Month: August 2019

Federal Court Rules State Judges Cannot Profit From Fines and Fees Imposed on Defendants in the Cases Before Them

In two unanimous rulings issued over the last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that criminal court judges in New Orleans, Louisiana have an unconstitutional conflict of interest, because the money collected from fees and fines imposed on defendants goes to subsidize their courts’ operations. Nick Sibilla of the Institute for Justice summarizes  the two cases in an article for Forbes:

Due to their “institutional interest” in generating court revenue (a “substantial portion” of their budget), the judges of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court “failed to provide a neutral forum,” which in turn violated the constitutional right to due process.

The first case, Cain v. White, centered around half a dozen criminal defendants who pled guilty and subsequently faced fines and fees ranging from $148 to $901.50. When they couldn’t pay up, OPCDC authorized warrants for their arrest, threw them in jail, and set their bond at $20,000….

Distressingly, some of the fines and fees were deposited into a “Judicial Expense Fund,” which the Orleans Parish judges have “exclusive authority” over. One quarter of the Fund’s revenue—around $1 million—comes directly from the fines and fees the court collects. Though judges can’t use the Fund to pad their own salaries, they can use it to pay the salaries and benefits of court personnel, as well as a wide array of miscellaneous expenses, including conferences, coffee, drug testing, and pest control.

In a similar vein, the second decision, Caliste v. Cantrell, involved a Louisiana law that sent 1.8% of a commercial bail bond’s value towards the same Fund. As the Fifth Circuit noted, “The bond fees are a major funding source for the Judicial Expense Fund, contributing between 20–25% of the amount spent in recent years.”

Judge Gregg Costa’s opinion in Caliste summarizes the legal issue involved:

“No man can be judge in his own case.” Edward Coke, INSTITUTES OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND, § 212, 141 (1628). That centuries-old maxim comes from Lord Coke’s ruling that a judge could not be paid with the fines he imposed. Dr. Bonham’s Case, 8 Co. Rep. 107a, 118a, 77 Eng. Rep. 638, 652 (C.P. 1610). Almost a century ago, the Supreme Court recognized that principle as part of the due process requirement of an impartial tribunal. Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 523 (1927).

This case does not involve a judge who receives money based on the decisions he makes. But the magistrate in the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court receives something almost as important: funding for various judicial expenses, most notably money to help pay for court reporters, judicial secretaries, and law clerks. What does this court funding depend on? The bail decisions the magistrate makes that determine whether a defendant obtains pretrial release. When a defendant has to buy a commercial surety bond, a portion of the bond’s value goes to a fund for judges’ expenses. So the more often the magistrate requires a secured money bond as a condition of release, the more money the court has to cover expenses. And the magistrate is a member of the committee that allocates those funds….

“Every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof required to convict the defendant… denies the latter due process of law.” [Tumey, 273 U.S.] at 532…..

Judge Cantrell has a direct and personal interest in the fiscal health of the public institution that benefits from the fees his court generates and that he also helps allocate….

His dual role—the sole source of essential court funds and an appropriator of them—creates a direct, personal, and substantial interest in the outcome of decisions that would make the average judge vulnerable to the “temptation . . . not to hold the balance nice, clear, and true.” Tumey, 273 U.S. at 532. The current arrangement pushes beyond what due process allows.

Judge Costa rightly emphasizes that the proper standard should be a conflict that would be a source of temptation for the “average man,” not one that assumes that judges are better able to withstand temptation than mere mortals.

It is perhaps worth noting that the judges who joined in these rulings span the political spectrum. Judge Costa is a liberal Obama appointee, as is Judge Graves, author of Caine v. White. But Judge James Ho, who joined in the court’s opinion in Caine is a conservative appointed by Trump. Reagan appointee Judge Edith Jones, who joined the ruling in Caliste, is, in my view, the most conservative judge on the Fifth Circuit,  if not in the entire federal appellate judiciary; she is not generally known for rulings favoring criminal defendants.

The specific funding system in the New Orleans cases may be unusual. But as Sibilla explains, similar conflicts of interest exist in other parts of the criminal justice in many states. He notes the examples of local governments and judicial systems that use court fees and fines as “ATMs” to finance their operations, such as the notorious abuses of power a 2015 Justice Department report documented in Ferguson, Missouri.

Another common scenario arises from asset forfeiture policies under which police forces get to keep the profits from assets  confiscated from owners on the theory that they may have been used in the commission of a crime—including in many cases where the owner was never even charged with an offense, much less convicted. In many jurisdictions, asset forfeitures are carried out with little opportunity for owners to challenge the seizures. The problem has been exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s reinstatement of the “equitable sharing” program, under which the federal government helps state and local police forces circumvent state law limitations on asset forfeitures, and thereby keep more loot for themselves.

Last year, a federal court in New Mexico struck down a particularly egregious asset forfeiture program in Albuquerque because it violated due process, by creating a conflict of interest. Hopefully, the two recent Fifth Circuit decisions will help generate momentum for further rulings along the same lines.

If it is a violation of due process for judges to indirectly profit from their own rulings, the same reasoning applies to cops who similarly profit from the fines and asset forfeitures they impose on citizens. In fairness, one can argue that conflicts of interest on the part of police and other law enforcement officers are not as egregious as those that involve judges, because the former do not make final decisions about the fate of the accused. But, in many situations, decisions by police have an enormous impact on the outcome, especially given that judges and prosecutors often defer to the police on various issues. That is particularly true in the case of asset forfeitures, where procedures make it extraordinarily difficult for owners to recover their assets once police have made the initial decision to seize them. Like judges, police exercise enormous discretion over the fate of suspects—discretion that should be free of self-interested temptations that are likely to bias the decision-making of “the average man.”

As the Fifth Circuit explains, the legal principles involved here have deep roots in the Anglo-American legal tradition’s conception of “due process.” But they are also just basic common sense. It’s dangerous to have judges—and police officers—who stand to profit from imposing fees and fines on people, or from seizing their property. Not because judges and cops are unusually bad people, but because they are subject to the same temptations as the rest of us.

NOTE: I clerked at the Fifth Circuit many years ago (for a judge who was not on either of these panels). I know both Judge Ho (who clerked for the same judge as I did, two years before me, and helped interview me for the clerkship position), and Judge Jones (whose chambers were down the hall from those of my own judge). I do not believe these connections bias my views of the two cases—both of which were decided long after I ceased to be a Fifth Circuit clerk. But I thought I would note this history here, nonetheless. A post about conflicts of interest should probably err on the safe side in such  matters!

 

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Now Could Be The Time To Sell Your Classic Car Before The Downturn

Have you ever thought about thinning out your classic car collection? Now could be the time before the antique car market rolls over.

Hagerty Price Guide, the premier collector car value guide, shows that in the last four years, 1960s American cars, blue-chip cars, British cars, Ferraris, German collectibles, and Muscle cars have seen their prices stagnate at record highs.

 

Prices have been flat, depressed, and unlikely to go higher ahead of the next recession. A possible correction in the classic car market could unfold into the early 2020s.

However, affordable classic cars, around the $20,000 price range, bucked the trend with prices moving higher.

The overall vintage car market is beginning to show signs of fatigue. Results from the Monterey Car Week earlier this month, an important bellwether for the state of the classic car market, had one of its worst auctions in 8 years.

Hagerty reported $245 million in sales during the two-day auction from Aug. 15 to 17. It represented a 34% drop from 2018’s results, which makes it the worst auction since 2011.

The average selling price plummeted by 36.7% to $319,610; the median sale price plunged 22.7% to $24,200; the sell-through rate (percentage of vehicles that sell) fell to 58% from 62%.

“Whether it’s threat of recession, broad economic volatility or too many cars crammed into too few hours, there’s no denying this year’s Monterey Auction Week results were depressed when you compare the results to recent years,” Hagerty’s Jonathan Klinger said.

This isn’t the first time Monterey’s sales have crashed. Sales plunged 72% from 2000 to 2002 and fell 14% between 2008 and 2009, according to Hagerty.

Klinger said recessions and credit bubble burstings fueled those drops.

“This year seems to be more anticipatory and reflective of broader market jitters,” Klinger said.

The downturn isn’t limited to just Monterey – it’s a broad-based cyclical downshift in the entire classic car market, except for cars priced under $20k. So now looks like the best time to thin out the collection before the next recession strikes.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zyFL4I Tyler Durden

Federal Court Rules State Judges Cannot Profit From Fines and Fees Imposed on Defendants in the Cases Before Them

In two unanimous rulings issued over the last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that criminal court judges in New Orleans, Louisiana have an unconstitutional conflict of interest, because the money collected from fees and fines imposed on defendants goes to subsidize their courts’ operations. Nick Sibilla of the Institute for Justice summarizes  the two cases in an article for Forbes:

Due to their “institutional interest” in generating court revenue (a “substantial portion” of their budget), the judges of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court “failed to provide a neutral forum,” which in turn violated the constitutional right to due process.

The first case, Cain v. White, centered around half a dozen criminal defendants who pled guilty and subsequently faced fines and fees ranging from $148 to $901.50. When they couldn’t pay up, OPCDC authorized warrants for their arrest, threw them in jail, and set their bond at $20,000….

Distressingly, some of the fines and fees were deposited into a “Judicial Expense Fund,” which the Orleans Parish judges have “exclusive authority” over. One quarter of the Fund’s revenue—around $1 million—comes directly from the fines and fees the court collects. Though judges can’t use the Fund to pad their own salaries, they can use it to pay the salaries and benefits of court personnel, as well as a wide array of miscellaneous expenses, including conferences, coffee, drug testing, and pest control.

In a similar vein, the second decision, Caliste v. Cantrell, involved a Louisiana law that sent 1.8% of a commercial bail bond’s value towards the same Fund. As the Fifth Circuit noted, “The bond fees are a major funding source for the Judicial Expense Fund, contributing between 20–25% of the amount spent in recent years.”

Judge Gregg Costa’s opinion in Caliste summarizes the legal issue involved:

“No man can be judge in his own case.” Edward Coke, INSTITUTES OF THE LAWS OF ENGLAND, § 212, 141 (1628). That centuries-old maxim comes from Lord Coke’s ruling that a judge could not be paid with the fines he imposed. Dr. Bonham’s Case, 8 Co. Rep. 107a, 118a, 77 Eng. Rep. 638, 652 (C.P. 1610). Almost a century ago, the Supreme Court recognized that principle as part of the due process requirement of an impartial tribunal. Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S. 510, 523 (1927).

This case does not involve a judge who receives money based on the decisions he makes. But the magistrate in the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court receives something almost as important: funding for various judicial expenses, most notably money to help pay for court reporters, judicial secretaries, and law clerks. What does this court funding depend on? The bail decisions the magistrate makes that determine whether a defendant obtains pretrial release. When a defendant has to buy a commercial surety bond, a portion of the bond’s value goes to a fund for judges’ expenses. So the more often the magistrate requires a secured money bond as a condition of release, the more money the court has to cover expenses. And the magistrate is a member of the committee that allocates those funds….

“Every procedure which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge to forget the burden of proof required to convict the defendant… denies the latter due process of law.” [Tumey, 273 U.S.] at 532…..

Judge Cantrell has a direct and personal interest in the fiscal health of the public institution that benefits from the fees his court generates and that he also helps allocate….

His dual role—the sole source of essential court funds and an appropriator of them—creates a direct, personal, and substantial interest in the outcome of decisions that would make the average judge vulnerable to the “temptation . . . not to hold the balance nice, clear, and true.” Tumey, 273 U.S. at 532. The current arrangement pushes beyond what due process allows.

Judge Costa rightly emphasizes that the proper standard should be a conflict that would be a source of temptation for the “average man,” not one that assumes that judges are better able to withstand temptation than mere mortals.

It is perhaps worth noting that the judges who joined in these rulings span the political spectrum. Judge Costa is a liberal Obama appointee, as is Judge Graves, author of Caine v. White. But Judge James Ho, who joined in the court’s opinion in Caine is a conservative appointed by Trump. Reagan appointee Judge Edith Jones, who joined the ruling in Caliste, is, in my view, the most conservative judge on the Fifth Circuit,  if not in the entire federal appellate judiciary; she is not generally known for rulings favoring criminal defendants.

The specific funding system in the New Orleans cases may be unusual. But as Sibilla explains, similar conflicts of interest exist in other parts of the criminal justice in many states. He notes the examples of local governments and judicial systems that use court fees and fines as “ATMs” to finance their operations, such as the notorious abuses of power a 2015 Justice Department report documented in Ferguson, Missouri.

Another common scenario arises from asset forfeiture policies under which police forces get to keep the profits from assets  confiscated from owners on the theory that they may have been used in the commission of a crime—including in many cases where the owner was never even charged with an offense, much less convicted. In many jurisdictions, asset forfeitures are carried out with little opportunity for owners to challenge the seizures. The problem has been exacerbated by the Trump Administration’s reinstatement of the “equitable sharing” program, under which the federal government helps state and local police forces circumvent state law limitations on asset forfeitures, and thereby keep more loot for themselves.

Last year, a federal court in New Mexico struck down a particularly egregious asset forfeiture program in Albuquerque because it violated due process, by creating a conflict of interest. Hopefully, the two recent Fifth Circuit decisions will help generate momentum for further rulings along the same lines.

In fairness, one can argue that conflicts of interest on the part of police and other law enforcement officers are not as egregious as those that involve judges, because the former do not make final decisions about the fate of the accused. But, in many situations, decisions by police have an enormous impact on the outcome, especially given that judges and prosecutors often defer to the police on various issues. That is particularly true in the case of asset forfeitures, where procedures make it extraordinarily difficult for owners to recover their assets once police have made the initial decision to seize them. Like judges, police exercise enormous discretion over the fate of suspects—discretion that should be free of self-interested temptations that are likely to bias the decision-making of “the average man.”

As the Fifth Circuit explains, the legal principles involved here have deep roots in the Anglo-American legal tradition’s conception of “due process.” But they are also just basic common sense. It’s dangerous to have judges—and police officers—who stand to profit from imposing fees and fines on people, or from seizing their property. Not because judges and cops are unusually bad people, but because they are subject to the same temptations as the rest of us.

NOTE: I clerked at the Fifth Circuit many years ago (for a judge who was not on either of these panels). I know both Judge Ho (who clerked for the same judge as I did, two years before me, and helped interview me for the clerkship position), and Judge Jones (whose chambers were down the hall from those of my own judge). I do not believe these connections bias my views of the two cases—both of which were decided long after I ceased to be a Fifth Circuit clerk. But I thought I would note this history here, nonetheless. A post about conflicts of interest should probably err on the safe side in such  matters!

 

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What Will China Do With The Hong Kong Protests?

Authored by Lawrence Franklin via The Gatestone Institute,

Protests in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China (SAR) — which began in early June with demonstrators denouncing a proposed law to permit the extradition of SAR residents to the mainland to be tried in Chinese Communist courts — have entered their 12th week and show no signs of abating. If anything, they are becoming increasingly strident, with calls for the resignation of Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s administration, among other broadening demands . The unfolding events present the Communist Party leadership in Beijing with a serious dilemma: to quell the protests with military force or wait until they die down.

According to a recent analysis in Bloomberg:

“In theory, [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] could quickly do away with Hong Kong’s autonomy and activate the city’s garrison overnight. But the likelihood of mobilizing troops remains low and the fallout from doing so — for both China and Xi personally — is potentially much higher than dealing with the political and economic repercussions of the protests, not least because he’s already engaged in a damaging trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump.”

The Hong Kong protests reportedly were a topic of debate at this year’s annual meeting of current and former Communist Chinese leaders, which was held in Beidaihe in early August. The discussions likely included possible courses of action that the Xi government could take, such as encouraging Hong Kong’s business community to call for an end to the demonstrations, for the purpose of restoring economic stability by reversing recent negative trends in retail sales, tourist-generated income and nervousness among foreign investors.

Pictured: Riot police detain a pro-democracy protester on August 24, 2019 in Hong Kong. (Photo by Anthony Kwan/Getty Images)

Beijing is currently exercising some version of this option, but by depicting protesters in a poor light — accusing them of being “terrorists” manipulated by “foreign forces” bent on harming China — and warning them to stop “playing with fire.”

China’s state media accused the demonstrators of conducting a “color revolution.” The name reflects Beijing’s sensitivity to how many of the former satellites of the USSR successfully seceded from the Soviet Empire, employing different colors of the rainbow as a symbol of their revolutionary intent.

Beijing also attempted to discredit the protesters through hundreds of fake accounts on social media. To their credit, Facebook and Twitter discontinued the Chinese government’s access to those accounts.

A more forceful option that the Xi government may decide to pursue involves the infiltration of Hong Kong’s local police force with the People’s Liberation Army Garrison. Beijing cannot count on the loyalty of the Hong Kong police force, many of whose members are close relatives of the protesters.

Moreover, the Hong Kong police have proven unable to control, much less terminate, the protests. Acknowledging this reality, Carrie Lam could request the intervention of the People’s Armed Police (PAP), a paramilitary force stationed in the nearby town of Shenzen in mainland China’s Guangdong Province.

It may be, however, that Lam, a Catholic, would be loath to make such a request — formally — as a heavy-handed Chinese intervention could endanger the independence of Hong Kong’s economic, political and religious institutions.

Alternatively, the People’s Republic of China Liaison Office might bypass Lam’s local administration and order the deployment of the PAP, China’s most effective arm against domestic strife. If this option is exercised, Hong Kong would be completely bypassed by the Chinese Defense Ministry.

Any move by Beijing aggressively to suppress the people of Hong Kong’s demand for the full implementation of their democratic rights would further hobble foreign investment, thereby seriously eroding the economic blueprint of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. A military solution would render meaningless Xi’s flowery rhetoric of a “win-win” international system, and reveal it as part of its scheme to fulfill its global hegemonic ambitions. Mainland and archipelago Southeast Asian nations would likely seek alternatives to Chinese regional leadership. One such alternative might be a U.S. Indo-Pacific community of nations.

In addition, any crackdown on the protesters in Hong Kong would likely dissuade Taiwan, and likely everyone else, from considering support for Beijing’s “one country, two systems” policy to solve the island’s standoff with the mainland’s People’s Republic.

China’s ruling Communist Party might decide , therefore, that an armed suppression of the Hong Kong demonstrations would be too costly, economically, politically and in terms of public relations. If so, the Xi administration may decide, instead, to tamp down the spiraling crisis, by ordering Lam to meet with protest leaders and agree to shelve extradition legislation and to establish a commission to investigate local police brutality — both original demands of the protestors.

Although such a maneuver could benefit Xi’s reputation internationally, his rivals within the Communist Party might criticize him for what they would consider to be acts of weakness and capitulation to the protesters, possibly encouraging what Xi might consider the greatest threat: opposition from his own 1.5 billion people on the mainland, who might also secretly be wishing for more freedom in their lives. China is a totalitarian power that cannot brook any source of independent thinking. Fearing that the Hong Kong protests could prove contagious, Beijing is more likely to crush, rather than cede, to the protesters.

Xi may assess that any opprobrium endured by Beijing if it used force against the protesters would dissipate, just as it did 30 years ago when former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the 1989 massacre of student protesters in Tiananmen Square.

As China continues ostensibly to weigh its options, then, any optimism on the part of the protesters and the West appears to be premature.

The real “elephant in the room” not being addressed, however, is what the Hong Kong protests are really about: 2047, when Hong Kong is supposed to be handed over to China without any “one country, two systems” protection. What then?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LmuFp7 Tyler Durden

“It Scares Me To Death”: Coding Errors In Sex Robots Make Them Prone To Violence And Strangling Humans

He’s the whistleblower that the future deserves and that the future needs: one expert is sounding the alarm on sex robots, according to The Daily Star.

Oh, and his name happens to be Brick Dollbanger (Yes, it’s his real name. Yes, we checked several sources). Dollbanger, a doll collector, has said that “violent repercussions” are possible if the sex robot industry isn’t regulated properly. He says that one simple “coding error” could turn sex robots against their owners. 

“It scares me to death, it’s a machine and it’s always going to be a machine,” Dollbanger said. He has close ties to doll manufacturers Realbotix and Abyss. 

He continued, describing in horrifying detail, his vision for the future of the sex robot industry: 

“If you’ve watched the movies, Ex-Machina, because I honestly believe synthetics are going to look very similar to that movie. It’s not going to be something you can hit with a pipe and it’s going to fall apart.”

He continued: “I’ve always said, when a synthetic can support itself, that synthetic is going to be much stronger than a normal human. It’s going to be more durable, instead of having bones it’s going to have high impact, plastic or aluminium frame, it’s going to be very strong, and it won’t get tired, it won’t stop unless it runs out of an energy supply.“

Which, we guess, could be a positive or a negative, depending on how you look at it…

Dollbanger continued: “Unless you can stop it with some kind of projectile, like a gun or something like that, if this thing got out of control it could do some serious damage. One line of bad code, as simple as that, one line of bad code. If you make one mistake and you have a line of bad code in there and it hits this line of bad code, depending on what it’s doing or where it’s at or numerous other instances, it could just decide this is what it’s supposed to do.”

He continued laying out his vision of a sex filled robot utopia: “…put it this way, it can put its arm around your neck and just stop you from breathing, and you wouldn’t be able to get away from it, something as simple as that, a simple hug could be a constriction that could literally compress your chest and airway and stop you breathing.”

We wrote back in June that regulating the sex robot industry would be the next big challenge for the government. 

We asked the question of how the US Consumer Product Safety Commission should regulate the hazards associated with these robots. We noted that existing products weren’t well regulated and that this could be cause for concern given the obvious – and excrutiatingly painful – ways they could be harmful to their users.

What if parts of a robot are manufactured with lead paint or a toxin? And what if the robot, with the mechanical strength of five human beings accidentally crushes a human’s finger – or a human’s other parts?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zyqiBG Tyler Durden

What Percentage Of U.S. Workers Are Union Members?

Authored by Zach Hrynowski of Gallup.com

As Americans prepare to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Labor Day on Monday, Gallup’s latest measurement on labor union membership finds that 10% of full- and part-time U.S. workers belong to a union. This marks the second year in a row of the lowest level of union membership in over 15 years: from 2003 to 2017, union workers made up an average of 13% of the American workforce.

  • Over one-third of government employees (37%) belong to a union, versus 6% of all private sector employees.

  • Workers in the South are the least likely of any U.S. region to report being part of a union, with 5% saying they belong to a union. That contrasts with 15% and 14% of workers in the East and West, respectively. In the Midwest — where organized labor and right-to-work laws have been the subject of intense political debate in recent years — 10% of workers say they are union members.

  • 14% of workers reporting an annual household income of $100,000 or more are members of a union, compared with 3% of those in households earning less than $40,000 per year.

  • Employed Americans aged 35 to 54 (13%) are more than twice as likely as those aged 18 to 34 (6%) to be members of organized labor.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZHpfKq Tyler Durden

Taxi Medallion Debt Catches A Bid After Prices Plunge 90% Over Last Decade

After years of taxi medallion prices plunging, leading to a slew of taxi driver suicides that we have documented exhaustively, taxi medallion debt (secured by medallions) has finally caught a bid from an unlikely buyer, according to Bloomberg.

For midwest money manager O’Brien-Staley, the disaster that is the New York City taxi industry appears opportunistic. They have acquired hundreds of medallion loans secured by more than 400 medallions from Signature Bank, according to regulatory filings and interviews. This represents about 3% of the over 13,000 medallions that are in use or in storage in New York City.

Lenders like Signature and Capital One have suffered increasing losses on medallion loans as Uber and Lyft have both up-ended the industry. This has also led many cab drivers, who once banked on their medallions for retirement, to severe financial distress.

Meanwhile, regulators are investigating predatory lending within the medallion industry and prices for a medallion have fallen to as low as $110,000 from about $1 million at the start of the decade. Banks that haven’t refinanced their loans and don’t want to compromise with borrowers may see selling to private equity and hedge funds as an opportunity, also.

Matthew Daus, an attorney at Windels Marx who formerly served as commissioner of New York’s taxi and limousine bureau said:

“There are other players resurfacing. Some banks may cut their losses once and for all.”

A spokesperson for Signature confirmed that the company made a bulk sale of performing loans to O-Brien-Staley earlier this year, representing more than 400 medallions. Signature’s financials disclosed about $46.4 million in loans tied to medallions and $4.6 million in repossessed medallions.

O-Brein-Staley’s website says that it specializes in “unloved” credits and the firm has about $1.3 billion in assets under management.

It is now one of the largest lenders against medallions.

Andrew Murstein, president of Medallion Financial Corp., which originates and services taxi loans, concluded: “It is another positive sign for the industry that another fund with a successful track record believes that medallions are a good investment.” 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZCNnSn Tyler Durden

A Climate Alarmist Sued A Skeptic For Defamation… And Lost

Authored by Onar Am via LibertyNation.com,

The Supreme Court of British Columbia recently dismissed a defamation lawsuit by celebrity climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann against global warming skeptic climatologist Dr. Tim Ball. Mann must pay the full legal costs to the defendant. The ruling is explosive because it means that Ball’s claim that Mann was a scientific fraudster is now supported by the court.

Background

In 1999, Mann published a 1000-year-long global temperature reconstruction from tree rings that severely undercut the then-accepted knowledge of climate. IPCC’s 1995 Second Assessment Report acknowledged that it was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than today and that a significant cooling called the Little Ice Age followed and lasted until the end of the 19th century.

Mann’s reconstruction demolished that view and replaced our climate history with something that looks like a hockey stick: For 900 years, the temperature was a slightly falling straight line and then, during the period of human activity, rapid warming in the 20th century.

Climate catastrophists immediately seized on this persuasive graph and made Mann the poster boy of the IPCC, which was now thoroughly controlled by radical greens appointed by leftist politicians.

Wegman Graph

There was only one problem with the graph: It was junk science. Future university courses in statistics will undoubtedly teach the hockey stick as a classic case of faulty methodology. In layman terms: Mann was using a statistical technique that cherry-picked the data needed to make the hockey stick shape.

In 2006, Congress commissioned three statisticians led by Dr. Edward Wegman to produce the so-called Wegman report on the controversy. The report proved that the technique Mann used could create any desired outcome and demonstrated this fact by creating the shape of the global temperature data from 1995.

If Mann had produced this graph in a graduate thesis in statistics, he would have flunked.

Hiding The Decline

Canadian engineer Stephen McIntyre spent several years after the publication of the hockey stick graph trying to prove that it was faulty. He ultimately prevailed – but, during this debacle, Mann engaged in what many have described as intellectually dishonest or even fraudulent behavior. He refused to release the full data and source files that he used in his infamous 1999 publication.

In 2011, Tim Ball summarized this by stating that Michael Mann “belonged in a pen, not in Penn University.” This statement was the basis for Mann’s defamation lawsuit.

Ball defended his remark by saying that if Mann released his data, it would prove that he was a fraudster. Nine years of delay tactics later, the court dismissed the case because Mann refused to release the data that could prove his honesty.

While this technically is not a victory for Ball, it is hard to imagine a legitimate reason for a tax-funded scientist to refuse to release the data upon which the global climate disaster narrative largely rests.

Dubious Science

Under normal circumstances, Mann’s career would have been lying in a pool of utter disgrace long ago. Instead, he is still one of the leading scientists in the climate catastrophe mafia. His colleagues had to defend him because if they ever were to admit that the hockey stick graph is junk science, it would discredit the IPCC and the entire field of paleoclimatology that hailed Mann’s result.

They have doubled down and used political pull and a friendly media to the scandal. So far, they have succeeded, but for every year, the gap between the climate models and reality is widening. At some point, nothing can hide the shaky ground upon which the climate hysteria stands.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2PtdlnE Tyler Durden

Meet The Robotic Welder That Will Soon Be Putting Construction Workers Out Of Jobs

While claiming to address the “shortage” of skilled welders, a company called Hirebotics has now engineered the first “robotic welding solution for hire”. The automated welder is paid by the hour, just like skilled manual labor, and is far less likely to need a bathroom break and/or file a grievance with the local union. 

Claiming that traditional robotic welding automation has been a “poor solution” for most fabricators, the company is now offering a product called the BotX welder, which it says can accelerate business growth while eliminating the “headaches” of finding skilled welders. 

The company, which was started with the goal of helping along manufacturers, says that the BotX Welder bridges the gap between inflexible, expensive and higher productive traditional automation and manual welding with skilled welders. It says that the BotX can be used both as a tool for a company’s manual welders to get more done each day, and also as a robotic welder that is set up by a skilled welder, but then run by an untrained operator, via app.

The company claims there are four key advantages to its solution:

  1. Pay by the Hour Automation

  2. No-Programming Robotic Welding

  3. Robotic Welding Library Developed by International Experts

  4. Industry leading 24/7 support

The company charges $33 per “productive” hour per system to hire its bots. 

The company’s mobile app says that it offers “real-time monitoring of your robotic welder tracking parts produced, consumption of welding consumables such as gas and wire, and productivity metrics like arc on time.” The app also includes a pre-set welding library specifically tuned for robotic welding. 

And of course – what would any new technological product, run via app, be without offering a “community”?

“when you hire a BotX Welder for your business, you are joining a community of like-minded users that share our philosophy and culture of helping others get the most out of robotic welding,” the company’s website says. 

Who wants to sit around and talk about robotic welding all day? A little marketing advice for the future: spare us the bullsh*t, you had us at saving money.

Video of the BotX at work can be seen here.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HDcb2i Tyler Durden

Leftist Politician Decides Cleaning Poop Off Seattle’s Streets With A Pressure Washer Is Racist

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Even though the courthouse and plenty of Seattle’s streets are covered in human fecal matter thanks to the socialist policies that have pushed people into poverty, a democrat has decided the streets cannot be cleaned up using a pressure washer.  Using this method to get the feces off the streets is racist said city council member Larry Gossett in a tweet.

The King County courthouse in downtown Seattle is located near the social service centers and several homeless shelters. A tent city has sprung up in the little park outside. There have been several assaults on courthouse employees, and even two attacks on jurors In May and June, leading to citizens summoned for jury duty to voice concerns about their safety, according to a report by RT. 

Judges Laura Inveen and Jim Rogers, backed by King County Sheriff John Urquhart, asked the county to do something about the violence and the fecal matter that continues to pile up, the Seattle Times reported last month. Among their requests was a daily power-wash of the sidewalks, which “reek of urine and excrement.”

Bu Councilmember Larry Gossett objected to the measure because power-washing “brought back images of the use of hoses against civil-rights activists,” according to the Seattle Times.

High-pressure water hoses were used by police in Birmingham, Alabama against civil rights protesters back in 1963. They have also been used to wash sidewalks in most American cities on a daily basis ever since, without being accused of racism – until now. We have democrats to thank for the ridiculous and unending racism that’s lingering.

This is 2019 when everything is racist – the New York Times says so – and anyone who doesn’t call it out is assumed to be an enabler, according to the rules of the “woke” cancel culture. So, the sidewalks of Seattle must remain covered in human waste, lest someone gets offended. -RT

“Gossett’s concern here is nothing short of insane,” wrote Kat Timpf in National Review. “What else are you going to do — not wash them? Because I really, really reject the idea that leaving sidewalks covered with human bodily waste is the less offensive move in this (or any) situation.” And many on Twitter agreed that Gossett’s view was insane.

Gossett claimed pressure washers were racist in 2017, however, it’s 2019, the streets are still filled with human poop and the solution from democrats is to not wash them. Because…racism. This is now our dystopian reality.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NNkpsR Tyler Durden