Month: September 2018

Assuming the nation moves beyond hazy recollections of groping, dick wagging and college gangbangs, the fate of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will rest in the hands of Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), a moderate conservative poised to “make or break Brett Kavanaugh’s chance at becoming a Supreme Court justice,” reports The Hill. 

In particular, several Senate colleagues of Collins’ are waiting for her to announce her stance on Kavanaugh before announcing their own positions – while Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (NY) has asked that centrists within his caucus “keep their powder dry on Kavanaugh” until they know where Republicans stand. 

Senate Republican aides think that Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) will likely vote the same way as Collins, who thus far has played a more vocal role in the debate over Kavanaugh. –The Hill

“We’re talking about a jury of one: Susan Collins,” said a senior GOP aide to The Hill, who gave Collins a “51 percent chance” of voting for Kavaugh. The aide added: “When you look at Murkowski and even Flake, no one lets Collins get to the left of them, so she’s going to be the lodestar here.” 

Democrats are in agreement that if Collins flips, Kavanaugh can be defeated. 

“If Collins were to oppose him then that would be the kiss of death,” said Brian Fallon, a former Senate Democratic leadership aide and executive director of Demand Justice, which has helped lead liberal opposition to Kavanaugh. –The Hill

Collins was the target of an ad campaign created by three liberal activists in Maine, who established a crowdfunding campaign which raised $1.3 million to “fund her future opponent” unless she votes no on Kavanaugh. 

GOP Senators, meanwhile, will need to take a position if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) upholds his Monday promise to hold an up-or-down vote on the floor. 

Over her 22-year Senate career, Collins has built a reputation as a fair-minded, practical swing vote who is willing to stand up to Republican leadership and presidents from her own party.

She voted against former President Clinton’s impeachment in 1999, helped craft a compromise to get past a major partisan impasse over circuit court nominees in 2005, was a key player in sinking a proposal to repeal ObamaCare last year and has consistently criticized President Trump for controversial statements since he took office.

She also voted against Betsy DeVos and Scott Pruitt, Trump’s controversial picks to head the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively.

One of her first legislative accomplishments in the Senate decades ago was to co-sponsor an amendment with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) to repeal a $50 billion tax break for the tobacco industry.

Kavanaugh will have virtually no chance at confirmation if Collins says she believes Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her at a high school party in 1982, according to people on both sides of the partisan Supreme Court fight. –The Hill

If Collins supports Kavanaugh, on the other hand, it will be near impossible for Democrats to stop his ascension to the Supreme Court. “I think Collins will vote with us. Kavanaugh gave her the right answer on Roe v. Wade,” said a female Republican senator who requested anonymity from The Hill. 

On Monday, progressives put pressure on Collins to vote against Kavanaugh – with 46 protesters arrested outside of her office on Capitol Hill. 

Also on Monday, Collins said that Senate investigators should reach out to a second woman accusing Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her during a drunken college party. 

That said, Collins did not call for an FBI investigation into accuser Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a high school gathering.

“Based on what she was saying last week, there was nobody I know in Maine that thought she was going to do anything to stop or delay progress on the confirmation of Kavanaugh,” said Bowdoin College Poli Sci professor, Janet Martin. “Not every woman has come out and been in support of the ‘Me Too’ movement or thinks there really is an issue here.”

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President Trump’s second address to the UN General Assembly didn’t include any bombshell revelations (like last year’s speech where Trump threatened North Korea with nuclear annihilation and referred to Kim Jong Un as ‘Little Rocket Man’), but it was just as much of a repudiation of the global order that the UN represents. In a speech that rejected internationalism and embraced the nationalist populism that Trump has long championed, Trump blasted “the ideology of globalism” and multinational organizations like the UN that he said infringe on national sovereignty. During the speech, Trump urged other nations to look out for themselves and their own interests – and allow the US to do the same.

“I honor every nation to pursue its own customs, beliefs and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship,” Mr. Trump said. “We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.

In a speech that lasted roughly 30 minutes, Trump vowed that the US would “not be taken advantage of any longer” and slammed both its friends and foes for taking advantage of the US’s defense spending and its trading largess.

Here are key takeaways courtesy of Bloomberg:

• US pressure on Iran only going to increase, with oil sanctions coming in November.
• Trump sees his “principled realism” in foreign policy paying big dividends since he took office, particularly on North Korea.
• James points out that this speech was studded with messages for his domestic audience, on foreign aid, on higher gas prices, on immigration.
• The US appears to be planning to overhaul foreign aid Trump praised Xi Jinping, but signaled he won’t back down on going after China on tariffs.
• One country not mentioned at all really: Russia

Watch the full speech below:

https://t.co/h43dehf0WV

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2018

 

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James O’Keefe just dropped the fourth installment in his series exposing the corruption and bias in the ‘deep state’. This report features two Internal Revenue Service (IRS) officials who candidly discuss the IRS’s unfair treatment of conservative non-profit groups.

The two officials in the report are Thomas Sheehy, an IRS tax examiner and member of the Austin Democratic Socialists of America in Texas, and Jerry Semasek, an IRS attorney in Washington, DC.

Via ProjectVeritas.com,

Flagrantly Targeting Conservative Groups

Sheehy boasts about and appears to justify former disgraced IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who was mired in scandal for losing tens of thousands of emails regarding the Lois Lerner controversy. The Lois Lerner controversy occurred in 2013 and involved revelations showing that the IRS unfairly scrutinized conservative groups.

SHEEHY: “John Koskinen. He got a lot of flak for giving increased scrutiny to these Tea Party groups. Conservatives got really mad at him, he was so cool though because he deleted all the emails, so they could not hold any evidence against him.”

Sheehy continues:

SHEEHY: “Yeah, I don’t give a s**t if that is a crime for doing that because… you should give increased scrutiny to those groups because a lot of them are just f***ing fronts for the Koch brothers or whatever.”

Mistakes Were Made

In a separate meeting, attorney Semasek discloses to Project Veritas multiple times that “mistakes were made,” during the 2013 scandal when conservative non-profits were targeted when applying for tax-exempt status.

SEMASEK: “… you know what, for what it’s worth, on the record, I know people in Tax Exempt Government Entities. All that stuff we saw in the news, yeah mistakes were made”

Attorney Semasek, who worked for the IRS during the 2013 scandal, continued:

SEMASEK: “… The law requires that an organization can’t be political, it can’t be partisan to be tax exempt… Those employees in Cincinnati Ohio started to separate them and put them in a pile. And it turns out that they were like the Tea Party group of people. And I think they did, like Lois Lerner and maybe some of her employees were more liberal leaning or Democrats so I don’t know if they disallowed them, but they required them to produce more documentation to try to prove that they weren’t partisan.”

He repeated that mistakes were made:

SEMASEK: “… and that was bad. I think, from what people tell me, that really know about, there were mistakes made, but the problem with what happened… And again, there were mistakes made, and I think probably some people that were advised against conservative groups did make some mistakes.”

Socialist Abuses Work Benefits

Sheehy, like individuals featured in the previous reports in this series, is also a member of a political activist group. Sheehy implies that he abuses his work benefits, including paid time off and sick days in order to engage in socialist activism for Austin Democratic Socialists of America.

SHEEHY: “I will say, I just really like the benefits. I get a lot of paid time off and sick days. So, like, for DSA stuff, I can just honestly… I will just stay late for a period. So, I will just call in for the next day.”

SHEEHY: “I mean, as long as like the manager doesn’t find out and you don’t explicitly say “hey I’m calling in sick to do Democratic Socialist of America work” then I mean like yeah. You know, you just gotta, you just gotta like sort of manage, you know, when and where you’re like doing, like, the work you do.”

More Democratic Socialists of America at IRS

Sheehy reveals there are more socialist activists at the IRS, referring to a friend of his who works on national communications for the Democratic Socialists of America, as well as writing bylaws for the political organization.

SHEEHY: “My friend Chris, like he does a lot of like tech stuff. He even runs the f**kin’, I was looking over his shoulder once at the electoral forum and I noticed that he actually is on the national social media working group. So, he helps run the national twitter account. He also runs our local twitter account. He also is one that does all the bylaws and stuff…. he also works for the IRS.”

Sheehy remarks about his disdain for the Constitution of the United States.

SHEEHY: “Unfortunately, I am not allowed by the bylaws of my union to go against the constitution.”

JOURNALIST: “Would you?”

SHEEHY: “Yeah.”

Watch:

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In an awkward moment for president Trump, the audience of world leaders at the United Nations gathered to listen to Trump’s speech laughed when the US President boasted of his accomplishment during his time in office.

“In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than any administration in the history of our country,” Trump said, opening his address to the U.N. General Assembly. At that moment, a wave of chuckling and laughter spread across the audience, with the the laughs only growing louder when Trump said “so true.”

Trump smiled and paused, then responded: “I didn’t expect that reaction but that’s OK.”

Donald Trump: “My administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of this country”

US President’s opening remarks raise muted laughs as he addresses UN General Assembly in New York https://t.co/g0QdKS5FWa pic.twitter.com/JOnfvvGn99

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 25, 2018

Trump was highlighting his domestic achievements, including tax cuts and his push to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, before addressing his foreign policy goals.

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Just days after a scandal involving Germany’s top spy threatened to tear apart Angela Merkel coalition, moments ago Germany’s chancellor suffered another major blow to her reputation, when her ally, and preferred candidate for Bundestag Caucus Leader, Volker Kauder was unexpectedly voted out of office as the influential head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group after 13 years on the job.

He was defeated by deputy leader Ralph Brinkhaus in a 125 to 112 vote.

A journalist from Der Spiegel commented: “Merkel era slowly coming to an end”.

The headlines as they come in:

• MERKEL’S ALLY VOLKER KAUDER UNEXPECTEDLY LOSES VOTE AS HEAD OF HER CONSERVATIVE PARLIAMENTARY GROUP IN GERMANY’S LOWER HOUSE
• MERKEL PARTY SPOKESMAN CONFIRMS DEFEAT OF FAVORED CANDIDATE
• MERKEL SUFFERS UNEXPECTED DEFEAT IN PARLIAMENTARY CAUCUS GROUP
• MERKEL’S CANDIDATE FOR BUNDESTAG CAUCUS LEADER DEFEATED IN VOTE

Merkel era slowly coming to an end. Her ally and favorite for majority leader Kauder was just voted out by CDU party MPs against Merkel’s will. https://t.co/vCuKB7MTAO

— Mathieu von Rohr (@mathieuvonrohr) September 25, 2018

No back to business in political Berlin: Germany’s governing conservatives @CDU just voted on their parliamentary leader – a standard procedure that took a dramatic turn as incumbent and Merkel loyalist Volker Kauder was challenged and lost to his deputy Ralph Brinkhaus.

— Maximiliane Koschyk (@MaxKoschyk) September 25, 2018

Breaking: German chancellor Angela #Merkel just lost her close ally and chief whip Volker Kauder. He will be replaced by Ralph Brinkhaus, an opponent of Merkel’s course

— Lorenz Hemicker (@hemicker) September 25, 2018

As of now, it is unclear what the consequences will be for Merkel and her ruling coalition, but if there is one thing Europe does not need, it is even more political chaos, especially in the country that has – so far – kept the rest of Europe together.

For now there has been no market reaction, although the EUR has come off its session highs after the report, when it was rapidly approaching 1.18.

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Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via Oilprice.com,

Plunging Canadian prices have been depressing oil producers’ realized prices and revenues, even though the U.S. benchmark and the international Brent Crude prices have rallied year to date.

But it’s not only oil sands producers that have been coping with wide price differentials between Canadian crude oil prices and WTI this year.

Canada’s shale drillers have also started to face widening differentials between the Canadian benchmark for light oil delivered at Edmonton and WTI, due to – unsurprisingly – insufficient pipeline infrastructure to transport the light oil to the market.

The Edmonton sweet crude discount to WTI slumped to US$16 a barrel earlier this month – the widest spread since Bloomberg began compiling the data in June 2014.

Not that Western Canadian Select (WCS) – the benchmark price of oil from Canada’s oil sands delivered at Hardisty, Alberta – has been doing any better. The WCS discount to WTI has been more than US$20 this year, and even US$30 at one point.

This resulted in Canada Natural Resources saying in early August that it was allocating capital to lighter oil drilling and is curtailing heavy oil production as the price of Canadian heavy oil tumbled to a nearly five-year-low relative to the U.S. benchmark price.

Higher oil prices this year have encouraged more Canadian light tight oil and condensate drilling and production, but takeaway capacity – the weakest link of Canada’s oil industry – is maxed and has already started to affect the realized prices of shale drillers, similar to the widening discount for Midland crude from the Permian in the United States.

To be sure, Canadian shale producers are still making money, even with a wider discount, because WTI is now at $70 a barrel, analysts tell Bloomberg.

Yet, signs have begun to emerge that a glut has started to pile up, as shale and condensate production has been growing when pipeline infrastructure has not.

Combined condensate production in Alberta and British Columbia has surged from around 170,000 bpd in early 2014 to nearly 400,000 bpd in March and 366,000 bpd in May 2018, according to Bloomberg estimates based on National Energy Board (NEB) data.

Yet, shale and condensate drillers expect that the wider Canadian light oil discount to be temporary, Tom Whalen, CEO at the Petroleum Services Association of Canada, told Bloomberg.

Although light oil and condensate prices are currently depressed, due to the infrastructure constraints, analysts see one upside for the Canadian oil industry from the wider light oil discounts.

While the wide price differential for Canada’s heavy oil has prevented oil sands producers from taking full advantage of the international and U.S. WTI oil price increase over the past year, low Canadian condensate prices is helping their finances a bit, because they pay lower prices for the condensate to dilute the bitumen they produce.

Oil sands production has created a market for 500,000 bpd of condensate necessary to dilute the bitumen, Kevin Birn, director on the North American crude oil markets team at IHS Markit, told Bloomberg.

A large part of that condensate currently comes from imports of U.S. condensates. According to Birn, the idea that Canadian condensate could overtake imports from the United States wasn’t considered in the past.

“If it’s a battle for market share, it’s going to come down to U.S. imports being pulled back,” Birn said.

Canadian condensates may end up helping oil sands producers with cheaper domestic dilutents, but the widened price differential for Edmonton light crude highlights the key factor that has plagued Canadian oil prices this year and that will likely shape the fate of Canada’s industry over the next five years – not enough pipelines.

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A Northern California woman hired to review flagged Facebook content has sued the social media giant after she was “exposed to highly toxic, unsafe, and injurious content during her employment as a content moderator at Facebook,” which she says gave her post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 

Selena Scola moderated content for Facebook as an employee of contractor Pro Unlimited, Inc. between June 2017 and March of this year, according to her complaint. 

“Every day, Facebook users post millions of videos, images, and livestreamed broadcasts of child sexual abuse, rape, torture, bestiality, beheadings, suicide, and murder,” the lawsuit reads. “To maintain a sanitized platform, maximize its already vast profits, and cultivate its public image, Facebook relies on people like Ms. Scola – known as “content moderators” – to view those posts and remove any that violate the corporation’s terms of use.“

“You’d go into work at 9am every morning, turn on your computer and watch someone have their head cut off. Every day, every minute, that’s what you see. Heads being cut off,” one content moderator recently told the Guardian.

According to the lawsuit, Facebook content moderators are asked to review over 10 million potentially rule-breaking posts per week, with an error rate of less than one percent – and a mission to review all user-reported content within 24 hours. Making the job even more difficult is Facebook Live, a feature that allows users to broadcast video streams on their Facebook pages. 

The Facebook Live feature in particular “provides a platform for users to livestream murder, beheadings, torture, and even their own suicides, including the following:” 

In late April a father killed his 11-month-old daughter and livestreamed it before hanging himself. Six days later, Naika Venant, a 14-year-old who lived in a foster home, tied a scarf to a shower’s glass doorframe and hung herself. She streamed the whole suicide in real time on Facebook Live. Then in early May, a Georgia teenager took pills and placed a bag over her head in a suicide attempt. She livestreamed the attempt on Facebook and survived only because viewers watching the event unfold called police, allowing them to arrive before she died.

As a result of having to review said content, Scola says she “developed and suffers from significant psychological trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)” – however she does not detail the specific imagery she was exposed to for fear of Facebook enforcing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) she signed. 

Scola is currently the only named plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, however the lawsuit says that the potential class could include “thousands” of current and former moderators in California. 

As Motherboard reports, moderators have to view a constant flood of information and use their judgement on how to best censor content per Facebook’s “constantly-changing rules.” 

Moderating content is a difficult job—multiple documentaries, longform investigations, and law articles have noted that moderators work long hours, are exposed to disturbing and graphic content, and have the tough task of determining whether a specific piece of content violates Facebook’s sometimes byzantine and constantly-changing rules. Facebook prides itself on accuracy, and with more than 2 billion users, Facebook’s work force of moderators are asked to review millions of possibly infringing posts every day. –Motherboard

“An outsider might not totally comprehend, we aren’t just exposed to the graphic videos—you’ll have to watch them closely, often repeatedly, for specific policy signifiers,” one moderation source told Motherboard. “Someone could be being graphically beaten in a video, and you could have to watch it a dozen times, sometimes with others present, while you decide whether the victim’s actions would count as self-defense or not, or whether the aggressor is the same person who posted the video.” 

The lawsuit also alleges that “Facebook does not provide its content moderators with sufficient training or implement the safety standards it helped develop … Ms. Scola’s PTSD symptoms may be triggered when she touches a computer mouse, enters a cold building, watches violence on television, hears loud noises, or is startled. Her symptoms are also triggered when she recalls or describes graphic imagery she was exposed to as a content moderator.”

Facebook told Motherboard that they are “currently reviewing the claim.”

“We recognize that this work can often be difficult. That is why we take the support of our content moderators incredibly seriously, starting with their training, the benefits they receive, and ensuring that every person reviewing Facebook content is offered psychological support and wellness resources,” the spokesperson said. “Facebook employees receive these in house and we also require companies that we partner with for content review to provide resources and psychological support, including onsite counseling—available at the location where the plaintiff worked—and other wellness resources like relaxation areas at many of our larger facilities.”

“This job is not for everyone, candidly, and we recognize that,” Brian Doegan, Facebook’s director of global training, community operations, told Motherboard in June. He said that new hires are gradually exposed to graphic content to “so we don’t just radically expose you, but rather we do have a conversation about what it is, and what we’re going to be seeing.” 

Doegan said that there are rooms in each office that are designed to help employees de-stress. –Motherboard

“What I admire is that at any point in this role, you have access to counsellors, you have access to having conversations with other people,” he said. “There’s actual physical environments where you can go into, if you want to just kind of chillax, or if you want to go play a game, or if you just want to walk away, you know, be by yourself, that support system is pretty robust, and that is consistent across the board.”

Read the lawsuit below: 

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