Month: August 2022

Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg Pleads Guilty To Tax Scheme, Will Testify Against Trump Org

Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg Pleads Guilty To Tax Scheme, Will Testify Against Trump Org

Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg has pleaded guilty to 15 felonies – admitting that he conspired with other Trump Organization executives to carry out a tax-avoidance scheme connected to lavish corporate benefits.

As part of the deal, he has agreed to testify against the Trump Organization – however he has refused to implicate Donald Trump in any wrongdoing.

Weisselberg is expected to receive a five-month jail term, however time credited for good behavior he’s likely to serve around 100 days, according to the NY Times.

As Bloomberg notes, “Trump hasn’t been charged in the case and, according to a person familiar with the matter, Weisselberg won’t implicate his boss as part of his plea. But because Weisselberg’s deal requires him to testify against his employer, an admission of criminal conduct could mean trouble for the Trump Organization, experts say.”

Developing…

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 11:01

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/cH4dPFb Tyler Durden

Russia Claims Ukraine Prepping “False Flag Provocation” At Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant As IAEA Attempts Access

Russia Claims Ukraine Prepping “False Flag Provocation” At Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant As IAEA Attempts Access

Starting a week ago the United States led the way at a United Nations Security Council special meeting in calls for a demilitarized zone around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, but on Thursday Russia’s defense ministry has again rejected such a possibility. Starting weeks ago Ukraine said that some 500 Russian troops occupied the nuclear power plant, which is Europe’s largest.

Amid tit-for-tat accusations of shelling on the facility and thus putting the sensitive site in danger of a nuclear incident, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Rafael Grossi said this week he stands ready to lead a delegation in person to inspect the plant. However, it’s being reported that the Russian side has rejected this possibility, saying such a mission would be too dangerous as Ukraine is shelling it.

File image via Ukrinform: Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant

At the same time, on Thursday, Russia’s defense ministry has issued its most ominous and alarming claim yet regarding the deteriorating situation at Zaporizhzhia, alleging that Ukraine is currently engaged in plotting a “false flag provocation” and that any resulting catastrophe will be immediately blamed on Moscow. 

Taking the allegation further, a military spokesman even named a date, Friday Aug.19, as the day it’s expected to happen according to the Kremlin. “Russia will be blamed for the man-made catastrophe,” the MoD spokesman warned. 

However, Ukraine and its Western allies have charged that it is in reality Russian troops that are using the plant as a nuclear shield and so bear responsibility for any potentially disastrous consequences.

At this point, both sides are in essence charging the other with “nuclear blackmail” – with Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also echoing the fresh military allegations of a Ukrainian “provocation” in the works. 

“This is not just a provocation, this is what we condemned as nuclear blackmail. And what else is it but a long standing provocation around a nuclear facility, a direct threat to nuclear power. This is certainly an act of nuclear blackmail,” Zakharova said in a televised briefing. 

“We are talking about nuclear energy, the whole European continent is being held hostage because this is all in the heart of Europe,” she added.

Meanwhile, the escalatory rhetoric is only ratcheting as the showdown continues:

RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS IS ONLY POSSIBLE AS A RESPONSE AND IN EMERGENCY CIRCUMSTANCES

“Today, science has already shown us that consequences of man-made disasters, and different tragedies at nuclear facilities have no boundaries, they only have time limits. Only time can limit the spread of these consequences,” the Zakharova concluded.

Ukraine for its part is demanding critical information from the Russian side as to the plant’s technical status. Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said of the dire need for a direct IAEA inspection, “They need to give some technical estimation on what is happening because we just don’t have concrete information on what is happening inside.”

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 11:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/L4vg95y Tyler Durden

“We Are All Watching The Beads Of Sweat Forming On The Fed’s Forehead”

“We Are All Watching The Beads Of Sweat Forming On The Fed’s Forehead”

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Hawks Of A Feather Flock Together

The RBNZ went 50bps again yesterday, taking rates up to 3.00% as expected, and saying: “it remains appropriate to continue to tighten monetary conditions at pace to maintain price stability and contribute to maximum sustainable employment. Core consumer price inflation remains too high and labour resources remain scarce.” Scarce resources – as I noted yesterday. Remember those? Many don’t.

Moreover, the Reserve Bank showed no sign of backing off, adding that monetary conditions needed to continue to tighten until they are confident there is sufficient restraint on spending to bring inflation back within its 1-3% target range. Indeed, they remain “resolute in achieving the Monetary Policy Remit.” (All capitalised too!) Their forecast is now that RBNZ base rates peak around 4.1% in mid-2023, up from 3.9% before – but let’s call it 4%.

The Kiwis look to be canaries in the global monetary policy mine rather than on one of their solo failed-tightening cycles. Indeed, appalling inflation numbers in the UK –headline CPI hitting 10.1% y-o-y, seeing the press note ‘a 13% peak looks optimistic’– saw a surge in gilt yields and market expectations that BOE rates are going to have to keep moving higher, with the peak now seen at 3.75%. One more bad CPI print and that will no doubt be 4% too. So, two very different economies, and one broadly similar view on where rates may settle.

The FOMC minutes then made it three in one day. Nonetheless, there was less ‘Follow me!’ than was evident in the statement from New Zealand.

The Fed’s favorite core PCE price inflation measure was expected to decline to normal by 2024. Risks to their baseline projection for real activity were skewed to the downside. Consumer expenditures, housing activity, business investment, and manufacturing production were all seen as decelerating from the robust rates. Ebbing foreign economic outlook and a strong dollar were contributing to weaker external demand. Only the labour market was still seen as strong – even though that is a lagging indicator. Even so, the key message was that US growth below trend was fine if it helped reduce inflationary pressures.

For the hawks, “inflation remained unacceptably high….[and] inflationary pressures were broad based.” Indeed, “declines in the prices of oil and some other commodities could not be relied on as providing a basis for sustained lower inflation, as these prices could quickly rebound.” Oops, for those relying on that metric – as the head of OPEC was underlining yesterday. Moreover, “sizable additional increases in residential rental expenses” were likely to drive a rebound in inflation ahead. (‘OER misses’, as I have quipped before for the rare subset of economics and Frankie Howerd fans.) Overall, “there was little evidence to date that inflation pressures were subsiding,” and inflation… “would likely stay uncomfortably high for some time.”

For doves, there was a throw-away line that “the high cost of living was an especially great burden on low- and middle-income households.” (“Oh, it’s the MEEK! Oh, I’m glad they’re getting something, because they have a hell of a time.” – for the much less rare subset of economics and Monty Python fans.) But higher mortgage costs and unemployment aren’t a burden(?)

For hawks, inflation stemming from supply bottlenecks would take “considerable time” to be resolved, and some suggested full resolution would take longer than previously assessed (**cough** ‘In Deep Ship’ **cough**). Some felt even that by itself “could not be relied on” to resolve supply-demand imbalances driving inflation. So less demand was needed too.

As such, “moving to a restrictive stance of the policy rate in the near term” was appropriate in order to build the FOMC’s credibility, and from a risk management perspective: and rates would need to be kept higher “for some time” once having achieved that target. So, ‘Higher for Longer’ as the new mantra? Whocouldanooed?

Yet for doves, the Fed also noted the need to slow the pace of rate hikes “at some point”, as the market now leans more towards a 50bps move in September than another 75bps step – and which is our Fed Watcher Philip Marey’s call too: and for November and December, so 150bps more this year.

Some members also noted “the effects of policy actions and communications were showing up more rapidly than had historically been the case, because the expeditious removal of policy accommodation and supporting communications already had led to a significant tightening of financial conditions.” I am not sure which conditions they are referring to: certainly not higher bond yields, wider credit spreads, or lower stocks. Perhaps they were long crypto?

Perhaps the key dovish phrase was that some saw “there was also a risk that the Committee could tighten the stance of policy by more than necessary to restore price stability. These participants highlighted this risk as underscoring the importance of the Committee’s data-dependent approach to judging the pace and magnitude of policy firming over coming quarters.” By contrast, the BOE knows there is going to be a recession, and is carrying on regardless. The RBNZ also seems pretty committed.

In short, we are all back to data-watching, which is where we were before: and also watching the beads of sweat forming on the Fed’s forehead (and those of the doves/rates bulls?)

One cannot help but think that there is some significance in the RBNZ, BOE, and Fed all now flocking together towards a base rate around 4% and then staying there for “some time”.

Indeed, Philip notes in ‘Lost in Translation’: “While the minutes are yet another piece of evidence that the Fed has prioritized price stability over full employment, markets are likely to remain deaf to the Fed’s repeated attempts to explain how they want to approach the current outbreak of inflation…. The same crowd that thought that inflation was transitory, is now celebrating peak inflation and the coming of an early Fed pivot. However, what they don’t seem to get is that bringing inflation back to 2% is going to require patience, from the Fed and markets.”

However, patience is for the birds, it seems.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 10:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/zvILTMq Tyler Durden

“We’re Witnessing A Housing Recession”: Existing Home Sales Crater 20% In July As Affordability Collapses

“We’re Witnessing A Housing Recession”: Existing Home Sales Crater 20% In July As Affordability Collapses

Another month, another plunge in housing.

Hot on the heels of the latest catastrophic homebuilder sentiment print and plunging single-family starts and permits, analysts expected existing home sales to accelerate their recent decline with a 4.9% MoM drop in Julye. They were right in direction but severely wrong in magnitude as existing home sales tumbled tumbled 5.9% MoM in June.

That is the 6h straight month of existing home sales declines – the longest stretch since 2013 – pulling home sales down a stunning 20.2% YoY. From the NAR

“The ongoing sales decline reflects the impact of the mortgage rate peak of 6% in early June,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.

“Home sales may soon stabilize since mortgage rates have fallen to near 5%, thereby giving an additional boost of purchasing power to home buyers.”

The collapsing housing market means the SAAR is now below the full year pace of 2012 – one decade ago.

Interestingly, despite the broad collapse in the market, properties typically remained on the market for 14 days in July, the same as June and down from 16 days in May and 17 days in July 2021. The 14 days on market are the fewest since NAR began tracking it in May 2011. Eighty-two percent of homes sold in July 2022 were on the market for less than a month.

In other words, the market is frozen, but inventory remains at record lows!

“We’re witnessing a housing recession in terms of declining home sales and home building,” Yun said. “However, it’s not a recession in home prices. Inventory remains tight and prices continue to rise nationally with nearly 40% of homes still commanding the full list price.”

Finally, there is some good news – the number of homes for sale rose for the first time in three years on an annual basis to 1.31 million, up from 1.26 in June and the highest since September. At the current sales pace it would take 3.3 months to sell all the homes on the market, marking the fifth straight rise in months’ supply.

Despite hopes that prices would start to roll over – helping with affordability – the median selling price rose 10.8% from a year earlier to a near-record $403,800. First-time buyers accounted for 29% of US sales last month, up from 30% in May.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 10:20

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/u1rTyqO Tyler Durden

Media Intervenors’ Argument Supporting Unsealing Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Affidavit

Monday, I blogged the government’s argument against unsealing the affidavit, and said I’d blog the reply to it when it was filed; here is the bulk of the principal reply:

The government and the Media Intervenors agree that the public has a “clear and powerful interest” in understanding the unprecedented investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s handling of classified records. They also agree that the common-law right of access applies to the search warrant materials currently under seal. They further agree that the law required release of the search warrant and property receipt, which the Court has now done, and that the cover sheets for the search warrant application, the government’s motion to seal, and the Court’s sealing order should be unsealed immediately as well, all with only minor redactions. And they agree that the government may be able to make a sufficient showing of a compelling interest authorizing it to maintain under seal some details of the investigation while it remains ongoing.

The government, however, has taken the position that the affidavit of probable cause must remain under seal in its entirety, despite the presumption of access, with little explanation as to how release would harm the ongoing investigation, and even though many details of the investigation are already public. In the government’s view, the necessary redactions “would be so extensive as to render the document devoid of content that would meaningfully enhance the public’s understanding of these events.” This runs counter to the presumption of public access, which requires the disclosure of as much information as possible. The affidavit of probable cause should be released to the public, with only those redactions that are necessary to protect a compelling interest articulated by the government.

THE PUBLIC’S “CLEAR AND POWERFUL INTEREST” IN THE SEARCH WARRANT RECORDS EXTENDS TO THE AFFIDAVIT OF PROBABLE CAUSE.

As Attorney General Merrick Garland aptly wrote when he was Chief Judge of the D.C. Circuit:

The common-law right of public access to judicial records is a fundamental element of the rule of law, important to maintaining the integrity and legitimacy of an independent Judicial Branch. At bottom, it reflects the antipathy of a democratic country to the notion of ‘secret law,’ inaccessible to those who are governed by that law.”

Leopold v. United States (D.C. Cir. 2020) (citation omitted); see also MetLife, Inc. v. Fin. Stability Oversight Council (D.C. Cir. 2017) (Garland, J.) (right of access “serves to produce an informed and enlightened public opinion,” to “safeguard against any attempt to employ our courts as instruments of persecution, to promote the search for truth, and to assure confidence in judicial remedies” (internal marks omitted)).

Separately, as the government notes, there is a First Amendment right of access to certain criminal proceedings. While the Eleventh Circuit has not considered whether the First Amendment right of access attaches to search warrant materials, the Eighth Circuit has recognized a First Amendment right, as has at least one court within this District. Although some courts have reached different conclusions, the Eighth Circuit’s view is more consistent with Supreme Court precedent.

Consistent with the presumption of access, the Department of Justice, under the Attorney General’s leadership, has joined the Media Intervenors in recognizing that the public has a “clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred in” the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, which “weighs heavily in favor of unsealing.” In recognition of that public interest, this Court acted promptly and diligently to ensure public access to redacted versions of the search warrant and property receipt.

That same public interest extends to the affidavit of probable cause in this matter, which outlines the government’s basis for the extraordinary step of seeking the warrant to search a former President’s home. See In re Four Search Warrants (N.D. Ga. 1996) (recognizing “the public’s right to understand the legal process, the preservation of the integrity of the fact-finding process, and the furtherance of the appearance of fairness” as interests favoring unsealing of search warrants). The unsealed search warrant and property receipt revealed that Trump is under investigation for potentially violating the Espionage Act, mishandling top secret documents, and obstruction of justice. In these circumstances, it is not merely a recitation of hornbook law to say that the public has a right to learn as much as possible, and as soon as possible, about this “historically significant event,” including the details of the investigation. Newman v. Graddick (11th Cir. 1983); see also Globe Newspaper Co. v. Super. Ct. (1982) (right of access “ensure[s] that th[e] constitutionally protected discussion of governmental affairs is an informed one” (internal marks omitted)). Notably, the former President has made no objection to the release of any warrant materials, and in fact has … call[ed] for “the immediate release of the completely Unredacted Affidavit” on social media.

The government has told the Court, in arguing to keep the affidavit under seal, that if it were to release the document, certain unspecified redactions would be “necessary to mitigate harms to the integrity of the investigation.” While the government characterizes those necessary redactions as “extensive” in making this argument, it admits that some portions of the document, if released, would not harm the investigation. Yet the government thus far appears to have made no effort to identify the particular portions of the affidavit that it believes pose a risk and explain the basis for that belief, instead asserting that the Court is already “familiar with the highly sensitive contents of the affidavit and the specific harms that would result from its unsealing.” To overcome the presumption of access, this Court must make findings of fact on the record supporting closure. See, e.g., Press-Enterprise Co. (“The interest is to be articulated along with findings specific enough that a reviewing court can determine whether the closure order was properly entered.”). The government has offered the Court little assistance in this regard, given the high level of abstraction in its response.

Any proposed redactions must be narrow, the government must explain to the Court why each redaction is necessary “to mitigate harms to the integrity of the investigation,” and only those redactions determined to meet a compelling need articulated by the government after the Court conducts an in camera review can be justified. The Media Intervenors request the opportunity to be further heard by the Court should they wish to challenge any redactions in the affidavit as publicly filed.

[I.] THERE IS NO COMPELLING INTEREST IN CONTINUED SEALING OF INFORMATION ALREADY PUBLICLY DISCLOSED.

As the government also recognized in its Motion to Unseal Limited Warrant Materials, the interest in maintaining secrecy is greatly diminished once the information contained in a judicial record has already been disclosed to the public through other sources. The government rightfully noted that the law required unsealing the warrant and property receipt because “the occurrence of the search and indications of the subject matter involved [were] already public.”

Indeed, the press has already widely reported significant details about the events leading up to the search and the investigation, including that:

  • Some of the materials sought in the Mar-a-Lago search related to nuclear weapons and/or “special access programs”;
  • The National Archives referred the matter to the Justice Department after it retrieved 15 boxes of materials from Mar-a-Lago in January7;
  • Some of the materials recovered by the National Archives were classified, including signals intelligence;
  • Some of the recovered materials were torn up and needed to be taped back together;
  • The Department of Justice launched an investigation and convened a grand jury;
  • This spring, the Department of Justice served a subpoena on Trump seeking additional classified materials in his possession;
  • Department of Justice officials, including Jay Bratt, the department’s chief of counterintelligence and export control, met at Mar-a-Lago in June with Trump attorneys Christina Bobb and Evan Corcoran;
  • During the June meeting, Trump briefly stopped by but did not answer any questions;
  • Also during the June visit, the group toured storage facilities at Mar-a-Lago and reviewed some materials there;
  • Bratt subsequently sent an email to Corcoran instructing him to further secure the area where the documents were kept;
  • One of Trump’s attorneys signed a letter to the Department of Justice stating that all materials marked as classified and held in storage at Mar-a-Lago had been turned over;
  • The Department of Justice also subpoenaed surveillance footage from Mar-a- Lago, which showed that boxes were moved in and out the storage room where the records at issue were kept; and
  • Justice Department officials interviewed many current and former Trump employees, at least one of whom indicated there may have been additional classified materials remaining at Mar-a-Lago.

To the extent that the affidavit of probable cause contains any of this information, or other details about the investigation already reported in the press, there is no compelling interest in maintaining it under seal. Instead, those portions of the affidavit should be made public even if the Court finds a compelling interest to maintain other discrete portions under seal. See In re Four Search Warrants (releasing redacted search warrant affidavits where “much of the information” they contained had “already been made widely available to the public” through news reports).

The government’s position that any redactions would “render the document devoid of content that would meaningfully enhance the public’s understanding of these events beyond the information already now in the public record,” turns the presumption of public access to judicial records on its head. The public is entitled to review judicial records unless there is a compelling interest to deny access, not if there is a sufficient reason to grant access to a redacted record, as the government has suggested. And it is the public itself, not the government, that should have the opportunity to determine whether the information available enhances its understanding of this historic event.

The media intervenors did, however, agree with the government’s request for “the temporary continued sealing of the … names [of additional prosecutors referenced in those documents] at this time.”

The post Media Intervenors' Argument Supporting Unsealing Mar-A-Lago Search Warrant Affidavit appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/T5KAReg
via IFTTT

The Satanic Panic Is Back, and It’s Bipartisan


woman with horns surrounded by Satanic imagery

A new poll looking at Americans’ belief in conspiracy theories finds high levels of support for loony-tunes ideas about sex, Satan, and U.S. institutions. In addition, more than half of those surveyed believed child sex-trafficking myths.

The situation echoes fears prevalent during the 1980s and ’90s, a mass hysteria that has in retrospect been dubbed the Satanic Panic. This vintage worry about ritual murders, sexual abuse inspired by devil worship, and Satanists in child care centers, the entertainment industry, and elsewhere was unfounded—but still ruined lives. (You can read much more about the Satanic Panic in Reason Books Editor Jesse Walker’s The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory.)

For a few decades, the moral panic around these topics seemed to subside—which is not to say people didn’t displace these fears into other overblown villains, such as sex trafficking cabals. Now it seems to be in full swing again, blended with ongoing panic about sex trafficking and retro myths about queer people being pedophiles and perverts.

“Accusations involving ritual sex abuse and the sexualization of children have surged into the mainstream of American politics over the past year,” University of Miami political science professors Joseph E. Uscinski and Casey Klofstad note on the London School of Economics’ U.S. politics and policy blog. “In particular, conservative politicians and opinion leaders have increasingly expressed concerns about Satan, Satanists, sex “grooming“, and the supposed “agenda” by public schools and entertainment companies to indoctrinate children into sexualized lifestyles or to turn them gay or trans.”

To gauge support for such views, Uscinski and Klofstad conducted a nationwide poll, garnering 2,001 (nationally representative) respondents between May 26 and June 30, 2022. They found not only high levels of nouveau Satanic Panic but also high levels of belief in conspiracy theories about child sex trafficking and Disney:

• 25 percent agree that “Satanic ritual sex abuse is widespread in this country.”

• 33 percent agreed that “members of Satanic cults secretly abuse thousands of children every year.”

• 26 percent agreed that “the Disney Corporation ‘grooms’ children into sexualized lifestyles.”

• 28 percent agreed that “there is a secret ‘gay agenda’ aimed at converting young people into gay and trans lifestyles.”

• 30 percent agreed that “elites, from government and Hollywood, are engaged in a massive child sex trafficking racket.”

• 60 percent agree that there are at least 300,000 kids being sex trafficked in the U.S.

The child sex-trafficking myth: Only 10.3 percent of those surveyed said there are somewhat fewer or far fewer than 300,000 kids being trafficked. Around 30 percent said they didn’t know.

We’ve tackled this last myth at Reason a number of times. It’s a statistic based on a bad study that assigned risk factors based on broad situations—like being the child of immigrants, being in foster care, or living in public housing—and then used these factors to arrive at the conclusion that 326,000 kids were “at risk for commercial sexual exploitation.” The research never said this many kids were or would be trafficked, and even the method used to calculate risk is dubious. Nonetheless, the study is still cited frequently by people in government and law enforcement, and often morphs from children at risk of trafficking to children who are being trafficked.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children drew from this study and a 2002 Justice Department study (the National Incidence Studies of Missing, Abducted, Runaway and Thrownaway Children, or NISMART) to suggest that the number actually being trafficked is 100,000.

Years ago, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler did a thorough debunking of both myths. Kessler notes that the NISMART survey “showed nearly 1.7 million kids had a runaway episode a year,” but “only 1,700 kids — less than one percent — reported having engaged in sexual activity in exchange for money, drugs, food, or shelter during the episode.”

Bipartisan lunacy: Many have blamed former President Donald Trump and other Republicans for myths about sex trafficking, given the right-wing bent of believers in the sex-trafficking panic that is QAnon. But myths and misinformation about sex trafficking have been spread for decades by both Republicans and Democrats.

And if Uscinski and Klofstad’s poll is accurate, both Republicans and Democrats are strong believers in child sex-trafficking myths as well as Satanic Panic hoopla. In the poll, Republicans were more likely to agree that Disney is “grooming” children and that there’s a secret “gay agenda.” But Democrats were as or more likely to believe other conspiracy theories.

For instance, on the question of whether Satanic ritual sex abuse is widespread, 29 percent of Democrats and 26 percent of Republicans said yes.

Thirty-two percent of both Republicans and Democrats said Hollywood and government elites are sex-trafficking children.

And 61 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of Republicans agreed that 300,000 or more children are being trafficked in the U.S.

Surveys like this one get at why curbing misinformation on social media—something politicians are constantly harping on tech companies to do—is so difficult. Wild myths are not merely fringe beliefs in many cases. They’re shared by a number of Americans and, all too often, rooted in rhetoric from mainstream politicians.

You can find the full poll results here.

FREE MINDS

Judges shouldn’t be able to sentence people based on crime accusations they’ve been cleared of, right? That seems like it only makes sense. Alas, it’s not so clear to some, apparently. A case involving this question is before the U.S. Supreme Court. The Due Process Institute lays out the stakes in a new friend-of-the-court brief:

FREE MARKETS

TikTok is pushing back on claims that it poses a national security threat. In a letter obtained by Politico and sent to Catherine Szpindor, chief administrative officer of the U.S. House of Representatives, the company challenged a “TikTok Cyber Advisory” issued by Szpindor’s office. The company is urging Szpindor’s office to rescind the advisory.

“Allegations that TikTok stores U.S. user data in China are inaccurate,” states the letter, noting that U.S. user data is currently stored in Virginia and backed up on a server in Singapore. “Moreover, as we recently announced, 100% of U.S. user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. We still use our U.S. and Singapore data centers for backup, but we expect to delete U.S. users‘ personal information from our own data centers and fully pivot to Oracle cloud servers located in the U.S.”

TikTok also noted that contrary to the House report, it does not use facial recognition technology or collect face or voice data and “does not automatically collect precise GPS location information in the U.S. Our privacy policy is quite clear that in the event we were to request precise location data, users would have to approve it for each request.” 

The letter is the latest in an ongoing saga involving attempts to ban or further regulate the popular video app since it is owned by a Chinese company.

QUICK HITS

• Arizona is punishing a mom for letting her 7-year-old kid and his friend play at the park without adult supervision.

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should get back to its roots, writes Reason‘s Ron Bailey.

• “Two former Pennsylvania judges who orchestrated a scheme to send children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks were ordered to pay more than $200 million to hundreds of people they victimized,” reports the Associated Press.

• Monkeypox may be spreading specifically through sex, rather than through simple skin-to-skin transmission as previously believed.

• Oklahoma’s governor issued a two-month stay of execution for Richard Glossip, a man on death row for a 1997 murder he did not (by anyone’s account) commit and may have had nothing to do with.

• Sex workers say they’re increasingly being restricted on Reddit—one of the few social media sites to still allow nudity and explicit sexual content.

• PEN America looks at censorship in American schools and finds that “this year, proposed educational gag orders have increased 250 percent compared to 2021. Thirty-six different states have introduced 137 gag order bills in 2022, compared to 22 states introducing 54 bills in 2021,” though “there has been a decline in new gag order laws passed from 12 last year to 7 this year.”

• What could go wrong?

The post The Satanic Panic Is Back, and It's Bipartisan appeared first on Reason.com.

from Latest https://ift.tt/L49u7H1
via IFTTT

Japan Wants People To Drink More Alcohol As Generational Trend Cuts Tax Haul

Japan Wants People To Drink More Alcohol As Generational Trend Cuts Tax Haul

In some sort of Bizarro World scenario, declining alcohol consumption is causing alarm in the halls of Japanese government, as the trend is putting a big dent in the country’s tax haul.

Average adult alcohol intake dropped from 100 liters a year in 1995 to 75 liters in 2020. Meanwhile, alcohol taxes declined from providing 3% of Japan’s tax revenue in 2011 to 2% in 2020.

As the Financial Times explains, much of the trend can be attributed to demographics:

A fall in the total volume of alcohol consumed in Japan was inevitable once the indigenous population began to shrink over a decade ago and the proportion of citizens aged over 65 increased to more than a quarter of the country eight years ago. 

Reflecting a worldwide phenomenon, Japan’s younger generations aren’t drinking as much as their parents and grandparents did. 

The general downtrend gained steam when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted lifestyles. Restaurants and bars closed or limited their operations, and people socialized less and shifted to working from home. “Many people may have come to question whether they need to continue the habit of drinking with colleagues to deepen communication,” a tax official told the Japan Times.  

The drop in revenue from 2018 to 2020 was the largest in 31 years. Taxes took a big hit in 1989 with a major change in Japan’s Liquor Tax Law. 

Fear not — having admitted it has an alcohol problem, Japan’s tax agency will no longer sit idle while sobriety insidiously spreads throughout the population. A government campaign is afoot to encourage people to hit the bottle. 

The first phase of the drinking drive is a contest called “Sake Viva!“, which asks Japanese citizens between the ages of 20 and 39 to come up with fresh ideas for juicing the country’s alcohol business. In addition to seeking “new products and designs” and new sales methods, the tax agency also wants strategies to encourage people to drink at home, reports The Guardian. 

After winners are named at a gala in November, the tax office plans to promote the adoption of the winning ideas by alcohol-related businesses. Japan’s health ministry isn’t participating in the contest, but said it trusted the ensuing campaigns would emphasize drinking only “the appropriate amount of alcohol.” 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 10:00

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/6RiDjJS Tyler Durden

A Deeper Dive Into The CDC Reversal

A Deeper Dive Into The CDC Reversal

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The Brownstone Institute,

It was a good but bizarre day when the CDC finally reversed itself fundamentally on its messaging for two-and-a-half years.

The source is the MMWR report of August 11, 2022. The title alone shows just how deeply the about-face was buried: Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems — United States, August 2022. 

The authors: “the CDC Emergency Response Team” consisting of “Greta M. Massetti, PhD; Brendan R. Jackson, MD; John T. Brooks, MD; Cria G. Perrine, PhD; Erica Reott, MPH; Aron J. Hall, DVM; Debra Lubar, PhD;; Ian T. Williams, PhD; Matthew D. Ritchey, DPT; Pragna Patel, MD; Leandris C. Liburd, PhD; Barbara E. Mahon, MD.”

It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall in the brainstorming sessions that led to this little treatise. The wording was chosen very carefully, not to say anything false outright, much less admit any errors of the past, but to imply that it was only possible to say these things now. 

“As SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to circulate globally, high levels of vaccine- and infection-induced immunity and the availability of effective treatments and prevention tools have substantially reduced the risk for medically significant COVID-19 illness (severe acute illness and post–COVID-19 conditions) and associated hospitalization and death. These circumstances now allow public health efforts to minimize the individual and societal health impacts of COVID-19 by focusing on sustainable measures to further reduce medically significant illness as well as to minimize strain on the health care system, while reducing barriers to social, educational, and economic activity.“

In English: 

everyone can pretty much go back to normal.

Focus on illness that is medically significant. Stop worrying about positive cases because nothing is going to stop them. Think about the bigger picture of overall social health. End the compulsion. Thank you. It’s only two and a half years late. 

What about mass testing?

Forget it:

“All persons should seek testing for active infection when they are symptomatic or if they have a known or suspected exposure to someone with COVID-19.”

Oh. 

What about the magic of track and trace?

“CDC now recommends case investigation and contact tracing only in health care settings and certain high-risk congregate settings.”

Oh. 

What about the unvaccinated who were so demonized throughout the last year? 

“CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur, though they are generally mild, and persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection.”

Remember when 40% of the members of the black community in New York City who refused the jab were not allowed into restaurants, bars, libraries, museums, or theaters? Now, no one wants to talk about that. 

Also, universities, colleges, the military, and so on – which still have mandates in place – do you hear this? Everything you have done to hate on people, dehumanize people, segregate people, humiliate others as unclean, fire people and destroy lives, now stands in disrepute. 

Meanwhile, as of this writing, the blasted US government still will not allow unvaccinated travelers across its borders! 

Not one word of the CDC’s turgid treatise was untrue back in the Spring of 2020. There was always “infection-induced immunity,” though Fauci and Co. constantly pretended otherwise. It was always a terrible idea to introduce “barriers to social, educational, and economic activity.” The vaccines never promised in their authorization to stop infection and spread, even though all official statements of the CDC claimed otherwise, repeatedly and often. 

You might also wonder how the great reversal treats masking. On this subject, there is no backing off. After all, the Biden administration still has an appeal in process to reverse the court decision that the mask mandate was illegal all along.

“At the high COVID-19 Community Level,” the CDC adds, “additional recommendations focus on all persons wearing masks indoors in public and further increasing protection to populations at high risk.”

The problem from the beginning was that there never was an exit strategy from the crazy lockdown/mandate idea. It was never the case that they would magically cause the bug to go away. The excuse that we would lock down in wait for a vaccine never made any sense. 

People surely knew early on of the social, economic, and cultural devastation that would ensue. If they did not, they never should have been anywhere near the control switches of public health. Badges and bureaucracies do not terrify a virus destined to spread to the whole planet. And not one person with even the most casual passing knowledge of coronaviruses could have sincerely believed that a vaccine would magically appear to achieve something never before achieved in the whole history of medicine. 

When the Great Barrington Declaration appeared on October 4, 2020, it caused a global frenzy of fury not because it said anything new. It was merely a pithy restatement of basic public-health principles, which pretty much instantly became verboten on March 16, 2020, when Fauci/Birx announced their grand scheme. 

The GBD generated mania because the existing praxis was based on preposterously unproven claims that demanded that billions of people buy into complete nonsense. Sadly many did simply because it seemed hard to believe that all world regimes but a handful would push such a damaging policy if it was utterly unworkable. When something like that happens – and there never was the hope that it could work – the regime imperative becomes censorship and shaming of dissent. It’s the only way to hold the great lie together. 

So finally, nearly two years later the CDC has embraced the Great Barrington Declaration rather than doing a “quick and devastating takedown” as Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci called for the day after its release. No, they had to try out their new theory on the rest of us. It did not work, obviously. For the authors of the GBD, they knew from the time they penned the document that it was a matter of time before they were vindicated. They never doubted it. 

Dr. Rajeev Venkayya is widely credited with coming up with the idea of lockdowns while he was working for the Bush administration back in 2005. He had no training at all in public health or epidemiology. He later marveled that it fell to him, a young desk-dwelling White House bureaucrat, to “invent pandemic planning.” Maybe he should have demurred that day that George W. Bush asked him to lead the charge to inaugurate a new war on pathogens. 

Somehow his views gained converts, among whom was Bill Gates, the foundation for whom he worked for years. The rest is history. 

In April 2020, Venkayya called me to explain why I needed to stop attacking lockdowns. He said that the planners need a chance to make their scheme work. 

On the phone, I asked the same question over and over: where does the virus go? The first two times, he did not respond. I pressed and pressed. Finally he said there will be a vaccine. 

It’s hard to appreciate just how preposterous that sounded at the time, and I said something along those lines: it would be a medical miracle never before seen to have a shot for a coronavirus that was sterilizing against wild type and all inevitable mutations, and to do it in a reasonable time so that society and economy had not completely fallen apart. 

The whole approach was clearly milliennarian at best and utter madness at worst. And here I was, in the thick of global lockdowns, on the phone with the architect of the whole idea, an idea that had reduced billions to servitude, wrecked schools and churches, and sent communities and countries into complete upheaval. I wondered at the time what it would be like to be Dr. Venkayya that day. After all this ended in disaster, would he take responsibility? His LinkedIn profile today says otherwise: he is prepared to “tackle current and future epidemic & pandemic threats as the CEO of Aerium Therapeutics.”

There never was an exit strategy from lockdowns and mandates but they eventually did find an exit nonetheless. It came in the form of a heavily footnoted and opaquely written reversal, published by the main bureaucracy responsible for the disaster. It amounts to a repudiation without saying so. And thus does the great experiment in mass compulsion come to an intellectual end. If only the carnage could be cleaned up by another posting on the CDC’s website. 

By the way, the Biden administration has extended the declaration of Covid emergency. And my unvaccinated friends in the UK still can’t board a plane to come for a visit. 

All of this gives rise to the great question: what was the point? Maybe it was all a mistake and now it is gone forever but that’s unlikely. The intellectuals who pushed this project on the world have a view of the world that is fundamentally ill-liberal. They differ among themselves on the details but the general approach is technocratic central planning rooted in deep suspicion of basic tenets of freedom. 

How many people on the planet have now been acculturated to top-down control, socialized to live in fear, accept whatever comes down from above, never to question an edict, and expect to live in a world of rolling man-made disasters? And was that the point after all, to cultivate low expectations for life on earth and relinquish the soul’s desire for a full and free life? 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 09:49

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/kTAQ7qm Tyler Durden

China’s Power Crisis Worsens As More Factories Suspend Operations

China’s Power Crisis Worsens As More Factories Suspend Operations

A heatwave-induced power crisis is spreading across southwestern China, shuttering factories and worsening by the day, according to Nikkei Asia. 

The latest news from China is the Chongqing municipal government ordered factories, including Japanese-owned ones, to suspend production through Aug. 24 to conserve power as demand surges because of extreme heat. 

Chongqing is following its neighbor, Sichuan Province, which announced earlier this week that slumping hydropower generation has led to the closure of some of the world’s largest multinationals, including Toyota Motor Corp. and Contemporary Amperex Technology Co.

Moody’s Vice President and Senior Credit Officer Boris Kan pointed out the heatwave will only boost China’s reliance on coal-fired generation. 

In Chongqing, specifically in the Liangjiang area, power demand has surged because extreme heat led to a spike in air conditioner use. Chongqing has a high concentration of factories that make automobiles and computers, and their shutdowns to conserve power could impact global supply chains. 

“Previously, the government had only required that factories cease production during consumption peaks, but the tight power supply-demand situation has become so severe that shutdowns were deemed necessary,” Nikkie Asia said. 

State-owned Chongqing Changan Automobile, U.S.-based Ford Motor, BYD Auto, and Taiwanese electronics manufacturers are some companies in Chongqing. 

And while a power crisis festers in the country’s southwestern part, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the critical situation on Thursday. He called on local authorities to resolve the severe drought in some provinces threatening electricity supplies, adding it could impact economic growth. 

Despite the heatwave and factory shutdowns, President Xi also said China would open up its economy even as globalization has experienced a rise in protectionism in some parts of the world. 

Good luck with the reopening, as July’s economic data is very alarming, which forced the country’s central bank to cut its key interest rates earlier this week unexpectedly. Compound a power crisis and factory closures to an already souring economic outlook (thanks to zero-Covid policies and a collapsing property sector), and China’s downturn appears to be deepening. 

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 09:40

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/wtcemsj Tyler Durden

Fed Fund Futures Belie Idea That July Minutes Were Dovish

Fed Fund Futures Belie Idea That July Minutes Were Dovish

By Ven Ram, Bloomberg Markets Live Commentator and reporter

Were the minutes of the Fed’s policy meeting for July dovish?

While some market observers seem to have thought so based on the statement that “it would become appropriate at some point to slow the pace of policy rate increases”, I thought by stating that the Fed wasn’t conceding much. “At some point”, yes, the markets are well aware, but that phrase also implies we aren’t there yet.

Far from it. For better or worse, the Fed believes that July’s 75-basis point rate hike took the Fed funds rate “within the range of…estimates of its longer-run neutral level”. I have argued before that given inflation running at more than four times the Fed’s target, the braking distance to slow price pressures is far longer — meaning the neutral rate isn’t your vanilla 2.50% on the nominal Fed funds rate.

Even so, the minutes concede in the very next breath:

With inflation elevated and expected to remain so over the near term, some participants emphasized that the real federal funds rate would likely still be below shorter-run neutral levels after this meeting’s policy rate.

In other words, some on the policy committee believed that rates would have to rise more to just get into Le Zone Neutral.

And in this kind of inflationary environment, one would think that your friendly neighborhood benchmark needs to be in restrictive territory to bring demand in alignment with skewed supply — which would be an even higher rate. And again, in the Fed’s own words, “…once the policy rate had reached a sufficiently restrictive level, it likely would be appropriate to maintain that level for some time to ensure that inflation was firmly on a path back to 2%”. Nowhere there is the notion of rate cuts anytime soon — as some fairy tales would have us believe.

Do the markets think the minutes were dovish? Just look at Fed fund futures for March next year, which have climbed sharply so far this month. And at those sticky real rates. To me, the minutes were pretty dovish only if you replaced the first four letters with h, a, w and k.

Tyler Durden
Thu, 08/18/2022 – 09:10

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/zEaqbpM Tyler Durden