The Law Protects Religious Liberty Far More than Many People Think

Religion 2

In an excellent recent article, conservative legal commentator and longtime religious liberty litigator David French explains why current law protects religious liberty far more than many people—particularly many conservatives—think. French makes many good points, and I agree with nearly everything he says. I do have two  reservations about his conclusion, however. One relates to the specific field of immigration law, which is a major exception to his thesis. The second is the growing tendency of many on both right and left to vary their approach to religious liberty issues depending on whose ox is being gored. The latter does not in itself change the nature of current legal doctrine. But it could have negative effects down the road.

Here are some of the excellent points French makes. On Title VII and employment discrimination:

I have seen a remarkable amount of commentary in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County arguing that the Supreme Court dealt religious liberty in America a serious, dangerous blow. Bostock, for those who don’t follow SCOTUS case names closely, is the case that interpreted Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination on the basis of “sex” to necessarily include sexual orientation and gender identity.

As I read piece after piece, I realized that many of the people writing about the impact on religious freedom simply didn’t understand the law. A generation of Americans raised on breathless activist warnings about freedom’s demise genuinely believe that religious organizations teeter on a dangerous precipice….

Religious employers have a right to impose religious litmus tests on their employees.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—the same statute at issue in Bostock—contains a provision specifically designed to protect the autonomy of religious organizations. It states, “This subchapter shall not apply … to the employment of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution, or society of its activities.”

It’s true that this carveout does not allow the religious organization to discriminate on other grounds (such as race or sex), but it does allow them to filter out all applicants who do not share the group’s faith. This has a profound impact on the relevant applicant pool and (along with the First Amendment) permits employers to require that applicants agree to the organization’s statement of faith.

Religious employers are completely exempt from nondiscrimination statutes when hiring and firing “ministerial” employees. The ministerial exception may well be the key firewall protecting church from state. Put simply, and as defined by a unanimous Supreme Court in 2012, both the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment work together to remove the state—including all nondiscrimination laws—from the ministerial selection process.

On Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in educational institutions:

Religious educational institutions enjoy a right to exempt themselves from Title IX. If there’s a single question I’ve received more than any other, it’s this: Does Bostock mean that religious schools will now have to alter policies regarding dorm rooms or sexual conduct to comply with federal prohibitions against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is nope, not unless they choose to be subject to Title IX…

To be clear, Bostock is an employment case (and thus the sections above apply to employment at religious schools), but one would expect that the definition of “sex” applied in Title VII would also extend to Title IX, thus preventing sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in, for example, codes of conduct, dorm placements, and athletic programs. .

But Title IX contains a special carveout:

[T]his section shall not apply to an educational institution which is controlled by a religious organization if the application of this subsection would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.

The exemption is not automatic. Schools have to choose to opt out (either proactively or in response to a Title IX complaint), and a number of religious schools have taken advantage of this provision. Many have not, but it is their choice, and that choice is plainly and clearly embedded in federal law.

French also covers a wide range of other issues, including discrimination against religious groups and organizations in access to public facilities, protections against employment discrimination targeting religious employees, and the extensive protection the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) gives to religious freedom by mandating religious exceptions to many “generally applicable” federal laws. I would that 21 states have enacted state RFRAs, which provide similar religious exemptions from state laws. Anyone interested in this topic should read French’s article in full. In most areas, religious liberty today enjoys broader protection than at any time in American history.

The big exception to French’s relatively optimistic conclusion is immigration law. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s badly flawed ruling in the 2018 travel ban case, the federal government is allowed to engage in religion-based discrimination in immigration law that would be forbidden in virtually any other context. As I explained in this article, evidence of unconstitutional discriminatory motivation in the travel ban case was substantially stronger than that presented in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, which the Supreme Court issued just a few weeks earlier. Yet the Court struck down the government action in the latter case, while upholding it in the former, because of the doctrine of special deference to the President and Congress on immigration policy. As a practical matter, this leaves the president and Congress free to engage in blatant religious discrimination against would-be immigrants, so long as there is even a thin veneer of a nondiscriminatory rationalization for their policy—even a transparently bogus one, as in the travel ban case itself.

This sad state of affairs is part of a more general pattern under which the Court has  largely exempted immigration restrictions from many of the constitutional constraints that apply to virtually every other exercise of federal power. People who care about religious freedom—and other constitutional rights—should work to change that.

The other reservation I have about the state of religious liberty is the pattern of ideological and partisan double standards that all too often surround the issue. Too many on the right care greatly about religious liberty when theologically conservative Christians are the ones in peril, but turn a blind eye (or worse) in the travel ban case, and other situations where the group that is threatened is one they have less sympathy with. On the left, many who were rightly outraged by Trump’s travel ban have no such objections to Blaine Amendments that discriminate against religious schools, or recent state and local government policies that treat religious meetings and demonstrations far more harshly than secular protests that liberals have greater sympathy for. I criticized such double standards in greater detail here.

In the short and even medium term, such inconsistency is unlikely to undermine legal protection for religious liberty too much. But, in the long run, a society where most political activists and elites care about religious freedom only when it affects “their” side, is one where religious freedom necessarily rests on weaker foundations than it should.

I do not claim to be a paragon of virtue or consistency when it comes to religious liberty issues. But, for what it is worth, I was one of the relatively few people who argued that religious liberty claims deserved to prevail in both the travel ban case and also in Masterpiece Cakeshop (which involved a conservative Christian baker who refused to bake cakes for same-sex weddings) and the 2014 Hobby Lobby case (which involved a RFRA claim by a theologically conservative business owner who opposed contraception).

As an atheist, I do not share the religious beliefs of the Muslim targets of Trump’s travel ban. And I have little sympathy for religious objections to same-sex marriage and contraception, both of which reflect attitudes I decry. But I still think it is essential to protect the liberty of those who hold such views. Just as freedom of speech famously requires freedom for “the thought that we hate,” so too religious liberty must apply even to those religious beliefs we have little affinity for or even consider abhorrent.

 

 

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“The Copyrighted Demand Letter, Redux”

Paul Alan Levy (Public Citizen) has the latest example:

It’s been many years since John Dozier and his associates suffered the humiliation (and subjected their clients to the Streisand Effect) that followed from their habit of appending a threat of copyright infringement litigation to their defamation demand letters, but a newly minted “defamation attorney” from Houston named Paul Sternberg seems determined to follow in their path. The story began when one of his clients, a fellow named Christopher J Nanda, proclaimed on social media that his office window put him in a perfect position to aim his well-oiled automatic rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin. Jana Hall took issue with this post, and used Twitter to call it to the attention of Nanda’s employer, which promptly sacked him.

Sternberg then wrote a letter to both Hall and her husband …, warning that he was going to sue both of them, potentially ruining her husband’s business, if she did not take down the tweets, “de-index” the tweets (that is, prevent Google from linking to them, part of the defamation services that his web site promises, circumventing what he claims is protection that web sites enjoy under the Freedom of Information Act [yes, that’s what Sternberg’s site says -EV]), and promise never to speak online about Nanda ever again. When she posted his demand letter on Twitter, both to call him to task for his threats and to crowd-source her quest for advice on how to respond to them, he angrily threatened her by claiming she had infringed his copyright in the letter, demanding that she remove it, as well, from her Twitter feed.

In a letter to Mr. Sternberg I have explained the error of his ways and urged him to retract his copyright claim. Happily, his web site makes clear that I did not have to explain the Streisand Effect to him….

UPDATE[:] Although Mr. Sternberg did not have the good grace to send Hall a letter retracting his copyright claim, he has now rescinded it in an email to me.

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Pompeo Mocked For Saying Iranian Jets Could Strike “Asia” Through “One Way” Flights

Pompeo Mocked For Saying Iranian Jets Could Strike “Asia” Through “One Way” Flights

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/24/2020 – 17:25

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is being widely mocked by American pundits and defense analysts for his latest tweet arguing for the extension of the UN Arms Embargo on Iran set to expire based on prior 2015 JCPOA UN agreements. 

In a weird last-ditch appeal to members of the UN Security Council, Pompeo argues Iran’s air force could attack… Asia? 

The infographic map Pompeo provides as “proof” of his claims cites potential future newly acquired Iranian fighter “capabilities” of reaching up to 3,000km out, deep into China and blanketing India.

Bizarrely, the map in Pompeo’s own tweet notes that “These ranges represent a one-way flight only.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif seized the opportunity, pointing out that Pompeo “is so desperate to mislead the world that he claims come October, Iran will purchase fighter aircraft.”

He added, “And then send them off to the limits of their ONE-WAY ranges. Perhaps he could also say how they would fly back to Iran having exhausted their fuel.”

…Unless Pompeo had in mind some kind of Iranian “one way” kamikaze suicide mission. 

Meanwhile, just in time to conveniently bolster US pressure on the UN to extend a total arms embargo on Tehran, those dastardly aluminum tubes – er, in this case aluminum powder suddenly appears out of nowhere.

A Reuters investigation based on unverifiable “leaked documents” via a former Iranian official now living in France says a ‘secret’ aluminum facility is a key part of the country ramping up its ballistic missile program. 

“Aluminium powder, derived from bauxite, is a key ingredient in solid-fuel propellants used to launch missiles,” the new report says.

However, a number of independent and respected Iran analysts immediately shredded the report, pointing out past and recent IRGC public statements to show none of this was ever “secret” or any kind of explosive new game-changer.

* * *

Perhaps Pompeo is gearing up for his own Colin Powell moment at the UN? 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3hV9HNo Tyler Durden

LA School Board Votes Down Massive Budget Cut For Police Department

LA School Board Votes Down Massive Budget Cut For Police Department

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/24/2020 – 17:05

Authored by GQ Pan via The Epoch Times,

Amid nationwide calls to “defund the police,” the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) on Tuesday evening denied a trio of police reform proposals, one of which would have cut the district’s police department budget by 90 percent over the next three school years.

After a marathon hearing lasting nearly 12 hours, the LAUSD Board of Education, which administers the second largest public school district in the United States, did not reach consensus on any of the three resolutions.

The most radical measure came from board member Monica Garcia, who called for reducing the LA School Police Department’s (LASPD) budget by 50 percent in the 2021-22 school year, 75 percent in the 2022-23 school year, and 90 percent in the 2023-24 school year. The freed-up funds would be redistributed to the “highest-need schools in support of African American students.”

“Removing police is not going to solve the problem of underfunding of schools or systemic racism,” Garcia said at the hearing. “This is a chance to transition away from police to another safety strategy.”

The other two proposals called for a hiring freeze on the LASPD and the removal of police from campus grounds, while a new committee would conduct a study on whether the district, which serves about 650,000 K-12 students, still needs police.

While Black Lives Matter activists and supporters were rallying outside the meeting and calling on the board to defund the district’s police department, the seven-member board rejected Garcia’s proposal in a 5-2 vote. The other two proposals both failed 4-3.

LASPD Chief Todd Chamberlain said during the hearing that while he acknowledged the demands for police reform, the presence of a police force is essential to campus safety.

“If you take away police … you’re still going to have people victimized,” Chamberlain told the board. “You’ll still have crime and still have an environment that’s not safe.”

LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner echoed Chamberlain’s comments, saying at the hearing that although he agrees there is a need to review existing LASPD policies and practices, he doesn’t think removing the police from schools can solve all problems once and for all.

“Those looking for a simple answer will be disappointed because I don’t think one exists,” Beutner told the board. “If the real objective of this conversation is to look at systemic bias, we will have to take a broader perspective because this is about more than school police.”

The 470-member strong LASPD is the largest independent school police department in the United States. Its sworn police officers, civilian school safety officers, and civilian support staff members oversee all school campuses within the district and patrol the surrounding areas. The department runs on a budget of $70 million, or 1 percent of the district’s annual budget.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2AXfqSo Tyler Durden

Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp Has Apparently Been Integral In Spurring The DOJ’s Antitrust Probe Into Google

Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp Has Apparently Been Integral In Spurring The DOJ’s Antitrust Probe Into Google

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/24/2020 – 16:46

Rupert Murdoch appears to playing a big part in spurring a Justice Department antitrust suit against Google. He has been one of the most outspoken critics of the internet giant, often while defending his own company, NewsCorp.

NewsCorp has petitioned regulators to look into Google, claiming the company is abusing its power in the $330 billion digital ad market. Most recently, Google made headlines for demonetizing us here at Zero Hedge and those at The Federalist for not censoring the comments sections our respective websites. 

Murdoch’s efforts appear to be gaining steam, according to Bloomberg. The EU has fined Google for billions and Australia has forced the company to pay for news. In U.S., no material action has taken place – yet.

That appears to be on the cusp of changing, as The Justice Department, led by Attorney General William Barr, is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against the company. NewsCorp representatives have met privately with the DOJ about the investigation, sources say. 

Last week a trade group headed up by a senior NewsCorp executive published a research paper outlining exactly how Google has taken publishers’ content and driven traffic without compensating them. The paper was subsequently sent to the DOJ.

Yale University economist Fiona Scott Morton, one of the paper’s authors said: “The publishers are trying to monetize their content and they only have one choice in how to do that, which is Google. Publishers also compete against Google’s YouTube to sell ad space. When a company depends on its direct competitor for revenue, that’s a problem.”

William Barr has been working to rope in Google and its rivals since joining the DOJ in 2019. Last year he opened an inquiry into whether or not they were thwarting their competition and helped shape the investigation. Barr himself also met with Murdoch in NYC late last year, according to the New York Times. 

“I think a lot of people wonder how such huge behemoths that now exist in Silicon Valley have taken shape under the nose of the antitrust enforcers,” Barr said in 2019. 

President Trump has also spoken out, not just about Google, but about other internet giants, referring to them as being controlled by the “radical left”. Murdoch’s NewsCorp features networks like Fox News, who generally provide favorable coverage of the President. 

An antitrust suit could throw a wrench in the gears of Google’s digital advertising business. 

David Chavern, the president of the News Media Alliance, which represents news organizations, including News Corp, said: “Publishers, particularly quality publishers that invest in content, haven’t believed the digital advertising ecosystem works for them for a long time. The whole system is designed so you can’t follow the money. All we know is we’re not getting enough of it.”

David Pitofsky, News Corp.’s general counsel, said in a House antitrust meeting last year: “Dominant platforms take the overwhelming majority of advertising revenue without making any investment in the production of the news. As a result, one of the pillars of the news industry’s business model, advertising revenue, is crumbling.”

Google, on the other hand, claims that competition in digital advertising is “flourishing.”

On Tuesday evening, we noted that state attorneys generals will meet with DOJ officials later this week to discuss the next steps in the investigation of Google.

And recall, on Wednesday morning, we reported that the DOJ was also in the midst of a “sweeping” antitrust probe of Apple. The DOJ, in partnership with several states attorneys general, are reportedly bringing an anti-trust probe against the consumer tech giant over alleged abuses of its app store – mirroring complaints brought by the European Commission’s anti-trust regulator.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NttHJ2 Tyler Durden

The Law Protects Religious Liberty Far More than Many People Think

Religion 2

In an excellent recent article, conservative legal commentator and longtime religious liberty litigator David French explains why current law protects religious liberty far more than many people—particularly many conservatives—think. French makes many good points, and I agree with nearly everything he says. I do have two  reservations about his conclusion, however. One relates to the specific field of immigration law, which is a major exception to his thesis. The second is the growing tendency of many on both right and left to vary their approach to religious liberty issues depending on whose ox is being gored. The latter does not in itself change the nature of current legal doctrine. But it could have negative effects down the road.

Here are some of the excellent points French makes. On Title VII and employment discrimination:

I have seen a remarkable amount of commentary in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County arguing that the Supreme Court dealt religious liberty in America a serious, dangerous blow. Bostock, for those who don’t follow SCOTUS case names closely, is the case that interpreted Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination on the basis of “sex” to necessarily include sexual orientation and gender identity.

As I read piece after piece, I realized that many of the people writing about the impact on religious freedom simply didn’t understand the law. A generation of Americans raised on breathless activist warnings about freedom’s demise genuinely believe that religious organizations teeter on a dangerous precipice….

Religious employers have a right to impose religious litmus tests on their employees.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964—the same statute at issue in Bostock—contains a provision specifically designed to protect the autonomy of religious organizations. It states, “This subchapter shall not apply … to the employment of individuals of a particular religion to perform work connected with the carrying on by such corporation, association, educational institution, or society of its activities.”

It’s true that this carveout does not allow the religious organization to discriminate on other grounds (such as race or sex), but it does allow them to filter out all applicants who do not share the group’s faith. This has a profound impact on the relevant applicant pool and (along with the First Amendment) permits employers to require that applicants agree to the organization’s statement of faith.

Religious employers are completely exempt from nondiscrimination statutes when hiring and firing “ministerial” employees. The ministerial exception may well be the key firewall protecting church from state. Put simply, and as defined by a unanimous Supreme Court in 2012, both the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment work together to remove the state—including all nondiscrimination laws—from the ministerial selection process.

On Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in educational institutions:

Religious educational institutions enjoy a right to exempt themselves from Title IX. If there’s a single question I’ve received more than any other, it’s this: Does Bostock mean that religious schools will now have to alter policies regarding dorm rooms or sexual conduct to comply with federal prohibitions against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination?

The short answer is no. The longer answer is nope, not unless they choose to be subject to Title IX…

To be clear, Bostock is an employment case (and thus the sections above apply to employment at religious schools), but one would expect that the definition of “sex” applied in Title VII would also extend to Title IX, thus preventing sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in, for example, codes of conduct, dorm placements, and athletic programs. .

But Title IX contains a special carveout:

[T]his section shall not apply to an educational institution which is controlled by a religious organization if the application of this subsection would not be consistent with the religious tenets of such organization.

The exemption is not automatic. Schools have to choose to opt out (either proactively or in response to a Title IX complaint), and a number of religious schools have taken advantage of this provision. Many have not, but it is their choice, and that choice is plainly and clearly embedded in federal law.

French also covers a wide range of other issues, including discrimination against religious groups and organizations in access to public facilities, protections against employment discrimination targeting religious employees, and the extensive protection the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) gives to religious freedom by mandating religious exceptions to many “generally applicable” federal laws. I would that 21 states have enacted state RFRAs, which provide similar religious exemptions from state laws. Anyone interested in this topic should read French’s article in full. In most areas, religious liberty today enjoys broader protection than at any time in American history.

The big exception to French’s relatively optimistic conclusion is immigration law. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s badly flawed ruling in the 2018 travel ban case, the federal government is allowed to engage in religion-based discrimination in immigration law that would be forbidden in virtually any other context. As I explained in this article, evidence of unconstitutional discriminatory motivation in the travel ban case was substantially stronger than that presented in the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision, which the Supreme Court issued just a few weeks earlier. Yet the Court struck down the government action in the latter case, while upholding it in the former, because of the doctrine of special deference to the President and Congress on immigration policy. As a practical matter, this leaves the president and Congress free to engage in blatant religious discrimination against would-be immigrants, so long as there is even a thin veneer of a nondiscriminatory rationalization for their policy—even a transparently bogus one, as in the travel ban case itself.

This sad state of affairs is part of a more general pattern under which the Court has  largely exempted immigration restrictions from many of the constitutional constraints that apply to virtually every other exercise of federal power. People who care about religious freedom—and other constitutional rights—should work to change that.

The other reservation I have about the state of religious liberty is the pattern of ideological and partisan double standards that all too often surround the issue. Too many on the right care greatly about religious liberty when theologically conservative Christians are the ones in peril, but turn a blind eye (or worse) in the travel ban case, and other situations where the group that is threatened is one they have less sympathy with. On the left, many who were rightly outraged by Trump’s travel ban have no such objections to Blaine Amendments that discriminate against religious schools, or recent state and local government policies that treat religious meetings and demonstrations far more harshly than secular protests that liberals have greater sympathy for. I criticized such double standards in greater detail here.

In the short and even medium term, such inconsistency is unlikely to undermine legal protection for religious liberty too much. But, in the long run, a society where most political activists and elites care about religious freedom only when it affects “their” side, is one where religious freedom necessarily rests on weaker foundations than it should.

I do not claim to be a paragon of virtue or consistency when it comes to religious liberty issues. But, for what it is worth, I was one of the relatively few people who argued that religious liberty claims deserved to prevail in both the travel ban case and also in Masterpiece Cakeshop (which involved a conservative Christian baker who refused to bake cakes for same-sex weddings) and the 2014 Hobby Lobby case (which involved a RFRA claim by a theologically conservative business owner who opposed contraception).

As an atheist, I do not share the religious beliefs of the Muslim targets of Trump’s travel ban. And I have little sympathy for religious objections to same-sex marriage and contraception, both of which reflect attitudes I decry. But I still think it is essential to protect the liberty of those who hold such views. Just as freedom of speech famously requires freedom for “the thought that we hate,” so too religious liberty must apply even to those religious beliefs we have little affinity for or even consider abhorrent.

 

 

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“The Copyrighted Demand Letter, Redux”

Paul Alan Levy (Public Citizen) has the latest example:

It’s been many years since John Dozier and his associates suffered the humiliation (and subjected their clients to the Streisand Effect) that followed from their habit of appending a threat of copyright infringement litigation to their defamation demand letters, but a newly minted “defamation attorney” from Houston named Paul Sternberg seems determined to follow in their path. The story began when one of his clients, a fellow named Christopher J Nanda, proclaimed on social media that his office window put him in a perfect position to aim his well-oiled automatic rifle at Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin. Jana Hall took issue with this post, and used Twitter to call it to the attention of Nanda’s employer, which promptly sacked him.

Sternberg then wrote a letter to both Hall and her husband …, warning that he was going to sue both of them, potentially ruining her husband’s business, if she did not take down the tweets, “de-index” the tweets (that is, prevent Google from linking to them, part of the defamation services that his web site promises, circumventing what he claims is protection that web sites enjoy under the Freedom of Information Act [yes, that’s what Sternberg’s site says -EV]), and promise never to speak online about Nanda ever again. When she posted his demand letter on Twitter, both to call him to task for his threats and to crowd-source her quest for advice on how to respond to them, he angrily threatened her by claiming she had infringed his copyright in the letter, demanding that she remove it, as well, from her Twitter feed.

In a letter to Mr. Sternberg I have explained the error of his ways and urged him to retract his copyright claim. Happily, his web site makes clear that I did not have to explain the Streisand Effect to him….

UPDATE[:] Although Mr. Sternberg did not have the good grace to send Hall a letter retracting his copyright claim, he has now rescinded it in an email to me.

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Bayer Surrenders to Trial-Lawyer Extortion Over Bogus Glyphosate Weedkiller Cancer Claims

RoundupReneVanDenBergDreamstime

Bayer, the German pesticide and seed company, has agreed to establish a $10 billion fund that aims to resolve current litigation and address potential future litigation over its Roundup-branded glyphosate weedkiller. The company simultaneously states that “it is important to emphasize that these resolutions contain no admission of liability or wrongdoing.” And it adds that “the extensive body of science indicates that Roundup™ does not cause cancer, and therefore, is not responsible for the illnesses alleged in this litigation.” In other words, the company is giving in to trial-lawyer extortion.

The company is merely stating scientific facts that decades of research have shown that glyphosate is not a carcinogen when used as directed. This is the scientific conclusion of every safety and regulatory agency that has evaluated the compound over the past 30 years, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

So what is going on? The trial lawyers are the willing (and highly compensated) instruments of the longstanding activist campaign against modern biotech crops spearheaded by groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. These activists hate the fact that the popular herbicide is used by millions of farmers around the world to clear weeds out of their fields planted in commodity crops genetically enhanced to resist it.

Scandalously, an activist scientist working with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) managed to get the agency to classify glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen.” Two weeks after publication of the IARC report, the scientist Christopher Portier cashed in on his activism by signing a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant with law firms engaged in bringing lawsuits first against Monsanto and later Bayer alleging that exposure to Roundup had caused their clients’ cancers.

Using bogusly generated claims about glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, trial lawyers have managed to bamboozle sympathetic juries into awarding hundreds of millions of dollars to their clients.

“All that this settlement shows is that the relevant science is no match for the combination of sensationalist tort cases, which exploit victims with a rare cancer, and the propaganda of a cynical agency, which appears to have engaged in fraud to find glyphosate a ‘probable carcinogen’,” observes former Stony Brook University School of Medicine cancer epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat in an email. “Over a dozen national and international agencies (including the U.S. EPA, Health Canada, and the European Food Safety Authority) have concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen and is safe when used as directed.  Nevertheless, Bayer has clearly decided that reasoned examination of the facts cannot overcome the power of narrative that reinforces well-worn fears, rewards greedy lawyers, and only harms farmers and the poor.”

Bottom line: Activist-generated scientifically bogus extortion worked.

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Bayer Surrenders to Trial-Lawyer Extortion Over Bogus Glyphosate Weedkiller Cancer Claims

RoundupReneVanDenBergDreamstime

Bayer, the German pesticide and seed company, has agreed to establish a $10 billion fund that aims to resolve current litigation and address potential future litigation over its Roundup-branded glyphosate weedkiller. The company simultaneously states that “it is important to emphasize that these resolutions contain no admission of liability or wrongdoing.” And it adds that “the extensive body of science indicates that Roundup™ does not cause cancer, and therefore, is not responsible for the illnesses alleged in this litigation.” In other words, the company is giving in to trial-lawyer extortion.

The company is merely stating scientific facts that decades of research have shown that glyphosate is not a carcinogen when used as directed. This is the scientific conclusion of every safety and regulatory agency that has evaluated the compound over the past 30 years, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Food Safety Authority, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, and the Food and Agriculture Organization.

So what is going on? The trial lawyers are the willing (and highly compensated) instruments of the longstanding activist campaign against modern biotech crops spearheaded by groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. These activists hate the fact that the popular herbicide is used by millions of farmers around the world to clear weeds out of their fields planted in commodity crops genetically enhanced to resist it.

Scandalously, an activist scientist working with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) managed to get the agency to classify glyphosate as a “probable human carcinogen.” Two weeks after publication of the IARC report, the scientist Christopher Portier cashed in on his activism by signing a lucrative contract to act as a litigation consultant with law firms engaged in bringing lawsuits first against Monsanto and later Bayer alleging that exposure to Roundup had caused their clients’ cancers.

Using bogusly generated claims about glyphosate’s carcinogenicity, trial lawyers have managed to bamboozle sympathetic juries into awarding hundreds of millions of dollars to their clients.

“All that this settlement shows is that the relevant science is no match for the combination of sensationalist tort cases, which exploit victims with a rare cancer, and the propaganda of a cynical agency, which appears to have engaged in fraud to find glyphosate a ‘probable carcinogen’,” observes former Stony Brook University School of Medicine cancer epidemiologist Geoffrey Kabat in an email. “Over a dozen national and international agencies (including the U.S. EPA, Health Canada, and the European Food Safety Authority) have concluded that glyphosate is not a carcinogen and is safe when used as directed.  Nevertheless, Bayer has clearly decided that reasoned examination of the facts cannot overcome the power of narrative that reinforces well-worn fears, rewards greedy lawyers, and only harms farmers and the poor.”

Bottom line: Activist-generated scientifically bogus extortion worked.

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Schiff: Why Is Gold The Last Safe Haven Standing?

Schiff: Why Is Gold The Last Safe Haven Standing?

Tyler Durden

Wed, 06/24/2020 – 16:25

Via SchiffGold.com,

Gold took out the April highs and rose to the highest level in 8 years on Tuesday. The rally in other safe have assets has stalled in recent weeks, but gold has continued to rise. Why is gold the only safe haven left standing? Peter Schiff explained in his podcast.

Even as the price of the metal continues to climb, gold stocks lag. Peter said a lot of traders still seem to be skeptical of this rally.

Ever since we got this rally, or this more recent rally, people just assume that it’s a temporary deal. ‘Oh, people are just flooding into gold. It’s a safe haven. They’re worried about COVID-19. They’re worried about the stock market going down. They’re worried about recession and all that. And so, they’re seeking out safe havens. But, you know, once the dust settles though, they’ll be taking the safe havens off. They’ll be getting out of those trades. They’ll be getting back into stocks.’ And so, they expect gold to fall.”

The continuing rise of US stock markets has helped fuel this skepticism.

Everybody who’s in these gold stocks – they’ve got one foot out the door. They don’t expect the momentum to continue. Yet gold continues to go up anyway. Gold continues to make new highs.”

Consider the three primary safe-haven assets – gold, the dollar and US Treasuries. When the stock market plunged in March with the onset of the COVID-19 government lockdown, the dollar rallied, Treasury prices skyrocketed and yields fell to record lows, and after an initial decline, gold rallied as well.

But of those three safe havens, the only one that continues to rise is gold.”

So, why is gold the only safe-haven left standing?

Because the real risk, the real threat, is not, or was not, plunging stock prices or COVID-19. The real threat is inflation. That’s what people are seeking out a safe haven from. It’s the central banks. It’s not that we have COVID-19 and a recession, but it’s the monetary policy response to the recession. It’s not the damage done from COVID-19. It’s the damage done from the monetary policy response to COVID-19 and to the monetary policy response to the fiscal policy response.

Of course, the fiscal policy response is to spend money. The Fed’s response is to print money to make the spending possible. None of this is actually helping.

That is what investors need safety from. So, the reason gold is the only safe haven that’s still going up is it’s the only safe haven that provides safety, that is a haven against inflation and global fiat currency debasement.”

In fact, the only reason stocks are rising is because the currency is being debased – central banks are inflating. As a recent article published by The Economist put it:

This devaluation will eventually lead to a loss of faith in the dollar and people will no more want to hold the fiat currency. As a result, people will want to convert their cash/wealth to something that they believe in, something that can protect their wealth with, something that has intrinsic value and that has proved its worth over decades.”

Gold.

Peter said that while this inflation is nominally bullish for the stock market, it is far more bullish for gold.

In fact, when central banks are doing that, real stock prices, which would be stock prices measured in gold, should be going down. And in fact, they are going down.”

Gold is outperforming every US stock market year-to-date, including the high-flying NASDAQ.

If gold continues its trajectory through the second have of the year, it will break the all-time record and finish above $2,000. Even some in the mainstream are anticipating this. Goldman Sachs recently raised its 12-month gold price forecast to $2,000.

In this podcast, Peter also talked about the stock market, the politics of the presidential election and explained why the dollar milkshake theory is all wet.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3fStBqv Tyler Durden