Outright Lying’: Justice Alito Getting Burned at Stake as SCOTUS Leaker by MSNBC Hosts, Liberal Twitter

By Zachary Leeman

Nov 19th, 2022,


Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito denied allegations he was behind leaking a 2014 Supreme Court ruling, which has many critics now branding him as the one who leaked the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Former anti-abortion activist Rev. Rob Schenck claimed through interviews with the New York Times and a letter sent to Chief Justice John Roberts that he was told the outcome of the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby weeks before it became public in June 2014.

According to the report by Jodi Kantor and Jo Becker, Schenck prepared a public relations campaign ahead of the ruling and he even tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the company that would win the case.

According to the Times:

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms.

As Law & Crime’s Aaron Keller notes, Alito vehemently denied the accusation that he leaked a ruling as “completely false” in a statement.

Critics weren’t buying it as Twitter became full to the brim with critics and numerous liberal pundits expressing shock at the revelation, and some even calling for Alito to be removed from the bench.

“This is really really shocking stuff. Also seems like someone is definitely outright lying and one of the people who may be just outright lying is Alito,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes tweeted in reaction.

“Alito is a disgrace to this nation and as dangerous as any terrorist. 

He must be forced off the Court,” Keith Olbermann wrote.

There was no shortage of people now completely convinced Alito

 was the Dobbs leaker

I’m starting to worry that Samuel Alito may be an 

untrustworthy and immoral person.

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) November 19, 2022

Elected Democrats are running with the implication, too.

mediaite.com

Brexit’s Global Trade is Fit for Georgian England

Devoid of Ethical Responsibility

Iain Overton
2 December 2022

BYLINE TIMES

First Opium War in 1843, The 98th Regiment of Foot at the Attack on Chin-Kiang-Foo. 

Photo: Incamerastock/Alamy

Iain Overton reflects on the Government’s policy of Free Trade Deals with countries regardless of their human rights record

Years ago, I was given a job with the global trading company Jardine Matheson – my role? To sell Scottish whisky in Malaysia, a largely Muslim country.

Jardines, as it is known, forms part of a legacy of Britain’s trading empire. And this Georgian-era company, renowned for once having traded Indian opium to Chinese addicts in exchange for tea and silk, was happy with its complicated past. Its actions that once led to the Opium Wars of 1839 and lay behind a long period of British interference in China – something the Communist party calls its “century of shame” – were never discussed in-house. Jardine’s website still does not mention its opium roots.

Rather, the company then clung to its less dark traditions. It still fired the Hong Kong Noon-Day Gun, ran a ‘chummery’ apartment for all single British ex-pats working for the firm, and still – legend had it – required those men to ask the CEO for permission to marry, in case they foolishly lost their hearts in the tropics. It was, at least in 1996, a company unreformed and unabashed for it.

My own experience working for this ancient Scottish trading company was marked by the realisation I was, in essence, employed in the business of addiction. Whisky sales were everything, and those tired old Chinese businessmen that I’d sing ‘My Way’ beside in karaoke clubs, with their yellow-stained eyes and trembling hands, were my prime customers.

It was a trade devoid of any moral complexity. I had no responsibility for my whisky drinkers’ problems. And in this light, Jardines was true to its Georgian opium roots – at least a quarter of a century ago. I am sure things have improved since, but, then, the business possessed a Georgian sensibility. It reflected, as one mid-18th century writer framed it, how: “to the instrumentality of Commerce alone, the Britannic empire is most particularly indebted.”

This Georgian spirit of trade alone – without moral complexity – has all the hallmarks of post-Brexit Britain. A promise that was there at the very beginning of the Brexiters’ vision of a free-spirited, buccaneering trading nation, free from the shackles of EU tyranny. It harked to a mythical Georgian trading era – a time that gave birth to the song ‘Rule Britannia’ – and lay at the heart of Vote Leave’s vision for a post-Empire future. British trading companies like Jardine’s were viewed as inspirational.

So amoral commerce it was. It’s a fact most evidenced today by the reality that the UK Government has already signed, or has plans to sign, Free Trade Deals with eight of the 31 countries on its list of Human Rights Priority countries. That list of countries where the UK Government is particularly concerned about human rights issues” has not stopped deals being struck with Colombia (May 2019), Egypt (December 2020), Israel (February 2019) and Palestine (February 2019).

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are also under negotiation with Bahrain and Saudi Arabia (as part of the UK-Gulf Cooperation Council); whilst association agreements have been signed with Nicaragua (July 2019) and Zimbabwe (January 2019).

In February 2019, the then Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox, said that the UK had resisted attempts by some countries to reduce the human rights provisions in trade agreements as the UK. But this does not fully explain why, since the Brexit referendum, Britain has also approved exports of military goods to 80% of the countries on its own embargoed, sanctioned or trade-restricted list. Of the 73 destinations that the UK’s Department for International Trade (DIT) lists as “subject to an arms embargo, trade sanctions and other trade restrictions”, 58 have had approval to receive goods that fall under ‘military use exports’ in the last five years.

‘Not Actually Very Good’Britain’s Post-Brexit Trade Agreements WITH JAPAN & AUSTRALIA

Ellie Newis


A spokesperson for the Department of International Trade said: “the UK is a leading advocate for human rights around the world and we remain committed to the promotion of universal human rights. We take our export control responsibilities seriously and operate one of the most robust and transparent export control regimes in the world.”

But any glance at the Human Rights Watch reports of any of the eight countries we are happy to sign FTAs with quickly shows what strange bed-fellows Brexit’s economic misery stands to acquaint us with.

This is not a surprise. In a post-Brexit world where the promises of bountiful deals have failed to materialise and existing trade deals offer a tiny proportion of what was lost in trade terms leaving the EU, there was never going to be much room for something as awkward as morality. And, as a House of Lords summary on post-Brexit trade deals ended: “it has also been suggested that trade agreements may not be the best means to address human rights issues, and that the approach is “new, unproven and not well understood”.”

Of course, Brexiteers would argue that more trade would lead to improved human rights. Theirs is a sentiment that echoes the Georgian writer and Birmingham businessman William Hutton. ‘Civility and humanity are ever the companions of trade,” he wrote. “A barbarous and commercial people is a contradiction”.

There is, however, scant evidence the reformative ethical power of trade happens, at least with regard to our own FTA deals. Perhaps equal inspiration must come from a Georgian poet who wrote in 1773 that the unfettered quest for trade brings its own consequences: ‘Low-thoughted Commerce! heart-corrupting trade! / To blast pure morals and true Virtue made’.

Heart-corrupting trade seems, at least for the moment, the toxic Brexit dividend. After all, selling arms to human rights abusers isn’t that morally different from flogging opium to Chinese addicts, is it?

Rishi Sunak quizzed on the impact of Brexit on UK economy – his reply ‘should shock the country’

"Apparently it doesn't matter how much damage Brexit has inflicted on the country", Peter Stefanovic said.

 by Jack Peat
2022-11-21 
in Politics


Rishi Sunak has insisted that Brexit “is delivering” for the UK economy, despite an avalanche of evidence suggesting to the contrary.

The prime minister was hoping to use the CBI conference to calm business fears over the state of the nation.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) recently warned that Brexit has had a “significant adverse impact” on UK trade.


“Our trade forecast reflects our assumption that Brexit will result in the UK’s trade intensity being 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU”, it found.

The CBI has also sent its own warnings, saying: “The best guarantor of Brexit is an economy that grows. Its biggest risk is one that doesn’t.”

But the prime minister remained unmoved at today’s conference, assuring delegates that Brexit is working for the UK and largely avoiding directly answering calls for immigration to be used to plug gaps in the domestic workforce.

Responding to his comments, Peter Stefanovic posted this video that should clear a thing or two up.

Watch it in full below:

Brexit changes caused 22.9% slump in UK-EU exports into Q1 2022 - research

Researchers at Aston assessed the impact of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the EU and the UK. UK exports fell by an average of 22.9% in the first 15 months following the deal

Reports and Proceedings

ASTON UNIVERSITY

Research by the Centre for Business Prosperity at Aston University has shown that UK exports to the EU fell by an average of 22.9% in the first 15 months after the introduction of the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, highlighting the continuing challenges that UK firms are facing. 

Building on earlier work funded through Aston’s Enterprise Research Centre, the researchers found that a negative effect on UK exports persisted and deepened from January 2021-March 2022. 

According to the research, the UK has also experienced a significant contraction in the variety of goods being exported to the EU, with an estimated loss of 42% of product varieties. The researchers say this, combined with an increased concentration of export values to fewer products, has serious implications for the UK’s future exporting and productivity. 

The authors are calling for an urgent national debate from politicians about the UK’s post-Brexit trade arrangements. 

The researchers assessed the impact of the TCA, which allows goods to continue to be bought and sold between the UK and EU without tariffs in the wake of Brexit, by creating an ‘alternative UK economy’ model, based on the case that the UK had remained within the European Union. By comparing the model UK’s exports and imports with actual figures for the UK, they could accurately isolate the impact which the new trade rules were having. 

“What we are seeing is the effect of Brexit on exports; and that is persisting. It’s not diminishing, and exports have yet to show signs of recovering,” says Professor Jun Du of Aston University. “Until this serious problem with exports is openly acknowledged and discussed, we won’t see any necessary actions being taken.”

Unlike exports, an initially significant drop on EU imports to Britain has recovered during the same period, suggesting that UK businesses and consumers have quickly adjusted to new rules. This stands in contrast to the persistent decline in UK exports, which the researchers believe is caused by more fundamental factors.

Professor Du said: “It seems that the UK can buy, but it can’t sell – and that’s reinforcing the problem of Brexit. A reduction in import bottlenecks might help exports to rebound, but this recovery is likely to be offset by the rising costs of imports.”

Researchers found that as many as 42% of the product varieties previously exported to the EU have disappeared during the 15 months after January 2021. This, they say, is principally caused by a large number of exporters simply ceasing to export to the EU, while the remaining exporters are streamlining their product ranges.

Co-author, Dr Oleksandr Shepotylo, says: “The product varieties that have disappeared are mostly those with low export value – we know this because the average export value increased as the number of varieties declined. These products are the ones typically exported by small firms or new exporters, or are exported to new markets. And It’s those smaller businesses that would normally export much more in future, as they grow their volumes and products – so that’s the UK’s future export pipeline being affected, which has bleak implications.”

Professor Du says: “The evidence we present here shows the real loss of Brexit, the overall competitiveness of the UK as a global trader. The considerable contraction of the UK trade capacity, combined with an increased concentration of export values to fewer products, signify some serious long-term concerns about the UK’s future exporting and productivity. Debate is essential so that the UK can start to address its current challenges. Of course, no one is suggesting going back into the EU, but there are collaborations, conversations and discussions that must be had. If the UK’s political leaders don’t acknowledge the facts, they are setting the course towards even longer-term problems.”

 

---

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Post-Brexit UK Trade: An Update

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Nov-2022

UK
The Government’s Energy Price Guarantee

Is Subsidising High Carbon Lifestyles

Thiemo Fetzer
2 December 2022

BYLINE TIMES

Photo: Realimage/Alamy

Thiemo Fetzer, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick, argues that the Government’s response to the energy crisis is wasting a unique opportunity

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, as tragic as it is, has gifted our societies in the West a unique opportunity: to get on a war footing, not just with Putin, but also to finally make decisive steps in tackling the climate crisis. Yet, the UK Government is either missing in action by failing to encourage the public to make energy savings or, through its actions, threatening to make matters worse.

The Government’s Energy Price Guarantee is a clear example of the latter. First, it is a misleading name for a policy. There is no such thing as a price guarantee in economics. We all have to pay the cost of the “guarantee” through higher taxation and more austerity.

The Government keeps repeating a headline number: for the average household, bills for gas and electricity should not be more than £3,000 per year. This would still amount to a near 100% year-on-year increase. But the average household doesn’t really exist (as in, it is not a point that is observed). An average is a statistical construct that combines a lot of information. Any responsible commentator would aim to look at what is behind the numbers.

It is no surprise that the biggest benefactors of the energy price cap are households that consume a lot of energy. But there is a further hidden mechanism which underpins this inequality.

The standing charge was raised for all households in line with the Ofgem October 2022 price cap, while the EPG lowered the unit cost. But the standing charge is paid by all households irrespective of how much energy they consume and so, invariably, the increase in the standing charge is a bigger burden for households who consume less energy. And this happens to be most often poorer households.

So, who are the main benefactors from the alleged “solidarity” embedded in the Energy Price Guarantee? To understand this, it is important to know that the type of property that somebody lives in is one of the main factors driving energy use. So, let us look at an example.

  \

Photo: Rightmove

This property above is a mansion that is estimated to consume at least 61,000 kWh of energy per year. This is more than five times as much energy as half of the UK’s households consume per year. This mansion is worth around £5.5m and has 1500 sqm and 7 bedrooms – a type of property that is lived in by people who either have a ton of wealth or have an income well in excess of £150,000 per annum.

Under the Energy Price Guarantee, we all help the people living in this property keep their energy bills down – to the tune of £5000 per year. Contrast this with the 50% of UK households for whom the energy price guarantee provides support of less than £1000 per year.

 
The Failure to Retrofit

It gets worse. My recent research reveals that some of the biggest energy savings are found in the types of properties that are typically lived in by well-off households who, at least in principle, should be most able to finance the cost of retrofits. There is one stark empirical regularity: higher property prices are strongly correlated with higher energy savings potential from retrofits. Fetzer, Gazze, Bishop (2022) 

“How large is the energy savings potential in the UK?” CAGE Working Paper.

The highest energy savings potential was found in areas with the highest property prices and highest household annual incomes. So, households who technically have the means to retrofit their properties simply didn’t bother to do so because energy was simply too cheap.

Restrictive zoning laws may also make retrofit much more complex and expensive, but it is imperative that these households should have all incentives to bring their energy consumption down in the short and longer-term through retrofitting. And this is where the Energy Price Guarantee sends exactly the wrong signal, as it reduces the burden of the energy prices and may thereby invite people to defer action.

You would think that the Government should encourage retrofitting action? Unfortunately, the announcement of November 17 of a new retrofitting program of around £6bn for energy efficiency measures may have the reverse effect. It is announced only from 2025 onwards. And guess what happens before then? A General Election. In this context, many households may simply further delay action in anticipation of financial support in the future.

This is simply not good enough. It is imperative that civil society, local government and citizens come together to take action into their own hands as it looks like this government will not tackle the climate crisis. We should honour the sacrifice of the Ukrainian people by doing our level best at home to deprive Putin of his ability to weaponize energy and, if, in doing so, we can save the planet – this seems more than a worthy cause.

Thiemo Fetzer is a Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick and Theme Leader at the CAGE Research Centre.

EXCLUSIVE

British Private Schools Earn Millions Tax-Free from Schools in States that Criminalise Homosexuality

Sam Bright
1 December 2022

BYLINE TIMES

Sherborne School, Dorset. Photo: Mark Draisey / Alamy

Sam Bright investigates the untaxed income earned by these schools in anti-LGBT states

British private schools have earned millions of pounds, tax-free, from franchising new institutions in countries that criminalise LGBT relations, Byline Times can reveal.

Amid ongoing controversy over the hosting of this year’s football World Cup in Qatar, one UK private school, Sherborne in Dorset, earned £413,000 from a series of private subsidiaries that run four independent schools in the country. Due to the fact that private schools are allowed to register in the UK as charities, these private subsidiaries are able to donate their profits through gift aid to Sherborne without incurring any UK tax.

Same-sex relations are outlawed in Qatar, with security staff at this year’s World Cup even removing LGBTQ symbols from several fans entering stadiums.

Sherborne, originally founded in 705AD and ‘re-founded’ in 1550 by King Edward VI, is one of only a few single-sex boys’ boarding independent senior schools left in the UK. Old Shirburnians include the scientist Alan Turing, actor Jeremy Irons, writer John le Carré, musician Chris Martin, and Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley.

Sherborne claims that its schools in Qatar offer “a top quality British education based on the National Curriculum of England, delivered by UK trained teachers”. It lists the values of the school as: “Respect, honesty, kindness, perseverance, responsibility and teamwork”. Annual fees for Sherborne Qatar’s senior school reportedly stand at roughly £15,000-a-year, compared to £42,000 for the UK boarding school.

Royal Grammar School (RGS) Guildford, another private institution, has likewise set up an offshoot in Qatar. To do so, the school has partnered with Al Qamra – a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate that trades across transportation, construction, IT, oil and gas, healthcare, and real estate. The chairman of the RGS Qatar board of governors is Hamad Saleh Al Qamra, whose profile on the school’s website says that he “believes in his country and supports the Qatar National Vision 2030. He is working to implement strategies that will support society and develop the state of Qatar”.

RGS Qatar doesn’t appear to have been as commercially successful as its Sherborne counterpart, having returned a profit of just £6,800 in the last couple of years.

“Day to day, RGS Guildford Qatar operates with the same values as the school in the UK,” the school’s chief operating officer, Bob Ukiah, told Byline Times. “It focuses on the welfare of children and does not tolerate prejudicial behaviour of any kind. The chairman of Governors and Headmaster have visited the school many times and are confident that the values of RGS Guildford Qatar are in line with those of the founding school.”

He added that: “Profit from our schools overseas goes to fund bursaries for those who would not otherwise benefit from an RGS Guildford education.”

Cranleigh School in Surrey provides an example of the profits that can be made through these overseas institutions. In its 2020/21 accounts, the school states that it earned a £4.8 million buyout of potential future profits earned by its school in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – another Gulf state that criminalises homosexuality.

It’s not entirely clear where this £4.8 million was paid, but a private company linked to the school – Cranleigh Education Services Limited – saw a marked jump in profits during the accounting period up to July 2021, from £220,000 the previous year to £5.8 million. The company subsequently made a £5.2 million gift aid donation, leaving its profits untaxed.

Cranleigh School has been approached for comment, as has every school cited in this article.

To help with the running of its foreign offshoot, Cranleigh has partnered with a local (private) education provider, Aldar Education. The chairman of Aldar Education is ‘His Excellency’ Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, a member of the Executive Council of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and the chairman of the Department of Culture and Tourism of Abu Dhabi. Same-sex relations in the UAE can be punished with six-months imprisonment, while being publicly transgender can result in a year-long sentence.

Brighton College and North London Collegiate School (NLCS) have both franchised institutions in the UAE. Despite the companies that administer their overseas schools earning £4.3 million and £750,000 respectively over the last two accounting periods, they have paid no tax on these profits. Repton School also runs a school in the UAE, though its profits are unknown.

The Times revealed in January that leading UK private schools had removed the anti-homophobia guidelines from the bullying charters of their Middle Eastern schools, including those run by Sherborne and RGS Guildford. “Private schools have been behind an aggressive expansion into the international market,” the report noted, quoting the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, that said it was “concerned” by the newspaper’s findings.

The headmaster of Sherborne told the Times that: “Our experience of working with Sherborne Qatar over the past 10 years makes it clear to us that the school does not tolerate bullying or discrimination.”

Several other private schools have institutions in countries that criminalise homosexuality. These include Aldenham (Saudi Arabia), Reigate (Saudi Arabia), Marlborough (Malaysia), Christ College Brecon (Malaysia), and Haileybury (Egypt).

Christ College Brecon’s latest accounts say that it will see its costs reimbursed for the school in Malaysia and an advance on profits for three years, paid to a private company: 1541 Limited. This company “gift aids its taxable profits to the college”, the accounts read.

Elite Private Schools Increase Assets

by More than Half a Billion Pounds in Six Years  

Sascha Lavin and Iain Overton


It has been estimated that UK private schools are able to recoup £13 million-a-year in unpaid tax through these private subsidiary arrangements – though many do still pay tax in the overseas territories that are home to their schools.

This process is entirely legal – though, as tax specialist Mike Warburton has said, “The question is whether private schools should have access to such structures.”

Indeed, a debate has been raging in recent days about the charitable status of private schools, which allows them to collectively benefit from £3 billion in tax breaks every year. The Labour Party has pledged to scrap this charitable status, with leader Keir Starmer saying that he would use the extra government revenues to invest in the state school sector.

Ending the charitable status of private schools would also force them to pay UK tax on the profits of their overseas institutions.

This policy is opposed by the Government. Using statistics from the Independent Schools Council, the lobby group that represents private schools, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt claimed in his Autumn Statement that 90,000 students would drop out of private school system if charitable status was ended, putting pressure on the state sector. Hunt suggested that Labour’s policy was an example of “giving with one hand and taking away with another”.