Month: May 2019

WaPo, CNN Virtually Silent After NYT Reveals 2nd FBI Spy Sent To Infiltrate Trump Campaign

After the New York Times revealed that the FBI sent a second spy to infiltrate the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election – a ‘honeypot’ who went by the name of Azra Turk who posed as a research assistant to the first spy they sent in, Stefan Halper – the rest of the MSM has been virtually silent. 

Both the Washington Post and CNN – which breathlessly reported on their peers’ anonymously-sourced anti-Trump propaganda for two years – have somehow failed to write a single article mentioning Azra Turk. 

As the Times revealed on Thursday, the FBI operative who went by the name Azra Turk repeatedly flirted with Trump aide George Papadopoulos during their encounters as well as in email exchanges according to an October, 2018 Daily Caller report, confirmed by the Times.

While in London in 2016, Ms. Turk exchanged emails with Mr. Papadopoulos, saying meeting him had been the “highlight of my trip,” according to messages provided by Mr. Papadopoulos.

“I am excited about what the future holds for us :),” she wrote. –New York Times

And as the Times makes clear, “the FBI sent her to London as part of the counterintelligence inquiry opened that summer” to investigate the Trump campaign. 

CNN has made mention of the report on-air, yet they haven’t written a single article mentioning “Azra Turk.” 

Meanwhile, a Russian-born academic falsely accused of being a Kremlin ‘honeypot’ operative against Mike Flynn, Svetlana Lokhova, has an interesting theory as to why the Times published the ‘2nd spy’ revalation in the first place. 

CNN law enforcement analyst and retired FBI agent James A. Gagliano opined on Twitter that perhaps the Times was helping the intelligence community get out in front of the upcoming Inspector General report on the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 election. 

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

Income Inequality & The Decline Of The Middle Class In Two Simple Charts

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Now look at the middle quintiles–the middle class: their income has gone nowhere in the past decade.

These two charts of average incomes of U.S. households by quintile (bottom 20%, middle 60% (20%+20%+20%) and top 20%) have both good news and bad news. (Charts are from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office — CBO).

These charts depict 1) household income before transfers (means-tested government benefits) and taxes, in other words, pre-tax earned income, income from capital gains and interest, unemployment insurance, etc., and 2) income after federal transfers and taxes.

This is a much more accurate view of household income, as this is what gets deposited in households’ accounts.

The typical chart of average incomes doesn’t include government transfers, so it under-reports the actual income of households receiving means-tested government benefits. (Note that the CBO methodology may not include all government transfers, as not all transfers are means-tested, i.e. based on income and other qualifying factors.)

The CBO reports periodically on the Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes, but it doesn’t generate these charts every year. (Go to Congressional Budget Office reports and scroll down to Distribution of Household Income and Federal Taxes).

Here’s the CBO’s summary of what the charts depict:

Means-tested transfers and federal taxes cause household incomes to be more evenly distributed. Those transfers and taxes:

  • Increased income among households in the lowest quintile by $12,000 (or more than 60 percent), on average, to $31,000.

  • Decreased income among households in the highest quintile by $74,000 (or more than 25 percent), on average, to $207,000.

While the gap between $31,000 and $207,000 is the core issue in rising income inequality, taxes and means-tested programs do make a big difference:a 60% gain in household income is significant.

As for the top 20%, this income is heavily skewed by the top 0.1%, those earning millions or tens of millions of dollars annually. A more accurate look can be found here:Summary of the Latest Federal Income Tax Data, 2018 Update.

Note that the charts depict cumulative income growth as percentages, with zero being set in 1979.

Let’s call this the good news: yes, income inequality is soaring, but America’s progressive tax system (the wealthy pay higher rates) and government programs transfer income from the top households to the bottom households–pretty much in line with the political mandate of the majority of Americans.

The bad news is the middle class has received no real income gains in the past 20 years, and they don’t qualify for many means-tested transfers. I’ve marked the charts up to highlight this.

In the income before transfers and taxes chart, the lowest and the middle quintiles are about where they were in 1999. Both gained ground in the 2005-08 housing bubble, but as with all bubbles, the effects only lasted as along as the bubble itself.

Since the top quintile’s income accelerated away from the bottom 80% in the early 1990s, there is a 70 percentage point gap between the top 20% and the bottom 80%. I’ve addressed the reasons for soaring income-wealth inequality here many times, but the key takeaway is the enormous gains reaped by the top 20% during asset bubbles, which are the consequence of financialization and central bank-fueled speculation.

In the income after transfers and taxes chart, the gap between lowest and top quintiles drops from 70 to 25 percentage points: a big reduction. After transfers, the lowest quintile income has gained steadily since the late 1980s. If we eliminate the asset bubble peaks, the gap between the top and bottom quintiles hasn’t grown that much.

Now look at the middle quintiles–the middle class: their income has gone nowhere in the past decade. Both the top and bottom quintiles have notched percentage gains in income while middle class income has stagnated.

And there you have it: financialization, central bank-fueled speculation and globalization greatly boosted the incomes of the top 20%, while government transfers have significantly increased the incomes of the bottom 20% of households.

The middle 60%, who did not benefit from the credit-fueled orgies of speculative bubbles (financialization) or globalization, and who do not qualify for many means tested transfers, have experienced near-zero income growth in the past decade of “recovery” and soaring asset bubbles.

We all know this from real-life experience in America: it pays to be either wealthy or low-income (especially if the household getting means-tested benefits also works in the black-market informal economy for cash). As for the middle 60%: you get nothing.

*  *  *

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via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2V9BPoa Tyler Durden

Barr Launches Wide-Ranging Probe Into 2016 FBI Spying

Attorney General William Barr told the Senate Judiciary Panel this week that he has assembled a team at the Justice Department to probe whether the spying conducted by the FBI against the Trump campaign in 2016 was improper, reports Bloomberg. 

Barr suggested that he would focus on former senior leaders at the FBI and Justice Department. 

“To the extent there was overreach, what we have to be concerned about is a few people at the top getting it into their heads that they know better than the American people,” said Barr. 

Barr will also review whether the infamous Steele dossier – a collection of salacious and unverified claims against Donald Trump, assembled by a former British spy and paid for by the Clinton campaign – was fabricated by the Russian government to trick the FBI and other US agencies. (Will Barr investigate whether Steele made the whole thing up for his client, Fusion GPS?)

“We now know that he was being falsely accused,” Barr said of Trump. “We have to stop using the criminal justice process as a political weapon.”

Mueller’s report didn’t say there were false accusations against Trump. It said the evidence of cooperation between the campaign and Russia “was not sufficient to support criminal charges.” Investigators were unable to get a complete picture of the activities of some relevant people, the special counsel found.

Although Barr’s review has only begun, it’s helping to fuel a narrative long embraced by Trump and some of his Republican supporters: that the Russia investigation was politically motivated and concocted from false allegations in order to spy on Trump’s campaign and ultimately undermine his presidency. –Bloomberg

As Bloomberg notes, Barr’s review could receive a boost by a Thursday New York Times article acknowledging that the FBI sent a ‘honeypot’ spy to London in 2016 to pose as a research assistant and gather intelligence from Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos over possible Trump campaign links to Russia. 

The Trump re-election campaign immediately seized on the Times report as evidence that improper spying did occur. “As President Trump has said, it is high time to investigate the investigators,” said Trump campaign manager, Brad Parscale in a statement. 

During Barr’s Wednesday testimony, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) told Barr “It appears to me that the Obama administration, Justice Department and FBI decided to place their bets on Hillary Clinton and focus their efforts” when it came to investigating the Trump campaign. 

Depending on what Barr finds, his review of the Russia probe could give Trump ammunition to defend himself in continuing congressional inquiries — and in a potential impeachment for obstructing justice. Barr told senators that Trump’s actions can’t be seen as obstruction if he was exercising his constitutional authority as president to put an end to an illegitimate investigation.

Barr’s efforts follow two years of work by a group of House Republicans who have been conducting dozens of interviews regarding the FBI’s and Justice Department’s conduct in the early stages of investigation of Trump and his campaign. –Bloomberg

On Thursday, Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) issued a criminal referral for Nellie Ohr – a former Fusion GPS contractor who passed anti-Trump research to her husband, then the #4 official at the DOJ. 

On Thursday, Meadows said that Barr’s “willingness to investigate the origins of the Russia investigation is the first step in putting the questionable practices of the past behind us,” and that the AG’s “tenacity is sure to be rewarded.”

The FBI opened its counterintelligence investigation against the Trump campaign after a self-professed member of the Clinton Foundation, Joseph Mifsud, fed Papadopoulos the rumor that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton. That rumor would be coaxed out of the former Trump aide by another Clinton-connected individual – Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who would notify authorities of Papadopoulos’ admission, officially launching the investigation. 

Barr says he wants to get to the bottom of it. 

His review will examine the above chain of events that set the investigation into motion, and whether any US agencies were engaged in spying on or investigating the Trump campaign before the probe was officially launched. 

Barr said he’s working with FBI Director Christopher Wray “to reconstruct exactly what went down.” He said he has “people in the department helping me review the activities over the summer of 2016.”

Notably, Barr said his aides will be “working very closely” with the Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz.

Horowitz is conducting his own investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation and whether there were abuses when the FBI obtained a secret warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016 to spy on another foreign policy adviser to the campaign, Carter Page. –Bloomberg

Barr will also investigate when the DOJ and FBI knew that the Democratic Party and Clinton was Steele. 

More subterfuge, or is this really happening?

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

Florida’s Health Care Deregulation Is a Win for Doctors, Patients, and Free Markets

Hospitals and many other health care centers offering outpatient care in Florida will no longer have to get the state government’s permission before expanding or offering new services, if Gov. Ron DeSantis signs a bill that reached his desk this week.

A bill to overhaul the state’s Certificate of Need (CON) regulations cleared both chambers of the state legislature during the final week of April, making Florida the latest state to ditch that vestige of a failed 1970s federal effort at controlling health care costs. CON laws were supposed to hold health care costs down by limiting unnecessary capital expenditures, but they often do the opposite—by operating as artificial limitations on the supply of health care services, they tend to inflate costs and reduce access to care.

“It’s time we got more cost effective coverage, more freedom and options, and more direct care,” state House Speaker Jose Oliva (R–Miami-Dade), who made the CON reforms a top priority for this year’s legislative session, says in a statement. “We will make these changes and reap the inevitable reward of the free market—lower costs and higher quality.”

The bill passed in Florida would exempt hospitals from CON review starting in July. Specialty hospitals, such as those dedicated to women’s health care or pediatric centers, will be free from CON oversight by the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration starting in 2021. Nursing homes and hospice facilities will remain subject to Florida’s CON laws.

CON laws have not produced better health outcomes in places where they are on the books. A 2016 paper by two researchers at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center found that the average 30-day mortality rate for patients with pneumonia, heart failure, and heart attacks in states with CON laws is between 2.5 percent and 5 percent higher (even after demographic factors are taken out of the equation) than in non-CON states.

Residents of states with CON laws end up paying higher prices too. The Federal Trade Commission has urged states to repeal those regulations, arguing that they “are not successful in containing health care costs” and “pose serious anti-competitive risks that usually outweigh their purported economic benefits. Market incumbents can too easily use CON procedures to forestall competitors from entering an incumbent’s market.”

Indeed, as Reason has previously reported, hospitals can use CON regulations to effectively block nearby hospitals from offering certain services. In one particularly tragic instance, a Virginia hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit successfully lobbied the state Department of Health to veto a CON application from a competing hospital that wanted to build a similar facility for sick babies. Shortly after the second hospital’s application was denied—despite widespread support from local officials, health care administrators, doctors, and residents—an infant died there following a premature birth.

Even when the stakes aren’t that high, CON laws create weird, anti-competitive outcomes. An eye doctor in Iowa has been waiting for years to see patients at his fully outfitted office, but a nearby hospital has repeatedly blocked his application for a Certificate of Need.

In December, a report from the federal Department of Health and Human Services urged states “to repeal or scale back Certificate of Need laws” as a way of promoting “choice and competition in provider markets.”

In Florida, Oliva championed CON reform as part of a larger effort to overhaul the state’s health care system. In a session-opening address in March, he called health care costs “a five-alarm fire” and called out “the health care industrial complex” for standing in the way of needed reforms.

Sure enough, hospital lobbyists fought the CON reform bill, then tried to promote an alternative, watered-down version of the legislation. In the end, Oliva’s favored proposal won out.

With the stroke of a pen, DeSantis can score a significant—and all too rare—win for freer markets in health care.

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Florida’s Health Care Deregulation Is a Win for Doctors, Patients, and Free Markets

Hospitals and many other health care centers offering outpatient care in Florida will no longer have to get the state government’s permission before expanding or offering new services, if Gov. Ron DeSantis signs a bill that reached his desk this week.

A bill to overhaul the state’s Certificate of Need (CON) regulations cleared both chambers of the state legislature during the final week of April, making Florida the latest state to ditch that vestige of a failed 1970s federal effort at controlling health care costs. CON laws were supposed to hold health care costs down by limiting unnecessary capital expenditures, but they often do the opposite—by operating as artificial limitations on the supply of health care services, they tend to inflate costs and reduce access to care.

“It’s time we got more cost effective coverage, more freedom and options, and more direct care,” state House Speaker Jose Oliva (R–Miami-Dade), who made the CON reforms a top priority for this year’s legislative session, says in a statement. “We will make these changes and reap the inevitable reward of the free market—lower costs and higher quality.”

The bill passed in Florida would exempt hospitals from CON review starting in July. Specialty hospitals, such as those dedicated to women’s health care or pediatric centers, will be free from CON oversight by the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration starting in 2021. Nursing homes and hospice facilities will remain subject to Florida’s CON laws.

CON laws have not produced better health outcomes in places where they are on the books. A 2016 paper by two researchers at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center found that the average 30-day mortality rate for patients with pneumonia, heart failure, and heart attacks in states with CON laws is between 2.5 percent and 5 percent higher (even after demographic factors are taken out of the equation) than in non-CON states.

Residents of states with CON laws end up paying higher prices too. The Federal Trade Commission has urged states to repeal those regulations, arguing that they “are not successful in containing health care costs” and “pose serious anti-competitive risks that usually outweigh their purported economic benefits. Market incumbents can too easily use CON procedures to forestall competitors from entering an incumbent’s market.”

Indeed, as Reason has previously reported, hospitals can use CON regulations to effectively block nearby hospitals from offering certain services. In one particularly tragic instance, a Virginia hospital with a neonatal intensive care unit successfully lobbied the state Department of Health to veto a CON application from a competing hospital that wanted to build a similar facility for sick babies. Shortly after the second hospital’s application was denied—despite widespread support from local officials, health care administrators, doctors, and residents—an infant died there following a premature birth.

Even when the stakes aren’t that high, CON laws create weird, anti-competitive outcomes. An eye doctor in Iowa has been waiting for years to see patients at his fully outfitted office, but a nearby hospital has repeatedly blocked his application for a Certificate of Need.

In December, a report from the federal Department of Health and Human Services urged states “to repeal or scale back Certificate of Need laws” as a way of promoting “choice and competition in provider markets.”

In Florida, Oliva championed CON reform as part of a larger effort to overhaul the state’s health care system. In a session-opening address in March, he called health care costs “a five-alarm fire” and called out “the health care industrial complex” for standing in the way of needed reforms.

Sure enough, hospital lobbyists fought the CON reform bill, then tried to promote an alternative, watered-down version of the legislation. In the end, Oliva’s favored proposal won out.

With the stroke of a pen, DeSantis can score a significant—and all too rare—win for freer markets in health care.

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The Fed Has Lost Control Of Rates As ‘Technical Tweak’ Fails

While the rest of the world is distracted by the plummeting unemployment rates and trade deal hype, a funny (well not so funny) thing happened in the short-term funding markets in the world’s reserve currency.

As we noted previously, something unexpected has been going on in overnight funding markets: ever since March 20, the Effective Fed Funds rate has been trading above the IOER. This is not supposed to happen.

As a reminder, ever since the financial crisis, in order to push the effective fed funds rate above zero at a time of trillions in excess reserves, the Fed was compelled to create a corridor system for the fed funds rate which was bound on the bottom and top by two specific rates controlled by the Federal Reserve: the “floor” for the corridor was the overnight reverse repurchase rate (ON-RRP) which usually coincides with the lower bound of the fed funds rate, while on top, the effective fed funds rate is bound by the rate the Fed pays on Excess Reserves (IOER), which served as the corridor “ceiling.”

Or at least that’s the theory. In practice, the effective FF tends to occasionally diverge from this corridor, and when it does, it prompts fears that the Fed is losing control over the most important instrument available to it: the price of money, which is set via the fed funds rate.

This week, The Fed tried to do something about it by cutting the IOER.

It has failed!

The effective fed funds rate fell to 2.41% on Thursday from 2.45%, according to New York Fed data. With the Federal Reserve’s 5bp cut to the interest on excess reserves (IOER) rate to 2.35%…

Fed effective rate on March 20 surpassed IOER for the first time since 2008, and it’s stayed above most days since.

This is a 6bps failure – worse than the 5bps spread BEFORE the Fed “tweaked”.

In other words, as one veteran funding market trader exclaimed, “it’s getting worse!”
Simply put, this is front and center a dollar liquidity shortage signal that The Fed is unable to solve… for now.

As Barclays’ Joseph Abate recently ominously concluded:

the large move also suggests that the banking sector is “nearing the steeply sloping part of the reserve demand curve” which means that “bank reserves are now significantly closer to what individual banks consider their ‘least comfortable level of reserves’ and thus banks are more willing to pay higher rates to retain these balances.” 

In other words, some $1.5 trillion in excess liquidity created by the Fed is no longer enough for banks which are starting to scramble to obtain additional liquidity, which needless to say, is very troubling for a banking system which is supposedly “fortress” and “much more stable” than it was before the financial crisis. If anything, this means that even a modest liquidity draining crisis at any point in the future could have vastly more dire consequences than even the pessimists believe.

So what can the Fed do to regain control over interest rates?

According to Barclays to address the expected increase in fed funds volatility, the Fed could either end the balance sheet runoff this summer instead of waiting until September, create a standing repo facility – something which has been rumored for months – or conduct standard open market operations, injecting even more liquidity into the system.

Is Larry Kudlow right? Is The Fed preparing to cut rates, despite Powell’s dismissal of directional bias? The market still thinks so…

Note, the market is shifting dovishly today despite the big beats in jobs, suggesting something else (cough liquidity cough) is affecting policy expectations.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VIk135 Tyler Durden

ISM Services Tumbles To 20-Month Lows As Employment Plummets

Following Manufacturing’s collapse, ISM reports that the Services sector has slumped to its weakest since August 2017.

In the latest sign of weaker economic momentum at the start of the second quarter, the non-manufacturing index declined to 55.5 in April from 56.1…

Under the hood, it’s just as ugly with new orders and employment both tumbling (the latter to two year lows).

The weakness in employment contrasts with Friday’s U.S. jobs report, which showed payrolls climbed in April by a robust 263,000 that topped all projections.

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

Green Revolution: Washington State to allow composting of human beings

Each Friday we highlight a number of important, and often bizarre stories from around the world that my team and I are closely following:


1. Washington State will allow human body composting

It doesn’t get much greener than this.

Staking his presidential run on climate change, the Governor of Washington is set to sign a bill legalizing composting of deceased humans.

An especially high percentage of the deceased in Washington are cremated, so this alternative will cut down on carbon emissions.

Instead, family members can pay around $5,500 to turn their loved ones into compost, and use the composted-remains to plant a tree.

Hell, why not throw it right into the vegetable garden. Then your loved ones become a part of you.

Friendly reminder though, soylent green is people.

Click here to read the full story.


2. Satanic Temple gets tax-exempt status

Surely a sign that the end times are nigh, the Satanic Temple has successfully gained tax exempt status like any other religion.

The thing is, they aren’t really all about worshipping Satan.

The church was founded as a bit of a joke. The group is meant to protest the meddling of government and religion.

For instance, if government functions start with a prayer, they want to open with a prayer to Satan. And if a courthouse lawn has a ten commandments statue, they want Lucifer spreading his wings right there beside it.

And now they have forced the government to recognize them as a religion, with all the tax exemptions that come with it.

Click here to read the full story.


3. Laying the groundwork for conscientious objection to taxes

Speaking of interesting tactics to avoid taxes…

Last year a man who refused to pay taxes since 1997 had his case dismissed by a federal court.

He refused to pay because some tax dollars fund abortions which he morally objects to.

But the reason his case got dismissed had nothing to do with that.

The government couldn’t prove he evaded taxes, because he never tried to hide it.

He was very open about why he wouldn’t pay taxes. That’s not evasion, that’s just refusal.

And when the IRS started garnishing his wages, the man simply cashed his work checks, and kept a low balance in his bank account. The court said not everything that makes collection harder is evasion, including simply cashing checks.

The man does still face misdemeanor charges for willful refusal to file tax returns.

I still prefer the legal ways of reducing my taxes, that won’t have be hauled in front of a judge.

Click here to read the full story.


4. Elizabeth Warren proposes canceling student loan debt, making college free

We said it was coming…

Desperate for attention in her 2020 bid for President, Senator Elizabeth Warren continues to roll out the most “progressive” policy proposals among the candidates.

She’s already proposed a wealth tax, jailing CEOs for civil crimes, and breaking up any large corporation she can get her hands on.

Now she wants to forgive almost all of the $1.5 TRILLION worth of student loan debt.

However you won’t be receiving any relief if you live in a household with income over $250,000 per year.

Since the United States government owns 90% of student loan debt, this just means that the taxpayers will be on the hook for all those wonderful underwater-basket-weaving and gender studies degrees.

Warren also proposed making college free. Because the government has done such a great job educating the youth in public schools…

Click here to read the full story.


5. Colorado becomes 15th state to approve gun confiscation

Beyond a reasonable doubt is the standard for criminal convictions. Only then can you be deprived of life, liberty, and property.

But all it takes under Colorado’s new red flag-laws to take your guns away is a preponderance of evidence.

And that weak standard of evidence doesn’t even have to apply to a crime.

The evidence just has to suggest that a person “poses a significant risk of causing personal risk to self or others in the near future.”

For a statute that can strip you of your rights, that’s pretty vague and arbitrary.

If a family member or former roommate testifies that you are a risk to yourself or others, the courts can confiscate your guns with an Extreme Risk Protective Order (ERPO).

After two weeks, the “suspect” (if you can even call them that, since they aren’t suspected of a crime) has a chance to prove his innocence in court. In other words, you are presumed guilty until you spend your own money to prove your innocence. Otherwise the ERPO can be extended for a full year.

And the same standard of proof can be used by the accuser to extend the ERPO year after year.

So forget due process. The whims of the cops and judges can strip you of your right to protect yourself.

Click here to read the full story.

Source

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“One-Offs” Pump-Up Payrolls As Supply-Chain Hiring Grinds To A Halt

The politicos are out crowing of the booming US economy confirmed by today’s jobs report.

Despite a worrying retracement in the participation rate:

But, as Southbay Research explains, beneath the headline figures, payrolls are slowing…

Supply Chain Hiring Grinds to a Halt, Services Takes Over

  • Manufacturing (+4K)

  • Trade & Transportation (+5K)

No surprise here, as ISM and other data was pointing to a pullback in these sectors.

Also, the jump in Construction (+33K) was called out in our forecast. 

This is catch-up seasonal hiring and not a trend.  For May, expect additional catch-up hiring to keep this figure up.

Services Roars Ahead on One-Offs

Weakness in Trade, Transportation was offset by strength in:

  • Financial (+12K) jumped on real estate as low rates boosted home buying

  • Landscaping (+20K) on catch-up seasonal hiring

  • Healthcare (+53K) including an unusual jump in Social Services (+26K)

  • Food Services (+25K)

Of the 202K additional Services Payrolls, at least 46K is one-time and will not repeat next month (Landscaping + Social Services)

And then there’s unusually strong Municpal Government Hiring

Strong one-off local government hiring (+27K) added to the party

Key Trend: Under the Headline Figure, A Payroll Slowdown is underway

  • Manufacturing retreats (+4K)

  • Construction continues (Construction + 33k, Real Estate Financial +8K)

  • Consumer spending is moderating (Trade, Transportation +5K)

  • Services Hiring is moderating.  For example, Temp Workers +17K in April but only +12K total the last 3 months

April’s strong number is the final rebound from February’s weakness (aka catch-up seasonal hiring). Coming up next month: Slower Payroll Growth.

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

Massage Parlor Surveillance Videos Can’t Be Used in Court, Says Florida Judge: Reason Roundup

Florida police failed to exhaust more low-key options and to protect the privacy of non-suspects when secretly recording surveillance video inside Martin County massage parlors. That’s the verdict of Florida Judge Kathleen Roberts, whose six-page decision on the matter was delivered yesterday.

To be legal and admissible, “it would have required that when it was determined that no illegal activity was happening in the massage room, the monitoring or recording was turned off when the client began to dress after the massage was concluded,” said the decision. But “at no time was any effort made to stop the monitoring or recording at any point to protect the innocent person who happened to enter an area covered by a camera.”

The Martin County massage-business stings were conducted in conjunction with stings in several nearby counties, including the Palm Beach County bust that led to solicitation of prostitution charges for Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Kraft and other men charged with solicitation have been challenging the use of “sneak and peak” warrants (you know, the kind authorized under the PATRIOT Act to stop terrorism) to install secret video cameras in massage rooms, where police filmed clients undressing, getting massaged, and in some cases allegedly paying for sexual services. Workers at these businesses are also suing over the surveillance, as are customers of the spas who simply received regular massage services and weren’t arrested for any funny business.

To the disappointment of some media outlets, a judge last week temporarily blocked the public release of surveillance video from the Palm Beach spas. A final decision is still pending.

The decision from Judge Roberts only applies to surveillance at Martin County spas.

“We’re elated that the rule of law triumphs over a flashy press conference,” says Richard Kibbey, who represents four people arrested in the Martin County stings, according to TCPalm.com.

At the initial press conferences, police portrayed themselves as the heroic foilers of an international sex trafficking ring. It later came out that they had spent more than half a year getting massages from these alleged sex slaves before arresting them on felony prostitution charges—and charging no one with human trafficking.

In her decision, Roberts noted that no effort had been made to differentiate between illegal and legal activity being recorded. “The innocent client was treated the same by law enforcement as the criminal element they sought to capture,” she wrote, ordering that the video footage be suppressed in court.

State prosecutors say they intend to appeal the ruling.

FREE MINDS

Rep. Devin Nunes has now filed several frivolous lawsuits against social media users and a local newspaper who he claims have defamed him. The California Republican “done everything an uber-conservative is supposed to do to successfully sue his hometown newspaper and Twitter trolls,” including “immediately alert[ing] Fox News to the developments and then [going] on Sean Hannity to shout about his victimhood,” quips Talking Points Memo. One thing Nunes hasn’t done so far? Actually served the defendants with notice that they’re being sued. Whoops.

FREE MARKETS

Bad news for the “gig economy” and so much more:

QUICK HITS

  • Shocking, we know:

 

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