Month: October 2016

Unprecedented Surge In Election Fraud Incidents From Around The Country

Mounting evidence would suggest it’s getting more and more difficult for the left to claim that there are “no signs” of fraud in the 2016 election cycle…though we’re sure they will continue to try.  Just this morning the Miami Herald noted that two arrests were made in Miami-Dade county on election fraud charges including efforts by one woman to illegally register voters (some of whom were dead…a recurring theme this election cycle) while another 74-year-old election worker was charged with actually “illegally marking ballots”.

A 74-year-old woman tasked with opening envelopes sent by Miami-Dade County voters with their completed mail ballots was arrested Friday after co-workers caught her illegally marking ballots, resulting in an unknown — but small — number of fraudulent votes being cast for mayoral candidate Raquel Regalado.

 

Investigators linked Gladys Coego, a temporary worker for the county elections department, to two fraudulent votes, but they suspect from witness testimony that she submitted several more.

 

In a separate election-fraud case, authorities also arrested a second woman for unlawfully filling out voter-registration forms on behalf of United for Care, the campaign to legalize medical marijuana in Florida.

 

The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office plans to accuse Tomika Curgil, 33, of filling out forms for five people without their consent. She also submitted at least 17 forms for people who apparently don’t exist — and several forms for people who are dead.

 

Police officers arrested Curgil at her Liberty City home Friday morning and intend to charge her with five felony counts of submitting false voter-registration information.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle was quick to praise the “swift arrest of the wrongdoers” and ensure voters of the “integrity of the electoral process.”  That said, we, like many others, wonder just how many similar cases of election fraud will go unnoticed between now and election day.

“Our law enforcement effort against these election law violators was swift and resulted in an immediate arrest of the wrongdoers,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernández Rundle, a Democrat, said in a statement. “The elections department was quick to detect and report these violations to our task force.

 

“Anyone who attempts to undermine the democratic process should recognize that there is an enforcement partnership between the elections department and our prosecution task force in place to thwart such efforts and arrest those involved. Now we need to move forward with the election.”

 

“I want to ensure the voters of Miami-Dade County that the integrity of the electoral process is intact because our procedures work,” White said in a statement. “While disappointed by these incidents, I am very proud of the safeguards the Elections Department has in place to prevent these fraudulent attempts, and I commend the employees who remained vigilant just as they were trained to do.”

Meanwhile, Florida isn’t the only state with fraud problems as an NBC affiliate in Virginia is reporting that a former resident of Alexandia was also arrested after being caught creating fictitious voter registrations and faces up to 40 years in prison.  Of course, Virginia, run by long-time Clinton confidant Terry McAuliffe, is no stranger to election fraud as one democratic organization was already caught earlier this month re-registering dead voters.

A former resident of Alexandria, Virginia, is facing up to 40 years in prison after he allegedly used fake names to fill out voter registration applications.

 

Vafalay Massaquoi, 30, is facing four felony charges related to allegations of voter registration fraud, the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office said. Each charge carries a maximum of 10 years in prison.

 

In the spring of 2016, Massaquoi was registering new voters as an employee of a local advocacy group. According to the Commonwealth’s Attorney, Massaquoi fabricated applications and used fake names to fill out the registration forms.

 

The fake applications were filed with the Alexandria Office of the General Registrar, who reported the issue to Commonwealth’s Attorney Bryan Porter.

All of these reports simply add fuel to the fire of Trump who has been relentlessly attacking the “rigged” elections for the past several weeks. 

 

Of course, these are just a few of the people who have actually been caught for their election “rigging” efforts.  Meanwhile, there have seemingly been an unlimited number of other fraud cases pop up around the country involving everything from illegal voter registrations to dead people voting.  In fact, a recent report from CBS Chicago found that over 100 dead Chicagoans had voted 229 times over the past decade.

Susie Sallee was buried in 1998. Yet records show she voted in Chicago 12 years later.

 

Victor Crosswell died in 1994, but records show he’s voted six times since then.

 

And then there’s Floyd Stevens. Records show he’s voted 11 times since his death in 1993.

 

“It’s crazy,” Sharon Stevens Anderson, Stevens’ daughter, tells CBS 2’s Pam Zekman. “I don’t see how people can be able to do something like that and get away with it.”

 

Those are just a few of the cases CBS 2 Investigators found by merging Chicago Board of Election voter histories with the death master file from the Social Security Administration.

 

In all, the analysis showed 119 dead people have voted a total of 229 times in Chicago in the last decade.

 

Moreover, an ABC affiliate in Philadelphia uncovered similar instances of dead voters in the “City of Brotherly Love.”

So, Action News dug through a decade’s worth of election and death records to see if there was any truth to the claim.

 

Some of what Action News investigation found was stunning.

 

Pezzano passed in 2006. But state voting records show the South Philadelphia native still listed as an “Active Voter” who cast ballots in 2008, 2012, 2014, and the 2016 primary election.

 

Our investigation also found Joseph B. Haggarty resting peacefully in a Bucks County cemetery. His grave marker confirmed he died in 2010, but records show he voted five years after his death.

 

Action News also found Paul Bunch, who died in 2006, also cast a vote in this year’s primary which was nearly ten years after death records show he died.

 

But, while all of this may seem shocking, in due time, we’re confident these arrests and all other instances dead people voting, etc. will be seen for what they really are, namely another blatant attempt to suppress low-income and minority votes.

via http://ift.tt/2e5BiMT Tyler Durden

Zimbabwe Goes Down The Path Of Hyperinflation… Again

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Some people just don’t learn.

After becoming the most famous case of hyperinflation in modern history roughly ten years ago, Zimbabwe is about to have another go at conjuring paper money out of thin air.

I’m sure this time will be different.

You know the story. Starting in the late 1990s, the Zimbabwe government’s policies under Robert Mugabe began to have some devastating effects.

He confiscated private property from established (mostly white) farmers and redistributed the land in very tiny tracts to his supporters, most of whom had no experience in farming.

Unsurprisingly, Zimbabwe’s once-booming agriculture exports collapsed almost overnight.

This destructive, authoritative control pervaded across nearly all industries, and by the early 2000s, the economy was in dire straits.

Unemployment and inflation skyrocketed.

In 2001 alone, retail prices doubled. But that was just the beginning.

Inflation rose so quickly that the government was having to constantly print new denominations of currency– thousand Zimbabwe dollar notes, then ten thousand Zim dollar notes… then million dollar notes… even trillion dollar notes.

By 2007, the hyperinflation was so bad that prices were doubling roughly every day.

My friends here in Zimbabwe tell me stories of going out for drinks at a bar; they’d drink a few beers for an hour or so, after which the bartender would inform them that the price of a beer had just increased by 50%.

People learned very quickly to spend money as soon as possible, and long lines formed at grocery stores as an entire nation desperately tried to turn their paper currency into something useful.

Even a simple loaf of bread became a store of value.

One friend told me how we would buy a loaf of bread in the morning with his spare change, and then sell it in the afternoon so that he would have enough money to pay the bus fare back home.

Some economists estimate that Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation peaked at more than 500 BILLION percent– an incomprehensible figure unless you’ve lived through it.

In 2009 it all ended. The government stopping printing money, and Zimbabwe became a ‘hard currency’ economy.

US dollars, euros, pounds, South African rand, and even Chinese renminbi have been circulating here ever since; merchants and consumers basically use whatever currency they can to engage in transactions.

Essentially there is no Zimbabwe dollar anymore.

But that hasn’t solved any of the country’s problems.

In the late 1990s, Zimbabwe’s GDP was roughly $30 billion. Today it’s just $13.5 billion, than $1,000 per capita.

Independent agencies estimate the unemployment rate here at over 80%, and the average worker makes just a few dollars per day.

It’s not hard to understand why. Taxes, fees, and absolutely insane regulations abound in Zimbabwe.

And even at age 92, Robert Mugabe still maintains dictatorial power and a tight (albeit arthritic) grip over the economy.

To give you an example, the mere possession of a radio in your car (if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a vehicle) requires an annual fee of $50.

The same applies if you have a television set in your home.

Many imports have been banned outright (leading to major shortages given that domestic production is practically nonexistent).

And whatever few goods are allowed to be imported typically come with a tax bill of 100%.

A friend of mine is in the farming business here in Zimbabwe; every time he tries to invest and improve production, he’s punished with a string of exorbitant taxes on capital and equipment.

And it’s not just the taxes and fees… it’s the mountains of paperwork and bureaucracy that are required across dozens of offices and agencies.

This is literally the exact opposite of what any government should do, especially one that’s experiencing such a prolonged depression.

But apparently these politicians have memories like goldfish. Because their grand solution now is to go back to the roaring 2000s and start printing money again.

They’re calling them “bond notes”, and as you can imagine, the government has already promised that they’ll exercise restraint and print these new bond notes in very limited quantities.

Of course, that’s the same thing they said 15 years ago.

And it’s the same thing that every government and central bank says when they embark on an initiative to print money.

This is such typical thinking, and sadly not limited to Zimbabwe

People in power across the world, including in North America and Europe, rely on this incredibly limited playbook.

They think they can engineer prosperity by going into debt and conjuring money out of thin air.

They think they can legislate and regulate their way to a quality healthcare or education system.

And when the majority of their initiatives fail, or even have the exact opposite effect as intended, they don’t learn from their mistakes.

They simply print more money, pass more laws, and go deeper into debt.

Do you have a Plan B?

via http://ift.tt/2eY9usR Tyler Durden

Another Black Swan Hits the U.S. Presidential Election

By now, everyone on planet earth has heard about the bombshell news just announced by the FBI that it was re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Here’s the text of FBI head James Comey’s letter to Congressional leaders.

screen-shot-2016-10-28-at-1-03-50-pm

Obviously, lots of people are out there pontificating on what, if anything, this means. As such, I’m going to add my two cents to the conversation.

I’ve prided myself on unemotionally calling this election how I see it the whole time, because I’m neither a Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump supporter. Being free of the tremendous baggage that comes with cheerleading a particular candidate in this contentious election, I had consistently predicted a Trump victory until the Access Hollywood tape emerged. At that point I penned a thought-piece titled, Donald Trump is in Trouble – Part 2, in which I changed my forecast to a Hillary Clinton victory.

Here’s some of what I wrote:

continue reading

from Liberty Blitzkrieg http://ift.tt/2eVOT8P
via IFTTT

How a Basketball Player’s Tragic Death Gave Us One Of The Worst Drug Laws Ever

The Len Bias tragedy continuesThough there was no fanfare from Congress, or from the conventional wisdom-thinking class who bemoan the fact that Congress doesn’t pass as many laws as it used to in the good ole’ days, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 turned 30 years old yesterday.

The law was created as a knee-jerk response to the tragic cocaine overdose death of star University of Maryland basketball player Len Bias, who had just signed a contract with the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics. Author Dan Baum wrote in his drug war history book Smoke and Mirrors of how the “do something, anything!” mentality led then-Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill (D-Mass.) to demand swift and decisive action to ratchet up drug laws and to do it before the Republicans could beat his party to it.

(Via former Reasoner Radley Balko’s Washington Post column):

Immediately upon returning from the July 4 recess, Tip O’Neill called an emergency meeting of the crime-related committee chairmen. Write me some goddamn legislation, he thundered. All anybody up in Boston was talking about was Len Bias. The papers were screaming for blood. We need to get out front on this now. This week. Today. The Republicans beat us to it in 1984 and I don’t want that to happen again. I want dramatic new initiatives for dealing with crack and other drugs. If we can do this fast enough, he said to the Democratic leadership arrayed around him, we can take the issue away from the White House.

In life, Len Bias was a terrific basketball player. In death, he would become the Archduke Ferdinand of the Total War on Drugs. What came before had been only skirmishing; the real Drug War had yet to begin. Within weeks the country would be marching, bayonets fixed…

Crack was a congressional member’s dream: an issue on which there was no real disagreement, only a question of who could prove himself more committed to the cause. Eric Sterling couldn’t tell whether Congress was leading television or vice versa. In the month following Bias’s death, the networks aired seventy-four evening news segments about crack and cocaine, often erroneously interchanging the two substances and blithely asserting it was crack that killed Bias…

At the time of the law’s passing, it was heralded as a bipartisan example of Congress taking its lawmaking responsibility seriously and in the public interest. But three decades later, its effect on mass incarceration, as well as the racial disparity of those prosecuted for drug-related crimes, and the militarization of police who are now expected to fight a “war on drugs” rather than “serve and protect” communities, are indisputably terrible.

Mandatory minimum sentences were exponentially increased, crack cocaine possession was prosecuted 100 times more harshly than powdered cocaine possession, and the focus on dealing with drug addicts became one of punishment, rather than rehabilitation.

Put simply, it is a terrible law, still on the books, with little interest in Congress to repeal it entirely.

While some of the law’s measures, such as the 100:1 crack to powder disparity, have been rolled back thanks to subsequent legislation, the fact remains that because politicians saw a high-profile tragedy as an opportunity to pass legislation (even worse, an opportunity to outdo the opposition party in how punitive such legislation would be) an unspeakable human and societal cost continues to be paid.

As Reason‘s Jacob Sullum noted, President Obama commuted the sentennces of 98 nonviolent drug offenders yesterday, including 42 who had been condemened to life in prison. Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) released a statement lauding the president’s action, but FAMM’s Vice President Kevin Ring also referred to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, saying “You can’t fix 30 years of bad policy overnight.”

Ring added, “Think about it: Every day, people are sentenced in federal court based not on what their judge thinks is appropriate, but on what Tip O’Neill, Strom Thurmond, and a bunch of other deceased lawmakers believed 30 years ago. It’s just ridiculous.”

Watch FAMM’s explainer video of The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 below:

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2dPxUqZ
via IFTTT

The Brutality of the Battle of Chosin: New at Reason

Battle of ChosinWhen the Chinese mortar shell exploded, it sent the American soldier hurtling through the air, his body savaged but his mind eerily dreamy as he fell back to earth, cataloging the carnage surrounding him. He took particular note of a severed limb casually askew on the ground. “Some poor guy lost a leg,” the soldier thought to himself sadly. When he tried to stand, the dream blinked back to reality: The poor guy without a leg was him.

So it goes in The Battle of Chosin, an episode of the PBS documentary series American Experience airing November 1. It’s a series of postcards—surreal, grisly, terrifying—from a largely forgotten battle in the mostly unremembered war that the United States fought in Korea from 1950 to 1953. Television critic Glenn Garvin has more.

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2dPDgSY
via IFTTT

New Clinton Emails Emerged As Part Of Probe Into Anthony Weiner’s Electronic Devices: NYT

In the latest stunning revelation in today’s saga involving the FBI’s second probe, moments ago the NYT reported that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered after the F.B.I. seized electronic devices belonging to Huma Abedin and her husband, Anthony Weiner.

Until recentl Anthony Weiner was married to Hillary Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin, who separated from Weiner recently after news emerged that Weiner had engaged in an online affair with an underage girl.

The F.B.I. told Congress that it had uncovered new emails related to the closed investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton or her aides had mishandled classified information, potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

More as we see it.

via http://ift.tt/2dPwGvS Tyler Durden

Nightmare In Deep Ellum: How Pension Obligation Bonds Ruined Dallas Employees’ Retirement Dreams

Like the victims in any good horror film, officials in Dallas, Texas, find themselves in a situtation that was entirely avoidable—if only they’d realized it before it was too late.

In 2005, Dallas issued a $500 million bond that was supposed to plug the leaks in its police and fire pension system.

Now, just more than a decade later, the city is scrambling to prevent a “run on the bank” that’s threatening to bankrupt the pension system before 2028. By one count, more than $200 million was withdrawn from the system in less than six weeks as Dallas’ police and firefighters are making a run for it—yanking their investments out of the system that’s teetering on the edge of collapse.

That makes Dallas the latest example of why cities and states facing huge piles of pension debt should steer clear of pension obligation bonds, or POBs, which usually do more harm than good.

In Dallas, the story goes like this: the city sold $535 million in bonds to refill the Dallas Police and Fire City Pension Fund. In essence, that moved the debt from one pile—the pension system—to another pile—the city’s municipal debt obligations, in the hope that payments on that debt would be less, in the long term, than the cost of the pension system. It was a risky move, like “taking $535 million and throwing it on the dice table,” said city council member Mitchell Rasansky at the time.

With the pension problem supposedly “fixed” by the POB, Dallas politicians went back to their old ways and continued underfunding the pension system, allowing the debt to grow again. Dallas hasn’t fully funded the pension system since 2009, and shortchanged it by $14 million this year, according to the Dallas Morning News. Now, an immediate infusion of $600 million—equal to 20 cents of every dollar the city spends in its current budget—to fix the city’s pension problem, members of the pension board told the city council in May.

Dallas isn’t the first city to discover the hidden horror of POBs. It’s another sequel in a long-running series, with the victims piling up.

Stockton, California, sold $125 million in POBs in 2007. Five years later, the city declared bankruptcy and claimed the decision to issue the bonds was partially responsible. Detroit issued $1.4 billion in POBs in 2005 to avoid increasing contributions to the pension fund or cutting employees’ benefits. When the city declared bankruptcy in 2013, it also blamed the decision to sell pension bonds.

Even when they don’t drive cities to bankruptcy, POBs can be bad news. Philadelphia used a $1.3 billion pension obligation bond sale in the 1990s to shore-up its municipal pension system. Soon after, the city relapsed on pension payments and ended up with a deficit that was as large as it had been before the bonds entered the equation. The city then was faced with the debt to pay on the bonds, in addition to the regular pension debt.

In theory, POBs can work if—and it’s a big “if”—politicians suddenly discover fiscal responsibility and make all the necessary future payments to both the pension fund and the bonded debt.

In reality, POBs are fraught with political risk way because they make pension funds appear to be in better shape than they actually are. By papering over the underlying problems in the system—in Dallas, those problems included rules that allowed police and firefighters to collect pension benefits while they worked other jobs—all you’ve really done is shift the debt from the pension fund to the bonds.

A 2013 study from the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College concluded that it was hard to find examples where pension obligation bonds worked, because they are usually undertaken by governments in poor financial straits and unable to shoulder the investment risk.

Credit ratings agencies like Moody’s—which recently downgraded Dallas because of all the debt in the city’s pension systems—generally warn against using pension obligation bonds because of the high levels of financial and political risk that come with them.

Luckily, some policymakers are starting to get the message. In Alaska, Gov. Bill Walker called off a plan to sell $3.3 billion in pension obligation bonds this week, citing a lack of support from members of the state legislature.

Walker told Reuters that he still favored the POB idea, but that members of the Senate Finance Committee talked him out of it because they worried about the consequences of taking on more debt.

Another thing about good horror movie franchises: they never seem to run out of potential victims.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2fo8tgB
via IFTTT

VIX Derivatives At “Scariest” Level Since August 2015 Crash

While VIX remains subdued at bull-market-narrative-confirming levels, there are extreme concerns being exhibited in VIX options. There are currrently almost 7 times more 'call' options (bets on a higher VIX) than 'put' options oustanding on the 'Fear' index – the highest since August 2015, just days before China devalued and the US equity market crashed.

As the chart below shows, the spikes in VIX Call/Put ratio has tended to successfully lead a spike in VIX a number of times…

 

And with an election, an FOMC meeting, and a Chinese currency/money market in turmoil again…

Who can blame the professionals from hedging their risk in as sneaky way as possible.

via http://ift.tt/2e5ogPF Tyler Durden

AP: Newly Discovered Emails Related To Clinton Investigation “Did Not Come From Her Private Server”

As the details on the second FBI probe continue to trickle on, moments ago AP tweeted, citing a US official, that “newly discovered emails related to Clinton investigation did not come from her private server.”

It is, however, unclear where the emails came from or far more importantly, what is on them.

While the market remains as clueless as everyone else what is going on, it took the latest report from AP as a sign that the FBI probe may be less severe and quickly moved higher in response.

via http://ift.tt/2e5mo9A Tyler Durden

Trump Online Victory Odds Jump As Hillary Slumps

While the world listens to Hillary address the Iowa public in her first public appearance since news of the FBI probe reopening broke, the betting markets are actively moving already and according to at least one online betteing platform, Trump’s odds, after plunging to contract lows in recent weeks, have jumped substantially and moments ago rose as high as 32 before paring gains modestly shortly after.

At the same time, while note exactly a flash crash, Hillary’s own odds have slid from the recent range of around 80% to the low 70s.

To be sure the gap remains substantial, with Hillary enjoying a comfortable lead, although should the current shake up persist, it won’t take much for Trump to catch up. Finally, recall that online odds for Brexit were showing the Remain camps as a virtual certainty as recently as hours prior to the vote, so perhaps this will be a repeat of the British anti-establishment vote…

via http://ift.tt/2eY2RGO Tyler Durden