Advice to Entering Law Students—Revisited

Law students around the country will be starting classes in the next few weeks. Last year, I wrote a post offering advice to entering students. I tried to focus on points that I rarely, if ever, see made in other pieces of this type. I think all three remain just as relevant today. Here they are (more detail in the original 2018 post):

1. Think carefully about what kind of law you want to practice.

Law is a profession with relatively high income and social status. Yet studies repeatedly show that many lawyers are deeply unhappy, a higher percentage than in most other professions. One reason for this is that many of them hate the work they do. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. There are lots of different types of legal careers out there, and it’s likely that one of them will be a good fit for you…. But to take advantage of this diversity, you need to start considering what type of legal career best fits your needs and interests….

Regardless, don’t just “go with the flow” in terms of choosing what kind of legal career you want to try. The jobs that many of your classmates want may be terrible for you (and vice versa). Keep in mind, also, that you likely have a wider range of options now than you will in five or ten years, when it may be much harder to switch to a very different field from the one you have been working in since graduation.

2. Get to know as many of your classmates and professors as you reasonably can.

Law is a “people” business. Connections are extremely important. No matter how brilliant a legal thinker you may be, it’s hard to get ahead as a lawyer purely by working alone at your desk. Many of your law school classmates could turn out to be useful connections down the road….

This is one front on which I didn’t do very well when I was in law school, myself. Nonetheless, I am still going to suggest you do as I say, not as I actually did. You will be better off if you learn from my mistake than if you repeat it.

3. Think about whether what you plan to do is right and just.

Law presents more serious moral dilemmas than many other professions. What lawyers do can often cost innocent people their liberty, their property, or even their lives. It can also save all three. Lawyers have played key roles in almost every major advance for liberty and justice in American history, including the establishment of the Constitution, the antislavery movement, the civil rights movement and many others. But they have also been among the major perpetrators of nearly every great injustice in our history, as well….

Law school is the right time to start working to ensure that the career you pursue is at least morally defensible. You don’t necessarily have a moral obligation to devote your career to doing good. But you should at least avoid exacerbating evil. And it’s easier to do that if you think carefully about the issues involved now (when you still have a wide range of options), than if you wait until you are already enmeshed in a job that involves perpetrating injustice…..

 

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France Rattles EU Sabre: ‘No-Deal’ Brexit Now Central Scenario, Demands UK Pay Up

Here we go again.

In what sounds like a repeat of the soundbites from early this year, the French government has once again declared that the UK leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement is now its ‘base case’ scenario.

That’s according to an unnamed official in President Emmanuel Macron’s office, according to Bloomberg. That’s because UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is refusing to accept the withdrawal agreement unless the EU agrees to remove the hated Irish Backstop, which, by law, could leave the UK trapped in the EU customs union, but with no authority to offer input into its rules.

EU officials have accused Johnson and his Brexiteers of secretly wanting to reimpose a border between Norther Ireland and Ireland, something that many suspect would lead to a revival of “troubles-era” violence.

But the EU’s accusations sound about as a convincing as the unnamed French officials “threat” that the EU should expect the UK to pay the 39 billion pound ($47 billion) exit bill even if the UK leaves the bloc without a deal.

To wit, Brussels has no obvious way to force the UK government to pay, just like it has no way to force Ireland and the UK to build a land border, as Mish Shedlock recently pointed out.

And he’s not the only one who’s noticed this, and questioned who, exactly, will pay for and erect the land border and customs checkpoint.

Will Mexico pay for it? Or maybe “Mr Brexit” himself, President Trump?

Sterling slipped to its LoD following reports that Johnson and his European counterparts were not getting along.

Johnson will meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin Wednesday, and will have lunch with Macron in Paris Thursday to discuss Brexit. All of them will then meet with President Donald Trump over the weekend at the Group of Seven summit in Biarritz, France.

As BBG points out, Johnson is, of course, well within his rights to demand that the backstop be removed. And since it’s only intended to be “insurance” in case the two sides don’t reach a trade agreement during the post-Brexit day interim, scrapping the withdrawal agreement and seemingly precluding any hope of an orderly relationship between the two in the near term seems a little like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

Which supports the notion that many Brexiteers have held all along: That the ‘backstop’ is merely an attempt by the EU to keep the UK as a nominal (if diminished) member in the customs union. The Europeans have likely been bluffing all along, Shedlock claims. The only thing that’s unclear is whether Theresa May had caught on and was playing along, or not.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TS2JNK Tyler Durden

US Drone Downed By Surface-To-Air Missile Over Yemen

Putting to rest any remaining doubt of America’s continued deep military involvement in the Yemen war, a US military drone was shot down outside the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Tuesday night

After local footage of fiery wreckage falling from the night sky over Yemen appeared online, US officials confirmed to Reuters on Wednesday that it was authentic, and further it was the second such US drone shoot down in months. 

It is believed that Shia Houthi rebels, still in control of Sanaa, intercepted the drone through a surface-to-air missile. The prior incident occurred in June, which the Pentagon has blamed also on Iran for providing outside assistance to Houthis on the ground. 

A Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saria, touted the drone downing as part of an increasingly sophisticated response to foreign aircraft in the country’s skies: “The rocket which hit it was developed locally and will be revealed soon at a press conference,” Saria said in a statement. The group’s official Al-Masirah TV identified the aircraft as a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper Drone.

“Our skies are no longer open to violations as they once were and the coming days will see great surprises,” he added.

Houthi media also released footage purporting to show the surface-to-air missile that took out the multi-million dollar Pentagon drone. 

This also comes as Houthi ballistic missile reach into Saudi Arabia has become more deadly and extensive of late, with airports in the country’s southwest being struck multiple times over the past months. 

Both Saudi and US officials have pointed the finger at Iran for supplying Shia forces in Yemen with these longer range weapons, as part of a broader proxy war for the Middle East. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31Xw1gH Tyler Durden

The Founders Were Flawed. The Nation Is Imperfect. The Constitution Is Still a ‘Glorious Liberty Document.’

Across the map of the United States, the borders of Tennessee, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona draw a distinct line. It’s the 36º30′ line, a remnant of the boundary between free and slave states drawn in 1820. It is a scar across the belly of America, and a vivid symbol of the ways in which slavery still touches nearly every facet of American history.

That pervasive legacy is the subject of a series of articles in The New York Times titled “The 1619 Project.” To cover the history of slavery and its modern effects is certainly a worthy goal, and much of the Project achieves that goal effectively. Khalil Gibran Muhammad’s portrait of the Louisiana sugar industry, for instance, vividly covers a region that its victims considered the worst of all of slavery’s forms. Even better is Nikole Hannah-Jones’s celebration of black-led political movements. She is certainly correct that “without the idealistic, strenuous and patriotic efforts of black Americans, our democracy today would most likely look very different” and “might not be a democracy at all.”

Where the 1619 articles go wrong is in a persistent and off-key theme: an effort to prove that slavery “is the country’s very origin,” that slavery is the source of “nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional,” and that, in Hannah-Jones’s words, the founders “used” “racist ideology” “at the nation’s founding.” In this, the Times steps beyond history and into political polemic—one based on a falsehood and that in an essential way, repudiates the work of countless people of all races, including those Hannah-Jones celebrates, who have believed that what makes America “exceptional” is the proposition that all men are created equal. 

For one thing, the idea that, in Hannah-Jones’ words, the “white men” who wrote the Declaration of Independence “did not believe” its words applied to black people is simply false. John Adams, James Madison, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and others said at the time that the doctrine of equality rendered slavery anathema. True, Jefferson also wrote the infamous passages suggesting that “the blacks…are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind,” but he thought even that was irrelevant to the question of slavery’s immorality. “Whatever be their degree of talent,” Jefferson wrote, “it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others.” 

The myth that America was premised on slavery took off in the 1830s, not the 1770s. That was when John C. Calhoun, Alexander Stephens, George Fitzhugh, and others offered a new vision of America—one that either disregarded the facts of history to portray the founders as white supremacists, or denounced them for not being so. Relatively moderate figures such as Illinois Sen. Stephen Douglas twisted the language of the Declaration to say that the phrase “all men are created equal” actually meant only white men. Abraham Lincoln effectively refuted that in his debates with Douglas. Calhoun was, in a sense, more honest about his abhorrent views; he scorned the Declaration precisely because it made no color distinctions. “There is not a word of truth in it,” wrote Calhoun. People are “in no sense…either free or equal.” Indiana Sen. John Pettit was even more succinct. The Declaration, he said, was “a self-evident lie.”

It was these men—the generation after the founding—who manufactured the myth of American white supremacy. They did so against the opposition of such figures as Lincoln, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and John Quincy Adams. “From the day of the declaration of independence,” wrote Adams, the “wise rulers of the land” had counseled “to repair the injustice” of slavery, not perpetuate it. “Universal emancipation was the lesson which they had urged upon their contemporaries, and held forth as transcendent and irremissible [sic] duties to their children of the present age.” These opponents of the new white supremacist myth were hardly fringe figures. Lincoln and Douglass were national leaders backed by millions who agreed with their opposition to the white supremacist lie. Adams was a former president. Sumner was nearly assassinated in the Senate for opposing white supremacy. Yet their work is never discussed in the Times articles.

In 1857, Chief Justice Roger Taney sought to make the myth into the law of the land by asserting in Scott v. Sandford that the United States was created as, and could only ever be, a nation for whites. “The right of property in a slave,” he declared, “is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution.” This was false: the Constitution contains no legal protection for slavery, and doesn’t even use the word. Both Lincoln and Douglass answered Taney by citing the historical record as well as the text of the laws: the founders had called slavery both evil and inconsistent with their principles; they forbade the slave trade and tried to ban it in the territories; nothing in the Declaration or the Constitution established a color line; in fact, when the Constitution was ratified, black Americans were citizens in several states and could even vote. The founders deserved blame for not doing more, but the idea that they were white supremacists, said Douglass, was “a slander upon their memory.”

Lincoln provided the most thorough refutation. There was only one piece of evidence, he observed, ever offered to support the thesis that the Declaration’s authors didn’t mean “all men” when they wrote it: that was the fact that they did not free the slaves on July 4, 1776. Yet there were many other explanations for that which did not prove the Declaration was a lie. Most obviously, some founders may simply have been hypocrites. But that individual failing did not prove that the Declaration excluded non-whites, or that the Constitution guaranteed slavery.

Even some abolitionists embraced the white supremacy legend. William Lloyd Garrison denounced the Constitution because he believed it protected slavery. This, Douglass replied, was false both legally and factually: those who claimed it was pro-slavery had the burden of proof—yet they never offered any. The Constitution’s wording gave it no guarantees and provided plentiful means for abolishing it. In fact, none of its words would have to be changed for Congress to eliminate slavery overnight. It was slavery’s defenders, he argued, not its enemies, who should fear the Constitution—and secession proved him right. Slaveocrats had realized that the Constitution was, in Douglass’s words, “a glorious liberty document,” and they wanted out. 

Still, after the war, “Lost Cause” historians rehabilitated the Confederate vision, claiming the Constitution was a racist document, so that the legend remains today. The United States, writes Hannah-Jones, “was founded…as a slavocracy,” and the Constitution “preserved and protected slavery.” This is once more asserted as an uncontroverted fact—and Lincoln’s and Douglass’s refutations of it go unmentioned in the Times

No doubt Taney would be delighted at this acceptance of his thesis. What accounts for it? The myth of a white supremacist founding has always served the emotional needs of many people. For racists, it offers a rationalization for hatred. For others, it offers a vision of the founders as arch-villains. Some find it comforting to believe that an evil as colossal as slavery could only be manufactured by diabolically perfect men rather than by quotidian politics and the banality of evil. For still others, it provides a new fable of the fall from Eden, attractive because it implies the possibility of a single act of redemption. If evil entered the world at a single time, by a conscious act, maybe it could be reversed by one conscious revolution. 

The reality is more complex, more dreadful, and, in some ways, more glorious. After all, slavery was abolished, segregation was overturned, and the struggle today is carried on by people ultimately driven by their commitment to the principle that all men are created equal—the principle articulated at the nation’s birth. It was precisely because millions of Americans have never bought the notion that America was built as a slavocracy—and have had historical grounds for that denial—that they were willing to lay their lives on the line, not only in the 1860s but ever since, to make good on the promissory note of the Declaration.

Their efforts raise the question of what counts as the historical “truth” about the American Dream. A nation’s history, after all, occupies a realm between fact and moral commitments. Like a marriage, a constitution, or an ethical concept like “blame,” it encompasses both what actually happened and the philosophical question of what those happenings mean. Slavery certainly happened—but so, too, did the abolitionist movement and the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The authors of those amendments viewed them not as changing the Constitution, but as rescuing it from Taney and other mythmakers who had tried to pervert it into a white supremacist document. 

In fact, it would be more accurate to say that what makes America unique isn’t slavery but the effort to abolish it. Slavery is among the oldest and most ubiquitous of all human institutions; as the Times series’ title indicates, American slavery predated the American Revolution by a century and a half. What’s unique about America is that it alone announced at birth the principle that all men are created equal—and that its people have struggled to realize that principle since then. As a result of their efforts, the Constitution today has much more to do with what happened in 1865 than in 1776, let alone 1619. Nothing could be more worthwhile than learning slavery’s history, and remembering its victims and vanquishers. But to claim that America’s essence is white supremacy is to swallow slavery’s fatal lie. 

As usual, Lincoln said it best. When the founders wrote of equality, he explained, they knew they had “no power to confer such a boon” at that instant. But that was not their purpose. Instead, they “set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.” That constant labor, in the generations that followed, is the true source of “nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional.”

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Advice to Entering Law Students—Revisited

Law students around the country will be starting classes in the next few weeks. Last year, I wrote a post offering advice to entering students. I tried to focus on points that I rarely, if ever, see made in other pieces of this type. I think all three remain just as relevant today. Here they are (more detail in the original 2018 post):

1. Think carefully about what kind of law you want to practice.

Law is a profession with relatively high income and social status. Yet studies repeatedly show that many lawyers are deeply unhappy, a higher percentage than in most other professions. One reason for this is that many of them hate the work they do. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that way. There are lots of different types of legal careers out there, and it’s likely that one of them will be a good fit for you…. But to take advantage of this diversity, you need to start considering what type of legal career best fits your needs and interests….

Regardless, don’t just “go with the flow” in terms of choosing what kind of legal career you want to try. The jobs that many of your classmates want may be terrible for you (and vice versa). Keep in mind, also, that you likely have a wider range of options now than you will in five or ten years, when it may be much harder to switch to a very different field from the one you have been working in since graduation.

2. Get to know as many of your classmates and professors as you reasonably can.

Law is a “people” business. Connections are extremely important. No matter how brilliant a legal thinker you may be, it’s hard to get ahead as a lawyer purely by working alone at your desk. Many of your law school classmates could turn out to be useful connections down the road….

This is one front on which I didn’t do very well when I was in law school, myself. Nonetheless, I am still going to suggest you do as I say, not as I actually did. You will be better off if you learn from my mistake than if you repeat it.

3. Think about whether what you plan to do is right and just.

Law presents more serious moral dilemmas than many other professions. What lawyers do can often cost innocent people their liberty, their property, or even their lives. It can also save all three. Lawyers have played key roles in almost every major advance for liberty and justice in American history, including the establishment of the Constitution, the antislavery movement, the civil rights movement and many others. But they have also been among the major perpetrators of nearly every great injustice in our history, as well….

Law school is the right time to start working to ensure that the career you pursue is at least morally defensible. You don’t necessarily have a moral obligation to devote your career to doing good. But you should at least avoid exacerbating evil. And it’s easier to do that if you think carefully about the issues involved now (when you still have a wide range of options), than if you wait until you are already enmeshed in a job that involves perpetrating injustice…..

 

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WeWTF?!

Scott Galloway, the best-selling author, well-known tech-industry pundit, and professor of marketing at New York University’s Stern School of Business, unleashed his special kind of wit and financial weaponry on WeWork’s recent S-1 filing.

Writing on his “No Mercy / No Malice” blog, Galloway says any Wall Street analyst who believes WeWork’s worth over $10 billion is “lying, stupid, or both.”

WeWTF

Really? Really?

I’ve started nine firms and I’m, generously, 3-4-2 (win-lose-tie). In retrospect, and I think about this a lot, the only reliable forward-looking indicator of our firm’s success or failure was … timing. Specifically, the part of the economic cycle at founding. The firms we started in recessions had an easier time finding talent, controlling costs, and getting immediate feedback about if this thing worked as clients/consumers held their purse strings closed. Then, armed with a battle-tested value proposition, as the recession ended, we enjoyed the afterburner of confidence to spend more and try new things. #disco. 

In frothy markets, it’s easy to enter into a consensual hallucination, with investors and markets, that you’re creating value. And it’s easy to wallpaper over the shortcomings of the business with a bull market’s halcyon: cheap capital. WeWork has brought new meaning to the word wallpaper. This is more reminiscent of the cheap marbled panelling you’d find in Mike Brady’s home office — panelling whose mucilaginous coating will dissipate at the first whiff of a recession, revealing a family of raccoons or the mummified corpses of drug mules. 

The features of seventies sitcom panelling:

Cult

WeWork’s prospectus has a dedication (no joke): “We dedicate this to the power of We — greater than any one of us, but inside each of us.” Pretty sure Jim Jones had t-shirts printed up with this inspiring missive. Speaking of idolatry, “Adam” (as in Neumann) is mentioned 169 times, vs. an average of 25 mentions for founder/CEOs in other unicorn prospectuses. Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, is mentioned 29 times in their prospectus. Granted, “Adam” is super dreamy, in sort of an Argentinian polo player way (he’s Israeli). But he’s not 6x dreamier than Dara, who has a whole “Omar Sharif, if he went to Brown” thing going on. But I digress. We’s mission is “to elevate the world’s consciousness.” Maybe, but it’s clear the mission of the prospectus is to dampen our consciousness ahead of the sh*tshow that is “The Story of Us: We.” 

Nomenclature 

Find the hottest sector, and if you don’t have the insight, IP, genius, capital, code, skills, human capital, or a clue, then just borrow the words. SAAS firms trade at a multiple of revenues (yay), vs. real estate firms, which trade at a multiple of EBITDA (boo). So, We isn’t a real estate firm renting desks, it’s a Space as a Service (SAAS) firm. I know, use the word “technology” over and over, despite having little R&D and computers and stuff, and voilà … we’re Salesforce. 

Today I froze water and used this technology to reconfigure the environment encapsulating my Zacapa and Coke. So, I’m Bill Gates. Better yet, today I began calling my wife Gisele, which I’m pretty sure means I’m the starting QB for the Pats. 

At WeWTF, you’re not a guest, but a member. Member has a more “recurring revenue” sound to it. So, I plan to be a member tomorrow night at the Marriott in Boston, where I will then get membership to the TD Center so I can watch a 21-year-old Canadian (Shawn Mendes) with my 8-year-old son — also a member of the Marriott and TD Center, for tomorrow at least. 

Invented Metrics

GAAP accounting standards got you down? No problema at WeWTF. We has begun reporting “Community-based EBITDA,” profitability before the BITDA, but is also taking out expenses, including real-estate, that comprise the bulk of cost required to deliver the service. A more honest description of the metric would be “EBEE, Earnings Before Everything Else.” As someone who follows stocks and goes on TV to pretend I have any idea which direction a given stock is going, I’d like to suggest a few metrics to provide insight into We:

  • EBG, Earnings Before Gluten

  • EBBG, Earnings Before the Big Dawg (tennis balls, pig’s ears, etc.)

  • EBEPW, Earnings Before Equal Pay for Women

Red Flags

My goddaughter informed me she’s dating a club promoter, a red flag. Occasionally, red flags marry each other, the Biebs and Hailey Baldwin — what could go wrong? So now, imagine red flags the dimensions of Kansas. Buckle up:

Adam Neumann has sold $700 million in stock. As a founder, I’ve sold shares into a secondary offering to get some liquidity and diversify holdings. Ok, I get it. But 3/4 of a billion dollars? This is 700 million red flags that spell words on the field of a football field at halftime: “Get me the hell out of this stock, but YOU should buy some.”

— Gross margins are a pretty decent proxy for how good or bad a business is. And this is a sh**ty business:

— Adam has several family members working in the business who make “less than $200,000.”

— The ownership structure chart is similar to a hieroglyphic on a cave wall about the survival of the species: Harvest the crops when the sun is high in the horizon, do not venture over the hills, hostile tribes live there, and … don’t buy this stock. The corporate governance structure of WeWTF makes Chinese firms look American, pre–big tech.

— The related party section of this prospectus reads like the Trump administration. Adam owns 10 buildings, several that he leased to WeWTF at a handsome profit. Adam also owned the rights to the “We” trademark, which the firm decided they must own and paid the founder/CEO $5.9 million for the rights. The rights to a name nearly identical to the name of the firm where he’s the founder/CEO and largest shareholder.

YOU. CAN’T. MAKE. THIS. SH*T. UP.

Mismatched durations. The founder of Kohlberg Capital, Jim Kohlberg (total gangster), taught me investment firms go out of business because of “mismatched durations.” It’s about raising money short (customers who can stop buying your product service soon/tomorrow) and investing money long (10-year leases). WeWTF is an especially risky business going into a recession, when the ability to variabilize costs is limited, but revenue decline is unlimited. WeWTF has $47 billion in long-term obligations (leases) and will do $3 billion in revenue this year. What could go wrong? 

There are other businesses like this (real estate, Hertz), and they are good businesses. Businesses that trade at, I don’t know, 0.5 to 2x revenues. However, WeWTF is claiming it’s not in this neighborhood, or even the same planet. So, let’s talk valuation.

Insane. Seriously loco. Ok, let’s assume WeWTF is onto something, better than peer IWG or Hertz. But is this firm, trading at 26x revenues, superior to Amazon, which trades at 4x revenues? There appears to be no scale effects, as losses have kept pace with revenue growth. There is little pricing power, as they are still a mole on the elephant of commercial real estate. There is no defensible IP, no technology, no regulatory moats, no network effects, and no flywheel effect (the ancillary businesses are stupid, just stupid). 

The last round $47 billion “valuation” is an illusion. SoftBank invested at this valuation with a “pref,” meaning their money is the first money out, limiting the downside. The suckers, idiots, CNBC viewers, great Americans, and people trying to feel young again who buy on the first trade — or after — don’t have this downside protection. Similar to the DJIA, last-round private valuations are harmful metrics that create the illusion of prosperity. The bankers (JPM and Goldman) stand to register $122 million in fees flinging feces at retail investors visiting the unicorn zoo. Any equity analyst who endorses this stock above a $10 billion valuation is lying, stupid, or both. 

Adam’s wife is Gwyneth Paltrow’s cousin, meaning Adam is two degrees removed from Goop, an assault on humanity.

Ms. Neumann created controversy when she went on CNBC and said: “A big part of being a woman is to help men [like Adam] manifest their calling in life.”

Ok, fine … whatever works for you and Adam. But it’s not retail investors’ role to help Adam realize his calling — he should feel pretty manifested with $700 million. The panelling is compelling and cool, but it’s beginning to curl and the substance behind the wood veneer stinks. I mean, stinks.

*  *  *

Follow Galloway on Twitter at @profgalloway.

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States May Not Cancel Votes of “Faithless” Presidential Electors

An excerpt from yesterday’s very long Tenth Circuit panel opinion in Baca v. Colorado Dep’t of State, written by Judge Mary Beck Briscoe and joined by Judge Jerome Holmes:

Micheal Baca, Polly Baca, and Robert Nemanich (collectively, the Presidential Electors) were appointed as three of Colorado’s nine presidential electors for the 2016 general election. Colorado law requires the state’s presidential electors to cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote in the state for President and Vice President. Although Colorado law required the Presidential Electors to cast their votes for Hillary Clinton, Mr. Baca cast his vote for John Kasich.

In response, Colorado’s Secretary of State removed Mr. Baca as an elector and discarded his vote. The state then replaced Mr. Baca withan elector who cast her vote for Hillary Clinton. After witnessing Mr. Baca’s removal from office, Ms. Baca and Mr. Nemanich voted for Hillary Clinton despite their desire to vote for John Kasich.

After the vote, the Presidential Electors sued the Colorado Department of State (the Department) …. We conclude Mr. Baca has standing to challenge his personal injury—removal from office and cancellation of his vote—but that none of the Presidential Electors have standing to challenge the institutional injury—a general diminution of their power as electors….

Article II and the Twelfth Amendment provide presidential electors the right to cast a vote for President and Vice President with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right. The electoral college did not exist before ratification of the federal Constitution, and thus the states could reserve no rights related to it under the Tenth Amendment. Rather, the states possess only the rights expressly delegated to them in Article II and the Twelfth Amendment. Those constitutional provisions grant states the plenary power to appoint its electors. But once that appointment process is concluded, the Constitution identifies no further involvement by the states in the selection of the President and Vice President.

And the states’ power to appoint, without any duty to take care that the electors perform their federal function faithfully, does not include the power to remove. The Constitution provides a detailed list of procedures that must be performed by specific actors—not including the states—after appointment. The electors must list all votes cast for President and Vice President, certify thatlist, and send it to the President of the Senate. Even where an elector violates a state-required pledge to vote for the winners of the state popular election, there is nothing in the federal Constitution that allows the state to remove that elector or to nullify his votes. And in the absence of such express authority, the states may not interfere with the electors’ exercise of discretion in voting for President and Vice President by removing the elector and nullifying his vote. Neither historical practices nor authoritative sources alter our conclusion.

Secretary Williams impermissibly interfered with Mr. Baca’s exercise of his right to vote as a presidential elector. Specifically, Secretary Williams acted unconstitutionally by removing Mr. Baca and nullifying his vote for failing to comply with the vote binding provision in § 1-4-304(5). Mr. Baca has therefore stated a claim for relief on the merits, entitling him to nominal damages….

Judge Carolyn McHugh dissented:

… I would not reach the merits of the issues presented but would instead conclude that this case is moot…. [T]he Presidential Electors lack standing to pursue prospective relief…. [A]n award of damages is retrospective relief, … [but] Section “1983 creates no remedy against a State.” By suing the Department, the Presidential Electors have sued the state of Colorado. Therefore, § 1983 affords the Presidential Electors “no remedy against” the Department. [And a]bsent a plausible claim for nominal damages, this case is moot….

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WTI Slides After Crude Inventories Drawdown Less Than Hoped

Oil prices held on to gains overnight after a surprisingly large crude draw reported by API (though crude is down about 18% from its late April highs as the trade war between the U.S. and China, the world’s biggest economies, weighs on demand.).

“The drawdown will certainly help support sentiment,” said Daniel Hynes, a senior commodity strategist at Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. in Sydney.

“But the market is definitely taking the glass-half-empty type approach to data.”

API

  • Crude -3.454mm (-1.8mm exp)

  • Cushing -2.803mm – biggest draw since Feb 2018

  • Gasoline -403k

  • Distillates +1.806mm

DOE

  • Crude -2.73mm (-1.8mm exp)

  • Cushing -2.485mm

  • Gasoline +312k

  • Distillates +2.61mm

After two weeks of unexpected builds, crude inventories drew down more than expected last week (though less than API reported) and Gasoline stocks rose modestly…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite the ongoing collapse in the oil rig count, US crude production remains near record highs…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI tested above $57 ahead of this morning’s inventory data but slid lower after the DOE data printed below API’s…

“It’s a tight market right now,” said Bjarne Schieldrop, the Oslo-based chief commodities analyst at SEB AB. “But the assumption is that the future will be very bleak and bearish.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TRY3ra Tyler Durden

States May Not Cancel Votes of “Faithless” Presidential Electors

An excerpt from yesterday’s very long Tenth Circuit panel opinion in Baca v. Colorado Dep’t of State, written by Judge Mary Beck Briscoe and joined by Judge Jerome Holmes:

Micheal Baca, Polly Baca, and Robert Nemanich (collectively, the Presidential Electors) were appointed as three of Colorado’s nine presidential electors for the 2016 general election. Colorado law requires the state’s presidential electors to cast their votes for the winner of the popular vote in the state for President and Vice President. Although Colorado law required the Presidential Electors to cast their votes for Hillary Clinton, Mr. Baca cast his vote for John Kasich.

In response, Colorado’s Secretary of State removed Mr. Baca as an elector and discarded his vote. The state then replaced Mr. Baca withan elector who cast her vote for Hillary Clinton. After witnessing Mr. Baca’s removal from office, Ms. Baca and Mr. Nemanich voted for Hillary Clinton despite their desire to vote for John Kasich.

After the vote, the Presidential Electors sued the Colorado Department of State (the Department) …. We conclude Mr. Baca has standing to challenge his personal injury—removal from office and cancellation of his vote—but that none of the Presidential Electors have standing to challenge the institutional injury—a general diminution of their power as electors….

Article II and the Twelfth Amendment provide presidential electors the right to cast a vote for President and Vice President with discretion. And the state does not possess countervailing authority to remove an elector and to cancel his vote in response to the exercise of that Constitutional right. The electoral college did not exist before ratification of the federal Constitution, and thus the states could reserve no rights related to it under the Tenth Amendment. Rather, the states possess only the rights expressly delegated to them in Article II and the Twelfth Amendment. Those constitutional provisions grant states the plenary power to appoint its electors. But once that appointment process is concluded, the Constitution identifies no further involvement by the states in the selection of the President and Vice President.

And the states’ power to appoint, without any duty to take care that the electors perform their federal function faithfully, does not include the power to remove. The Constitution provides a detailed list of procedures that must be performed by specific actors—not including the states—after appointment. The electors must list all votes cast for President and Vice President, certify thatlist, and send it to the President of the Senate. Even where an elector violates a state-required pledge to vote for the winners of the state popular election, there is nothing in the federal Constitution that allows the state to remove that elector or to nullify his votes. And in the absence of such express authority, the states may not interfere with the electors’ exercise of discretion in voting for President and Vice President by removing the elector and nullifying his vote. Neither historical practices nor authoritative sources alter our conclusion.

Secretary Williams impermissibly interfered with Mr. Baca’s exercise of his right to vote as a presidential elector. Specifically, Secretary Williams acted unconstitutionally by removing Mr. Baca and nullifying his vote for failing to comply with the vote binding provision in § 1-4-304(5). Mr. Baca has therefore stated a claim for relief on the merits, entitling him to nominal damages….

Judge Carolyn McHugh dissented:

… I would not reach the merits of the issues presented but would instead conclude that this case is moot…. [T]he Presidential Electors lack standing to pursue prospective relief…. [A]n award of damages is retrospective relief, … [but] Section “1983 creates no remedy against a State.” By suing the Department, the Presidential Electors have sued the state of Colorado. Therefore, § 1983 affords the Presidential Electors “no remedy against” the Department. [And a]bsent a plausible claim for nominal damages, this case is moot….

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Epstein Used Network Of Shell Companies And Associates For Sex-Trafficking Ring, Lawsuits Claim

Jeffrey Epstein used his tangled web of shell companies as a “brazen and powerful organization” to operate a sex-trafficking ring, according to three new civil lawsuits filed against his $578 million estate. 

The new litigation was filed against the estate, its executors and the shell companies themselves, asking for unspecified damages for medical and psychological expenses, trauma, humiliation and other injuries suffered as recently as 2017, according to Bloomberg

Among the companies named in all three suits are one that owned Epstein’s Manhattan mansion until 2011; his money-management firm, Financial Trust Co.; and HBRK Associates Inc., which allegedly helped arrange travel for Epstein’s accusers between New York and Florida. A Richard Kahn was listed as the registered agent for HBRK in New York state corporate filings in 2008.

Two of the complaints name as a defendant the company that once owned Little St. James, the smaller of Epstein’s private islands in the Caribbean. Little St. James was one of the locations from which Epstein ran a “complex commercial sex trafficking and abuse ring,” according to the lawsuits.

The defendants include the executors, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, lawyers who were directors for a nonprofit Epstein had in the U.S. Virgin Islands called Gratitude America. –Bloomberg

Two of the women, “Katlyn Doe” and “Lisa Doe” claim to have met Epstein when they were seventeen. The third, “Priscilla Doe” says she was 20. The three say Epstein used a “vast enterprise” of associates working “in concert and at his direction, for the purpose of harming teenage girls through sexual exploitation, abuse and trafficking. Notably, the new suits claim that all of this happened after his deal with federal prosecutors in Florida in 2007. 

Katlyn and Priscilla claim they were flown to Florida so that Epstein could continue to sexually abuse them while he was on work release from jail. Katlyn claims he promised to pay for medical treatment, while he manipulated Lisa and Priscilla by promising to advance their dance careers – which he did not do, according to the lawsuits. 

Epstein’s complicit associates include “chefs, butlers, receptionists, schedulers, secretaries, flight attendants, pilots, housekeepers, maids, sex recruiters, drivers and other staff members,” according to the suits. 

Katlyn also alleges that in 2013 Epstein paid her $10,000 to marry an associate in order for him to become a legal resident of the United States – stiffing her on another $10,000 she says she was promised upon their divorce. She says she agreed to come to Florida after Epstein promised her a job at his office, and that HRBK coordinated her travel. She added that Epstein forced her to “engage in sexual encounters” with him and another young female at the headquarters of his Florida Science Foundation. 

According to University of Oregon law professor Susan Gary, Epstein’s death shouldn’t serve as an impediment to their civil claims. 

They’re still in a good position,” said Gary, adding that the challenge “is proving as required by law that he injured them and they should get benefits for their injury.”

After Epstein served 13 months in a Palm Beach jail, he settled over two dozen lawsuits with accusers who say he lured them when they were teenagers to his mansion, where they were coerced into sex and paid to recruit others

Three of those cases, filed by clients of Brad Edwards, settled for a total of $5.5 million. Edwards is the lawyer for the women who filed the complaints Tuesday in federal court in New York. The plaintiffs aren’t named because of the “sensitive sexual nature” of the cases, the suits say.

Late Tuesday, Edwards submitted arguments on behalf of VE, another client who last week sued Epstein’s estate and three of the same companies targeted by the latest suits, asking the court to allow her to proceed anonymously.

Epstein’s vast wealth and far reaching connections make it clear that retaliation could be employed against individuals pursuing claims against the estate” and could deter witnesses, according to the filing. VE’s anonymity will serve society as well, which “has an interest in eradicating the predatory practices of powerful men against vulnerable, susceptible women.” –Bloomberg

According to Katlyn Doe, Epstein would often remind her of his “extraordinary power to reward and punish.”

Meanwhile, plaintiff Lisa Doe says she met Epstein in 2002 when she was 17, when he told her he was “close personal friends with some of the most influential names in dance,” and would help her with her career if she taught a dance-based exercise class at the home of a wealthy New York man. Instead, Epstein forced her to engage in sexual encounters and derailed her career aspirations

Lastly, Priscilla Doe says that an Epstein “recruiter” asked her if she wanted to give the financier a massage in his Manhattan mansion in 2006 when she was 20-years-old. 

An associate of his taught her the “exact way” he liked to receive oral sex and Epstein “forced himself on her and took her virginity,” according to the complaint. While Epstein was receiving massages, the suit says, he took calls from four people, referred to in the suit as “Important Business Person” 1, 2, 3 and 4.

The plaintiff says she was forced to “engage in commercial sex” on each of more than 20 trips to the Virgin Islands between 2006 and 2012. –Bloomberg

According to the lawsuits, “Each of the employees and associates were paid through companies believed to have been funded by Jeffrey Epstein and, regardless of such funding, were disciples of Jeffrey Epstein, constantly informing plaintiff and other victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s power and ability to improve or destroy a victim’s life depending on her level of cooperation.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TTHJ9d Tyler Durden