From the standpoint of the United States Assange is a hostile foreign intelligence agent, but that alone is not enough to try to charge and extradite him here, and he isn't an American citizen. So I'm wondering if they've got him on something more specific than publicizing the dirty laundry that other agents handed to him, because it sounds likely US officials are going to try to get him from the British authorities at some point.
Imagine the fireworks that would happen if Trump tried to pardon him instead...
I don't think you read it in context. That quote is specific to the charge of obstruction of justice, and the report says that Mueller gathered up the facts and declined to evaluate whether the activity constituted a crime
You didn't read it correctly. What Mueller said was that without collusion there cannot be obstruction of collusion. Case closed.
That is complete nonsense, though I've heard it's like before. You can obstruct justice and commit perjury over behavior that isn't even a crime, or is about someone else's crimes. Flynn lied about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the FBI, but him talking with the Russian ambassador about policy for the incoming administration was not illegal (except perhaps under the effectively dead law of the Logan act), and likely not even scandalous. Bill Clinton committed perjury over a blowjob.
And Mueller didn't say that either. Barr is saying his and Rosenstein's assessment is that they couldn't prove that Trump's conduct met the elements of the offense for the obstruction of justice statute, in particular whether Trump's public obstructive behavior targeted particular potential legal proceedings and whether they had corrupt intent. The former prosecutors I've seen have said that corrupt intent is hard to prove in general. Congress might have a different opinion on the matter, and they aren't as constrained to proving the elements of the particular obstruction of justice statutes in front of a jury as the DoJ is.
There was a more specific classified order that outlined what in particular Muller was supposed to investigate that was released in partially redacted form during Manafort's trial, here: The Scope of Investigation and Definition of Authority
Mueller was ordered to handle particular investigations in that classified memo, including the Manafort business, and could ask to expand his probe in request to the acting AG Rosenstein.
For additional matters that otherwise may have arisen or may arise directly from the Investigation, you should consult my office for a determination of whether such matters should be within the scope of your authority. If you determine that additional jurisdiction is necessary in order to fully investigate and resolve the matters assigned, or to investigate new matters that come to light in the course of your
investigation, you should follow the procedures set forth in 28 C.F.R. 600.4(b).
Barr's report said that there was never a case where the DoJ overruled the special counsel on prosecutorial orders, so presumably Mueller and Rosenstein (and perhaps subsequently Whitaker and Barr as well) agreed to the scope of the investigation and investigations and prosecutions on unrelated matters were handed off to other authorities.
Which is the point I'm trying to make that you seem to have trouble with: Mueller was only investigating a limited set of matters, and if he expanded his scope at all it was also in a limited manner made in consultation with DoJ. The other stuff, like Cohen's financial chicanery and the campaign finance crimes and whatever else were handed off to other authorities.
Despite the picture that Trump was painting as this being an open ended witch hunt looking at anything and everything to bring him down, it very much was not. Which is both good and bad for him, good since he has nothing more to worry about from Mueller prosecuting him or more of his associates and only has to worry about what he has already collected and put in his report, bad in that any other issues that were outside Mueller's scope are distinctly unresolved by the closure of the special counsel's investigation as well as any potential political fallout that occurs when more details are released.
This is not a "shades of grey" issue. Either a crime was committed or not. If there is sufficient evidence to support a criminal conviction then a crime was committed. Anything short of that constitutes "not a crime."
Do you seriously believe this? How can anyone consider such a blatant false dichotomy be insightful?
Of course there are crimes that people get away with. It happens all the time! Big crimes, small crimes, only a fraction are ever resolved or prosecuted. I seriously doubt that whoever stole my PS2 in college got caught, but you'd have been incredibly dense to think that doing so was anything short of a crime.
This is a serious misunderstanding of the principle of the presumption of innocence. In the eyes of the law, we should not deprive people of their liberty unless we can prove crimes based a well reasoned assessment of the evidence. But just because someone is not guilty in the eyes of the law, does not mean they necessarily factually innocent of the underlying acts, nor are they immune to collateral reputational damage.
I'm sure Hillary Clinton would be surprised to hear that this standard applied to her in the minds of her most ardent opponents. She was never even indicted on anything, much less convicted, but still the chants of "lock her up" persist.
Huh? Are you not understanding what I posted, or that document that you posted? Because what you said doesn't make sense.
Mueller got a guilty plea from Cohen about lying about the Moscow project, which was a matter within the special's mandate given to him by Deputy AG Rosenstein. Mueller did not get the guilty plea from Cohen about the other financial and campaign finance crimes, that was the SDNY portion of the Department of Justice (who was less considerably less thrilled with Cohen's level of cooperation than the special counsel was). The investigators obviously shared evidence obtained by the FBI, but the parts of the criminal investigations outside of Mueller's mandate were handed off to the other more permanent law enforcement agencies, and those are pretty clearly not resolved by the conclusion of the special counsel investigation.
This is in contrast to the old post-Watergate independent counsel law that Ken Starr and the like operated under, which had way more latitude in what they went after.
We just found out what again? If you are talking about the Steele dossier, we've known since before McCain was dead that McCain and his team had their hands on the dossier and had given it over to the FBI. An associate of McCain had given it to Buzzfeed as was revealed recently, who were the ones who finally published it after the election in 2017, but the dossier was an open secret bouncing around well before then, and David Corn at Mother Jones was reporting on it before the election.
But again, it was public knowledge well before the twitter fight with the dead that McCain and his team were passing around that dossier, and they weren't the only ones who knew about it.
You seem to pretty clearly be misunderstanding Mueller's job and mandate. Mueller had an explicit and narrow mandate to examine particular issues with the Russian efforts in the 2016 election, issues that directly arose from that in particular obstruction of justice, and a couple other specific things that Rosenstein particularly assigned to his team like Manafort's shady finances and associated dealings with Ukrainians. Mueller's job was not to go after Trump for anything and everything he could find, and the clearest example of this was how the bulk of Michael Cohen's assorted crimes was handed back to the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York. In particular, Mueller wasn't handling the campaign finance crimes at all, he was investigating Cohen for other things and it was the SDNY who came up with those charges on their own they were the ones who came just short of naming Trump an unindicted co-conspirator. Whatever other assorted crimes Trump did or did not commit, it was not up to Mueller to handle it either way; it'll be up to some other authority to adjudicate, such as the regular DoJ, the congress, or state law enforcement.
And there seems to be clearly evidence of obstruction of justice, just that we aren't being allowed to see it yet, he wouldn't have said the line about it not exonerating Trump if there was nothing there. Instead, Barr decided that it was his duty, for whatever reason, to make the conclusion that there was not a case to be made on obstruction of justice despite Mueller not making a conclusion either way. Given that Barr is a maximalist on executive power in this context and takes a borderline Nixonian position that it is almost impossible for a President to commit obstruction of justice due to his constitutional authorities, you will need to forgive a heavy dose of skepticism of Barr's ability to fairly make an assessment on obstruction of justice without seeing the underlying evidence. The obvious constitutional authority that should be making the conclusions on this particular issue is the congress.
Which side am I supposed to be rooting for on in this one?
The side that doesn't kill or threaten journalists would be a good place to start.
Which immediately raises the question: Which side am I supposed to be rooting for on in this one?
That's the joke.jpg
Russia's already been threatening and killing journalists that have been thorns in their side, and now we see the Saudis are capable of doing that as well at an even more audacious level.
Russia has an interest in doing this on a purely economic level too, since Saudi Arabia is a dominant power in fossil fuel production and export, and Russia's economy is heavily dependent also on fossil fuel exports. Busting up the competition like this with cyberwarfare is a fairly obvious move in the amoral cartel world that these guys are operating in.
That's not a new or particularly unheard of strategy. Some right wing groups in recent elections have sent out mailers with the wrong election date and/or voting information on them to unfavorable demographics to suppress the vote. One of the less subtle forms of voter suppression, which is a class of activity that should be treated much more harshly by the law and subsequently law enforcement, but the US has done somethings to earn its dips into the flawed democracy status such as in the Economists' index.
If it makes you feel better, the historical methods for cheating in US elections tended to be a lot more blatant, including some of the stuff that we were chiding other countries for no so long ago.
This isn't that odd of a concept when viewed through old school division of capital and labor, though with a new twist based on the technologies involved. The software that automates your work is effectively capital in and of itself, and the coder used their labor to create that capital. However, the company paid the labor wage without expecting the creation of that capital but instead just the laborer performing the job themselves. But the management is acting on the behalf of the company owners, the traditional capital holders, and thus want the control of the capital themselves as opposed to the supposed laborer keeping it to themselves. Many companies would expect the worker to remain in the position of a laborer with a wage rather than buying the end service from another effective tiny capital holder with their own little automated fiefdom.
I'm not going to go out and say how this all "should" work, but it does demonstrate that the barriers between labor and capital are much lower when you introduce automating software into the mix relative to traditional forms of capital like heavy industrial machinery or real estate.
Parent post is literally reposting large amounts of Russian propaganda, read about Sputnik news if you think this is an exaggeration. This isn't particularly subtle either, Sputnik and RT don't try to hide their Russian origins, and as you can see from that link Sputnik was "established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya."
I guess the Russian sympathetic block has got their hands on mod points if unvarnished Russian propaganda is what passes for interesting or insightful.
I didn't know how sports gambling worked at first (since I'm disinterested in it), but it is different from a lot of other forms of gambling in that if the bookies are doing their job right then they don't care about the outcome. They set the odds or spreads to aim at getting balanced action on whoever wins, and take a slice off the top. Note that they don't have to target the actual odds or probabilities of the real outcome of the sporting event, just such that they get the bettors to balance out on either side.
Which makes bookies banning the skilled bettors somewhat strange, as long as it isn't them suspecting that they are rigging the matches that is. Unless it is causing them to set their odds and spreads wrong and making them look dumb, then it shouldn't matter if the smart money gets on one side as long as there is enough dumb money on the other side to even it out. If they can't do that because they aren't good enough bookies, then perhaps they should hire some of the skilled bettors instead of banning them.
The test is the moneymaker. The low end of price for the test is in the $50 range if you are getting a deal, but a lot of the tests you can order online are closer to $100. It used to be even more expensive, and woe unto you if you get it done by a lab out of your insurance network in a high cost of living area.
The thing is that the vitamin D test is really expensive for a run of the mill blood test. Ridiculously expensive in America due to the overinflated healthcare costs in general, but even in cheaper countries like Britain it is still pricey relative to a lot of the routine blood tests.
I have a vitamin D deficiency so it was worthwhile for me to get the test, but the bill provided some serious sticker shock.
Even though tariffs are applied as taxes on imports, and thus at face value seem to be mainly in the realm of foreign policy and international trade, a lot of the effects as to who wins and loses can be viewed in terms of the domestic economy. The tariffs help the local producer of the taxed product by raising the market price of their good without raising their price of production (in isolation), while hurting the consumers of the taxed product by raising its price.
So CaseLabs going under provides a pretty straightforward example of this. Steel and aluminum producers are boosted by the tariffs on their goods, and a company on the margins that consumes a lot of steel and aluminum goes out of business because they cannot pass enough of the price increase down stream to their customers to stay afloat.
More generally tariffs are typically bad news because they distort the markets to protect narrow economic interests who would be at a competitive disadvantage without some heavy handed assistance, but they can make sense in more complicated scenarios such as when the markets are already distorted or if the other side is already a bad actor. But if you are dealing with someone like Canada who has an edge on aluminum foundries because they have a ton of really cheap electricity from hydroelectric dams, then putting a bunch of aluminum tariffs on them like Trump is doing hurts the US as a whole only for the narrow benefit of the local aluminum industry, even before you get into retaliatory tariffs.
The increased conversion rate I was talking about matters for fundamental changes to the company, which delisting and going private like Musk is discussing should include. If he is planning to go private in large part as a response to this particular $920M of debt, then the breakeven price for conversion is even lower, the $252.54 I mentioned, and on an earlier effective date than maturity the conversion is profitable above $252.54, not just $359.87, based on the table in 9.03(e).
If he is just goosing the stock to go above $360 so note holders convert and it reduces his debt load as you and the article are describing, then he can do that at least partially before the maturity date, since the notes can be converted at least a few days before maturity, and there is a 5 day measuring period. But the note holders are the ones who retain the option to convert if things continue as normally, so I'm not sure what the plan would be for goosing the price this many months out if Musk is just BSing about going private and can't maintain high enough prices longer than momentarily. However, $360 breakeven price in the initial note offering might not even be right anymore, the conversion rate is adjusted in section 9.04 based on changes to the stock pool such as splits or dividends. I haven't been following Tesla closely so I couldn't tell you if any of the 9.04 adjustments are relevant.
I don't disagree with the overall point that Tesla may have cashflow issues and potentially financing troubles, but Musk wanting to go private has bigger implications beyond him just goosing the price above $360. Also remember that what we are discussing is past debt based financing that is maturing next year, it would be hardly surprising if instead of paying that all off with cash Tesla just issued more debt. We're not currently in a financial meltdown like in 2008-2009 (fingers crossed), so I'm not sure it is a good idea to get lost in the weeds about converting debt into equity around the $360 per share price point, when the overall issue remains that he has almost a billion dollars in liabilities coming due March next year regardless and the markets should be well aware of that fact.
That article is wrong based on the underlying linked SEC report on on the notes, either the author didn't read it properly or didn't expect their readers to read it properly. The note holder has the option to convert to stock until a couple days before maturity; the base conversion rate is 2.7788 per $1000 principal (which translates to about $360), but the conversion rate is increased depending upon the stock price given in table 9.03(e), with more shares given for stock prices at the cutoff of $252.54 per share. It gives the same breakeven point on the March 1, 2019 at the prices per share between $252.54 and $359.87.
The timing and reporting issues are listed in 9.01(b), for the listed major company changes (like liquidation) Tesla has to give notification at least 30 trading days in advance.
Frankly, that article set off by BS alarms causing me to look at the supporting material, since it sounded like this conversion was structured as a bonus to lenders if the stock price went really high, not as a way to dodge unforeseen financing trouble years ahead of time. The note holder captures upside to stock prices above $360 from the conversion. Presumably they structured it this way to improve how much money Tesla got up front for selling the notes in the 2013 or 2014 timeframe, and they were willing to trade away some of the upside if the price per share went above $360.
That's a remarkable bit of denial, an excellent exemplar of why I have decreasing faith that this will end well. There is plenty of evidence that the Russians were involved in all sorts of various hacking and active measures and whatnot, but if you simply refuse to believe that evidence, then you can just deny everything and believe whatever you want to believe or whatever you are told to believe. That is one of the end goals of the concerted campaign of propaganda that the Russians been running since the Soviet era: true information no longer matters anymore and the ability to assess facts and adjust beliefs in response to facts is utterly withered.
To the particular point, the prior indictments against the Russian nationals are far more detailed than standard indictments, they are so called "speaking indictments." The most recent one this month against the GRU hackers detailed the particular methods they used and quite a bit of the timing of the attacks. And it sounds like western intelligence had high end source in the Russian government that Trump was told about prior to the inauguration confirming that the top levels of the Russian government, including Putin, were orchestrating the attacks. But again, if you can simply deny that information out of hand, and call it "fake news", then what point is there in providing any more information? What will be believed short of reality providing a swift kick to the groin?
or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort
That's the relevant part that brings forth the possibility of treason. If you replace the word "Enemies" with "the Russian government", then Trump looks pretty guilty based on public knowledge alone. They launched a campaign of subversion, psychological warfare, espionage, and cyberwarfare and Trump was read in on the most top secret of details confirming that before he was inaugurated. Since then he has covered for Russia and continually denied and obfuscated the truth of their attack, instead attacking and alienating our traditional allies, and he is now rewarding Russia and promoting Putin in front of the world. And who knows what else he promised in secret, since we know he even considered handing over former American officials to the Russians based on laughably absurd accusations because they've been a thorn in Putin's side.
The reason why it might not be treason is mostly semantic, the Russians might not technically qualify as enemies. By the pedantic and minimalist reading treason might be functionally impossible for anyone to commit if you limit it to only enemies that you have a declared war against, since we haven't had a formally declared war in many decades. In that case, Trump's actions are merely "treason adjacent."
The barbarians are at the walls, and Trump is trying to hold open the gates, saying that no one's and there nothing to worry about. At least some of us have eyes and ears and are willing to use them.
Long term this is an unmitigated disaster, since it won't be just the Russians trying to manipulate the US if we've shown such remarkable defenselessness. China will want to grab hold on some of the puppet strings.
Unfortunately, no, not everything is Russian bots, we have more than enough home grown crazies, traitors, collaborators, and enablers to go around even without their help. Russian bots are a force multiplier for America's self destructive movement despite that.
#Walkaway is mostly fake and it is one of the major pushes that the Russian bots have been making lately. Plenty of useful idiots to aid them and provide a fertile ground, however. The right-wingers are clueless if they think this is a major movement on the left, I'd dismiss and ignore it except that I fear this sort of nonsense will be used to lay the groundwork for further dismantling of democracy. Creating alternative realities is a tried and true method for justifying and excusing all sorts of malfeasance.
#WalkAway is a completely transparent astroturf, pushed heavily by the Russian bots and people who weren't Democrats at all. The right-wingers pushing this are getting high on their own supply if they believe this stuff is real, and are utterly blinding themselves to the sentiments of their opposition.
The reasonable assessment is that the US healthcare system has a lot problems beyond simply the payment system for health services. Which it does, US's health sector is bloated and inefficient in a wide variety of ways beyond private or socialized insurers. But those unnecessary redundancies and the intentionally crippled negotiating power of those payment systems are still a big part of the problem.
Either a heavily regulated and subsidized private system or a more socialized system could work, but what the US has now is a Frankenstein system with various limbs from various systems sewn together, and entrenched interests who get their gravy train from the wide variety of inefficiencies and have sufficient political clout (largely as consequence of that wealth) to block any efforts for genuine reform. If we had a rational, above the board government right now they'd launch an even more aggressive legislative and regulatory assault on the problem than we got with Obamacare. Because we have a corrupt government that represents an ideology that venerates selfishness instead, we'll probably plod along until the system collapses under its own unsustainable weight and causes a massive recession or depression.
I didn't treat the AC seriously, but since you got some biters I guess I'll give a serious response.
Insurance works because people are naturally risk adverse, and risk pools have their mathematical risk (think std. deviations and related statistics) scale up more slowly than the simple aggregation of the individual risks as long as they aren't too correlated with each other. People will pay more to mitigate the price of their individual risks summed together than the overall price of the risk to the insurer in a properly run and profitable insurance plan.
Insurers can improve their edge (if allowed by law) by underwriting individuals and trying to more accurately finding the risk profile for each policy holder, and subsequently charging the high risk individuals more and the low risk individuals less in premiums. That underwriting and analysis is not free, and requires both skilled labor and a decent expenditure of resources to find the data to build risk profiles to determine the premiums or deny coverage, and thus private market insurers would only engage in this datamining and modeling if there was a reasonable belief that it would be sufficiently profitable.
The problem with health insurance, the "high risk" and uninsurable individuals are such because they have had illness or injury in their past records, with the worst being chronic illnesses. If you take the laissez faire approach with no government intervention either through regulation, subsidy, or outright socialization, then a substantial portion of the portion of the population will simply be unable to afford health coverage. To be curt, you will need to start digging a whole lot of graves if no government in healthcare is the policy that you want to pursue. Society will lose all that could be provided by those disabled and dead in service of such an unflinching ideology, and other advanced countries have well proven that the cost for some decent baseline level of coverage is well within the realm of affordability for a wealthy country.
If all you have is enlightened self interest, you must realize that anyone including you could enter into the realm of the "uninsurable" if fate rolls your dice poorly and you end up with a bad diagnosis. That's a big picture risk that most people are willing to entrust to the government to mitigate, even despite how little people trust the government here in the US.
Slashdot Mirror
From the standpoint of the United States Assange is a hostile foreign intelligence agent, but that alone is not enough to try to charge and extradite him here, and he isn't an American citizen. So I'm wondering if they've got him on something more specific than publicizing the dirty laundry that other agents handed to him, because it sounds likely US officials are going to try to get him from the British authorities at some point.
Imagine the fireworks that would happen if Trump tried to pardon him instead...
I don't think you read it in context. That quote is specific to the charge of obstruction of justice, and the report says that Mueller gathered up the facts and declined to evaluate whether the activity constituted a crime
You didn't read it correctly. What Mueller said was that without collusion there cannot be obstruction of collusion. Case closed.
That is complete nonsense, though I've heard it's like before. You can obstruct justice and commit perjury over behavior that isn't even a crime, or is about someone else's crimes. Flynn lied about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the FBI, but him talking with the Russian ambassador about policy for the incoming administration was not illegal (except perhaps under the effectively dead law of the Logan act), and likely not even scandalous. Bill Clinton committed perjury over a blowjob.
And Mueller didn't say that either. Barr is saying his and Rosenstein's assessment is that they couldn't prove that Trump's conduct met the elements of the offense for the obstruction of justice statute, in particular whether Trump's public obstructive behavior targeted particular potential legal proceedings and whether they had corrupt intent. The former prosecutors I've seen have said that corrupt intent is hard to prove in general. Congress might have a different opinion on the matter, and they aren't as constrained to proving the elements of the particular obstruction of justice statutes in front of a jury as the DoJ is.
There was a more specific classified order that outlined what in particular Muller was supposed to investigate that was released in partially redacted form during Manafort's trial, here: The Scope of Investigation and Definition of Authority
Mueller was ordered to handle particular investigations in that classified memo, including the Manafort business, and could ask to expand his probe in request to the acting AG Rosenstein.
Barr's report said that there was never a case where the DoJ overruled the special counsel on prosecutorial orders, so presumably Mueller and Rosenstein (and perhaps subsequently Whitaker and Barr as well) agreed to the scope of the investigation and investigations and prosecutions on unrelated matters were handed off to other authorities.
Which is the point I'm trying to make that you seem to have trouble with: Mueller was only investigating a limited set of matters, and if he expanded his scope at all it was also in a limited manner made in consultation with DoJ. The other stuff, like Cohen's financial chicanery and the campaign finance crimes and whatever else were handed off to other authorities.
Despite the picture that Trump was painting as this being an open ended witch hunt looking at anything and everything to bring him down, it very much was not. Which is both good and bad for him, good since he has nothing more to worry about from Mueller prosecuting him or more of his associates and only has to worry about what he has already collected and put in his report, bad in that any other issues that were outside Mueller's scope are distinctly unresolved by the closure of the special counsel's investigation as well as any potential political fallout that occurs when more details are released.
This is not a "shades of grey" issue. Either a crime was committed or not. If there is sufficient evidence to support a criminal conviction then a crime was committed. Anything short of that constitutes "not a crime."
Do you seriously believe this? How can anyone consider such a blatant false dichotomy be insightful?
Of course there are crimes that people get away with. It happens all the time! Big crimes, small crimes, only a fraction are ever resolved or prosecuted. I seriously doubt that whoever stole my PS2 in college got caught, but you'd have been incredibly dense to think that doing so was anything short of a crime.
This is a serious misunderstanding of the principle of the presumption of innocence. In the eyes of the law, we should not deprive people of their liberty unless we can prove crimes based a well reasoned assessment of the evidence. But just because someone is not guilty in the eyes of the law, does not mean they necessarily factually innocent of the underlying acts, nor are they immune to collateral reputational damage.
I'm sure Hillary Clinton would be surprised to hear that this standard applied to her in the minds of her most ardent opponents. She was never even indicted on anything, much less convicted, but still the chants of "lock her up" persist.
Huh? Are you not understanding what I posted, or that document that you posted? Because what you said doesn't make sense.
Mueller got a guilty plea from Cohen about lying about the Moscow project, which was a matter within the special's mandate given to him by Deputy AG Rosenstein. Mueller did not get the guilty plea from Cohen about the other financial and campaign finance crimes, that was the SDNY portion of the Department of Justice (who was less considerably less thrilled with Cohen's level of cooperation than the special counsel was). The investigators obviously shared evidence obtained by the FBI, but the parts of the criminal investigations outside of Mueller's mandate were handed off to the other more permanent law enforcement agencies, and those are pretty clearly not resolved by the conclusion of the special counsel investigation.
This is in contrast to the old post-Watergate independent counsel law that Ken Starr and the like operated under, which had way more latitude in what they went after.
We just found out what again? If you are talking about the Steele dossier, we've known since before McCain was dead that McCain and his team had their hands on the dossier and had given it over to the FBI. An associate of McCain had given it to Buzzfeed as was revealed recently, who were the ones who finally published it after the election in 2017, but the dossier was an open secret bouncing around well before then, and David Corn at Mother Jones was reporting on it before the election.
But again, it was public knowledge well before the twitter fight with the dead that McCain and his team were passing around that dossier, and they weren't the only ones who knew about it.
You seem to pretty clearly be misunderstanding Mueller's job and mandate. Mueller had an explicit and narrow mandate to examine particular issues with the Russian efforts in the 2016 election, issues that directly arose from that in particular obstruction of justice, and a couple other specific things that Rosenstein particularly assigned to his team like Manafort's shady finances and associated dealings with Ukrainians. Mueller's job was not to go after Trump for anything and everything he could find, and the clearest example of this was how the bulk of Michael Cohen's assorted crimes was handed back to the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York. In particular, Mueller wasn't handling the campaign finance crimes at all, he was investigating Cohen for other things and it was the SDNY who came up with those charges on their own they were the ones who came just short of naming Trump an unindicted co-conspirator. Whatever other assorted crimes Trump did or did not commit, it was not up to Mueller to handle it either way; it'll be up to some other authority to adjudicate, such as the regular DoJ, the congress, or state law enforcement.
And there seems to be clearly evidence of obstruction of justice, just that we aren't being allowed to see it yet, he wouldn't have said the line about it not exonerating Trump if there was nothing there. Instead, Barr decided that it was his duty, for whatever reason, to make the conclusion that there was not a case to be made on obstruction of justice despite Mueller not making a conclusion either way. Given that Barr is a maximalist on executive power in this context and takes a borderline Nixonian position that it is almost impossible for a President to commit obstruction of justice due to his constitutional authorities, you will need to forgive a heavy dose of skepticism of Barr's ability to fairly make an assessment on obstruction of justice without seeing the underlying evidence. The obvious constitutional authority that should be making the conclusions on this particular issue is the congress.
Which side am I supposed to be rooting for on in this one?
The side that doesn't kill or threaten journalists would be a good place to start.
Which immediately raises the question: Which side am I supposed to be rooting for on in this one?
That's the joke.jpg
Russia's already been threatening and killing journalists that have been thorns in their side, and now we see the Saudis are capable of doing that as well at an even more audacious level.
Russia has an interest in doing this on a purely economic level too, since Saudi Arabia is a dominant power in fossil fuel production and export, and Russia's economy is heavily dependent also on fossil fuel exports. Busting up the competition like this with cyberwarfare is a fairly obvious move in the amoral cartel world that these guys are operating in.
That's not a new or particularly unheard of strategy. Some right wing groups in recent elections have sent out mailers with the wrong election date and/or voting information on them to unfavorable demographics to suppress the vote. One of the less subtle forms of voter suppression, which is a class of activity that should be treated much more harshly by the law and subsequently law enforcement, but the US has done somethings to earn its dips into the flawed democracy status such as in the Economists' index.
If it makes you feel better, the historical methods for cheating in US elections tended to be a lot more blatant, including some of the stuff that we were chiding other countries for no so long ago.
This isn't that odd of a concept when viewed through old school division of capital and labor, though with a new twist based on the technologies involved. The software that automates your work is effectively capital in and of itself, and the coder used their labor to create that capital. However, the company paid the labor wage without expecting the creation of that capital but instead just the laborer performing the job themselves. But the management is acting on the behalf of the company owners, the traditional capital holders, and thus want the control of the capital themselves as opposed to the supposed laborer keeping it to themselves. Many companies would expect the worker to remain in the position of a laborer with a wage rather than buying the end service from another effective tiny capital holder with their own little automated fiefdom.
I'm not going to go out and say how this all "should" work, but it does demonstrate that the barriers between labor and capital are much lower when you introduce automating software into the mix relative to traditional forms of capital like heavy industrial machinery or real estate.
Parent post is literally reposting large amounts of Russian propaganda, read about Sputnik news if you think this is an exaggeration. This isn't particularly subtle either, Sputnik and RT don't try to hide their Russian origins, and as you can see from that link Sputnik was "established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya."
I guess the Russian sympathetic block has got their hands on mod points if unvarnished Russian propaganda is what passes for interesting or insightful.
I didn't know how sports gambling worked at first (since I'm disinterested in it), but it is different from a lot of other forms of gambling in that if the bookies are doing their job right then they don't care about the outcome. They set the odds or spreads to aim at getting balanced action on whoever wins, and take a slice off the top. Note that they don't have to target the actual odds or probabilities of the real outcome of the sporting event, just such that they get the bettors to balance out on either side.
Which makes bookies banning the skilled bettors somewhat strange, as long as it isn't them suspecting that they are rigging the matches that is. Unless it is causing them to set their odds and spreads wrong and making them look dumb, then it shouldn't matter if the smart money gets on one side as long as there is enough dumb money on the other side to even it out. If they can't do that because they aren't good enough bookies, then perhaps they should hire some of the skilled bettors instead of banning them.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977.
I've never been able to understand why it's our business to prosecute someone else's criminals. Let Hungary prosecute them!!
Because the criminals are often the ones running their government, particularly with these sorts of crimes.
The test is the moneymaker. The low end of price for the test is in the $50 range if you are getting a deal, but a lot of the tests you can order online are closer to $100. It used to be even more expensive, and woe unto you if you get it done by a lab out of your insurance network in a high cost of living area.
The thing is that the vitamin D test is really expensive for a run of the mill blood test. Ridiculously expensive in America due to the overinflated healthcare costs in general, but even in cheaper countries like Britain it is still pricey relative to a lot of the routine blood tests.
I have a vitamin D deficiency so it was worthwhile for me to get the test, but the bill provided some serious sticker shock.
Even though tariffs are applied as taxes on imports, and thus at face value seem to be mainly in the realm of foreign policy and international trade, a lot of the effects as to who wins and loses can be viewed in terms of the domestic economy. The tariffs help the local producer of the taxed product by raising the market price of their good without raising their price of production (in isolation), while hurting the consumers of the taxed product by raising its price.
So CaseLabs going under provides a pretty straightforward example of this. Steel and aluminum producers are boosted by the tariffs on their goods, and a company on the margins that consumes a lot of steel and aluminum goes out of business because they cannot pass enough of the price increase down stream to their customers to stay afloat.
More generally tariffs are typically bad news because they distort the markets to protect narrow economic interests who would be at a competitive disadvantage without some heavy handed assistance, but they can make sense in more complicated scenarios such as when the markets are already distorted or if the other side is already a bad actor. But if you are dealing with someone like Canada who has an edge on aluminum foundries because they have a ton of really cheap electricity from hydroelectric dams, then putting a bunch of aluminum tariffs on them like Trump is doing hurts the US as a whole only for the narrow benefit of the local aluminum industry, even before you get into retaliatory tariffs.
The increased conversion rate I was talking about matters for fundamental changes to the company, which delisting and going private like Musk is discussing should include. If he is planning to go private in large part as a response to this particular $920M of debt, then the breakeven price for conversion is even lower, the $252.54 I mentioned, and on an earlier effective date than maturity the conversion is profitable above $252.54, not just $359.87, based on the table in 9.03(e).
If he is just goosing the stock to go above $360 so note holders convert and it reduces his debt load as you and the article are describing, then he can do that at least partially before the maturity date, since the notes can be converted at least a few days before maturity, and there is a 5 day measuring period. But the note holders are the ones who retain the option to convert if things continue as normally, so I'm not sure what the plan would be for goosing the price this many months out if Musk is just BSing about going private and can't maintain high enough prices longer than momentarily. However, $360 breakeven price in the initial note offering might not even be right anymore, the conversion rate is adjusted in section 9.04 based on changes to the stock pool such as splits or dividends. I haven't been following Tesla closely so I couldn't tell you if any of the 9.04 adjustments are relevant.
I don't disagree with the overall point that Tesla may have cashflow issues and potentially financing troubles, but Musk wanting to go private has bigger implications beyond him just goosing the price above $360. Also remember that what we are discussing is past debt based financing that is maturing next year, it would be hardly surprising if instead of paying that all off with cash Tesla just issued more debt. We're not currently in a financial meltdown like in 2008-2009 (fingers crossed), so I'm not sure it is a good idea to get lost in the weeds about converting debt into equity around the $360 per share price point, when the overall issue remains that he has almost a billion dollars in liabilities coming due March next year regardless and the markets should be well aware of that fact.
That article is wrong based on the underlying linked SEC report on on the notes, either the author didn't read it properly or didn't expect their readers to read it properly. The note holder has the option to convert to stock until a couple days before maturity; the base conversion rate is 2.7788 per $1000 principal (which translates to about $360), but the conversion rate is increased depending upon the stock price given in table 9.03(e), with more shares given for stock prices at the cutoff of $252.54 per share. It gives the same breakeven point on the March 1, 2019 at the prices per share between $252.54 and $359.87.
The timing and reporting issues are listed in 9.01(b), for the listed major company changes (like liquidation) Tesla has to give notification at least 30 trading days in advance.
Frankly, that article set off by BS alarms causing me to look at the supporting material, since it sounded like this conversion was structured as a bonus to lenders if the stock price went really high, not as a way to dodge unforeseen financing trouble years ahead of time. The note holder captures upside to stock prices above $360 from the conversion. Presumably they structured it this way to improve how much money Tesla got up front for selling the notes in the 2013 or 2014 timeframe, and they were willing to trade away some of the upside if the price per share went above $360.
That's a remarkable bit of denial, an excellent exemplar of why I have decreasing faith that this will end well. There is plenty of evidence that the Russians were involved in all sorts of various hacking and active measures and whatnot, but if you simply refuse to believe that evidence, then you can just deny everything and believe whatever you want to believe or whatever you are told to believe. That is one of the end goals of the concerted campaign of propaganda that the Russians been running since the Soviet era: true information no longer matters anymore and the ability to assess facts and adjust beliefs in response to facts is utterly withered.
To the particular point, the prior indictments against the Russian nationals are far more detailed than standard indictments, they are so called "speaking indictments." The most recent one this month against the GRU hackers detailed the particular methods they used and quite a bit of the timing of the attacks. And it sounds like western intelligence had high end source in the Russian government that Trump was told about prior to the inauguration confirming that the top levels of the Russian government, including Putin, were orchestrating the attacks. But again, if you can simply deny that information out of hand, and call it "fake news", then what point is there in providing any more information? What will be believed short of reality providing a swift kick to the groin?
or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort
That's the relevant part that brings forth the possibility of treason. If you replace the word "Enemies" with "the Russian government", then Trump looks pretty guilty based on public knowledge alone. They launched a campaign of subversion, psychological warfare, espionage, and cyberwarfare and Trump was read in on the most top secret of details confirming that before he was inaugurated. Since then he has covered for Russia and continually denied and obfuscated the truth of their attack, instead attacking and alienating our traditional allies, and he is now rewarding Russia and promoting Putin in front of the world. And who knows what else he promised in secret, since we know he even considered handing over former American officials to the Russians based on laughably absurd accusations because they've been a thorn in Putin's side.
The reason why it might not be treason is mostly semantic, the Russians might not technically qualify as enemies. By the pedantic and minimalist reading treason might be functionally impossible for anyone to commit if you limit it to only enemies that you have a declared war against, since we haven't had a formally declared war in many decades. In that case, Trump's actions are merely "treason adjacent."
The barbarians are at the walls, and Trump is trying to hold open the gates, saying that no one's and there nothing to worry about. At least some of us have eyes and ears and are willing to use them.
Long term this is an unmitigated disaster, since it won't be just the Russians trying to manipulate the US if we've shown such remarkable defenselessness. China will want to grab hold on some of the puppet strings.
Unfortunately, no, not everything is Russian bots, we have more than enough home grown crazies, traitors, collaborators, and enablers to go around even without their help. Russian bots are a force multiplier for America's self destructive movement despite that.
#Walkaway is mostly fake and it is one of the major pushes that the Russian bots have been making lately. Plenty of useful idiots to aid them and provide a fertile ground, however. The right-wingers are clueless if they think this is a major movement on the left, I'd dismiss and ignore it except that I fear this sort of nonsense will be used to lay the groundwork for further dismantling of democracy. Creating alternative realities is a tried and true method for justifying and excusing all sorts of malfeasance.
#WalkAway is a completely transparent astroturf, pushed heavily by the Russian bots and people who weren't Democrats at all. The right-wingers pushing this are getting high on their own supply if they believe this stuff is real, and are utterly blinding themselves to the sentiments of their opposition.
The reasonable assessment is that the US healthcare system has a lot problems beyond simply the payment system for health services. Which it does, US's health sector is bloated and inefficient in a wide variety of ways beyond private or socialized insurers. But those unnecessary redundancies and the intentionally crippled negotiating power of those payment systems are still a big part of the problem.
Either a heavily regulated and subsidized private system or a more socialized system could work, but what the US has now is a Frankenstein system with various limbs from various systems sewn together, and entrenched interests who get their gravy train from the wide variety of inefficiencies and have sufficient political clout (largely as consequence of that wealth) to block any efforts for genuine reform. If we had a rational, above the board government right now they'd launch an even more aggressive legislative and regulatory assault on the problem than we got with Obamacare. Because we have a corrupt government that represents an ideology that venerates selfishness instead, we'll probably plod along until the system collapses under its own unsustainable weight and causes a massive recession or depression.
I didn't treat the AC seriously, but since you got some biters I guess I'll give a serious response.
Insurance works because people are naturally risk adverse, and risk pools have their mathematical risk (think std. deviations and related statistics) scale up more slowly than the simple aggregation of the individual risks as long as they aren't too correlated with each other. People will pay more to mitigate the price of their individual risks summed together than the overall price of the risk to the insurer in a properly run and profitable insurance plan.
Insurers can improve their edge (if allowed by law) by underwriting individuals and trying to more accurately finding the risk profile for each policy holder, and subsequently charging the high risk individuals more and the low risk individuals less in premiums. That underwriting and analysis is not free, and requires both skilled labor and a decent expenditure of resources to find the data to build risk profiles to determine the premiums or deny coverage, and thus private market insurers would only engage in this datamining and modeling if there was a reasonable belief that it would be sufficiently profitable.
The problem with health insurance, the "high risk" and uninsurable individuals are such because they have had illness or injury in their past records, with the worst being chronic illnesses. If you take the laissez faire approach with no government intervention either through regulation, subsidy, or outright socialization, then a substantial portion of the portion of the population will simply be unable to afford health coverage. To be curt, you will need to start digging a whole lot of graves if no government in healthcare is the policy that you want to pursue. Society will lose all that could be provided by those disabled and dead in service of such an unflinching ideology, and other advanced countries have well proven that the cost for some decent baseline level of coverage is well within the realm of affordability for a wealthy country.
If all you have is enlightened self interest, you must realize that anyone including you could enter into the realm of the "uninsurable" if fate rolls your dice poorly and you end up with a bad diagnosis. That's a big picture risk that most people are willing to entrust to the government to mitigate, even despite how little people trust the government here in the US.