On Monday, October 26, the Pennsylvania Bar Institute will present a day-long continuing legal education program, “The Law of Guns.” The program is accredited in Pennsylvania for five hours of substantive CLE plus one hour of ethics. Most state CLE programs are fairly liberal about granting CLE for a program accredited in another state.
The program will be webcast, and you can register here. The cost is $279, or $140 for new attorneys. Below is the program and presenters. All times are Eastern.
9:00—10:00. Regulation of Assault Weapons. John Parker Sweeney, of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. A very experienced litigator for firearms law in general, including so-called “assault weapons.”
10:10 – 11:10. Reforming Mental Health Law to Protect Public Safety and Help the Severely Mentally Ill. Presented by me, David Kopel.
11:20 – 12:20. Firearms, Land Use and the Constitution. Anna M. Barvir. A litigator with Michel & Associates, the leading firearms law firm in California.
12:55—1:55. License to Carry in Public and The Right to Bear Arms. Stephen Halbrook. Since the early 1980s, one of the leading scholars and attorneys on arms law issues. With a 5-0 record in Supreme Court cases, including Printz v. United States.
2:05 – 3:05. Standing in the 2nd Amendment Context. Jay Porter of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. Another very experienced litigator. Standing might not seem like a glamorous issue, but it is critical in Second Amendment litigation, and in civil rights litigation generally.
3:15 – 4:15. Red Flag Laws. This is the one-hour ethics component. Jonathan Goldstein, of Goldstein Law Partners. A leader in Pennsylvania arms litigation, including on Pennsylvania’s notorious laws for lifetime deprivations of the right to arms without due process.
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Sudan & Israel Agree To Normalize Ties In Another Historic US-Brokered Deal Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/23/2020 – 16:40
Trump’s Arab-Israel peace rollout looks to be making rapid progress across the region, as on Friday Sudan agreed to be the latest Arab League country to formally recognize Israel, opening up diplomatic relations and political ‘normalization’.
It becomes the third to do so after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed accords at the White House for the first time in their histories. Though it’s not quite official just yet in terms of a signed deal, it looks to be firm following a year of talks, and overcoming the last major hurdle of the US removing Sudan from the state sponsors of terror list. According to the AFP on Friday:
Reporters were escorted into the Oval Office where Trump was on speakerphone with Sudan’s leadership and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a close ally of the embattled Republican president.
“We are expanding their circle of peace so rapidly with your leadership,” Netanyahu was heard saying.
Trump said: “There are many, many more coming.”
A senior Trump aide, Judd Deere, said that Sudan and Israel “have agreed to the normalization of relations.”
Trump on the phone with the leaders of Israel and Sudan in the Oval Office on October 23, via Reuters.
Indeed it constitutes a major foreign policy success for President Trump with just two weeks away from the election. Netanyahu also hailed it as a “rare turnabout” considering Israel and Sudan have been fierce enemies over decades, and with Sudan’s harboring of al-Qaeda terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, on its soil in the 1990s.
Meanwhile Trump asserted to reporters that “At least five more Arab states want peace with Israel,” according to AFP. He said he particularly has high hopes that Saudi Arabia will be among them.
It was previously widely reported that the White House pushed normalization with Israel as a condition for Sudan getting taken off the state sponsors of terror list, which it has been on since 1993.
That appears to have been finalized, with on Friday a White House statement hailing that “President Donald J. Trump has informed Congress of his intent to formally rescind Sudan’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.”
“This follows on Sudan’s recent agreement to resolve certain claims of United States victims of terror and their families,” the statement continues. “Yesterday, in fulfillment of that agreement, the transitional government of Sudan transferred $335 million into an escrow account for these victims and their families.”
With the election right around the corner, it remains that these significant Trump administration Mideast peace achievements have beenglaringly absent from the debates, also going almost completely unacknowledged among mainstream pundits’ election commentary.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3kqynOz Tyler Durden
On Monday, October 26, the Pennsylvania Bar Institute will present a day-long continuing legal education program, “The Law of Guns.” The program is accredited in Pennsylvania for five hours of substantive CLE plus one hour of ethics. Most state CLE programs are fairly liberal about granting CLE for a program accredited in another state.
The program will be webcast, and you can register here. The cost is $279, or $140 for new attorneys. Below is the program and presenters. All times are Eastern.
9:00—10:00. Regulation of Assault Weapons. John Parker Sweeney, of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. A very experienced litigator for firearms law in general, including so-called “assault weapons.”
10:10 – 11:10. Reforming Mental Health Law to Protect Public Safety and Help the Severely Mentally Ill. Presented by me, David Kopel.
11:20 – 12:20. Firearms, Land Use and the Constitution. Anna M. Barvir. A litigator with Michel & Associates, the leading firearms law firm in California.
12:55—1:55. License to Carry in Public and The Right to Bear Arms. Stephen Halbrook. Since the early 1980s, one of the leading scholars and attorneys on arms law issues. With a 5-0 record in Supreme Court cases, including Printz v. United States.
2:05 – 3:05. Standing in the 2nd Amendment Context. Jay Porter of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP. Another very experienced litigator. Standing might not seem like a glamorous issue, but it is critical in Second Amendment litigation, and in civil rights litigation generally.
3:15 – 4:15. Red Flag Laws. This is the one-hour ethics component. Jonathan Goldstein, of Goldstein Law Partners. A leader in Pennsylvania arms litigation, including on Pennsylvania’s notorious laws for lifetime deprivations of the right to arms without due process.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3jprBHF
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“The next Fourth Turning is due to begin shortly after the new millennium, midway through the Oh-Oh decade. Around the year 2005, a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire. The very survival of the nation will feel at stake. Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II.” – Strauss & Howe–The Fourth Turning
“There is no darkness but ignorance. The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.” William Shakespeare
I read The Fourth Turning in 2006, after seeing it described in John Mauldin and Doug Casey’s newsletters as an uncannily accurate assessment of American history based upon generational configurations which recur on eighty-year cycles, a long human life. Strauss and Howe wrote the book in 1997 and used their generational theory to predict the Crisis that would begin in the mid-2000’s and come to an indeterminate climax in the mid-2020’s.
As a student of history, the theory spoke to me. I have been writing articles since 2009, using the Fourth Turning as a guide to interpreting what has been happening and what might happen as this crisis period accelerates towards its violent culmination. The quotes above perfectly capture exactly what has happened since this crisis began in September 2008, with the Fed/Wall Street created financial collapse. The existing social order is disintegrating, but they are willing to destroy the country rather than relinquish their wealth, power and control.
Strauss & Howe identified the core elements of this Crisis as debt, civic decay, and global disorder. No one can argue the severe distress engulfing the nation and the world traces its origins to these core elements, with the catalyst for this Crisis being the 2008 central banker manufactured financial collapse. Nothing has been normal since 2008. And 2008’s epic implosion was driven by the disastrous financial, political and military decisions implemented by the puppets of the Deep State from 2000 onward, with the Federal Reserve obligingly creating bubble after bubble as the “solution” to the previous bubble.
And now we are here again, in the midst of the greatest bubble in the history of mankind. A bubble of willful ignorance. The obliviousness of most Americans to the danger awaiting them is akin to the day before Fort Sumpter was bombed, the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked, or the dinosaurs unaware of a giant meteor rushing towards the planet and about to transform their future in a challenging way.
Real hardship has beset the land, for those not in the .1% or Deep State lackeys being rewarded for propagating mistruths, outright lies, fear, and propaganda on behalf of their oligarch benefactors. These apparatchiks mainly consist of corrupt politicians, central bank lackeys, mainstream media hacks, neocon warmongers, surveillance state traitors, and big pharma captured health “experts”. The severe distress does involve class, race, nation and empire, but most of the distress has been artificially created by those pulling the strings – Bernays’ invisible government manipulating the masses.
As the looming election advances like a deadly avalanche crashing down a mountainside towards an unsuspecting village below, a battle wages between an evil ingrained establishment and a few dedicated patriots of truth. If you don’t feel the very survival of the nation hangs in the balance, then you are either delusional, willfully ignorant, or unwilling to recognize your own cognitive dissonance. The next five to ten years will alter the course of history in a profound way. Whether the outcome is positive for average American citizens is very much in doubt.
“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.” – Aldous Huxley
I wish it were not so, but most human beings seem incapable of critical thought regarding how history follows a cyclical path due to human nature retaining its flaws, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and fortes throughout history. We believe we have advanced because our inventions, discoveries, and technology, but the desire for wealth, power and control over others still consumes a sociopathic portion of mankind who tend to rise to the top through any means necessary.
As Huxley lamented in the 1950’s, technological progress has actually propelled mankind backwards in terms of its humanity and relationship with nature and other human beings. The very technology we glorify as an example of our advancement is now being used by the totalitarians to imprison us. It has happened slowly and methodically over decades as generation after generation have entered the government indoctrination centers (public schools) to be taught ignorance and obedience to the state. This indoctrination has been reinforced by ceaseless propaganda injected into their brains by media conglomerates doing the bidding of the state.
The dystopian use of disinformation, false narratives, blatant lies and propaganda by the totalitarians constituting the Deep State, as their never-ending coup attempt against a duly elected president attests, will be the catalyst for the next vicious phase of this Fourth Turning. For the last four years the Russiagate coup has dogged Trump, as Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Mueller and a myriad of lesser co-conspirators have propagated the Big Lie to cover-up their traitorous actions of trying to overthrow Trump.
An honest truth-seeking press with unbiased journalists would have uncovered this conspiracy and revealed the truthful facts to a concerned public. Instead, a completely captured corporate media has turned a blind eye to the truth as they have acted as accomplices of the coup culprits. Just as evil is the suppression of truth through censorship and keeping silent regarding the truth. Huxley understood how totalitarian propagandists operated decades before the current batch of Silicon Valley authoritarians initiated their national truth repression scheme.
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.” – Aldous Huxley
A perfect example of this is my local ABC news affiliate doing an hour long broadcast last night with absolutely no mention of the Hunter Biden – Joe Biden pay for play scandal. The truth dies in silence. The left-wing media dominated by six mega-corporations and social media billionaire titans (Bezos, Zuckerberg, Dorsey) have colluded with other left wing billionaires (Soros, Bloomberg) and the traitorous Deep Staters (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Clinton) to bring down a sitting president and now to memory hole proof of Joe Biden corruption and his son’s illegal dealings with foreign enemies.
These anti-rational propagandists are enemies of freedom, as they systematically pervert reality and knowingly manipulate the minds of the masses towards how they require them to think, feel and act. After years of socialist indoctrination in government schools and universities, the masses have been taught to feel rather than think. Victimhood is celebrated, while personal responsibility is scorned.
The truth has been revealed, to those capable of critical thinking since the onset of this engineered pandemic fear exercise in March 2020. We have segued from the soft tyranny of Huxley’s Brave New World towards the harsh tyranny of Orwell’s 1984. As the leftist oligarchs have unleashed their ANTIFA and BLM terrorists in cities across America in “mostly peaceful protests”, as proclaimed by the Big Brother media, ignorance is strength rings true across our dystopian landscape.
I’m amazed by the extreme level of ignorance exhibited by a vast swath of our population, as they glory in believing comforting mistruths which confirm their preordained belief structure. They don’t know because they don’t want to know. They are intoxicated by the endless stream of idiocy emanating from their iGadgets, as they willfully choose ignorance over awareness, servitude over freedom, and captivity over liberty.
As Huxley predicted, the controlling oligarchy has used technology to convince people to love their servitude, while unthinkingly believing what they are told by their government and media mouthpieces, doing the bidding of the government and oligarchs who control the government. The goal of the ruling class is to keep people from thinking, and most willingly oblige because thinking is hard and the uncomfortable truths are too much to bear for the satiated masses.
But there is a minority who want the truth and are willing and able to deal with the consequences. They realize facts don’t cease to exist because we ignore them. Facts don’t care about your beliefs or feelings. Facts lead you to the truth. And the immense coverup of facts over the last ten months as we approach this historically important election boggles the mind of every critical thinking person on the planet.
This clearly coordinated effort to mislead the public regarding our dire financial plight, the truth about this overblown flu, the true facts about the Russiagate coup attempt against Trump, and now the massive Joe Biden/Hunter Biden corruption scandal coverup, has taken on a new level of malevolence and deceitfulness. The duplicitous nature of the measures taken by the social media tyrants to control the narrative and dictate what the people must believe will climax in a violent response by those unwilling to accept their plot to overthrow the government and shredding of the U.S. Constitution.
We are now living in a world where so called “experts” declare the science is settled regarding the spread of Covid, the efficacy of masks, the need for lockdowns to slow the spread, the requirement for a vaccine to cure Covid, the danger of HCQ, the fallacy of herd immunity and the fact we will never return to normal again. If anyone dares to question the approved Covid narrative, they will be attacked by MSM talking heads, de-platformed by Twitter and Facebook, called a murderer by the thousands of Karens patrolling social media, and possibly lose their jobs. When straight talking brilliant doctors, like Dr. Scott Atlas, use facts to blow up the approved narrative, he is attacked by the MSM and social media hyenas. Facts don’t matter when fear is the preferred method of herding a nation of sheep.
Even though 99.7% of those who contract Covid will not die, with most not even knowing they had it, the pandemic promoters (Gates, Big Pharma, Trump haters, Democrats, Left-wing media) continue to exaggerate the threat and scare a country into a Depression. This coordinated charade has been instituted as a cash grab by the ruling oligarchy, a coverup for the Fed rescuing a collapsing financial system, and an effort to dispose of Trump after the failed impeachment coup.
Even though, prior to this engineered pandemic, CDC documentation unequivocally declared masks useless in stopping the spread of viruses and numerous other studies by respected institutions confirmed this conclusion (you know – science), masks (muzzles) are now required to conform to state dictate under penalty of arrest. Even though thousands of scientists and doctors have said lockdowns don’t work, politicians continue to destroy the lives of their citizens by tyrannically closing down their cities and states. For what true purpose?
Even though Hydroxychloroquine plus zinc has proven to drastically reduce the effects of Covid if taken early in the illness, costs only a few dollars per dose, has been used safely for decades in dealing with malaria, and has the support of thousands of doctors, it was declared unsafe by the health agencies controlled by Big Pharma and politically motivated health care hack bureaucrats who care more about defeating Trump than saving lives. Why support a drug that only costs a few bucks when Big Pharma can roll out treatments that cost a few thousand dollars and don’t provide better outcomes than HCQ and zinc? There are profits to be made and stock prices to support. That’s the real science going on here.
The hit job stories from the NYT, Washington Post and other left-wing media about how Sweden would suffer death on a grand scale by not requiring masks, not locking down their country, and not closing schools were being written at a torrential pace in the Spring and Summer. They continue today as they attempt to discredit Dr. Scott Atlas because he is taking a realistic balanced approach to the virus.
Sweden’s death rate was in the middle of the pack in Europe and they achieved herd immunity by the Fall. Their cases are minuscule and deaths virtually nil. Meanwhile, the European lockdown countries are now experiencing a surge of new cases and locking down again. Sweden was right, but the compliant captured press maintains silence about their success, because silence about the truth maintains their Big Lie. If they can convince everyone to believe the lie, it becomes the truth.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.” – George Orwell, 1984
So, we are less than two weeks out from the election and the outcome, no matter who wins, will likely ignite a raging firestorm that will make the California wildfires look like a flickering matchstick. As we have supposedly made tremendous advancements in science and technology, reality proves we have merely achieved a more efficient means of going backwards.
The intoxication from earlier successes of science and technology have devolved into a gruesome morning after hangover of deteriorated outcomes, now threatening to imprison masked Americans in an electronic gulag of forced vaccinations and digital currency. The social media billionaire moguls, in conjunction with the Wall Street owned Federal Reserve, and sociopathic political operatives will mandate compliance regarding medical, financial and political decrees or you will be demonetized and cut-off from the ability to transact – essentially living in an electronic prison camp.
Based on the Fourth Turning generational theory, there is no doubt Donald Trump is the prophet generation Grey Champion. The term Grey Champion does not mean they are a great, noble, humane person. Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were not nice guys. They did whatever they thought necessary to achieve their means during our previous three Fourth Turnings. Millions of Americans hated Lincoln and Roosevelt, just as tens of millions hate Trump.
The Grey Champion’s appearance marks the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” as the violent turmoil climax of the Fourth Turning approaches. Trump and Pence are from the Prophet (Boomer) Generation, while Biden is from the Silent Generation and Harris is Generation X. At this stage of the Fourth Turning a transfer of power to a Silent generation leader would not make sense. Trump is the lightning rod for a clash that must take place to sweep away the existing corrupted social order and replace it with something new.
Every four years we hear the same pablum about this being the most important election of our lifetime. No matter who wins this election, the Deep State, Military Industrial Complex, Wall Street controlled Federal Reserve, Big Business, Big Pharma, Big Media, Silicon Valley Titans, and Billionaires like Soros, Bloomberg and Gates will still be running the show. One man has extraordinarily little chance of confronting these wealthy power-hungry sociopaths and winning.
It remains to be seen whether the Grey Champion can ignite a civil uprising against the powerful forces of totalitarianism engulfing the country and the world. They will not be stopped through the ballot box. They had successfully convinced a willfully ignorant populace to love their servitude and acquiesce to allowing them unfettered control over their lives. But, the tyrannical lockdowns, martial law like mandates from bureaucrats, compulsory masking as a requirement to be accepted in society, and the dehumanizing of our daily lives has created a Resistance, peaceful thus far, who are enraged by what is happening.
These are the critical thinkers, non-maskers, no-lockdowners, no vacciners, unwilling to kneel before the altar of Fauci, Gates, WHO, CDC, MSM and tyrannical sociopathic politicians like Cuomo, Newsome and Whitmer. These dissidents and doubters are most certainly a minority, but it was only a minority who carried the load during the American Revolution.
They are heavily armed, but it will require stealth, guile and intelligence to defeat the entrenched establishment. The weakness of these sociopaths is their arrogance and hubris. When they make mistakes during the coming conflict, they must be made to pay heavily. Those with their eyes wide open know what is happening. But, as Huxley asked over sixty years ago, do enough people think it is worth the fight to stop our drift towards totalitarian control?
“Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge? Does a majority of the population think it worthwhile to take a good deal of trouble, in order to halt and, if possible, reverse the current drift toward totalitarian control of everything?” – AldousHuxley
The last week of MSM hyperbolic vitriol towards Trump; censorship of all dissenters about the Covid narrative by the social media tyrants; the purposeful increase in testing to all-time highs in order to generate more cases; ignoring the plunge in Covid related deaths; seeing “neutral” journalists question Trump like he is on trial at Nuremberg while lobbing underhanded softballs to Biden like he’s a four year old (his dementia riddled brain tells him he is four years old); and seeing the MSM tout polls showing a Biden landslide just as they did in 2016, leads me to believe Trump is going to win re-election in November.
It may take weeks, there will be rampant fraud in trying to swing the vote to Biden, and it could end up in the Supreme Court, but I believe Trump will win. The deplorables are seething with an inner rage which will be released on November 3. While the election is being contested, shockingly, ANTIFA and BLM will again begin burning down cities. It was fascinating how it had all stopped when polls showed the riots having a negative impact on Biden and his Democrat cohorts. The time frame between November 3 and January 20, when the president is supposed to be sworn in, guarantees to be tumultuous, dangerous, and fraught with potential peril.
I do not believe either side will accept the outcome of the election and will treat the victor as illegitimate. Once that mindset gains control, only violent conflict can result. The myriad of potential outcomes is too vast to comprehend. What we do know is Fourth Turnings always accelerate and intensify towards a bloody finale, with clear winners and losers.
Unconditional surrender will be demanded by those maintaining the upper hand. Whether this coming conflict remains domestic or spreads internationally, the “advancements” in the technology of destruction will endanger every human being on the planet. You cannot escape the impact of Fourth Turnings, only survive and/or do your part in helping achieve a positive outcome. There is no predetermined ending.
“The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, a total war. Every Fourth Turning has registered an upward ratchet in the technology of destruction, and in mankind’s willingness to use it.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
When pondering the possible outcomes of this Fourth Turning, we tend to be drawn towards the negative, because a positive outcome seems so unlikely given the current animosity roiling the country. If you step back and realize all the hate and conflict is being engineered and coordinated by a ruling class of powerful rich men, then average Americans could organize a new paradigm that honors the original intent of the U.S. Constitution, allowing citizens the liberty and freedom to create voluntary associations based upon common interests at a local level.
The ruling oligarchs find this unacceptable, so this freedom must be wrested away from them by any means necessary. There is a civil war already underway, but only one side is fighting – the billionaire class who not only don’t want to relinquish some power, but want total control over every aspect of our lives. I believe this election will turn this one-sided silent war into a hot war.
Rather than wallowing in doom and the worst-case scenarios, we should be trying to figure out how to reorganize our nation going forward, after the billionaire oligarchs are defeated. As I was trying to go back in time to see when I wrote my first Fourth Turning article, I came across an article I wrote in 2010 – Brave New World 2010.
At the end of the article I noted the wisdom and practicality of Aldous Huxley’s advice on how to restructure our society, from his 1958 book Brave New World Revisited. This should be a template for restructuring our way of life if we want a sustainable future. I am not optimistic we have the fortitude, wisdom, courage and will to choose Huxley’s suggested path:
As recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you wish to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society’s merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily cooperating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government.
If you wish to avoid the spiritual impoverishment of individuals and whole societies, leave the metropolis and revive the small country community, or alternately humanize the metropolis by creating within its network of mechanical organization the urban equivalents of small country communities, in which individuals can meet and cooperate as complete persons, not as the mere embodiments of specialized functions.
Huxley’s prescription of re-humanizing our country and voluntarily choosing where we want to live and who we want to associate with in small enclaves is how many rural communities already function. We can either willingly choose this path peacefully, or we will be left with this as our only option after our modern world self-destructs during the violent cataclysm, following the crashing of our Ponzi scheme debt saturated economic system.
The American Empire is clearly in rapid decline and may not survive the trials and tribulations over the coming decade. The Fourth Turning is not a prophecy, but should be taken as a warning and call to action. Sitting this out and hoping for the best will not help achieve a positive outcome. Tragedy or triumph – the choices we make will matter. The climax of this Fourth Turning may be a few years off, but the battle for the soul of America begins on November 3.
“History offers no guarantees. Obviously, things could go horribly wrong – the possibilities ranging from a nuclear exchange to incurable plagues, from terrorist anarchy to high-tech dictatorship. We should not assume that Providence will always exempt our nation from the irreversible tragedies that have overtaken so many others: not just temporary hardship, but debasement and total ruin. Losing in the next Fourth Turning could mean something incomparably worse. It could mean a lasting defeat from which our national innocence – perhaps even our nation – might never recover.” – Strauss & Howe – The Fourth Turning
Despite President Donald Trump’s claims, the U.S. military likely won’t play much of a role in distributing a COVID-19 vaccine.
“We have a vaccine that’s coming, it’s ready,” Trump said near the start of Thursday’s presidential debate. “It’s going to be announced within weeks, and it’s going to be delivered. We have Operation Warp Speed, which is the military, is going to distribute the vaccine.”
Trump has been using variations of this line for months—as far back as May, he was talking about “mobilizing” the military for vaccine distribution—but his own medical and military officials say it’s simply not true. Once a vaccine is developed, it will be handled the same way as any other: distributed by pharmaceutical companies through doctors’ offices and pharmacies.
“Our best military assessment is that there is sufficient U.S. commercial transportation capacity to fully support vaccine distribution,” Department of Defense (DOD) spokesman Charles Pritchard toldAmerican Shipper, a logistics industry publication, last month. “There should be no need for a large commitment of DOD units or personnel to support the nationwide distribution of vaccines.”
“For the overwhelming majority of Americans,” Paul Mango of the Department of Health and Human Services toldThe New York Times, “there will be no federal official who touches any of this vaccine before it’s injected into Americans.”
In July, McClatchy reported that the military commands responsible for homeland defense and the National Guard have not even been asked to prepare a plan for the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine.
In any case, Trump’s focus on distributing the vaccine is a bit premature. The CEOs of pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Pfizer have claimed that their COVID-19 vaccines may be ready by the end of this year or in early 2021, but Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Robert Redfield has warned that there may not be a vaccine widely available until “late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”
It’s true that some military resources are involved in Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that aims to invent, produce, and deliver 300 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by January 2021. But once a vaccine is developed, any military involvement, according to Pritchard, would likely be just “to deliver vaccines to a remote location only if no other means of transportation is feasible.”
Unless you’re really committed to social distancing—living in an isolated shack in the middle of Alaska, perhaps—your COVID-19 vaccine will probably be distributed just like your flu shot: through your local doctor’s office or pharmacy.
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The parents of a seventh-grade boy received a letter from his school in Lafayette, California, warning of possible truancy charges if he missed any more virtual class sessions.
“Out of the blue, we got this letter,” Mark Mastrov, the boy’s father, told the East Bay Times. “It said my son had missed classes and at the bottom, it referenced a state law which said truants can go to jail for missing 90 minutes of class.”
Mastrov assumed the school had been sent in error, so he called the school. He was shocked to learn that the authorities meant business: The law says any kid who misses three full days of school or is tardy for a 30-minute class period on three separate occasions can face jail time.
The policy was obviously intended to cover unexcused absences for in-person education, but the district apparently intends to apply it to virtual education as well.
Mastrov contends that his son didn’t miss his classes but simply logged on after his teacher had already taken attendance.
“Who passed this law in their infinite wisdom?” he wonders. “Who in their right mind could do that?”
Virtual learning is a deeply frustrating experience for many families, and schools should be maximally patient with students and their parents. Unfortunately, education officials around the country have been making life unnecessarily difficult for students who don’t sign in to their classes on time. Some places have even required teachers to perform virtual wellness checks, and to call the cops on parents if their kids seem checked-out during class. One kid got in trouble because his camera caught a glimpse of a toy gun, as though that’s comparable to bringing an actual weapon to a physical school.
This pandemic has caused enough problems on its own. Parents don’t need to be threatened with jail time for failing to master a hopelessly frustrating—and temporary—new system.
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Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature from the Institute for Justice.
New on the Short Circuit podcast: IJ attorneys Kirby West and Jeff Redfern consider the pressing issues of the day, such as how many Ninth Circuit judges does it take to change an en banc denial and can butterflies flutter over The Wall?
Almost forty years ago, a defendant was convicted of killing a man on Christmas eve on the streets of Philadelphia. Twenty years ago, somebody else confessed to the murder. Ten years ago, a key witness for the prosecution recanted her testimony. Six years ago, two more witnesses recanted. Third Circuit: We view recantations with suspicion, but the number of recantations here warrants an evidentiary hearing.
Last month, North Carolina elections officials, apparently wary of the Post Office’s ability to deliver absentee ballots in time, extended the deadline for receipt from three to nine days after election day (ballots still must be mailed by election day). Much litigation ensues. The Fourth Circuit takes the unusual step of taking the case en banc after the panel had voted but before the panel opinion had been drafted. And the en banc court will not put a stop to the ballot-receipt extension, over some dissenters who are displeased both with the substance of the decision and the process it took to get there.
Former co-owner of Dinero Express is convicted of money laundering: running it through washing machines, when it arrives smelling like mischief, but also running it through a series of money transfers. Fifth Circuit: While petitioner was a success at money laundering—both literal and figurative—his habeas petition raises issues that could have been raised in an earlier petition and is an abuse of the writ. Concurrence: I agree, but I also think we should reconsider our habeas case law to further restrict the writ.
Texas’s absentee-ballot system involves a “Signature Verification Committee”—a “politically diverse” group that is tasked with approving or rejecting signatures on mail-in ballots. The committee verifies signatures on the ballot application and the absentee ballot envelope, and it may also look to signatures from that voter within the last six years that are on file with the county clerk or voter registrar. If a majority of the committee votes to reject a signature, the voter must be notified but has no opportunity to challenge the rejection. Considering that absentee ballots are “the largest source of potential voter fraud” and voting by mail is a privilege rather than a constitutional right, says the Fifth Circuit, this system is fine, at least fine enough to apply to this election.
For their entire lives, two teenage brothers in Mathis, Tex., have each kept a lock of their hair uncut as a promesa (a practice among American Catholics of Hispanic descent, which involves petitioning God with a request and vowing to fulfill a promise in return). In 2017, their public school informs them that they cannot participate in extracurricular activities unless their adhere to the school’s grooming standards, which prohibit their long hair. District court enters preliminary injunction, finding that the school is likely violating the family’s rights under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Fifth Circuit: And contrary to the school’s protestations, Brother #1 did not have to comply with pre-suit notice requirements. But Brother #2 should have, meaning the preliminary injunction is vacated as to him.
In 1998, Kentucky passed a law requiring abortion facilities to acquire a written agreement with a local hospital plus a written agreement with a local ambulance service to transport patients with abortion complications. Recently, state officials added a requirement that the hospitals be within a 20-minute drive. Sixth Circuit (over a dissent): There’s no indication that both of the state’s abortion facilities would close if the law is enforced, so it’s not accurate to say that the regs impose an undue burden on the right to abortion. (Attn circuit-split watchers: The chief justice’s concurrence in last term’s June Medical Services continues to confound; the Sixth Circuit sides with the Eighth and splits from the Fifth as to the effect of the concurrence.)
Allegation: Pretrial detainee smuggles cigarettes into jail, fails to bring enough for everyone, and suffers three beatings at the hands of envious inmates before Coffee County, Tenn. jail officials finally grant his request to transfer him to a safer cell block. Deliberate indifference? Jail officials: If he hadn’t smuggled in those cigarettes, he wouldn’t have gotten beaten up all those times. Sixth Circuit: No qualified immunity.
Tennesseans who registered to vote online or by mail may not vote absentee in the first election after they registered. District Court: That ban violates first-time voters’ constitutional rights, so it’s enjoined. Sixth Circuit: And we won’t stay that injunction. For one thing, we don’t understand why the government waited nearly a month to appeal and seek a stay given that the election is so quickly approaching.
Michigan has long prohibited people from hiring cars to take voters to the polls unless they’re physically unable to walk. The law was first enacted in 1895 to prohibit the classic form of bribery known as vote hauling, which is “cast as a way to get voters to the polls, [but is] often little more than an efficient vote-buying operation.” And, 125 years later, two-thirds of this Sixth Circuit panel will allow the gov’t to enforce the law for this election.
Out of a total of 60 potential jurors for trial over 2007 Champaign, Ill. triple shooting, just two are African-American. The prosecutor strikes one of them who is familiar with the scene of the crime. (Defendant is convicted and sentenced to 90 years.) State court: Which is a perfectly reasonable reason to strike a venireperson. Seventh Circuit: Just so. The lack of African-Americans in the jury pool was a minor anomaly and is neither here nor there Batson-wise.
FBI agent is ordered to turn over his laptop, which contains surreptitious recordings of Arkansas state senator (who is ultimately sentenced to 18 years for taking bribes). Instead, the agent pays a computer shop to erase the hard drive and scrubs it again himself after. Then he lies to his superiors and the court. Nonetheless, the recordings are recovered elsewhere, and they’re not particularly helpful to the defense. So was there something else on the laptop that would make the agent risk criminal charges, his career? Eighth Circuit: Whatever it was, it doesn’t help the senator (or his conspirators). Conviction affirmed.
After blowing a deadline by which it was required to promulgate rules for managing landfill emissions, the EPA is ordered to wrap things up by November 2019. Instead, EPA conducts a rulemaking extending their deadline until August 2021. District Court: Nope, you’ll stick to the November 2019 date. Ninth Circuit: Nope, it’s an abuse of discretion to refuse to modify an injunction when the underlying law has changed.
“What if the State of Washington passed a law that gave the reigning political party access to certain State-controlled, speech-enabling information, but denied that information to everyone else? It is hard to imagine anyone believing such a law would be constitutional under the First Amendment. So should it matter if the State enacted the same law, but instead of giving the information to the incumbent political party, it gave it to an incumbent public-sector union that serves as the exclusive bargaining representative for certain employees paid with public funds? That is what happened here when Washington voters enacted I-1501.” So writes Judge Bress, dissenting from a panel opinion of the Ninth Circuit upholding the initiative.
If you walk towards someone you allegedly assaulted earlier in the day, with a knife drawn, and while defying specific police orders to stop, do you have a clearly established right to be free from the use of deadly force? Ninth Circuit: You do not. Qualified immunity.
Federal law taxes revenue from selling illegal drugs, but doesn’t allow deductions for business expenses. Yikes! And that rule applies even where marijuana is legal as a matter of state law. Tenth Circuit: Over the past several years, numerous dispensaries in Colorado have resisted complying with IRS subpoenas seeking information about their revenues and expenses. As usual, their arguments fail.
Long-haul trucker and his trainee are accosted by a woman in a Homewood, Ala. parking lot. She accuses the trucker of hitting her car on the highway. Police arrive, and matters escalate quickly. Trucker’s allegations: Per company policy, I tried to photograph the alleged damage to the woman’s car, and the officer tased me in the back without warning, kicked me, and broke my jaw, then tased me again, then pepper-sprayed me, and then two more officers arrived and continued to kick, strike, and choke me. Eleventh Circuit: At the summary judgment stage, the district court erred by not crediting the man’s account. To trial the case must go.
Florida man alleges state law enforcement agency wrongly continues to disseminate his personal information on its website after he completed probation for sex crimes against minors. District court: The man waited too long to sue; his case is barred by the statute of limitations. Eleventh Circuit: Affirmed.
And in en banc news, the Eleventh Circuit will reconsider its holding that the Prison Litigation Reform Act prevents prisoners from recovering punitive damages for a constitutional violation unless they have been physically injured.
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Despite President Donald Trump’s claims, the U.S. military likely won’t play much of a role in distributing a COVID-19 vaccine.
“We have a vaccine that’s coming, it’s ready,” Trump said near the start of Thursday’s presidential debate. “It’s going to be announced within weeks, and it’s going to be delivered. We have Operation Warp Speed, which is the military, is going to distribute the vaccine.”
Trump has been using variations of this line for months—as far back as May, he was talking about “mobilizing” the military for vaccine distribution—but his own medical and military officials say it’s simply not true. Once a vaccine is developed, it will be handled the same way as any other: distributed by pharmaceutical companies through doctors’ offices and pharmacies.
“Our best military assessment is that there is sufficient U.S. commercial transportation capacity to fully support vaccine distribution,” Department of Defense (DOD) spokesman Charles Pritchard toldAmerican Shipper, a logistics industry publication, last month. “There should be no need for a large commitment of DOD units or personnel to support the nationwide distribution of vaccines.”
“For the overwhelming majority of Americans,” Paul Mango of the Department of Health and Human Services toldThe New York Times, “there will be no federal official who touches any of this vaccine before it’s injected into Americans.”
In July, McClatchy reported that the military commands responsible for homeland defense and the National Guard have not even been asked to prepare a plan for the distribution of a coronavirus vaccine.
In any case, Trump’s focus on distributing the vaccine is a bit premature. The CEOs of pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Pfizer have claimed that their COVID-19 vaccines may be ready by the end of this year or in early 2021, but Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief Robert Redfield has warned that there may not be a vaccine widely available until “late second quarter, third quarter 2021.”
It’s true that some military resources are involved in Operation Warp Speed, the public-private partnership that aims to invent, produce, and deliver 300 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine by January 2021. But once a vaccine is developed, any military involvement, according to Pritchard, would likely be just “to deliver vaccines to a remote location only if no other means of transportation is feasible.”
Unless you’re really committed to social distancing—living in an isolated shack in the middle of Alaska, perhaps—your COVID-19 vaccine will probably be distributed just like your flu shot: through your local doctor’s office or pharmacy.
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Stimulus Stalemate Sparks Slump In Stocks, Bonds, Oil, & The Dollar Tyler Durden
Fri, 10/23/2020 – 16:00
Day after day the algos excited pumped and dumped stocks on the back of ‘hope’ and ‘nope’ headlines about the next round of COVID-19 relief from Washington. By the end of the week, stocks were down, bond (prices) were down, oil was down, the dollar was down, and economic data was down…
Source: Bloomberg
But all stocks care about is their next “feed” of free money…
Source: Bloomberg
But apart from that everything is awesome…
Small Caps and Trannies managed gains on the week, Nasdaq underperformed…
Big round-trip in VIX this week but remained higher on the week…
FANG stocks fell for the second week in a row…
Source: Bloomberg
And semis chipwrecked for a second week…
Source: Bloomberg
Interestingly, defensives and cyclicals tracked each other all week as everything was top-down stimulus-on/stimulus-off swings…
Source: Bloomberg
Significant weakness in momo stocks this week…
Source: Bloomberg
“Most Shorted” stocks were squeezed Thursday and Friday back to unch on the week…
Source: Bloomberg
In fact, as yields rose on the week (rallying back lower somewhat today)…
Source: Bloomberg
Pushing yields to their highest since early June…
Source: Bloomberg
The curve rose to its steepest since July 2017…
Source: Bloomberg
Real Yields rose notably on the week but as the chart shows, gold decoupled…
Source: Bloomberg
The dollar extended its decline (down for the 3rd week in the last 4)…
Source: Bloomberg
On the bright side, BANKS were bid as the yield curve steepened…
Source: Bloomberg
And BITCOIN soared back above $13,000…
Source: Bloomberg
Gold futures ended the week very slightly higher, managing to hold above $1900…
Oil prices tumbled on the week, with WTI futs closing below $40…
Finally, this is what the ‘experts’ are panicking about?!!
Source: Bloomberg
And if some more context for this terrifying killer pandemic is also required…
The parents of a seventh-grade boy received a letter from his school in Lafayette, California, warning of possible truancy charges if he missed any more virtual class sessions.
“Out of the blue, we got this letter,” Mark Mastrov, the boy’s father, told the East Bay Times. “It said my son had missed classes and at the bottom, it referenced a state law which said truants can go to jail for missing 90 minutes of class.”
Mastrov assumed the school had been sent in error, so he called the school. He was shocked to learn that the authorities meant business: The law says any kid who misses three full days of school or is tardy for a 30-minute class period on three separate occasions can face jail time.
The policy was obviously intended to cover unexcused absences for in-person education, but the district apparently intends to apply it to virtual education as well.
Mastrov contends that his son didn’t miss his classes but simply logged on after his teacher had already taken attendance.
“Who passed this law in their infinite wisdom?” he wonders. “Who in their right mind could do that?”
Virtual learning is a deeply frustrating experience for many families, and schools should be maximally patient with students and their parents. Unfortunately, education officials around the country have been making life unnecessarily difficult for students who don’t sign in to their classes on time. Some places have even required teachers to perform virtual wellness checks, and to call the cops on parents if their kids seem checked-out during class. One kid got in trouble because his camera caught a glimpse of a toy gun, as though that’s comparable to bringing an actual weapon to a physical school.
This pandemic has caused enough problems on its own. Parents don’t need to be threatened with jail time for failing to master a hopelessly frustrating—and temporary—new system.
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