Month: June 2018

Police Warned Multiple Times About Annapolis Shooting Suspect; Gazette Employee Took Out Restraining Order

The suspect in Thursday’s deadly newsroom shooting had been reported to the police on at least two occasions by journalists at the paper, and that a restraining order had been taken out against him, according to a former Capital Gazette employee.

Jarrod Ramos, 38, sued The Gazette and two of its journalists in 2012 for defamation over a July 2011 article about Ramos harassing and threatening a former High School classmate on Facebook.

“He seems to think there’s some sort of relationship here that does not exist,” said the woman in a harassment case she filed against Ramos. “I tried to back away from it, and he just started getting angry and vulgar to the point I had to tell him to stop.”

After his case against The Gazette was thrown out, a Twitter account associated with Ramos was used to send hostile, threatening tweets at Gazette employees and the judge in his case. The account had remained dormant from January 2016 until Thursday – minutes before the shooting, when he wrote “Fuck you, leave me alone @judgemoylanfrnd” – to an unused Twitter account which appears to have been created by Ramos in 2016. 

Police notified

Former Gazette employee Joshua Stewart tweeted Thursday night “I can say with complete certainty that a @capgaznews employee had previously told @AACOPD [Anne Arundel Police] about concerns regarding the suspect in today’s shooting on #Annapolis,” and that “in addition to warning the @AACOPD about the suspect, another @capgaznews employee warned the @AnnapolisPD [Annapolis Police] as well.”

In another tweet, Stewart says that another reporter at The Gazette was granted a restraining order:  

Five people after Ramos allegedly stormed The Gazette on Thursday. Despite having damaged his fingertips, making fingerprint identification impossible, he was identified after Thursday’s shooting using facial recognition software according to AP. Ramos was found hiding under a desk after the attack, in which he was reportedly armed with a shotgun and a backpack containing fake grenades, smoke bombs and flash bang devices.

Acting Police Chief William Krampf of Anne Arundel County called it a targeted attack in which the gunman “looked for his victims.”

“This person was prepared today to come in, this person was prepared to shoot people,” Krampf said.

Journalists crawled under desks and sought other hiding places in what they described as minutes of terror as they heard the gunman’s footsteps and the repeated blasts of the shotgun as he moved about the newsroom. –AP

Circling the wagons

After Gazette employee Chase Cook took to Twitter to say “I can tell you this: We are putting out a damn paper tomorrow,” Several journalists from other outlets offered to help the Gazette during the disarray – from phone calls to emails to help on reporting. Those offering to help include Katie Rosman of the New York Times, journalist Jonathan Katz and Jonathan Schieber of TechCrunch. 

Meanwhile, Bloomberg employee Madi Alexander set up a GoFundMe account for the Capital Gazette with a goal of $30,000. 

After getting in contact with someone who worked for the Gazette, Alexander decided to organize a fundraiser through GoFundMe. As of Thursday evening, the page had raised $14,290 toward a $30,000 goal. Alexander, who doesn’t know anyone on staff at the newspaper outside Annapolis, started with a $10,000 goal and increased it at the urging of GoFundMe. –Capital Gazette

“I can’t stop shaking because I cant’t stop thinking about how this could be any one of us,” said Alexander, 26, a Bloomberg Government data reporter. “There’s nothing to keep this from happening to any newsroom or newspaper across the country.”

“Our hearts break for our colleagues in Annapolis and we want to do whatever we possibly can to help them pay for medical bills, funeral costs, newsroom repairs, and any other unforeseen expenses that might arise as a result of this terrible shooting,” the page says.

Tributes

Hours after the shooting, The Gazette managed to publish lengthy tributes to each of the five employees who were slain in Thursday’s attack: 

The Associated Press Media Editors also promised to help the Gazette, while AP also put out a call to newspapers nationwide to help the paper continue its coverage.

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Activists Say Straws Should Be Banned Because They Are a ‘Gateway Plastic’

Plastic straw bans won’t help the environment, but that’s no reason not to pass them.

Or so argue straw prohibitionists who want the little suckers outlawed in the hope of provoking environmentally friendly soul searching among inconvenienced consumers. “Straw bans aren’t going to save the ocean, but they could jumpstart much-needed conversations about the level of non-biodegradable trash in them,” writes Vox‘s Radhika Viswanathan, who gets all the facts about straws and their minimal effect on the environment right but still manages to come out in favor of a ban.

Viswanathan is joined by Dune Ives, executive director of the Lonely Whale Foundation, whose organization has targeted straws as a “gateway plastic.” With “plastic water bottles too endemic, plastic bags already somewhat politicized, and no viable alternative for the plastic cup in ALL markets,” Ives wrote in an October 2017 blog post, her organization had to find something to ban.

Straws, Ives says, made the perfect target: too inconsequential to really be missed but so ubiquitous that their absence would be noticed. “To us, it was the ‘gateway plastic’ to the larger, more serious plastic pollution conversation,” says Ives, whose organization was instrumental in getting Seattle to ban straws with its “Strawless in Seattle” campaign.

Does it make sense to support ineffectual bans in the hope that they might, through the power of conversation, spark an attitudinal change? Petty restrictions on people’s behavior usually makes them less sympathetic, not more, to the cause the rules are supposed to serve. And whatever benefits they might produce must be weighed against the very real costs they impose on those forced to comply with them.

Consider Caroline Lee, the owner of Young Tea, a bubble tea shop in downtown Seattle. She has been rushing to replace her stock of plastic straws with the now-mandated biodegradable type by July 1, when the city’s ban goes into effect. “I would say that it’s six to seven times more expensive than the regular plastic straw,” Lee says.

These compostable straws are also less durable, which increases shipping and storage costs. “It cannot endure high heat,” Lee says. “When we ship it over sea, we use an insulation blanket to cover the cartons. It’s pretty expensive.” She adds that the new straws last only 16 months before becoming stale and unusable.

These costs, says Lee, are forcing her to impose some new austerity measures on her customers. “Some of the customers would grab two straws,” she says. “We have been generous about that. Now we just give one straw per drink, and we are thinking of raising up the price a little bit to compensate for the costs.”

Lee says she shares the concerns animating the straw banners but is nevertheless conflicted about the policy. “As a business owner it is hard,” she says. “It’s more costs for us, but I too am concerned about so many plastics…so for me it’s complicated.” Lee suggests the city should compensate businesses affected by the straw ban by lowering their taxes.

No such plans are in the works. Instead the city will fine Lee $250 for any violations of the new straw policy.

The burdens placed on Lee and business owners like her seem to be pretty far from the minds of straw banners. Viswanathan’s Vox article spends not a word on how bans affect businesses. Neither did Ives’ Lonely Whale Foundation when it was pimping paper straws during its “Strawless in Seattle” blitz last September.

Activists instead are choosing to focus on the magical, planet-saving conversations that will spring from diners, drinkers, and coffee sippers who are told they can’t grab an extra straw on the go.

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Amazon PillPack Purchase Said To Be “Trojan Horse”

Amazon has been on a roll this week, not only announcing its plan to circumvent “last mile” hurdles and costs by incubating an army of third-party delivery vans, partially outsourcing its long-standing relationships with logistics providers, but also actively expanding into the pharma space with the clever acquisition of PillPack, pulling the rug out from below the feet of the entire pharma industry.

Commenting on the move, Bloomberg writes that the relatively cheap acquisition – Amazon paid only $1 billion for this critical market entry – Loop Capital said that the purchase is a “Trojan horse” for Amazon to become a major pharma player. Meanwhile, Jefferies analyst Brian Tanquilut said the deal presents a large overhang for the retail pharmacy sector – particularly for players like Walgreens Boots Alliance.

Here is a snapshot of several analyst’s takes on how Amazon is set to dominate yet another industry, courtesy of Bloomberg:

Jefferies’ Tanquilut says the AMZN deal has enlarged the overhang on the sector, preventing WBA and CVS from seeing meaningful stock upside near term

  • Downgrades WBA to hold from buy; lowers PT $65 from $85

Baird analyst Eric Coldwell says if AMZN was going to enter pharmacy then “acquisition was the most viable route”

  • Says AMZN deal may not be material to short run fundamentals, but issue has no end in sight and comes at an inopportune time with WBA’s core moderating
  • Downgrades WBA to neutral from outperform; lowers PT $64 from $86

Loop Capital’s Anthony Chukumba says the PillPack deal isn’t necessarily a “game changer,” but the most significant benefit is the target’s 50 U.S. state licenses

  • Reiterates buy rating; PT $1,900

Amazon’s move had been widely expected for a while, notably following a Morgan Stanley report from last November which laid out not only the potential disruption for Amazon in the pharma space…

… but also the threats for legacy industry players.

Read more here: “Alexa, This Is Going To Hurt”: These Companies Will Be Destroyed By Amazon Next

 

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Employees At Dozens Of German Banks Snagged In Tax-Evasion Probe

Late last year, German tax authorities carried out several brazen raids of some of the country’s largest lenders – including Commerzbank – tied to an investigation into so-called “dividend stripping.” The practice, which was commonplace before German authorities clarified tax laws about five years ago, allowed wealthy individuals to take advantage of a loophole allowing them to buy a stock just before losing rights to the dividend, then sell it short. Both the buyer and seller could then claim certain tax credits. Before German tax authorities revised the rules, large banks regularly advised their German clients about the practice. 

German

Fast forward five years, “dividend stripping” has been made retroactively illegal, and prosecutors in Cologne are preparing to issue their first indictments in a wide-ranging tax-evasion probe that has ensnared many of the biggest names in finance. According to Bloomberg, the scheme cost the Germany Treasury more than 10 billion euros ($11.6 billion).

Investigators are looking at the role of dozens of banks, brokerages, accounting companies, and law firms in the deals, and the cases involve hundreds of individuals, said the people, who declined to be identified because they’re not authorized to discuss the probe. The investigations include transactions handled by lenders including Barclays, Goldman Sachs Group, Bank of America Corp., Macquarie, and BNP Paribas, and initial indictments are likely as soon as this year, the people said.

The probe, which has been underway for about a half-decade, is picking up speed as several witnesses have agreed to cooperate. The Cologne team is working in parallel with prosecutors in Munich and Frankfurt, who last month charged six people, including former investment bankers at UniCredit SpA’s HVB unit in London. The Cologne investigators are focused on bankers in London because the tax office for non-residents is located in nearby Bonn.

Dozens of banks in Europe and the US engaged in the practice on some level – either doing the deals themselves or arranging them for clients. Many of the banks acted as custodians for the shares as they facilitated the “cum-ex” (with-without) transactions. The custodian banks would even issue certificates for the dividend withholding-tax redemption that shareholders could redeem at the tax office. All of these transactions were purportedly “legal” with lawyers and advisors issuing opinions declaring them such.

Given that the German justice system doesn’t have the capabilities to process hundreds of subjects, settlements are inevitable. The case being brought by prosecutors also doesn’t sound like it’s airtight: The practice largely ended after Germany reformed its tax code in 2012. And there’s still some debate about whether the transactions were legal before that. Indeed, despite leading to raids in 14 countries back in 2014, it sounds like the Cologne investigation would’ve died on the vine if it wasn’t for a breakthrough last year, when prosecutors secured the cooperation of a handful of traders and advisors.

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Kurt Loder Reviews Sicario: Day of the Soldado: New at Reason

“I’m gonna have to get dirty,” says walking human-rights violation Matt Graver (Josh Brolin), who you’ll be happy to know is still the same cheery sadist we met three years ago in Sicario. Graver has been called back to Washington from Somalia, where he was happily tormenting captured pirates, and re-assigned by his arm’s-length government handlers to start a fake drug war down in Mexico. The reason why this should need to be done isn’t crystal clear – just to own the narcotraficantes, maybe—but the assignment is coming from the U.S. secretary of defense (Matthew Modine), and he has no objection to any dirty moves Graver may want to make. Happy to hear that, Graver flies off to Bogotá to reconnect with fellow hardass Alejandro Gillick (Benicio Del Toro), who is likewise much the same as he was in the first film, although possibly scarier. “No rules this time,” Graver tells him. “I’m turning you loose.” Just the words we want to hear, writes Kurt Loder.

View this article.

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American Spending Grows Faster Than Income For The 29th Straight Month

For the 29th month in a row, Americans annual spending grew faster than their incomes as the ‘no consequences’ new normal rolls on, leaving the savings rate languishing near record lows – even if it did very modestly uptick in May.

Year-over-Year income growth reached 4.0% – the highest since Nov 2015; while YoY spending growth stalled at 4.4%.

Income growth was dominated by private workers seeing another uptick…

On the month, personal incomes grew 0.4% (as expected) – the fastest rate since Dec 2017.

However, for the second straight month, month-over-month spending growth disappointed – rising just 0.2% MoM vs +0.4% expectations.

But the growth in both continues.

The PCE Inflation data came in a little hotter than expected – rising at the fastest since March 2012…

As a reminder, the vast gap between extreme high confidence and extreme low savings rate – a borrow-my-way-to-happiness narrative – has never ended well in the past…

Remember, nothing lasts forever – ask the German soccer team.

 

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“Failing” Deutsche Bank May Be Kicked Out Of Key European Index

One day after Deutsche Bank’s US operations failed the Fed’s “stress test”, it appears that this outcome had been priced in by the market as DB’s stock price rose as much as 3% in early Friday trading…

… although looking slightly higher in the capital structure reveals ongoing skepticism, with the yield on DB’s 6% contingent convertibles rising, and set to hit 10% any moment.

However, much to the chagrin of investors in the biggest European lender, the barrage of bad news facing Deutsche Bank is not nearly over, and as the WSJ reports, the sharp drop in DB’s stock price could mean the exit from a major European index, jeopardizing its inclusion in the giant funds that track that benchmark, and assuring new all time lows as mutual fund liquidate their holdings.

The issue is that DB’s share price has dropped by more than 40% this year, as it struggles with falling profitability and other legacies of pre-financial crisis exuberance; the price is so low in fact, it would no longer be included in one of Europe’s most important inidices if there were no changes for the next 2 months.

According to WSJ calculations, Deutsche Bank’s market capitalization has fallen to a level that would see it removed from the Euro Stoxx 50, taking the lender out of the orbit of exchange-traded-funds with €42.5 billion ($49.1 billion) in assets that follow this index.

Still, an expulsion from the index is not assured, as a large bout of buying could save Deutsche Bank’s place in the index when it is rejigged in September, “but its presence in the relegation zone is a dramatic indicator of the once-European banking champion’s fall from grace.”

Some more details on the Stoxx 50, one of the most popular European aggregate indices:

The most important indexes for Deutsche Bank are the DAX and MSCI, but losing the Euro Stoxx 50 would be unhelpful, the person said.

Index provider Stoxx rebalances the Euro Stoxx 50 every September to remove companies whose market capitalization has shrunk below a certain size and to add those which have grown in the intervening year.

The index includes the 40 largest stocks drawn from 12 so-called supersectors. The remaining 10 stocks are filled from the stocks ranked 41-60 by floating market capitalization, prioritizing companies already included in the index.

At the beginning of June, Deutsche Bank was ranked 62nd in that longlist by Stoxx. Holding that position would see the bank removed from the index. A few weeks later, as of June 29, Deutsche Bank’s free-floating market capitalization left it ranked 63 of the companies on the Euro Stoxx 50 longlist. Its market capitalization is around €2.6 billion below the stock in 60th place, the last company with a chance of inclusion in the index as it currently stands.

When companies are dropped by indexes, the funds that track them must begin to sell those stocks and buy shares in the recently-added companies.

As the WSJ reminds us, this wouldn’t be DB’s first time on the rodeo: in 2016, Deutsche Bank was removed from a less closely followed index, the Stoxx Europe 50, which also includes stocks from non-eurozone nations like Switzerland and the U.K. But a greater number of funds with more assets under management reference the Euro Stoxx 50, making it more important for companies to be included. Just €2.6 billion track the Stoxx Europe 50, according to Deutsche Börse, which owns STOXX.

The impact of being dropped from an index can vary over time, according to some investment experts.

“What it does when you exit these indexes is it means Joe Average fund manager no longer has to look at you,” said Dan Davies, a senior research adviser at Frontline Analysts and a former banking analyst.

“Having an investor base made up of sector specialists might not be a bad thing, given how often the bank runs into regulatory issues,” he added.

The prospect of being expelled from the index is not lost on DB itself, and the WSJ says that the prospect “is on Deutsche Bank’s radar.” By the bank’s own estimates, somewhere less than 5% of its outstanding shares would likely be affected by investor rebalancing, in particular by passive investors who would be expected to automatically sell the shares if it fell out the Euro Stoxx 50.

However, in this time of pervasive passive dominance and generally illiquid markets, a forced 5% liquidation is more than enough to cripple the stock, especially if it will no longer be buoyed by the tidal ETF wave.

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Futures Rebound As Mnuchin Denies WTO Exit Story

For the second time in a few days, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has had to come galloping to the rescue of markets over ‘fake news’ reports.

US equity futures tumbled in early trading after Axios reported that the Trump administration was planning to withdraw from WTO.

But have now erased that drop Steve-the-savior rescues markets into month-end.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has just appeared on Fox Business to deny the story, saying that the “Axios story is not true” and is an “exaggerations” adding that Trump “has concerns about the WTO, he thinks there’s aspects of it that aren’t fair.”

Finally, Mnuchin added – in yet another attempt to clam markets – that “U.S. is not in trade war with China, it is a trade dispute.”

Semantics Steve…

 

 

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Cops Arrested a Black Man. He Called Them Nazis, So He Was Charged With a Hate Crime.

ArrestPolice officers in Crafton, Pennsylvania, arrested a 52-year-old black man, Robbie Sanderson, for shoplifting at a CVS in September of 2016. He called them Nazis, skinheads, and Gestapo as they cuffed him.

Because of those epithets, Sanderson was charged with “ethnic intimidation.” Insulting the officers in such terms was an anti-white hate crime, from the perspective of the authorities. Sanderson had made bias-motivated “terroristic threats,” they claimed. The alleged motivation increased the seriousness of Sanderson’s crime from a first-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony.

That’s according to The Appeal’s Joshua Vaughn, who reports that Pennsylvania residents were charged with hate crimes for making offensive statements to police at least three other times. In each of these cases, including Sanderson’s, the hate crime charges were eventually dropped. But the threat of a hate crime conviction can still hurt. Defendants might plead guilty to other offenses, for instance, if prosecutors agree to drop a hate crime charge.

In any case, it’s absurd to think that the crime of “ethnic intimidation” was meant to include citizens who angrily rant at cops who are arresting them. “This is not what the hate crime statute was for,” says the ACLU’s Mary Catherine Roper. “This is criminalizing pure speech and that violates the First Amendment.”

Making racially biased remarks isn’t against the law. Rather, hate crime provisions enhance the penalties for offenses such as vandalism, assault, and, yes, terroristic threats. A man who beats up his neighbor might be guilty of assault, but a man who beats up his neighbor because the neighbor is black could be guilty of ethnic intimidation. Merely shouting at the cops during the course of an arrest shouldn’t count.

The cases highlighted by The Appeal present good evidence that we ought to be skeptical of hate crime laws. Although intended to protect the underprivileged from bigotry and racism, they often permit the government to quell speech that is critical of authority. In my recent testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, I noted examples from outside the U.S. where stricter prohibitions of hate crime and hate speech empowered the government to arrest people for telling harmless jokes or sharing inappropriate lyrics.

Yet one Pennsylvania news source, Pennlive.com, is concerned that Pennsylvania is too quick to drop hate crime charges:

Police logs across the state are filled with scores of similar incidents—ones in which a bias against someone’s race, ethnicity or religion are noted in the crime report. But whether it’s a failure of police to file hate-crime charges or the chargers become the go-to bargaining chip in a plea deal, these so-called hate crimes seldom make it into state crime statistics.

As a result, Pennsylvania, a state of 12.7 million, continues to have a chronically low annual reporting rate of hate crimes to the FBI.

As an example of the kind of thing that should be prosecuted as a hate crime, Pennlive.com’s editorial board recalled a 2016 incident involving a white teenager who made cruel, racist remarks about a black kid and “shared the result of his disgusting handiwork to Snapchat.” The teenager was charged with cyber-bullying and harassment, but the authorities didn’t immediately think to add a hate crime charge.

Should hate crime enhancements apply in a case where the underlying crime was itself a matter of speech? Prosecuting more hate crimes in Pennsylvania would indeed generate more reports of such offenses. But that wouldn’t tell us whether hate crimes were actually increasing or decreasing, especially if the numbers merely reflect harsher treatment of teenagers who make mean videos and people who shout epithets at cops.

The best point against hate crime laws is the one raised by Commissioner Peter Kirsanow during the hearing I attended:

He directed his questions to all of us, and invited anyone who possessed the information to answer.

“Are you aware of any data, studies, or other evidence, that shows designating a crime a hate crime deters, prevents, or reduces that crime, and second, whether designating a crime a federal hate crime reduces, deters, or prevents incidents of that crime?” he asked.

Neither I nor any of the other panelists were aware of such information, and so the panel fell silent.

Kirsanow continued. “Then, one other question: are you aware of any databases, study, or other evidence that shows designating a crime a hate crime, whether a municipal, federal, or state crime, assists in the resolution of that crime or the apprehension of the perpetrator?” he asked.

Again, silence.

“Thank you, Madame Chair,” he said, yielding the floor.

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Maxine Waters Cancels Events Following “Very Serious” Death Threats

Congresswoman Maxine Waters – who earlier this week urged her supporters to accost members of the Trump administration at restaurants and other public venues – has been forced to cancel a pair of public events after receiving a “very serious death threat.” The Congresswoman told CNN on Thursday that she’s seen an increase in threats since she made the controversial comments.

Waters

Waters canceled appearances in Alabama and Texas this week after receiving “threatening messages” and “hostile mail” at her office, including “one very serious death threat” from an individual from Texas.

“As the President has continued to lie and falsely claim that I encouraged people to assault his supporters, while also offering a veiled threat that I should ‘be careful’, even more individuals are leaving (threatening) messages and sending hostile mail to my office,” Waters said in a statement.

“There was one very serious death threat made against me on Monday from an individual in Texas which is why my planned speaking engagements in Texas and Alabama were cancelled (sic) this weekend,” she continued. “This is just one in several very serious threats the United States Capitol Police are investigating in which individuals threatened to shoot, lynch, or cause me serious bodily harm.”

Waters has been roundly criticized by President Trump, who published several tweets criticizing the Congresswoman and her ill-advised comments this week.

Trump wasn’t alone in his criticism: Few, if any, Democrats in Congress backed Waters’ tactics, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer even criticized her from the floor of the Senate, saying he “strongly disagrees” with folks who advocate harassing people who disagree with you.

Waters’ comments famously followed an incident where Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled by activists at a restaurant in Washington DC, and Mitch McConnell’s wife was ambushed in her own driveway.

Waters herself has tried to walk back her comments, insisting that she “believes in peaceful, very peaceful protests” and that she has “not called for the harm of anybody.” Waters added that she receives death threats “all the time.” Back in April, a man pleaded guilty to threatening Waters last year.

One wonders if after the alleged death threats Maxine will put an end to her calls for harassment? Or will we hear more stump speeches like this one:

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