news – Page 26103

How to Figure out if You’re Being Sex Trafficked

“Everybody’s trafficked by
something.” That’s how Police Lieutenant Jim Gallagher, who runs a
series of controversial sex work stings/salvation missions in
Phoenix, Arizona,
sees it. “People that enter into a life of prostitution
typically don’t do it because they want to. There are circumstances
in their life that lead them to what is typically a really bad
circumstance.”

I like Gallagher’s statement because it succinctly captures the
mindset of the nouveau anti-sex-trafficking brigade. Because all
things being equal some sex workers might prefer to be secretaries
or astronauts, they are “trafficked” into it. Voila! All
prostitution is sex trafficking! That’s easy.

Sex worker and writer Tara Burns nicely challenges this
idea by adopting the rhetoric of Buzzfeed. “Are you being sex
trafficked?” she asks today at The New
Inquiry. Take
this short quiz to find out!

“Being a sex worker means that people constantly try to explain
to me that I’m a victim who doesn’t know what I’m doing to myself,”
writes Burns in the quiz’s intro. “It’s exciting to think that
women in the sex industry are forced into sexual bondage by evil
men, but the boring reality is that most often we have to go to
work to pay the bills, just like everyone else.”

So what are you waiting for? Go find out if you, too,
might be a victim of sex trafficking!

Pretty sure you’re not? The real point of the quiz is to spark
conversation about “the complexities of choice, coercion, agency,
and sex work.”

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Walmart Admits in its Annual Report that its Profits Depend Heavily on Corporate Welfare

Following up from my post earlier today, A First Look at a New Report on Crony Capitalism – Trillions in Corporate Welfare, some really juicy additional corporate welfare queen news has now come across my screen. It appears that Walmart has admitted the potentially severe adverse impact a reduction in food stamp payments could have on its bottom line. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who reads this site, as I have written about this many, many times. Most notably in the very popular post: McDonald’s Math: You Can’t Survive Working for Us.

Well now we have further evidence of this disturbing economic trend straight from the horse’s mouth: Walmart.

The LA Times reports that:

Wal-Mart’s annual report, issued late last week, puts a different spin on things. Buried within the long list of risk factors disclosed to its shareholders–that is, factors “outside our control” that could materially affect financial performance–are these: “changes in the amount of payments made under the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Plan and other public assistance plans, (and) changes in the eligibility requirements of public assistance plans.”

Yes, that says “materially impact.”

Wal-Mart followers say this is the first time the company has made a disclosure like that.

I’m not sure if that is the case, I think they have mentioned it before, but I’m not sure. Either way…

Wal-Mart says it gets more than half its sales from its grocery departments. Since low-income shoppers are a big part of its clientele, it’s unsurprising that that squealing you hear is coming from its annual report. There’s no indication that Wal-Mart executives stepped up to the plate during the debate in Washington to warn Congress off these cuts in assistance to its customers.

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What Happens If A US President Stops Speaking, And Nobody Claps

… does it mean that everyone saw right through the endless bluster, hollow rhetoric and empty promises of the man tasked with reading from a teleprompter, and currently in charge of one of the world’s most totalitarian states? Because either someone is getting fired for forgetting to turn on the “applause” sign, or Europeans no longer care for the lies uttered by Obama on all topics NSA-related. One wonders: how long until the US president finally gets the same treatment in his own country?

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1jKuNJn Tyler Durden

If You Don’t Want a SWAT Team at Your Door, You Shouldn’t Be Drinking Tea

Why did a SWAT team raid Bob and
Addie Harte’s house in Leawood, Kansas, two years ago, then force
the couple and their two children to sit on a couch for two hours
while officers rifled their belongings, searching for “narcotics”
that were not there? KSHB, the NBC station in Kansas City,
reports that the Hartes made two mistakes: Bob went to a
hydroponics store in Kansas City, Missouri, with his son to buy
supplies for a school science project, and Addie drank tea. It cost
them $25,000 to discover that these innocent actions earned them an
early-morning visit by screaming, rifle-waving men with a battering
ram.

The Hartes, who tried to reassure their neighbors by showing
them the search report indicating that nothing was taken from their
home, were naturally curious what they had done to attract police
attention. But the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office would not say,
so the Hartes hired a lawyer to help them obtain the relevant
records, which according to KSHB is not easy in Kansas because
state law favors darkness over sunshine. Eventually the Hartes
learned that a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper saw Bob at the
hydroponics store on August 9, 2011. Seven months later, state
police passed on this hot tip to the sheriff’s office, which sprang
into action (after a few weeks), rummaging through the Hartes’
garbage three times in April 2012. On all three occasions, they
found “wet plant material” that a field test supposedly identified
as marijuana.

Such tests are notoriously
unreliable, confusing chocolate with hashish, soy milk with
GHB, and soap with cocaine, among other hilarious errors that
result in fruitless searches, mistaken arrests, and
false imprisonment. But the cops did not bother to confirm
their field results with a more reliable lab test before charging
into the Hartes’ home, three days after their third surreptitious
trash inspection. When the Hartes starting asking questions about
the raid, the sheriff’s office suddenly decided to test that wet
plant material, which it turned out was not marijuana after all.
The Hartes figure it must have been the loose tea that Addie
favors, which she tends to toss into the trash after brewing. Field
tests have been known to misidentify
various possible tea ingredients, including spearmint, peppermint,
lavendar, vanilla, anise, and chicory, as marijuana.

Since mistakes like this are pretty embarrassing, the Hartes
think Kansas cops would be more careful if obtaining police records
were easier. “You shouldn’t have to have $25,000, even $5,000,”
Addie Harte tells KSHB. “You shouldn’t have to have that kind of
money to find out why people came raiding your house like some sort
of police state.”

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Does Our System Select for Incompetent Sociopaths?

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

What is the shelf life of a system that rewards confidence-gaming sociopaths rather than competence?

Let's connect the dots of natural selection and the pathology of power.

In his 2012 book The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, author Kevin Dutton described how the attributes of sociopathology are in a sense value-neutral: the sociopathological attributes that characterize a dangerous criminal may also characterize a cool, high-performing neurosurgeon.

As Dutton explains in his essay What Psychopaths Teach Us about How to Succeed (Scientific American):

Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic, ruthless and focused. Yet, contrary to popular belief, they are not necessarily violent. Far from its being an open-and-shut case–you're either a psychopath or you're not–there are, instead, inner and outer zones of the disorder: a bit like the fare zones on a subway map. There is a spectrum of psychopathy along which each of us has our place, with only a small minority of A-listers resident in the “inner city.”

While there is obviously a place for high-functioning sociopaths in professions which reward those characteristics, what about sociopaths who substitute deviousness and deception for competence? For some context, let's turn to the Pathology Of Power by Norman Cousins, published in 1988.

Cousins was particularly concerned with the National Security State, a.k.a. the military-industrial complex, which at that point in U.S. history was engaged in a Cold War with the Soviet Empire. Cousins described the pathology of power thusly:

"Connected to the tendency of power to corrupt are yet other tendencies that emerge from the pages of the historians:

1. The tendency of power to drive intelligence underground;
2. The tendency of power to become a theology, admitting no other gods before it;
3. The tendency of power to distort and damage the traditions and institutions it was designed to protect;
4. The tendency of power to create a language of its own, making other forms of communication incoherent and irrelevant;
5. The tendency of power to set the stage for its own use.

In broader terms, we might add: the tendency of power to manifest hubris, arrogance, bullying, deception and the substitution of rule by Elites for rule of law.

Natural selection isn't only operative in Nature; it is equally operative in human organizations, economies and societies. People respond to whatever set of incentives and disincentives are present. If deceiving and conning others is heavily incentivized, while integrity and honesty are punished, people will gravitate to running cons and embezzlement schemes.

What behaviors does our Status Quo reward? Misrepresentation, obfuscation, legalized looting, embezzlement, fraud, a variety of cons, gaming the system, deviousness, lying and cleverly designed deceptions.

Let's connect the pathology of power and the behaviors selected by our Status Quo. What we end up with is a system that selects for a specific category of sociopaths: those whose only competence is in running cons.

No wonder we have a leadership that is selected not for competence but for deviousness. What's incentivized in our system is spinning half-truths and propaganda with a straight face and running cons that entrench the pathology of power.

What is the shelf life of a system that rewards confidence-gaming sociopaths rather than competence? Unless we change the incentives and disincentives, the system is doomed.

Of related interest:

The Normalization of Sociopathology in America (October 16, 2010)

The Federal Reserve and the Pathology of Power (November 18, 2010)

The Banality of (Financial) Evil (November 9, 2010)

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Woman Arrested For Late Payment of $5 Dog License—and That’s Business as Usual

Ann Musser was arrested at her Holyoke,
Massachusetts, home, according to
media reports, and spent four and a half hours in jail—because
she was tardy in paying her $5 dog license fee.

Well, actually, as Holyoke
City Clerk Brenna McGee assured me, Musser was actually
arrested on an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in
court—over the tardy $5 dog license fee. Musser is a little
preoccupied these days with ovarian cancer, which may explain why
she put an administrative fee on the back burner. But then, it’s
common practice in Massachusetts to refer people to court after
they’ve ignored or simply missed notices of tickets for even the
pettiest of offenses. And since petty offenses have proliferated,
including the non-payment of fees for the most mundane activities,
court referrals and encounters with the police
over…well…bullshit are not uncommon.

Musser “and her husband are also repeated offenders” McGee told
me, referring to the dog license issue. Licenses for Fido and Spot
are
required by the state of Massachusetts and Holyoke, both. McGee
assures me that “this is not about the collection of administrative
fees. This is a violation of city ordinance.” But the two are not
mutually exclusive. The city
application asks for little more than “$5.00 for spayed female
or neutered male (please include proof of altering), or $15.00 for
unspayed or unneutered” and identifying information.

The state asks for proof of vacccination for rabies, but the
Holyoke application includes no such provision, and nobody alleges
that the the Musser’s 14-year-old family dog, Pumpkin, was rabid or
even unvaccinated.

But Brenna McGee reports that there are lots of ways to get
referred to the court system.

It has been the practice of this office (M.G.L
Chapter 40 section 21d) and other cities to report unpaid
tickets to the court system. The process begins in February. Up to
three notices are sent to remind dog owners to license their dogs
by the deadline. If by June 1st the dog is not licensed a ticket is
issued by the City Dog Officer. Tickets are marked very clearly
that if no payment is received within 21 days the ticket is then
sent to the court.

Musser
told the Republican that she paid the $5 license fee
and $25 late fee, but only after court proceedings had begun. She
claims she attempted to appear in court and cooled her heels in a
crowded courtroom for three hours, but left after her complaints
that seating a woman with a faltering immune system in a crowd
might be less than brilliant fell on deaf ears.

Not that it matters. Let’s not forget that she was supposed to
kill a day in an institutional room because she failed to pay for a
permission slip to own a dog. The court then sent armed men to nab
her because she chafed at remaining in after-school detention
court. The situation would have been ludicrous even if she were
perfectly healthy.

“Please also note,” McGee told me, “that ALL tickets are sent to
the court after 21 days of no payment, not just dog tickets. To
name a few: possession of marijuana, loud music, emptying of bulk
waste containers before 7am, motorized scooters, animal waste,
shopping carts, tag sale permit.”

Yes, you can really end up summoned to court, and perhaps
arrested for failure to appear, for not paying for a permission
slip to have a tag sale.

“I do know that people have been arrested in Holyoke for dog
tickets and most recently a few weeks ago in Belchertown,” McGee
said. “And yes, there have been arrests for unpaid other tickets as
well. One just a few weeks ago in Holyoke.” She didn’t remember
what the last arrest was for, other than that it was an ordinance
violation.

Speaking of revenue, state laws specify that, once court
proceedings have begun over dog licenses, tag sales, and the like,
“any fines imposed under the provisions of this section shall enure
to the city or town for such use as said city or town may direct.”
So there just may be a bit of incentive to proliferate those petty,
annoying ordinances and send defaulters courtward-bound.

To be clear, Brenna McGee isn’t the villain here—just a city
clerk kind enough to answer questions. Similar answers would have
been forthcoming from most officials in her position in
Massachusetts and elsewhere. In a hyper-regulated world, everything
becomes a subject for administrative procedures, the begging of
permission, and the payment of fees. And hyper-regulated as we are,
disorganization or defiance of even the stupidest rules become
grounds for encounters with armed men.

I asked McGee whether she and her colleagues ever discussed the
appropriateness of the system that ensnared Musser. She declined to
respond, though assured me that medical conditions are taken into
account when they’re known—a bit of mercy from the bureaucratic
class, should they choose to grant it.

Ann Musser shouldn’t have been exempted from arrest for being
sick. She should have been free of fear of arrest for violating
intrusive rules that have no business on the books and should
certainly never be enforced by armed agents of the state.

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Stocks Are Dumping (Again); All Indices Red Post-Yellen

Not only is it deja vu all over again (again) but our warning this morning of reality of a virtual reality world coming unglued is all too real. Biotechs and Momos are at the lows of the day; Nasdaq and Russell 2000 are now down 3% post-Yellen and all major indices (including the IBM-sponsored Dow) are now in negative territory post-Yellen. Financials, ahead of tonight's CCAR, are also fading fast (catching down to their credit counterparts).

All major indices are red post-Yellen

As Biotechs re-collapse…

and Momos are fading fast…

And financials (as we said) are rolling over into the CCAR and catching down to credit…

We hate to say we told you so…

Despite today's pre-open ramp, which will be the 4th in a row, one wonders if biotechs will finally break the downward tractor beam they have been latched on to as the bubble has shown signs of cracking, or will the mad momo crowd come back with a vengeance – this too will be answered shortly.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1p6XBPN Tyler Durden

The Word from the Bundesbank

Dr.Andreas Dombret, a member of the executive board of the Bundesbank presented to a small group at the New York Stock Exchange earlier today.

As a consummate central banker, Dombret stuck to his knitting and could not be tempted to stray from his message: the situation in the euro area was improving, though complacency is a luxury that can still not be afforded. Among the risks he cited were “reform fatigue” and the consequences of low interest rates, which could distort investment incentives.

Dombret spent some time explaining why the BBK (and the ECB) do not see a significant threat of deflation. He cited three general reasons. First, 2/3 of the drop in inflation, he says, is due to falling prices for energy and food. Dombret argues there are exogenous factors and that their effects will likely be temporary. This is a standard BBK/ECB line and begs the question. The ECB’s mandate is not core inflation and, in fact, headline inflation had previously been used to justify ECB rates hikes under Trichet.

Second, Dombret argued that the low inflation rates in the euro area as a whole partly reflects the adjustment process in the periphery. We have anticipated such an argument. Low inflation or even outright deflation in some crisis hit economies are wholly a favorable development. It is what some have dubbed “an internal devaluation” rather than an external one. In order to boost competitiveness, domestic prices in many peripheral countries have to fall. This too begs the question. The adjustment process in the periphery would not have to be as painful or deflationary, which exacerbates the pressure on debtors, if Germany would offset the austerity in the periphery with more accommodation.

Third, Dombret argues that deflation is not a significant risk because there is not a downward, self-reinforcing spiral in prices and wages. Dombret, like other BBK and ECB officials, argue that long-term inflation expectations are anchored at a level close to the ECB’s definition of price stability (close to, but below 2%). He dismissed the notion that the euro area was headed for Japanese-style lost decades.

I was able to ask Dr. Dombret about what Draghi had said recently about the euro’s strength (increasing the downside risk of inflation and growth) coupled with BBK President Weidmann’s comments yesterday about not ruling out QE. I asked, along the lines I have written about recently, could the ECB take a page from the Swiss National Bank’s playbook and buy foreign bonds in QE. Buying European bonds has been controversial (both Weber and Stark resigned over the previous bond purchases scheme, SMP) and potentially in violation of the ECB’s charter.

Dombret refused to be tempted down the path I tried to lead him. However, his argument was still quite revealing, even if untended. First he said that it would be improper for any central banker to categorically to rule out actions. Second, he said that even if the euro is at $1.40 there is not need for foreign exchange intervention. Dombret essentially argued that, at some level, it could be necessary, but he of course would not speculate on where that level would be. Third, he suggested as there is not need for QE; it would not be appropriate to discuss which assets could be bought if or when it would be necessary.

The take away message is that officials may be more relaxed than Draghi’s recent comments or the spin put on Weidmann’s comments would seem to have suggested. While we have been inclined to look for some action from the ECB next week, Dombret’s comments suggest it is by no means a done deal. That said, if the ECB stands pat, the market will have every incentive to push the euro higher, through the $1.40 level, fishing, as it were, for the ECB’s pain threshold.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hsGjqd Marc To Market

Russian Retaliation Continues? Government Dumps iPads, Switches To Samsung

A week after the White House appeared to shun Blackberry (and ignored Apple’s iPhones) as the WSJ reported it was testing Android-based smartphone replacements from LG and Samsung, it seems the Russians have the same idea. Whether this is another swing of the sanctions “boomerang” is unclear but ITAR-TASS reports that, because South Korean tablets have better information security, the Russian government is switching from iPads to Samsung. Communications Minister Nikiforov added this “isn’t related to politics.” We are sure…

Via Bloomberg,

South Korean tablets have better information security; Russian govt’s switch from iPad isn’t related to politics, Itar-Tass cites Communications Minister Nikolay Nikiforov as saying.

Samsung was first to certify products with Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, state news wire reports, citing Samsung press service

…

Govt calling for greater scrutiny of foreign IT partners; no plans to ban or place sanctions on foreign high-tech products, state-run news service RIA Novosti says, citing Nikiforov

Nikiforov says comments by U.S. officials raise concerns of increased intelligence gathering, interception of digital information: RIA

Too bad Russia doesn’t make smartphones for the US to retaliate against…

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Highest Yield Since May 2011, Record Low Dealer Take Down, Make Today’s 5 Year Auction A Whopper

Following yesterday’s uninspiring 2 Year bond auction, today’s 5 Year issuance of $35 billion was a whopper. Because while it was known well in advance that today’s closing high yield of 1.715%, which priced through the When Issued of 1.732% by 1.7 bps, would be the highest since May 2011. However, the stunners were all within the internals. First, the Bid To Cover of 2.99 was the highest since September 2012, and an abrupt turn in the recent general downward trend in BTCs – who would have thunk that all it took for greater interest in US paper was higher yields . But it was the takedown where the real shockers lay.

To wit, while Directs were awarded 23.1% of the final allotment, the third highest ever, and below the 23.3% last seen in May of 2013, it was the surge in Indirects, which rose to an all time high of 50.9%, well above the 45.2% TTM average, meaning Dealers in turn had the lowest allotment on record as well, getting just 25.9% of the final auction which could make future monetization of this CUSIP by the Fed problematic. Altogether a great auction, even if PIMCO, which had been buying the 5 Year in recent months has gotten creamed on the snapback wider in the bucket, where as reported previously, the 5s30s curve is the flattest it has been in ages.

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