The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Monday in a 10th Amendment case that pits the state of New Jersey against both the federal government and the biggest names in professional and amateur sports. It will be a constitutional clash between federalism and federal power.
The case is Christie v. National Collegiate Athletic Association. In a new video produced by the Federalist Society, I explain the legal issues at stake in this high-profile dispute. Does the federal government have the lawful power to prevent New Jersey from partially legalizing sports betting in its casinos and racetracks? Or does the 10th Amendment shield the state from the federal government’s reach? Click below to watch.
Shall we compare the damage that will be done when all these bubbles pop?
Regardless of one's own views about bitcoin/cryptocurrency, what is truly remarkable is the asymmetry that is applied to questioning the status quo and bitcoin. As I noted yesterday, everyone seems just fine with throwing away $20 billion in electricity annually in the U.S. alone to keep hundreds of millions of gadgets in stand-by mode, but the electrical consumption of bitcoin is "shocking," "ridiculous," etc.
Since the U.S. consumes about 20% of the world's energy, we can guesstimate the total amount of electricity wasted on stand-by and similar sources of waste is more on the order of $100 billion annually.
What's shocking and ridiculous is that upwards of $100 billion in electricity is squandered globally annually on stand-by devices and other painfully obvious sources of waste. But this attracts essentially zero concern or commentary. Do you notice any asymmetry in the scrutiny being applied to the status quo and to bitcoin et al.? The status quo– wasteful beyond measure–is just fine: nobody questions the staggering waste built into the status quo, from hundreds of millions of devices consuming electricity but doing no work to hundreds of millions of vehicles idling in traffic for hours each and every day across the globe–nope, the really big issue is bitcoin / blockchain consumption.
Does anyone question how much electricity the vast server farms of Google and Facebook consume in order to serve up adverts and store photos of puppies and kittens? And how about the energy consumed by the NSA and the dozens of National Security agencies that have proliferated over the past 16 years? How much coal gets burned to serve adverts, archive photos of puppies and kittens, and store billions of emails, phone calls to Aunt Sadie, etc. for future analysis? (Dear old Sadie could be a jihadist–ya never know…)
There's also an interesting asymmetry in pronouncements of bubbles. Almost every pundit / commentator agrees that the cryptocurrencies are in crazy bubbles akin to the tulip bulb mania, but how many of these folks publicly ask if fiat currencies might be the greatest bubbles in human history, pyramids of illusion that are supposedly worth tens of trillions of dollars?
Do the bubbles in bonds, stocks and real estate get the same scrutiny as the bubble in cryptos? Do any of the conventional critics deriding the bubble in bitcoin bother comparing the scale of all these bubbles? So bitcoin is in a bubble at a market cap of $170 billion, but the unprecedented $500 trillion bubble in stocks, bonds, debt instruments and real estate is perfectly fine and no risk at all? (Approximately $300 trillion in global financial assets and $200 trillion in real estate.)
Shall we compare the damage that will be done when all these bubbles pop? owners of bitcoin would suffer a collective loss of $85 billion should bitcoin fall in half from $10,000 to $5,000, while the owners of stocks, bonds, debt instruments and real estate will suffer a collective loss of $250 trillion when these bubbles pop–an event that history tells us is inevitable.
The status quo does an excellent job assuring us that these $500 trillion bubbles will never pop– never, ever, ever; they will continue expanding until the end of time because central banks are the greatest power in the Universe and they will never ever let these markets decline.
Meanwhile, history is conclusive: ultimate financial powers in the Universe are 0 for 100 in terms of staving off collapses of asset bubbles, especially asset bubbles based on the infinite expansion of credit.
So which bubble is more dangerous? Which one should be attracting the most scrutiny and risk assessment? The mainstream will answer "bitcoin," but if we strip away the astounding asymmetry that's being applied to all things bitcoin/blockchain, we might find that worrying about the destruction of $250 trillion is considerably worthier of close examination than the potential for what amounts to signal-noise (in comparison to losses that will be measured in the tens of trillions) losses in bitcoin.
The asymmetry of bubbles will generate an asymmetry of losses.
Our national debt is $20.5 trillion and heading to $30 trillion by 2030. You’d think that this would be a wake-up call for Republicans, who control all three branches of government, to finally take spending seriously. Instead, they want to get rid of the spending caps meant to constrain lawmakers’ uncontrollable appetite to spend.
The spending caps were implemented as part of the Budget Control Act of 2011. The deal itself was the result of a vigorous debt ceiling battle between those who wanted the unconditional ability to raise the debt limit and those who called for fiscal discipline going forward in exchange for additional debt at the time. In the end, the pro-debt people got their increase in the authority of the federal government to borrow even more money, and the pro-fiscal restraint ones got spending caps. Though the caps weren’t strict enough (they mostly reduced the growth of additional spending, as opposed to imposing actual cuts), they turned out to be the most fiscally responsible policy in decades.
Now, you may say that being the most successful at restraining spending isn’t that impressive when there haven’t been many, if any, real attempts to control spending. Indeed, the Republicans have, time and time again, proved that when they’re in power, they like to spend just as much as Democrats do, writes Veronique de Rugy in her latest column for Reason.
Rumors have circulated for months that Rex Tillerson's time at the helm of the State Department might soon be coming to the end. Tensions between the two men – who could forget "morongate"? – have apparently worsened since the spring, when reports first emerged that Tillerson and Trump had different views on important foreign policy issues like the Iran deal and North Korea. Trump was famously accused of "castrating" his secretary of state in the eyes of the global diplomatic community when he chided Tillerson not to bother pursuing diplomatic talks with the North Koreans.
Pompeo has long been rumored (as we pointed out in October) to be Tillerson's obvious replacement, given his foreign policy expertise as head of the CIA and a reportedly close relationship with Trump – the two meet every day for Trump's intelligence briefing. Pompeo's reportedly become "a trusted policy adviser" to the president, according to the Times. Before the CIA, Pompeo was a Congressman from Vice President Mike Pence's home state of Indiana.
And now, the New York Times is reporting that Tillerson could be out "within weeks." For the former ExxonMobile CEO, an end-of-year exit would make his time in office the shortest of any secretary of state whose tenure was not ended by a change in presidents in nearly 120 years. Tillerson has reportedly been holding out until year end to try and end his tenure with a little dignity.
Pompeo would then be replaced at the CIA by Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas who has been a key ally of the president on national security matters, according to the White House plan. Cotton has signaled that he would accept the job if offered, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss sensitive deliberations before decisions are announced.
However, there's the story comes with one crucial caveat: According to the Times, it was not immediately clear whether Trump has given final approval to the plan, but he has been said to have soured on Tillerson and in general is ready to make a change at the State Department.
White House chief of staff John Kelly developed the transition plan and has discussed it with other officials, who presumably shared it with the Times. Under his plan, the shake-up of the national security team would happen around the end of the year or shortly afterward.
As the Times points out, Tillerson's tenure has been marred by "turbulent" relations with his boss:
The ouster of Mr. Tillerson would end a turbulent reign at the State Department for the former Exxon Mobile chief executive, who has been largely marginalized over the last year. Mr. Trump and Mr. Tillerson have been at odds over a host of major issues, including the Iran nuclear deal, the confrontation with North Korea and a clash between Arab allies. The secretary was reported to have privately called Mr. Trump a “moron” and the president publicly criticized Mr. Tillerson for “wasting his time” with a diplomatic outreach to North Korea.
Pompeo's move is, of course, a setback for Nikki Haley, Trump's ambassador to the UN, a position that's typically seen as a stepping stone to leading the state department.
Cotton's promotion wouldbe a reward for one of Trump's most loyal supporters in the Senate on national security and immigration issues. However, Cotton's ascension is not yet completely assured: There's still some debate about whether he'd be more use to Trump in Langley, or in the senate.
If Cotton leaves, his seat will be up for grabs in 2018.
Tillerson would mark the latest in a string of more than a dozen high-profile departures from the Trump administration during its first year. He's also probably the most high-profile figure to depart since Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned after being exposed for taking expensive chartered flights at taxpayer expense.
Sally Yates Michael Flynn Katie Walsh Preet Bharara James Comey Michael Dubke Walter Shaub Mark Corralo Sean Spicer Micheal Short Reince Priebus Anthony Scaramucci Steve Bannon Sebastian Gorka Tom Price
When Ballou High School, once one of Washington D.C.’s worst performing public schools, announced that all of its 2017 senior class graduated with college acceptance letters, the praise was effusive.
Both NPR and the Washington Post ran stories on the miracle school, praising its miraculous feat of boosting its graduation rate from 57 to 100 percent in a single school year.
Thanks to a joint investigation by NPR and local public broadcaster WAMU we know the miracle was cheating. According to the WAMU story Wednesday, many of the students Ballou graduated had missed so many classes they should have been ineligible for their diplomas.
D.C. Public School policy states students who miss more than 30 days of a course automatically fail that course. Records compiled by WAMU showed 141 graduating seniors had at least 30 days of unexcused absences and 86 had at least 60 unexcused absences. Roughly 20 percent of the graduating class was absent 90 or more times, or more absent than in attendance.
Ballou teachers reported students with woefully inadequate academic skills. Only 9 percent of Ballou students passed D.C.’s standardized test for English last year, and none passed the standardized math test.
“I’ve never seen kids in the 12th grade that couldn’t read and write,” Brain Butcher, a former Ballou History teacher, told WAMU.
Teachers acknowledged to WAMU the Ballou administration brought incredible pressure on teachers to pass students. This included threatening teachers with poor performance reviews should they fail students or encouraging them to give students grades of 50 percent on work that was never turned in.
In initial interviews with WAMU, Jane Spence, chief of secondary schools for the district, downplayed the chronic absences, saying, “we also know that students learn material in lots of different ways. So we’ve started to recognize that students can have mastered material even if they’re not sitting in a physical space.”
Public officials haven’t been as forgiving. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said at a press conference Wednesday the district was going to “thoroughly review all policies related to attendance, graduation, and credit recovery.”
One would hope so. Ballou High School received some $12.7 million in taxpayer funds in Fiscal Year 2017 for its annual budget.
What the WAMU investigation makes clear, however, is that much of that money is spent on juking stats, a disservice to taxpayers and to students actively incentivized to become worse students with no consequence for their failure.
“If I knew I could skip the whole semester and still pass, why would I try,” Morgan Williams, a former health and physical education teacher at Ballou, asked. “They’re not prepared to succeed.”
After reaching its highest since March 2011 in October, Chicago Business Barometer dropped in November (but beat expectations) amid slowing New orders.
Chicago PMI dropped from 66.2 to 63.9, better than the 63.0 expectations…
Under the covers:
Prices paid rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion
New orders rose at a slower pace, signaling expansion
Employment rose and the direction reversed, signaling expansion
Inventories rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion
Supplier deliveries rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion
Production rose at a faster pace, signaling expansion
Order backlogs rose at a slower pace, signaling expansion
Business activity has been positive for 12 months over the past year.
Rocky took some many punches and kept coming back. Fighting the trends highlighted below might be a little painful to the pocketbook.
Below looks at three broad-based indices on a monthly basis over the past few decades-
CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE
Breakouts continue to take place in each of these broad-based indices at each (1).
Until these indices reflect weakness and break key support lines, might not be worth fighting these price trends!
Why you see chart pattern analysis with brief commentary:
There is a ton of news and opinions about markets and stocks that make the decision-making process more difficult than it needs to be.
I believe the Power of the chart Pattern provides all you need to see what is taking place in an asset and determine the action to take.
This approach has worked well for me and our clients and I encourage you to test it for yourself.
Send an email if you would like to see sample research and take me up on a trial of our Premiumor Weekly Researchwhere I provide actionable alerts on breakouts and reversals in broad market indices, sectors, commodities, the miners and select individual stocks
A day after reports emerged that Michigan Rep. John Conyers wouldn't seek re-election in 2018, ending a more than 50-year career in the House, local media reported that he had been hospitalized after returning to the Detroit area.
Conyers' office confirmed the congressman is hospitalized but did not say why or at which hospital. Political consultant Sam Riddle spoke to reporters Thursday morning and said Conyers was hospitalized due to stress. Riddle said he spoke to Conyers' wife, Monica Conyers, Thursday morning.
"I just spoke with Monica Conyers on the phone and we want you to know that the congressman is resting comfortably in an area hospital. He's doing OK, as well as he can be expected for a gentleman that's approaching 90 years of age," Riddle said. "The congressman's health is not what it should be and lot of that is directly attributable to this media assault."
The 88-year-old congressman returned to Detroit this week amid sexual harassment claims from his former staffers.
One of the women accusing Conyers of sexual harassment spoke early Thursday.
Marion Brown described what she claims Conyers did to her while she worked for him.
"Some of the things that he did, it was sexual harassment," she said. "Violating my body, propositioning me, inviting me to hotels with the guise of discussing business, and then propositioning for sex. He just violated my body. He has touched me in different ways, and it was very uncomfortable and very unprofessional."
Conyers settled a sexual harassment claim with Brown back in 2015.
Buzzfeed reported last week that Conyers had used taxpayer money to pay settlements to several former staffers who accused him of sexual harassment.
A lawyer for former DNC IT staffer Imran Awan is scrambling to block evidence found on a hidden laptop which may contain proof of a massive spy ring operating at the highest levels of Congress, in what may be the largest breach of National Security in U.S. history.
Awan, a Pakistani national, worked for dozens of Democratic members of Congress along with his wife, two brothers and a friend. Following the publication of DNC emails by WikiLeaks in the lead-up to the 2016 election, Congressional investigators discovered that the Awans had a secret server being housed by the House Democratic Caucus backed up to an offsite Dropbox account.
“For members to say their data was not compromised is simply inaccurate. They had access to all the data including all emails. Imran Awan is the walking example of an insider threat, a criminal actor who had access to everything,” –Daily Caller
According to a briefing, "all five of the shared employees system administrators collectively logged onto the [House Democratic] Caucus system 5,735 times, or an average of 27 times per day,” despite only one of them being authorized to do so.
The Awans were banned from the House IT network on February 2, 2017 after being named in a criminal investigation – however they continued to work in the building for Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz until Imran Awan's arrest at Dulles Airport trying to flee the country in late July. Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were charged with conspiracy and bank fraud in relation to a real estate transaction.
The laptop in question was tucked away in a tiny room formerly used as a phone booth on the second floor of the Rayburn House Office Building late one night in March, only to be found by Capitol Police just after midnight on April 6, 2017 along with notebooks marked 'attorney client privilege,' letters addressed to the US Attorney of DC regarding Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and several forms of identification. Based on the contents of the backpack, some believe Awan wanted the laptop to be found.
Attorney-Client Privilege
Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller, who has been tracking the Awan case, reports that Awan's attorney Chris Gowen – a former aide to Hillary Clinton, is seeking to block the laptop evidence by arguing the 'attorney client privilege' note attached to the notebook found with the laptop covers the contents of the hard drive, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
Via the Daily Caller:
"Chris Gowen, Awan’s attorney, said at the last hearing: “We do expect there being an attorney-client privilege issue in this case… What occurred is a backpack from my client was found, he was trying to get a better signal, there was a note that said attorney client privilege and a hard drive. We feel very strongly about this.”
#1 a Pakistani ID card with the name Mohommed Ashraf Awan #2 a copy – not original – of a driver’s license with name Imran Awan #3 a copy (front and back) of his congressional ID #4 an Apple laptop with the homescreen initials ‘RepDWS’ #5 composition notebooks with notes handwritten saying ‘attorney client privilege’ and possibly discussing case details below #6 loose letters addressed to US Attorney of DC discussing the apparent owner of the bag being investigated.
As Rosiak points out, it is unclear how the handwritten note saying "attorney client privilege" could be construed to cover a hard drive, rather than the pages of [the] notebook it was contained on.
Andrew McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney who has followed the case, said “The A/C (attorney-client) privilege only applies to communications between the client and lawyer that are for the purpose of seeking legal advice and that are intended by both parties to be kept confidential… Moreover, asserting that something is A/C protected does not make it so. You still have to show that the material in question constitutes communications strictly between the lawyer and client that were for the purpose of seeking legal advice.
“If I give my lawyer my bank records and ask him if they show evidence of a crime, the bank records do not become A/C-privileged — only his advice to me would be A/C-privileged. And if I stuck a sign on my bank records that said ‘A/C-privileged documents,’ that would not make them A/C-privileged documents,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday." -Daily Caller
Debbie Downer
In May of 2016, Debbie Wasserman Schulz – an employer and personal friend of Awan – spent several minutes browbeating the Chief of DC Capitol Police at a budget meeting, claiming the laptop should be given back since it was hers and threatening 'consequences' if it wasn't returned.
The Awan brothers were managing computers for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence – a group with top secret clearance which is looking into Russian election interference right now.
Also of note
The brothers were "shared employees," hired by multiple Democrats for IT work whenever it was needed – so they floated all over the place doing all sorts of work on House members computers. Democrats Juaquin Castro, Cedric Richmond, Andre Carson, Jackie Speier, Tammy Duckworth, and Louis Frankel all employed the Awans.
Information Brokers?
Judge Andrew Napolitano appeared on Fox Business Network in late July where he dropped a bombshell: not only did the Awans had access to the emails of every member of Congress, Imran Awan reportedly sold information to still unknown parties, which the FBI is currently investigating.
Napolitano: He was arrested for some financial crime – that's the tip of the iceberg. The real allegation against him is that he had access to the emails of every member of congress and he sold what he found in there. What did he sell, and to whom did he sell it? That's what the FBI wants to know. This may be a very, very serious national security situation.
Varney: Wait a second, he was the IT worker along with his two Pakistani brothers, for DWS, and other Democrats in the House – and the theory is that he got access to all of their secrets or whatever, and sold some?
Napolitano: Yes, and this was at the time that Congresswoman Schultz was also the chair of the Democratic National Committee. So at this point I don't believe they know what he sold, and to whom he sold it – but they do know what he had access to, which is virtually everything in the House of representatives, which would include classified material in the House intelligence committee.
Lt. Colonel Tony Shaffer went even further – claiming that the Awan brothers were linked to the Muslim Brotherhood while working for Democrat Congressman Andre Carson, a report reinforced by Frontpage Magazine:
The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie Wasserman Schultz; to whom the letter had been addressed.
Carson is the second Muslim in Congress and the first Muslim on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and, more critically, is the ranking member on its Emerging Threats Subcommittee. He is also a member of the Department of Defense Intelligence and Overhead Architecture Subcommittee.
The Emerging Threats Subcommittee, of which Carson is a ranking member, is responsible for much of counterterrorism oversight. It is the worst possible place for a man with Carson’s credentials.
Carson had inherited his grandmother’s seat and exploited it to promote a radical Islamist agenda. He has interfaced with a laundry list of Islamist groups from CAIR to ISNA to ICNA to MPAC. Islamists have funded Carson’s career to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. The Center for Security Policy has put together a dossier of Carson’s connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is the parent organization of many key Islamic terror groups posing a threat to our national security including Al Qaeda and Hamas.
Andre Carson shared the stage at a CAIR banquet with Sirraj Wahaj: an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Center bombing who had once declared,” You don’t get involved in politics because it’s the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics are a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.” CAIR itself had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in terror finance.
Immunity for Hina?
In September, it was reported that Hina Alvi – Imran Awan's wife, had struck a deal with federal prosecutors to return to the U.S. from Pakistan to face conspiracy and bank fraud charges.
Alvi and her children fled to the safety of Pakistan in early 2017, so her voluntary return – which was structured with an arrest to be made "not in front of her children" is significant. Upon her return to the United States, Hina was arraigned on four felony counts of bank fraud and handed over her U.S. passport to prosecutors.
Congressman Trent Franks (R-AZ) says that Alvi's return may be part of a broader immunity deal with prosecutors in return for a "significant" and "pretty disturbing" story about Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
“I don’t want to talk out of school here but I think you're going to see some revelations that are going to be pretty profound. The fact that this wife is coming back from Pakistan and is willing to face charges, as it were, I think there is a good chance she is going to reach some type of immunity to tell a larger story here that is going to be pretty disturbing to the American people.”
"I would just predict that this is going to be a very significant story and people should fasten their seat belts on this one."
Despite the volumes of evidence stacking up against the former DNC IT staffers, Debbie Wasserman Schultz claims the entire investigation of the Awans is nothing more than Islamophobia.