friendly_iconoclast
friendly_iconoclast's JournalEx-Trump adviser sold $31m in shares days before president announced steel tariffs
Source: The Guardian (UK)
Carl Icahn, a former special adviser to Donald Trump, sold $31.3m of shares in a company heavily dependent on steel imports last week, shortly before Trumps announcement of new tariffs sent its shares plummeting.
Icahn, a billionaire investor who was a major Trump supporter, started selling shares in the crane and lifting equipment supplier Manitowoc Company on 12 February, days before the commerce department first mooted plans to impose stiff tariffs on foreign steel imports...
...On Thursday Trump said he would press ahead with the commerce departments plans to levy 25% tariffs on imports of steel and 10% on aluminium.
According to a regulatory filing Icahn was able to sell his shares for $32 to $34. On Friday morning Manitowocs shares had fallen 5.48% to $26.37. The fall was in line with drops seen by other companies dependent on cheap steel imports, including Boeing and Caterpillar.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/02/carl-icahn-shares-sell-trump-steel-tariffs-announcement-timing
Carl Icahn? Worked for Trump? Engaged in insider trading?
I am Joe's complete lack or surprise..
The Liberal Gun Club: We support Fix NICS
X-posted from GD:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100210304692
https://www.theliberalgunclub.com/2018/02/28/we-support-fix-nics/
Ed Gardner
There is currently legislation being pondered in the Senate called Fix NICS.
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is a United States system for determining if prospective firearms or explosives buyers name and birth year match those of a person who is not eligible to buy. It was mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Law) of 1993 and launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1998.
Source: Wiki
When you buy a new firearm, the FFL runs these checks in real time with the FBI to determine if you are prohibited from buying a firearm. The FBI tells the FFL to Proceed with the sale, Deny the sale, or Defer the sale. In the case of the Defer, the FBI has 72 hours to give a definitive answer or the sale is allowed to proceed, so its critical that data be available, complete and accurate.
There have been several shooters who should have been prohibited from purchasing their weapons prior to their murders. Charlottes perpetrator had a drug conviction that hadnt been reported appropriately to the FBI, so the Defer apparently turned into a Proceed. The Texas shooter had a military conviction that the sentence alone put him in a prohibited class. There are other examples, but these that come to mind immediately.
This bill seems to address one of our central positions, the completeness and accuracy of the NICS system. We know that not all relevant records make it into NICS, from states who were reluctant to submit adjudicated records, to agencies like the Department of Defense simply failing to report convictions.
This bill seems to address those issues to some extent, and as we said after Texas, its the sort of thing that might actually have an impact, eliminating the legal avenues that bad guys bent on killing have to acquire ANY firearm. The summary from GovTrack:
-Establish a new Domestic Abuse and Violence Prevention Initiative in order to better prevent those convicted of those crimes from obtaining weapons.
-Publicly report any federal agencies that fail to upload relevant information to the system, and withhold certain pay from political appointees who neglect to upload the info.
-Establish new measures to verify the accuracy of existing records already uploaded into the system.
The full text of the bill in the Senate can be found here*, a version has passed out of committee in the House.
We support this.
So, apparently, does the NRA and the folks at Sandy Hook Promise. With support from a broad range of organizations from across the spectrum, there is no reason for this bill to be delayed. Dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Will Congress act? Have you called your representatives?
*https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2135/text
The Liberal Gun Club: We support Fix NICS
https://www.theliberalgunclub.com/2018/02/28/we-support-fix-nics/Ed Gardner
There is currently legislation being pondered in the Senate called Fix NICS.
The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is a United States system for determining if prospective firearms or explosives buyers name and birth year match those of a person who is not eligible to buy. It was mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Law) of 1993 and launched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1998.
Source: Wiki
When you buy a new firearm, the FFL runs these checks in real time with the FBI to determine if you are prohibited from buying a firearm. The FBI tells the FFL to Proceed with the sale, Deny the sale, or Defer the sale. In the case of the Defer, the FBI has 72 hours to give a definitive answer or the sale is allowed to proceed, so its critical that data be available, complete and accurate.
There have been several shooters who should have been prohibited from purchasing their weapons prior to their murders. Charlottes perpetrator had a drug conviction that hadnt been reported appropriately to the FBI, so the Defer apparently turned into a Proceed. The Texas shooter had a military conviction that the sentence alone put him in a prohibited class. There are other examples, but these that come to mind immediately.
This bill seems to address one of our central positions, the completeness and accuracy of the NICS system. We know that not all relevant records make it into NICS, from states who were reluctant to submit adjudicated records, to agencies like the Department of Defense simply failing to report convictions.
This bill seems to address those issues to some extent, and as we said after Texas, its the sort of thing that might actually have an impact, eliminating the legal avenues that bad guys bent on killing have to acquire ANY firearm. The summary from GovTrack:
-Establish a new Domestic Abuse and Violence Prevention Initiative in order to better prevent those convicted of those crimes from obtaining weapons.
-Publicly report any federal agencies that fail to upload relevant information to the system, and withhold certain pay from political appointees who neglect to upload the info.
-Establish new measures to verify the accuracy of existing records already uploaded into the system.
The full text of the bill in the Senate can be found here*, a version has passed out of committee in the House.
We support this.
So, apparently, does the NRA and the folks at Sandy Hook Promise. With support from a broad range of organizations from across the spectrum, there is no reason for this bill to be delayed. Dont let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Will Congress act? Have you called your representatives?
*https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2135/text
"Don't walk out. Walk IN. To the polls on voting day."
Shamelessly lifted from DUer Binkie The Clown (may their tribes increase!)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=10279617
I'll add: Get everyone you know that's 18 and over to register to vote and go with you.
Trump and the NRA folded because the implications of March 24th scare the shit out of them
Between Robert Mueller, his 'friends' on the right, and the high school students on the left,
he's getting squeezed from three directions and he knows it.
GOOD
It's done my crusty heart a lot of good to see these kids in action
Full tilt bar brawl over Trump re stocks going on at FR, and it is EPIC
Whether this is true, or not and will be forgotten tomorrow...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-moves-ban-bump-stocks-response-last-year-s-deadly-n849706
...the Freepers are all acting as if it's a done deal.
A few are going with the "DT is a DNC plant" line, while others are telling them to STFDASTFU,
as see:
'Stopped clock' moment, eh?
Here, let me play something for those poor, poor, misunderstood snowflakes:
Full tilt bar brawl over Trump going on at FR, and it is EPIC
Whether this is true, or not and will be forgotten tomorrow...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-moves-ban-bump-stocks-response-last-year-s-deadly-n849706
...the Freepers are all acting as if it's a done deal.
A few are going with the "DT is a DNC plant" line, while others are telling them to STFDASTFU,
as see:
Here, let me play something for those poor, poor, misunderstood snowflakes:
I missed this announcement: The War Of The Worlds is being turned into a BBC series
And unlike the two movies and previous TV series, this one is supposedly going to follow the
novel:
http://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/national/article/Poldark-producers-to-make-War-Of-The-Worlds-into-BBC-drama-2107c830-22be-4b9e-8b56-c0ceb73ae990-ds
The three-part, BBC One drama, following one man's attempt to escape ruthless Martians, is being made by the producers of TV hits Poldark and Victoria.
It is being billed as the first British TV adaptation of Wells' famous novel, in which the inhabitants of Earth fall victim to a violent invasion, and will be set in Surrey, the book's original location.
Writer Peter Harness, whose credits include Doctor Who, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and Wallander, said: "I'm feeling phenomenally lucky to be writing The War Of The Worlds, and blowing up gigantic swathes of the home counties at the dawn of the 20th Century...
...Damien Timmer, managing director of producer Mammoth Screen, said: "It's a great honour to bring HG Wells' masterpiece to BBC One. This huge title - the original alien invasion story - has been loosely adapted and riffed on countless times, but no-one has ever attempted to follow Wells and locate the story in Dorking at the turn of the last century.
This promises to be very, very cool...
Leaked DHS Report Uses Junk Science to Argue for Surveillance of Muslims
https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-profiling/leaked-dhs-report-uses-junk-science-argueFebruary 7, 2018 | 3:15 PM
A recent draft report from the Department of Homeland Security called for the discriminatory surveillance of Sunni Muslims in the United States.
The report originated in U.S. Customs and Border Protections Office of Intelligence and was obtained and published by Foreign Policy magazine. It examines 29 perpetrators of 25 terrorist incidents in the United States that CBP assesses were driven by radical Sunni Islamist militancy. It concludes, based on the common demographics of those in the study, that the government should continuously evaluate those with similar characteristics in order to identify individuals who might have a higher risk of becoming radicalized. A CBP spokesperson stated that the report was an initial draft and has since been revised.
The report is nonetheless alarming. First, lets dispense with the euphemisms: When CBP calls for vetting, recurrent screening, and on-going evaluations, it is talking about long-term surveillance. And that surveillance would be nakedly discriminatory: The report focuses exclusively on Sunni Muslims in the United States and identifies religion and national origin in the Middle East, South Asia or Africa as reasons to continuously evaluate those who meet the profile. It also oozes religious animus, referring without evidence or explanation to the long-term difficulty for some Muslim immigrants to integrate into U.S. society, and casting particular suspicion on Muslim converts.
Because this bias is baked into the report, its conclusions are nonsensical from a scientific standpoint. It analyzes only incidents involving what it calls radical Sunni Islamist militancy ignoring other significant drivers of attacks, like violent right-wing extremism. It then concludes that those with characteristics similar to the 29 perpetrators should be surveilled. And even using this absurdly limited data set, the report still cant identify meaningful trends or commonalities, leaving only what the attackers in the analysis shared: their Sunni Muslim identity. In other words, the report assumes its own conclusion, that Sunni Muslims, by virtue of their religion, should be subject to heightened surveillance. Thats the empirical equivalent of a dog chasing its own tail...
The original FP article can be found here:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/05/draft-dhs-report-surveillance-of-muslim-immigrants/
ACLU:Leaked DHS Report Uses Junk Science to Argue for Surveillance of Muslims
https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/discriminatory-profiling/leaked-dhs-report-uses-junk-science-argueFebruary 7, 2018 | 3:15 PM
A recent draft report from the Department of Homeland Security called for the discriminatory surveillance of Sunni Muslims in the United States.
The report originated in U.S. Customs and Border Protections Office of Intelligence and was obtained and published by Foreign Policy magazine. It examines 29 perpetrators of 25 terrorist incidents in the United States that CBP assesses were driven by radical Sunni Islamist militancy. It concludes, based on the common demographics of those in the study, that the government should continuously evaluate those with similar characteristics in order to identify individuals who might have a higher risk of becoming radicalized. A CBP spokesperson stated that the report was an initial draft and has since been revised.
The report is nonetheless alarming. First, lets dispense with the euphemisms: When CBP calls for vetting, recurrent screening, and on-going evaluations, it is talking about long-term surveillance. And that surveillance would be nakedly discriminatory: The report focuses exclusively on Sunni Muslims in the United States and identifies religion and national origin in the Middle East, South Asia or Africa as reasons to continuously evaluate those who meet the profile. It also oozes religious animus, referring without evidence or explanation to the long-term difficulty for some Muslim immigrants to integrate into U.S. society, and casting particular suspicion on Muslim converts.
Because this bias is baked into the report, its conclusions are nonsensical from a scientific standpoint. It analyzes only incidents involving what it calls radical Sunni Islamist militancy ignoring other significant drivers of attacks, like violent right-wing extremism. It then concludes that those with characteristics similar to the 29 perpetrators should be surveilled. And even using this absurdly limited data set, the report still cant identify meaningful trends or commonalities, leaving only what the attackers in the analysis shared: their Sunni Muslim identity. In other words, the report assumes its own conclusion, that Sunni Muslims, by virtue of their religion, should be subject to heightened surveillance. Thats the empirical equivalent of a dog chasing its own tail...
The original FP article can be found here:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/02/05/draft-dhs-report-surveillance-of-muslim-immigrants/
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