A series of massive explosions at an ammunition depot in Siberia resulted in the evacuation of around 10% of the population in the city of Achinsk in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region.
The incident occurred after a fire broke out in the storage unit for powdered artillery charges, according to Russian news agency TASS, citing the Russian Central Military District. At least one massive explosion was recorded.
Local emergency units took steps to restrict the spread of fire and ensure security at the fire site. “Currently, the epicenter of the fire is being localized,” the district added.
…
The personnel has been evacuated. An effort is underway to evacuate residents of settlements located within a 20 km zone from the accident’s epicenter.
The authorities of the city of Achinsk in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk Region, which has a population of 100,000, are evacuating about 11,000 people after explosions. –TASS
“Districts with a total population of about 11,000 people are within the impact zone. These areas are being evacuated,” according to local press.
According to another source from the region’s emergency services, residential buildings were damaged by the explosion.
“Residential buildings have been damaged. The windows have been shattered by the blast wave. The territory [of the military base] has been cordoned off,” said the source.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ME98KI Tyler Durden
Following the recent rash of mass shootings, media outlets have begun to suggest again that murder is a growing reality in the lives of Americans.
For example, the Associated Press ran an article titled “U.S. already has nearly 20 mass killings in 2019,” suggesting the threat of dying in a shooting is becoming an ever-more-likely fate in America. USA Today took it a step further with an article titled “Not an unreasonable fear: Mass shootings such as the one at Gilroy Garlic Festival more numerous, deadly.”
Articles like these combine to send to the message that homicides are a growing part of American life. Moreover, these sorts of articles have had the intended effect.
As the Pew Research Center has noted, [i]n a survey in late 2016, 57% of registered voters said crime in the U.S. had gotten worse since 2008. At least some of these poorly conceived estimates of crime trends can likely be attributed to an ongoing media focus on mass shootings. But as we shall see, mass shootings are but a very small part of larger crime trends. And, the overall trend has been downward for decades.
The homicide rate in America in recent years has been around half of what it was in the early 1990s.
Indeed, for Americans born in the 1970s or after, the last few years have been the least homicidal years of their lives.
It is true that nationwide homicide rates have increased since 2014’s 51-year low, rising from 4.4 homicides per 100,000 people in 2014 to 5.3 per 100,000 in 2017. But, the most recent data we have suggests 2018 may be another down year for homicides.1
According to preliminary crime data from the FBI for 2018, homicides and violent crime were both down in the first half of 2018, compared to the previous year.
Full-year stats for 2018 will become available in September.
From January to June of 2018, there were 6.7 percent fewer murders, and 4.3 percent less violent crime overall.
This decline follows a three year period during which murders rose form the previous year (in the first half of the year). But the preliminary data and the full-year data do not always match up. For example, the first half of 2017 showed an increase in homicides, although homicides ended up being down for the full year of 2017.
Trends can change at any time, of course. But for now, the data points toward a continued overall trend toward less homicide in the United States.
Nor is this trend just limited to homicides. This is important to note because sometimes observers of homicide data suggest homicides have only lessened because medical science means fewer assaults result in death.
But we can also see that violent crime in general — including aggravated assaults — are down considerably from earlier peaks.
Violent crime overall was at 382.9 per 100,000 during 2017, near a 45 year low.
Aggravated assaults were near a 40-year low, at 248.9 per 100,000.
It may very well be that medical science is helping prevent many assaults from turning into homicides, but it’s also true that fewer violent crimes in general are taking place. Thus, we cannot only attribute declines in homicide rates only to improved medical care for homicide victims. There are simply fewer violent attacks in America over the past twenty years.
What Role Do Mass Shootings Play?
In spite of all this, journalists and pundits who focus on mass shootings might say “well, the homicide rate would improve more if mass shootings weren’t such a problem.”
That may be so. But how much of the homicide puzzle are mass shootings? It turns out: very small.
According to Mother Jones magazine — a publication that’s hardly a right-wing stooge for the NRA — there were 117 deaths resulting from mass shootings in 2017. Given that there were 17,284 homicides reported during 2017, mass shootings made up 0.7 percent off all homicides.
In 2018, there were 80 deaths from mass shootings. We don’t have full-year 2018 data yet, but since the first half of the year already shows a 6.7 percent decrease, let’s assume a slight decrease for the year, down to 17,000 homicides. If this turns out to be the case, that means mass shooting deaths will make up about 0.5 percent of all homicides.
Those wounded in mass shootings are an even smaller percentage of those who survive serious assaults nationwide. Indeed, because aggravated assaults are so numerous, the non-homicide victims of mass shootings barely register as a percentage of total assaults. For example, in 2017, there were more than 810,000 aggravated assaults in the US. Even if we count the shockingly large number of wounded (i.e., 546 people) from the Las Vegas shooting that year, the total comes to 0.07 percent of all aggravated assaults.
It remains unclear, however, why USAToday should label such concerns as “not an unreasonable fear.” True, it makes sense to not discount the risk of mass shootings entirely, and to be aware that the risk exists. Even if very small.
However, for all the air time and public discussion devoted to mass shootings in the US, nearly all people murdered in America this year will be murdered the “old fashioned” way. They’ll be murdered by a family member or a jilted lover or by some street thug looking to score some cash to pay for a drug fix. Most Americans murdered this year will victims of the sort we see in Baltimore where ordinary murders of the non-mass-shooting variety continue to wreak havoc on the local population. These murders won’t be any less tragic than murders from mass shootings. But you won’t hear nearly as much about them as you’ll hear about the mass shootings.
Of course, from a public policy perspective, it’s easy to see why pundits and politicians and media journalists would push the mass-shooting angle so hard. The seeming randomness of the shootings allows nearly the entire population to imagine that it could be a victim of a mass shooting at any time. After all, these shootings occur in churches and in schools and at county fairs. These are places where ordinary, middle class Americans go. More importantly, these are places voters go. It’s easy to look at street crime in a big city and dismiss it as simply a problem for people who live in “slums.” Thus, by focusing on mass shootings, its easier to create the impression that violence has exploded across the US, as mass shootings get ever more air time and discussion in social media.
Yes, it may very well be that trends reverse themselves, and we enter another cycle of rising crime in coming years. For now, however, most Americans’ estimates that crime is “getting worse” in the US appears to be unfounded.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2yKNMTz Tyler Durden
The political reaction to violent tragedies is rarely good for individual liberty. President Donald Trump’s response to the weekend’s mass shootings in Texas and Ohio is no exception.
On Monday morning, Trump tweeted that he would be willing to support more restrictions on gun ownership—and suggested linking those restrictions to congressional action on immigration.
“We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain,” wrote the president. “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!”
In a brief speech Monday morning, Trump repeated his openness to more gun control measures but avoided any mention of immigration.
“Now is the time to set destructive partisanship aside,” said Trump. His remarks called for more red flag laws, which allow police to confiscate weapons from law-abiding gun owners if they are deemed potential threats. The president also called on social media companies to develop tools to flag likely mass shooters, and he endorsed increased investments in mental health.
This is not the first time that Trump has floated the idea of more gun control regulations in the wake of mass shootings. His administration banned bump stocks following the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Trump isn’t the only conservative voice calling for additional gun control measures either. The conservative New York Post editorial board called for a ban on “weapons of war” in a Monday front-page editorial.
“An assault weapons ban is aimed at the likes of the El Paso shooter, who coldly plotted how to kill as many as possible, as quickly as possible. Let’s make that a lot tougher for the next monster,” reads the Post‘s editorial, which makes a direct appeal to Trump to support a renewed assault weapons ban.
The Post said additional restrictions on specific firearms should be part of a larger gun control package that would include red flag laws and expanded background checks.
Trump’s speech today largely conformed to the Post‘s policy prescriptions.
The Post‘s op-ed editor, the right-wing nationalist Sohrab Ahmari, went further on Twitter by specifically calling out libertarians for their opposition to expanded gun control.
“What about gangland killings in Chicago? The Founders, the Founders . . . .” the libertarian gun absolutist said as mass killers bathed two American cities in the blood of innocents in fewer than 24 hours.
Democrats have renewed their calls for stepped-up gun control measures following the shootings over the weekend, but it seems doubtful that a majority would be willing to trade increased immigration restrictions to get them.
Zuri Davis contributed additional reporting to this article.
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The political reaction to violent tragedies is rarely good for individual liberty. President Donald Trump’s response to the weekend’s mass shootings in Texas and Ohio is no exception.
On Monday morning, Trump tweeted that he would be willing to support more restrictions on gun ownership—and suggested linking those restrictions to congressional action on immigration.
“We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain,” wrote the president. “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!”
In a brief speech Monday morning, Trump repeated his openness to more gun control measures but avoided any mention of immigration.
“Now is the time to set destructive partisanship aside,” said Trump. His remarks called for more red flag laws, which allow police to confiscate weapons from law-abiding gun owners if they are deemed potential threats. The president also called on social media companies to develop tools to flag likely mass shooters, and he endorsed increased investments in mental health.
This is not the first time that Trump has floated the idea of more gun control regulations in the wake of mass shootings. His administration banned bump stocks following the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas.
Trump isn’t the only conservative voice calling for additional gun control measures either. The conservative New York Post editorial board called for a ban on “weapons of war” in a Monday front-page editorial.
“An assault weapons ban is aimed at the likes of the El Paso shooter, who coldly plotted how to kill as many as possible, as quickly as possible. Let’s make that a lot tougher for the next monster,” reads the Post‘s editorial, which makes a direct appeal to Trump to support a renewed assault weapons ban.
The Post said additional restrictions on specific firearms should be part of a larger gun control package that would include red flag laws and expanded background checks.
Trump’s speech today largely conformed to the Post‘s policy prescriptions.
The Post‘s op-ed editor, the right-wing nationalist Sohrab Ahmari, went further on Twitter by specifically calling out libertarians for their opposition to expanded gun control.
“What about gangland killings in Chicago? The Founders, the Founders . . . .” the libertarian gun absolutist said as mass killers bathed two American cities in the blood of innocents in fewer than 24 hours.
Democrats have renewed their calls for stepped-up gun control measures following the shootings over the weekend, but it seems doubtful that a majority would be willing to trade increased immigration restrictions to get them.
Zuri Davis contributed additional reporting to this article.
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One day after China finally snapped, and demonstratively refused to intervene and keep the CNH above 7.00 vs the dollar, escalating the trade war into a currency war, stocks are tumbling and Wall Street analysts – all of whom had been bullish until now – are scrambling to adjust their narrative.
With the S&P dropping more than 2%, bringing its slide from the all time highs just two weeks ago to more than 5%, semiconductors which are most directly exposed to Chinese trade, and banks stocks, which are sensitive to interest rates, are among the hardest hit sectors.
As widely expected, President Trump himself joined the fray and on Monday morning tweeted about China and the Fed saying: “China dropped the price of their currency to an almost a historic low. It’s called ‘currency manipulation.’ Are you listening Federal Reserve? This is a major violation which will greatly weaken China over time!” In doing so, he once again confirmed that he is using trade war as leverage to get Powell to cut rates further, as BofA showed in the following simple schematic:
But while Trump’s reaction was expected, what was more interesting is how sellside analysts – until recently predicting that the S&P will enjoy smooth sailing well into the 3,000, are adjusting their trading recos now that the worst case scenario in the trade war with China has materialized. So, courtesy of Bloomberg, here are some samples of the latest sellside commentary:
Cowen, Chris Krueger
Krueger called China’s retaliation “massive,” adding that “on a scale of 1-10, it’s an 11.” He cited the Chinese government calling on state buyers to halt U.S. agricultural purchases, while there’s “increased anecdotal evidence that the Chinese government is tightening its overview of foreign firms.”
“While there were measures that could have been chosen with larger direct effects on supply chains, the announcements from Beijing represent a direct shot at the White House and seem designed for maximum political impact,” Krueger said. “ We expect a quick (and possibly intemperate) response from the White House, and consequently expect a more rapid escalation of trade tensions.”
“There now will be increased expectations that the Fed will cut again in September to offset the drag caused by this escalation in the trade war,” he added. “Such moves will only be a partial, lagged offset to the recessionary headwinds a cycle of retaliation would cause.”
BMO, Ian Lyngen
“The wait is over for those wondering how Beijing would respond to Trump’s recent tariff announcement. The result: the yuan was allowed to depreciate well beyond 7.0.”
Instructing state-owned Chinese firms to halt U.S. crop purchases triggered “the obligatory flight-to-quality,” which pushed 10-year yields to 1.74%, with two-year yields keeping pace. That was “an impressive move that suggests August will not experience the traditional summer doldrums. Who needs vacation anyway?”
“The most significant unknown at this moment,” Lyngen added, “is how much further the yuan will be allowed to fall given that it’s already the weakest since 2008.”
Morgan Stanley, Betsy Graseck
Bank investors’ eyes were “glued to the yield curve last week,” with Trump’s tariff tweet on Thursday, Graseck wrote in a note. They’re now asking about Morgan Stanley’s net interest margin (NIM), outlook.
Graseck didn’t change her NIM assumptions yet. “We bake one additional cut of 25 basis points in 2019 in-line with our economist, and bake in the 10-year at 1.75% by mid 2020,” she wrote. She’ll update NIM and earnings per share estimates “if it looks like these trade tariffs are going through as September approaches.”
Morgan Stanley, Michael Zezas
“The dynamics of U.S.-China negotiation and macro conditions mean the next round of tariffs will likely be enacted, and investors are likely to behave as if further escalation will follow in 2019 until markets price in impacts,” Zezas wrote. “This supports our core view of weaker growth and skews the Fed dovish.”
Zezas sees incentives for the U.S. to escalate quickly. If the administration “understands the Fed’s trade policy reaction function, then it may also perceive that a more rapid escalation could deliver one or more of three beneficial points ahead of the 2020 election: 1) A quicker, potentially more aggressive Fed stimulus response that could help the economy heading into the election; 2) More time to re-frame the potential economic downside; and 3) A major concession by China (not our base case, but it is, of course, a possibility).”
Source: Bloomberg
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2OFgJeE Tyler Durden
The US presidential election is more than 15 months away, and already we’re seeing elitist establishment narrative managers rolling out their long-anticipated “Stop Rebelling and Support Biden, You Insolent Little Shits” campaign. HBO’s Bill Maher spent his “New Rule” monologue segment last night admonishing his audience to abandon any notion of progressive reform and embrace the former vice president instead.
“All the Democrats have to do to win is to come off less crazy than Trump, and of course they’re blowing it, coming across as unserious people who are going to take your money so that migrants from Honduras can go to college for free and get a major in America Sucks,” Maher said.
“Now do I want Biden to be president? Not really, but Biden’s the only Democrat who beats Trump in Ohio. He’s like non-dairy creamer: nobody loves it, but in a jam it gets the job done.”
“I’m sick of hearing that Democrats need to excite the base; Trump excites the base,” Maher said.
“It’s the fatigue, stupid. Let’s make it hard for Donald Trump to play on voters’ fears and let the fatigue win the election for us. We’ll get to the revolution, but remember: put on your oxygen mask before assisting your child.”
Boy, Bill. If that’s not the kind of inspiring rallying cry that can galvanize people against the president, I don’t know what is.
Weirdly, Maher inadvertently explains why his brilliant Biden strategy is doomed to failure earlier on in this exact same segment. Maher praises the Trump economy, saying “It’s hard to beat an incumbent in a good economy; every incumbent since FDR has won if they avoided a recession leading up to the election year.”
“The voters that Democrats need to win, moderates who have Trump fatigue, will vote against a good economy, I think, just to get back to normalcy,” Maher said.
“But they won’t trade it away for left-wing extremism. You say you want a revolution, well, you know, you gotta get elected first.”
Maher has all the facts right there in front of him, but because he is a propagandist who is only famous because he knows how to spout pro-establishment lines in an authoritative tone of voice, he manages to interpret them in the dumbest way possible. Yes, on paper the US economy is doing well, but only by the standards used by neoliberal politicians and mass media outlets to determine economic success. In real terms a population that used to be able to support a family on a single income now mostly requires two incomes, and most of them would struggle to pay even a thousand-dollar emergency expense.
Americans have gotten much poorer in terms of real income and income inequality has been exploding, but because both parties have been normalizing this paradigm and deceitfully using stock markets and unemployment rates to measure economic success, Trump is able to say he’s performing amazingly well economically. In terms of real American spending power he’s actually performing abysmally, but Democrats are resistant to saying so because it will mean conceding that the Obama/Biden administration did, too.
The path to beating Trump, then, is obviously not to hope that Americans will “vote against a good economy” for the first time in living memory as Bill Maher suggests, but to address the elephant in the room of growing income and wealth inequality and how more and more Americans have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. If you can offer Americans more in terms of real economic justice instead of crap about the stock exchange that puts bread on nobody’s table, voters will listen. There are some candidates who are campaigning on exactly this platform, and none of them are named Joe Biden.
Joe Biden has a message for the millennial generation: Stop complaining. https://t.co/4qELqr15vU
Biden’s platform, in contrast, seems more and more to consist of him just telling progressives to shut up and stop whining. Asked on a recent AFSCME forum about his controversial comments in January of last year that he has “no empathy” for young Americans who fear crippling college debt and rising cost of living, The Huffington Post reports that Biden not only stood by his comments, but doubled down on them, saying that if things are bad then the younger generation is to blame for not engaging in the political process.
“Don’t tell me how bad it is, change it,” Biden said.
“Change it. Change it. My generation did.”
Biden, like Bill Maher, is inadvertently giving progressives all the information they need. Yes, they should change it. And the very first thing they should change is a political dynamic which elevates warmongering Wall Street cronies like Joe Biden. There’s absolutely no reason for anyone to accept a status quo that insists the only way to beat Trump is to take a Hail Mary gamble on trying to elect a Democrat who’s no better than Trump. They tried that in 2016 and there’s no reason to believe they’ll be able to bully everyone into playing along in 2020.
The former vice president is about one click away from coming right out and saying “Vote for me, because fuck you that’s why.” And elitist establishment narrative managers are already essentially saying it for him.
* * *
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On the heels of disappointing US Manufacturing ISM/PMI prints last week – and global surveys – US Services surveys were expected to show a modest rebound in July.
Markit’s Services PMI did surprise to the upside, printing 53 (from 51.5 in June and above the 52.2 flash print), but business expectations plunged to a record low.
Although client demand strengthened further from May’s recent low, service sector firms reported another fall in business confidence during July. The degree of optimism slipped for the sixth month running to a fresh series record low, reflecting heightened economic uncertainty.
ISM’s Services survey collapsed to its weakest since August 2016 (printing 53.7 vs 55.5 expected)
Business activity fell to 53.1 vs 58.2 prior month
New orders fell to 54.1 vs 55.8
Prices paid fell to 56.5 vs 58.9
Backlog of orders fell to 53.5 vs 56
New export orders fell to 53.5 vs 55.5
So, Markit’s Services respondents seem to be in a world of their own…
“An improvement in the overall rate of business growth signalled by the services PMI for July is welcome news, but the overall weak pace of expansion remains a concern. The PMIs for manufacturing and services collectively point to GDP expanding at an annualized rate of under 2% in July, below that seen in the second quarter and among the weakest seen over the past three years.
However, Williamson was quick to steal the jam out of that donut…
“A sharp drop in future expectations meanwhile suggests downside risks have increased in the near-term at least, hinting that the upturn in growth seen in July could prove short-lived and that GDP growth could remain disappointingly modest in the third quarter.
“Optimism is at its lowest ebb since comparable data were first available in 2012 as companies have grown increasingly concerned about the year ahead, fueled by trade war worries and wider geopolitical jitters, as well as growing worries that the economic cycle has peaked.”
So take your pick – headline improvement (buy stocks because here comes the rebound), or under the cover collapse in confidence (buy stocks because Fed will save us all)… or sell.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Ksi8jh Tyler Durden
It’s not clear what Trump will say, or whether he’ll propose any new policies or initiatives, but in a series of tweets Monday morning, the president appeared to express support for more stringent background checks.
We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain. Likewise for those so seriously wounded. We can never forget them, and those many who came before them. Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying….
Democrats are pushing Republicans to join them in supporting the universal background check bill that passed the House earlier this year before dying in the Senate, and by the looks of it, President Trump appears to now support that measure.
Meanwhile, Mexican President AMLO criticized the US’s gun control policy on Monday and said his country was working to stop the import of US-made guns into Mexico. Though, when it comes to gun violence, Mexico is resembles the pot calling the kettle black.
AMLO’s implication that the proliferation of firearms is the root cause behind mass shootings simply isn’t supported by the data: As one recent study showed, Mexico’s intentional homicide rate is much higher than the US’s, even though the number of guns in circulation per capita in the US is much higher than in Mexico. But warring drug cartels have led to a murder rate in Mexico that is consistently much higher than in the US.
In addition to the two shootings over the weekend, another shooting at a Garlic Festival in California earlier in the week left another 3 dead. Last time Trump expressed support for more stringent background checks and/or gun control (in the wake of the deadly Oct. 2017 shooting in Las Vegas), he swiftly changed his mind after a brief spat with the NRA. But, with the NRA still reeling from a recent power. struggle, will Trump, uh, stick to his guns this time around?
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YE8Ee5 Tyler Durden
The answer to a murderer targeting immigrants is…more immigration control, according to the president. On Monday morning, Donald Trump reacted to the two recent mass shootings by offering what sounds like a quid pro quo to liberals: Give me my border plans, and I’ll give you gun control.
This weekend saw two mass shootings in America, the first in El Paso, Texas, and the second in Dayton, Ohio. We cannot let the victims of these shootings “die in vain,” Trump tweeted. “Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying…this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform.”
….this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!
The Dayton killing spree doesn’t have any known connection to immigration and would not have been changed by stricter background checks. The shooter—Connor Betts, 24—killed his sister and eight others while wounding 27 more people after opening fire in the city’s popular Oregon District on Saturday night. “The guns had been legally purchased, police said, and there was nothing in Betts’s background that would have raised concerns—he had only traffic tickets, for speeding and failing to yield,” notesThe Washington Post.
The man arrested for the El Paso shooting, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, opened fire in a Walmart on Saturday, killing 20 people and wounding more than two dozen others. This time, immigrants were involved—as the target of the suspected shooter’s hate.
As Eric Boehm noted here over the weekend, Crusius apparently published “a hate-filled diatribe in which he called Hispanics ‘invaders’ and criticized the supposed takeover of the U.S. government by pro-immigrant corporations.” NBC has reported that “law enforcement was analyzing the document before the shooting began but were unable to verify the author’s identity or potential target in advance.”
The “manifesto” was hosted on the forum 8chan. Web hosting company Cloudflare subsequently announced that it would be terminating 8chan’s account.
“In the case of the El Paso shooting, the suspected terrorist gunman appears to have been inspired by the forum website known as 8chan,” wrote Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in a blog post:
Based on evidence we’ve seen, it appears that he posted a screed to the site immediately before beginning his terrifying attack on the El Paso Walmart killing 20 people.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Nearly the same thing happened on 8chan before the terror attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. The El Paso shooter specifically referenced the Christchurch incident and appears to have been inspired by the largely unmoderated discussions on 8chan which glorified the previous massacre. In a separate tragedy, the suspected killer in the Poway, California synagogue shooting also posted a hate-filled “open letter” on 8chan. 8chan has repeatedly proven itself to be a cesspool of hate.
8chan is among the more than 19 million Internet properties that use Cloudflare’s service. We just sent notice that we are terminating 8chan as a customer effective at midnight tonight Pacific Time. The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths. Even if 8chan may not have violated the letter of the law in refusing to moderate their hate-filled community, they have created an environment that revels in violating its spirit.
Prince seems to suffer from the common delusion that absent some particular platform, bigots and monsters won’t find a place to spew hatefulness and won’t wind up acting on their worst impulses. There is no evidence this is true, and a vast number of forums and tools in the digital sphere where these folks can find refuge.
As Prince himself has noted, Cloudflare decided two years ago to terminate account services for the far-right site The Daily Stormer. “That caused a brief interruption in the site’s operations but they quickly came back online using a Cloudflare competitor. That competitor at the time promoted as a feature the fact that they didn’t respond to legal process. Today, the Daily Stormer is still available and still disgusting. They have bragged that they have more readers than ever. They are no longer Cloudflare’s problem, but they remain the Internet’s problem,” Prince wrote.
Cloudflare can obviously do as it pleases as a private company, and the fact that companies can choose which messages to broadcast is a good thing. But Prince’s description of the Daily Stormer episode showcases the futility in acting like this is some sort of salve for maniacal violence.
The company’s decision to dump 8chan, meanwhile, goes beyond the precedent set with Daily Stormer. The latter is a site specifically dedicated to white supremacy, while the former is merely an open forum where some odious people communicate. Canceling web venues where some users are awful will shut down social media as we know it really quickly.
“In 2019 8chan is no longer a refuge for extremist hate—it is a window opening onto a much broader landscape of racism, radicalization and terrorism,” suggestsBuzzfeed‘s Ryan Broderick. “Shutting down the site is unlikely to eradicate this new extremist culture, because 8chan is anywhere. Pull the plug, it will appear somewhere else, in whatever locale will host it. Because there’s nothing particularly special about 8chan, there are no content algorithms, hosting technology immaterial. The only thing radicalizing 8chan users are other 8chan users.”
FREE MINDS
Will Wilkinson opposes the new “national conservatism”:
The practical implication of the nationalist’s entitled perspective is that unifying social reconciliation requires submission to a vision of national identity flatly incompatible with the existence and political equality of America’s urban multicultural majority. That’s a recipe for civil war, not social cohesion.
The mortgage interest deduction is dying and nobody cares. “A beloved tax break bound tightly to the American dream of homeownership, [it] once seemed politically invincible,” say New York Times business writers Jim Tankersley and Ben Casselman.
Then it nearly vanished in middle-class neighborhoods across the country, and it appears that hardly anyone noticed….The people selling and buying homes do not seem to care much that President Trump’s signature tax overhaul effectively, although indirectly, vaporized a longtime source of government support for homeowners and housing prices.
The 2017 law nearly doubled the standard deduction—to $24,000 for a couple filing jointly—on federal income taxes, giving millions of households an incentive to stop claiming itemized deductions.
As a result, far fewer families—and, in particular, far fewer middle-class families—are claiming the itemized deduction for mortgage interest. In 2018, about one in five taxpayers claimed the deduction, Internal Revenue Service statistics show. This year, that number fell to less than one in 10.
QUICK HITS
Blog Post: Some Much-Needed Pushback on the Anti-Section 230 Craziness (Linkwrap) https://t.co/tW2uPpTxG6
“In tightening controls on doctors who prescribed pain relievers, state and federal agencies were focusing on the aspect of the problem most subject to regulatory intervention.” But their strategy backfired…
