Tag: news

Totally Predictable Consequence of LA County Condom Porn Mandate Gets Totally Predictable Call to Do More by Nanny Staters

oh brave new worldLast November, voters in Los Angeles County
approved a measure requiring the use of condoms on the set of
pornos shot in the county. Predictably, the mandate was quickly
challenged in a lawsuit, both for the broad powers of enforcement
and
on free speech grounds. Over the summer, a court rejected the
free speech claim but
did rule to narrow the powers of health inspectors tasked with
targeting porn sets, requiring, among other things, warrants and
judicial review. The county did not appeal the ruling.
Nevertheless, some porn companies have been driven out of LA,

and California altogether, and permit requests in Los Angeles
county have plummeted. The Huffington Post
reports:

The LA County Department of Public Health told HuffPost
that 11 porn companies have been issued public health permits since
January. And yet there are many more adult film organizations in
LA, where an estimated 90 percent of porn movies in the
U.S. are made.

Industry insiders say that many adult film companies have not
applied for public health permits, adding that even those who have
a public health permit have yet to be inspected by the county.
County officials did not respond to HuffPost’s inquiry as to
whether the department has conducted any inspections of porn
sets.

So it could be that porn producers are still in LA and just filming
without either public health or film permits. That’s what Michael
Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, thinks is
happening, even though industry officials like [Free Speech
Coalition CEO Diane] Duke insist otherwise.

Weinstein, who authored the condom mandate, has been very
critical of LA County for not enforcing the law. Without
enforcement, porn companies don’t feel the need to use condoms on
set, Weinstein said to HuffPost.

“Would people speed more,” he added, “if they knew they wouldn’t
get caught?”

Weinstein refuses to acknowledge the civil liberties
implications of his puritan nanny state
crusade. When the county declined to appeal the court’s ruling on
the condom mandate, Weinstein
told the Huffington Post that county officials “obviously have
a callous disregard to the will of 1.6 million voters… The
department is bureaucratic and lazy. They want to do as little as
possible.”

Weinstein and his fellow crusaders, though, want to do as much
as possible to drive porn out of Los Angeles, and California, as
possible,
with state lawmakers looking at regulations that would require
the use of safety goggles on porn sets where contact with bodily
fluids is likely (all of them?).  Supporters and fetishists of
porn regulation and enforcement look ever more likely to regulate
and enforce the entire industry completely out of their reach.

Reason TV previewed the condom mandate last year:

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/22/totally-predictable-consequence-of-la-co
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Europe Shocked, Furious While Putin Triumphs Again: Ukraine Spurns Europe, Turns Toward Moscow

Yesterday, Ukraine was faced with a historic choice: “go West” by signing a new trade pact with the European Union and align against its former master the USSR… or “East”, and go back, at least symbolically, to mother Russia. To Europe’s shocked amazement, the Ukraine picked “East” in yet another very visible win for Vladimir Putin in what has just been the former KGB spy’s year. Sure enough, Putin spokesman’s welcomed “the desire to improve and develop trade and economic cooperation” with a “close partner”. Europe on the other hand, was shocked and appalled at this unprecedented snub: “This is a disappointment not just for the EU but, we believe, for the people of Ukraine,” EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said in a statement. Ah yes, because Europe’s unelected dictators are so concerned with the popular choices of wayward “democracies.”

Reuters adds, “European officials were dismayed. Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, a veteran of east-west diplomacy, tweeted: “Ukraine government suddenly bows deeply to the Kremlin. Politics of brutal pressure evidently works.”” Well that, or a rational choice by a country that at least has the option of saying no to the European Pandorafornia Hotel… Box – to most others this choice has been irrevocably eliminated by the unelected banker-supported Brussels bureaucrats.

More on the backstory:

Ukraine had been due to sign a wide-ranging trade and cooperation agreement with the EU on November 29 which would have tugged it westwards and away from Russia’s sphere of influence. Brussels said the deal would have boosted investment in the cash-strapped country of 46 million people.

 

Earlier, EU officials said President Viktor Yanukovich had cited fears of losing massive trade with Russia when he told an EU envoy this week that he could not agree terms.

 

Yanukovich’s prime minister issued the dramatic order to suspend the process in the interests of “national security” and renew “active dialogue” with Moscow. EU officials, who had hoped the president’s complaints in recent days were a last-minute bargaining tactic, saw little chance of saving the deal.

For Europe, a pact with the Ukraine would have had profound symbolic implications:

Luring it westward has been a strategic objective for the EU, to tear down the last remnants of the old Iron Curtain.

 

But shuttle diplomacy was dogged for months by EU pressure for Yanukovich to release jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who European leaders consider a political prisoner.

 

Moscow meanwhile had threatened retaliation for Kiev’s moves west, raising fears it could cut energy supplies in new “gas wars”.

Ah, gas. And rather Gazprom’s unprecedented monopoly power. Not to mention the cause for the near-break out of World War III when Europe desperately sought a gas pipeline outlet to Qatar just to avoid the Russian dominance over its energy needs. As is well-known by now, Europe failed, as did the US and Saudi Arabia. Putin won. Again.

Ukraine’s parliament, dominated by Yanukovich’s allies, prepared the way for the announcement by rejecting a series of bills that would have satisfied the EU by letting Tymoshenko out of prison to travel to Germany for medical treatment.

 

Shortly afterwards, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov issued the order on suspending the EU process. Talks would be revived with Russia, other members of a Moscow-led customs union and the former Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States.

 

European governments, especially those dominated by Moscow during the Cold War, have been keen to anchor Ukraine’s bulk and population closer to the West, though others have doubted whether corruption and oppression make it a viable partner.

Promptly following the announcement, Europe piled on, adding threats to amazement:

Sweden’s Bildt foresaw Ukraine’s economy declining and said the rupture would “kill” Kiev’s foreign investment prospects. EU officials told Reuters that when Yanukovich met the EU’S point man on Ukraine, Stefan Fuele, on Tuesday, the Ukrainian leader had said he could not agree to the deal.

 

It would, he said, cost Kiev $500 billion in trade with Russia over the coming years, while implementing demands for Ukraine to adopt EU legal and other standards would cost another $104 billion. Some EU diplomats had viewed that stance as brinkmanship, an effort to secure better terms.

Or math. Which is why only Germany, which is the last rational European actor had the most delicate words:

Germany’s Westerwelle spoke of wishing that Ukraine would share the EU’s values and choose a “European path of development” but made clear that was up to Kiev.

 

“Our interest in good relations with Ukraine is unbroken and our offer of a real partnership still stands,” he said in a statement. “The ball is in Kiev’s court. It is their sovereign right to decide on their path freely.”

Regardless of the latest political humiliation for Europe, there was one clear winner that day.


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/fQ-ptZ0qgww/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Meanwhile, in the Timeline Where JFK Lived…

And now my guardian angel, Clarence, will show me a world where I was never born.What would have happened if
the CIA
the KGB
you and
me the OswaldBot 2000 missed his target on November 22,
1963, allowing John F. Kennedy to finish out his term? You can
never prove a counterfactual, but I think the evidence is pretty
strong that (1) the country would have
suffered through the Vietnam War anyway, and (2) the president
probably would not have been able to
pass a domestic agenda that was anywhere near as sweeping
as LBJ’s. Put another way, the liberal nostalgists who dream of
bygone Camelot would probably like that timeline even less than
they like ours. (A question to ponder: How would it have affected
the ’60s protest movements to have a Kennedy instead of a Johnson
in the White House?)

If all that New Frontier nostalgia is
getting you down, I’ve got one Kennedy link for you that is
mercifully devoid of reverence: Paul Krassner’s classic hoax
“The Parts That Were Left
Out of the Kennedy Book,” which many readers took to be true
when it first appeared. Published in 1967, the piece pretended to
be a series of outtakes from William Manchester’s popular tome
about the assassination,
The Death of a President. It begins with some material
that was well known to journalists but had not yet been reported,
such as the president’s infidelities, and then it grew steadily
less reliable, culminating in…oh, I won’t spoil the ending for
you. But I will warn away anyone who doesn’t want to read anything
involving Lyndon Johnson’s genitalia.

Bonus link: I talked about JFK conspiracy
theories on
Canadian TV this morning.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/22/meanwhile-in-the-timeline-where-jfk-live
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Dirt bags, losers and miracles

I went to drug court a couple of weeks ago. The first time I attended the Coweta County Drug Court was almost two and a half years ago. Someone that I have known for a long time got involved with drugs and, as it almost always does, that choice eventually led to an arrest.

In Coweta County, innovative thinkers decided that, if people who have fallen prey to the dangers and ravages of drugs could be helped and restored to society as responsible individuals, it would be a positive benefit for the individual, the judicial system, and the community.

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/david-epps/11-22-2013/dirt-bags-losers-and-miracles

If You're Poor In Latvia, Move To Denmark

Expenditure on social benefits in the EU fell to 29.1% of GDP in 2011 from 29.7% in 2009, Eurostat said yesterday. However, do not feel too bad for the broad European social state. While France (as one might expect) nears the top of the list with over 33% of GDP spent on “social benefits”, Bloomberg’s Niraj Shah notes that it is Denmark that spends the most on welfare at 34.3% of GDP, and Latvia spent the least, 15.1%. Of course, in the new normal, as in the US, retirees accounted for the majority of the trasnfer payments with an average of 46% of total expenditure while unemployment benefit accounted for 6%. Interestingly, Greece nears the top of the list with almost 31% of GDP spent on welfare.

 

 

Source: Bloomberg


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/M9PTxkOFiwM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

If You’re Poor In Latvia, Move To Denmark

Expenditure on social benefits in the EU fell to 29.1% of GDP in 2011 from 29.7% in 2009, Eurostat said yesterday. However, do not feel too bad for the broad European social state. While France (as one might expect) nears the top of the list with over 33% of GDP spent on “social benefits”, Bloomberg’s Niraj Shah notes that it is Denmark that spends the most on welfare at 34.3% of GDP, and Latvia spent the least, 15.1%. Of course, in the new normal, as in the US, retirees accounted for the majority of the trasnfer payments with an average of 46% of total expenditure while unemployment benefit accounted for 6%. Interestingly, Greece nears the top of the list with almost 31% of GDP spent on welfare.

 

 

Source: Bloomberg


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/M9PTxkOFiwM/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Best friends

It’s been said that friends come and go, but best friends are forever. This year there’s one particular best friend I’m extremely thankful for.
For you see, if it weren’t for him and the kindness he has shown me over the years, it’s safe to say I wouldn’t be here today.
Rarely do I speak about divorce, and I’ve never written about it. Such an event tears families apart and can even tear at one’s very soul. Over 16 years ago such an event happened to yours truly.

read more

via The Citizen http://www.thecitizen.com/blogs/rick-ryckeley/11-22-2013/best-friends

15 Internal Affairs Investigations in Two Years and Officer Sterling Wheaten Is Still Employed

K9Officer Sterling WheatenSterling Wheaten, a K9 handler for the Atlantic
City, New Jersey, Police Department, has a special talent for
making unpleasant waves without consequences—so far. Only five
years on the job, and he’s been named in half-a-dozen lawsuits, and
investigated (but “exonerated”) repeatedly by Internal Affairs.
Now, just months after siccing his dog on a man who was already
lying on his face on the ground after being pounded by other police
officers (see the image at right), he’s accused of jumping and
arresting a woman because she videorecorded him roughing up her
brother.

From
Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia:

[Janine] Costantino says Wheaten arrested her brother after he
got into an altercation with another patron.

“Wheaten had my brother in a headlock and his arms were limp and
his legs were weak,” Costantino said. “I screamed out that it was
police brutality and that I was videotaping it all.”
That’s when she claims Wheaten turned on her.

“He was running at me and he says, ‘Give me the phone you
b**h,’” she said. “He grabbed my bun and he was slamming my
forehead into the floor.”

Wheaten then arrested Costantino but court records show the
charges against her were later dropped. Costantino says she’ll
never forget what one officer told her the night of the
incident.

“He’s like, ‘Oh, that’s your first mistake,’” she said. “You
shouldn’t be videotaping police officers.”

Wheaten is one of six officers under investigation for using
excessive force against 20-year-old David Connor Castellani.
Castellani had been ejected from a casino for being under age.
Surveillance video of the incident (see below) shows him mouthing
off at the cops as he walked away. Apparently wounded in their
pride, the cops rushed him (he was across the street) and laid into
him with fists, feet, and batons. Late-arriver Wheaten let his dog
do the work after Castellani was down.

From Wallace McKelvey at
pressofAtlanticCity:

Atlantic City officials and activists called for increased
scrutiny Tuesday as more allegations of excessive force surfaced
about one of six police officers recorded on video allegedly
beating a 20-year-old Linwood man this summer.

David Connor Castellani filed a lawsuit against the city, its
police department and six officers Tuesday in U.S. District Court
in Camden.

On June 15, Castellani was removed from the Tropicana Casino and
Resort. A short time later, at 3:10 a.m., Tropicana surveillance
video obtained via subpoena showed him being tackled by police,
with a K-9 released on him. Castellani’s injuries required 200
stitches and ongoing physical therapy, family members say. …

At least six other lawsuits filed in the last three years allege
that Sterling Wheaten, the K-9 officer seen in the video, abused
his power during the course of arrests. Wheaten graduated from the
Atlantic County Police K-9 Academy this May. Tracy Riley, his
attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. One
of the lawsuits was dismissed and another settled out of court.

That article details the six lawsuits naming Wheaten and
predating the Castellani lawsuit, alleging such acts as punching,
beating, and throwing people down stairs. One plaintiff also claims
that Wheaten attacked him with a police dog.

The Comcast report refers to “an internal police report which
shows that Atlantic City Police internal affairs investigated
Wheaten 15 times between 2008 and 2010 for allegations of
misconduct, some of those allegations being excessive force. Each
time however, the department concluded Wheaten did nothing wrong or
that there was not enough evidence to clearly prove he did
something wrong.”

McKelvey says there are “21 complaints against Wheaten over a
three-year period” and that complainants included then-Chief John
Mooney and Deputy Chief Henry White. White alleged excessive force
and Mooney complained of “simple assault and standard of
conduct.”

The former police chief and the deputy chief complained
about Wheaten and he’s still on the job? You have to wonder just
what kind of photos he has filed away. And how long the people of
Atlantic City will have to tolerate him and his buddies.

Update: Costantino’s phone is MIA, along with her
video. According to a pressofAtlanticCity
report:

“Wheaten stood up and handed the phone to a smaller man in a
plaid shirt and said, ‘you got this?’,” the suit reads. “To which
the man in the plaid shirt said in sum and substance, ‘yah, I’ll
take care of it. Don’t worry’.”

That man, also unidentified in the suit, allegedly put the phone
in his pocket and walked away. The phone was never recovered after
the arrest.

So we’ll have to make do with video of the Castellani
incident.

from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/22/15-internal-affairs-investigations-in-tw
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Carl Icahn Lambasts Ackman's "Rantings Of A Sore Loser"

We earlier discussed Bill Ackman’s lengthy interview on Bloomberg TV during which he faced up to the $500 million losses (more now) from his Herbalife position, and that it is “not a trade” for him but “will take it to the ends of the earth.” However, it seems his comments that “Herbalife longs are all 80-year-old billionaires” pissed off Carl Icahn enough to warrant his wrath. Icahn called in to Trish Regan and exclaimed, “I fail to understand how Bill Ackman, whom I haven’t spoken to for years, nor do I intend to speak to, would know what I am or am not committed to. I continue to believe Herbalife has a great future, and in my opinion many of the things Ackman says about it are simply the rantings of a sore loser.“ The stock remains +5% and back near recent record highs.

 

The original Ackman interview “will take Herbalife short to the ends of the earth…”:

ACKMAN HIGHLIGHTS:

-Lost $400-500 million on Herbalife
-Losses are mark-to-market
-‘Lots of ways we can be successful’ on HLF
-Pershing has met with foreign regulators on HLF
-Herbalife re-audit should have been completed by now
-He doesn’t know what FTC is doing on Herbalife
-Re-audit is a short-term catalyst if not done by December
-An Herbalife LBO is more opportunity to go short
-He’ll take Herbalife bet ‘to the end of the earth’
-Herbalife short ‘not a trade for me’
–Skeptical of Icahn’s belief in Herbalife long-term
-Puzzled by Bill Stiritz’s Herbalife motivations
-Herbalife fits FTC OCT pyramid warning
-He has data on Herbalife distributor earnings
-Seeks third party auditor on Herbalife retail sales
-Herbalife longs are all 80-year old billionaires.
-He is not short JCPenney
-Hopes JCP becomes a very successful company
-He deserves his share of responsibility for JCP

And Trish Regan and Stephanie Ruhle discuss Icahn’s tempestuous response:

“I fail to understand how Bill Ackman, whom I haven’t spoken to for years, nor do I intend to speak to, would know what I am or am not committed to. I continue to believe Herbalife has a great future, and in my opinion many of the things Ackman says about it are simply the rantings of a sore loser…

 

Interestingly there is something that Ackman and I have in common. Ackman complained at an Oxford conference that every time I went on TV and mentioned Herbalife, the stock went up a few points. Well, that’s also true of him.”

 

We leave it to the chart as the ultimate arbiter of who is winning (so far)…


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Os5PBaYXet8/story01.htm Tyler Durden

Carl Icahn Lambasts Ackman’s “Rantings Of A Sore Loser”

We earlier discussed Bill Ackman’s lengthy interview on Bloomberg TV during which he faced up to the $500 million losses (more now) from his Herbalife position, and that it is “not a trade” for him but “will take it to the ends of the earth.” However, it seems his comments that “Herbalife longs are all 80-year-old billionaires” pissed off Carl Icahn enough to warrant his wrath. Icahn called in to Trish Regan and exclaimed, “I fail to understand how Bill Ackman, whom I haven’t spoken to for years, nor do I intend to speak to, would know what I am or am not committed to. I continue to believe Herbalife has a great future, and in my opinion many of the things Ackman says about it are simply the rantings of a sore loser.“ The stock remains +5% and back near recent record highs.

 

The original Ackman interview “will take Herbalife short to the ends of the earth…”:

ACKMAN HIGHLIGHTS:

-Lost $400-500 million on Herbalife
-Losses are mark-to-market
-‘Lots of ways we can be successful’ on HLF
-Pershing has met with foreign regulators on HLF
-Herbalife re-audit should have been completed by now
-He doesn’t know what FTC is doing on Herbalife
-Re-audit is a short-term catalyst if not done by December
-An Herbalife LBO is more opportunity to go short
-He’ll take Herbalife bet ‘to the end of the earth’
-Herbalife short ‘not a trade for me’
–Skeptical of Icahn’s belief in Herbalife long-term
-Puzzled by Bill Stiritz’s Herbalife motivations
-Herbalife fits FTC OCT pyramid warning
-He has data on Herbalife distributor earnings
-Seeks third party auditor on Herbalife retail sales
-Herbalife longs are all 80-year old billionaires.
-He is not short JCPenney
-Hopes JCP becomes a very successful company
-He deserves his share of responsibility for JCP

And Trish Regan and Stephanie Ruhle discuss Icahn’s tempestuous response:

“I fail to understand how Bill Ackman, whom I haven’t spoken to for years, nor do I intend to speak to, would know what I am or am not committed to. I continue to believe Herbalife has a great future, and in my opinion many of the things Ackman says about it are simply the rantings of a sore loser…

 

Interestingly there is something that Ackman and I have in common. Ackman complained at an Oxford conference that every time I went on TV and mentioned Herbalife, the stock went up a few points. Well, that’s also true of him.”

 

We leave it to the chart as the ultimate arbiter of who is winning (so far)…


    



via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Os5PBaYXet8/story01.htm Tyler Durden