China property: refusing to pay mortgages is a powerful political weapon

todayuknews1 day ago

 

Chinese president Xi Jinping tends to get his way. But there is one rare group that even he cannot control. China’s angry homeowners are furious at floundering property developers. Local banks will probably have to foot the bill to keep Xi’s policies intact.

Beijing’s crackdown on its indebted property market was undeterred by a string of developer defaults and nearly a hundred billion dollars of value lost in Chinese property company high-yield bonds. But protests by China’s middle class could unravel the government’s efforts.

The problem for Chinese developers is that protests are accompanied by rapidly spreading boycotts on mortgage payments in nearly 100 cities. The first group of affected homebuyers are the ones who have already paid an estimated Rmb2tn ($296bn) for homes that developers failed to deliver because of financial troubles. Falling property prices mean that anger, and boycotts, could soon spread to homeowners who are paying steep payments for houses whose values have fallen.

Xi is months away from securing a historic third term in office. Addressing social discontent is crucial. Unrest among ordinary homeowners could threaten the foundation of his push for “common prosperity”.

Local banks will therefore be leaned on to fill in the financial gaps. The sector, which is already dealing with a rise in its bad debt balance, will probably have to absorb the losses from boycotted mortgage payments.

However, the country’s roughly 4,000 local banks already have suffered a run on deposits in the past year thanks to the effects of the poor property market. They do not have the resources to deal with such losses.

Historically, the largest local state-owned banks such as Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) have bailed out smaller banks, often by buying stakes in the local banks. That may not happen this time. Shares of the largest banks, including ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China and China Construction Bank, are down this year. They trade at just a third of their book value, less than half that of regional peers such as HSBC.

Local lenders are heavily exposed and need help. Combined, they have an estimated $6.8tn in outstanding real-estate loans. That equates to about a third of the total loans for the largest banks. The trend could mark a bad start to Xi’s third term.

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US Mortgage Applications Drop to Lowest Level Since Early 2000

Molly Smith
Wed, July 20, 2022 

US Mortgage Applications Drop to Lowest Level Since Early 2000


(Bloomberg) -- A measure of US mortgage applications to buy or refinance a home fell to the lowest since the turn of the millennium in the latest sign of sluggish housing demand.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s market index dropped in the week ended July 15 to the lowest since February 2000, data released Wednesday showed. The group’s measure of home purchase applications fell for a third week to a more than two-year low.

The housing market has been cooling off as mortgage rates near the highest since 2008 compound affordability challenges. Separate data Wednesday showed existing-home sales fell for a fifth month in June to a two-year low.

US Housing Affordability Is Set to Drop to 2007 Levels This Year, S&P Says

Maria Paula Mijares Torres, Bloomberg News  Jul 20, 2022

A "For Sale" outside a house in Hercules, California. , Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Housing affordability is set to worsen to levels last seen early in the financial crisis as rising mortgage rates compound high prices, according to S&P Global Ratings.

By the end of this year, mortgage payments will make up 28% of income for the typical first-time buyer -- the highest since the first quarter of 2007 -- assuming a 10% down payment, S&P North American Chief Economist Beth Ann Bovino said in a report. Mortgages shouldn’t exceed 25% of income to be considered affordable, per guidelines from the National Association of Realtors.

That threshold has already been breached for low- and middle-income buyers and will remain “well above” it through 2025, leaving 60% of US households out of the market, S&P said.

“High home purchase prices don’t necessarily mean that homes have become unaffordable, but after over a decade of relatively benign home purchase conditions, our analysis of housing market conditions shows affordability has worsened in recent years,” the report said.

The housing market is coming off its boil as the Federal Reserve aggressively raises interest rates, which has sent mortgage rates up near the highest level since 2008. That’s crowding out buyers who were already struggling with record prices.

For prospective homebuyers, that means signing a contract could be decades away. By the fourth quarter of 2022, it’ll take 11.3 years for a first-time buyer with median income to save for a 10% down payment, and twice as long for 20%, S&P said. Before the pandemic, each took half as long.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

In Harvard study of Jan. 6 rioters, top motivation is clear: Trump

Ben Collins and Ryan J. Reilly and Jacob Ward

Wed, July 20, 2022 

Researchers at Harvard University who conducted the largest study yet of what motivated Jan. 6 rioters say the data is clear: The most common responses focused on former President Donald Trump and his lies about the election.

The study, which was shared with NBC News ahead of its publication, logged and analyzed the motives of 417 Capitol rioters, all of whom have been charged in relation to Jan. 6. The motives were derived from 469 documents filed to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, including charging documents and sentencing memoranda.

The researchers from the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University wrote that the documents make clear that Jan. 6 committee member Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., “was mostly correct in her assessment” that “Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

“Far and away, we find that the two most commonly-cited reasons for breaching the US Capitol were a desire to support Trump on January 6th in DC and concerns about election integrity,” the report reads.

The report adds to evidence from thousands of court documents in the more than 840 cases brought forward so far that many of those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and committed violent acts were motivated by their support for Trump and their belief in lies about the 2020 election.

A plurality of rioters cited either their support for Trump (20.6%) or Trump’s false belief that the election had been stolen (also 20.6%) as their primary motivation for their actions that led to charges on Jan. 6.

The third most frequently listed reason defendants gave to law enforcement for entering the Capitol was their belief that they were participating in “revolution, civil war, or secession.”

About the same number of defendants in the study claimed they were at the Capitol to “peacefully protest” (7%) as those who claimed they were there because of a “general interest in violence” (6.2%).

The report, written by Joan Donovan, director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, and Kaylee Fagan and Frances Lee, research assistants at Shorenstein, is an analysis of “the largest and most far-reaching publicly available archive of social media posts, private messages, and direct quotes attributed to the members of the mob: their court documents.”

The report includes specific social media posts from rioters in the days before Jan. 6 that pinpoint Trump as a primary cause of mayhem. The Harvard study also notes the most-shared links among the more than 400 Capitol rioters included in the analysis.

The second-most-shared link by defendants was a Dec. 22, 2021, Facebook video posted by then-President Trump, in which he makes baseless accusations of voter fraud for over 14 minutes.

“When we were crafting a research question, we really wanted to answer, ‘What motivated Jan. 6 defendants to go inside the Capitol?’” Donovan said.

The documents were produced by either FBI agents or law enforcement and include both people’s stated motivations for going to the Capitol that day, as well as some of their social media history that the officers believed was relevant to their arrest.

Kelly Meggs, a member of the far-right militant group The Oath Keepers, cited then-President Trump’s tweet on Dec. 18 telling fans to “be there, will be wild!” in a Facebook post the same day.

“Trump said It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!! It’s gonna be wild!!!!!!!” Meggs wrote. “He wants us to make it WILD that’s what he’s saying. He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!!”

Meggs was later charged with seditious conspiracy by the Department of Justice for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Daniel “D.J” Rodriguez, the California Trump supporter who was captured on multiple videos driving a stun gun into the neck of D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Mike Fanone, admitted to the FBI that he did what was shown on video.

After Rodriguez was arrested by the FBI in late March 2021, he waived his Miranda rights and gave the FBI an in-depth view into how he ended up committing a violent act on an officer. (After he confessed, Rodriguez’s attorneys unsuccessfully attempted to get his confession suppressed from a potential trial. He has entered a not guilty plea in his case, but remains held until trial because of the overwhelming evidence against him.)

“It’s very stupid and ignorant, and I see that it’s a big joke, that we thought that we were going to save this country, we were doing the right thing and stuff,” Rodriguez explained.

Rodriguez said that he’d knocked on doors in support of the Trump campaign, attended numerous rallies, and even attempted to sign up for the Army after Trump became president, walking into a recruitment station while wearing a Trump shirt.

“Trump called us. Trump called us to D.C.,” Rodriguez told the FBI, explaining why he went to D.C. on Jan. 6. “If he’s the commander in chief and the leader of our country, and he’s calling for help — I thought he was calling for help, I thought he was I thought we were doing the right thing.”

The sizable trove of evidence released in connection with Jan. 6 criminal cases illustrates the motivations of Capitol riot defendants in other ways. Recently released police body camera footage, presented as evidence in connection with Jan. 6 case, shows members of the mob chanting “Fight for Trump” inside the Capitol as they try to fight past police officers attempting to remove them from the building after the mob broke through the door on the eastern side of the Capitol.

Additional footage filmed by Capitol rioter Nolan Cooke, recently released following a request from NBC News, shows the mob chanting “Stop the steal” and “We want Trump!” after breaking a police line and chasing overwhelmed cops up the stairs of the Capitol.

Donovan said she hopes her research can help show social media companies and authorities when they need to act before a similar flash point occurs in the future.

“What we’re trying to understand is really the new potent forms of political violence that can come from agitation online, that creates this kind of fervor. And then, once the match is lit by a politician, we have to have appropriate responses by other actors, including not just law enforcement, but journalists and technologists,” Donovan said.

“I do believe that the only way to come at this problem of networked incitement is with a whole of society solution.”

THE MAN WILL NEVER DEFEAT THE PEOPLES WILL

China’s Top Chipmaker Achieves Breakthrough Despite US Curbs

Debby Wu and Jenny Leonard
Thu, July 21, 2022 


(Bloomberg) -- Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. has likely advanced its production technology by two generations, defying US sanctions intended to halt the rise of China’s largest chipmaker.

The Shanghai-based manufacturer is shipping Bitcoin-mining semiconductors built using 7-nanometer technology, industry watcher TechInsights wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. That’s well ahead of SMIC’s established 14nm technology, a measure of fabrication complexity in which narrower transistor widths help produce faster and more efficient chips. Since late 2020, the US has barred the unlicensed sale to the Chinese firm of equipment that can be used to fabricate semiconductors of 10nm and beyond, infuriating Beijing.

A person familiar with the developments confirmed the report, asking not to be named as they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. SMIC climbed as much as 1.9% in Hong Kong, while Chinese chip and chip gear stocks including Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics Group Co., Naura Technology Group Co. and Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. gained more than 5%.

SMIC’s surprising progress raises questions about how effective export controls have been and whether Washington can indeed thwart China’s ambition to foster a world-class chip industry at home and reduce reliance on foreign technologies. It also comes at a time American lawmakers have urged Washington to close loopholes in its Chinese-oriented curbs and ensure Beijing isn’t supplying crucial technology to Russia.

The restrictions effectively derailed Huawei Technologies Co.’s smartphone business by cutting it off from the tools to compete at the cutting edge -- but that company is now quietly staffing up a renewed effort to develop its in-house chipmaking acumen.

Previously, SMIC has said that its core capabilities stand at 14nm, two generations behind 7nm, which in turn is roughly four years behind the most advanced technology available now from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. The company has worked with clients on technologies more advanced than 14nm as early as 2020, it said on an earnings call that year.

China-based MinerVa Semiconductor Corp., which is named as SMIC’s customer in the TechInsights report, showcases a 7nm chip on its website and said mass production began in July 2021, without specifying the manufacturer. Dylan Patel, chief analyst at SemiAnalysis, was first to note the report.

Representatives of SMIC and MinerVa didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The labels attached to generations of chip production technology have become increasingly controversial as they no longer represent dimensions of the microscopic transistors that give chips their electronic function. Companies have accused each other of mislabeling their products to make them appear more advanced than they actually are.

And while the ability to produce a small number of chips using the next level of production technique signals that a company is making technological progress, what determines economic viability -- under normal circumstances -- is yield, or the percentage of every production run that’s successful. Intel Corp, once the leader in production technology, stalled on one type of production for five years because it couldn’t get enough viable chips to make it profitable to introduce that node into mainstream production.

SMIC is not operating under standard business conditions however. It is critical to China’s ability to produce chips domestically as the US tries to undercut the country’s tech advancements. Beijing may be willing to subsidize losses at domestic competitors like SMIC -- out of fear its companies won’t have access to key components.

The Trump administration blacklisted SMIC about two years ago on national security concerns, citing the company’s ties with the Chinese military, an allegation the chipmaker has denied. Following Washington’s move, American equipment suppliers have been banned from providing the Chinese company with gear “uniquely required” to produce 10nm or more advanced chips without licenses, although it is not clear exactly what the US Department of Commerce has allowed domestic firms to sell to SMIC since.

Huawei and SMIC Scored Billions in US Licenses, Lawmakers Say

US Senator Marco Rubio and US Congressman Michael McCaul have repeatedly urged the department to tighten export control restrictions pertaining to SMIC to strengthen US security and ensure China is not transferring technology to Russia and helping Moscow evade sanctions.

“The Biden Administration will continue working to grow and strengthen our cooperation with allies and partners to ensure effective controls on semiconductor production so that we remain generations ahead of competitors in advanced semiconductor technology,” a spokesperson for the Commerce Department said. The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.

SMIC has said that its blacklist status hurts its ability to develop sophisticated technologies. The company’s capability is severely curbed by its lack of access to ASML Holding NV’s extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) systems, which are required to make the most advanced chips that include 5nm and 3nm geometries. The Dutch firm has not shipped a single EUV machine to mainland China because of US pressure on the Dutch government.

US Pushes for ASML to Stop Selling Chipmaking Gear to China

The administration of President Joe Biden at one point considered tightening restrictions around SMIC but ruled out any unilateral action to allow for more time to negotiate with other trading partners. Those talks have not borne fruit so far. Washington is, however, pushing ASML to stop selling even less advanced gear to China.

SMIC told analysts in mid-2020 that a large share of the equipment it has for 14nm chips can be used to make more advanced chips and it is seeking to develop more sophisticated technology to improve its profitability.

(Updates with background on labelling of chip technology from eigth paragraph.)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

BRITISH ROYAL CONSPIRACY
Secret hearing over Prince Philip's will was wrong, UK court told


Funeral of Britain's Prince Philip in Windsor

Wed, July 20, 2022 
By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) - It was wrong to hold a secret hearing which decided that the will of Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's late husband, should be sealed and kept private for 90 years, lawyers for a newspaper told the Court of Appeal in London on Wednesday.

Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, died in April last year aged 99 at Windsor Castle after more than seven decades of marriage to the queen.

In September, Andrew McFarlane, the president of the High Court’s Family Division, disclosed that he had agreed Philip’s will should be sealed up "and that no copy of the will should be made for the record or kept on the court file".

He said that by a convention dating back to 1910, the death of a senior royal is followed by an application to seal the will, with such hearings and judgments kept private.

HARDLY ANCIENT TRADITION 

McFarlane said he was the custodian of a safe containing more than 30 envelopes with the wills of dead royals.

The Guardian newspaper is appealing against a decision to exclude the press and public from a hearing on July 28 last year. An earlier hearing that agreed to this exclusion was also held in secret.

The first the media became aware of the hearings was when McFarlane's ruling was made public two months later.

"An entirely private hearing such as this is the most serious interference with open justice," Caoilfhionn Gallagher, the Guardian's lawyer, told the court, describing the decision as "disproportionate and unjustified".

The paper is arguing that McFarlane was wrong not to allow the media a chance to question whether the application to seal the will should proceed in private.

Gallagher said the paper "does not and could not" at this stage challenge McFarlane's substantive ruling to seal the will, but was likely to seek to make submissions as a third party should the application be re-heard.

The appeal is being heard by three of Britain's most senior judges - Master of the Rolls Geoffrey Vos; Victoria Sharp, the president of the Queen's Bench Division; and Justice Eleanor King.

In Britain, once probate - the administering of a deceased’s estate - is complete, wills are normally made public.

McFarlane had ruled that publishing Philip's will would be "contrary to the aim of maintaining the dignity of the Sovereign". He also agreed to exclude the value of the estate from the grant of probate.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

FALLING RATE OF PROFIT MEMES

 

 

 

THIS DOES NOT HAPPEN IN CUBA

To get their degrees, Mexico's medical students practice medicine at gunpoint

Leila Miller
Thu, July 21, 2022

Mar Nevarez, left, and Itzel Olimpia Acevedo Luna embrace over the casket of classmate Eric Andrade Ramirez at his funeral on Sunday. Andrade was killed while completing a year of community service that's required for his medical degree.

 (Fermin Ricardo Soto Munoz / For The Times )

When Alfredo Cortes arrived at a tiny clinic for his year of community service required of all medical students in Mexico, he found that he had no cellphone or internet access — only a radio.

He lived alone at the clinic, a simple dwelling in a rural community of Michoacan state where police were a rare sight. In the early hours of a spring morning in 2020, he was roused from sleep by growling trucks and pounding on the front door.

Several armed men ordered Cortes to leave with them. When he refused, one truck sped away and quickly returned with a man bleeding heavily from his belly. He had been shot.

As Cortes got to work, one of the men trained a gun on him and shouted, “Save him!”

The patient needed surgery, but the clinic lacked basic supplies, so all Cortes could do was bandage the wound and warn that if the man didn’t receive treatment elsewhere he would die.

“They’re pointing their guns, they’re shouting, there are people communicating by radio, and you don’t know with whom,” recalled Cortes, now 26, who learned later that the man had lived. “It’s a very tense situation.”

Such stories are common among Mexico’s medical students these days.

Medical students protest in Durango this week demanding an end to the community service program. 

Mandatory service has long been part of the government’s effort to improve healthcare in isolated communities. But as drug cartels and other criminal groups have increased their footprint across the country, it has become an increasingly dangerous rite of passage.

The shooting death of a medical student last week inside the hospital where he worked in the mountains of Durango state sparked protests by medical students across the country. Some marched in white lab coats and carried signs that said, “We’re not your cheap labor” and “No more community service, they’re killing us.”

It’s unclear exactly how many students have been killed or suffered attacks during their community service, but even university officials have started to acknowledge that the program has become unsafe.

“This scheme is a total anachronism and should be changed,” said Dr. Luis Carlos Hinojos, the director of the medical school at the Autonomous University of Chihuahua.

He said the university has tried to place more students in safer urban locations and relocate those deemed to be in danger. After a doctor was shot and killed this month in the municipality of Bocoyna, which has seen clashes between cartels, six students set to start work there were reassigned.

Mourners carry a sign and a portrait of Eric Andrade Ramirez outside the funeral Mass for him last Sunday. (Fermin Ricardo Soto Munoz / For The Times)

The government defends the program, which dates to 1936 and graduates about 18,000 students each year. Mexican Health Secretary Jorge Alcocer told reporters this week that officials would be reviewing security conditions but that the community service is an “academic requirement that, in principle, cannot be canceled.”

“It’s not advisable to suspend that process of formation that’s so important for doctors,” he said. “We can’t set aside the most far-away placements that don’t have conditions that are completely safe.”

Moreover, the program has been a crucial source of medical care in rural areas. For every 10,000 people, Mexico has 24 doctors — not far behind the U.S. figure of 26 — but they are heavily concentrated in cities.

In May, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced that the country would fill the gaps by contracting Cuban doctors, prompting criticism that the real problem was security.

Medical school in Mexico starts right after high school and usually lasts six or seven years, the last of which is spent doing community service, which can entail conducting research or working in clinics. Typically, the government determines what slots are available and leaves it to the schools to fill them.

Students with the best grades get the first pick of assignments, so those with lower averages tend to get the most dangerous jobs. They sometimes work without supervision or outside contact and live alone at the clinics — problems that students and university officials say have long been recognized but not adequately addressed.

Locals tend to view the students as full-fledged doctors — and that leads to situations in which the newcomers can incur wrath of the community when a patient can’t be saved.

“They won’t say the clinic doesn’t have the resources, the clinic doesn’t have an ambulance, the roads aren’t accessible, the routes aren’t easy,” said Cinthya Flores, president of a national association that represents medical students. “It’ll be the doctor’s fault.”

Andrade's mother, Maria Paula Ramírez Yañez, leans over his body while his father, Jose Mauricio Andrade Avila, sister Suhey Andrade Ramirez and family friend Cecilia Ramirez, left, stand beside her at his funeral. 

(Fermin Ricardo Soto Munoz / For The Times)

Dr. Jorge Valdez Garcia, president of the Mexican Assn. of Medical Schools, said that sometimes universities aren’t given enough time to choose their placements carefully and that conditions can change rapidly, such as when a cartel arrives in a community.

“That’s happened many times,” he said. “No one has the intention to send them to unsafe areas.”

In interviews, more than two dozen current and former students described harrowing experiences that included navigating cartel checkpoints to get to their clinic, delivering medical care at gunpoint and working in places where criminals leave severed heads in the street.

“We were always worried for our security,” said Adonai Esparza, 28, who did his service in 2019 at a rural clinic in northern Michoacan, which has seen violence related to the avocado trade, which has been infiltrated by cartels.

One night, a teenager arrived with a knife injury on his hand. Esparza began to treat him when he heard several cars arrive.

The boy’s father, a drug boss in the area, entered with two armed men. He asked about his son and on his way out told Esparza, “Don’t worry, you’ll be watched and protected.”

“After that, I felt a bit strange,” said Esparza. “I realized I had security but not the security that I had expected.”

Medical students in the state of Durango call for authorities to better protect students completing their year of mandatory community service.

 (Fermin Ricardo Soto Munoz / For The Times)

Hilary López, 27, who did her service in 2020 in the southern state of Quintana Roo, quickly learned to give priority to certain patients: those who a nurse told her were relatives of drug traffickers.

In one incident, a man who arrived after midnight insisted that she examine an older woman who had fallen in her home and was still there. When López explained she couldn’t leave the clinic with a stranger, he returned 15 minutes later with a gun.

“Doctor, are you going to come out or are you not going to come out?” he told her.

López called the nurse, who calmed the man down and persuaded him to stop threatening López, who said that the scare prompted her to ask health officials for more security but that nothing changed.

She happened to be out of town when armed men from the community surrounded the clinic and threatened to set it on fire after one of her patients died from COVID-19. The nurse warned her not to return, and López found a new placement and changed her telephone number.

“I disappeared from the map,” she said.

Such close calls seldom make headlines. Killings of medical students are a different story, with two recent cases pushing the issue into public view.

The first victim was Luis Fernando Montes de Oca Armas, 23, who was finishing his service at a hospital in Huejuquilla El Alto, Jalisco state, in June 2021 when he left to accompany a patient in an ambulance to the neighboring state of Zacatecas.

Lui Fernando Montes de Oca Armas, a student at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, was killed in Zacatecas while doing his community service in 2021. (Courtesy of José Fernando Montes de Oca Padilla)

On his way back, he sent a disturbing voice message to his father.

“There’s a truck here,” he said. “They’re probably going to kidnap us or something, I don’t know.”

His father called his son-in-law, Juan Carlos Galaviz, who discovered the bullet-ridden bodies of Montes de Oca and the ambulance driver along a highway next to the abandoned vehicle.

Then last Friday evening, several men arrived at the rural Durango hospital where Eric Andrade Ramirez was working. They appeared to be under the influence of drugs.

The details of what happened next are unclear, but at one point, at least one of them pulled out a gun.

Mourners watch as Andrade's coffin is lowered. 

(Fermin Ricardo Soto Munoz / For The Times)

Andrade, 25, was killed, just days before he would have finished his service in El Salto, a logging town about an hour-and-a-half drive from his home in the city of Durango.

After the killing, some medical students in Durango deserted their placements and vowed not to return.

“How is it possible that we’re giving a health service to take care of others but no one protects us?” asked Daniel Ramirez, 27, a classmate who decided to leave his assignment in a Durango town where he said drug traffickers colluded with the police.

Dr. Martin Gerardo Soriano Sariñana, the rector of the Autonomous University of Durango, where Andrade had been a student, said about 180 students will be reassigned placements. He pledged to develop “community service programs for our students that don’t put their safety at risk.”

At Andrade’s funeral on Sunday afternoon, classmates wearing white lab coats cried quietly as they watched his casket being lowered into a grave while a 13-person orchestra played. Friends described him as a charismatic person who loved norteño music and threw parties.

Mourners attend Andrade's funeral.

 (Fermin Ricardo Soto Munoz / For The Times )

His brother, Luis, 29, said Andrade had spent his final year in a state of unease as armed men would show up demanding to be seen.

“He lived with fear,” Luis said. “He didn’t want to be doing the service.”

Their sister, Suhey, 24, the youngest of the three siblings and a medical student herself, is scheduled to start her community service on Aug. 1 in a town on the outskirts of the city of Durango. She is reconsidering.

“Right now I have a hatred toward medicine,” she said.

The hospital where her brother died, a dilapidated one-story white building, is now closed. In the lobby, a bouquet of flowers and candles lie on the floor next to a large patch of dried blood.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

House passes same-sex-marriage protections, citing threat from Roe decision

Tom LoBianco

·Reporter

Tue, July 19, 2022 

WASHINGTON — House Democrats and a sizable group of Republicans voted Tuesday in favor of protecting same-sex marriage from being overturned by the Supreme Court.

The House voted to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, 267-157, with 47 Republicans joining Democrats. The bill would codify same-sex marriage into federal law and bolster other marriage protections, and came in response to fears that the Supreme Court may strike down such protections after overturning in June the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that established the constitutional right to an abortion.

The bill would also formally repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The measure is widely expected to fall short of the 60 votes needed to clear a filibuster in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans hold 50 seats apiece.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi at a press event on reproductive rights in front of the U.S. Capitol on July 15. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cited Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, in which he argued that same-sex marriage and access to contraception were also not inherently protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“Make no mistake, while his legal reasoning is twisted, and unsound, it is crucial that we take Justice Thomas and the extremist movement behind him at their word. This is what they intend to do,” Pelosi said.

But House Republicans, who spent much of the debate arguing on items other than marriage itself, called the vote a last-minute political ploy by Democrats to gin up support from their voters ahead of the November midterm elections.

“We’re debating this bill today because it is July in an election year, and inflation is at a level not seen in 40 years,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is expected to head the House Judiciary Committee if Republicans retake control of the House in November.

In response to a question Tuesday about the legislation, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing that President Biden “strongly supports the bill. He’s grateful that this has bipartisan support in the House.”

She added that “the exact reason for why this bill is being voted on is because of Republicans’ assault on the recognition of Americans’ right to privacy, which has been recognized and upheld over decades by judges appointed by a wide range of presidents — that puts us here. That is why the House had to vote for this bill, so that we can protect people’s rights because of what we have seen this past several weeks.”

Protesters march to the White House to denounce the Supreme Court decision to end federal abortion rights protections on July 9. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

A handful of hard-right lawmakers have called for ending the same-sex-marriage protections derived from the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican and a possible White House candidate, said last weekend the decision was “clearly wrong.”

But other Republicans tamped down that talk, citing Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion in which he wrote that ending abortion protections should not be viewed as setting precedent for upending other rights.

House lawmakers debated passionately for close to an hour, but top House Republicans — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and his top deputies — were absent from the debate Tuesday.

In a rare move, McCarthy and other top Republicans decided not to press their members — or “whip” the vote — to vote against the marriage protections, Punchbowl News reported Tuesday.

Public attitudes on same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically in recent years. A decade ago, the issue divided Democrats, who were apprehensive about being seen as too liberal. But now 70% of the broader public supports same-sex-marriage rights, according to the most recent Gallup poll on the issue.

The surprise vote Tuesday comes as Pelosi has promised to hold a series of votes on hot-button issues that Thomas indicated could be decided by the court.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C, in 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

In his concurring opinion, Thomas did not mention the landmark Loving v. Virginia case, which legalized interracial marriage decades ago. But others, including actor Samuel L. Jackson, have questioned whether that right could be overturned as well.

“He didn’t mention interracial marriage, but it’s on the same theory,” said Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn. “Of course he’s involved in an interracial marriage; he wouldn’t be married to [Ginni Thomas] but for that Loving decision.”

But even that issue has garnered a surprising amount of attention recently. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., said in March that interracial marriage should be decided by each state. Following an uproar, he later explained that he did not want to ban interracial marriage.

Republicans show political evolution with same-sex marriage vote



Emily Brooks

The Hill.
Tue, July 19, 2022 

A vote on codifying federal protections for same-sex marriage demonstrated a sharp political evolution for Republicans on the issue over the last decade, with nearly four dozen House GOP members voting in favor of the legislation.

The House Republican Conference gave members breathing room by not whipping votes against the bill, which Democrats brought up in response to concerns about the Supreme Court potentially reversing course on the case that protected the right for same-sex couples to marry

Titled the Respect for Marriage Act, the bill would also repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage for federal purposes as being between one man and one woman.

“I’m sure we’ll probably be split” on the bill, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said of the conference on Tuesday morning, noting that he does not formally whip the conference for or against most bills.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), vice chairman of the House GOP conference, said that the whip team communicated to members that the vote was “a matter of personal conscience.”

In the end, 47 House Republicans voted for the bill, including two members of House GOP leadership: Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Emmer (Minn.).

“It’s the right vote, and I’m proud to vote for it,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.).

Just a decade ago, the 2012 national Republican Party platform asserted support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

The vote also cemented an evolution for Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who expressed opposition to same-sex marriage in 2013 despite her sister Mary being married to another woman. Cheney expressed regret for that position in an interview last year.

The number of House GOP votes, accounting for about a fifth of the conference, bodes well for the legislation’s chance of passing in the Senate, where it would need at least 10 Republican votes to pass. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Monday expressed optimism about the bill’s chances of reaching the 60-vote threshold necessary to pass in the chamber.

Though the majority of House Republican conference voted against the bill, Republicans against it largely did not center their arguments on the acceptability of same-sex marriage. Instead, they focused on the feeling that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi aimed to use the vote as a political tool in the midterms.

The bill was a response to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. Thomas suggested the court “reconsider” its substantive due process precedents — including in the case that legalized same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges.

Republicans countered that the majority opinion in Dobbs said that its overturning Roe should not cast doubt on precedents like Obergefell. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on the House floor that the bill was a “further effort to intimidate the Court.”

Others, like Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), said they were against the bill because they think recognition of same-sex marriage should be left up to the states.

Several Republicans, including Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), expressed hesitation on Tuesday morning about voting for the bill due to the political maneuvering of Democrats and the speediness with which it was brought to a vote without going through committees. But later on Tuesday evening, they voted for it.

Bacon said that he thinks many Republicans have softened on the issue of same-sex marriage. His own decision on how to vote on the bill was a “little bit of a tug-of-war” due to his religious convictions, but weighed that against the fact that same-sex marriage had been legal nationally for seven years, and that the country is not going to go backwards.

“I have brothers who are gay,” Bacon said. “I have a view that people have a right to live their lives the way they want.”

The Log Cabin Republicans, a group representing LGBT conservatives, said that Democrats’ aim to get Republicans on the record on the issue was a reason to vote for the bill rather than against it.

“Democrats, desperate to deflect from the disastrous leadership of the Biden-Harris Administration, are trying to use this election year vote to paint the GOP as out of step with the rest of the country,” Log Cabin Republicans President Charles Moran said in a statement. “There are critical fights to be had in the coming months on issues like the Left’s assault on Title IX and gender identity lessons in kindergarten classrooms, but Republican voters increasingly agree marriage equality is not one of them.”

Support for same-sex marriage among U.S. adults reached 71 percent in a May 2022 Gallup poll, the highest percentage since the company started measuring support for it in 1996. Gallup found that a majority, 55 percent, of Republicans supported same-sex marriage in 2021.

Weekly churchgoers are the primary demographic likely to oppose same-sex marriage, Gallup found, with 58 percent in that group opposed.

That religious segment is still present among GOP members and their voter base.

In 2019 and 2020, former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.) was censured by some local GOP committees, which his office at the time said was retaliation against him officiating a same-sex wedding.

The congressman who replaced Riggleman, Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.), voted against the bill.

“I’m a biblical conservative, I believe in God’s definition of marriage. And, you know, God’s perfect design is one man for one woman for a lifetime,” Good said. “I don’t think the Supreme Court should have tried to make law on that issue.”

THE WORKPLACE IS NOT A DEMOCRACY

Glassdoor ordered to unmask former toy company employees who posted scathing criticism, showing the scary stakes of ‘anonymous’ reviews

Jane Thier

Tue, July 19, 2022 

A new lawsuit indicates that those Glassdoor reviews you’re writing may not be anonymous.

Last week, Alex Tse, a magistrate judge in a Northern California district court, ruled in favor of a New Zealand–based billion-dollar toy company called Zuru in its case against Glassdoor. Zuru’s co-CEOs alleged that anonymous “false, disparaging and defamatory” reviews on the employer-review site materially harmed its business and complicated its recruiting process.

In January, Zuru filed a subpoena against Glassdoor to compel it to reveal the identities of the person or people who slammed Zuru on the site, calling it a "burnout factory" with a "toxic" culture and "incompetent" leaders. In court, Zuru said it plans to file a defamation lawsuit in New Zealand against whoever posted these on Glassdoor, once their identities are revealed.

Fortune's review of Zuru's Glassdoor page currently shows largely positive posts; yet several negative ones remain standing. Glassdoor also posted an alert on the company's page, alerting users that Zuru has taken legal action and saying, "Please exercise your best judgment when evaluating this employer."

This is bad news for Glassdoor, whose entire billion-dollar business model is based on the promise of anonymity. Even if it is sued, the company maintains in its FAQ, it will “object to and resist” subpoenas it receives. “And, if necessary and as appropriate, we will appear in court to oppose and defeat your request.”

Competing interests are at play, Judge Tse wrote in his decision, according to court documents Fortune reviewed. “Glassdoor wants to safeguard anonymous speech on its website. Zuru wants to protect its reputation. Both interests can’t simultaneously be accommodated.”

A Glassdoor spokesperson told Fortune that the company is committed to its users and its mission in helping people find jobs, promising to continue to fight to protect users' anonymous free speech rights.

"Of the 2.2 million companies that have been rated and reviewed on Glassdoor, we are only involved in a small handful of legal battles with employers, and we almost always prevail," they said. "The Court's decision is a rare outlier under New Zealand law and its implications are limited to reviews involving one employer acting against multiple former New Zealand-based employees."

Judge Tse wrote that Glassdoor may have a legitimate interest in shielding the reviewers’ identities if Zuru's defamation claim is baseless. “But if the reviewers made false statements, their right to remain anonymous may give way to [Zuru’s] need to discover [their] identity in order to pursue its claim.”

Even though the ruling occurred in a U.S. federal court, Judge Tse said he made the ruling based on New Zealand law, as Zuru intends to sue in that jurisdiction. Therefore, the court's ruling was decided based on New Zealand law's definition of defamation, and not the U.S. legal definition.

In other words, Glassdoor shouldn't be ordered to turn over "anonymous" user data in any case solely based on U.S. law. But you never know.

For Glassdoor posters worried about being found out, a judge and jury may not even be involved. If you’ve written a review via a company desktop, phone, or laptop, your employer could digitally track you down. As with any so-called anonymous site, that’s all the more reason to err on the side of caution.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

FALLING RATE OF PROFIT

AT&T Falls Most in 20 Years After Overdue Bills Hit Cash Flow

Scott Moritz
Thu, July 21, 2022


(Bloomberg) -- AT&T Inc. fell the most in 20 years after saying some customers are starting to put off paying their phone bills, which contributed to the wireless carrier cutting its forecast for free cash flow this year by $2 billion.

The emerging economic strain on consumers is adding to pressure the company had already been facing from deep discounts on new phones and higher spending on network equipment.

AT&T shares fell as much as 11%, their biggest slide since 2002. The rout erased the stock’s gain for the year and sent phone company peers Verizon Communications Inc. and T-Mobile US Inc. lower.

AT&T said Thursday that it now expects 2022 free cash flow of $14 billion. About $1 billion of the difference was tied to the “timing of customer collections.” The gloomier outlook overshadowed second-quarter results that topped estimates for profit and wireless subscriber growth.

The forecast raises concerns that consumers are pulling back on spending in the face of decades-high inflation. Part of that pressure is that their bills are getting more expensive. AT&T raised prices by $6 a line on older mobile plans in May.

“I’m not surprised to hear consumers are paying bills more slowly; they are already struggling with higher food and energy prices,” said Wolfe Research analyst Peter Supino. “I’m not worried so much for AT&T as I am for the broader consumer economy. You wonder if this is the canary in the coal mine.”

The highest US inflation in four decades has been squeezing household budgets everywhere from the gas pump to the grocery aisle. That has soured people’s view of the economy and forced some to scale back entertainment and other discretionary spending. But wireless has long been considered an essential service, even for low-income Americans, and discounts on phones are still luring them to sign up with AT&T.

The company added 813,000 regular monthly phone subscribers in the second quarter, exceeding the 554,000 average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Earnings, excluding some items, topped estimates at 65 cents a share, while analysts were looking for 62 cents. Revenue in the quarter met estimates at $29.6 billion.

Recent price increases and subscriber gains allowed the company to raise its forecast for full-year wireless service revenue growth to a range of 4.5% to 5%, up from at least 3% previously. Even so, those price hikes aren’t fully covering costs, Chief Executive Officer John Stankey told analysts on AT&T’s earnings call.

Stankey said he expects higher bad debt and slower payments to continue. Customers are eventually paying their bills, but they’re “less timely,” he said. On average, customers are taking an extra two days to pay their bills.

AT&T added 316,000 new fiber broadband customers in the quarter, topping the 289,000 added in the first three months of the year, giving the company a total of 6.6 million fiber customers. This marked the first full quarter since AT&T spun off its media and streaming business to Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. so it could focus exclusively on wireless and broadband growth.

AT&T used most of the proceeds from the Discovery deal to reduce its net debt by $37 billion in the quarter to $132 billion.