Tag: news

77% Of CFOs Say Stock Market Is Overvalued Even As They Order Record Stock Buybacks

77% Of CFOs Say Stock Market Is Overvalued Even As They Order Record Stock Buybacks

Over the past two years, a dramatic, profound divergence emerged between consumer and CEO (or corporate professional) confidence, with the former soaring to record highs while the latter tumbling to financial crisis levels.

While there was no immediate explanation for this, some such as Deutsche Bank showed that CEO Confidence tends to lead the ISM Non-Mfg PMI by 12 months with uncanny accuracy, suggesting that CEO confidence and sentiment may be – as one would expect – a far more accurate indicator of where the economy is headed, where consumer confidence is merely a lagging representation of of the economy and/or stock market at any given moment.

So now that we are two weeks into the new 2020, with the worst of the trade war with China behind us and the repo crisis supposedly over (if only until April tax season), has there been any material improvement in corporate executive confidence. As it turns out, according to the latest Deloitte CFO Signal Survey, the answer is not only no, but quite the opposite, because despite the record S&P high and the recent rebound in the US economy, CFOs at big US companies entered 2020 with almost all anticipating an economic slowdown against the backdrop of an overvalued stock market.

The Deloitte CFO Survey – which polled 147 CFOs from U.S., Canada and Mexico from companies that have more than $3 billion in annual revenue – showed that while the corporate leaders see the economy as “good,” they anticipate that before the year is over, conditions will slow. They also see consumer and business spending slowing, and 82% anticipate taking more defensive actions, like reducing discretionary spending and headcount, as a way to stave off the looming headwinds, CNBC reported.

In short, the people who know their companies – and the economy best – are confident that the conventional wisdom about a pick up in economic growth is dead wrong.

According to the survey, the coming slowdown is likely to be particularly acute in Europe and China, because while 69% of respondents see conditions in North America as good, the number is just 7% in Europe and 18% in China, the latter a three-year low as the country’s shift to a more consumer-focused economy and its trade battle with the U.S. both conspiring to hold back growth.

“North America is clearly the place where companies are continuing to increase their investment focus,” said Sandy Cockrell, Deloitte Global CFO program leader. “There’s still a high level of caution.”

The good news is that while CFOs do see a downturn, they’re not foreseeing a worst-case scenario… yet: expectations for an outright recession fell to just 3% in the fourth-quarter survey, down from 15% in the first-quarter 2019 survey (when stocks had just emerged from a vicious if bread Q4 2018 bear market). However, 97% say a slowdown already has begun or will start sometime in 2020.

These concerns, CNBC notes, are consistent with a recent Conference Board CEO survey that found recession at the top of the list of things to fear.

What could help reverse sentiment sharply higher? In a word (or three): trade war peace.  Cockrell said a lasting peace between the U.S. and China would be a big help. While the two countries are about the sign a phase one trade agreement, uncertainty over the impact tariffs the two sides have levied and could reinstitute remain problems.

“If we can get these trade deals done, that would be the biggest thing,” he said. “Uncertainty of having to price your supply chains makes budgeting and forecasting extremely difficult. From a CFO’s perspective, naturally they are going to be a bit on the conservative side, which they should be. But if they can get some clarity behind that, I would view that as a tailwind.”

Besides trade, CFOs are also closely watching the 2020 presidential election, with some 65% saying economic performance will depend significantly on the outcome, though few are making business adjustments yet based on the political landscape.

But the biggest paradox is CFO sentiment toward the market: as the S&P hits new record highs on an almost daily basis every day since the Fed launched QE4 last October, 77% of respondents said stocks are overvalued, the highest level in nearly two years. Just 4% said equities are undervalued, down from 10% in the last reading.

Why is this a paradox? Because while over three-quarters CFOs lament just how expensive the market has become, virtually all of them are scrambling to repurchase their “overvalued” stock, with total buybacks in 2018 and 2019 hitting record highs on largely thanks to Trump’s tax law, which allowed US corporations to repatriate about $1.5 trillion in offshore cash, much of which was then used by companies to buy back their stock. Other companies merely issue debt and use the proceeds to also buyback stocks. Meanwhile, looking ahead, SocGen forecasts that in 2020, S&P500 companies will buyback another $570BN in stock, just shy of the 2019 record highs.

So while most corporate Corner Suites are now convinced all stocks are overvalued, they keep a special place in their heart for their own stock, which they all are rushing to repurchase – especially tech CFOs…

… as the higher their own stock goes, the greater their equity-linked comp. In other words, while most agree stocks are overvalued, they will keep buying (back) these overvalued stocks as their pay literally depends on it.

Meanwhile, as everyone rushes to buyback their own stock, the entire market just gets even more overvalued, and it is up to the Fed to make sure not even a modest market correction takes place, or else the correction will promptly transform into a full-blown crash.

And just to keep everyone distracted from this great discrepancy, CFOs had a convenient scapegoat on which to “focus”: global warming. According to Deloitte, CFOs were also asked about climate change, with more than 70% saying they are under some pressure from stakeholders to take preventive actions. Perhaps that “action” is to buyback their own stock?


Tyler Durden

Thu, 01/09/2020 – 15:26

Tags
Business Finance

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39UBJVj Tyler Durden

Maryland Housing Package Combines Upzoning With Vienna-Style Social Housing

A Maryland lawmaker is trying to cobble together a coalition of tenant advocates, housing supply-siders, and left-wing public housing activists to pass an ambitious package of bills aimed at addressing the state’s housing affordability problems.

“People’s incomes have remained stagnant and the cost of housing has gone up,” says Del. Vaughn Stewart (D–Montgomery County). “The housing affordability problem has turned into a crisis, and affects people across the income spectrum. This is no longer just a problem of the poorest Marylanders being able to afford a roof over their heads.”

To that end, Stewart introduced three bills that expand current tenant protections, legalize the construction of “middle housing” in areas with lots of either jobs or transit, and impose new taxes on real estate transactions to fund “Vienna-style” government-owned housing developments.

Of the three, Stewart’s Modest Homes Choices Act is the one most likely to appeal to free marketers. According to summary language provided to Reason, the bill would require all local governments in the state to allow for the development of duplexes on residential parcels currently zoned for single-family dwellings in “qualifying census tracts.” Qualifying tracts would need to be within a mile of a major transit stop, have 5,000 jobs per square mile, or have a median household income twice that of a metro area’s median income.

The bill would also require local governments to allow the development of three- and four-unit homes, as well as townhomes and “cottage clusters” (small homes sharing a common courtyard) in these census tracts.

“In areas where you have the most opportunity, the best public amenities, the most jobs, the most access to transit, you can’t have the lowest density,” Stewart tells Reason, saying that restrictions on private, market-rate housing have played a critical roll in raising the state’s housing costs. “This is not the classic liberal story of market failure. Or somehow corporate greed.”

The legislation represents a hybrid approach from zoning reform bills that have been proposed in places like Virginia and California. In the former state, the legislature will consider a bill that would legalize duplexes on all residential land in the state. California’s major housing reform bill, SB 50, authorizes mid-rise apartments of up to five stories near transit stops and job centers, in addition to allowing four-unit homes statewide.

A more modest, targeted upzoning bill is politically practical in Maryland, says Stewart, where the state government has traditionally not played a major role in land-use decisions. It’s also only one leg of the housing supply stool.

The other leg is Stewart’s Social Housing Act. That bill would raise tax rates on real estate transfers and impose a $75 recording fee on some real estate documents. Most of the proceeds would then go to fund the state’s existing Partnership Rental Housing Program, which finances affordable housing projects.

The bill doubles the amount of funding the program can spend on these projects to $150,000 per-unit for large projects, and $4 million total for smaller projects. It would also create a new block grant “social housing” program with no per-project or per-unit funding caps.

These social housing projects would be publicly-owned, mixed-income developments. There would be three tiers of rent in these complexes, with some tenants paying slightly below-market-rate rents, others paying “cost rents” that cover a building’s operating expenses plus losses from vacant units, and a more heavily discounted tier for low-income renters.

While he supports more private housing supply, Stewart argues upzoning is not a sufficient response to housing affordability problems. “[I am] skeptical that would completely solve the problem,” he says. “I think that you would still have abusive landlords. You would likely have sky-high rents.”

The idea for social housing, he said, is inspired by the approach taken in Vienna, Austria, where a large portion of the housing stock is mixed-income units built and maintained by the government or semi-public entities. Funding these mixed-income developments in Maryland would keep housing affordable while avoiding many of the problems of past public housing efforts, says Stewart, which often had the effect of concentrating poverty in marginal locations far from jobs or transit.

There’s an inherent trade-off in this approach, however, says Michael Lewyn, a property law professor at Touro Law School. The more resources you devote toward helping median-income renters, the less money you have to spend on housing for low- and no-income folks.

“On the one hand, if you worry about concentrated poverty, the remedy for that is mixed-income housing,” he tells Reason. “[But] if you have a major-league housing shortage, then your goal is to build as many units as possible.”

In addition to devoting resources to building housing for folks who could likely afford private, market-rate alternatives, Stewart’s bill would raise development costs in other ways. For instance, his legislation would require that public housing developments use unionized labor and pay prevailing wage rates, which will raise labor costs. It also prioritizes funding for social housing developments in high-income, job- and transit-rich census tracts, where land costs are going to be higher.

Whatever the merits of those requirements, they will mean that any single sum of money will end up buying fewer units of housing.

Lewyn notes that while Vienna might be an example of successful public housing policies, it is also a great example of a well-functioning private housing market.

“Yes, you have a huge amount of new [public] housing coming online, you also have private housing coming online,” Lewyn says.

A February 2019 Huffington Post story on “Vienna’s affordable housing paradise” notes that two-thirds of the 13,000 new homes built in the city each year are produced by private developers. That is way more public housing than any U.S. city is building. But it also happens to be way more private housing than any U.S. city is building.

A blog post by Lewyn in response to the HuffPo article notes that Vienna, a city of 1.8 million people, managed to add more total units in a single year than the comparatively more populous Manhattan did in three years. Vienna is even outbuilding Houston, a larger city known for its high rates of housing construction.

A 2016 study put out by Harvard University’s Center for Joint Housing Studies comparing international rental markets found that in Austria as a whole, the median market-rate renter spent 20 percent of their income on housing. Not only is that lower than the 30 percent the median market-rate U.S. renter spends, it’s also within spitting distance of the 16.7 percent of income Austrian renters in public housing are paying for housing.

That, again, suggests that an expansive public housing system in Austria is complemented by a lot of affordable private housing.

Lewyn argues that even in a very deregulated market, there will still be very low-income people who will not be able to find adequate private housing, necessitating some form of government assistance.

(The most libertarian policy would be to eliminate all regulations of housing quality so that people with very low incomes, or even no source of formal income, could rent or build dirt-cheap slum housing. Whether one finds that radical solution palatable probably turns on just how morally offensive one finds the redistributive taxation needed to fund supportive housing.)

In addition to his upzoning and social housing bills, Stewart’s housing package also includes stepped-up tenant protections. Tenants who are stalking victims or have been harassed by their landlord on the basis of their sex, race, or gender identity would be allowed to terminate their leases early. Landlords would also have to return tenants’ security deposits within 30 days, as opposed to the current 45.

Stewart hopes that by introducing his bills as a package, he will be able to assemble a winning coalition of different interest groups who don’t normally pool their resources.

“Typically, how it works is the tenant activists testify in Annapolis on tenant bills, leftists go testify on public housing bills, and then your sort of YIMBY urbanist types come testify on your efforts to create more density of private-market housing,” he says. “I am trying to create a broad, durable coalition of people interested in housing justice who are often trapped in silos.”

He says that since announcing his housing package, he’s gotten messages of support from both socialists and hardcore free marketers.

Maryland’s legislative session started yesterday. Stewart says he is hoping to get a hearing on his bills within the next few weeks.

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Maryland Housing Package Combines Upzoning With Vienna-Style Social Housing

A Maryland lawmaker is trying to cobble together a coalition of tenant advocates, housing supply-siders, and left-wing public housing activists to pass an ambitious package of bills aimed at addressing the state’s housing affordability problems.

“People’s incomes have remained stagnant and the cost of housing has gone up,” says Del. Vaughn Stewart (D–Montgomery County). “Housing affordability problem has turned into a crisis, and affects people across the income spectrum. This is no longer just a problem of the poorest Marylanders being able to afford a roof over their heads.”

To that end, Stewart introduced three bills that expand current tenant protections, legalize the construction of “middle housing” in areas with lots of either jobs or transit, and impose new taxes on real estate transactions to fund “Vienna-style” government-owned housing developments.

Of the three, Stewart’s Modest Homes Choices Act is the one most likely to appeal to free marketers. According to summary language provided to Reason, the bill would require all local governments in the state to allow for the development of duplexes on residential parcels currently zoned for single-family dwellings in “qualifying census tracts.” Qualifying tracts would need to be within a mile of a major transit stop, have 5,000 jobs per square mile, or have a median household income twice that of a metro area’s median income.

The bill would also require local governments to allow the development of three- and four-unit homes, as well as townhomes and “cottage clusters” (small homes sharing a common courtyard) in these census tracts.

“In areas where you have the most opportunity, the best public amenities, the most jobs, the most access to transit, you can’t have the lowest density,” Stewart tells Reason, saying that restrictions on private, market-rate housing have played a critical roll in raising the state’s housing costs. “This is not the classic liberal story of market failure. Or somehow corporate greed.”

The legislation represents a hybrid approach from zoning reform bills that have been proposed in places like Virginia and California. In the former state, the legislature will consider a bill that would legalize duplexes on all residential land in the state. California’s major housing reform bill, SB 50, authorizes mid-rise apartments of up to five stories near transit stops and job centers, in addition to allowing four-unit homes statewide.

A more modest, targeted upzoning bill is politically practical in Maryland, says Stewart, where the state government has traditionally not played a major role in land-use decisions. It’s also only one leg of the housing supply stool.

The other leg is Stewart’s Social Housing Act. That bill would raise tax rates on real estate transfers and impose a $75 recording fee on some real estate documents. Most of the proceeds would then go to fund the state’s existing Partnership Rental Housing Program, which finances affordable housing projects.

The bill doubles the amount of funding the program can spend on these projects to $150,000 per-unit for large projects, and $4 million total for smaller projects. It would also create a new block grant “social housing” program with no per-project or per-unit funding caps.

These social housing projects would be publicly-owned, mixed-income developments. There would be three tiers of rent in these complexes, with some tenants paying slightly below-market-rate rents, others paying “cost rents” that cover a building’s operating expenses plus losses from vacant units, and a more heavily discounted tier for low-income renters.

While he supports more private housing supply, Stewart argues upzoning is not a sufficient response to housing affordability problems. “[I am] skeptical that would completely solve the problem,” he says. “I think that you would still have abusive landlords. You would likely have sky-high rents.”

The idea for social housing, he said, is inspired by the approach taken in Vienna, Austria, where a large portion of the housing stock is mixed-income units built and maintained by the government or semi-public entities. Funding these mixed-income developments in Maryland would keep housing affordable while avoiding many of the problems of past public housing efforts, says Stewart, which often had the effect of concentrating poverty in marginal locations far from jobs or transit.

There’s an inherent trade-off in this approach, however, says Michael Lewyn, a property law professor at Touro Law School. The more resources you devote toward helping median-income renters, the less money you have to spend on housing for low- and no-income folks.

“On the one hand, if you worry about concentrated poverty, the remedy for that is mixed-income housing,” he tells Reason. “[But] if you have a major-league housing shortage, then your goal is to build as many units as possible.”

In addition to devoting resources to building housing for folks who could likely afford private, market-rate alternatives, Stewart’s bill would raise development costs in other ways. For instance, his legislation would require that public housing developments use unionized labor and pay prevailing wage rates, which will raise labor costs. It also prioritizes funding for social housing developments in high-income, job- and transit-rich census tracts, where land costs are going to be higher.

Whatever the merits of those requirements, they will mean that any single sum of money will end up buying fewer units of housing.

Lewyn notes that while Vienna might be an example of successful public housing policies, it is also a great example of a well-functioning private housing market.

“Yes, you have a huge amount of new [public] housing coming online, you also have private housing coming online,” Lewyn says.

A February 2019 Huffington Post story on “Vienna’s affordable housing paradise” notes that two-thirds of the 13,000 new homes built in the city each year are produced by private developers. That is way more public housing than any U.S. city is building. But it also happens to be way more private housing than any U.S. city is building.

A blog post by Lewyn in response to the HuffPo article notes that Vienna, a city of 1.8 million people, managed to add more total units in a single year than the comparatively more populous Manhattan did in three years. Vienna is even outbuilding Houston, a larger city known for its high rates of housing construction.

A 2016 study put out by Harvard University’s Center for Joint Housing Studies comparing international rental markets found that in Austria as a whole, the median market-rate renter spent 20 percent of their income on housing. Not only is that lower than the 30 percent the median market-rate U.S. renter spends, it’s also within spitting distance of the 16.7 percent of income Austrian renters in public housing are paying for housing.

That, again, suggests that an expansive public housing system in Austria is complemented by a lot of affordable private housing.

Lewyn argues that even in a very deregulated market, there will still be very low-income people who will not be able to find adequate private housing, necessitating some form of government assistance.

(The most libertarian policy would be to eliminate all regulations of housing quality so that people with very low incomes, or even no source of formal income, could rent or build dirt-cheap slum housing. Whether one finds that radical solution palatable probably turns on just how morally offensive one finds the redistributive taxation needed to fund supportive housing.)

In addition to his upzoning and social housing bills, Stewart’s housing package also includes stepped-up tenant protections. Tenants who are stalking victims or have been harassed by their landlord on the basis of their sex, race, or gender identity would be allowed to terminate their leases early. Landlords would also have to return tenants’ security deposits within 30 days, as opposed to the current 45.

Stewart hopes that by introducing his bills as a package, he will be able to assemble a winning coalition of different interest groups who don’t normally pool their resources.

“Typically, how it works is the tenant activists testify in Annapolis on tenant bills, leftists go testify on public housing bills, and then your sort of YIMBY urbanist types come testify on your efforts to create more density of private-market housing,” he says. “I am trying to create a broad, durable coalition of people interested in housing justice who are often trapped in silos.”

He says that since announcing his housing package, he’s gotten messages of support from both socialists and hardcore free marketers.

Maryland’s legislative session started yesterday. Stewart says he is hoping to get a hearing on his bills within the next few weeks.

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IRS Audits Plummet To Lowest Level In Four Decades

IRS Audits Plummet To Lowest Level In Four Decades

Individual US taxpayers are half as likely to get audited than they were in 2010, according to the Wall Street Journal, which notes that IRS tax enforcement has fallen to the lowest level in at least four decades.

In FY 2019, the agency audited just 0.45% of all personal income-tax returns, down from 0.59% in 2018 – marking eight straight years of declining reviews. In a Monday report, the IRS said that in 2010, 1.1% of tax returns were audited. The report did not provide details on audits by income category, or how much revenue has been recovered from the enforcement (or lack thereof).

According to the Journal, years of budget cuts and a heavier workload are to blame for the steady erosion of audit – which, experts say, is depriving the Treasury of billions of dollars while budget deficits rise.

The IRS budget is about 20% below the 2010 peak  in inflation-adjusted dollars, according to the Congressional Budget Office. During that time, Congress has given the agency more responsibility, including the implementation of the 2010 health care law and the 2017 tax law.

In Monday’s report, the IRS said the agency had lost almost 30,000 full-time positions since fiscal 2010, in areas including enforcement and criminal investigation. It now has about 78,000 workers and has been hiring over the past year. But the agency also projects that up to 31% of remaining workers will retire within the next five years. –Wall Street Journal

“The audit rate reported for 2019 was less than half of what it was in 2010, underscoring the depleted state of the IRS enforcement function, which urgently needs to be rebuilt,” said Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive group in Washington.

Investing in enforcement and tightening rules could generate about $1 trillion over a decade, according to Harvard University economist Lawrence Summers, who served as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, and University of Pennsylvania professor Natasha Sarin. The government estimates that each additional dollar spent on tax enforcement could yield more than $4 in revenue, and Democratic presidential candidates have made increasing IRS funding part of their agenda. –Wall Street Journal

Cuts to the IRS budget began after Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, and was further reduced after the Obama administration’s IRS targeting scandal in which the agency admitted in 2013 that it had given improper scrutiny to conservative nonprofit groups.

According to Trump-appointed IRS commissioner Charles Rettig, the administration has been trying to find new ways of remaining aggressive for tax-dodgers by using data analytics.

“Our compliance employees have a commitment to fraud awareness as we continue our enforcement efforts in the offshore and other more traditional compliance-challenged arenas,” writes Rettig in Monday’s report. “We want to maintain a visible, robust enforcement presence as we continue to explore innovative strategies and techniques in support of our mission.”


Tyler Durden

Thu, 01/09/2020 – 15:00

Tags
Social Issues
Politics

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30aicLZ Tyler Durden

Glacier Park In Montana Set To Remove “Glaciers Will All Be Gone By 2020” Signs

Glacier Park In Montana Set To Remove “Glaciers Will All Be Gone By 2020” Signs

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Montana’s Glacier National Park is being forced to remove all signs that read “glaciers will all be gone by 2020,” after the doomsday scenario didn’t happen.

Some of the signs were already removed last year as it became clear the prediction wasn’t going to unfold.

Now the rest of the signs will have to be taken down too.

Glacier National Park spokeswoman Gina Kurzmen “told MTN News that the latest research shows shrinking, but in ways much more complex than what was predicted. Because of this, the park must update all signs around the park stating all glaciers will be melted by 2020,” reports 8KPAX.

In the late 90’s and early 2000s, scientists predicted that man-made global warming would cause melting glaciers, leading to rapidly rising sea levels that would sink coastal cities and towns.

The more dire forecasts have proven to be totally inaccurate and some glaciers are now growing.

Back in June, NASA reported that the Jakobshavn Glacier in western Greenland had thickened and “has grown for the third year in a row.”

The glacier prediction is by no means the only forecast global warming alarmists have got spectacularly wrong.

At the end of the 70’s, climate experts said that a new ice age was coming. It didn’t happen.

Paul Erlich’s prediction that hundreds of millions of people would die of starvation due to crop failure by the 1980’s also didn’t happen.

The 2004 prediction that major European cities would be underwater and that Britain would be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020 didn’t happen.

Al Gore’s doomsday warning that the Arctic would have ice free summers by 2013 didn’t happen either.

Maybe since these “experts” been caught lying time and time again, we should stop listening to them.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden

Thu, 01/09/2020 – 14:40

Tags
Environment

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39QxfPD Tyler Durden

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie Signs On to House Bill Ending War in Iraq

Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) announced today that he is officially crossing the aisle and co-sponsoring a bill in the House to end military engagements in Iraq.

Massie tweeted that he is signing onto a bill by Rep. Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) repealing the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in 2002. The AUMF allowed the military to invade and occupy Iraq and has been used to justify continued involvement there:

Lee’s resolution had 43 listed co-sponsors, all Democrats. Massie appears to be the first Republican to sign on. The resolution, H.R. 2456, simply says, “The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107–243; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) is hereby repealed.”

America’s continued involvement in Iraq has not made that country safer for the people who live there, and it hasn’t made America safer for the people who live here. Our continued occupation of Iraq risks the welfare of American troops in service of goals that do not remotely resemble the reason Congress initially authorized the war.

Seriously, read this chunk of text on why we’re in Iraq and try to determine anything in this AUMF that actually matches what we’re doing today:

There is no item there permitting the president to use Iraq as a staging area to attack Iran.

To the extent the 2002 AUMF allows military actions against other countries, it is limited to those that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” That clause is why Vice President Mike Pence attempted to exaggerate ties between Iran and the 9/11 terrorists as some roundabout way of retroactively justifying the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. While several of the 9/11 terrorists did pass through Iran on their way to the United States, the commission that examined the attack found no evidence that the country’s leaders were aware of their plans.

Massie has supported Trump’s anti-interventionist foreign policy rhetoric, even though Trump’s actions have not aligned with what he says. (We are, for example, sending more troops to the Middle East.)

Massie has been very consistent, along with the likes of Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah), and Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.) that it’s time to repeal these old AUMFs. Let’s see if some other House Republicans follow suit.

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Republican Rep. Thomas Massie Signs On to House Bill Ending War in Iraq

Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) announced today that he is officially crossing the aisle and co-sponsoring a bill in the House to end military engagements in Iraq.

Massie tweeted that he is signing onto a bill by Rep. Barbara Lee (D–Calif.) repealing the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in 2002. The AUMF allowed the military to invade and occupy Iraq and has been used to justify continued involvement there:

Lee’s resolution had 43 listed co-sponsors, all Democrats. Massie appears to be the first Republican to sign on. The resolution, H.R. 2456, simply says, “The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107–243; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) is hereby repealed.”

America’s continued involvement in Iraq has not made that country safer for the people who live there, and it hasn’t made America safer for the people who live here. Our continued occupation of Iraq risks the welfare of American troops in service of goals that do not remotely resemble the reason Congress initially authorized the war.

Seriously, read this chunk of text on why we’re in Iraq and try to determine anything in this AUMF that actually matches what we’re doing today:

There is no item there permitting the president to use Iraq as a staging area to attack Iran.

To the extent the 2002 AUMF allows military actions against other countries, it is limited to those that “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.” That clause is why Vice President Mike Pence attempted to exaggerate ties between Iran and the 9/11 terrorists as some roundabout way of retroactively justifying the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani. While several of the 9/11 terrorists did pass through Iran on their way to the United States, the commission that examined the attack found no evidence that the country’s leaders were aware of their plans.

Massie has supported Trump’s anti-interventionist foreign policy rhetoric, even though Trump’s actions have not aligned with what he says. (We are, for example, sending more troops to the Middle East.)

Massie has been very consistent, along with the likes of Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.), Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah), and Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.) that it’s time to repeal these old AUMFs. Let’s see if some other House Republicans follow suit.

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Jussie Smollett’s Emails, Photos, Location Data And Private Messages To Be Turned Over By Google: Judge

Jussie Smollett’s Emails, Photos, Location Data And Private Messages To Be Turned Over By Google: Judge

A judge in Cook County, Illinois has ordered Google to hand over 12 months of Jussie Smollett’s emails, photos, location data and private messages to the special prosecutor conducting an investigation into the actor’s 2018 hate crime hoax, in which he two associates say the actor paid them to dress up as white Trump supporters and beat him, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Two sweeping search warrants, obtained by the Chicago Tribune, provide the first public glimpse at the direction of the probe by special prosecutor Dan Webb more than four months into the investigation.

The warrants, filed last month in Circuit Court, sought a trove of documentation from Smollett and his manager’s Google accounts — not just emails but also drafted and deleted messages; any files in their Google Drive cloud storage services; any Google Voice texts, calls and contacts; search and web browsing history; and location data. –Chicago Tribune

Prosecutors sought Smollett’s data from November 2018 to November 2019 despite the fact that key events in the controversy happened between late January and late March of 2019. It’s possible, according to the Tribune, that authorities may be looking for any incriminating remarks from Smollett or his manager – who the actor claimed overheard his alleged assailants shouting “This is MAGA country.”

Also under scrutiny is the sudden dismissal of Smollett’s charges following the intervention of former Michelle Obama Chief of Staff Tina Tchen.

Tchen, a Chicago-based attorney, reached out on Feb. 1 to Chicago’s top prosecutor Kim Foxx – telling her that the “Empire” actor’s family had “concerns” about the investigation. Smollett was considered at the time to be the victim of an assault, however the actor was subsequently charged with disorderly conduct for filing a false police report in connection with a staged hate crime. In March, a Chicago grand jury slapped Smollett with a 16 count indictment for lying to the police – to which he pleaded not guilty.

The mysterious reversal by Foxx’s office — coming after Foxx herself stepped aside from overseeing the prosecution — sparked a public outcry that ultimately led Judge Michael Toomin to appoint Webb as special prosecutor in late August.

Toomin signed off on the search warrants on Dec. 6, the records show. In doing so, the judge ordered Google and its “representatives, agents and employees” not to disclose his order to turn over the records, saying to do so “may jeopardize an ongoing criminal investigation.” –Chicago Tribune

Despite Smollett’s accomplices readiness to testify against him in a slam-dunk case, charges against Smollett were dropped in what former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called a “whitewash of justice.”

It is unknown whether Google has already handed over the data on Smollett and his manager – while Chicago PD spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed with the Times that the department is working with the special prosecutor on “follow-ups” to its initial investigaiton.

Read the rest of the report here.


Tyler Durden

Thu, 01/09/2020 – 14:20

Tags
Law Crime

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Video Captures Alleged Moment Missile Strikes Boeing 737 Over Tehran

Video Captures Alleged Moment Missile Strikes Boeing 737 Over Tehran

With the narrative surrounding the crashed Ukrainian Boeing 737 changing by the minute, shifting away from a initially proposed theory of a technical error and shifting toward speculation the plane was accidentally or not taken down by someone (Iranians? Israelis? CIA?) on the ground, “evidence” is suddenly starting to emerge to validate this latest theory. And so moments ago, an unverified, unconfirmed video has appeared on the Telegram network, purporting to show the moment a missile strikes the Ukrainian flight PS752.

Needless to say, this remains absolutely unconfirmed for now. As a reminder, moments after the crash the first unconfirmed footage of the Ukrainian airplane showed the plan on fire falling near Tehran.

 


Tyler Durden

Thu, 01/09/2020 – 14:07

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New Mexico Medical Marijuana Supplier Wins First Amendment Challenge to the State Fair’s Absurdly Broad Censorship

New Mexico officials have agreed to settle a First Amendment lawsuit challenging ridiculously broad and picayune restrictions on a medical marijuana booth at the state fair. Under the agreement, the agency that oversees the fair, which is held each year at the Expo New Mexico campus in Albuquerque, will pay $69,600 to Ultra Health LLC, which runs 23 state-licensed medical marijuana dispensaries, and drop its challenge to a federal injunction against the fair’s “entirely unreasonable” censorship of the company’s speech.

Ultra Health initially ran into trouble at the 2016 state fair, where its exhibit included a cannabis plant and marijuana pipes. State police officers ordered the company’s representatives to pack up and leave. The next year, Leigh Jenke, Ultra Health’s director of quality and compliance, asked Raina Bingham, the state fair’s concessions and commercial exhibits manager, to clarify what was prohibited in a display devoted to medical marijuana. Bingham’s response was breathtakingly broad:

You may not bring onto the EXPO New Mexico campus any and all cannabis and
cannabis derived products including CBD products. You may also not bring any product that would be outside your New Mexico Department of Health approved distribution plan. Moreover, you may not bring any type of drug paraphernalia that could be used to plant, propagate, cultivate, grow, harvest, manufacture, compound, convert, produce, process, prepare, test, analyze, pack, repack, store, contain, conceal, inject, ingest, inhale or otherwise introduce into the human body any type of cannabis or other controlled substance. You are also precluded from displaying any image of the above restricted items in any way to include banners, flyers, clothing, or any other medium.

U.S. District Judge James Parker explored the absurd implications of that edict, which was ostensibly aimed at promoting a “family friendly” environment, in a January 2019 ruling. Ultra Health not only was forbidden to display actual cannabis plants or products; it was also barred from displaying images of them, including signs, photographs, and videos explaining the production, distribution, or use of medical marijuana. Also verboten: any items that would qualify as drug paraphernalia in the context of a medical marijuana booth, including a rosin press, a microscope, a shovel, and a plastic bin, as well as images of those items.

“A picture of a tractor tilling a field to prepare it for planting corn would be allowed in a vendor’s booth pertaining to corn, but the State Fair would prohibit the very same picture of the tractor tilling a field if placed in Ultra Health’s booth because it would constitute paraphernalia in that context,” Parker noted. “That the very same photograph of a tractor or display of an otherwise ordinary agricultural implement would suddenly be rendered ‘family unfriendly’ when displayed in Ultra Health’s booth is entirely unreasonable. Under Defendants’ expansive interpretation of the restrictions on implements and their images, even the most innocuous items are rendered objectionable when displayed in the context of medical cannabis, a subject Defendants concede falls within the statutory purpose of the State Fair and is otherwise allowable.”

As a “limited public forum,” Parker said, the state fair has wide discretion to regulate exhibitors’ booths so they are consistent with the event’s goals. But its rules can pass constitutional muster only if they are reasonable in light of the forum’s purpose and do not discriminate based on viewpoint.

Parker noted that Bingham had accommodated other exhibitors by making exceptions to the seemingly sweeping restrictions laid out in the State Fair Vendor Manual, which include a general ban on “the display, sale, or distribution of weapons (firearms, knives, mace, martial art items, chains, etc.), toy weapons, fireworks, drug-related merchandise or paraphernalia, pornographic materials, offensive wording or graphics of any type, and counterfeit or ‘knock-off’ items.” Notwithstanding the rule against knives and firearms, a cutlery company had been allowed to display its wares, and Bingham testified that she would “allow a hunting and fishing store to display photographs of its merchandise, including shotguns sold in its store.”

Ultra Health was granted no such leniency. “Contextual exceptions to the general prohibited items provision are troublesome and bear on the reasonableness of the State Fair’s prohibitions as applied to Ultra Health,” Parker wrote. “The absence of definite and impartial criteria for determining whether an item is family friendly, combined with evidence of inconsistent application, renders the policy as applied to Ultra Health unreasonable.”

After concluding that the policy was not reasonably related to its rationale, Parker issued a permanent injunction requiring the state fair to let Ultra Health display “implements used to grow, manufacture and process medical cannabis, including a microscope and a lavender rosin press”; “images of implements used to grow, manufacture and process medical cannabis, including a video of Ultra Health’s laboratory, growth, and processing facilities”; and “images of cannabis plants cultivated by Ultra Health as part of its producer license through the New Mexico Department of Health’s Medical Cannabis Program.” By dropping its appeal of Parker’s decision, the state fair leaves that injunction in place.

Duke Rodriguez, president and CEO of Ultra Health, told the Albuquerque Journal that the $70,000 payment that was also part of the settlement agreement will not fully cover the company’s legal fees and other expenses related to the dispute. “Our actual expenses were higher, but the agreed settlement amount represents a reasonable settlement with the state of New Mexico and hopefully extends an olive branch to the administration as to our willingness to resolve these matters in a timely and equitable manner,” Rodriguez said. “We were willing to compromise on the dollars and cents of the litigation, but we did not compromise on the principle at stake.”

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