“Let’s Do a Manhattan Project Against This Virus”: Thomas Massie

Last week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) became the most-hated man in Washington when he unsuccessfully tried to force a recorded vote in the House of Representatives on the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) denounced him while President Donald Trump called him “a third rate Grandstander.” Seconding Trump’s characterization on Twitter, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry averred, “Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole.”

In an exclusive interview with Reason, Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican who entered Congress in 2012 with the backing of the Tea Party movement, explains his insistence that House members should have cast on-the-record votes on the single-biggest spending bill in U.S. history and calls out his critics. Referring “to John Kerry’s tweet that I tested positive for being an a-hole,” Massie tells Nick Gillespie, “I would just say at least I haven’t been symptomatic since birth.”

Brushing aside health concerns for his House colleagues, Massie notes that the Senate, whose members are on average much older than those in the House, voted in person for the spending bill. “You’re telling me that a congressman who makes $174,000 a year and has a really good healthcare plan paid for by the taxpayer can’t come to work when the Constitution compels them,” asks Massie rhetorically.

The CARES Act passed on a voice vote, meaning that there is no record of who voted in favor of or against the legislation (Massie adds bitterly that officials claim it passed unanimously). It was quickly signed into law by President Trump. Massie says that he knows several members besides himself who would have voted against it and name-checks Justin Amash (I–Mich.), Ken Buck (R–Colo.), Alex Mooney (R–W. Va.), and Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.) as others he says were solid no votes. He adds that several “Bernie bro” members recognize that the CARES Act is “cronyism on steroids” but isn’t sure they would have voted the bill down given the opportunity.

In a wide-ranging discussion about the public health and economic responses to COVID-19, Massie says that the federal government, especially the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration first failed to anticipate and contain the pandemic and now continue to get in the way of allowing local and state governments and the private sector to respond effectively. “When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, did we come up with a $2 trillion stimulus package,” he asks while criticizing the CARES Act. “Or did we declare a war on our enemies? We declared war on our enemies. Why have we not declared war on this virus? Why is our first instinct to make sure that the rich people is to keep all their riches? We need to be fighting the virus. So let’s do a Manhattan project against this virus. Let’s do a Manhattan project that comes up with a 3D-printed a ventilator, right? Let’s do a Manhattan project that figures out how to get everybody a week supply of masks.”

Despite the passage of a $2 trillion spending bill and his belief that another massive spending bill will almost certainly be introduced over the coming months, Massie still believes that the anti-spending energy that propelled the Tea Party movement and helped bring him to Congress in the first place is still alive. He notes that after he first announced his dissent to the CARES Act and his insistence that regular order be observed in voting for the legislation, he started receiving support from people around the country who respected what he was doing.

“You’ve got government telling you when to go to work and how long to work and what things you can buy and what you can’t buy. That’s central planning on steroids,” observes Massie. “When this is over… [I hope we will see] the aspects of this that saved us were free market and innovation and individuals and not the government. Maybe when this is over with, people will have less confidence in the government. A realistic view of what government’s role is.”

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The FBI Is Routinely Screwing Up FISA Warrants Targeting Americans

A report released today by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice (OIG) warns that the problems found with the FBI’s secret warrants to wiretap former Donald Trump aide Carter Page were not an anomaly. The agency regularly makes mistakes on its applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment (FISA) Court when it asks for permission to secretly snoop on Americans.

Back in December, the OIG released a blockbuster report showing that FBI agents made a number of significant omissions and errors in their four warrant applications to snoop on Page in the hopes of determining if he was being unduly influenced by Russian officials during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz was so bothered by the problems with the Page warrants that he declared that the OIG would perform a deeper audit to see if FBI officials were following proper procedures with their other secret FISA warrants.

The results of that deeper audit were published today and they don’t look good for the FBI. The OIG report shows that the agency regularly neglects proper procedures when seeking FISA warrants.

The failing point appears to be adherence to the Woods procedures, a collection of policies implemented in 2001 to make sure that every fact and detail in a warrant application to the FISA court has been carefully vetted for accuracy and to document that process. The FBI failed to properly follow those procedures with Page. Based on this new report, it looks like this failing is a common problem.

How common? The OIG reviewed 29 FISA warrant applications. In 25 of them the OIG identified errors or “inadequately supported facts.” In the other four, the OIG couldn’t find the associated Woods files—records that document that the FBI agents did due diligence to verify factual accuracy—at all. In three of those cases, the OIG is not certain whether any Woods files even exist. So there’s essentially a problem with every warrant application the OIG looked at for this audit.

The report notes that the OIG is not evaluating whether these errors or omissions were material mistakes that would or should have impacted whether the original warrants should have been granted. But that’s not the point, and that’s why this audit is so important. Because the FISA warrant process is so deliberately secretive, its oversight is limited to the FISA court, which depends on the FBI to be honest about the procedures it is supposed to follow. The FBI has a lengthy internal process to double-check warrant applications. This report notes that the internal processes have found close to 400 errors in 39 FISA warrant applications across the last five years. Inspector General Horowitz writes:

We do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy, or that the process is working as it was intended to help achieve the “scrupulously accurate” standard for FISA applications.

Horowitz recommends that the FBI put into place a system of examining past Woods procedures compliance problems to train FBI employees to do a better job. And he recommends that the FBI perform a “physical inventory” to make sure that there’s a Woods file for every warrant application submitted to the FISA court.

After the Page warrant audit was released, FBI Director Christopher Wray released a 40-point plan to correct procedures within the department. In the FBI’s official response to today’s OIG report, FBI Associate Deputy Director Paul Abbate contends that the changes that Wray is already introducing, such as more checklists and training, will help fix these problems moving forward.

It’s deeply disturbing that the OIG found problems with every single FISA warrant application it looked at. FISA warrants exist for the purpose of catching spies and terrorists, which is why so much secrecy is permitted. But mistakes and omissions in this secretive process have huge civil liberties implications for any citizen caught in the government crosshairs. Normally, citizens can turn to the courts for relief when warrants are misapplied. But that’s not the case with FISA warrants.

Read the new OIG memo here.

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Stocks Suffer Worst Start To A Year Ever… As Trump Approval Reaches Record High

Stocks Suffer Worst Start To A Year Ever… As Trump Approval Reaches Record High

It’s Official…

Here’s a chart that no one suspected would happen (most of all not the media and the democrats)… as stocks crashed by record amounts in March, President Trump’s approval rating has soared to the highest of his presidency…

Source: Bloomberg

So how bad was Q1?

Q1 was the world’s biggest quarterly capitalization loss (in bonds and stocks) ever…

With bonds adding a modest $1.1 trillion while stocks lost a record-smashing 19.6 trillion…

Source: Bloomberg

This was The Dow’s worst Q1 ever…

…and worst overall quarter since Q4 1987…

This was The S&P’s worst Q1 since 1938 (and worst overall quarter since Q4 2008) and March was worst month for S&P since Oct 2008.

Additionally, stocks suffered the first back-to-back-to-back monthly losses since Oct 2016.

30Y Yields fell in all three months in Q1. This is the biggest Q1 crash in 30Y Yields since 1986 (and biggest quarterly decline in yields since Q3 2011). 2Y Yields plunged 136bps in Q1 (down 6 quarters in a row) – the biggest yield drop since Q1 2008.

This is the 6th straight quarter of gains for gold (and up 12 of the last 14 Q1s)

Oil prices plunged all three months in Q1. Q1’s 66% crash in WTI is the worst quarter ever (worse than the 60% oil glut crash in Q1 1986).

But apart from that, Q1 was awesome!!

*  *  *

The Russell 2000 is the biggest (major) index loser in Q1 (down around 31%) and the Nasdaq the relative winner…

Source: Bloomberg

European stocks were down about as hard as US – 25-to-30% in Q1 led by UK’s FTSE…

Source: Bloomberg

But, in China, tech-heavy and small cap names have outperformed in Q1 (UP over 4%) as the rest of the Chinese stock market is down modestly…

Source: Bloomberg

Directly-virus-affected sectors – airlines, cruiselines, hotels, restaurants – were a bloodbath in Q1…

Source: Bloomberg

The Virus-Fear Trade – long food, short leisure – has started to deteriorate again this week suggesting all is not well…

Source: Bloomberg

Bank stocks suffered their second worst quarter ever, crashing 41% (Q1 2009 was -44%) with Citi and Wells Fargo worst…

Source: Bloomberg

2020 has been a one-way street of long-momentum and short-value…

Source: Bloomberg

Q1 also saw the biggest quarterly spike in VIX ever…

And realized volatility in stocks has only been higher during the Black Mondays in 1987 and 1929…

Source: Bloomberg

Credit markets collapsed at a record pace in Q1 with IG taking the brunt (relatively speaking) until The Fed bailed them out…

Source: Bloomberg

High Yield was ugly though…

Source: Bloomberg

Bond yields collapsed in Q1 led by the short-end (2Y -135bps, 30Y -105bps)…

Source: Bloomberg

2Y Yields are once again back below The Fed Funds rate (even after the massive cuts this quarter)…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dollar surged in Q1 (its biggest quarter since Q4 2016)

 

 

Source: Bloomberg

Q1 was mixed for cryptos with Bitcoin down 9.5% and Bitcoin Cash up 9%…

Source: Bloomberg

While oil stole all the headlines in Q1 with its record-breaking crash, gold managed solid gains…

Source: Bloomberg

Among the precious metals, Palladium outperformed, Platinum was the biggest paggard…

Source: Bloomberg

While some (heavier) crudes actually traded with negative prices in Q1 (Wyoming Asphalt Sour), WTI traded down to a $19 handle at its lows… for now…

Source: Bloomberg

But crude’s contango is the largest its ever been as prices adjust down to desperately try and avoid storage gluts…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, what happens next? Who knows? But Nomura’s Charlie McElligott has run the historical seasonals and this is what the ‘odds’ say:

Global index performance for the next 4 weeks, the outperformers are Eurostoxx +4.3% with a 81% hit rate, DAX +4.1% with a 73% hit rate, EM +2.6% with a 69% hit rate, RTY +2.5% with a 69% hit rate, worst performers are HSCEI +2.0% with a 58% hit rate, Japan +2.0% with a 73% hit rate, SPX +2.0% with a 77% hit rate, Korea +2.2% with a 69% hit rate, UKX +2.4% with a 73% hit rate

US sector performance for the next 4 weeks, the outperformers are Energy +3.8% with a 77% hit rate, Materials +3.2% with a 73% hit rate, Industrials +2.8% with a 73% hit rate, Utilities +2.6% with a 65% hit rate, Discretionary +2.5% with a 69% hit rate, worst performers are Telco +0.1% with a 50% hit rate, Staples +0.6% with a 58% hit rate, Healthcare +0.8% with a 62% hit rate, Fins +1.8% with a 73% hit rate, Reits +2.3% with a 72% hit rate, Technology +2.4% with a 69% hit rate

US industry performance for the next 4 weeks, the outperformers are Energy +3.8% with a 77% hit rate, Automobiles & Components +3.2% with a 81% hit rate, Materials +3.2% with a 73% hit rate, Capital goods +2.9% with a 73% hit rate, Software and Services +2.8% with a 73% hit rate, Utilities +2.6% with a 65% hit rate, Retailing +2.6% with a 65% hit rate, Transports +2.3% with a 81% hit rate, Real Estate +2.3% with a 72% hit rate, Media +1.9% with a 73% hit rate, Insurance +1.9% with a 77% hit rate, worst performers are Telecommunication  -0.4% with a 46% hit rate, Food and Staples Retail -0.1% with a 50% hit rate, Food Beverage & Tobacco +0.4% with a 69% hit rate, Healthcare equip +0.5% with a 58% hit rate, Household & Personal +0.9% with a 69% hit rate, Pharma, Biotech +0.9% with a 69% hit rate, Comm & Profess Services +1.2% with a 73% hit rate, Diversified Fins +1.4% with a 65% hit rate, Tech Hardware & Equip +1.5% with a 58% hit rate, Semiconductors +1.7% with a 65% hit rate, Banks +1.8% with a 77% hit rate, Consumer Durable +1.8% with a 73% hit rate

Factor performance for the next 4 weeks, the outperformers are Size Factor +0.8% with a 65% hit rate, Beta Factor +0.6% with a 61% hit rate, worst performers are Predicted P/E -0.6% with a 43% hit rate, Price Momentum +0.3% with a 52% hit rate.

Cross asset performance for the next 4 weeks, the outperformers are Crude +4.2% with a 65% hit rate, Gold +1.0% with a 58% hit rate, worst performers are US rates -0.5% with a 46% hit rate, Dollar -0.4% with a 27% hit rate.

However, the question is – do we replay 2008 after this bounce?

Source: Bloomberg

Remember, it’s about the fun-durr-mentals again…

Source: Bloomberg

And top-down macro is even worse…

Source: Bloomberg

As The Feds favorites (and only) tool seems to have stopped working…

Source: Bloomberg


Tyler Durden

Tue, 03/31/2020 – 16:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/340kqzv Tyler Durden

28 Spring-Breaker ‘Covidiots’ Test Positive In Texas After Group Trip To Cabo

28 Spring-Breaker ‘Covidiots’ Test Positive In Texas After Group Trip To Cabo

The ‘Covidiots’ have struck again.

The City of Austin’s public health department just reported that 28 young adults who recently returned from a spring break trip to Cabo have all tested positive for COVID-19, a local TV news station reports.

These students were part of a group of roughly 70 mostly UT Austin students left for Cabo a week and a half ago. So far, nearly half of that group has tested positive, while the rest have been warned to remain in self-isolation. The university confirmed that it was mostly UT students.

It’s just the latest example of how the virus uses healthy young people to spread.

“The virus often hides in the healthy and is given to those who are at grave risk of being hospitalized or dying,” APH Interim Health Authority Dr. Mark Escott said.

“While younger people have less risk for complications, they are not immune from severe illness and death from COVID-19,” he said.*

Every student who participated in the trip has been contacted, APH said, and all of them are waiting to be tested.

Though the students aren’t facing any kind of punishment from their school, the incident is “a vital reminder” of why all Americans need to take the government advisories seriously.

The incident is a reminder of the vital importance of taking seriously the warnings of public health authorities on the risks of becoming infected with COVID-19 and spreading it to others,” UT spokesman JB Bird said in a statement.

At the time of the trip, Mexico wasn’t under a travel advisory, and Americans hadn’t yet been asked to remain home.

Data so far show that roughly half of those testing positive for COVID-19 in Texas’s Travis County so far are between the ages of 20 and 40.

The movements of these ‘spring breakers’ will soon be visible from space as they unknowingly infect dozens in their path.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 03/31/2020 – 15:50

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39zz6GU Tyler Durden

“Let’s Do a Manhattan Project Against This Virus”: Thomas Massie

Last week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) became the most-hated man in Washington when he unsuccessfully tried to force a recorded vote in the House of Representatives on the $2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) denounced him while President Donald Trump called him “a third rate Grandstander.” Seconding Trump’s characterization on Twitter, former secretary of state and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry averred, “Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an asshole.”

In an exclusive interview with Reason, Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican who entered Congress in 2012 with the backing of the Tea Party movement, explains his insistence that House members should have cast on-the-record votes on the single-biggest spending bill in U.S. history and calls out his critics. Referring “to John Kerry’s tweet that I tested positive for being an a-hole,” Massie tells Nick Gillespie, “I would just say at least I haven’t been symptomatic since birth.”

Brushing aside health concerns for his House colleagues, Massie notes that the Senate, whose members are on average much older than those in the House, voted in person for the spending bill. “You’re telling me that a congressman who makes $174,000 a year and has a really good healthcare plan paid for by the taxpayer can’t come to work when the Constitution compels them,” asks Massie rhetorically.

The CARES Act passed on a voice vote, meaning that there is no record of who voted in favor of or against the legislation (Massie adds bitterly that officials claim it passed unanimously). It was quickly signed into law by President Trump. Massie says that he knows several members besides himself who would have voted against it and name-checks Justin Amash (I–Mich.), Ken Buck (R–Colo.), Alex Mooney (R–W. Va.), and Andy Biggs (R–Ariz.) as others he says were solid no votes. He adds that several “Bernie bro” members recognize that the CARES Act is “cronyism on steroids” but isn’t sure they would have voted the bill down given the opportunity.

In a wide-ranging discussion about the public health and economic responses to COVID-19, Massie says that the federal government, especially the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration first failed to anticipate and contain the pandemic and now continue to get in the way of allowing local and state governments and the private sector to respond effectively. “When we were attacked at Pearl Harbor, did we come up with a $2 trillion stimulus package,” he asks while criticizing the CARES Act. “Or did we declare a war on our enemies? We declared war on our enemies. Why have we not declared war on this virus? Why is our first instinct to make sure that the rich people is to keep all their riches? We need to be fighting the virus. So let’s do a Manhattan project against this virus. Let’s do a Manhattan project that comes up with a 3D-printed a ventilator, right? Let’s do a Manhattan project that figures out how to get everybody a week supply of masks.”

Despite the passage of a $2 trillion spending bill and his belief that another massive spending bill will almost certainly be introduced over the coming months, Massie still believes that the anti-spending energy that propelled the Tea Party movement and helped bring him to Congress in the first place is still alive. He notes that after he first announced his dissent to the CARES Act and his insistence that regular order be observed in voting for the legislation, he started receiving support from people around the country who respected what he was doing.

“You’ve got government telling you when to go to work and how long to work and what things you can buy and what you can’t buy. That’s central planning on steroids,” observes Massie. “When this is over… [I hope we will see] the aspects of this that saved us were free market and innovation and individuals and not the government. Maybe when this is over with, people will have less confidence in the government. A realistic view of what government’s role is.”

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Federalism and the Coronavirus Crisis

Historically, major crises have led to expansions of federal government power. As Robert Higgs documents in his classic book Crisis and Leviathan, this tends to happen even if the crisis was partly caused by misguided federal policies, and even if the federal response to the crisis has serious flaws of its own. So far, however, the coronavirus crisis seems like it might be an exception. There is some value to the decentralized nature of the response to the crisis, but also some risks. And it is far from clear that the crisis won’t ultimately result in a major expansion of federal power.

As Walter Olson documents in a Wall Street Journal op ed, so far it is state governments that have taken the lead in combating the virus. The “shut down” and “stay at home” orders that have affected millions of Americans are almost entirely issued by state and local authorities. These have also—so far—taken the lead in trying to boost the capacity of the health care system to handle the surge in coronavirus cases.

The federal government’s coronavirus “social distancing” guidelines, by contrast, are largely advisory. With the important exception of draconian new restrictions on international travel and migration, the lion’s share of coronavirus-related regulations affecting ordinary citizens are the work of state and local authorities. Donald Trump may have high TV ratings, but the actions of governors like Gavin Newsom (California), Andrew Cuomo (New York), and Mike DeWine (Ohio) are having a much bigger on-the-ground impact.

There is some value to this relatively decentralized approach to combating the virus. The US is a large and diverse nation, and it is unlikely that a single “one-size-fits-all” set of social distancing rules can work equally well everywhere. In addition, state-by-state experimentation with different approaches can increase our still dangerously limited knowledge of which policies are the most effective.

Moreover, if one policymaker screws up, his or her errors are less likely to have a catastrophic effect on the whole nation.  Here, there is a tension in the views of those who both advocate a much more centralized policy but also (correctly in my view) believe that Donald Trump is often malicious or incompetent. The worse he is, the less we should want to see even more power concentrated in his hands.

As Olson points out, giving the states the lead role on public health issues is not a new idea, but one  embedded in the original meaning of the Constitution. The Founding generation regarded most public health issues as primarily a state responsibility beyond the scope of the federal government’s enumerated powers. In his landmark 1824 opinion  in Gibbons v. Ogden, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall—who generally advocated a broad conception of federal power by the standards of the time—listed “Inspection laws, quarantine laws, [and] health laws of every description” as part of “that immense mass of legislation which embraces everything within the territory of a State not surrendered to the General Government.”

There is, in fact, a long history of state and local governments taking the lead in battling the spread of contagious disease. During the 1918-19 flu pandemic, state and local restrictions were the primary means of inhibiting the spread of the virus, while the federal government did very little.

While there is much to be said for state-led efforts, they also have at least two serious limitations in the current crisis. First, the coronavirus is—apparently—highly contagious and can spread quickly from one area to another. This means that a state or locality with overly lax policies can potentially “infect” its neighbors.

I lack the epidemiological expertise to assess the extent of this risk; it may vary from place to place. It is also possible that it can be mitigated by coordination between neighboring jurisdictions. Still, the possibility of “externality” effects—in which one state’s policies harm its neighbors—is a standard critique of decentralization. And the spread of a deadly disease is a particularly severe example of this problem, one that may be more difficult to address than many other types of  externalities.

Second, one of the major checks on bad state and local policies is the ability of people to “vote with their feet” against them by moving elsewhere. Foot voting enables some people to escape harmful or oppressive government policies, and also gives jurisdictions incentives to avoid  them in the first place, for fear of losing key parts of their tax base. In most situations, foot voting is one of the biggest advantages of political decentralization.

But its effectiveness is greatly reduced in our current situation situation. Though some states have enacted  quarantine requirements on people entering from epidemic hot sports, interstate migration has not—so far—actually been banned. But even aside from legal restrictions, interstate movement in the midst of a pandemic will be extremely difficult, at best. Where it remains feasible, it could potentially risk spreading the disease further—at least until we have enough testing capacity to effectively screen would-be movers (and others).

Hopefully,  foot voting will become safer more feasible again, as testing improves, and parts of the economy begin to recover. At the moment, however, it is nowhere near as effective as it would need to be to provide a meaningful constraint on ill-advised state and local policies. That includes both policies that are overly lax—and thereby allow the virus to spread—and those that are overly restrictive, and thereby cause more harm to liberty, the economy, and social welfare than can be justified by their health benefits.

Externalities and other similar problems might yet lead to a greater centralization of power during the crisis. Centralization could occur even in some areas where it isn’t really needed, because public opinion might prefer a seemingly strong federal hand on the tiller in the midst of a crisis. Political ignorance is widespread, and many voters may be unwilling or unable to  objectively evaluate the effectiveness of either federal or state policies. For many, the default response to a terribly dangerous situation might be to clamor for large-scale intervention of the largest and most powerful government available.

It is also worth remembering that the massive $2 trillion “stimulus” bill passed by Congress has already caused a huge increase in federal spending, and made many more people, industries, and subnational governments more dependent on federal largesse. Much of what is in the bill may be a justified emergency measure. But that spigot—like other expansions of government power in the midst of crisis—may not be easy to cut off even after the emergency ends.

In sum, the coronavirus crisis has so far featured states taking the lead in crafting the US response. This federalist approach has some real value. But it has downsides, as well. It is too early to tell how severe those flaws are. Despite the current starring role of state governments, it is also too early to rule out the possibility that the coronavirus crisis will ultimately result in a major expansion of federal government power.

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COVID-19: Ten Things To Think About

COVID-19: Ten Things To Think About

Authored by Justin Pavoni via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity,

1. All of this can be solved by following the voluntary principle: If you are worried then stay home. If you are willing to assume the risk then go to work.

Going to work means you may interact with people and thus get sick. It’s a risk. The other people at work took on this risk of their own choosing too. Life is full of risks. Not going to work has its own obvious risks associated with it. Let people choose their own paths based on their own risk tolerance and voluntary choices. Don’t impose your view via government force on those of us that peacefully disagree with you.

2. There have been 23,000 US deaths so far this year due to flu, 3,000 from coronavirus.

Worldwide stats are roughly in parallel. Legitimate population samples and common sense show that the virus has infected way more people than reported by the immoral news organizations that make money off this hysteria. It is highly likely that REAL death rates are closer to .05 percent rather than the oft-emphasized 3 percent.

3. Social Distancing makes people distrust one another.

People that are afraid of each other are easier to control. We just had a house fire and while nobody will shake my hand because they’re afraid to death of coronavirus, they’ll happily walk around in the burned down home without a respirator. Of course the burned down house is far more likely to be an immediate and serious health threat. Anyone else see a problem here?

4. I have already seen certain local governments posting websites for all of us to tell on each other for congregating in groups.

My wife has had skeptical posts removed from Facebook. Sounds a lot like the secret police to me.

5. Will they soon be forcibly vaccinating my whole family even though there’s a huge chance I’m naturally immune to this virus already?

What if I don’t want the vaccine? What if I would rather develop a natural immunity? Am I going to be targeted (modern day witch hunt) as a bio terrorist germ spreader if I want to contract the cold and let my body beat it on its own? Of course, since vaccines have all kinds of toxins in them and since they’ll also get rushed to market in the hysteria, there’s a huge likelihood making me take the vaccine would do more harm than good. Is anyone going to be held responsible for that if it were to happen?

6. Everyone’s job is “essential” to their own ability to put food on their table.

I’m tired of people telling my wife and I that her work as a realtor isn’t essential. Tell that to my kids. The government does not have a right to make it illegal to work and then pretend to solve the problem by printing money it does not have. Of course, printing money only steals the purchasing power of what little savings people do have in the bank to cover themselves during this absurd moment in time. How about just getting out of the way?

7. The first amendment to the constitution is supposed to guarantee the right of Americans to peacefully assemble with their fellow man.

THAT IS, TO PEACEFULLY PROTEST AS A GROUP. What happens when I get together with >10 people to protest this insane coronavirus lockdown that does nothing to stop the spread of a disease the government is likely 6 months behind? I would probably spend 6 months in jail and everyone would tell me I’m trying to kill their grandparents. INSANE! There is no provision in the constitution that allows for this fundamental human right to assemble to be ignored during the coronavirus or at any other time. Therefore, like most things the US government does, this is fundamentally illegal nonsense.

8. The government has no money.

It has to steal everything it gets and since it’s in the red, it has to print the $2 trillion out of thin air. The one honest guy in the House of Representatives, Thomas Massie, called this a huge wealth transfer from the masses to the rich with $1200 as the cheese in the trap. He is exactly right. He is of course getting slaughtered in the press for trying to force other representatives to at least put their names on the vote. Of course, the insane bipartisan consensus of stupidity is slaughtering him for having enough integrity to ask for ACCOUNTABILITY. They just say he’s trying to make us all sick by coming back to DC to vote! Again, Insane.

9. The Federal Reserve (the small group of economics PhDs who have the monopoly privilege to counterfeit money and falsely believe that they can model human action as an equilibrium equation) just said they would backstop all debt.

So here we go again only this time it’s worse. Now the Fed has established three new lending facilities to buy corporate bonds.

So first they print the money to keep prices from falling in ’08 to a level where private citizens could afford houses. Then they bought up all the mortgages (so the Fed really owns all the homes in America). Now they’re printing up more money to buy all the big companies. So soon the Fed will own all the businesses because who can compete with a printing press. Who needs a communist revolution when you have central banking?

Welcome to 1984 in the central banking states of America.

10. And last, but not least, both Chinese and American politicians seem intent to blame each other for the virus. So maybe they’ll top it all of with a cherry on top… another war anyone? Give it a few years I’m sure it’s coming. After all, Hitler took over when the Weimar Republic printed its currency into oblivion. I don’t remember that working out too well.

People need to start pushing back against this insanity.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 03/31/2020 – 15:35

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39z6cH9 Tyler Durden

Alleged ‘Crisis Profiteer’ Arrested For Coughing On FBI Agents And Claiming He Had Tested Positive For COVID-19

Alleged ‘Crisis Profiteer’ Arrested For Coughing On FBI Agents And Claiming He Had Tested Positive For COVID-19

We’re not the first to remark that the novel coronavirus outbreak has exposed the worst of humanity, from spring-breaker ‘covidiots’ to unscrupulous ‘entrepreneurs’ who hit every Costco and Wal-Mart in a 60 mile radius to stock up on cleaning supplies and medical supplies.

They then turned around and sold those same products on Amazon and eBay at ridiculous mark-ups. Some might call it ‘entrepreneurship’, others would call it ‘crisis profiteering’. Despite governors and AGs taking steps to prioritize prosecution of these ‘coronantrepreneurs’ – after all, many big box stores across the northeast and other parts of the country are still out of toilet paper – they persist, and sometimes, many try to act like what they’re doing isn’t a crime.

A south Brooklyn man was arrest last week for allegedly “coughing” on FBI agents who tried to arrest him after investigating him for selling medical supplies including N95 masks at illegal markups. The arrest was one of the first cases of profiteering in the New York area, though other incidences of “coughing” have occurred. One “knucklehead” is even facing terror charges.

The suspect, Baruch Feldheim, 43, was charged with assaulting federal officers and lying to them about his accumulation and sale of medical supplies, the U.S. Attorney’s office in New Jersey said in a statement released Monday, Bloomberg reports.

Ultimately, Feldheim wasn’t charged with profiteering, only with the charges stemming from assaulting the agents. The agents had been staking out Feldheim’s residence in Brooklyn, watching people leave with what appeared to be medical supplies. Prosecutors said that Feldheim sold supplies at markups as high as 700% to doctors and nurses.

Agents confronted Feldheim outside his home on Sunday (March 29). The FBI agents approached Feldheim outside his house, identified themselves and asked him to stay at a safe distance. In response, the agents said Feldheim “coughed in their direction without covering his mouth” and shouted that he had been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Hospitals in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere are running so short on masks and other vital medical gear that doctors and nurses are being forced to reuse disposable masks for days at a time. One doctor in New Jersey contacted Feldheim on March 18 through a WhatsApp chat group called “Virus2020!” and arranged to buy about 1,000 N95 masks and other goods for $12,000.


Tyler Durden

Tue, 03/31/2020 – 15:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3ayPI32 Tyler Durden

The FBI Is Routinely Screwing Up FISA Warrants Targeting Americans

A report released today by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice (OIG) warns that the problems found with the FBI’s secret warrants to wiretap former Donald Trump aide Carter Page were not an anomaly. The agency regularly makes mistakes on its applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendment (FISA) Court when it asks for permission to secretly snoop on Americans.

Back in December, the OIG released a blockbuster report showing that FBI agents made a number of significant omissions and errors in their four warrant applications to snoop on Page in the hopes of determining if he was being unduly influenced by Russian officials during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Inspector General Michael Horowitz was so bothered by the problems with the Page warrants that he declared that the OIG would perform a deeper audit to see if FBI officials were following proper procedures with their other secret FISA warrants.

The results of that deeper audit were published today and they don’t look good for the FBI. The OIG report shows that the agency regularly neglects proper procedures when seeking FISA warrants.

The failing point appears to be adherence to the Woods procedures, a collection of policies implemented in 2001 to make sure that every fact and detail in a warrant application to the FISA court has been carefully vetted for accuracy and to document that process. The FBI failed to properly follow those procedures with Page. Based on this new report, it looks like this failing is a common problem.

How common? The OIG reviewed 29 FISA warrant applications. In 25 of them the OIG identified errors or “inadequately supported facts.” In the other four, the OIG couldn’t find the associated Woods files—records that document that the FBI agents did due diligence to verify factual accuracy—at all. In three of those cases, the OIG is not certain whether any Woods files even exist. So there’s essentially a problem with every warrant application the OIG looked at for this audit.

The report notes that the OIG is not evaluating whether these errors or omissions were material mistakes that would or should have impacted whether the original warrants should have been granted. But that’s not the point, and that’s why this audit is so important. Because the FISA warrant process is so deliberately secretive, its oversight is limited to the FISA court, which depends on the FBI to be honest about the procedures it is supposed to follow. The FBI has a lengthy internal process to double-check warrant applications. This report notes that the internal processes have found close to 400 errors in 39 FISA warrant applications across the last five years. Inspector General Horowitz writes:

We do not have confidence that the FBI has executed its Woods Procedures in compliance with FBI policy, or that the process is working as it was intended to help achieve the “scrupulously accurate” standard for FISA applications.

Horowitz recommends that the FBI put into place a system of examining past Woods procedures compliance problems to train FBI employees to do a better job. And he recommends that the FBI perform a “physical inventory” to make sure that there’s a Woods file for every warrant application submitted to the FISA court.

After the Page warrant audit was released, FBI Director Christopher Wray released a 40-point plan to correct procedures within the department. In the FBI’s official response to today’s OIG report, FBI Associate Deputy Director Paul Abbate contends that the changes that Wray is already introducing, such as more checklists and training, will help fix these problems moving forward.

It’s deeply disturbing that the OIG found problems with every single FISA warrant application it looked at. FISA warrants exist for the purpose of catching spies and terrorists, which is why so much secrecy is permitted. But mistakes and omissions in this secretive process have huge civil liberties implications for any citizen caught in the government crosshairs. Normally, citizens can turn to the courts for relief when warrants are misapplied. But that’s not the case with FISA warrants.

Read the new OIG memo here.

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Federalism and the Coronavirus Crisis

Historically, major crises have led to expansions of federal government power. As Robert Higgs documents in his classic book Crisis and Leviathan, this tends to happen even if the crisis was partly caused by misguided federal policies, and even if the federal response to the crisis has serious flaws of its own. So far, however, the coronavirus crisis seems like it might be an exception. There is some value to the decentralized nature of the response to the crisis, but also some risks. And it is far from clear that the crisis won’t ultimately result in a major expansion of federal power.

As Walter Olson documents in a Wall Street Journal op ed, so far it is state governments that have taken the lead in combating the virus. The “shut down” and “stay at home” orders that have affected millions of Americans are almost entirely issued by state and local authorities. These have also—so far—taken the lead in trying to boost the capacity of the health care system to handle the surge in coronavirus cases.

The federal government’s coronavirus “social distancing” guidelines, by contrast, are largely advisory. With the important exception of draconian new restrictions on international travel and migration, the lion’s share of coronavirus-related regulations affecting ordinary citizens are the work of state and local authorities. Donald Trump may have high TV ratings, but the actions of governors like Gavin Newsom (California), Andrew Cuomo (New York), and Mike DeWine (Ohio) are having a much bigger on-the-ground impact.

There is some value to this relatively decentralized approach to combating the virus. The US is a large and diverse nation, and it is unlikely that a single “one-size-fits-all” set of social distancing rules can work equally well everywhere. In addition, state-by-state experimentation with different approaches can increase our still dangerously limited knowledge of which policies are the most effective.

Moreover, if one policymaker screws up, his or her errors are less likely to have a catastrophic effect on the whole nation.  Here, there is a tension in the views of those who both advocate a much more centralized policy but also (correctly in my view) believe that Donald Trump is often malicious or incompetent. The worse he is, the less we should want to see even more power concentrated in his hands.

As Olson points out, giving the states the lead role on public health issues is not a new idea, but one  embedded in the original meaning of the Constitution. The Founding generation regarded most public health issues as primarily a state responsibility beyond the scope of the federal government’s enumerated powers. In his landmark 1824 opinion  in Gibbons v. Ogden, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall—who generally advocated a broad conception of federal power by the standards of the time—listed “Inspection laws, quarantine laws, [and] health laws of every description” as part of “that immense mass of legislation which embraces everything within the territory of a State not surrendered to the General Government.”

There is, in fact, a long history of state and local governments taking the lead in battling the spread of contagious disease. During the 1918-19 flu pandemic, state and local restrictions were the primary means of inhibiting the spread of the virus, while the federal government did very little.

While there is much to be said for state-led efforts, they also have at least two serious limitations in the current crisis. First, the coronavirus is—apparently—highly contagious and can spread quickly from one area to another. This means that a state or locality with overly lax policies can potentially “infect” its neighbors.

I lack the epidemiological expertise to assess the extent of this risk; it may vary from place to place. It is also possible that it can be mitigated by coordination between neighboring jurisdictions. Still, the possibility of “externality” effects—in which one state’s policies harm its neighbors—is a standard critique of decentralization. And the spread of a deadly disease is a particularly severe example of this problem, one that may be more difficult to address than many other types of  externalities.

Second, one of the major checks on bad state and local policies is the ability of people to “vote with their feet” against them by moving elsewhere. Foot voting enables some people to escape harmful or oppressive government policies, and also gives jurisdictions incentives to avoid  them in the first place, for fear of losing key parts of their tax base. In most situations, foot voting is one of the biggest advantages of political decentralization.

But its effectiveness is greatly reduced in our current situation situation. Though some states have enacted  quarantine requirements on people entering from epidemic hot sports, interstate migration has not—so far—actually been banned. But even aside from legal restrictions, interstate movement in the midst of a pandemic will be extremely difficult, at best. Where it remains feasible, it could potentially risk spreading the disease further—at least until we have enough testing capacity to effectively screen would-be movers (and others).

Hopefully,  foot voting will become safer more feasible again, as testing improves, and parts of the economy begin to recover. At the moment, however, it is nowhere near as effective as it would need to be to provide a meaningful constraint on ill-advised state and local policies. That includes both policies that are overly lax—and thereby allow the virus to spread—and those that are overly restrictive, and thereby cause more harm to liberty, the economy, and social welfare than can be justified by their health benefits.

Externalities and other similar problems might yet lead to a greater centralization of power during the crisis. Centralization could occur even in some areas where it isn’t really needed, because public opinion might prefer a seemingly strong federal hand on the tiller in the midst of a crisis. Political ignorance is widespread, and many voters may be unwilling or unable to  objectively evaluate the effectiveness of either federal or state policies. For many, the default response to a terribly dangerous situation might be to clamor for large-scale intervention of the largest and most powerful government available.

It is also worth remembering that the massive $2 trillion “stimulus” bill passed by Congress has already caused a huge increase in federal spending, and made many more people, industries, and subnational governments more dependent on federal largesse. Much of what is in the bill may be a justified emergency measure. But that spigot—like other expansions of government power in the midst of crisis—may not be easy to cut off even after the emergency ends.

In sum, the coronavirus crisis has so far featured states taking the lead in crafting the US response. This federalist approach has some real value. But it has downsides, as well. It is too early to tell how severe those flaws are. Despite the current starring role of state governments, it is also too early to rule out the possibility that the coronavirus crisis will ultimately result in a major expansion of federal government power.

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