“Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused me for years,” according to accuser Courtney Wild, who told a US District Court in Manhattan on Tuesday that Epstein’s death – ruled a suicide – “robbed myself and all the other victims of our day in court.”
Wild called Epstein a “coward” during the hearing to formally dismiss the case against the dead pedophile.
“I feel very angry and sad and justice has never been served in this case,” she added.
US District Judge Richard Berman said that Epstein’s August 10 suicide was a “stunning turn of events,” and that accusers should be heard during today’s hearing “because of their relevant experiences.”
Up to 30 women were expected to address the court, along with prosecutors and Epstein’s lawyers. Lawyer Brad Williams, who represents dozens of accusers, said that 15 women he represents will testify on Tuesday, while another 20 declined — “some out of fear of public exposure, others because the way in which this case ended will never bring full justice and they decided it was best for them not to talk today.”
Another accuser, who did not disclose her name, told Judge Richard Berman on Tuesday “It didn’t feel good to wake up that morning and hear he allegedly committed suicide.”
“I still feel like I’m learning the ways he’s impacted me,” that woman said.
A third woman, who also did not give her name, said ”“I think that many of us will never heal from what happened to us.”
“As destructive as that relationship was and as much of a villian as we’ve created him to be, based on facts, we’ve created him to be a villian, but he’s a complex villian.” –CNBC
According to the prosecutor, the dismissal against Epstein “in no way” hinders their investigation into other co-conspirators – or the prosecution of new defendants. Furthermore, the government may explore “the possibility of seeking civil forfeiture of any assets that would facilitate the crimes charged in this indictment.”
The prosecutor added that there are teams of FBI agents and other investigators probing Epstein’s death at the Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC), and that there is an active and ongoing grand jury investigation into what happened.
Of note, attorney David Boies – who represents Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, said “Epstein did not act alone,” adding “He could not have done what he did, on such scope and scale, for as many years as he did, without a number of other key individuals. Those individuals need to bear their share of responsibility and have their reckoning as well.”
Epstein attorney Martin Weinberg noted that Judge Berman has the authority to go to the ninth floor of the MCC where Epstein was housed and witness how pretrial defendants are housed, according to Bloomberg legal reporter Chris Dolmetsch.
Developing…
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HuzN9i Tyler Durden
In 1962 in a picturesque setting in Santa Barbara, California, two local entrepreneurs opened a low-cost, roadside inn where the nightly room rate was just $6.
They called it Motel 6.
And today the chain has grown to over 1,400 locations.
If you want the most straightforward explanation for why you should own gold, consider your local Motel 6.
It’s noteworthy that, today, the very same Santa Barbara location now rents its rooms for nearly $90 per night.
That’s a 15x increase in 57 years, an average increase of roughly 5% per year.
Are the rooms 15x bigger, or 15x nicer? Not really.
The reason the price has increased so much is because of inflation– the gradual erosion of the US dollar’s purchasing power over the past several decades.
This is why it’s important to have a conversation about gold.
Unlike paper currencies, gold has a 5,000 year track record of keeping up with inflation.
In fact, when priced in gold, a room at the Motel 6 has actually gotten cheaper.
Back in 1962, an ounce of gold would buy you about 6 nights at the motel. Now, despite the 12-fold increase in the price of a room, one ounce of gold will buy you 21 nights there.
That’s because the price of gold has largely outpaced the rate of inflation and the decline in the purchasing power of the US dollar.
Gold is a fantastic long-term store of value. It’s also an insurance policy– a hedge against paper currency, systemic risk, and uncertainty.
And there’s plenty of those in the world.
But there’s also a number of catalysts emerging right now that could send gold prices substantially higher in the near future, so it may be worth considering gold right now as a speculation.
There have been several times in history where gold has experienced wild swings in value against paper currency. And some people got very rich from it.
In the coming days and weeks, I’ll be writing a series of articles on different ways to own gold.
And it’s my hope that you’ll use the information to as part of your Plan B, not only to hedge against looming risks, but also to potentially profit from uncertainty in the system.
We’ll start with physical gold.
Think about your traditional savings: you probably have several deposit accounts at a number of banks. But the way the banking system works, there’s a middle man (the bank) between you and your money.
Having physical gold stored in an at-home safe is a great way to privately preserve your wealth without this sort of counter party risk. There’s no one else standing between you and your gold. No bank bureaucracy, no central bank, no regulator.
Your wealth can literally be held in your own hands.
It’s also a great idea to consider storing some gold overseas in a foreign, non-bank safety deposit box– but we’ll talk more about that soon.
When it comes to physical gold, you can buy either coins or bars. They come in a variety of sizes, from just 1/8th of an ounce (or smaller) to 20 kilograms or more.
And there are dozens of refiners and minters who produce coins and bars.
Now, I avoid buying gold bars because they are typically less uniform than coins. And here’s a great example why:
If you’ve ever seen those giant stacks of gold bars in the movies– those bars are supposed to be 400 ounces. Each.
But here’s a dirty secret few people know about gold–
According to the “Good Delivery” specifications for a 400 ounce gold bar traded on the London Metal Exchange, the bar could weigh as little as 350 ounces, or as much as 430 ounces, and still qualify as a 400 ounce bar.
Every one of those bars is different… there’s no uniformity.
That’s why my preferred way to own physical gold is to buy the most widely recognized coins (i.e. NOT bars) that have the highest purity.
The United States Mint, for example, produces a very famous coin called the “American Gold Eagle”, that contains 91.67% pure gold.
The American Gold Eagle is well-known throughout the world, and pretty much every coin dealer on the planet will buy and sell them.
However, I don’t recommend buying the American Gold Eagle. At 91.67%, its gold purity is too low.
Coins of lower purity can sometimes cause problems for international transport if you’re shipping gold from one country to another; if the purity is below a certain threshold, you might have to pay customs duty.
Also, lower purity coins could cause tax problems (especially for US taxpayers) if you want to qualify for a ‘like kind exchange’ under IRS section 1031. More on that another time.
So, instead of a American Gold Eagle, which is only 91.67% pure, I recommend the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf.
The Canadian Gold Maple Leaf is produced by the Royal Canadian Mint. And with a gold content of 99.99%, the Maple Leaf is one of the purest gold coins in the world.
It’s also just as renowned worldwide as the American Gold Eagle, but without the potential drawbacks. So it’s a better coin to own.
Here are a few widely recognized, high-purity gold coins which you could consider:
Canada Gold Maple Leaf (99.99% purity)
Chinese Panda (99.9% purity)
Austrian [Vienna] Philharmonic (99.99% purity)
Australian Gold Nugget (99.99% purity)
American Buffalo (99.99% purity)
There are plenty of other countries whose national mints produce high-purity gold coins– like Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Ukraine, etc.
But those countries’ coins don’t have the global recognition of a Canadian Gold Maple Leaf or Chinese Panda. And without the global recognition, they’re more difficult (and more expensive) to buy/sell.
I also recommend avoiding these coins (because the purity is too low) including:
American Gold Eagle (91.67%)
South African Krugerrand (91.67%)
United Kingdom Sovereign (91.7%)
You can buy coins in countless places, whether at a local coin dealer, or online– Kitco, APMEX, even eBay and Amazon.
Leon Haughton, a legal green card holder from Jamaica who has lived in Maryland for almost 10 years, arrived at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on December 29 following his yearly pilgrimage back home. U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained him. For what, he wasn’t sure.
Maryland Transportation Authority Police then arrested him, telling him that the bottles in his bag labeled “honey” had tested positive for methamphetamine. A police dog sniffed Haughton’s bag raising suspicion that he had drugs, and a field test at the airport yielded positive results for meth. He spent the next 82 days in jail.
Except the bottles really were full of honey. Maryland State Police lab test results confirmed that on January 17, and prosecutors dropped three felony drug counts six days later.
Yet he stayed in jail. On January 24, Haughton and his lawyer sought his immediate release on bail. But the state was still pursuing a misdemeanor possession charge, the lab results notwithstanding, because Maryland’s lab is not fully equipped to test liquids.
Citing the K-9 hit and the positive field test, the state dropped the three felony drug charges but maintained the lesser charge while law enforcement sent the bottlesto a Homeland Security lab in Georgia for more testing.
Normally, Haughton would’ve been released on bail since the charges levied against him had been whittled down to one misdemeanor. But the original felony charges triggered an active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer—so if the state released him, the feds could arrest and deport him. Haughton’s legal saga took place in the midst of the winter’s lengthy government shutdown, meaning that no one could get in touch with the agency to have the detainer lifted.
“The ICE detainer is really prohibitive,” said Laura M. Robinson, a U.S. District Court judge for Anne Arundel County, during Haughton’s third bail review hearing on February 5, according to The Washington Post. “I’m kind of up against it on the ICE detainer.”
Haughton would not go home until March 21, when the new lab results came in and the state finally dropped the remaining charge.
The case highlights a heap of inane government incompetence. Why would an immigration detainer remain in place for a misdemeanor drug offense, even after the government shutdown ended on January 25? Why was Haughton’s honey tested at the first lab if that facility was not prepared to render a result? Why did it need to be tested three times to get an accurate result, and why did that take so many months to complete?
During the ordeal, Haughton lost both of his jobs, one as a cleanerand the other as a construction worker. He also has six children, and he says that their school performance suffered immensely while he was away.
“It broke me right down,” Haughton told The Post. His children kept asking him, “When are you coming home?”
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2MEovnl
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Leon Haughton, a legal green card holder from Jamaica who has lived in Maryland for almost 10 years, arrived at Baltimore-Washington International Airport on December 29 following his yearly pilgrimage back home. U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained him. For what, he wasn’t sure.
Maryland Transportation Authority Police then arrested him, telling him that the bottles in his bag labeled “honey” had tested positive for methamphetamine. A police dog sniffed Haughton’s bag raising suspicion that he had drugs, and a field test at the airport yielded positive results for meth. He spent the next 82 days in jail.
Except the bottles really were full of honey. Maryland State Police lab test results confirmed that on January 17, and prosecutors dropped three felony drug counts six days later.
Yet he stayed in jail. On January 24, Haughton and his lawyer sought his immediate release on bail. But the state was still pursuing a misdemeanor possession charge, the lab results notwithstanding, because Maryland’s lab is not fully equipped to test liquids.
Citing the K-9 hit and the positive field test, the state dropped the three felony drug charges but maintained the lesser charge while law enforcement sent the bottlesto a Homeland Security lab in Georgia for more testing.
Normally, Haughton would’ve been released on bail since the charges levied against him had been whittled down to one misdemeanor. But the original felony charges triggered an active Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer—so if the state released him, the feds could arrest and deport him. Haughton’s legal saga took place in the midst of the winter’s lengthy government shutdown, meaning that no one could get in touch with the agency to have the detainer lifted.
“The ICE detainer is really prohibitive,” said Laura M. Robinson, a U.S. District Court judge for Anne Arundel County, during Haughton’s third bail review hearing on February 5, according to The Washington Post. “I’m kind of up against it on the ICE detainer.”
Haughton would not go home until March 21, when the new lab results came in and the state finally dropped the remaining charge.
The case highlights a heap of inane government incompetence. Why would an immigration detainer remain in place for a misdemeanor drug offense, even after the government shutdown ended on January 25? Why was Haughton’s honey tested at the first lab if that facility was not prepared to render a result? Why did it need to be tested three times to get an accurate result, and why did that take so many months to complete?
During the ordeal, Haughton lost both of his jobs, one as a cleanerand the other as a construction worker. He also has six children, and he says that their school performance suffered immensely while he was away.
“It broke me right down,” Haughton told The Post. His children kept asking him, “When are you coming home?”
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2MEovnl
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Expectations that the Boeing 737 MAX 8 will return to the skies any time in the near future have largely faded, and now, after dedicating billions of dollars to compensating customers, Boeing is finally facing their wrath in the courtroom. The FT reports that a Russian aircraft-leasing company has filed a lawsuit against the aerospace company seeking not only the return of the deposit it paid for the 35 MAX 8s that it ordered, but also punitive damages in the hundreds of millions.
Avia Capital Services, a subsidiary of Russian state conglomerate Rostec, accused Boeing of “negligent actions and decisions” that led to two deadly accidents and roughly 350 deaths. Regulators around the world grounded the 737 MAX 8 in response to the accidents, and investigations have pointed toward issues with the plane’s software as the culprit.
In its lawsuit, Avia also claimed that the design of the MAX 8 was “defective”, and – embracing a more conspiratorial tone – that Boeing knew about these defects bu withheld this “critical information” from US regulators and Boeing’s customers.
The lawsuit was filed in Cook County circuit court in Chicago, where Boeing is based.
Avia ordered 35 MAX 8s, and paid a cash deposit of $35 million to secure its order. In its lawsuit, the company is seeking the return of this deposit, along with another $75 million of lost profits plus additional punitive damages.
The company’s lawyer, Steven Marks of the Miami aviation law firm Podhurst Orseck, said Boeing had offered the company compensation for the MAX 8’s problems, but that this compensation was “inadequate.” Marks is also representing the families of some of the victims.
Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg has said it’s possible that the MAX 8 could be re-approved for passenger service by October. But it’s entirely possible that the CEO could be jawboning to convince customers to hold off from moving ahead with lawsuits. Of course, the families of the victims who died in the two plane crashes attributed to flaws in the 737 MAX 8’s anti-stall system are moving ahead with their lawsuits, even after Boeing set aside $100 million for payoffs.
In the meantime, orders for new 737 MAX 8s have dried up, and if the plane isn’t given the OK to return to the skies before the end of the year, it’s possible that Boeing could halt production of its most popular aircraft, according to CBS News.
American firms like Southwest (the 737 MAX 8s’ largest customer) have been far more understanding and willing to work with Boeing. But how much longer until their patience runs out, and they start filing lawsuits?
Though this hasn’t been reflected in Boeing shares, it’s still entirely possible that a flood of legal judgments could bankrupt Boeing.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zltsJ0 Tyler Durden
Last week at a Bernie Sanders campaign stop, someone ask him a question that began with, “Yesterday, oligarch David Koch passed away…”
The Bolshevik crowd interrupted immediately with ebullient cheers, joyfully celebrating the death of a man they had never met and knew nothing about.
If you hadn’t heard, multi-billionaire David Koch died last week at the age of 79 after a prolonged battle with cancer.
Along with his brother Charles, David Koch was co-owner of Koch Industries, one of the largest private companies in the world.
Forbes magazine estimated his net worth at more than $40 billion, making him one of the wealthiest people on the planet.
That was Strike 1. Because we know how much Bolsheviks hate wealthy people.
Also, Koch Industries is primarily engaged in the oil business. And that was Strike 2. The only thing Bolsheviks hate more than wealthy people are wealthy people who make their money from oil.
I suspect the Bernie Sanders crowd would have had less of a problem with David Koch if he had become wealthy from clubbing baby seals.
David Koch was also a heavy donor to conservative causes.
Although his politics could be described more as libertarian– he favored sensible spending and limited government, was pro for gay rights, in favor of ending the war on drugs, and against foreign intervention– the Bolsheviks labeled him as a Republican donor.
And that was strike #3. Bolsheviks hate when wealthy people spend their own money on issues they find important.
(It’s perfectly fine, of course, for Bolsheviks to spend other people’s money on causes and issues that fit with the Bolshevik agenda.)
And for those reasons, a crowd of bitter, angry, ignorant strangers cheered Koch’s death.
Elizabeth Warren also decided to take a shot at Koch, the day after he passed away. The crowd at her campaign rally booed the recently deceased.
All across social media, tolerant and enlightened Bolsheviks gloated over Koch’s death. Despite the fact that he gave over $1 billion to charity… all they knew was that he was rich, he made it from oil, and he donated to non-Bolshevik causes.
These people love to celebrate ‘diversity’, as long as that diversity doesn’t include intellectual or ideological diversity.
In response, one columnist remarked on Twitter, “I can’t wait until the people who celebrate the death of their political opponents are in charge of healthcare.”
I couldn’t agree more.
And this sort of behavior is a pretty stark warning for everyone, regardless of how you feel about socialized healthcare, the Koch brothers, or anything else in politics.
When it gets to the point that “leaders” preside over celebrating the death of their political opponents, it’s time to take notice.
It reminds me of “two-minutes hate” from 1984.
Each day, the citizens of Oceania are directed to ritualistically scream, snarl, and froth at the mouth toward whoever their leaders tell them to hate. They’ve never met these supposed enemies. They don’t know anything about them apart from what they have been told by Party officials.
But if the leadership says to despise someone, the people do so without any independent thinking to reach their own conclusions.
This is what our society is decaying into. If you have a different opinion, other people want you to die.
It’s not the first time in history that society has become so fractured, and unfortunately it won’t be the last.
Throughout history, every time society reaches this point, intelligent people who see the writing on the wall take steps to protect themselves and their families from this type of madness.
Maybe it all blows over and people come to their senses. Perhaps they realize that death, chaos, and hate are not the answer.
Maybe everyone mellows out.
It’s also possible that the vitriol becomes much worse. And if it does, you want to be ready.
That’s what a Plan B is all about– taking sensible steps to safeguard what you have worked your entire life to build. It means preserving your family’s way of life by doing things that make sense no matter what happens or doesn’t happen next.
We also talk a lot about gold and silver, both great hedges in times of uncertainty.
If you don’t have a Plan B, all your eggs are in one basket. And in a time where crowds gloat over the death of people with differing political opinions, that is a substantial risk to your freedom and prosperity.
In case you’re looking for some guidance about how to get started, take a look at our complimentary Perfect Plan B guide.
Update 1: Michael Mann disputes the notion that he lost (and more): “There have been some wildly untruthful claims about the recent dismissal of libel litigation against Tim Ball circulating on social media.”
There have been some wildly untruthful claims about the recent dismissal of libel litigation against Tim Ball circulating on social media. Here is our statement (https://t.co/8tGoBZnE3Y): pic.twitter.com/ySeJcOktX9
Update 2: technology.news has a rather different take than Mann, noting that further legal steps are on their way.
Penn State climate scientist, Michael ‘hockey stick’ Mann commits contempt of court in the ‘climate science trial of the century.’ Prominent alarmist shockingly defies judge and refuses to surrender data for open court examination. Only possible outcome: Mann’s humiliation, defeat and likely criminal investigation in the U.S.
The defendant in the libel trial, the 79-year-old Canadian climatologist, Dr Tim Ball … is expected to instruct his British Columbia attorneys to trigger mandatory punitive court sanctions, including a ruling that Mann did act with criminal intent when using public funds to commit climate data fraud. Mann’s imminent defeat is set to send shock waves worldwide within the climate science community as the outcome will be both a legal and scientific vindication of U.S. President Donald Trump’s claims that climate scare stories are a “hoax.” (snip)
Michael Mann, who chose to file what many consider to be a cynical SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) libel suit in the British Columbia Supreme Court, Vancouver six long years ago, has astonished legal experts by refusing to comply with the court direction to hand over all his disputed graph’s data. Mann’s iconic hockey stick has been relied upon by the UN’s IPCC and western governments as crucial evidence for the science of ‘man-made global warming.’ (snip)
The negative and unresponsive actions of Dr Mann and his lawyer, Roger McConchie, are expected to infuriate the judge and be the signal for the collapse of Mann’s multi-million dollar libel suit against Dr Ball. It will be music to the ears of so-called ‘climate deniers’ like President Donald Trump and his EPA Chief, Scott Pruitt.
As Dr Ball explains:
“Michael Mann moved for an adjournment of the trial scheduled for February 20, 2017. We had little choice because Canadian courts always grant adjournments before a trial in their belief that an out of court settlement is preferable. We agreed to an adjournment with conditions. The major one was that he [Mann] produce all documents including computer codes by February 20th, 2017. He failed to meet the deadline.”
Punishment for Civil Contempt
Mann’s now proven contempt of court means Ball is entitled to have the court serve upon Mann the fullest punishment. Contempt sanctions could reasonably include the judge ruling that Dr. Ball’s statement that Mann “belongs in the state pen, not Penn. State’ is a precise and true statement of fact. This is because under Canada’s unique ‘Truth Defense’, Mann is now proven to have wilfully hidden his data, so the court may rule he hid it because it is fake. As such, the court must then dismiss Mann’s entire libel suit with costs awarded to Ball and his team.
Michael Mann, a climatologist at Penn State University, is the creator of the “hockey stick graph” that appears to show global temperatures taking a noticeable swing upward in the era when humanity has been burning fossil fuels and dumping CO2 into the atmosphere.
The graph was firstpublished in 1998, prominently featured in the 2001 UN Climate Report, and formed part of Al Gore’s 2006 movie, An Inconvenient Truth.
The graph’s methodology and accuracy have been and continue to be hotly contested, but Mann has taken the tack of suing two of his most prominent critics for defamation or libel.
One case, against Mark Steyn, is called by Steyn likely toend up in the Supreme Court. But another case, against Dr. Tim Ball was decided by the Supreme Court of British Columbia, with Mann’s case thrown out, and him ordered to pay the defendant’s legal costs, no doubt a tidy sum of money. News first broke in Wattsupwiththat, via an email Ball sent to Anthony Watt. Later, Principia-Scientific offered extensive details, including much background on the hockey stick.
The Canadian court issued it’s final ruling in favor of the Dismissal motion that was filed in May 2019 by Dr Tim Ball’s libel lawyers.
Not only did the court grant Ball’s application for dismissal of the nine-year, multi-million dollar lawsuit, it also took the additional step of awarding full legal costs to Ball. A detailed public statement from the world-renowned skeptical climatologist is expected in due course.
This extraordinary outcome is expected to trigger severe legal repercussions for Dr Mann in the U.S. and may prove fatal to climate science claims that modern temperatures are “unprecedented.”
…
Dr Mann lost his case because he refused to show in open court his R2 regression numbers (the ‘working out’) behind the world-famous ‘hockey stick’ graph (shown above).
Real science, not the phony “consensus” version, requires open access to data, so that skeptics (who play a key role in science) can see if results are reproducible. Of course, there are no falsifiable experimental data associated with the global warming predictions of doom, so it doesn’t really stand as science as Karl Popper defined it
This is an important victory in the process of debunking the warmist scare.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30OXwsk Tyler Durden
It appears that Jeffrey Epstein had really good timing when he, according to New York Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson, decided to hang himself in his Manhattan jail cell the morning of August 10th – crushing bones in his neck which can fracture during hangings, but are typically broken during homicide by strangulation.
Not only was his cellmate moved out the day before he died, overworked prison guards reportedly fell asleep – missing their assigned 30-minute checks on the highest profile inmate in the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC). Epstein had recently been taken off suicide watch stemming from mysterious injuries he received weeks earlier. The convicted pedophile said he had been attacked.
He was placed on suicide watch for about a week after that — meaning he was monitored 24-7. He was placed back in the jail’s special housing unit late in the month and, for a time, had a new roommate.
But that person was transferred the day before Epstein’s death, and a new roommate was not assigned — despite the fact that at least eight jail officials knew Epstein was not to be left alone in his cell. –Washington Post
Now, the Washington Post reports that at least one of the cameras in the hallway outside Epstein’s cell had footage that is “unusable,” despite “other, clearer footage” which was captured in the area. v
In short, it looks like we may never know why sources heard “shouting and shrieking” from Epstein’s jail cell the morning he died.
It was not immediately clear why some video footage outside Epstein’s cell is too flawed for investigators to use or what is visible in the usable footage. The incident is being investigated by the FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, which are attempting to determine what happened and how to assess whether any policies were violated or crimes committed.
The footage is considered critical to those inquiries, and the revelation of an unusable recording is yet another of the apparent failures inside the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the short-staffed Bureau of Prisons facility in downtown Manhattan that held Epstein. –Washington Post
Epstein was arrested on July 6 on charges of sex-trafficking minors in Florida and New York. Despite pleading with the judge for pretrial release, the pedophile financier was ordered held without bond.
On August 10, the 66-year-old was found hanging by in his cell by bedsheets. He was rushed to the hospital and later pronounced dead.
And while prosecutors have filed to drop charges against Epstein, their investigation into his potential co-conspirators has continued. On Tuesday, a federal judge will hold a hearing to determine how to proceed – and will allow Epstein’s accusers to speak in court.
Lawyers for Epstein and his family have questioned the official suicide ruling, as well as the thoroughness of the investigation into his death.
“The defense team fully intends to conduct its own independent and complete investigation into the circumstances and cause of Mr. Epstein’s death including if necessary legal action to view the pivotal videos — if they exist as they should — of the area proximate to Mr. Epstein’s cell during the time period leading to his death,” said lawyers in an August 16 filing. “We are not satisfied with the conclusions of the medical examiner.”
Attorney General William Barr, meanwhile, described “serious irregularities” at the MCC, and announced an investigation into what happened.
“I was appalled to learn that Jeffrey Epstein was found dead early this morning from an apparent suicide while in federal custody. Mr. Epstein’s death raises serious questions that must be answered,” said Barr, adding. “In addition to the FBI’s investigation, I have consulted with the Inspector General who is opening an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Epstein’s death.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZmgsSC Tyler Durden
By his own admission, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool socialist who wants the state to actually own the means of production. But he still wants the government to be very much in the mix of just about every sort of business that gets transacted. That’s scary enough when we’re talking about making widgets or reducing the number of people who are allowed to enter the country legally (the Democratic presidential hopeful is worried that too many poor people will show up). But it’s really bad news when it comes to regulating the media, which is very much on the senator’s mind these days.
Writing in Columbia Journalism Review (the self-proclaimed “voice of journalism”), Sanders has unveiled a plan that would halt all media mergers if his administration believes they would reduce the number of journalists employed, “adversely affect people of color and women,” or concentrate ownership in fewer hands (sort of a basic goal of all mergers). Sanders says that Facebook and Google have “monopolistic control” of online advertising because between them they account for 60 percent of “the entire digital advertising market” and swears that “after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful of companies control almost everything you watch, read, and download.”
“[President Donald] Trump’s authoritarian bullying of the media is totally unacceptable,” writes Sanders even as he lays out his plans to limit the ability of, for instance, Jeff Bezos to run The Washington Post as he sees fit. “We should not,” avers the senator,
want even more of the free press to be put under the control of a handful of corporations and “benevolent” billionaires who can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves from scrutiny.
When I am president, my administration will put in place policies that will reform the media industry and better protect independent journalism at both the local and national levels.
So when Trump calls out Jeff Bezos for publishing “fake news” and threatens him with libel and other actions, he is an authoritarian bully who must be stopped. (Disclaimer: Bezos has donated money to Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes this website.) But when Bernie Sanders does exactly the same thing, he is a savior to an industry that has arguably been battered more by the gale of creative destruction than any other in the past 25 years or so.
Sanders’ distress over media consolidation rings hollow not simply because he merely rehashes old, played-out perennial complaints. Remember back in 2000 when the merger of AOL and Time Warner spelled the absolute doom of an independent press? Better yet, can you even remember AOL or Time magazine, once massive presences in media that are now desiccated ruins of their former selves? At a point when traditional broadcast TV and radio have never had less influence on public discourse, is the solution making sure that the “right” type and number of people—however defined—own the appropriate number of stations? Does anyone in their right mind think, as Sanders does, that a “targeted tax” on online advertising and “tech companies” will actually work to fund “independent public media” that will somehow report earnestly on the very government that ensures their existence?
This is malarkey and it doesn’t help that Sanders wraps it up in the same populist billionaire-baiting rhetoric he covers everything in, ideological maple syrup to sweeten what can only be understood as an unprecedented power grab over freedom of speech and the press.
More than two centuries after the constitution was signed, we cannot sit by and allow corporations, billionaires, and demagogues to destroy the Fourth Estate, nor can we allow them to replace serious reporting with infotainment and propaganda.
We must take action—and if we do, I know we can be successful. We can and will restore the media that Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Cronkite envisioned, and that America so desperately needs.
Legacy media have indeed been decimated over the past 25-plus years and the next decade doesn’t look so bright either. And yet, there is no question that Americans have more sources of information at our fingertips than ever before. Even left-wingers at The Nation, a publication that rarely misses an opportunity to call for more government control over virtually every aspect of our lives, understand this. Writing in 2014, Tom Engelhardt notes:
There has, in fact, never been a DIY moment like this when it comes to journalism and coverage of the world. Period. For the first time in history, you and I have been put in the position of the newspaper editor. We’re no longer simply passive readers at the mercy of someone else’s idea of how to “cover” or organize this planet and its many moving parts. To one degree or another, to the extent that any of us have the time, curiosity or energy, all of us can have a hand in shaping, reimagining, and understanding our world in new ways.
Writing a decade ago from a more libertarian perspective, press critic Jack Shafer (then at Slate, now at Politico) similarly captured exactly what eludes Bernie Sanders and others who equate journalism with the health of conventional daily newspapers that flourished in the postwar era.
Journalism has generally benefited by increases in the number of competitors, the entry of new and once-marginalized players, and the creation of new approaches to cracking stories. Just because the journalism business is going to hell and it may no longer make economic sense to maintain mega-news bureaus at the center of war zones doesn’t mean that journalism isn’t thriving.
Trump has easily been the most-dissected president of all of our lifetimes. That he hasn’t been hounded from office yet and stands to win reelection isn’t for lack of trying by professional and amateur journalists who have revealed all sorts of information about him and his dealings. Nobody is suffering from a lack of ideologically diverse and in-depth information about every possible topic under the sun. There may well be more chaff mixed in with the wheat, but that’s because we now have far more choice of what to read.
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