Former Oregon House Speaker Gets Busted by Prostitution Law He Helped Put in Place


301996_242060205839961_1416853871_n(1)

“Former Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt cited in sex trafficking sting,” the New York Post reported yesterday. It’s one of a number of headlines that accuse Hunt—a Democrat who served in the state legislature from 2003 to 2013—of having been busted for sex trafficking.

He wasn’t. To be considered sex trafficking (or “trafficking in persons,” as Oregon’s offense is officially known), a commercial sex act must involve either force, fraud, coercion, or someone under 18 years old. Hunt was simply caught by undercover cops who were conducting a prostitution sting.

The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) posted ads online, pretending to be sex workers. Eight men who took the bait—including Hunt—”were criminally cited on the charge of Commercial Sexual Solicitation,” according to a PPB press release.

It seems Portland cops—like so many in law enforcement these days—are not above playing hero and pretending to solve serious crimes as they spend public resources on busting adults trying to have consensual sex with other adults. So PPB has shamelessly framed their vice sting as a “human trafficking” operation, complete with grandiose statements about how “human trafficking is not a victimless crime” and PPB is working in conjunction with the feds and other departments to stop it.

Of course human trafficking is not a victimless crime—no one disputes that. But human trafficking is not what Portland cops were actually fighting here.

Hunt—who now works in public affairs and serves on the board of Clackamus Community College—is being unfairly slandered as a sex trafficker. But before anyone starts feeling too bad for him, note that he voted in favor of a 2011 measure criminalizing the very activity that he tried to engage in.

That measure created the crime of patronizing a prostitute—since renamed commercial sexual solicitation—punishable by up to one year imprisonment, a $6,250 fine, or both when the person being patronized is an adult.

Hunt’s attorney told the Portland Tribune that Hunt “denies the allegations, but respects the criminal justice process and will refrain from saying more until he has his opportunity in court.”

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Texas “Critical Race Theory” Opponents Fight Back, Win School Board Election

Texas “Critical Race Theory” Opponents Fight Back, Win School Board Election

Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

Two candidates opposed to teaching critical race theory (CRT) in public school classes have been elected to a Texas school board.

Nine months after Hannah Smith and Cameron “Cam” Bryan introduced a proposal to prevent teaching CRT in the Dallas-area Carroll Independent School District, the pair received nearly 70 percent of the vote in their respective races, winning two seats on the board.

The election came after a 2018 video surfaced showing two students shouting the N-word. The district in response proposed a “Cultural Competency Action Plan,” drawing backlash from parents and the two candidates, who vocally criticized CRT.

Some parents argued during school board meetings that the district’s proposal, which would require diversity and inclusion training, would create “diversity police” and discriminate against white children.

Smith and Bryan won Saturday’s election in landslide, taking two open school board spots.

“The voters have come together in record-breaking numbers to restore unity,” said Smith, a Southlake attorney and former clerk for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.

“By a landslide vote, they don’t want racially divisive critical race theory taught to their children or forced on their teachers. Voters agreed with my positive vision of our community and its future.”

Smith’s opponent, Erik Hernandez, said after the vote that he was worried about how the result would impact students in the affluent school district.

“I don’t want to think about all these kids that shared their stories, their testimonies,” Hernandez said.

“I don’t want to think about that right now because it’s really, really hard for me. I feel really bad for all those kids, every single one of them that shared a story. I don’t have any words for them.”

The news comes as a growing number of Republican leaders nationwide have said they aim to ban the teaching of CRT in schools, workplaces, and government agencies.

President Joe Biden, in one of his first executive actions in the White House, rescinded his predecessor’s ban of CRT in federal workplaces. Former President Donald Trump’s September 2020 executive order declared that diversity and inclusion training for federal employees should not promote “un-American” and “divisive concepts.”

Biden instead issued an executive order stating that the federal government must pursue “a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all.”

CRT has gradually proliferated in recent decades through academia, government structures, school systems, and the corporate world. It redefines human history as a struggle between the “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), similarly to Marxism’s reduction of history to a struggle between the “bourgeois” and the “proletariat.” It labels institutions that emerged in majority-white societies as racist and “white supremacist.”

Like Marxism, it advocates for the destruction of institutions, such as the Western justice system, free-market economy, and orthodox religions, while demanding that they be replaced with institutions compliant with the CRT ideology.

In February, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York condemned CRT, describing it as an outgrowth of the European Marxist school of critical theory that interprets American social and political life through the lens of a power struggle between the race of the oppressor and that of the oppressed.

Proponents of CRT have argued that the theory is merely “demonstrating how pervasive systemic racism truly is.”

On Thursday, the Oklahoma House voted to ban public schools and universities from teaching CRT. The bill, HB1775, now heads to Gov. Kevin Stitt’s desk to be signed into law. He has received requests to veto the bill.

Days earlier, Idado Gov. Brad Little signed into law a bill, H 377 (pdf), that would prevent the teaching of CRT in the Gem State’s public schools and universities.

And last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced CRT as hateful.

“There’s no room in our classrooms for things like critical race theory,” he said, announcing that the state’s new civic curriculum will explicitly exclude critical race theory.

“Teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other is not worth one red cent of taxpayer money.”

Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/04/2021 – 16:45

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

WTI Extends Gains After Biggest Crude Draw Since January

WTI Extends Gains After Biggest Crude Draw Since January

A stronger dollar and a hawkish Yellen were not enough to slow oil’s rebound as more US states eased lockdowns and the European Union sought to attract more travellers, which would help offset weakened fuel demand in India as COVID-19 cases soar.

“Gasoline inventories in the U.S. are well below where they were a year ago and we’ve taken out refinery capacity,” said Peter McNally, global head for industrials, materials and energy at Third Bridge.

“We’ve seen the impact on demand as more people get vaccinated, so we’re going to get that tailwind plus seasonality coming later this month.”

While OPEC kept its crude production steady in April, ahead of a planned output hike this month, all eyes will be on signs of demand picking up in US crude stocks.

API

  • Crude -7.688mm

  • Cushing +548k

  • Gasoline -5.308mm

  • Distillates -3.453mm

The last few weeks have seen very modest changes in crude stocks and analysts expected inventories to have fallen last week, and it did in a big way. Crude stocks fell 7.688mm barrels – the biggest weekly draw since January

Source: Bloomberg

Solid gains for WTI today left it hovering at the highs of the day around $65.75 ahead of the API print – its highest since mid-March – and extended gains above $66 after the data.

“The news from Europe on the outlook toward reopening is providing a good sense of optimism for global demand continuing to rise,” said Gary Cunningham, director at Stamford, Connecticut-based Tradition Energy.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/04/2021 – 16:35

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2POT4d7 Tyler Durden

Former Oregon House Speaker Gets Busted by Prostitution Law He Helped Put in Place


301996_242060205839961_1416853871_n(1)

“Former Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt cited in sex trafficking sting,” the New York Post reported yesterday. It’s one of a number of headlines that accuse Hunt—a Democrat who served in the state legislature from 2003 to 2013—of having been busted for sex trafficking.

He wasn’t. To be considered sex trafficking (or “trafficking in persons,” as Oregon’s offense is officially known), a commercial sex act must involve either force, fraud, coercion, or someone under 18 years old. Hunt was simply caught by undercover cops who were conducting a prostitution sting.

The Portland Police Bureau (PPB) posted ads online, pretending to be sex workers. Eight men who took the bait—including Hunt—”were criminally cited on the charge of Commercial Sexual Solicitation,” according to a PPB press release.

It seems Portland cops—like so many in law enforcement these days—are not above playing hero and pretending to solve serious crimes as they spend public resources on busting adults trying to have consensual sex with other adults. So PPB has shamelessly framed their vice sting as a “human trafficking” operation, complete with grandiose statements about how “human trafficking is not a victimless crime” and PPB is working in conjunction with the feds and other departments to stop it.

Of course human trafficking is not a victimless crime—no one disputes that. But human trafficking is not what Portland cops were actually fighting here.

Hunt—who now works in public affairs and serves on the board of Clackamus Community College—is being unfairly slandered as a sex trafficker. But before anyone starts feeling too bad for him, note that he voted in favor of a 2011 measure criminalizing the very activity that he tried to engage in.

That measure created the crime of patronizing a prostitute—since renamed commercial sexual solicitation—punishable by up to one year imprisonment, a $6,250 fine, or both when the person being patronized is an adult.

Hunt’s attorney told the Portland Tribune that Hunt “denies the allegations, but respects the criminal justice process and will refrain from saying more until he has his opportunity in court.”

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Lyft Soars After Beating Estimates; On Verge Of Cashflow Breakeven

Lyft Soars After Beating Estimates; On Verge Of Cashflow Breakeven

With the world slowly emerging from the covid pandemic, ridesharing services are seeing an impressive return to normalcy as the just released results from Lyft showed.

After seeing its revenue crash as much as 61% in the first full post-covid quarter, moments ago Lyft reported that in Q1 2021, earnings were down 36% from a year ago (and up 7% from Q4), the smallest decline in a year, even if total revenues of $609MM (which beat exp of $557.3MM) were still some $350MM shy of the $955MM it made a year ago, thanks to 13.5 million active riders, above the estimated 12.7 million.

Some more Q1 earnings details:

  • Adjusted net loss for Q1 2021 was $114.1 million versus an adjusted net loss of $97.4 million in the first quarter of 2020.
  • Lyft reported Contribution for Q1 2021 of $337.3 million versus $547.4 million in the first quarter of 2020, down 38 percent year-over-year but up 7 percent from $316.0 million in Q4 2020. Contribution Margin for Q1 2021 was 55.4 percent, which was down by 1.9 percentage points year-over-year but down by just 10 basis points quarter-over-quarter. Contribution Margin for Q1 2021 exceeded the Company’s outlook of 51 to 51.5 percent1.
  • Lyft reported $2.2 billion of unrestricted cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments at the end of the first quarter of 2021, roughly unchanged on the quarter.

But what was most impressive, was the remarkable improvement in EBITDA, which shrank to just a loss of $73MM, nearly half the expected loss of $143.5MM, and on pace to turn cash flow positive despite still generating well below pre-covid revenues.

The company’s revenue and EBITDA over time:

“The improvements we’ve made over the last year are paying off – we’ve built a much stronger business. As the recovery continues, we are confident that we will be able to deliver strong financial results” said Logan Green, co-founder and chief executive officer of Lyft.

“We had an exceptionally strong Q1 as more people started moving again. Our results meaningfully exceeded our outlook driven by elevated demand across our network,” said Brian Roberts, chief financial officer of Lyft.

“With the pending sale of our Level 5 self-driving division, Lyft is set up to win the transition to autonomous through our hybrid network of human drivers and AVs, advanced marketplace tech, and leading fleet management capabilities,” said John Zimmer, co-founder and president of Lyft.

Remarkably, unlike most of its covid vaccine beneficiary peers who have seen their stock tumble despite beating, LYFT shares jumped after hours, rising as high as $59 after closing at $56 in the regular session…

… although the company’s announcement that it plans to increase driver incentives in the coming months – i.e., hike net pay, could end up hitting the stock once the news is digested.

Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/04/2021 – 16:34

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3eiwxi2 Tyler Durden

College Soccer Player Suing Coach Who Benched Her After She Refused to Kneel During Protest


kiersten3

Kiersten Hening was a star midfielder on the Virginia Tech women’s soccer team—until she refused to kneel in protest with her teammates. Now Hening is suing her coach for pressuring her off of the team and violating her First Amendment rights. As a public university, Virginia Tech is responsible for upholding constitutional rights just like any other government entity.

Tensions began rising in early September 2020 when a Virginia Tech student athlete advisory committee decided that players would wear Black Lives Matter (BLM) shirts, face masks, wristbands, and armbands during warmups.

The initiative was endorsed by most of Hening’s teammates. Her coach, Charlie Adair, even proposed replacing the team name on their uniforms with names of victims of police violence.

Hening dissented. While she “supports social justice and believes that black lives matter,” according to her lawsuit, “she disagrees with [BLM’s] tactics and core tenets of its mission statement, including defunding the police and eliminating the nuclear family.” 

She voiced those concerns in a text message to her teammates, some of whom sent screenshots to Adair demanding that the coach address “the fact that some of his players were ‘racist’ and did not support BLM.”

The conflict escalated at a September 12 game against the University of Virginia, when Hening’s teammates knelt during the reading of a unity pledge developed by the Atlantic Coast Conference‘s committee for racial and social justice. Hening remained standing, an act she claims sparked a “campaign of abuse.”

According to Hening, she was “verbally attacked” by her coach at halftime. Adair “singled her out and directly attacked her, pointing a finger in her face,” the lawsuit reads. “He denounced Hening for ‘bitching and moaning,’ for being selfish and individualistic, and for ‘doing her own thing.'”

Adair then benched Hening. Before the incident, she acted as a media spokesperson for the team and had played the most minutes of any athlete on the team. At the September 12 game, however, she played a total of five minutes.

Hening alleges she was continuously targeted by Adair and received considerably fewer minutes of playing time in ensuing games. By September 20, she had reached her breaking point: “Coach Adair’s campaign of abuse and retaliation made conditions for Hening so intolerable that she felt compelled to resign,” her lawsuit states. “Hening did not want to leave.”

In March, Hening filed the federal lawsuit against Adair, claiming his treatment violated her right to expressive conduct protected by the First and 14th Amendments. “Hening’s stance was costly—too costly,” the suit reads, “Her coach dislikes Hening’s political views. Because she refused to kneel, he benched her, subjected her to repeated verbal abuse, and forced her off the team.”

Hening is suing Adair for undisclosed compensatory, punitive, and nominal damages. She also is seeking reinstatement on the soccer team and requesting that Adair receives training on the First Amendment.

“There would be a clearer and easier case if the coach said, ‘You’re off the team because you did the following,’ but that’s not always how things work in reality,” says Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. “The question is whether there’s retaliation and consequences, and, in this case, the result was her being harassed by the coach.”

A similar incident occurred in 2017 when five cheerleaders at Kennesaw State University in Georgia knelt during the national anthem. They were subsequently prohibited from appearing on the field at home games. In 2019, one of the cheerleaders received a $145,000 settlement for the violation of her right to expressive conduct.

The right to protest and the right to abstain when protesting is the popular choice are both equally safeguarded by the First Amendment. “No matter what your views are on kneeling during the national anthem,” says Steinbaugh, “when we violate the rights of one person, we jeopardize the rights of everyone.”

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College Soccer Player Suing Coach Who Benched Her After She Refused to Kneel During Protest


kiersten3

Kiersten Hening was a star midfielder on the Virginia Tech women’s soccer team—until she refused to kneel in protest with her teammates. Now Hening is suing her coach for pressuring her off of the team and violating her First Amendment rights. As a public university, Virginia Tech is responsible for upholding constitutional rights just like any other government entity.

Tensions began rising in early September 2020 when a Virginia Tech student athlete advisory committee decided that players would wear Black Lives Matter (BLM) shirts, face masks, wristbands, and armbands during warmups.

The initiative was endorsed by most of Hening’s teammates. Her coach, Charlie Adair, even proposed replacing the team name on their uniforms with names of victims of police violence.

Hening dissented. While she “supports social justice and believes that black lives matter,” according to her lawsuit, “she disagrees with [BLM’s] tactics and core tenets of its mission statement, including defunding the police and eliminating the nuclear family.” 

She voiced those concerns in a text message to her teammates, some of whom sent screenshots to Adair demanding that the coach address “the fact that some of his players were ‘racist’ and did not support BLM.”

The conflict escalated at a September 12 game against the University of Virginia, when Hening’s teammates knelt during the reading of a unity pledge developed by the Atlantic Coast Conference‘s committee for racial and social justice. Hening remained standing, an act she claims sparked a “campaign of abuse.”

According to Hening, she was “verbally attacked” by her coach at halftime. Adair “singled her out and directly attacked her, pointing a finger in her face,” the lawsuit reads. “He denounced Hening for ‘bitching and moaning,’ for being selfish and individualistic, and for ‘doing her own thing.'”

Adair then benched Hening. Before the incident, she acted as a media spokesperson for the team and had played the most minutes of any athlete on the team. At the September 12 game, however, she played a total of five minutes.

Hening alleges she was continuously targeted by Adair and received considerably fewer minutes of playing time in ensuing games. By September 20, she had reached her breaking point: “Coach Adair’s campaign of abuse and retaliation made conditions for Hening so intolerable that she felt compelled to resign,” her lawsuit states. “Hening did not want to leave.”

In March, Hening filed the federal lawsuit against Adair, claiming his treatment violated her right to expressive conduct protected by the First and 14th Amendments. “Hening’s stance was costly—too costly,” the suit reads, “Her coach dislikes Hening’s political views. Because she refused to kneel, he benched her, subjected her to repeated verbal abuse, and forced her off the team.”

Hening is suing Adair for undisclosed compensatory, punitive, and nominal damages. She also is seeking reinstatement on the soccer team and requesting that Adair receives training on the First Amendment.

“There would be a clearer and easier case if the coach said, ‘You’re off the team because you did the following,’ but that’s not always how things work in reality,” says Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. “The question is whether there’s retaliation and consequences, and, in this case, the result was her being harassed by the coach.”

A similar incident occurred in 2017 when five cheerleaders at Kennesaw State University in Georgia knelt during the national anthem. They were subsequently prohibited from appearing on the field at home games. In 2019, one of the cheerleaders received a $145,000 settlement for the violation of her right to expressive conduct.

The right to protest and the right to abstain when protesting is the popular choice are both equally safeguarded by the First Amendment. “No matter what your views are on kneeling during the national anthem,” says Steinbaugh, “when we violate the rights of one person, we jeopardize the rights of everyone.”

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The CDC’s Guidance for Summer Camps Is Insane


dreamstime_xxl_37842698

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidance to help summer camps mitigate their coronavirus risk. Given that summer camps involve both children and the outdoors—two factors that render COVID-19 significantly less worrisome—and will be opening in the wake of widespread vaccination, one might have expected the CDC to depart from its characteristic over-caution.

Nope: This is among the most restrictive, unrealistic guidance the agency has released during the pandemic. It’s more limiting than the CDC’s guidance for vaccinated people exercising outside more generally. If followed, summer campers would be miserable, deprived of physical contact, and in considerable danger of overheating. The government has essentially recommended that summer camps treat kids like prisoners.

Here are just some of the restrictions:

  • Everyone at the camp—including staff and every kid over the age of two—must wear masks at all times, unless they are eating or swimming. They should wear two layers of masks, especially when social distancing is difficult, regardless of “whether activities are indoors or outdoors.”
  • Campers should be placed in “cohorts,” and their interaction with people outside the cohort must be limited.
  • There should always be at least three feet between campers of the same cohort, and six feet between campers of different cohorts. Staff should keep six feet away from campers at all times, whether inside or outside. Distance should be maintained while eating, napping, or riding the bus: The CDC suggests seating kids in alternating rows.
  • The use of physical objects that might be shared among kids—toys, art supplies, electronics—should be limited wherever possible.
  • Camps should not permit close-contact sports and indoor sports, and should require masks regardless.
  • If anyone is curious there are separate restrictions for outdoor gardening.

This is bonkers. First, COVID-19 is not easily transmitted outside, even if people are maskless. Second, all camp staffers will have likely had the opportunity to be vaccinated by the time summer arrives. Third, the campers themselves are not at risk of a negative health outcome: For kids, COVID-19 is probably less hazardous than the flu. (In a typical year, more U.S. kids drown than will have died of COVID-19.)

From a pandemic standpoint, kids playing together outside is an extremely safe group activity. And again, the vaccines work. They offer almost complete protection for anyone who is worried about getting sick.

The Atlantic‘s David Zweig interviewed several health experts who assailed the guidance as “cruel,” “irrational,” and little more than “virtue signaling.” He writes:

Mark Gorelik, a pediatric immunologist at Columbia University and an expert on MIS-C, the rare COVID-19-related inflammatory syndrome, said, “We know that the risk of outdoor infection is very low. We know risks of children becoming seriously ill or even ill at all is vanishingly small. And most of the vulnerable population is already vaccinated. I am supportive of effective measures to restrain the spread of illness. However, the CDC’s recommendations cross the line into excess and are, frankly, senseless. Children cannot be running around outside in 90-degree weather wearing a mask. Period.”

An infectious-disease scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci’s agency, spoke with me about the CDC guidance on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. “With staff and parents vaccinated, there is no reason to continue incredibly strict mitigation efforts or put severe limitations on activities,” they said. “Charitably,” the scientist, who has an expertise in respiratory viruses, continued, “masking kids at camp outdoors is simply virtue signaling. Requiring kids to continuously wear masks at camps, even while outside playing in the heat, when it provides little additional protection is unfair and cruel to our children. Considering that children are at incredibly low risk for developing severe illness, the minimal benefits of mask wearing do not outweigh the substantial costs of discouraging children to be active and their overall health.”

Kids and vaccinated adults do not need to wear masks or adhere to strict social distancing while outside. The guidance should be updated immediately to reflect this reality. Failing that, it should simply be ignored.

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May The Fourth Be Not With The Doves

May The Fourth Be Not With The Doves

As many celebrate Star Wars Day, Janet Yellen stepped up to the plate to deliver, warning that “interest rates will have to rise to ensure the economy does not overheat.”

“I felt a great disturbance in the farce, as if millions of dovish voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

Bear in mind that money-markets have been discounting a rate-hike far sooner than The Fed’s dot-plot forecast would suggest for months…

Source: Bloomberg

“Every client call I’m on including the one I just finished … is talking about overheating,” CNBC cited BackRock’s CIO Rick Rieder as saying.

So this move today is more of a wake-up call for stocks than anything else. The Dow scrambled back to unchanged (King Kong Yellen ain’t got shit on me…). Nasdaq suffered its worst day since mid-March and is down 5 of the last 6 days…

European stocks also puked…

Source: Bloomberg

“Dammit, Janet!”

We do note that we suspect a “just kidding” clarification is coming as The White House confirmed that Yellen will join the press briefing on Friday. Press Secretary Psaki says the Biden administration takes “inflationary risk incredibly seriously.”

Fed’s Kaplan continued his ‘cover your ass’ warnings:

  • *KAPLAN: SHOULD BE AWARE OF IMPACT OF LOW RATES ON ASSET PRICES

Year-to-date, Nasdaq 100 is the laggard now, up 4.7%… while Dow Transports are up a stunning 24.7%…

Source: Bloomberg

Seems like Biden’s Tax malarkey took the shine off the Growth trade…

Source: Bloomberg

Trannies have regained all their relative underperformance versus Nasdaq 100 since March 2020…

Source: Bloomberg

The Nasdaq found support at its 50DMA…

Russell 2000 broke below its 50DMA (and didn’t recover)…

“Most Shorted” stocks are down 6 straight days and today was the biggest drop since March…

Source: Bloomberg

FAAMG stocks were hammered…

Source: Bloomberg

Semis are down 5 of the last 6 days and broke below key technical levels today…

Source: Bloomberg

Ether continued its recent rampage to new record highs (above $3500) before falling after Yellen’s comments…

Source: Bloomberg

Bitcoin was clubbed like a baby seal…

Source: Bloomberg

BTC’s weakness relative to ETH sent the ratio soaring once again…

Source: Bloomberg

Meanwhile, Dogecoin ripped to become the 4th largest cryptocurrency…

Source: Bloomberg

And bullion was battered on Janet’s jawboning…

The dollar spiked on Yellen’s comments but gave it all back after running stops from yesterday’s highs…

Source: Bloomberg

Treasury yields were all lower today, led by the long-end (30Y -3bps). NOTE, very similar pattern to yesterday in terms of buying and selling..

Source: Bloomberg

10Y Yield dropped back below 1.60%(though chopped around a little on Yellen’s comments)…

Source: Bloomberg

 

 

Source: Bloomberg

WTI managed gains today, unfazed by Yellen, holding above $65 ahead of tonight’s API inventory data…

Silver lost $27 today…

Bloomberg’s Commodity Spot Index continued its surge to the highest since 2011…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, we wonder how investors would cope if the S&P 500 were to fall back to its global liquidity support level (only around 3900)?

Source: Bloomberg

Tyler Durden
Tue, 05/04/2021 – 16:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3h2WhB4 Tyler Durden

The CDC’s Guidance for Summer Camps Is Insane


dreamstime_xxl_37842698

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released new guidance to help summer camps mitigate their coronavirus risk. Given that summer camps involve both children and the outdoors—two factors that render COVID-19 significantly less worrisome—and will be opening in the wake of widespread vaccination, one might have expected the CDC to depart from its characteristic over-caution.

Nope: This is among the most restrictive, unrealistic guidance the agency has released during the pandemic. It’s more limiting than the CDC’s guidance for vaccinated people exercising outside more generally. If followed, summer campers would be miserable, deprived of physical contact, and in considerable danger of overheating. The government has essentially recommended that summer camps treat kids like prisoners.

Here are just some of the restrictions:

  • Everyone at the camp—including staff and every kid over the age of two—must wear masks at all times, unless they are eating or swimming. They should wear two layers of masks, especially when social distancing is difficult, regardless of “whether activities are indoors or outdoors.”
  • Campers should be placed in “cohorts,” and their interaction with people outside the cohort must be limited.
  • There should always be at least three feet between campers of the same cohort, and six feet between campers of different cohorts. Staff should keep six feet away from campers at all times, whether inside or outside. Distance should be maintained while eating, napping, or riding the bus: The CDC suggests seating kids in alternating rows.
  • The use of physical objects that might be shared among kids—toys, art supplies, electronics—should be limited wherever possible.
  • Camps should not permit close-contact sports and indoor sports, and should require masks regardless.
  • If anyone is curious there are separate restrictions for outdoor gardening.

This is bonkers. First, COVID-19 is not easily transmitted outside, even if people are maskless. Second, all camp staffers will have likely had the opportunity to be vaccinated by the time summer arrives. Third, the campers themselves are not at risk of a negative health outcome: For kids, COVID-19 is probably less hazardous than the flu. (In a typical year, more U.S. kids drown than will have died of COVID-19.)

From a pandemic standpoint, kids playing together outside is an extremely safe group activity. And again, the vaccines work. They offer almost complete protection for anyone who is worried about getting sick.

The Atlantic‘s David Zweig interviewed several health experts who assailed the guidance as “cruel,” “irrational,” and little more than “virtue signaling.” He writes:

Mark Gorelik, a pediatric immunologist at Columbia University and an expert on MIS-C, the rare COVID-19-related inflammatory syndrome, said, “We know that the risk of outdoor infection is very low. We know risks of children becoming seriously ill or even ill at all is vanishingly small. And most of the vulnerable population is already vaccinated. I am supportive of effective measures to restrain the spread of illness. However, the CDC’s recommendations cross the line into excess and are, frankly, senseless. Children cannot be running around outside in 90-degree weather wearing a mask. Period.”

An infectious-disease scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci’s agency, spoke with me about the CDC guidance on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. “With staff and parents vaccinated, there is no reason to continue incredibly strict mitigation efforts or put severe limitations on activities,” they said. “Charitably,” the scientist, who has an expertise in respiratory viruses, continued, “masking kids at camp outdoors is simply virtue signaling. Requiring kids to continuously wear masks at camps, even while outside playing in the heat, when it provides little additional protection is unfair and cruel to our children. Considering that children are at incredibly low risk for developing severe illness, the minimal benefits of mask wearing do not outweigh the substantial costs of discouraging children to be active and their overall health.”

Kids and vaccinated adults do not need to wear masks or adhere to strict social distancing while outside. The guidance should be updated immediately to reflect this reality. Failing that, it should simply be ignored.

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