Month: May 2019

Census Citizenship Question Pushed for by GOP Gerrymanderer

Any fair reading of the public record since 2017 has suggested that the Trump administration, despite inconsistent protestations to the contrary (whether in front of Congress or in the courtroom), has sought to re-insert on the decennial census form in 2020 a question about citizenship status for the express political purpose of undercounting heavily Democratic areas, thereby decreasing these areas’ representation in Congress.

Now comes news, via a court filing Thursday, that a recently deceased GOP gerrymandering specialist not only wrote a 2015 analysis of how Republicans would benefit if political maps were drawn based on voting-age U.S. citizenry rather than overall population, he also helped ghostwrite a 2017 Department of Justice letter to the Commerce Department (which manages the census), requesting the reinstatement of the citizenship question on the highly dubious grounds that it would improve enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.

Thomas Hofeller, who The New York Times describes as having achieved “near-mythic status in the Republican Party as the Michelangelo of gerrymandering,” died last August at age 75. His estranged daughter, Stephanie Hofeller, when sorting through dad’s affairs, “came across a clear plastic bag holding four external hard drives and 18 thumb drives, backups of data on Mr. Hofeller’s Toshiba laptop.” In a series of implausible-sounding coincidences, she reportedly happened to mention in passing the existence of some gerrymandering-related material on those drives to a lawyer who happened to work for Common Cause, which happened to have an active lawsuit in North Carolina court about gerrymandering.

One thing led to another, and the files have now been presented to U.S. District Judge Jesse Furman of the Southern District of New York, who ruled against the administration’s citizenship question in January. That case has been appealed and is awaiting a Supreme Court ruling. It is unclear whether the Hofeller trove will affect the case.

The original purpose of the census, as spelled out in the Constitution, is to count the “Number of free Persons” living in each state for the purpose of apportioning seats in the House of Representatives. The post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution redefined that whole “free Persons” bit: “Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.”

As Matthew J. Franck has explained at National Review, “voting rights are not and never have been the relevant consideration in counting population for congressional representation. Like women in most states before the Nineteenth Amendment, and like minor children even today, the alien is counted because he is represented in Congress, even if he cannot participate in electing members of it.” This has been the governing system ever since, upheld in various ways by the Supreme Court.

Republican immigration restrictionists have been chafing at that legal reality since at least the 1980s. When Sen. David Vitter (R–La.) in 2009 introduced a bill mandating that the census reinsert the citizenship question for the first time since 1950, he was explicit in his aims: “States that have large populations of illegals,” Vitter complained, are being unfairly “rewarded.” That view is shared by many within the Trump administration orbit, most notoriously the populist svengali Steve Bannon and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Hofeller was initially hired in 2015 to provide potential analytical ammo in Evenwel v. Abbott, a case in which two Texas voters attempted to challenge the Lone Star State’s residency-based political apportionment, arguing that the political power of legal citizens was unfairly diluted by the counting of non-legal residents. (The Supreme Court decided unanimously, if narrowly, in 2016 against that argument, with Justice Samuel Alito remarking along the way that “The decennial census required by the Constitution tallies total population.”)

Hofeller concluded in his study that redrawing Texas political boundaries based on voting eligibility “would be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.” But such voter data was not available on a granular basis, he lamented. “Without a question on citizenship being included on the 2020 Decennial Census questionnaire,” Hofeller wrote, “the use of citizen voting age population is functionally unworkable.”

The New York Times picks up the timeline from there:

Roughly 16 months later, as President-elect Trump prepared to take office, Mr. Hofeller urged Mr. Trump’s transition team to consider adding a citizenship question to the census, the transition official responsible for census issues, Mark Neuman, said last year in a deposition in the Manhattan census lawsuit.

Mr. Neuman testified that Mr. Hofeller told him that using citizenship data from the census to enforce the Voting Rights Act would increase Latino political representation — the opposite of what Mr. Hofeller’s study had concluded months earlier.

Court records show that Mr. Neuman, a decades-long friend of Mr. Hofeller’s, later became an informal adviser on census issues to Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. By that summer, a top aide to Mr. Ross was pressing the Justice Department to say that it required detailed data from a census citizenship question to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.

It’s worth pausing to reflect on the brazenness here. Hofeller writes up a study showing that redistricting based on voter eligibility—which by the way is unconstitutional—would definitely help Republicans and whites while hurting Democrats and Latinos in high-immigrant states. He then complains that the best compilation of that data—the annual American Community Survey, which asks the citizenship question and is the primary information source used for enforcement of the Voting Rights Act—is not a thorough survey, but a mere sampling of around 3.5 million households nationwide. In order to produce the desired outcome for Republicans, at the expense of Latino households, he writes, you’d need the citizenship question asked by the decennial census.

The Trump administration then claims with a straight face that the primary purpose of restoring that question is to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.

While that clumsy lie was smacked down already by Judge Furman (and in these pages by Jacob Sullum), Thursday’s court filing adds a new wrinkle to the mendacity. In a Hofeller document dated Aug. 30, 2017, the Voting Rights Act rationale was spelled out in a paragraph, complete with supporting court decisions. According to the Times, “That paragraph later appeared word for word in a draft letter from the Justice Department to the Census Bureau that sought a citizenship question on the 2020 census.” A later letter clearly drew on Hofeller’s 2015 study, the Times found.

Hofeller is not the only GOP gerrymanderer who attempted to influence Trump’s census. The president’s first pick for deputy director and operational executive of the Census Bureau was Thomas Brunell, author of the 2008 book, Redistricting and Representation: Why Competitive Elections Are Bad for America. Brunell’s name was later withdrawn after an outcry.

So what’s wrong with the census including a citizenship question, since after all it was included in the “long form” of the questionnaire as recently as 2000? I’ll turn the floor over to Jacob Sullum:

The Constitution requires an “actual enumeration” of each state’s population, without regard to citizenship or immigration status, every 10 years so that representatives can be apportioned correctly. Asking about citizenship, which the main census form has not done since 1950, undermines that goal, since people may worry that the information they provide will be used against them or their relatives—a fear for which there is historical precedent, notwithstanding the government’s promise of confidentiality.

Since 1960 the Census Bureau and the commerce secretary have warned that a citizenship question would aggravate the undercounting of “hard-to-count” groups, including not just unauthorized residents but people who live with them. Last January bureau staff conservatively estimated that adding the question would cause a 5 percent drop in form completion by noncitizen households.

Remarkably, Commerce Secretary Ross has stated on the record that an undercount of the one thing the census was specifically tasked with would nonetheless be worth it in return for all that crucial Voting Rights Act information. “Even if there is some impact on responses … the citizenship data provided to [the Department of Justice] will be more accurate with the question than without it,” Ross wrote in a memo last year, “which is of greater importance than any adverse effect that may result from people violating their legal duty to respond.”

Trump administration officials have repeatedly demonstrated that they are willing to lie in order to depress the counting of immigrant households. We should know in a matter of weeks whether they’ll get away with it.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2EGx8be
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Peso, Futures Tumble As Trump Unleashes Tariffs On Mexico “Until Illegal Immigration Stops”

Following an earlier leaked story from the Wall Street Journal, President Trump has confirmed that he will impose tariffs on Mexico until the illegal immigration problems at the southern US border are fixed.

Amid negotations and escalations in the process of moving USMCA through Congress, Trump has decided to go after one on America’s closest trade partners: “On June 10th, the United States will impose a 5% Tariff on all goods coming into our Country from Mexico, until such time as illegal migrants coming through Mexico, and into our Country, STOP. The Tariff will gradually increase until the Illegal Immigration problem is remedied, at which time the Tariffs will be removed. Details from the White House to follow.”

The reaction in markets was swift. Futures dropped…

And the peso plunged…

So it appears ‘Tariff Man’ is true to his word – imposing arbitrary tariffs on anyone and everyone until he gets what he wants to Make America Great Again.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2QIM0uJ Tyler Durden

Six Explosions Rip Through Iraq’s Oil City Of Kirkuk In Terror Attack

A series of explosions have rocked the oil-rich northern Iraq city of Kirkuk, which lies 150 miles north of Baghdad in a disputed region which Iraqi Kurdistan leaders have jostled with the national government for control over. 

On Thursday evening half a dozen or more explosions ripped across a central avenue, leaving at least five people dead and a dozen or more wounded, according to unconfirmed early conflicting reports. Some reports have cited as many as six or more among the dead what may have numbered eight total explosions. 

Dramatic footage captured the moment of one of the bombs being detonated on a busy street during the heart of the evening in an area known as a popular commercial hub filled with cafes and malls.  

According to regional Kurdistan 24 media: 

According to initial reports, five explosions were heard in the center of the province near the Peace Mall on Jerusalem Street. A source in the area told Kurdistan 24 the incident left many killed and injured.

Other reports said at least seven blasts targeted various areas inside the city, including Jerusalem Street and Baghdad Road.

The attack is believed to have involved improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and possibly car bombs in what was clearly a terror attack on the ethnically diverse northern Iraqi city. 

There have been early reports that suicide bombers may have been involved. No group has claimed responsibility, however, the city has seen a remnant ISIS insurgency wreak havoc on the area of late, for which Kurdish Peshmerga forces have reportedly been deployed to root out. 

Regional gulf media outlet Al-Arabiya reports the death toll may be rising as hospitals take in more casualties: 

At least five people were killed and 18 injured in the blasts, sources in the Kirkuk general hospital said.

The statement from the military said the Iraqi security forces defused two of the explosive devices in the city.

Kirkuk has historically and in recent years been disputed by Erbil and its regional ‘Kurdistan’ government and Baghdad. 

Over the past month the whole region has been on edge with the United States’ saber-rattling over Iran and its proxies in Iraq – the Shia popular mobilization units nominally under Baghdad’s control. 

developing…

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Wf5j4v Tyler Durden

What’s Behind Bitcoin’s Blistering Ascent: Former Chinese Central Banker Denied Transfer Of $20,000 Abroad

Almost four years ago, in September 2015 when bitcoin was trading at $200, we wrote “China Scrambles To Enforce Capital Controls (Which Is Great News For Bitcoin)” in which we explained that with China aggressively cracking down on its capital control “firewall”, bitcoin was set to soar. Specifically, we said that “if a few hundred million Chinese decide that the time has come to use bitcoin as the capital controls bypassing currency of choice, and decide to invest even a tiny fraction of the $22 trillion in Chinese deposits in bitcoin (whose total market cap at last check was just over $3 billion), sit back and watch as we witness the second coming of the bitcoin bubble, one which could make the previous all time highs in the digital currency, seems like a low print as bitcoin soars past $500, past $1,000 and rises as high as $10,000 or more.”

A little over two years later bitcoin had risen 100x, hitting $20,000 as a result of, you got it, a lot of Chinese scrambling to use bitcoin as a capital controls evading mechanism (and not, as some financial “experts” claimed at the time, a Russian ponzi scheme) one which prompted Beijing to unleash draconian measures to curb bitcoin use, and eventually succeeded to break the magnetic draw that the cryptocurrency held for millions of Chinese money-launderers (and momentum chasers).

Fast forward to today when in just the past month bitcoin has soared nearly 140%, and is back to $9,000 after tradiong as low as $3,000 in December. The reason, no surprise, is yet another massive ramp up in Chinese capital control which have recently surpassed all of Beijing’s prior attempts at managing the flow of outbound capital.

But don’t take our word for it –  none other than a former Chinese central bank adviser has admitted that Beijing’s capital account controls may be too “extreme” after personally being blocked from sending US dollar funds abroad because he was too old.

Yu Yongding, former People’s Bank of China adviser

As the SCMP reports, Yu Yongding, a former central banker at the PBOC and currently a senior research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-owned think tank, told a financial forum in Beijing on Wednesday that he recently tried to exchange yuan to the value of US$20,000 at a bank and transfer the money out of China to pay for a trip to visit relatives living abroad.

And then: surprise – the bank refused to provide the service even though Yu, like all citizens under Chinese law, is allowed to make foreign transfers of up to US$50,000 each year. According to Yu, the bank refused to provide the service because he is over 65.

“I always support capital account controls, and I always encourage such measures. But sometimes we tend to be too extreme in doing things,” Yu was quoted as saying by Chinese news portal Sina.com. “Legal foreign exchange deals are being hindered.”

While the former PBOC adviser confirmed the incident in a phone call with the South China Morning Post, he declined to elaborate further, declining to name the bank, and only stating that the implementation of China’s foreign exchange controls were “too rigid.”

“There were heavy outflow pressures in 2015 and 2016, but I don’t see clear signs of outflows at the moment,” Yu said.

Well, there wouldn’t be if capital controls are “extreme” although perhaps Yu was looking at the wrong place – if, as in 2016/2017 when Bitcoin exploded, the former central banker was instead looking at the price of cryptocurrencies he may observe some “clear signs” of outflows, those taking place via cryptocurrency.

Incidentally, Yu was one of most respected voices on China’s monetary and foreign exchange polices and he was also the only academic member on the central bank’s monetary policy committee when the People’s Bank of China opted to remove the fixed exchange rate between the yuan and the US dollar in 2005.

Meanwhile, China’s capital controls gatekeeper and FX regulator, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) maintains that there has been no change to the annual quota of US$50,000, although the foreign exchange regulator did not immediately respond to SCMP’s faxed questions regarding Yu’s case and bank policies that limit withdrawals.

As the SCMP notes, Yu’s case adds fresh evidence that China is tightening controls of personal purchases of US dollars despite the US$50,000 allowance. The Post reported earlier this month that some Chinese banks have increased scrutiny of foreign-currency withdrawals and quietly reduced the amount of US dollars customers are allowed to withdraw, fanning concerns that Beijing is cutting the supply to individuals and companies.

Why? Simple: because as part of China’s defense of the Yuan from sliding below 7.00 vs the dollar, a key psychological level that would lead to an avalanche of yuan selling and sharply draining China’s currency reserve – SAFE has maintained that the country has ample foreign exchange reserves, which stood at about US$3 trillion as of the end of April – Beijing is doing everything in its power to pre-empt this waterfall by making selling of the Yuan virtually impossible, in effect fully isolating China from the the global FX system. As a result those who are desperate to transfer their funds offshore are forced to find creative alternatives.

Such as buying bitcoin instead, something will only accelerate the longer China cracks down on enforcing capital controls, which in turn will be a function of how long the trade war lasts. In other words, the best hedge to a lengthy, escalating trade war may be cryptocurrency. And for those asking how high bitcoin could rise this time around, consider this – the market cap of the 5 largest cryptos (bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, bitcoin cash and EOS) is just $215 billion. China’s total deposits? $26.7 trillion, or roughly 124 times greater. Do the math.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2W1Dacg Tyler Durden

JP Morgan Pays $5 Million To Settle Claims It Discriminates Against New Dads

Ever since the #MeToo movement erupted 18 months ago, considerable attention has been paid to the prevalence of sex discrimination in the workplace, as women complained about being underpaid, overlooked for promotion or subjected to rude, sexist comments by bosses and coworkers just because they tried to ‘have it all’ by juggling a family and a demanding career.

On Wall Street, stories like these have become so commonplace that details can muddle to the point of becoming indistinguishable.

But it’s not every day you read a story about a young father winning a major settlement in a parental-leave discrimination claim.

Derek

On Thursday, JP Morgan tentatively agreed to pay $5 million to settle a class action lawsuit claiming the bank discriminated against fathers by denying them adequate family leave.

The lawsuit stemmed from a complaint filed two years ago by Derek Rotondo, an employee in the bank’s Colombus, Ohio, office. It was elevated to class action status after the ACLU got involved.

Now, the bank is going to distribute the money to fathers who were denied the bank’s four-month leave for ‘primary’ caregivers and, as part of the settlement, it has agreed to ensure that its parental leave policies are administered in a gender-neutral way.

According to the New York Times, if the settlement is approved by a judge, it will be the first – and largest – successful class-action suit brought by employees alleging discrimination in a company’s family leave policies.

Here’s some background on Rotondo’s case, courtesy of WSJ:

Derek Rotondo, who works as a fraud investigator in the bank’s office in Columbus, Ohio, filed a charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission arguing that, by designating biological mothers as the default primary caregivers, J.P. Morgan’s parental leave policy violates federal and state laws that prohibit employers from discriminating against employees based on gender or gender-based stereotypes. He was joined in his charge by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Ohio.

After his son was born in 2017, Rotondo filed to take the full four months of leave. But the bank denied him on the basis that Rotondo’s wife was a special-education teacher who was on summer break at the time of the birth. When it denied his application, the bank told Rotondo that it considered birth mothers primary caregivers by default.

Shortly before Rotondo filed his complaint, the bank expanded its leave policy for primary caregivers from 12 weeks to 16 weeks. Earlier this year, JPM CEO Jamie Dimon said the bank had expanded its leave for secondary caregivers from two weeks to six weeks.

But Rotondo’s lawyers say this distinction is a problem, because it reinforces stereotypes that “our society has artificially set.”

It’d be easier and simpler if corporations offered the same amount of leave to both parents, instead of relying on distinctions like “primary” and “non-primary” caregivers.

“You can’t achieve full equality for women in the workplace unless and until men are taking on a more active role at home,” said Galen Sherwin, one of Mr. Rotondo’s lawyers and an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Women’s Rights Project.

In the US, only 15% of private-sector workers have access to paid family leave, mostly in highly paid white collar professions. Socialists like Bernie Sanders’ frequently complain that America is one of the only developed countries that doesn’t require leave.

Ultimately, Rotondo was granted the full leave.

While this ruling is undoubtedly a step forward in the fight toward recognizing father’s equal standing in the family realm, we can think of at least one other venue that is badly in need of reform.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HLUrlN Tyler Durden

Direct Democracy Is The Future Of Human Governance, Part 2

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Read Part 1 here…

War is not a foregone conclusion or a national necessity. Each successive occupant of the White House only needs you to believe that in order to centralize the power of an increasingly imperial presidency, stifle dissent, and chip away at what remains of civil liberties.

– Danny Sjursen, retired US Army officer, The Pence Prophecy: VP Predicts Perpetual War at the West Point Graduation

Whenever I mention direct democracy, a certain segment of the population always comes back with a very negative knee-jerk reaction. Since this response tends to center around several concerns, today’s post will dig into them and explain how such pitfalls can be structurally addressed.

Minority Protection

The first thing that worries people is a fear there will be no protections for minority populations within such a system. Take the U.S. for example, where approximately 80% of the population lives in urban areas and only 20% in rural. If we moved to a system where direct popular vote played a meaningful role in deciding the majority of issues, rural populations would lose out every single time. It would end up being an oppressive system for people who live in less populated areas and would tear up the U.S. even faster than is happening now.

I definitely think this sort of thing is a problem, but people misunderstand what I mean when I discuss direct democracy. Fundamentally, I’m a firm believer that governance should be radically decentralized compared to what it is today. America is a great example of a good idea gone completely off the tracks.

Localism

While the founders envisioned a decentralized structure in which core politically entities known as states would decide most issues, we’re now stuck with a centralized imperial system in which virtually all major decisions are made in Washington D.C. by gangs of hopefully corrupt and compromised politicians. But it’s even worse than that. Power hasn’t merely been concentrated in D.C., but it’s also become increasing concentrated within the capital itself in the hands of a reckless imperial presidency.

For example, the separations of powers outlined in the Constitution when it comes to war has been all but obliterated. Congress is supposed to declare war, yet the U.S. military is involved in conflicts all over the planet, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger without any such declaration.

To illustrate how insane all of this is, read the following from a Vicearticle published last year:

The U.S. is officially fighting wars in seven countries, including Libya and Niger, according to an unclassified White House report sent to Congress this week and obtained by the New York Times.

Known officially as the “Report on the Legal and Policy Frameworks Guiding the United States’ Military Force and Related National Security Operations,” the document is part of a new requirement outlined in the 2018 defense spending bill. The White House is already required to update Congress every six months on where the U.S. is using military force.

We’ve somehow gone from Congress must declare war, to the White House will update Congress every six months on how all the undeclared wars are going. This is madness.

The U.S. is currently drowning in an overly centralized and corrupt imperial government based in D.C. For direct democracy to truly function well, it should based in local governance. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the places currently using these tools most successfully, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, focus on localism.

There are many reasons I believe decentralized, local governance is a superior model . First, it’s an insane level of conceit to assume a country as geographically and culturally diverse as the U.S. should be in the business of making one-size fits all decisions for 325 million humans. While the urban/rural divide I mentioned earlier is one important factor, so are other cultural distinctions.

Though city-dwellers in Seattle and Houston may have urban living in common, cultural differences mean these two populations will often want to handle similar problems very differently. Even within states, you often have serious friction from county to county, and power within the states themselves likewise can be too centralized and dismissive of local concerns.

A perfect example can be seen in the state of Colorado where I live. Fracking, and oil and gas drilling in general, is a very contentious issue, and what often happens is cities will try to ban or regulate drilling in their communities only to be overruled by politicians in the state capital. Who should decide whether drilling happens, the people actually living near wells, or politicians in the statehouse?

As reported by Westword:

Under Colorado law, communities have virtually no authority to stop these facilities from popping up wherever a company can acquire land, obtain a state permit and decide to start drilling.

The situation has sown a sense of powerlessness — and frustration suffused an October city council meeting in Republican-leaning Loveland. That community of 76,000 recently woke up to letters informing residents of — not asking permission for — a project that will drill a dozen two-mile-long horizontal wells underneath many of their homes and schools.

An overflow crowd packed into council chambers to hear a presentation on the drilling proposal and share concerns. Most were residents of the neighborhoods under which the planned drilling would take place — retirees anxious about how it would affect their health, parents worried about their young children. As city employees briefed council members on the plans, however, it became clear just how little control Loveland would be able to assert over the situation.

As this past weekend’s EU elections demonstrated, humans everywhere are increasingly frustrated with the political status quo and feel utterly helpless in the face of corrupt and centralized bureaucracies. Similar to how many people in Loveland, Colorado feel alienated and disempowered when confronted with oil and gas interests and a state government that doesn’t care, billions of people across the planet are experiencing a similar level of disenfranchisement and revulsion with the political establishment. Increased local decision making combined with more citizen power via tools of direct democracy, as opposed to professional politicians, could be a key to improving outcomes, quality of life and a sense of self-government so sorely lacking in today’s world.

Civil Liberties

Another key thing to keep in mind when thinking about future political systems is civil liberties. One of the great gifts provided to the American people by the founding fathers is the Bill of the Rights of the Constitution. These civil liberties protections, which include freedom of speech and the press, are the highest law of the land. While they’re subject to interpretation by the courts, they cannot be legislated away by Congress or suspended by the president (at least in theory). In a future system more defined by direct democracy, similar protections should be institutionalized. A conscious and healthy political system should define up front certain basic civil liberties considered untouchable, while empowering the community to experiment widely beyond that.

Propaganda and Manipulation

The other pushback I get when mentioning the merits of direct democracy is how easy it is to fool and manipulate people. This is used as an argument against putting more power in the hands of average citizens, which is considered by some to be dangerous and irresponsible.

It’s undoubtably true that while the social media era has made it easier for humans across the world to directly communicate and collaborate, it has also made mass propaganda and psyops easier to perpetrate amongst a population. Nevertheless, this isn’t a good argument against the need for more direct democracy. Remember, the primary purpose of injecting more direct democracy into political systems isn’t to get rid of a separation of powers, but to disrupt the archaic and broken practice of representative democracy, i.e., the goal is to disempower professional politicians by giving more direct say to the public in matters that are currently handled by elected representatives.

In a representative democracy, propaganda and manipulation is probably an even more effective tool than it would be in a direct democracy. All you have to do is manipulate people every couple of years to vote for some sleazy, self-interested politician, and once the vote is over, special interests simply need to target that person and compromise them. In most cases, this is easily accomplished. In contrast, manipulation must be more regularly engaged under a direct democracy where citizens are more actively involved beyond just voting for some puppet every few years.

This also demonstrates another reason localism and direct democracy go hand in hand. When you centralize decision making for hundreds of millions of people in a nation-state capital, you make the job of special interests that much easier. Compromising a few hundred representatives is trivial compared to manipulating and compromising millions. Moreover, it becomes even harder to control when hundreds or even thousands of cities/regions/communities are making most decisions for themselves via direct democracy. In that sort of world, an oligarch or lobbyist who wishes to rig things in their favor must deal not just with myriad distinct largely autonomous political entities, but also with the empowered citizens residing in those areas. The more political entities an oligarch or corporation has to interact with, the harder and costlier it becomes to capture and control large swaths of society.

People will dismiss this idea and claim your average person is lazy and won’t really be involved in local politics, but I think we’d see far more involvement than we do currently since local decision-making is far easier to get a handle on and influence than the infinite levels of Orwellian bills constantly being passed by a national legislatures

In order to clearly demonstrate just how broken our political system in the U.S. is, here’s something Hunter S. Thompson wrote all the way back in 1972.

That’s the real issue this time,” he said. “Beating Nixon.  It’s hard to even guess how much damage those bastards will do if they get in for another four years.”

The argument was familiar, I had even made it myself, here and there, but I was beginning to sense something very depressing about it.  How many more of these goddamn elections are we going to have to write off as lame, but “regrettably necessary” holding actions?  And how many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?

Now with another one of these big bogus showdowns looming down on us, I can already pick up the stench of another bummer.  I understand, along with a lot of other people, that the big thing this year is Beating Nixon.  But that was also the big thing, as I recall, twelve years ago in 1960 – and as far as I can tell, we’ve gone from bad to worse to rotten since then, and the outlook is for more of the same.

—Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72

Sound familiar? It’s the exact same argument shoved down our throats during the 2016 campaign in order to guilt people into voting for Hillary Clinton. Likewise, it’ll be the exact same argument used in 2020 to guilt people into voting for Joe Biden if Democratic Party donors somehow succeed in getting that clown nominated.

Fifty years and nothing’s changed when it comes to politics in this country. It’s no wonder things keep breaking down and getting worse for more and more people. Citizens have virtually no power or influence on public policy by design, and have been reduced to food on the table for oligarchs and other assorted special interests. This is a global problem, and it’s why the time has come to alter governance in order to provide the people with more direct power.

I want to conclude by making it clear that I don’t think I have “the answer” to anything. The only thing I am 100% certain of is human beings across the globe, whether they live in an in your face dictatorship or a representative democracy, have very little agency when it comes to the public policy that intimately affects their lives on a daily basis. All governments are more or less controlled by a very small group of powerful interests who use carefully selected politicians to do their bidding. In the more ostensibly free societies, we’ve centralized legislative power in a few hundred easily corruptible people, but it’s become clear this no longer works. Such a system merely serves to separate the voter from the professional politician as soon as an election is over.

I’m fairly certain representative democracy as we know it is on the way out, and the purpose of this series is to think out loud about what might come next, and how we can improve upon the better parts of the systems we already have. As things continue to fracture and break down more dramatically in the years ahead, I believe the idea of direct democracy will catch on like wildfire, and it’d benefit all of us to start thinking about what this means and how best to go about it.

*  *  *

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via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Mf7fFx Tyler Durden

First Amendment Limits Media Liability for Inducing Breach of Nondisclosure Agreement

From yesterday’s opinion by Judge John Segal in Jenni Rivera Enterps., LLC v. Latin World Entm’t Holdings, Inc.:

These appeals arise from a dispute concerning a television production based on the life of the Mexican-American celebrity Jenni Rivera, who died in a plane crash in December 2012. The entity that controls most of Rivera’s assets, Jenni Rivera Enterprises, LLC (JRE), entered into a nondisclosure agreement with Rivera’s former manager, Pete Salgado, that restricted his disclosure and use of certain personal information about Rivera and her family. Alleging Salgado breached that agreement by disclosing information to the producers and the broadcaster of a television series based on Rivera’s life, JRE sued Salgado and the program’s producers for breach of contract, interference with contract, and inducing breach of contract. JRE also sued the program’s broadcaster for interference with contract and inducing breach of contract….

The court concluded that the plaintiffs’ claim against Univision for tortuously inducing Salgado to breach his contract were viable as a matter of California law, but were preempted by the First Amendment, given that “Univision had no knowledge of the nondisclosure agreement at the time it entered into the license agreement with BTF [the producers of the series about Rivera],” and that all Univision did after learning of the agreement appeared to “consist[] of continuing to pay license fees to BTF and promoting Salgado’s involvement with the Series”:

“While refusing to recognize a broad privilege in newsgathering against application of generally applicable laws, the United States Supreme Court has also observed that ‘without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated.'” The United States Supreme Court has consistently limited the press’s newsgathering privilege, however, to circumstances in which the press “lawfully obtains truthful information about a matter of public significance.” …

Courts determine whether the media obtained information lawfully by considering whether the media obtained the information by “routine reporting techniques” or “traditional means of news-gathering.” … “At one extreme, “‘routine … reporting techniques,'” such as asking questions of people with information (“including those with confidential or restricted information”) could rarely, if ever, be deemed an actionable intrusion…. At the other extreme, violation of well-established legal areas of physical or sensory privacy—trespass into a home or tapping a personal telephone line, for example—could rarely, if ever, be justified by a reporter’s need to get the story. Such acts would be deemed highly offensive even if the information sought was of weighty public concern; they would also be outside any protection the Constitution provides to newsgathering.” … [T]he “First Amendment is not a license to trespass, to steal, or to intrude by electronic means into the precincts of another’s home or office” ….

California courts have not determined where intentionally interfering with a nondisclosure agreement falls on this continuum. Cases from other jurisdictions involving a First Amendment defense to claims against media for intentional interference with contract or economic relations have rejected those claims. (See, e.g., Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Times Pub. Co., Inc. (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 2001) 780 So.2d 310, 318 [under Florida law, a plaintiff tribe failed to show reporters had an improper motive to interfere with the tribe’s relationship with its employees by using routine news gathering techniques to obtain and publish truthful but confidential information about the tribe’s casino operations]; see also Huggins v. Povitch (N.Y.Sup.Ct., Apr. 19, 1996, No. 131164) 1996 WL 515498; Dulgarian v. Stone (1995) 420 Mass. 843, 852; but see Falwell v. Penthouse Intern., Ltd. (W.D.Va. 1981) 521 F.Supp. 1204, 1209 [suggesting in dicta that a publisher could be liable for inducing freelance writers “to violate the terms under which [an] interview was granted”].) …

We need not decide the broad question whether the torts of inducing a breach of contract and interfering with a contract are “independent torts” such that the First Amendment can never provide a defense to such claims when they arise from conduct that leads to the publication or broadcast of truthful and newsworthy information.

Here, it is uncontroverted Univision had no knowledge of the nondisclosure agreement at the time it entered into the license agreement with BTF. The evidence of Univision’s actions, after it learned of the nondisclosure agreement, that arguably contributed to Salgado’s continued breaches of the agreement consisted of continuing to pay license fees to BTF and promoting Salgado’s involvement with the Series.

Even if those actions were sufficient to serve as the basis of liability for tortious interference, they are not sufficiently “wrongful” or “unlawful” to overcome the First Amendment newsgathering and broadcast privileges. Therefore, the First Amendment protected Univision’s use and broadcast of the Series….

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Beto O’Rourke Wants To Overhaul Our Asylum System and Provide Amnesty for 11 Million Immigrants

Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke unveiled a sweeping immigration plan on Wednesday, promising to reform the U.S. asylum system, overhaul naturalization laws, and strengthen relations with Latin America.

“Coming from a city of immigrants, I’ve seen the incredible contributions of immigrants to our communities and local economies, and have been able to experience what happens when we allow everyone to contribute to their full potential,” O’Rourke said in a statement announcing the plan. “Under our administration, we will ensure that we advance a new vision of immigration that fully reflects our country’s values and empowers every individual to contribute to the shared greatness of our country.”

On day one, O’Rourke says he would usurp executive authority to reunite families separated at the border by Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy. Specifically, O’Rourke would issue an executive order to eliminate immigrant detention for all detainees, save those with criminal records. He would also terminate funding for private prison operators.

In lieu of detention, O’Rourke wants to bolster family case management, which he says is “nearly one-tenth the cost.” Additionally, his plan pledges to streamline the asylum process by adding judges and repealing policies that slow down adjudication. According to Syracuse University, there were 859,375 pending immigration cases in April 2019, which includes asylum cases that failed an initial review. On average, it takes 718 days to get an immigration hearing.

The presidential hopeful outlines a series of loftier goals as well, such as cementing an “earned” path to citizenship for America’s 11 million undocumented immigrants within his first 100 days, which would require congressional approval. While that may be a long shot, he says his amnesty plan would be “more efficient than previous proposals,” though he does not elaborate.

Despite being short on some specifics, O’Rourke does outline an innovative community-based visa designation that would allow local governments and religious congregations to sponsor refugees. Additionally, he suggests expanding visa caps, allowing immigrant-heavy industries like agriculture, manufacturing, and various service trades to hire immigrant labor.

O’Rourke believes we need to build up Latin America in order to fix our own immigration system. As such, he proposes a $5 billion investment in the region, with the primary beneficiaries listed as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community-based groups, and public-private partnerships. However well-intentioned, outside efforts to rebuild foreign institutions from the ground up are rarely successful. In fact, they often make things worse.

While abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE is an increasingly popular line among Democratic candidates, it doesn’t resonate with O’Rourke, who would instead create a commission to oversee the agency and inaugurate “improved training and continuing education courses.”

In Beto fashion, the former rocker infuses his plan with quotes from a range of immigrants, the majority of whom live in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. “It took me almost 18 years to finally be able to become a United States citizen,” says Carlo G. Maldonado, an immigration lawyer from Quito, Ecuador, who immigrated to the U.S. when he was 16 years old. “I am so honored today to be able to say that I am an American, and I’m honored that through my work every day I am able to help others navigate the immigration process and have a chance at the American Dream too.”

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Bolton Finally Backs Off Iran Escalation: It’s “Not Over” But US “Deterred” Threat

In perhaps the best sign thus far that a potential US war with Iran has been averted (at least for the near term), given the possibility that both heightened saber-rattling and the potential for an “accidental” deadly encounter between IRGC forces and the recent build-up of American deployments could have led to a major conflict, White House National Security Adviser John Bolton himself appears to now be fast climbing down the escalation ladder. 

According to Reuters on Thursday Bolton is singing a different tune compared to the war rhetoric of the past weeks since the crisis began: “The threat from Iran is not over but quick action from the United States has helped deter it.” This echoes a prior Pentagon statement essentially saying the “clear” Iran threat intelligence against US forces was accurate but that the US carrier and other extra force deployments to the Persian Gulf region thwarted Iran’s intentions. 

“I don’t think this threat is over, but I do think you can make at least a conditional claim that the quick response and the deployment and other steps that we took did serve as a deterrent,” Bolton told reporters during a visit to London on Thursday. 

Image source: The New York Times

When pressed over whether he was at odds with President Trump who has repeatedly stated the US is not looking for regime change in Tehran, Bolton responded: 

“The policy we’re pursuing is not a policy of regime change. That’s the fact and everybody should understand it that way.”

Bolton even seemed to have backed away from prior statements of defense officials which accused Iran’s leaders of having “ordered” attacks on oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz as well as a Saudi oil pipeline in the past weeks. 

Late last week an official Pentagon statement said “the leadership of Iran at the highest level” ordered a spate of disruptive attacks.

But now Bolton seems have have introduced more ambiguity, identifying Iran’s “surrogates” – and stopping short of prior direct and more aggressive “top leadership” accusations – as possibly behind the attacks. Per Reuters: 

Bolton said there was some prospect that evidence Iran was behind attacks this month on oil tankers in the Gulf would be presented to the United Nations Security Council next week.

“I don’t think anybody who is familiar with the situation in the region, whether they have examined the evidence or not, has come to any conclusion other than that these attacks were carried out by Iran or their surrogates,” he said.

Over the past week, following Trump’s extended hand for Iran’s leaders to “call me,” we’ve seen a consistent deescalation following weeks of dangerous escalation, including threats and counter-threats of military action by both sides.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani reportedly said this week that the “road is not closed” on talks with the US if Washington drops the sanctions and returns to upholding the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) – something not at all likely to happen. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2JMh5wH Tyler Durden

First Amendment Limits Media Liability for Inducing Breach of Nondisclosure Agreement

From yesterday’s opinion by Judge John Segal in Jenni Rivera Enterps., LLC v. Latin World Entm’t Holdings, Inc.:

These appeals arise from a dispute concerning a television production based on the life of the Mexican-American celebrity Jenni Rivera, who died in a plane crash in December 2012. The entity that controls most of Rivera’s assets, Jenni Rivera Enterprises, LLC (JRE), entered into a nondisclosure agreement with Rivera’s former manager, Pete Salgado, that restricted his disclosure and use of certain personal information about Rivera and her family. Alleging Salgado breached that agreement by disclosing information to the producers and the broadcaster of a television series based on Rivera’s life, JRE sued Salgado and the program’s producers for breach of contract, interference with contract, and inducing breach of contract. JRE also sued the program’s broadcaster for interference with contract and inducing breach of contract….

The court concluded that the plaintiffs’ claim against Univision for tortuously inducing Salgado to breach his contract were viable as a matter of California law, but were preempted by the First Amendment, given that “Univision had no knowledge of the nondisclosure agreement at the time it entered into the license agreement with BTF [the producers of the series about Rivera],” and that all Univision did after learning of the agreement appeared to “consist[] of continuing to pay license fees to BTF and promoting Salgado’s involvement with the Series”:

“While refusing to recognize a broad privilege in newsgathering against application of generally applicable laws, the United States Supreme Court has also observed that ‘without some protection for seeking out the news, freedom of the press could be eviscerated.'” The United States Supreme Court has consistently limited the press’s newsgathering privilege, however, to circumstances in which the press “lawfully obtains truthful information about a matter of public significance.” …

Courts determine whether the media obtained information lawfully by considering whether the media obtained the information by “routine reporting techniques” or “traditional means of news-gathering.” … “At one extreme, “‘routine … reporting techniques,'” such as asking questions of people with information (“including those with confidential or restricted information”) could rarely, if ever, be deemed an actionable intrusion…. At the other extreme, violation of well-established legal areas of physical or sensory privacy—trespass into a home or tapping a personal telephone line, for example—could rarely, if ever, be justified by a reporter’s need to get the story. Such acts would be deemed highly offensive even if the information sought was of weighty public concern; they would also be outside any protection the Constitution provides to newsgathering.” … [T]he “First Amendment is not a license to trespass, to steal, or to intrude by electronic means into the precincts of another’s home or office” ….

California courts have not determined where intentionally interfering with a nondisclosure agreement falls on this continuum. Cases from other jurisdictions involving a First Amendment defense to claims against media for intentional interference with contract or economic relations have rejected those claims. (See, e.g., Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Times Pub. Co., Inc. (Fla.Dist.Ct.App. 2001) 780 So.2d 310, 318 [under Florida law, a plaintiff tribe failed to show reporters had an improper motive to interfere with the tribe’s relationship with its employees by using routine news gathering techniques to obtain and publish truthful but confidential information about the tribe’s casino operations]; see also Huggins v. Povitch (N.Y.Sup.Ct., Apr. 19, 1996, No. 131164) 1996 WL 515498; Dulgarian v. Stone (1995) 420 Mass. 843, 852; but see Falwell v. Penthouse Intern., Ltd. (W.D.Va. 1981) 521 F.Supp. 1204, 1209 [suggesting in dicta that a publisher could be liable for inducing freelance writers “to violate the terms under which [an] interview was granted”].) …

We need not decide the broad question whether the torts of inducing a breach of contract and interfering with a contract are “independent torts” such that the First Amendment can never provide a defense to such claims when they arise from conduct that leads to the publication or broadcast of truthful and newsworthy information.

Here, it is uncontroverted Univision had no knowledge of the nondisclosure agreement at the time it entered into the license agreement with BTF. The evidence of Univision’s actions, after it learned of the nondisclosure agreement, that arguably contributed to Salgado’s continued breaches of the agreement consisted of continuing to pay license fees to BTF and promoting Salgado’s involvement with the Series.

Even if those actions were sufficient to serve as the basis of liability for tortious interference, they are not sufficiently “wrongful” or “unlawful” to overcome the First Amendment newsgathering and broadcast privileges. Therefore, the First Amendment protected Univision’s use and broadcast of the Series….

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