North Korea Warns Of Border Intrusions By South’s Navy Amid Search For Slain Official Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/27/2020 – 20:30
Despite Kim Jong-Un offering a nearly unheard of apology for last week’s shooting death of a South Korean fisheries official after he was found to have breached the disputed border in waters of the western coast, tensions are still running high which could set off further conflict.
North Korea’s military says it is searching for the charred remains of the official, after its border patrol soldiers had burned it on coronavirus fears. But now Pyongyang is warning Seoul not to interfere, given the south’s increased naval maneuvers in the region off Yeonpyeong Island. It appears both sides are conducting a major search of the area.
“We urge the south side to immediately halt the intrusion across the military demarcation line in the west sea that may lead to escalation of tensions,” North Korean state news agency KCNA said on Sunday.
Republic of Korea Navy maneuvers file image, via The Korea Times.
Apparently both sides are searching in order to recover the body on either side of the maritime border, while issuing warnings not to venture across the ambiguously defined demarcation line.
“The South has been searching only in waters south of the Northern Limit Line, a contested sea demarcation between the two Koreas that dates to the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said, quoting an unnamed coast guard official,” Reuters reports.
South Korea has mobilized 39 vessels, including 16 naval ships, and six aircraft for the search, which continued on Sunday despite the North Korean complaints, Yonhap said. North Korea was beginning its own search operation to recover the body, KCNA said.
The whole crisis was sparked when on Thursday the South Korean man had reportedly disappeared from a boat close to the the western border island of Yeonpyeong. He was reportedly set upon by a North Korean patrol vessel while wearing a life jacket. Seoul defense sources told AFP that “circumstances tell us that there was an intent to defect.”
That’s when the north’s border patrol questioned him from the boat, and then shot multiple times, killing the man and afterward burning his body.
Kim Jong-Un later issued an unprecedented message saying that the north was “very sorry” over the “unexpected, unfortunate incident” which was expressed in a letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2S0OmXc Tyler Durden
Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s TikTok Ban Hours Before Midnight Deadline Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/27/2020 – 20:18
Update (2015ET): Judge Nichols has – at least temporarily – blocked the White House’s TikTok ban, and sparred Google and Apple from an order to remove the app from their app stores at midnight.
Trump’s ban on Tiktok is temporarily blocked by federal judge
As we noted below, several reporters believed this was the expected outcome, based on the judge’s questions during today’s emergency hearing. The first of two critical deadlines loomed at mighnight, but it appears the judge has – as expected – adhered to the precedent set in a ruling averting a similar block on WeChat.
Before making his ruling on whether the Trump Administration’s national security concerns were urgent enough to justify the ban, the judge said he would solicit feedback from both parties, which was cited as the primary reason for the delay. The 90-minute hearing took place Sunday morning in a Washington DC courtroom.
What happens next is uncertain, a quality that has permeated the administration’s crackdown and subsequent race for a deal. The administration via the Department of Commerce has set Nov. 12 to be the final post-election deadline, and there’s still plenty of time for appeals should the Trump Administration choose to push ahead with its case. Last week, Chinese media published a series of editorials implying that the TikTok deal was in jeopardy of being quashed by Beijing, while President Trump reiterated demands for American control or TikTok would be shunted out of another massive market (it has already been banned in India, along with hundreds of other Chinese apps).
* * *
The day has finally arrived. During a 90-minute emergency hearing Sunday morning, lawyers from the DoJ faced off with the legal team from ByteDance in arguments before Judge Carl Nichols of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, who has said he release his decision by late Sunday.
That decision comes in response to TikTok’s latest legal action – a request for an emergency injunction – to try and circumvent a series of executive orders signed by President Trump that seek to completely shut down the app by No. 12. If allowed to stand, TikTok would be booted from American app stores, as of midnight, with more restrictions set to come into effect after the election.
So far, this is the biggest hint that we’ve gotten on the judge’s decision, hinting that whether TikTok has been accorded “due process” might be a key issue in the judge’s thinking.
Judge says when he issues his decision, he’ll publicly grant or deny an injunction. But the contents of the *opinion* will be sealed til TikTok and the US government get back to him on what needs to be redacted.
And while a decision might not arrive until late tonight, since the judge is requiring both sides to respond to his opinion before it’s unsealed.
Too early to tell how the judge may decide, but he appeared to tip his hand slightly when pressing DOJ to defend why the restrictions gave TikTok enough due process. It seems, he said, that: pic.twitter.com/7y0wjmwrPb
Axios’ editor Dan Primack believes the odds are that TikTok’s request will be granted, given the precedent from the WeChat ruling earlier this month.
TikTok ruling by EOD.
Odds are company gets TRO request approved. Becuz: Judge skeptical of gov “status quo” argument on Thurs, WeChat quasi-precedent, EO text and process was super sloppy & can grant TRO w/out disputing nat sec argument.
Here’s a redacted briefing outlining the rest of the government’s argument, the most thorough explanation yet, which was apparently filed Friday night, but only released Sunday afternoon. In its ruling, the DoJ accuses TikTok of being a “mouthpiece of the Communist Party” and alleges that the company has an “informal” relationship with the state security apparatus due to Chinese laws compelling cooperation by domestic companies.
Beijing-controlled papers published a flurry of editorials opposing the deal last week. ByteDance’s venture investors, including General Atlantic Partners and Sequoia Capital, created the structure that makes it look like TikTok will largely be owned by US investors, though this fact has apparently been disputed as both Beijing and Washington want the other to come away with majority control – one of the key sticking points in the talks, according to press reports. According to the structure, Oracle will manage TikTok in its cloud, a highly lucrative business, while ByteDance would retain control of TikTok’s content-recommendation algorithm, seen as its “secret sauce”. An IPO would then be planned for some time next year.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2EDNg0l Tyler Durden
New CDC Estimates: Fatality Rate For COVID-19 Drops Again And May Surprise You Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/27/2020 – 20:00
Submitted by Mark Glennon of Wirepoints
What’s are the real chances of dying if you are infected with COVID-19? You’ll probably be surprised how low they are according to new numbers from the Center for Disease Control. We’ll state those numbers simply for those of you who aren’t crazy about math.
The CDC’s new estimate, for the first time, is broken down by age groups. Here is what the CDC calls its “current best estimate” of chances of dying from the virus if you get infected:
1 out of 34,000 for ages 0 to 19;
1 out of 5,000 for ages 20 to 49;
1 out of 200 for ages 50 to 69; and
1 out of 20 for ages 70 and up.
Here’s another way to look at the same numbers. If you get infected, your chances of surviving are as follows:
The CDC’s numbers are actually published as what’s called the “Infection Fatality Ratio” or IFR. The relevant portion of their chart is reproduced below. We’ve just stated their numbers a different way and rounded a bit. IFR includes, as those who were “infected,” those who got the virus but never got sick or displayed symptoms.
The CDC’s “best estimate” may be off and it offered other scenarios, also shown in the chart below. They are all very low, however, as you can see. For those age 20-49, for example, even under the worse case scenario, the IFR is only .0003. That means your chances of dying even if you got infected would be 1 out of 3,333.
Estimates of COVID’s lethality have been dropping regularly. In March, when most of the nation went into lockdown, Dr. Anthony Fauci estimated the mortality rate at about 2% and the World Health Organization pegged it at about 3.4%. Both are far higher than the current CDC estimate.
Those earlier numbers, which were far more frightening, got extensive press coverage. Very little media attention, however, has gone toward the new numbers.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden is getting a lot of heat for his outrageous comments comparing President Donald Trump Saturday to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. The backlash against those comments has been fierce on Twitter, with many people asking for an apology for the insulting and inaccurate comment.
Biden made the comments during an interview on MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle. She asked how he would handle and respond to Trump’s repeated claims that the Democratic Party, along with Biden, were pushing a Marxist, socialist agenda.
Trump is like “Goebbels,” said Biden.
“You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge…I think people see very clearly the difference between me and Donald Trump.”
“Trump is clearing protests in front of the White House that are peaceful, you know, with the military,” Biden went on to say.
“This guy is more Castro than Churchill.”
Adam Milstein, a well-known and well respected Jewish philanthropist, said in a Tweet, “Goebbels helped carry out the systematic murder of more than six million Jewish people.”
“This is unacceptable, offensive and demeans the memory of the Holocaust,” Milstein, who is also a friend of mine for full disclosure stated. “Biden must apologize!”
The tragedy, in my opinion, is that many anti-Trump Biden supporters also seem to be perpetuating these dangerous comments. Moreover, there are also many antiSemitic tweets on Twitter and the platform is doing little to stop that propaganda. SAD!
Biden should be ashamed of himself and like Milstein has demanded, along with many others, he must apologize.
.@JoeBiden liken @realDonaldTrump to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels helped carry out the systematic murder of more than six million Jewish people. This is unacceptable, offensive and demeans the memory of the Holocaust. Biden must apologize! pic.twitter.com/HgncgsHQbe
NYT Publishes 10,000 Word Summary Of 20 Years Of Trump Tax Returns; President Calls It “Totally Fake News” Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/27/2020 – 18:41
With the news and outrage cycle in need of a fresh Trump reset now that the first presidential debate is just two days away, on Sunday afternoon – almost exactly two years after the NYT first published a report alleging how Trump “engaged in suspect tax schemes as he reaped riches from his father“, the NYT published what to many anti-Trumpers is the holy grail of Trump bomshells: a 10,000+ word summary of more than two decades of Trump tax documents which reveal that the president paid no income taxes for 10 of the 15 years before he was elected president, with his income tax payments in 2016 and 2017 amounting to just $750. The reason, as was already largely known, Trump had generated nearly $1 billion in casino-linked losses in the 1990s and onward (incidentally, loss carryfowards or NOLs are perfectly acceptable and legal instrument which anyone can apply against future income) and which offset much of the money that he made.
The NYT also claims the documents show Trump losing millions of dollars from his golf courses, “vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due” and that Trump earned $73 million abroad.
Combined, Trump initially paid almost $95 million in federal income taxes over the 18 years. He later managed to recoup most of that money, with interest, by applying for and receiving a $72.9 million tax refund, starting in 2010.
“The Apprentice,” along with the licensing and endorsement deals that flowed from his expanding celebrity, brought Mr. Trump a total of $427.4 million, The Times’s analysis of the records found. He invested much of that in a collection of businesses, mostly golf courses, that in the years since have steadily devoured cash — much as the money he secretly received from his father financed a spree of quixotic overspending that led to his collapse in the early 1990s.
The NYT report focuses closely on the specifics of the $73 million refund:
A large refund has been crucial to his tax avoidance.
Mr. Trump did face large tax bills after the initial success of “The Apprentice” television show, but he erased most of these tax payments through a refund. Combined, Mr. Trump initially paid almost $95 million in federal income taxes over the 18 years. He later managed to recoup most of that money, with interest, by applying for and receiving a $72.9 million tax refund, starting in 2010. The refund reduced his total federal income tax bill between 2000 and 2017 to an annual average of $1.4 million. By comparison, the average American in the top .001 percent of earners paid about $25 million in federal income taxes each year over the same span.
The $72.9 million refund has since become the subject of a long-running battle with the I.R.S.
When applying for the refund, he cited a giant financial loss that may be related to the failure of his Atlantic City casinos. Publicly, he also claimed that he had fully surrendered his stake in the casinos. But the real story may be different from the one he told. Federal law holds that investors can claim a total loss on an investment, as Mr. Trump did, only if they receive nothing in return. Mr. Trump did appear to receive something in return: 5 percent of the new casino company that formed when he renounced his stake. In 2011, the I.R.S. began an audit reviewing the legitimacy of the refund. Almost a decade later, the case remains unresolved, for unknown reasons, and could ultimately end up in federal court, where it could become a matter of public record.
A visual summary prepared by the NYT of Trump’s profit and losses is shown below:
One argument made by the NYT is that by the time Mr. Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, “his revenue streams from “The Apprentice” and licensing were drying up”, his “proceeds from fame continued to tumble, falling below $10 million in 2017 and to $2.9 million in 2018” and Trump “was in need of financial reinvigoration.” This is where the idea to run for president came form.
The question then is, since there appears to be no discovery of legal malfeasance, did Trump’s businesses benefit from the presidency which the NYT responds affirmatively “in some respects” pointing to the flood of new members in Mar a Lago “starting in 2015 allowed him to pocket millions more dollars a year from the business.”
And without a blockbuster “gotcha” that would confirm that Trump had violated the law, the NYT simply concludes by noting that “in the end the financial picture for Mr. Trump is fraught” and that “as he approaches one of the most consequential elections in American history — down in most polls, under I.R.S. audit and heavily in debt — his businesses may not be well equipped to navigate what lies ahead.”
While notable, and hardly unique to just the president, this is probably not the damning climax so many in the anti-Trump field were expecting in the 4-year-long crusade to get Trump’s tax returns. Oh yes, and then there is the audit, the same audit Trump has said prevents him from publishing his tax filings:
Hanging over his head is the audit. Should the I.R.S. reverse the huge refund he received 10 years ago, Mr. Trump could be on the hook for more than $100 million.
Since the question of where all this information came from will likely be scrutinized, the NYT noted that “all of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it” adding that “while most of the tax data has not previously been made public, The Times was able to verify portions of it by comparing it with publicly available information and confidential records previously obtained by The Times.”
Those arguing that the report may paint a one-sided picture of Trump’s tax returns will be out of luck hoping that the NYT would publish the source data:
“We are not making [Trump’s tax] records themselves public because we do not want to jeopardize our sources, who have taken enormous personal risks to help inform the public.”
The article also admits “the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled,” and also kills off the idea that President Trump’s finances were somehow linked to Russia. The piece reads: “Nor do [the tax returns] reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.”
Of course, to the rabid Russian conspiracy theorists, not even this admission will suffice as Matt Taibbi put it succinctly:
Here @davidfrum doubles down on his witch-hunting propaganda about Trump tax returns, classifying those who advised caution as “people who defended Trump.” We weren’t defending Trump: we were defending the basic press standard of not making unsupportable public allegations. https://t.co/YzY0F6zbot
For those pressed for time, here is a recap of the key revelations in the NYT article, which the NYT recapped in a separate article:
Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750.
He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
Many of his signature businesses, including his golf courses, report losing large amounts of money — losses that have helped him to lower his taxes.
The financial pressure on him is increasing as hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he personally guaranteed are soon coming due.
Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.
Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.
As president, he has received more money from foreign sources and U.S. interest groups than previously known. The records do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
While the media will be going through all of these revelations with a fine-toothed comb, it’s also notable what the report fails to show: unless the NYT has saved the kicker for a subsequent article, “there appears to be no wrongdoing, no Russia ties, and nothing of substance beyond what most corporations do”, as the National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam writes.
Also of note, the New York Times failed to include the details of the returns in its reporting, admitting in its own article: “The Times declined to provide the records, in order to protect its sources.”
When asked during a Sunday news conference about the NYT revelations, Trump called the central claim the NYT makes – that he only paid $750.00 in federal income taxes – “fake news.”
In a statement to The Times, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten said “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” and reportedly took issue with the amount of taxes Trump has paid: “Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3mXinpa Tyler Durden
It is natural to want a President to appoint justices that share your jurisprudential views. Originalists want Presidents to appoint originalist justices. Living constitutionalists want Presidents to appoint living constitutionalist justices. And so on.
But when the President is from the other party, or is likely to pick a justice with a different jurisprudential philosophy, what sort of justice should we want the President to pick? An excellent one, or so suggests Harvard’s Noah Feldman in his recent column, “Amy Coney Barrett Deserves to Be on the Supreme Court.”
As Feldman explains, he would prefer a justice that shares his legal views, but given that President Trump is going to appoint a conservative, he explains why liberals should want it to be someone like Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
Writes Feldman:
Some might argue that you should want your probable intellectual opponent on the court to be the weakest possible, to help you win. But the Supreme Court is not and should not be a battlefield of winner-take-all political or ideological division.
It would be naïve to deny that there is plenty of politics in constitutional interpretation. There are winners and losers every time the justices take a stance on an important issue of law. Nevertheless, the institutional purpose of the Supreme Court is to find a resolution of political conflicts through reason, interpretation, argument and vote-casting, not pure power politics. It follows that the social purpose of the Supreme Court is best served when justices on all sides of the issues make the strongest possible arguments, and do so in a way that facilitates debate and conversation.
As Feldman explains, this is why he believes Barrett will be a good justice, albeit one with whom he will regularly disagree:
I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them. . . .
it is better for the republic to have a principled, brilliant lawyer on the bench than a weaker candidate. That’s Barrett.
I agree with Feldman. When Democrats are selecting judges and justices, I want them to select the smartest and most principled nominees (and I have consistently argued that such nominees should be confirmed). Given the ideological makeup of the courts will be determined by the ideological preferences of nominating presidents, we are all better off when judges, whatever their underlying jurisprudential philosophies, are thoughtful, intelligent, principled, and discerning. Judge Barrett clearly satisfies that standard, and I hope future nominees will as well.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/335f8Uu
via IFTTT
It is natural to want a President to appoint justices that share your jurisprudential views. Originalists want Presidents to appoint originalist justices. Living constitutionalists want Presidents to appoint living constitutionalist justices. And so on.
But when the President is from the other party, or is likely to pick a justice with a different jurisprudential philosophy, what sort of justice should we want the President to pick? An excellent one, or so suggests Harvard’s Noah Feldman in his recent column, “Amy Coney Barrett Deserves to Be on the Supreme Court.”
As Feldman explains, he would prefer a justice that shares his legal views, but given that President Trump is going to appoint a conservative, he explains why liberals should want it to be someone like Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
Writes Feldman:
Some might argue that you should want your probable intellectual opponent on the court to be the weakest possible, to help you win. But the Supreme Court is not and should not be a battlefield of winner-take-all political or ideological division.
It would be naïve to deny that there is plenty of politics in constitutional interpretation. There are winners and losers every time the justices take a stance on an important issue of law. Nevertheless, the institutional purpose of the Supreme Court is to find a resolution of political conflicts through reason, interpretation, argument and vote-casting, not pure power politics. It follows that the social purpose of the Supreme Court is best served when justices on all sides of the issues make the strongest possible arguments, and do so in a way that facilitates debate and conversation.
As Feldman explains, this is why he believes Barrett will be a good justice, albeit one with whom he will regularly disagree:
I disagree with much of her judicial philosophy and expect to disagree with many, maybe even most of her future votes and opinions. Yet despite this disagreement, I know her to be a brilliant and conscientious lawyer who will analyze and decide cases in good faith, applying the jurisprudential principles to which she is committed. Those are the basic criteria for being a good justice. Barrett meets and exceeds them. . . .
it is better for the republic to have a principled, brilliant lawyer on the bench than a weaker candidate. That’s Barrett.
I agree with Feldman. When Democrats are selecting judges and justices, I want them to select the smartest and most principled nominees (and I have consistently argued that such nominees should be confirmed). Given the ideological makeup of the courts will be determined by the ideological preferences of nominating presidents, we are all better off when judges, whatever their underlying jurisprudential philosophies, are thoughtful, intelligent, principled, and discerning. Judge Barrett clearly satisfies that standard, and I hope future nominees will as well.
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/335f8Uu
via IFTTT
Reaganomics, Clintonomics, Obamanomics, and Trumponomics. Abenomics is an economic philosophy named after Prime Minister Abe. It is a multipronged strategy that involves increasing Japan’s money supply, enhancing government spending, and reforming the world’s third-largest economy to make it more competitive. He launched Abenomics once he started his second term in December 2012, announcing that his government would “implement bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy that encourages private investment, and with these three pillars, achieve results.” In other words, Abe promised to reverse the country’s stagnation and supercharge Japan. But what did he achieve after eight years as head of state?
The Fruits of Abenomics
In the aftermath of the Lost Decade, Tokyo never fully recovered from this abysmal period. Abe enjoyed electoral success because he championed economic policies that would lead to prosperity and growth. However, Abe’s government fell short of the $5.6 trillion growth target laid out by the prime minister.
The Nikkei 225 stock market index has done incredibly well under Abe, as it has more than doubled since 2012. This was achieved because a critical component of Abenomics was the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) large-scale monetary easing putsch that involved subzero interest rates, enormous asset purchases, and yield curve control. This triggered massive asset inflation and a weakened yen, which boosted its exports and allowed Japanese firms to expand their footprints in foreign markets.
But what about common folk? Wage growth has stagnated for the last thirty years. Unlike its Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) partners, average real wages have flatlined since 1991, and it continued under Abe, despite his cabinet mandating higher salaries. Although deflation is often associated with the Japanese economy, consumer and producer prices have gone up since 2014. When you factor in an unwelcomed sales tax hike and a depreciated yen, the cost of living became a tad too high.
The most significant burden for the Japanese population will inevitably be government debt. Tokyo generated international headlines when it reported a 1 quadrillion yen public debt. There is no argument that the national debt and the budget deficit will explode following the covid-19 pandemic. Before the virus outbreak, the prime minister did introduce a plan to organize its financial mess. But once the coronavirus gripped the Japanese economy, the government abandoned fiscal responsibility and instead implemented a series of exorbitant stimulus and relief packages. Right now, spending is about survival. In the future, the astronomical debt levels will hinder expansionary fiscal efforts, which would impact the state-dependent economy.
In the end, somebody is going to have to pay the bill. Seniors over sixty-five account for a third of the population, young people are not having children, and the current system is bloated. These are indicators that a lot of change is needed, but it is unclear if the Diet has an appetite to modify public policy.
Abenomics Is Here to Stay
Abe said that he would officially resign when the Liberal Democrat Party chooses his successor. No matter who is selected to lead Abe until the next election, Abenomics is here to stay, even if the opposition forms a government. Tokyo would have no other choice but to embark upon a perpetual campaign of printing and spending money in the postcoronavirus economy, particularly if a second wave strikes. The next leader might tinker around with altered approaches, but it will be more of the same.
Japan is in a recession, debt to gross domestic product is more than 200 percent, and the many purchasing managers’ index (PMI) readings suggest business activity is still contracting. Japan would need Abenomics right now, even if this neo-Keynesian approach to central planning failed during the boom phase of the business cycle. Japan will never kick its easy money addiction, but that is par for the course of the rest of the planet that has adopted ultraloose fiscal and monetary policy.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2G8YV7P Tyler Durden
Trump Administration, CDC Sued By Landlords Over ‘Unconstitutional’ Moratorium On Evictions Tyler Durden
Sun, 09/27/2020 – 17:55
A national moratorium on evictions is being challenged in at least two lawsuits filed in federal court on the grounds that denying landlords the right to evict tenants for nonpayment is unconstitutional.
The National Apartment Association – a trade group representing the apartment rental housing industry, joined a lawsuit filed in a Georgia federal district court against the Trump administration and the Centers for Disease Control. The original suit was brought by a group of landlords and the New Civil Liberties Alliance – a nonprofit group which seeks to protect constitutional freedoms and civil rights “from violations by the Administrative State,” according to MarketWatch.
“Agencies have no inherent power to make law, and nothing in the relevant statutes or regulations gives CDC the power or authority to issue an eviction-moratorium order,” said the New Civil Liberties Alliance in a summary of the court filing which claims that the CDC’s moratorium “violates the U.S. Constitution because the CDC has not identified any act of Congress that confers upon it the power to halt evictions or preempt state landlord-tenant law.”
The group claims the CDC moratorium basically “commandeers” state officials – including law enforcement officers and judges, to enforce federal law.
A second lawsuit was filed by a group of Tennessee property owners, who similarly argue that the CDC’s moratorium violates the constitution – and that the agency has prevented landlords from exercising due process over their property rights.
“Plaintiffs readily acknowledge the nobility of the CDC’s and, by extension, the executive branch’s, desire to help those profoundly affected by the current health crisis,” states the suit. “However, that help must conform to the law and must not infringe unlawfully upon the rights of others.”
Rental-housing industry officials have warned that the CDC’s order could have devastating effects on landlords, particularly smaller “mom-and-pop” landlords who own only a handful of properties.
“The CDC eviction moratorium will surely cause more economic harm than it prevents,” said David Howard, executive director of the National Rental Home Council, another industry trade group. “It puts renters in a position of having to pay back rent that they likely won’t have, while causing immediate hardship for property owners who have no means of carrying the costs of ownership.”
Now that the moratorium is in effect, Howard said, many property owners have come to the conclusion that they may not be able to afford to stay in business. (The National Rental Home Council is not party to either of the lawsuits against the CDC.) –MarketWatch
Another group questioning the legality of the moratorium – the National Multifamily Housing Council – has not joined either of the lawsuits, but has instead pursued rental assistance for struggling tenants.
“It is far better to focus on ensuring renters can pay the rent than to try and come up with policies like eviction moratoriums that do not address the root cause and put housing providers at financial risk,” said Paula Cino, the group’s VP of construction, development and land use policy.
Affordable housing experts agree with Cino.
“Rather than suing for the right to evict during a pandemic, landlords should be working with renters to ensure Congress provides at least $100 billion in emergency rental assistance to help renters avoid a financial cliff when the moratorium expires and to help landlords continue to operate their rental homes,” said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Said experts also say that the two lawsuits against the CDC are unlikely to be successful – as landlords who have previously challenged state moratoria on evictions using similar arguments.
“Every single case filed previously was dismissed for lack of merit, and we think the same thing should happen with these new cases,” said Eric Dunn, director of litigation at the National Housing Law Project.
And while the CDC has issued its moratorium, evictions are still making their way through state and local courts nationwide. The CDC’s order doesn’t automatically protect tenants from being kicked out of their homes for failure to pay the rent amid the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, renters must proactively sign a document stipulating that they cannot pay and provide that document to their landlord. Legal experts have also suggested that loopholes in the order could allow for evictions to occur.
As of Monday, roughly 3,500 eviction cases had been filed by private-equity firms and other corporate landlords, according to information collected by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, an initiative that seeks to monitor these firms. In the last week alone, more than 1,860 cases had been filed. –MarketWatch
“Corporate landlords are moving quickly to file evictions before renters can make use of the protections,” said Yentel. “As the CDC order makes clear, eviction poses significant harm to individuals, their communities, and our broader public health as we collectively work to contain the coronavirus pandemic and prevent unnecessary deaths.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3cyFXDQ Tyler Durden
The Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor, has published yet another anonymously sourced CIA press release disguised as a news report which just so happens to facilitate longstanding CIA foreign policy.
True to form, at no point does WaPo follow standard journalistic protocol and disclose its blatant financial conflict of interest with the CIA when promoting an unproven CIA narrative which happens to serve the consent-manufacturing agendas of the CIA for its new cold war with Russia.
And somehow in our crazy, propaganda-addled society, this is accepted as “news”.
.@joshrogin: “Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden” – The Washington Post https://t.co/1zxPpjfxzS
The CIA has had a hard-on for the collapse of the Russian Federation for many years, and preventing the rise of another multipolar world at all cost has been an open agenda of US imperialism since the fall of the Soviet Union. Indeed it is clear that the escalations we’ve been watching unfold against Russia were in fact planned well in advance of 2016, and it is only by propaganda narratives like this one that consent has been manufactured for a new cold war which imperils the life of every organism on this planet.
There is no excuse for a prominent news outlet publishing a CIA press release disguised as news in facilitation of these CIA agendas. It is still more inexcusable to merely publish anonymous assertions about the contents of that CIA press release. It is especially inexcusable to publish anonymous assertions about a CIA press release which merely says that something is “probably” happening, meaning those making the claim don’t even know.
None of this stopped The Washington Post from publishing this propaganda piece on behalf of the CIA. None of it stopped this story from being widely shared by prominent voices on social media and repeated by major news outlets like CNN, The New York Times, and NBC. And none of it stopped all the usual liberal influencers from taking the claims and exaggerating the certainty:
America is so screwed up right now that the CIA has determined that Putin is directing efforts to interfere in the 2020 election against Biden, and a collective shoulder-shrug is all we can muster. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The CIA-to-pundit pipeline, wherein intelligence agencies “leak” information that is picked up by news agencies and then wildly exaggerated by popular influencers, has always been an important part of manufacturing establishment Russia hysteria. We saw it recently when the now completely debunked claim that Russia paid bounties on US troops to Taliban-linked fighters in Afghanistan first surfaced; unverified anonymous intelligence claims were published by mass media news outlets, then by the time it got to spinmeisters like Rachel Maddow it was being treated not as an unconfirmed analysis but as an established fact:
If you’ve ever wondered how rank-and-file members of the public can be so certain of completely unproven intelligence claims, the CIA-to-pundit pipeline is a big part of it. The most influential voices who political partisans actually hear things from are often a few clicks removed from the news report they’re talking about, and by the time it gets to them it’s being waved around like a rock-solid truth when at the beginning it was just presented as a tenuous speculation (the original aforementioned WaPo report appeared on the opinion page).
The CIA has a well-documented history of infiltrating and manipulating the mass media for propaganda purposes, and to this day the largest supplier of leaked information from the Central Intelligence Agency to the news media is the CIA itself. They have a whole process for leaking information to reporters they like (with an internal form that asks whether the information is Accurate, Partially Accurate, or Inaccurate), as was highlighted in a recent court case which found that the CIA can even leak documents to select journalists while refusing to release them to others via Freedom of Information Act requests.
The way mainstream media has become split along increasingly hostile ideological lines means that all the manipulators need to do to advance a given narrative is set it up to make one side look bad and then share it with a news outlet from the other side. The way media is set up to masturbate people’s confirmation bias instead of report objective facts will then cause the narrative to go viral throughout that partisan faction, regardless of how true or false it might be.
US Intelligence: If Trump Wins Russia Did It, If Biden Wins It Was China And Iran
“Lastly, the dumbest thing about believing foreign nations are interfering in American democracy is believing America has any democracy to interfere with.”https://t.co/1BatXPtUut
The coming US election and its aftermath is looking like it will be even more insane and hysterical than the last one, and the enmity and outrage it creates will give manipulators every opportunity to slide favorable narratives into the slipstream of people’s hot-headed abandonment of their own critical faculties.
And indeed they are clearly prepared to do exactly that. An ODNI press release last month which was uncritically passed along by the most prominent US media outlets reported that China and Iran are trying to help Biden win the November election while Russia is trying to help Trump. So no matter which way these things go the US intelligence cartel will be able to surf its own consent-manufacturing foreign policy agendas upon the tide of outrage which ensues.
The propaganda machine is only getting louder and more aggressive. We’re being prepped for something.
* * *
Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, throwing some money into my tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my books Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone and Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.
