BILLY BARR TRUMP'S BULLY BOY

Assistant U.S. Attorney Says William Barr 'Dishonors' Justice Department


Sebastian Murdock
Senior Reporter, HuffPost,
HuffPost•September 26, 2020


A federal prosecutor wrote a letter expressing his opposition to Attorney General William Barr, who he said “brought shame” to the Department of Justice.

“While I am a federal prosecutor, I am writing to express my own views, clearly not those of the department, on a matter that should concern all citizens: the unprecedented politicization of the office of the attorney general,” said James D. Herbert, assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, in a letter to The Boston Globe published Thursday.

Herbert said he felt compelled to speak out against Barr after the attorney general earlier this month lambasted the prosecutors who work for him.

“The attorney general acts as though his job is to serve only the political interests of Donald J. Trump. This is a dangerous abuse of power,” Herbert wrote, citing Barr’s misleading summary of the Mueller Report and his false claims about mail-in voting.- ADVERTISEMENT -


More recently, Barr took the unprecedented step of throwing the weight of the Justice Department behind Trump in a lawsuit filed by a rape accuser. Barr also recently designated New York City, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, “anarchist jurisdictions” in a bid to cut federal funding to the cities perceived as liberal.

“William Barr has done the president’s bidding at every turn,” Herbert wrote. “For 30 years I have been proud to say I work for the Department of Justice, but the current attorney general has brought shame on the department he purports to lead.”

HuffPost reached out to Barr’s office for comment.

Related...

William Barr: Black Lives Matter Movement 'Not Interested In Black Lives'

William Barr Wildly Compares Coronavirus Safety Measures To Slavery

Legal experts are freaking out about Bill Barr’s actions to help Trump win

Travis Gettys, Salon•September 26, 2020


Bill Barr ABC

Legal experts are increasingly alarmed by Attorney General William Barr's efforts to help President Donald Trump win re-election.

The attorney general has joined the president in attacking voting integrity and civil rights demonstrators, and he has described his role in the election in explicitly religious terms that show Barr believes he represents "moral discipline and virtue" against "individual rapacity," reported The Guardian.

"His abuses have only escalated as we have gotten closer and closer to the election, and as the president has felt more and more politically vulnerable," said Donald Sherman, deputy director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "I can't put it more plainly than this: The attorney general is a threat to American citizens having free and fair access to the vote, and is a threat to American having their votes counted."


Barr has recently asked federal prosecutors to consider charging protesters with sedition and designated New York City, Portland and Seattle as "anarchy" zones, which helps Trump whip up hysteria about public safety.

"I think this attorney general is demonstrably more committed to the political success of the president, and the president's political agenda than any attorney general in history I can think of," said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State law professor who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel under Bill Clinton.

Kinkopf testified against Barr during his 2019 confirmation hearing, when he warned senators the deeply conservative Washington veteran believed in giving the chief executive "breathtaking" powers.

"When I testified against him, I recognized how dangerous the unitary executive theory is," Kinkopf said. "But what I didn't appreciate, and I don't think anybody appreciated, was just how fully he would deploy that theory in advance not of rule-of law values, but in order to advance both the president's political agenda, and I think more deeply for Barr, his own social and religious commitments."

The attorney general has accused Black Lives Matter protesters of fomenting chaos as part of a socialist revolution, and he has described himself as a bulwark in a battle between good and evil. 

"The attorney general sees himself clearly as fighting culture wars that are to him moral and religious," Kinkopf said, "and those are deeper, I think, commitments for him than the commitment to federalism, and so to the extent that the balance of federal and state power gets in the way of achieving what he wants to achieve in the culture wars, he's willing to cast that aside.

"So if there weren't a culture war angle on it, I think he would take the position that states and local governments should be left to police their own communities, and the federal government should keep its nose out," Kinkopf added. "But because he sees something at stake in the current protests that jeopardizes what he feels as being the proper order of society, he's not troubled about using federal power to pursue what he views as being the right results."

The Black wealth gap

The Week Staff, The Week•September 27, 2020



Decades after the civil rights movement, African Americans still hold a fraction of the wealth of white Americans. Why? Here's everything you need to know:

How big is the gap?

It's staggering. The net worth of a typical white family in 2016 — including home, retirement accounts, and all assets — was nearly 10 times greater than that of a Black family, at $171,000 to $17,600. This gulf even includes African Americans whose households are headed by college graduates, who actually have less net worth than white households headed by high school dropouts. Wealth begets wealth through generations, and African Americans have missed out on that transfer for centuries. Just 8 percent of Black families receive an inheritance from parents or grandparents. For someone with no ­buffer of savings and no family member who can help, any financial emergency — a sudden illness or job loss — is a catastrophe.


How did the gap start?

After the Civil War, Reconstruction was supposed to begin making up for the hundreds of years of slavery during which African Americans had wages, property, and even spouses and children stolen from them. But the "40 acres and a mule" promised by Gen. William Sherman was yanked away by Abraham Lincoln's successor, President Andrew Johnson, and the little land that had been parceled out was returned to the white former slaveholders. Most Blacks in the South after the war were forced to toil as sharecroppers, perpetually in debt to white landowners. Blacks who managed to succeed despite all this fell victim to white terrorism, as in the 1898 Wilmington, North Carolina, massacre that wiped out a Black-led government in the nation's only successful coup, or the 1921 Tulsa massacre in which jealous whites attacked, burned, and even bombed from the air a thriving neighborhood known as Black Wall Street. With segregation and Jim Crow laws depriving them of the vote and of economic opportunity, many Blacks abandoned the South in the Great Migration, only to find more-subtle discrimination waiting in the North.

What kind of discrimination?

The New Deal was meant to help the poor across America, but it had racism baked into it. Rather than overturning racial covenants that kept Blacks out of desirable neighborhoods, the new Federal Housing Administration promoted them. The government Home Owners' Loan Corporation marked majority-Black districts in red on maps, so banks would not extend government-insured loans there — suppressing both Black homeownership and business development. The corrosive effects of that "redlining" persist to this day. After World War II, the G.I. Bill, which paid for college or vocational training for veterans and offered subsidized mortgages, was administered by the states, which funneled the benefits away from Blacks. And the 1956 Federal Highway Act that helped create the suburbs bulldozed and isolated black neighborhoods, creating ghettos.


Didn't the Civil Rights Act help?

The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited discrimination and strengthened voting rights and the desegregation of schools. But even as it "struck down legal barriers," says historian Leon Litwack, "it failed to dismantle economic barriers." The wealth gap was already so large that even if Blacks were paid the same as whites for the same job — and they were not — they were unable to catch up. Meanwhile, the era of mass incarceration had begun. By the 1980s, Black men were 11 times as likely to be incarcerated as whites, thanks partly to laws punishing use of crack cocaine an order of magnitude harsher than powder cocaine, which was favored by wealthier whites. Our educational system also perpetuates Black poverty: Unlike in most other advanced nations, schools are funded locally and are tied to the local tax base, which means that people growing up in poor neighborhoods go to inadequate schools. Far from shrinking, the racial wealth gap has in fact grown over the past few decades, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis, which wiped out much of the progress blacks had made. While median white household incomes rose by a third from 1983 to 2016, typical Black household incomes actually dropped by 50 percent.

But don't some Black people succeed?

Yes, but individual efforts to "bootstrap" one's way up the economic ladder face enormous obstacles. A 2019 Georgetown University study showed that wealth in youth is a better predictor of success than intelligence. Racism in hiring persists, as numerous studies have shown that pit a résumé with a "Black-­sounding" name against a similar one with a white name. Marriage and stable families help create wealth, and married Black women have more wealth than single Black women. But many Black men with low incomes do not feel marriageable; moreover, a 2017 DuBois Cook Center study showed that wealth differences persist between the races despite marriage status. Structural racism leaves African Americans trapped in a wealth gap that is actually widening, not narrowing. "It is as though we have run up a credit-card bill and, having pledged to charge no more, remain befuddled that the balance does not disappear," Black writer and intellectual Ta-Nehisi Coates said in The Atlantic. "The effects of that balance, interest accruing daily, are all around us."

How COVID-19 worsened the gap

When the coronavirus hit this year, Black Americans were still reeling from the 2008 financial crisis. That downturn had wiped out 53 percent of all Black wealth, largely because subprime lenders had targeted Black communities with loans on bad terms. Then came the COVID-19 shutdown. While 22 percent of all U.S. businesses shuttered between February and April this year, 41 percent of Black-owned businesses closed. Many African-American business owners couldn't access the Payroll Protection Program, because loans tended to go to large firms that had existing relationships with major banks. One study found that white owners who went in person to a bank to ask for a PPP loan fared much better than Black owners who did so, even when the Black owners had better financial profiles. And many Black-owned businesses are sole proprietorships, which weren't covered. As a result, fewer than half of all African-American adults now have a job. "The pandemic is falling on those least able to bear its burdens," said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. "It is a great increaser of inequality."

This article was first published in the latest issue of The Week magazine. If you want to read more like it, you can try six risk-free issues of the magazine here.

Several hundred arrests amid protest calls in Egypt: rights group

© Reuters/AMR ABDALLAH DALSH FILE PHOTO: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi attends the funeral of former President Hosni Mubarak east of Cairo

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian authorities have detained at least 382 people since Sept. 20 amid reports of small, scattered demonstrations against President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a rights group said on Monday.

The interior ministry could not be reached for comment.

The arrests come after security measures were tightened around the first anniversary of rare demonstrations in Cairo and other cities, triggered by appeals in September last year from an exiled former contractor and actor, Mohamed Ali.

Ali, who had posted videos online lambasting the authorities, called for more protests this month.

Videos posted on social media since Sept. 20 appeared to show several very small demonstrations involving up to several dozen people in different parts of the country.

Reuters could not independently verify the videos, but security sources confirmed some small and scattered protests on Friday, which they said were mainly in villages and outside big cities.

In one case, a witness said about 100 men had gathered in an area outside the city of Damietta and chanted "Leave, Sisi".

The Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms said it had directly documented 249 detentions over the past nine days, while it said another 133 had been documented by other rights groups or lawyers.

The public prosecutor's office said on Sunday it had ordered the release of 68 minors detained for their alleged participation in "recent riots". It did not mention other arrests.

Security forces can be seen deployed in public spaces especially on Fridays, and there have been increased security checks.

The protests are partly fuelled by economic frustrations made worse by the coronavirus pandemic, and by a major government campaign to impose fines or demolitions on unlicensed housing, activists say.

In an apparent reference to the protests, Sisi praised Egyptians for enduring tough economic conditions on Sunday and said some were trying to exploit Egypt's challenges to undermine the country but would not succeed.

"They choose the difficult conditions to offend and sow suspicion among Egyptians about what we are doing - that this is at their expense and against them," Sisi said during the inauguration of a petrochemical plant.

"The people and the state are one entity. Nobody intervenes between us and nobody will be able to intervene between us."

Since his election in 2014 Sisi has overseen a broad crackdown on political dissent, which was extended with a wave of arrests after the protests last September.

Sisi says the government is looking after human rights by working to provide basic needs such as jobs and housing.

At the inauguration, a video on human rights was played that said the "safety and stability" of Egypt was one of the most important rights of its people.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

Carleton PhD student detained in Turkey, accused of inciting protests
Nil Köksal


In the ten years they've been together, Ömer Ongun has not gone a day without hearing the voice of his partner, Cihan Erdal.

It's now been three days since they've spoken.

Their last conversation came on Friday, just moments before Erdal was detained in Istanbul's Besiktas neighbourhood.

"It was 2 a.m. for us, 9 a.m. for Cihan in Istanbul. He called me and said 'I love you. They are at my door. They're going to take me away,'" Ongun said.

Erdal, a 32-year-old PhD candidate at Carleton University and a permanent resident of Canada, is now being held at a detention centre in the Turkish capital, Ankara.

He was among dozens of people named in warrants issued across Turkey on Friday. Ongun, also a permanent resident, said Erdal's lawyer has not been allowed to see the specifics of his case file, but the allegations against all of the detainees relate to a letter written in 2014.

The letter called on the Turkish government to step in to help the Kurdish town of Kobani, in Syria, at the height of ISIS attacks.
Deadly protests

Thirty-seven people were killed in protests in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast that October as people filled the streets, angry the Turkish Army wasn't moving in to protect Kobani and its people.

The Turkish government accuses the signatories of that letter of supporting the protests.

Erdal was a member of the youth arm of the People's Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish, legal political party in Turkey. It is the country's third largest party.

Its leader, Selahattin Demirtas, has been in prison since 2016. In recent years, dozens of elected HDP mayors have been forced out of their positions and replaced with government appointees.

The Turkish government accuses the HDP of supporting the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) — an allegation the HDP denies.

Canada, the United States, and the European Union along with Turkey have labelled the PKK a terrorist organization. The conflict with the PKK has taken roughly 40,000 Turkish and Kurdish lives since 1984.
'It's ridiculous'

Ongun can not reconcile the accusations with the man he knows.

"Cihan is one of the kindest, most peaceful people in the world," he said in a telephone interview from his home in Ottawa. "He wanted to represent voices of LGBTQ youth, students, ecologists, you know, make their rights and needs visible. To accuse him for calling for violence and terrorism. It's devastating. It's ridiculous. We are all shocked."

Carleton University says it is equally shocked. In a letter released on Friday, the university's department of sociology and anthropology condemns Erdal's detention and says he has not been politically active for years.

"Cihan's research is on youth-led social movements in Europe, including in Turkey, focused on the stories of young activists about their involvement in social movements. His work is in no way critical of the Turkish state," the letter reads. "He was beginning interviews online, while awaiting approval under the new pandemic ethics process to begin face to face interviews in Turkey, Athens, and Paris."  

  

© Yilmaz Kazandioglu/Reuters Turkish troops patrol in Hakkari province, southeastern Turkey in June 2010 where Turkish troops and Kurdish fighters clashed.

Ongun said they were also in Turkey in August to check on their parents during the pandemic. Ongun returned to Canada, Erdal planned to stay a few more weeks to conduct his doctoral field research.

The university has reached out to Foreign Affairs Minister Francois Philippe-Champagne's office, the Turkish Embassy in Canada and the Canadian Embassy in Turkey, hoping to help secure his release.

The school is offering to cover any travel or accommodation expenses Erdal may have when he is released.

Global Affairs Canada told CBC News it was preparing a response to our request for information about Erdal's case.

Erdal has not been physically harmed in detention. His lawyer has been able to visit him, take him clothing and toiletries, and a pen and paper to write a letter to Ongun.

The lawyer sent him a photograph of it. "He said all he is doing is thinking about me and his family," Ongun said.

There are concerns his sexual orientation could make him a target during a prolonged detention.

The next step will be a court appearance in the coming days, perhaps as early as Monday. And then, Cihan's family and supporters hope, a swift release.

"He has a lot to contribute to this world. To Canada. To Turkey. We just want him back," Ongun said.

Liz Weston: Sustainable investing could get a lot harder

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Interest in sustainable investing is soaring, as more people become convinced that making a positive impact can be profitable as well as good for the planet and society. Unfortunately, the Labor Department doesn’t think these investments belong in your 401(k).


In June, the federal regulator proposed a rule that would restrict workplace retirement plans from investments that include environmental, social and governance considerations. Popularly known as ESG or socially responsible investing, this approach considers the sustainability of a company’s business practices.

The Labor Department says only returns, not business practices, should matter. But its proposal is unusual for a number of reasons, including its wide range of opponents. The rule has been denounced by some of the world’s largest investment managers, including BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisors and Fidelity, along with groups representing pension funds and 401(k) providers. Many say the rule would make it so difficult or risky for workplace plans to offer ESGs that it effectively removes them from consideration.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bankers Association and the Investment Company Institute, among other business interests, warned the rule could raise costs, significantly limit investment options and increase the risk of lawsuits.

“This is out of step with mainstream investing,” says Aron Szapiro, director of policy research for investment research firm Morningstar. “This is pretty unworkable and it’s logically inconsistent.”

Far from acting in investors’ best interests, as workplace plan sponsors are required to do, the Labor Department seems determined to make retirement plans limit our options and potential returns.

SUSTAINABLE INVESTING IS NOW MAINSTREAM

The proposed rule might have made sense 20 years ago, when so-called “socially responsible” investing consisted of a handful of funds that excluded entire industries for social, political or religious reasons and sometimes sacrificed returns in the process.

But socially responsible investing has long since evolved into “sustainable” investing. Instead of making value judgments, it seeks companies making a quantifiably positive impact and steers clear of those that may pose costly risks.

This approach has spread rapidly. By 2018, one out of every four dollars under professional management was invested using strategies that consider environmental, social and corporate governance issues, according to the US SIF Foundation, a non-profit that researches sustainable investment. The number of mutual funds that say they consider sustainability grew from 81 in 2018 to 562 last year, Morningstar found. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment manager, announced in January that it would incorporate sustainability criteria into its investment decisions. Two weeks later, State Street Global Advisors, the third-largest asset manager, said it would use its influence to make sure companies were identifying and considering sustainability risks.

These investment managers haven’t become soft-headed do-gooders. They believe, with good evidence, that they’ll get better risk-adjusted returns if they consider a company’s impact on the environment, potential labour and product liability issues, executive compensation, and the effectiveness and diversity of its board of directors, among other factors.

Proponents of ESG investing say such concerns “are intrinsically tied to the ability of an enterprise to continue to generate profits or cash flow,” Szapiro says.

In fact, sustainable funds have outperformed conventional funds for the past few years and weathered the downturn earlier this year with fewer losses, Morningstar found.

THE RULE WOULD IMPOSE NEW COSTS ON PLANS

Screening out investments that use sustainability criteria would be an added expense that regulators don’t seem to have considered, Szapiro says.

“They say, ‘Well, we don’t think it’s gonna cost anything because we think plan sponsors simply won’t use ESG funds,’ but that requires identifying which ones are and are not,” Szapiro says.

“That’s a really big issue with cost that is simply not addressed.”

Another problem was the proposal’s short comment period. The Labor Department allowed feedback for just 30 days, closing comments on July 31. Normally, comments are accepted for 60, 90 or even 180 days, Szapiro says. The short timeline may indicate the department plans to implement the rule, despite overwhelmingly negative feedback.

YOU STILL HAVE OPTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE INVESTING

If enacted, the rule may stymie the growth of sustainable investing strategies in retirement plans that the department regulates, which include 401(k)s and other defined contribution plans as well as most traditional corporate pensions. The rule won’t apply to public pensions, however, or to investments in individual accounts, including IRAs.

You also can invest in ESG funds if your 401(k) offers a “brokerage window,” which lets you invest outside of the plan’s normal investment lineup. These windows allow you to set up an account with an associated brokerage and pick from a much larger array of stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investments.

You can research options using the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment or an online broker’s mutual fund screening tools. In addition, some automated investment platforms – known as robo-advisors – offer ESG options.

It obviously would be easier if your 401(k) plan would do the screening and offer vetted options. As long as the Labor Department seems determined to prevent that, you’ll need to put in some work for a shot at better returns.

________________________________________

This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet. Liz Weston is a columnist at NerdWallet, a certified financial planner and author of “Your Credit Score.” Email: lweston@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @lizweston.

RELATED LINKS:

NerdWallet: What Is Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) and How to Get Started http://bit.ly/nerdwallet-responsible-investing

Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment https://charts.ussif.org/mfpc/

Liz Weston Of Nerdwallet, The Associated Press

Amazon to create 3,500 new tech and corporate jobs in Vancouver and Toronto

Financial Post Staff , Bloomberg News

© Provided by Financial Post Amazon jobs will include software development, designers, cloud computing and sales and marketing executives.

Video player from: YouTube (Privacy Policy, Terms)

Amazon has announced plans to create 3,500 corporate and tech jobs in its Canadian technology hubs Vancouver and Toronto.

The lion’s share of jobs, which include software development, designers, cloud computing and sales and marketing executives, will be in Vancouver. Amazon says to make room for 3,000 new workers it will expand its location at The Post in downtown Vancouver, leasing 18 floors in the north tower and 17 floors in the south tower, as the sole corporate tenant.

“Amazon’s investment has tangible benefits for the broader economy and community – from the people we employ, to the small businesses we empower, to the charities we support, to the academic opportunities we fund. We’re proud to reaffirm our commitment to Canadian cities at this critical time,” Jesse Dougherty, Amazon VP and Vancouver site lead, said in a statement.

A weak loonie, lower wages and a steady flow of graduates make Canada an attractive place to expand for tech companies whose largest expense is labour.

The average wage of a software developer in Vancouver last year was US$92,726, compared to US$141,785 in San Francisco or US$128,067 in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, according to a July report by real estate firm CBRE Group Inc. Once rental costs are folded in, the cost of running a 500-employee operation in the Canadian city is half that of a similar-sized operation in the Bay Area, it found.

Vancouver also had the fastest-growing tech labour pool of 50 markets surveyed in the U.S. and Canada by CBRE, while the quality of its talent based on academic degrees and work experience ranked among the top 10, the study found.

The expansion positions the company to become one of the city’s biggest employers: Vancouver-based telecommunications giant Telus Corp. has about 8,000 staff in the province, according to Business In Vancouver.

With files from Natalie Obiko Pearson, Bloomberg

Alberta's oilpatch gets a rare gift — a U.S-backed $22-billion export line to tidewater via Alaska

Yadullah Hussain

© Provided by Financial Post A White Pass and Yukon passenger train rounds a curve on the narrow-gauge track as it descends through the mountains to Skagway, Alaska. 

It may well be his last few weeks in office (at least according to the public polls), but U.S. President Donald Trump just gave Alberta oil producers a gift.

Amid his increasingly-deranged conspiracy theory tweets over the weekend, he broadcast a more presidential tweet on Friday: “Based on the strong recommendation of @SenDanSullivan and @repdonyoung of the Great State of Alaska, it is my honor to inform you that I will be issuing a Presidential Permit for the A2A Cross-Border Rail between Alaska & Canada. Congratulations to the people of Alaska & Canada!”

Dan Sullivan is a U.S. senator serving Alaska, and Don Young is a Congressman serving the American last frontier. The U.S. president has been sweet on the Canadian oilpatch before, having approved TC Energy Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline project which had been rejected by the previous president Barack Obama. If it proceeds, the railway project could serve as another important outlet for Alberta’s oil producers who have struggled due to lack of pipeline capacity. However, railway lines are deemed to be a more expensive way to transport oil compared to pipelines.

The proposed 2,570-kilometre A2A railway aims to transport bulk commodities such oil, grain and ore in addition to containerized goods, and aims to develop “a new railway connecting the Alaska Railroad and Alaska’s tidewater, to northern Alberta.”

The project is expected to cost $22 billion, of which $7 billion will be built in Alaska and $15 billion in Alberta, according to the company.

Construction will begin near Fairbanks, where the Alaska Railroad currently ends, and move south and east through Alaska, across into Yukon, the Northwest Territories, and into Alberta.

The proposed route will connect the North American railway network, via Northern Alberta to the existing Alaska Railroad network and Alaska’s deep-water ports.

“This is a world-class infrastructure project that will generate more than 18,000 jobs for Canadian workers at a time when they are most needed, provide a new, more efficient route for trans-Pacific shipping and thereby link Alberta to world markets,” A2ARail founder and chairman Sean McCoshen said in July, as he announced commissioning an engineering firm to start a detailed land survey along the Alberta segment of the railway’s proposed route.

“The new rail line will create new economic development opportunities for a wide range of businesses, communities and Indigenous communities in Canada and Alaska,” the chairman said. “We estimate that A2A Rail could unlock $60 billion CAD in additional cumulative GDP through 2040 and lift household incomes by an average of 40 per cent.”

The company’s president is Jean Paul Gladu, who served as the president and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business from September 2012 until April 2020.

The Alaska–Alberta Railway Development Corporation (A2A Rail) is privately owned and funded by its McCoshen, who the company says has spent more than US$100 million through the early phases of the project.

“As the project progresses, it is anticipated that A2A Rail will seek investment from infrastructure funds, Sovereign Wealth groups, and private investors. Additionally, A2A Rail is looking into several government issued grants and loan guarantees in both the U.S. and Canada to assist in providing the risk capital needed to develop the railway,” according to the company website.

IT'S NEVER THE RIGHT TIME DEPT.
Air France leads tax pushback in climate vs recovery fight

By Laurence Frost and Kate Abnett

© Reuters/Pascal Rossignol FILE PHOTO: Outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Lesquin

By Laurence Frost and Kate AbnettPARIS/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Air France-KLM is battling new green taxes on top of the coronavirus crisis - in a test of growing policy tensions between righting Europe's crippled airlines and delivering on climate goals.

The Franco-Dutch group, sustained by 10.4 billion euros ($12.2 billion) in state-backed loans, faces higher duties in both home markets as well as EU plans to hike airlines' carbon costs.

The struggle unfolding around Air France-KLM is part of a larger reckoning for carbon-intensive industries as efforts to tackle global warming spawn more taxes and regulation.

While campaigners say those are long overdue, crisis-hit airlines warn their timing and severity will cost thousands more jobs and hurt development of lower-carbon technologies.

New taxes "do not support emissions reductions", said Air France-KLM Chief Executive Ben Smith in response to proposed increases to French passenger duties.

"In fact it's counterproductive and would deprive us of finances that could otherwise be invested in environmental projects," he told an online industry forum this month.

Tensions can only rise as emissions goals are toughened to slow dangerous climate change. The European Union's executive now wants to cut greenhouse gas output by 55% in the next decade rather than the previous 40%, from a 1990 baseline.

While the pandemic has dampened climate protests led by Extinction Rebellion and Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, their political legacy must be squared with the economic emergency.

GREEN WAVE

French municipal elections saw the ecologist EELV party take Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg in a June 28 "Green Wave". The next day, President Emmanuel Macron promised to advance 146 proposals from a "citizens' climate convention".

Those include an airline duty increase to 30 euros per short-haul economy passenger and 400 euros for long-haul business, from their current 1.50-18 euro range. At 2019 traffic, officials say the sector would pay 4.2 billion euros.

Key members of the government, which underwrote 7 billion euros for Air France, are backing away from the pledge as officials draft legislation in response to the convention.

"It would be grotesque to take back with one hand what we'd given the sector with the other," Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told daily Les Echos.

Le Maire and his Dutch counterpart were among nine EU finance ministers who had called for "taxation or similar policies" to curb emissions by raising air fares.

From Jan. 1, the Netherlands is introducing passenger duties worth 220 million euros at pre-crisis traffic. A Greenpeace legal challenge is also demanding steeper emissions cuts in return for KLM's 3.4 billion-euro aid package.

OFFSETS UPSET

Airline emissions account for 2.5% of the global total but are set to triple by 2050. Under a U.N.-brokered programme, CORSIA, the industry aims to counter emissions growth from international flights with carbon offsets, whose effects are contested.Airbus has given itself until 2035 to put a "zero-emission" plane into service, but many are sceptical about that deadline. Synthetic fuels are also too scarce and expensive to offer a near-term solution.

For intra-European flights, airlines would face a higher bill for European carbon credits under plans outlined this month to reduce free permits for the sector.

EU officials have also signalled likely moves to end a tax exemption for jet fuel enshrined in international treaties, a process that could take several years.

Germany, which has pushed ahead with an airline tax increase to fund cheaper rail travel, plans binding minimum quotas for carbon-neutral alternative jet fuel.

Far from giving struggling airlines a break, campaign groups are urging governments to use bailouts to force faster progress.

"Airlines' reliance on governments strengthens the case for acting to cut their emissions," said Andrew Murphy of Brussels-based Transport & Environment.

Assuming a slow recovery, the group says CORSIA's market mechanism would price emissions as low as 17 cents per long-haul flight, leaving little incentive to curb greenhouse gases. ICAO, the U.N. aviation agency that developed the programme, said it was "grossly misrepresented" by the research.

NOT FARE

Other emissions-cutting proposals may divide the industry.

Air France-KLM's Smith called on French ministers to consider a minimum fare instead of taxes, citing the 40-euro minimum recently introduced in Austria. "Let's discuss that," he said in a newspaper interview.

While minimum fares can curb overall traffic and emissions without hurting traditional airlines' profits or jobs, they punish budget carriers and their customers."This is another mad idea from a high-fare airline that can only survive with over 10 billion euros of illegal state subsidies," Ryanair said. The low-cost giant is challenging rivals' EU-approved bailouts in court.

"Ordinary consumers all over Europe have benefited from and will continue to demand low fares, choice and competition," it said.

However these tensions play out, airlines face a rising tide of carbon costs on top of their current woes.

Maintaining fuel tax exemptions would present a "flagrant inconsistency" with EU climate goals, said Christian Egenhofer of Brussels-based think tank CEPS.

Taxing fuel would be an important step even if rates started low, Egenhofer said. "You know what happens with taxes – they always go up."

(Reporting by Laurence Frost and Kate Abnett; Editing by Mark Potter)

Gap in early death rates between rich and poor growing: research

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Poor Canadians stand a greater chance of dying early than the well off and that gap has been growing for decades, says a detailed new analysis.

The study, published Monday in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, found the chances of dying before age 75 or of avoidable causes has been declining for almost everyone. But they've been declining for the rich much faster than for the poor and have been doing so for a generation.

The gap is growing for both women and men, the analysis found. And the chances of an early, avoidable death for women with the least education are actually growing.

"We've made no overall progress towards reducing overall health inequality," said Faraz Shahidi of the University of Toronto's Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

"The size of these inequalities in mortality are even larger than we previously thought."

Shahidi and co-author Abtin Parnia analyzed more than 16 million records from five different censuses and divided incomes into five groups. The incomes for each group varied from census to census. In 2016, the median household pretax income -- which would represent the middle group -- was $70,300.

The study found that for high-income men -- the top fifth of earners -- the mortality rate before age 75 declined by nearly 50 per cent between 1991 and 2016. For those in the bottom fifth, mortality declined by 34 per cent.

Education levels revealed the same pattern.

Premature deaths in men with a post-secondary degree declined by 47 per cent, but for men without a high school diploma the decline was 21 per cent.

The pattern was just as stark for women.

Premature death for high-income women declined more than 40 per cent, but 19 per cent for the less wealthy. Mortality rates for women with university degrees went down by more than one-third, but less than two per cent for those without a high-school diploma.

Shahidi found similar results when he looked at avoidable deaths caused by behaviours or by treatable conditions. For women with little education, mortality rates increased -- by up to 12 per cent for those who didn't finish high school.

The links between income, education and health have been well-established by previous research, Shahidi said.

"It's an inference," he said. "But it's an inference we make on a massive body of science telling us that people's everyday social and economic conditions are a fundamental factor driving health inequality."

Shahidi said eliminating the gaps in rates of early death is "virtually impossible" without reducing the income and education gaps that help create them.

"In the absence of policy action, we tend to see those inequalities widen," he said. "There are very actionable policy solutions which (governments) can put in place to address and reverse this trend."

Those measures include raising wages, more progressive taxation, generous social assistance, easier-to-access employment insurance and protecting job security.

"It's in a large part through lack of policy action that we have allowed, as a society, these inequalities to grow over time," said Shahidi.

"These health inequalities are fundamentally rooted in everyday conditions. And everyday social and economic conditions are what they are for people, because of the political decisions policy-makers make."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2020.

Bob Weber, The Canadian Press

Ambassadors appeal for acceptance of LGBTQ people in Poland


The Associated Press

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WARSAW, Poland — Polish leaders on Monday rejected suggestions that LGBTQ people are deprived of any of their rights in the country, after an open letter from 50 ambassadors and international representatives cited a need to work for “non-discrimination, tolerance and mutual acceptance.”


The ambassadors’ appeal, made in an open letter published Sunday, comes as an increasingly visible LGBTQ community in Poland has faced a backlash from the right-wing government, many local communities and the Catholic church.

“Human rights are universal and everyone, including LGBTI persons, are entitled to their full enjoyment,” the letter said, using the acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said he agreed that every person deserves respect but that he completely disagreed with the ambassadors’ claim that LGBT people were being deprived of that.

“Dear Ambassadors, I can tell only you that tolerance is in Poles’ DNA,” Morawiecki said at a news conference on Monday. “Nobody needs to teach us tolerance.”

Some of Poland’s leaders, including the president and lawmakers from the ruling party, have cast the movement for civil rights for LGBTQ people as a threat to traditional families. President Andrzej Duda won a second term this summer after calling LGBTQ rights an “ideology” more dangerous than communism.

Meanwhile, dozens of towns in conservative parts of eastern and southern Poland have passed mostly symbolic resolutions declaring themselves to be free from “LGBT ideology.” Many of the declarations express the view that young people will be demoralized if confronted by the issue.

“Human Rights are not an ideology — they are universal,” U.S. Ambassador Georgette Mosbacher tweeted. “50 Ambassadors and Representatives agree.”

Joachim Brudzinski, deputy head of the ruling Law and Justice party who is now a lawmaker to the European Parliament, shot back at Mosbacher on Monday, saying “we in Poland also agree.”

“Therefore, we are waiting with hope for the next letter, this time in defense of murdered Christians, imprisoned #ProLife activists, people dismissed from work and persecuted for quoting the Bible, people subjected to euthanasia against their will,” he wrote on Twitter, along with some other examples of alleged abuse of Christians.

It was not exactly clear what Brudzinski was referring to. Poland is a predominantly Catholic nation where Christians do not face persecution and where abortion is illegal in most cases and euthanasia is outlawed. In one case, however, an IKEA employee in Poland was fired for citing Biblical passages to suggest gays should be killed. The current government has spoken in the employee’s defense and a state prosecutor is suing the IKEA manager who fired him.

Brudzinski also waded into the debate about LGBTQ rights in the summer, saying on Twitter that “Poland without LGBT is most beautiful.” His tweet included an image of Jesus and eggs in a bird nest — a bird family which he described as “realizing God’s plan.”

That triggered articles in the Polish liberal press about how homosexuality is a naturally occurring phenomenon in the animal world — just one of many examples of an outpouring of support in Poland for LGBTQ people. In Warsaw, for instance, it has become common recently to see rainbow flags hanging from apartments or people carrying rainbow bags.

The ambassadors’ letter paid tribute to the work of the LGBTQ community in Poland as it seeks to raise awareness about the challenges its faces. The rise in hostility has led many to live in anger and fear or even to emigrate from the country.

Many activists say their greatest priority now is to get legislation passed criminalizing hate speech against people based on their sexual identity.

The letter was signed by the ambassadors of the United States, many European countries, including Germany, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, as well as further off nations like Japan and Australia.

It was also signed by representatives in Poland of the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Community of Democracies, which is based in Warsaw.