Month: August 2023

Legal Concerns Halt NIH $154 Million “False Information” Program

Legal Concerns Halt NIH $154 Million “False Information” Program

Authored by Benjamin Rothove via TheCollegeFix.com,

Federal court case takes aim at Biden-Big Tech partnership…

The National Institutes of Health halted a $154 million research program intended to study “equitable health communication” and combat alleged medical misinformation.

The “pause” came “in the context of the current regulatory and legal landscape around communication platforms,” according to a website for the initiative.

A spokeswoman for the NIH did not answer direct questions about the reason for the pause.

A federal court is considering a lawsuit brought by plaintiffs who allege the federal government colluded with Big Tech companies to silence their speech, often critical of COVID policies or the integrity of the 2020 presidential election.

“The project was still in concept phase and is being paused to reconsider its scope and aims in the context of the current regulatory and legal landscape around communication platforms, as noted on the website,” Emily Ritter told The College Fix via email.

“Our overall assessment will determine the future direction of the concept in terms of if or how it will move forward.”

Discovery in the case, Missouri v. Biden, found federal officials communicated with Big Tech platforms and pressured them to remove content, including a parody Anthony Fauci Instagram account.

The Fix asked how the NIH ensures its programs do not violate the First Amendment and if Missouri v. Biden played a role in the decision to pull the program.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the federal government to continue to work with Big Tech while the lawsuit continues.

The initiative appears to have come from comments made by departing NIH Director Francis Collins in 2021.

“We basically have seen the accurate medical information overtaken, all too often, by the inaccurate conspiracies and false information on social media. It’s a whole other world out there,” Collins said.

“The concept envisioned the development, testing, and sharing of new approaches for effective and equitable health communication,” the NIH website stated.

“Planning for the concept was informed by input from a request for information in April 2022 and a workshop held in May 2022.”

The College Fix contacted the New Civil Liberties Alliance to ask if the cancellation of the initiative was a positive development, if they were concerned about the lack of transparency from the NIH and if they thought Missouri v. Biden played a role in the decision. NCLA is representing plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit.

The legal group said it “won’t be able to comment on this at this time.”

Alta Charo, a bioethicist and University of Wisconsin Law School professor who has advised the NIH, told KFF Health News that the NIH “is caught up in a larger debate about who gets to decide what is truthful information these days.”

The Fix contacted Charo to ask if she was concerned about why the study was canceled, if she knew of previous instances where medical research was halted due to political pressure and the importance of similar projects. She was on vacation and unable to comment.

The Fix also twice contacted Dean Schillinger, a researcher at the University of California San Francisco, in the past two weeks with the same questions. Schillinger has not responded to requests for comment.

Schillinger co-authored an article in JAMA Network Open, which is published by the American Medical Association, criticizing the NIH for canceling the program.

“The NIH’s unfortunate decision to halt the program, which took place in the face of mounting political pressures related to the study of misinformation, represents a serious threat to the integrity of science and to its successful translation,” he wrote.

“With so much at risk, this is precisely the wrong time to back away from research into a critical threat to the health of our country,” Schillinger wrote.

“The chilling effect of the recent political actions to block the NIH and other government agencies from combating all types of health-related misinformation has very broad repercussions.”

“The program was deemed potentially so important that it would be supported through the agency’s Common Fund: a designation for high-priority programs that cut across normal institutional boundaries,” according to the NIH.

While representatives for the NIH have said that the project is on pause, it is listed under “former programs” on the website.

However, the pause does not mean an end to all “misinformation” research.

The NIH grant database lists millions of dollars in funded projects for 2023 alone that deal with “misinformation” and communication.

Projects include “Mitigating the Spread of Misinformation and Disinformation about COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment Initiatives among Hispanics” and “Investigating and identifying the heterogeneity in COVID-19 misinformation exposure on social media among Black and Rural communities to inform precision public health messaging.”

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 11:20

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Tropical Storm Idalia Forecasted To Intensify Into “Major Hurricane” Before Striking Florida

Tropical Storm Idalia Forecasted To Intensify Into “Major Hurricane” Before Striking Florida

Tropical Storm Idalia is forecasted to become a major hurricane before striking Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday morning, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. 

 NHC senior hurricane specialist Eric Blake told local newspaper Orlando Sentinel​​​​​​, “The risk continues to increase for life-threatening storm surge and dangerous hurricane-force winds along portions of the west coast of Florida and the Florida Panhandle beginning as early as late Tuesday.”

NHC’s early morning forecast said Idalia is “forecasted to become a hurricane when it nears Western Cuba Today,” adding “life-threatening storm surge and dangerous winds becoming increasingly likely for portions of Florida.” 

NHC said Idalia is forecasted to become a “dangerous major hurricane over the northeastern Gulf of Mexico by early Wednesday.” On the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, this means the storm will be rated as a Category 3 system or higher. 

On Sunday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 33 Florida counties while campaigning for president in Iowa. He activated the Florida Division of Emergency Management to prepare for the storm. Also, 1,100 National Guard members were deployed. 

“These things can wobble, so Floridians along our Gulf Coast should be vigilant even if you’re currently outside the [forecast zone] cone,” DeSantis said. 

“The bottom line is that rapid intensification is becoming increasingly likely before landfall,” Blake said. He noted, “It should be emphasized that only a small deviation in the track could cause a big change in Idalia’s landfall location in Florida due to the paralleling track to the west coast of the state.”

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 11:00

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When Should the Law Regulate Content Moderation?

Thanks to Eugene for inviting me to guest-blog this week about my new article, The Five Internet Rights. The article endeavors to answer the (internet) age-old question: When, if ever, should the law intervene into how private entities moderate lawful online user content?

This question has taken center stage as debates rage over the proper role of social media companies in policing online speech. For example, Twitter’s decision to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story alarmed many people about the power large platforms exercise, or could exercise, over the dissemination of news and, thus, over electoral outcomes. It also spurred Florida to pass a law that attempts to prevent social media companies from discriminating against “journalistic enterprises.”

Similarly, social media companies’ decision to prevent users from discussing the COVID “lab leak” theory—a decision they later reversed after the theory achieved mainstream status—caused many to wonder if social media companies may be hamstringing the search for truth by arrogating to themselves the power to determine what constitutes valid scientific inquiry. It too generated a legislative response—this time, from Texas, which went even further by prohibiting social media companies from discriminating against any users based on their viewpoints.

Still others fear that social media companies are being too lax in moderating user content. They believe that disinformation and hate speech pose a much greater danger to society, and even to free speech, than does private “censorship.” These concerns have prompted other states like New York to consider legislation that would force social media companies to take down problematic user content or else face legal consequences.

But even if these concerns are valid—even if the content moderation practices of large online platforms present serious risks to society—is regulation the answer? Or would government involvement only introduce larger problems? And even if state intervention into private content moderation could improve matters, would the Constitution permit it? That too remains an open question after the Eleventh Circuit enjoined Florida’s forced carriage law while the Fifth Circuit upheld Texas’s similar law.

In the face of these thorny issues, it might seem impossible to answer the foundational question of whether the law should ever intervene in private content moderation. Still, I believe an answer (or at least a partial answer) can be found by examining the topic from a different angle.

When considering whether the state should intervene in private content moderation, much, if not all, of the analysis to date has focused on the actions of social media companies. That’s not surprising, since most online speech these days occurs on social media, and social media companies make most content moderation decisions. But social media companies aren’t the only game in town when it comes to limiting user speech. And far more concerning, I would argue, than whether Facebook permits some news story or scientific theory to be shared is the fact that content moderation is now moving deeper down the internet stack.

For example, after it was discovered that some of the January 6 rioters used Parler to amplify Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rhetoric, Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing provider, famously booted Parler from its servers, causing the website to go down for weeks. Other infrastructural providers, such as Cloudflare and Joyent, have similarly revoked hosting services for websites because those websites have permitted offensive (albeit lawful) user speech. Registrars like GoDaddy and Google have taken to revoking domain names associated with lawful websites whose viewpoints they oppose. And even internet service providers may be getting into the content moderation game by blocking their subscribers’ access to websites for ideological reasons.

Still, most concerning of all was a development that received scarcely any attention in the press. Shortly after Parler managed to migrate to an alternate host, it went dark again, but this time for a different reason. After complaints reached LACNIC, one of the five regional internet registries responsible for managing the world’s network identifiers, LACNIC revoked more than eight thousand IP addresses used by Parler and its new hosting provider, taking Parler offline once more. A year later, Ukraine sent a similar request to Europe’s regional internet registry to revoke Russian IP addresses.

Given how foundational these core resources are to the operation of the internet—and the fact that a deplatformed website or user cannot simply build his or her own alternative Internet Protocol or Domain Name System—these developments point to a world in which it may soon be possible for private gatekeepers to exclude unpopular users, groups, or viewpoints from the internet altogether. I call this phenomenon viewpoint foreclosure.

Understanding viewpoint foreclosure provides the key to determining when and how the law should regulate content moderation. It suggests that intervention should start with basic viewpoint access—the right of all users to self-publish their lawfully expressed viewpoints on the public internet. It also suggests that whether the state should intervene when private intermediaries deny internet resources to users for ideological reasons should ultimately turn on whether users can realistically create substitute resources to stay online. As I’ll explain when I unpack internet architecture, the law can ensure viewpoint access by guaranteeing five basic internet rights: the rights of connectivity (connecting to the internet), addressability (maintaining a publicly reachable IP address), nameability (maintaining a stable domain name), routability (having one’s packets faithfully routed through intervening networks), and accessibility (not having one’s users blocked from accessing one’s content).

Put differently, when it comes to content moderation, the only regulation we clearly need (although we may indeed need more) is this set of five basic and irreducible rights. In this series, I’ll show why that’s the case by answering the following four questions:

  1. Can the state regulate content moderation?
  2. Can a controversial user really be kicked off the internet?
  3. Should a website have the right to exist?
  4. How can the state prevent viewpoint foreclosure?

Tomorrow, I’ll tackle the first question.

The post When Should the Law Regulate Content Moderation? appeared first on Reason.com.

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How Does Intramural Speech Fit Within the First Amendment?

I noted last month that a Fourth Circuit panel had handed down a divided decision in Porter v. North Carolina State University. The case involved a tenured statistics professor in the college of education who was removed from the program in higher education after a number of complaints he had made about the program becoming too focused on social justice. The Porter panel denied his claim that the speech for which he was being punished was constitutionally protected. Porter is a relatively rare case on “intramural speech,” internal faculty speech about matters of university governance and policy, and the decision is an important one in concluding that such speech does not merit constitutional protection.

I have now posted an article-length paper examining the competing arguments in Porter and contending that neither the majority nor the dissent approached the question in the right way. I offer an alternative approach to extending the Supreme Court’s doctrine on government employee speech to the particular context of intramural speech by state university professors. From the abstract:

Since the early twentieth century, advocates of academic freedom in the United States have urged universities to tolerate internal dissent and refrain from sanctioning professors for their comments on university affairs. Despite this long history of advocacy, the status of intramural speech within traditional theories and policies regarding academic freedom and within First Amendment doctrine relating to academic freedom remains uncertain at best. Controversies regarding intramural speech are recurring, but there is no clear conceptual framework for how those controversies should be resolved. University officials and judges are often inclined to give little weight to academic freedom interests associated with intramural speech.

This article offers a theoretical and doctrinal approach to integrating intramural speech within the broader logic of academic freedom. Deploying government employee speech doctrine as a useful paradigm for thinking about intramural speech generally, the article argues intramural speech should be viewed as a generally protected form of speech by university professors. The relative weight of the faculty’s interest in such speech and of the university’s interest in regulating such speech varies, however, depending on how closely associated the speech in question is to academic functions of the university. The weight that should be given to intramural speech is at its zenith when professors engage in campus speech directly related to scholarly and educational enterprise, but it is at its nadir when professors comment on university affairs that are not distinctive to or closely related to the academic mission of the university.

You can read the whole thing here.

The post How Does Intramural Speech Fit Within the First Amendment? appeared first on Reason.com.

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Watch: Romney Calls Bottomless Ukraine Aid “The Best National Defense Spending We’ve Ever Done”

Watch: Romney Calls Bottomless Ukraine Aid “The Best National Defense Spending We’ve Ever Done”

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

Republican Senator Mitt Romney gave a big shout out to the Biden Administration Friday, posting a video in which he claims that sending billions in taxpayer dollars to Ukraine is “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done.”

While the economy at home is dismal, Romney claimed that a “very small amount” of money that the U.S. is sending to Ukraine, more than $200 billion and counting, is benefitting all Americans.

“The single most important thing we can do to strengthen ourselves relative to China is to see Russia defeated in Ukraine. Because they are allies, and Russia being weakened weakens their ally, China,” Romney said.

“Being able to take an amount which equals what about 5 percent of our military budget, but actually less than 5 percent of our military budget each year to help the Ukrainians, is about about the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done,” Romney claimed.

He added “We’re losing no lives in Ukraine,” while not mentioning the hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians.

He continued, “the Ukrainians are fighting heroically against Russia that has 1,5000 nuclear weapons aimed at us. It’s like, so, we’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money relative to what we spend on the rest of defense.”

“It is very much in America’s national interest in our national interest to help Ukraine. And the best thing we can do for America is to see people who have nuclear weapons and that is getting weaker,” Romney concluded.

Residents of the devastated Lahaina inMaui sure don’t think that sending money to Ukraine is the best form of national defense spending:

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Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 10:40

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Fists Fly, Bodies Slammed As Antifa Crashes Anti-Migrant Protest At NYC Mayor’s Mansion

Fists Fly, Bodies Slammed As Antifa Crashes Anti-Migrant Protest At NYC Mayor’s Mansion

Cops had their hands full at the New York City mayor’s mansion on Sunday when black-clad antifa counterprotestors showed up at a demonstration against Mayor Eric Adams’ handling of the 2023 migrant crisis. 

Anti-migrant protestors scrap with a black-clad counterprotestor outside Gracie Mansion (Getty Images via Daily Mail)

More than 100,000 migrants have poured into New York City since April 2022, overwhelming the government’s capacity to house and feed them. Many residents of the city and surrounding areas are growing increasingly resentful of the measures Adams has approved, from kicking wedding parties out of hotels to shipping migrants to suburban counties and even housing adult men in the gyms of actively-used elementary schools. 

New Yorkers are also alarmed by scenes like these: 

The latest flashpoint: The city’s housing of 3,000 migrants in a tent city on Randall’s Island, an expanse along the East River between Northern Manhattan and Queens dominated by parkland and recreational facilities. Taxpayers were already incensed over youth soccer fields and other leisure assets being converted to migrant housing — and then came news that the city is spending $20 million per month on the migrant mini-city.  

Sunday’s protest was headlined by Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, who addressed the fed-up crowd with a microphone and PA system:

“These migrants have jumped the queue,” he said. “And by the way, if I were a migrant and you gave me an opportunity to jump the queue and stay in a hotel, give me three square meals … — basically give me more than homeless people born in America have or veterans who are down on their luck have — you’re damn right they’re gonna keep coming!”

Protesters held signs with slogans like “STOP REWARDING, START DEPORTING” and “AMERICANS OVER MIGRANTS.” The New York Post quotes a Trump supporter as shouting “No migrants on Long Island! We pay a lot of property taxes!” 

Counterprotestors held signs reading “NO ONE CHOOSES TO BE A REFUGEE” and “HUMANITY HAS NO BORDERS.” Some yelled “F**k white supremacist NYPD!” 

Sunday gave the world a clear front-runner for 2023’s most moronic foray into leftist-agenda “intersectionality” (Getty Images via Daily Mail)

The highlight of the pre-combat action came when the anti-open-borders crowd taunted the leftists with chants of “PASTY WHITE LIBERALS!” 

It wasn’t long before friction between the two groups of protestors inevitably erupted into a series of brawls… 

Here, it appears a black-masked antifa-type was in the midst of pummeling an anti-open-immigration protestor when his world was positively rocked by a right-winger flying in to the rescue: 

This video shows the challenge facing NYPD cops as the skirmishes ebbed and flowed: 

As he’d promised in advance, Sliwa was eventually arrested for acts of civil disobedience, but not before he was seen intervening to break up some of the fights.

Sliwa wasn’t the only one arrested. Here, cops swoop in and handcuff antifa affiliates: 

With the gates along the southern border literally welded open by the Biden administration, expect more brawls in the months to come… 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 10:20

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Peter Schiff: Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole Speech Was Full Of Holes

Peter Schiff: Jerome Powell’s Jackson Hole Speech Was Full Of Holes

Via SchiffGold.com,

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered his annual speech at Jackson Hole on Friday. Peter Schiff broke the speech down in his podcast and said the speech itself was full of holes.

It wasn’t so much what he said, but what he left out.

Very early in the speech, stocks started to sell off, along with gold as the dollar rose when Powell said the Fed still has a very long way to go to get price inflation back to 2%. Peter called that one of the biggest understatements of the year — maybe of the century.

It’s not that they have a long way to go. They have an impossible distance to travel. In fact, the route is so far between where we are and where the Fed thinks it’s going to get that it’s basically a mission impossible. There’s no way that the Fed is going to complete this journey.”

Powell made some other hawkish statements, reiterating that the central bank is going to remain resolute in the inflation fight. He also emphasized that 2% is the target and that the Fed won’t move the goalposts and accept a higher rate.

While the markets initially sold off on the speech, they recovered later in the day.

The markets just totally shrugged it off, which is what the market has been doing. Yes, we’ve had a decent correction off the highs, but the market has basically held up very well in relation to the carnage in the bond market.”

Peter said he expects the bond market carnage to continue and Powell’s Jackson Hole speech reinforces the momentum to the downside that we’re seeing in bonds.

Peter said the most interesting part of the speech wasn’t what Powell said, but what he left out.

The whole point of raising interest rates is to slow down aggregate demand. Raising rates makes borrowing more expensive and theoretically slows down consumption. But Powell never addresses the elephant in the living room — aggregate demand isn’t going down.

It doesn’t matter that the Fed has raised interest rates. It’s done nothing. And one of the main reasons it’s done nothing is because at the same time the Fed is pursuing a higher monetary policy of quantitative tightening and interest rate hikes, the US federal government is pursuing the opposite policy. The US government is now running one of the most expansive, stimulative fiscal policies in our nation’s history.”

Peter noted the massive budget deficits. With two months left to go, the deficit for fiscal 2023 already stood at $1.61 trillion. Based on the deficit, you would think the US economy is in the midst of a deep recession. In fact, the 2023 deficit will be higher than any deficit the Obama administration ran during the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta Fed recently upped its Q3 GDP estimate to 5.9%.

According to the Federal Reserve, the economy is booming and Powell is talking about how they’re reducing aggregate demand with their rate hikes. They haven’t reduced anything. But the point I’m making is we’ve got this growing economy, yet despite this growing economy we are running budget deficits that are close to $2 trillion per year. Now, if we’re running deficits of $2 trillion a year when the economy is good — when it’s growing, supposedly, what’s going to happen during the next recession?”

The bottom line is we already have a massive stimulative fiscal policy that is working at cross-purposes with the Fed.

How can the Fed not mention this? How can the Fed not say, ‘Look, we’ve got a problem here. We’re trying to fight inflation but the government is undermining our efforts. We’re trying to reduce aggregate demand by raising rates, and the reason it hasn’t worked, one of the reasons, is because the government is doing the opposite. The government is undermining everything we’re trying to achieve with its stimulative fiscal policy.’”

In just 72 days, the Biden administration added over $700 billion to the national debt.

A few years ago, that was more red ink than we built up in an entire year. … The budget deficits are going up. We’re stimulating more and more. That is going to undermine everything the Fed has done, and nothing that the Fed has done is going to work in the face of this fiscal policy that is so stimulative.”

The Fed is also fighting against the lag effect of more than a decade of easy money.

All the money that the Fed has been creating through QE1, QE2, QE3, QE4, those effects are still being pushed out in the economy. Yes, the Fed is backing off now, but that’s not going to do anything about all the inflation that’s still in the pipeline and what the government is doing now that is ultimately going to cause the Fed to reverse course.”

Peter raises the key question.

How is it that Powell can give this speech with all the world looking at him talking about inflation and ignoring this problem? What Powell should be doing is warning about these big deficits and saying, ‘Congress needs to help out here. I can’t do this all by myself.’”

Last year, Fed economists even admitted the central bank can’t rein in price inflation with monetary policy alone. But Peter said Powell is too big of a wimp to call out the Biden administration.

You can’t ignore fiscal policy when you’re running monetary policy. You can’t say, ‘Hey, there’s a separation here and I don’t want to interfere with what Congress is doing.’ No! He’s got to interfere. In fact, he’s paid to interfere. The idea that there is an independent Fed — it’s supposed to be independent from Congress, not the other way around. It’s not that the Fed is not supposed to point out when Congress is doing something wrong or the president. No, that is the job of the Fed chairman. If Congress is running these big deficits, and it’s creating a problem for inflation, if it’s creating a problem for the Fed and the public, the Fed chairman is supposed to call them out. The Fed chairman is supposed to say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to cut spending. You’ve got to bring down these deficits.”

Peter goes on to parse out some of the economic data, revealing the failure of the Fed’s inflation fight.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 10:00

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Key Events This Week: Payrolls, GDP, JOLTS, PCE And ISM

Key Events This Week: Payrolls, GDP, JOLTS, PCE And ISM

Thanks to a UK holiday, it’s a quiet start to what is shaping up as a busy final week of August, and the summer. The main event this week is the August payrolls report on Friday; we also get JOLTS job openings on Tuesday, the Q2 GDP revision on Wednesday, core PCE on Thursday, and the ISM report on Friday. There are several speaking engagements from Fed officials this week, including remarks from presidents Bostic, Collins and Mester.

A day by day analysis of the global key events courtesy of Rabobank:

  • Monday: Aussie retail sales for July printed at 0.5%, much stronger than the 0.2% estimate of the Bloomberg survey. Might this be an indication that predictions of an end to the rate hiking cycle are premature? Later today we get the Dallas Fed’s manufacturing activity index, which is expected to be slightly less bad at -19 as well as a number of central bank speakers including Nagel and Holzmann from the ECB and Barr from the Fed.

  • Tuesday: Japanese labor market data is first up with the unemployment rate expected to hold at 2.5% in July and the job to applicant ratio also expected to hold at 1.3x. Following that, we have consumer confidence surveys out in Germany and France, July retail sales for Spain (6.7% YoY expected) and a climate-change related speech from current RBA Deputy (soon to be Supremo) Michele Bullock. The big-ticket items of the day will be the Conference Board survey and the JOLTS survey out of the USA. The Fed’s Barr will also be speaking on banking services.

  • Wednesday: NZ building permits for July gets the ball rolling ahead of similar data for Australia and the July monthly CPI inflation gauge from the ABS. We will get preliminary August CPI figures for Germany (6% expected) and Spain (expected to accelerate to 2.5% YoY) ahead of the second read of US 2nd quarter GDP.

  • Thursday: NZ business confidence is the first print of the day, followed by Aussie private sector credit and CAPEX figures. The major release of the Asian session will be Chinese PMI data for August, where the contraction in manufacturing is expected to worsen to 49.1 and services are seen slowing to 51.1. German July retail sales are expected to have grown by 0.3% MoM, while preliminary French CPI for August is seen accelerating to 4.6% YoY from 4.3% previously. We will also get German labour market data, where the unemployment rate is expected to lift one tick to 5.7%, and Italian preliminary CPI figures for August where price growth is expected to have slowed to 5.6% YoY. The major release of the day will be the US core PCE deflator for July. The Bloomberg survey suggests market expectations of inflation accelerating to 3.3% YoY in July.

  • Friday:  NZ consumer confidence figures are the first release of the day ahead of Caixin manufacturing PMI data for China, Nationwide house prices for the UK and manufacturing PMIs for Europe, the UK, Canada and the USA. That data will likely be overshadowed slightly by the US non-farm payrolls report, which should be the highlight of the week. Payrolls are expected to have grown by 168k in August, while the unemployment rate holds steady at 3.5% and average hourly earnings tick lower to 4.3% YoY. Friday will also bring Q2 GDP data for Canada, where growth is seen slowing to 1.2% annualized, as well as the August ISM survey. Central bank speakers include Raphael Bostic and Loretta Mester from the Fed

And here is Goldman, focusing on just the US:

Monday, August 28

  • 10:30 AM Dallas Fed manufacturing index, August (consensus -19.0, last -20.0)

  • 01:30 PM Fed Vice Chair Michael Barr speaks about banking services: Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr speaks in roundtable conversation with Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Council. Q&A with moderator is expected.

Tuesday, August 29

  • 09:00 AM S&P Case-Shiller 20-city home price index, June (GS +0.9%, consensus +0.80%, last +0.99%)

  • 10:00am JOLTS job openings, July (GS 9400k, consensus 9450K, last 9582k)

  • 10:00 AM Conference Board consumer confidence, August (GS 116.8, consensus 116.5, last 117.0): We estimate that the Conference Board consumer confidence index edged down to 116.8 in August.

  • 10:30 AM Dallas Fed services index, August (consensus n.a., last -4.2)

  • 03:00 PM Fed Vice Chair Michael Barr speaks about banking services: Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael S. Barr takes part in roundtable conversation with Blackfeet Business Council. Q&A with moderator is expected.

Wednesday, August 30

  • 08:15 AM ADP employment change, August (GS 150k, consensus 198k, last 324k): We estimate a 150k rise in ADP payroll employment in August, reflecting solid but sequentially softer Big Data employment indicators. We also note that ADP employment growth has slowed in August in 6 of the last 7 years.

  • 08:30 AM Advance goods trade balance, July (GS -$87.0bn, consensus -$90.0bn, last revised -$88.8bn)

  • 08:30 AM GDP, Q2 second release (GS +2.6%, consensus +2.4%, last +2.4%): Personal consumption, Q2 second release (GS +1.8%, consensus +1.8%, last +1.6%): We estimate a 0.2pp upward revision to Q2 GDP growth to +2.6% (qoq ar), reflecting upward revisions to consumer spending, government spending, and business fixed investment—partially offset by downward revisions to inventory investment.

  • 08:30 AM Wholesale inventories, July preliminary (consensus -0.3%, last -0.5%)

  • 08:30 AM Retail inventories, July (consensus +0.5%, last +0.7%)

  • 10:00 AM Pending home sales, July (GS +0.5%, consensus -1.0%, last +0.3%)

Thursday, August 31

  • 03:15 AM Atlanta Fed President Bostic (FOMC non-voter) gives speech in South Africa: President Bostic will give a speech and participate in a panel discussion at the South African Reserve Bank’s biennial research conference. Speech text will be made available. Q&A with audiences is expected. On August 1, Bostic said in a press briefing that “there has been significant progress in the battle.” and he doesn’t see need for a September hike.

  • 08:31 AM Initial jobless claims, August (GS 225k, consensus 235k, last 230k): Continuing claims, August (consensus 1705K, last 1702k)

  • 08:30 AM Personal income, July (GS +0.5%, consensus +0.3%, last +0.3%); Personal spending, July (GS +0.7%, consensus +0.7%, last +0.5%); 08:30 AM PCE price index, July (GS +0.21%, consensus +0.2%, last +0.2%); Core PCE price index, July (GS +0.21%, consensus +0.2%, last +0.2%): Based on details in the PPI, CPI, and import price reports, we forecast that the core PCE price index rose by 0.21% month-over-month in July, corresponding to a 4.24% increase from a year earlier. Additionally, we expect that the headline PCE price index increased by 0.21% in July, corresponding to a 3.28% increase from a year earlier. We expect that personal income increased by 0.5% and personal spending increased by 0.7% in July (mom sa).

  • 09:45am Chicago PMI, August (GS 45.0, consensus 44.1, last 42.8): We estimate that the Chicago PMI rebounded by 2.2pt to 45.0 in August. Our GS manufacturing tracker rose by 1.4pt to 49.1.

  • 09:00 AM Boston Fed President Collins (FOMC non-voter) speaks on community colleges: Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Susan Collins to speak on the role community colleges play in the nation’s essential development of its people and workforce. Speech text will be made available. On July 11, Collins said in her Boston TV interview “my expectation is that we will need to hold rates at a level that will help us to slow demand and realign demand and supply for some time, and so my baseline is that we will need to hold at least through this year and that we’ll start bring rates down next year.”

Friday, September 1

  • 06:00 AM Atlanta Fed President Bostic (FOMC non-voter) speaks on US monetary policy: Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic takes part in panel discussion with SARB governor Lesetja Kganyago, IMF first deputy managing director Gita Gopinath, and Huw Pill, chief economist and executive director for Monetary Analysis and Research at the Bank of England in Cape Town. The panel discussion will be livestreamed. Q&A with audiences is expected.

  • 08:30 AM Nonfarm payroll employment, August (GS +149k, consensus +168k, last +187k); Private payroll employment, August (GS +124k, consensus +150k, last +172k); Average hourly earnings (mom), August (GS +0.20%, consensus +0.3%, last +0.4%); Average hourly earnings (yoy), August (GS +4.25%, consensus +4.3%, last +4.4%); Unemployment rate, August (GS 3.5%, consensus 3.5%, last 3.5%); Labor force participation rate, August (GS 62.6%, consensus 62.6%, last 62.6%): We estimate nonfarm payrolls rose by 149k in August (mom sa). Big Data indicators indicate solid but generally slowing job growth, and August payrolls has exhibited a consistent negative bias in the initial prints (subsequently revised higher in each of the last five years). Our forecast also embeds a 26k one-time drag from the combination of Hollywood worker strikes (-18k) and Yellow trucking layoffs (-8k). We estimate that the unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.5%, reflecting a modest rise in household employment and unchanged labor force participation (at 62.6%). We estimate a 0.20% increase in average hourly earnings (mom sa) that lowers the year-on-year rate to 4.25%, reflecting waning wage pressures and negative calendar effects (the latter worth -5bps, on our estimates).

  • 09:45 AM S&P Global US manufacturing PMI, August final (consensus 47.0, last 47.0)

  • 09:45 AM Cleveland Fed President Mester (FOMC non-voter) speaks on inflation:  Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester speaks at European Central Bank and Cleveland Fed’s Center for Inflation Research conference – Inflation: Drivers and Dynamics Conference 2023. The talk will be livestreamed, and the text will be made available. Q&A with audiences is expected. On August 25, Cleveland President Mester said it’s quite possible the central bank will raise rates again and the key issue is to decide how restrictive monetary policy needs to be and how long it needs to stay at those levels.

  • 10:00 AM Construction spending, July (consensus +0.5%, last +0.5%)

  • 10:00 AM ISM manufacturing index, August (GS 47.0, consensus 47.0, last 46.4): We estimate that the ISM manufacturing index rebounded by 0.6pt 47.0 in August, reflecting the net pickup in US regional surveys but the mixed recovery in East Asian industrial activity. Our GS manufacturing tracker rose by 1.4pt to 49.1.

  • 05:00 PM Lightweight motor vehicle sales, May (GS 15.3mn, consensus 15.5mn, last 15.7mn)

Source: Rabobank, Goldman

Tyler Durden
Mon, 08/28/2023 – 09:50

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/vI57sJb Tyler Durden

It Isn’t ‘Divisive Rhetoric’ That Kills People


Dollar General | Jakub Porzycki/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

A gunman carrying a rifle emblazoned with a swastika killed three people at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Florida, on Saturday before taking his own life.

The shooter, 21-year-old Ryan Christopher Palmete, was white. All of his victims—52-year-old Angela Michelle Carr, 19-year-old Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., and 29-year-old Jerrald Gallion—were black. Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters has said that the murder spree was racially motivated and Palmete specifically targeted black people. The sheriff also noted that the guns Palmete was carrying were legally purchased.

As is so often the case with crimes like these, people are casting about for someone other than one racist psychopath—or “deranged scumbag,” as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put it—to blame. Some have settled on “divisive rhetoric” as the culprit.

“When we have this kind of divisive rhetoric, this is exactly what happens,” journalism professor and Jacksonville councilmember Rahman Johnson told MSNBC’s Symone Sanders-Townsend. He mentioned Florida’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion trainings, African-American studies programs in schools, and transgender people.

“The division has to stop, the hate has to stop, the rhetoric has to stop,” Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan said.

An op-ed in the Florida Times-Union blamed the city’s reaction to antisemitic banners and light displays, saying the response wasn’t “forceful enough.” Those “public demonstrations look like terrible harbingers of what was to come,” wrote columnist Nate Monroe.

Florida state Rep. Angie Nixon blamed attacks on “wokeness,” which she called “a dog whistle. That wokeness that they want to die is Black people, and it was evident yesterday by what happened,” Nixon said.

Needless to say, plenty of people hear the same rhetoric Palmete may have heard about diversity trainings, wokeness, and so on but don’t go on to commit atrocities. And openly bigoted speech, as represented by those antisemitic banners, is much less common now than at most points in U.S. history past.

We do not know what route Palmete took to the politics of the swastika, nor what combustible collection of mental health issues those politics may have ignited. But laying the blame on the political rhetoric or actions of state or city leaders both overplays the role of policy makers and absolves Palmete of too much responsibility. “Divisive rhetoric” didn’t kill three people on Saturday. Palmete did.

FREE MINDS

More panic about kids and screen time. A widely covered study published last week purportedly showed more dangers from letting very young children be exposed to screens—TVs, phones, etc.—in any capacity. “Age 1 is too young for any amount of screen time,” Fast Company reported of the findings. “‘iPad kids,’ or babies and young children who have access to more screen time have a higher likelihood of developmental delays,” reported Fox News.

Once again, the actual findings behind the headlines are rather mundane.

The study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, found that one-year-olds exposed to more screen time had “a higher risk of developmental delay at age 2 years in the communication, fine motor, problem-solving, and personal and social skills domains.” By age four, delays in fine motor, personal, and social skills had disappeared but children with more screen time were still at higher risk for communication and problem-solving deficits. “In particular, more than 4 hours of screen time per day was associated with developmental delays in communication and problem-solving across ages 2 and 4 years,” the researchers say.

It doesn’t take special training to see some problems with using this study to draw major conclusions about kids and screen time in general, or using it to demonize any and all screen exposure for very young children. For one thing, the effects may not be so much about the detrimental effects of TV or the internet but the fact that more time spent doing that means less time for other developmentally enriching activities. A young kid who spent four hours per day on any one activity to the exclusion of others may experience delays in certain cognitive or physical domains.

The bigger problem is that families who let very young children spend a lot of time in front of screens tend to differ in a lot of other ways from those who do not. And indeed, “mothers of children with high levels of screen time were characterized as being younger…and having a lower household income, lower maternal education level, and having postpartum depression” than mothers of children with less screen time. There were also differences in number of siblings and presence of a grandparent.

The researchers attempted to control for some of these differences, but “we should continue to worry that there are significant other unobserved differences,” economist Emily Oster points out. She concludes:

Correlation is not causation, and it’s hard to convince yourself that the choice of an hour a day versus four hours a day of television for a 1-year-old is a random choice. To be clear: four hours of screens a day for a 1-year-old will leave relatively little time for other things, so it is worth being intentional about how you use screen time. But this study shouldn’t change how you think about that.

It’s also worth noting that the researchers didn’t differentiate between types of screen time. It’s possible some types have a negative effect and some have a positive effect. A meta-analysis published last year, for instance, looked at 478 studies on small children and exposure to television and found watching TV linked to both positive and negative effects, depending on the type of programming that was viewed and the circumstances of that viewing.

FREE MARKETS

Did banks hand private financial data to the FBI without legal process? The House Judiciary Committee is currently investigating that question. But “there’s no doubt about the threat to civil liberties posed by the government’s leverage over the financial industry; that’s long established,” writes J.D. Tuccille. And while the current investigation is focused on whether banks were too quick to share data related to the January 6 riots, the larger problem needs to be fixed no matter what lawmakers discover in this instance.

“Financial institutions have long operated as surveillance arms of the state, tracking transactions and movements, making assumptions about what they might mean, then turning that information over to government officials under regulatory pressure,” notes Tuccille. The government exerts this pressure through customer due diligence rules, the Bank Secrecy Act, mandated suspicious activity reports, and the USA PATRIOT Act. The results have included the Obama-era Operation Chokepoint and the exclusion of sex workers from risk-averse banks and payment processors.

“Just as politicians have leaned on the tech sector to muzzle speech, they have long pressured banks to spy on customers and deny services to people whose existence offends officialdom,” Tuccille points out.

Whether or not the House Judiciary Committee Chairman finds evidence of “a dangerous escalation in the abuse of government officials’ leverage over the financial industry,” this issue deserves as much attention as government pressure on tech platforms.

QUICK HITS

• A new poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 77 percent of those surveyed think Biden is too old to be an effective president for another full term. This view was shared by 89 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats.

• France is moving to ban the abaya—a full-length robe that some Muslim women wear—from state-run schools.

• Reason‘s Nick Gillespie interviews Semafor editor (and former BuzzFeed News editor) Ben Smith about his book Traffic and the digital media explosion of the early 21st century.

• Former President Donald Trump “has raised $7.1 million since he was booked at an Atlanta jail Thursday evening,” reports Politico. “On Friday alone, Trump raised $4.18 million, making it the single-highest 24-hour period of his campaign to date, according to a person familiar with the totals.”

• Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, long dominated by conservatives, has swung left.

The post It Isn't 'Divisive Rhetoric' That Kills People appeared first on Reason.com.

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Can New York City Ban the Sale of Foie Gras?


2749981372_139a1cfd1d_k | "foie gras" by stu_spivack is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse.

This past term the Supreme Court upheld a California law barring the sale of animal products that are not produced in conformity with the state’s animal welfare laws, even if the products are produced out of state. A majority of the justices rejected the claim that such a law violated the Dormant Commerce Clause because of its extraterritorial effect.

Politico reports on a similar battle in New York, where New York City is seeking to ban the sale of foie gras, largely because of the manner in which it is produced. (Foie gras involves force feeding ducks or geese so as to increase the fat content in their livers.) Although the conflict arises under state law, some of the underlying quesitons are similar, as it pits producers from elsewhere (in this case, upstate New York) against a local jurisdiction.

New York City’s anti-foie-gras ordinance was set to take effect last year, but it was blocked by the state. That order, in turn, was rejected by a state court, and litigation is ongoing.

One of the central issues is whether, under New York law, a city may adopt regulations that unduly interfere with agricultural practices in other parts of the state.  Two farms in upstate New York are the nation’s dominant foie gras producers, and New York City is responsible for a disproportionate share of their sales.

From the Politico story:

The New York City Council passed, and then-Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law, a bill banning the sale and serving of foie gras in November 2019. It was set to take effect three years later, in November 2022, but the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets ordered the city to foie greddaboudit. The city couldn’t implement the ban since it “unreasonably restricts” two foie gras farms’ “operations and on-farm practices” under state law, the agency ruled.

The Adams administration sued, and got a taste of victory Aug. 3 when an Albany County judge struck down the state’s order blocking the city ban as “arbitrary and capricious.” . . .

But the waterfowl war is far from over. La Belle and Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the two duck farms party to the case, filed a notice of appeal Aug. 18.

The state could get another shot at the duck issue too. Albany Judge Richard Platkin’s ruling was based on the state’s failure to comprehensively review the legislative history of the bill. Instead, he wrote, the agriculture department relied on “two brief quotations drawn from a multi-thousand page record.” But he gave the state a second chance by allowing the agency to review the farms’ complaints about the law again, and issue a new order based on a more thorough review.

Accoridng to Politico, the conflict is also pitting New York City mayor Eric Adams (who follows a near-vegan diet) against New York Governor Kathy Holchul. It also presents rather common questions about when state law should preempt local ordinances.

For now, foie gras remains on the menu at several New York restaurants. Foie gras cannot be sold commercially in California, however. Under California law, individuals can mail-order foie gras from out of state, but retailers and restaurants may not sell it.

The post Can New York City Ban the Sale of Foie Gras? appeared first on Reason.com.

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