IMPERIALISM IS FINANCIAL CAPITALI$M

First Horizon shareholders approve proposed $13.4B deal with TD

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First Horizon Building in Downtown Memphis
STEPHEN MACLEOD | MBJ

By John Klyce – Reporter, Memphis Business Journal
May 31, 2022

First Horizon announced on Feb. 28 it had entered into an agreement to be acquired by Toronto-based TD Bank Group, in an all-cash transaction valued at $13.4 billion, or $25 per share.

Now, the Memphis-based institution has taken a major step toward completing the deal — it’s gained shareholder approval.

First Horizon held a special meeting of shareholders on Tuesday, May 31, at its Downtown headquarters, to consider and vote on the merger proposal, as well as other proposals related to the merger. According to a press release, shareholders voted to approve the deal. The $25 per share is a significant premium over First Horizon's stock price on Jan. 6, when First Horizon was approached about the merger. That day, the price closed at $18.09. On Friday, May 27, First Horizon's stock price closed at $23.10.

"Approval of the transaction demonstrates the confidence our shareholders have in the financial and strategic benefits of the transaction and the value it provides our associates, clients, and communities," said president and CEO Bryan Jordan, in a press release. "Following the completion of the transaction, the combined organization will have immediate scale benefits and be well positioned to create extraordinary value with a shared customer-centric strategy and broader client capabilities."

Over the past few months, more details about the transaction with TD have been revealed, with a proxy statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) containing a wealth of information.

For example, a section of the proxy is dedicated to a timeline of the deal's progress, charting negotiations from the first inquiry received by president and CEO Bryan Jordan on Jan. 6, to the execution of the agreement on Feb. 27.

It contains Jordan’s employment agreement with TD — which includes a $9 million retention award, in the form of restricted stock units — and the golden parachute compensation executives could receive, as a result of the merger. These aren't necessarily guaranteed payouts, because certain employment conditions in their change-in-control agreements (CICs) must be met to trigger those elements of the compensation. But all together, the bank’s leaders could receive a total of nearly $100 million.

The proxies also note TD’s commitment to the Bluff City, asserting that it “intends to maintain significant business, employment, and community engagement in the Memphis metro area following the closing.”

This tracks with what executives have said previously. First Horizon is the last of the large, publicly traded banks based in Memphis. Previously, Union Planters Bank and National Commerce Financial Corp. were also headquartered here. But Union Planters was acquired by Regions in 2004 for $6 billion, while National Commerce was acquired by SunTrust that same year for $6.98 billion.

The number of local employees at those institutions dropped over time after the acquisitions; and when the deal was announced, MBJ asked Jordan how First Horizon can avoid a similar fate. Here’s what he said:
“If I look at other mergers TD has done in the past, what they’ve shown is not only the ability to maintain employment but to leverage the capabilities of organizations, and, in often cases, grow employment. This was a rapidly growing organization, and I think we have a strong ability in this combination to minimize the adverse impact on the communities that we serve."

Post-acquisition, the new TD Bank Group would have more than 2,600 branches and nearly 30 million customers. In the U.S., First Horizon's $89 billion in assets would push the combined TD Bank Group past $600 billion in assets. The U.S operations of TD Bank stands to hit 10.7 million customers across 1,560 locations in 22 states. The First Horizon-TD transaction is expected to close in November 2022.

ESG Backlash Has Fund Clients Demanding Proof It Works

Lisa Pham
Tue, May 31, 2022,

ESG Backlash Has Fund Clients Demanding Proof It Works

(Bloomberg) -- Investment clients are demanding more evidence that ESG asset managers can deliver on their promises, amid a steady stream of criticism that the industry is on the wrong track.

“There’s a lot of pressure on investment managers to demonstrate the value that they’re getting out of their stewardship work,” said Peter Reali, managing director of responsible investment and engagement at Nuveen LLC, which oversees about $1.3 trillion. And when it comes to wider industry efforts to cut portfolio emissions, ESG investment professionals “definitely hear the complaints and concerns,” he said.

Environmental, social and governance investing has drawn an increasingly vocal chorus of detractors this year, with everyone from US Republicans to Elon Musk weighing in. But fund bosses are also facing more targeted criticism from ESG insiders, with notable highlights including hedge fund activist Chris Hohn’s recent diatribe against so-called ESG engagement strategies. At the same time, regulators are growing more explicit in their warnings that a crackdown is coming.

Against that backdrop, clients are asking more specific questions around things like proxy voting, and they want evidence that ESG engagement is actually “getting companies to move,” Reali said.

But despite much of the ESG industry’s focus on climate, the data suggest the investment industry isn’t really moving the needle. Last year, global CO2 levels rebounded to their “highest level in history,” the International Energy Agency said in March. Meanwhile, the ESG industry has surpassed $40 trillion in value, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

Simon Rawson, director of corporate engagement at nonprofit ShareAction, said he’s seen relationships between asset managers and the companies in which they hold stakes sometimes get too comfortable.

“If they’re going to be robust stewards and challenge companies, they also need to be able to have courageous conversations,” he said. “And honestly, most of the time they aren’t prepared to compromise the relationship that they have with the company.”

In the current climate of ESG skepticism, “tea-and-biscuits engagement with companies just doesn’t cut it anymore,” he said.

Reali said Nuveen is trying to make it easier for clients to track and monitor how well near-term ESG targets are being met. Having a 2050 net-zero emissions goal “is worthless without interim targets, interim goals and progress reporting,” he said. “The systems have to be built now. I think people are really underestimating the challenge we’re facing here.”

Mirza Baig, global head of ESG investments at Aviva Investors, said it’s “difficult to argue that, as an industry, we have done enough.” Despite the rhetoric, “in too many areas, we are still operating on a business-as-usual basis, while bolting on renewables and energy efficiency initiatives.”

Baig singled out a tendency in the industry to rely on the environmental metric of carbon intensity, whereby a company’s carbon footprint is measured as a percentage of the total.

“The problem is absolute emissions levels continue to rise,” he said. “This strategy of continuing to invest substantial sums in brownfield oil and gas sites, but then supplementing that with lower carbon solutions, in aggregate will take us further away from a Paris Aligned energy mix in the future.”

While it’s important to approach the subject of decarbonization “with a degree of realism,” the ESG industry needs to ask itself whether it’s done enough and at a fast enough pace, Baig said.

“I think we can all objectively say it hasn’t,” he said.

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CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Deutsche Bank Replaces DWS’s Woehrmann After Greenwash Raid

Steven Arons, Sheryl Tian Tong Lee and Ambereen Choudhury
Wed, 1 June 2022, 5:06 am·4-min read

(Bloomberg) -- Deutsche Bank AG’s embattled DWS Group Chief Executive Officer Asoka Woehrmann resigned hours after a police raid at the asset manager, the culmination of months of controversy surrounding the executive.

Stefan Hoops, head of the German lender’s corporate bank, will assume the top role at DWS from June 10, according to a statement Wednesday. His previous role will be taken by David Lynne, who leads the corporate bank for Asia-Pacific based in Singapore.

The departure of one of Deutsche Bank CEO Christian Sewing’s former close allies underscores the rising pressure since former DWS chief sustainability officer Desiree Fixler’s allegations that the company inflated its ESG credentials. The raids add to a growing list of regulatory and legal headaches for Sewing after law officials swooped into both firms in Frankfurt on Tuesday.

DWS shares fell as much as 8% in Frankfurt on Wednesday, adding to a 5.7% drop the previous day. The stock was down 7.3% at 31 euros ($33) as of 1:05 p.m. local time.

“The allegations made against DWS and me over the past months, including personal attacks and threats, however unfounded or undefendable, have left a mark,” Woehrmann wrote in a farewell message to staff seen by Bloomberg. “They have been a burden for the firm, as well as for me and, most significantly, for those closest to me. So it is with an extremely heavy heart that I have agreed with the firm to resign.”

The greenwashing probes also underscore the growing scrutiny of money managers and their sustainability claims as demand for ESG investments soars. Assets tied to environmental, social and governance issues are expected to surge to more than $50 trillion by 2025, or about a third of global assets under management, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

“Asset managers, especially those operating in markets such as Europe and the US, need to make sure they can support their ESG claims given regulators’ scrutiny of greenwashing,” said Mak Yuen Teen, a professor at the National University of Singapore who researches corporate governance.

For Woehrmann, the raid was another blow after he faced scrutiny over his use of personal email for business purposes and the role his relationship with a German businessman played in deals.

While the negative news flow around DWS in recent months had annoyed the bank’s top brass, Bloomberg has reported, Sewing had stood by Woehrmann. Earlier this year he said that the executive had “done an outstanding job” and in Wednesday’s statement thanked him for his “impressive work and performance.”

He took over the DWS job in 2018, soon after the asset manager’s poorly-received initial public offering. Investors had yanked billions of euros from its funds and Sewing asked Woehrmann to turn the asset manager around after he’d impressed him running the bank’s German retail operations. He managed to stem the outflows and morale improved.

Woehrmann also slashed costs at the asset manager while boosting revenue. The firm last year achieved the highest pretax profit since before its listing four years ago.

Like Woehrmann before him, Hoops is close to Sewing and he has spent his entire career at Deutsche Bank, most of it in the trading unit before Sewing tapped him in 2019 to turn around the flagging transaction banking business.

The business was supposed to be a centerpiece of the overhaul but has seen results outshone by those at the investment bank. The unit has faced strong interest-rate headwinds, though Hoops’ relentless focus on introducing deposit charges for clients has recently contributed to two consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth.

Growing Chorus

The ESG industry has recently faced attacks from a growing chorus of detractors. Jim Whittington, head of responsible investment at Dimensional Fund Advisors, said the sustainability trend is struggling both in terms of real-world impact and returns. HSBC Holdings Plc’s asset management unit recently suspended its head of responsible investment after he questioned the sense of focusing on climate change.

The US Securities and Exchange Commission floated tighter rules last week to ensure a product’s name is squarely focused on its actual strategy, with most observers fixating on what the restrictions mean for socially responsible investing. The proposals could hit thousands more funds trading everything from value and growth stocks to bonds and emerging markets.

Misleading Claims

Fixler has said that DWS’s claims that hundreds of billions of its assets under management were “ESG integrated” were misleading because the label didn’t translate into meaningful action by relevant fund managers. DWS has since stopped using the label.

Woehrmann fired former sustainability officer Fixler in March last year, saying in a memo to staff that her unit hadn’t made enough progress. She sued for unfair dismissal but lost the case before a Frankfurt labor court in January.

Still, ESG assets have continued to pour into the bank. DWS funds saw record net inflows of 48 billion euros ($51 billion) in 2021, with ESG products accounting for 40% of the total, according to a press release.

MMM YARG GROWL CRUNCH EAT CREDIT

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


Lisa Lee
Tue, May 31, 2022, 

BLOOMBERG



1 / 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stumbling Along

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

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

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

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

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

AMC didn’t respond to a request seeking comment.

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

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

‘More Zombies’

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

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

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

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

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

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CRIMINAL CAPITALISM WINK,WINK

The death knell for SPACs?

Connie Loizos
Tue, May 31, 2022,


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachelle Akuffo

Wed, June 1, 2022, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great Realization

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rachelle Akuffo is an anchor for Yahoo Finance Live.

Split on drug culture, Mexican ballads flourish in digital age

Agence France-Presse
June 03, 2022

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

CLAUDIO CRUZ AFP

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Difficult to control'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For him, there is only the corrido genre.

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

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

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

© 2022 AFP

NO CAN DO

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


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

AFP, Abu Dhabi
Published: 24 May ,2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amy Goodman,

 Democracy Now!
June 04, 2022

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

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



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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kirk Swearingen,

 Salon
June 03, 2022

Amy Coney Barrett (AFP)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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