Manchin Undecided On Impeachment Vote, Floats Bipartisan Censure
After refusing to reveal how he’ll vote on impeachment, moderate Democrat Joe Manchin on Monday floated a plan to censure President Trump for pausing military aid to Ukraine while requesting an investigation into the Bidens.
“I see no path to the 67 votes required to impeach,” said Manchin. “However, I do believe a bipartisan majority of this body would vote to censure President Trump for his actions in this manner. Censure would allow this body to unite across party lines, and as an equal branch of government to formally denounce the president’s actions and hold him accountable.”
Manchin’s proposal gained little traction among Senate Republicans, though the Never-Trump wing (Romney, Collins and Murkowski) of the GOP may warm up to it.
“His behavior cannot go unchecked by the Senate, and censure would allow a bipartisan. Statement condemning his unacceptable behavior in the strongest terms,” Manchin said, warning that a failure to respond in a bipartisan way to Trump’s actions would set a bad precedent.
“History will judge the Senate for how we have handled this solemn constitutional duty.”
The issue with a censure vote is that most Senate Republicans don’t think it’s viable, and argue that the impeachment process is too far along.
A censure resolution was originally seen as a way to give more moderate senators an “out” — allowing them to formally disapprove of Trump’s behavior without voting to convict him.
But as moderate senators from both parties were forced to make a tough call on the witness vote last Friday, the benefits of a censure vote for these senators declined immensely.
Nick Weaver and I debate Sens. Graham and Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, a proposal to require that social media firms follow best practices on preventing child abuse. If they don’t, they won’t get full Section 230 immunity from liability for recklessly allowing the abuse. Nick thinks the idea is ill-conceived and doomed to fail. I think there’s a core of sense to the proposal, which simply asks that Silicon Valley firms who are reckless about child abuse on their networks pay for the costs they’re imposing on society. Since the bill gives the attorney general authority to modify the best practices submitted by a commission of industry, academic, and civic representatives, though, critics are sure that an evil bogeyman by the name of Bill Barr will effectively prohibit end-to-end encryption.
But before we get to that that debate, Gus Hurwitz and I unpack the law and tactics behind Facebook’s decision to pay $550 million to settle a facial recognition class action. And Klon Kitchen and Nick ponder the shocking corruption and coverup alleged in the case of a Harvard chemistry chairman being prosecuted for hiding the large sums he was getting from the Chinese government to boost its research into nanomaterials.
Klon also gives us a feel for just how hard it can be to enforce Iranian sanctions, and the creativity that went into one Iranian app developer’s evasion scheme.
Gus and Nick offer real hope that robocalling will start to get harder, and soon: DOJ has requested restraining orders to stop telcos from facilitating fraudulent robocalls; the FTC has put 19 VoIP providers on notice for facilitating robocalls; and SHAKEN/STIR is slowly making it harder to spoof a phone number.
Gus asks a question that had never occurred to me, and certainly not to millions of homeowners who may have committed inadvertent felonies by installing Ring doorbell cameras. It turns out that Ring recordings may be illegal intercepts in states with all-party consent laws. At least that’s what one enterprising New Hampshire defense lawyer is arguing.
First it cocks a snook at Brussels, and now this: The UK government is really on a roll. It’s proposing an IoT security law that Nick endorses with enthusiasm. Maryland, not so much: Klon critiques a proposed state law that would make ransomware illegal – and maybe ransomware research, too.
In dog-bites-man news, the United Nations has suffered a breach – probably by a semi-competent government. Which doesn’t narrow things down much, since as Nick observes, everyone but the Germans has probably pwned the UN. And the Germans are just being polite.
A lot of old stories have come back for one more turn on stage: The Russian hacker that the Russian government was afraid would sing if extradited to the US has pleaded guilty and is probably singing already. Avast has killed Jumpshot, its much-criticized data collection operation. The Bezosphone Saga continues, as Sen. Chris Murphy calls on the DNI and FBI to investigate the hacking allegations, and Bezos’s girlfriend’s brother is suing for defamation. Charges against the Iowa courthouse pentesters have finally been dropped. LabMD’s Mike Daugherty should probably hang up his cleats. He won a great victory over the FTC, but his racketeering suit against Tiversa and lawyers is officially time-barred. Finally, it turns out that the FBI has been investigating NSO Group since 2017, though without bringing charges, so far.
As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of our institutions, clients, friends, former friends, spouses, children, or pets.
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One way to understand the Democratic Party’s agenda for the next four years is to pay attention to what’s happening on the presidential campaign trail.
Another way—maybe a better way—is to keep an eye on what the House of Representatives is doing right now. And that’s especially true this week, when Democrats are expected to pass a package of labor union-backed policies through the House even though the chances that the Senate will consider the bill are roughly nil.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) would insert new language into the National Labor Relations Act to compel the payment of union dues even by non-members working in unionized professions. That means the passage of the PRO Act would effectively undo so-called “right to work” laws on the books in many states and cancel out the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2018’s closely watched Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees case. In that decision, the high court ruled that requiring non-union workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment “violates the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern,” as Justice Samuel Alito put it.
The PRO Act would also implement a veritable grab bag of policies that labor unions have been pushing Congress to pass for years. The bill would force employers to turn over employees’ private information—including cell phone numbers, email addresses, and work schedules—to union organizers. It would accelerate the National Labor Relation Board’s official timetable for union organizing elections in non-union workplaces. And it would codify so-called “card check” elections, removing the protection of the secret ballot when a workplace votes to unionize.
All three policies are meant to tip the scales towards unions and against employers.
Unions are looking for help from Congress because membership continues to fall. According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, only 10.3 percent of American workers are unionized—a drop of 0.2 percentage points since this time last year. While 33 percent of public-sector workers are unionized, only 6.2 percent of private-sector workers are members of a union.
“This failure to bolster union membership, even with the favorable rules promulgated by federal agencies, has strengthened organized labor’s resolve that the only solution is to push for legislation like the PRO Act,” says Trey Kovaks, a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank that opposes the PRO Act. “Implementing such a policy would take away workers’ right to choose how they spend their earnings, limit flexible work arrangements, and endangers workers’ privacy.”
Other opponents of the bill, like the National Retail Federation, which represents store owners, warn that passage of the PRO Act would hurt the gig economy. One provision in the bill would impose a multi-level test for determining if a worker is an independent contractor or an employee. A similar provision in California state law—which predated the state’s even more controversial law effectively banning most independent contractor work—significantly curtailed the number of workers classified as independent contractors.
Forcing more workers to count as employees means higher costs on employers, less flexibility for workers, and, of course, more potential union members.
But since the PRO Act is almost certainly dead on arrival in the Senate, the expected House vote this week is more about politics than setting policy.
Internally, the fact that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) is letting the bill come to the floor for a vote is a major win for the House Democrats’ progressive wing. But it’s also telling that several Democrats in swing districts signed a letter last week urging Pelosi to bring the bill to the floor.
That means the PRO Act is likely to be a litmus test in this year’s elections. Scheduling a vote now, even when the bill won’t go any further, will allow Democrats to campaign on having supported it—and attack swing-district Republicans who oppose it.
And, at a higher level, all of this is outlining the direction Democrats will try to take the country if they gain control of the Senate and/or the White House in November. Unlike the pie-in-the-sky promises being made by the presidential candidates—who will compete later tonight in the first nominating contest on the long road to the White House—the PRO Act is a concrete list of policies being pushed by a politically powerful set of special interests.
That makes it far more likely that a Democratic Congress in the next few years could pass this package, or something that looks a lot like it, while lawmakers continue to clash over bigger issues like Medicare for All and free college.
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I was listening to NPR in my car today and heard one of the House managers make the case that I though the Democrats should have made all along–that Trump’s Ukrainian mess was not a one-off, but part of a very troubling pattern of behavior by the president that renders him unfit to hold office. This includes everything from insulting a gold star mother to asking Russia to hack Hillary’s emails to constant lies and deceptions, and so on.
Influenced by co-blogger Keith Whittington, I have come to the conclusion that impeachment should be reserved for presidents who are not just incorrigible in misbehaving, but incorrigible in ways that Congress can’t easily control through normal checks and balances. There is a good case to be made that this describes Trump. But while a House manager tried to make it today, that’s not what the impeachment hearings were about, nor is that what is in the articles of impeachment.
What we do have is obstruction of justice and the Ukrainian situation. With regard to the latter, I think that the Democrats would have an open-and-shut case for impeachment if they could show either that (1) Trump really did not believe that the Bidens had done anything wrong, and thus tried to sic the Ukrainians on them solely because Biden Sr. is his political opponents; or (2) that Trump tried to get the Ukrainians to make up damaging evidence, rather than simply launch an investigation. Instead, we have dubious behavior that is “impeachable,” but probably every president has engaged in impeachable behavior. (Certainly Obama engaged in a fair amount of impeachable conduct, but even in my book about his misbehavior, I never suggested he be impeached). In the annals of presidential misconduct, it’s relatively small beans–unless, of course, it’s part of a broader pattern of misbehavior, which is exactly what the Democrats, in their rush to conclude the impeachment process before the campaign season, chose not to investigate and allege in the impeachment articles.
I’m also dubious of impeachment unless there is a clear public majority in favor of it, which is one of the reasons I opposed impeaching Bill Clinton. After all, unlike in a parliamentary system where new elections are usually called when the PM is removed, in the U.S. the Vice-President takes over, and nobody voted for him to be president.
All that said, I have been contemplating a question that I’m unsure of the answer to: Let’s say I were a Senator voting my conscience, and I believed the following: (1) Trump’s conduct is “impeachable”; (2) I wouldn’t normally vote to convict on the level of misbehavior alleged in the articles of impeachment, especially in the absence of strong public support for it; and (3) allegations and evidence not put forward by the House persuade me that Trump is unfit to be president. Should I vote to convict?
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Nick Weaver and I debate Sens. Graham and Blumenthal’s EARN IT Act, a proposal to require that social media firms follow best practices on preventing child abuse. If they don’t, they won’t get full Section 230 immunity from liability for recklessly allowing the abuse. Nick thinks the idea is ill-conceived and doomed to fail. I think there’s a core of sense to the proposal, which simply asks that Silicon Valley firms who are reckless about child abuse on their networks pay for the costs they’re imposing on society. Since the bill gives the attorney general authority to modify the best practices submitted by a commission of industry, academic, and civic representatives, though, critics are sure that an evil bogeyman by the name of Bill Barr will effectively prohibit end-to-end encryption.
But before we get to that that debate, Gus Hurwitz and I unpack the law and tactics behind Facebook’s decision to pay $550 million to settle a facial recognition class action. And Klon Kitchen and Nick ponder the shocking corruption and coverup alleged in the case of a Harvard chemistry chairman being prosecuted for hiding the large sums he was getting from the Chinese government to boost its research into nanomaterials.
Klon also gives us a feel for just how hard it can be to enforce Iranian sanctions, and the creativity that went into one Iranian app developer’s evasion scheme.
Gus and Nick offer real hope that robocalling will start to get harder, and soon: DOJ has requested restraining orders to stop telcos from facilitating fraudulent robocalls; the FTC has put 19 VoIP providers on notice for facilitating robocalls; and SHAKEN/STIR is slowly making it harder to spoof a phone number.
Gus asks a question that had never occurred to me, and certainly not to millions of homeowners who may have committed inadvertent felonies by installing Ring doorbell cameras. It turns out that Ring recordings may be illegal intercepts in states with all-party consent laws. At least that’s what one enterprising New Hampshire defense lawyer is arguing.
First it cocks a snook at Brussels, and now this: The UK government is really on a roll. It’s proposing an IoT security law that Nick endorses with enthusiasm. Maryland, not so much: Klon critiques a proposed state law that would make ransomware illegal – and maybe ransomware research, too.
In dog-bites-man news, the United Nations has suffered a breach – probably by a semi-competent government. Which doesn’t narrow things down much, since as Nick observes, everyone but the Germans has probably pwned the UN. And the Germans are just being polite.
A lot of old stories have come back for one more turn on stage: The Russian hacker that the Russian government was afraid would sing if extradited to the US has pleaded guilty and is probably singing already. Avast has killed Jumpshot, its much-criticized data collection operation. The Bezosphone Saga continues, as Sen. Chris Murphy calls on the DNI and FBI to investigate the hacking allegations, and Bezos’s girlfriend’s brother is suing for defamation. Charges against the Iowa courthouse pentesters have finally been dropped. LabMD’s Mike Daugherty should probably hang up his cleats. He won a great victory over the FTC, but his racketeering suit against Tiversa and lawyers is officially time-barred. Finally, it turns out that the FBI has been investigating NSO Group since 2017, though without bringing charges, so far.
As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of our institutions, clients, friends, former friends, spouses, children, or pets.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2v4trdi
via IFTTT
One way to understand the Democratic Party’s agenda for the next four years is to pay attention to what’s happening on the presidential campaign trail.
Another way—maybe a better way—is to keep an eye on what the House of Representatives is doing right now. And that’s especially true this week, when Democrats are expected to pass a package of labor union-backed policies through the House even though the chances that the Senate will consider the bill are roughly nil.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act) would insert new language into the National Labor Relations Act to compel the payment of union dues even by non-members working in unionized professions. That means the passage of the PRO Act would effectively undo so-called “right to work” laws on the books in many states and cancel out the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2018’s closely watched Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees case. In that decision, the high court ruled that requiring non-union workers to pay union dues as a condition of employment “violates the free speech rights of nonmembers by compelling them to subsidize private speech on matters of substantial public concern,” as Justice Samuel Alito put it.
The PRO Act would also implement a veritable grab bag of policies that labor unions have been pushing Congress to pass for years. The bill would force employers to turn over employees’ private information—including cell phone numbers, email addresses, and work schedules—to union organizers. It would accelerate the National Labor Relation Board’s official timetable for union organizing elections in non-union workplaces. And it would codify so-called “card check” elections, removing the protection of the secret ballot when a workplace votes to unionize.
All three policies are meant to tip the scales towards unions and against employers.
Unions are looking for help from Congress because membership continues to fall. According to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data, only 10.3 percent of American workers are unionized—a drop of 0.2 percentage points since this time last year. While 33 percent of public-sector workers are unionized, only 6.2 percent of private-sector workers are members of a union.
“This failure to bolster union membership, even with the favorable rules promulgated by federal agencies, has strengthened organized labor’s resolve that the only solution is to push for legislation like the PRO Act,” says Trey Kovaks, a policy analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank that opposes the PRO Act. “Implementing such a policy would take away workers’ right to choose how they spend their earnings, limit flexible work arrangements, and endangers workers’ privacy.”
Other opponents of the bill, like the National Retail Federation, which represents store owners, warn that passage of the PRO Act would hurt the gig economy. One provision in the bill would impose a multi-level test for determining if a worker is an independent contractor or an employee. A similar provision in California state law—which predated the state’s even more controversial law effectively banning most independent contractor work—significantly curtailed the number of workers classified as independent contractors.
Forcing more workers to count as employees means higher costs on employers, less flexibility for workers, and, of course, more potential union members.
But since the PRO Act is almost certainly dead on arrival in the Senate, the expected House vote this week is more about politics than setting policy.
Internally, the fact that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) is letting the bill come to the floor for a vote is a major win for the House Democrats’ progressive wing. But it’s also telling that several Democrats in swing districts signed a letter last week urging Pelosi to bring the bill to the floor.
That means the PRO Act is likely to be a litmus test in this year’s elections. Scheduling a vote now, even when the bill won’t go any further, will allow Democrats to campaign on having supported it—and attack swing-district Republicans who oppose it.
And, at a higher level, all of this is outlining the direction Democrats will try to take the country if they gain control of the Senate and/or the White House in November. Unlike the pie-in-the-sky promises being made by the presidential candidates—who will compete later tonight in the first nominating contest on the long road to the White House—the PRO Act is a concrete list of policies being pushed by a politically powerful set of special interests.
That makes it far more likely that a Democratic Congress in the next few years could pass this package, or something that looks a lot like it, while lawmakers continue to clash over bigger issues like Medicare for All and free college.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2tvZ7YY
via IFTTT
I was listening to NPR in my car today and heard one of the House managers make the case that I though the Democrats should have made all along–that Trump’s Ukrainian mess was not a one-off, but part of a very troubling pattern of behavior by the president that renders him unfit to hold office. This includes everything from insulting a gold star mother to asking Russia to hack Hillary’s emails to constant lies and deceptions, and so on.
Influenced by co-blogger Keith Whittington, I have come to the conclusion that impeachment should be reserved for presidents who are not just incorrigible in misbehaving, but incorrigible in ways that Congress can’t easily control through normal checks and balances. There is a good case to be made that this describes Trump. But while a House manager tried to make it today, that’s not what the impeachment hearings were about, nor is that what is in the articles of impeachment.
What we do have is obstruction of justice and the Ukrainian situation. With regard to the latter, I think that the Democrats would have an open-and-shut case for impeachment if they could show either that (1) Trump really did not believe that the Bidens had done anything wrong, and thus tried to sic the Ukrainians on them solely because Biden Sr. is his political opponent; or (2) that Trump tried to get the Ukrainians to make up damaging evidence, rather than simply launch an investigation. Instead, we have dubious behavior that is “impeachable,” but probably every president has engaged in impeachable behavior. (Certainly Obama engaged in a fair amount of impeachable conduct, but even in my book about his misbehavior, I never suggested he be impeached). In the annals of presidential misconduct, it’s relatively small beans–unless, of course, it’s part of a broader pattern of misbehavior, which is exactly what the Democrats, in their rush to conclude the impeachment process before the campaign season, chose not to investigate and allege in the impeachment articles.
I’m also dubious of impeachment unless there is a clear public majority in favor of it, which is one of the reasons I opposed impeaching Bill Clinton. After all, unlike in a parliamentary system where new elections are usually called when the PM is removed, in the U.S. the Vice-President takes over, and nobody voted for him to be president.
All that said, I have been contemplating a question that I’m unsure of the answer to: Let’s say I were a Senator voting my conscience, and I believed the following: (1) Trump’s conduct is “impeachable”; (2) I wouldn’t normally vote to convict on the level of misbehavior alleged in the articles of impeachment, especially in the absence of strong public support for it; and (3) allegations and evidence not put forward by the House persuade me that Trump is unfit to be president. Should I vote to convict?
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In an explosive interview Dr. Francis Boyle, who drafted the Biological Weapons Act has given a detailed statement admitting that the 2019 Wuhan Coronavirus is an offensive Biological Warfare Weapon and that the World Health Organization (WHO) already knows about it.
Dr. Francis Boyle Creator Of BioWeapons Act Says Coronavirus Is Biological Warfare Weapon
Francis Boyle is a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He drafted the U.S. domestic implementing legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, that was approved unanimously by both Houses of the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President George H.W. Bush.
In an exclusive interview given to Geopolitics and Empire, Dr. Boyle discusses the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China and the Biosafety Level 4 laboratory (BSL-4) from which he believes the infectious disease escaped. He believes the virus is potentially lethal and an offensive biological warfare weapon or dual-use biowarfare weapons agent genetically modified with gain of function properties, which is why the Chinese government originally tried to cover it up and is now taking drastic measures to contain it.
The Wuhan BSL-4 lab is also a specially designated World Health Organization (WHO) research lab and Dr. Boyle contends that the WHO knows full well what is occurring.
Dr. Boyle also touches upon GreatGameIndia‘s exclusive report Coronavirus Bioweapon – where we reported in detail how Chinese Biowarfare agents working at the Canadian lab in Winnipeg were involved in the smuggling of Coronavirus to Wuhan’s lab from where it is believed to have been leaked.
Watch Dr. Francis Boyle’s interview with Geopolitics and Empire below:
Dr. Boyle’s position is in stark contrast to the mainstream media’s narrative of the virus being originated from the seafood market, which is increasingly being questioned by many experts.
In a video accompanying his post, Cotton explained that the Wuhan wet market (which Cotton incorrectly referred to as a seafood market) has been shown by experts to not be the source of the deadly contagion.
Cotton referenced a Lancet study which showed that many of the first cases of the novel coronavirus, including patient zero, had no connection to the wet market — devastatingly undermining mainstream media’s claim.
“As one epidemiologist said: ‘That virus went into the seafood market before it came out of the seafood market.’ We still don’t know where it originated,” Cotton said.
“I would note that Wuhan also has China’s only bio-safety level four super laboratory that works with the world’s most deadly pathogens to include, yes, coronavirus.”
China claimed—for almost two months—that coronavirus had originated in a Wuhan seafood market. That is not the case. @TheLancet published a study demonstrating that of the original 40 cases, 14 of them had no contact with the seafood market, including Patient Zero. pic.twitter.com/PdgqgHjkGy
Such concerns have also been raised by J.R. Nyquist, the well known author of the books “Origins of the Fourth World War” and “The Fool and His Enemy,” as well as co-author of “The New Tactics of Global War”. In his insightful article he published secret speechs given to high-level Communist Party cadres by Chinese Defense Minister Gen. Chi Haotian explaining a long-range plan for ensuring a Chinese national renaissance – the catalyst for which would be China’s secret plan to weaponiz viruses.
Nyquist gave three different data points for making his case in analyzing Coronavirus. He writes:
The third data point worth considering: the journal GreatGameIndia has published a piece titled “Coronavirus Bioweapon – How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada And Weaponized It.”
It is not GreatGameIndia alone which is being viciously attacked. Zero Hedge, a popular alternate media blog was suspended by Twitter for publishing a story related to a study by Indian scientists finding 2019 Wuhan Coronavirus to be not naturally evolved, raising the possibility of it being created in a lab. Shockingly, the study itself came under intense online criticism by Social Media experts resulting in the scientists withdrawing the paper.
The study came under the scanner as two of the 12 researchers belonged to the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s Department of Emerging Infectious Diseases, and it was funded by the United States Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).
The study, conducted by scientists of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in the U.S. and the Duke-National University in Singapore, is now being investigated for how the scientists were allowed to access live samples of bats and bat hunters (humans) without due permissions.
The results of the study were published in October last year in the PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases journal, originally established by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As the author J.R. Nyquist puts it:
We must have an investigation of the outbreak in Wuhan. The Chinese must grant the world total transparency. The truth must come out. If Chinese officials are innocent, they have nothing to hide. If they are guilty, they will refuse to cooperate.
The real concern here is whether the rest of the world has the courage to demand a real and thorough investigation. We need to be fearless in this demand and not allow “economic interests” to play a coy and dishonest game of denial. We need an honest inquiry. We need it now.
Alleged Bezos Nude Photo Leaker Sues Amazon Founder For Defamation
The man who was allegedly accused by Jeff Bezos’ representatives of providing graphic nude photos of the Amazon founder to news outlets is now hitting back.
Michael Sanchez, the brother of the Bezos’ girlfriend, is suing the Amazon founder for defamation in a suit filed Friday in California state court in Los Angeles. The suit also names Gavin De Becker, a security consultant hired by Bezos, as a defendant, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“My client has chosen to address this lawsuit in court and we will do that soon,” Bezos’ lawyer responded.
Sanchez’s sister, Bezos’ girlfriend, provided a statement claiming: “Michael is my older brother. He secretly provided my most personal information to the National Enquirer—a deep and unforgivable betrayal.”
“Michael’s lawsuit speaks for itself,” the plaintiff’s lawyer said.
The lawsuit does acknowledge that Sanchez helped publicize the relationship in an attempt to “get in front of the news” of the relationship. But his lawsuit raises allegations of a campaign by Bezos and De Becker to blame Sanchez for turning over graphic nude photographs, which Sanchez says he didn’t do.
People familiar with the matter have said that Sanchez showed the National Enquirer a below the belt photo of Bezos, but kept it to himself, only supplying the tabloid with other photos. The tabloid published photos of Bezos and his girlfriend in public back in January 2019, but it kept photos supplied by Mr. Sanchez under wraps.
Now Federal prosecutors are investigating a hack of Bezos’ phone and whether the National Enquirer attempted to extort or blackmail him over embarrassing photos, which Bezos claimed in a blog post last year.
The post also included an email from Enquirer editor Dylan Howard to Bezos’ lawyer, where Howard described sexual photos of the Amazon CEO.
Sanchez says he denies giving the Enquirer the “many penis selfies”. Instead, he claims he was a “target” of De Becker who spread a false narrative about the photos. The suit also claims that Bezos and De Becker peddled false rumors that Sanchez “was involved in a conservative conspiracy with high-profile political operatives” and the Saudi government.
The suit claims that De Becker used Sanchez’s relationship with two former Trump advisers, Carter Page and Roger Stone, as evidence that he was working against Bezos.
The complaint says: “All of these actions, including Mr. de Becker’s promulgation of the false information and Mr. Bezos’ refusal to contradict that false information, caused Mr. Sanchez’s reputation to suffer damage on a national scale, as well as causing him to suffer emotional distress,” the complaint says, seeking unspecified damages.
For benefit of our readers and all parties involved, we have also omitted the Bezos dick pics from this article.
Let’s take a look at the last six recessions. How long did it take from inversion to recession?
10-Year to 3-Month Inversions
In this post, we are analyzing the recession lead time from yield curve inversions as measured by by the 10-year yield minus the 3-month yield.
An inversion occurs when the result is negative, i.e. the 10-year note yield is lower than the 3-month T-Bill yield.
Let’s kick this discussion off with a Tweet from Jim Bianco.
The curve leads a recession by 311 days. That would be Q2 20, based on an in an initial inversion in Jun 19. It could be as late as Q4 20, if the lead equals 06.
Bianco says “the yield curve does not predict a recession, it causes it.”
This is a subtle point of difference, but I respectfully disagree.
The yield curve does not “cause” anything. After all, the yield curve has no decision-making ability or input. Rather, an inverted yield curve is a market “reaction” to Fed policy, government fiscal policy, or both.
Thus an inverted yield curve is a “symptom” that something is wrong or about to go wrong, not a cause of anything. Pragmatically speaking, the difference may not matter, but let’s put the blame where it belongs.
And the blame for the next recession does not go to the yield curve!
I believe we all know where it goes: Fed bubble blowing policies coupled with poor governmental fiscal policies.
With that distinction out of the way, let’s hone in on some charts.
December 1969 Recession
The recession was about a year from the first inversion. Bianco tracked 10-day sustained inversion.
November 1973 Recession
Heading into the 1973 recession you had about a 5-month lead-time warning.
Jan 1980 Recession
Congratulations! You had a long lead time on this one.
July 1981 Recession
This double-dip recession whipsaw gave you a warning of about 9 months.
March 2001 Recession
The inversion signal for the March 2001 recession gave you 8 months warning, perhaps.
But many technology stocks started their collapse in early 2000.
From an investment standpoint, there was no warning at all for many issues.
Great Recession
There was plenty of warning for this one. The stock market peaked in November of 2007. The Great Recession started the next month.
One of the more amusing aspects of the Great Recession is that in March, three months after the recession started, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke denied a housing bubble and a recession.
Also in March of 2008 the ECRI called it a recession of choice, insisting the Fed could have prevented it.
Yet, the ECRI insists it called that recession correctly.
Please consider the following image snip. Highlighting is mine.
ECRI:
“The difference this time is that, even though the shocks have arrived,good leading indicators like the USLLI are not showing recessionary weakness… This is a key reason why the economy is not yet in a recession. ….weakness is not pronounced, pervasive and persistent enough to be recessionary. …. leading indexes are still holding up sufficiently for a recession to be averted.“
The U.S. economy is now in a clear window of vulnerability, given the plunge in ECRI’s Weekly Leading Index (WLI) since last spring. Yet there is a brief window of opportunity within that window of vulnerability to avert a recession. That is why ECRI has not yet forecast a recession. ….
This is why, having correctly predicted the last two recessions in real time without crying wolf in between, we are not forecasting one yet.
ECRI Denial
The ECRI laid it on pretty thick, openly mocking the “best advertised [recession] in history” while claiming “This is why, having correctly predicted the last two recessions in real time without crying wolf in between, we are not forecasting one yet.“
The irony is the recession was about 2 months old at the time.
The U.S. economy is now on a recession track. Yet this is a recession that could have been averted. In January, given the plunge in the Weekly Leading Index, we declared that the economy had entered a clear window of vulnerability. Yet we emphasized the brief window of opportunity within that window of vulnerability for timely policy stimulus to head off a recession.
It is a somewhat different story with regard to GDP, because the cyclically volatile manufacturing sector still accounts for 36% of GDP. A mild downturn in that sector should limit the decline in GDP in this recession.
Poor Calls
The ECRI did NOT call that recession and it has since called one that did not happen. I am not picking on the ECRI, just setting the facts straight.
I have made a number of poor calls, including two recession calls that have not happened. On one of them, I sided with the ECRI on coincident indicators. That was a mistake.
It is not easy to get these calls correct and many who claim to have done that, didn’t, to put things politely.
Where to Now?
We are still on a recession track IMO. But you have six models to pick from.
One of them is that we are in a recession now, and no one even realizes it.
Feeling lucky like November 2007? Even if so, will you recognize the recession when it hits?
The worst scenario is not that the recession has started, or is about to, but rather this is now like March of 2000 or November 1978 with stocks tanking well in advance of a recession.
