Colorado Couple’s Adoption Plans Wrecked by Child Neglect Charges for Briefly Letting a Kid Nap in the Car

dreamstime_xxl_75935899

Let your child nap in the car on a cool day while you run into the hardware store and you might have to say goodbye to your dreams of adoption.

That’s what happened to a Colorado couple we’ll call Ted and Jen. (Their real names have been redacted to protect their identity.) Last spring, Ted’s three-year-old fell asleep on his way to Ace Hardware. He parked where he could still see her as he entered the store, and was gone for just 20 minutes. It was 40 degrees outside, according to Jen.

A passerby called the cops, because many people believe that any time kids are alone in a car they are in immediate danger of kidnapping or overheating. The tragic fact is that every year some children do die in cars. But the vast majority are young children who got into cars without their parents realizing it and couldn’t get out, or kids whose parents drove to work and completely forgot about the sleeping child in the back seat. In fact, 4.6 hours is the average time that kids who died in cars were unattended. Children deliberately left in the car for a brief period of time on a temperate day are in very little danger.

When Ted came out of the store, the cop called to the scene said he was going to take the child into custody unless he could reach Ted’s wife to see if she trusted Ted with the girl. Jen told the cop that Ted is a great dad, so Ted was allowed to leave with the child, according to Jen.

But Jen’s heart was breaking already because she knew that this would probably impact the adoption process they were going through. Jen had had a kidney transplant in her 20s. Her daughter was born premature and spent two months in neonatal intensive care. Another pregnancy was not something they could risk. Dearly wanting another child, they had found an adoption agency, passed the home visit, paid $15,000, and were awaiting a child.

When a child services caseworker came to the home two days later, he looked through the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, and questioned Jen, who could not stop sobbing. (Ted was at work.) According to Jen, the caseworker told her that the child had been in danger of kidnapping during those 20 minutes (actually, stranger kidnappings are exceedingly rare), or choking (the child was safely strapped in her car seat). The caseworker later returned to question Ted.

Ted, a law enforcement officer himself, tried to explain that there is no actual law against letting a child wait in the car in Colorado, and that the girl had been totally fine. But, says Jen, the caseworker told him, “I have to make it a finding, man.” A “finding” means labeling Ted guilty of child neglect and placing his name on the state’s child abuse registry, which is accessible to public agencies, hospitals, case workers, and even through background checks conducted by private employers. In most states, the registration process occurs without any trial, and the burden is on the person named to find a lawyer (if they can afford one) and appeal through their state’s administrative appeal system (good luck with that).

Ted and Jen tried to convince the adoption agency that they still deserved a child. But with this black mark on their record, the agency did not respond warmly. Eventually, Ted filed an appeal and his registration status was expunged. With clearance in hand, Ted and Jen were sure that now they could adopt.

No such luck.

“We found out that expunged doesn’t mean expunged,” says Jen. “Your name stays in the registry. It just says ‘expunged’ on some different screen somewhere.” The couple sought help from the county and state, but though her husband was officially no longer a child abuser, it was impossible to take Ted’s name off the registry. The adoption agency dumped them—and kept their $15,000 deposit.

When Ted and Jen applied to be foster parents, the state turned them down, too.

“They said, you know, maybe we could foster after 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years had passed, but they’re just making things up as they go along,” says Jen. “And I was like, ‘What if we wanted to foster teenagers? How does this have any effect on our ability foster them?'” After all, teens are allowed to wait in cars. “But if you’re on that registry,” says Jen, “you’re bad.”

The pair are emotionally and financially exhausted. They wish they could just sign a piece of paper saying they will never let a child wait alone in a car again.

“Vague neglect laws give cops and caseworkers more power than the parents themselves to decide what is safe for their own kids,” notes Diane Redleaf, Let Grow’s legal consultant and co-chair of United Family Advocates, which advocates for more legal protections for wrongly accused families. “It is high time we required child protection authorities to bring child abuse or neglect accusations to court for an impartial determination before they are allowed to place anyone on the registry.”

In the end, Ted had to complete a six-month diversion program to get his criminal charge dismissed. Meantime, he was placed on 12 weeks of paid administrative leave while his Internal Affairs department conducted an investigation. He received a formal letter fining him a nominal amount because “getting a child abuse ticket looks bad for our department.”

Jen, a state employee, is herself a mandated reporter—meaning she is required to report any children who seem possibly abused or neglected. Over the course of 10 years, she says, she reported four. Two of the families she thinks she would still report, since the kids were in terrible shape. But now that she has seen what can happen when Child Protective Services gets involved, she regrets involving the other two families, and indeed anyone at all, unless the kids are literally in grave danger.

“The system is built to perpetuate itself,” she says. At her agency, “we get extra funding for extra caseloads,” and she suspects it is the same at CPS.

As for her own future, Jen says she expects she and Ted will never be allowed to adopt. The consequence of one rational decision by a dad will deprive a loving family of a child, and a child of a loving family.

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Colorado Couple’s Adoption Plans Wrecked by Child Neglect Charges for Briefly Letting a Kid Nap in the Car

dreamstime_xxl_75935899

Let your child nap in the car on a cool day while you run into the hardware store and you might have to say goodbye to your dreams of adoption.

That’s what happened to a Colorado couple we’ll call Ted and Jen. (Their real names have been redacted to protect their identity.) Last spring, Ted’s three-year-old fell asleep on his way to Ace Hardware. He parked where he could still see her as he entered the store, and was gone for just 20 minutes. It was 40 degrees outside, according to Jen.

A passerby called the cops, because many people believe that any time kids are alone in a car they are in immediate danger of kidnapping or overheating. The tragic fact is that every year some children do die in cars. But the vast majority are young children who got into cars without their parents realizing it and couldn’t get out, or kids whose parents drove to work and completely forgot about the sleeping child in the back seat. In fact, 4.6 hours is the average time that kids who died in cars were unattended. Children deliberately left in the car for a brief period of time on a temperate day are in very little danger.

When Ted came out of the store, the cop called to the scene said he was going to take the child into custody unless he could reach Ted’s wife to see if she trusted Ted with the girl. Jen told the cop that Ted is a great dad, so Ted was allowed to leave with the child, according to Jen.

But Jen’s heart was breaking already because she knew that this would probably impact the adoption process they were going through. Jen had had a kidney transplant in her 20s. Her daughter was born premature and spent two months in neonatal intensive care. Another pregnancy was not something they could risk. Dearly wanting another child, they had found an adoption agency, passed the home visit, paid $15,000, and were awaiting a child.

When a child services caseworker came to the home two days later, he looked through the kitchen cabinets and refrigerator, and questioned Jen, who could not stop sobbing. (Ted was at work.) According to Jen, the caseworker told her that the child had been in danger of kidnapping during those 20 minutes (actually, stranger kidnappings are exceedingly rare), or choking (the child was safely strapped in her car seat). The caseworker later returned to question Ted.

Ted, a law enforcement officer himself, tried to explain that there is no actual law against letting a child wait in the car in Colorado, and that the girl had been totally fine. But, says Jen, the caseworker told him, “I have to make it a finding, man.” A “finding” means labeling Ted guilty of child neglect and placing his name on the state’s child abuse registry, which is accessible to public agencies, hospitals, case workers, and even through background checks conducted by private employers. In most states, the registration process occurs without any trial, and the burden is on the person named to find a lawyer (if they can afford one) and appeal through their state’s administrative appeal system (good luck with that).

Ted and Jen tried to convince the adoption agency that they still deserved a child. But with this black mark on their record, the agency did not respond warmly. Eventually, Ted filed an appeal and his registration status was expunged. With clearance in hand, Ted and Jen were sure that now they could adopt.

No such luck.

“We found out that expunged doesn’t mean expunged,” says Jen. “Your name stays in the registry. It just says ‘expunged’ on some different screen somewhere.” The couple sought help from the county and state, but though her husband was officially no longer a child abuser, it was impossible to take Ted’s name off the registry. The adoption agency dumped them—and kept their $15,000 deposit.

When Ted and Jen applied to be foster parents, the state turned them down, too.

“They said, you know, maybe we could foster after 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 years had passed, but they’re just making things up as they go along,” says Jen. “And I was like, ‘What if we wanted to foster teenagers? How does this have any effect on our ability foster them?'” After all, teens are allowed to wait in cars. “But if you’re on that registry,” says Jen, “you’re bad.”

The pair are emotionally and financially exhausted. They wish they could just sign a piece of paper saying they will never let a child wait alone in a car again.

“Vague neglect laws give cops and caseworkers more power than the parents themselves to decide what is safe for their own kids,” notes Diane Redleaf, Let Grow’s legal consultant and co-chair of United Family Advocates, which advocates for more legal protections for wrongly accused families. “It is high time we required child protection authorities to bring child abuse or neglect accusations to court for an impartial determination before they are allowed to place anyone on the registry.”

In the end, Ted had to complete a six-month diversion program to get his criminal charge dismissed. Meantime, he was placed on 12 weeks of paid administrative leave while his Internal Affairs department conducted an investigation. He received a formal letter fining him a nominal amount because “getting a child abuse ticket looks bad for our department.”

Jen, a state employee, is herself a mandated reporter—meaning she is required to report any children who seem possibly abused or neglected. Over the course of 10 years, she says, she reported four. Two of the families she thinks she would still report, since the kids were in terrible shape. But now that she has seen what can happen when Child Protective Services gets involved, she regrets involving the other two families, and indeed anyone at all, unless the kids are literally in grave danger.

“The system is built to perpetuate itself,” she says. At her agency, “we get extra funding for extra caseloads,” and she suspects it is the same at CPS.

As for her own future, Jen says she expects she and Ted will never be allowed to adopt. The consequence of one rational decision by a dad will deprive a loving family of a child, and a child of a loving family.

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The Market’s Invisible Guardrails Are Missing

The Market’s Invisible Guardrails Are Missing

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/14/2020 – 08:19

Authored by Michael Lebowitz and Jack Scott via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

If you have ever driven on California’s Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), you understand risk. For those that haven’t made the drive, you are missing out on a spectacular winding road perched between a steep cliff and the ocean well below. Staying safe on this harrowing road requires strong driving skills and a good set of brakes.

Above and beyond what is in the driver’s control, the essential defense protecting drivers are the guard rails. If the PCH were fortified with 20-foot concrete walls, the risks of driving the road would be minimal but the incredible views lost. Conversely, if there were no guardrails, the risks increase substantially. A healthy compromise lies between these two extremes.

Investors also have the ability to employ guardrails in the market. Sometimes they are large and protective. Other times they are negligible. Unfortunately, most investors have little appreciation for these invisible guardrails and which type of investors manage them. In reality, the efficacy of market guard rails’ should largely determine our risk-taking stance.

Credit

Before progressing, we would be remiss if we did not thank Steven Bregman from Horizon Kinetics. Steve brought the pitfalls of passive investing to our attention over six years ago. Here is a LINK to a great speech he gave at the Grants Fall 2016 conference.

Also, Chris Cole and Mike Green have done substantial work in quantifying the risks associated with the increasing popularity of passive strategies. The following LINK offers an outstanding interview of Mike Green by Grant Williams.

Passive versus Active

The market guardrails we allude to are based on the capabilities of active investors. Before explaining, it is worth a short review on passive and active investment strategies.

In 2016, we wrote Passive Negligence, the first of many articles on this topic. Per the article:

“Passive index strategies are all the rage. Investors, desperate for “acceptable” returns are investing in funds whose value is directly linked to stock market indices. Unlike active funds, indexed funds do not perform investment analysis and are not looking for sectors or companies that offer greater return potential than the market. They do one thing, and that is replicate a particular equity index.”

In 2016 passive index strategies were “all the rage.” Today they are the market. Active investors have become endangered species. Due to poor relative returns and short-term thinking clients, many active professionals have been forced to become less value and more growth oriented. Failing to adapt ultimately means business failure as clients flee to the growth/passive style. Similarly, most individual active investors have similarly swapped active for passive strategies.

The graph below shows how value investors (active) have recently fared versus growth investors (mostly passive). The duration and magnitude of value’s underperformance is unprecedented.

Passive in Action

In the article five years ago we also wrote: “In other words, the prices of underlying stocks will increasingly rise and fall together in correlation with the market and not based on their individual merits.”

Little did we know how profound those words would be. In “How to Find Value in an Upside Down World” we show the following graph.

As of September 2020, year to date returns were highest for the largest companies and lowest for the smallest within the S&P 500. The return differentials are stunning. As the saying goes, size matters. It appears that size is all that matters.

As we wrote, “The S&P 500 and NASDAQ are market-cap-weighted indexes, meaning the largest companies contribute more to the index than the smallest.” Ergo, when passive investors buy the index, they are mainly buying the largest companies.

Value

Active investors seek out value. While value investing is defined in many ways, it generally means buying assets they deem cheap. Conversely, they tend to sell assets that fulfill their valuation forecast and become overpriced. Some active investors also short overpriced assets.

With that in mind, we present some graphs from the same article.

As shown, the companies with the best fundamental ratios had the worst performance.

From January to September, value was left for dead. The only thing that seems to matter to investors is market cap.

These results demonstrate that value investors are not a viable force in the market. The activities of those who are left are being overwhelmed by the growing preference for passive investing.

Active Guardrails

The graph below highlights the exodus from active to passive strategies over the last 12 years.

The obvious takeaway from the graph is the larger role of passive investors (net inflows) and the smaller share of active investors (net outflows). What is not obvious but of utmost importance to the health of the market are the repercussions of the dramatic shift taking place.

To help you understand the role active investors play, let’s consider a simple and somewhat hypothetical case. From 2010 to late 2019, Apple’s (AAPL) price to earnings ratio was between 10 and 20. In this case, it should be self-evident that active investors might generally view Apple as cheap at 10 and expensive at 20. By contrast, passive investors, are indifferent at any P/E.

As shown below, P/E gyrates in the range. As it approaches the bounds, active managers get involved. Their interest provides buying and selling pressure to regulate the range. Active investors have enough market share in our example to uphold the range.

The graph shows that active investors may have lost enough market share in 2019 and could not provide their protective services. It is important to note that there is little about Apple’s prospects to be giddy about. Their earnings have been flat for the last five years.

In reality, active investors have many different views and opinions. They also have different strategies and vastly different evaluations on rich versus cheap. That said, the more active investors there are, the more prices are grounded to historical valuation norms. In other words, active investors reduce volatility, and therefore risk. Active investors are the guardrail.

Quantifying our Guardrails

Market and individual stock guardrails can be thick or flimsy. Also, there is not one proverbial guardrail but many based on the differing opinions of active investors. Regardless, the ability of active investors to provide a valuation check is purely a function of how powerful active investors are.

The question, therefore, is at what point passive investors negate the ability of active investors to regulate markets.

Chris Cole of Artemis, in his brilliant article “What is Water?,” helps put a number on our question.

When passive participants control 60%+ of the market the simulation becomes increasingly unstable, subject to wild trends, extreme volatility, and negative alpha. In the real world, because the ratio between active to passive is not constant, the instability threshold will occur at a much lower threshold as investors shift their preference to passive in real-time.

The irony of the Bogle-head crowd is that they tout efficient market hypothesis to support passive investing while simultaneously failing to comprehend how the dominance of the strategy causes markets to become highly unstable and inefficient. The most immediate realities are the ones that are the hardest to see… If you want to know when volatility will truly arrive, watch the shift in the medium. 

The “medium”, in Cole’s terminology, is the balance between the roles of active and passive investors. He computes that when passive investors are more than 42% of the market, volatility increases and active investors gain an edge. As he writes, above 60%, the market lacks guardrails. Without guardrails, active investors have a considerable advantage as price becomes grossly detached from fundamentals.

Summary

The massive surge in passive strategies’ popularity has pushed the market to the brink of instability. Instability can result in price surges to unprecedented valuations. It can also produce immense volatility and tremendous price declines, as we saw in March. Volatility is here to stay as long as investor preferences remain the same.

There are no longer guardrails on our winding road of wealth accumulation. Those guardrails have been temporarily put out to pasture in favor of the laziness of passive strategies. Most troubling is that so few investors, many of which are heavily dependent on their investment portfolios, understand there are no guardrails for their wealth.

As you would drive on the PCH without guardrails, we recommend managing your wealth with the same attention. This article is not a recommendation to divest and sit in cash. However, it should serve as a warning that the hair raising declines in March, and vertical surge afterward may not have been an anomaly but a preview of things to come.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2H0u0v4 Tyler Durden

Have Zoom, Won’t Need to Travel

As I mentioned a few months ago, several groups have invited me to give Zoom talks this Fall, and I enthusiastically accepted. It’s less engaging, of course, than an in-person talk, but there’s no travel time and no travel cost, so I’m much more open to such invitations than I had been to in-person speaking engagements.

So far, I’ve done talks for law school groups, college classes, and lifelong learning groups; I’ve done podcasts and videocasts and webinars; I have some scheduled with bar associations; I’m arranging something with a church group; all of it is fun for me, and my sense is that it’s interesting for the audiences as well.

And this reminded me that I wanted to offer this more broadly: If you have a group of any sort, such as

  • your junior high or high school students,
  • students in your home-schooling group,
  • your college or law school classmates,
  • your lawyer group,
  • your nonlawyer group,
  • your podcast or video audience, or
  • who knows what else,

and you wanted me to give a Zoom talk about

  1. free speech,
  2. religious freedom,
  3. gun rights and gun policy,
  4. the Supreme Court,
  5. the Constitution generally, or
  6. maybe even some other topics,

just e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu and let me know the circumstances.

Naturally, I’d prefer talking to larger groups rather than very small groups (though that might be easier to do via video, if you gather audience members from various different locations); and the sensible topics might differ from audience to audience. But I’m flexible.

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Goldman Smashes Expectations On Stellar FICC Beat Despite Slowdown From Q2 Trading Frenzy

Goldman Smashes Expectations On Stellar FICC Beat Despite Slowdown From Q2 Trading Frenzy

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/14/2020 – 08:07

Unlike JPM, BofA, Citi and Wells, Goldman Sachs is lucky that it remains a pure play trading operation (the joke that is Marcus notwithstanding), and perhaps that’s why Goldman provided a ray of hope for the battered banking sector after BofA’s dismal earnings report and yesterday’s lackluster results from JPM and Citi.

Unlike BofA’s disappointing sales and trading results, Goldman reported revenues and EPS which smashed expectations, with Q3 revenues of $10.78BN, up 30% Y/Y, and smashing exp. $9.40, resulting in Q3 EPS of $9.68, double the $4.79 reported a year ago, and also trouncing the estimate of $5.52.

 

Some more highlights on how Goldman generated more than $10BN in revenue:

 

  • Investment Banking generated quarterly net revenues of $1.97 billion, including the second highest quarterly net revenues in  Equity  underwriting.
  • Global Markets generated quarterly net revenues of $4.55 billion, reflecting continued strength in Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities (FICC) and Equities.
  • Asset Management generated quarterly net revenues of $2.77 billion, reflecting strong performance in Equity investments. Assets under management $2.04 trillion, +16% y/y
  • Consumer  &  Wealth  Management  generated  quarterly  net  revenues  of  $1.49  billion,  reflecting  record net  revenues  in Consumer banking and continued strength in  Wealth management.

Naturally, the bulk of this upside was driven by yet another solid quarter in global markets, driven by a Y/Y surge (but Q/Q drop) in Q3 FICC sales & trading revenue, which rose 65% Y/Y to $2.50 billion, beating the estimate $2.27 billion. Meanwhile, equities sales & trading revenue was slightly weaker than expected at $2.05 billion, below the estimate of $2.14 billion. As a result, total 3Q trading rev. $4.55 billion, beating the estimate of $4.41 billion.

A breakdown of FICC vs Equity is shown below:

Goldman also reported strong investment banking revenue of $1.97 billion, beating the estimate of $1.75 billion, despite “financial advisory net revenues that were significantly lower reflecting a decrease in industrywide mergers and acquisitions.” Offsetting this was significantly higher underwriting net revenues “due to higher net revenues in equity underwriting, reflecting a significant increase in industry-wide IPOs and higher net revenues in Debt underwriting, driven by asset-backed and investment grade activity.”

Of course, while Goldman remains mostly a hedge fund, the bank has been pretending it is also a traditional bank, and as such, the Net Interest Income it generated in Q3 was up 7.5% from last year as it continued to grow out Marcus, generating $1.08 billion in Net Interest Income driven by “an increase in interest earning assets.” That said, total loans were a paltry $112BN, with Goldman only setting aside some $4BN in loan loss allowance, unchanged from last quarter.

There was some good news for Goldman employees too, as compensation and benefits jumped by 14% Y/Y (but dropped 30% from Q2), which reflected significantly higher net revenues. This was offset by “lower travel and entertainment expenses, professional fees, occupancy-related expenses, and net provisions for litigation and regulatory proceedings” Goldman also incurred “higher technology expenses and brokerage, clearing, exchange and distribution fees.”

As a result of the strong trading results, unlike the other banks Goldman’s stock was actually higher on earnings:

Full results below:

GS Q3 2020 by Zerohedge on Scribd

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GPt50N Tyler Durden

See No Risk

See No Risk

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/14/2020 – 08:01

Authored by Sven Henrich via NorthmanTrader.com,

Amazing times all around. Most astounding perhaps the level of complacency building in markets into the US election and into year end.

Most of the market appears to have adopted a see no risk attitude. Hear of no risk, see no risk, speak of no risk.

No matter who wins the election it’s bullish, no matter what happens more stimulus is coming. And besides, if all else fails the Fed will just print more.

The bull case can be summarized as such:

And following a ferocious rally off of the falling wedge we’ve been discussing markets may well be on their way to new highs as there’s a technical inverse brewing that could technically target 3650 as I discussed Friday at the close however with an important caveat:

Fast forward to today.

Just shy of all time highs set in September, we can observe a market with the highest valuation in history expressed in market cap vs GDP:

Now as I’ve outlined on Twitter this number will drop once the bounce in Q3 GDP will be accounted for, but that doesn’t change the fact that markets are at record valuations.

Which is kind of ironic as there are some other records floating around, such as record retail participation:

How does record retail participation risk manage record valuations? With record complacency of course as options equity put call ratios have hit the proverbial dust.

Record lows on the monthly chart (month not over yet):

Only matching the weekly low readings we saw in June and in September:

Record valuations, record retail participation and record complacency.

What can possibly go wrong?

According to participants the answer is clearly nothing. Oh kay.

Whether this laissez faire attitude will prove itself to be justified we will all soon find out in the weeks ahead. I won’t even pretend to offer a prediction on the outcome of the election, but since everybody seems to be expecting tons more stimulus no matter what and now a non-contested election let me throw some water on that happy go lucky camp fire.

While markets are presuming a blue wave who can say with certainty that Republicans will lose the Senate? What, exactly, is the prospect of a Republican led Senate agreeing to big stimulus aspirations of a Democratic president and House? I think we’ve seen that movie before and the answer is a big fat No.

And those that presume a blue wave will propel Biden into the White House perhaps they should ask themselves this question:

Who says the electoral college will vote for Biden even if he wins? Imagine a scenario where Biden wins key swing states such as Florida, yet the Republican governor and state legislature there decides to cast electoral college votes for Trump anyways using  fraud in the election count (real or not) as an excuse? Who would stop them? The law? There is no such law that says they couldn’t vote for Trump. Would the Supreme Court stop them? Watch the nomination hearings in the Senate right now. ACB will likely pass and then the GOP has a 6-3 majority in the court.  I’m not predicting anything, but I’m also not making this up. This scenario was recently outlined in the Atlantic. Via Forbes:

“A jarring new report from The Atlantic claims that the Trump campaign is discussing potential strategies to circumvent the results of the 2020 election, should Joe Biden defeat Donald Trump, by first alleging the existence of rampant fraud and then asking legislators in battleground states where the Republicans have a legislative majority to bypass the state’s popular vote and instead to choose electors loyal to the GOP and the sitting president”.

Can you imagine the storm of uncertainty that would follow?

Markets have been rallying not only on stimulus hope but also on the premise that the risk of a contested election is diminished or so the popular pablum goes. Well, for there to not be a contested election there needs to be a concession speech on the eve of the election.  If the game plan outlined above is indeed the strategy then there will be no election clarity until at least December 14 when the electoral college votes. That’s 6 weeks of uncertainty. And what if this gets contested or what if there are legal challenges in between or beyond?

I’m raising these questions to highlight that there are all sorts of risks floating about that this market is not pricing in. At all. Rather the market is making all kinds of positive presumptions in terms of what it appears to perceive as the most positive outcomes. And they may well be correct, but whether these presumptions are correct or not I’m not one to say, but it appears that if these presumptions are wrong then risk is very much under-appreciated. For now this market hears of no risk, sees no risk, and speaks of no risk.

Just remember: Risk happens fast.

*  *  *

For the latest public analysis please visit NorthmanTrader. To subscribe to our market products please visit Services.

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

Have Zoom, Won’t Need to Travel

As I mentioned a few months ago, several groups have invited me to give Zoom talks this Fall, and I enthusiastically accepted. It’s less engaging, of course, than an in-person talk, but there’s no travel time and no travel cost, so I’m much more open to such invitations than I had been to in-person speaking engagements.

So far, I’ve done talks for law school groups, college classes, and lifelong learning groups; I’ve done podcasts and videocasts and webinars; I have some scheduled with bar associations; I’m arranging something with a church group; all of it is fun for me, and my sense is that it’s interesting for the audiences as well.

And this reminded me that I wanted to offer this more broadly: If you have a group of any sort, such as

  • your junior high or high school students,
  • students in your home-schooling group,
  • your college or law school classmates,
  • your lawyer group,
  • your nonlawyer group,
  • your podcast or video audience, or
  • who knows what else,

and you wanted me to give a Zoom talk about

  1. free speech,
  2. religious freedom,
  3. gun rights and gun policy,
  4. the Supreme Court,
  5. the Constitution generally, or
  6. maybe even some other topics,

just e-mail me at volokh at law.ucla.edu and let me know the circumstances.

Naturally, I’d prefer talking to larger groups rather than very small groups (though that might be easier to do via video, if you gather audience members from various different locations); and the sensible topics might differ from audience to audience. But I’m flexible.

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How To Ensure a High Unemployment Rate for Individuals with Down Syndrome.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report entitled Subminimum Wages: Impacts on the Civil Rights of People With Disabilities. The report calls for the elimination of a federal program that allows specially authorized employers to pay severely disabled employees less than the minimum wage. Overwhelmingly, the employees involved have Down Syndrome (or a similarly severe developmental disability).

At first blush, that may sound nice. But since it will make it impossible for many of those with Down Syndrome to get any job at all, “nice” is not really the right word for it.

I therefore dissented from the report. So did my colleague Peter Kirsanow.

Prior to the report’s publication, the Commission was deluged with 9,700 comments from the public—the highest number the Commission has ever received. Of those, the overwhelming majority were from parents or other close family members of an affected disabled individual. Almost all of them disagreed—often vehemently—with the Commission’s recommendation. But the Commission was convinced it knew more about their loved one’s situation than they did.

Interestingly, the Commission waited until page 99 of the report (by which time nearly all policymakers have stopped reading) to mention that 98 per cent of those who submitted comments opposed its conclusion.

The program at issue was created by Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standard Act. It was adopted in 1938 at the same time as the first federal minimum wage. Back then it was believed—no doubt correctly—that a federal minimum wage would cause many disabled persons to become unemployable. An exception was thus created. A limited number of employers would be permitted to obtain certificates authorizing them to pay disabled persons something less than the minimum wage. Under current law, how much less depends upon stringent tests of each such employee’s productivity, which must be conducted every six months. It is a heavily regulated program.

The program is, of course, entirely optional. Right now the law allows eligible individuals (or their guardian) a choice. They can take a mainstream job at a higher wage if they prefer that and can find an employer willing to hire them. If they prefer 14(c) employment (at a sheltered or non-sheltered workplace) and have a willing 14(c) employer, they can choose that.

The unemployment rate was extremely low in early March when we undertook the field research for this report. Even then, advocates of shutting down the 14(c) program admitted that it would result in fewer jobs. I suspect it would be worse now.

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How To Ensure a High Unemployment Rate for Individuals with Down Syndrome.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights released a report entitled Subminimum Wages: Impacts on the Civil Rights of People With Disabilities. The report calls for the elimination of a federal program that allows specially authorized employers to pay severely disabled employees less than the minimum wage. Overwhelmingly, the employees involved have Down Syndrome (or a similarly severe developmental disability).

At first blush, that may sound nice. But since it will make it impossible for many of those with Down Syndrome to get any job at all, “nice” is not really the right word for it.

I therefore dissented from the report. So did my colleague Peter Kirsanow.

Prior to the report’s publication, the Commission was deluged with 9,700 comments from the public—the highest number the Commission has ever received. Of those, the overwhelming majority were from parents or other close family members of an affected disabled individual. Almost all of them disagreed—often vehemently—with the Commission’s recommendation. But the Commission was convinced it knew more about their loved one’s situation than they did.

Interestingly, the Commission waited until page 99 of the report (by which time nearly all policymakers have stopped reading) to mention that 98 per cent of those who submitted comments opposed its conclusion.

The program at issue was created by Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standard Act. It was adopted in 1938 at the same time as the first federal minimum wage. Back then it was believed—no doubt correctly—that a federal minimum wage would cause many disabled persons to become unemployable. An exception was thus created. A limited number of employers would be permitted to obtain certificates authorizing them to pay disabled persons something less than the minimum wage. Under current law, how much less depends upon stringent tests of each such employee’s productivity, which must be conducted every six months. It is a heavily regulated program.

The program is, of course, entirely optional. Right now the law allows eligible individuals (or their guardian) a choice. They can take a mainstream job at a higher wage if they prefer that and can find an employer willing to hire them. If they prefer 14(c) employment (at a sheltered or non-sheltered workplace) and have a willing 14(c) employer, they can choose that.

The unemployment rate was extremely low in early March when we undertook the field research for this report. Even then, advocates of shutting down the 14(c) program admitted that it would result in fewer jobs. I suspect it would be worse now.

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‘Smoking Gun’ Emails Show Hunter Biden Introduced VP Dad To Burisma Executive

‘Smoking Gun’ Emails Show Hunter Biden Introduced VP Dad To Burisma Executive

Tyler Durden

Wed, 10/14/2020 – 07:20

MSM organizations may have largely ignored findings from a Senate Intel Committee report, released last month, which claimed that some of Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine raised “counterintelligence and extortion” concerns. On the day that report dropped, Rep Adam Schiff brushed it aside, accusing his GOP colleagues in the Senate of “promoting the same Russian disinformation”, per the New York Post.

Well, we’d be interested to hear what Schiff & Company have to say about this.

In a shocking report based on documents collected by the FBI – but which haven’t been previously disclosed in the press – the New York Post reveals that Hunter Biden introduced his father – then the Vice President of the United States – to a top executive at Burisma, the shady Ukrainian energy firm where Biden once served as a board member.

Emails contained in the report shed new light on Biden’s claims that he successfully forced former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire a public prosecutor named Viktor Shokin. Biden bragged about leveraging $1 billion in US aid to force Poroshenko to fire Shokin, who was opposed by both the US and the EU. However, Shokin was reportedly working on an investigation into the management and executive board of Burisma, a group that included Hunter Biden, and his former business partner Devon Archer, whose conviction on securities fraud charges in the US was recently reinstated.

The emails offer evidence that Hunter Biden did in fact introduce his father to a top executive at Burisma less than a year before the vice president moved to oust Shokin, thereby quashing an investigation into the firm. The meeting is referenced in emails between Vadym Pozharskyi, an advisor to the board of Burisma, who sent Biden an email on April 17, 2015 thanking him for the introduction.

Another email also shows Pozharskyi, believed to be the No. 3 exec at Burisma, asking Biden about how the political scion could “use your influence” to help Burisma.

All of this would seem to undermine Biden’s claim that he has “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings”, which also included extensive dealings in China.

Another email dated on May 12, 2014, shortly after Hunter joined the board, shows Pozharskyi attempting to pressure Biden to use his “political leverage” to help the ompany. The message included the subject line “urgent issue” and also references an attempted “shakedown” by Ukrainian prosecutors under Poroshenko. According to Pozharskyi, prosecutors in the country had approached a man referred to as “NZ”, who was identifed by the Post as Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky, who went by the Americanized name “Nicholas”.

When “NZ” rebuffed their threats, they proceeded with “concrete actions” including “one or more pretrial proceedings,” Pozharskyi wrote.

“We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message / signal, etc .to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions,” he added.

The timing of the email is also notable: It was sent just as Burisma was announcing Biden’s decision to join the executive board.

It’s merely the latest piece of evidence suggesting that the company brought Biden on to manage its “legal affairs” because it likely believed his pull with the US would protect Burisma from these types of prosecutorial “shakedowns”.

In addition to the emails, the drive contained photos, some of which were shared with the Post. They spanned from family snaps of Hunter with his father and his kids, to selfies of Biden smoking cigarettes in a variety of unusual poses.

According to the Post, the images and correspondence were taken from the hard drive of a laptop that was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware, and never retrieved. After seeing what was on the hard drive, the owner of the shop copied it, and turned it over to a lawyer connected with former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani reportedly turned it over to the NY Post over the weekend.

We imagine the MSM will cover up this report, as is standard practice for any concerning information involving Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.

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