another site
For more, see this Feb. 18, 2020 press release from the U.S. Mint.
Thanks to Jennifer Wilson for the pointer, and see also this Nerdist story (Eric Diaz).
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Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) plans to join the challenge to some of Joe Biden’s electoral votes when Congress officially tallies the presidential election results next Wednesday. The support of a senator, along with the objections that some of Donald Trump’s allies in the House plan to lodge, is enough to force votes in both chambers. But the effort to reject electoral votes, let alone stop Biden from taking office, is still bound to fail, since successful challenges require majority support in both the House and the Senate.
Hawley, a freshman senator with presidential ambitions and populist rhetoric similar to Trump’s, has not explicitly endorsed the president’s charge that Biden stole the election, which Trump has been unable to substantiate even while claiming to have “absolute PROOF” of “massive Election Fraud.” The senator says he wants to make a statement about election procedures he considers illegal or deficient.
“Following both the 2004 and 2016 elections, Democrats in Congress objected during the certification of electoral votes in order to raise concerns about election integrity,” Hawley said in a press release he issued yesterday. “They were praised by Democratic leadership and the media when they did. And they were entitled to do so. But now those of us concerned about the integrity of this election are entitled to do the same.”
Hawley said “some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws.” He added that “I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden.”
The first claim has some merit, as illustrated by the controversy over the extension of Pennsylvania’s deadline for absentee ballots, which was challenged in court but did not affect the outcome of the election in that state. The second claim, which alludes to Hawley’s oft-stated complaint that social media platforms discriminate against conservatives, has nothing whatsoever to do with the integrity of the election or the validity of any particular state’s electoral votes.
Hawley is right that Democrats have a history of expressing their dissatisfaction with election practices by objecting to electoral votes. But leaving aside a controversy over a “faithless” elector who voted for George Wallace instead of Richard Nixon in 1968, such protests have attracted a senator’s support just once in the 133 years since Congress approved the Electoral Count Act, which established the procedures that Hawley intends to use.
In 2005, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D–Calif.) joined Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D–Ohio) in objecting to electoral votes from Ohio, which they claimed had disqualified or discouraged voters through various improper policies and practices. Under the Electoral Count Act, that forced the joint session of Congress to adjourn for separate debates and votes. The challenge—which was not supported by 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator—failed by a vote of 267–31 in the House and 74–1 in the Senate.
Notwithstanding the resounding rejection of Boxer and Jones’ objections, Republicans were not happy about the maneuver. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R–Texas) said the Democrats had a habit of “crying wolf” every four years. House Republicans ridiculed Democratic allegations of election fraud in Ohio, which George W. Bush won by about 120,000 votes. “This is a travesty,” said Sen. Rick Santorum (R–Pa.). “They’re still not over the 2000 election, let alone the 2004 election.”
But that was then. Now that a Republican presidential candidate has lost, Hawley thinks it is perfectly appropriate to protest election procedures in Pennsylvania—and even, weirdly, the moderation practices of Twitter and Facebook—by objecting to electoral votes for the other party’s candidate. And in this case, the losing candidate is enthusiastically backing the pointless exercise.
While Hawley does not assert that systematic fraud denied Trump his rightful victory, he says “Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections.” His allies in the House go a bit further.
“Too many states have blatantly violated Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, violated federal election statutes, or willfully failed to obey their own state election laws, thereby opening the door to massive voter fraud, casting of illegal ballots, and election theft,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R–Ala.) said in a statement welcoming Hawley’s support. “The 2020 presidential election was one we’d expect to see in a banana republic, not the United States of America,” Rep. Louis Gohmert (R–Texas) said on Monday, after he filed a federal lawsuit asserting that Vice President Mike Pence has the constitutional authority to reverse Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office. “The fraud that stole this election,” Gohmert warned, “will mean the end of our republic.”
Brooks and Gohmert are two of the 126 Republican House members who unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to hear Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s quixotic lawsuit seeking to overturn the election by nullifying the results in four swing states. All of them agreed that “unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome”—meaning not just that certain procedures were suspect or that fraud occurred here and there but that the irregularities were massive enough to put Biden in the White House instead of Trump.
In other words, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans have lent credence to an extraordinary claim that the Trump campaign and its allies have conspicuously failed to back up with credible evidence in the scores of lawsuits they have filed. Gohmert claims “no court so far has had the morality and courage to allow evidence of fraud to be introduced in front of it.” But that is flatly untrue.
Most of the Trump campaign’s 60 or so lawsuits did not allege actual fraud, which in itself is telling. But “in nearly a dozen cases,” The New York Times notes, the campaign’s fraud allegations “did indeed have their days in court” and “consistently collapsed under scrutiny.”
While the campaign’s lawyers claimed that more than 130,000 people voted illegally in Nevada, for instance, a state judge deemed the evidence unreliable; the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously upheld his dismissal of the case. When the Trump campaign tried to overturn Pennsylvania’s election results, a federal judge noted that it had failed to present “factual proof of rampant corruption,” instead offering nothing but “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.” Upholding that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in a blistering opinion written by a Trump nominee, noted that charges of election improprieties “require specific allegations and then proof,” but “we have neither here.”
Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, who claimed to have so much evidence that she likened it to a “Kraken” and a “fire hose,” has not fared any better. “Plaintiffs append over three hundred pages of attachments, which are only impressive for their volume,” a federal judge in Arizona wrote. “The various affidavits and expert reports are largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.” A federal judge in Michigan said Powell offered “nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden.”
Hawley may not want to directly associate himself with the loony conspiracy theory promoted by Trump, Powell, and Rudy Giuliani, but he can’t escape its taint. Neither can all of the House Republicans who have treated Trump’s allegations as credible. From now on, whenever Republicans raise the issue of voter fraud, even fair-minded people who otherwise might be open to their arguments will be inclined to roll their eyes.
Hawley, in other words, is not doing the cause of “election integrity” any favors. Nor is he helping his party, which can only suffer from a vote that will force Republican lawmakers to choose between recognizing reality and joining Trump in the alternate universe where he won the election. Keen to avoid the divisiveness of that spectacle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) has urged his colleagues not to do what Hawley is doing.
Hawley is demonstrating his unquestioning fealty to Donald Trump, which presumably is also the point that his collaborators in the House are trying to make. Republicans are terrified of angering the president, who has a history of turning against stalwart supporters when they dare to deviate from his whims. After Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R–S.D.) belatedly acknowledged Biden’s victory and observed that any challenge to electoral votes on January 6 will “go down like a shot dog” in the Senate, Trump declared that Thune “will be primaried in 2022,” meaning his “political career [is] over!!!”
Republicans are betting that the political benefits of appeasing Trump and his supporters will outweigh the political risks of endorsing the president’s self-flattering fantasy. They may be right, but I hope not.
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“Queen’s Gambit Capital” SPAC Shamelessly Names Itself After Trendy Netflix Movie
You know we might be heading toward peak SPAC hysteria when blank check companies start naming themselves after whatever trend is being talked about in the news that day – even Netflix movies.
Which is why the reaction from social media this week was off the charts when it was announced that “Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital” was looking to raise $225 million for its blank check company. The company appears to be named after the incredibly successful Netflix series called “The Queen’s Gambit”, which has received great reviews and reached a record 62 million households during its first 28 days on the streaming service.
The company’s S-1 lists its address as 55 Hudson Yards, 44th Floor, New York, NY. The blank check company’s CEO is listed as Victoria Grace and the company is described as “a blank check company newly incorporated as a Cayman Islands exempted company for the purpose of effecting a merger, amalgamation, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities, which we refer to throughout this prospectus as our initial business combination.”
So far, it hasn’t found a business target to merge with, its S-1 says – and yes, it is an actual entity registered with the SEC.
The response to the name on social media was raucous:
I am starting House of Cards Capital LLP to compete
— John W. Rich (Wealthy Tech Exec) (@Cokedupoptions) December 29, 2020
SPAC frenzy very similar to .com. More than half of these “revolutionary” disrupters and “industry leaders” won’t make it. My 2c
— A Ninny Mouse (@wants_2_learn) December 30, 2020
Any news on Schitts Creek Value SPAC?
— Christian Fromhertz (@cfromhertz) December 30, 2020
I’m starting a Seinfeld SPAC….”it’s about nothing…”
— StockOptionSelling.com (@StockOptionSell) December 30, 2020
“chap 11 in 3 moves.”
— el gato malo (@boriquagato) December 29, 2020
As for us, we’ll be eyeing up our next SPAC purchase. Anyone have a quote on Bird Box Capital? How long until we can put some money in Making a Murderer Capital?
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 13:44
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Jz7aMB Tyler Durden
Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) plans to join the challenge to some of Joe Biden’s electoral votes when Congress officially tallies the presidential election results next Wednesday. The support of a senator, along with the objections that some of Donald Trump’s allies in the House plan to lodge, is enough to force votes in both chambers. But the effort to reject electoral votes, let alone stop Biden from taking office, is still bound to fail, since successful challenges require majority support in both the House and the Senate.
Hawley, a freshman senator with presidential ambitions and populist rhetoric similar to Trump’s, has not explicitly endorsed the president’s charge that Biden stole the election, which Trump has been unable to substantiate even while claiming to have “absolute PROOF” of “massive Election Fraud.” The senator says he wants to make a statement about election procedures he considers illegal or deficient.
“Following both the 2004 and 2016 elections, Democrats in Congress objected during the certification of electoral votes in order to raise concerns about election integrity,” Hawley said in a press release he issued yesterday. “They were praised by Democratic leadership and the media when they did. And they were entitled to do so. But now those of us concerned about the integrity of this election are entitled to do the same.”
Hawley said “some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws.” He added that “I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden.”
The first claim has some merit, as illustrated by the controversy over the extension of Pennsylvania’s deadline for absentee ballots, which was challenged in court but did not affect the outcome of the election in that state. The second claim, which alludes to Hawley’s oft-stated complaint that social media platforms discriminate against conservatives, has nothing whatsoever to do with the integrity of the election or the validity of any particular state’s electoral votes.
Hawley is right that Democrats have a history of expressing their dissatisfaction with election practices by objecting to electoral votes. But leaving aside a controversy over a “faithless” elector who voted for George Wallace instead of Richard Nixon in 1968, such protests have attracted a senator’s support just once in the 133 years since Congress approved the Electoral Count Act, which established the procedures that Hawley intends to use.
In 2005, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D–Calif.) joined Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D–Ohio) in objecting to electoral votes from Ohio, which they claimed had disqualified or discouraged voters through various improper policies and practices. Under the Electoral Count Act, that forced the joint session of Congress to adjourn for separate debates and votes. The challenge—which was not supported by 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator—failed by a vote of 267–31 in the House and 74–1 in the Senate.
Notwithstanding the resounding rejection of Boxer and Jones’ objections, Republicans were not happy about the maneuver. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R–Texas) said the Democrats had a habit of “crying wolf” every four years. House Republicans ridiculed Democratic allegations of election fraud in Ohio, which George W. Bush won by about 120,000 votes. “This is a travesty,” said Sen. Rick Santorum (R–Pa.). “They’re still not over the 2000 election, let alone the 2004 election.”
But that was then. Now that a Republican presidential candidate has lost, Hawley thinks it is perfectly appropriate to protest election procedures in Pennsylvania—and even, weirdly, the moderation practices of Twitter and Facebook—by objecting to electoral votes for the other party’s candidate. And in this case, the losing candidate is enthusiastically backing the pointless exercise.
While Hawley does not assert that systematic fraud denied Trump his rightful victory, he says “Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections.” His allies in the House go a bit further.
“Too many states have blatantly violated Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, violated federal election statutes, or willfully failed to obey their own state election laws, thereby opening the door to massive voter fraud, casting of illegal ballots, and election theft,” Rep. Mo Brooks (R–Ala.) said in a statement welcoming Hawley’s support. “The 2020 presidential election was one we’d expect to see in a banana republic, not the United States of America,” Rep. Louis Gohmert (R–Texas) said on Monday, after he filed a federal lawsuit asserting that Vice President Mike Pence has the constitutional authority to reverse Biden’s victory and keep Trump in office. “The fraud that stole this election,” Gohmert warned, “will mean the end of our republic.”
Brooks and Gohmert are two of the 126 Republican House members who unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to hear Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s quixotic lawsuit seeking to overturn the election by nullifying the results in four swing states. All of them agreed that “unconstitutional irregularities involved in the 2020 presidential election cast doubt upon its outcome”—meaning not just that certain procedures were suspect or that fraud occurred here and there but that the irregularities were massive enough to put Biden in the White House instead of Trump.
In other words, nearly two-thirds of House Republicans have lent credence to an extraordinary claim that the Trump campaign and its allies have conspicuously failed to back up with credible evidence in the scores of lawsuits they have filed. Gohmert claims “no court so far has had the morality and courage to allow evidence of fraud to be introduced in front of it.” But that is flatly untrue.
Most of the Trump campaign’s 60 or so lawsuits did not allege actual fraud, which in itself is telling. But “in nearly a dozen cases,” The New York Times notes, the campaign’s fraud allegations “did indeed have their days in court” and “consistently collapsed under scrutiny.”
While the campaign’s lawyers claimed that more than 130,000 people voted illegally in Nevada, for instance, a state judge deemed the evidence unreliable; the Nevada Supreme Court unanimously upheld his dismissal of the case. When the Trump campaign tried to overturn Pennsylvania’s election results, a federal judge noted that it had failed to present “factual proof of rampant corruption,” instead offering nothing but “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.” Upholding that decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit, in a blistering opinion written by a Trump nominee, noted that charges of election improprieties “require specific allegations and then proof,” but “we have neither here.”
Former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, who claimed to have so much evidence that she likened it to a “Kraken” and a “fire hose,” has not fared any better. “Plaintiffs append over three hundred pages of attachments, which are only impressive for their volume,” a federal judge in Arizona wrote. “The various affidavits and expert reports are largely based on anonymous witnesses, hearsay, and irrelevant analysis of unrelated elections.” A federal judge in Michigan said Powell offered “nothing but speculation and conjecture that votes for President Trump were destroyed, discarded or switched to votes for Vice President Biden.”
Hawley may not want to directly associate himself with the loony conspiracy theory promoted by Trump, Powell, and Rudy Giuliani, but he can’t escape its taint. Neither can all of the House Republicans who have treated Trump’s allegations as credible. From now on, whenever Republicans raise the issue of voter fraud, even fair-minded people who otherwise might be open to their arguments will be inclined to roll their eyes.
Hawley, in other words, is not doing the cause of “election integrity” any favors. Nor is he helping his party, which can only suffer from a vote that will force Republican lawmakers to choose between recognizing reality and joining Trump in the alternate universe where he won the election. Keen to avoid the divisiveness of that spectacle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) has urged his colleagues not to do what Hawley is doing.
Hawley is demonstrating his unquestioning fealty to Donald Trump, which presumably is also the point that his collaborators in the House are trying to make. Republicans are terrified of angering the president, who has a history of turning against stalwart supporters when they dare to deviate from his whims. After Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R–S.D.) belatedly acknowledged Biden’s victory and observed that any challenge to electoral votes on January 6 will “go down like a shot dog” in the Senate, Trump declared that Thune “will be primaried in 2022,” meaning his “political career [is] over!!!”
Republicans are betting that the political benefits of appeasing Trump and his supporters will outweigh the political risks of endorsing the president’s self-flattering fantasy. They may be right, but I hope not.
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Dozens Of Republicans Planning To Challenge The Electoral College Results
Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours)
At least 25 Republicans plan on challenging electoral votes during next month’s joint session of Congress, according to a tally by The Epoch Times.
Twenty-four representatives and representatives-elect, who will enter office several days before the session, plan on filing objections. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is the only member or member-elect of the upper chamber to commit to an objection.
“You’ve got 74 million Americans who feel disenfranchised, who feel like their vote doesn’t matter. And this is the one opportunity that I have as a United States senator, this process right here, my one opportunity to stand up and say something, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Hawley said on Wednesday.
Objections are filed in writing and must have support from at least one member of each chamber. If they do, they trigger a two-hour debate and a vote by the House of Representatives and the Senate. A simple majority in each chamber is required to uphold the challenge.
Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) told The Epoch Times that the group plans to file objections against the votes from six states, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Nevada. They’re mulling an objection to votes from New Mexico.
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) was the first to announce plans to file an objection.
“In my judgment, based on what I have seen so far and my own personal experience with voter fraud and election theft by Democrats, in my judgment, if you only could count lawfully cast votes by American citizens, Donald Trump won the Electoral College,” Brooks told The Epoch Times “American Thought Leaders” last month.
A slew of members or members-elect have said this week they’re joining the group plotting the objections.
“If irregularities exist, we should examine and provide solutions to make sure our electoral process is accurate and represents the will of the people,” Rep.-elect Burgess Owens (R-Utah) told news outlets in a statement. “Millions of Americans across this country are concerned about the electoral process and we do them a great disservice by merely ignoring their voices.”
Republican Senate leadership opposes the planned objections. About two dozen GOP senators have said they will not object, while others have indicated opposition. A small group—Sens. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)—have said they may object.
Virtually all Democrats have said they will not object, and have criticized those who plan to challenge votes. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s spokeswoman told reporters on Wednesday that the team views the counting of electoral votes as a mere formality, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) expressed confidence Biden would be confirmed as president-elect.
Here are the lawmakers planning on challenging votes:
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)
Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.)
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)
Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.)
Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas)
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas)
Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.)
Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.)
Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas)
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.)
Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.)
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.)
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.)
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)
Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)
Rep.-elect Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.)
Rep.-elect Barry Moore (R-Ala.)
Rep.-elect Bob Good (R-Va.)
Rep.-elect Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)
Rep.-elect Ronny Jackson (R-Texas)
Rep.-elect Burgess Owens (R-Utah)
Rep.-elect Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.)
Rep.-elect Jerry Carl (R-Ala.)
Rep.-elect Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.)
Rep.-elect Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.)
100 Republicans?
Kicking things up a notch is Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), who told “The Bulwark Podcast” that there could be “upwards of 100” Republican lawmakers who object to Biden’s Electoral College votes.
“I think you’re going to have some people that come out and take a strong stand,” he said, adding that “I’m not going to be surprised if it approaches three figures.”
In the podcast interview, Kinzinger said that he does not support the initiative to object to the votes led by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.). Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Wednesday said he would join their challenge, becoming the first senator to do so.
The bid requires both a senator and a representative to carry out. An objection to any state by a representative and a senator will prompt up to two hours of debate in the Senate and House on whether to accept a state’s Electoral College votes; it means that if the lawmakers object to more than one state, the procedure could last for hours.
Some GOP senators said that their challenge would fail.
“Senator Hawley has every right to object,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Fox News on Thursday. “But it’s another thing to overturn an election of another state.”
“If dead people were voting, I want the names,” Graham added. “If you’re going to retry the case in the Senate that’s already been tried in the federal courts it would be hard for me to basically take over the federal courts’ role. But I will listen and we’ll see how it comes out.”
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 13:20
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KHKxGs Tyler Durden
When the 2021 baseball season arrives—if it arrives—the minor leagues will look a bit different than they did two years ago. And more than a dozen cities might look extra foolish for spending major amounts of public money on minor league ballparks.
There was no minor league baseball in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but there was still plenty of drama surrounding Major League Baseball’s (MLB) farm system. After months of speculation and occasional news leaks, MLB finalized its plans earlier this month to reduce the number of affiliated minor league clubs that are used by major league teams to develop talent. Previously, each of the 30 MLB clubs had five or six minor league affiliates—starting next year, each will have just four.
It’s a move that’s meant to save the big league clubs money, as it means paying fewer minor league ballplayers and financially supporting fewer clubs. Even though minor league teams are owned and operated mostly independently of their MLB parent organizations, the much richer big-league clubs provide a steady stream of revenue to their farm teams. Losing its connection to an MLB franchise can be an existential threat to a minor league club, which stands to lose both the direct financial benefits of being affiliated and the indirect benefits of attracting fans who want to see future big-leaguers or rehabbing MLB stars.
None of those things are available in the non-MLB-affiliated independent leagues, where life for ballclubs is nasty, brutish, and often short.
That’s the gloomy future to which about 40 former minor league teams have been doomed. Given the uncertainties created by COVID-19—will fans be allowed into the stadiums this summer?—it seems more than likely that some of those franchises will simply cease to exist.
That’s a shame, because taxpayers have funneled nearly $250 million into stadiums for teams that are now on MLB’s chopping block. That’s according to Neil deMause, a stadium subsidy critic and co-author of Field of Schemes (as well as a blog of the same name), who crunched the numbers after the official affiliation announcements were made earlier this month.
“A whole lot of minor-league baseball fans are about to lose their teams, and a whole lot of cities are about to see their investments in stadiums go up in smoke,” writes deMause.
One of the biggest losers is New York City, which spent $71 million of public money to help build a waterfront minor league ballpark in Staten Island less than 20 years ago. The Staten Island Yankees, a former affiliate to the cross-town team of the same name, didn’t survive this year’s minor league reaping. The team has folded and plans to sue MLB, according to a statement.
The story is much the same elsewhere. Taxpayers in Kane County, Illinois, kicked in $19 million to build and later upgrade a minor league ballpark, but the Kane County Cougars got booted to the curb by MLB and are now exploring options including independent leagues. In Charleston, West Virginia, taxpayers put up $25 million in 2005 to build a ballpark for the West Virginia Power. Just 15 years later, MLB is turning out the lights.
Empty minor league ballparks that stand as monuments to failed economic development schemes aren’t new, of course. In New Jersey, for example, taxpayers paid to build—and then demolish—stadiums in Camden and Newark within the past couple of decades when those teams abruptly ran out of money.
Unfortunately, this year’s reduction in the number of MLB-affiliated minor league teams is unlikely to stop local officials from throwing money at baseball teams. In fact, MLB may be hoping that it does the exact opposite—by reducing the number of affiliated minor league teams in the market, those remaining teams could have greater leverage to extract public subsidies by threatening to leave for new homes.
As deMause notes, one of the reasons MLB gave for seeking to cut teams was to improve minor league “stadium facilities,” and some owners of teams headed for the scrap heap have said they were more or less told that subpar facilities doomed them. The message to the remaining minor league owners is clear: Lobby your local governments to pay for upgrades or face the consequences.
But those investments are foolish even when they don’t result in abandoned stadiums. Study after study after study has debunked the idea that publicly funded stadiums are financially beneficial to anyone other than the team owners, who get free infrastructure for their business. And the costs keep rising. Worcester, Massachusetts, recently spent $70 million in public funds on a new ballpark, a record for a minor league facility—one that was completed just in time for fans to be banned from attending sporting events due to the pandemic.
Even in cities that aren’t losing their minor league teams, the farm system reshuffling is making civic leaders look foolish for spending big bucks on stadiums.
Consider what’s happened in Wichita, Kansas. For years, the city had been home to a Double-A minor league team—that’s two steps below the major leagues—until it relocated to Arkansas in 2007. Even though the city already possessed a perfectly fine minor league ballpark, local officials decided to spend $75 million building a new stadium in the hopes of luring a Triple-A team—the highest minor league level—from somewhere else. What more could a midsized city in Kansas want, and all it cost residents was an extra 2 percent sales tax.
It seemed to work. The Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins announced in 2019 that it would relocate from New Orleans to Wichita. The new ballpark was set to open earlier this year.
Then COVID-19 struck, and the season was canceled. Now, as part of the overall MLB reshuffling, the Twins have designated a different team, located in nearby St. Paul, their Triple-A affiliate. They’ll still maintain the new team in Wichita, but it will be demoted.
Next season, Wichita residents will be watching Double-A ball once again. They’ll still be paying those higher taxes.
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When the 2021 baseball season arrives—if it arrives—the minor leagues will look a bit different than they did two years ago. And more than a dozen cities might look extra foolish for spending major amounts of public money on minor league ballparks.
There was no minor league baseball in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but there was still plenty of drama surrounding Major League Baseball’s (MLB) farm system. After months of speculation and occasional news leaks, MLB finalized its plans earlier this month to reduce the number of affiliated minor league clubs that are used by major league teams to develop talent. Previously, each of the 30 MLB clubs had five or six minor league affiliates—starting next year, each will have just four.
It’s a move that’s meant to save the big league clubs money, as it means paying fewer minor league ballplayers and financially supporting fewer clubs. Even though minor league teams are owned and operated mostly independently of their MLB parent organizations, the much richer big-league clubs provide a steady stream of revenue to their farm teams. Losing its connection to an MLB franchise can be an existential threat to a minor league club, which stands to lose both the direct financial benefits of being affiliated and the indirect benefits of attracting fans who want to see future big-leaguers or rehabbing MLB stars.
None of those things are available in the non-MLB-affiliated independent leagues, where life for ballclubs is nasty, brutish, and often short.
That’s the gloomy future to which about 40 former minor league teams have been doomed. Given the uncertainties created by COVID-19—will fans be allowed into the stadiums this summer?—it seems more than likely that some of those franchises will simply cease to exist.
That’s a shame, because taxpayers have funneled nearly $250 million into stadiums for teams that are now on MLB’s chopping block. That’s according to Neil deMause, a stadium subsidy critic and co-author of Field of Schemes (as well as a blog of the same name), who crunched the numbers after the official affiliation announcements were made earlier this month.
“A whole lot of minor-league baseball fans are about to lose their teams, and a whole lot of cities are about to see their investments in stadiums go up in smoke,” writes deMause.
One of the biggest losers is New York City, which spent $71 million of public money to help build a waterfront minor league ballpark in Staten Island less than 20 years ago. The Staten Island Yankees, a former affiliate to the cross-town team of the same name, didn’t survive this year’s minor league reaping. The team has folded and plans to sue MLB, according to a statement.
The story is much the same elsewhere. Taxpayers in Kane County, Illinois, kicked in $19 million to build and later upgrade a minor league ballpark, but the Kane County Cougars got booted to the curb by MLB and are now exploring options including independent leagues. In Charleston, West Virginia, taxpayers put up $25 million in 2005 to build a ballpark for the West Virginia Power. Just 15 years later, MLB is turning out the lights.
Empty minor league ballparks that stand as monuments to failed economic development schemes aren’t new, of course. In New Jersey, for example, taxpayers paid to build—and then demolish—stadiums in Camden and Newark within the past couple of decades when those teams abruptly ran out of money.
Unfortunately, this year’s reduction in the number of MLB-affiliated minor league teams is unlikely to stop local officials from throwing money at baseball teams. In fact, MLB may be hoping that it does the exact opposite—by reducing the number of affiliated minor league teams in the market, those remaining teams could have greater leverage to extract public subsidies by threatening to leave for new homes.
As deMause notes, one of the reasons MLB gave for seeking to cut teams was to improve minor league “stadium facilities,” and some owners of teams headed for the scrap heap have said they were more or less told that subpar facilities doomed them. The message to the remaining minor league owners is clear: Lobby your local governments to pay for upgrades or face the consequences.
But those investments are foolish even when they don’t result in abandoned stadiums. Study after study after study has debunked the idea that publicly funded stadiums are financially beneficial to anyone other than the team owners, who get free infrastructure for their business. And the costs keep rising. Worcester, Massachusetts, recently spent $70 million in public funds on a new ballpark, a record for a minor league facility—one that was completed just in time for fans to be banned from attending sporting events due to the pandemic.
Even in cities that aren’t losing their minor league teams, the farm system reshuffling is making civic leaders look foolish for spending big bucks on stadiums.
Consider what’s happened in Wichita, Kansas. For years, the city had been home to a Double-A minor league team—that’s two steps below the major leagues—until it relocated to Arkansas in 2007. Even though the city already possessed a perfectly fine minor league ballpark, local officials decided to spend $75 million building a new stadium in the hopes of luring a Triple-A team—the highest minor league level—from somewhere else. What more could a midsized city in Kansas want, and all it cost residents was an extra 2 percent sales tax.
It seemed to work. The Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins announced in 2019 that it would relocate from New Orleans to Wichita. The new ballpark was set to open earlier this year.
Then COVID-19 struck, and the season was canceled. Now, as part of the overall MLB reshuffling, the Twins have designated a different team, located in nearby St. Paul, their Triple-A affiliate. They’ll still maintain the new team in Wichita, but it will be demoted.
Next season, Wichita residents will be watching Double-A ball once again. They’ll still be paying those higher taxes.
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The Greatest Short Squeeze In History
From the lows in March, the “most shorted” stocks in the market are up a stunning 207% – by far the largest such surge in the history of the data…
Source: Bloomberg
But that is nothing compared to the short-soul-crushing damage that Elon Musk’s Tesla has wrought in markets this year.
With TSLA stock up over 740% in 2020, Bloomberg reports that Tesla bears have seen more than $38 billion in mark-to-market losses this year, according to data from S3 Partners. By comparison, the next-biggest loss for short sellers was on Apple Inc., at just under $7 billion, S3 data shows.
This “is not only the largest mark-to-market loss for any stock this year, it is the largest yearly mark-to-market loss I have ever seen,” said Ihor Dusaniwsky, a managing director at S3 Partners.
Many of TSLA’s short-sellers have been squeezed out of their positions by the endless surge with short interest falling to less than 6% of the float from nearly 20% a year ago, according to S3 data.
In July, CEO Musk tweaked the noses of Tesla critics by selling limited-edition red-satin shorts with the company’s logo – or what he called “short shorts.” Fans have posted pictures of themselves wearing them as Tesla’s stock has rallied, and Musk tweeted a picture of a pair as a Christmas greeting.
Tesla short shorts are starting to be delivered & worn in public. Here, @Sofiaan was spotted washing his car in a pair. #TeslaShortShorts Thanks Sofiaan, they look stunning! pic.twitter.com/oCsD7SzH4x
— Tesla Owners Austin (@AustinTeslaClub) October 28, 2020
“The short squeeze has been going on all year. It’s been an angled straight line down,” Dusaniwsky said. “The big thing about Tesla as opposed to any other stock is that the vast majority of retail shareholders will never be sellers. They love the stock, they love the car, they love Elon Musk and they are adamant long shareholders.”
And as short-sellers have languished, Elon Musk, who holds 18% of the company’s stock, has seen his net worth explode to make him the second richest man in the world
We wonder, as infamous short-sellers like Jim Chanos remark on how “painful” this position was, just how much of Musk’s massive wealth gain should be attributed to this…
Flush with Government “stimulus,” individuals shifted their bets from sports to stocks.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 13:08
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2WYJgNz Tyler Durden
The Curse Of The Third 10%-Plus Year
Jessica has written several times about the seeming market anomaly that the S&P 500 rarely posts three or more consecutive +10 percent years.
Since 1928 (93 years), it’s happened only 5 times:
World War II (4 years): 1942 (+19 pct), 1943 (+25 pct), 1944 (+19 pct) and 1945 (+36 pct)
Korean War (4 years): 1949 (+18 pct), 1950 (+31 pct), 1951 (+24 pct) and 1952 (18 pct)
Start of Vietnam War (3 years): 1963 (+23 pct), 1964 (+16 pct), and 1965 (+12 pct)
Late 1990s Bull Market (5 years): 1995 (37 pct), 1996 (+23 pct), 1997 (+33 pct), 1998 (+28 pct) and 1999 (+21 pct)
Post-Financial/Greek Debt Crisis (3 years): 2012 (+16 pct), 2013 (+32 pct) and 2014 (14 pct)
That’s the whole list, across almost an entire century of US equity returns… The famous bull market of the 1980s did not see 3 consecutive +10 percent years. Nor did the 1970s, when the S&P 500 rose by 78 percent over that inflationary decade. Even the post-1932 snapback from the Great Depression bottom for US stocks failed to string together 3 years in a row of +10 percent returns in the 1930s.
We’re closing 2020 with a 15 percent price return, and 2019 was 31 percent, so why would one think that there’s enough left in the tank for another +10 percent year in 2021?
Do we really think investors haven’t figured out that corporate earnings will rebound sharply in 2021?
… Or that they don’t believe the Federal Reserve is serious about keeping interest rates low across the curve?
Those factors explain 2020’s return, especially the lift off the March 23rd bottom. But they do nothing useful to defend the view that 2021 will see the S&P 500 return another +10 percent.
Some thoughts about what a real “surprise” would actually be next year that could propel US stocks:
S&P earnings could be more like $50/share in Q3 and Q4 2020, rather than the $45-$46/share Wall Street currently has in its models. This is our “base case” surprise, something that is likely to happen but not yet fully incorporated into stock prices. Earnings leverage through a cyclical bottom (both on the way down and back up again) is always hard to call, which is why markets always swoon at the start of recessions and rip at the bottom of economic downturns.
US vaccine rollout and adoption could be faster than expected, supporting the idea earnings might be better than expected since consumer confidence will recover more quickly.
Congress and the Biden administration might agree on multiple large fiscal stimulus packages over the course of 2021, taking the risk out of next year’s earnings estimates even if we don’t get to $50/share in Q3/Q4. Also, some of that cash would end up in equities, as 2020’s $1,200/person cash payments did.
Worth noting: the Georgia Senate races could be a negative surprise for markets if both Democrats prevail. This would swing the upper house to 50/50, making Democrat VP Harris the tie breaking vote on issues like tax policy.
Takeaway: if we had to guesstimate, we’d say 80% of all the baseline good news expected in 2021 is already incorporated in an S&P 500 at 3,700 in late December 2020. If all we get is a sub-1.5 percent 10-year yield and a 2H earnings run rate of $90/share, then the “Third Year Curse” will likely prevail.
On a separate note, you’ve probably looked at this chart many, many times in the last decade. It is, of course, the Shiller Price-Earnings multiple for the S&P 500, which uses rolling 10-year average earnings for the “E” to approximate underlying corporate profitability across an economic cycle.
The only other red dot on that graph is Black Tuesday 1929, when the Shiller PE was actually lower than today. Scary stuff…
But… Let’s remember that the Shiller PE ignores a lot of important variables:
Interest rates. Stock prices reflect discounted future cash flows, and discount rates vary with risk free rates. It makes no sense to compare 2020 to prior periods, at least as naively as the Shiller PE does, without acknowledging that 10-year Treasuries yield 1.0 percent now and were higher at any other point on that graph.
Index composition. Every sector in the S&P 500 has its own fundamentals and therefore its own valuation. We don’t expect Technology to trade for the same multiple as Energy, for instance.
Consider the 1980 – present part of this time series. That’s the rightmost third of the graph, when the Shiller PE rose from 10x to that current 34x reading.
Rate of change. This is one place where a careful reading of historical Shiller PEs does deliver useful investment conclusions, but we rarely see it mentioned. Look carefully at the run-up to Black Tuesday 1929, Black Monday 1987 and the peak of the dot com bubble in 2000.
In all 3 cases, the Shiller PE more than doubled in the 5 years before its peak. From 1925 – 1929, it went from 10x to 30x. From 1983 – 1987, it went from 8x to 17x. From 1995 to 1999, it went from 20x to 44x.
To show the same speculative fervor now the S&P would have to trade for 48x trailing 10-year earnings, not the 34x multiple we have today. That would be an S&P 500 at 5,200, in case you’re wondering.
Takeaway: US equity valuations remind us of the pre-Socratic Greek philosophical statement “No man steps in the same river twice, for its not the same river and he’s not the same man”. A stock index that is 26/8 percent Energy/Technology should not have as high a multiple as one that is 28/2 percent the other way. And an investor in 2021 faces a different rate environment from one in 1980. In the end, we should really just concern ourselves with how fast the river is rising and not step in if the waters are moving too quickly.
To our thinking, the decade of the 2020s actually starts Friday because the Gregorian calendar has no “year zero”. That means 2020 was the last year of the 2010s, at least to the letter of the law. And yes, we’re aware the late great Prince saw things differently.
To look forward, let’s start by looking back; here is the Effective Fed Funds Rate from 1954 to the present day. The important bit for our purposes is towards the right side. There you will see that Fed Funds were 0 – 25 basis points for 7 years, from December 2008 to November 2015. This remarkable stability has no precedent in the post-World War II historical record, either in terms of level or duration.
We know that the bulk of the Federal Open Market Committee sees rates remaining at zero for 2021 – 2023, in eerily similar fashion to much of the last decade, because that’s what was in their December 2020 “Dot Plot”. Add in the 9 months of 2020 with zero rates, and the 2020s will see zero interest for at least half as long a time as during the 2010s. Fed Funds Futures markets price rate policy in much the same way. As of today, every contract with at least one trade on the books expects rates to stay at 0 – 25 basis points through September 2022.
This observation leads to a fork in the road when it comes to equity returns in the 2020s.
Path #1: The Fed, and Fed Fund Futures, are wrong and rates will rise sooner than either one expects. This is the inflation-driven bear case for stocks. Anyone who was investing in 1994 or 2000 (see chart above if you weren’t) knows what equities do when the Fed starts to raise rates after a long period of easy policy. There’s a bit of patience at first, but eventually fears of a policy mistake seep into the market narrative. And Q4 2018 shows how unforgiving investors are in the current day to such a possibility.
Path #2: Rates will remain at zero for at least the next several years, replicating the 2010s experience. In that case, equities have a chance to generate reasonable returns as long as corporate earnings recover (more on this in Point #4 below). There are, however, some other issues to consider:
This is not 2010 – 2012, when US energy production was the hot investment theme. In 2011, Energy’s share of the S&P was 13 percent, not far-off Technology’s 18 percent. Capital impatient with zero interest rates was almost as likely to take a flyer on a fracking project as a Series A venture capital round.
We’re seeing where capital goes in 2020, and it’s basically to one place: technology. It might be electric vehicles, or online shopping/learning/working anywhere in the world. Four billion smartphone users can’t be wrong, and capital still sees them as the most important investment opportunity out there.
Takeaway: when we get to year end 2030 and look back at the last 10 years, we’re most likely to consider either:
#1 How anyone in 2021 (including the Fed) could have thought inflation was dead given all of 2020’s fiscal/monetary stimulus or …
#2 … how ultra-low Fed policy rates forced a tidal wave of capital into funding the disruptive technologies we all take for granted as we start 2031.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 12:40
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Restaurants Prepare For “Dramatic Loss Of Revenue” As New Year’s Eve Celebrations Are Canceled
As the world bids goodbye to 2020, restaurants and bars will have a nightmarish New Year’s Eve as many shops grapple with indoor seating limits, early curfews, and, in some parts of the U.S., a complete ban on indoor dining.
New Year’s Eve is one of the most profitable nights of the year for restaurants and bars, but this year it will be full of misery industrywide.
“In past years, the run-up to the holidays was the time for everyone in the business to make money to carry us through the lean months of winter,” Kip Michel, general manager of renowned Brooklyn pizza joint Roberta’s, told Bloomberg. “It’s a tough time this year.”
A recent Morning Consult survey found that only 7% of Americans are expected to attend New Year’s Eve celebrations at a restaurant this year. This is more bad news for eateries from New York to Chicago to San Francisco.
“It’s going to be a dramatic loss of revenue,” said Andrew Rigie, executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance, a group that represents restaurants and bars in New York. He said the restrictions plus the lack of people attending eateries tonight would hurt businesses and workers, adding, “with employees either out of work or making a fraction of the tips they would normally make.”
The restaurant industry has had one of the most challenging years on record.
The National Restaurant Association warned earlier this month that more than one hundred thousand restaurants are permanently closed because of virus-related public health restrictions issued by the government.
“This night is normally huge for us because we do a food and drink package and sell out,” said Dusty Carpenter, director of operations and managing partner for Another Round Hospitality Group, which owns D.S. Tequila. For many patrons, New Year’s Eve this year is “an afterthought.”
Restaurants have found creative ways to make money through the pandemic, such as to-go alcohol and food orders, along with outdoor dining.
As Goldman Sachs pointed out in a recent client note, restaurant operators need to take weather into consideration as foot traffic to outdoor dining would plunge when the temperatures dip below 45°F.
While many hope 2021 will usher in a much better year than this – as, for restaurant operators, the worst has yet to be seen.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 12/31/2020 – 12:20
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3oge1JG Tyler Durden
