A senior judge dubbed new Manchester Airport drop-off fees 'unjust' and an 'absolute disgrace' as he freed a teacher who left a parking official fearing for his life during a road rage row over the charges.

Graham Benbow, 55, lost his temper and attempted to drive through an open barrier at the airport after being told he would have to pay £3 for dropping off a passenger.

The official tried to stop him by standing against the barrier, but ended up on the bonnet of Benbow's Mazda 3 hatchback and was carried along the road for several hundred yards.

During the 'manic' incident, Benbow - a psychology teacher at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls - went over a roundabout before eventually stopping for police as he was about to join the M56 .

The unnamed airport official was uninjured in the incident but said he 'genuinely believed he could die from falling off the bonnet'.

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/judge-dubs-manchester-airport-drop-15182429

When Representative John Conyers Jr., who represented Detroit, resigned following accusations of sexual harassment, was there a moment when you were like “Why not me for Congress?”

When there was talk about him retiring, that’s when the light bulb went off. It was not just that Trump was in office, but also the kind of injustice that I see right now in the 13th Congressional District, where we’re handing out corporate tax breaks to billionaires to build hockey stadiums downtown and everybody keeps talking about this so-called “comeback” in this city, but then my neighborhood still hasn’t gotten services it needs. And being a Muslim, being Arab, being a woman of color — the possibility of being a member of Congress, what a message that would be.

You’ve said you want to be part of the movement that’s getting rid of “sellout Democrats.” What defines a “sellout Democrat”?

I was talking about some of my opponents that supported corporate tax breaks for for-profit development in the 13th Congressional District that took away money from schooling, from education funding. Do I feel like they’re speaking on behalf of all of us or speaking on behalf of some?

You’ve also said that you would probably not vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker if Democrats capture the House. Why not?

Because I’m part of a new generation of people that are coming in. We speak differently. We work differently. We serve differently. And this is not to say that I don’t appreciate the incredible leadership of the last three or four decades by Leader Pelosi. But this is a new era. There’s a new generation of leaders that are coming up the ranks that are coming from a perspective that is so much more connected now with what’s happening on the ground. Over half the members of Congress right now are millionaires. Are they dealing with class sizes of 45? Are they dealing with the fact that they can’t seem to find good-quality public-school education in their district?

...You’ve discussed wanting to humanize Palestinians to people in the United States.

So many talk about the leadership, the different policies, but I don’t think they realize what’s going on on the ground. Like my grandmother: She’s in the West Bank, 10 miles outside Ramallah. She’s in a small village — like 700 people live there. She walks out of her door, literally in front of her house is a checkpoint. It’s brand new. It wasn’t there when I was 7, when I visited. It wasn’t there when I was 11 or 12 years old, when I visited. It wasn’t there when I was 19. When people ask me, “Do you support this or that?” I say: “You know what? I support my grandmother getting access to the best hospital for care, and that means being able to travel to Jerusalem.”

Since the 1980s, corporate boards in the United States have embraced as dogma the position that companies should be run primarily for the benefit of their shareholders. The stranglehold of this doctrine of “shareholder-value maximization” over corporate decision making has been a leading cause of inequitable incomes, unstable employment, and sagging productivity.

The principal tool for extracting value from companies and handing it to shareholders is the stock buyback, which usually boosts a company’s stock price. Buybacks are favored by top executives, who are paid primarily in stock options and stock awards, and encouraged by ever-more-powerful hedge-fund activists. From 2008 to 2017, 466 S.&P. 500 companies distributed $4 trillion to shareholders as buybacks, equal to 53 percent of profits, along with $3.1 trillion as dividends.

...Corporations already had a way to provide a yield to shareholders: dividends. But by 1997, stock buybacks had surpassed dividends as a mode of distribution to shareholders.

To understand the magnitude of this shift, we analyzed financial data from 232 companies in the S.&P. 500 Index that were publicly listed in 1981, before the rule, and were still public through 2016. We found that from 1981 to 1983, these companies spent 4.3 percent of profits on buybacks. In comparison, from 2014 to 2016, these same companies spent 59 percent of their profits buying back their own stock. Dividends absorbed just under half of profits in both periods.

...Defenders of buybacks contend that they do no harm because the funds are reallocated through financial markets and used elsewhere in the economy. A company’s profits are, however, the financial foundation for investments in productive capabilities, first and foremost in employees. Investment in training and retaining employees is the key to productivity growth and innovation, for individual companies and for the economy. According to our research, when trillions of dollars of corporate cash are extracted from companies through buybacks, on top of dividends, the result is a dramatic concentration of income among the richest American households and the destruction of middle-class employment opportunities...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/opinion/ban-stock-buybacks.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=9&pgtype=sectionfront

Let me see if I understand this. From 1981 to 1983 4.3 per cent of profits went to buybacks and "just under half" to dividends. Let's throw a dart and call that 40 per cent. So, companies had a fair amount of profit (50-ish per cent?) left to spend on other things, like investing in R&D, modernizing equipment and facilities, rewarding employees, etc. In the 2014 to 2016 timeframe, stock buybacks had ballooned to 59%. Using that same somewhat arbitrary 40 per cent figure for dividends (would it have killed the authors to publish the actual numbers here?), corporations had leftover profits down in the single digit range. So, we are left with flat wages, aging machinery, and very little R&D, but very handsome executive benefit packages. Kinda makes you wonder what the SEC was thinking.

The leader of a centrist bloc of Democratic lawmakers expressed concern Friday that the party's top three House leaders are in their late 70s, joining a chorus of younger Democrats questioning older leaders' ability to overcome the party's "generational gap."

Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the chairman of the centrist New Democrat Coalition, told CNN that party leaders' rising ages are a "problem" and declined to say whether he would support House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for speaker if Democrats take control of the House in the midterm elections.

...Acknowledging he is a "huge admirer of Nancy Pelosi's operational ability," Himes, 52, said Democrats will soon need leaders who can communicate effectively with younger voters.

"The fact that our top three leaders are in their late 70s - I don't care who those leaders are - that is, in fact, a problem," he said.

"We are at a moment in time where young people are involved as they never have been before," he said. "I don't care how good you are - there is a generation gap.”

More at https://m.ctpost.com/news/article/Democratic-congressman-says-party-leaders-rising-13164315.php