The leader of a New Mexico militia which has been detaining border crossers is expected to appear in an Albuquerque court on Monday to face federal weapons charges, according to Reuters.
Larry Hopkins, leader of the United Constitutional Patriots, was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm after the FBI claims it found guns during a 2017 visit to his home.
The 69-year-old was arrested by the FBI on April 20, several days after his militia was accused by the ACLU of illegally detaining migrants – prompting New Mexico’s Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham to call for them to stop.
Hopkins in 2017 allegedly boasted of training volunteers to kill former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and financier George Soros, an FBI agent said in court papers.
The United Constitutional Patriots has helped the U.S. Border Patrol, which has been overwhelmed by record numbers of Central American families seeking asylum, detain some 5,600 migrants in New Mexico in the last 60 days, the group said. –Reuters
Hopkins’ defense attorney, Kelly O’Connell, says that the charges are unrelated to the militia’s actions at the border, and stem from an October 2017 report that a militia was being run out of Hopkins’ home in Flora Vista, New Mexico, according to FBI Special Agent David Gabriel.
The United Constitutional Patriots (UCP), meanwhile, have been patrolling the border with rifles and camouflage uniforms which beat the group’s eagle insignia. They have posted dozens of videos on YouTube depicting UCP members detaining migrant families, who are then made to sit and wait at gunpoint until Border Patrol agents arrive.
Upon entering Hopkins’ home, agents collected nine firearms ranging from rifles to pistols – which Horton was illegally in possession of due to at least one prior felony conviction, according to the complaint.
A federal grand jury has returned an indictment charging Hopkins with being a felon in possession of firearms, the same charged he faced in the original complaint, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement on Friday. The indictment allows prosecutors to avoid a preliminary hearing in the case. –Reuters
The UCP leader faces a maximum of 10 years in prison if convicted.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V4ogpZ Tyler Durden
At the peak of its power in 1350 BC, thousands of years ago, ancient Egypt was like nothing ever seen before.
The great Kingdom was thriving under an efficient system of agricultural production and trade with foreign nations.
Egyptians had learned to adapt to the natural irrigation of the Nile river to produce surpluses of food, which supported a larger population, trade specialization and social and cultural development.
Mineral exploitation in the surrounding areas gave Egyptians great resources with which to trade with foreign empires – and led to great wealth for the kingdom.
New technologies were invented at an astonishing pace: there are records of discoveries in medicine, construction, and mathematics dating from Ancient Egypt that we still use today (yes, that’s how they built the Pyramids).
Ancient Egypt also gave us the first peace treaty ever, and new forms of literature.
Nefertiti, the wife of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, led a religious revolution away from a common belief in several gods, to the worship of just one – the Sun god – the first instance of monotheism ever recorded.
And famously, Egypt’s art scene thrived.
Monuments, sculptures, masks, statues, amulets – you name it. Egyptians were great craftsmen, and their art was widely circulated around the world.
Today, most of the world’s major historical art museums carry some form of Egyptian art.
So it should come as no surprise that despite the more than 3,000 years that have passed, antiquities from Ancient Egypt have tremendously grown in value.
This week, a granite statue from ca. 1350 BC will be on auction sale in New York for a starting price of $4.5 million.
And a Scarab amulet will start at $80,000.
I don’t know about you, but I’m interested in anything that holds value with that kind of longevity.
That’s one of the reasons why gold is such a sensible asset to hold: it’s scarce, portable, and has been valuable since ancient times.
Egyptian art is even more scarce. No one can go back in time and create more of it.
So as a means to preserve wealth over the long-term, it makes sense to consider owning some rare, collectible assets as part of a larger strategy… rather than having 100% of your savings in fundamentally flawed paper currencies.
We had some of the world’s foremost experts teaching us. It was 100% educational… there was absolutely nothing to buy and sell.
And we learned about so many different types of assets– rare coins, antique firearms, vintage cars, works of arts, Swiss watches, comic books, etc.
We even arranged for one of the most prominent museums in the country to shut down for our group, where we enjoyed cocktails and a private tour with the curator and a handful of talented artists.
Collectible assets, just like anything else, derive value from supply and demand.
And supply is all about scarcity.
Again, you can’t go back to Ancient Egypt and make another amulet. You can’t ask Leonardo da Vinci to paint another masterpiece. You can’t go back in time to 1952 and print another Mickey Mantle rookie card.
In addition to scarcity, quality is another important factor: collectibles in better condition will typically be stronger stores of value.
For example, a ‘mint condition’ Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card is worth millions of dollars, whereas one with just a bit of wear and tear is worth around $800,000.
Similarly, rare coins in flawless condition will hold value better than the same coin with scratches and scuffs.
Demand with collectible assets tends to be strongest with brands, or historical events, that have the widest following.
Beatles and Elvis memorabilia, for instance, has far greater appeal than, say, Roy Orbison, simply because their worldwide fan bases are so much larger.
There are far more World War II or American Civil War aficionados than there are for the War of 1812. So there is far more demand for World War II and Civil War artifacts.
Historical documents (another category of collectible assets) signed by Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, or Winston Churchill have far greater demand than those from Grover Cleveland or Arthur Balfour.
They’re more expensive, but the extra premium you pay will most likely hold its value (and grow) in the years and decades to come.
Collectibles are also quite interesting because they’re so portable. You could walk across a border with a single rare coin in your pocket that’s worth over $1 million… which also makes collectibles a very private way to store wealth.
Another benefit is estate planning. At some point, each of us is going to pass away. And a collection of coins or artwork is a LOT easier to pass along to your heirs than traditional financial assets (like bank accounts and stocks).
Most of all, collectibles can really be fantastic assets. We discussed this weekend that, for the past several decades, a number of different collectible categories ranging from vintage Ferraris to Andy Warhol paintings have vastly outperformed the stock market over the past few decades.
It’s not to say you should run out and by an $80,000+ Egyptian artifact. It’s important to first find something that appeals to you, and learn as much as you can about it.
And a lot of highly desired collectibles can be had for just a few thousand dollars, so the entry point can be quite low.
But at a time when central banks continue to debase their currencies and western governments are drowning in debt, it makes sense to consider ‘forever assets’ that can hold their value for generations to come.
There is a “crisis” brewing in America which will affect more Americans than the subprime crisis in 2008.
What is it?
It’s the pension and retirement crisis.
According to a recent report from the National Retirement Planning Week the three “legs” of the retirement “stool” are Social Security, private pensions and personal savings. None are in great shape.
The average Social Security check is $14,000 a year, hardly a cushy retirement.
23% of boomers ages 56-61 expect to receive income from a private company pension plan; and,
“Using faulty assumptions is the lynchpin to the inability to meet future obligations. By over-estimating returns, it has artificially inflated future pension values and reduced the required contribution amounts by individuals and governments paying into the pension system.”
This is a critically important point to understand as it is why a vast majority of Americans are trapped in the same “quicksand” as pension funds and don’t realize it.
For years, Wall Street has espoused the “myth of compounded average returns.”This is the same myth which has not only infected pension funds, but has led to the same false sense of future financial security in personal retirement planning nationwide. An article from IBD further perpetuates this myth:
“J.P. Morgan says ‘enough’ means the nest egg is big enough to have at least an 80% chance of surviving 30 years in retirement.’
The financial firm’s number crunchers also assume that, before retirement, you keep kicking in 10% of your income each year to your nest egg. In addition, they assume that your retirement portfolio grows an average of 6% a year before retirement and 5% a year in retirement.“
And there it is. The biggest mistake you are making in your retirement planning by buying into the “myth” that markets “compound returns” over time.
They don’t. They never have. They never will.
The chart below shows a compounded return rate of at 4-8% with $5000 annual dollar cost averaging (DCA) contributions made monthly (as noted above 10% of $50,000 which is roughly the median wage), and using variable rates of return from current valuation levels. (Chart assumes 35 years of age to start saving and expiring at 85)
Just as with “pension funds,” the issue of using above average rates of return into the future suggests one can “save less” today because the “growth” will make up for the difference.
Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.
Financial Insecurity
While we can argue about market returns, compounding rates, etc., in order for any of that to matter we have to assume Americans have money, or savings, to invest to begin with.
A new report by Forbesstates that 23% (nearly one in four) Americans are saving not even one penny from their paychecks.
As part of its 2019 Savings Survey, First National Bank of Omahaexamined Americans’ habits, behaviors, and priorities when it comes to saving, monthly spending, and retirement planning. The findings showed that nearly 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
The 2018 Planning & Progress Study gathered data in an online survey from over 2000 Americans over the age of 18. In that survey, they found:
78% said they were “extremely” or “somewhat” concerned about affording a comfortable retirement.
“According to a survey from Gallup, 43 percent of adults between the ages of 50 and 64 expect to rely on Social Security during retirement. This number has been steadily increasing since 2001. However, only 24 percent of respondents in the 2018 Planning & Progress Survey believe it’s extremely likely that Social Security will even be available when they plan to retire.”
That fear is likely not so misplaced as Reason noted:
“Social Security will be insolvent and unable to pay the full value of promised benefits by 2035—that’s one full year later than previously expected—and Social Security’s costs will exceed its income by 2020, according to a new report published Monday by the program’s trustees.
At the end of 2018, Social Security was providing income to about 67 million Americans. About 47 million of them were over age 65, and the majority of the rest were disabled. If nothing changes, the Social Security Trust Fund will be fully depleted by 2035 and the program would impose across-the-board cuts of 20 percent to all beneficiaries.”
Meanwhile, demographics are blowing up the basic premise of how Social Security is funded. There were 2.8 workers for every Social Security recipient in 2017. That’s down from 3.3 in 2007, and that’s way down from the 5.1 workers per beneficiary that existed in 1960.
Furthermore, the two programs function mostly as a giant conveyor belt to transfer wealth from the young and relatively poor to the old and relatively rich, allowing the average person (who now lives to be 78) more than a decade of taxpayer-funded retirement. As I have shown previously, welfare now makes up the highest percentage of disposable personal incomes in history despite record low unemployment, rising wage growth, and the longest economic expansion in U.S. history.
Those entitlement programs are also the primary drivers of our national debt, which just hit $22 trillion, and the deficit, despite tax reform is now pushing in excess of $1 Trillion, which has never been seen during an economic expansion.
Won’t Or Can’t
Asking people to save “more” really isn’t an option.
The lack of savings, of course, is directly related to the rising cost of living versus the lack of wage growth over the last 35-years which led to a massive surge in debt to maintain the standard of living.
Fidelity provided some further insights into the savings problem which shows it permeates Boomers, Generation X’ers, and Millennials:
“Generation X is squarely in middle age and beset on all sides by bills. Many in Generation X have dependents at home—84% in the survey said they have at least one. They may also still be paying off their own student debts—just more than one in four survey respondents from Generation X says he or she is still paying for his or her own education.
There are all kinds of money problems, but the solutions are generally the same: Save more, spend less, or find a higher-paying job—or maybe all three. But this is easier said than done.”
The massive shortfall in “savings” is going to be a problem in the future.
But everyone saves money in their 401k plan?
A report from the non-profit National Institute on Retirement Security which found that nearly 60% of all working-age Americans do not own assets in a retirement account.
Here are some additional findings from the report:
Account ownership rates are closely correlated with income and wealth. More than 100 million working-age individuals (57 percent) do not own any retirement account assets, whether in an employer-sponsored 401(k)-type plan or an IRA nor are they covered by defined benefit (DB) pensions.
The typical working-age American has no retirement savings. When all working individuals are included—not just individuals with retirement accounts—the median retirement account balance is $0 among all working individuals. Even among workers who have accumulated savings in retirement accounts, the typical worker had a modest account balance of $40,000.
Three-fourths (77 percent) of Americans fall short of conservative retirement savings targets for their age and income based on working until age 67 even after counting an individual’s entire net worth—a generous measure of retirement savings.
“13 percent of Americans are saving less for retirement than they were last year and offers insight into why much of the population is lagging behind. The most popular response survey participants gave for why they didn’t put more away in the past year was a drop, or no change, in income.”
The cost of living has risen much more dramatically than incomes. According to Pew Research:
“In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.”
But the problem isn’t just the cost of living due to inflation, but the “real” cost of raising a family in the U.S. has grown incredibly more expensive with surging food, energy, health, and housing costs.
Researchers at Purdue University recently studied data culled from across the globe and found that in the U.S., $132,000 was found to be the optimal income for “feeling” happy for raising a family of four.
Gallup also surveyed to find out what the “average” family required to support a family of four in the U.S. (Forget about being happy, we are talking about “just getting by.”) That number turned out to be $58.000.
The chart below shows the “disposable income” of Americans from the Census Bureau data. (Disposable income is income after taxes.)
So, while the “median” income has broken out to all-time highs, the reality is that for the vast majority of Americans there has been little improvement. Here are some stats from the survey data which was NOT reported:
$306,139 – the difference between the annual income for the Top 5% versus the Bottom 80%.
$148,504 – the difference between the annual income for the Top 5% and the Top 20%.
$157,635 – the difference between the annual income for the Top 20% and the Bottom 80%.
If you are in the Top 20% of income earners, congratulations. If not, it is a bit of a different story.
Assuming a “family of four” needs an income of $58,000 a year to just “make it,”such becomes problematic for the bottom 80% of the population whose wage growth falls far short of what is required to support the standard of living, much less to obtain “happiness.”
The “gap” between the “standard of living” and real disposable incomes is more clearly shown below. Beginning in 1990, incomes alone were no longer able to meet the standard of living so consumers turned to debt to fill the “gap.” However, following the “financial crisis,” even the combined levels of income and debt no longer fill the gap. Currently, there is almost a $3200 annual deficit that cannot be filled.
This is why we continue to see consumer credit hitting all-time records despite an economic boom, rising wage growth, historically low unemployment rates.
The mirage of consumer wealth has not been a function of a broad increase in the net worth of Americans, but rather a division in the country between the Top 20% who have the wealth and the Bottom 80% dependent on increasing debt levels to sustain their current standard of living.
With the vast amount of individuals already vastly under-saved and dependent on social welfare, the next major correction will reveal the full extent of the “retirement crisis” silently lurking in the shadows of this bull market cycle.
For the 75.4 million “boomers,” about 26% of the entire population heading into retirement by 2030, the reality is that only about 20% will be able to actually retire.
The rest will be faced with tough decisions in the years ahead.
The good news is that if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is correct, none of this will be a problem if climate change kills everyone in the next 12 years.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GIm1Pq Tyler Durden
As more than 1,000 students have been quarantined in California and New York State has begun issuing expensive summons to at least 12 unvaccinated people who have dared to defy its mandatory vaccination order, the CDC on Monday confirmed that the number of measles cases documented in the US since the beginning of the year has climbed to 704 cases in 22 states, the largest number of cases documented in a single year since 1994…and it’s only April.
The outbreaks are a huge setback for public health officials in the US, who had declared that measles had been eliminated back in 2000.
The worst outbreaks have been documented in Orthodox Jewish communities in Brooklyn and New York’s Rockland County. Some 88% of cases have been associated with these religious communities. To combat the outbreak, NYC has instituted a policy of mandatory vaccinations, and Rockland County has threatened a $2,000-a-day fine for any unvaccinated individuals who mix with the general public.
In a statement Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar underscored the seriousness of the outbreaks: “We have come a long way in fighting infectious diseases in America, but we risk backsliding and seeing our families, neighbors, and communities needlessly suffer from preventable diseases. We are very concerned about the recent troubling rise in cases of measles. Vaccine-preventable diseases belong in the history books, not in our emergency rooms. The suffering we are seeing today is completely avoidable. Vaccines are safe because they are among the most studied medical products we have.”
Currently, the US leads the developed world in the number of unvaccinated children.
Outside New York, the worst outbreaks have been documented in California, Washington and Michigan.
Here are key facts about measles:
Public health officials blame the measles resurgence on the spread of misinformation about vaccines. A vocal group of parents opposes vaccines, believing that ingredients in them can cause autism. Social networks have resorted to censorship to prevent the spread of any related postings.
The largest outbreaks are concentrated in Orthodox Jewish communities in New York City’s Williamsburg neighborhood, where some 390 cases have been confirmed, and Rockland County north of New York City, which has recorded 201 cases. Those figures include infections from last year and are not directly comparable to the CDC numbers.
Other outbreaks have been reported in Washington state, New Jersey, California’s Butte County and Michigan.
The disease is highly contagious and can be fatal, killing one or two of every 1,000 children who contract it, according to the CDC. It can also cause permanent hearing loss or intellectual disabilities. It poses the greatest risk to unvaccinated young children.
The United States’ 2000 declaration that measles was eradicated meant that the disease was no longer present in the country year round. Measles remains common in some countries in Europe, Asia and Africa, and unvaccinated travelers to those countries can bring it back to the United States. The current outbreaks are believed to trace back to visits to Israel and Ukraine.
New York City officials said some 21,000 people have received the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine in affected areas since the outbreak began in October. The city has begun fining unvaccinated adults.
Lawmakers in Oregon, California and Washington state are considering bills to eliminate nonmedical exemptions that allowed unvaccinated children to attend public schools.
In order to achieve herd immunity that protects those unable to get the measles vaccine, such as infants and people with compromised immune systems, 90% to 95% of the population needs to be vaccinated.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2J3Fdd0 Tyler Durden
Even if you disable GPS, deactivate phone location tracking, and turn off your phone, it’s still possible for Google and the NSA to monitor your every move.
Over the last two decades, cell phone use has become an everyday part of life for the vast majority of people around the planet. Nearly without question, consumers have chosen to carry these increasingly smart devices with them everywhere they go. Despite surveillance revelations from whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, the average smart phone user continues to carry the devices with little to no security or protection from privacy invasions.
Americans make up one of the largest smartphone markets in the world today, yet they rarely question how intelligence agencies or private corporations might be using their smartphone data. A recent report from the New York Times adds to the growing list of reasons why Americans should be asking these questions. According to the Times, law enforcement have been using a secret technique to figure out the location of Android users. The technique involves gathering detailed location data collected by Google from Android phones, iPhones, and iPads that have Google Maps and other Google apps installed.
The location data is stored inside a Google database known as Sensorvault, which contains detailed location records of hundreds of millions of devices from around the world. The records reportedly contain location data going back to 2009. The data is collected whether or not users are making calls or using apps.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) says police are using a single warrant—sometimes known as a “geo-fence” warrant—to access location data from devices that are linked to individuals who have no connection to criminal activity and have not provided any reasonable suspicion of a crime. Jennifer Lynch, EFF’s Surveillance Litigation Director, says these searches are problematic for several reasons.
“First, unlike other methods of investigation used by the police, the police don’t start with an actual suspect or even a target device—they work backward from a location and time to identify a suspect,” Lynch wrote. “This makes it a fishing expedition—the very kind of search that the Fourth Amendment was intended to prevent. Searches like these—where the only information the police have is that a crime has occurred—are much more likely to implicate innocent people who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Every device owner in the area during the time at issue becomes a suspect—for no other reason than that they own a device that shares location information with Google.”
The problems associated with Sensorvault have also concerned a bipartisan group of lawmakers who recently sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The letter from Democrats and Republicans on the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee gives Google until May 10 to provide information on how this data is used and shared. The letter was signed by Democratic Representatives Frank Pallone and Jan Schakowsky and Republicans Greg Walden and Cathy McMorris Rodgers.
Google has responded to the report from the Times by stating that users opt in to collection of the location data stored in Sensorvault. A Google representative also told the lawmakers that users “can delete their location history data, or turn off the product entirely, at any time.” Unfortunately, this explanation falls flat when one considers that Android devices log location data by default and that it is notoriously difficult to opt out of data collection.
No matter what promises Google makes, readers should remember that back in 2010, the Washington Postpublished a story focusing on the growth of surveillance by the National Security Agency. That report detailed an NSA technique that “enabled the agency to find cellphones even when they were turned off.” The technique was reportedly first used in Iraq in pursuit of terrorist targets. Additionally, it was reported in 2016 that a technique known as a “roving bug” allowed FBI agents to eavesdrop on conversations that took place near cellphones.
These tools are now undoubtedly being used on Americans. The reality is that these tools—and many, many others that have been revealed—are being used to spy on innocent Americans, not only violent criminals or suspects. The only way to push back against this invasive surveillance is to stop supporting the companies responsible for the techniques and data sharing. Those who value privacy should invest time in learning how to protect data and digital devices. Privacy is quickly becoming a relic of a past era and the only way to stop it is to raise awareness, opt-out of corporations that don’t respect privacy, and protect your data.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XRovBN Tyler Durden
Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital has finally released full-year results for 2018. And what started out as a nine-figure loss, according to financials released all the way back in Q3, the firm had already brooked a $134 million loss, combining realized and unrealized losses, by the end of Q1. By the end of Q3, that loss had widened slightly to $136 million.
By the end of the year, total realized and unrealized losses for the firm founded by the former Goldman partner and Fortress fund manager, which both invests in cryptocurrencies, as well as blockchain-focused startups, had ballooned to $272.7 million, an ignominious start for the company’s first full year of operations.
Mike Novogratz
As of Dec. 31, Galaxy had $249.1 million in digital assets and investments, down from $323 million at the end of September, the company said in a statement.
The additional losses in Q4 were primarily a result of a net realized loss of $48.7 million on the firm’s digital assets (as the firm’s trading arm trimmed some of its losing positions) and a $25 million unrealized loss on its investments.
For the full year, the firm’s total losses on its crypto holdings amounted to $177 million, with nearly $100 million more lost on operating expenses and investment writedowns.
But Novogratz is pressing forward. In the statement, he touted eight new investments closed in the fourth quarter, and upped its investment in three existing startups.
Novogratz said things had already started to turn around in 2019, as crypto prices have rallied off their lows. In particular, bitcoin has held above $5,000.
“While 2018 was a challenging year for the industry, I am pleased with the ways in which our team navigated difficult market dynamics, and believe we are well positioned to scale our business strategically over time. We have used our capitalized position to both identify and invest in a number of unique opportunities, while also continuing to build an institutional-quality platform,” Novogratz said in a statement.
“The first few months of 2019 have yielded a notable increase in activity across our business lines. We are already benefiting from both the strong foundation we laid in 2018 as well as the year-to-date rally in digital asset markets. We expect to continue to build upon this positive momentum through the remainder of 2019 and beyond.”
Since the start of 2019, the company said its Galaxy Benchmark Crypto Index Fund, a passively managed index fund which tracks the Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index, has generated inflows and was up about 19% so far this year.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GRc3fF Tyler Durden
Leading up to the Mueller report, one of the long-promised “gotchas” peddled by the anti-Trump media is that that Donald Trump Jr. would be indicted over a June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russian representatives who promised negative information on Hillary Clinton.
Keep in mind, the Russian attorney who sought the discussion – Natalia Veselnitskaya – met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson before and after the Trump Tower meeting. Fusion was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC to produce the now-infamous “Steele Dossier.”
Also keep in mind that Trump Jr. reportedly shut down the meeting when it was obviously not going to bear fruit.
Obvious setups aside, former US Attorney Joe diGenova has penned an Op-Ed for Fox Newsexcoriating the media for ‘recklessly’ promoting an untested falsehood; that the meeting was illegal in the first place.
The president’s eldest son, an outspoken and unapologetic conservative, is a favorite punching bag of the left. For more than two years, liberal journalists and shrieking “#resistance” activists have salivated over the thought of seeing Don Jr. carted off in handcuffs.
To their dismay, there is only one crucial takeaway from the Mueller report’s conclusions about the utterly inconsequential “Trump Tower meeting” between Don Jr., several Russians, and others: neither Don Jr. nor anyone else involved in the meeting was charged with any crime.
The reasons are clear. The entire theory about what was potentially illegal about the meeting was speculative and untested. What’s more, even if it were illegal, the report concluded that Don Jr. didn’t have the “willful” intent to break the law that would be necessary to make it a crime.
In their disappointment, Don Jr.’s detractors have latched on to a new theory: that he was simply “too stupid” to be charged with a crime because he didn’t know that his conduct was illegal.
They hang this blatant misconstruction on these words from the report: “the Office did not obtain admissible evidence likely to meet the government’s burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that these individuals acted ‘willfully,’ i.e. with general knowledge of the illegality of their conduct.”
That’s not just some minor technicality, absent which Robert Mueller’s prosecutors would have had Don Jr. in shackles while revelers in cat-eared pink hats danced in the streets. It’s a central element of the offense they were investigating, and they decided to clear Don Jr. because without it there is no crime.
One often-used definition of “willful” intent states that it “requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knew his or her conduct was unlawful and intended to do something that the law forbids; that the defendant acted with a purpose to disobey or disregard the law.”
In essence, in order to be charged with conspiring to cheat, you have to have been actually meaning to cheat. That’s the law. Without intent, there is no crime. And Mueller’s team, even his hand-picked Democrat attack dog Andrew Weissmann, knew they didn’t have evidence to convince a jury that Don Jr. meant to circumvent election laws when he typed “I love it” in response to a tangentially-related British publicist’s suggestion the Russian government might have “information that would incriminate Hillary.” Don Jr. even voluntarily released his email correspondence related to that meeting.
But even if there were the requisite intent, the Mueller report still exonerates Don Jr., stating that “the government would likely encounter difficulty proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the value of the promised information exceeded the threshold for a criminal violation.”
Did you catch that?
For the English speakers among you, let me translate that from Weissmann-speak: “This ‘crime’ we thought up as a way to nail Don Jr. is so speculative and unprecedented, we don’t think there’s a court in the land that would let this fly.”
The entire notion of a criminal conspiracy is predicated on the idea that the federal election law’s ban on campaigns taking “contributions” or “things of value” from foreign nationals also applies to “dirt” on opposing candidates.
That’s hardly an established interpretation of the law. In fact, no one has ever been convicted of something similar. If “dirt” is a “thing of value” for campaign finance purposes, that is a dangerously radical innovation with huge potential First Amendment implications.
Personally, I think it’s a completely untenable interpretation, but don’t take my word it. Mueller and his team considered it, as well — and then rejected it as too “difficult to prove” in their report.
I wonder how many of the journalists calling Don Jr. stupid were so certain about this far-fetched legal theory. I further wonder how many of them felt the same way when foreign national Christopher Steele handed the Hillary Clinton campaign a whole dossier of “dirt” on President Trump — at a hefty, agreed-upon price, no less.
The whole thing is pure “#resistance” fantasy.
It was reckless for the media to promote the Trump Tower meeting as a crime, and it was irresponsible for Mueller’s report to discuss the matter using language that allows people who hate Don Jr. to continue in that delusion.
With US-China trade talks set to resume this week amid what flashing red headlines, Larry Kudlow and Donald Trump’s twitter account remind us every day, if not hour, is a sense of “optimism” about an imminent deal, on Sunday the US navy reminded Beijing to stick to the script (one in which Trump supposedly comes off as a negotiating giant), when it two warships through the hotly contested Taiwan Strait as the Pentagon increases the frequency of movement through the strategic waterway despite vocal and often time angry opposition from China.
While the voyage risks further raising tensions with China – at an especially sensitive time for trade negotiations – it will also be viewed by Taiwan as a sign of support from the Trump administration amid growing friction between Taipei and Beijing.
According to Reuters, the two destroyers were the William P. Lawrence and Stethem.
The guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem. Photo: Reuters
“The ships’ transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” Commander Clay Doss, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet, said in a statement. The 112-mile-wide Taiwan Strait separates Taiwan from China. Winking at China, Doss also said there were no unsafe or unprofessional interactions with other countries’ vessels during the transit. Beijing may beg to differ.
Despite an alleged convergence of view on trade between Beijing and DC., Taiwan remains one of a growing number of flashpoints in the U.S.-China relationship, which also include a trade war, U.S. sanctions, the future of Huawei and 5G and China’s increasingly muscular military posture in the South China Sea, where the United States also conducts freedom-of-navigation patrols to remind China that the US will never cede implicit control of the world’s most important naval area.
Commenting on the transit, Taiwan’s Ministry of Defense said the US ships had sailed north through the strait. “U.S. ships freely passing through the Taiwan Strait is part of the mission of carrying out the Indo-Pacific strategy,” it said in a statement. Taiwan’s armed forces monitored the transit and nothing out of the ordinary happened, the ministry said.
Beijing was far less enthusiastic: China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had paid close attention to the sailing and had expressed concern to the United States. “The Taiwan issue is the most important and sensitive issue in Sino-U.S. relations,” he told a daily news briefing.
While the United States has no formal ties with Taiwan, it is bound by law to help provide the island with the means to defend itself and is its main source of arms. More importantly, just like Saudi Arabia, Taiwan is one of the biggest clients of US weapons. The Pentagon says Washington has sold Taipei more than $15 billion in weaponry since 2010.
China has been ramping up pressure to assert its sovereignty over the island, which it considers a wayward province of “one China” and sacred Chinese territory.
It said a recent Taiwan Strait passage by a French warship, first reported by Reuters on Wednesday, was illegal. China’s Geng added that China hoped that France could ensure such an incident did not happen again.
As Reuters notes, Beijing’s concerns about Taiwan are likely to factor into Chinese defense spending this year, following a stern New Year’s speech from President Xi Jinping in which he threatened to attack Taiwan should it not accept Chinese rule.
To that end, last month, Beijing unveiled a target of 7.5 percent rise in defense spending for 2019, a slower rate than last year but still outpacing its economic growth target. In response to US moves in the region, China has repeatedly sent military aircraft and ships to circle Taiwan on exercises in the past few years and worked to isolate it internationally, whittling down its few remaining diplomatic allies.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2voOiVV Tyler Durden
While today’s Dallas Fed manufacturing activity index dipped to 2 from 6.9 in March, missing expectations of a rebound to 10, and the lowest print since January, among the generally downcast respondents comments was the following mini-essay written by a small business respondent in the “miscellaneous manufacturing” space, which revealed what may be the most gushing praise of the Trump economy yet. Presented below without further comment:
When reviewing our financial performance over the last few years, the outlook for the company has significantly improved, in large part due to the change in taxes. During the Obama administration, our effective total-taxes-paid rate was over 70 percent, and now under the Trump administration, our effective total-taxes-paid rate is about 50 percent.
This has allowed us to hire more people, increase compensation, pay larger bonuses, purchase more manufacturing equipment and make more investments.
For those people who say that lower taxes do not help small and growing businesses, they are completely mistaken. Small and fast-growing businesses need as much after-tax profits for expansion and investments as possible to continue to be successful.
If you want the private sector to expand and hire more people, it’s critical we have sufficient after-tax money to reinvest and justify putting more time and effort in our businesses.
The fastest way to make people give up is seeing all their hard work and the results of their efforts redirected to wasteful and often counterproductive government spending and programs.
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V4Gc42 Tyler Durden
Online trading firm E*Trade Financial Group is preparing to offer cryptocurrency trading on its platform, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg on April 26.
E*Trade will reportedly begin by offering bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) after which it will add other cryptocurrencies.
As one of the largest online trading platforms, E*Trade offering cryptocurrency trading could represent a significant step forward for cryptocurrency adoption. Per the firm’s annual report filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Dec. 31, 2018, E*Trade had 4.9 million brokerage accounts and a total margin receivables balance of $9.6 billion. The firm’s total assets are over $65 billion.
Should E*Trade offer cryptocurrency trading, it would join other online securities trading platforms like Robinhood, which have also stepped into the cryptocurrency space. In May 2018, Robinhood briefly overtook E*Trade in the number of trading accounts on the platform. At that time, Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt said:
“Crypto has certainly added to our growth. In the next couple of years, I think you’ll see Robinhood looking like a full-service consumer finance company.”
Some analysts have recently said that cryptocurrency represents a sound long-term investment for institutional investors. Cambridge Associates, which specializes in pension and endowment consultancy, wrote:
“Despite the challenges, we believe that it is worthwhile for investors to begin exploring this area today with an eye toward the long term. Though these investments entail a high degree of risk, some may very well upend the digital world.’’
via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2vqNRu6 Tyler Durden
