MMM YARG GROWL CRUNCH EAT CREDIT

Zombie Firms Face Slow Death in US as Era of Easy Credit Ends


Lisa Lee
Tue, May 31, 2022, 

BLOOMBERG



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(Bloomberg) -- They are creations of easy credit, beneficiaries of central bank largesse. And now that the era of unconventional monetary policy is over, they’re facing a challenge like never before.

They are America’s corporate zombies, companies that aren’t earning enough to cover their interest expenses, let alone turn a profit. From meme-stock favorite AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. to household names such as American Airlines Group Inc. and Carnival Corp., their ranks have swelled in recent years, comprising roughly a fifth of the country’s 3,000 largest publicly-traded companies and accounting for about $900 billion of debt.

Now, some say, their time may be running short.

Firms that could once count on virtually unfettered access to the bond and loan markets to stay afloat are being turned away as investors girding for a recession close the spigot to all but the most creditworthy issuers. The fortunate few that can still find willing lenders face significantly higher borrowing costs as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates to tame inflation of more than 8%. With surging input costs poised to eat away at earnings, it’s left a broad swath of corporate America with little margin for error.

The end result could be a prolonged stretch of bankruptcies unlike any in recent memory.

“When interest rates are at or close to zero, it’s very easy to get credit, and under those circumstances, the difference between a good company and a bad company is narrow,” said Komal Sri-Kumar, president of Sri-Kumar Global Strategies and former chief global strategist of TCW Group. “It’s only when the tide runs out that you figure out who is swimming naked.”

Of course, there have been any number of moments over the past decade when zombie firms have appeared on the cusp of a reckoning, only for markets to be tossed a last-minute lifeline. But industry watchers note that what makes this time different is the presence of rampant inflation, which will limit the ability of policy makers to ride to the rescue at the 11th hour.

That’s not to say that a wave of defaults is imminent. The Fed’s unprecedented efforts to bolster liquidity following the onset of the pandemic allowed zombie companies to raise hundreds of billions of dollars of debt financing that could last months, even years.

Yet as the central bank works to quickly unwind the stimulus, the effects on credit markets are already plain to see.

Junk-rated companies, those ranked below BBB- by S&P Global Ratings and Baa3 by Moody’s Investors Service, have borrowed just $56 billion in the bond market this year, a more than 75% decline from a year ago.

In fact, issuance in May of just $2.2 billion is set to be the slowest for the month in data going back to 2002.

“If rates had not been so low, many of them would have gone under” already, said Viral Acharya, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India. “Unless we have another full-blown financial crisis, I don’t think the Fed’s capacity to bail out is necessarily that high. Especially when they are explicitly saying they want to reduce demand. How is that consistent with keeping these firms alive?”

Raising cash in the leveraged loan market hasn’t been much easier amid concern monetary policy tightening could tip the US into a recession. New loan starts of under $6 billion in May compare with more than $80 billion in January, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

What’s worse, companies that piled loans onto their balance sheets to ride out the pandemic now face the daunting prospect of higher interest rates eating a larger and larger share of their earnings.

The Fed is set to boost its target rate by 3 percentage points by the end of next year, according to Bloomberg Economics, driving up floating-rate benchmarks that underpin corporate loans.

Even the few speculative-grade firms that can raise funds are having to pay up to tap the market.

Cruise-ship operator Carnival sold $1 billion of eight-year notes that yield 10.5% earlier this month, a stark contrast to the $2 billion it was able to raise just seven months prior at a rate of 6%.

At the same time, US corporate profits fell in the first quarter by the most in almost two years as some companies struggled to pass along rising costs for materials, shipping and labor onto consumers.

Of the 50 largest zombies by outstanding debt, half reported lower operating margins in their latest results, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The trend is only going to get worse, according to Viktor Hjort, global head of credit strategy at BNP Paribas SA.

“Price increases have only been fairly recent,” Hjort said. “We’ll see that start to have an impact in the second and third quarter results.”

Stumbling Along

Zombie firms get their nickname because of how they tend to stumble along, weighed down by their debt burdens yet with sufficient access to capital markets to roll over their obligations. They drag on overall productivity and economic growth because they can’t afford to invest in their businesses, and tie up assets that could be better used by stronger players.

While the exact criteria market experts use can vary, many economists consider zombies to have interest-coverage ratios below one over a given period. To account for the impact of the pandemic, Bloomberg’s analysis looked at the trailing 12-month operating income of firms in the Russell 3000 index relative to their interest expenses over the same span.

Roughly 620 companies didn’t earn enough to meet their interest payments over the past year, down from 695 12 months prior, but still well above pre-pandemic levels.

Matt Miller, a spokesperson for American Airlines, said that the company has a “strong liquidity balance of $15.5 billion and anticipate being profitable in the second quarter.”

A representative for Carnival said that the company plans to have its entire global fleet sailing by the end of the year, and has been working over the past 12 months to refinance its debt at more attractive rates.

AMC didn’t respond to a request seeking comment.

One name no longer on the list is Exxon Mobil Corp., one of the biggest beneficiaries of rising oil prices and widening fuel margins. Booming profits have allowed the energy giant to pare down debt to $48 billion, from roughly $70 billion at the end of 2020.

A representative for Exxon didn’t respond to a request seeking comment.

‘More Zombies’

Any significant uptick in bankruptcies will make it more difficult for the Fed to engineer a so-called soft landing that allows the US to avoid a recession, according to Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Dreyfus and Mellon.

“You worry that the mechanism of financial fragility generally, zombie firms in particular, are an accelerant to what the Fed does,” Reinhart said. “As rates rise it pushes more of those firms into distress, and amplifies the tightening by the Fed of financial conditions and credit availability.”

Equity investors may already be awakening to such risks. Zombie firms in the Russell 3000 have plunged 36% over the past year on average, versus just 4.3% for the broader gauge, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Still, even as some zombies end up in bankruptcy, effectively killing them, new ones will emerge, as inflation pushes more companies into distress. The number of living-dead companies can stay close to current levels or even rise for some time, according to Noel Hebert, direct of credit research at Bloomberg Intelligence.

“The combination of interest-rate hikes and inflation will produce more zombies,” Hebert said. “By year-end, we’ll have more.”

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CRIMINAL CAPITALISM WINK,WINK

The death knell for SPACs?

Connie Loizos
Tue, May 31, 2022,


It was a tough day for special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, which had already fallen out of favor after roughly 18 months in the limelight.

First, Senator Elizabeth Warren announced today that she's planning a bill that targets the SPAC industry. Called the "SPAC Accountability Act of 2022," the bill would expand the legal liability of parties involved in SPAC transactions, close loopholes that SPACs have "long exploited to make overblown projections," and lock in longer the investors sponsoring a deal.

Even if the bill never passes, SPACs look to be starting a new chapter, given that the SEC is today concluding a 60-day public comment period on a number of its own proposed guidelines for SPACs, specifically around disclosures, marketing practices and third-party oversight.

As TechCrunch noted in a weekend look at numerous electric vehicle SPACs to flounder, if the SEC's rules are approved, the barrier of entry to going public via a SPAC will rise to the same level as companies choosing the more traditional IPO listing process, including to hold liable banks associated with SPACs for misstatements related to the merger. (To protect itself, Goldman Sachs has already said it's no longer working with most SPACs that it took public and pausing work with new SPAC issuance.)


It's not as if either initiative will abruptly stop SPACs in their tracks. They began losing momentum when the SEC warned in March 2021 that SPACs weren’t accounting correctly for investor incentives called warrants. Indeed, while 247 SPACs were closed in 2020, the majority of the SPACs closed in 2021 (a stunning 613 of them) came together in the first half of the year, before the SEC made it quite so plain that it planned to do more on the regulatory front.

Now those many blank-check companies need to find suitable targets in a market turned bearish, and the clock is ticking. Given that blank-check companies are typically expected to merge with a target company within 24 months of investors funding the SPAC, if those hundreds of SPACs can't complete mergers with candidate companies within the first half of next year, they'll either have to wind down (which can mean millions of lost dollars for SPAC sponsors) or else seek out shareholder approval for extensions.

It's even worse than it sounds. With the time between when a deal is announced to when the SEC has time to review it taking up to five months, according to SPACInsider founder Kristi Marvin, even SPACs that strike a deal tomorrow couldn't ask their shareholders to vote on it until roughly November.

In fact, while lawmakers and regulators seem late to the party, they're not too late to watch for unnatural acts as SPAC sponsors do everything in their power to get their deals completed.

Already, a number of SPAC sponsors has already begun to ask their shareholders for more time to get a deal done, some of them apparently hoping investors might warm again to the once-obscure financial vehicles. Magnum Opus, the SPAC that last August announced plans to take Forbes public, filed two deadline extensions this year. It would have needed to obtain its shareholders' approval for an extension yet again to keep the deal alive; instead, reports the New York Times, Forbes today scrubbed the deal.

Also bound to happen more: More redemptions that leave SPACs with far less cash on hand for their mergers, and more SPACs that announce target companies outside of their area of expertise.

Surf Air Mobility is a perfect example of both. A nearly 11-year-old electric aviation and air travel company in Los Angeles that operates via a membership model, it recently announced it would be going public via a merger with the SPAC Tuscan Holdings Corporation II.

Given that Tuscan was a little long in the tooth as SPACs go — it went public in 2019 -- it had to ask shareholders to approve an extension. Many backers instead redeemed their shares, shrinking the size of the capital pool Tuscan had to work with. Still, enough shareholders said yes to an extension that things are moving forward for now. Other SPACs might not be so lucky.

"A lot of SPACs will liquidate over the next two years," says Matthew Kennedy, a senior IPO strategist at Renaissance Capital. "I think shareholders are just looking at [the performance of companies taken public via SPACs] and saying, 'Why would I hold this if I have a four out of five chance of losing money?'"

Tuscan was also originally targeting -- but not limited to -- a company in the cannabis industry -- not a travel company. There's nothing legally wrong with that, underscores Marvin, noting that SPACs always feature boilerplate language about their efforts not being limited to a particular industry or geographic region. She also observes that it isn't the first SPAC to shop far outside its stated sector of interest.

Still, unexpected curveballs could further give investors pause when it comes to SPAC tie-ups.

Consider an earlier SPAC, Hunter Maritime, which came together in 2016 with the help of Morgan Stanley to acquire one or more operating businesses in the international maritime shipping industry, per its original prospectus. Three years later, it acquired a China-based wealth manager instead and rebranded. Today that combined company, NCF Wealth Holdings, is no longer a company.

Work-related stress creeps back in as employees return to office

Rachelle Akuffo

Wed, June 1, 2022, 

As employees begin returning to prior work routines after a COVID disruption, the same job-related stresses are creeping back in too.

A new survey from Future Forum found that work-related stress reached its highest level since the summer of 2020.

"We know that workers are struggling," Headspace CEO Russell Glass told Yahoo Finance Live (video above). "50% of millennial workers are saying they're contemplating leaving their job due to mental health issues. A third of the workplace is facing burnout right now."

A woman works on her computer as the first phase of FMC Corporation employees return to work in the office in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., June 14, 2021. REUTERS/Hannah Beier

One key source of stress may be inflexible policies now that worker expectations have shifted, according to Brian Elliott, Future Forum executive leader and "How the Future Works" co-author.

“Top talent expects that flexibility is a key part of their work going forward,” Elliott told Yahoo Finance Live. “In fact, flexibility is second only to compensation and people's consideration about where they want to be employed. And that's changing a lot about how people think about not only where, but when people work.”

Great Realization

Those unmet priorities of flexibility and compensation are among the reasons why the Great Resignation has transitioned into the Great Realization or Great Reshuffle, which is characterized by high rates of employee turnover.

A PwC survey found that 1 in 5 people plan to change jobs in the next year.

With a tight labor market, workers are finding that switching jobs increases their odds of securing higher pay. According to Lending Tree, people who started a new job that included relocation within the U.S. enjoyed an 11% jump in earnings — outpacing the 8.3% inflation rate.

But a willingness to leave a job for higher pay at another job isn't always a guarantee of less stress, Elliott noted.

“The grass is always greener on the other side when you join a new organization,” he said. “So thinking ahead about what are you going to get out of it, learning opportunities are really essential when we talk to people.”

For employers trying to navigate employee satisfaction and retain talent, Glass underscored that employee burnout "is now a business continuity issue, which means that businesses, boards, the executives have to be thinking about it."

Coaching company leadership to recognize and talk about mental health could help destigmatize the issue, he added.

A Google Android assistant demonstrating the features of a connected smart house at the Android Avenue during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) on March 3, 2022, in Barcelona, Spain. (Photo by Joan Cros/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

"We're all human. We all have these issues," Glass said. "So as executives, as leaders, talking about it helps everybody else talk about it."

Elliott suggested that implementing transparency around return-to-office policies can also incentivize workers to stay on.

“People who don't believe that their senior management is being open with them about their future work plans are four times more likely to tell us that they are definitely looking for new jobs,” he said.

“Instead of sitting there and saying, top-down, we're going to dictate what those rules look like, we realized the different teams have different needs," Elliott added. "So let's start with principles. Like, there are benefits to flexibility. So we're going to afford people the opportunity to work where and when it's best for them."

Rachelle Akuffo is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live.

Split on drug culture, Mexican ballads flourish in digital age

Agence France-Presse
June 03, 2022

Mexican ballad singer Vivir Quintana performs in Mexico City, on May 12, 2022 

CLAUDIO CRUZ AFP

With songs chronicling the lives of drug traffickers or railing against violence, a new generation of Mexican ballad singers are enjoying success and skirting censorship through digital platforms.

Abraham Vazquez, 22, and Vivir Quintana, 32, are two of the new faces of the "corrido" genre that emerged during the Mexican revolution of 1910-1917 to tell an alternative story to the official narrative.

Vazquez, originally from the northern state of Chihuahua, boasts 1.1 million listeners monthly on Spotify.

His rap-infused "narcocorrido" -- a ballad about drug traffickers -- "El de las dos pistolas" (The one with the two guns) has been played 52.8 million times on the digital music platform.

The video for the song exalts the world of gangsters with wads of dollars, guns, and women in a swimming pool. It has been viewed 27.7 million times on YouTube.

Fed up with her students listening to such songs, Quintana, a teacher from the northern state of Coahuila, turned to "anti-narcocorrido," which emerged five years ago, to denounce gender and criminal violence.
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She recently released "El corrido de Milo Vela" (The Ballad of Milo Vela) -- a tribute to journalist Miguel Angel Lopez, murdered in 2011 along with his wife and son in the eastern state of Veracruz.

"It was to replace drug traffickers with those who really defend the country, those who defend the truth... I think we're at a very critical moment," she told AFP, referring to the murders of 11 Mexican reporters this year alone.

Another of Quintana's songs, "Cancion sin Miedo" (Song without Fear), has become a feminist anthem.

Accused of being apologists for organized crime, narcocorrido singers have seen their songs banned in the states of Sinaloa, Baja California and Chihuahua, where punishments range from 36 hours' detention to fines of $20,000.

Even well-known bands have been punished, including norteno acts Los Tigres del Norte, who were fined in Chihuahua in 2012 and 2017, and Los Tucanes, who have been banned in Tijuana since 2008.

'Difficult to control'

The genre has flourished on digital platforms, which facilitate production, access and interaction between artists and audiences, researcher Juan Antonio Fernandez said.

"With the platforms, it's very difficult to control it because unfortunately young people see drug trafficking as an aspirational activity, where they can get easy money," he told AFP.

The genre's popularity is also helped by the rags-to-riches stories the songs tell.

"The imaginary drug trafficker goes from being an individual from a rural background -- growing drugs -- to be a more urbanized drug trafficker, more connected with today's youth," Fernandez said.

In 2019, during the Coachella festival in California, hundreds of boys danced with Los Tucanes wearing shirts with the image of Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman, the notorious drug lord imprisoned in the United States.

In the government's view, the narcocorridos -- three of whose performers have been murdered since 2006 -- promote gang culture and represent a "social risk" that must be tackled, Fernandez said.

But Teodoro Bello, a veteran composer of famous Los Tigres del Norte songs, rejects the label as he considers it stigmatizing.

For him, there is only the corrido genre.

His 1997 song "Jefe de Jefes" (Boss of bosses) performed by Los Tigres del Norte was thought to have been inspired by Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, a major cartel boss in the 1980s.

But, Bello told AFP, "'the boss of bosses' is the one who is the best in his profession: a doctor, a lawyer or even a journalist."

Despite the flirtation with crime, even President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador plays songs by Los Tigres del Norte at his daily news conference. He says one reason is to refute comments by Texas Governor Greg Abbott on immigration.

© 2022 AFP

NO CAN DO

Net zero is ‘biggest challenge’ for aviation: Etihad CEO


An engineer walks near an Etihad Airways aircraft at Abu Dhabi International Airport. (Reuters)

AFP, Abu Dhabi
Published: 24 May ,2022

Etihad Airways chief Tony Douglas said Tuesday achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 poses the “biggest challenge” for commercial aviation, in a reality check for the industry.

Last year, the International Air Transport Association pledged carbon neutrality by 2050, which is also a target of the United Arab Emirates and several other countries.

“The biggest challenge to commercial aviation is the commitment that’s been made to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050,” the Abu Dhabi-based airline’s CEO told the Global Aerospace Summit in the UAE capital.

“As a gentleman of more mature years, it’s very easy for me and others to sign up to something like that, almost with the anticipation that it will be the next generation who has the responsibility to deliver upon that commitment.”

The aviation industry is among the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gases, with airlines looking at hydrogen-fueled aircraft to reduce CO2 emissions.

IATA, which represents 290 airlines accounting for 83 percent of global air traffic, made its net-zero pledge in October.

The UAE, one of the world’s biggest oil exporters, last year also launched a “strategic initiative” targeting carbon neutrality by 2050.

“I imagine everybody in this room understands that the physics of powered flight render the achievement of that objective (net zero) extremely difficult anytime soon,” Douglas said at the three-day conference.

“Our responsibility as leaders within the aerospace sector is to enable the foundations for the next generation to deliver upon what will ultimately determine who are the winners and who are the losers in commercial aviation.”

'This is racist terrorism': Ex-Buffalo cop says gun violence and white supremacy must both be addressed

Amy Goodman,

 Democracy Now!
June 04, 2022

Police on scene at a Tops Friendly Market on May 14, 2022, in Buffalo, New York, where 10 people were killed in a racist-fueled shooting. - John Normile/Getty Images North America/TNS

As President Biden calls on Congress to enact new gun control measures, we go to Buffalo to speak with Cariol Horne, a racial justice advocate and former Buffalo police officer. She says the nation must address white supremacy, as well as gun control, following last month’s massacre in Buffalo, when a white supremacist attacked a grocery story, fatally shooting 10 people, all of whom were Black. “He victimized everyone in that community, even the people who arrived on the scene after it happened and watched the carnage that he left behind,” says Horne. “This is racist terrorism. We have to call it what it is.” Horne also talks about how she was fired from the Buffalo police force for stopping a white officer from choking a Black man who was handcuffed.



This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: In a rare primetime speech from the White House, President Biden called on Congress Thursday to ban assault weapons and expand background checks. Biden condemned the recent massacres in Buffalo, New York; Uvalde, Texas; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: For god’s sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept? How many more innocent American lives must be taken before we say “enough”? Enough. I know that we can’t prevent every tragedy. But here’s what I believe we have to do. Here’s what the overwhelming majority of the American people believe we must do. Here’s what the families in Buffalo and Uvalde, in Texas, told us we must do.

We need to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines — and if we can’t ban assault weapons, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21 — strengthen background checks, enact safe storage law and red flag laws, repeal the immunity that protects gun manufacturers from liability, address the mental health crisis deepening the trauma of gun violence and as a consequence of that violence. These are rational, commonsense measures.


AMY GOODMAN: Shortly after President Biden spoke, the House Judiciary Committee passed a package of gun control measures known as the Protecting Our Kids Act. The full House will likely pass the legislation next week, but Republicans are expected to use the filibuster to reject the bills in the Senate.

We go now to Buffalo, New York, which is still in mourning after the May 14th massacre, when an 18-year-old white supremacist shot dead 10 Black people in a supermarket in the heart of Buffalo’s African American community. On Wednesday, the gunman was indicted on 25 counts, including domestic terrorism and murder as a hate crime. He pleaded not guilty. It was the first time that domestic terrorism charge was used in New York state history.

We’re joined right now by Cariol Horne. She’s a community organizer and racial justice advocate in Buffalo. She’s also a former Buffalo police officer. In 2008, she was fired from Buffalo’s police force after an incident two years earlier when she stopped a white police officer from choking a handcuffed Black man during an arrest. Last year a New York court vindicated Horne, making her eligible for back pay and pension benefits.

Cariol Horne, welcome back to Democracy Now! Our condolences on what has befallen your community, this horrific domestic terrorist attack. Can you start off by talking about where you were when the mass shooting took place? And describe what’s happened in Buffalo since.

CARIOL HORNE: I was at a meeting talking about the violence in our area. I actually was on my way to that meeting. I had just left my daughter’s graduation. And when I got to the meeting, I let, you know, one of the advocates that I work with — let him know what was going on as far as the shooting, the information that I had gotten.

We left that meeting and went over to the scene, where there were, like, bodies in the parking lot, a lot of chaos. People did not know where their loved ones were. The police didn’t seem to really — they weren’t communicating with each other. So, it was chaos. So I just tried to do what I could as far as a citizen, as a concerned person, a person who goes to that store, just a concerned community person. I tried to be like a buffer between the police and the people who were looking for their loved ones. The police wanted people to move. The families wanted to know if their loved ones were OK. And so, you know, eventually, there was a school that was opened for them to go to where they were finding out if their loved ones were in there or if they had been one of the victims.

AMY GOODMAN: Cariol Horne, I wanted to ask you about the white supremacist gunman, 18 years old, who has now just been charged for murdering the 10 people at the Tops supermarket. Again, he, on Wednesday, was indicted on 25 counts, including domestic terrorism and murder as a hate crime, the first time a domestic terror law has ever been used in New York. Can you respond to the charges? He pled not guilty.

CARIOL HORNE: Well, 25 charges were not enough. He victimized everyone in that community, even the people who arrived on the scene after it happened and watched the carnage that he left behind. In our community, we were already open targets, because a lot of people in the community have been banned from having weapons themselves, which I think that if we are banned from having weapons, then everyone should be banned from having weapons. I really don’t understand why someone would need a high-powered weapon in the first place. A lot of times they use the excuse of going hunting. Well, when you’re hunting people, I think that you need to just ban the weapons altogether. There is no reason why someone should have to have a high-powered weapon like that. And by the way, I have not been vindicated yet, so I don’t have a pension yet.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean? What happened in your case?

CARIOL HORNE: In my case, the decision to fire me was overturned, but I have not received a pension.

AMY GOODMAN: And what would it take to get one?

CARIOL HORNE: It would take them to issue a check.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you — I mean, your story is so incredible, in 2008, fired after you had stopped a fellow white officer — again, you’re a former Buffalo police officer. You stopped him from putting a Black man who was in handcuffs in a chokehold, and it was you who was fired. But I wanted to ask you about President Biden’s visit to Buffalo. He denounced the attack as an act of domestic terrorism and described white supremacy as a poison. You were among at least 200 people who gathered at a rally, leading the crowd in chants while calling for law enforcement to let Robin Gary inside the center where Biden was speaking — Robin Gary, who the shooter had put a gun to their head. Explain what happened.

CARIOL HORNE: Well, she begged for the life of her daughter. And instead of killing her, he did put the hot gun that he had just killed other people with to her head. At some point, she’ll be able to tell you her story herself. So, yeah, I want to respect that she’s not ready to talk about it yet.

But at the same time, you know, this is racist terrorism. We have to call it what it is. We have to deal with the race issue. We have to deal with the hate issue. We have it in the police department also — racism and, as far as I’m concerned, terrorism — because we saw them — when I say “them,” I mean the Buffalo police — they arrested the racist terrorist with no problems whatsoever, but then you have Black men dying at the hands of the police, and they have no weapon at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you something. The Justice Department has announced it’s going to require federal agents to intervene if they see other law enforcement officers using excessive force — the first update to the DOJ’s use-of-force policy in nearly two decades. I mean, it sounds similar to exactly what you did back more than 15 years ago. Your response?

CARIOL HORNE: Yeah, so, the law that I wrote, Cariol’s Law, I wrote it in around 2015, 2016, and it was implemented in the city of Buffalo. Cariol’s Law, duty to intervene, which has six components — you can go to CariolsLaw.com — it needs to be a federal law. And there needs to be a federal registry, so that officers won’t go from one department to another department when they have exhibited bad behavior.

AMY GOODMAN: Are you encouraged by what the DOJ is doing? Of course, this only applies to federal agents. It wouldn’t apply to state or local police.

CARIOL HORNE: I am, but it should be all across the board. It should be a federal law. It should be a federal registry.

AMY GOODMAN: Your final comment, Cariol Horne? It is unbelievable to think that Buffalo attack just happened, the massacre there of 10 African Americans, more than half of them grandmothers, in the Tops supermarket, then Uvalde happens, but there were many in between. There have been dozens of mass shootings since Buffalo. You’re a former police officer. The issue of an assault weapons ban, can you talk directly about this, and the myth that police officers are, you know, for people carrying guns, that you’re a former officer who feels assault weapons ban is important?

CARIOL HORNE: Well, I don’t think that those officers in Texas thought that people should carry assault weapons, because they didn’t go into that school. And I don’t believe that anyone should carry an assault weapon. There’s no reason to, unless you want to slaughter a lot of people at one time.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Cariol Horne, I want to thank you for being with us, Buffalo, New York, community organizer, racial justice advocate, remarkably brave former Buffalo police officer who tried to stop a white cop from choking a handcuffed Black man during an arrest in 2006. She was fired in 2008.

'Originalism' and other Supreme nonsense: How the right-wing justices rationalize mass murder

Kirk Swearingen,

 Salon
June 03, 2022

Amy Coney Barrett (AFP)

When I moved to New York City in 1981, I first stayed at the YMCA, and every day I encountered street hustlers on 34th Street, taking people's money with the shell game. You know how it goes: A pea or a little ball is placed under one of three cups and moved around rapidly; you are enticed to bet on where it ends up. (And after the first "lucky" guess, you are invariably wrong.)

I've been thinking about those shell games because of the endless, reverent talk of "textualism" and "originalism" by conservative, Federalist Society–approved justices on the Supreme Court.

It was Justice Antonin Scalia who first articulated a handy way to expand "gun rights" beyond any reasonable limits, and to render our Constitution as dead as any of the innumerable victims of American gun violence — in the process, going against the explicit wishes of some of the most prominent members of the founding generation, ounders, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In the 2008 Heller decision, which somehow blithely dispensed with the whole "well regulated Militia" thing, and in various of his writings, Scalia outlined the right-wing constitutional interpretation now known as "textualism" or "originalism."

RELATED: Did the Supreme Court just become "political"? God, no — it's always been that way

"Strict construction "— meaning an absolutely literal reading of the Constitution or of a statute — was supported by conservatives until it received too much criticism. That clenched-sphincter dodge was then replaced by "textualism" and later "originalism," both of which, more or less, allow a judge just a bit more interpretive leeway. Then there are the different kinds of originalism — one that seeks to divine the writer's original intent, and another that looks at original meaning, as supposedly understood by reasonable people at the time of the writing. Failing that, originalists, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who formerly clerked for Scalia, will detour into a "common-law Constitution" (or "living Constitution") and wander through English common law, historical documents and even favored philosophers until they find what they're looking for.

I don my tricorn hat and declare this "poppycock."

Historian Heather Cox Richardson has detailed, referring specifically to Barrett, how conservative justices have used this interpretive technique to limit the powers of the federal government and reverse the gains made since World War II in regulating business activities or and in expanding civil and women's rights:

The originalism of scholars like Barrett is an answer to the judges who, in the years after World War Two, interpreted the law to make American democracy live up to its principles, making all Americans equal before the law. With the New Deal in the 1930s, the Democrats under Franklin Delano Roosevelt had set out to level the economic playing field between the wealthy and ordinary Americans. They regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure.

And what about all of our nation's current problems, ones the founders could not possibly have anticipated? The simple algorithm for textualists and originalists appears to be: 1) If the founders didn't write explicitly about it, then we don't need to know about it, because the Founders were godlike and are still totally pertinent; 2) If the founders did write about it but were vague in their expression, we'll consult English common law or our fave-rave philosophers (e.g., Plato, Edmund Burke) for answers, because, well, everyone knows the founders were in a big hurry and often imbibed too much cider.

In other words, it's a rigged game in which you cherry-pick whatever quotes seem to support the decisions you are determined to make anyway. We all try to fight confirmation bias when we go searching for evidence in other people's writings. Even a journalist writing an opinion piece with a solid point of view needs, at least, to appear reasonable to the other side, to state facts clearly, to link to reputable sources and to outline or otherwise anticipate the likely objections.

So with that in mind: The argument made by conservatives for textualism and originalism is that they comply with the separation of powers: Only the legislative branch makes the law, and the judicial branch interprets it. Which would all be elegant and true in a fully functioning republic.

But Republicans have declared war, at least since the era of Ronald Reagan, on government itself, so making laws to address public needs has become anathema to those who want only to "starve the beast" or, in Grover Norquist's troubling and violent metaphor, "drown it in the bathtub" and thereby send power back to individual states. So here we are, with only one functioning political party, while the other is enthralled with nonexistent voter fraud and other wacko conspiracy theories, harboring a growing devotion to authoritarian leaders, and doing anything possible — including flouting public health rules — to "own the libs." And now that unreasonable minority has supermajority control of the highest court in the land.

Republicans steadfastly refuse to make laws that address issues of grave public concern — such as regulating gun ownership, for example — because they are deeply invested in proving that our form of government cannot or does not work. That perverse effort has been in play for so long now that Republicans reflexively try to cast themselves as the victims and make tragedies like mass shootings further alienate Americans from one another, insisting that nothing can be done because sowing that sense of helplessness and isolation far and wide yields short-term political benefits for them.

Remember the Obama signs that said "HOPE," which Republicans countered with "NOPE"? They meant it. They told us then that they were the party that stood for hopelessness.

As least as they're utilized now by emboldened right-wing judges, both textualism and originalism are merely august-sounding forms of judicial obstructionism or revanchism.

Despite the Heller ruling, any good-faith textualist reading of the Second Amendment would instantly reveal that the so-called right to bear arms depends on the continuing need for a well-regulated militia, an observation made by previous Supreme Court justices and other legal minds much more qualified than I am. But even a dope like me can read the plain meaning of the text: The second part of that 27-word statement is dependent on the first part. It's a conditional clause. If the first part is not true or no longer valid, the rest does not stand.

But, again, the so-called originalists will, from time to time, allow themselves to delve deeper and find their justifications wherever they can, in order to get that pea under the shell where they knew it would wind up from the beginning.

Even if you steadfastly don't want to believe that, then ask the question so many people have asked about the Buffalo shooter, the Uvalde shooter, the Tulsa shooter and the dozens or scores of others: Which well-regulated militia were they members of?

Scalia often wrote about the need for a "reasonable" interpretation of the Constitution, and that is exactly what has been abandoned, especially in his own on-the-fly remix of the Second Amendment.

The entire world sees it as it is, absurd and monstrous. If the United States is going to act as the "muscle" around the globe, we seriously need to get over our fake tough-guy fetish and our "exceptionalism" and learn from what works in other developed or even developing countries, where these kinds of mass shootings simply do not happen. The U.K. managed to quell gun violence after suffering tragedies, and now has a very low rate of homicide (0.04 per 100,000 people) relative to the U.S. (nearly 4 per 100,000). Australia and Ireland have done the same. Canada stands poised to ban assault-style weapons and limit ownership of handguns. Speaking of Heller and the "right" to own a handgun in the home, more than half the gun deaths in the U.S. result from suicide, because having a gun in the house makes suicide attempts far more likely to be lethal.

In this particular shell game, Americans lose more than pocket money — they lose many hard-won rights, environmental regulation and consumer protection, almost any action on the existential threat of climate change and their freedom to feel safe, for themselves and their loved ones, in public places.

In a 2018 New York Times op-ed, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens urged post-Parkland protesters to do more than fight for gun regulation. He wrote that they should "seek more effective and more lasting reform" and work for a repeal of the Second Amendment. In his view, the amendment was originally intended only as a stopgap measure:

Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that "a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed." Today that concern is a relic of the 18th century.

My wife and I got to see our daughters finish elementary school and move on to middle school. My wife worked at their elementary school, and made lovely videos to commemorate those graduations to the next level. It breaks our hearts that the parents of all the children slain in the name of preposterous policies allowing for easy access to guns and assault weapons — or, for that matter, the parents who have lost a child to suicide made more efficient by a gun in the house — will never experience the joys and pains of seeing their kids grow up and become amazing adult versions of the beautiful children they once were.

But there are more guns to sell, more "patriotic" lobbyists trying to make a buck, more "pro-life" politicians to bribe, and a population that needs to be constantly reminded that government cannot work. (Especially when the Biden administration, in numerous ways, is proving that it can. Even Fox News admits to some positives.)

At the moment, the Supreme Court looks primed to strike down an eminently reasonable, century-old law in New York that regulates who can carry a handgun in public. So much for all the talk about being reasonable and including notions of fairness and good policy in decisions. Or even precedent — a once-cherished concept, now tossed to the wind.

They want you to listen up when you are told that, after the prayers, we will move on from this tragedy.

As gun fanatics continue to make increasingly absurd and often revealing arguments about who or what is to blame for the endless slaughter of their fellow Americans, of even schoolchildren, people of good faith in this country need to do everything we can to quell the gun violence. Public health campaigns are important, as are "red-flag" laws and regulations of semiautomatic weapons. But ultimately, Justice Stevens' solution will probably be necessary: The Second Amendment has to go.

Why the mystery hepatitis in children may have been here all along

2022/6/2 
© The Philadelphia Inquirer

LIFE-HEALTH-CHILDREN-HEPATITIS-DMT. - 

Dreamstime/Dreamstime/TNS

PHILADELPHIA — The children typically show up at hospitals scattered across the country, one or two at a time, with symptoms like unexplained vomiting, diarrhea and jaundice. These are the classic signs of hepatitis — inflammation of the liver — yet in many cases, no cause is ever identified.

That's why the nation's disease detectives are so intrigued by the evidence emerging from more than 200 pediatric hepatitis cases dating back to October, including a handful from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

Close to half of the children, including an initial nine identified in Alabama, tested positive for an adenovirus — a type of virus not normally associated with hepatitis.

It's possible that the virus has been responsible all along for many of the cases for which no cause is ever identified, CDC officials said at a briefing. An investigation remains underway, in cooperation with officials in 32 other countries where cases have been reported. As of Friday, 650 cases are under investigation worldwide, the World Health Organization said.

The CDC also is investigating whether some sort of "co-factor" is involved, causing the children to become sicker from the adenovirus than would otherwise be the case. Among the early possibilities considered: the virus that causes COVID-19.

And investigators are looking for other possible causes of the hepatitis, such exposure to drugs, toxins, or food, but so far an adenovirus infection remains a leading theory, said Jay Butler, the CDC's deputy director for infectious diseases. The unusual cluster last fall in Alabama was the first clue.

"This is the type of shoe-leather epidemiology that our disease detectives are trained to do," he said.

Six of the U.S. children died, and 15 have needed liver transplants, whereas symptoms were moderate or mild in the rest. The CDC did not specify where the six deaths occurred in order to protect patient privacy, agency officials said.

St. Christopher's Hospital for Children has reported two cases to the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, said Janet Chen, section chief of infectious diseases at the North Philadelphia hospital. She noted that the likelihood that COVID plays a role in the unknown hepatitis seems to be weakening. But it's too soon to rule it out entirely.

"If the last two years have taught us anything, COVID is involved in a lot of things," she said.

The liver is a complex organ, ridding the body of toxins while making other substances that are essential for survival, among them proteins used in clotting blood. The organ also is involved in producing cholesterol, and it stores energy in the form of glucose.

Hepatitis is a catchall term for inflammation in the organ. And while other viruses are known to cause it (the hepatitis viruses A, B, and C are the most common), adenoviruses have been implicated only in cases where the child's immune system is compromised.

The unusual cluster last fall in Alabama pointed epidemiologists in the direction of the adenovirus.

In cases where the virus could be subjected to genetic testing, labs have identified a specific type called adenovirus 41.

For children whose samples are no longer available for viral testing, the other case details are still valuable in establishing the scope of disease, said Jim Squires, an associate professor of pediatrics in the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

That hospital has identified several such cases that meet the CDC's broad definition for inclusion: children in whom a type of liver enzyme was elevated, he said.

"It's getting a denominator of how many cases are out there," said.

Still, Squires agreed with CDC officials that the adenovirus was a possible culprit in the recent cases.

Yet uncertainty remains. Generally, the adenovirus was not found in the children's livers, but in their blood.

As more and more hepatitis cases have been identified, COVID is looking less likely as a contributing factor. The percentage of cases in children who turned out to have a recent or current infection with the coronavirus has dipped below 20%, the CDC's Butler said.

If the adenovirus turns out to be the prime culprit, it could, in theory, be prevented with the same tool we've used against COVID: a vaccine.

A vaccine that protects against two other types of adenoviruses is recommended for members of the U.S. military, though no adenovirus vaccine is on the recommended schedule for children.

"I think everything's on the table," said Chen, of St. Christopher's Hospital for Children. "We have to kind of wait and see how this plays out."

Experts are terrified that 'genetic paparazzi' are right around the corner

The Conversation
June 03, 2022

Image: DNA molecules (Shutterstock.com)

Every so often stories of genetic theft, or extreme precautions taken to avoid it, make headline news. So it was with a picture of French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin sitting at opposite ends of a very long table after Macron declined to take a Russian PCR COVID-19 test. Many speculated that Macron refused due to security concerns that the Russians would take and use his DNA for nefarious purposes. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz similarly refused to take a Russian PCR COVID-19 test.

While these concerns may seem relatively new, pop star celebrity Madonna has been raising alarm bells about the potential for nonconsensual, surreptitious collection and testing of DNA for over a decade. She has hired cleaning crews to sterilize her dressing rooms after concerts and requires her own new toilet seats at each stop of her tours.

At first, Madonna was ridiculed for having DNA paranoia. But as more advanced, faster and cheaper genetic technologies have reached the consumer realm, these concerns seem not only reasonable, but justified.

We are law professors who study how emerging technologies like genetic sequencing are regulated. We believe that growing public interest in genetics has increased the likelihood that genetic paparazzi with DNA collection kits may soon become as ubiquitous as ones with cameras.

While courts have for the most part managed to evade dealing with the complexities of surreptitious DNA collection and testing of public figures, they won’t be able to avoid dealing with it for much longer. And when they do, they are going to run squarely into the limitations of existing legal frameworks when it comes to genetics.

Genetic information troves

You leave your DNA behind you everywhere you go. The strands of hair, fingernails, dead skin and saliva you shed as you move through your day are all collectible trails of DNA.

Genetic analysis can reveal not only personal information, such as existing health conditions or risk for developing certain diseases, but also core aspects of a person’s identity, such as their ancestry and the potential traits of their future children. In addition, as genetic technologies continue to evolve, fears about using surreptitiously collected genetic material for reproductive purposes via in vitro gametogenesis become more than just paranoia.

In vitro gametogenesis (IVG), while still in development, could allow prospective parents to create egg or sperm from other parts of the body, like skin.

Ultimately, taking an individaul’s genetic material and information without their consent is an intrusion into a legal domain that is still considered deeply personal. Despite this, there are few laws protecting the interests of individuals regarding their genetic material and information.

Existing legal frameworks

When disputes involving genetic theft from public figures inevitably reach the courtroom, judges will need to confront fundamental questions about how genetics relates to personhood and identity, property, health and disease, intellectual property and reproductive rights. Such questions have already been raised in cases involving the use of genetics in law enforcement, the patentability of DNA and ownership of discarded genetic materials.

In each of these cases, courts focused on only one dimension of genetics, such as privacy rights or the value of genetic information for biomedical research. But this limited approach disregards other aspects, such as the privacy of family members with shared genetics, or property and identity interests someone may have in genetic material discarded as part of a medical procedure.

In the case of genetic paparazzi, courts will presumably try to fit complex questions about genetics into the legal framework of privacy rights because this is how they have approached other intrusions into the lives of public figures in the past.

Modern U.S. privacy law is a complex web of state and federal regulations governing how information can be acquired, accessed, stored and used. The right to privacy is limited by First Amendment protections on the freedom of speech and press, as well as Fourth Amendment prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizure. Public figures face further restrictions on their privacy rights because they are objects of legitimate public interest. On the other hand, they also have publicity rights that control the commercial value of their unique personally identifying traits.

People whose genetic material has been taken without their consent may also raise a claim of conversion that their property has been interfered with and lost. Courts in Florida are currently considering a conversion claim in a private dispute where the former CEO of Marvel Entertainment and his wife accused a millionaire businessman of stealing their DNA to prove that they were slandering him through a hate-mail campaign. This approach replaces the narrow legal framework of privacy with an even narrower framework of property, reducing genetics to an object that someone possesses.

What the future may hold

Under existing laws and the current state of genetic technology, most people don’t need to worry about surreptitious collection and use of genetic material in the way that public figures might. But genetic paparazzi cases will likely play an important role in determining what rights everyone else will or will not have.

The U.S. Supreme Court is very unlikely to recognize new rights, or even affirm previously recognized rights, that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Therefore, at least at the federal level, individual protections for genetic material and information are not likely to adapt to changing times.

This means that cases involving genetics are likely to fall within the purview of state legislatures and courts. But none of the states have adequately grappled with the complexities of genetic legal claims. Even in states with laws specifically designed to protect genetic privacy, regulations cover only a narrow range of genetic interests. Some laws, for example, may prohibit disclosure of genetic information, but not collection.

For better or for worse, how the courts rule in genetic paparazzi cases will shape how society thinks about genetic privacy and about individual rights regarding genetics more broadly.


By Liza Vertinsky, Professor of Law, University of Maryland 

Yaniv Heled, Associate Professor of Law, Georgia State University


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

QAnon Queen of Canada Now Claims to Be Queen of the World

The QAnon "leader", who's been touring Canada relentlessly, is increasingly demanding her followers force her many decrees upon the world.

By Mack Lamoureux
TORONTO, CA
June 2, 2022,

ROMANA DIDULO SALUTES HER FOLLOWERS WHILE SURROUNDED BY KINGDOM OF CANADA FLAGS. PHOTO VIA TELEGRAM.


A QAnon influencer some people believe to be the true Queen of Canada took a quick break from her monthslong tour of the country to announce her intentions to go global.

“The entire team was privileged to hear Queen Romana speak to the United States Commander and Chief via telephone and hear the intel disclosed. Wait for it…. ” Romana Didulo’s press secretary told followers before taking a dramatic pause.

“Queen Romana is the leader of the world!”

ROMANA DIDULO AND THE FOLLOWERS WHO CAME OUT TO SEE HER DURING A RECENT MEET AND GREET IN A QUEBEC TOWN. PHOTO VIA TELEGRAM.

Speaking in a Quebec campground parking lot on May 24, in front of a massive purple Queen Romana decal (which features a sword bifurcating a maple leaf) on Didulo’s new RV, the press secretary said this was a big development for the burgeoning leader, one that would bring them legitimacy, and she urged those who follow Didulo to stand up for their queen.

“Queen Romana has done all of the heavy lifting, and now it is up to ‘we the people’ to stand in our authority and put these decrees into place,” she told her followers. ”The only visible leader on this planet is her royal majesty Queen Romana, period, and that’s a mic drop.”

Didulo grew out of the online QAnon movement—which believes there is a secret war being fought against the elites—and has garnered a not-insignificant following by actually inserting herself in the real world created by this conspiracy. For months now, Didulo and a rotating cast of characters have been crisscrossing the country in a convoy—which they call their “mobile government”—building her community offline by meeting followers at almost every stop they make. They’re on the tail end of their second loop of the second-largest country in the world, as gas prices have reached record highs.

Didulo has issued, as of this week, 79 decrees. For the most part, the decrees have had little real-world impact, such as declaring Victoria, British Columbia (where she resides when not in the RV) the capital of Canada, and raising the age of consent to 24, although some followers bristled at that.

However, some of these decrees take a darker tone, especially concerning since many followers appear to take them quite seriously. One of them involves clearing out all refugees and immigrants at a crossing in Quebec that’s a hot-button issue for the far-right (Didulo just visited the crossing in her RV) or that “publishing slanderous articles concerning Queen Romana Didulo of the Kingdom” will result in an immediate 30-year prison sentence. Didulo has also in the past urged her followers to take violent action against those facilitating vaccines for children. While she has recently softened her tone, Didulo's past rhetoric veered into the realm of violence.

"We're not putting up with this garbage anymore," wrote one excited follower on a Telegram channel devoted to Didulo. "Queen Romana did the heavy lifting and we have to take over and finish this!"



DIDULO'S RV CONVOY AT A RECENT STOP. PHOTO VIA TELEGRAM.

When Didulo speaks, many of her followers listen. One follower was arrested after posting a threat against his daughter's school for giving out vaccines after Didulo said it was time to take action. Experts have told VICE World News a select few of her followers may go to extremes to further their beliefs. Some of her followers appear to be unwell and post frequently about how they believe they are actually in a war with the elites.

Didulo’s followers suffer for their allegiance to their queen. Some stopped paying their utility bills after she announced the bills were unethical and instructed them to pull all utility companies off their online banking payee lists. Those who listened to her now say they’re being hounded by debt collectors, and in some extreme cases, are having their power or water shut off. Some, blaming the capitalist system for their woes, are begging Didulo for help in turning their power back on or making people believe.

“Queen Romana. It is time you show your authority to the MSM NOW," wrote one. "I agree that it is time to enforce your decrees Canada-wide and take out the fake Trudeau from his office. We the people are trying to enforce the decrees with little success.”

Things have gotten to the point in the community where they are circulating a generic letter to send to utility companies to demand they turn their power, water, or internet back on. One woman, who pushes others to follow Didulo’s decrees, posted an image from a bank showing she had racked up $47,000 on a personal credit line and is frustrated they won’t listen to the Didulo videos she sends them. Other followers have posted they’ve suffered in other ways for their devotion to their Queen. One woman, who said she walked away from her partner and comfortable life is about to move into her car, shared an email she was sent from her brother.

“Please think this through. What happens when your back pain becomes unbearable and you have no meds? Promise me you won't turn to street drugs,” it reads. “(Your partner) misses you but felt he needed to break up because you are listening to some phoney cult online."

Are you a follower or a former follower, or do you have a loved one who follows Romana Didulo? We would love to hear your story. You can get in touch with Mack Lamoureux at mack.lamoureux@vice.com.

One thing that Didulo does believe her followers need to pay for, however, is her new RV she has dubbed QR1. The RV reportedly cost $65,000 and Didulo and her entourage are insisting her followers pay it off. So far, Didulo's press secretary said they’ve been able to raise $12,000. As always, some of her followers jumped at the opportunity to help their queen. Followers have posted images of them sending money to the person on Didulo’s “staff” who handles finances .Didulo herself posted a screenshot from one follower who sent her $3,500 US for the RV.

“Accepted... and done,” one follower replied to a call for donations. “I wish I could donate more but have been out of work since Nov. 2021.”

Follow Mack Lamoureux on Twitter.