Month: March 2021

Education Department To Suspend Payments, Refund Garnished Wages and Tax Returns for Student Loan Borrowers in Default


STudentLoan

The Education Department announced on Tuesday that it will freeze collections and return garnished wages and tax refunds to student loan borrowers who have defaulted on their Federal Family Education Loans (FFEL). More than 1 million borrowers will be covered by the new policy, and they will join 40 million other Americans who, since March 2020, have not accrued interest or been required to make payments on student loans already owned by the Education Department. 

Exactly who are the borrowers in this category? Anyone who took out a Stafford or PLUS student loan prior to 2010 borrowed that money from a commercial lender with a federal guarantee under the FFEL program. If your FFEL loan is in good standing, congratulations! Your loan remains with a commercial lender and Tuesday’s action does not apply to you. However, if you defaulted on your FFEL loan and it has been transferred to a federally funded guaranty agency—but has not been in default so long that the guaranty agency has already transferred collections to the Education Department (in which case, it was already frozen)—then you are the intended beneficiary of Tuesday’s announcement. Your loan repayment will be frozen until at least September 2021, any wages or taxes garnished since March 2020 will likely be returned (at some point), your loan will be restored to good standing, your credit score will hopefully be depenalized, and you will have the option to request a refund of any voluntary payments you made on your defaulted loan during the pandemic. 

I qualified many parts of the above because the Education Department does not yet know exactly how many people will benefit from this policy, exactly how much money will be taken from the Treasury in the form of refunded garnishments, how it will return garnishments or refund voluntary payments, or how it will coordinate the various parties needed to make this policy work. For instance, assuming the Education Department can quickly identify every borrower who will be affected by Tuesday’s announcement, it can probably stop the IRS from withholding their 2020 tax refunds, unless, perhaps, those people have already filed. But how quickly can it identify—or get guaranty firms to identify—which employers should stop garnishing defaulted borrower’s wages and communicate that information to them?

If this policy turns out to be a hot mess, it will largely be because the FFEL program was a hot mess. 

Under FFEL, the Education Department paid commercial lenders a fee to lend to students and their parents. When a borrower enters repayment and defaults, the commercial lender files a claim with a guaranty agency; the guaranty agency then uses Education Department funds to buy the loan from the commercial lender for about 97 cents on the dollar; that guaranty agency then charges the Education Department to collect on the loan and contracts collections out to various other firms. If the guaranty agency’s debt collection contractors can’t collect, the Education Department takes over loan service and collections. 

As that chain of responsibility suggests, FFEL was a case study in moral hazard. Not only did lenders and guaranty agencies make money without taking on risk, but annual limits on how much each student could borrow incentivized lending to as many people as possible, regardless of whether they were likely to complete their degree or had enrolled in an institution that was preparing them for gainful employment. 

In the wake of the 2008 mortgage crisis, many private lenders no longer had the capital to issue new FFEL loan disbursements to students who were already enrolled, which left students in the lurch. Asking colleges to charge a fraction of their pre-crisis rates overnight was out of the question, so Congress allowed the Education Department to buy newly issued FFEL loans from the very banks the department had previously paid to issue those loans so that students could continue borrowing. Ultimately, the Education Department purchased roughly $150 billion in FFEL loans issued between 2007 and 2009. 

The Education Department’s FFEL purchase in 2009 is why some FFEL borrowers have already benefited from the loan repayment freeze. Other FFEL borrowers have already benefited from the freeze because they were in default so long that their debt had already been moved from the commercial lender to the guaranty agency to the Education Department. To complicate matters further, some guaranty agencies that are servicing FFEL defaulted loans voluntarily froze repayment at the same time the Education Department did. This makes total sense, in a way, because the Education Department already owns the loans that commercial lenders have transferred to the guaranty agencies, but the Education Department does not know exactly which FFEL borrowers in default whose debt remains in the care of guaranty agencies have had their payments frozen. 

Again, if this all sounds ridiculously complicated and poorly designed, that’s because it is. Congress killed the FFEL program in 2010 for all the reasons mentioned above and replaced it with Federal Direct Loans, or FDLs, all of which have been frozen since March 2020. But FFEL’s complexity still haunts us because some 8 million FFEL borrowers are still out there, chipping away (or not!) at their ballooning balances. 

While there are likely some deadbeats among the beneficiaries of Tuesday’s announcement, the median borrower who is struggling to make minimum payments on loans issued prior to 2010—with some active FFEL loans dating back to the 1990s—probably does need some debt relief and isn’t providing much in the way of garnishment regardless. If you believe in means testing, Tuesday’s policy is better than the blanket freeze on all student loans owned by the Department of Education, which benefitted not just households that lost income, but also white-collar workers who didn’t miss a paycheck over the last year. 

However, we should consider whether the Education Department is creating a new moral hazard or other bad incentives. For instance, Tuesday’s announcement says that “any of these [FFEL] loans that went into default since March 13, 2020, will be returned to good standing. The guaranty agencies that hold those loans will assign them to the Department and request that the credit bureaus remove the record of default.” Might some people interpret that to mean they can or should default on FFEL loans that they are currently repaying? What if you defaulted earlier in the pandemic but can now afford repayment—why bother? What message does this send to the 5 million FFEL borrowers whose loans remain with commercial lenders? What message does this send to people who are having their wages garnished for other kinds of debt? What about people who defaulted before COVID-19 tanked the economy, and the people who will default after the economy recovers? 

Lastly, when are policymakers going to acknowledge that federal student loans have played a major role in driving up the cost of education, and that dipping into the public fisc to pay off debts incurred due to cost inflation is a vicious cycle that is bound to repeat itself?

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Wells Fargo Aiming To Have Employees Back To Offices By September 6

Wells Fargo Aiming To Have Employees Back To Offices By September 6

Despite the Biden administration’s best efforts to scare the living sh*t out of the general public, it looks as though Americans already have their hearts set on returning to normal life at some point during 2021. The same goes for small businesses, that are cautiously starting to re-open – and major corporations, who are beginning to require that employees start ebbing and flowing back to their respective offices. 

One such corporate entity is Wells Fargo, who announced on Tuesday this week that it plans on bringing its workers back to its offices after Labor Day, due to the “increasing availability of vaccines”. It’s almost like we have the pandemic under control, though don’t tell our CDC director that.

The bank says it is hoping for operations to return to normalcy after September 6, according to Reuters. The bank says it is still evaluating whether or not to allow certain businesses or functional subgroups to return to work before labor day. 

Wells Fargo says that about 200,000 employees have been working from home, and about 60,000 from offices, during the pandemic.

They are following the footsteps of Goldman Sachs, who said early this month that he was hoping to have employees back in their respective offices by the summer. Now might be a great time for businesses to head back into the office, as we pointed out a couple weeks ago that Manhattan office rents have plunged to their lowest levels since 2018. 

In February the average asking rent fell for an eighth straight month to $73.12 a square foot, the lowest since March 2018.

And ensuring that prices will stay low for a long time, at the same time vacant space continues to pile up. The office availability rate rose for a ninth consecutive month to 15.5%, a record in data going back to 2000, the brokerage said; the amount of space listed by tenants for sublease jumped by 1.1 million square feet.

In a stark testament to the post-pandemic world, leases were signed for less than 1 million square feet of Manhattan office space last month, a whopping 51% drop from January. Not surprisingly, the five biggest agreements were in Midtown.

The Manhattan office market continues to struggle nearly a year after the pandemic hit, which has emptied Manhattan’s skyscrapers. And since most employees are still working from home, just 14% of workers in the New York metropolitan area were back at their desks as of Feb. 17, according to data from Kastle Systems.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/31/2021 – 13:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3dngQob Tyler Durden

To Stop Bullying, British School Eliminates Recess


dreamstime_xxl_126999449

To eliminate bullying, a school in England has eliminated ball games and jump-roping on the playground, replacing these with poetry recitations, choir, and quizzes. Said Charlotte Whelan, the Hackney New School head teacher (the British equivalent of a principal): “A school without bullying sounds like a utopia, but it is achievable.”

Whether or not reciting Shelley during recess is your idea of utopia, a BBC piece on the school quotes Whelan saying, “It’s long been my belief that we could be doing more for pupils while they are on their breaks,” because “so often you see them aimlessly wandering the playground. We want every second at school to count.”

I’m sure the kids are counting the seconds, too.

Clearly Whelan is of the belief that kids’ brains shut down the moment they are not engaged in something officially academic. That’s what prompted her to start the break-time poetry recitals, “and it evolved from there.”

I doubt it will come as a surprise that another expert quoted in the piece said it is important for schools to create safe spaces, where kids feel “supported and included.”

The issue here is not just the Dolores Umbridge-esque nature of the administration. It’s the inability of that administration to believe that kids could possibly be learning anything when they are allowed to goof around. The teachable moment notion of child development is so thick here that kids are not allowed to “waste” their time even between bites.

This notion is wrong. “When they are free to play in their own ways, children practice the most important skills required to move toward adulthood—how to take initiative, make their own decisions, solve their own problems, negotiate with peers—and, yes, how to deal with others who aren’t always nice,” says Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College and my co-founder at Let Grow. “When we prevent them from such opportunities by taking continuous control of their lives, we prevent them from growing up.”

Prevent away seems to be the philosophy of those who believe the only way to end bullying is to end any freedom the students enjoyed. Linda James, founder of a nonprofit called “Bullies Out,” notes in the BBC piece: “Unstructured games can sometimes lead to nasty comments, aggressive behavior and children feeling left out.”

She’s right: Some sad feelings—and betrayals and loneliness—are inevitable in both childhood and adulthood. No one wants kids facing constant cruelty, but learning how to deal with some playground frustration is actually a big life skill it behooves them to learn. There’s more to school than sonnets.

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Discovery Class B Shares Explode Higher In Post-Archegos Short Squeeze

Discovery Class B Shares Explode Higher In Post-Archegos Short Squeeze

The Archegos margin call liquidation – the biggest since LTCM – may now be over, but the consequences of the fund’s unwind will likely continue for days if not weeks.

For a vivid example of this, look no further than the furious squeeze taking place in Discovery Class B shares, which have soared surged as much as 115% (last up 81%), triggering several trading halts in the wake of Archegos-related volatility. The gain in Class B shares (DISCB) has far outpaced the modest 4% advance in Class A shares, which are far more liquid and trade with significantly more daily volume.

As a reminder, together with ViacomCBS and a bunch of Chinese tech names, Discovery Class A was one of the stocks to see a block trade related to the forced liquidation of positions linked to Bill Hwang’s Archegos hedge fund. However, while many had expected the rebound to push the Class A shares sharply higher now that the unwind appears to be over, it is the Class B shares where the trading frenzy took place today, with today’s volume of 684,000 shares more than 20,000% the three-month average!

Speaking to Bloomberg, Bright Trading prop trader Dennis Dick said what is happening may be an extreme example of what an “arb squeeze” where instead of buying Class A shares, funds who were forced to buy-in due to a short squeeze or some other reason, have moved to the Class B shares instead:

“It could be that arbitrage traders went in and maybe found that it was tough to borrow on one share class, so they went into the one that is more thinly traded.”

“Just because the share classes are fundamentally linked, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will trade alike”, he added and one look at the chart below confirms that…

Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/31/2021 – 12:56

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3dl6rJQ Tyler Durden

To Stop Bullying, British School Eliminates Recess


dreamstime_xxl_126999449

To eliminate bullying, a school in England has eliminated ball games and jump-roping on the playground, replacing these with poetry recitations, choir, and quizzes. Said Charlotte Whelan, the Hackney New School head teacher (the British equivalent of a principal): “A school without bullying sounds like a utopia, but it is achievable.”

Whether or not reciting Shelley during recess is your idea of utopia, a BBC piece on the school quotes Whelan saying, “It’s long been my belief that we could be doing more for pupils while they are on their breaks,” because “so often you see them aimlessly wandering the playground. We want every second at school to count.”

I’m sure the kids are counting the seconds, too.

Clearly Whelan is of the belief that kids’ brains shut down the moment they are not engaged in something officially academic. That’s what prompted her to start the break-time poetry recitals, “and it evolved from there.”

I doubt it will come as a surprise that another expert quoted in the piece said it is important for schools to create safe spaces, where kids feel “supported and included.”

The issue here is not just the Dolores Umbridge-esque nature of the administration. It’s the inability of that administration to believe that kids could possibly be learning anything when they are allowed to goof around. The teachable moment notion of child development is so thick here that kids are not allowed to “waste” their time even between bites.

This notion is wrong. “When they are free to play in their own ways, children practice the most important skills required to move toward adulthood—how to take initiative, make their own decisions, solve their own problems, negotiate with peers—and, yes, how to deal with others who aren’t always nice,” says Peter Gray, a professor of psychology at Boston College and my co-founder at Let Grow. “When we prevent them from such opportunities by taking continuous control of their lives, we prevent them from growing up.”

Prevent away seems to be the philosophy of those who believe the only way to end bullying is to end any freedom the students enjoyed. Linda James, founder of a nonprofit called “Bullies Out,” notes in the BBC piece: “Unstructured games can sometimes lead to nasty comments, aggressive behavior and children feeling left out.”

She’s right: Some sad feelings—and betrayals and loneliness—are inevitable in both childhood and adulthood. No one wants kids facing constant cruelty, but learning how to deal with some playground frustration is actually a big life skill it behooves them to learn. There’s more to school than sonnets.

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Is Matt Gaetz a Child Sex Trafficker? Here’s What the Law Actually Says.


rollcallpix129230

On Tuesday night, The New York Times alleged that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) is “under investigation over possible sex trafficking” of a minor. Gaetz has denied the allegations and spun some accusations of his own, involving a former federal prosecutor attempting to extort his family.

According to “three people briefed on the matter,” Gaetz “is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him,” the Times reported. “Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said.”

The Times doesn’t go into any more specifics about Gaetz’s alleged relationship or how the activity described constitutes sex trafficking. But on Fox News last night, Gaetz denied traveling with a 17-year-old (“people can look at my travel records and see that that is verifiably not the case,” he told Tucker Carlson) or having a relationship with a 17-year-old (“that’s totally false,” Gaetz said).

Gaetz went on to say that he was being extorted by people demanding $25 million from his dad “in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away.”

For more than a decade, sex trafficking has occupied a central place in modern crime panic and fears for child safety. To many, it conjures images of abduction, smuggling across borders, confinement, and physical violence. As a legal matter, it needn’t actually involve any of these things. No matter which version we go by, however, it’s hard to see how the conduct alleged in this case—while morally suspect and quite possibly a violation of some criminal laws—qualifies.

The federal prohibition on sex trafficking (18 U.S. Code § 1591) specifically relates to commercial sex—a.k.a. prostitution—involving force, fraud, or coercion and/or people under age 18. Passed in 2000 and expanded every few years since, it implicates anyone who “recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person” knowing that force, threats of force, fraud, or coercion “will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act.” Commercial sex act is defined under federal law as “any sex act, on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.”

Some have argued that if Gaetz paid for someone he was having sex with to travel with him, this constitutes commercial sex. But the key thing when it comes to “commercial sex acts”—whether we’re talking about activity between consenting adults or activity that would qualify as criminal sex trafficking—is that any payment must be in exchange for sex. The payment needn’t be a direct monetary exchange, but it must be quid pro quo.

If two adults go on a trip together, one of them pays for the plane tickets and hotel room, and the pair winds up having sex, that is not considered commercial sex. Nor is it commercial sex if someone buys a date dinner or some sort of gift and later that night the pair hooks up. And, obviously, if an adult pays for a 17-year-old to travel with them and no sexual activity takes place, that is not commercial sex, either.

But what about the activity alleged here: an adult paying for a 17-year-old to travel with him and also engaging in a sexual relationship with her?

That certainly could run afoul of a number of criminal laws. However, prosecution for child sex trafficking seems unlikely unless it could be proved that paying for the girl’s travel was explicitly conditioned on her engaging in sexual activity, or that money or something else of value was specifically promised in return for these sex acts.

Saying that what Gaetz is accused of isn’t child sex trafficking doesn’t mean it’s perfectly fine behavior for a member of Congress or that it shouldn’t be condemned. But our modern tendency to describe any and all morally suspect and/or criminalized sexual activity as sex trafficking leads us not to moral righteousness but moral panic.

It’s how we get masses of people believing insane conspiracy theories like those spread by QAnon, in which the highest levels of government and business are supposedly controlled by child sex traffickers who harvest kids’ blood. It’s how we get oodles of nonsensical Facebook memes about traffickers trailing people around supermarkets. It’s how we end up with dangerous laws like the 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which criminalizes online speech surrounding consensual sex and makes it more difficult for workers in commercial sex sectors to stay safe. And it’s how we end up with ever more police, FBI, and ICE stings targeting all forms of sex work, which ruin lives and drive up arrests and incarceration without actually protecting anyone.

None of this is to say that a man who is in his thirties “dating” a teenager is something to be condoned. Most people can probably agree that it is, at the very least, creepy. Many people would agree that it crosses a moral line. And depending on where the relationship took place, it could also violate a number of criminal laws.

In D.C., the age of sexual consent is 16 (meaning a sexual relationship between an adult man and a 17-year-old girl would be legal). But the age of sexual consent in many states (including Florida) is age 18, so an adult having sex with a 17-year-old in these places would be guilty of statutory rape (a state-level crime). And if state, country, or territorial lines were crossed, prosecution under a federal law known as the Mann Act is also possible.

The Mann Act of 1910—which is distinct from the federal prohibition on sex trafficking passed this century—prohibits bringing anyone, including adults, across state lines “with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.”

This law—which once banned helping someone cross state lines for any “debauchery” or “immoral purposes”—has a dark history of being used against interracial couples, LGBTQ people, immigrants, immodest women, and others whom authorities considered de facto suspect. It also became a catchall tool to justify federal police surveillance and action. Today, it is still used in cases where no force, fraud, coercion, or minors are involved and can be levied against adult sex workers who travel in pairs or aid each other with travel plans.

In addition to crossing borders for prostitution purposes, the Mann Act also bans an array of other acts, some involving minors and some not. One section bans the transportation of minors across state lines “with intent that the individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” If the Times report on Gaetz’s relationship and activities is true, it’s this part that seems like the most applicable federal statute (provided the age of consent in any of the areas traveled to was above 17). It’s perhaps the only applicable federal statute unless the feds want to argue that paying for the travel constitutes engaging in a commercial sex act.

The New York Times does not say what statutes Gaetz is allegedly suspected of violating, but it does report that it “is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges.”

Where this investigation—and Gaetz’s counterclaims—will ultimately lead is anyone’s guess. But for now, it seems like prime example of how sex trafficking allegations have become a catchall to capture all sorts of perceived sexual misconduct.

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Major Liability? Biden’s Dog Bites Another Employee After Returning From Delaware Seclusion

Major Liability? Biden’s Dog Bites Another Employee After Returning From Delaware Seclusion

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

I previously wrote about the historical and legal perspectives of a biting incident involving one of the presidential pets, Major. 

Both Biden German Shepherds (Major and Champ) were previously whisked out of town.  They were then quietly brought back. 

Now Major has bitten another person who reportedly required medical attention. In the prior column, I noted that under tort law a dog is afforded (at most) “one free bite” before strict liability applies. Major could now be treated as a known vicious animal for liability purposes.

Major was adopted in November 2018 from an animal shelter.

The latest incident involved a National Park Service employee who was bitten while on the White House South Lawn on Monday afternoon.

First lady Jill Biden’s press secretary Michael LaRosa told CNN:

“Yes, Major nipped someone on a walk. Out of an abundance of caution, the individual was seen by WHMU and then returned to work.”

The difference between “nipped” and “bitten” is that you are bitten by other people’s dogs. Your dog however only nips, which is somewhere on the spectrum between a lick and a complete devouring.

As noted earlier, there was always question whether Major was entitled to “one free bite.” The “one free bite rule” is a commonly misunderstood torts doctrine — suggesting that you are not subject to strict liability until after the first time your dog bites someone. In fact, you are subject to strict liability whenever you know or have reason to know of the vicious propensity of your animal. That can be satisfied by conduct such as frequent snapping or aggressive behavior. Indeed, that was the evidence used in the famous case from San Francisco involving lawyers and dog owners Marjorie Knoller and Robert Noel. They were found both criminally and civilly liable after their two Presa Canario dogs killed apartment neighbor Diane Whipple. Various neighbors complained about the dogs, which the couple inherited from a convict. Paul “Cornfed” Schneider is a reputed member of the Aryan Brotherhood and was planning a guard-dog business to be called “Dog-O-War.” Three days after Whipple’s death, the couple adopted Schneider as their son. The dogs had not bitten anyone but were known to be aggressive. Accounts from the prior biting incident indicate that he has been displaying aggressive behavior including barking and charging at White House staff and security. That could negate any need for an actual bite since it could be alleged that Major’s vicious propensity was known or should have been known to the Bidens.

After the prior incident, White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the injury as “minor” and insisted that Major was just “getting acclimated and accustomed to their surroundings and new people.”  He was then sent away to Delaware with Champ. It was equivalent of a politician going into “treatment” at the height of a scandal. Major was later returned to the White House but still appears not to have become “acclimated.”

Ordinarily, the victim could easily sue the Bidens, including for strict liability in most states. Indeed, many states now simply apply strict liability or have “hybrid” systems that impose greater liability than the traditional “one free bite” rule. Washington, D.C. is more complex with a number of provisions that could apply. However, the city has laws that impose liability for allowed dogs to run free before an injury.  Clearly, that becomes a tad more difficult when a dog is allow to run free on a large government residence like the White House.

Under Section 8-1808 states “No owner of an animal shall allow the animal to go at large.” The term “at large” is defined as in Section 8-1801(a)(1)(A) as “The term ‘animal at large’ means any animal found off the premises of its owner and neither leashed nor otherwise under the immediate control of a person capable of physically restraining it.”

The liability section is found in Section 8-1812 providing “If a dog injures a person while at large, lack of knowledge of the dog’s vicious propensity standing alone shall not absolve the owner from a finding of negligence.”

Complicating this issue is that the bite not only occurred on the grounds of the official residence and within what is federal property.

However, putting aside those distinctions, was Major “at large”? The subsection says that the dog was “off the premises of the owner . . . nor otherwise under the immediate control of a person capable of physically restraining it.” The key issue is the meaning of “nor.” It does not say “or” to clearly mean that you can be liable for either a bite off premises or a bite on the premises when the dog is not under control.  That interpretation does not make a lot of sense under this construction. Why specify a bite occurring off the premises if the owner can be liable regardless of the location on the premises?  The more natural reading is that the rule does not apply to bites on the premises of an owner.  It imposes a strict liability without the need for knowledge (either one prior bite or evidence of a vicious propensity) when the dog is both at large and not leashed or controlled.

The question then becomes if there is any liability for bites on the premises of an owner.  Presumably an owner can still be negligent in failing to take reasonable measures to protect licensees or invitees on the property. Thus, the Bidens could still be sued for negligence failure to take reasonable steps after learning of the propensity of Major to bite.

Alternatively, this could be a matter for the Federal Tort Claims Act as a personal injury occurring on federal property.  Fortunately, Major is not considered a government official entitled to immunity for discretionary functions, including occasional “nipping” noted by the press secretary.

Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/31/2021 – 12:46

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3m7UTgQ Tyler Durden

Is Matt Gaetz a Child Sex Trafficker? Here’s What the Law Actually Says.


rollcallpix129230

On Tuesday night, The New York Times alleged that Rep. Matt Gaetz (R–Fla.) is “under investigation over possible sex trafficking” of a minor. Gaetz has denied the allegations and spun some accusations of his own, involving a former federal prosecutor attempting to extort his family.

According to “three people briefed on the matter,” Gaetz “is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him,” the Times reported. “Investigators are examining whether Mr. Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, the people said.”

The Times doesn’t go into any more specifics about Gaetz’s alleged relationship or how the activity described constitutes sex trafficking. But on Fox News last night, Gaetz denied traveling with a 17-year-old (“people can look at my travel records and see that that is verifiably not the case,” he told Tucker Carlson) or having a relationship with a 17-year-old (“that’s totally false,” Gaetz said).

Gaetz went on to say that he was being extorted by people demanding $25 million from his dad “in exchange for making horrible sex trafficking allegations against me go away.”

For more than a decade, sex trafficking has occupied a central place in modern crime panic and fears for child safety. To many, it conjures images of abduction, smuggling across borders, confinement, and physical violence. As a legal matter, it needn’t actually involve any of these things. No matter which version we go by, however, it’s hard to see how the conduct alleged in this case—while morally suspect and quite possibly a violation of some criminal laws—qualifies.

The federal prohibition on sex trafficking (18 U.S. Code § 1591) specifically relates to commercial sex—a.k.a. prostitution—involving force, fraud, or coercion and/or people under age 18. Passed in 2000 and expanded every few years since, it implicates anyone who “recruits, entices, harbors, transports, provides, obtains, advertises, maintains, patronizes, or solicits by any means a person” knowing that force, threats of force, fraud, or coercion “will be used to cause the person to engage in a commercial sex act, or that the person has not attained the age of 18 years and will be caused to engage in a commercial sex act.” Commercial sex act is defined under federal law as “any sex act, on account of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.”

Some have argued that if Gaetz paid for someone he was having sex with to travel with him, this constitutes commercial sex. But the key thing when it comes to “commercial sex acts”—whether we’re talking about activity between consenting adults or activity that would qualify as criminal sex trafficking—is that any payment must be in exchange for sex. The payment needn’t be a direct monetary exchange, but it must be quid pro quo.

If two adults go on a trip together, one of them pays for the plane tickets and hotel room, and the pair winds up having sex, that is not considered commercial sex. Nor is it commercial sex if someone buys a date dinner or some sort of gift and later that night the pair hooks up. And, obviously, if an adult pays for a 17-year-old to travel with them and no sexual activity takes place, that is not commercial sex, either.

But what about the activity alleged here: an adult paying for a 17-year-old to travel with him and also engaging in a sexual relationship with her?

That certainly could run afoul of a number of criminal laws. However, prosecution for child sex trafficking seems unlikely unless it could be proved that paying for the girl’s travel was explicitly conditioned on her engaging in sexual activity, or that money or something else of value was specifically promised in return for these sex acts.

Saying that what Gaetz is accused of isn’t child sex trafficking doesn’t mean it’s perfectly fine behavior for a member of Congress or that it shouldn’t be condemned. But our modern tendency to describe any and all morally suspect and/or criminalized sexual activity as sex trafficking leads us not to moral righteousness but moral panic.

It’s how we get masses of people believing insane conspiracy theories like those spread by QAnon, in which the highest levels of government and business are supposedly controlled by child sex traffickers who harvest kids’ blood. It’s how we get oodles of nonsensical Facebook memes about traffickers trailing people around supermarkets. It’s how we end up with dangerous laws like the 2018 Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which criminalizes online speech surrounding consensual sex and makes it more difficult for workers in commercial sex sectors to stay safe. And it’s how we end up with ever more police, FBI, and ICE stings targeting all forms of sex work, which ruin lives and drive up arrests and incarceration without actually protecting anyone.

None of this is to say that a man who is in his thirties “dating” a teenager is something to be condoned. Most people can probably agree that it is, at the very least, creepy. Many people would agree that it crosses a moral line. And depending on where the relationship took place, it could also violate a number of criminal laws.

In D.C., the age of sexual consent is 16 (meaning a sexual relationship between an adult man and a 17-year-old girl would be legal). But the age of sexual consent in many states (including Florida) is age 18, so an adult having sex with a 17-year-old in these places would be guilty of statutory rape (a state-level crime). And if state, country, or territorial lines were crossed, prosecution under a federal law known as the Mann Act is also possible.

The Mann Act of 1910—which is distinct from the federal prohibition on sex trafficking passed this century—prohibits bringing anyone, including adults, across state lines “with intent that such individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.”

This law—which once banned helping someone cross state lines for any “debauchery” or “immoral purposes”—has a dark history of being used against interracial couples, LGBTQ people, immigrants, immodest women, and others whom authorities considered de facto suspect. It also became a catchall tool to justify federal police surveillance and action. Today, it is still used in cases where no force, fraud, coercion, or minors are involved and can be levied against adult sex workers who travel in pairs or aid each other with travel plans.

In addition to crossing borders for prostitution purposes, the Mann Act also bans an array of other acts, some involving minors and some not. One section bans the transportation of minors across state lines “with intent that the individual engage in prostitution, or in any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.” If the Times report on Gaetz’s relationship and activities is true, it’s this part that seems like the most applicable federal statute (provided the age of consent in any of the areas traveled to was above 17). It’s perhaps the only applicable federal statute unless the feds want to argue that paying for the travel constitutes engaging in a commercial sex act.

The New York Times does not say what statutes Gaetz is allegedly suspected of violating, but it does report that it “is part of a broader investigation into a political ally of his, a local official in Florida named Joel Greenberg, who was indicted last summer on an array of charges.”

Where this investigation—and Gaetz’s counterclaims—will ultimately lead is anyone’s guess. But for now, it seems like prime example of how sex trafficking allegations have become a catchall to capture all sorts of perceived sexual misconduct.

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Convicted Felon Arrested For Brutal Attack On Elderly Asian Woman

Convicted Felon Arrested For Brutal Attack On Elderly Asian Woman

A parolee who was convicted of stabbing his mother to death in 2002 was arrested on a felony hate crime charge for a Monday attack on an elderly Asian woman outside a midtown Manhattan luxury apartment, while shouting “you don’t belong here,” according to an early Wednesday statement by New York police.

Police said Brandon Elliot, 38, is the man seen on video kicking and stomping the woman on Monday. They said Elliot was living at a hotel that serves as a homeless shelter a few blocks from the scene of the attack.

Elliot, who is Black, was convicted of stabbing his mother to death in the Bronx in 2002, when he was 19. He was released from prison in 2019 and is on lifetime parole. -AP

Surveillance video showed a lone assailant kicking the 65-year-old woman in the stomach – knocking her to the ground before he stomps on her face. The attack occurred just two blocks from Times Square in a section of Manhattan known as the “Crossroads of the World.”

Two security guards inside the luxury apartment building were seen on film witnessing the attack but failing to come to the woman’s aid, though their union says they called for help immediately. The attacker simply walked away after the assault, the video shows.

Elliott faces charges of assault as a hate crime, attempted assault as a hate crime, assault and attempted assault, according to police.

The victim, Vilma Kari, immigrated from the Philippines according to her daughter, while Philippine Ambassador to the United States Manuel Romualdez confirmed that Kari is Filipino American.

Philippines foreign secretary, Teodoro Locsin Jr. condemned the attack, tweeting “This is gravely noted and will influence Philippine foreign policy.”

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called the attack “absolutely disgusting and outrageous,” adding that it was “absolutely unacceptable” that witnesses did nothing. 

“I don’t care who you are, I don’t care what you do, you’ve got to help your fellow New Yorker,” he said at a Tuesday press briefing.

“If you see someone being attacked, do whatever you can,” de Blasio continued. “Make noise. Call out what’s happening. Go and try and help. Immediately call for help. Call 911. This is something where we all have to be part of the solution. We can’t just stand back and watch a heinous act happening.”

On Wednesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland instructed DOJ officials to give priority to investigating and prosecuting hate crimes and hate incidents, particularly against Asians. Garland cited “the disturbing trend in reports of violence against members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community,” which the left is now blaming on former President Trump’s anti-China rhetoric.

The New York police department has recorded a 1,300 percent increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the pandemic.

If one reads past the headline – which most people do not – the actual numbers are a little less shocking:

“The number of hate crimes with Asian-American victims reported to the New York Police Department jumped to 28 in 2020, from just three the previous year.”

A report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism drew national media attention for identifying a 149% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020 compared to 2019 in 16 of our largest cities. A startling number — until you learn the actual number of hate crimes in those cities rose from 49 to 122 – in a country of 330 million people.

So, to cut through the gaslighting, here are the facts according to the most recent FBI crime data (2019):

  • White Americans make up 70% of the population and are cited for 52% of all hate crimes (nearly 20% below the percentage of the white population).

  • Black Americans are 13% of the population but are cited for 24% of all hate crimes (nearly double the percentage of the black population).

  • Black Americans are also cited for over 50% of all violent crime in the nation.

…and as we previously noted, NYPD held a press conference last week to highlight the assailants…

And if convicted, we can add Brandon Elliot to the list:

Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/31/2021 – 12:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3u8hyfQ Tyler Durden

AOC: Calling The Border Crisis A ‘Surge’ Pushes ‘White Supremacist Philosophy’

AOC: Calling The Border Crisis A ‘Surge’ Pushes ‘White Supremacist Philosophy’

Authored by Annaliese Levy via saraacarter.com (emphasis ours)

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), D-N.Y., has criticized the use of the word “surge” to describe the border crisis because it “consciously is trying to invoke a militaristic frame.”

“They wanna say, ‘But what about the surge?” Ocasio-Cortez said to her Instagram followers during a live broadcast on Tuesday. “Well, first of all, just gut check, stop. Anyone who’s using the term ‘surge’ around you consciously is trying to invoke a militaristic frame.”

The Democratic “squad” member went on to say that anyone using the term “surge” is pushing a “white supremacist idea-philosophy.”

“And that’s a problem because this is not a surge, these are children and they are not insurgents and we are not being invaded, which by the way is a White supremacist idea-philosophy, the idea that if another is coming in the population that this is an invasion of who we are.”

Ocasio Cortez’s statements sparked outrage online, with many calling her out since she has yet to visit the southern border.

Fox News contributor Lara Trump slammed Ocasio Cortez on Monday for her “total hypocrisy.”

“It’s total hypocrisy,” she said.

“The way they covered this under the Trump administration versus the Biden administration is total hypocrisy. Where is the outrage from the folks on the left? Where is AOC down there doing a photo op?”

Ocasio Cortez, who has been vocally opposed to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, has been quiet regarding President Joe Biden’s handling of the border crisis.

She previously accused Trump of housing migrants in “concentration camps.”

ZH: We would note that then-candidate Joe Biden called for a ‘border surge‘ – while major news outlets have regularly used this ‘white supremacist’ language:

Lots of white supremacists at the networks we suppose…

Tyler Durden
Wed, 03/31/2021 – 12:05

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39yiySK Tyler Durden