another site
For the rest of my playlist, click here. Past poems are:
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3jjObl6
via IFTTT
NYSE Prepares To Move Operations Out Of New Jersey If Trading Tax Passes
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 14:53
The saga over New Jersey’s trading tax continues, and in the latest installment the Mahwah-based New Jersey New York Stock Exchange told New Jersey lawmakers that it is prepared to move operations out of state should they impose a new tax on electronic trades via data servers, according to Bloomberg.
To prove that the NYSE is serious, in late September, Hope Jarkowski, co-head of government affairs for NYSE parent Intercontinental Exchange Inc., said that the world’s largest exchange by market capitalization conducted a test “for a wholesale transition out of New Jersey” noting that “from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, we moved our production servers for our NYSE Chicago exchange out of New Jersey to our secondary data center.”
The kicker: “Proximity to New York City is no longer relevant in today’s trading environment.”
The latest threat to bail on the Garden State comes after state lawmakers announced they plan to charge a tax of a hundredth-cent per trade, down from an earlier proposal of a quarter-cent levy. The fee, which is set to begin Jan. 1 and last two years if passed, would be paid by “high-quantity processors of financial securities,” or firms that collect and store data. Such operations exist in Mahwah, Secaucus, Carteret and elsewhere in New Jersey, where the NYSE, Nasdaq and CME all conduct operations, and whose proximity to Wall Street makes it conducive to fast electronic trades. But, as Bloomberg notes, “evolving technology is threatening the need for short, straight data lines, potentially allowing exchanges to operate well beyond their suburban tether.”
While New Jersey has estimated that a trade tax would bring in $500 million in each of the two years on transactions involving stocks, futures, options, credit-default swaps, derivatives and other trades, market representatives disagree, and instead claim that such taxes enacted in France, Sweden and Italy have fallen far short of goals.
The strategy “will backfire,” said Terry Campbell, vice president of global relations for Nasdaq Inc. “You will not get the revenue you predict.”
Instead, according to those who have for years benefited from the legal frontrunning that is HFT, claim that individual investors and middle-class retirees would shoulder the burden, via higher transaction fees and costs passed on by pension funds and other investment managers. A coalition of exchanges and trading firms have been fighting the tax, with Monday’s hearing giving them another chance to warn lawmakers that the levy will hurt the state more than help.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Tf8xB3 Tyler Durden
For the rest of my playlist, click here. Past poems are:
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3jjObl6
via IFTTT
Trump Adviser Says Debate Commission May ‘Shut Mic Off’ As Foreign Policy Suddenly Dropped From Topics
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 14:55
The Commission on Presidential Debates is meeting Monday afternoon to discuss potential rule changes for Thursday’s debate between President Trump and Joe Biden, according to CNN.
“We are going to consider what changes we are going to make with regards to the debate on Thursday night,” said one commission member, who added that there is also a chance that no changes will be made.
The Commission announced in late September that it would explore changes ‘to ensure a more orderly discussion’ following a heated first debate between Trump and Biden.
According to Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller, the commission may allow producers to “turn off the president’s microphone whenever they want to, which again would be a gross violation of what we agreed to initially.”
Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller on a call with reporters says he’s hearing the debate commission may allow producers to “turn off the president’s microphone whenever they want to, which again would be a gross violation of what we agreed to initially.” https://t.co/2fwqta8FNP
— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) October 19, 2020
Meanwhile, in the wake of the Hunter Biden laptop revelations – and in what we’re sure is a coincidence, the Debate Commission has decided to ditch foreign policy as a topic for Thursday’s face-off.
According to Miller, the Debate Commission “changed focus of final debate away from foreign policy so Joe Biden wouldn’t have to answer to being compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, supporting endless wars and sending pallets of cash to Iran.”
Good morning to everyone except Presidential Debate Commission members who changed focus of final debate away from foreign policy so Joe Biden wouldn’t have to answer to being compromised by the Chinese Communist Party, supporting endless wars and sending pallets of cash to Iran.
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) October 19, 2020
More via The National Pulse:
The National Pulse understands that while “national security” has been included in the list of topics by moderator Kristen Welker, the campaigns had long been discussing the subject being the majority of the debate, rather than regurgitating on issues such as COVID, climate change, and race.
Those topics were both covered in the first debate, and in the substantive Vice Presidential debate which saw VP Mike Pence emerge unquestionably victorious over a hectoring Kamala Harris.
The Hunter Biden laptop and e-mails were initially reported by the New York Post last week, triggering a cavalcade of censorship by Big Tech firms, as well as a failure by reputable media outlets to ask Joe Biden about the distressing revelations contained within, such as Hunter’s ties to Ukraine, to Moscow, and to the Chinese Communist Party.
Speaking to Maria Bartiromo on Fox News on Monday morning, Jason Miller added: “If the moderator doesn’t bring [Hunter Biden’s e-mails] up, I think you’re safe to assume that the President will. Again, these are real simple questions that Joe Biden needs to answer to the American public. And keep in mind this is supposed to be a debate on foreign policy. I know the Debate Commission is trying to move the goal posts yet again and work in a bunch of other issues. We’re going to talk about Biden’s support for endless wars, talk about the piles of cash loaded up with billions of dollars and sent to Iran, and we’re going to talk about all the foreign corruption, the foreign money that’s been coming into the Biden family. If Joe Biden can’t answer these real simple questions, you know he’s running from something.”
* * *
Meanwhile, the moderator for the third debate, Kristen Welker, has been added to the list of ‘anti-Trump’ debate moderators – with President Trump calling her “terrible and unfair” on Saturday in response to a New York Post article accusing her of having “deep Democrat ties.”
On Monday, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade called Welker “often the most abrasive, most dismissive, most disrespectful reporter” in White House press briefings.
Brian Kilmeade is mad that NBC’s Kristen Welker is going to moderate Thursday’s debate, because her parents donated to Democrats and “she was a registered Democrat before,” even though Kilmeade’s colleague/first debate moderator Chris Wallace is currently a registered Democrat. pic.twitter.com/L59N2jZ7rl
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) October 19, 2020
Others have noted that she accidentally tipped off Hillary Clinton’s Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri in 2016 about at least one question she was about to ask.
In March 2016 Welker was busted on live television tipping off Hillary Clinton’s Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri about at least one question she planned to ask her during a post-debate interview in Michigan.https://t.co/5YD5TOADB9 pic.twitter.com/c3qTtwIG00
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) October 17, 2020
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3jcupb8 Tyler Durden
From Gabros v. Shore Medical Center, decided last week by Judge Noel Hillman (D.N.J.) (emphasis added) (for the backstory on the case, see here):
The Parties seek to seal … a report by the National Practitioner Data Bank (“NPDB”), submitted by Defendant Shore Medical Center on June 18, 2015. This report was a result of the final adverse action taken by SMC to revoke Plaintiff’s clinical privileges.
In 1986, Congress passed the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (“HCQIA”), 42 U.S.C. § 11101, et seq. The HCQIA requires that certain information regarding malpractice payments, sanctions, and professional review actions taken with respect to medical professionals be reported to the federal government. 42 U.S.C. § 11131-7. The regulations promulgated pursuant to the HCQIA established the National Practitioner Data Bank to collect and organize information collected under the HCQIA.
The NPDB operates as a centralized clearinghouse for state licensing boards, hospitals, and other health care entities to obtain relevant background information about physicians. Hospitals are required to request information from the NPDB with respect to each physician or health care practitioner who applies for staff membership or clinical privileges. The NPDB makes the information it collects available to “State licensing boards, to hospitals, and to other health care entities (including health maintenance organizations) that have entered (or may be entering) in an employment or affiliation relationship with the physician or practitioner or to which the physician or practitioner has applied for clinical privileges or appointment to the medical staff.” 42 U.S.C. § 11137(a).
Section 11137 also outlines the confidentiality provisions applicable to the information collected under the HCQIA. Specifically, it mandates:
“Information reported under this subchapter is considered confidential and shall not be disclosed (other than to the physician or practitioner involved) except with respect to professional review activity … or in accordance with regulations of the Secretary promulgated pursuant to subsection (a) of this section. Nothing in this subsection shall prevent the disclosure of such information by a party which is otherwise authorized, under applicable State law, to make such disclosure. Information reported under this subchapter that is in a form that does not permit the identification of any particular health care entity, physician, other health care practitioner, or patient shall not be considered confidential.”
As such, unless otherwise provided by state law, all information collected by the NPDB and “reported under this subchapter” is presumed confidential and is only released as specifically mandated by the HCQIA.
The Parties contend that federal law prohibits disclosure of National Practitioner Data Bank reports. The Parties highlight that the purpose of the NPDB and its reports is to improve health care quality, protect the public, and reduce health care fraud and abuse in the United States. According to the Parties, if NPDB reports were available to the public, reporting entities would lose confidence in the NPDB’s confidentiality protections. The Parties argue that this lack of confidence would lead to a decline in voluntary or optional reports regarding problematic officials and would ultimately hinder the reliability and effectiveness of the NPDB in serving its public policy goals.
The Court has closely reviewed the documents the parties ask the Court to seal and does not find a legitimate private or public interest warranting sealing, nor a serious injury that would result from a failure to seal. While there is no doubt a generalized public benefit from a confidential reporting system allowing medical employers to share information about the qualifications of licensed medical professionals, that interest must fall away when those reports are themselves evidence in a matter pending in federal court or any court. The alternative is that medical employers and professionals may generate false or truthful information about each other material to their dispute and the potential claims of injured third parties under a regime where that information never sees the light of day.
It is hard to imagine how that benefits the public at large and begs the question why a federal court should aid in such secrecy absent clear statutory direction. What the parties really envision is a system that always shields the airing of claims of incompetency and malfeasance by medical professionals and the medical institutions that hire them. This lack of transparency and absolute immunity is as likely to cause false reports as it is to foster candor.
Nor does the relevant statute create such an absolute private world immune from outside scrutiny. It is one thing to say that information should be confidential between the parties for regulatory purposes and quite another to say that information can never be revealed when disputes arise over the content of such reports. The only law cited by the parties actually authorizes disclosure for purposes of litigation when the system breaks down as envisioned. See 45 C.F.R. 60.18(a)(1)(v) (allowing use of NPDB reports in medical malpractice litigation where hospital failed to request information from the NPDB).
Moreover, there can be no better example of the overbreadth of the parties’ argument for sealing than this case. Plaintiff’s case hinges on allegations that NPDB reports about him were false and he demands a jury trial. Plaintiff would have his allegations litigated in a star chamber with a jury of ordinary citizens presumably barred from discussing the case after their service in a closed courtroom. There is no precedent for such a proceeding in federal court except in those rare cases which might involve classified information or national secrets and even in those cases redactions and sanitized versions allow for public access.
In sum, the Court is unpersuaded by the parties’ arguments that denying their motion to seal the NPDB reports will have a chilling effect on reporting. Moreover, there is nothing in binding case law or the relevant statute itself expressly forbidding disclosure of these reports in the context of the claims brought by this Plaintiff. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, this Court has repeatedly emphasized the public interest in the disclosure of materials filed on this Court’s docket, which often outweighs private interests in confidentiality.
This Court is funded by the public and does not sit, in general, to resolve private disputes in secret. Finding that the parties lack a legitimate justification to warrant sealing the identified information, the Court will deny the parties’ joint motion to seal with regard to the NPDB reports….
The court also refused to seal a past opinion in the case:
The Parties argue that because the Court’s Opinion “recites the content of the NPDB and DCA Reports verbatim,” allowing public access to this opinion is “tantamount to allowing the public to review the reports themselves.”
Having reviewed the Court’s June 2019 Opinion, the Court notes that this Opinion does not contain any personally identifiable information or sensitive information that would justify granting the parties’ joint motion to seal. And as the Court has noted, that the Opinion recites certain content from the NPDB and DCA is an insufficient reason to seal it.
Finally, while this Court’s decisions are binding on no one except the parties, the development of the federal case law requires that the reasoning of the Court in interpreting statutes be widely available to be considered by sister courts as persuasive authority or not. The Court’s 52-page opinion discusses the statute of limitations for defamation claims arising from NPDB reports, the scope of immunity under the HCQIA, and the reach of analogous claims under state statutory law.
The development of the law would be stymied if Courts issue secret rulings known only to the parties. In short, because the Court does not make its decisions in secret, the Court finds it is in the public interest to allow the June 2019 Opinion containing the resolution of certain issues in this case to made public….
Despite this decision, the June 2019 opinion remains sealed, presumably as a result of some delay in the Clerk’s Office; I’ll post it as soon as it’s unsealed.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/31lLKrX
via IFTTT
“Where would the Black Lives Matter movement be without the right to free speech?” asks Ira Glasser, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1978 to 2001. “There is no social justice movement in America that has ever not needed the First Amendment to initiate its movement for justice, to sustain its movement to justice, to help its movement survive.”
Glasser is the subject of the new documentary Mighty Ira, which chronicles his efforts to secure the speech rights of Nazis, undermine government attempts to regulate internet content, combat hate speech laws, and abolish campus speech codes. It is a portrait of a First Amendment hero who managed to have friends across ideological divides while remaining civil, engaged, and effective.
The 82-year-old Glasser is troubled by his former group’s seeming embrace of identity politics over free speech, and he worries that younger social justice activists view the First Amendment as an adversary rather than an ally. “John Lewis said that without free speech and the right to dissent, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings,” Glasser says. “That’s historically and politically true without exception.”
Written by Nick Gillespie. Produced and edited by Paul Detrick.
Neo-Nazis; Credit: Alexandra Buxbaum/ABACAUSA.COM/Newscom; Ira Glasser; Credit: Mario Ruiz/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Neo Nazi marcher; Credit: ID 132745286 © Patrick Morrissey | Dreamstime.com; Black Lives Matter protesters; Credit: Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire CBW, Tim Evans/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Adam J. Dewey/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Women’s rights marcher; Credit: Jeff Malet Photography/Newscom; Anti-war activist; Credit: Zach D Roberts/ZUMA Press/Newscom; David Duke; Credit: file UPI Photo Service/Newscom; Eldridge Cleaver; Credit: Underwood Archives/UIG Universal Images Group/Newscom; Supreme court protesters; Credit: Jeff Malet Photography/Newscom; Gay rights protester; Credit: Louis Brems/ZUMA Press/Newscom; AIDS activists; Credit: Frances M. Roberts/Newscom, Ezio Petersen UPI Photo Service/Newscom, Michale Smith UPI Photo Service/Newscom; Civil rights movement; Credits: akg-images/Newscom; ICE protest; Credit: John Marshall Mantel/SIPA/Newscom; Joseph McCarthy; Credit: Everett Collection/Newscom; Richard Nixon; Credit: JT Vintage/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Rudy Giuliani; Credit: Jason Winslow / Splash News/Newscom; Donald Trump; Credit: Paul Hennessy/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Bill Barr; Credit: Jeff Roberson/UPI/Newscom; ACLU legal observers; Credit: Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Lannis Waters/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA/Newscom, Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom; ACLU clients; Credit: GDA Photo Service/Newscom, Pat Vasquez-Cunningham/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Romain Blanquart/MCT/Newscom; Neo-nazis; Credit: Jim De Pree/TNS/Newscom; Unite the Right rally; Credit: Stephanie Keith/Reuters/Newscom; ACLU protesters; Credit: ID 173780741 © Jerry Coli | Dreamstime.com
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/35bTQEF
via IFTTT
From ‘Hope’ To ‘Nope’: Stocks Tumble After “Disagreements Remain” On COVID Relief
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 14:47
After an overnight surge on the back of nothing but hope, the answer from Pelosi and the Democrats appears to be ‘nope’ as headlines state that “disagreements on stimulus language remain,” pouring cold water on the belief that a deal wil lget done by tomorrow’s Pelosi-mandated deadline.
This sent stocks to the low of the day…
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31pZCS6 Tyler Durden
“Where would the Black Lives Matter movement be without the right to free speech?” asks Ira Glasser, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) from 1978 to 2001. “There is no social justice movement in America that has ever not needed the First Amendment to initiate its movement for justice, to sustain its movement to justice, to help its movement survive.”
Glasser is the subject of the new documentary Mighty Ira, which chronicles his efforts to secure the speech rights of Nazis, undermine government attempts to regulate internet content, combat hate speech laws, and abolish campus speech codes. It is a portrait of a First Amendment hero who managed to have friends across ideological divides while remaining civil, engaged, and effective.
The 82-year-old Glasser is troubled by his former group’s seeming embrace of identity politics over free speech, and he worries that younger social justice activists view the First Amendment as an adversary rather than an ally. “John Lewis said that without free speech and the right to dissent, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings,” Glasser says. “That’s historically and politically true without exception.”
Written by Nick Gillespie. Produced and edited by Paul Detrick.
Neo-Nazis; Credit: Alexandra Buxbaum/ABACAUSA.COM/Newscom; Ira Glasser; Credit: Mario Ruiz/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Neo Nazi marcher; Credit: ID 132745286 © Patrick Morrissey | Dreamstime.com; Black Lives Matter protesters; Credit: Scott W. Grau/Icon Sportswire CBW, Tim Evans/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Adam J. Dewey/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Women’s rights marcher; Credit: Jeff Malet Photography/Newscom; Anti-war activist; Credit: Zach D Roberts/ZUMA Press/Newscom; David Duke; Credit: file UPI Photo Service/Newscom; Eldridge Cleaver; Credit: Underwood Archives/UIG Universal Images Group/Newscom; Supreme court protesters; Credit: Jeff Malet Photography/Newscom; Gay rights protester; Credit: Louis Brems/ZUMA Press/Newscom; AIDS activists; Credit: Frances M. Roberts/Newscom, Ezio Petersen UPI Photo Service/Newscom, Michale Smith UPI Photo Service/Newscom; Civil rights movement; Credits: akg-images/Newscom; ICE protest; Credit: John Marshall Mantel/SIPA/Newscom; Joseph McCarthy; Credit: Everett Collection/Newscom; Richard Nixon; Credit: JT Vintage/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Rudy Giuliani; Credit: Jason Winslow / Splash News/Newscom; Donald Trump; Credit: Paul Hennessy/ZUMA Press/Newscom; Bill Barr; Credit: Jeff Roberson/UPI/Newscom; ACLU legal observers; Credit: Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Lannis Waters/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA/Newscom, Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call/Newscom; ACLU clients; Credit: GDA Photo Service/Newscom, Pat Vasquez-Cunningham/ZUMA Press/Newscom, Romain Blanquart/MCT/Newscom; Neo-nazis; Credit: Jim De Pree/TNS/Newscom; Unite the Right rally; Credit: Stephanie Keith/Reuters/Newscom; ACLU protesters; Credit: ID 173780741 © Jerry Coli | Dreamstime.com
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/35bTQEF
via IFTTT
Reclaim The Internet: End Social Media’s “Overton Window” Suppression
Tyler Durden
Mon, 10/19/2020 – 14:40
No matter how much you dislike Trump, only a fool can fail to see the implications for public access to information of the massive suppression on the internet of the Hunter Biden leaks.
This blog has been suffering a ratcheting of social media suppression for years, which reached its apogee in my coverage of the Julian Assange trial. As I reported on 24 September:
Even my blog has never been so systematically subject to shadowbanning from Twitter and Facebook as now. Normally about 50% of my blog readers arrive from Twitter and 40% from Facebook. During the trial it has been 3% from Twitter and 9% from Facebook. That is a fall from 90% to 12%. In the February hearings Facebook and Twitter were between them sending me over 200,000 readers a day. Now they are between them sending me 3,000 readers a day. To be plain that is very much less than my normal daily traffic from them just in ordinary times. It is the insidious nature of this censorship that is especially sinister – people believe they have successfully shared my articles on Twitter and Facebook, while those corporations hide from them that in fact it went into nobody’s timeline. My own family have not been getting their notifications of my posts on either platform.
It was not just me: everyone reporting the Assange trial on social media suffered the same effect. Wikileaks, which has 5.6 million Twitter followers, were obtaining about the same number of Twitter “impressions” of their tweets (ie number who saw them) as I was. I spoke with several of the major US independent news sites and they all reported the same.
I have written before about the great danger to internet freedom from the fact that a few massively dominant social media corporations – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram – have become in effect the “gatekeepers” to internet traffic. In the Assange hearing and Hunter Biden cases we see perhaps the first overt use of that coordinated power to control public information worldwide.
The way the power of the “gatekeepers” is used normally is insidious. It is quite deliberately disguised. “Shadow banning” is a term for a technique which has many variations. The net result is always that the post is not ostensibly banned. Some people see it, so that if the subject of the suppression claims to be banned they look stupid. But it is in fact shown to far, far less people than it would normally be. So even members of my own immediate family find that my posts no longer turn up in their timeline on either Facebook or Twitter. But a few followers, presumably at random, do see them. Generally, though not always, those followers are apparently able to retweet or share, but what they are not told is that their retweet or share is in fact put in to very, very few people’s timelines. The overall audience for the Tweet or Facebook post is cut to as little as 1% of what it might be without suppression. As 90% of the traffic to this blog comes in clicks from these social media posts, the effect is massive.
That was the technique used on the Assange hearing. In normal times, the ratchet on traffic can be screwed down or released a little, from week to week or post to post.
In the Hunter Biden case, social media went still further and without disguise simply banned all mention of the Hunter Biden leaks.
As I reported on September 27 last year:
What I find deeply reprehensible in all the BBC coverage is their failure to report the facts of the case, and their utter lack of curiosity about why Joe Biden’s son Hunter was paid $60,000 a month by Burisma, Ukraine’s largest natural gas producer, as an entirely absent non-executive director, when he had no relevant experience in Ukraine or gas, and very little business experience, having just been dishonorably discharged from the Navy Reserve for use of crack cocaine? Is that question not just a little bit interesting? That may be the thin end of it – in 2014-15 Hunter Biden received US $850,000 from the intermediary company channeling the payments. In reporting on Trump being potentially impeached for asking about it, might you not expect some analysis – or at least mention – of what he was asking about?
That Hunter Biden received so much money from a company he never once visited or did any legitimate work for, located in a country which remarkably at the same time launched into a US sponsored civil war while his father was Vice President, is a question which might reasonably interest people. This is not “fake news”. There is no doubt whatsoever of the facts. There
is also no doubt that, as Vice President of the USA, Joe Biden secured the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma for corruption.
The story now is that Hunter Biden abandoned a laptop in a repair shop, and the hard drive contained emails between Hunter and Burisma in which he was asked for, and promised, various assistance to the company from the Vice President. This hard drive was passed to the New York Post. What the emails do not include is any incriminating correspondence between Hunter and his father in which Joe Biden agrees to any of this – which speaks to their authenticity, as that would be the key thing to forge. Given that the hard drive also contains intimate photos and video, there does not seem to be any real doubt about its authenticity.
However both Facebook and Twitter slapped an immediate and total ban on all mention of the Hunter Biden emails, claiming doubts as to its authenticity and an astonishing claim that they never link to leaked material or information about leaked material.
Alert readers will note that this policy was not applied to Donald Trump’s tax returns. These were extremely widely publicised throughout social and mainstream media – and quite right too – despite being illegally leaked. Twitter may be attempting to draw a distinction between a “hack” and a “leak”. This is difficult to do – the Clinton and Podesta emails, for example, were leaked but are frequently claimed to have been hacked.
I am astonished by the online comment of people who consider themselves “liberals” who support the social media suppression of the Hunter Biden story, because they want Trump to be defeated. The truth is that those in control of social media censorship are overwhelmingly Atlanticist figures on the Clinton/Blair political spectrum. That embraces the roles of Nick Clegg and Ben Nimmo at Facebook. It explains the protective attitude of Blairite Wikipedia boss Jimmy Wales (also a director of Guardian Media Group) toward the Philip Cross operation.
Censorship from the self-satisfied centre of the political establishment is still more dangerous, because more stable, than censorship from the left or right. It seeks rigorously to enforce the “Overton window” on social media. It has a “whatever it takes” attitude to getting Joe Biden into the White House and removing a maverick element from the political stability it so prizes. Its hatred of public knowledge is behind the persecution of Assange.
The Establishment’s problem is that inequalities of wealth are now so extreme in Western society, that the attempted removal of access by the public to radical thinking is not protecting a stable society, but is protecting a society tilting towards structural instability, in which the lack of job security and decent conditions and pay for large swathes of the population contrasts vividly with the spectacularly flourishing fortunes of the ultra billionaires. Our society desperately needs thinking outside the box into which the social media gatekeepers are attempting to confine us.
An early part of that thinking out of the box needs to relate to internet architecture and finding a way that the social media gatekeepers can be bypassed – not by a few activists, but by the bulk of the population. We used to say the internet will always find a work-around, and there are optimists who believe that the kind of censorship we saw over Hunter Biden will lead to a flight to alternative platforms, but I don’t see that happening on the scale required. Regulation to prevent censorship is improbable – governments are much more interested in regulation to impose more censorship.
The development of social media gatekeeping of internet traffic is one of the key socio-political issues of our time. We need the original founders of the internet to get together with figures like Richard Stallman and – vitally – Julian Assange – to find a way we break free from this. Ten years ago I would not have thought it a danger that the internet would become a method of political control, not of political freedom. I now worry it is too late to avert the danger.
* * *
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34a18JE Tyler Durden
From Gabros v. Shore Medical Center, decided last week by Judge Noel Hillman (D.N.J.) (emphasis added) (for the backstory on the case, see here):
The Parties seek to seal … a report by the National Practitioner Data Bank (“NPDB”), submitted by Defendant Shore Medical Center on June 18, 2015. This report was a result of the final adverse action taken by SMC to revoke Plaintiff’s clinical privileges.
In 1986, Congress passed the Health Care Quality Improvement Act of 1986 (“HCQIA”), 42 U.S.C. § 11101, et seq. The HCQIA requires that certain information regarding malpractice payments, sanctions, and professional review actions taken with respect to medical professionals be reported to the federal government. 42 U.S.C. § 11131-7. The regulations promulgated pursuant to the HCQIA established the National Practitioner Data Bank to collect and organize information collected under the HCQIA.
The NPDB operates as a centralized clearinghouse for state licensing boards, hospitals, and other health care entities to obtain relevant background information about physicians. Hospitals are required to request information from the NPDB with respect to each physician or health care practitioner who applies for staff membership or clinical privileges. The NPDB makes the information it collects available to “State licensing boards, to hospitals, and to other health care entities (including health maintenance organizations) that have entered (or may be entering) in an employment or affiliation relationship with the physician or practitioner or to which the physician or practitioner has applied for clinical privileges or appointment to the medical staff.” 42 U.S.C. § 11137(a).
Section 11137 also outlines the confidentiality provisions applicable to the information collected under the HCQIA. Specifically, it mandates:
“Information reported under this subchapter is considered confidential and shall not be disclosed (other than to the physician or practitioner involved) except with respect to professional review activity … or in accordance with regulations of the Secretary promulgated pursuant to subsection (a) of this section. Nothing in this subsection shall prevent the disclosure of such information by a party which is otherwise authorized, under applicable State law, to make such disclosure. Information reported under this subchapter that is in a form that does not permit the identification of any particular health care entity, physician, other health care practitioner, or patient shall not be considered confidential.”
As such, unless otherwise provided by state law, all information collected by the NPDB and “reported under this subchapter” is presumed confidential and is only released as specifically mandated by the HCQIA.
The Parties contend that federal law prohibits disclosure of National Practitioner Data Bank reports. The Parties highlight that the purpose of the NPDB and its reports is to improve health care quality, protect the public, and reduce health care fraud and abuse in the United States. According to the Parties, if NPDB reports were available to the public, reporting entities would lose confidence in the NPDB’s confidentiality protections. The Parties argue that this lack of confidence would lead to a decline in voluntary or optional reports regarding problematic officials and would ultimately hinder the reliability and effectiveness of the NPDB in serving its public policy goals.
The Court has closely reviewed the documents the parties ask the Court to seal and does not find a legitimate private or public interest warranting sealing, nor a serious injury that would result from a failure to seal. While there is no doubt a generalized public benefit from a confidential reporting system allowing medical employers to share information about the qualifications of licensed medical professionals, that interest must fall away when those reports are themselves evidence in a matter pending in federal court or any court. The alternative is that medical employers and professionals may generate false or truthful information about each other material to their dispute and the potential claims of injured third parties under a regime where that information never sees the light of day.
It is hard to imagine how that benefits the public at large and begs the question why a federal court should aid in such secrecy absent clear statutory direction. What the parties really envision is a system that always shields the airing of claims of incompetency and malfeasance by medical professionals and the medical institutions that hire them. This lack of transparency and absolute immunity is as likely to cause false reports as it is to foster candor.
Nor does the relevant statute create such an absolute private world immune from outside scrutiny. It is one thing to say that information should be confidential between the parties for regulatory purposes and quite another to say that information can never be revealed when disputes arise over the content of such reports. The only law cited by the parties actually authorizes disclosure for purposes of litigation when the system breaks down as envisioned. See 45 C.F.R. 60.18(a)(1)(v) (allowing use of NPDB reports in medical malpractice litigation where hospital failed to request information from the NPDB).
Moreover, there can be no better example of the overbreadth of the parties’ argument for sealing than this case. Plaintiff’s case hinges on allegations that NPDB reports about him were false and he demands a jury trial. Plaintiff would have his allegations litigated in a star chamber with a jury of ordinary citizens presumably barred from discussing the case after their service in a closed courtroom. There is no precedent for such a proceeding in federal court except in those rare cases which might involve classified information or national secrets and even in those cases redactions and sanitized versions allow for public access.
In sum, the Court is unpersuaded by the parties’ arguments that denying their motion to seal the NPDB reports will have a chilling effect on reporting. Moreover, there is nothing in binding case law or the relevant statute itself expressly forbidding disclosure of these reports in the context of the claims brought by this Plaintiff. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, this Court has repeatedly emphasized the public interest in the disclosure of materials filed on this Court’s docket, which often outweighs private interests in confidentiality.
This Court is funded by the public and does not sit, in general, to resolve private disputes in secret. Finding that the parties lack a legitimate justification to warrant sealing the identified information, the Court will deny the parties’ joint motion to seal with regard to the NPDB reports….
The court also refused to seal a past opinion in the case:
The Parties argue that because the Court’s Opinion “recites the content of the NPDB and DCA Reports verbatim,” allowing public access to this opinion is “tantamount to allowing the public to review the reports themselves.”
Having reviewed the Court’s June 2019 Opinion, the Court notes that this Opinion does not contain any personally identifiable information or sensitive information that would justify granting the parties’ joint motion to seal. And as the Court has noted, that the Opinion recites certain content from the NPDB and DCA is an insufficient reason to seal it.
Finally, while this Court’s decisions are binding on no one except the parties, the development of the federal case law requires that the reasoning of the Court in interpreting statutes be widely available to be considered by sister courts as persuasive authority or not. The Court’s 52-page opinion discusses the statute of limitations for defamation claims arising from NPDB reports, the scope of immunity under the HCQIA, and the reach of analogous claims under state statutory law.
The development of the law would be stymied if Courts issue secret rulings known only to the parties. In short, because the Court does not make its decisions in secret, the Court finds it is in the public interest to allow the June 2019 Opinion containing the resolution of certain issues in this case to made public….
Despite this decision, the June 2019 opinion remains sealed, presumably as a result of some delay in the Clerk’s Office; I’ll post it as soon as it’s unsealed.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/31lLKrX
via IFTTT
