'Russia helped elect Donald Trump': GOP strategist calls out Republicans over Ukraine

David McAfee
September 30, 2023 

U.S. President Donald Trump and Russia's President Vladimir Putin talk during the family photo session at the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam November 11, 2017. REUTERS/Jorge Silva

Numerous Republican lawmakers are wrongly supporting Donald Trump and Russian interests over Ukraine and American democracy, Stuart Stevens, Chief Strategist of Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, said on Saturday.

Stevens, who appeared on CNN's The Source with Kaitlan Collins earlier this month and said Mitch McConnell was wrong about Republicans who secretly hate Trump but can't voice that concern, said today's Republican legislators are veering off course and that voters would be better off supporting President Joe Biden in the upcoming election.

Stevens began by saying Russia "helped elect" Trump in 2016.

"Today the party that once was the most consistent antagonist of Soviet Union/Russia is the home of the large and growing pro-Putin element of American politics," Stevens said, adding that Biden "is in the role that represents the best of America: leading a coalition to fight tyranny and genocide."

The strategist added:

"If Ronald Reagan were president today, he would do the same," he said. "If you care about liberty and the defense of freedom, if you believe it is wrong to stand by while thousands of children are kidnapped and a tyrant sends an army of rapists and murderers to prey on the innocent, you have one choice in this election: support" Biden.

Stevens further encouraged everyone to "stand with" the President.

"There is no neutral position on confronting an evil unlike any we have seen since WW2. To do nothing is to help the evil spread. Stand with freedom. Stand with human dignity. Stand with Ukraine."

Libertarianism and why Republicans embrace cruelty

Thom Hartmann
September 30, 2023

Ronald Reagan (Edalisse Hirst/Flickr)

Last night was the Republican debate, where we heard lots of predictable rants about crushing the “welfare state” and restoring “freedom” and “self-reliance.”

So, once again, why are Republicans so cruel and why do they seem so fond of libertarianism? Why does Greg Abbott put razor wire in the Rio Grande river? Why does Donald Trump target people for assassination by his followers? Why does Ron DeSantis revel in keeping tens of thousands of low-income Florida children from getting Medicaid?

Yesterday, I laid out the terrible impact Libertarian policies, which have infected the GOP for five decades, have had on the United States. But where did the whole idea of libertarianism come from, and who started the Libertarian Party?

Get ready for a wild ride as we do a deep dive into America’s most bizarre (and phony) political party.

How is it that Republicans so often embrace casual cruelty like tearing mothers from their children or throwing pregnant women in poverty off public assistance? Why have 12 GOP-controlled states refused to this day to expand Medicaid for their 30 million minimum-wage working people when the federal government covers 90 percent of the cost?

Why are Republicans so committed to destroying Medicare and Social Security? Why do they go so far as to use the disrespectful slur “Democrat Party” when there’s no such a thing in America and never has been?

Why are Democratic members of Congress having to armor their own homes, having received over 9000 death threats so far this year, virtually all of them from domestic terrorists who Republicans refuse to repudiate? The FBI still is looking for a Matt Gaetz supporter who threatened to murder Gaetz’s Democratic opponent: why are these people attracted to the GOP?

It turns out this is not just politics; the roots of this brutal movement in today’s GOP run from a 1927 child murderer, through a greedy real-estate lobbying group, to Ronald Reagan putting both of their philosophies into actual practice and bringing morbidly rich rightwing billionaires into the GOP fold.

As a result, Republican policies over the past 42 years not only gutted America’s middle class and transferred $50 trillion from working people to the top 1 percent, but also led straight to the Trump presidency and the attack on the Capitol on January 6th that he led.

The Libertarians

Reporter Mark Ames documents how, back in the 1940s, a real estate lobbying group came up with the idea of creating a new political party to justify deregulating the real estate and finance industries so they could make more money.

This new “Libertarian Party” would give an ideological and political cover to their goal of becoming government-free, and they developed an elaborate pretense of governing philosophy around it.

Their principal argument was that if everybody acted separately and independently, in all cases with maximum selfishness, such behavior would actually benefit society. There would be no government needed beyond an army and a police force, and a court system to defend the rights of property owners. It was a bizarre twisting of Adam Smith’s reference to the “invisible hand” that regulated trade among nations.

In 1980, billionaire David Koch ran for vice president on the newly formed Libertarian Party ticket.

His platform included calls to privatize the Post Office, end all public schools, give Medicare and Medicaid to big insurance companies, end all taxation of the morbidly rich, terminate food and housing support and all other forms of “welfare,” deregulate all corporate oversight while shutting down the EPA and FDA, and selling off much of the federal government’s land and other assets to billionaires and big corporations.

Reagan, who won that 1980 election, embraced this view in his inaugural address, saying, “[G]overnment is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” He then doubled down on the idea by beginning the systematic process of gutting and crippling governmental institutions that historically had supported working people and the middle class.

The child-killer who inspired a movement

Reagan wasn’t just echoing the Libertarian vision; he was also endorsing Ayn Rand’s “objectivist” view of the world, which traces its roots to a murderous psychopath in 1927.

Back in 2015, Donald Trump told USA Today’s Kirsten Powers that his favorite book was Ayn Rand’s raped-girl-decides-she-likes-it novel, “The Fountainhead.”

“It relates to business, beauty, life and inner emotions,” he told Powers. “That book relates to … everything.”

Ayn Rand’s novels have informed libertarian Republicans like former Speaker of the House of Representatives and current Fox News board member Paul Ryan, who required interns to read her books when they joined his staff.

Powers added, “He [Trump],” told her that he “identified with Howard Roark, the protagonist who designs skyscrapers and rages against the establishment.”

Rand’s hero Roark, in fact, “raged” so much in her novel that he blew up a public housing project with dynamite.

Rand, in her Journals, explained where she got her inspiration for Howard Roark and the leading male characters in so many of her other novels. She writes that the theme of The Fountainhead, for example, is:

“One puts oneself above all and crushes everything in one’s way to get the best for oneself.”

On Trump’s hero Howard Roark, she wrote that he:

“…has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world. He knows what he wants and what he thinks. He needs no other reasons, standards or considerations. His complete selfishness is as natural to him as breathing.”


It turns out that Roark and many of her other characters were based on a real person. The man who so inspired Ayn Rand’s fictional heroes was named William Edward Hickman, and he lived in Los Angeles during the Roaring Twenties.


Ten days before Christmas in 1927, Hickman, a teenager with slicked dark hair and tiny, muted eyes, drove up to Mount Vernon Junior High School in Los Angeles and kidnapped Marion Parker — the daughter of a wealthy banker in town.

Hickman held the girl ransom, demanding $1,500 from her father — back then about a year’s salary. Supremely confident that he would elude capture, Hickman signed his name on the ransom notes, “The Fox.”

After two days, Marion’s father agreed to hand over the ransom in exchange for the safety of his daughter. What Perry Parker didn’t know is that Hickman never intended to live up to his end of the bargain.


The Pittsburgh Press detailed what Hickman, in his own words, did next.

“It was while I was fixing the blindfold that the urge to murder came upon me,” he said. “I just couldn’t help myself. I got a towel and stepped up behind Marion. Then, before she could move, I put it around her neck and twisted it tightly.”


Hickman didn’t hold back on any of these details: he was proud of his cold-bloodedness.

“I held on and she made no outcry except to gurgle. I held on for about two minutes, I guess, and then I let go. When I cut loose the fastenings, she fell to the floor. I knew she was dead.”


But Hickman wasn’t finished:

“After she was dead I carried her body into the bathroom and undressed her, all but the underwear, and cut a hole in her throat with a pocket knife to let the blood out.”


Hickman then dismembered the child piece-by-piece, putting her limbs in a cabinet in his apartment, and then wrapped up the carved-up torso, powdered the lifeless face of Marion Parker, set what was left of her stump torso with the head sitting atop it in the passenger seat of his car, and drove to meet her father to collect the ransom money.

He even sewed open her eyelids to make it look like she was alive.

On the way, Hickman dumped body parts out of his car window, before rendezvousing with Marion Parker’s father.

Armed with a shotgun so her father wouldn’t come close enough to Hickman’s car to see that Marion was dead, Hickman collected his $1,500, then kicked open the door and tossed the rest of Marion Parker onto the road. As he sped off, her father fell to his knees, screaming.

Days later, the police caught up with a defiant and unrepentant Hickman in Oregon. His lawyers pleaded insanity, but the jury gave him the gallows.

To nearly everyone, Hickman was a monster. The year of the murder, the Los Angeles Times called it “the most horrible crime of the 1920s.” Hickman was America’s most despicable villain at the time.

Ayn Rand falls in love with a “superman”

But to Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum, a 21-year-old Russian political science student who’d arrived in America just two years earlier, Hickman was a hero.

Alissa was a squat five-foot-two with a flapper hairdo and wide, sunken dark eyes that gave her a haunting stare. Etched into those brooding eyes was burned the memory of a childhood backlit by the Russian Revolution.

She had just departed Leninist Russia where, almost a decade earlier, there was a harsh backlash against the Russian property owners by the Bolsheviks. Alissa’s own family was targeted, and at the age of 12 she watched as Bolshevik soldiers burst into her father’s pharmacy, looted the store, and plastered on her Dad’s doors the red emblem of the state, indicating that his private business now belonged to “the people.”

That incident left such a deep and burning wound in young Alissa’s mind that she went to college to study political science and vowed one day she’d become a famous writer to warn the world of the dangers of Bolshevism.

Starting afresh in Hollywood, she anglicized her name to Ayn Rand, and moved from prop-girl to screenwriter/novelist, basing the heroes of several of her stories on a man she was reading about in the newspapers at the time. A man she wrote effusively about in her diaries. A man she hero-worshipped.

William Edward Hickman was the most notorious man in American in 1928, having achieved the level of national fame that she craved.

Young Ayn Rand saw in Hickman the “ideal man” she based The Fountainhead on, and used to ground her philosophy and her life’s work. His greatest quality, she believed, was his unfeeling, pitiless selfishness.

Hickman’s words were carefully recounted by Rand in her Journals. His statement that, “I am like the state: what is good for me is right,” resonated deeply with her. It was the perfect articulation of her belief that if people pursued their own interests above all else — even above friends, family, or nation — the result would be utopian.

She wrote in her diary that those words of Hickman’s were, “the best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I ever heard.”

Hickman — the monster who boasted about how he had hacked up a 12-year-old girl — had Rand’s ear, as well as her heart. She saw a strongman archetype in him, the way that people wearing red MAGA hats see a strongman savior in Donald Trump.

As Hickman’s murder trial unfolded, Rand grew increasingly enraged at how the “mediocre” American masses had rushed to condemn her Superman.

“The first thing that impresses me about the case,” Rand wrote in reference to the Hickman trial in early notes for a book she was working on titled The Little Street, “is the ferocious rage of the whole society against one man.”


Astounded that Americans didn’t recognize the heroism Hickman showed when he proudly rose above simply conforming to society’s rules, Rand wrote:

“It is not the crime alone that has raised the fury of public hatred. It is the case of a daring challenge to society. … It is the amazing picture of a man with no regard whatever for all that society holds sacred, with a consciousness all his own.”


Rand explained that when the masses are confronted with such a bold actor, they neither understood nor empathized with him.

Thus, “a brilliant, unusual, exceptional boy [was] turned [by the media] into a purposeless monster.”


The protagonist of the book that Rand was writing around that time was a boy named Danny Renahan. In her notes for the book, she wrote, “The model for the boy [Renahan] is Hickman.” He would be her ideal man, and the archetype for a philosophical movement that would transform a nation.

“He is born with the spirit of Argon and the nature of a medieval feudal lord,” Rand wrote in her notes describing Renahan. “Imperious. Impatient. Uncompromising. Untamable. Intolerant. Unadaptable. Passionate. Intensely proud. Superior to the mob… an extreme ‘extremist.’ … No respect for anything or anyone.”


Rand wanted capitalism in its most raw form, unchecked by any government that could control the rules of the market or promote the benefits of society. Such good intentions had, after all, caused the hell she’d experienced in the Bolshevik Revolution.

Ayn Rand, like Hickman, found peace and justification in the extremes of her economic, political, and moral philosophy. Forget about democratic institutions, forget about regulating markets, and forget about pursuing any policies that benefit the majority at the expense of the very rich — the petty political rule-makers and rule-enforcers could never, ever do anything well or good.

Libertarianism and Ayn Rand set the stage for Trumpism

Only billionaires should rule the world, Trump has suggested.

And he tried to put it into place, installing a billionaire advocate of destroying public schools in charge of public schools, a coal lobbyist representing billionaires in charge of the EPA, an billionaire-funded oil lobbyist in charge of our public lands, and a billionaire described by Forbes as a “grifter” in charge of the Commerce Department.

Trump’s chief of staff said that putting children in cages and billionaire-owned privatized concentration camps (where seven died) would actually be a public good.

As Ayn Rand might say, “Don’t just ignore the rules; destroy them.”

Welfare and other social safety net programs were, as Rand saw it, “the glorification of mediocrity” in society. Providing a social safety net for the poor, disabled, or unemployed, she believed, were part of a way of thinking that promoted, “satisfaction instead of joy, contentment instead of happiness… a glow-worm instead of a fire.”

Sociopaths of the world, unite!

Rand, like Trump, lived a largely joyless life. She mercilessly manipulated people, particularly her husband and Alan Greenspan (who brought a dollar-sign-shaped floral arrangement to her funeral), and, like Trump, surrounded herself with cult-like followers who were only on the inside so long as they gave her total, unhesitating loyalty.

Like Trump, McConnell, McCarthy and their billionaire backers, Rand believed that a government working to help out working-class “looters,” instead of solely looking out for rich capitalist “producers,” was throwing its “best people” under the bus.

In Rand’s universe, the producers had no obligations to the looters. Providing welfare or sacrificing one nickel of your own money to help a “looter” on welfare, unemployment, or Social Security — particularly if it was “taken at the barrel of a gun” (taxes) — was morally reprehensible.

Like Trump saying, “My whole life I’ve been greedy,” for Rand looking out for numero uno was the singular name of the game — selfishness was next to godliness.

Later in Rand’s life, in 1959, as she gained more notoriety for the moral philosophy of selfishness that she named “Objectivism” and that is today at the core of libertarianism and the GOP, she sat down for an interview with CBS reporter Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes.

Suggesting that selfishness undermines most truly American values, Wallace bluntly challenged Rand.

“You are out to destroy almost every edifice in the contemporary American way of life,” Wallace said to Rand. “Our Judeo-Christian religion, our modified government-regulated capitalism, our rule by the majority will… you scorn churches, and the concept of God… are these accurate criticisms?”


As Wallace was reciting the public criticisms of Rand, the CBS television cameras zoomed in closely on her face, as her eyes darted back and forth between the ground and Wallace’s fingers. But the question, with its implied condemnation, didn’t faze her at all. Rand said with confidence in a matter-of-fact tone, “Yes.”

“We’re taught to feel concern for our fellow man,” Wallace challenged, “to feel responsible for his welfare, to feel that we are, as religious people might put it, children under God and responsible one for the other — now why do you rebel?”


“That is what in fact makes man a sacrificial animal,” Rand answered. She added, “[Man’s] highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness.”


Rand’s philosophy, though popular in high school and on college campuses, never did — in her lifetime — achieve the sort of mass appeal she had hoped. But today Ayn Rand’s philosophy is a central tenet of the Republican Party and grounds the moral code proudly cited and followed by high-profile billionaires and three former presidents of the United States.

Ironically, when she was finally beginning to be taken seriously, Ayn Rand became ill with lung cancer and went on Social Security and Medicare to make it through her last days. She died a “looter” in 1982, unaware that her promotion of William Edward Hickman’s sociopathic worldview would one day validate an entire political party’s embrace of a similarly sociopathic president.

The result so far is over a million dead Americans from Covid, an epidemic of homelessness, and the collapse of this nation’s working class.

While the ideas and policies promoted by the libertarian wing of the Republican Party have made CEOs and billionaire investors very, very rich in recent decades, it’s killing the rest of us.

A return to sanity

In the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950’s Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower put America back together after the Republican Great Depression and built the largest and wealthiest middle class in the history of the world at the time.

Today, 42 years of Ayn Rand’s ideas being put into practice by libertarian Republicans from Reagan to Bush to Trump have gutted the middle class, made a handful of oligarchs wealthier than any king or pharaoh in the history of the world, and brought a whole new generation of criminals, hustlers and grifters into the GOP.

Three men in America today own more wealth than the entire bottom 50 percent of the country, a level of inequality never before seen in the modern developed world.

When America was still coasting on FDR’s success in rebuilding our government and institutions, nobody took very seriously Rand’s or Koch’s misguided idealist efforts to tear it all down.

Now that Libertarians and objectivists in the GOP have had 42 years to make their project work, we’re hitting peak libertarianism and it’s tearing our country apart, pitting Americans against each other, and literally killing people every day.

If America is to survive as a functioning democratic republic, we must repudiate the “greed is good” ideology of Ayn Rand and libertarianism, get billionaires and their money out of politics, and rebuild our civic institutions.

That starts with waking Americans up to the incredible damage that 40 years of Rand’s writings and libertarian “Reagan Republicans” have done to this country.

It will succeed if President Biden can overcome the cynicism and greed celebrated by McConnell, Trump, Gaetz, Greene, Cruz, and Hawley; reclaim the mantle of FDR; and put America back on the upward trajectory the middle class enjoyed before the Reagan Revolution.

What Mark Meadows did with classified docs ended Dick Cheney's chief of staff; Scooter Libby, before a grand jury

WHICH SENT HIM TO JAIL
Sarah K. Burris
October 1, 2023 

Mark Meadows (Photo by Nicholas Kamm for AFP)


Cassidy Hutchinson revealed in her new book Enough, that she was lugging around classified information in a Whole Foods bag after pro-Donald Trump reporters returned the documents to Mark Meadows.

The documents were given to far-right writers Mollie Hemingway and John Solomon, Hutchinson wrote. It infuriated the White House counsel, who witnessed what happened.

It was previously reported that Meadows made a last-minute mad-dash for the Justice Department, claiming Trump declassified the information after Trump had already left the White House, according to Hutchinson. The DOJ refused to declassify the information, but Trump's allies maintain Trump filed the necessary paperwork in time. It was 15 minutes before President Joe Biden was sworn in as the president.

"At around 10:30 p.m. [the night before], I saw Pat Philbin power walking toward my office. Great, I thought. What could possibly be going wrong now?" she writes. Trump had already left the office and many other staffers carried their belongings out.

“How many copies of that Crossfire Hurricane binder did Mark make? Where are all the copies?” Pat asked Hutchinson. “How many of them have been distributed?”

"Slow down,” she told Philbin. “How many copies? I have no idea. There are some in our office…”

She described many binders thrown around the room with "still-classified but supposedly soon-to-be-declassified information, but the Crossfire Hurricane binders were easy to identify because of how thick they were."

“Did Mark already give copies to Mollie Hemingway and John Solomon?" Philbin asked. Hutchinson describes them as "the conservative journalists who the president and Mark were acquainted with."

“Yeah, he had a few of his Secret Service agents meet Mollie and John in Georgetown earlier tonight while you all were in the Oval Office with the boss," she told Philbin.

"The color drained from Pat’s face. 'Seriously?'"

The following day, a Secret Service agent dropped off a bag full of loose papers in the Whole Foods sack. It's unknown if the writers kept any documents and what they were given.

What is certain, however, is that the act of giving classified information to reporters is exactly what sent Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. "Scooter" Libby, to prison.

"In 2007, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton sentenced I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to 30 months in federal prison, imposed a $250,000 fine and ordered Libby to undergo a further two years of supervised release, including 400 hours of community service," reported Politico on the one-year anniversary.

Libby was indicted in 2005 by a federal grand jury in wake of a federal investigation into who leaked the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame to New York Times reporter Judith Miller. He ultimately made a plea deal and President George W. Bush commuted his prison sentence, but left the $250,000 fine in place. Libby was ultimately found to have lied to the grand jury, obstructed justice and false statements.

Richard Nixon's White House counsel John Dean wrote about the trial in 2006. Among the things explained are that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald found "Libby said that he was authorized" by Cheney and Bush to leak the name to the Times.

"This revelation has been accompanied by a number of public misstatements, which call for correction," Dean wrote at the time. "The most blatant of these is the claim that Fitzgerald's filing indicates that the President authorized the release of Valerie Plame's covert status at the CIA. In fact, the document is conspicuously silent on this fact. The filing does indicate that the President authorized the release of classified information, but it was different information — a National Intelligence Estimate that had been classified pursuant to an executive order."

It began with an op-ed in 2003 by Joseph Wilson, accusing the Bush administration of lying about Iraqi president Saddam Hussein attempting to acquire uranium to make nuclear weapons. It was the motivation for the administration to enter into a decade-long war.

Wilson's op-ed begins: "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

The special counsel found that the vice president's office saw this as a direct attack on them. Plame's name and information were leaked to the press, destroying her career as a covert operative. Libby was accused of using her information to discredit Wilson.

Fitzgerald's report said Libby "undertook vigorous efforts to rebut" Wilson because "Vice President Cheney, defendant's immediate superior, expressed concern to defendant regarding whether Mr. Wilson's [CIA-sponsored] trip [to Africa to determine if Iraq was getting uranium from Niger] was legitimate or whether it was in effect a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife."

Libby "testified that he was specifically authorized … to disclose the key judgments of the classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to Miller" because the information "was 'pretty definite' against Ambassador Wilson… and that the Vice President thought that it was 'very important' for the key judgments of the NIE to come out."

Libby claimed the president "later" authorized him to leak the information. It was never known whether "later" meant before or after he gave the info to Miller.

"The word 'later,' in the filing, is crucially ambiguous," wrote Dean. "Did the President authorize Libby's actions before Libby actually revealed the classified information to Miller, or afterward? The distinction may make a large difference in Libby's defense: If the authorization was retroactive, then Libby initially revealed classified information without permission to do so; thus, he would have reason to lie."

Cheney's lawyer claimed that because Bush granted that it be publicly disclosed essentially meant it was declassified. The text specifically said, "Publicly disclos[ing] a document amountedto a declassification of the document."

Donald Trump has used similar claims, saying that because he took them out of the Oval Office they became declassified. Bush and Cheney had the benefit of still being in office at the time of the investigation.

The United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby started in 2007, and he was able to be bailed out by the administration so he wasn't charged with leaking classified information. He was only charged and convicted of lying to the grand jury and others, along with obstruction.

No special counsel has been called to investigate the case of Mark Meadows handing the classified binders to conservative reporters, as Hutchinson alleges. It's also unclear if he was given a similar order as Libby to share the information by former President Donald Trump.

A federal grand jury has been called in Washington, D.C. for Wednesday, Nov. 8.

He was unable to have the information declassified by the Justice Department in the last few minutes of the Trump administration.

Newsom vetoes bill to give striking workers unemployment benefits

2023/10/01

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

Days after President Joe Biden joined a picket line of striking autoworkers in Michigan in an unprecedented public display of support, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have given unemployment benefits to striking workers in California — a blow to organized labor in a state that typically embraces it.

“Now is not the time to increase costs or incur this sizable debt,” said Newsom in his veto statement over the weekend.

Senate Bill 799 was backed by the Writers Guild of America, which recently reached a deal to end a months-long strike, and SAG-AFTRA, the union representing thousands of Hollywood actors that have been striking since July. The veto comes as workers in fields from health care to hospitality increasingly turn to strikes in a bid to secure better wages and working conditions.

While the move leaves labor leaders frustrated with the governor, that’s a political calculation Newsom — who is widely expected to seek office beyond deep blue California one day — appears poised to weather just fine.

“If you’re Newsom, it’s okay to be labor’s good friend. You don’t have to be their best friend,” said Dan Schnur, a political analyst and professor at the University of California-Berkeley, University of Southern California, and Pepperdine University. “The last four governors have had to deal with very large budget deficits, which ended up meaning either big tax increases or painful spending cuts — or both. Newsom doesn’t want to end up in the same place.”

Under the proposal, striking workers would have received unemployment checks from the state — which could total up to $450 per week — after striking for at least two weeks. But even without the bill, the fund used by the state to pay unemployment benefits is expected to be nearly $20 billion in debt by the end of the year.

“It’s imperative we focus our attention on the higher priority of restoring this system to fiscal health and not adding to the problem,” said Jim Wunderman, head of the Bay Area Council, a pro-business group that applauded Newsom’s veto. “We can’t keep saddling business with more and more costs and expect the state’s economy to flourish.”

While the bill, which passed the legislature on Sept. 14, garnered strong support from labor groups, Republican lawmakers largely opposed the legislation. They argued it would give workers a leg up in strike negotiations, and the California Chamber of Commerce called it a “job killer.” Democrats said it would support workers who often rely on side jobs and union funds to pay their bills during a strike.

After the veto, California Labor Federation head Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher said Newsom’s decision was “out-of-step with American values.”

This year, strikes have popped up across California, including not just the Hollywood writers, but thousands of Los Angeles hotel workers who have been pushing for higher wages. This week, the largest health care strike in the nation’s history could begin on Wednesday. The contract for 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers expired with no agreement in place. Twelve million patients across California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, Virginia and Washington D.C. could be affected, with strikers expected to include nursing assistants, emergency medical technicians, and pharmacists.

“The hardworking women and men in California need to put food on their table and pay their rent,” said Senator Anthony Portantino, a Democrat from Burbank who authored the bill. “SB 799 would have injected a small piece of security to working families that is needed and deserved.”

Despite the blowback, Schnur said Newsom’s veto didn’t put him too far afield from other Democrats, even Biden. Even as the president joined the picket line earlier this month, Schnur noted, he didn’t give unions everything they wanted in the Inflation Reduction Act. And Newsom and Biden are playing very different political games. Biden — having already clinched the presidency — now must drum up support from his base. Newsom, meanwhile, appears to be attempting to drive up more widespread appeal — a task that is likely to require moving toward the political center on some issues.

“Although it’s true that we’re a very labor-friendly state and he’s a labor-friendly Democratic leader, it’s a very progressive bill,” said Melissa Michelson, dean of arts and sciences and a professor of political science at Menlo College. “We all know that Newsom has ambition, and to some extent, he probably wants to insulate himself from claims that he is too liberal — and too left for the country, or even for the state.”

Days before the veto, Newsom signed into law a bill to raise the minimum wage for fast food employees across the state, ensuring that the group of workers will have the highest guaranteed base salary in the industry. Still, the governor also faced criticism for vetoing legislation that would have required human drivers on self-driving trucks — one that union leaders said would have saved thousands of jobs across the state.

“In the short-run, people are going to be mad because they’re disappointed,” said Michelson. “But in the long run, (Newsom) will have done other things, and he’ll, quote, unquote, ‘prove’ that he’s pro-labor again.”

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© The Mercury News

Flexible hours, sick pay and meals: British workers get a better deal

By James Davey, Kate Holton and David Milliken

October 2, 2023






en Eaton, Regional Operations Manager for Loungers bar and restaurant chain sits for a portrait during an interview with Reuters at Alcampo Lounge all-day bar restaurant in Brighton, Britain, August 15, 2023.

 REUTERS/Toby Melville 

BRIGHTON, England, Oct 2 (Reuters) - For Josh Hughes-Davies, the best thing about his job in a bar in the coastal city of Brighton is the free meal with every shift.

For his manager, Barrie Chapman, the overtime he now gets is a huge boost once unheard of in the hospitality sector. Their regional manager Jen Eaton looks back in horror at the 14-hour shifts she once worked in casinos in heels with no break.

Like thousands of others in lower-paid sectors of the British economy, all three have benefited from a gradual improvement in employment terms since the global pandemic and Brexit forced companies to work harder to find staff in a tight labour market.

The shift follows years of warnings from unions and campaign groups that the balance of power in Britain had swung too far towards employers, leaving many lower-paid staff working unpredictable hours with poor benefits and little protection.

Nick Collins, CEO of Loungers (LGRS.L) which employs Eaton, Chapman and Hughes-Davies among 8,000 staff in restaurants and bars across Britain, said expectations of employees had risen.

"And rightly so. The combination of Brexit and COVID have transformed the market," he told Reuters.

Conversations with 18 company bosses, HR managers, a union, economists, recruitment groups and workers suggest big employers in hospitality, retail, logistics and security are all offering more flexibility over the hours people work, better financial support for sick leave or private healthcare and other perks.

Since the pandemic, U.S. giant Amazon UK (AMZN.O) has joined retailers Tesco (TSCO.L) and Marks & Spencer (MKS.L), as well as logistics group XPO (XPO.N) and security company G4S, in offering flexible working contracts.

Global recruitment company Indeed told Reuters there has been a steady increase in the percentage of postings offering paid sick leave over the last 18 months, including in hospitality and other lower-paid sectors such as healthcare.

Tesco, Britain's largest private-sector employer now provides its 310,000 staff with an online private family doctor.

And data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the percentage of people saying they are happy with their hours has been at the highest level over the last year since 2007.

WAGE RISES

While the moves can increase costs and complexity for employers, the former finance director of a FTSE 100 company said businesses had no choice as staff retention had become such a hot topic when workers were hard to find.

The executive who sits on other company boards said he expected the use of automation and the hunt for efficiencies to grow as employment costs rise. He asked not to be named because he was not authorised to discuss the matter publicly.

Britain's labour market started to tighten in 2021 as older people retired early during the global pandemic, Europeans returned home after Britain left the EU and an increasing number were too ill to work.

With just under 1 million job vacancies still open, it has been one factor behind Britain's stubbornly high inflation rate. It hit 11.1% in October before falling to 6.7% in August, still one of the highest of any major economy.

That has forced major employers such as supermarkets, logistics groups and big coffee and food chains to raise wages on multiple occasions in the last 18 months, and even resort to making counteroffers to prevent staff from going elsewhere.

Regular pay, excluding bonuses, was 7.8% higher in the three months to July than a year earlier - the joint-fastest growth since comparable records began in 2001.

Loungers said that while its overall wage costs had risen, profits had continued to grow and staff loyalty had increased.

At its "Alcampo Lounge" venue in Brighton, staff can get a free meal per shift, flexible hours, bonuses, and overtime for salaried employees. They also get some weekends off and avoid having to work late and then open early.

While the rapidly growing company had always prided itself on offering above-average pay and decent terms, some of those changes have come in since the pandemic.

"There's been a trend in hospitality to work staff hard, to not treat them very well, because there was always another person that would come in," said head chef Chris Lloyd-Rogers.

"That's changing because of the way the world is right now," he said, referring to the many eastern Europeans who used to work in kitchens but left Britain after Brexit and the pandemic.

JOB SATISFACTION

Tony Wilson, director of the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), said as the labour market tightened companies tried to provide flexibility and job satisfaction to lure back those who had left the workforce.

While Britain had one of the highest minimum wages in the world compared to average salaries even before the current labour shortages, it was very much a laggard in the area of minimum employee benefits, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

"That's why people leave work, and it's what brings people back," Wilson said.

Recruitment website Indeed said its regular survey of job seekers showed that the most highly valued benefits were flexible working and sick pay.

Retailer M&S, which provides meals for warehouse workers and gift cards at Christmas, said more women had gone into store management roles after they allowed retail managers to share jobs, or do a four-day compressed week.

"The pandemic certainly accelerated our focus on making flexibility work for our store managers," HR director Sarah Findlater said.

Fiona Walters, the head of the UK arm of security and outsourcing group G4S, said allowing staff including prison wardens to work shorter shifts or split shifts did increase complexity and the cost of managing the workforce.

But she said it had helped to recruit more women and there had also been a small drop in the rate of staff leaving.

"We're seeing green shoots," she said.

Over the past year, the number of working-age people who say they are not in employment because they are looking after family or home - a group which is 85% female - dropped by 167,000, or a 10% decline, according to ONS statistics.

The Resolution Foundation think-tank says, however, that despite the recent shifts there is still a stark divide between the sick pay and maternity leave that workers can get depending on whether they are in well-paid or low-paid jobs.

The Indeed data for the last 18 months showed that only 8.9% of job postings in hospitality and tourism offered paid sick leave, though that was still a stark jump from 4.5% when they first started to look at the trend in March 2022.

The labour market is, however, showing clear signs of cooling as the economy slows, posing the question of whether employers will retain the new approach to hiring and retention.

Wilson at the IES said bosses should get used to tighter conditions in general because of the country's ageing population and tighter immigration controls - and that could be bad news for smaller firms struggling to compete.

Amit Puntambekar has to work 90 hours a week at the supermarket he runs near Cambridge - and rope in his elderly parents to help - because he cannot match the salary and benefits being offered by the big supermarket chains to attract enough staff, despite paying more than the minimum wage.

"I'm at my wits' end over what to do," Puntambekar said.


James Davey reported from Brighton, Kate Holton and David Milliken reported from London; Editing by David Clarke

Mexican church roof collapses during Sunday mass killing 9, about 30 others missing

"GOD IS A SADIST"

DIEU EST UN SADISTE

MARQUIS DE SADE

Reuters

October 1, 2023

Members of a rescue team and people work at a site where a church roof collapsed during Sunday mass in Ciudad Madero, in Tamaulipas state, Mexico in this handout picture distributed to Reuters on October 1, 2023. 

Secretaria de Seguridad Publica Tamaulipas

MEXICO CITY, Oct 1 (Reuters) - A church roof collapsed during Sunday mass in a northern Mexican city killing at least nine people and injuring 40, authorities said, as rescuers worked into the night, desperately looking for another 30 people believed to be trapped under the rubble.

Working under floodlights, military personnel supported emergency services using rescue dogs and earth moving equipment to identify and dig out survivors from the ruins of the church in Ciudad Madero, a city on the Gulf coast near the port of Tampico.

Footage on social media showed the moment the church roof caved in, puffs of gray smoke billowing into the air, followed by the toppling of yellow brick outer walls.

Nine people died and another 40 were taken to nearby hospitals, while 30 other worshippers remained unaccounted for, Jorge Cuéllar, spokesman for the Security Ministry of Tamaulipas state, which borders Texas.

Speaking on Foro TV news channel, Cuéllar thanked local businessmen for bringing equipment to help remove rubble and aid rescue efforts.

Bishop Jose Armando Alvarez from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tampico said the church roof crumbled as worshippers were receiving communion and asked others to pray for the survivors.

"In this moment the necessary work is being carried out to pull out the people who are still under the rumble," Bishop Armando said in a recorded message shared on social media.


Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Tom Hogue & Simon Cameron-Moore

https://eupraxsofia.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/marquis-de-sade-dialog-between-a-priest-and-a-dying-man.pdf

BAD BANK

Barclays challenges ruling it 'retaliated' against whistleblower in India

By Lawrence White and Kirstin RidleyOctober 1, 2023

Summary

Barclays' whistleblowing policies 'only on paper' -judge

Former IT manager awarded two years' pay by Indian court

Had raised concerns over handling of data loss -judgment

Barclays to appeal, hearing due on Oct. 20 -filings

LONDON, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Barclays (BARC.L) is seeking to overturn a ruling by an Indian court that found the British bank had retaliated against a whistleblower, legal filings show.

The case concerns a former senior IT manager who raised concerns about how a data loss had been handled.

Barclays' whistleblowing policy "appears to be in existence only on paper", a District Court in the western Indian city of Pune said in a March 28 judgment published online, which was seen by Reuters and is reported here for the first time.

The Pune court ordered Barclays to pay Atul Gupta two years' salary, totalling around 9,600,000 Indian rupees ($115,620), saying the bank's Indian service company had made him redundant "in retaliation to his whistleblowing act".

A hearing for Barclays' appeal to the Bombay High Court is listed for Oct. 20, court records show. One source familiar with the case said the bank was attempting to strike out the award.

"Barclays is unequivocally committed to having a culture where colleagues feel comfortable to speak up when something isn't right and no employee is excluded from being able to raise a concern – by contract or otherwise," a bank spokesperson said.

"We take the protection of whistleblowers very seriously and have zero tolerance for whistleblower retaliation," the spokesperson added. They declined to comment on the specifics of the Indian case.

Barclays has faced other fines and regulatory censure for failing to protect people who raise red flags, after former chief executive Jes Staley in 2017 sought to unmask a whistleblower who had sent letters criticising a bank employee.

The Gupta case raises fresh questions about Barclays' whistleblowing procedures and whether they are being applied consistently across subsidiaries, said Francesca West, a lawyer who represents whistleblowers and who reviewed the judgment.

"Cases like this are seminal moments for big organisations, asking them 'whose side are we on?'," she said.

Email messages between the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Gupta, seen by Reuters, showed the whistleblowing team at Britain's markets regulator tracked the Indian case but does not plan "specific action".

The FCA, which has ordered banks to put in place clear internal processes to allow whistleblowing, declined to comment when asked by Reuters why it had decided against further action or whether it had asked Barclays about its handling of the matter.

"We are in regular contact with Barclays and discuss a wide range of issues, including whistleblowing," a spokesperson said, adding that the FCA could not comment on individual cases.

A lawyer representing Barclays' Global Service Centre Private Limited and two senior managers in the case told the court that Gupta's concerns had been internally investigated but had been unsubstantiated, the judgment shows.

They said Gupta's role had become redundant and the 55-year-old had accepted three months' severance pay.

Gupta has also appealed to the Bombay High Court, court records show, arguing the pay-out awarded was too low, the source familiar with the appeals said.

Last year, Gupta also filed a secondary civil case against Barclays, another court filing shows. The source familiar with the case said Gupta is alleging the bank produced misleading documents during the initial proceedings.

Barclays also declined to comment on this case. A hearing is listed for Oct. 12, a public court website shows.

The cases turn on how around 1.4 terabytes of data was accidentally deleted in August 2019, costing the bank about 700,000 pounds ($854,140). Barclays did not dispute this in court.

Gupta said he reported concerns about how the loss had been handled to senior management through a 'raising concerns' channel, to the legal team and finally to Barclays' global whistleblowing team in emails on Oct. 17 and 25, 2019, the judgment shows.

But on Nov. 15, 2019, three days before a scheduled video call with a special internal investigator, Gupta's managers told him he was at "risk of redundancy". On Feb. 4, 2020, he was dismissed, the judgment shows.

($1 = 83.0300 Indian rupees)

($1 = 0.8195 pounds)


Additional reporting by Arpan Chaturvedi; Editing by Sinead Cruise and Alexander Smith

UAW workers and Mack Trucks reach deal to avoid strike

Reuters 

October 1, 2023

U.S. President Joe Biden joins striking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the picket line outside the GM's Willow Run Distribution Center, in Belleville, Wayne County, Michigan, U.S., September 26, 2023. 

REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File photo

Oct 2 (Reuters) - About 4,000 workers represented by the United Auto Workers (UAW) reached an agreement with Volvo Group-owned Mack Trucks just before midnight Eastern Standard Time (0400 GMT) on Sunday, the union and the company said.

The temporary agreement must still be ratified by the UAW.

"The terms of this tentative agreement would deliver significantly increased wages and continue first-class benefits for Mack employees and their families," Mack President Stephen Roy said in a statement.

The union announced the deal on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. About 98% of the truck company's workers had authorized a strike last month, according to the UAW.

The UAW is currently in the third week of an ongoing strike against the Detroit 3 automakers, General Motors (GM.N), Ford and Chrysler parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI).

Should Mack workers have gone on strike, it could have strained the UAW's limited strike fund.

Workers across industries ranging from airlines to shipping and from retail to entertainment have been pressing for better wages and benefits from large U.S. companies in recent months due to high inflation and low unemployment.

The U.S. labor movement's efforts have broad national support, with a recent Reuters poll showing a majority of Americans agree with the auto workers' and Hollywood actors' aims for better compensation.

Mack, founded in 1900, is one of North America's largest manufacturers of medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks, engines and transmissions, according to its website. Its trucks are sold in nearly 30 countries.

The company had said on Thursday its bargaining teams had reached tentative agreements but certain discussions were still ongoing.

"While it is true that the parties are currently far apart on the economics, this is not unusual at this point in the negotiations, and we expect progress in the coming days," Mack had said then.


Volvo (VOLVb.ST) bought Mack in 2000.


Reporting by Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri and Savio D'Souza

GREENWASHING

UAE oil executive says energy companies support 2050 net-zero goal

Reuters

October 2, 2023


COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber poses for a photograph with delegates from the UAE after a news conference following his announcement that the UAE was pledging $4.5 billion dollars to develop 15 GW of clean power in Africa by 2030, on the sidelines of the Africa Climate Summit (ACS) 2023 in Nairobi, Kenya, September 6, 2023.... 

ABU DHABI, Oct 2 (Reuters) - A top Emirati oil executive said on Monday that more than 20 oil and gas companies were rallying around his calls to curb carbon emissions ahead of a United Nations summit on climate change.

"For too long, this industry has been viewed as part of the problem, that it's not doing enough and in some cases even blocking progress," COP28 president Sultan al-Jaber said at an oil and gas conference in Abu Dhabi.

"This is your opportunity to show the world that, in fact, you are central to the solution," he said, addressing major energy companies.

Jaber said that more than 20 oil and gas companies had positively answered calls to align around net zero by 2050, zero out methane emissions and eliminate routine flaring by 2030. He did not elaborate.

The COP28 summit is scheduled to take place in Dubai between Nov. 30 and Dec. 12.


Reporting by Maha El Dahan, Yousef Saba and Alexander Cornwell in Abu Dhabi; Writing by Nadine Awadalla; Editing by Louise Heavens

Australia PM rallies support for Indigenous referendum as early voting starts


Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during the bilateral meeting with Indonesia's President Joko Widodo on the sidelines of the 43rd Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, 07 September 2023. 

BAGUS INDAHONO/Pool via REUTERS/File PhotoPOOL


SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday he would focus on having one-on-one conversations with Australians to rally support for the Indigenous referendum, as early voting began in some parts of the country.

In a landmark referendum, Australians will decide on Oct. 14 whether to approve altering the constitution to enshrine an Indigenous advisory body called the "Voice to Parliament" that can give advice on matters that affect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The proposal, backed by Albanese's Labor government, has been struggling to get majority support with recent opinion polls showing voters will reject it. Some voters who had switched their stance said the Voice was creating distraction from their top two issues - the cost of living and the cost of housing.

In a bid to mobilise support, Albanese said if Australians are focused on what the question is from the referendum amid the distractions, they will vote yes, and there is nothing to fear from this campaign.

"I sincerely think the key to the next fortnight is those one-on-one conversations with people to accept this request of the overwhelming majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples," he said in Melbourne where early voting began on Monday.

Early voting on the referendum in New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory will begin on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Stella Qiu; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)