Month: September 2018

Cable Spikes On Reports Germany, UK Drop Key Brexit Demands

As critical dates loom for the Brexit process, Bloomberg reports that the British and German governments have abandoned key Brexit demands, potentially easing the path for the U.K. to strike a deal with the European Union, people familiar with the matter said.

As Bloomberg details, Germany is ready to accept a less detailed agreement on the U.K.’s future economic and trade ties with the EU in a bid to get a Brexit deal done, according to people speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private.

The U.K. side is also willing to settle for a vaguer statement of intent on the future relationship, postponing some decisions until after Brexit day, according to an official who declined to be named.

The shift means that widespread opposition to U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s proposal for the future relationship – known as the Chequers plan – isn’t necessarily an obstacle to getting a divorce deal.

A fudged political declaration on the future relationship may also make it easier for May to approve the backstop, according to Mujtaba Rahman, managing director at Eurasia Group, in a note on Wednesday.

“EU negotiators are now calculating that the British prime minister will be able to sign off on the EU’s backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement because she will be able to argue –pointing explicitly to the political declaration — that it will never need to be implemented,” Rahman wrote.

Negotiators in the U.K. and EU were once planning a document of up to 100 pages; now it could be just a tenth of that, officials say.

The reaction to this headline was immediate buying in cable…

Still, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Tuesday that “we don’t want these negotiations to fail, but we can’t rule it out completely.”

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Brett Kavanaugh Praises Anthony Kennedy’s ‘Legacy of Liberty.’ Many Conservatives Won’t Like the Sound of That.

In his opening statement yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh took the opportunity to honor the man whose seat on the Court he soon hopes to fill. Justice Anthony Kennedy “is a mentor, a friend, and a hero,” Kavanaugh said. “He fiercely defended the independence of the judiciary. And he was a champion of liberty.” In fact, Kavanaugh stressed, “if you had to sum up Justice Kennedy’s entire career in one word: liberty. Justice Kennedy established a legacy of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”

Many conservatives won’t like the sound of that. Liberty, after all, was the watchword in Kennedy’s landmark opinions securing the constitutionality of gay rights. The concept of constitutional liberty is simply inseparable from those parts of Kennedy’s jurisprudence that many conservatives dislike the most.

Consider Lawrence v. Texas (2003). At issue before the Supreme Court was the constitutionality of that state’s prohibition on what it called “homosexual conduct.” Writing for the majority, Kennedy struck down the ban because it violated the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, which forbids the states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.

“Liberty protects the person from unwanted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places,” Kennedy wrote. “Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.” Because the state’s Homosexual Conduct Act trampled on this bedrock guarantee of liberty, Kennedy led the Court in ruling it unconstitutional.

Writing in dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia took a very different view. Indeed, Scalia both denounced and ridiculed Kennedy’s argument. The Texas law “undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty,” Scalia retorted. “So do laws prohibiting prostitution, recreational use of heroin, and, for that matter, working more than 60 hours per week in a bakery. But there is no right to ‘liberty’ under the Due Process Clause, though today’s opinion repeatedly makes that claim.” (Extra credit if you spotted Scalia’s swipe at Lochner.) As far as Scalia was concerned, “what Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand new ‘constitutional right’ by a Court that is impatient of democratic change.”

Which brings us back to Brett Kavanaugh. As the SCOTUS nominee is surely aware, Kennedy’s “legacy of liberty” centers on a series of cases that Scalia and other conservatives thoroughly despise. By praising Kennedy as a “champion of liberty,” did Kavanaugh intend to distance himself from the Scalia stance on gay rights? Or was Kavanaugh just trying to say something nice about a retired colleague, with no deeper meaning attached?

Someone on the Senate Judiciary Committee should probably ask Kavanaugh to explain exactly what he had in mind.

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Facebook Is Building A “War Room” To Monitor Midterm Elections In Real-Time

Authored by Joseph Jankowski via PlanetFreeWill.com,

Facebook is gearing up for the upcoming midterm elections by building a physical “war room” in order to fight off “bad actors” who wish to influence voters.

Facebook’s head of civic engagement, Samidh Chakrabarti, told NBC in an interview published Tuesday that the company was in a better place than it was in 2016 in regards to fighting “misinformation” and “fake news.”

“I think we are in a much better place than we were in 2016. But it is an arms race. And so that’s why we’re remaining ever vigilant, laser-focused to make sure that we can stay ahead of new problems that emerge,” Chakrabarti said.

According to the top executive, the social giant has become effective over the past two years in “combating foreign interference” and blocking and deleting unwanted “fake accounts.”

Facebook is taking it’s “responsibility” (as Mark Zuckerberg put it) to battle these potential bad actors so serious that it will have in place a physical “war room” wherein real time the company will hope to guarantee fair elections.

The command center of sorts will be composed of people of different trades who will be able to “take quick and decisive action” if needed.

When asked what some of the tactics and strategies that his company was using to detect malicious activity, Chakrabarti admitted that Facebook is “just one small part of a much bigger puzzle” that includes governments and “security experts” around the world.

“We’ve been working with governments around the world, with security experts around the world, with civic society around the world to share information about threats that we see. And we bring those together and we put our best intelligence investigators on it to find that kind of activity on our platform and take it down,” the Facebook head would say.

The interview provides no elaboration on what security experts Facebook has been consulting, a lack of detail which caused RT to mention:

… its partnership with the Atlantic Council is a good indication of precisely how ‘unbiased’ one can expect them to be. The Council is basically an academic arm of NATO which frequently hosts lively debates between assorted Russophobes. It also has a dedicated team of couch investigators who are skilled in detecting so-called “Russian bots” among social media users based on imperfections in their English.

NBC described Facebook’s goal in fighting misinformation as a way to “prevent another 2016,” referring to company claims that 126 million American’s received Russian-backed content on its platform during the run-up to Trump’s election victory.

Chakrabarti also confirmed close cooperation between Facebook and other tech media giants, revealing that the recent social media ban wave was a result of “exchanging information.”

“As an example, with the takedowns that we did just a few weeks ago, we’ve been working with our industry partners on this, exchanging information. And that has really yielded a lot of benefits. The benefit that we see is we are able to get more information about particular bad actors and then we’re able to take them off of the platform. And we can similarly, reciprocally, provide that kind of help to others in the industry.”

When asked directly if Facebook discriminates against conservatives, the head of civic engagement denied any bias, saying that the platform is “agnostic of people’s political views.”

As a report revealed in the New York Times last week, dozens of Facebook employees have organized against what they call the company’s “intolerant” liberal culture.

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US Trade Deficit With EU, China Hits Record

The July trade deficit – a closed watched number in a time of trade wars – came in at $50.1BN, fractionally better than the $50.2BN expected, but 9.5% worse than last month’s revised print of $45.7BN. This was the biggest one month move since 2015.

The deficit deteriorated as a result of less exports (-1.0%) and more imports (+0.9%). Broken down, July exports were $211.1 billion, $2.1 billion less than June exports, while July imports were $261.2 billion, $2.2 billion more than June imports. The July increase in the goods and services deficit reflected an increase in the goods deficit of $4.2 billion to $73.1 billion and a decrease in the services surplus of $0.1 billion to $23.1 billion.

Some notable highlights from the report:

  • July exports of services ($70.3 billion) were the highest on record.
  • July imports of goods and services ($261.2 billion) were the highest on record.
  • July imports of goods ($213.9 billion) were the highest on record.
  • July imports of services ($47.2 billion) were the highest on record.

Digging into the numbers, even more records were revealed:

  • July exports of industrial supplies and materials ($46.5 billion) were the highest on record.
  • July petroleum exports ($15.8 billion) were the highest on record.
  • July imports of goods ($212.2 billion) were the highest on record.
  • July imports of industrial supplies and materials ($49.3 billion) were the highest since December 2014 ($51.8 billion).
  • July imports of other goods ($9.0 billion) were the highest on record.
  • July petroleum imports ($20.3 billion) were the highest since December 2014 ($23.6 billion).
  • July imports from South and Central America ($10.8 billion) were the highest since December 2014 ($12.1 billion).
  • The July import average price per barrel of crude oil ($64.63) was the highest since December 2014 ($73.60).

But what was most important is the geographic distribution of trade, and this is where Trump will be displeased because in July the trade deficit with both China ($36.8 billion)…

… and the EU ($17.6 billion), were the highest on record.

While the number will not have much of an impact on Q3 GDP, it could have a major impact on future trade because if Trump wanted one final “sign” to slap China with $200BN of tariffs on Friday, he just got it.

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Musk Quadruples Down on “Pedo” Claims, Calls Reporter “F**king Asshole”

Not even 7 days after we pondered what part of Elon Musk’s PR genius compelled him to triple down on his claim that a British cave rescuer was a “pedo” than Musk was back at it. He has now reportedly quadrupled down on these claims, essentially going “all in” on his previous statements and labeling rescue diver Vern Unsworth a “child rapist” in an e-mail he sent to BuzzFeed news.

But wait, there’s more. As an added touch, Musk also called BuzzFeed news reporter Ryan Mac a “fucking asshole.”

We’re guessing that Tesla must be on its way to profitability and that Model 3 production must be through the roof, since Musk has apparently chosen to allocate his spare time in continuing to address whether or not a cave diver who helped save a youth soccer team trapped in a cave in Thailand is, in fact, a pedophile.

Having previously labeled cave diver Vern Unsworth as “pedo guy” in a Tweet, Musk made these new claims in an email to BuzzFeed news, calling Unsworth a “child rapist” who had moved to Thailand in order to take a child bride “who was about 12 years old at the time“. Musk wrote:

“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote in the first message. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time.”

Musk then followed up by stating “I fucking hope he sues me”. 

Unsworth reportedly denied these accusations through his attorney to BuzzFeed.

The article notes that it is unclear why Musk believes this and whether or not he has proof of his claims. Even if he did, at this point, is this a narrative worth pursuing for the embattled CEO? Unsworth’s lawyer furthered his case that these statements were actionable in a statement to BuzzFeed.

“Elon Musk can tweet his vindictive and vicious lie about Mr. Unsworth a hundred times and it will still be a lie. After deleting the initial accusation and tweeting an apology, Mr Musk has continued to republish his false and unsupportable accusation. His conduct demonstrates that his recklessness is intentional and designed to harm Mr. Unsworth.”

He continued, “Today the rich and powerful seem all too ready to tweet falsities in the hope and expectation that their wealth and position will protect them. Pedophilia is too serious an issue to leave unchallenged. If Mr. Musk believes his wealth affords him protection from his lies and Twibels, he is sadly mistaken.”

A search for a criminal history on Unsworth reportedly yielded nothing. 

Publicly available legal documents do nothing to support Musk’s claims: BuzzFeed News could not immediately locate any criminal records for Unsworth in the UK.

Separately, a Thai immigration official named Ploy Pailin told BuzzFeed News that an individual on a visa would likely not have it renewed if they had been found guilty of criminal activity in the country. Pailin also said that while foreigners applying for visas in Thailand do not undergo mandatory background checks, those who are found guilty of serious crimes are often blacklisted by the government and can be removed from the country.

Unsworth’s longtime girlfriend of seven years, 40 year old Woranan Ratrawiphukkuh, stated that he spends part of the year in Thailand and part of the year in the UK. She “declined to comment on Musk’s allegations against Unsworth, and referred a reporter to his lawyers,” according to the report. 

When we last reported on Musk’s inability to stop talking about British cave diver Vern Unsworth, we noted that Unsworth was potentially preparing a libel suit against Musk for claims that he had made about the diver.

Below is the full text of the letter obtained by BuzzFeed that was sent to Musk on August 6. In it, it calls Musk’s statements “false and defamatory” and points out that Musk stated, in three Tweets to 22 million followers, that Unsworth “engages in the sexual exploitation of Thai children” at the very same time “he was working to save the lives of twelve Thai children”.

To date, it doesn’t appear that any lawsuit has been filed.

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Judging Kavanaugh: New at Reason

Some people are very angry about President Trump’s new Supreme Court pick.

“Hell no, Kavanaugh! He is a dangerous man!” protesters shouted on the steps of the Supreme Court.

John Stossel takes a different view. Libertarians should be happy about Brett Kavanaugh’s SCOTUS nomination, Stossel says.

View this article.

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Cryptos Crash As Goldman Suspends Trading Desk Plans

Bitcoin is back below $7000, and Ethereum is tumbling back near its lowest since Nov 2017 as reports that Goldman Sachs is putting its plans to build a crypto trading desk on hold has sparked ‘what do they know’ anxiety in the virtual currency space.

Headlines from Business Insider reporting that the bank is ditching plans to open a desk for trading cryptocurrencies in the foreseeable future, according to people familiar with the matter, as the regulatory framework for crypto remains unclear, sparked an instant selling rampage across the entire crypto space.

 

Bashing Bitcoin back below $7000…

And pushing Ethereum back towards 2018 lows (and its lowest since Nov 2017)…

While the reaction seems a little overdone for the headlines, we note that it was just one month ago that Goldman was reportedly creating crypto custody services and seemed gung ho towards this new space.

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Trump Slams “Discredited” Woodward, Asks Why “Politicians Don’t Change Libel Laws?”

As we anticipated, President Trump wasn’t thrilled about some of the allegations included in Watergate reporter Bob Woodward’s upcoming book – and he’s taken to twitter to express his outrage in predictably Trumpian fashion. After taking his first swipe at the Washington Post editor last night, President Trump chimed in this morning by questioning why politicians in Washington don’t “change the libel laws” in the US to make it easier for private citizens and public officials to sue journalists.

“Isn’t it a shame that someone can write an article or book, totally make up stories and form a picture of a person that is literally the exact opposite of the fact, and get away with it without retribution or cost,” Trump tweeted. “Don’t know why Washington politicians don’t change libel laws?” Trump made similar remarks back in January during a cabinet meeting when he said his administration intends to “take a strong look at the libel laws” and called them a “sham and a disgrace.” Before that, Trump famously said during the campaign that, if elected, he would “open up” the libel laws.”

Fortunately for journalists, defamation laws are largely “a creature of state law, not federal law” and it would be very difficult for Trump to change them.

Yesterday, Trump issued more than half a dozen denials of Woodward’s claims, tweeting statements from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Chief of Staff John Kelly, as well as the White House communications office’s official denial.

 

 

 

 

 

Woodward and the Washington Post published an audio recording of his phone call with President Trump where Trump repeatedly denied being told about Woodward’s desire for an interview. Surprisingly, Trump hasn’t resorted to the vicious personal attacks he employed last month against Woodward’s Watergate colleague Carl Bernstein. However, with more leaks likely to come ahead of the book’s official publication, we imagine this isn’t the last we’ve heard from Trump or the White House.

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Theranos Is Formally Dissolving

It is only fitting that John Carreyrou, who broke the Theranos scandal story and laid it out for the world would be the WSJ writer who also wrote the company’s epitaph, which he did last night when the WSJ reported that the scandal-plagued blood-testing company accused of perpetrating Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud, will soon cease to exist.

In an email to shareholders (apparently those still exist), the company said it would formally dissolve, and would seek to pay unsecured creditors its remaining cash in coming months.

The company’s overdue end comes after the feds filed criminal charges against Theranos founder, and frequent Clinton Global Initiative guest and speaker, Elizabeth Holmes and the blood-testing company’s former No. 2 executive, alleging that they defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and defrauded doctors and patients.

The trigger for the dissolution was Theranos’ breach of a covenant governing the $65 million loan it received from Fortress last year. Under the loan terms, Fortress was entitled to foreclose upon the company’s assets if its cash fell beneath a certain threshold.

In the email to shareholders, sent Tuesday, Theranos General Counsel and Chief Executive Officer David Taylor said the company is trying to negotiate a settlement with Fortress that would give the New York private-equity firm ownership of the company’s patents but leave its remaining cash—estimated at about $5 million—for distribution to other unsecured creditors.

Under a liquidation process known as “an assignment for the benefit of creditors,” getting that remaining cash to the unsecured creditors could take six to 12 months, Taylor said in the email.

And so the company that was once valued in the billions is now fighting to preserve a few million for other creditors upon liquidation. The “value” left over for equity? $0.

Not that anyone was expecting more: most of Theranos’s remaining two-dozen employees worked their last day on Friday, Aug. 31. Only the General Counsel and a handful of support staff remain on the payroll for a few more days.

Theranos’ liquidation followed a failed attempt to sell the company, when over four months Jefferies reached out on Theranos’s behalf to more than 80 potential buyers, and executed nondisclosure agreements with 17 of those parties, the email said, adding: “We assisted those parties with diligence and had numerous follow-on conversations.”

Nobody bothered to proceed.

After the liquidation, the big-name investors who poured money into Theranos will get nothing. All told, investors in Theranos have lost nearly $1 billion.

The roster of Theranos investors — most of whom poured money into the company after its commercial rollout in Walgreens stores in late 2013 — included the Waltons, heirs to Walmart Inc. founder Sam Walton; Atlanta’s Cox family; the family of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos; and Rupert Murdoch, executive chairman of 21st Century Fox and of News Corp , the Journal’s parent company. Each invested $100 million or more in Theranos—investments that are now worthless.

At least they will have their freedom, but the same can not be said for Elizabeth Holmes: the Theranos’s founder and her ex-boyfriend, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani were indicted on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in June. Balwani was Theranos’s president and chief operating officer until he retired from the company in May 2016. If convicted, they each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000, plus restitution to those found to have been defrauded, on each count.

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Supervised Injection Facilities Save Lives: New at Reason

Last week California’s legislature approved a bill that would authorize “overdose prevention programs” in San Francisco where people can inject their own drugs in a safe, sanitary, and supervised environment. The next day, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein published a New York Times op-ed piece in which he promised “swift and aggressive action” against such programs.

The fight over supervised injection facilities (SIFs), which operate legally in 66 cities around the world but are prohibited in the United States, is the latest round of a long-running debate, Jacob Sullum notes. On one side are advocates of “harm reduction,” who seek to save lives by making drug use less dangerous; on the other are hard-line prohibitionists like Rosenstein, who seek to deter drug use by keeping it as dangerous as possible.

View this article

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