Author: TSA Press

Fast forward this to Zimbabwe’s fast-moving political events just after Robert Mugabe fired his then Deputy President, Emmerson Mnangagwa who immediately hinted he will be back in a matter of weeks. Indeed, this came to pass, but not before tanks, guns and gunpowder was involved. Yet, since that ‘smart’ coup of November 2017 and the disputed election of July 2018, political events have moved quickly in Zimbabwe. It is becoming clearer that for the then Deputy President to come back he had to strike a deal with various factionalism in the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) and importantly with the army generals who were increasingly feeling insecure about their future under Robert Mugabe. The bargain went further and roped in South Africa and other global super powers global players like the UK and China who wanted to see the back of Mugabe. Internally the new President had to strike a bargain by parcelling off powerful positions to the men and women in the army, especially appointing them to cabinet and dishing out Ambassadorships. That bargain included carting off the old nationalists to the party positions in the Stalinist like Politburo yet reserving the powerful position of Political Commissar to the military men. Although “ED” walked into state house after all these bargains, it seems the melting political economy is now making these backroom deals look like the proverbial ‘sailor’s weight’ that will sink his Presidency.

The political economy situation in Zimbabwe continues on a downward spiral. Measured against any metric that one can conjure up things are looking really bad. Yet, against this evidence the President’s social media messaging continues on a very parallel universe with posts disconnected from the reality in the country. And to top this off, the political elite continue hammering on a political dialogue that can only be summed up as a pre-emptive but chimerical pretence on the much-needed comprehensive dialogue. Firstly, the labour unions have re-started negotiations with the government which is the largest employer and the government has very little room to cushion the over a half a million workforce. Secondly, in the private sector banking employees have started demanding for the review of their salaries to match the rise in inflation and this is most likely to be a demand from other unions and workers. Thirdly, inflation has started marching up with no restrain and this means that people’s incomes are being eroded and prices have been rising at alarming levels. Fourthly, the government has started a full-scale crackdown on political and human rights activists. Add to this matrix that the MDC Alliance has completed its congress and now they have turned full scale to face the ruling political class. The combination of these factors are mixing up a very explosive situation and if the citizen does not revolt early enough there is a very chilling prospect that there will be a real coup in Zimbabwe this time around.

Social Discontent is rising: Will Junior Officers Behave?

The coup beneficiary President has shuffled and reshuffled police commanders around, has ‘managed’ to slowly purge military commanders and has so far pacified the out of control intelligence services which Mugabe depended on. Some military commanders were promoted internally, some appointed into the government directly as Ministers, some as Ambassadors and some of them have become senior bureaucrats across the party and the civil service. But one thing is common here. The military senior officers have become ‘shareholders’ and in that sense have worked through the economic system to become an autocratic-crony capitalist class. The senior military officers are well taken care of and their rotund bellies says it all. They have lucrative farms, some have mining claims, involved in diamond mining, some are ‘silent’ partners in many contracting businesses and they have built mansions in Northern Harare. They have become a network of parasites on the economy and they are living plush lives of chartered jets, foreign hospitals and enjoying kickbacks from the cartels that span through the foreign currency dealing and the petroleum industries. In a word, they don’t pay for anything at all. The Rhodesian farmer-settler and the colonial company capitalist class who used forced labour plundered land and took over vast amounts of land will be green with envy.

What the military strategists are not paying attention to is that as the military changes and is re-configured to meet the loyalty of the new emperor this is building dissent in the ‘officers’ mess’ as the saying goes. Add this disgruntlement to the rising temperature and social discontent this can eventually whip up the junior officers out of the barracks into a real non-cosmetic coup. And coups that are conducted by junior officers can be very messy and bloody business. A messy coup often involves the rounding up, arrest, detention, torture and even execution of the top elites of the political class. In Ghana when Jerry Rawlings took over a few of the elites were executed, in Nigeria’s coup and counter-coups often top political elites were executed; same goes in historical revolutions like the French revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Chinese-Maoist Revolution. But the bloodbath will not stop there. If the barracks are not united, with no central command, there will be countermanding of orders, other security services will join in, and in that melee, little warlords controlling different operational zones will emerge. The state will have collapsed. By bringing back the military into the factional contest of power in ZANU PF and in the country’s political-electoral landscape the floods have been opened and the junior officers are now on the loose. Sudan has become the latest state to have soldiers go haywire and there are claims or a coup, counter-coups and in that scenario, it is the constitutional republic that gets buried. In our case, we need to watch the Commando Barracks and the Presidential Guard closely, for we might have now entered the era in which ‘the gun now commands politics’ and ‘soldiers without ideology’ reign supreme – mercenaries.

Post published in: Featured

After topping Mugabe, Mnangagwa had an enormous task facing him trying to please his erstwhile conspirators by appointing them into the cabinet. He also attempted to cure the coup and legitimise his power through the elections. With almost 18 months after the coup, Zimbabwe has been faced with political and economic instability and the country is literally seating on a knife edge. It seems the cart is slowly wheeling off towards the cliff, thus signalling a not so good-looking future. While there have been arguments that the coup managed to address ZANU PF internal political contradictions at the time, the passage of time has disproved that thesis. Already, the ugly head of factionalism is rearing its head and the statements of the ZANU PF Youth and Women’s league are the tell-tale signs. Already, the ground is becoming fertile for another ruction and begs again if this would not be from the barracks. But the real question would be from which section of the Barrack?

ED’s Missed opportunities

Mnangagwa has missed opportunities to “cure the coup”, particularly the failure to create stable transitional mechanisms.  Mnangagwa and his co-conspirators unwittingly attempted to “cure” the coup through a manipulated “election” and this strategy has backfired and the sooner they come to terms with reality the better. Unbeknown to Mnangagwa was that the ball was in his court and he had many options to redeem himself as a unifying leader. However, his lack of foresight has exposed him as a greedy person with no strategy of moving Zimbabwe forward. One of the simplest and many options available to him at the time was calling for a genuine national dialogue of all stakeholders, not for the purposes of power sharing but rather to chat the way forward for Zimbabwe towards political and economic reforms to address the 37-year rot created by Mugabe. This kind of dialogue would have come out with clear timelines on fundamental reforms at the same time as one of the main steps in curing the coup. It would had also helped to cool down the political temperatures and depolarise our politics. However, that did not happen, as Mnangagwa became consumed and intoxicated by power, allegedly building his power around a partisan and parochial tribal agenda.  Mnangagwa has been busy focussing on consolidating his power at the expense of building a nation, forgetting Lord Acton’s warning: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”.

A regime in fear

 The unfortunate and terror events of 1st of August 2018 and 14th-16th of January 2019 exposed the true colours of the Mnangagwa administration. It became apparent that the military is the underwriter and as such, when their power was threatened, they resorted to their real character: violence; murder and impunity. Their actions since November 2017 typifies of a lot that is living in fear, the fear not from the opposition but amongst themselves and particularly the men in in uniform.  The fact that they are constantly reshuffling the command within the security forces is testament to the heightening levels of insecurity. More so, the alleged reports indicating that the government gave soldiers RTGS$400 cushioning allowances versus RTGS$97 allocated to the rest of civil servants indicates a divide and rule strategy that seeks to pacify the army. The reasoning is all apparent to everyone: buying loyalty of the gun as a hungry soldier cannot be trusted. But the question is whether the strategy is sustainable in the long run.

The Achilles’ heel of coups

The coup plotters justified their action of overthrowing President Mugabe’s government in November 2017 being necessitated by the need to address the economic and political crisis facing the country then. However, fast forward to Mid-2019, the situation has moved to another new level as workers’ and ordinary citizens’ earnings, pensions and savings have been eroded and withered by inflation and currency devaluation. The worsening economic conditions will most likely lead us to squabbling within the cockpit as opportunities for arbitrage decline, thus creating ripe conditions for another coup. McBride and Coulier in their 2004 paper “Crises, Coups, and Entry-deterring Reforms in Sub-Saharan Africa’’, in their analysis of coups in Africa advance reasons that generally lead to military intervention: personal greed; hope to extract once they gain power or directly control the state. This fits well in our case, as military chiefs have now become an economic class with its own distinct interests. A reading of Jabusile Shumba’s book “Zimbabwe’s Predatory State: Party, Military, Business” and  Richard Saunders and Tinashe Nyamunda’s book “Facets of Power: Politics, Profits and People in the Making of Zimbabwe’s Blood Diamonds” give a some glimpses and insights on how this military business class has become embedded in the economy. Therefore, it is not without doubt that the coup was a ‘military class project’ with a personal accumulation thrust.  The soldiers are now openly and actively involved in the control of the country’s mines, and other strategic points of economic interest.  The military assisted transition in Zimbabwe seems to have failed to bring any meaningful change in people’s livelihoods and this is not unique, and Decaldo argues in his 1986, ‘African Studies and Military coups in Africa’ that, “the military has not been able to generate economic development”. Military assisted transitions always come on the backdrop of well-meaning rhetoric but always fall short on action. It is fast becoming clear for everyone that apart from personal accumulation and self-enrichment, the current administration is as clueless in so far as economic development is concerned. For instance, the sucking in of the Minister of State Security in the Gaika Mine in Kwekwe despite a standing court order barring the mine invaders point to a bleak economic future.

The recent ambush and guerilla style re-introduction of the Zimbabwe Dollar and banning of the multi-currency regime is alleged to have been done as a strategy to pacify the men and women in uniform who had started to demand being paid in American dollars to cushion them against dollarisation. The drastic measures on currency reforms have been described by the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt Development (ZIMCODD) as policy inconsistencies and premature reaction on the part of the government. In their statement, ZIMCODD said instead there was a need for addressing the root cause of the current currency crisis which is, “rampant corruption, mismanagement of public finances and impunity being enjoyed by those that are fuelling the crisis through arbitrage and resource bleeding.’’  Dealing with corruption and arbitrage means taking the feeding trough away from the wannabe military capitalists and creating ructions in the cockpit; yet, not doing so, means ripening the polity for revolt. Hence, I argue that without proper reforms and a different way of doing things Zimbabwe is destined for another military coup, but this time not from the top brass but the junior ranks. There is a need for inclusivity and genuine dialogue of all stakeholders, with the genesis of all being to address the political reform agenda to boost confidence in the economy. Political reforms are essentially the roadmap to curing the coup and any short cut will have disastrous consequences. There is a dark cloud of uncertainty and fear not only amongst Zimbabweans but largely amongst those who plotted the coup, no one really knows what tomorrow is in store for them. The economic meltdown is in itself a ticking time bomb that when it explodes the whole country will be burnt. Historically, coups in their very nature do not just end without another one occurring if their initial fundamental causes are not addressed. The economy remains the Achilles’ heel, and it will just take one daring junior officer and the rest can be history.

Forewarned is Forearmed!

It is clear that the current trajectory by the Mnangagwa administration in dealing with the political and economic crisis facing the country will most likely lead us to another ‘military assisted transition’. The conditions that led to the November 2017 coup seem to be multiplying exponentially as each day passes and this is creating a ticking time bomb.  If things are left unresolved one may not rule out another coup happening as history has shown us that if coups are not cured, they are bound to happen again. There is a need to cure the coup by embarking on drastic and genuine political and economic reforms that will enable the economy to be on its feet again.

Blessing Vava is the Regional Coordinator of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition. He writes here in his personal capacity.

Post published in: Featured

The National Transportation Safety Board said its investigation found no mechanical problems with the helicopter, a single-engine Bell UH-1H manufactured in 1967, and found that pilot Coleman Dodd was flying too low over mountainous terrain at night.

Besides Bennett, his wife Heather, Dodd, a co-pilot and wealthy businessman from Texas also were killed.

Bennett, who drew the wrath of former President Robert Mugabe, had won a devoted following in Zimbabwe for passionately advocating political change.

Andra Cobb, the businessman’s girlfriend and the co-pilot’s daughter, was the sole survivor of the crash. She recalled for authorities last year that the aircraft hit the ground with a loud bang before rolling, stopping upside down and bursting into flames on a grassy mesa top in northeast New Mexico.

She was able to free herself from her seat belt and escape the helicopter before it erupted in flames, she said.

Federal investigators previously reported that the fatally injured pilot said he’d flown into terrain near Raton, New Mexico. The NYSB report did not identify Dodd by name, but New Mexico authorities have previously said he was the lead pilot.

In a 911 call, Dodd told authorities immediately after the crash that three people were dead and there two other survivors, Andra Cobb and Bennett, who was suffering from a head wound. A search in the dark was slowed because of the rugged terrain and lack of access, officials said. First responders arrived on the scene nearly two hours after the crash, which occurred about 6 p.m., the NTSB report said.

As he was placed in a rescue helicopter, Dodd said the accident was his fault, according to a previous report. Dodd had thousands of hours of flying experience.

The NTSB report said a toxicology test showed Dodd had an antihistamine called diphenhydramine in his blood at the time of the crash. Investigators said a “therapeutic level” of the drug likely impaired him, but they could not say with certainty whether it was the reason he was unable to avoid crashing.

An autopsy report from New Mexico medical investigators last year also found a low concentration of fentanyl in Dodd’s system, but did not say whether he had taken it for health reasons.

According to latest figures released by Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZIMSTAT) on Wednesday, Zimbabwe has significantly cut its electricity import bill amid foreign currency shortages and a heavy debt burden.

ZIMSTAT said Zimbabwe’s trade deficit narrowed to $93.6m in May, bringing the cumulative year-to-date total deficit to $332m. The trade deficit was $1.3bn in the comparable 2018 period.

For the past five months, the electricity monthly import bill for the southern African country has averaged $3.4m, down from an average of $13.7m in 2018. This is partly because the country does not have adequate foreign currency to meet supplies and had a debt overhang to Eskom which prevented further supplies.

Energy minister Fortune Chasi is in South Africa to negotiate electricity supplies with his counterpart Gwede Mantashe, according to information minister Monica Mutsvangwa.

Diesel imports used averaged $93.3m in 2018, but now only $73.6m worth of fuel is being imported. For petrol, imports have dropped to $36m from $44m in 2018.

This has resulted in crippling shortages in energy supplies in Zimbabwe.

‘Twin evils’

Overall, by the same time last year, Zimbabwe had a cumulative trade deficit of $1.3bn, and Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube described it as one of the “twin evils” affecting the country’s economy.

The other was a budget deficit which reached $2,8bn or 11.7% of GDP in 2018.

The latest figures, however, suggest that a reversal of these “twin evils/deficits”, with Ncube speaking of a budget surplus since the beginning of the year.

Not anything to smile about

Analysts, however, say the deficit is nothing to smile about, as it driven by the country’s inability to pay for critical imports.

“From October last year, the government has not provided any foreign currency to import electricity despite the crippling shortages. It has also struggled to pay for adequate fuel supplies, and all this feeds into the trade figures,” said Analyst Walter Mandeya of Trigrams Investment.

He said as a result, the reduction in trade deficit is not by design, but forced.

“As much as government had planned to reduce the trade deficit, I don’t think the plan was to reduce key imports such as fuel and electricity, we simply can’t do without those two and the impact of the shortages have been telling on the economy,” he said.

South Africa

Imports from South Africa dropped from an average $230.6m per month in 2018 to $136.6m in 2019.

Exports also fell from an average $188m per month in 2018 to $141.7m in 2019.

Zimbabwe further exported more than it imported from South Africa. Exports for the five months to May stood at $708.9m against imports of $683.2m for the same period.

In 2018, Zimbabwe imported more from SA than it exported.

Post published in: Business

The artist Prince, with his eyes sad and gaze unaverted, peers out from the confines of a stark and moving photograph, inviting the viewer to commiserate, to share his pain. This 1981 work, created by Lynn Goldsmith, captured Prince at his most compelling and is now at the center of a lawsuit between Goldsmith and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Had Prince knew the distress this photograph would cause another artist decades after its taking, his countenance would have been even more dour.

In 1984, Vanity Fair licensed the photograph from Goldsmith for use as “source art” to be adapted by Andy Warhol as part of one of his signature derivatives. This derivative ran in Vanity Fair’s November issue and included a credit to Goldsmith for the “source art” used by Warhol.

Warhol also used the Goldsmith photograph as “source art” for a series of silk screens and other pieces, most of which were sold off for exorbitant sums. When Prince passed in 2016, Vanity Fair republished the Goldsmith/Warhol work online. This republication was so successful that Vanity Fair used the work as the cover image for a new publication it created and sold commemorating Prince’s life. In this new publication, Goldsmith’s credit was removed from the work. And Vanity Fair paid a license fee only to the Andy Warhol Foundation (which by that time controlled Warhol’s copyrights).

When she caught wind of the above, Goldsmith contacted the AWF and noted that the new publication incorporates both her and Warhol’s creative material and that both authors had previously been credited and compensated. This had been acknowledged expressly in the Vanity Fair article and did not seem to be a disputed issue. Yet, she was rebuffed and then sued by the AWF.

The AWF sought declaratory relief in the form of a court order finding the licensing and exploitation without consent of Goldsmith’s material to be “fair use” and thus not infringement.

As readers of this column know, this writer is no fan of the amorphous and raggedly applied “fair use” doctrine, which has, over the years, transitioned from focusing on the commercial impact of the disputed use to whether that use is “transformative.” And, along the way, it has swallowed up the once exclusive right of an artist to create derivative works from her material.

This case illustrates why that transition is so problematic. The now all-important “transformative” analysis in Goldsmith’s case ventured into the mire of the metaphysical, an always dicey undertaking. The court homed in on the fact that Goldsmith’s photograph illustrates that Prince is “not a comfortable person” and is instead a “vulnerable human being.” The court then notes “in contrast,” that Warhol’s work features a “flatter” depiction that “transforms” Prince “from a vulnerable, uncomfortable person to an iconic, larger-than-life figure.” Through this flattening, the court concludes that the “humanity” was removed from Goldsmith’s photograph and the work transformed in the process.

Now, the above may be true, and Judge Koeltl, who wrote this decision, is a very sharp and astute jurist with a firm grasp on copyright principles, but I cannot make heads or tails out of what this passage means or how the “removal of humanity” fits within the fair use factors codified at Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The “fair use” test has now become so bloated and convoluted that nobody can find their way out.

Surely, if you trace a photograph on paper it is going to look flatter. And the bit about how the flattening “transforms” Prince from vulnerable to iconic does little to distract from the fact that this was a simple embellished copy. The true crux of the court’s analysis is revealed as almost an aside at the end of the “transformative” analysis, when the court states that the work basically looks like (or is “recognizable” as) a Warhol so should be protected as a Warhol.

Yet, the fact that a work is “recognizable” as coming from one artist is irrelevant to whether the use is a “fair use,” at least from a statutory standpoint. Indeed, when an artist of outsized fame like Warhol is involved in a “fair use” review, the process is further distorted as courts tend to look beyond the four corners of the artwork at issue to consider the fame of the artist. This, too, is not contemplated by the statute.

The Goldsmith “fair use” analysis got so muddled that the court even trotted out Justice Stewart’s “I know it when I see it” obscenity test, which is certainly of no assistance to artists and not the direction the “fair use” test should be heading. In the end, the court found that the work looks like a Warhol and should thus be protected by fair use. This ruling would seem to indicate that a famous artist with a known aesthetic can more easily claim fair use than a lesser-known artist, which is also not within the spirit of the Copyright Act.

This decision is also another nail in the coffin of one of the statutorily guaranteed exclusive rights that Congress granted to authors under the Copyright Act in an effort to incentivize the creation of artistic works. R.I.P, we can now mutter, at least in the Second Circuit, to the exclusive right to create derivative works.

17 USC 106(2) of the Copyright Act still provides an author with the “exclusive right” to “prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work[.]” And a “derivative” is still defined as “a work based upon one or more preexisting works,” such as those that “recast, transformed, or adapted” the prior work. Indeed, a “work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship,” is still an archetypal “derivative work.”

But, this exclusive right was jettisoned here despite the fact that Warhol’s Prince works are certainly an “elaboration on” or “modification of” Goldsmith’s photograph. Indeed, as the Copyright Act’s legislative history makes clear, the infringing work will “incorporate a portion of the copyrighted work in some form.” That is exactly what Warhol’s Prince work does — incorporates a portion (and a large one at that) of Goldsmith’s work. Yet, the AWF has been adjudged free to exploit and monetize Warhol’s elaboration on Goldsmith’s work without any compensation whatsoever to Goldsmith.

An illuminating way to look at the equities here is to imagine Goldsmith and Warhol in the same studio back in the 1980s, with Goldsmith creating the photograph and then handing it to Warhol to trace and flatten and color. Had that happened, it could not be disputed that the work was a joint work and each artist would thus receive 50 percent of any profits from the work (or contracted for a different split of the profits). But, because Warhol simply appropriated the work without collaborating with Goldsmith, he (or his foundation, rather) may exploit and monetize the derivative without any compensation to Goldsmith. This does not seem to further the purpose of the Copyright Act.

While the AWF should be able to profit from the marketing and sale of Warhol’s Prince works, which are undoubtedly alluring in their own right, Goldsmith, as the creator of the source for those works, should not be left out in the cold. As a staunch advocate for artists’ rights, Prince is likely to be rolling over in his beret given this decision, which will hopefully be challenged on appeal.

Scott Alan Burroughs, Esq. practices with Doniger / Burroughs, an art law firm based in Venice, California. He represents artists and content creators of all stripes and writes and speaks regularly on copyright issues. He can be reached at scott@copyrightLA.com, and you can follow his law firm on Instagram: @veniceartlaw.

Labor Secretary Alex Acosta showed up at his press conference today adamant that he wasn’t holding this debacle of an event to send any signals to the White House. He then proceeded to offer us an hour of him trying to send signals to the White House in a desperate bid to hold onto his own job amid heightened scrutiny of that time that he let Jeffrey Epstein get a sweetheart deal before sealing all the records and cutting Epstein’s victims out of the whole process.

If this was his pitch, expect to see him gone within the week.

A lot can happen of course. Acosta might be able to convince his boss that he needs to stay to “own the libs” or something, but based solely on that press conference Acosta tried and miserably failed to connect with Trump.

Trump, who destroyed Jeb Bush’s air of inevitability by branding him “low energy” couldn’t have appreciated Acosta’s measured, meandering effort to heap responsibility for Epstein’s ludicrous plea deal on everyone but himself. He did, however, take off his “smart person” glasses right off the bat in a clumsy attempt to look like he was “getting tough,” so there was that. What Trump wanted to see was Brett Kavanaugh throwing a sneering temper tantrum and what he got was a series of weasely “well, actually…” statements thrown together.

Over the course of the hour, we heard alternatively that Epstein’s deal was the fault of Florida state prosecutors, or maybe the judge, or his superiors at main Justice, or the career prosecutor. One America News, an organization that astoundingly gets press credentials to events like this, even tried to pin all the blame on Robert Mueller. But it was never Acosta’s fault. Never ever.

According to Acosta it was definitely the fault of Epstein’s victims, who he repeatedly blamed for “not coming forward” even though many have come forward and Acosta knows full well that his office strung those victims along making what a federal judge has branded “material omissions” in the process. Acosta tried to argue that a culture of victim shaming kept him from building a case based on victim testimony. And then he proceeded to victim shame them in real time for allegedly “not being loud enough.”

Acosta, whose current office oversees sex trafficking efforts and has affirmatively tried to slash those by upwards of 80 percent, shockingly argued that his former office — you know, the Department of Justice — couldn’t possibly have brought Epstein to trial based on all that evidence they were putting under seal because, golly, what if they were to lose? That’s why this had to be swept under the rug with a 13-month prison sentence that let Epstein walk free every day for 12 hours, because there was a chance the government might lose. Left somewhat unresolved at the presser was how this fear of failure jived with the decision to immunize Epstein’s co-conspirators. Apparently, that was an effort to get the goods on Epstein… but then they didn’t get enough evidence? So, why did they immunize these people again? It’s all so confusing.

To hear Acosta tell it, the U.S. federal government are a bunch of hapless losers who never can win the big one instead of an entity wielding awesome prosecutorial power and securing convictions over 90 percent of the time. In the reality-based timeline that the rest of us live in, the only barrier to Epstein’s conviction in 2008 was a lack of will.

Specifically Acosta’s lack of will.

Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

Oh my, the Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley Law School just brings a nearly unending stream of amusement to us here at Above the Law. Whether they’re claiming they’re the number two law school in the nation (don’t worry, we aren’t living in the upside down — it was Cooley’s own ranking that put Cooley at #2 with a methodology we declared “intellectually insulting”), sponsoring a baseball stadium, or fighting with the ABA over whether they should be accredited (which they wanted to keep quiet), the law school is known for bringing the lolz. And whaddya know? They’re at it again.

A tipster sent us an interesting bit of Cooley Law School sponsored content that makes the pretty… interesting claim that there just aren’t enough lawyers:

If that doesn’t seem like it comports with the realities of the legal profession as it exists in 2019, well, you’re onto something. The truth is something we’ve documented repeatedly in the past — there now are more law school applicants than at any point since the recession. Within legal academia, there’s been a sort of a prevailing wisdom that the country’s slip towards fascism under Donald Trump has encouraged more people to become educated about the law, in a phenomenon (one that’s even been skewered by The Onion) known as the “Trump Bump.” And it’s something that’s been going on for several application cycles at this point. But Cooley is out there posting spon con on July 8th, 2019, as if it’s 2010 and the recession (complete with law firm layoffs) caused by the mortgage-backed securities disaster made laying out money for law school a bad bet.

Of course a law school like Cooley has a vested interest in trying to convince unsuspecting applicants that the jobs will be there, ripe for the plucking when they graduate. But the truth is, for the class of 2018, only 29.7 percent of Cooley grads have long-term, full-time legal jobs, compared with the national average of 68.3 percent. With even more people going to law school in 2019, and without a significant increase in the amount of legal jobs, the situation is bound to only get worse for those who fall for Cooley’s outdated puff piece.

Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).