Not Every Health Condition Is Insurable

With all the discussion over the need for healthcare in the U.S., one question is never asked: is a person’s health insurable?

The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises helped clarify what types of events are open to insurance when he defined two types of probability. Case probabilities are those events for which we know some of the factors that will determine an outcome, but for which there are other factors we know absolutely nothing about. Football matches fall into this category, as do wars. Class probabilities are those events that we know or assume to know everything about a broadly similar category of events, but with regards to any individual occurrence within the category, we know nothing.

Death is an event that falls into this latter category of class probabilities. Death is, paradoxically perhaps, the most and least certain of all events that will happen in your life. Everyone knows that they will die, but no one knows exactly when, of what, where, or why. Yet because everyone dies, we can all be placed into a category that behaves in a similar way. We know a person’s life expectancy at birth, for example, and we can further refine the category by accounting for differences in factors that affect the probability of death, such as smoking.

Life insurance works because insurance companies can play the averages. Some people who own a life insurance policy will die before the insurance company earns enough money on the premiums to pay the death benefit. In this case the company loses money. It offsets these losses with the gains it makes on those who die long past the point where they have broken even on the premiums they have paid relative to the death benefit they will receive.

Discrimination in the life insurance market is not only a fact of life; it is fair. Every policy holder pays according to his odds of death. People are free to undertake risky activities, but they must pay the price. People who choose to live less risky lives — that is to say, avoiding those activities that increase one’s probability of death such as skydiving or smoking — lose out on the enjoyment these activities may provide, but they gain by paying less for life insurance. There are no free lunches in this world.

Health insurance could possibly exist in this way. There are class probabilities for certain diseases, both communicable and not. There are also known risk factors for diseases and ailments. Smokers are more likely to get lung cancer; bull riders are more at risk of suffering broken bones; economics professors might succumb to carpal tunnel syndrome from typing too many articles about health insurance. Depending on one’s lifestyle, different insurance premiums can be assigned to cover an individual against any number of health concerns.

Some types of medical impairments, however, are not open to being insured. They do not belong to any definable class which lends itself to coverage. The causes of Parkinson’s disease, for example, are still hotly debated and there is no clear explanation as to what causes it; it is just the luck of the draw. Some types of cancer also fall into this category. There is always the hope that in the future we will learn more about these ailments so that they can be assigned a class (or even better, cured), but this is not a possibility at this point in time.

“Ought presupposes can” and before answering whether people “ought” to have health insurance we must answer whether they “can” have it.

For some types of ailments health insurance is a viable option. For others, the possibility of coverage just doesn’t exist. One of the cornerstones of Obamacare is that “you cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions.” Not only does this compromise the usefulness of insurance by muddying the definition of a certain class, it actually negates the applicability of the insurance policy. Certain risks are just non-insurable. This is not because of some sinister plot to exclude certain individuals; after all, it is the disease and not the person which is being excluded. But this is just a cold hard economic fact which stems directly from Mises’s distinction between class (insurable) events and case (non-insurable) events.

The recognition that some health risks can be insured must come with a warning: just because health insurance can exist on a limited range of ailments does not answer the question of why it should be mandated. After all, our daily food and water requirements are at least as much a matter of life and death as our daily healthcare requirements, and no one is suggesting that the government mandate coverage for those goods.

Likewise, just because healthcare is expensive is not a necessary or sufficient condition for mandating coverage. There are all sorts of goods and services that are pricey and which insurance coverage to purchase is not mandated. A better question to ask is “why is healthcare so expensive.” Many people have answered that already, whether the blame is to be placed on the obesity epidemic, licensing requirements for physicians, riskier lifestyles among those already covered by mandatory insurance (Medicare and Medicaid), or the bureaucracy of getting new procedures and drugs approved by the government. In any case the insurability of any good or service is ancillary to its cost.

Answering the question of “why” health insurance is needed is fundamentally distinct from the question of “can” we provide health insurance and if so, what ailments are coverable. To the extent that only some diseases and ailments are insurable, health insurance is, at least for now, a somewhat limited undertaking. Obamacare answers the wrong question, and diminishes the usefulness of the health insurance policies that exist through its mandated coverage of pre-existing conditions.

Offering insurance without reference to the specific insurable class, or by purposefully grouping uninsurable risks with an insurable class, removes any economic rationale in determining the appropriate insurance coverage and rates. If you think healthcare pricing seems nonsensical now, just wait until you see what happens when mandated coverage removes any semblance of rational insurance pricing to the healthcare “insurance” market.

The Right Not To Testify

[This originally appeared in Libertarian Review in November 1978.]

Libertarians surely favor freedom of speech, that is, the right to speak without being hampered by the government. But the right to speak implies the right not to speak, the right to remain silent. Yet libertarians have themselves been strangely silent on the many instances of compulsory speech in our society.

The most flagrant example of continuing compulsory speech takes place in every courtroom in our land: the compulsory bearing of witness. Now surely each person is the absolute owner of his or her own body; as the owner of his own body, only the individual should decide on whether or not to speak in any given situation, and there should be no compulsion upon him to talk or not to talk. And yet in every court, witnesses are dragged in by force (the subpoena power) and compelled to bear witness for or against other people.

The Fifth Amendment, as we all know, prohibits the government from forcing a person to testify against himself: “nor shall any person … be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” Excellent. But why should an accused criminal possess a right not also granted to admittedly innocent persons? In short, by what right does a government compel someone to testify against another? Here is a flagrant invasion of liberty, a flagrant abuse against the rights of the individual, and an initiation of force and violence against an innocent person. Yet where are the libertarians to raise their voices against this practice?  

There is also something peculiarly monstrous and anti-libertarian about the way in which courts, i.e. judges, move against such “crimes” as non-testimony. In every other criminal case, whether real or victimless, the defendant is duly charged, indicted, and prosecuted, and is allowed to plead his case before third parties: judges or juries who are not involved in the dispute. Yet with the “crime” of failing to testify, all such procedures and safeguards go by the board. The judge is the prosecutor – charging the defendant with “contempt of court” – and also the decider of the defendant’s guilt (in this “crime” against himself). The judge is the plaintiff, prosecutor, judge, and jury all wrapped into one.

What is more, in all other cases of crime, the conviction and the sentence are punishments after the fact, after the crime has been committed. Someone commits a crime, and is then punished. But not so in the case of “contempt of court.” In such cases, the judge uses the “punishment” in an attempt to compel action on the part of the “criminal.” The punishment is before the fact, an attempt to force the defendant to do something the judge wants him to do. And, in theory at least, the judge can keep the victim in jail for life until he “purges himself of contempt” by performing the required deed. He can keep the defendant in jail until he agrees to bear witness in court, until he performs the required speech.

A particularly dramatic case involving a clash between compulsory testimony and the First Amendment is the predicament of New York Times reporter Myron A. Farber. In 1976, Farber wrote a series of articles in the Times which resurrected the mysterious multiple murders committed a decade before in a New Jersey hospital, in which a number of patients were killed by injections of excessive amounts of curare. As a result of Farber’s investigations, the surgeon, Dr. Mario Jascalevich was indicted (and later acquitted) of three of the murders.

During the trial, the court, at the behest of the defense, ordered Farber to turn his notes in the investigation over to the court. Farber refused, citing the First Amendment (which protects freedom of the press as well as speech), and also a New Jersey “shield law” designed to defend journalists against compulsory disclosure of their sources. Farber added that the government must not be able to commandeer a reporter’s notes and sources if a free press is to be maintained. And the judiciary, he pointed out, is a branch of the government.

The court ruled, however, that in this case the shield law and even the First Amendment were overruled by the Sixth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which guarantees the accused in a criminal trial “compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor.” Still Farber refused to turn over the notes. He spent 39 days in jail before Dr. Jascalevich’s acquittal won him his freedom. Furthermore, Farber was hit with a $2000 fine, and the New York Times too was fined a flat sum of $100,000 plus $5000 a day as long as Farber’s notes remained outside the judge’s custody.  

While the jailing of Farber was, of course, a far more heinous injustice, the crippling effects of the fine on the newspaper should not be overlooked. Not every newspaper is as affluent as the New York Times. As Ken Johnson, editor of the Grand Junction (Col.) Daily Sentinel puts it, “there would be no recourse against such an incredible abuse of judicial power. We would have to capitulate to the judge’s outrageous and illegal demands, or simply say there no longer will be a free and independent newspaper in this community.”

Even a veteran civil libertarian and First Amendment absolutist like Nat Hentoff is nonplussed and disarmed by the Farber case. For Hentoff (and the American Civil Liberties Union as well) feel that they have to balance – and even override – the First Amendment by the Sixth, so that Farber should be compelled to turn over his notes if the defense can show relevance to the case at hand. (See Hentoff, “The Confused Martyrdom of M.A. Farber,” Inquiry (Oct. 16, 1978), pp. 5–7.)

 Well, what does one do if one is a Bill of Rights absolutist – as Hentoff is – and two amendments contradict each other, as they clearly do in the Farber case? What does one do, in general, if one is a Constitutional absolutist and two parts of the Constitution contradict each other, which they do frequently? There is only one way to resolve such contradictions (if one really wants to resolve them, rather than waffle one’s way through arbitrary qualifiers piled on each other). And that is to have a non-contradictory set of principles that is held higher than any written document, even one as generally beneficent as the Bill of Rights. Libertarians have such a set of principles, and libertarians therefore are particularly well equipped to point the way out of this First Amendment–Sixth Amendment morass.

For libertarians hold that it is ever and always illegitimate to use force against a non-aggressor, against someone who has not himself used force against someone else. That means that no one, no innocent person, regardless of his occupation: whether he be newspaperman, lawyer, physician, accountant, or just plain citizen, should ever be forced to testify or turn over notes to anyone, whether as witness against himself, or for or against anyone else. In contrast to Bill of Rights absolutism, libertarian absolutism sheds a pure and non-contradictory light on the issue. The Sixth Amendment must be altered to drop the compulsory process clause. The remainder of the Sixth Amendment provides guarantees for defendants against the government; only this clause provides defendants with compulsory powers against innocent people. It must be repealed.

Who then will bear witness in court? Whoever wishes to do so, freely and voluntarily. Conscription of witnesses is no more justified than conscription into the armed forces or into any other service or occupation. Freedom and individual rights must extend to all institutions and all branches of life, even into the judiciary, the heart of State power.

Democrats seek probe of key FAA decisions on 737 MAX approval

March 19, 2019

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives transportation committee and another key Democrat asked the Transportation Department’s inspector general on Tuesday to examine key decisions made by the Federal Aviation Administration in certifying Boeing’s 737 MAX jet for use.

The request follows the March 10 crash of a 737 MAX jet in Ethiopia and the crash in Indonesia in October of another 737 MAX jet.

The inspector general’s office said it would open an audit Tuesday into the plane’s approval but has not disclosed what it will examine. Representative Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and committee member Rick Larsen said the crashes underscore “the need to take a more proactive approach with safety to protect the traveling public.”

The two Democrats asked in a letter that the probe include a review of what “led to the FAA’s decision not to revise pilot training programs and manuals to reflect changes to flight-critical automation systems.”

The FAA declined to comment on the letter.

Congress plans to hold hearings as early as next week on the two fatal crashes that are expected to include the FAA’s acting chief, Dan Elwell, and other government officials. The Democrats want the review to help improve the “certification process overall and identify improvements to oversight and safety of all new aircraft.”

Boeing said earlier on Tuesday that it would fully cooperate in the inspector general’s audit.

The Democrats want the audit also to include a review of how each of the new features on the Boeing 737 MAX, including positioning of engines on the aircraft and the corresponding changes to automation, angle-of-attack sensors, and how new software “were tested, certified, and integrated into the aircraft.”

They also ask the review to include “how new features of the aircraft, and potential performance differences in this aircraft, were communicated to airline customers, pilots and foreign civil aviation authorities.”

They also want a status report on corrective actions since the fatal Lion Air crash in Indonesia in October “and whether pilots are being adequately trained before the 737 MAX is returned to revenue passenger service throughout the international aviation community.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by James Dalgleish and Leslie Adler)

Man Who Dismembered Girlfriend Gets Parole to Live as Transgender

Man who butchered and killed his former girlfriend given parole so he can live as transgender woman

A man who killed and dismembered his girlfriend has been granted parole and allowed to live as a woman after telling authorities he is transgender.

Khaled Farhan murdered his then-girlfriend in 1999 and was nicknamed “The Butcher of Gatineau” following the horrific crime.

Dailycaller.com reports: He was high on cocaine at the time of the murder. The court found Farhan guilty of second-degree murder in 2000, according to the Ottawa Citizen.

Farhan now identifies as a woman and is legally recognized as Zahra Farhan.

Farhan was granted parole in January. “You are assessed as a low to low end of moderate risk for both general and violence recidivism,” the parole board wrote, the Citizen reported.

Following a guilty conviction, Farhan was sent to a men’s prison and placed in solitary confinement in 2010 after sending inappropriate sexual letters to prison guards, according to the Citizen.

While in prison, Farhan began identifying as a woman and was transferred to a woman’s prison. Canada allows prisoners to be housed according to their gender identity rather than biological sex. Prison guards must address them according to their preferred pronouns and names. Transgender convicts also may choose whether a male or female officer will attend to them during drug tests and strip searches.

Following release from prison, Farhan must live at a halfway house and is barred from using any drugs or alcohol, according to parole conditions. Farhan must also report entry into any romantic relationships with another person, the Citizen reported.

Pediatricians now covertly interrogating children to find out if their parents own guns

(Natural News) There aren’t many institutions that a majority of Americans trust anymore, including the “mainstream” media, government, and even clergy. Soon, that list will likely include pediatricians. That’s because more and more of them believe they have the right to pry into whether a child’s parents are supporters of one of our most fundamental…

Trudeau’s Top Bureaucrat Unexpecteldy Quits Amid Growing Corruption Scandal

Since it was exposed by a report in Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper earlier this month, the scandal that’s become known as the SNC-Lavalin affair has already led to the firing of several of Trudeau’s close advisors and raised serious questions about whether the prime minister was complicit in pressuring the attorney general to offer a deferred prosecution agreement with a large, Quebec-based engineering firm.

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And according to the first round of polls released since the affair exploded into public view…

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…it could cost Trudeau his position as prime minister and return control to the conservatives, according to the CBC.

Campaign Research showed the Conservatives ahead with 37% to 32% for the Liberals, while both Ipsos and Léger put the margin at 36% to 34% in the Conservatives’ favour. Since December, when both polling firms were last in the field, the Liberals have lost one point in Campaign Research’s polling and four percentage points in the Ipsos poll, while the party is down five points since November in the Léger poll.

Meanwhile, as the noose tightens around Trudeau, on Monday another of the key Canadian government officials at the center of the SNC-Lavalin scandal has quit his post.

Michael Wernick, clerk of the privy council, the highest-ranking position in Canada’s civil service and a key aide to Justin Trudeau, announced his retirement Monday. Trudeau named Ian Shugart, currently deputy minister of foreign affairs, to replace him.

In a scathing letter to Trudeau, Wernick said that “recent events” led him to conclude he couldn’t hold his post during the election campaign this fall.

“It is now apparent that there is no path for me to have a relationship of mutual trust and respect with the leaders of the opposition parties,” he said, citing the need for impartiality on the issue of potential foreign interference. According to Bloomberg, the exact date of his departure is unclear.

As we reported in February, Canada’s former justice minister and attorney general, Jody Wilson-Raybould, quit following allegations that several key Trudeau government figures pressured her to intervene to end a criminal prosecution against Montreal-based construction giant SNC. Wernick was among those she named in saying the prime minister’s office wanted her to pursue a negotiated settlement.

Wernick has since twice spoken to a committee of lawmakers investigating the case, and during that testimony both defended his actions on the SNC file and warned about the risk of foreign election interference, as “blame Putin” has become traditional Plan B plan for most politicians seeing their careers go up in flames.

“I’m deeply concerned about my country right now, its politics and where it’s headed. I worry about foreign interference in the upcoming election,” he said in his first appearance before the House of Commons justice committee, before repeating the warning a second time this month. “If that was seen as alarmist, so be it. I was pulling the alarm. We need a public debate about foreign interference.”

Because somehow foreign interference has something to do with Wenick’s alleged corruption.

Incidentally, as we wonder what the real reason is behind Wernick’s swift departure, we are confident we will know soon enough.

Anyway, back to the now former clerk, who is meant to be non-partisan in service of the government of the day, also criticized comments by a Conservative senator and praised one of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers.

Wernick’s testimony was criticized as overly cozy with the ruling Liberals. Murray Rankin, a New Democratic Party lawmaker, asked the clerk how lawmakers could “do anything but conclude that you have in fact crossed the line into partisan activity?” Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said he seemed “willing to interfere in partisan fashion for whoever is in power.”

Whatever Wernick’s true motives, he is the latest but not last in what will be a long line of cabinet departures as the SNC scandal exposes even more corruption in Trudeau’s cabinet (some have ironically pointed out that Canada’s “beloved” prime minister could be gone for actual corruption long before Trump). Trudeau had already lost a top political aide, Gerald Butts, to the scandal. A second minister, Jane Philpott, followed Wilson-Raybould in quitting cabinet.

Separately, on Monday, Trudeau appointed a former deputy prime minister in a Liberal government, Anne McLellan, as a special adviser to investigate some of the legal questions raised by the controversy. They include how governments should interact with the attorney general and whether that role should continue to be held by the justice minister.

As Bloomberg notes, the increasingly shaky Liberal government hasn’t ruled out helping SNC by ordering a deferred prosecution agreement in the corruption and bribery case, which centers around the company’s work in Moammar Qaddafi’s Libya. Doing so would allow the company to pay a fine and avoid any ban on receiving government contracts. That decision is up to the current attorney general, David Lametti; of course, such an action would only raise tensions amid speculation that the government is pushing for a specific political, and favorable for Trudeau, outcome. 

Not too late to get ‘real change’ to Brexit deal: Britain’s Johnson

March 17, 2019

LONDON (Reuters) – Former British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday it was not too late for the government to get “real change” to Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit deal and cautioned against holding another parliamentary vote on the agreement this week.

Johnson, who was a figurehead of a campaign for Britain to leave the European Union in a 2016 referendum and might influence other lawmakers on which way to vote over May’s deal, asked in his column in the Telegraph newspaper whether there was a way forward to break the impasse of Brexit in parliament.

“Perhaps,” he answered. “There is an EU summit this week. It is not too late to get real change to the backstop. It would be absurd to hold the vote before that has even been attempted.”

He also said May should outline her strategy for talks on the future relationship with the EU to “reassure … understandably doubtful MPs (members of parliament) by answering some basic questions”.

May is expected to hold the third vote on her Brexit deal this week after suffering heavy defeats, and she is hoping to win over lawmakers, many of whom like Johnson fear the so-called Northern Irish backstop could trap Britain in the EU’s sphere.

The backstop is an insurance policy to stop any return of a border controls between the British province of Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland if a future trading deal fails to remove the need for them.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Department of Defense Formally Recognizes Trump Admin. Reversal of Transgender Military Policy

Department of Defense Formally Recognizes Trump Admin. Reversal of Transgender Military Policy

Source: Michael Foust | ChristianHeadlines.com Contributor

The Department of Defense formally announced Tuesday details of the new Trump policy on transgender troops, saying that personnel must serve in their biological sex and not their preferred gender – although current transgender troops who don’t meet the new standards will be allowed to stay.

The new policy means that no one will be booted from the military, although men and women who sign up for the military after it takes effect won’t receive an exemption. The policy will go into effect in 30 days.

It was written at the directive of President Trump and overturns the Obama-era policy that allowed personnel to serve under their gender identity. A man who identified as a woman, for example, could serve alongside women. In the future, such an arrangement won’t be permitted.

A story on the Department of Defense website says the policy “was developed by military and civilian experts” on combat readiness “who consulted with medical professionals.”

Persons who have sex-reassignment surgery or are diagnosed with gender dysphoria are ineligible for the military under the new policy.

The new policy advances military readiness, the department says.

“To maintain a military force that is worldwide deployable and combat effective, the military must set high standards, and all military members must sacrifice to meet these standards,” a DoD explanation of the policy reads. “In fact, just over 70 percent of prime military-age Americans cannot meet the military’s standards.

“… Persons with a history of gender dysphoria – a serious medical condition – and who have undergone certain medical treatment for gender dysphoria, such as cross-sex hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery, or are unwilling or unable to meet the standards associated with their biological sex, could adversely impact unit readiness and combat effectiveness. For this reason, such persons are presumptively disqualified for service without a waiver.”

The Department of Defense maintains that the new policy is not a “ban.”

“A transgender person is someone who identifies as a gender other than his or her biological sex,” the DoD explanation reads. “For example, a person who is biologically male but identifies as female may identify as transgender. Transgender individuals are not excluded from military service, and DOD policy specifically prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. But all persons, whether or not they are transgender, must meet all military standards, including the standards associated with their biological sex. Waivers or exceptions to these standards may be granted on a case-by-case basis.”

Meanwhile, troops who signed up for the military under the old policy will be allowed to stay: “Service members who joined the military in their preferred gender or were diagnosed with gender dysphoria before the 2018 policy takes effect are exempt from the new policy and may serve in their preferred gender.”

Fed looks to avoid crossed signals at policy meeting

March 17, 2019

By Trevor Hunnicutt and Ann Saphir

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Only two things will really matter when Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell strides to the podium for his press conference on Wednesday after the end of the U.S. central bank’s latest two-day policy meeting: Dots and bonds.

That Powell and his colleagues will leave the Fed’s benchmark overnight interest rate unchanged in a range of 2.25 percent to 2.50 percent and stick to their pledge of a “patient” approach to monetary policy is effectively a given.

The big reveal, though, will be whether policymakers will have sufficiently lowered their interest rate forecasts to more closely align their notorious “dot plot,” a diagram showing individual policymakers’ rate views for the next three years in little blue-shaded circles, with that pledge of patience.

And, just as importantly, what new details will they share on a plan to stop culling the Fed’s holdings of nearly $3.8 trillion in bonds?

“It’s going to be new information for the market to trade whether it’s the Fed’s intention or not,” said Ben Jeffery, a strategist at BMO Capital Markets.

Dissatisfaction with Powell’s remarks in December regarding the balance sheet threw markets for a spin and helped lead to the Fed’s pause on rates a month later. Since then, the Fed chief has explicitly said one of his aims is to avoid “needless market disruptions.”

Traders currently expect there will be no rate hikes this year, and are even building in bets for a rate cut in 2020. Any gap between that view and the Fed’s could send markets lower. So too could a sharp drop in policymakers’ rate-hike expectations, especially if coupled with a softer economic outlook.

(Graphic: Federal Open Market Committee target rate projections – https://tmsnrt.rs/2UCRTe1)

Wrong or confusing signals on either the rate forecasts or the Fed’s bond portfolio could upend the market calm the central bank in large part has engineered despite nosediving economic forecasts.

Making Powell’s task even harder: A jumble of economic data, including a sharp slowdown in jobs growth last month that was accompanied by rising wages.

Uncertainty on the outlook for the world economy and global trade as well as a sharp U.S. growth slowdown expected by a range of forecasters mean that markets are on a hair trigger for signals from the Fed.

FED’S GUIDANCE

In January, the Fed pivoted from hiking rates quarterly to pledging patience before making more moves. Powell has also said the central bank could stop shedding bonds this year.

The central bank’s last official policy statement offered no hint about whether rates will rise or fall. The statement from the March 19-20 meeting is likely to do the same.

Asked if they would support rate hikes this year, Fed policymakers have been offering less information.

“Patience is basically saying we’re not going to give a lot of guidance to what we’re expecting down the road because there’s enough uncertainty that we just have to see how things evolve,” Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren told a National Association of Corporate Directors chapter on March 5.

But guidance is exactly what the Fed offers in its Summary of Economic Projections slated for release alongside the policy statement on Wednesday. That document could show the central bank expecting a rate hike if the economy delivers the strong 2019 growth most policymakers still forecast.

Some Fed officials voiced concern at the Jan. 29-30 policy meeting that the projections could send a misleading statement about what the central bank is doing, according to the records from that meeting. Powell warned on March 8 against reading too much into the forecasts.

So far, the Fed’s on-guard and guarded communication has given markets new confidence. A gauge of swings expected in U.S. government bond prices over three months hit its lowest levels in 17 years. Stock markets have reacted as well, with the S&P 500 index up more than 12 percent this year.

With little sign of an inflation pickup, there would seem to be no urgency to raise U.S. borrowing costs, and investors have all but written off the possibility of a hike this year, especially with signs that slowing European and Chinese growth might weigh on the United States.

BALANCE SHEET

Meanwhile, the Fed faces pressure to elaborate on piecemeal statements that it will stop cutting bond holdings this year.

The Fed bulked up its books with bank reserves in order to buy trillions of bonds and further stimulate the economy once rates neared zero in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis. To restore policy to normal, the Fed began shrinking its balance sheet in late 2017 by not replacing as many bonds when they mature.

Now, with the central bank ending that process, Fed policymakers face a number of questions. Some, for instance, have said they would not want the balance sheet policies, which might tighten financial conditions, to work at cross-purposes with the more cautious rate policy.

(Graphic: Federal Reserve bond holdings – https://tmsnrt.rs/2UD2oOr)

New York Fed President John Williams told Reuters earlier this month that “there is no clear answer” to exactly how large the balance sheet needs to be. Investors will be looking for answers as soon as this week. Powell is likely to be pressed on the subject at his press conference on Wednesday.

Cliff Corso, executive chairman at investment manager Insight North America LLC, said markets are looking for “confirmation and comfort” about their assumptions about the size and composition of the Fed’s assets. “Any deviations around that might create a little bit of volatility,” he said.

(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt in New York and Ann Saphir in San Francisco; Editing by Paul Simao)

UN Discuss Injecting Aerosols into Earth’s Stratosphere to ‘Block the Sun’

United Nations discuss injecting aerosols into Earth's stratosphere

Source:

The UN is scheduled to discuss pulling CO2 out of our atmosphere and injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to block the sun. 

The geoengineering resolution is set to be discussed at the United Nations Environment Assembly next week, when it meets in Nairobi.

Nature.com reports: The body is poised to debate a resolution on geoengineering approaches that could be used to fight climate change, elevating a controversial issue to its highest political forum yet.

A proposal backed by Switzerland and ten other countries would require the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to prepare a comprehensive assessment of geoengineering, including methods to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere or inject aerosols into the stratosphere to block sunlight. Due by August 2020, the report would examine the underlying science and technology, and how to govern research and wide-scale use.

Preliminary discussions began this week and a final decision by government ministers could come at the end of the UN assembly’s meeting, which runs from 11–15 March.

“In principle, it’s a big deal,” says Ted Parson, who studies environmental law and policy at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This could be the start of the serious international deliberation on governance that has been needed for years.”

Weighing in

Other UN bodies have considered geoengineering in the context of specific treaties. In 2010, the 196 member countries of the Convention on Biological Diversity called for a moratorium on geoengineering technologies, citing gaps in scientific knowledge and potential environmental, social and economic risks; the non-binding decision includes exceptions for research. And in a series of decisions over the last decade, parties to the London Convention on ocean pollution have banned the commercial use of ocean fertilization — in which iron is released into the ocean to spur the growth of CO2-absorbing algae — while laying out criteria for research.

But concerns about the global nature of solar geoengineering — the injection of reflective particles into the stratosphere — in particular have spurred efforts to give the governance debate more prominence within the UN. A fleet of high-flying aircraft could pump enough sulfur into the stratosphere to offset around 1.5 °C of warming for as little as US$1 billion–$10 billion annually, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The relatively cheap price has spurred concerns that individual countries could eventually pursue such a programme on their own, with global consequences. Janos Pasztor, who heads the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative, an advocacy group in New York City, has spent more than two years discussing the need for geoengineering governance with high-level government officials around the world. He says that a UNEP assessment would command attention and help to bring governments up to speed.

“There has been no global assessment of geoengineering technologies, and this is very much needed,” says Pasztor, who advised former UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on climate change.

But other scientists question whether a UNEP assessment of geoengineering would add anything to the global debate, given that organizations such as the UK Royal Society and the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine have already produced thorough analyses. And although a UNEP assessment could spur conversations within governments, the question is whether those conversations will advance or hinder research, says Steve Rayner, director of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford, UK.

“Ten years ago, when we wrote the Royal Society report, we thought that the governance challenge of geoengineering was stopping Dr Strangelove,” Rayner says. “A decade on I am inclined to think it is kick-starting Mr Scrooge.”

Looking ahead

The outlook for the coming geoengineering debate at the UN Environment Assembly is unclear. The resolution faces opposition from countries such as the United States and Saudi Arabia, as well as scepticism from non-governmental groups that oppose geoengineering.

“The technologies continue to be speculative, so we don’t really need a new study,” says Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America director for the ETC Group, an environmental advocacy group in Val-David, Canada. She says that the UNEP resolution discounts work done under the London Convention and the Convention on Biological Diversity, which have already produced similar assessments of science and governance issues related to geoengineering.

If the UN Environment Assembly approves the resolution, Ribeiro is pushing for changes that would require the participation of representatives from civil society, indigenous tribes and others in an ad-hoc advisory committee that would advise the UNEP on the assessment.

Pasztor’s organization has taken a neutral stance on the resolution itself, and he says that the outcome remains unclear. Regardless, he says the debate itself represents a success. “Our goal is to have governments come together and talk,” Pasztor says. “We have catalysed the process, and now it’s a question for governments.”

EU: Telling Europeans What To Think

Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  • The above initiatives, of course, exist in addition to all the other measures that the EU has put in place to “guide” Europeans onto the path of proper thinking… which the untransparent and unaccountable online tech giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla — signed in October 2018, and their 2019 “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online.”

  • In the same vein as China’s “reeducation camps” or the former Soviet Union’s “rehabilitation centers” that abused psychiatry for political purposes, Marine Le Pen in September was ordered to undergo psychiatric tests for tweeting the pictures, ostensibly to establish whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions”.

  • It is probably safe to say that the first victims of the EU’s media literacy policies will be diversity of opinion and free speech.

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Marine Le Pen (pictured at podium), the leader of France’s Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, posted tweets condemning the Islamic State terrorist group, including photos of their murdered victims. For this, she was charged with the crime of “disseminating violent images,” and ordered by a court to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions.” (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images)

The first European Media Literacy Week, an initiative of the European Union, will take place March 18-22 in various European cities. The week is a new initiative by the European Commission, putatively “to underline the societal importance of media literacy and promote media literacy initiatives and projects across the EU”. The European Commission explains its policy of strengthening ‘media literacy’ within the EU — which could have been a noble and useful initiative — the following way:

“With the rapid rise of digital technology and its increasing use in business, education and culture, it is important to ensure everyone can understand and engage with digital media.

“Media literacy is vital for economic growth and job creation. Digital technologies are a key driver of competitiveness and innovation in the media, information, and communication technology sectors.”

As part of its “Digital Single Market” strategy, the European Commission addsflimsily:

“Media literacy concerns different media (broadcasting, radio, press), different distribution channels (traditional, internet, social media) and addresses the needs of all ages… A high level of media literacy is a key factor to enable citizens to make informed decisions in the digital age. Media literacy is a pre-requisite for a vibrant, modern democracy.”

One does not have to scratch the surface much, however, before it appears that at least certain aspects of the European Commission’s Media Literacy policy are less about enlightening citizens, than about heavy-handedly guiding them on what to think. According to the European Commission, “a key stone in all possible definitions of media literacy is the development of critical thinking by the user.” The Commission, it would appear, has arrogated to itself the formidable task of “developing” that crucial faculty in EU citizens.

Furthermore, according to the Commission:

“Media literacy is also a tool empowering citizens as well as raising their awareness and helping counter the effects of disinformation campaigns and fake news spreading through digital media.”

The EU initiative against disinformation, according to which, “The exposure of citizens to large scale disinformation, including misleading or outright false information, is a major challenge for Europe,” contains “an action plan to step up efforts to counter disinformation in Europe and beyond…” The action plan is analyzed in more detail here.

The above initiatives, of course, exist in addition to all the other measures that the EU has put in place to “guide” Europeans onto the path of proper thinking. These measures include the Code of Practice on Disinformation, which the untransparent and unaccountable online tech giants — Facebook, Google, Twitter and Mozilla — signed in October 2018, and their 2019 “Code of Conduct on countering illegal online hate speech online.”

Europeans evidently now need the further indispensable guidance of the European Commission to learn how properly to navigate, read and interpret the news, whether the source is traditional or digital. How and why it became the business of the EU bureaucracy to teach Europeans what to read and think remains somewhat obscure.

Even so, for some European leaders, this artillery battery of bureaucratic measures to guide the thinking of Europeans is still not sufficient. French President Emmanuel Macron recently gave a speech in which he proposed establishing the Orwellian sounding “European Agency for the Protection of Democracies”:

“We should have European rules banish all incitements to hate and violence from the Internet, since respect for the individual is the bedrock of our civilisation of dignity.” [Emphasis in the original]

As always, who defines what is perceived as “hate” was left blowing in the wind. Presumably, whatever EU leaders perceive to contradict their own preferred policies, as previous experience has shown — for instance herehere, and here. In Macron’s France, for example, Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National (National Rally) party, formerly known as Front National, has been charged with circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity,” for tweeting images of atrocities committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq in 2015, and that can be viewed by a minor. One of the images showed the body of James Foley, the American journalist beheaded by ISIS terrorists, while the others showed a man in an orange jumpsuit being driven over by a tank and another of a man being burned alive in a cage. “Daesh is this!” Le Pen wrote in the caption, which she tweeted a few weeks after the ISIS attack on Paris in November 2015, in which 130 people were killed.

“I am being charged for having condemned the horrors of Daesh,” Le Pen said. In the same vein as China’s “reeducation camps” or the former Soviet Union’s “rehabilitation centers” that abused psychiatry for political purposes, Le Pen in September was ordered to undergo psychiatric tests for tweeting the pictures, ostensibly in order to establish whether she “is capable of understanding remarks and answering questions.”

Warning against Islamic terrorism, according to the French judicial system, is not only criminal but apparently represents a psychological aberration. Le Pen could face up to three years in prison and a fine of €75,000 ($85,000). Also in September, parliament lifted the immunity of another Rassemblement National MP, Gilbert Collard, over similar tweets that contained ISIS images. Criminal prosecution is, of course, one way for governments to deal with political opponents, but it used to be limited to dictatorships, not parliamentary democracies, such as France.

One wonders if this form of European censorship is what Macron, with his Orwellian plan, would like to see exported to the rest of Europe.

Meanwhile, the upcoming media literacy week will launch with an opening conference hosted by the European Commission on March 19. So far, there are around 180 announced media literacy events throughout Europe for the month of March. In Slovenia, workshops such as “Media Literacy Workshop for Students: Fighting Fake News” and “Real Media Literacy for a Fake News World” are offered, and in London, Europeans are invited to a seminar on, “Fake News vs Media Literacy: Critical Thinking, Resilience, Civic Engagement,” where:

“Leading media literacy researchers from the US and UK will come together… with teachers, librarians, journalists, digital media producers and young people to tackle disinformation with media literacy… working to a collective aim – a practical strategy for harnessing media literacy to develop young people’s resilience to ‘fake news’, with a focus on case studies from both the UK and the US.”

It is probably safe to say that the first victims of the EU’s media literacy policies will be diversity of opinion and free speech.

Nobel Laureate William Nordhaus demonstrates that pursuing climate mitigation will make a nation worse off

“Using Nordhaus’s model assumptions, if the World as a whole fulfilled the Paris Climate Agreement collectively with optimal policies, then the world would be worse off than if it did nothing. That is due to most countries pursuing little or no actual climate mitigation policies. Within this context, pursuing any costly climate mitigation policies will make a country worse off than doing nothing. Assuming political leaders have the best interests of their country at heart, and regardless of whether they regard climate change a problem, the optimal policy strategy is to impose as little costly policy as possible for maximum appearance of being virtuous, whilst doing the upmost to get other countries to pursue costly mitigation policies.”

“Something Was Extraordinarily Wrong”: Doomed Boeing Swung Up And Down Hundreds Of Feet

One glimpse at the terrifying trajectory of the Ethiopian Airlines jetliner that crashed on Sunday shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa and it is clear something was dreadfully wrong from the start.

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As The New York Times notes, controllers also observed that the aircraft, a new Boeing 737 Max 8, was oscillating up and down by hundreds of feet – a sign that something was extraordinarily wrong.

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Pilots are reportedly abuzz over publicly available radar data that showed the aircraft had accelerated far beyond what is considered standard practice, for reasons that remain unclear.

“The thing that is most abnormal is the speed,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former 737 pilot.

“The speed is very high,” said Mr. Cox, a former executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association in the United States. “The question is why. The plane accelerates far faster than it should.” NYT

According to officials with Ethiopian Airlines, the crew of flight 302 told air traffic control they they were experiencing “flight control” problems just a few minutes before contact was lost. Pilot Yared Getachew – who had more than 8,000 hours of flying experience, reported the initial “flight control” problem in a calm voice within one minute of departure. 

According to the radar, the aircraft was flying far below the minimum safe altitude recommended during takeoff. Within two minutes, the plane had climbed to a safer altitude, and the pilot reported that he wanted to remain on a straight course to 14,000 feet. 

The plane then proceeded to rapidly climb and fall by hundreds of feet while flying unusually fast, according to the Times. Air traffic controllers “started wondering out loud what the flight was doing.” 

The plane’s trajectory was so erratic that two other Ethiopian flights – 613 and 629, where ordered to remain at higher altitudes. 

While the controllers were instructing the other planes to keep their distance, a panicked Captain Getachew interrupted just three minutes into their flight and requested to turn back as the plane accelerated to even higher speeds well beyond the plane’s safety limits. 

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Flight 302 was immediately cleared to turn back, turning right as it climbed even further. 

A minute later, it disappeared from the radar while flying over a restricted military zone

As the Times notes, the crash of flight 302 is reminiscent of the October crash of another Boeing 737 Max 8 which crashed in Indonesia. 

Both took place soon after takeoff, and the crews of both planes had sought to return to the airport.

The possibility that the two crashes had a similar cause was central to regulators’ decision to ground all 737 Maxes, a family of planes that entered passenger service less than two years ago.

After the Indonesia crash, a new flight-control system meant to keep the jet from stalling was suspected as a cause. In both cases, pilots struggled to control their aircraft. –NYT

The investigation of the Ethiopian crash is still in its early stages – with the so-called black boxes containing voice and flight data arriving in France on Thursday for further analysis. 

Boeing, meanwhile, has been working on a software update for all 737 Max 8 jets which is expected by April. Meanwhile, questions remain over whether pilots should have undergone more training as airlines rolled out more technologically advanced models. 

As we reported on Tuesday, several pilots repeatedly warned federal authorities of safety concerns over the 737 Max 8, with one captain calling the plane’s flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient,” according to the Dallas Morning News

On Wednesday, the chairman of the transportation committee in the House of Representatives, Peter Defazio (D-OR) said he would investigate the FAA’s certification of the 737 Max, including whether pilots have received inadequate training. 

“Something Was Extraordinarily Wrong”: Doomed Boeing Swung Up And Down Hundreds Of Feet

One glimpse at the terrifying trajectory of the Ethiopian Airlines jetliner that crashed on Sunday shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa and it is clear something was dreadfully wrong from the start.

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As The New York Times notes, controllers also observed that the aircraft, a new Boeing 737 Max 8, was oscillating up and down by hundreds of feet – a sign that something was extraordinarily wrong.

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Pilots are reportedly abuzz over publicly available radar data that showed the aircraft had accelerated far beyond what is considered standard practice, for reasons that remain unclear.

“The thing that is most abnormal is the speed,” said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant and former 737 pilot.

“The speed is very high,” said Mr. Cox, a former executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association in the United States. “The question is why. The plane accelerates far faster than it should.” NYT

According to officials with Ethiopian Airlines, the crew of flight 302 told air traffic control they they were experiencing “flight control” problems just a few minutes before contact was lost. Pilot Yared Getachew – who had more than 8,000 hours of flying experience, reported the initial “flight control” problem in a calm voice within one minute of departure. 

According to the radar, the aircraft was flying far below the minimum safe altitude recommended during takeoff. Within two minutes, the plane had climbed to a safer altitude, and the pilot reported that he wanted to remain on a straight course to 14,000 feet. 

The plane then proceeded to rapidly climb and fall by hundreds of feet while flying unusually fast, according to the Times. Air traffic controllers “started wondering out loud what the flight was doing.” 

The plane’s trajectory was so erratic that two other Ethiopian flights – 613 and 629, where ordered to remain at higher altitudes. 

While the controllers were instructing the other planes to keep their distance, a panicked Captain Getachew interrupted just three minutes into their flight and requested to turn back as the plane accelerated to even higher speeds well beyond the plane’s safety limits. 

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Flight 302 was immediately cleared to turn back, turning right as it climbed even further. 

A minute later, it disappeared from the radar while flying over a restricted military zone

As the Times notes, the crash of flight 302 is reminiscent of the October crash of another Boeing 737 Max 8 which crashed in Indonesia. 

Both took place soon after takeoff, and the crews of both planes had sought to return to the airport.

The possibility that the two crashes had a similar cause was central to regulators’ decision to ground all 737 Maxes, a family of planes that entered passenger service less than two years ago.

After the Indonesia crash, a new flight-control system meant to keep the jet from stalling was suspected as a cause. In both cases, pilots struggled to control their aircraft. –NYT

The investigation of the Ethiopian crash is still in its early stages – with the so-called black boxes containing voice and flight data arriving in France on Thursday for further analysis. 

Boeing, meanwhile, has been working on a software update for all 737 Max 8 jets which is expected by April. Meanwhile, questions remain over whether pilots should have undergone more training as airlines rolled out more technologically advanced models. 

As we reported on Tuesday, several pilots repeatedly warned federal authorities of safety concerns over the 737 Max 8, with one captain calling the plane’s flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient,” according to the Dallas Morning News

On Wednesday, the chairman of the transportation committee in the House of Representatives, Peter Defazio (D-OR) said he would investigate the FAA’s certification of the 737 Max, including whether pilots have received inadequate training. 

Nomura: China Holds The Key To Japanese Yen

Via Nomura’s Bilal Hafeez,

Overnight, we received the latest data for Chinese growth, and on balance they were weaker than expected. Our economists continue to look for the weakness to persist. The challenge for the market is whether to focus on this likely near-term weakness or focus on the likely stimulus-led bounce in the second half of this year.

Government wants pick-up

The key government-driven measures of infrastructure investment and credit appear to have reached a trough after a year of weakness, but have yet to establish a firm upward trend (Figure 1). Meanwhile, Chinese stocks appear to be focusing on the prospective stimulus rather than the current weak data (Figure 2).

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Yen tied with Chinese growth

As for currency markets, the dollar appears to be ignoring the Chinese cycle with the euro having only a weak negative correlation with Chinese stocks. The Chinese yuan also just has a low (positive) correlation. The currency that does appear to be affected most is the Japanese yen. The strongest correlations with Chinese stocks are all yen crosses. The largest and most stable correlations with Chinese stocks are USD/JPY and KRW/JPY followed by GBP/JPY and EUR/JPY (Figure 3). This means that any weakness in Chinese stocks should see yen strength, especially through these crosses.

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US bonds, rather than equities, tied with Chinese growth

Outside of currency markets, we find that US 10yr yields are exhibiting a strong positive correlation with Chinese stocks. US equities and oil prices have positive correlations too, but they are less stable. As expected copper prices have a positive correlation, though surprisingly iron ore is negatively correlated.

Beto O’Rourke Officially Enters 2020 Presidential Race

The democratic presidential hopeful field expanded by one on Thursday morning, when Beto O’Rourke, the 46-year-old former Texas congressman, who surged to prominence by nearly unseating Republican Senator Ted Cruz in last year’s midterm congressional elections, formally announced his candidacy for president on Thursday.

O’Rourke told US media that he would run as a Democratic candidate for president. He had first suggested that he was running in an article for Vanity Fair magazine published on Wednesday.

“This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one of us,” O’Rourke said in a video announcing his candidacy sent to US media.

“The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy and our climate have never been greater. They will either consume us, or they will afford us the greatest opportunity to unleash the genius of the United States of America.”

As Axios notes, Beto was unknown outside of Texas until his race against Ted Cruz put him on the national stage. If he ends up winning, AP writes that he “would be the first U.S. politician to do so since Abraham Lincoln lost his Senate bid to Stephen Douglas in Illinois in 1858, then was elected president two years later.”

The fluent Spanish speaker created a grassroots phenomenon by driving to all 254 counties in Texas and posting images of his travels on social media. He raised a record $38m in the quarter before the election from small donors, easily outpacing Mr Cruz despite not taking money from special interests. Donald Trump and the Republican establishment became so concerned that Mr O’Rourke might beat Mr Cruz that the president flew to Texas to campaign for the man he once mocked as “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.

“He’s not ‘Lyin’ Ted’ any more. He’s Beautiful Ted’,” Mr Trump said two weeks before the election, as he slammed Mr O’Rourke who was attracting big crowds at his rallies across the second-biggest US state.

O’Rourke, who is starting a three-day swing through eastern Iowa on Thursday, said he will hold a kick-off rally for his campaign in El Paso, Texas, on March 30: “You can probably tell that I want to run. I do. I think I’d be good at it,” Mr O’Rourke told Vanity Fair for a cover story illustrated with an image taken by the renowned portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The 46-year-old Irish-American had been mulling a presidential bid since his unexpectedly strong challenge to Cruz. While he lost 51-48 per cent, his performance was seen as remarkable in a conservative state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate for three decades and not voted for a Democrat candidate for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Donald Trump and the Republican establishment became so concerned that Mr O’Rourke might beat Mr Cruz that the president flew to Texas to campaign for the man he once mocked as “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz.

“He’s not ‘Lyin’ Ted’ any more. He’s Beautiful Ted’,” Mr Trump said two weeks before the election, as he slammed Mr O’Rourke who was attracting big crowds at his rallies across the second-biggest US state.

O’Rourke previewed his candidacy with an Annie Leibovitz cover and 17-page Vanity Fair spread.

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Joe Hagan, who wrote the cover story, tweets that he spent two months reporting this story before ever meeting Beto, starting last December:

“I convinced Beto O’Rourke to do this cover story after walking up to his house and introducing myself one Sunday afternoon. He was lounging on the front veranda, barefoot in blue jeans and T-shirt, talking on his cell phone.”
Hagan captures O’Rourke’s “radical openness”:

Beto O’Rourke seems like a cliff diver trying to psych himself into the jump. And after playing coy all afternoon about whether he’ll run, he finally can’t deny the pull of his own gifts. “You can probably tell that I want to run,” he finally confides, smiling. “I do. I think I’d be good at it.” …

The more he talks, the more he likes the sound of what he’s saying. “I want to be in it,” he says, now leaning forward. “Man, I’m just born to be in it, and want to do everything I humanly can for this country at this moment.”

O’Rourke enters the crowded Democratic field as moderately progressive candidate who wants to reform the immigration system and opposes the wall that Trump wants to build on the US-Mexico border. During the Senate race, he also made criminal justice reform a central issue, which helped generate strong support from African-Americans.

Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia politics professor, said Mr O’Rourke was “terrific on the trail” but one question was whether he could “capture lightning in a bottle a second time”, given that his opponent will not be Cruz.

At rallies from Dallas to Amarillo in west Texas before the midterms, some supporters told the Financial Times the Mr O’Rourke reminded them of former president Barack Obama or of Robert Kennedy, the former attorney-general and brother of president John F Kennedy who was also assassinated as he ran for president in 1968.

Democratic critics say Mr O’Rourke has no discernible record from his time in Congress. But his fans point to his optimistic vision for the US, his anti-Trump message on immigration and his ability to draw large, excited crowds as evidence that he has the ability to turn out enough voters to beat the president.

O’Rourke faces a very crowded and diverse field of opponents, who include two African-Americans and a record number of women, including senators Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren. He also will face Bernie Sanders who, despite his age, was able to electrify younger voters in 2016 when he challenged Hillary Clinton for the nomination.

His campaign launch also comes as Joe Biden, the former vice-president and moderate Democrat, is expected to launch his own candidacy.

Save money by growing peppers year round inside your house

(Natural News) Organic peppers are wonderful, colorful vegetables that can add a zest to any meal, whether they are stuffed and baked, grilled, smothered onto enchiladas, tossed into salads or simply enjoyed as a raw snack. The taste of a pepper, depending on the type and size, varies from mild and sweet to spicy, burning hot — challenging and delighting the taste…

Save money by growing peppers year round inside your house

(Natural News) Organic peppers are wonderful, colorful vegetables that can add a zest to any meal, whether they are stuffed and baked, grilled, smothered onto enchiladas, tossed into salads or simply enjoyed as a raw snack. The taste of a pepper, depending on the type and size, varies from mild and sweet to spicy, burning hot — challenging and delighting the taste…

Mueller should put Trump under oath, Schiff says

Source: Mark Niquette, Bloomberg News

It would be a mistake for special counsel Robert Mueller not to subpoena President Donald Trump to appear before a grand jury in the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Sunday.

Mueller is constrained by time pressure to conclude his work and also faces a White House that would likely fight a subpoena, the Schiff said. Even so, he shouldn’t rely just on written answers from Trump because lawyers help write them and there’s no chance for follow-up questions, the California Democrat said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Probably the best way to get the truth would be to put the president under oath,” Schiff said. “Because as he’s made plain in the past, he feels it’s perfectly fine to lie to the public. After all, he has said, ‘It’s not like I’m talking before a magistrate.’ Well, maybe he should talk before a magistrate.”

“I’ve said all along that I don’t think Bob Mueller should rely on written answers,” Schiff said.

Trump’s lawyers have suggested that the president won’t meet with Mueller to answer questions beyond the written responses to questions that were submitted in November. The lawyers have said the answers cover only events before Trump became president and Russian-related topics, not whether he tried to obstruct justice.

Trump has repeatedly denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia, and called Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt.

(c)2019 Bloomberg News

Visit Bloomberg News at http://www.bloomberg.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Objective is to avoid hard Brexit: Austria’s Kurz

March 13, 2019

VIENNA (Reuters) – EU heads of government would unanimously support any decision to avoid a hard Brexit, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday, suggesting a short delay to Britain leaving the European Union on March 29 may be necessary.

British lawmakers crushed Prime Minister Theresa May’s EU divorce deal on Tuesday, thrusting Britain deeper into crisis and forcing parliament to decide within days whether to back a no-deal Brexit or seek a last-minute delay.

Kurz said he expected there would be no majority in the British parliament in a vote on Wednesday for leaving the bloc without a withdrawal agreement, in which case a vote on deferring Brexit is due to take place on Thursday.

“If that all happens as outlined, then we support this course of action,” Kurz told a news conference. “I assume that among the (EU) heads of government there is the unanimous view that it makes sense to avoid a no-deal scenario, a so-called hard Brexit.”

He repeated that it would be better if Brexit happened before the European Parliament election at the end of May.

“The shorter the phase that we extend by the better, but the broader objective that must be kept in the foreground is to avoid a hard Brexit, so ideally I would say we are talking about weeks rather than months,” he said.

(Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Catherine Evans and Janet Lawrence)

Father Of The World Wide Web Warns “Perverse Incentives” Have Made The Internet “Dysfunctional”

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee – known as the inventor of the World Wide Web, says that the internet has become a cesspool of “clickbait and the viral spread of misinformation,” which needs to be “changed for the better,” reports CNBC

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Image via Wikimedia Commons

In a Monday letter marking 30 years since he created a blueprint for the WWW in March 1989, the 63-year-old Oxford/MIT professor outlined three “sources of dysfunction” affecting the internet today; malicious behavior such as state-sponsored hacking and online harassment, “perverse” incentives driving misinformation, and unintended negative consequences such as polarizing, unhealthy conversations. 

“Governments must translate laws and regulations for the digital age,” said Berners-Lee. “They must ensure markets remain competitive, innovative and open.

Berners-Lee singled out Google and Facebook for rewarding clickbait and misinformation. He has previously knocked the tech giants for exploiting people’s personal data. 

“Companies must do more to ensure their pursuit of short-term profit is not at the expense of human rights, democracy, scientific fact or public safety,” reads the Monday letter. 

Last October, Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web foundation released a new blueprint in order to help put the web back on its original course. Known as the “Contract for the Web,” the plan calls for governments to ensure that everyone can connect to the internet – which is kept “available, all of the time,” and respects people’s “fundamental right to privacy.” It also calls on businesses to make the internet affordable to everyone as well as respect data privacy rights. 

One pillar of the contract is treating the web as a basic right for everyone, an idea that is far from reality today. The World Bank estimates roughly half of the world’s population still does not have access to the internet. In a report published Monday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found more than four in 10 rural households in OECD countries don’t have access to the fast fixed broadband needed to support the Internet of Things, whereas nearly nine in 10 households in urban areas have fast connections. –CNBC

Berners-Lee told Vanity Fair last year that he was “devastated” over what the web had become, and had launched a new online platform and company, Inrupt – described as a “personal online data store,” or pod, where everything from messages, music, contacts or other personal data will be stored in one place overseen by the user instead of an array of platforms and apps run by corporations seeking to profit off personal information. The project seeks “personal empowerment through data” and aims to “take back” the web, according to company statements. 

At MIT Berners-Lee has for years led a team on designing and building a decentralized web platform called ‘Solid’ — which will underlie the Inrupt platform. The Inrupt venture will serve as users’ first access to the new Solid decentralized web:

If all goes as planned, Inrupt will be to Solid what Netscape once was for many first-time users of the web: an easy way in. And like with Netscape, Berners-Lee hopes Inrupt will be just the first of many companies to emerge from Solid.

“I have been imagining this for a very long time,” says Berners-Lee.

As described on the Solid and Inrupt websites the new platform will allow users to have complete control over their information ‘pods’ (an acronym for “personal online data store”) — it is only they who will decide whether outside apps and sites will be granted access to it, and to what extent. 

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In short, unlike Facebook or Twitter where all user information ultimately resides in centralized data centers and servers under control of the companies, applications on Inrupt will compete for users based on the services they can offer, and only the users can grant these apps “views” into their data, making personal data instantly portable between similar applications.

“The main enhancement is that the web becomes a collaborative read-write space, passing control from owners of a server, to the users of that system. The Solid specification provides this functionality,” reads the website. 

Asked whether his plans could impact billion-dollar business models that profit off of controlling user data, Berners-Lee shot back: 

“We are not talking to Facebook and Google about whether or not to introduce a complete change where all their business models are completely upended overnight. We are not asking their permission.” 

‘Game Changer’: Simple Eye Scan May Detect Alzheimer’s Earlier, Study Finds

 

DURHAM, N.C. Your eyes may be the window to your soul, but thanks to new research, they may also be the key to detecting Alzheimer’s disease early on. Researchers at the Duke Eye Center say a simple eye scan may reveal activity in the brain associated with the debilitating condition.

Eye doctors may not only be fitting patients with glasses or contacts in the future, but they could also be routinely checking people for Alzheimer’s. The research team found that blood vessel activity in the eyes of Alzheimer’s patients is notably different from that within healthy individuals.

On the left, the retina of a healthy person shows a dense web of blood vessels, the highest-density areas highlighted in red and orange. On the right, the retina of a person with Alzheimer’s disease shows areas in blue and teal where blood vessels are least dense. The images were captured using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).

“We know that there are changes that occur in the brain in the small blood vessels in people with Alzheimer’s disease, and because the retina is an extension of the brain, we wanted to investigate whether these changes could be detected in the retina using a new technology that is less invasive and easy to obtain,” says lead author Dr. Dilraj S. Grewal, M.D., an ophthalmologist and retinal surgeon at Duke, in a media release.

In healthy people, blood vessels form a dense web inside the retina, researchers say, but in patients with Alzheimer’s, that web is notably weaker. Using a noninvasive technology called optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), the authors were able to spot these differences when looking at the eyes of 133 healthy people, compared to 39 people with Alzheimer’s and 37 people with mild cognitive impairment. The OCTA eye scan allows doctors to take high-resolution images of the retina in just a few minutes and see blood vessel activity.

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Changes in the blood vessel density in the retina could indicate similar activity within the brain that occurs in people with Alzheimer’s. But these changes may occur before symptoms become noticeable, such as changes in memory. That’s why the authors believe this eye scan could be groundbreaking.

“Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is a huge unmet need,” says senior author Dr. Sharon Fekrat, an ophthalmologist and retinal surgeon at Duke, in a statement to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. “It’s not possible for current techniques like a brain scan or lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to screen the number of patients with this disease. It is possible that these changes in blood vessel density in the retina may mirror what’s going on in the tiny blood vessels in the brain. Our work is not done. If we can detect these blood vessel changes in the retina before any changes in cognition, that would be a game changer.”

The study was published in the journal Ophthalmology Retina.

‘Game Changer’: Simple Eye Scan May Detect Alzheimer’s Earlier, Study Finds

 

DURHAM, N.C. Your eyes may be the window to your soul, but thanks to new research, they may also be the key to detecting Alzheimer’s disease early on. Researchers at the Duke Eye Center say a simple eye scan may reveal activity in the brain associated with the debilitating condition.

Eye doctors may not only be fitting patients with glasses or contacts in the future, but they could also be routinely checking people for Alzheimer’s. The research team found that blood vessel activity in the eyes of Alzheimer’s patients is notably different from that within healthy individuals.

On the left, the retina of a healthy person shows a dense web of blood vessels, the highest-density areas highlighted in red and orange. On the right, the retina of a person with Alzheimer’s disease shows areas in blue and teal where blood vessels are least dense. The images were captured using optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).

“We know that there are changes that occur in the brain in the small blood vessels in people with Alzheimer’s disease, and because the retina is an extension of the brain, we wanted to investigate whether these changes could be detected in the retina using a new technology that is less invasive and easy to obtain,” says lead author Dr. Dilraj S. Grewal, M.D., an ophthalmologist and retinal surgeon at Duke, in a media release.

In healthy people, blood vessels form a dense web inside the retina, researchers say, but in patients with Alzheimer’s, that web is notably weaker. Using a noninvasive technology called optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA), the authors were able to spot these differences when looking at the eyes of 133 healthy people, compared to 39 people with Alzheimer’s and 37 people with mild cognitive impairment. The OCTA eye scan allows doctors to take high-resolution images of the retina in just a few minutes and see blood vessel activity.

NEW! CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY E-MAIL NEWSLETTER & GET THE LATEST STUDIES FROM STUDYFINDS.ORG!

Changes in the blood vessel density in the retina could indicate similar activity within the brain that occurs in people with Alzheimer’s. But these changes may occur before symptoms become noticeable, such as changes in memory. That’s why the authors believe this eye scan could be groundbreaking.

“Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease is a huge unmet need,” says senior author Dr. Sharon Fekrat, an ophthalmologist and retinal surgeon at Duke, in a statement to the American Academy of Ophthalmology. “It’s not possible for current techniques like a brain scan or lumbar puncture (spinal tap) to screen the number of patients with this disease. It is possible that these changes in blood vessel density in the retina may mirror what’s going on in the tiny blood vessels in the brain. Our work is not done. If we can detect these blood vessel changes in the retina before any changes in cognition, that would be a game changer.”

The study was published in the journal Ophthalmology Retina.

West Point Tries to Defend the Idea of a Just War

Villanova University is hosting a West Point Military Academy-supported event about “Just War” theory.

The professor who teaches “ethics” at West Point last year lost two debates on the topic of whether war can ever be justified. Videos: one, two. I admit to being biased, as I was the one debating him, but the first event polled people at the start and finish and found that they’d been moved in the direction of agreeing with me. At the second event, the moderator failed to poll the audience, and I suspect the audience was more in agreement with me to begin with, but the video speaks for itself.

The idea that a war can be justified by an ancient imperialist set of sophistries is thoroughly debunked here. That’s a link to a book I wrote in preparation for a debate on “Just War” theory with a professor who writes books in defense of it. Here’s the video of that debate.

I believe it is plain from watching such videos that no great skill is required to debunk this stuff, that it falls under its own weight. But, perhaps I’m biased. Judge for yourself.

Brazil arrests two former policemen over Rio councilwoman’s murder

March 12, 2019

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Two former policemen were arrested in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday in connection with the murder of a local councilwoman and her driver, Rio de Janeiro police and prosecutors said.

The operation that resulted in the arrests came on the eve of the first anniversary of the deaths of the councilwoman, Marielle Franco, and Anderson Gomes.

The suspects were identified as Ronnie Lessa, a retired military police officer, and Élcio Vieira de Queiroz, a former policeman who was expelled from the force.

“Two police officers were arrested with a direct and effective participation in the crime,” said Marcus Vinícius Braga, Rio de Janeiro state police secretary. “With the these arrests, we get close to solving the crime.”

Investigators said Lessa fired the shots that killed Franco and Gomes on March 14, 2018, on the north side of Rio. Queiroz drove the car that ambushed them, investigators said.

Franco, an activist for human rights and women’s causes, was a rising star in the Socialism and Liberty Party. Her press secretary, Fernanda Chaves, who was traveling in the same vehicle as Franco and Gomes, suffered minor injuries.

One of the detained policemen lives in the same gated community where Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has a home and lived before being elected last year. The police did not explain whether that had any significance and so far the president has not been tied to the case in any manner.

The president’s press office did not immediately reply to request for comment.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga, writing by Ana Mano, editing by Larry King)

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