality of life, but for a lot of residents, it’s doing the opposite…
Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation in 2016 to increase the New York York State’s minimum wage to $15.00/hr. The lowest minimum wage in NY at the time was $9.60. NYC’s “big employers” (11 or more employees) were the first to be forced to increase minimum wage pay toward the end of 2018. The rest of NYC’s smaller-scale businesses won’t have to pay up until December of 2019, according to data on Cuomo’s website.
Cuomo claims to have created the bill with “the needs of workers and businesses alike” in mind, but a lot of business owners in the boroughs beg to differ. They say the extra money comes with an unforeseen cost: higher good prices, fewer working hours and layoffs.
“Many people working in the restaurant industry wanted to work overtime hours, but due to the increase, many restaurants have cut back or totally eliminated any overtime work,” Andrew Riggie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, told Fox News.
“There’s only so much consumers are willing to pay for a burger or a bowl of pasta.”
Roughly 77 percent of NYC restaurants have slashed employee hours. Thirty-six percent said they had to layoff employees and 90 percent had to increase prices following the minimum wage hike, according to a NYC Hospitality Alliance survey taken just one month after the bill took effect.
Only about 4 percent of survey respondents indicated that none of the above changes took place in their restaurants.
“What it really forces you to do is make sure that nobody works more than 40 hours,” Susannah Koteen, owner of Lido Restaurant in Harlem, told Fox News.
“You can only cut back so many people before the service starts to suffer.”
The bill would have effectively doubled the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. There is dismal 6 percent support for a nation-wide $15 wage hike among economists, according to Fox News surveys.
Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation by the time of publishing.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MS8XeY Tyler Durden
In the rate cut playbook envisioned by Trump, Powell’s July 31st rate cut was supposed to send stocks higher while crushing the dollar. However, when the FOMC announce a “mid-cycle”, 25bps cut, the outcome was not only a surge in the dollar but also a surge in volatility not seen so far this year.
The sequence of events is familiar to all by now: at first, Powell’s rate cut spooked the market which had been expected either a 50bps cut, or an explicit promise of an easing cycle. It got neither, and neither did Trump, who the very next day realized that with the Fed now explicitly focusing on global uncertainties, read trade war, as a catalyst for future rate cuts as demonstrated by the following infamous chart…
…. decided to escalate the trade war with China by announcing 10% tariffs on the remaining $300BN in Chinese imports, sending stocks and bond yields plunging, and the market pricing in as much as 100bps of more rate cuts in 12 months, forcing Powell to cut far more than just another 25bps or so as the Fed Chair suggested in the July FOMC meeting.
China immediately retaliated by devaluing the Yuan below 7.00 for the first time since 2008 and halting US ag imports, which in turn prompted the US Treasury to declare China a currency manipulator. Meanwhile, China’s yuan devaluation means the White House is set to unveil even higher tariffs, resulting in an even weaker yuan, and so on, in a toxic feedback loop that may soon escalate the trade and currency war into an all-out shooting war.
And as the market braces for the worst in this new regime of unprecedented policy uncertaint, volatility has exploded, with the S&P chalking up its longest streak of consecutive big daily moves since the start of the year.
When the S&P 500 tumbled as much as 1.2% on Friday, it marked the eighth straight session the index traded in an intraday range of more than 1 percentage point (before closing a more modest 0.7% down), according to calculations by the Financial Times. It was the longest streak of 1%+ moves since a 29-day run that ended on January 10, when the market was convulsed by bouts of sharp selling and subsequent buying.
Additionally, indicating just how fickle traders have become and are willing to buy or sell everything on a single flashing red headline or Trump tweet, the S&P 500 on Wednesday reversed an intraday decline of 2% and finished 0.1 per cent higher; on Friday the S&P went from -1.2% to almost unchanged before closing down 0.7%. July 31 and August 1 marked the first time since May the benchmark swung between positive and negative territory and traded in a more than 1 percentage point daily range for back-to-back sessions.
What happens next is unclear: back in January, the market stabilized on hopes that the Fed would soon turn even more dovish. Now, paradoxically, the volatility has been unleashed precisely because the Fed turned more dovish, raising questions just what will stabilize the market this time.
Yet even with the recent fireworks in the market – the S&P closed down just 0.5% for the week, after suffering its biggest daily drop of 2019 on Monday, following by the year’s biggest 3-day rebound in the subsequent days – volatility has a ways to go before it catches up with the vol explosion that rocked markets at the end of 2018. While the VIX spiked above 24 at the start of the week, its highest closing level since early January, it was trading just below 19 on Friday, right on top of its historical average.
Additionally, at its Monday lows when it tumbled 3.0%, the S&P dropped to the mid-2800s, a level it first traded at the start of 2018 before its suffered the VIXplosive volmageddon event which eradicated inverse VIX ETNs, which sent the VIX just shy of 40. This time, VIX barely crept to 25.
And yet, according to Bank of America analysts, Monday’s selloff was one of the sharpest of all-time on a vol-adjusted basis. The S&P 500 lost almost 3.0%, or about 4.8x its trailing (EWMA) realized vol of 9.9%, the largest sigma loss we’ve seen since 10-Oct-18’s 3.3% selloff on a 6.3% trailing realized vol (-8.3 sigma). In fact, this was the 27th largest 1-day vol-adjusted decline in the history of the S&P 500 (since 1928), a move in the <1st percentile.
And another fascinating observation: while it may not seem like it, especially to traders who were active in 2008/2009 or August 2015, or Feb 2018, the market in the past 3 years has become the most fragile in recent history. As BofA calculates, Monday’s selloff “event” marked the 7th 4+ sigma drawdown in the S&P since 2016, the most in the 4-year window since 1949.
Other recent fragility events include those on 5-Feb-2018 (-5.5 sigma), 17-May-2017 (-5.1 sigma), 9-Sep-2016 (-5.9 sigma), and 24-Jun-2016 (-6.0 sigma). And with the trade and currency war between the US and China only just getting started, traders brace as many more market shocks are set to hit in the coming weeks and months.
One thing is certain: with stocks set to drop, the the dollar rising (for various reasons discussed here) Trump will not be happy, and what’s worse, Trump’s latest calls for 1% in rate cuts (or more), will only make the situation worse as rate cuts of that magnitude would only confirm that a juggernaut of a recession is coming. In any event, the Fed may have no choice but to comply with the president’s and market’s demands, and with Rabobank‘s recession probability index now the highest it has ever been…
… the bank does one better, and lays out how the Fed will cut over the next 16 months as it sends rates back to 0%.
Just as Trump wanted it.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Ks8vm8 Tyler Durden
Representative Joaquin Castro, doxing Trump donors on Twitter – “Sad to see so many San Antonians as 2019 maximum donors to Donald Trump. Their contributions are fueling a campaign of hate that labels Hispanic immigrants as ‘invaders’” – has given us that teachable moment.
Laws mandating disclosure of campaign contributions were originally intended to ensure that the contributions were on the up and up, but they have been turned upside down in today’s take-no-prisoners political climate. Politicians now use disclosure to monitor and police the views of American citizens, calling into question the wisdom of allowing government to surveil so much of our political activity.
“I think you’re a scumbag and I f***ing despise everything you stand for,” said one caller who spammed the voicemail of a Trump donor named in Castro’s tweet.
“That’s why I’m calling you and filling up your voicemail with a bunch of bullsh*t. So, enjoy that. I will make sure to post this number and extension all over the Internet.”
This type of harassment appears to be what Castro hoped for and intended – it is hard to see why else he would have tweeted as he did.
Federal law requires the name, address, occupation, and employer of anyone who gives over $200 to a federal candidate to be published in a government database. The threshold hasn’t been adjusted, even for inflation, in over 40 years. At that level, the law doesn’t just capture big donors — it captures ordinary Americans, too. When Americans who make political contributions find themselves doxxed by a congressman and harassed by anonymous lowlifes, many may decide it’s too risky to support candidates. That would be a real loss for democracy.
Even as disclosure laws have grown more expansive, technology has made them easier to abuse. When the first compulsory disclosure laws were passed in the 1970s, accessing donor information required a person to travel to a specific location and manually sort through the records. Few people took the time to dig up the donations of unknown Americans. By contrast, today it takes only a few clicks from any Internet-connected computer in the world to look up anyone’s donation history.
As a result, donor information is no longer the domain only of responsible journalists. Today an employer or landlord, a bank-loan officer or college-admissions director, an overbearing family or church-community member, or any old nosey neighbor can instantly use and abuse these highly personal records. In a worst-case scenario, donor information offers a roadmap for would-be harassers to target Americans for their beliefs. Even on its best day, disclosure mostly serves up cheap ammunition for partisans to slime their opponents.
The Supreme Court has permitted mandatory disclosure of contributions to candidates, political parties, political-action committees, and super PACs. But historically the Court has protected our right to privacy when we support groups advocating for social change. A unanimous Supreme Court ruled in 1958 that “compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association” as other forms of censorship. In Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the landmark ruling on campaign-finance laws, the Supreme Court upheld donor-disclosure requirements only after limiting the law’s reach to candidates and political committees.
Representative Castro and others in Congress want to move that line. The so-called For the People Act would invade the privacy of advocacy groups and their supporters by publishing the names of donors and members.
Too many politicians think they have a right to track our political activity. They want to know who is supporting any group or person standing in the way of their agenda: who is funding the grassroots advocacy groups that organize petition drives and protests; the public-interest law firms that challenge unconstitutional laws in court; the think tanks that promote policy solutions to today’s biggest challenges. In short, they want to know what ideas you support, and what groups you join.
And as Castro’s doxing of Trump donors shows, many are willing to use this information to put a target on the backs of Americans. If we do not defend privacy in association, everyone who participates in politics may one day be at the mercy of the social-media mob. Let’s keep transparency for the government, and privacy for the people.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GWkxlm Tyler Durden
As we noted yesterday, it took several weekends of mass shootings for Universal Pictures to yank ads for (but not postpone, or cancel) an R-rated ‘murder-porn’ movie in which elite liberals hunt Trump supporters for sport.
“The same people who want you to give up the right to bear arms are the same people making movies about killing Trump supporters for sport,” tweeted OANN Chief White House Correspondent Emerald Robinson.
“Did anyone see what our ratfucker-in-chief just did?” asks one character early in the screenplay for The Hunt – set to open Sept. 27.
“At least The Hunt’s coming up. Nothing better than going out to the Manor and slaughtering a dozen deplorables,” is the reply.
But, after furious backlash in the last few days, that has changed as The Hill reports that Universal Pictures says it is canceling the release of “The Hunt” following intense criticism on both sides of the aisle about the upcoming film.
“While Universal Pictures had already paused the marketing campaign for ‘The Hunt,’ after thoughtful consideration, the studio has decided to cancel our plans to release the film,” a Universal Pictures spokesperson told The Hill in a statement.
“We stand by our filmmakers and will continue to distribute films in partnership with bold and visionary creators, like those associated with this satirical social thriller, but we understand that now is not the right time to release this film.”
This decision followed President Trump’s outburst against “racist” Hollywood on Friday, blaming popular culture for pushing “dangerous” movies.
“The movie coming out is made in order… to inflame and cause chaos. They create their own violence, and then try to blame others,” Trump tweeted Friday.
“They are the true Racists, and are very bad for our Country!”
As Daisy Luther noted, imagine if the shoe was on the other foot and “liberal snowflakes” were being hunted by a bunch of red-hat wearing rednecks. The media would go wild and reasonably so. But when conservatives are in the crosshairs? Crickets.
But Universal’s decision to cancel release (for now), at least delays the inevitable surge in divisiveness and outrage that is coming as we head into an election cycle.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YETQfL Tyler Durden
Donald Trump is an economic ignoramus. I say this all the time. I keep hoping I’m wrong, but every time he opens his mouth he confirms my worst impression of him.
Trump isn’t dumb, he’s very smart. But, like so many smart people, including myself and FOMC members, he’s over-confident in applying that which he’s been mis-educated about.
Trump is surrounded by monetarists, like Larry Kudlow. Kudlow still believes the Phillips Curve has validity for pity’s sake. Behind the curve doesn’t begin to describe the situation in the White House.
And yet that’s what they think of the Fed.
The Fed is staffed by Keynesians, or more accurately Samuelsonians. All of them have truly bonkers ideas about how markets actually work in the real world versus how they do in their textbooks.
Trump is likely the only one of them with any real world experience. And even he, as a real estate developer, only understands things from his tiny perspective.
In his latest round of anti-Fed tweets Trump lit off a litany of economic bromides as to why the Fed is the problem. And, so help me, Donald Trump is so out of touch with reality that I have been reduced to defending the Fed against him.
*grabs for my ginseng*
As your President, one would think that I would be thrilled with our very strong dollar. I am not! The Fed’s high interest rate level, in comparison to other countries, is keeping the dollar high, making it more difficult for our great manufacturers like Caterpillar, Boeing,…..
Trump is right that the dollar is strengthening. But he’s dead wrong about why.
On the one hand he wants a weaker currency but then he lauds, in the same Tweet thread, to the high heavens that money is “pouring into the U.S by the tens of billions” because of safety, security and interest rates.
And worse, that that money pouring is money China isn’t getting. And then, after destroying mutually beneficial trade with China he’s going to spend more of our grandkids’ money (because that’s what record budget deficits are) bailing out farmers whose businesses he ruined.
The stupid, it burns.
He invites capital investment into the U.S through a massive corporate and middle class tax cut and then doesn’t expect the dollar to strengthen? The Fed isn’t the cause of this dynamic.
Sure, the Fed could have held off on raising interest rates but that would only have changed the slope of the capital inflow curve, not the direction.
Trump seems to think the Fed is all-powerful, that all it has to do is snap its fingers, lower interest rates and all will be well again. No. The Fed is a slave to market forces just like everyone else.
And market forces, set in motion by Trump himself, through his responding reflexively with tariff increases and demonization of China.
Trump seems to think the Fed saved the world alone in 2008. He forgets that global ZIRP was only possible because the Chinese economy had the capacity to take the money printed and put it to work.
Without that capacity, as David Stockman pointed out cogently in his book Peak Trump and my interview with him, there would have not been the last decade of muddle through here in the West and explosive growth of China.
So, Trump blaming the Fed for a rising dollar is silly. What’s causing the rising dollar is the very instability he’s creating with his ‘tariff the world/sanction the world’ policy to force change.
The Fed needed to raise rates and force some sanity on the world. It needed to start rewarding savers to rebuild the pool of real savings within the U.S. economy, gutted to rebuild the banks on Wall St. who are now staring at an abyss of red inkfrom the oil boom and bust Trump thinks will Make America Great Again.
Russia and Iran have something to say about that.
IMO, they didn’t go far enough. If Trump’s goal is a different trade dynamic, a stronger dollar is the path to doing that. The Fed was helping him get what he wants. But because he’s, frankly, a spoiled Baby Boomer he wants it all and he wants it now.
What’s even sadder about this is that not only is Trump getting me to defend the Fed he’s getting me to agree with the shitlibs who say he doesn’t have the temperament to be President.
That doesn’t mean I pine for Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office. This is not an “If Not A, then B” situation. Just because Trump is not fit to be President doesn’t mean Hillary was either.
Like everyone else, I’m just trying to make the best of a bad situation rapidly deteriorating. Trump’s inability to grasp the basics of capital flows and the inadequacies of government accounting is yet another catalyst for a global meltdown that the U.S. will be the last one to feel the worst effects of, because the Fed’s ZIRP policy blew the biggest bubble of all time, denominated in, you guessed it, dollars.
There’s more than $50 trillion in dollar-denominated debt out there trading at already historically-low interest rates. What in the actual fuck does Trump think another 25 basis points is going to do?
Cure Cancer? Or get him re-elected so he can terrorize the world with his victimhood mentality he still clings to from when he was a Democrat.
The Fed can’t reverse the capital flowing into the U.S.. Trump started that the right way, he cut taxes and continues to cut regulations while changing the face of the judiciary.
But like the malignant narcissist that he is he refuses to take responsibility for doing so. His inflexibility will doom his presidency but he won’t see that until it’s too late.
So the blame game goes on. When he’s blaming the media and the increasingly bizarre behavior of Democrats trying to oust him from power, he’s spot on. When he tries to make sense of the interface between politics and markets he’s lost in a wilderness of mirrors.
I have only one word of advice at this point.
Duck.
*checks the price of gold and bitcoin*
* * *
Join my Patreon if you like unvarnished truth. Install Brave if you still want to be able to find it in two years.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YZguuE Tyler Durden
The same day that Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a formal statement warning that any Israeli involvement in the proposed US-led joint maritime coalition in the Gulf is a “clear threat” to Iran’s national security, a separate statement from a senior government official has threatened war would engulf Israel should it send boats into the Strait of Hormuz.
Senior Advisor to the Iranian Parliament, Speaker Hossein Amir Abdollahian, said Friday that “smoke will rise from Tel Aviv” should Israel joint the United States’ maritime patrol in the gulf.
Image source: AFP
“If Israel enters the Strait of Hormuz, it will be engulfed in the wrath of the region and its smoke will rise from Tel Aviv,” the senior official threatened in a statement posted on Twitter.
According to Reuters, Israeli media had quoted Foreign Minister Israel Katz early in the week as confirming discussions were underway among top defense officials over possibly joining a US maritime protection initiative in the Persian Gulf.
Israel’s role could come down to intelligence-sharing, however, given the explosive potential for conflict should its forces actually deploy in the region. Israeli officials have yet to confirm nor deny the reports.
Abdollahian’s statement explained further: “Iran has a vital role in the security of the Strait of Hormuz. Any US-led military coalition in the strait is a repetition of Iraq and Afghanistan occupation and escalation of insecurity in the region.”
Iran’s leaders have repeatedly warned that only its forces can secure the vital narrow oil shipping waterway, and have said stepped up western patrols will only destabilize the region.
The Foreign Ministry has warned this week that Iran’s military reserves the right to “counter this threat and defend its territory,” while referring to any hostile foreign powers on or near its territory.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MbAs3k Tyler Durden
Do investors recognize how much risk they’re taking on at this stage in markets? I think it’s a highly relevant question as things may not be as well as they seem. On the surface all looks well as markets just made new all time highs in July and big cap stocks such as $AAPL are near trillion dollar valuations and show strong balance sheets.
But there’s something insidious going on underneath the valuation equation and that is: Investors paying higher and higher forward multiples not realizing that they do.
Why? Because corporate profits are actually not expanding. Not only are they not expanding they’re shrinking on an aggregate level.
What if I told you corporate profits before taxes actually peaked in 2014, 5 years ago? Really, it is true:
And if you look closely you realize that this a trend that happens preceding recessions. Now this trend can last a few years as it has now, or in the period in the mid 90’s leading to the 2000 top, or it can happen more quickly as in the 2006 – 2007 time frame.
But note, this decline in corporate profits presages the end of a business cycle, i.e. an upcoming recession, but markets tend to keep rising until that happens:
Why don’t markets react to this decline in corporate profits? The last cycle and this cycle in particular give a clear answer: Buybacks.
Even more so now than in 2006-2007 we are still in a very aggressive buyback cycle and this form of financial engineering masks a lot of things.
Here’s how I explained it on twitter the other day in reference to a chart about how earnings growth has come to a halt:
How this works:
Say you earn $1 in year 1 and $1 in year 2.
Earnings are flat.
But because you shrank your float via buybacks you can claim earnings growth.
$1 over 1 share = EPS of 1
$1 over 0.9 shares = EPS of 1.11
Look: 11% earnings growth. Magic.
Now pay me a bonus. https://t.co/kJ6mIviixQ
And here is how this translates into risk to investors. Take $APPL.
The company is trading around $200 these days, nearly double the level it was trading at in 2015. Why is 2015 relevant? Because $AAPL’s earnings were exactly the same as they are now: Around $53B.
But what did they do? They bought back shares since 2015. Lots of them. 1.2 billion shares to be precise. The net effect:
“With flat net income, the purchase of a net 1.2 billion Apple shares means that per-share earnings are slated to rise from $9.22 in fiscal 2015 to $11.51 this year”.
What’s that mean for investors? Well, you’re paying a near double premium in share price for a company that hasn’t grown earnings in 4 years. That’s called multiple expansion. $AAPL’s forward earnings multiple in 2015 was 11-2, now it’s near 17. That means you’re taking on a lot more risk than in 2015. In fact the multiple expansion is between 45%-55%.
Who says there’s no inflation?
And it’s not only with $AAPL, it’s common across the board. So investors be aware: You’re taking on a lot more risk in paying for shares either directly or in ETFs and index funds, especially at a time when market valuations to GDP have exceeded 140%. Buyer beware.
* * *
For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YYNseS Tyler Durden
With virtually everyone piling on the surreal news of “no longer on suicide watch” Jeffrey Epstein’s murder “suicide” , including Rudy Giuliani and Rod Rosenstein, even as we patiently await to see whether Bill Clinton or Donald Trump will chime in first…
… moments ago Attorney General William Barr slammed the death of the wealthy financier pedophile in federal custody while he awaited charges on sex trafficking, saying the apparent suicide “raises serious questions.”
“I was appalled to learn that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead early this morning from an apparent suicide while in federal custody. Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered,” Barr said in a statement.
“In addition to the FBI’s investigation, I have consulted with the Inspector General who is opening an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Epstein’s death,” Barr added.
While the facts surrounding Epstein’s “suicide” have yet to be revealed, what is bizarre is that even though he was reportedly placed on suicide watch in late July after a possible suicide attempt when he was found unconscious in his jail cell with marks around his neck, reports Saturday indicated he was not on suicide watch at the time of his death.
What makes the “suicide” so unbelievable is that virtually everyone saw it coming… Except for the Bureau of Prisons apparently.
Dear Bureau of Prisons: Please get Jeffrey Epstein to a super Max prison pronto, or the people who want him dead will make sure we never know the truth. ACT NOW!
And speaking of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, it announced earlier Saturday morning that the FBI would investigate his death at the Manhattan jail where he was being held awaiting trial.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Epstein was being held, has yet to offer any statements surrounding Epstein’s death.
In the statement earlier Saturday, the Bureau of Prisons said Epstein had been discovered in his cell about 6:30 a.m., and was taken to a nearby hospital where efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KKq67M Tyler Durden
The result has been domination of girls’ track and field events by biological males, including by one male who couldn’t cut it in male track and then shattered 10 records in female track.
Female athletes in Connecticut say it’s a violation of Title IX – and the Department of Education is willing to hear them out.
The agency’s Office for Civil Rights in Boston agreed to open an investigation into the allegations by Selina Soule (above), two unnamed students and their parents, including that they faced retaliation from CIAC and the Glastonbury Board of Education for advocating against the “Transgender Participation Policy.”
OCR has jurisdiction over the matter because the school district receives federal funding and because the district and other recipients “ceded to the CIAC controlling authority over athletic programs,” according to the Wednesday letter from Adrienne Mundy-Shephard, acting regional director.
The feds have a model policy they can cite if they don’t want to completely ban biological males from competing in girls’ sports. The NCAA’s transgender policy requires males to take testosterone-suppressing hormones for at least a year before competing in a female sport.
The investigation will probe whether CIAC and the district “denied equal athletic benefits and opportunities to girls” in violation of Title IX. Retaliation is also a violation of Title IX, and OCR will consider whether CIAC retaliated against the first complainant when its executive director stopped “accept[ing] communications” from her. (The parents are identified as “Complainants,” and their daughters as “Students.”)
The second retaliation claim OCR will investigate is broader and appears to reference allegations by Soule, the only student who named herself, and her mother:
Whether the District retaliated against Student 2 for her and Complainant 2’s advocacy against the Transgender Participation Policy when Student 2’s track coach replaced the Student 2 on the sprint medley relay team in February 2019, told the Student 2 and her parents that he could not give a good report to college coaches about her, and denied Student 2 a position as a team captain, and suggested that she should leave the outdoor track team due to her schedule in March 2019 …
The Title IX complaint was filed on behalf of the families by the Alliance Defending Freedom. In a press release Thursday, the public interest litigation firm thanked OCR for investigating and said the CIAC policy makes girls “spectators in their own sports”:
Title IX is a federal law that was designed to eliminate discrimination against women in education and athletics, and women fought long and hard to earn the equal athletic opportunities that Title IX provides. Allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women. …
Selina and her fellow female athletes train countless hours in hope of the personal satisfaction of victory, an opportunity to participate in state and regional meets, or a chance at a college scholarship. But girls competing against boys know the outcome before the race even starts.
