Tag: news

America’s Women Go On Strike, Pledge To “Avoid Spending Money” (Men Celebrate)

Women all around the United States plan to use today, International Women’s Day, to stay home from work and stage demonstrations to, among other things, continue their opposition efforts against the Trump administration and call attention to the gender pay gap.

In addition to not working, a great perk for protesters by itself, organizers suggest women wear red and also avoid spending money, the latter of which many men around the country undoubtedly wish their wives would observe in perpetuity.  But if they just have to spend money, protest organizers suggest women only do so at women-owned businesses (which would seem difficult since those women-owned businesses should be closed in solidarity…but we digress). “It would pretty much shut down the economy if all women bought nothing,” said Michael Englund, the chief economist at Action Economics, a financial analysis firm. “It is a question of participation. I’ve never seen any boycott or protest ever affect GDP numbers.” 

Organizers are attempting to repeat tactics from the Jan. 21 women’s march on Washington and other cities that came together largely through
social media.

DWW

 

Of course, this “Day Without Women” protest is intended to mimic the recent “Day Without Immigrants” protest in which “undocumented, residents, citizens, immigrants from all over the world” were encouraged to stay home from work and not spend money.

Day Without Immigrants

 

In a world where companies are increasingly forced to take political sides, some businesses are voluntarily giving their female employees the day off to protest. The women’s website Bustle, for example, won’t publish any new content Wednesday; employees can participate in an optional volunteer day or strike. “It seems like a really interesting opportunity to showcase what a day is like without women,” said Editor-in-Chief Kate
Ward. NARAL Pro-Choice America has also closed its Washington, D.C., office.

Meanwhile, more than 300 public school teachers in Alexandria, Va., requested the day off work, prompting the school district to shut down for the day. A school district in North Carolina has also canceled classes. Instead of striking, teachers at the Horace Mann School, a private school in New York, plan to lead silent activities and teach lessons focusing on the contributions of women.

As Bloomberg points out, today’s “Day Without Women” strike is intended to be an escalation in protest efforts to “reintroduce the notion of strike in the political lexicon of this country.”

A general work stoppage suggests that, at least in theory, the strikers could grind the economy to a halt by refusing to participate in it, or at least make enough noise to get attention. But the March 8 strike has a more modest and potentially subversive goal: “We want to reintroduce the notion of strike in the political lexicon of this country,” said Lamis Deek, a human-rights attorney and one of the organizers of the Day Without Women.

 

A strike, with its implied threat, is a more aggressive form of protest than a Saturday-afternoon march like the ones held nationwide on Jan. 21, and the organizers hope Wednesday is just the beginning. “A lot of what people are trying to do is start to rebuild a muscle,” said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “They are trying to get people to think about how they might participate.”

Of course, just like some of the immigrants that decided to skip work at the ironically named “I Don’t Care” Bar and Grill in Catoosa, Oklahoma last month for the “Day Without Immigrants” protest, we suspect some of these women just might find themselves unemployed for their efforts.

via http://ift.tt/2m24OF7 Tyler Durden

Killing Big Bird: New at Reason

President Trump looks to cut funding to government-subsidized art and broadcasting.

John Stossel writes:

Next week, Donald Trump releases his new budget. It’s expected to cut spending on things like the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Good!

Government has no business funding art. When politicians decide which ideas deserve a boost, art is debased. When they use your money to shape the culture, they shape it in ways that make culture friendlier to government.

As The Federalist‘s Elizabeth Harrington points out, the National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t give grants to sculpture honoring the Second Amendment or exhibitions on the benefits of traditional marriage. They fund a play about “lesbian activists who oppose gun ownership” and “art installations about climate change.”

View this article.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2mlGkcg
via IFTTT

Tim Kaine’s Son Arrested For Rioting During Trump Rally

The youngest son of Senator Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential running mate, was one of six people arrested Saturday after counter-protesters disrupted a rally in support of President Donald Trump at the Minnesota State Capitol, the Twin Cities Pioneer Press reported. Linwood Michael Kaine, 24, and four others were arrested on suspicion of second-degree riot after the “March 4 Trump” rally in St. Paul; another person was cited for disorderly conduct.

On Saturday afternoon, several hundred Trump supporters showed up at the Capitol for a permitted rally billed as the “March 4 Trump,” one of several held around the country. The Minnesota State Patrol estimated the crowds at 400 Trump supporters and 50 counter-demonstrators.

Speeches had been going on for about a half-hour inside the newly renovated Capitol rotunda when a group of people tried to disrupt the event. At that moment, counter-protesters clashed with Trump supporters after they disrupted the proceedings with air horns, whistles and chants. At one point, someone set off a smoke bomb — apparently striking a woman in the head, police said.

A 61-year-old Plymouth woman said she was hit in the head at 12:30 p.m., about 10 minutes after she arrived at the Trump rally. The woman said she saw something coming toward her, tried to avoid the object, but it struck her in the forehead, according to Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman. She was not injured. It was not clear who threw the smoke bomb. Security guards intervened, skirmishes broke out, and someone sprayed chemical irritant into the crowd. Some counter-demonstrators dispersed, and the rally resumed.

Elisa Sarmento, one of the rally’s organizers, was upset by the disruption, though she said it didn’t have much of an impact. “All we wanted to do was just celebrate our president in our own country,” Sarmento said. “We have the freedom to do it and for those young kids to come … and disrupt and hurt people, that’s very disappointing.”

Twin Cities adds that Linwood Kaine, a Minneapolis resident who attended Carleton College and goes by Woody, was released from the Ramsey County jail on Tuesday morning pending further investigation, law enforcement officials said.

While no charges have been filed against him or the four other people who were arrested by St. Paul police yet, St. Paul City Attorney Samuel Clark is reviewing the case for possible misdemeanor charges.  Woody Kaine was seen with four people who lit fireworks inside the Capitol, Linders said. Police are investigating whether Kaine was one of the people who was lighting the devices.

St. Paul police arrested Kaine and the four others near Rice Street and University Avenue, less than a block from the Capitol. After the group ran and a St. Paul police officer detained Kaine, “he turned around and squared up to fight with the officer,” Linders said Tuesday night. “The officer was able to place Mr. Kaine under arrest and take him to the Ramsey County jail for booking.”

The officer used “some force” to take Kaine into custody, according to Linders, who said he didn’t have details about what it involved. The State Patrol arrested a sixth person at the Capitol. People involved in Kaine’s arrest were not aware that he is the son of Tim Kaine, and it was brought to the police department’s attention by a Pioneer Press reporter, Linders said. No one from the U.S. senator’s office had contacted the department, he said.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, a St. Paul native, released a Tuesday night statement through a spokesperson to the Pioneer Press: “We love that our three children have their own views and concerns about current political issues,” he said. “They fully understand the responsibility to express those concerns peacefully.”

Woody Kaine is one of three children of Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Houlton. An older son, Nat, a Marine serving overseas, was more visible during the presidential campaign. The couple also has a daughter, Anella.
 

via http://ift.tt/2miDXoY Tyler Durden

March Rate Hike Odds Reach 100%

Following the massive ADP employment beat (but productivity disappointment), March rate hike odds finally upticked to certainty. Fed Funds futures now imply a 100% chance that The Fed hikes next week.

Up from low 20s to 100% in a month…

 

What did The Fed see that suddenly spooked them all?

Which reminds us of the WTF-est chart we know of right now – as The Fed’s forecast for
GDP collapses, so the odds of a rate hike soar (FF Futs tumble)…

via http://ift.tt/2miuqOT Tyler Durden

The Lingering Impact of Justice Kennedy’s Trumpesque Claim About Sex Offenders

Last week Robert Montgomery, a senior deputy attorney general at the North Carolina Department of Justice, seemed to have little success convincing the Supreme Court that his state’s law banning sex offenders from social media is consistent with the First Amendment. But at least one statement Montgomery made in defense of the law went unchallenged, even though it has no empirical basis. “This Court has recognized that [sex offenders] have a high rate of recidivism and are very likely to do this again,” he said. “Even as late as 20 years from when they are released, they may recidivate.”

As New York Times legal writer Adam Liptak notes, it is accurate to say the Supreme Court has assumed that sex offenders “have a high rate of recidivism and are very likely to do this again.” But to say the Court has recognized as much implies the statement is true. It isn’t, at least insofar as we can tell from the existing research.

In the 2002 case McKune v. Lile, the Supreme Court rejected a Kansas inmate’s claim that punishing him for refusing to detail his history of sex crimes (possibly including offenses that had previously gone undetected) as part of a prison therapy program violated the Fifth Amendment’s ban on compelled self-incrimination. Underlining the importance of the therapy program in the plurality opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said “the rate of recidivism of untreated offenders has been estimated to be as high as 80%,” which he called “a frightening and high risk of recidivism.” The following year, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Smith v. Doe, which upheld retroactive application of Alaska’s registration requirements for sex offenders. Describing registration as a civil measure aimed at protecting public safety (as opposed to a punishment), Kennedy quoted himself, saying “the risk of recidivism posed by sex offenders is ‘frightening and high.'”

As Ira Mark Ellman and Tara Ellman show in a 2015 Constitutional Commentary article, the original source for Kennedy’s claim that sex offenders have recidivism rates “as high as 80%” was a 1986 Psychology Today article by a counselor who ran a treatment program at an Oregon prison and a therapist who worked for him. “Most untreated sex offenders released from prison go on to commit more offenses,” they wrote, explaining the value of the work from which they earned their livelihoods. “Indeed, as many as 80% do.” As Ellman and Ellman point out, that was “a bare assertion” with “no supporting reference.”

Studies of actual sex offenders find much lower recidivism rates. I summarized some of that research in a 2011 Reason article:

“Though often thought of as the most persistent and dangerous criminals, sex offenders are among the least likely criminals to recidivate,” write Florida Institute of Technology psychologist Timothy Fortney and three co-authors in a 2007 article published by the journal Sexual Offender Treatment. A 2003 Justice Department study of 9,700 sex offenders found that 5 percent were arrested for new sex crimes within three years of being released from prison. (By comparison, 23 percent of burglars were arrested for new burglaries, and 22 percent of people who had served time for nonsexual assault were arrested for new assaults.) Studies that cover longer periods find higher recidivism rates for sex offenders, but still nothing like those claimed by panic-promoting politicians. Two meta-analyses of studies involving a total of 29,000 sex offenders, published by the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 1998 and 2005, found a recidivism rate of 14 percent after four to six years. A study of 4,700 sex offenders, published by Public Safety Canada in 2004, found that 24 percent were charged with a new sex crime over a period of 15 years.

Ellman and Ellman cite a subsequent study, a 2014 meta-analyis covering almost 8,000 sex offenders, that found a five-year recidivism rate of about 20 percent among “high-risk” offenders but less than 3 percent among the rest. The recidivism rate for the high-risk offenders rose to 32 percent after 15 years but remained flat thereafter, indicating that even offenders initially classified as “high risk” pose little or no continuing threat if they go 15 years without committing another sex crime (contrary to Montgomery’s claim before the Supreme Court that a sex offender remains dangerous even after two crime-free decades). The 15-year recidivism rate for low-to-moderate-risk offenders was just 5 percent.

These studies do not tell the whole story, because not all crimes are reported. Montgomery, the lawyer defending North Carolina’s law, emphasized that point during his oral argument last week. “You don’t know how many actual offenses these sex offenders have committed,” he told the Supreme Court. In treatment, he said, sex offenders often confess crimes that were never detected, “so there’s much more crime committed by these offenders than ever gets reported.”

Since confession of past crimes is required by treatment programs and viewed as a sign of cooperation and progress, such statements probably should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, it is fair to say that true recidivism rates are apt to diverge somewhat from estimates based on arrests. But that is a far cry from suggesting that the overall recidivism rate for sex offenders—a diverse group that includes not only rapists and child molesters but nonpredatory lawbreakers such as people who look at forbidden pictures and teenagers have consensual sex with other teenagers—is anything remotely like 80 percent.

These numbers matter because fear of recidivism is at the heart of the harsh and sweeping policies aimed at sex offenders, including mandatory minimum sentences, indefinite civil confinement after prison, lifelong registration, residence and presence restrictions, occupational bans, and stigmatizing passports. The risk that sex offenders will commit new crimes is relevant not only in justifying these measures on policy grounds but in resolving constitutional issues such as whether registration and all the burdens associated with it should be viewed as punishment or as regulations promoting public safety. Ellman and Ellman found that Justice Kennedy’s baseless assertion of “frightening and high” recidivism rates had been quoted “in 91 judicial opinions, as well as briefs in 101 cases.”

Legislators make similar claims whenever they want to impose new restrictions on sex offenders. In 2005 Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), later notorious for sending sexually suggestive email messages to teenage pages, even outdid Kennedy’s Trumpesque recidivism claim. “There is a 90 percent likelihood of recidivism for sexual crimes against children,” he said. “Ninety percent. That is the standard. That is their record. That is the likelihood. Ninety percent.”

There are some encouraging signs that courts are beginning to take a more skeptical view of such claims. Last year, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that Michigan’s Sex Offender Registration Act violated the constitutional ban on retroactive punishment, it cited Justice Department data indicating that sex offenders “are actually less likely to recidivate than other sorts of criminals.” In Does #1–5 v. Snyder, the appeals court faulted the state’s lawyers for failing to present any data on recidivism and noted research suggesting that laws like Michigan’s may “actually increase the risk of recidivism, probably because they exacerbate risk factors for recidivism by making it hard for registrants to get and keep a job, find housing, and reintegrate into their communities.”

In a recent Boston College Law Review article, Melissa Hamilton describes that decision as “an example of the appropriate use of scientific studies in constitutional law” and cites subsequent cases that “provide hints of a sea change in constitutional decision-making, fueled by a new emphasis upon empirically-led analysis.” So far that sea change has not hit the Supreme Court, where an unsupported, self-serving claim published in Psychology Today three decades ago continues to shape constitutional law.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2mY5T4R
via IFTTT

Women on Strike, Lady Liberty Goes Dark, American Alzheimer’s Deaths Have Doubled: A.M. Links

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t forget to sign up for Reason’s daily updates for more content.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2mlxbAD
via IFTTT

US Productivity Growth Slowed Dramatically In Q4

Following Q3’s 3.3% surge in US worker productivity – the best in 2 years – Q4 was a disappointment as growth slowed to just 1.3% (below the 1.5% expectation).

Productvity growth slowed to just 1.3% in Q4 – the exact average growth rate of President Obama’s 8 year reign.

 

Unit labor costs rose very slightly more than expected but remain subdued at just 1.7% QoQ (notably non-financial corporations saw notable drops in unit labor costs) and Real Compensation fell 0.4% QoQ in Q4 and Manufacturing employee hours dropped the most since 2015.

via http://ift.tt/2mB1qUF Tyler Durden

Trump Effect: ADP Employment Surges Near Most In 6 Years On Record Goods-Producing Job Gains

Following January's surge in employment (biggest gain in 7 months), February's ADP print exploded higher to 298k (5 sigma above all expectations). This is the third biggest monthly employment gain of the expansion. It appears the 'Trump Effect' is the biggest driver as the ADP payroll surge was mostly due to a record surge in employment for goods-producing industries.

Private sector employment surged by 298,000 for the month, with goods producers adding 106,000. Construction jobs swelled by 66,000 and manufacturing added 32,000.

3rd best month of the recovery:

 

This is 5 standard deviations above the 187k expectation….

 

Led by a record surge in goods-producing jobs…

 

The details:

 

"Confidence is playing a large role," Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Analytics, told CNBC. "Businesses are anticipating a lot of good stuff — tax cuts, less regulation. They are hiring more aggressively."

March rate-hike odds were 98% going into ADP and we suspect it will uptick from here.

“February proved to be an incredibly strong month for employment with increases we have not seen in years,” said Ahu Yildirmaz, vice president and co-head of the ADP Research Institute. “Gains were driven by a surge in the goods sector, while we also saw the information industry experience a notable increase.”

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics said, “February was a very good month for workers. Powering job growth were the construction, mining and manufacturing industries. Unseasonably mild winter weather undoubtedly played a role. But near record high job openings and record low layoffs underpin the entire job market.”

Some more visual details:

Change in Nonfarm Private Employment

 

Change in Total Nonfarm Private Employment

 

Change in Total Nonfarm Private Employment by Company Size

Full Breakdown:

<br /> ADP National Employment Report: Private Sector Employment Increased by 298,000 Jobs in February<br /> ” border=”0″ height=”1598″ src=”<a href=http://ift.tt/2mlrVwO…” width=”598″ />

via http://ift.tt/2lXXCJd Tyler Durden

David Tepper Reveals He’s Short Bonds, Long Stocks, in Pedantic CNBC Interview

Gazillionaire from the Short Hills shopping mall got real kitschy this morning in an absurd CNBC interview (I’ll get the vid up later), revealing that he’s short bonds (hey oh, fughetiboutit) and long stocks (fargin’ A-hole, mamma mia).

Amongst the things he sees happening, he thinks the Trump admin will be soft on trade with China, ‘watered down’ immigration stance, and Le Pen loss in France (that chick don’t gots the motts). It’s worth mentioning, he’s long European equities too — because ‘dos valuations are cheap, ya know wud I mean?’


‘Any of yoos see my bank receipt? I’ve seem to have misplaced it, know what I mean?’

In what appeared to be a Tony Soprano impersonation, regular guy David, worth $10 billion, tried his best to talk to the little people like they’re used to be spoken to, with cute play on words, near curses, and idiotic syntax.

He was critical of Draghi’s incessant bearish tone and didn’t know why $TEVA was on his books on certain days, given its underperformance. Overall, he’s just a happy fucking guy playing with the stock markets — regular Joeing it for the rest of us out here.

For lunch, I’m sure David will be grabbing a bagel filled with tuna fish out of his hard case construction worker lunch box today — washed down with a fucking NYC deli cup of joe. You know, like all regular guys out here.

Fuck off.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

 

via http://ift.tt/2mFv5fC The_Real_Fly