Month: July 2018

Police Arrest Man Who Threatened to Kill Rand Paul and Butcher Family, Senator Says

U.S. Capitol Police have arrested a man who threatened to kill Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) and “chop up” his family with an axe, the senator said Monday.

In a Twitter post, Paul expressed his gratitude to the Capitol Police for detaining the man. “Thank you to the US Capitol Police for their arrest of the man who recently threatened to kill my family and me,” the Kentucky Republican wrote:

According to the Louisville Courier Journal, the suspect made the disturbing threats over the phone, having called in to Paul’s office in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

“Capitol Police have issued an arrest warrant for a man who threatened to kill me and chop up my family with an axe,” Paul said earlier Monday at an event in Litchfield. “It’s just horrendous that we have to deal with things like this.”

Paul is no stranger to threats to his physical wellbeing. Last June, he was practicing with his Republican teammates for the Congressional Baseball Game at a field in Alexandria, Virginia, when a gunman opened fire. Paul was not hurt, though House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R–La.) sustained serious injuries.

Then, in November, Paul was assaulted by a neighbor who was angry that the senator was stacking yard debris near the boundary between their properties. Paul suffered several fractured ribs and the neighbor, Rene Boucher, was arrested by state police following the attack. He later pleaded guilty to the federal charge of assaulting a member of Congress.

In addition to being sentenced to 30 days in jail, Boucher was slapped with a $10,000 fine. Federal prosecutors have since decided to appeal his sentence, arguing it isn’t harsh enough. Moreover, Paul has filed a civil lawsuit against Boucher, alleging “physical pain and mental suffering” and seeking punitive and compensatory damages.

Needless to say, Paul has dealt with a lot over the past year or so, and he admitted as much on Monday. “It’s been a year where we’re becoming more and more aware of these threats,” he said.

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Attkisson: Rosenstein Conflicts Undermine Legitmacy Of Mueller’s Investigation

Authored by Sharyl Attkisson, op-ed via The Hill,

In his recent testimony to Congress, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein undoubtedly intended to sound reassuring. “I am quite confident,” he proclaimed, “about my conduct throughout this investigation.”

Rosenstein may have reason to feel confident. He’s in a difficult position and his conduct may indeed be above board. And, under normal circumstances, Congress and the public might be comforted by his guarantee.

But that’s the rub: These circumstances are far from normal.

We’re in the midst of one of the most important scandals in memory: Our intel agencies and some public officials within them are suspected of abusing power and misusing sensitive tools under their control as political weapons. The allegations reach far beyond the 2016 campaign and transcend party politics, which makes them all the more insidious in nature.

Combine that with the probes into Trump-Russia “collusion” and Hillary Clinton’s classified email practices, and the result may well be the most tangled web of overlapping investigations and competing conflicts of interest we’ve ever seen.

In this context, it seems unreasonable to be expected to uncritically accept assurances from Rosenstein or other figures and federal agencies — such as the CIA, the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) — whose behavior is under the microscope. Yet, they currently control much of the evidence at issue and are making crucial determinations about everything from what to turn over to Congress and what to withhold or redact, the propriety of wiretaps and other surveillance, possible prosecutions, whether they should recuse themselves for conflicts of interest, to appointment(s) of special counsel(s) who could investigate their conduct.

For his part, Rosenstein has several potential conflicts of interest – at least in perception. And in the realm of legal ethics, perception counts.

Rosenstein recommended that President Trump fire FBI Director James Comey — then handpicked Robert Mueller to investigate why Trump fired Comey. It’s akin to you or I being allowed to hire the guy who’s going judge our own actions. Not only that, Rosenstein’s pick — Mueller — is a longtime colleague of Comey’s, whose own behavior was found to be “extraordinary and insubordinate,” according to the recent DOJ’s inspector general report.

Rosenstein reviewed and signed off on controversial wiretaps of Trump associate Carter Page, who was never charged with a crime despite being tracked under four FBI wiretap approvals.

The wiretaps Rosenstein signed had relied, in part, on anti-Trump political opposition research known as the “Steele dossier.” The FBI reportedly had not strictly verified the research as required under the FBI’s Woods Procedures. If that’s the case, Rosenstein (or those who work under him) could be implicated in possible violations of those procedures.

Rosenstein is in the position to decide whether to pursue criminal charges against the man who provided the anti-Trump “oppo” research used for the wiretaps that Rosenstein approved: Christopher Steele. But implicating Steele — an FBI source — could call into question the actions of Rosenstein himself and his colleagues. Rosenstein has taken no public action on a criminal referral against Steele sent to him almost six months ago by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Under Rosenstein, the Department of Justice and FBI have withheld and improperly redacted information Congress requested. One key withheld text exchange was dated Aug. 9, 2016. It  was between the FBI’s former top counterespionage official, Peter Strzok, and his reported mistress, FBI attorney Lisa Page. “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Page wrote to Strzok. “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.” Strzok answered. After the texts and other possible misconduct were known internally, both Strzok and Page were allowed to remain on the job.

All that — and yet, the clear message delivered at last week’s hearing was: We’re not to worry. Material isn’t being provided to Congress? We’re told nobody’s hiding anything, it’s just that it’s part of “an ongoing investigation.” We’re to trust, without the ability to independently verify, that blacked-out passages in emails and other evidence are legitimately withheld — although the ones making those decisions are the feds themselves who are potentially under investigation. As for previous improper redactions? We’re told we’re paranoid or conspiratorial if we’re dubious about the next batch. When we ask who was responsible for the improper redactions in the first place, the question is diverted. We can assume the same people are still on the job — but that would be conspiratorial.

And most of all, even in the face of the DOJ’s inspector general faulting dozens of top officials, lawyers and ethics officials at the FBI and Justice Department, we’re to believe that any who are still there (and their friends) will do the right thing, even if it comes down to exposing their own misconduct.

Lastly, during his testimony, Rosenstein assured Congress that he would certainly discuss with Mueller if there were any conflicts of interest.

Don’t worry. He’ll take care of it.

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Anthony Kennedy, Libertarian?

What’s the best way to describe the legal/political views of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy? For some pundits, the answer has been to label Kennedy a “libertarian.”

As it happens, Kennedy himself weighed in on this very topic back in 2005. “People say I’m a libertarian,” Kennedy told The New York Times that year. “I don’t really know what that means.”

Most libertarian legal experts would probably agree with him. That’s because Kennedy joined the Supreme Court in handing the libertarian legal movement two of its biggest defeats in recent memory. In Gonzales v. Raich (2005), Kennedy joined the Court in recognizing a broad congressional power to control the interstate market in medical marijuana, even though the plants at issue were cultivated and consumed entirely within the state of California (and were cultivated and consumed legally under state law). Then, in Kelo v. City of New London (2005), Kennedy joined the Court in affirming that municipality’s use of eminent domain on behalf of a private developer working in cahoots with the Pfizer corporation. Not exactly strong evidence of Kennedy’s libertarian bona fides.

But things do look a little different when you zoom out and take in the bigger picture. At that point, Kennedy’s overall impact on the Court does start to look a bit more libertarian. As I’ve previously argued, Kennedy stands out in recent years as the one member of the Court “who at least occasionally favors the basic libertarian mix of social and economic freedom.”

Sometimes Kennedy even employs explicitly libertarian arguments. In his 2003 majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, for example, which struck down that state’s sodomy ban, Kennedy repeatedly cited the powerful friend of the court brief filed by the libertarian Cato Institute, which explained why the Texas law was an unconstitutional exercise of state power.

Similarly, when the Supreme Court heard oral argument last March over the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, it was Kennedy whose statements most closely tracked the libertarian legal movement’s opposition to the law’s unprecedented reach. “Here the government is saying that the Federal Government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act,” Kennedy told Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, “and that changes the relationship of the Federal Government to the individual in a very fundamental way.”

Kennedy is the only member of the modern Court who has voted in favor of gays and guns while also opposing Obamacare. Libertarians can relate to that.

Over the years, I’ve seen Kennedy variously described as “libertarian-leaning,” “libertarian-ish,” “quasi-libertarian,” and “modestly libertarian.” None of these labels is entirely satisfying, but that’s just because Kennedy’s jurisprudence was never entirely satisfying. This mercurial justice defies easy categorization.

Related: Justice Anthony Kennedy Is Retiring and All Hell Is About to Break Loose

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Euro Jumps After CSU Leader Says Migration Clash With Merkel Resolved

After a torrid for German politics 24 hours, in which CSU leader and German interior minister Horst Seehofer first offered to resign, only to withdraw his offer shortly after and replace it with another ultimatum for Merkel, the whole world was on edge to see if Merkel and Seehofer would have a final falling out over Germany’s refugee situation, or if they would somehow kiss and make up in the 11th hour (and 59th minute).

The answer, it turns out, was the latter and moments ago Seehofer said that he would not resign as the migration clash with Merkel had been resolved, and that the CSU and CDU had reached a “clear agreement.”

  • GERMAN CSU LEADER SAYS MIGRATION CLASH WITH MERKEL RESOLVED
  • GERMAN INTERIOR MINISTER SIGNALS END TO MERKEL COALITION FIGHT

While initial details were sparse, the news that Merkel’s fate was again safe, has so far resulted in a 25 pip spike in the Euro which is back to 1.1645, after trading briefly below 1.16 earlier in the session; however the common currency is still below where it started off the session, perhaps as traders were looking for more details.

 

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Tesla Confirms Chief Engineer Has Left

On a day when Tesla’s share price plunged 10% from its highs intraday after Musk tried to spin his missed Model 3 deadline as a win, the company has confirmed that its chief engineer Doug Field is leaving the company.

Oops…

Field, who “had been taking time off to recharge and spend time with his family” after Elon Musk took over production responsibilities during the ramping up of the Model 3 sedan…

is now officially gone.

“After almost five years at Tesla, Doug Field is moving on. We’d like to thank Doug for his hard work over the years and for everything he has done for Tesla,” the company says in an emailed statement

As we noted previously, Field has been a “key leader at the Silicon Valley auto maker since joining in 2013 from Apple” according to the WSJ and oversees all engineering of Tesla’s vehicles. As noted above, that changed this spring when Chief Executive Elon Musk said he retook control of production.

Ironically, the hiring of Field from Apple, where he was vice president of Mac hardware engineering, was touted as a win for Mr. Musk, who had big ambitions for Tesla. Field had also worked at Ford Motor and Segway, giving him unique experience in both the tech and autos industry.

When Field first joined Tesla, he said driving a Tesla for the first time “was like using the first Mac with a mouse. He knew that eventually everyone would want to drive one.”

The latest SEC filing shows Field sold over $1 million in Tesla shares.

So they have no chief engineer and production is being done under a tent – so 7k next should be no problem, right?

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Libertarian Party Adopts New Sex Work Plank, Becomes Only Notable U.S. Party to Endorse Prostitution Decriminalization

The Libertarian Party officially “supports the decriminalization of prostitution,” according to a new plank in the party’s political platform. This makes the L.P. the only notable U.S. political party to stand unequivocally for sex-worker rights and in opposition to cops caging people for consensual sex.

“We assert the right of consenting adults to provide sexual services to clients for compensation, and the right of clients to purchase sexual services from consenting sex workers,” reads the new language, adopted by vote today at the Libertarian National Convention in New Orleans. The convention brings together Libertarian Party members for forums, speeches, and debates, while delegates vote on proposed amendments to the party’s platform and bylaws and who will be the national leaders.

After some debate Monday morning, delegates adopted the decriminalization amendment as Plank 2.8 of the party’s platform. The previous platform made no mention of sex work or prostitution. The language of the new amendment was drafted by sex workers, and L.P. delegates rejected a similar amendment in order to approve the sex-worker-penned version.

The L.P.’s move comes the same week America’s other most popular third party, the Greens, explicitly rejected a platform that protects sex worker rights.

“In a not surprising, yet still disappointing, move,” the Green Party “failed to pass a platform resolution calling for the decriminalization of sex work,” the Sex Workers Outreach Project noted on Twitter this morning. “Instead they retain their current platform which recommends ‘Nordic’ model criminalization and conflates trafficking with [sex work].”

The “Nordic model” puts more emphasis on prosecuting sex buyers than sex sellers and lets some sex workers avoid arrest as long as they do so under very specific circumstances.

In voting that ended July 1, Green Party delegates rejected a proposed platform amendment that would add the decriminalization to the party’s official platform. The measure was co-sponsored by the Green Parties of Alabama, Colorado, North Carolina, and Utah and the Lavender Greens and Youth Greens. “It is the opinion of the authors of this document that the party’s current stance on sex work…is morally indefensible, ideologically incoherent, and politically damaging,” they suggested. The amendment failed.

The Democratic platform makes no mention of prostitution or sex work, though it does contain at least a dozen references to sexual orientation. The Republican platform also avoids commentary on prostitution, though it does claim that “Pornography, with its harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the lives of millions.”

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Bitcoin Bounced, Tesla Trounced, Platinum Pummelled, Yield Curve Crushed

It all just has that feeling…

 “It’s not a happy start to the second half. Trade war concerns, U.S. sanctions, Trump’s rants and political problems in Europe, as well as worries about slowing emerging-market growth are all playing their part.” – Saxo’s Ole Hansen.

China was ugly overnight…

 

Europe also closed red – but rebounded from the gap down open…

 

But US equities shrugged it all off as Trump walked back his WTO comments somewhat and all major indices went bid…

 

The Dow closed below its 200DMA for the 6th day in a row…

 

The percentage of stocks in bear territory is also rising sharply with over 22% of the MSCI World names now down more than 20% – more than three times as many seen at the end of January.

 

Tesla pumped (on “hitting” an aribtrary milsetone) then tumbled on “missing” the deadline…

 

Treasury yields roundtripped on the day. After being bid overnight, bonds were sold from 830ET on today back to around unchanged… (short-end underperformed)

 

The yield curve reverses Friday’s sudden steepening…

 

 

The Dollar was a one-way street higher today – erasing Friday’s losses – until later in the day when the dollar began to roll over…

 

The Mexican Peso slipped overnight after AMLO’s election victory but bounced into the close…

 

Emerging Market FX continues to push lower against the dollar…

 

And cryptos all surged today on the heels of some major short liquidations in Bitcoin…

 

All the major commodities were weaker on the day (with a notable gap down open last night)…

 

As the dollar strengthened, precious metals slipped lower, led by Platinum…

 

Gold and Silver were monkey hammered lower at the 830am fix and never looked back…

 

Platinum plunged today – dropping the most since 2011 to its lowest since 2008…

 

And finally – because it’s the big thing that everyone is ignoring – Offshore Yuan continues its freefall, accelerating today…

 

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Jim Kunstler Fears The Democrats’ “Turn For The Worse”

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

The Democratic Party has steered itself into an exquisitely neurotic predicament at a peculiar moment of history. Senator Bernie Sanders set the tone for the shift to full-throated socialism, and the primary election win of 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a New York congressional district seems to have ratified it. She promised voters free college tuition, single-payer health care, and free housing. Ah, to live in such a utopia!

One can actually understand why New Yorkers especially would fall for that agenda of promises. When I was a child there in the 1950s and 60s, New York was a mostly middle-class city. City College of New York, with a really distinguished faculty, was free. That’s right, stone free. Much of that middle-class was educated there, including most of my high school teachers. In the 1950s and 60s, it cost a few hundred dollars to have a baby in the hospital, and less than that to receive three stictches in the ER. Back then, New York real estate was mostly rental housing and not subject to the deformations of wandering global capital.

You can’t overstate how fortunate this country was after the Second World War. The mid-twentieth century was the apex of American industrial wealth. We produced real goods and lived in extraordinary comfort. Now, of course that has all turned around, the industry is mostly bygone, the magnificent energy supply is getting sketchy, and all that’s left is a false-front financialized economy based on swindling and accounting fraud. Medicine and health care have become unabashed rackets, and good luck finding a place to live for less than half of your monthly income.

Things have changed, as Bob Dylan once noted in song, and the times they are a ‘changing once again. This is probably the worst time in recent history to go full-bore socialist. Look, it’s as simple as this: the 20th century saw the greatest rise of global GDP ever. The prospect of that is what drove the various socialisms of the period — the belief that there would be evermore material wealth and that a lot of it had to be fairly redistributed to the workers who brought into being. You can debate the finer socio-ethical points of that — and indeed that’s what much of politics consisted of throughout the industrialized world — but the stunning bonanza of wealth compelled it.

That is the world we are moving out of right now, despite the fantasies of Elon Musk and the many techno pied pipers like him. GDP growth has stalled, the implacable trend is toward contraction, and the wizards of financial hocus-pocus are running out of tricks for pretending that they create anything of value. In short: there’s no there there. All that’s left are IOUs for loans that will never be paid back — and that kind of loan (especially in the form of a bond) doesn’t have any value.

So, the Democratic Party has embarked on a crusade to redistribute the wealth of the nation at the exact moment when the “wealth” is turning out to be gone. Good luck with that.

A perhaps more high-toned and fine-tuned version of this program is the new scheme called “universal basic income” (UBI). A Silicon Valley zillionaire named Andrew Yang has launched a 2020 presidential bid based on this UBI. You can listen to his pitch in this excellent discussion with Sam Harris here. Yang is obviously sincere. He proposes to give every citizen around $1,000 a month whether they have a job or not. You can mount any number of arguments about how this might incentivize behavior for better or worse, but if something like that were ramped up, I assure you it could only be done with a debased currency on track toward oblivion. The wealth is no longer there and the representation of it in “money” will be obviously false.

Don’t get too worked-up, either, over the Big Story that robots will soon be doing all the jobs lately done by humans in America.

That fantasy of the next economy is actually already dead-on-arrival due to the energy predicament that virtually no one in the public arena is paying any attention to. The century-long oil bonanza is winding down again. The oil companies know it. They’re not spending any money on exploration, meaning they won’t replace the energy we’re currently burning up with new supply. To make matters more interesting, the alt-energy industries will not survive the demise of oil. You have no idea how this dilemma will shove the life our nation into something like a new medieval age. And don’t be surprised if it comes complete with a new feudalism — which is just a way of describing a deeply local economy, if you can make one at all.

The Democratic Party’s return to socialist nostrums could not happen at a less propitious moment. It’s one thing to spend other people’s money during an age of steadily rising GDP, and another thing when GDP is collapsing. It might even prove to be a winning strategy in a few elections. But that depends on how delusional the voters remain.

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Animal Rights Activists Slam Huntress for Killing ‘Rare’ African Giraffe That Isn’t Actually Rare

An American huntress who shot and killed a supposedly rare giraffe in South Africa is facing widespread backlash from animal rights activists. But the creature in question does not, in fact, appear to be all that rare.

Photos posted to Twitter last month by the South African media outlet Africland Post showed a woman posing next to a “rare” dead giraffe. “White American savage who is partly a Neanderthal comes to Africa and shoot down a very rare black giraffe courtesy of South Africa stupidity,” the outlet declared:

The woman, Kentucky resident Tess Thompson Talley, went on the hunt last June and had originally posted the photos to Facebook. “Prayers for my once in a lifetime dream hunt came true today! Spotted this rare black giraffe bull and stalked him for quite a while. I knew it was the one. He was over 18 years old, 4000 lbs. and was blessed to be able to get 2000 lbs. of meat from him,” she wrote on the social media platform at the time.

Though the hunt was more than a year ago, Talley has faced criticism in recent days from animal rights activists due to the Africland Post tweet, with some people saying she deserves to be abused and shamed:

Actress Debra Messing even said on Twitter that Talley is “a disgusting, vile, amoral, heartless, selfish murderer.”

Talley has defended herself from the critics, telling Fox News that the breed of giraffe she killed was far from endangered. “The giraffe I hunted was the South African subspecies of giraffe. The numbers of this subspecies is actually increasing due, in part, to hunters and conservation efforts paid for in large part by big game hunting. The breed is not rare in any way other than it was very old. Giraffes get darker with age,” Talley said.

She also claimed that the 18-year-old giraffe she killed was not able to breed and had killed three younger giraffes, which would mean its actions were actually decreasing the population of the subspecies.

Julian Fennessy, co-founder of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation, seems to agree with Talley. “The giraffe in the photo is of the South African species, which are not rare—they’re increasing in the wild,” Fennessy tells Yahoo. “Legal hunting of giraffe is not a reason for their decline, despite the moral and ethical side of it which is a different story.”

This is not the first time an American trophy hunter has come under fire for his or her legal exploits in Africa. Recall Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer, who received global criticism for killing a lion named Cecil during a 2015 trip to Zimbabwe.

Palmer’s case is somewhat different in that the the lion in question was indeed rare. Still, it’s worth asking: Is it ever acceptable to hunt endangered animals?

Reason‘s Nick Gillepsie thinks it is. “One thing that we know that helps endangered animals more than endangered species lists,” Gillepsie said in 2011, “is actually giving people ownership rights over animals”:

“In a libertarian society,” he continued, “there would be ownership of more types of animals, and there would be more types of animals.” Ownership would encourage conservation, but it wouldn’t end hunting. Not only would people “be able to hunt and eat those endangered animals,” but they could also “prepare them with an absinthe sauce, or a heroin sauce, or a cocaine sauce, and the world would be a better place.”

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Chamber Of Commerce Turns On Trump With Campaign To Oppose Tariffs

The US Chamber of Commerce has been opposed to President Trump’s trade war since before Trump even won the Republican nomination. Back in March 2016, CoC President Tom Donohue warned that Trump “would be impeached” if he followed through with his threats of slapping tariffs on China and Mexico. Now, more than two years later, the chamber – which bills itself as the largest interest interest group representing US businesses – is launching an all-out offensive to oppose Trump’s trade policies, according to Reuters. 

Trump

The campaign, which officially launched Monday, is described as “an aggressive effort by the business lobbying giant. Using a state-by-state analysis, it argues that Trump is risking a global trade war that will hit the wallets of US consumers.”

“The administration is threatening to undermine the economic progress it worked so hard to achieve,” said Chamber President Tom Donohue in a statement to Reuters. “We should seek free and fair trade, but this is just not the way to do it.”

Of course, Donohue’s criticism begs the question: If this isn’t the solution to achieving “free and fair” trade, then what is?

The campaign represents a major shift in the Chamber’s stance toward the administration after it applauded the Trump tax cuts. The CoC represents 3 million members and has historically worked closely with Republican presidents and lawmakers. Yet, as it turns out, its plan of attack isn’t all that different from the European Union’s attempts to dissuade Trump from moving ahead with his tariffs, lest they spark a global trade war. To wit, both entities have resorted to warning Trump about the negative economic impact his tariffs might have on states that he won during the 2016 race.

Of course, just because Trump’s trade policies might trigger an economic backlash doesn’t mean his blue-collar voters will abandon him en masse. Workers at Harley-Davidson’s Menomonee Falls plant told the FT that they support Trump’s trade moves despite the fact that “they could end up as collateral damage.”

We wonder how effective the chamber’s argument will be considering that the president can already point to tangible results from his policies in the form of a collapsing US trade deficit.

Trade

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