Tag: news

Russian Forces Establish Presence On Syrian-Iraqi Border

Russian Forces Establish Presence On Syrian-Iraqi Border
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/17/2020 – 02:00

Submitted by SouthFront.org,

Over the past weeks, the Syrian Army and its allies have intensified their operations against ISIS cells hiding in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert.

According to pro-government sources, during the past few days, Syrian government forces and Iranian-backed militias carried out a series of raids to the south of the Palmyra-Deir Ezzor highway and southeast of al-Mayadin. Pro-militant media outlets clam that over 10 Syrian soldiers and 15 ISIS members died in these clashes.

The Russian Aerospace Forces also resumed their strikes on ISIS targets in the desert region. Pro-opposition sources say that the Russians delivered over 100 airstrikes. Indeed, the intensity of this campaign demonstrates that the regularly resurfacing ISIS cells, which actively exploit the state of chaos on the Syrian-Iraqi border, pose a notable security threat.

Just a few days ago, the Russian Military Police established a local HQ and several positions in the Syrian town of al-Bukamal, which lies on the border with Iraq. Local sources link the increased Russian presence on the border with the recently resumed anti-ISIS operation there.

Given the de-facto collapse of security in the area on the Iraqi side of the border, the Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian-backed forces deployed near al-Bukamal and al-Qaim are now the major factor deterring the terrorists operating there. At the same time, Israel and mainstream Western propaganda argue that al-Bukamal is just the base of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and thus must be destroyed.

While the presence of Iranian-backed forces there is an open secret, attacks on them and their allies, which were repeatedly conducted by Israel and even the US-led coalition, have in fact supported the ISIS agenda.

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Can Private Employers Mandate COVID Vaccines?

The EEOC released guidance stating that private employers can generally mandate that employees get the COVID-19 vaccine. There are two likely types of exemptions. First, there may be some disability-related justifications that would exempt a person from a vaccine-mandate. Second, there may be some religious-related justifications that would exempt a person from the vaccine-mandate. EEOC offers this FAQ:

K.6. If an employer requires vaccinations when they are available, how should it respond to an employee who indicates that he or she is unable to receive a COVID-19 vaccination because of a sincerely held religious practice or belief? (12/16/20)

Once an employer is on notice that an employee’s sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance prevents the employee from receiving the vaccination, the employer must provide a reasonable accommodation for the religious belief, practice, or observance unless it would pose an undue hardship under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  Courts have defined “undue hardship” under Title VII as having more than a de minimis cost or burden on the employer. EEOC guidance explains that because the definition of religion is broad and protects beliefs, practices, and observances with which the employer may be unfamiliar, the employer should ordinarily assume that an employee’s request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief.  If, however, an employee requests a religious accommodation, and an employer has an objective basis for questioning either the religious nature or the sincerity of a particular belief, practice, or observance, the employer would be justified in requesting additional supporting information.

Here, EEOC is relying on TWA v. Hardison (1977). Justice White’s majority opinion found that religious exemptions that create “more than a de minimis cost” are an “undue hardship,” and need not be granted. But this precedent may not be long for the world. In Patterson v. Walgreens, Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch signaled they wish to revisit Hardison. And I am aware of at least one petition that squarely presents this question: Dalberiste v. GLE Associates Inc. The case was initially distributed for conference on 10/9, and has been rescheduled three more times. Perhaps a Justice is preparing another dissent from denial. Or there is some chicanery behind the scenes over whether to grant this term. If Justice Barrett is willing to give a courtesy fourth, the Court could decide the issue this year.

If the Court overrules Hardison, Justice Gorsuch would vote to reverse a precedent authored by his former boss. I am not aware of a Justice who has expressly voted to nullify a precedent his former employer wrote. The closest example I can think of is Dames & Moore v. Regan, in which Justice Rehnquist watered down Justice Jackson’s Youngstown framework. Perhaps Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will one day reverse a Kennedy precedent. Or ACB could overrule a Scalia precedent. I don’t think there are any Goldberg or Marshall precedents on the chopping block for Breyer or Kagan.

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Can Private Employers Mandate COVID Vaccines?

The EEOC released guidance stating that private employers can generally mandate that employees get the COVID-19 vaccine. There are two likely types of exemptions. First, there may be some disability-related justifications that would exempt a person from a vaccine-mandate. Second, there may be some religious-related justifications that would exempt a person from the vaccine-mandate. EEOC offers this FAQ:

K.6. If an employer requires vaccinations when they are available, how should it respond to an employee who indicates that he or she is unable to receive a COVID-19 vaccination because of a sincerely held religious practice or belief? (12/16/20)

Once an employer is on notice that an employee’s sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance prevents the employee from receiving the vaccination, the employer must provide a reasonable accommodation for the religious belief, practice, or observance unless it would pose an undue hardship under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.  Courts have defined “undue hardship” under Title VII as having more than a de minimis cost or burden on the employer. EEOC guidance explains that because the definition of religion is broad and protects beliefs, practices, and observances with which the employer may be unfamiliar, the employer should ordinarily assume that an employee’s request for religious accommodation is based on a sincerely held religious belief.  If, however, an employee requests a religious accommodation, and an employer has an objective basis for questioning either the religious nature or the sincerity of a particular belief, practice, or observance, the employer would be justified in requesting additional supporting information.

Here, EEOC is relying on TWA v. Hardison (1977). Justice White’s majority opinion found that religious exemptions that create “more than a de minimis cost” are an “undue hardship,” and need not be granted. But this precedent may not be long for the world. In Patterson v. Walgreens, Justices Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch signaled they wish to revisit Hardison. And I am aware of at least one petition that squarely presents this question: Dalberiste v. GLE Associates Inc. The case was initially distributed for conference on 10/9, and has been rescheduled three more times. Perhaps a Justice is preparing another dissent from denial. Or there is some chicanery behind the scenes over whether to grant this term. If Justice Barrett is willing to give a courtesy fourth, the Court could decide the issue this year.

If the Court overrules Hardison, Justice Gorsuch would vote to reverse a precedent authored by his former boss. I am not aware of a Justice who has expressly voted to nullify a precedent his former employer wrote. The closest example I can think of is Dames & Moore v. Regan, in which Justice Rehnquist watered down Justice Jackson’s Youngstown framework. Perhaps Gorsuch and Kavanaugh will one day reverse a Kennedy precedent. Or ACB could overrule a Scalia precedent. I don’t think there are any Goldberg or Marshall precedents on the chopping block for Breyer or Kagan.

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Continuing Education During COVID-19

agerf107008

There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted childhood education. In many countries, kids have physically returned to school. In others, schools were never closed. Yet in the United States, many public schools have been closed since March, yielding disastrous results for millions of kids. While scientific data say it’s safe to bring them back, incentives in the school systems are such that many kids continue to be locked up at home rather than receiving a proper education.

A school’s main role is to educate children. They can feed low-income children and supply day care for working parents, but these benefits are secondary to providing a quality education to all enrolled children.

The fact that children and their taxpayer parents are consumers in this scenario should guide the decisions made by superintendents and school boards. But that hasn’t been the case since the start of this pandemic.

For many kids, the last academic year’s schooling ended in March rather than in June. Where I live in Arlington County, Virginia, some parents feel as though the students who bothered to show up online weren’t really taught new material. A teacher told me in June that absenteeism was extremely high, which isn’t surprising given that kids knew there would be no consequences.

Making matters worse, after the summer break, our Arlington schools were hardly more prepared for virtual learning than they were following March’s school closings.

Yet for many kids, better preparation wouldn’t make a real difference. How do you realistically educate kindergarteners and elementary school students virtually? In Arlington, it took months for the superintendent to allow teachers to teach from their classroom, depriving them of the educational tools we taxpayers have paid for and forcing them to improvise, often poorly. How do you provide adequate online instruction for students with disabilities? What about students whose native language isn’t English? Even under the best of circumstances, the education is lacking.

When schools closed in March, there were many unknowns. But the latest research supports the fact that this instructional dysfunction is unnecessary. Experts now know that locking children at home doesn’t keep people safe from COVID-19’s infectiousness or mortality, and sending them to school doesn’t carry much risk either. Studies that looked at the reopening of German schools found that “neither the summer closures nor the closures in the fall have had any significant containing effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among children or any spill-over effect on older generations.” The investigators also didn’t “find any evidence that the return to school at full capacity after the summer holidays increased infections among children or adults.”

The largest study to be published on the issue so far, using data from the United Kingdom, finds no increase in severe coronavirus-related outcomes for adults living with children who go to school. It demonstrated a small increase in infections, which didn’t result in any noticeable bad outcomes.

Since our school closed, many parents, including some from the 800 members of the nonpartisan Arlington Parents for Education coalition (where I’m also a member), emailed school officials to alert them to these studies. But instead, these bureaucrats decided to essentially trap students in their homes, often without adult supervision. Failing grades, collapsing math skills, increased educational gaps, and mental health issues are the results. And for all the pandering in Arlington County about equity, the most affected students were precisely those lower-income and disabled children.

Some educators would like to go back, but their voices are drowned out by the voices who claim that going back is unsafe. The media shares some of the blame for these fears. A new study by Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote and two other researchers looked at news stories about COVID-19 and found that the coverage of school reopenings was “overwhelmingly negative, while the scientific literature tells a more optimistic story,” about how “schools have not become the super-spreaders many feared.”

But that’s not the whole story. The superintendent and the school board members have little incentive to change their performance since they won’t be held accountable for this fiasco—not even when faced with a roughly 2,500 drop in projected versus actual Pre-K-12 enrollment in Arlington Public Schools since March. Unlike private employees who would fear for their jobs were they responsible for the loss of paying consumers, these bureaucrats have little to fear.

The pandemic has exposed many problems with American society. Let’s use this opportunity to address some of the chronic ones we’re seeing in government-supplied K-12 schooling.

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Continuing Education During COVID-19

agerf107008

There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted childhood education. In many countries, kids have physically returned to school. In others, schools were never closed. Yet in the United States, many public schools have been closed since March, yielding disastrous results for millions of kids. While scientific data say it’s safe to bring them back, incentives in the school systems are such that many kids continue to be locked up at home rather than receiving a proper education.

A school’s main role is to educate children. They can feed low-income children and supply day care for working parents, but these benefits are secondary to providing a quality education to all enrolled children.

The fact that children and their taxpayer parents are consumers in this scenario should guide the decisions made by superintendents and school boards. But that hasn’t been the case since the start of this pandemic.

For many kids, the last academic year’s schooling ended in March rather than in June. Where I live in Arlington County, Virginia, some parents feel as though the students who bothered to show up online weren’t really taught new material. A teacher told me in June that absenteeism was extremely high, which isn’t surprising given that kids knew there would be no consequences.

Making matters worse, after the summer break, our Arlington schools were hardly more prepared for virtual learning than they were following March’s school closings.

Yet for many kids, better preparation wouldn’t make a real difference. How do you realistically educate kindergarteners and elementary school students virtually? In Arlington, it took months for the superintendent to allow teachers to teach from their classroom, depriving them of the educational tools we taxpayers have paid for and forcing them to improvise, often poorly. How do you provide adequate online instruction for students with disabilities? What about students whose native language isn’t English? Even under the best of circumstances, the education is lacking.

When schools closed in March, there were many unknowns. But the latest research supports the fact that this instructional dysfunction is unnecessary. Experts now know that locking children at home doesn’t keep people safe from COVID-19’s infectiousness or mortality, and sending them to school doesn’t carry much risk either. Studies that looked at the reopening of German schools found that “neither the summer closures nor the closures in the fall have had any significant containing effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among children or any spill-over effect on older generations.” The investigators also didn’t “find any evidence that the return to school at full capacity after the summer holidays increased infections among children or adults.”

The largest study to be published on the issue so far, using data from the United Kingdom, finds no increase in severe coronavirus-related outcomes for adults living with children who go to school. It demonstrated a small increase in infections, which didn’t result in any noticeable bad outcomes.

Since our school closed, many parents, including some from the 800 members of the nonpartisan Arlington Parents for Education coalition (where I’m also a member), emailed school officials to alert them to these studies. But instead, these bureaucrats decided to essentially trap students in their homes, often without adult supervision. Failing grades, collapsing math skills, increased educational gaps, and mental health issues are the results. And for all the pandering in Arlington County about equity, the most affected students were precisely those lower-income and disabled children.

Some educators would like to go back, but their voices are drowned out by the voices who claim that going back is unsafe. The media shares some of the blame for these fears. A new study by Dartmouth economist Bruce Sacerdote and two other researchers looked at news stories about COVID-19 and found that the coverage of school reopenings was “overwhelmingly negative, while the scientific literature tells a more optimistic story,” about how “schools have not become the super-spreaders many feared.”

But that’s not the whole story. The superintendent and the school board members have little incentive to change their performance since they won’t be held accountable for this fiasco—not even when faced with a roughly 2,500 drop in projected versus actual Pre-K-12 enrollment in Arlington Public Schools since March. Unlike private employees who would fear for their jobs were they responsible for the loss of paying consumers, these bureaucrats have little to fear.

The pandemic has exposed many problems with American society. Let’s use this opportunity to address some of the chronic ones we’re seeing in government-supplied K-12 schooling.

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

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Year Zero

Year Zero
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/16/2020 – 23:50

Authored (mostly satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

2020 was GloboCap Year Zero. The year when the global capitalist ruling classes did away with the illusion of democracy and reminded everyone who is actually in charge, and exactly what happens when anyone challenges them.

In the relatively short span of the last ten months, societies throughout the world have been transformed beyond recognition. Constitutional rights have been suspended. Protest has been banned. Dissent is being censored. Government officials are issuing edicts restricting the most basic aspects of our lives … where we can go, when we can go there, how long we are allowed to spend there, how many friends we are allowed to meet there, whether and when we can spend time with our families, what we are allowed to say to each other, who we can have sex with, where we have to stand, how we are allowed to eat and drink, etc. The list goes on and on.

The authorities have assumed control of the most intimate aspects of our daily lives. We are being managed like inmates in a prison, told when to eat, sleep, exercise, granted privileges for good behavior, punished for the slightest infractions of an ever-changing set of arbitrary rules, forced to wear identical, demeaning uniforms (albeit only on our faces), and otherwise relentlessly bullied, abused, and humiliated to keep us compliant.

None of which is accidental, or has anything to do with any actual virus, or any other type of public health threat.

Yes, before some of you go ballistic, I do believe there is an actual virus, which a number of people have actually died from, or which at least has contributed to their deaths … but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any authentic public health threat that remotely justifies the totalitarian emergency measures we are being subjected to or the damage that is being done to society. Whatever you believe about the so-called “pandemic,” it really is as simple as that. Even if one accepts the official “science,” you do not transform the entire planet into a pathologized-totalitarian nightmare in response to a health threat of this nature.

The notion is quite literally insane.

GloboCap is not insane, however. They know exactly what they are doing … which is teaching us a lesson, a lesson about power. A lesson about who has it and who doesn’t. For students of history it’s a familiar lesson, a standard in the repertoire of empires, not to mention the repertoire of penal institutions.

The name of the lesson is “Look What We Can Do to You Any Time We Fucking Want.” The point of the lesson is self-explanatory. The USA taught the world this lesson when it nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. GloboCap (and the US military) taught it again when they invaded Iraq and destabilized the entire Greater Middle East. It is regularly taught in penitentiaries when the prisoners start to get a little too unruly and remember that they outnumber the guards. That’s where the “lockdown” concept originated. It isn’t medical terminology. It is penal institution terminology.

As we have been experiencing throughout 2020, the global capitalist ruling classes have no qualms about teaching us this lesson. It’s just that they would rather not to have to unless it’s absolutely necessary. They would prefer that we believe we are living in “democracies,” governed by the “rule of law,” where everyone is “free,” and so on. It’s much more efficient and much less dangerous than having to repeatedly remind us that they can take away our “democratic rights” in a heartbeat, unleash armed goon squads to enforce their edicts, and otherwise control us with sheer brute force.

People who have spent time in prison, or who have lived in openly totalitarian societies, are familiar with being ruled by brute force. Most Westerners are not, so it has come as a shock. The majority of them still can’t process it. They cannot see what is staring them in the face. They cannot see it because they can’t afford to see it. If they did, it would completely short-circuit their brains. They would suffer massive psychotic breakdowns, and become entirely unable to function, so their psyches will not allow them to see it.

Others, who see it, can’t quite accept the simplicity of it (i.e., the lesson being taught), so they are proposing assorted complicated theories about what it is and who is behind it … the Great Reset, China, the Illuminati, Transhumanism, Satanism, Communism, whatever. Some of these theories are at least partially accurate. Others are utter bull-goose lunacy.

They all obscure the basic point of the lesson.

The point of the lesson is that GloboCap – the entire global-capitalist system acting as a single global entity – can, virtually any time it wants, suspend the Simulation of Democracy, and crack down on us with despotic force. It can (a) declare a “global pandemic” or some other type of “global emergency,” (b) cancel our so-called “rights,” (c) have the corporate media bombard us with lies and propaganda for months, (d) have the Internet companies censor any and all forms of dissent and evidence challenging said propaganda, (e) implement all kinds of new intrusive “safety” and “security” measures, including but not limited to the physical violation of our bodies … and so on. I think you get the picture. (The violation of our bodies is important, which is why they love “cavity searches” in prison, and why the torture-happy troops at Abu Ghraib were obsessed with sexually violating their victims.)

And the “pandemic” is only one part of the lesson. The other part is being forced to watch (or permitted to watch, depending on your perspective) as GloboCap makes an example of Trump, as they made examples of Corbyn and Sanders, as they made examples of Saddam and Gaddafi, and other “uncooperative” foreign leaders, as they will make an example of any political figurehead that challenges their power. It does not matter to GloboCap that such political figureheads pose no real threat. The people who rally around them do. Nor does it make the slightest difference whether these figureheads or the folks who support them identify as “left” or “right.” GloboCap could not possibly care less. The figureheads are just the teaching materials in the lesson that they are teaching us.

And now, here we are, at the end of the lesson … not the end of the War on Populism, just the end of this critical Trumpian part of it. Once the usurper has been driven out of office, the War on Populism will be folded back into the War on Terror, or the War on Extremism, or whatever GloboCap decides to call it … the name hardly matters. It is all the same war.

Whatever they decide to call it, this is GloboCap Year Zero. It is time for reeducation, my friends. It is time for cultural revolution. No, not communist cultural revolution … global capitalist cultural revolution. It is time to flush the aberration of the last four years down the memory hole, and implement global “New Normal” Gleichschaltung, to make sure that this never happens again.

Oh, yes, things are about to get “normal.” Extremely “normal.” Suffocatingly “normal.” Unimaginably oppressively “normal.” And I’m not just talking about the “Coronavirus measures.” This has been in the works for the last four years.

Remember, back in 2016, when everyone was so concerned about “normality,” and how Trump was “not normal,” and must never be “normalized?” Well, here we are. This is it. This is the part where GloboCap restores “normality,” a “new normality,” a pathologized-totalitarian “normality,” a “normality” which tolerates no dissent and demands complete ideological conformity.

From now on, when the GloboCap Intelligence Community and their mouthpieces in the corporate media tell you something happened, that thing will have happened, exactly as they say it happened, regardless of whether it actually happened, and anyone who says it didn’t will be labeled an “extremist,” a “conspiracy theorist,” a “denier,” or some other meaningless epithet. Such un-persons will be dealt with ruthlessly. They will be censored, deplatformed, demonetized, decertified, rendered unemployable, banned from traveling, socially ostracized, hospitalized, imprisoned, or otherwise erased from “normal” society.

You will do what you are told. You will not ask questions. You will believe whatever they tell you to believe. You will believe it, not because it makes any sense, but simply because you have been ordered to believe it. They aren’t trying to trick or deceive anybody. They know their lies don’t make any sense. And they know that you know they don’t make any sense. They want you to know it. That is the point. They want you to know they are lying to you, manipulating you, openly mocking you, and that they can say and do anything they want to you, and you will go along with it, no matter how insane.

If they order you to take a fucking vaccine, you will not ask what is in the vaccine, or start whining about the “potential side effects.” You will shut up and take the fucking vaccine.

If they tell you to put a mask on your kid, you will put a fucking mask on your fucking kid. You will not go digging up Danish studies proving the pointlessness of putting masks on kids.

If they tell you the Russians rigged the election, then the Russians rigged the fucking election.

And, if, four years later, they turn around and tell you that rigging an election is impossible, then rigging an election is fucking impossible.

It isn’t an invitation to debate. It is a GloboCap-verified fact-checked fact.

You will stand (or kneel) in your designated, color-coded, social-distancing box and repeat this verified fact-checked fact, over and over, like a fucking parrot, or they will discover some new mutant variant of virus and put you back in fucking “lockdown.” They will do this until you get your mind right, or you can live the rest of your life on Zoom, or tweeting content that no one but the Internet censors will ever see into the digital void in your fucking pajamas. The choice is yours … it’s is all up to you!

Or … I don’t know, this is just a crazy idea, you could turn off the fucking corporate media, do a little fucking research on your own, grow a backbone and some fucking guts, and join the rest of us “dangerous extremists” who are trying to fight back against the New Normal. Yes, it will cost you, and we probably won’t win, but you won’t have to torture your kids on airplanes, and you don’t even have to “deny” the virus!

That’s it … my last column of 2020. Happy totalitarian holidays!

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Anti-Cop Climate Sparks NYPD Exodus 

Anti-Cop Climate Sparks NYPD Exodus 
Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/16/2020 – 23:30

The NYPost has learned the anti-cop climate, underwhelming pay, and out of control violent crime in New York City have resulted in police officers’ exodus. 

Approximately 50 NYPD officers left their jobs in Nassau County last Friday. Many of them were on the job for less than five years. 

The departure comes as thousands of city cops have already quit or retired. 

Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said the NYPD needs 900 new police officers.

Uniformed NYPD officers fell to 34,184 this year – down from 36,900 last year, a loss of more than 2,700.

Suppose politicians in the metro area don’t quit bashing the police and their campaign to defund the NYPD. In that case, the exodus is expected to dangerously increase, one where decreased patrols could be seen, which would transform some neighborhoods into violent areas, such as ones seen in Baltimore and Detroit.

New York City has already experienced gun violence levels ‘unseen in years’ with shootings in November up by more than 112% compared with the same month last year.

The surge in gun violence in NYC since June coincides with the NYPD’s decision to eliminate its plain-clothes anti-crime unit that focused on retrieving illegal guns. That decision came after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. 

Shea recently said the surge in violent crime across the five boroughs this summer came after NYPD’s budget was reduced by $1 billion. 

“It certainly had a significant impact,” Shea told FOX Business’, Maria Bartiromo. “You think back, crime follows certain patterns and trends. Certainly, we see upticks of violence in the summer. … To have this crazy time happen this year, certainly, and leading to a defunding, it’s really hurt.”

NYC Shooting Victims 

NYC Shooting Incidents 2019 vs. 2020

NYC Murders 

While violent crime is surging, the levels of crime is nowhere near what it was in the early 1990s – though the move to defund police is undoubtedly creating an environment that could return the city to a violent mess. 

Simultaneously, another exodus is underway, one where city dwellers are fleeing to rural communities as they deem the metro area no longer safe to raise a family. 

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Trump Can’t Live Full-Time at Mar-A-Lago Because of 1993 Covenant

In 1993 Donald Trump reached a “use agreement” with Palm Beach Florida that restricted the use of Mar-A-Lago. This document appears to be a covenant. Article II, titled “Club use,” imposes restrictions on the use of the guest suites on the property:

The use of guest suites shall be limited to a maximum of three (3) non-consecutive seven (7) day periods by any one member during the year.

Generally, Article II empowers Trump. Here, it restricts him. In other words, a member can only live in a guest suit for three, non-consecutive one-week periods. The intent here is to prevent Mar-A-Lago from being used as a permanent home. Or, to put it in Property lingo, Orangeacre shall not be used for residential purposes. (Blackacre just didn’t seem to fit here). And, the document was signed by President Donald J. Trump. (President of the Mar-A-Lago Club, Inc., that is).

President Trump has announced that he plans to live in Mar-A-Lago after he leaves the White House (on or about January 20, 2021).

Now, neighbors have complained, and seek the enforcement of the covenant:

Neighbors of Mar-a-Lago sent a letter to the Town of Palm Beach and the U.S. Secret Service on Tuesday complaining that Mr. Trump has violated the 1993 agreement he made with the town that allowed him to convert the property to a moneymaking club.

“Per the use agreement of 1993, Mar-a-Lago is a social club, and no one may reside on the property,” wrote Reginald Stambaugh, a lawyer representing the DeMoss family, which has a property next to Mar-a-Lago.

“To avoid an embarrassing situation for everyone and to give the president time to make other living arrangements in the area, we trust you will work with his team to remind them of the use agreement parameters,” Mr. Stambaugh wrote. “Palm Beach has many lovely estates for sale, and surely he can find one which meets his needs.”

…

Construction has been done on the president’s residential quarters at the club, where Mr. Trump is expected to spend the Christmas holiday and which Mr. Stambaugh argued already violates the use agreement.

According to the Washington Post, the town has failed to enforce the covenant over the years. For example, Palm Beach has not imposed restrictions on how many days the President has stayed there–including over Christmas break. Also, the town has allowed the installation of a helipad for Marine One–an addition that would be prohibited by the covenant. And, the club does not seem to be limiting 50% of its members to Palm Beach residents, as the agreement requires.

Perhaps Trump could argue that the covenant cannot be enforced based on the doctrine of acquiescence? That is, Palm Beach failed to enforce the restrictions of the covenant for so long, it cannot now sue to enforce the agreement.

Go figure. We will see Article II litigation concerning President Trump even after he leaves office.

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Any Tips for Video Parties?

Any suggestions for how best to do a video party (not just a small-group video conversation)? Since it’s hard to have good video conversations with more than 6 people at once (or maybe even more than 4), the party would at least need a breakout room feature, where people can choose to join one group and then move on to others.

I was thinking of doing it by Zoom, setting the option letting people join the breakout room they choose. But are there other platforms that are better? I noticed Evite has configured one; do any of you have experience with it? Are there other tips beyond just what platform and configuration to choose? Let us all know!

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The Case for Paying College Athletes

NCAA

Earlier today, the Supreme Court decided to hear NCAA v. Alston, a case challenging the legality of NCAA rules barring most compensation for college athletes:

The Supreme Court will hear a landmark antitrust case against the NCAA that could upend the business model for college sports by allowing colleges to compensate student athletes.

The high court said Wednesday that it will hear appeals filed by the NCAA and one of its member conferences over a May decision that found the group’s limits on player compensation violate antitrust law…

A group of current and former players challenged the NCAA rules that prohibit athletes from accepting money or other forms of compensation. Following a 2019 trial, a federal judge found the restrictions anti-competitive and said the NCAA must allow colleges to offer student athletes education-related benefits, such as graduate school scholarships, study abroad opportunities or computers for educational use.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed that decision earlier this year.

Economists have long argued that the NCAA rules barring compensation for athletes are essentially a thinly veiled cartel, complete with severe punishment for defecting participants, all the way up to the “death penalty.” The main difference with other cartels is that the NCAA system has better PR, and has thereby managed to persuade many people that they are actually serving the public interest by promoting tradition and protecting the integrity of “student athletes.” That said, I don’t know enough about antitrust law to know who should prevail on the legal issues in the case. I will leave those questions to others with greater relevant expertise.

Legal issues aside, however, there is a strong policy rationale for ending restrictions on student athletes compensation. I summarized it back in 2010 and 2011, building on earlier pieces by economists David Henderson and Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker. Most of what they and I said remains relevant today. As Henderson put it:

The NCAA runs a tightly controlled cartel whose “profits” go to colleges and coaches. It’s not simply a private cartel but one backed by government force. Armen Alchian and William Allen, in their 1964 textbook, University Economics, were the first people I know to point this out. They pointed out that those colleges that decided to pay athletes would find their academic accreditation at risk. So why don’t new schools sense a profit to made and then enter and compete players away by paying them? Alchian and Allen answer: “[N]o new school could get subsidies from the state or major philanthropic foundations without recognition by the present accreditation group.” They add, “We have finally arrived at the source of the value of membership in the NCAA and related organizations: subsidized education.”

One could argue, “Well, the student athletes will cash in on their skills later when they go on to become professional athletes.” Not so, as the NCAA admits in its advertising [noting that most players don’t go on to professional careers].

Becker added:

The toughest competition for basketball and football players occurs at the Division I level. These sports have both large attendances at games-sometimes, more than 100,000 persons attend college football games- and widespread television coverage…. Absent the rules enforced by the NCAA, the competition for players would stiffen, especially for the big stars…

To avoid that outcome, the NCAA sharply limits the number of athletic scholarships, and even more importantly, limits the size of the scholarships that schools can offer the best players….

It is impossible for an outsider to look at these rules without concluding that their main aim is to make the NCAA an effective cartel that severely constrains competition among schools for players. The NCAA defends these rules by claiming that their main purpose is to prevent exploitation of student-athletes, to provide a more equitable system of recruitment that enables many colleges to maintain football and basketball programs and actively search for athletes, and to insure that the athletes become students as well as athletes.

Unfortunately for the NCAA, the facts are blatantly inconsistent with these defenses….

A large fraction of the Division I players in basketball and football, the two big money sports, are recruited from poor families; many of them are African-Americans from inner cities and rural areas. Every restriction on the size of scholarships that can be given to athletes in these sports usually takes money away from poor athletes and their families, and in effect transfers these resources to richer students in the form of lower tuition and cheaper tickets for games…

 

A few of my own thoughts from those earlier posts:

[T]he NCAA cartel is not just a private arrangement. It is propped up by the federal government, which uses the threat of denying federal funding to force schools to comply with cartel rules. If this federal intervention were lifted, the cartel might well fall apart…

The traditional NCAA response to such criticism is that the players are “scholar-athletes” who get compensated with education. This is probably true for many college athletes in lesser-known sports. In Division I football and basketball however, the players are essentially full-time professionals. Most of them have little time to spend on their studies, and many have academic credentials far weaker than those of the regular students at their schools. Few people can do well academically if placed at an institution where their credentials are far below the norm and they had to work at a demanding full-time job at the same time.

I don’t believe that student athletes are morally entitled to be paid for playing. If no one wants to pay to watch them, I have no objection. The reality, however, is that there is a high demand for their services which is being artificially suppressed by government coercion. Indeed, some schools and boosters pay players under the table despite the threat of severe NCAA sanctions if they get caught.

Another particularly galling element of the NCAA cartel system is the way in which it is surrounded by a veneer of righteousness. The NCAA has managed to persuade the media and most of the public that the real bad guys are actually those schools that try to undermine the cartel and pay their players at something more closely resembling market rates. Few people seem to care that most of the athletes who get shortchanged are poor minorities who are being deprived of a key opportunity to create a nest egg for their future. As [David] Henderson points out, only a small percentage of them go on to make big bucks in the pros.

There is a conceptually simple, though politically difficult, solution to this problem. The government should withdraw its support for the NCAA cartel. Universities will gradually stop pretending that Division I football and basketball players are primarily students, and start treating them as the employees they actually are. The players will get paid for their work, and they and the universities won’t have to waste time and money forcing players to attend bogus classes in order to keep up appearances. Those who have the desire and academic credentials to do real coursework should of course be allowed to do so….

It’s also worth noting that the same universities who loudly condemn the very thought of paying players often pay huge salaries to coaches and athletic administrators. I don’t begrudge these people their riches. But it seems strange to claim that paying players any salary at all will somehow sully the academic ethos, while simultaneously contending that there’s nothing wrong with paying big bucks to Mike Krzyzewski or Jerry Tarkanian.

If the Supreme Court rules against the NCAA, perhaps things will move in the direction I advocated. It is also possible that some universities will reconsider whether it is actually desirable for academic institutions to be so heavily involved in what are essentially professional sports.

UPDATE: It’s perhaps worth noting that this is the second time in three years that the NCAA will have a major case before the Supreme Court. In 2018, the NCAA (along with the Trump administration and various professional sports leagues) was on the losing side in Murphy v. NCAA, a major victory for constitutional federalism and for sanctuary cities.

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