Author: VD

Recession proof

Or maybe not. Remember how I pointed out that there was going to be a crash this year? Now consider what Goldman Sachs was saying at the end of December:

Just months after almost everyone on Wall Street worried that a recession was just around the corner, Goldman Sachs said a downturn is unlikely over the next several years.

In fact, the firm’s economists stopped just short of saying that the U.S. economy is recession-proof.

An analysis Goldman conducted of the current potential risks to growth show that they are mostly muted. The report found that the pillars of the “Great Moderation” that began in the 1980s — low levels of volatility marked by sustainable growth and muted inflation, interrupted only by the financial crisis more than a decade ago — are still standing.

Investors could be excused for getting a little nervous over such calls, as optimism also was heavy in late 2007, just as the economy was about to enter the worst of the financial crisis.

So much for those “mostly muted” risks to growth.

Definitely default

A second timely ruling just dropped on Friday, and this one is most definitely not in Patreon’s favor. An August 14 decision by a US District Court judge has settled what had hitherto been the undefined “due date” of the new California law intended to prevent corporations from delaying and evading arbitrations, and it means that Patreon is in material default of every single one of the Bears’ 91 arbitrations. 
Dekker v. Vivint Solar, Inc., No. C 19-07918 WHA (N.D. Cal. Aug. 14, 2020)

The legislature expressly sought to avoid a “perverse incentive scheme” whereby ambiguity in the law allowed companies to delay adjudication, perhaps even affording them “an incentive to refuse to arbitrate claims . . . in the hope that the frustrated [employees and consumers] would simply abandon them.” Id. at 8 (quoting Brown v. Dillard’s, 430 F.3d 1004, 1012 (9th Cir. 2005)) (emphasis added).

Yet, this “perverse incentive scheme” remains a distinct possibility under defendants’ theory of the due date. At the hearing, defense counsel admitted that, in their view, if JAMS hypothetically granted a due date extension after defendants missed a first given due date, § 1281.97’s 30-day grace period would only begin after defendants missed the second due date (Dkt. No. 81 at 14). Under this view, the arbitrator could postpone time and again, delaying the 30-day grace period for as long as the arbitrator wished. This would subvert the whole point of the new law.

Finally, a similar action involving food delivery app Postmates illustrates how other arbitration providers have responded to the new California law. There, over ten thousand former and current Postmates drivers filed individual arbitration demands against Postmates with the American Arbitration Association on February 15, 2020, pursuant to the mandatory arbitration provisions in their contracts. The AAA notified Postmates of the filings and gave a payment due date of March 16. The AAA wrote that, subject to the newly enacted § 1281.97, “payment must be received by April 15, 2020 or the AAA may close the parties’ cases,” and that it would “not grant any extensions to this payment deadline.” Postmates, now owing over $4.6 million in initial filing fees, sought a TRO to enjoin the drivers from enforcing § 1281.97. The court denied Postmates’ request, finding, among other things, that payment of filing fees would not irreparably harm Postmates, and that the balances of equities favored the drivers, who “have an interest in having their claims heard in a timely matter.” Postmates Inc. v. 10,356 Individuals, No. CV 20-2783 PSG (JEMx), 2020 WL 1908302 at *4, 9 (C.D. Cal. Apr. 15, 2020) (Judge Philip Gutierrez).

There, with Postmates owing over $4.6 million in filing fees for over ten thousand arbitrations, the court refused to temporarily suspend the due date and buy Postmates more time. Here, on the other hand, defendants owed little more than $15,000 across the eight disputes. The district court also echoed California’s legislature when it weighed the competing interests and found that the drivers’ prevailed. “[The drivers] have an interest in being permitted to pursue their wage and hour claims in arbitration, which is supposed to be a speedy and inexpensive alternative to litigation.” Id. at *8 (internal quotations omitted). This decision, along with the clear legislative intent to prevent delays in commencing arbitration, points towards a strict enforcement of the 30-day grace period that begins upon defendants’ receipt of invoice.

When AAA said payment was due by April 15 without extensions, else the arbitrators could close their case, the court enforced that deadline. This order agrees with AAA’s view of § 1281.97. Here, the JAMS invoices stated that payment was due upon receipt. It is true that JAMS, perhaps in order to keep the business, was willing to let payment slide for a few weeks, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was due and payable upon receipt. Defendants then had 30 days to pay or be in material breach, even if JAMS was willing to wait. Waiting is delay, and delay is exactly what the legislature sought to stop.

When the corporate cancer is terminal

You’ll see companies doing crazy things like DC Comics is doing in the wake of a 30 percent staff reduction:

Lee shockingly revealed just how bad their lineup had been performing. He also detailed they would be reducing the lineup significantly. Lee stated, “That said, we will be reducing the size of the slate. But it’s about looking at everything and looking at the bottom 20 percent, 25 percent of the line that wasn’t breaking even or was losing money.”

When asked about promoting Marie Javins and Michele Wells to interim editors-in-chiefs, Lee committed the company to “diversity and inclusivity.”

He told THR, “We thought it would be a great pairing to bring them together to help draft and organize the content we’re doing along these lines. Across digital, across global, we want to make sure we have diversity and inclusivity, and making it in a way that we have authenticity to the storytelling that we’re doing.”

They’re going to keep diversiting and inclusiviting right up until they finally go out of business. The SJW Imperative demands total commitment!

Attention Castalia Subscribers

A message from our sponsor:

During our long months of social distancing we started to realize the value of other humans. After weeks of eating expired dippin’ dots and watching 90’s romcoms alone while talking to a gecko on the wall, being around other humans started to seem like a good idea. Especially once we realized that the gecko had been dead for at least a month, presumably from a bad batch of bat soup.

His name was Bobby. We buried him in a tiny mask.

This was the turning of the tide. It is time to reach out again, as we now realize in our heart that all humans are special, even those that support us at the lowest tier possible. And so, we embrace every patron because we know your real value, and not because we may feel vaguely guilty over completely blowing off last month for perfectly valid medical reasons concerning social and temporal distancing.

So, to all of our patrons, this month we will give you more than you ever asked for. With the gracious permission of the author, for July and August we are giving every patron the download codes for both the ebook and audiobook productions of both The Lawdog Files and The Lawdog Files: African Adventures.

The coupon will expire September 15, 2020, so you still have several weeks left to become a Castalia patron and avail yourself of what Squeaks the pygmy mongoose himself would swear was the most excellent opportunity since that magic day that Ali Cheap-Cheap dropped a burlap bag of “beef” on his personal residence.

Machiavelli and the Holocaust laws

From The History of Florence by Niccolo Machiavelli:

Nor is it possible for a public to enact a law more pernicious than one relating to matters which have long transpired.

Machiavelli was discussing here the fate of the ammoniti, or the descendants of the Ghibellines who were banned by law from holding any office of government in Florence after the victory of the Guelphic party in 1356. He states that this law “laid the foundation of many evils” and noted “none felt so particularly injured with it as the Ricci; for they knew themselves to have occasioned it, they saw it involved the ruin of the republic, and their enemies, the Albizzi, contrary to their intention, became great in consequence.”

History always repeats itself. The direct attacks on the First Amendment rights of Americans by U.S. citizens who are not, and never will be, Americans, are not only going to fail, they are going to ruin the republic and make great their enemies.

There is a reason the Prometheans don’t want you to study history and why the Shapiros and Pragers relentlessly lie about it and retroactively attempt to revise it. There is nothing new under the sun. If you know history and you recognize which patterns apply to current events, you will have a very good idea what is going to happen.

Twitter bans mask skeptics

It’s always interesting to see what SJW narrratives are not only being pushed, but are being actively enforced, by the Tech Cartel:

Conservative pundit Bill Mitchell has been kicked off Twitter, saying his opposition to face masks first earned him a suspension, which became permanent after he unwittingly violated the rules by tweeting from a second account. Mitchell announced his ban in a post on Parler on Friday, laying his Twitter handle to rest after accumulating more than 600,000 followers. Earning regular retweets from President Donald Trump, the account was a source of controversy, at times backing ‘QAnon’ conspiracy theories and voicing skepticism toward Covid-19, among other things.

Frankly, since I don’t pay much attention to the ever-shifting Corona-chan narratives, I was still vaguely under the impression that the Narrative was still insisting that masks were unnecessary for the general public.

In late February and early March as the COVID-19 outbreak began accelerating in the US, hospitals and health facilities experienced severe shortages of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. In response, experts like Fauci and the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams advised Americans against wearing masks. 

I imagine Twitter is going to be hell on margarine matters too.

Score one for the concerned consumers

And it’s a very big one. Patreon’s core strategy from the start has been to try carving out an exception to the arbitrations it imposes upon all of its users in order to avoid paying the required arbitration fees. This strategy has uniformly failed, as evidenced by decisions by the arbitration company, the arbitrators, and even the Superior Court judge.

Now Patreon’s attempt to avoid permitting the arbitrators to decide if its practices are deceptive and in violation of California law or not has been comprehensively shot down by the highest relevant authority. This means that its legal strategy has been a complete and comprehensive failure, as any informed observer could have told them it would be back in December when they implemented it.

Unappreciated and unawarded

And it wasn’t just unawarded. Midnight’s War somehow didn’t even qualify as one of the 36 runners-up despite being one of the top 10 ranked in Popularity and earning a higher rating than two out of the three Silver winners.

This tells me that Arkhaven needs to seriously rethink our plan to use Webtoons as a platform. While some of the winning stories were pretty good, precisely none of the art in any of the winners or runners-up was even close to that of Midnight’s War. It’s now clear that it’s just not the sort of thing that they are ever going to promote to their readership.

Perhaps we’ll look for a platform more in tune with Western art or perhaps we’ll build our own platform. But we definitely won’t be putting anything except Hypergamouse, Quantum Mortis, and Go Monster Go! up there, at least for the time being. If you think my reaction is too severe, consider the artwork from the top prize winner below, and then compare it to the art for Midnight’s War.

UPDATE: There is no mystery concerning the missing webcomics. I pulled AH, CDA, and Jeeves down last night; MW will also be taken down as soon as it’s not locked for the contest by Webtoons. I don’t have the time to keep updating 30-panel episodes if the platform is not part of our core strategy. For Arkhaven Patreon subscribers, we’ll return to direct digital downloads.

UPDATE: Midnight’s War and Quantum Mortis have been removed as well. We are going to build our own platform.

You may not see color

But color sees you:

“Give us your house, give black people back their homes, you’re sitting there comfortably…I used to live in this neighborhood and my family was pushed out and you’re sitting up there having a good time with your other white friends. Now we’re bringing it to your front door, so what the fuck do you plan to do about it?” asks the male protester as the mob continues to harass the homeowner.

The video ends with the homeowner apparently turning the lights off in a bid to avoid any further escalation. The seizure of white-owned property has long been a primary goal of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The remarkable thing about white anti-racists is that they won’t give up their racial virtue-signaling even when blacks are murdering little boys playing in the neighborhood:

Darius Sessoms, a black man, walked up to his neighbor’s kids (three white children) who were riding bikes outside their home, placed a gun to a 5 year old white boy’s head and executed him in front of his two sisters for accidentally riding his bike on his lawn.  

A brave and noble blow against structural and intrinsic racism, no doubt. He’s right up there with St. Floyd and the Chicago Cancer-Fighting Crew:

The Ronald McDonald House in Chicago was vandalized during looting early Monday morning while families and their sick children huddled inside, the charity said Tuesday. The Ronald McDonald House in the Streeterville neighborhood of the city’s Near North Side provides support for sick children and their families while the child receives medical treatment at nearby Lurie Children’s Hospital.

The charity said more than 30 families and their sick children were sleeping inside when the looters, who had taken over downtown, ransacking stores and vandalizing properties, started attacking the building.

I’m confident these brave young men and their enthusiasm to become doctors and fight cancer was just tragically misunderstood due to unconscious bias and racism.

The Sino-Jewish war

That’s what the affirmative-action battle in the Ivy League is actually about:

The Department of Justice found Yale discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year. For the great majority of applicants, Asian Americans and whites have only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials. Yale rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit.

Although the Supreme Court has held that colleges receiving federal funds may consider applicants’ race in certain limited circumstances as one of a number of factors, the Department of Justice found Yale’s use of race is anything but limited. Yale uses race at multiple steps of its admissions process resulting in a multiplied effect of race on an applicant’s likelihood of admission, and Yale racially balances its classes.

The Department of Justice has demanded Yale agree not to use race or national origin in its upcoming 2020-2021 undergraduate admissions cycle, and, if Yale proposes to consider race or national origin in future admissions cycles, it must first submit to the Department of Justice a plan demonstrating its proposal is narrowly tailored as required by law, including by identifying a date for the end of race discrimination.

The anti-white disparity is actually much worse than it appears, because Jews are classified as white by the universities and are the group most favored by the admissions offices. This battle over the educational high ground is also taking place in Hollywood and Big Tech, and the only reason the media isn’t also a battleground is because it is in complete collapse. The war between China and the Jewish diaspora for global primacy may well prove to be the most significant conflict of the 21st century.