824 Michael Hudson backs Sanders on Banks. Panama tax haven for oil, gas & mining industries

Michael Hudson backs Sanders on Banks. Panama tax haven for oil, gas &
mining industries

Newsletter published on 19 April 2016

(1) Panama: Laundering Havens for War Budgets - Michael Hudson
(2) Michael Hudson backs Sanders on Banks, against Paul Krugman
(3) Michael Hudson: Wall Street donors run the Gov't. Tim Geithner
should be in Jail
(4) Paul Krugman talks about Debt, but writes out the role of Banks -
Steve Keen

(1) Panama: Laundering Havens for War Budgets - Michael Hudson
http://michael-hudson.com/2016/04/laundering-havens-for-war-budgets/

Laundering Havens for War Budgets

By Michael Hudson

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Panama money laundering 2016

"Closing Panama Tax Haven Will Require Fighting the Most Powerful Lobby
In the World,"

The Real News Network, April 14, 2016.

Economist Michael Hudson says oil and mining industries and the State
Department created Panama and Liberia for the express purpose of tax
evasion.

Sharmini Peries coming to you from Baltimore.

Within a week the 11 million documents called the Panama papers,
published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists,
has become a household name. The documents are connected to the Panama
law firm Mossack Fonsesca that helped establish offshore accounts for
some of the wealthiest and most powerful leaders to launder money and
evade taxes.

On Tuesday the police in Panama raided the Mossack Fonseca law firm to
search for more documents linked to illicit activities. But what are
they expecting to find, since we have already known for some time now
that offshore accounts are being used to evade taxes by the banking
sector, essentially white-collar crooks, at institutions such as Credit
Suisse and others? But who is really behind the creation of these
mechanisms and loopholes for tax evasion?

Our next guest, Michael Hudson, says Panama was created as a tax haven
by certain sectors of our economy for this purpose. Joining us now from
New York is Michael Hudson. Michael is a distinguished research
professor of economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and
he?s a former balance of payments economist for Chase Manhattan bank. He
is the author of many books, and the latest among them is Killing the
Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global
Economy. And if you want to know more about that book, on our site
you’ll find Chris Hedges interviewing Michael Hudson on this book.
Thanks for joining us, Michael.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Good to be here, Sharmini.

PERIES: Michael, so let’s begin with a short history of the creation of
Panama and how it was bought from Colombia by the United States, and its
relevance today vis-a-vis the Panama papers.

HUDSON: Well, Panama was basically carved off from Colombia in order to
have a canal. It was created very much like Liberia. It’s not really a
country in the sense that a country has its own currency and its own tax
system. Panama uses U.S. dollars. So does Liberia.

The real story didn’t come out in the Panama papers. Reporters naturally
focused on criminal people laundering money. But Panama wasn’t designed
to launder money. It was designed to launder earnings – mainly by the
oil and the gas industries, and the mining industry.

Panama and Liberia were long noted as having "flags of convenience." Oil
tankers and mineral ships would register themselves under the flags of
Panama or Liberia, or some other country that used the U.S. dollar, not
its own local currency.

I first found out about this about 40 years ago, when I was doing a
study of the balance of payments of the oil industry. I went to Standard
Oil, whose treasurer walked me through their balance sheet. I said, I
can’t figure out whether Standard Oil and the other oil companies make
their money at the producing end of oil, or at the distributing end of
refining and selling it. And he said, "We make our earnings right here
in New York, in the Treasurer’s office." I asked what he meant He
explained: "We sell the oil that we buy from Saudi Arabia or the Near
East at very low prices to the tanker company that’s registered in
Panama or Liberia." They don’t have an income tax in their country,
because they’re not a real country. The oil companies then sell the
crude oil to downstream distributors in the United States or Europe – at
a very, very high markup.

The markup is so high that there’s no room for profit to be made at all
in refineries or gas stations selling the oil. So the oil companies
don’t pay the tax collector in Europe anything. They don’t pay the
American government an income tax either. All their earnings are
reported as being made in the tankers, which are registered in countries
that don’t tax income.

I told him that I had looked at the balance-of-payments reports from the
Federal Reserve and the Treasury Bulletin. I see here’s Europe, here’s
Latin America, here’s Africa and Asia. I can’t find where the profit
remittances are.

He told me to look at the very last line on the right hand of the
country tables. It’s called "International." I asked whether all these
countries in Europe and elsewhere were international. He explained to me
that "International" was a special category for what was really part of
the United States abroad. They’re the offshore banking centers – Panama,
Liberia, et cetera.

So I found out that basically Panama, and hence Panamanian companies,
were set up initially to register oil tankers and mineral ships in order
to give the appearance of taking all of their profits on the
transporting the oil, or the copper or other minerals, from third world
countries to the United States and Europe.

The United States went along with this. This made the oil industry tax
exempt really since the 1920s. When the income tax was created in 1913
or 14, it was intended to capture economic rents. But the big rent
extractors, oil and gas and minerals, got away with avoidance.

PERIES: Michael, you indicated in one of your articles that you were
approached by a State Department operative in 1967. Tell us more about
that experience.

HUDSON: It was from a former State Department person who had gone to
work for Chase. The problem that America had in the 1960s was the
Vietnam War. The entire balance-of-payments deficit of the United States
in the 1950s and the ‘60s, right down to the early ‘70s, was military
spending abroad. Either the dollar was going down or the United States
had to sell gold. That’s what finally led Nixon to take the dollar off
gold in 1971. But for many years the United tried to fight against doing
that.

So the State Department came to Chase, and said, we’ve got to figure out
some way of getting enough dollars to offset the military deficit. They
found the way to do it. It was to make the United States the new
Switzerland of the world. I was asked to make a calculation of how much
criminal capital there is in the world. How much the drug dealers made,
how much the criminals all over made, how much the dictators secreted
away. How much goes to Switzerland, and how can U.S. banks get this
criminal money in the United States?

The end result was that the U.S. Government went to Chase and other
banks and asked them to be good American citizens and make America safe
for the criminals of the world, to safeguard their money to support the
dollar in the process.

Earlier, Chase had been asked to create a bank in Saigon so that the
army and other people wouldn’t have to use French banks, which sent it
back to France, where it ended up with General De Gaulle cashing it in
for gold, Chase said, okay, we will help set up banks.

Other banks did this not to evade the law, not to break the law
initially, but to be good citizens and attract crooked capital from all
over the world. The same thing happened with the British West Indies –
the Cayman Islands. They had declared their independence, but in order
not to be a real country, in order to attract flight capital to England,
they rejoined the empire as a colony so that they could serve as money
laundering intermediaries. The idea was to have all of this money come
to the United States or its ally Britain.

All this context can easily be traced. If you look at the money that
goes into Panama and other offshore banking centers in the Caribbean,
none of this money stays in Panama. It becomes "U.S. liabilities to
Panama," or other banking centers – mainly to U.S. bank branches in
these regions.

PERIES: Michael, there is a question I want to ask you. Over the next
few days there has been many questions raised about why there are not
many Americans or even Canadians named in the leaked documents. Some
speculate that this is because in the U.S. they don’t need tax havens,
because it is one. States such as Nevada, Wyoming, and South Dakota are
considered the new Switzerland of tax evasion. Explain how the process
works, because all this is interlinked.

HUDSON: You usually have not only one or two, but often three or four
centers in a "veil of tiers." The idea is not to put money into the
United States directly. Imagine you’re a Russian kleptocrat, or a
Ukrainian kleptocrat, and you want to take a billion dollars and keep it
safe. You’re not going to put it directly into a Delaware corporation,
or a Wyoming corporation. The money is going to end up there. But if you
put it right in, then the U.S. Government and the bank would say, "Wait
a minute. Here is the president of Ukraine with a billion dollars, right
in our banking system."

So what you have to do is launder the money. Likewise with the Colombian
drug cartel. They’re not going to put the Colombian drug cartel balance
in a Delaware bank under their name. It has to go through a lot of
stages. The money goes out of the Ukraine and out of Russia into Latvia,
primarily via the banks of Riga. I’ve met with individuals in Riga,
Americans who provide the service of setting up maybe 30 companies for
the money launderer. They will send the money, say, to the British West
Indies. From the British West Indies it’ll go to Panama. And then it’ll
go from Panama, already being concealed, to end up in a Delaware
corporation at the end of the line.

You can look in the balance-of-payments statistics and you can find
liabilities of bank branches in Panama or the British West Indies or
whoever, owed to the U.S. head office. You can look and see how much
American stock, how many American bonds, how many American bank deposits
all come from these islands. The magnitude is so enormous that this is
what has been supporting the dollar.

Congress is right behind this. In the 1960s it recognized that
basically, criminals are the most liquid people in the world. They don’t
want to tie down their money and property, because property can be seen,
it’s visible. Finance in the balance of payments reports is called
"Invisibles." If you’re a criminal, you want to have your finance
invisible in order to keep it safe. And the safest investment is U.S.
Treasury bonds.

So there was an argument in Congress in the 1960s: Do we want to have
15% tax withholding on the Treasury bonds, especially to foreigners? It
was pointed out that most foreigners who hold Treasury bonds actually
are criminals. So Congress said, we need criminal money. We are not
going to withhold criminal taxes. We’re going to make crime tax-free.
We’re going to tax American industry, we’re going to tax American labor,
but not foreign criminals, because we need their money. So we’re not
going to withhold what they hold through their fiduciary accounts in
Delaware, which was the main at that time, or New York, or London
branches of U.S. banks. The London branches of U.S. banks were the
single major depositors and source of revenue of growth in the 1960s for
Chase, Citibank and others. They were called eurodollars. The
eurodollars flowing into these branches were very largely from drug
dealing and arms dealing, and third world dictators in Africa and other
places.

So under U.S. pressure the international banking system was set up to
facilitate the money laundering of drug capital. The reason the
Americans and the Canadians were not particularly noteworthy in the law
firm’s records is the Panamanian law firm’s records was that its role
was to set up money laundering for foreigners, to conceal their means of
getting money. But the oil industry doesn’t conceal it. The oil industry
declares all of the income it gets, and the mining industry declares all
the income that it gets from the Panamanian shipping companies, from the
Liberian shipping companies. But because Panama and Liberia don’t have
an income tax, there’s no tax liability for this. It’s stolen fair and
square from the tax collector, just like California Senator Hayakawa
said America had stolen Panama fair and square from Colombia.

PERIES: Wow. The big question here in all of these discussions and leaks
is what are the solutions to this problem, and is it attainable at all?

HUDSON: Well, the solution is to tax companies on their worldwide
earnings. If you know that a U.S. company like Standard Oil, Exxon now,
makes X billion dollars earnings, you simply rule that it doesn’t matter
whether you declare these in Panama or the United States. We’re going to
treat the income that you declare from your Panamanian shipping company
as if it is earned in the United States, and we’re going to tax it at
the U.S. rate.

However, this explains why there’s not going to be a solution to money
laundering. If you would solve the money laundering problem and tax
companies and their worldwide earnings, you would tax Apple on all the
income that it makes tax exempt in Ireland by using Ireland as a tax
avoidance center, you would take on the largest vested interests in the
United States – oil, gas and monopolies.

I don’t think any politician is strong enough to attract campaign
contributions from these main contributors and at the same time really
push to tax them. They’re going to go after the little guy who is trying
to walk through the loopholes that the oil industry created a century
ago. But it’s hard to go after the little guy and the small tax evaders
without catching the big fish. And the big fish are the biggest
corporations in the United States.

That’s why the problem is not going to be solved. It won’t be solved
largely because the United States wants to support the dollar by
attracting all of this crooked money, just like England wants to support
sterling by making itself the flight capital center for all of the
biggest criminals in the world, from the Russian kleptocrats to African
dictators and Asian money launderers.

The whole financial system basically has been criminalized in the
process of being militarized, to subsidize the fact that countries like
the United States and Britain have heavy military budgets. This is how
they finance their military budget – with money laundering by the
world’s criminal class. The byproduct is to leave the largest companies
tax exempt, from Apple to Exxon, right down the line.

PERIES: There’s a lot in there, Michael. Thank you so much for joining
us today, and we hope to have you back to unpack some of those very
important sections you were talking about in terms of solutions, as well
as how to get legally at some of the people involved in creating these
loopholes and evasions. I thank you so much for joining us.

HUDSON: Thanks a lot, Sharmini. It?s good to be here.

PERIES: And thank you for joining us on the Real News Network.

(2) Michael Hudson backs Sanders on Banks, against Paul Krugman

http://michael-hudson.com/2016/04/establishment-protection-of-big-banks/

Establishment Protection of Big Banks

By Michael Hudson

Wednesday, April 13, 2016 Interviews wall st

Permalink

JAISAL NOOR, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I’m Jaisal Noor in
Baltimore.

It’s been a tough week for Senator Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail,
despite his big win in Wisconsin on Tuesday, because it’s been marked by
fierce attacks on his economic plans. On Friday, New York Times’ Paul
Krugman pinned a scathing critique of Sanders for his slogans of
breaking up the banks because he says that won’t protect us from a
future crisis and for Sanders failing to provide details about how he
would go about this, when asked by the New York Daily News. Sanders met
with the Daily News on April 1st for an in depth interview for a range
of his policy positions. That interview’s been widely panned by the
corporate media which is especially significant ahead of the April 19th
New York primary.

Well now joining us to talk about this is Michael Hudson and Bill Black.
Michael Hudson is a distinguished Research Professor of Economics in
University of Missouri, Kansas City. His latest book is Killing the
Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global
Economy. And joining us from Kansas City, Missouri is Bill Black. Bill
is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of
Missouri, Kansas City. He’s a white collar criminologist, financial
regulator, and author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One, as
well as a regular contributor to the Real News.

So I want to thank you both for joining us and let’s start with you
Michael. So the New York Daily News is not a small paper. It has the
highest circulation out of any local daily in the country and there’s
been all this fallout from their interview, including most recently Paul
Krugman, who really went after Sanders for his policy positions on
breaking up the big banks as well as other things as well. We want to
get your response.

MICHAEL HUDSON: Well it’s obvious that supporters of Hillary are now
getting very worried. Sanders was sandbagged at the Daily News. One of
the reporters for the Daily News is also the co-host of Democracy Now.

NOOR: Juan Gonzales.

HUDSON: He said that the editorial page editor was giving him rapid fire
questions, wanted short answers, and then when Sanders gave the short
answer, the newspaper later made up a whole attack that was unjustified,
saying he didn’t give long answers – when he wasn’t given a chance to.
So it was really left to Paul Krugman to attack Sanders’ policy on the bank.

Now Krugman has always been a defender of the bank and always in denial
that banks can be crooked. A few years ago in Iceland, Iceland had a
problem. The banks were very crooked, they controlled the government
that was about to give enormous amounts of money to the banks. I had
gone over and met with the Prime Minister and former Prime Ministers and
convinced them not to pay Britain and the sort of crooked depositors.
They hired Krugman at a very high fee and gave him the handouts and he
said ‘no, the Icelandic banks are not crooked’. Iceland should really
bankrupt itself and pay for the Icesave and the British bank affiliates
that went under even though these were not bank branches but bank
affiliates.

The Icelanders were very disappointed because they thought that Krugman
really was a liberal. But he’s not a liberal when it comes to banking.
He’s very right-wing, and the very day after Sanders gave the Daily News
interview, the Wall Street Journal had a much better report explaining
just what Sanders’ position was with the banks. He said he wanted to
give the issue of closing the too big to fail banks to the Treasury, not
to the Fed.

When Krugman came out and said what Sanders is saying is inconceivable,
it’s just really wrong and a personal attack. The fact is that FDIC head
Sheila Bair had come out and in her memoirs that she wrote when she
left, she said how she tried to close down Citibank because this was the
crux of the junk mortgage boom. She wanted to close it down and she was
opposed by the Obama Administration.

Krugman said that the frauds were not in the banks. They were in the
non-bank things. And yet the fact is that if the frauds weren’t in the
bank then why did the Federal Reserve have to give 4.3 trillion dollars
of quantitative easing and what Randy Wray has calculated as 17 trillion
dollars’ worth of taking bad bank assets on. Everybody knew that the
banks were crooked because they called these loans "liars’ loans." The
liars were the banks, not the mortgagees. And they talked about NINJAS,
No Income No Job and no Assets. So the fact is, everybody knew about who
was sponsoring these mortgages except Krugman.

Krugman has had a problem with Sanders advisers all the way back. He’s
written that it’s impossible for banks to create credit. That they can
only act like savings banks and recycle money. He’s always accused
Modern Monetary Theorists, who are part of the UMKC, of being cranks.
And yet he’s never mentioned them in print. He thought he had a chance a
few years ago to defend his right-wing views by having a debate with an
Australian economist, Steve Keen, and your viewers can Google
Krugman-Keen and see the result of it. But Krugman just showed that he
really didn’t know what he was talking about when it comes to bank
credit and to monetary theory.

And that’s exactly why he’s been trotted forth as an opponent of Sanders
in here. Because he has credibility, but he doesn’t have any credibility
in bank theory or finance.

It’s very much like when Sanders has accused Wall Street and other
wealthy people of mind-control of the political process. The same thing
has happened in academia. They’ve bought control or they’ve subsidized
economists who really give the Wall Street line. And Krugman right down
the line supports the banks, supports Wall Street. He’s to the right of
Sheila Bair and other progressive Republicans who did try to stop what
was happening. We’re advocating exactly what Bernie Sanders is
advocating today; to break up the big banks and to treat them as what
they are, engaging in massive fraud.

NOOR: Bill I wanted to bring you into this and your response to Krugman.
In his piece, he writes, he attacks Sanders for his critique of Hillary
Clinton for taking money from Wall Street. Earlier this week he said
that made her unqualified because of all the corporate money that she’s
taken. He’s backed away from that. But I want to read you a bit of what
Krugman said. He said "it’s one thing for the Sanders campaign to point
out Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street connections which are real. Although
the questions are whether those have distorted her positions. A case the
campaign has never even tried to make." Can we get your response to that?

BILL BLACK: Well I’ve actually written 3 pieces this week that track
each of these subjects. In your lead-in you said despite his win in
Wisconsin he’s had these attacks. I would change that, because of his
win in Wisconsin that there’s a finally a note of desperation in the
Sanders campaign.

NOOR: You mean the Clinton campaign.

BLACK: The Clinton campaign. So let me take it in pieces in what Krugman
has said. As Michael Hudson was explaining, Krugman’s central point is,
he says it wasn’t big banks that caused the problem, it was little
banks. And then the examples he picked is Countrywide which is the
largest home lender in the world, which is kind of hilarious. But I’ve
also written a column this week on Citigroup which is by any measure a
massive Wall Street financial institution. Which not only made predatory
loans/fraudulent loans, but purchased and sold them. We’re talking about
hundreds of billions of dollars of loans that it knew to be fraudulent.
How did it know? Because its own senior people put this in writing. And
in particular to take on another [hat] that I have as one of the
founding members of Bank Whistleblowers United.

One of my co-founders is Richard Bowen. Senior Vice President, Chief
Risk Underwriter for Citi. Who put in writing to the absolute senior
management in Citi including Robert Ruben, that 80% of the loans that
Citi was selling on the secondary market, largely [inaud.]. It was
selling roughly 60 billion dollars a year of this stuff. 80% of it was
fraudulent. So Krugman is simply wrong. There was enormous criminal
activity and even the Obama Justice Department which refuses to
prosecute, consistently now uses the word fraud and toxic mortgages to
describe what was done.

NOOR: For full disclosure you are an adviser to Sanders. So we wanted to
get Michael Hudson back in this conversation.

HUDSON: Citigroup certainly is the bank that everybody had wanted to
close down. Sheila Bair gives all the reasons for this. Of course my old
boss at Chase Manhattan, Paul Volcker, was the person who was pushing
the too big to fail. So the important thing to realize is that Sanders
position is the normal position among people who know banking and who
see the need to reform. Krugman’s taking an extreme pro bank position
that is even to the right to progressive Republicans in the attacks that
he gives. The attacks basically are not warranted. That’s why I said
he’s sort of the Alan Greenspan of the left-wing. The go-to person when
the banks want somebody with credibility on the left to support the bank
position against the critics and essentially to do a hit job on the
critics. That’s what basically he’s been trying to do. He’s trotted out
to confuse the left, as if what Sanders is saying lacks credibility.
That’s simply not the case.

NOOR: And Bill, this isn’t Krugman’s first attack of course. You’ve been
writing, you’ve been responding to attacks by the likes of Krugman for
some time now. I’m sure we can expect more of it especially over the
next week. Give us your thoughts on how Sanders and Clinton compare on
this issue of big banks. I’ve been traveling around the country and
interviewing perspective Democratic voters and this is one of the
biggest issues that is affecting voters around the country is the
economy and people feel the banks are responsible and they want to see
the banks reigned in.

BLACK: Well Krugman is now basically serving as surrogate on this issue
for Hillary Clinton. I’ve just written an article which I explain his
over the top attack on Senator Sanders for how dare he complain about
the Clinton campaign taking massive funds from Wall Street. And in
particular the systemically dangerous banks that when, not if, the next
one fails will cause a global systemic crisis. You’ve just heard Krugman
doesn’t want anything done to these institutions. He wants them to be
allowed to operate with massive federal subsidies.

But I point out in this column by quoting Krugman extensively from past
pieces in which he says campaign contributions are the key corrupting
influence and that we have to deal with it. Well that’s what he used to
believe until he was supporting Hillary Clinton. Then apparently all of
that stuff became inoperative. So fundamentally, notice that Hillary
Clinton in the debates always answers, if the banks pose a system risk
then ‘I’ll deal with them’.

By definition the only way you get to be too big to fail, by definition
even the Federal Reserve says this, is if you pose a global systemic
risk. So we already know they pose a global systemic risk. But by saying
that you don’t necessarily pose any such risk, she has played into their
hands, there was just a court decision in favor of, Metropolitan Life,
saying that even though it was so large that it would cause a systemic
crisis were it to fail that that’s not the standard. That unless you can
prove that it’s actually about to fail that you can’t do anything about it.

Well at that point it’s too late. It’s absolutely useless. So Hillary
together with Paul Krugman mean A) they’re not going to try to take on
the systemically dangerous institutions, as you’ve noticed President
Obama has refused to do for 7 years. And B) because of the position
Krugman and Hillary are taking, they would lose the court cases because
they’re constantly giving ammunition to the opponents.

NOOR: Well I want to thank you both for joining us.

BLACK: Thank you.

HUDSON: Good to be here.

NOOR: And thank you for joining us at the Real News Network.

(3) Michael Hudson: Wall Street donors run the Gov't. Tim Geithner
should be in Jail
http://michael-hudson.com/2016/03/traumatized-worker-syndrome/

Traumatized Worker Syndrome

By Michael Hudson

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

CHRIS HEDGES: Hi, I’m Chris Hedges. Welcome to Days of Revolt.

Today we’re going to carry out part two of my discussion about where
we’re headed economically, with economist Michael Hudson. He’s worked on
Wall Street, taught economics, and is the author of Killing the Host:
How Financial Parasites and Debt Destroy the Global Economy. Welcome,
Michael. (Part One – The inversion of Classical Economics)

MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s good to be here.

HEDGES: So, we spoke in the first segment about the parasitic quality of
the banks, hedge funds and the speculative class that has in essence
cannibalized the country – including, interestingly, industry itself,
and forced down the throats of the American public an unsustainable debt
peonage, whether that’s through student loans, predatory credit card
interest rates where it’s that bait and switch – where you get zero
percent interest and next thing you know, you’re paying as high as 26
percent, 23 percent …

HUDSON: If you miss a payment.

HEDGES: If you miss a payment. Mortgages, with many houses now
underwater because of 2008. I want to look first at the self-identified
liberal class within the Democratic Party, including Barack Obama. It
often uses the language of economic justice, and will even chastise Wall
Street rhetorically, but has been as committed to this neoliberal
project as the Republicans.

HUDSON: The key of demagogic politics is to realize that the people who
are really backing you are your campaign funders. Your job as a
politician is to say, "I can deliver this constituency to you backers.
"Obama was a genius at doing what Donald Trump is trying to do today:
taking a constituency. That’s his column A: a focus group listing
everything the constituency wants. They want debt relief. They want
better jobs. They want higher minimum wage.

HEDGES: And not trade agreements like NAFTA and …

HUDSON: Right. And then column B, that he didn’t tell them, was what the
campaign backers on Wall Street want. Obama was picked essentially by
Robert Rubin, who then became head of Citibank after having come out of
the Goldman Sachs. Obama was picked by Rubin of Wall Street to promise
was he was going to really do. It was what any president today is going
to do: A politician’s job is to deliver whoever voted for you to your
backers, who are on Wall Street. Whether you are a Republican or a
Democrat, but especially if you are a Democrat – that’s really the Wall
Street wing of the American political system. The Republicans are for
the corporate monopoly, oil and gas wing of it.

As soon as Obama got in, [Hank] Paulson – the Republican Treasury
Secretary – was talking to Barney Frank and said, you know, we were
supposed to, under TARP, have some of the money to go for debt writedown.

HEDGES: Explain TARP.

HUDSON: TARP was Troubled Asset Relief Program. It was supposed to treat
banks as if they were troubled. If you’re a criminal and you’re stealing
from people, that was called "troubled." There’s a lawsuit recently in
in the news about a rich boy drove his car and killed four people. His
defense was, "It’s not my fault, I have affluenza. I’m so rich that I
don’t have a social sense. So of course I drove away. But I’m innocent,
because I’m rich. What do you expect?"

Essentially that’s the Goldman Sachs view of the economy. You cause
collateral damage all over, but that’s what Wall Street does. You can’t
punish them for it. They’re just doing what a predatory financial
institution does. So Obama said "No, , I’m not going to do that,"
[meaning write down the mortgage debts as he had promised voters in
Column A]. He came in and appointed Wall Street’s main lobbyist, Tim
Geithner, as Treasury Secretary.

HEDGES: You spend a lot of time in the book on him.

HUDSON: That’s right. Geithner appears in almost every dirty dealing
episode of the book. He was the bagman. He was the person who [Sheila
Baoir] accused of blocking the FDIC when it wanted to take over
Citibank, which not only was broke but was a criminalized organization.
It was [inaud.].

HEDGES: Explain just quickly why it was criminalized.

HUDSON: Well, Citibank …

HEDGES: Citibank, by the way, was not alone. There were other …

HUDSON: No, there were others. But …

HEDGES: Citibank was maybe the worst.

HUDSON: Citibank, along with Countrywide Financial, was making junk
mortgages. These were mortgages called NINJA. They were called liars’
loans, to people with no income, no jobs and no assets. You had this
movie, The Big Short, as if some genius on Wall Street discovered that
the mortgages were all going to go down. And you have the stories of
Queen Elizabeth going to the economist …

HEDGES: "How come none of you knew?"

HUDSON: Right. The fact is, if everybody on Wall Street called these
mortgages liars’ loans, if they knew that they’re made for NINJAs, for
people who can’t pay, all of Wall Street knew that it was fraud.

The key is that if you’re a really smart criminal, you have to plan to
get caught. The plan is how to beat the rap. On Wall Street, if you buy
garbage assets, how do you make the government bail you out? That was
what the president of the United States is for, whether it was Obama or
whether it would have been John McCain …

HEDGES: Or Bush.

HUDSON: Or whether it would be Hillary today, or Trump. Their job is to
bail out Wall Street and make the people pay, not Wall Street. Because
Wall Street are "the people" who select the politicians – who know where
their money is coming from. If you have a campaign contributor, no
matter whether it’s Wall Street, or locally if it’s a real estate
developer, you all know who your backers are.

The talent you need to have as a politician is to make the voters think
that you’re going to be supporting their interests …

HEDGES: And what’s that great Groucho Marx quote?

HUDSON: The secret of success is sincerity. If you can fake that, you’ve
got it made.

HEDGES: Well, and that’s kind of it. You know, there’s Ron Suskind in
his book, what’s it called? Confidence–.

HUDSON: Confidence Man.

HEDGES: Confidence Man. He interviews someone on Wall Street, and asks
why they’re so hostile to Obama when he’s so protective of Wall Street.
And the answer is, because if we keep being publicly hostile, he can
always do what we want.

HUDSON: This is like Uncle Remus and the Briar Patch, when Br’er Rabbit
keeps saying, don’t throw me into the briar patch. And finally the fox
throws him into the briar patch, and the rabbit runs away, singing "Born
and bred in the briar patch." He runs away and is happy. The moral is
that there’s a pretense that if a politician talks against Wall Street
and can vocalize people’s resentment, that he must understand them and
thus will support them.

HEDGES: Well, that’s what Hillary Clinton’s doing in spades.

HUDSON: That’s exactly it. There’s a movie, La dolce vita, by Fellini,
with Anita Ekberg. You have the Italian reporter Marcello go after
Ekberg, and then her boyfriend comes up to him and says, "I can
understand you." Then whomp, he hits him right in the face. That
basically is what we have here. The politician says to the voters, "I
feel your pain. I can understand you." And they think oh, he understands
it. Then the politician hits them in the face and backs Wall Street, and
tries to privatize pension funds, privatize Social Security. And doesn’t
send a single banker to jail, by appointing Justice Department people
who are vetted by Wall Street and treat them simply a "troubled" rich.

So essentially Wall Street campaign contributors have a veto over who
you’re going to appoint as Secretary of the Treasury. They want the …

HEDGES: Attorney General.

HUDSON: Yeah, Attorney General, to make sure that nobody has to pay the
price for financial crime. Then the Council of Economic Advisors comes
to assure people that Wall Street really is adding to the economy, and
if you can only do what the Federal Reserve is doing. So Janet Yellen
says, let’s give the banks more money, and the economy can borrow its
way out of debt … if only we can have enough quantitative easing.

So the Federal Reserve has given Wall Street $4.5 trillion. That $4.5
trillion could have been used to write down the debt. And then we
wouldn’t have a problem. Then everybody would have a lower costs of
living. The $4.5 trillion could have been spent into the economy.

HEDGES: We could have saved people from being foreclosed and driven from
their homes.

HUDSON: Yes. But that wasn’t what Obama did.

HEDGES: Even though he promised that he would. And then he turned
around, he earmarked some money to save people who were being pushed out
of their homes. And then he never spent it.

HUDSON: That’s right. It wasn’t spent. That’s what Niel Barofsky, the
SIGTARP head – Special Inspector General for TARP – found out. He said,
wait a minute, they’re not spending any of it. It’s a fraud. And he
wrote a whole book, Bailout, describing the lies Geithner told. Then,
when Geithner came out with his own autobiography, Barofsky reviewed it
and exposed him as a liar who should go to jail.

Geithner was suitably rewarded by getting a rich job on Wall Street. The
Japanese call that "descent from heaven." When you take your rewards,
having sold out the economy to your backers, you get a nice job and end
up rich for life.

HEDGES: So, let’s talk a bit about what this means for the future,
because there’s been no brakes put on this kind of criminal and
fraudulent behavior on the part of the speculative class. Bubbles have
been re-inflated with public funds. I think you had written an article
in Harper’s magazine before 2008 saying this – we’re all going to have a
big car wreck. Since we’re playing the game again, what’s going to
happen? Are they going to be able to go back and loot the U.S. Treasury
the way they did before?

HUDSON: What’s ahead first of all is that the economy hasn’t recovered
since 2008. People talk about that there’s been a recovery, but the
recovery has only been for the One Percent. The 99 Percent know they
haven’t recovered. That’s why they’re voting for Trump, and that’s why
they’re voting for Sanders. But they’re blaming themselves. There’s a
tendency of victims to blame themselves. And the other part of that …

HEDGES: But let’s be clear: The media doesn’t explain the economic
reality at all. They’re always talking about the recovery.

HUDSON: That’s the point. The result of the media telling people that is
to create a Stockholm syndrome: The victim, the kidnap victim,
identifies with the victimizer. The thinking is that if only we can give
more money to Wall Street, it will save us. So if the Federal Reserve
can only pump more money into the economy …

They talk about the Federal Reserve creating money with a helicopter.
But the Federal Reserve’s helicopter only drops money over Wall Street.
It doesn’t drop money over the economy. People don’t get it. The Fed
doesn’t say, "We’re going to add $200 to everybody’s checking account so
they can have more money and pay their debts." It’s only lending money
to Wall Street.

And what does Wall Street do? It lends out money. So the solution to the
debt problem that we’re in – debt deflation – is to lend even more money.

That’s what makes the economy a Ponzi scheme, as you mentioned at the
beginning of the first half of this interview. In a Ponzi scheme, people
seem to make a lot of money, but that’s because you’re really not making
profits. You’re just getting more and more people convinced that you’re
making money. And you’re paying the early entrants out of the money from
new subscribers. That’s what Bernie Madoff did. The whole economy has
become a Madoff scheme.

HEDGES: And largely through real estate, right?

HUDSON: Largely through real estate, because that’s the largest asset.

HEDGES: So the worth of your house ostensibly rises and rises and rises,
and you believe that you have created it – that this is a form of wealth
creation.

HUDSON: Here’s the problem that existed in 2008. Either Obama could have
saved the economy, or he could have saved Wall Street. He chose to save
Wall Street. And the only way to save Wall Street, if banks have made a
lot of bad loans, is to help them not go bankrupt. So what do you do?
You give them more money.

The theory, the pretense in the media, is that banks will make money by
lending to industry to build more factories and hire people.

HEDGES: And credit dried up for small businesses and consumers.

HUDSON: That’s right. Wall Street knew that the real estate market was
already loaned up. In other words, the game was over. Nobody could pay
any more of their income for rent or for mortgages. Banks couldn’t even
make more credit card loans. So they began to cancel their credit card
exposure. What they did was gamble on foreign currency.

HEDGES: And student debt.

HUDSON: And student debt.

HEDGES: Because it’s guaranteed.

HUDSON: That’s right. They make, the government …

HEDGES: I mean, the government guaranteed them.

HUDSON: Since the 2008 crash the government has guaranteed almost all
new mortgage loans. Up to 43% of the borrower’s income, that was
guaranteed. Student loans, all guaranteed. But basically the banks made
money abroad. If you could borrow at one-tenth of a percent from the
Federal Reserve, you could buy Brazilian loans, bonds paying 9% or more.
You could gamble on writing default swaps in Greece. And when Greece had
real problems, the fact that the German and French banks had made too
many loans to it, the IMF was going to write down the Greek debt. But
then Geithner got on the phone with Europe, and Obama went to the G20
meetings and said, "Look, you can’t write off the Greek debt, because
the American banks have essentially turned into horse race betters. We
have casino capitalism. They have bet and promised to guarantee, the
Greek bonds. If the Greek bonds are written down, the American banks
will go under. And if we go under, we promise we’re going to bring you
down too. We’re going to bring down the European banks. Do you really
want that to happen?"

So the gambles made by Wall Street ended up almost driving Greece out of
the European Union. Wall Street was willing to tear Europe apart
politically just for the Wall Street investment banks – basically four
banks – to make gains by insuring the Greek debt, by treating the
financial market like a horse race.

That’s where we are now. It’s not really about imperialism draining
foreign economies. It’s Wall Street making bets. And essentially it’s by
Wall Street running the European Central Bank. Just like Europe has to
do burden sharing in NATO, the financial ministries have to do burden
sharing with the U.S. Treasury.

HEDGES: So let’s talk a bit about what this means, where we’re headed.

HUDSON: It means that markets are not growing, because the American
consumer has to spend so much money paying the banks and paying taxes
that they don’t have enough money to buy more goods and services.

HEDGES: One of the things you pointed out in your book, which I didn’t
know, is that when we measure the economy we actually count the paying
off of debt, credit card debt, whatever it is, as a form of savings.

HUDSON: That’s right. After 2008 the savings rate jumped way up. But the
saving isn’t available. But to an accountant, if you owe less money,
then actually you’ve done the same as paying it out of saving. So we’re
in a savings economy. The savings rate in 2008 was zero. Actually, it
was  minus 2% when you take into account borrowing from foreigners. The
whole economy was essentially consumers maintaining their living
standards by running up their credit card debt, and by taking out what
Alan Greenspan called cashing out on your house’s rising value, by
taking out an equity mortgage loan. But that’s not really cash. That’s
taking on more debt.

So you had an inside-out vocabulary. America was going into debt
thinking it would get rich, and all of a sudden it finds, it’s in a
state of what you said, debt peonage, where the wage workers and others
have to pay any increase in wages they get; it goes to pay down …

HEDGES: Because you’re spending all of your income to service the
interest rather than paying off the principal. And that’s why wages have
been suppressed since the ‘70s. The speculative class on Wall Street
does not want people to be able to pay off their debt.

HUDSON: This was the one thing that Alan Greenspan contributed to
economic theory: the Traumatized Worker Syndrome. He said, the reason
you’ve had this huge productivity gain without any wage increase is
workers are afraid to go on strike, or even to complain about working
conditions, because they’re just one paycheck away from homelessness.

HEDGES: Which is true.

HUDSON: And if they miss a credit card payment, all of a sudden their
credit card fee escalates to 29%. Even if they’re late on a utility
bill, the bank will raise the fee.

HEDGES: So what does this mean? I mean, what’s going to happen?

HUDSON: It means a slow crash. It means what was …

HEDGES: Which we’ve already begun, haven’t we?

HUDSON: Yes. we’re in a slow crash now. All this was analyzed in the
1930s when it was called debt deflation by Irving Fisher. But debt
doesn’t appear in the textbooks. They talk about saving, but not debt.
The fact is, all money is debt of one form or another. The cash in your
pocket is a government debt, technically. It’s on the liabilities side
of the balance sheet. What people thought was an asset turns out to be
kept afloat by debt. But rather than the rising tide of debt raising all
boats, it raises the yachts, but the rest of the economy is underwater,
to make a metaphor.

HEDGES: So, spell it out for people. What’s going to – I mean, we’ve
lost control of this predatory or parasitic force.

HUDSON: Well, you can look at the future as what’s happening in Greece,
what happened in Russia after their traumatic shock therapy. America’s
in for shock therapy, no matter who wins the presidential …

HEDGES: So play it out for me. What’s it going to look like?

HUDSON: Well, more people are going to have higher and higher charges
for what they spend for medical care. More for schooling. More just to
break even. And they’re going to have to draw down their existing
savings, or they’re going to have to downsize, or they’re going to have
to default. The rate of default is still rising very sharply on student
loans. And these are loans you can’t wipe out in bankruptcy.

HEDGES: Not unless you’re dead. And it’ll go to your parents, if they’re
still around.

HUDSON: That’s the point. The parents have countersigned. Meanwhile, the
students who have taken out these loans are having to live at home with
the parents. They can’t afford to buy a house. And if you can’t buy a
house it’s really hard to get married. I was in China recently, and my
translator there said that women in China are looking for a husband who
can get his own house, because you need a house to have children. All
that has stopped here.

When you have this phenomenon in Greece, Russia or other places, you
have shrinking birth rates, rising mortality rates and disease rates,
shorter life spans. Latvia followed this policy and lost 20% of its
population since the late 1990s. You have a huge emigration from
Iceland, from Greece. There’s nowhere for Americans to emigrate to.

HEDGES: Right. And you say in the book that really, the only option left
is a form of debt slavery or revolt.

HUDSON: That’s exactly it. But the enzymes of the parasite have
inculcated via the control of the media tell people it’s not Wall
Street’s fault, it’s not the parasite’s fault, it’s your fault. The
victims haven’t been able to make enough money to pay the One Percent,
the victimizers. That’s financial affluenza after it kills an economy.

HEDGES: But is it working? I don’t think the lie of neoliberal economics
is being swallowed by larger segments of the population, including the
people gathered around Trump.

HUDSON: That’s right. They know that something’s wrong, but they don’t
know what it is, because nobody’s spelling out how the economy actually
works. That’s why I wrote my book, to say here’s what’s happening. The
reason I was able to warn about the crisis a year before it happened was
that I had the charts that were published in Harper’s. My charts were
cited in the Financial Times as the only charts by those who did foresee
the crisis and said just how and why it would happen.

Anyone who does Wall Street charts about the ability to pay sees that
this is what happened in the 1920s. Anybody who did charts like that can
tell that there’s an intersection, a breaking point, and there’s a
crisis. America now is having the same crisis that Argentina had, that
Greece had, that Latvia had, that Russia had. These economies are our
future. And it’s going to go down and down in a slow crash.

HEDGES: But could it go down and down, and what we end up with is a form
of neofeudalism, a rapaciously wealthy, oligarchic elite with a kind of
horrifying police state to keep us all in order?

HUDSON: This is exactly what happened in the Roman Empire.

HEDGES: Yes, it did.

HUDSON: You had the great Roman historians, Livy and Plutarch – they
blamed the decline of the Roman empire on the creditor class being
predatory, and the latifundia. The creditors took all money, and would
just buy more and more land, displacing the other people. The result in
Rome was a Dark Age, and that can last a very long time. The Dark Age is
what happens when the rentiers take over.

If you look back in the 1930s, Leon Trotsky said that fascism was the
inability of the socialist parties to come forth with an alternative. If
the socialist parties and media don’t come forth with an alternative to
this neofeudalism, you’re going to have a rollback to feudalism. But
instead of the military taking over the land, as occurred with the
Norman conquest, you take over the land financially. Finance has become
the new mode of warfare. Not militarily – except in Europe, of course –
but simply financially. You can achieve the takeover of land and the
takeover of companies by corporate raids.

The Wall Street vocabulary is one of conquest and wiping out. You’re
having a replay in the financial sphere of what feudalism was in the
military sphere.

HEDGES: And in essence, we become a kind of nation of sharecroppers.

HUDSON: That’s exactly right, having to shop at the company store.

HEDGES: At the company store.

HUDSON: Yes.

HEDGES: Well, that lays it out. I think it illustrates the point that we
need a vision to counter the vision of predatory, parasitic capitalism.
If we don’t get a vision very soon, we’re in for a dark age.

HUDSON: And the job of the politician is to promise the nice vision, and
then double-cross the constituents.

HEDGES: Well, so far unfortunately, they’ve done it very well. Thank
you, Michael.

HUDSON: It’s good to be here.

HEDGES: And thank you for watching Days of Revolt.

(4) Paul Krugman talks about Debt, but writes out the role of Banks -
Steve Keen

{visit the link to see the tables}

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2015/02/11/nobody-understands-debt-including-paul-Krugman/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevekeen/2015/02/10/nobody-understands-debt-including-paul-Krugman/#749c23e03ecb

Nobody understands debt–including Paul Krugman   By Steve Keen |
February 11, 2015 | Debtwatch

Paul Krugman has published a trio of blog posts on the issue of debt in
the last week: "Debt Is Money We Owe To Ourselves" (February 6th at
7.30am), "Debt: A Thought Experiment" (same day at 5.30pm), and finally
"Nobody Understands Debt" (February 9th in an Op Ed).

There is one truly remarkable thing about all three articles: not one of
them contains the word "Bank".

Now you may think it’s ridiculous that an economist could discuss the
macroeconomics of debt, not once but three times, and never even
consider the role of banks. But Krugman would tell you whyyou don’t need
to consider banks when talking about debt, and call you a "Banking
Mystic" if you persisted.

Well Krugman would be wrong, and you would be right. This is one of the
many times where "experts" in economics have it all wrong, and the
general public’s gut feelings about banks, debt and money are closer to
the truth. Bank lending is fundamentally important to the performance of
the economy, and it is also fundamentally different to lending between
individuals. But mainstream economics has convinced itself of the
opposite propositions—that lending (most of the time) has trivial
macroeconomic implications (the exception being during a "liquidity
trap"), and that bank lending to individuals is really no different to
lending between individuals.

Bunkum—and it’s easy to show why using that boring but vital tool of the
accountant, double-entry bookkeeping.

Imagine that you want to buy a new iPhone 6, but you don’t have the $299
Apple wants for it. There are two ways you can get the money: you can
borrow from a friend—who transfers money from her bank account to
yours—which we can call "Peer to Peer" lending. Or you can add to your
credit card debt with your bank—which obviously is "Bank Lending".

Are the two operations macroeconomically equivalent? Or if they are not,
are there rules that constrain bank lending so that it’s effectively
just the same as "peer to peer" lending? I’ll consider the first point
in this article and tackle the second in a later post.

If you borrow from a friend—let’s call you "Impatient" and your friend
"Patient" to borrow Krugman’s terminology—then from the situation, as
seen from the bank’s point of view, is as shown in Table 1. When you
borrow the money, Patient’s deposit account falls by $299, while yours
rises by $299. Then when you buy the iPhone, your account falls by $299,
and Apple’s rises by $299. Apple gets an extra $299 in income, but since
Patient’s bank account has fallen by that much, she is likely to spend
less over time, which will reduce someone else’s income by about as much
as Apple’s income rose.

Overall, the banks’ Liabilities—the deposit accounts of its
customers—don’t change in the aggregate, and neither do the bank’s Assets.

What if you get the $299 by dipping into your credit card limit? Then
the situation is as shown in Table 2. Patient is out of the picture
here: your borrowing from the bank has no effect on Patient’s bank
account (or her ability to shop). Your spending power has risen by $299
however, and you spend that on Apple—so your expenditure and Apple’s
income rises by $299, with no offsetting fall in expenditure by anyone else.

Overall, the banks Liabilities and Assets both rise by $299—a crucial
difference to the "Patient lends to Impatient" case. New money, new
demand and new income has been created. This is utterly different to
what happens with "Peer to Peer" lending.

This is only half the story however: the other half is what happens when
debt is repaid. Obviously for Impatient to repay, he is going to have to
save money by spending less after the extravagance of buying the iPhone
on credit. But when he does repay, the macroeconomic impact in the case
of "Peer to Peer" lending is zip: Impatient’s bank account falls by $299
and Patient’s rises by the same amount (I’m not ignoring interest
payments here by the way, just separating principal repayment from
interest payments). Again there is no change in the bank’s Assets or
Liabilities (see Table 3).

The situation is utterly different when a bank loan is repaid. As shown
in Table 4, the bank’s Assets and Liabilities both fall by $299. The
repayment of the debt has reduced the amount of money in
circulation—where money in our modern economy is almost exclusively the
sum of our bank accounts (cash accounts for a trivial percentage of the
total money supply). In this sense, the repayment of the debt has
destroyed money.

This is the crucial difference between bank lending and the "peer to
peer" vision of lending that mainstream economists like Krugman persist
with—despite the evidence and the admonition, from institutions like the
Bank of England, that they have got the mechanics and the importance of
bank lending all wrong. Because mainstream economists like Krugman
ignore bank lending, they ignore the biggest factor determining
macroeconomic performance. Recommended by Forbes

Bernanke dismissed Irving Fisher’s Debt-deflation Theory of Great
Depressions" with the cavalier statement that "Absent implausibly large
differences in marginal spending propensities among the groups, it was
suggested, pure redistributions should have no significant
macro-economic effects". That’s because he shares Krugman’s delusion of
treating bank lending as no different to "peer to peer" lending. A
simple look at the data in Figure 1 is enough to show how wrong they
are: the correlation between the annual change in private debt and the
level of unemployment since 1990 is -0.93—which I think one might call
significant. It has been higher since the crisis began at a veritably
perfect -0.975—which a superficial soul might interpret as evidence for
the liquidity trap explanation—but between 1990 and August 2007 it was
still -0.81).

Figure 1: Change in private debt drives the economy (correlation
coefficient =  -0.93)

image002Krugman is right on some points—the worry about the
intergenerational impact of government debt are, to use one of my
favourite Australian idioms, a furphy. But bank debt matters, and
Krugman shows that he (and the economic mainstream) understands debt
less than many non-economists when he leaves it out of his thinking.

823 Transgenderism and Unisex toilets - Germaine Greer backs North Carolina

Transgenderism and Unisex toilets - Germaine Greer backs North Carolina

Newsletter published on 17 April 2016

(1) Unisex, or separate Bathrooms for Men and Women?
(2) Transgenderism and Unisex toilets - Germaine Greer backs North
Carolina
(3) Ringo Starr cancels North Carolina gig over 'bathroom law'
(4) Obama threatens to withhold funding to North Carolina over Unisex
Bathrooms
(5) Gay rights advocates file a Federal lawsuit on North Carolina
Bathroom law
(6) Apple, Dow Chemical, PayPal, American Airlines attack North Carolina
law
(7) Germaine Greer says transgender women are not real women
(8) Gender Specific Toilets 'put others into uncomfortable situations'
(9) Mississippi allows businesses to refuse service to gay couples
(10) Equal Employment Opportunity Lawsuits for Gay Workers
(11) China’s "homowives"

(1) Unisex, or separate Bathrooms for Men and Women?
Date: Wed, 13 Apr 2016 22:10:12 +0000 Subject: Bathroom Crisis In
America: The National Debate Over Gender-Neutral  Bathrooms Goes Viral

http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/bathroom-crisis-in-america-the-national-debate-over-gender-neutral-bathrooms-goes-viral

Bathroom Crisis In America: The National Debate Over Gender-Neutral
Bathrooms Goes Viral

By Michael Snyder, on April 12th, 2016

Should public facilities continue to offer separate bathrooms for men
and women?  In 2016, this has become a political "hot potato" that is
causing emotions to run high on both sides of the debate.  Many liberals
consider the push for gender-neutral bathrooms to be on the cutting edge
of the civil rights movement in the United States.  Meanwhile, many
conservatives consider separate bathrooms for men and women to be a
matter of basic moral decency.  What both sides of the debate can agree
on is that this is an issue that is not going away any time soon.
Gender-neutral bathrooms are popping up in public places all over
America, and the Obama administration has even installed one in the
White House.  Unfortunately, these gender-neutral bathrooms can have
some very serious unintended consequences as you will see below.

U.S. colleges and universities are at the center of this debate.  All
over the country student groups are pushing for gender-neutral
restrooms, and many institutions of higher learning are now starting to
implement them.  The following comes from an editorial in the Harvard
Crimson that addresses the transition that is now taking place at that
university…

The need for gender-neutral restrooms is profound, and their expansion
is long overdue. Gender-neutral restrooms are critical for the safety
and well-being of BGLTQ students, and it is vital that they are
installed more widely throughout campus. While it is commendable that
some of the Houses have started to implement gender-neutral restrooms,
single-gender bathrooms are the majority, especially in residential
buildings. The process by which students can petition for gender-neutral
restrooms in their dorms remains inconsistent and opaque. Additionally,
very few gender-neutral restrooms exist in academic buildings.

Of course other institutions of higher learning are far ahead of Harvard
in this regard.  In fact, there is one university in New York City that
only has gender-neutral restrooms at this point…

The Cooper Union, a small but prestigious art and engineering university
in New York City, has taken the bold step of making every single
bathroom on campus gender-neutral.

Instead of being classified as "men’s," "women’s," or single-occupancy
restrooms, all facilities at the Cooper Union will carry descriptive
signs describing exactly what lies within. Former men’s rooms, for
instance, are now described as "urinals and stalls," while former
women’s rooms now carry the label "stalls only." Regardless of their
type, all bathrooms will be open to whomever wants to use them.
According to Inside Higher Education, Cooper Union appears to be the
first college in the country to entirely de-gender all of its bathroom
facilities.

Unfortunately, when men and women start using the same bathrooms, really
bad stuff can happen.

This is something that the University of Toronto found out the hard way…

The administration at the University of Toronto was recently enlightened
on why two separate washrooms are generally established for men and
women sharing co-ed residencies.

The University is temporarily changing its policy on gender-neutral
bathrooms after two separate incidents of "voyeurism" were reported on
campus September 15 and 19. Male students within the University’s
Whitney Hall student residence were caught holding their cellphones over
female students’ shower stalls and filming them as they showered.

Anyone with half a brain could have figured this out.

If you allow young men into areas where young women are exposing
themselves, some of those young men are going to try to look.  We are a
nation of voyeurs, and our young men have been trained by thousands of
hours of television and movies to think of women as sex objects.

As I wrote about yesterday, it has been estimated that 68 percent of all
Christian men watch pornography on a regular basis.  Considering what
our men are doing behind closed doors, do you really want them around
when women are trying to shower or use the toilet?

I don’t mean to be crude, but this is the reality of the situation.

Sadly, the University of Toronto doesn’t seem to get the message.  The
rule change at that one residence hall is only "temporary", and no
changes have been made to the rules at other residence halls…

The University concluded that while the changes were made in the
specific residence hall of the voyeurism incidents, "there has been no
change to the designation of gender-neutral washrooms in the other
University College Residences or elsewhere on campus as a result of
these incidents."

I suppose that it is "politically incorrect" to think that there will be
problems if young men and young women are using the same restrooms.  The
officials are the University of Toronto clearly believe in what they are
doing, and they don’t plan to reverse course now.

But I would suggest that it is quite naive to put men and women in the
same public bathrooms and just assume that everything will work out just
fine somehow.

And we have seen problems start to happen in non-academic settings as
well.  Just consider what recently happened at a public swimming pool in
the Seattle area…

A man claimed a right to use a women’s locker room at a public swimming
pool after his partial undressing there caused alarm.

According to Seattle Parks and Recreation, women alerted staff at Evans
Pool staff when a man wearing swim trunks entered the women’s locker
room and took off his shirt.

When staff told him to leave, the man reportedly said "the law has
changed and I have a right to be here."

Ultimately the man was not arrested, and he later returned to the
women’s locker room while young girls were changing…

No one was arrested in this case and police weren’t called, even though
the man returned a second time while young girls were changing for swim
practice.

What is going to stop other sickos like this from putting on a dress and
demanding that they have every right to sit there and watch women change
at public swimming pools all across the nation?

In the end, the only thing that will stop it is if laws are passed, but
that is not going to be as easy as you may think.  In fact, the state of
North Carolina has created a massive national controversy because of the
law that was just passed there…

In the face of travel bans from at least five states, 10 cities and two
counties, North Carolina’s governor issued an executive order Tuesday
that he said restores some protections to gays in the state.

Gov. Pat McCrory’s order, signed in the state capital of Raleigh, does
not change North Carolina’s controversial law, which he signed March 24
and became effective immediately. It prohibits counties and
municipalities from passing anti-discrimination ordinances and requires
transgender people to use public bathrooms and locker rooms that match
their gender at birth.

(2) Transgenderism and Unisex toilets - Germaine Greer backs North Carolina
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-14/bradley-there's-a-real-arrogance-to-resisting-transgenderism/7325026

There's a real arrogance to resisting transgenderism

By Michael Bradley

Posted about 8 hours ago

The resistance to transgenderism and unisex toilets - both from Germaine
Greer here and with North Carolina lawmakers - reveals a paternalistic
arrogance and threatens to deny physical reality and human dignity,
writes Michael Bradley.

When I arrived at Sydney University in 1983 and found that the main
student union bar had unisex toilets, it pretty much blew my mind.

The concept of the two genders incidentally discovering each other's
sanitary procedures was not something I had ever contemplated. Imagine
my surprise later on when I learned that humanity is not neatly divided
into two genders at all.

That's the journey we're on, like it or not. As the language has
progressed from "gay" to LGBTQIA - lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
queer, intersexual and asexual - we've all been confronted by the
challenge to our traditional understandings of what it actually means to
be human.

People respond to this challenge in infinitely varied ways, influenced
by their own life experiences, what they've been taught and what they
believe.

Obviously, if you have a problem accepting homosexuality as a valid way
of being, then you're more likely to really struggle with the less
well-understood concepts of transgender or intersex status; and more
likely to look askance at the suggestion that the male/female
bifurcation - whether in relation to identity or sexuality - is not on
solid ground.

The confusion this generates is understandable. As Q&A host Tony Jones
said to Germaine Greer this week while she was making her second attempt
to explain her position on transgenderism: "I thought you were digging
yourself out of this hole, and now I wonder if you've just shovelled it
back in." Greer's response - "I belong in this hole" - pretty much sums
it up. These questions aren't easy.

Back to the toilet block though, because it's really in the bathroom
where we confront the starkest realities of our shared existence. And
it's now provided what's become an international focal point for the
challenges of transgenderism and intersexuality.

On March 23, the General Assembly of the US State of North Carolina
passed "House Bill 2" - HB2, or the "bathroom law". In short, it kills
the unisex toilets idea dead.

HB2 follows the modern trend of clothing discriminatory laws in
anti-discriminatory language. Thus:

     It is the public policy of this State to protect and safeguard the
right and opportunity of all individuals ... to enjoy fully and equally
... places of accommodation free of discrimination because of race,
religion, color, national origin, or biological sex, provided that
designating multiple or single occupancy bathrooms or changing
facilities according to biological sex ... shall not be deemed to
constitute discrimination.

OK, so no discrimination in the bathrooms of North Carolina, but
discrimination is redefined to not include what HB2 is actually all
about. That is a legislative mandating of two things: all schools and
public buildings in the State must now provide separate bathrooms for
boys and girls; and everyone is now by law a boy or a girl (no category
for "other"). The last part is achieved by defining your "biological
sex" as the gender stated on your birth certificate.

It's an interesting thing when a legislature feels the need to make a
law stating what "is", as opposed to the more normal role of lawmaking,
which is to tell us how to behave. For example: There was a Parliament
in another country once which felt so concerned about the prospect of
gay people marrying each other that it rushed through a law redefining
"marriage".

These things never end well. It's a fact, as much as many would prefer
otherwise, that the boy/girl thing doesn't cover everyone. There are
many other variants, biologically as well as by choice. The point is not
to try to keep redefining the categories, or determine whether anyone is
right or wrong. I do not understand comments like this from Germaine Greer:

     If you're a 50-year-old truck driver who's had four children with a
wife and you decide that the whole time you've been a woman, I think
you're probably wrong!

The difference between the attitudes of Greer and the North Carolina
legislature is hard to discern; they both apparently think they have the
right to tell people what or who they are.

Putting aside that prejudice which denies uncomfortable or confronting
realities and just gets in the way, of course there is still a challenge
here. We didn't invent single sex bathrooms in the first place for no
reason.

Unisex toilets at my school would have led to poor educational outcomes,
I'm pretty sure. There is also the sad truth that, for women, the
bathroom and changing room are sanctuaries from the sexualised scrutiny
to which they are subjected in pretty much every society and away from
which no generation seems to have been able to evolve. Much as I'd kind
of like to advocate unisex toilets everywhere, I do see the problem with
that.

What if a man does decide that he's a woman, and wants to use the
ladies' toilet? There is a loud objection from those who suspect that
he's wrong about that, or that he's lying about it. Assuming we can
separate out any bigotry in that response from a rational concern (such
as that a man with voyeuristic intentions may pretend to be transgender
for the purpose of gaining access to a female changing room), then yes,
we have a real problem with which to contend.

The solution is not simple, although I do note that earlier violent
objections to the sharing of bathrooms and locker rooms with gay men
seem to have subsided with time. An understanding that difference does
not equate to perversion will make the conversation much more constructive.

Whatever the answer is, it must be founded on respect. Our ultimate
human right is the possession of our own identity. A law which says that
we cannot define that identity for ourselves necessarily infringes that
right. It is the height of paternalistic arrogance to mandate that a
person is by some legal definition male or female, as it is to tell them
that they are not really gay. We are surely capable of a more
sophisticated approach than the manufactured concept of "biological sex".

There has been a strong reaction to the North Carolina law. Numerous
corporations have publicly denounced it and are boycotting the State. As
the B Corporation movement, which represents 1500 companies worldwide
who share a charter of conducting their business "as if people and place
mattered", said when announcing that it is moving its annual conference
away from North Carolina:

     We cannot ask members of the LGBT community to travel to a state
where they do not feel safe or comfortable and may feel threatened.

There are hopeful signs that the pressure may force a repeal.

HB2 is prejudice enshrined in law. It denies both physical reality and
human dignity. It hurts already-marginalised people in the name of
protecting others, but there are better ways of properly balancing
public safety with our most precious right of all - to be who we are.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Sydney law firm Marque
Lawyers, and he writes a weekly column for The Drum. He tweets at
@marquelawyers.

(3) Ringo Starr cancels North Carolina gig over 'bathroom law'

http://www.northernstar.com.au/news/ringo-starr-cancels-north-carolina-gig-over-bathro/2996073/

14th Apr 2016 11:28 AM

RINGO Starr has cancelled his upcoming show in North Carolina over the
anti-gay "bathroom law".

The former Beatles' drummer has made the decision not to play his
planned gig on June 18 at the Koka Booth Amphitheater in protest over
the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act, which decides which
toilet a transgender person can use.

A statement on the venue's website reads: "Ringo Starr cancels his North
Carolina performance in opposition to the passing of HB2. Like Bruce
Springsteen and other fellow artists, Ringo stands with those fighting
against the bigotry of HB2.

"Ringo states, 'I'm sorry to disappoint my fans in the area, but we need
to take a stand against this hatred. Spread peace and love.' This law
opens the door to discrimination everywhere by limiting
anti-discrimination laws against people based on their sexual
orientation or gender identity.

"Ringo adds, 'How sad that they feel that this group of people cannot be
defended.' He asks that we all support organizations that are fighting
to overturn this law in whatever way we can.

"As Canned Heat sang, 'let's work together,' and The Beatles said, 'all
you need is love (sic).'"

Ringo follows in the footsteps of Bruce Springsteen who recently axed
his gig in Greensboro to show his "solidarity" in the fight against
prejudice of "LGBT citizens".

He said: "North Carolina has just passed HB2, which the media are
referring to as the "bathroom" law. HB2 - known officially as the Public
Facilities Privacy and Security Act - dictates which bathrooms
transgender people are permitted to use."

"The law also attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their
human rights are violated in the workplace. No other group of North
Carolinians faces such a burden. Right now, there are many groups,
businesses, and individuals in North Carolina working to oppose and
overcome these negative developments. Taking all of this into account, I
feel that this is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for
those freedom fighters. As a result, and with deepest apologies to our
dedicated fans in Greensboro, we have canceled our show. Some things are
more important than a rock show and this fight against prejudice and
bigotry -- which is happening as I write -- is one of them. It is the
strongest means I have for raising my voice in opposition to those who
continue to push us backwards instead of forwards (sic)."

(4) Obama threatens to withhold funding to North Carolina over Unisex
Bathrooms

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/02/us/politics/north-carolina-anti-discrimination-law-obama-federal-funds.html

North Carolina Law May Risk Federal Aid

By MATT APUZZO and ALAN BLINDER

APRIL 1, 2016

Your Stories

Hear from a diverse group of transgender voices, and add your own. Share
Your Story

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering whether North
Carolina’s new law on gay and transgender rights makes the state
ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways
and housing, officials said Friday.

Cutting off any federal money — or even simply threatening to do so —
would put major new pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law, which
eliminated local protections for gay and transgender people and
restricted which bathrooms transgender people can use. A loss of federal
money could send the state into a budget crisis and jeopardize services
that are central to daily life.

Although experts said such a drastic step was unlikely, at least
immediately, the administration’s review puts North Carolina on notice
that the new law could have financial consequences. Gov. Pat McCrory of
North Carolina had assured residents that the law would not jeopardize
federal money for education.

But the law also represents a test for the Obama administration, which
has declared that the fight for gay and transgender rights is a
continuation of the civil rights era. The North Carolina dispute forces
the administration to decide how aggressively to fight on that principle.

The North Carolina law created a mandatory statewide anti-discrimination
policy, but it did not include specific protections based on sexual
orientation or gender identity. The law prohibits transgender people
from using public bathrooms that do not match the sexes on their birth
certificates.

Anthony Foxx, the secretary of transportation, first raised the prospect
of a review of federal funding in public remarks on Tuesday in North
Carolina. The Department of Transportation provides roughly $1 billion a
year to North Carolina. The New York Times then asked other federal
agencies whether they were conducting similar reviews.

A Department of Education spokeswoman, Dorie Nolt, said on Friday that
her agency was also reviewing the North Carolina law "to determine any
potential impact on the state’s federal education funding." She added,
"We will not hesitate to act if students’ civil rights are being violated."

The agency said it provided $4.3 billion to North Carolina last year for
kindergarten through 12th grade as well as colleges.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it was doing a
similar evaluation. "We’re reviewing the effects of the law on HUD
funding allocated for North Carolina," said Cameron French, a department
spokesman.

White House officials had no comment.

Any decision on federal aid would take time, experts said. Federal
agencies have used the threat of lost money to pressure a handful of
municipal governments in California and Illinois to change their
policies and allow transgender students to use the restrooms of the
gender they identify with. There is no recent precedent for the federal
government’s applying similar pressure to address a state law that it
sees as discriminatory.

"It would be a long process of negotiation," said Jane R. Wettach, an
education law specialist at the Duke University School of Law in Durham,
N.C. "I think the federal government would be loath to do it and would
give North Carolina every possibility, every chance to change their
position, to change the law, to negotiate, to make some exceptions. I
think they’d go back and forth for a while and try to come to a
negotiated settlement."

Mr. McCrory, a Republican who is seeking re-election, and other
supporters of the law have been aware, but dismissive, of suggestions
that the measure might endanger the state’s federal largess. Mr.
McCrory’s office did not respond to messages on Friday.

Dan Forest, the Republican lieutenant governor and the president of the
State Senate, said he expected that federal aid would continue. He noted
that many states did not explicitly provide gay and transgender people
with anti-discrimination protection. Neither does federal law.

"It would be wrong — even illegal — to single out North Carolina for
unfavorable treatment," Mr. Forest said in an emailed statement. He said
the state complied with the Constitution and federal laws. "I’m
confident that we will continue to receive this federal money despite
the threats from a few in Washington, D.C."

Mr. Forest is correct that federal anti-discrimination laws do not
explicitly mention gay and transgender people: the Obama administration
has repeatedly called on Congress to pass a law banning discrimination
against them in employment decisions. On several occasions, however, the
administration has also said that gay, lesbian and transgender people
are already covered by laws banning sex discrimination.

Last year, a federal judge in Virginia rejected that notion, ruling that
restricting the bathroom choices for transgender students did not
violate federal law. The Obama administration had argued otherwise and
the case is on appeal.

The Obama administration would not need to go to court to withhold grant
money, but doing so would surely lead to a court fight, especially since
the law is unsettled.

Advocacy groups have praised the Obama administration for its broad view
of civil rights laws. During the past seven years, "the fight for
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality has reached an
incredible crescendo," Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch said last year.

James D. Esseks, who works on gender and sexual orientation issues for
the American Civil Liberties Union, said the North Carolina law
represented a chance for the Obama administration to stand behind those
views. He called on the federal government to say: "Hey folks, we’re
serious here. We’re not going to give you all this federal money if
you’re requiring discrimination in every corner of the state."

North Carolina has faced criticism from businesses including Bank of
America, which has its headquarters in Charlotte, N.C.; Apple; and
Facebook. The National Basketball Association suggested that it might
move the 2017 All-Star Game from Charlotte. The White House called the
law "meanspirited."

In a video message on Tuesday, Mr. McCrory complained about "a vicious,
nationwide smear campaign," and he lashed out at critics in his state,
including Attorney General Roy Cooper, and beyond North Carolina.
Lawmakers had said that they were trying to prevent men from dressing as
women to enter bathrooms and commit assaults. Critics said there was no
evidence that had happened.

"Disregarding the facts, other politicians — from the White House to
mayors to state capitals and City Council members and even our attorney
general — have initiated and promoted conflict to advance their
political agenda and tear down our state, even if it means defying the
Constitution and their oath of office," Mr. McCrory said.

Matt Apuzzo reported from Washington, and Alan Blinder from Atlanta.
Michael D. Shear contributed reporting from Washington.

Follow The New York Times’s politics and Washington coverage on Facebook
and Twitter, and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on April 2, 2016, on page A1
of the New York edition with the headline: North Carolina May Risk Aid
With Bias Law.

(5) Gay rights advocates file a Federal lawsuit on North Carolina
Bathroom law

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/us/north-carolina-anti-discrimination-lawsuit.html?_r=0

Suit Challenges North Carolina Law Overturning Anti-Discrimination Measures

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

MARCH 28, 2016

Gay rights advocates in North Carolina filed a federal lawsuit on
Monday, challenging a new state law that overturns local protections for
gay and transgender people, and bars transgender people from using
public bathrooms that do not match the sexes stated on their birth
certificates.

The plaintiffs, a coalition of individuals and civil liberties groups,
charged that the bill approved on Wednesday by the Republican majorities
in the General Assembly, and signed by Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican,
violated the Constitution and federal anti-discrimination laws.

"Let’s be clear: The legislature and Governor McCrory have done nothing
less than encourage discrimination," said Chris Brook, legal director of
the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality North Carolina, a gay rights
group, said, "Our national partners have told us that this is the most
sweeping and the most dangerous anti-L.G.B.T. bill they’ve seen at least
this session, and in quite a while."

Several large companies and business groups have protested the law, and
opponents have predicted an economic backlash against the state.

The state General Assembly called a special session to take up the bill,
at a cost of $42,000, held no hearings, allowed little debate and passed
the measure hours after it was introduced. Republicans supported it
unanimously, while many Democrats walked out in protest. Mr. McCrory,
who is running for re-election this year, quickly signed it.

Republicans said the bill was prompted in part by a city ordinance
passed in Charlotte last month allowing people to use public restrooms
that correspond to the sexes they identify with, not necessarily their
sex at birth.

Some conservatives complained that the ordinance would endanger women
and girls by allowing people who are anatomically male to use their
restrooms, an argument that has been used elsewhere. Transgender
advocates dismiss that as nonsense, saying that transgender people have
been using their chosen bathrooms for years without incident.

The new state law overturns any such local protections, saying that
people may use only public locker rooms or restrooms that correspond to
the sexes on their birth certificates. North Carolina law allows a
transgender person to change the sex indicated on a birth certificate,
but only after gender reassignment surgery, which most transgender
people do not undergo.

But the law also goes far beyond the question of bathrooms, superseding
any ordinance that offers any kind of anti-discrimination protection for
gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people. It also prohibits cities
from setting local minimum wages higher than the statewide minimum of
$7.25 an hour.

(6) Apple, Dow Chemical, PayPal, American Airlines attack North Carolina law

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/25/us/north-carolina-law-antidiscrimination-pat-mccrory.html

North Carolina Gay Bias Law Draws a Sharp Backlash

By MOTOKO RICH

MARCH 24, 2016

A day after Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina signed a sweeping law
eliminating anti-discrimination protections for all lesbians, gays and
bisexuals and barring transgender people from using bathrooms that do
not match the gender they were born with, the battle lines were clear in
a bitterly divided state.

On social media and in public rallies, civil rights groups, businesses
and politicians expressed dismay at the law, which was passed by the
Republican-controlled legislature and signed by the governor within just
12 hours during a hasty special session on Wednesday.

American Airlines, which employs 14,000 people in the state and has its
second largest hub in Charlotte, along with other companies with
operations in the state, including Apple, Dow Chemical, PayPal, Red Hat
and Biogen, all issued statements critical of the new law.

Biogen opposes #NCGA attempt to undermine equality in NC via #HB2. We
support advancing the power of difference https://t.co/RlxgLt3JBC —
Biogen (@biogen) March 23, 2016

At #RedHat we strongly value diversity: https://t.co/XDfUVzC1OL. HB#2 is
a clear step backwards. Sad day. #WeAreNotThis — Jim Whitehurst
(@JWhitehurst) March 23, 2016

"Our future as Americans should be focused on inclusion and prosperity,
and not discrimination and division," Apple said in a statement. "We
were disappointed to see Governor McCrory sign this legislation."

The immediate trigger for the legislature’s action was the passage of an
anti-discrimination ordinance in Charlotte last month that would permit
transgender people to use public bathrooms that correspond with their
gender identity, rather than their gender at birth. But the law passed
by the legislature on Wednesday night, which prohibits municipalities
from passing their own ordinances allowing such bathroom use, also
prevents cities from protecting gays and bisexual people against
discrimination generally.

Conservative groups, using the hashtag #keepncsafe, were quick to praise
the legislature and thanked the governor for signing a bill they said
would protect women and children from unwanted advances from biological
males in bathrooms.

Thank you Governor @PatMcCroryNC ! #KeepNCSafe #ncpol #ncga
https://t.co/vCUKmHI5bo — Civitas Institute (@NCCivitas) March 24, 2016

With the November election approaching, political observers said the
law, signed by Mr. McCrory, a Republican who is running for re-election,
was clearly aimed at galvanizing the party’s conservative base in a
state where it controls the legislature and most offices elected
statewide. "This is not a state that you spend a lot of time trying to
sway swing voters," said Ferrel Guillory, director of the Program on
Public Life, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "You really
try to get your voters to the polls and you maximize the vote among your
constituents."

Mr. McCrory had originally run as a moderate but has often gone along
with the conservative legislature. This year, there is added pressure to
do that, Mr. Guillory said. "Everything has to do with the heated
political temperature of the moment," he said. "It’s an indication of
how the national debate, with Trump and Cruz being the two leading
candidates on the Republican side, has ripple effects into state politics."

Critics of the law, which also prohibits local governments from setting
minimum wages above the state level and strips veterans of
anti-discrimination protections, vowed to fight back in the court of
public opinion as well as investigate legal remedies. On Twitter, Mr.
McCrory’s Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, Attorney General
Roy Cooper, posted a video and joined numerous critics who voiced their
anger under the hashtag #WeAreNotThis.

Retweet if you agree: #WeAreNotThis pic.twitter.com/cUSGLxDgmd — Roy
Cooper (@RoyCooperNC) March 24, 2016

Just as strong as the political backlash was outspoken reaction from the
business community. Mitchell Gold, chairman of Mitchell Gold and Bob
Williams Home Furnishings, one of a dwindling number of companies still
manufacturing furniture in the state, said the new law was "outrageous."

"It’s so un-American, and it’s so shortsighted," said Mr. Gold, who is
gay. "The folks that want this passed — when you look at who are these
people, they are the people who are using their outdated, misguided
ill-informed religious teachings to discriminate."

The law could lead to some economic fallout for the state. The N.C.A.A.,
which is planning to hold tournament events in North Carolina in 2017
and 2018, said in a statement that it would "continue to monitor current
events, which include issues surrounding diversity, in all cities
bidding on N.C.A.A. championships and events, as well as cities that
have already been named as future host sites."

And on Twitter, a new account calling for a boycott of the state emerged
in response to the law. Chris Sacca, a Silicon Valley investor, implied
he would no longer invest in businesses in the state.

Headed to NC in May to discuss how we could invest more in the state.
Now the key words will be "could've invested." https://t.co/kTMLo3lB0U —
Chris Sacca (@sacca) March 23, 2016

In Charlotte, Mayor Jennifer Roberts said she was "appalled at the speed
of the law being passed" without consideration of the ramifications for
the business community. "The fallout is just starting," she said,
adding, "We are very concerned about the ripple effects and I do believe
that discrimination is not good for business."

Some political observers noted that the state legislation, which
deprives local municipalities of control over their own laws, seemed
antithetical to conservative values. "This doesn’t seem conservative to
me," said Mac McCorkle, a former Democratic consultant and an associate
professor of public policy at Duke University. "This seems authoritarian."

Correction: March 28, 2016

An article on Friday about the criticism of a North Carolina law that
eliminates anti-discrimination protections misstated the surname of the
mayor of Charlotte, who opposed the measure. She is Jennifer Roberts,
not Rogers.

Katie Benner contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on March 25, 2016, on page
A13 of the New York edition with the headline: North Carolina Law
Barring Anti-Discrimination Measures Draws Sharp Backlash.

(7) Germaine Greer says transgender women are not real women
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-11/q&a-germaine-greer-weighs-in-sexuality-transgender/7318024

Q&A: Germaine Greer revives an old controversy about what constitutes a
real woman

Germaine Greer, the influential Australian academic and author, is used
to courting controversy — from the publication of The Female Eunuch, her
1970 feminist treatise, to posing nude in photo shoots.

But she may not have expected, on an appearance on the ABC's Q&A program
last night, to have an old controversy dredged up on live television.

Last year, students at Cardiff University accused the famous feminist of
sprouting hateful and marginalising views of transgender people and
putting forward the "problematic" view that post-operative transgender
men are not real women.

A petition circulated calling on her to abandon a public address in
Wales, something she refused to do.

On Monday night, audience member Steph D'Souza — clearly a fan of the
author's influential work — confronted her about it.

     "I find really confusing views you've expressed that transgender
women are not real women. Why do you believe there is such a thing as a
real woman? Isn't that the kind of essentialism that you and I are
trying to resist and escape?"

Greer's immediate response was: "This is so difficult." The 10-odd
minutes of in-depth discussion that followed, about what constitutes
sexual identity, seemed to bear that out.

Greer: "I agree that when I first was thinking about what is a woman, I
fell for the usual view that women were people with two Xs and men were
people with an X and a Y ... and I now realise ... that this was wrong."

"But the interesting thing to me is this: That if you decide, because
you're uncomfortable in the masculine system — which turns boys into
men, often at great cost to themselves — if you're unhappy with that, it
doesn't mean that you belong at the other end of the spectrum."

Host Tony Jones asked: What if you know you've been born the wrong sex?

"You can't know," Greer replied, to which Labor Senator Lisa Singh, also
on the panel, responded: "How can you say that?"

     Greer: "You don't know what the other sex is like."

     Singh: "But to a transgender person, they know that. They feel that
within their own identity."

The back-and-forth continued.

Greer later said the difficulty for her was that women were constantly
being told they were "not satisfactory as women", and that the crowning
of Caitlyn Jenner as Glamour Magazine's woman of the year "makes the
rest of the female population of the world feel slightly wry".

She summed up her position fairly succinctly.

"If you're a 50-year-old truck driver who's had four children with a
wife and you've decided the whole time you've been a woman, I think
you're probably wrong."

Another panellist, Joseph Tawadros, ARIA award-winning oud virtuoso and
owner of the best facial hair on the Q&A set, was forced to respond.

"As a very ugly woman I totally disagree with you," he said, fulfilling
his role as the night's comedic relief.

On a serious note, he added: "Society is moving very quickly. There's
still lot of people that don't understand transgender. I don't
understand all the aspects of transgender people but I just have to
respect that."

(8) Gender Specific Toilets 'put others into uncomfortable situations'

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/pizza-shops-unisex-bathroom-goes-viral-2016-1?r=US&IR=T

This pizza restaurant's bathroom sign is receiving national attention

Kate Taylor Jan 15, 2016, 5:33 AM

Pure Pizza of Charlotte, North Carolina, is generating buzz for an
unexpected reason: a note hanging inside of its unisex bathroom.

"We have a UniSex bathroom because sometimes gender specific toilets put
others into uncomfortable situations," the note reads.

Juli Ghazi, the owner of Pure Pizza, goes on to write that she added a
unisex bathroom option because she wanted to "provide a place" for
single dads with daughters, single mums with sons, parents with disabled
children, members of the LGBTQ community, and adults with ageing parents
who may be disabled.

A photo of the note was posted to a neighbourhood Facebook group this
weekend, and has since been shared more than 1,000 times, and liked by
more than 2,800 people. Pure Pizza noteLarken Egleston

The pizza shop lacks a men’s room altogether, with one gender-neutral
restroom and one reserved for women, reports local LGBT-centric
journalist and blogger Matt Comer.

Ghazi was partially inspired to designate a gender-neutral restroom
after the Charlotte City Council failed to pass several LGBT-inclusive
non-discrimination ordinances, writes Comer. The rejected legislature
would have expanded laws to include sexual orientation and gender
identity as protected categories.

Gendered bathrooms have recently been the target of a number of recent
proposals and laws. A new bill was recently proposed in Virginia that
would require public facilities to designate restrooms for use "by a
specific gender to solely be used by individuals whose anatomical sex
matches such gender designation." Meanwhile, cities such as Seattle,
Philadelphia, and Austin, Texas have passed laws that require public
institutions to provide visitors with gender-neutral bathroom options.

(9) Mississippi allows businesses to refuse service to gay couples

http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-mississippi-law-service-denial-gays-20160405-story.html

Mississippi governor signs law that allows businesses to refuse service
to gay couples

A Human Rights Campaign equality flag is planted at the edge of the
grounds of the governor's mansion in Jackson, Miss. (Rogelio V. Solis /
Associated Press) Jenny Jarvie

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed a controversial bill into law on
Tuesday that could allow businesses and government workers to deny
services to lesbian and gay couples.

Bryant said in a statement that he was signing HB 1523 "to protect
sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals,
organizations and private associations from discriminatory action by
state government or its political subdivisions."

The law, dubbed the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government
Discrimination Act, has met with sustained opposition from LGBT groups,
businesses and the Mississippi Economic Council. They say the law
sanctions discrimination against lesbians and gays.

One gay rights advocacy group, Freedom for All Americans, dubbed the new
Mississippi law "the nation’s worst piece of anti-LGBT legislation."

"Indiana and North Carolina’s anti-LGBT laws were horrendous, but Gov.
Bryant’s bill goes even further in denying critical protections and
enabling discrimination against LGBT individuals," Matt McTighe,
executive director of Freedom for All Americans, said in a statement.

Authored by Republican Philip Gunn, speaker of the Mississippi House,
the law claims to provide protections to people who believe marriage is
the union of one man and one woman, that sexual relations should only
take place inside such marriages, and that the terms "male" or "female"
refer to individuals’ "immutable biological sex." Get ready for more
state-level showdowns over LGBT rights Get ready for more state-level
showdowns over LGBT rights

It prevents state government from taking discriminatory action against
any churches, religious charities and private businesses that decline
services to people violating their religious beliefs.

In a statement, Bryant said the law was an attempt to prevent government
interference in people’s lives, one that "merely reinforces the rights
which currently exist to the exercise of religious freedom as stated in
the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution."

"This bill does not limit any constitutionally protected rights or
actions of any citizen of this state under federal or state laws," he
said. "It does not attempt to challenge federal laws, even those which
are in conflict with the Mississippi Constitution, as the Legislature
recognizes the prominence of federal law

Last week, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, vetoed a bill that
would have allowed businesses and individuals to cite their religious
beliefs as a reason for denying services to same-sex couples. Not only
would the law allow discrimination in the name of religious freedom,
McAuliffe said in a statement, but it would have been bad for business.

"We should be pursuing policies to make Virginia a more vibrant and
welcoming place to live, work and raise a family," McAuliffe said.

On Tuesday morning, PayPal announced it would abandon a planned
expansion into North Carolina because of the new anti-LGBT law. Dan
Schulman, PayPal’s president and chief executive, said in a statement
that the law "perpetuates discrimination" and "violates the values and
principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture."

The San Jose-based company’s new global operations center in Charlotte
would have employed more than 400 people.

Other companies that have spoken out against North Carolina’s new law
include American Airlines, Apple, Bank of America, Facebook, Google,
IBM, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo.

The Mississippi law would allow government employees to refuse to issue
marriage licenses or perform marriage ceremonies. It would also allow
businesses and faith-based groups to deny housing, jobs and adoption and
foster care services to people based on their sexual orientation or
gender identity.

Physicians and other medical professionals could deny sex reassignment
or "psychological, counseling, or fertility services" on the basis of
their religious beliefs. Government would be prevented from taking
action against a person who established "sex-specific standards or
policies" concerning "employee or student dress or grooming" or access
to restrooms, locker rooms, or dressing rooms.

"This is a sad day for the state of Mississippi and for the thousands of
Mississippians who can now be turned away from businesses, refused
marriage licenses or denied housing, essential services and needed care
based on who they are," Jennifer Riley-Collins, executive director of
the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, said in a statement.

"This bill flies in the face of the basic American principles of
fairness, justice and equality and will not protect anyone’s religious
liberty," she said. "Far from protecting anyone from ‘government
discrimination’ as the bill claims, it is an attack on the citizens of
our state, and it will serve as the Magnolia State’s badge of shame."

Jarvie is a special correspondent.

(10) Equal Employment Opportunity Lawsuits for Gay Workers
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/gay-workers-discrimination-lawsuits_us_56d5e0a8e4b0bf0dab3387a2?section=australia

'Groundbreaking' Discrimination Lawsuits Brought On Behalf Of Gay Workers

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is arguing that the Civil
Rights Act covers workers' sexual orientation.

03/01/2016 02:16 pm ET

The federal agency that enforces civil rights in the workplace is
pursuing its first lawsuits ever based upon a worker's sexual orientation.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced Tuesday that it
has filed two cases it described as "groundbreaking" -- one on behalf of
a gay male employee of a Pennsylvania medical center, another on behalf
of a lesbian employee of a Maryland pallet manufacturer.

A supervisor at Scott Medical Health Center, in Pittsburgh, subjected
the worker to "various anti-gay epithets" and "highly offensive comments
about his sexuality and sex life," leading him to eventually quit his
job, according to the EEOC. A supervisor at IFCO Systems, the Maryland
employer, taunted the employee there over her sexual orientation and
fired her after she complained about the harassment to management, the
agency said.

The EEOC is responsible for protecting workers' rights under the Civil
Rights Act, which bars employers from discriminating based upon race,
religion, sex or national origin. The cases announced Tuesday are
notable because a worker's sexual orientation is not explicitly
protected under that landmark law, and the EEOC has never before filed
such a suit on behalf of a gay worker (though it has on behalf of
transgender workers).

But in a case last year, the EEOC determined that discrimination based
upon sexual orientation is inherently discrimination based upon sex.
(For the commission's full rationale, check out that decision here.)
That determination suggested the commission was likely to bring lawsuits
based upon sexual orientation, and Commissioner Chai Feldblum said just
a week ago that such a suit would be "coming soon."

In an amicus brief it filed in a separate case last month, the EEOC
argued that "sexual orientation discrimination necessarily involves sex
stereotyping." In such cases, the agency wrote, workers are treated
differently "because their orientation does not conform to
heterosexually defined gender norms."

"With the filing of these two suits, EEOC is continuing to solidify its
commitment to ensuring that individuals are not discriminated against in
workplaces because of their sexual orientation," David Lopez, the
commission's general counsel, said in a statement. "While some federal
courts have begun to recognize this right under Title VII, it is
critical that all courts do so."

The EEOC has been inviting workers to submit charges claiming
discrimination over sexual orientation since 2013, as Bloomberg BNA
explained. No federal appeals court has ruled yet that the Civil Rights
Act covers a worker's sexual orientation, making it likely any ruling in
favor of the EEOC would be challenged.

The EEOC said Tuesday that it tried to settle both cases before filing
lawsuits against the two employers.

(11) China’s "homowives"

http://qz.com/329575/chinas-homowives-are-becoming-unlikely-champions-for-gay-rights/

China’s "homowives" are becoming unlikely champions for gay rights

Zheping Huang

March 02, 2015

After her marriage was over, just looking at a wedding photo would make
Qiu Xuan feel awful. The 29-year-old, a video editor at a communications
company in Guangzhou, could tell by the picture that she wasn’t half of
a happy couple that day, even though she was the one wearing a white veil.

The photo shows the bride and groom with their best man, who was
standing in between them, hanging one arm over the groom’s shoulder, and
leaning his head towards him. Qiu said her yearlong sexless and loveless
marriage can be explained in that one image—her husband was in love with
his best man, not her. Qiu’s wedding day photo.(From Qiu's personal
photos, used with permission.)

The term "beard" to describe a woman who is used, knowingly or
unknowingly, to disguise her partner’s homosexuality has been used as
slang in the United States for many decades.

But acknowledgement that such marriages even happen is a recent
phenomena in China. In China, a "beard" is known straightforwardly as a
??(Tongqi), or ""homowife"—the abbreviation of "the wife of a
homosexual" in Chinese.

There are millions of gay men married to women in China, academics
believe. According to an estimate by Zhang Beichuan, one of the first
Chinese scholars to study sexuality, China has 20 million male
homosexuals of marriageable age—and 80% of them will marry a woman. In
contrast, according to a 2010 Economist report, 15 to 20% of gay men in
America have married heterosexual women.

The women in these marriages are quietly becoming an unlikely force in
China’s nascent gay-rights movement. If men are free to openly have
relationships with other men, sham marriages like theirs will no longer
happen, they say. Being "homosexual is not wrong," said Qiu in an
interview. "What’s wrong is to marry a heterosexual to make a tragedy."

Liu Jie, a 25-year-old homosexual interior decorator from Shantou,
Guangdong Province, has thought of entering into a gay-straight
marriage, because, like many Chinese of marrying age, he’s under a lot
of pressure from his parents. "They said they would have nothing to
worry about in their lives once I got married. How can I come out of the
closet to them?" Liu said to Quartz.

"Among three ways of being an unfilial son, the most serious is to have
no heir," argued Mencius, an ancient Confucian philosopher. The idea is
still ingrained in modern China; men are under social pressure to marry
and produce a male heir to carry on the family line. Though new
generations are more open-minded, many still believe that to marry and
have children are the two most important things in life, whether they
are gay or straight.

For women who unknowingly marry gay men, a divorce can be difficult to
obtain, and can leave them much worse off financially. Qiu, the video
editor, got a divorce and custody of her 9-month-old daughter after
court mediation. Her husband agreed to pay alimony of 700 yuan, or $114,
per month, which, according to Qiu, accounts for less than 20% of his
monthly income. Qiu only agreed to the terms, she said, because her
husband’s family refused to let her see her daughter otherwise.

Qiu said the court had rejected her appeal for further compensation,
because she could not prove her husband had an extramarital affair. "He
has never admitted he is gay, although everyone knows about that," Qiu said.

"A person who has a spouse but cohabits with another person" is one of
the circumstances listed in China’s marriage law that allows a husband
or wife to file for divorce, and demand compensation from the other
party, but in its judicial interpretation, the "another person" only
refers to "the opposite sex."

"If a man and a woman get a room [in the hotel], we can say it’s an
extramarital affair; but if it is two men, we can say nothing," said
Liu, 35, a judge from Shenzhen who agreed to speak on the matter if he
was identified only by his surname.

Some women in China unknowingly married to a gay man are openly choosing
to maintain a nominal marriage to give their children a stable family.
Jiang Xinyi, a 24-year-old software engineer from Shanghai, who has been
counseling women married to gay men since 2009, said this was a common
alternative to divorce and separation. "They draw three ground rules for
their husbands: Have sex [with their wives], take care of the family,
and look after the child."

Other arrangements are springing up as well—like the "cooperative
marriage" or "xinghun," in which a lesbian woman and gay man agree to
marry to appease their parents.

Jiang first learned there were other women in similar marriages from
China’s first homowives meeting in 2009. Then a university student, she
found the women who had attended the meeting online and joined their
chat group on QQ, a popular Chinese instant messaging software.

After watching other women share their ordeals and comfort each other in
the chat group, Jiang volunteered to establish and operate new groups
for newcomers.

Now Jiang runs three QQ chat groups, which have over 200 members in
total, and a social media account on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like
microblog site. She also helps these women get legal advice and speak
out to the public. She named the volunteer organization Hibiscus Flower,
which she said stands for tenacity and vitality.

"Homowives" and their supporters are getting more vocal about their own
situations, and the need for China to become more accepting of
homosexuality. Zhang Ziwei, a 27-year-old corporate secretary from
Nanchang, southeast China’s Jiangxi Province, who dated a gay man three
years ago, now manages a QQ chat group on the topic with more than one
hundred members. She is translating two books—My Husband Is Gay and When
Your Spouse Comes Out, written by Carol Grever, an American woman who
married a gay man—into Chinese. After she finishes, she plans to send
them to other women in her situation, because there are no such books in
China.

One woman who was formerly married to a gay man, who calls herself
"Little Delan," dressed in a bridal gown to seek marriage at the Qixi
Festival, China’s Valentines’ Day, in August, 2014 on the the streets of
Quanzhou, the largest city in southeastern Fujian Province. She told
Chinese media that, besides finding the right man, she wanted to raise
awareness about homowives, and the need for China to offer homosexuals
equal rights and legalize gay marriage.

A 51-year-old retired worker from Zhengzhou, central China’s Henan
Province, who only wants to be identified by her online nickname, Aunt
Moon, has been volunteering at Hibiscus Flower since she helped her
niece get out of a gay-straight marriage four years ago.

"I don’t have a high literacy level, but I am gentle, and willing to
talk," said Aunt Moon, who has had volunteer experience at the Red Cross
Society of China.

Among the thousands who attended Hong Kong’s annual gay rights parade in
November, Aunt Moon and the three women she was with became a peculiar
scene with their different identities and pursuits from the gay
marchers. During the march, they held up placards that read: "My husband
is gay. I am in pain." Aunt Moon (second from the right) and other
marchers at Hong Kong’s gay pride parade in November 2014.(Photo from
Weibo, used with permission.)

Aunt Moon said she thought it may have been the first time that women
married to gay men in China took part in a gay rights demonstration. She
said the parade was a chance for them to increase people’s awareness
about their fate. She wishes the gay rights movements to succeed as
well: "the more prosperous the better," she said. Little Delan also
appeared at the Hong Kong parade, again in a bridal gown.

Yet a tune of discord hung over the event. A group of gay participants
from Hong Kong drew people’s attention by holding a red flag, like the
ones that police use during protests to tell demonstrators to halt, that
read: "Stop discriminating or we will marry a woman and hehe [be gay] in
the dark."

"The threatening slogan helps nothing. It will only harm their image,"
Aunt Moon said. "If they want to achieve marital rights, they must face
up to homowives."

Three women married to gay men attended the last annual PFLAG China
meeting, the gay support group’s co-founder told Quartz. Their
involvement isn’t without controversy. "Ideally we should stand in the
same trench to fight against biases from the society," co-founder Aqiang
said. But being a "homowife is only a transitional identity—after they
find a heterosexual man and get married, they are no longer homowives."
Aqiang said, "I don’t expect them to do much."

"What they want is to solve their own problems," he added. "They are
often emotional, critical and angry. We can’t hear the husbands’ voices
in their cases."

Same-sex marriage is now legally recognized in 16 countries, and 33
states in America. China is not on the list. Li Yinhe, a sociologist and
sexologist who has been trying to legalize homosexual marriage since
2000, has failed each time. Li, who has been in a relationship with a
transgender man for many years, said she has been unable to get the 30
cosponsors necessary for the idea to be discussed at the Chinese
People’s Political Consultative Conference, which advises the government
on issues that should become law.

The government, Li said, thinks it is an idea that is ahead of its time.

"Homosexual marriage had been brought up when the marriage law was
revised in the 1980s," Yang Lixin, a law professor at Renmin University
of China, told Quartz, "but the society was deemed not prepared." Yang
said next time the marriage law is revised, homosexual marriage might be
legalized, but when that will occur, "only the heads of the legislature
know."

Until then, expect millions more unhappy couples to tie the knot.

The author is a master’s student at The University of Hong Kong’s
Journalism and Media Studies Center, and an intern with Quartz. You can
follow him on Twitter at @pingroma.