Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Tougher tactics would have ended Syrian war, claims the country's top intelligence general By Robert Fisk

Exclusive: Speaking for the first time as the bombardment of Aleppo continues, General Jamil Hassan – a man facing sanctions from both the US and EU – says he's ‘astounded the US and UN make all this effort for this very small district’

Sunday 27 November 2016 13:45 BST

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The Independent Online

Aleppo's historic citadel, controlled by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad Reuters

It’s not every day that you come face to face with the commander of the most powerful, ruthless – and undoubtedly most feared – security agency in all of Syria. The very words “Syrian Air Force Intelligence” are enough to stop any conversation in its tracks. The “moderate” Free Syrian Army famously reported the assassination of this most loyal and ferocious of presidential protectors four years ago and even Wikipedia still refers to him in the past tense. But I can assure you that 63-year old General Jamil Hassan is very much alive.

His handshake is vice-like, and his eyes – which stare at you like an angry interrogator when he speaks – fixed their gaze upon me like a lighthouse beam when I asked him if he was a cruel man. His voice combines a lion’s roar with the slow deliberation of an intelligence boss who is fast running out of patience.

This is not a man to be crossed. “In the Western media, I am a war criminal,” he growls at me. “So I’m not sure your article about me will be allowed in The Independent. I am ready – even if they take me to the War Crimes Tribunal – to continue with my work. Because Syria deserves the sacrifice.”

General Hassan is slightly exaggerating his notoriety. No war crimes court has sought his arrest. But the EU has condemned him for his “involvement in the repression against the civilian uprising” in Syria in 2011, imposing both a travel ban and a freezing of his financial assets.
The US Treasury, after threats by President Barack Obama against the Syrian regime, has imposed its own sanctions upon the general “for engaging in the commission of human rights abuses.” The Americans stated that Syrian Air Force Intelligence – whose name derives from President Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez, who was a Syrian air force officer – killed at least 43 demonstrators in April 2011. Of which, more later.

Throughout our astonishing three-hour interview, General Jamil Hassan ducked no questions, even about his own prisons, and while repeatedly declaring his loyalty to President Bashar al-Assad, made it perfectly clear that a more ruthless reaction to the first hints of revolution in Syria in 2011 might have crushed all armed opposition to the regime at once.

He even referred to the crushing of the Muslim Brotherhood revolt in Hama in 1982, when thousands of civilians and fighters were slaughtered after the Brotherhood went on a murderous rampage against Ba‘ath Party members in the city.

General Hassan was a junior security officer at the time, serving Hafez el-Assad’s government. “I was a very young man,” he said. “There were exaggerated media reports [of the casualties]. [But] if we did what we did in Hama at the beginning of this crisis, we would have saved a lot of Syrian blood.” I was also briefly in Hama during the 1982 revolt: I recorded at the time that fatalities might have reached 20,000.

It was a strange, unexpected – and unsought – meeting with one of Syria’s most powerful figures. Outside the general’s office hung one Syrian and three Russian flags. He knew his history books, and he lit a Churchill cigar as he spoke of Hitler, Rommel, Montgomery and Churchill. But there was no doubt in his mind as to just who was to blame for Syria’s tragedy.

Boy asks if he will die after alleged chlorine attack in Aleppo

“The West conspires against Syria,” he almost shouts at me. “First Israel, the head of the snake and all who support its policies, along with the Arab regimes, led by Saudi Arabia – I’m not talking about the Saudis as a people, but the King and the royal family – this selfish and narcissistic family which has a very dirty attitude towards the Arab people, especially a country like Syria, which has a disciplined [sic] rule and a young leader…who is very intelligent and knows the interests of his people and even the interests of the whole Arab world.

The Israelis and the dirty rulers of Arab peoples are not interested in these attitudes. They need agents to execute their own agendas…need to execute their agendas – because they know that the strength of Syria is in its unity. So they do all this to divide Syria. They encourage extremist ideology. The big role in this was that of the Wahabis and al-Qaeda and their black doctrines. From this, they launched their plans to divide Syria.”

I restrained myself from telling General Hassan that the last time I heard such condemnation of the Saudi autocracy, it came from the mouth of Osama bin Laden, talking to me in Afghanistan of his wish to destroy the Saudi regime.

The Independent

North Carolina’s Sore Loser - The New York Times

North Carolina’s Sore Loser - The New York Times:

"As early voting exit polls in North Carolina trickled in just before Election Day, state Republican Party officials could hardly contain their glee. They issued a statement hailing early results that suggested “the once dynamic Obama Coalition” was “crumbling and tired.” The statement boasted that the percentage of African-Americans voting early had dropped by 8.5 percent below 2012 levels, while white early voting was up by 22.5 percent.

They were optimistic that recent efforts by Republicans to systemically suppress minority voting in a state with a long history of racial discrimination and disenfranchisement of African-Americans appeared to be paying off. Yet, while Donald Trump won North Carolina, Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, lost his re-election race by a few thousand votes to Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat.

Mr. McCrory, a governor who brought disgrace and financial loss to his state by championing a bill to discriminate against gay and transgender people, demanded a recount and began scouring voting rolls for evidence of fraud. It was a hard-fought, acrimonious election, decided by a slim margin, but as provisional and absentee ballots were added to the tally in recent days, Mr. Cooper’s lead surpassed the 10,000 threshold that bars Mr. McCrory from requesting a taxpayer-funded recount.

Mr. McCrory has refused to concede, and despite having no path to victory, he has been engaged in an all-out assault on the integrity of the election system. His fight appears likely to serve as rationale for a renewed effort in the legislature to make North Carolina’s voting laws and regulations even more onerous.

The McCrory campaign has alleged that his defeat resulted from “massive voter fraud,” an irresponsible claim for which there is no evidence. It challenged the eligibility of 43 voters, contending they were felons. A review of public records by Democracy North Carolina, a voting rights group, established that nearly half of those voters were not, in fact, ineligible.

“It’s scandalous that they would malign innocent people to poison the larger public’s trust in the election system,” Bob Hall, the executive director of Democracy North Carolina, said in an interview. It’s dishonorable for Mr. McCrory to promote voting fraud myths and add fuel to voter suppression efforts as he’s going out the door.

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this editorial appears in print on December 1, 2016, on page A30 of the New York edition with the headline: North Carolina’s Sore Loser. Today's Paper|Subscribe"

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OPEC Reaches Deal to Limit Production, Sending Prices Soaring

By STANLEY REED and CLIFFORD KRAUSSNOV. 30, 2016

Khalid al-Falih, center, the Saudi energy minister, at the OPEC meeting in Vienna on Wednesday.
CreditChristian Bruna/European Pressphoto Agency

VIENNA — After years of trying fruitlessly to prop up energy markets, OPEC on Wednesday finally reached a consensus on production cuts, sending oil prices soaring. The problem is, the euphoria may not last.

With prices still at less than half the levels of two years ago, all 14 members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed this fall to lower collective production. But they could not figure out how to spread out the cuts among the countries.

The path to consensus has been complicated by Saudi Arabia and Iran, whose longstanding mutual enmity encompasses religious, political and economic competition. When it comes to oil, Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s top producer, has fought to maintain its market share while Iran has worked to protect its nascent comeback as a power broker in the cartel, a role it lost in recent years under nuclear sanctions.

They overcome their differences on Wednesday, with OPEC deciding to cut production next year by about 4.5 percent, or 1.2 million barrels a day, according to Mohammed bin Saleh al-Sada, the Qatari oil minister, who is running the meeting. It will be the first cut in eight years.

With the prospect of less pumping, oil prices, which began rising earlier in the day in anticipation of the deal, were up more than 7 percent, to nearly $50 a barrel. Rising prices could provide a lift to the troubled economies of oil-dependent nations like Nigeria and Venezuela, as well as bolster the fortunes of smaller American energy producers that have been shaken by the weakness.

What’s the Current Price of Oil?

The optimism, though, may soon be tempered.

The deal is contingent on the cooperation of non-OPEC countries, most notably Russia. OPEC has said that Russia agreed to participate, but Moscow is notoriously hard to predict.

A recent production frenzy creates another wild card for the deal.

While both Saudi Arabia and Iran have vocally supported higher prices, their national oil companies have been making deals in Asia and filling tankers as quickly as they can leave port. Saudi production has increased to well over 10 million barrels a day, while reductions in domestic consumption have left more available for export. Iran, relieved of nuclear sanctions, has gone on its own selling spree in India and started production in new oil and gas fields.

Other OPEC countries have followed, increasing production in recent months. The race to pump more is taking several of the cartel’s largest members to the brink of their production capacity.

The intense competition makes OPEC’s new plan less meaningful — part of the broader piece of the industry dynamics that means the price increase could prove temporary.

The size of the cut is fairly trivial in a 96-million-barrel-a-day marketplace that remains oversupplied. Should prices rise in the next few weeks, American shale producers are likely to drill and complete more new wells, which would add supply to the global market and depress prices in 2017. And, if history is any guide, even a modest agreement can be breached by cheating.

“If higher prices bring higher output, prices will not remain up for long,” said Jim Krane, a Middle East energy analyst at Rice University. “It won’t be long before we’re back where we started.”

Two months ago, the cartel surprised world energy markets by agreeing in principle to trim production by up to 700,000 barrels a day from current levels of slightly more than 33 million barrels a day. The move by OPEC signaled a significant change of course for Saudi Arabia.

To undercut higher-cost Western players, the powerhouse producer had allowed oil prices to collapse, from more than $100 a barrel, to below $30 earlier this year. With its finances coming under increasing pressure, Saudi Arabia’s new royal government said it would return to a more traditional effort of managing prices by controlling production.

But the cartel’s words and actions did not initially dovetail. The production and export frenzy in Iran has been accompanied by increased activity across much of OPEC.

In the midst of a civil war, Libya has more than doubled oil production since August, to 600,000 barrels a day; it hopes to raise output an additional 300,000 barrels by early 2017. Iraq has expanded production by 300,000 barrels a day since the summer. Nigeria has pledged to increase oil production to 2.2 million barrels a day by the end of the year, from 1.9 million.

“The Saudis have always feared they would be left carrying the burden while the other members cheat, said Michael C. Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research and a former adviser to OPEC.

The biggest issue, however, has been the Saudi-Iranian rivalry, as has been the case many times in OPEC’s turbulent history.

Riyadh has insisted that Tehran should contribute to the move to bolster prices. Iran is trying to reclaim the global market share, and the clout in OPEC, that it lost in recent years under Western sanctions tied to its nuclear program.

Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern and African producers — particularly Angola, Iraq, Kuwait and Nigeria — took advantage of Iran’s troubles by raising production levels to serve its old customers. At one point, Iran threatened a retaliatory naval blockade of the critical Gulf choke point of the Strait of Hormuz, a move that could have paralyzed the economies of Saudi Arabia, its neighboring allies and much of Asia and inflamed geopolitical tensions.

Now Iran is coming back fast.

Since many sanctions were lifted in January, Iran’s crude oil production has risen nearly a third, to about 3.7 million barrels a day. Having achieved the goal of returning to pre-sanctions levels, Iranian officials want to take production capacity higher still, toward 4.8 million barrels a day by 2021.

“Iran’s influence in OPEC, and indeed in the region, has been growing since the lifting of nuclear-related international sanctions,” said Bhushan Bahree, an OPEC analyst at IHS Markit, a research company. “Its oil output has grown rapidly this year, and Tehran is actively trying to attract foreign companies, capital and technology to raise oil and gas production in the years to come.”

Iran is beginning to negotiate deals with outside companies for the capital and technological expertise it needs to reach its production goals.

Officials have already reached a preliminary agreement with Total to develop a giant Gulf natural gas field that Iran shares with Qatar, and are discussing energy deals with Royal Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Dutch giant. Nearly 50 oil and gas projects may also be opened to foreign investors.

Iran’s ultimate success at recovering its old glory is uncertain.

During the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump promised to rip up the nuclear deal with Iran negotiated by the Obama administration and other world powers. And even if other countries refuse to follow Mr. Trump’s lead, persistently low oil prices could deter foreign investment.

“There is a lot of uncertainty,” said Homayoun Falakshahi, an Iran analyst at Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy.

The rivalry with Saudi Arabia complicates matters further.

Some energy analysts say the Saudis pushed the idea of a cut, in part thinking that Iran had reached its production limits and would not be able to fight for supremacy in the Asian markets for long. In the days before the OPEC meeting, Iran tried to negotiate an exemption from any output cut.

The competition extends beyond markets. Saudi Arabia and Iran are also playing an increasingly deadly political game, battling for power in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The specifics of the OPEC deal give Saudi Arabia and Iran reasonable room.

Saudi Arabia is taking a considerable hit, agreeing to cut by 486,000 barrels a day, the largest chunk of the total deal. But the Saudis would normally cut back substantially in the winter, when they burn less oil to generate electric power for air-conditioning. The country’s output, too, remains at historically elevated levels. Iran faces a ceiling that is about 100,000 barrels a day higher than what analysts estimate the country is now producing.

Adherence to the deal also isn’t necessarily a given. Three big and reliable Persian Gulf producers — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates — account for more than 60 percent of the overall cuts. But the rest come from other producers who may not adhere as closely to their limits.

“This is a great headline number,” said Jamie Webster, a fellow at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, who was observing the meeting. But considering the “need to secure cuts from non-OPEC and that there need to occur big contributions from countries that don’t have a great history of compliance, it starts to look smaller,” he said.

Correction: November 30, 2016

An earlier version of a photo caption with this article misspelled the name of the oil minister of Saudi Arabia. He is Khalid al-Falih, not Khaled al-Falih.

NYT

Eyeing the Trump Voter, ‘Fight for $15’ Widens Its Focus By NOAM SCHEIBER

Leaders of the labor-financed “Fight for $15” campaign say they have improved the lives of millions of workers at the bottom of the nation’s pay scale, helping to raise the minimum wage in California, New York State and a host of cities.

Now, four years into their crusade, the movement’s leaders are signaling a determination to expand their reach beyond the urban working poor, who were among the chief beneficiaries of their earlier efforts. Among their new targets: working-class Americans frustrated by an economy that is no longer producing the middle-class jobs they or their parents once held.

Many of these workers voted for Donald J. Trump.

“A whole bunch of us out there are not doing well,” Scott Courtney, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union and one of the chief architects of the Fight for $15 campaign, said in an interview last week.

“In red states, blue states; black, brown, white — people are hurting,” he said. “Sixty-four million of them don’t make $15 per hour.”

As part of the push, thousands of workers turned out in dozens of cities on Tuesday to demand a $15 wage, better working conditions and the right to unionize. Thousands of airport workers, including baggage handlers, cabin cleaners and wheelchair attendants, loomed at the center of the protests, demonstrating and even walking off the job at some of the nation’s busiest airports, like O’Hare International in Chicago.

Leaders of the Fight for $15 highlighted the symbolic importance of the airport workers, whose jobs decades ago paid a living wage. More recently, the jobs have become a source of financial hardship as outsourcing to nonunion contractors has taken its toll — a dynamic arguably central to Mr. Trump’s election.

In other cases, blue-collar workers have lost high-paying union jobs at factories and replaced them with lower-paying jobs at nonunion factories or e-commerce fulfillment centers.

“We’re shining a light on a part of the economy that used to be living-wage work,” said Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, which has spent tens of millions of dollars on the Fight for $15 campaign. “They’re joining with fast-food workers, child care, home care, which have never been living wage work.”

Organizers said that in addition to extending the movement to a different profile of job, they believed the Fight for $15 campaign had to become more disruptive to achieve a new round of victories. The campaign had already planned Tuesday’s protests before the election, but leaders say the imperative for sowing chaos became all the more urgent after Mr. Trump’s victory.

For example, the idea of workers striking at airports, as opposed to just protesting there, came about after the election.

“When Trump is able to spin an entire news cycle about ‘Hamilton’ instead of other issues that matter to working folks, it’s that much harder for us to bring attention to the everyday struggles of families trying to put food on the table,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, a grass-roots organizing group that helped start the current campaign.

In Chicago, hundreds of demonstrators representing labor unions, churches and community groups converged at O’Hare. Stretched along the walkway between Terminals 2 and 3, the protesters chanted, sang, beat drums and blasted trumpets.

In Los Angeles, several thousand workers turned up to protest around noon on a major airport access street, including Ashley Adams, 25, who had been arrested earlier at a rally outside McDonald’s on accusations of stopping traffic and disturbing the peace. “We really need to fight for this,” said Ms. Adams, who takes orders at a pizza restaurant and makes a bit more than $8 an hour. “I want to see my baby grow up being able to afford basic things and survive.”

Elsewhere across the country, protesters, including Uber drivers, cooks, cashiers and hospital workers, thronged at fast-food restaurants and public spaces. In Lower Manhattan, workers marched on Broadway starting at Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street protesters camped in 2011. Three City Council members — Mark Levine, Antonio Reynoso and Brad Lander — were among the protesters arrested at a sit-in, along with Francisco Moya, a state Assembly member.

Protests outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Detroit led to 40 arrests, according to WDIV, a local TV station. Local media outlets also reported dozens of arrests in Cambridge, Mass.

There is no question that the incoming Trump administration presents obstacles to the Fight for $15 movement. In recent years, the Service Workers and other unions helped change labor law doctrine as it relates to employers like contractors or franchisees that have a relationship with larger, more profitable companies.

Thanks to a 2015 ruling by the National Labor Relations Board, employees of a contractor or franchisee who form a union are more likely to be entitled to bargain with these larger parent companies — a critical development since the parent companies have been known to cut ties with contractors or franchisees whose workers form a union.

Under Mr. Trump and his future appointees to the labor board, this so-called joint employer doctrine is almost certain to be undone, making organizing fast-food workers through traditional means nearly impossible.

In other ways, however, the Fight for $15 movement is very much built for the Trump era, having never relied excessively on the Washington power structure to sustain itself.

Many of the movement’s successes came in cities and states, where its pressure helped enact new minimum wage laws, and with individual employers whom the movement helped persuade to lift wages voluntarily.

Allstate, the insurer, recently announced it would raise its entry-level wage for all corporate employees in the United States to at least $15 per hour. Facebook, which had some contract workers who made less than $15 per hour, lifted them over that rate. Service sector giants like McDonald’s and Walmart have increased their lowest wages by modest amounts in the last two years.

“If a messiah was going to save us, that person is in the White House right now,” Mr. Courtney said.

“By himself or herself, no president can make this happen.”

Some labor experts say that an essential insight of the Fight for $15 campaign was to turn the conventional labor model on its head in many respects. Rather than first organizing workers into a traditional union and then bargaining for wages and benefits, the campaign has effectively bargained for wages first — through protests and public relations offensives aimed at voters, politicians, and corporations — and hopes to build new worker organizations in after these successes.

Janice Fine, an associate professor of labor studies at Rutgers University, said one possible animating principle for the organizations that emerge from the Fight for $15 could be enforcement of minimum wage laws, and other laws affecting paid leave and scheduling, once they are enacted.

None of these innovations — whether the uniquely public form of bargaining or the creation of worker organizations focused on enforcement — require the assent of officials in Washington or the blessing of federal labor law.

Not all of the recent gains for workers are the doing of the Fight for $15 and other advocacy efforts, of course. Some of the changes, particularly in the private sector, simply reflect employers’ need to raise wages to fill jobs in a tightening labor market.

Critics argue that while the Fight for $15 has engineered significant wage increases for many workers, the movement will be harder pressed to notch victories in the future.

“They used low-hanging fruit to create a sense of momentum, but it was always limited” to certain states and jurisdictions, said Michael Saltsman of the business-backed Employment Policies Institute.

Mr. Saltsman said he expected a backlash to the recent minimum wage increases as “the bill starts to come due for the policies over the next year,” by which he meant the possibility of layoffs and the outright failure of businesses as wage increases take effect.

Other critics have pointed out that whatever the gains for workers, the tens of millions of dollars the Service Employees have poured into the campaign has netted the union little in the way of new members (although existing members have been beneficiaries of the recent wage increases).

But Ruth Milkman, a sociologist who studies labor at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, rejected that analysis. She said unions simply had a different calculus than corporations, which are more focused on the bottom line, and called the Fight for $15 campaign “the single most important initiative on the labor front in the last few years.”

Referring to the tens of millions of dollars that the union spent on the recent presidential election, Ms. Milkman added, “I suppose they could have given more to Hillary Clinton, but that might have been a worse investment.”

Ryan Schuessler, James Arthur Holt and Daniel Victor contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on November 30, 2016, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Fight for $15 Shifts Focus. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

NYT

‘Hamilton’ Hits a New High: The Most Money Grossed in a Week on Broadway - The New York Times

‘Hamilton’ Hits a New High: The Most Money Grossed in a Week on Broadway - The New York Times:

By MICHAEL PAULSONNOV. 28, 2016

Javier Muñoz, center, as Alexander Hamilton in the musical “Hamilton.” Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

History is happening in Manhattan: “Hamilton” has set a record for the most money ever made in a single week by a Broadway show.

The musical, which attracted national attention just before the week began with criticism from President-elect Donald J. Trump of its quality and the manners of its cast, grossed $3.3 million last week. That’s a huge number on Broadway, where only unusually strong shows gross more than $1 million in a week, and most pull in far less.

“Hamilton,” which won the Tony Award this year for best new musical, is now the first Broadway show to gross more than $3 million for an eight-performance week. In 2013, “Wicked” grossed $3.2 million during a week in which that show had nine performances, one more than usual.

“Hamilton,” which uses hip-hop and a diverse cast to explore the life and death of Alexander Hamilton, also set a record for the highest premium ticket price charged by a Broadway box office — $998 — although some people have paid more buying tickets from resellers. The previous premium ticket price record was $700, for “Barry Manilow on Broadway” in 2013.

Why ‘Hamilton’ Has Heat

What’s the story behind a show that’s become a Broadway must-see with no marquee names, no special effects and almost no white actors? Erik Piepenburg explains, in six snapshots, why “Hamilton” has become such a big deal.

It is not clear how many seats “Hamilton” sold for a $998 box-office price, but the show’s high average paid admission last week — $303, which is a record for average paid admission — suggests that a substantial number of seats sold for a premium. This price data, released on Monday by the Broadway League, reflects ticket prices charged by the producers and primarily sold at the box office or through Ticketmaster; it does not reflect higher prices paid by consumers for seats resold on the secondary ticket market.

It seems clear that, barring a dramatic and unforeseen reversal of fortunes, “Hamilton” will be the top-grossing show this season, overtaking “The Lion King.”

Last week was a bonanza for Broadway, as it included Thanksgiving, which is generally the second most lucrative period of the year after Christmas and New Year’s. Tourists to New York are plentiful, and sought-after shows regularly increase their premium prices during those weeks. Thirteen shows grossed more than $1 million last week, including four that exceeded $2 million — “Hamilton,” “The Lion King,” “Wicked” and “Aladdin.”

For “Hamilton,” the strong week follows a weekend of unexpected drama in which the vice president-elect, Mike Pence, attended the show. The cast addressed him afterward from the stage, asking him “to work on behalf of all of us,” and Mr. Trump reacted unhappily on Twitter. But that episode did not affect last week’s grosses — “Hamilton” is a sold-out show, so its attendance does not fluctuate from week to week; its grosses vary because of pricing changes, and the prices charged for Thanksgiving-week tickets were set months ago.

Overall, the 34 shows running during the week that ended on Nov. 27 grossed $35.3 million, making it the highest-grossing Thanksgiving week, according to the weekly grosses report released by the Broadway League. The figures are not adjusted for inflation.

The week was not, however, the best attended — there were two years in which more people attended Broadway shows over Thanksgiving, including last year.

This season has been lagging behind last in total grosses, but has gradually been making up lost ground. As the crucial holiday period begins, total grosses are 0.3 percent lower than last season. Overall attendance is up, if only slightly — by 0.1 percent — with a number of promising shows yet to open.

Among the new musicals this fall, three that faced skepticism in some quarters are starting strong. “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812,” which stars the pop singer Josh Groban and opened to strong reviews, has grossed over $1 million every week except one when Mr. Groban missed some performances because he sick. “Dear Evan Hansen,” now in previews and playing in a small theater, grossed a healthy $883,677 over just seven performances, playing to full houses and with a strong average ticket price. And “A Bronx Tale,” also in previews, is starting well, grossing $717,860 in seven performances.

The news was significantly less good for another new musical, “In Transit,” an a cappella show that grossed $257,037 in eight preview performances.

Among plays, a much-anticipated revival of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” starring Janet McTeer and Liev Schreiber, has been soft at the box office — it grossed $428,583 last week — and the producers have announced that they would close the show on Jan. 8, two weeks earlier than planned."

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Tuesday, November 29, 2016

How Many Just Voted Themselves Out of Health Care? By Paul Krugman

Economics and Politics by Paul Krugman - The Conscience of a Liberal - The New York Times:

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My original update was right! Screwed up dates. So it’s back to around 5 1/2 million Trump chumps.

Gah: technical issues involving changes in survey. I now have white-alone, no bachelors declining from 27 million in 2013 to 21.5 million in 2015. So we’re back to a number like 3.5 million.

Update: It turns out that I can do a lot better than this, using the Census CPS table creator. Here’s what I have now: in 2013, 27 million whites without a bachelor’s degree were uninsured. By 2015, that was down to 18.5 million. So we’re talking about 8.5 million working-class whites who stand to lose health insurance under Trump. If two-thirds of those losers-to-be voted Trump, we’re looking at 5.6 million people who basically destroyed their own lives.

As Greg Sargent points out, the choice of Tom Price for HHS probably means the death of Obamacare. Never mind the supposed replacement; it will be a bust. So here’s the question: how many people just shot themselves in the face?

My first pass answer is, between 3.5 and 4 million.

But someone who’s better at trawling through Census data can no doubt do better.

Here’s my calculation: we start with the Census-measured decline in uninsurance among non-Hispanic whites, which was 6 million between 2013 and 2015. Essentially all of those gains will be lost if Price gets his way.

How many of those white insurance-losers voted for Trump? Whites in general gave him 57 percent of their votes. Whites without a college degree — much more likely to have been uninsured pre-Obama — gave him 66 percent. Apportioning the insurance-losers using these numbers gives us 3.42 million if we use the overall vote share, or 3.96 million if we use the non-college vote share.

There are various ways this calculation could be off, in either direction. Also, maybe we should add a million Latinos who, if we believe the exit polls, also voted to lose coverage. But it’s likely to be in the ballpark. And it’s pretty awesome.

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Monday, November 28, 2016

Can Oil Help Mexico Withstand Trump’s Attack on Trade? It’s Hard to See How

AMERICAS

By ELISABETH MALKINNOV. 27, 2016

The Pemex Miguel Hidalgo refinery in Tula de Allende, in the state of Hidalgo, north of Mexico City.CreditJanet Jarman for The New York Times

CIUDAD DEL CARMEN, Mexico — The town that oil built is emptying out.

“For Sale” signs are plastered on concrete-block houses and sun-bleached bungalows alike. The idled oil workers who used to cluster in the main square, hoping to pick up odd jobs, have moved on.

Here in Ciudad del Carmen, on the gulf coast of Mexico, even the ironclad union positions are slipping away. Some roughnecks on the offshore rigs of the national oil company, Pemex, have not worked in months, and their voices are filled with anxiety.

“What do you think is going to happen?” some ask.

Pemex has been limping along for years, bleeding billions of dollars annually, saddled with debt and struggling to maintain production as its giant oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico run dry. Next year, it will pump less than two million barrels a day, the lowest output since 1980.

Fixing the oil company was already at the top of Mexico’s list of priorities, the focus of a long debate over the fate of one of its most important — and troubled — national institutions.

Now, that mammoth undertaking has become all the more critical with the United States’ election of Donald J. Trump. As Mexicans steel themselves for an American president who made upending his nation’s relationship with Mexico a cornerstone of his campaign, officials on this side of the border have hastened to reassure the country that Mexico’s economy is sound.

If Mr. Trump goes through with his promises to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, deport migrants and tax remittances to pay for his border wall, Mexico will face severe economic shocks, particularly to the vibrant manufacturing base, whose products replaced oil as the country’s main export years ago.

The Mexican peso remains at record lows. The central bank raised interest rates this month, citing “heightened uncertainty.” And last week, it cut growth forecasts for this year and next. The bank’s governor, Agustín Carstens, told a local radio station that understanding the Trump administration’s policies was “like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together without having all the pieces.”

Many are pessimistic that the government can come up with a backup plan. “Mexico lacks a credible Plan B to offset the anti-trade wave,” analysts at Morgan Stanley warned in a recent note to investors.

The damage that Mr. Trump could inflict on the busy factories that ship cars and computers to the United States has given a sharp urgency to Mexico’s efforts to jump-start parts of the economy that do not rely on Nafta — particularly its dilapidated oil industry.

Pemex CEO José Antonio González presented the company’s business plan during a press conference at its Mexico City headquarters on Nov. 3. CreditJanet Jarman for The New York Times

To that end, when José Antonio Meade, the finance minister, lists the Mexican economy’s strengths, he singles out the importance of the new energy laws that broke the 75-year monopoly held by Pemex.

The laws, part of a package of economic overhauls that President Enrique Peña Nieto pushed through Congress three years ago, allow for private investment in Mexico’s oil sector for the first time since foreign companies were expelled in 1938.

Only days before the American presidential election, Pemex’s chief executive, José Antonio González Anaya, presented a timetable of projects he expected to offer to potential partners and promised to begin returning the national oil company to solvency.

He and the finance minister met with investors in New York this month to argue that Mexico’s economy was solid and that “the oil sector will continue to be an engine of national economic growth,” according to a joint statement from Pemex and the Finance Ministry. The pair followed up with a visit to London.

Mr. Peña Nieto has pushed through other overhauls, including changes in education, telecommunications, taxes, electricity and finance, but they have yet to generate significant economic growth. Most economists project that the economy will expand by just over 2 percent this year.

The most radical of all these overhauls, though, was ending the monopoly of Pemex, the country’s largest company, and allowing it to seek capital and technology from private companies. The measure struck at Mexico’s most enduring symbol of national sovereignty, rejecting the long-held conviction that it could develop its most valuable natural resource on its own.

“The only way to bring back production in the next five, six years is to bring more investment to Pemex,” said Juan Carlos Zepeda, the president of the National Hydrocarbons Commission, Mexico’s oil regulator. “There is no other way.”

But after the new energy laws were approved, the company stalled, the promised joint ventures did not happen, and oil prices plunged.

Pemex reeled as its debt soared and production dropped. Falling oil revenue means oil funds less than 20 percent of the government budget, down from as much as 40 percent when prices were at their peak.

Members of the marine wildlife conservation organization Sea Shepherd monitored the fuel tanker Burgos as it continued to burn on Sept. 25, a day after it erupted in flames off the coast of the port city of Boca del Rio, Mexico. CreditFelix Marquez/Associated Press

“The government was never prepared for sustained low oil prices,” said John Padilla, a managing director of IPD Latin America, an energy consulting firm. “They never saw a Pemex implosion in the way it occurred.”

The president chose Mr. González Anaya, a Harvard-educated economist known for efficiency, to take over at Pemex in February. He quickly announced the first joint venture proposal: a deepwater oil field just south of United States waters.

Experts believe that Mexico’s untapped deepwater oil fields are its next great prize. But they are risky and expensive, a concern at a time when low oil prices have forced international oil companies to scrap many planned investments.

Still, major companies like BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Shell have qualified to bid in a deepwater auction in December.

In an interview in his office at the top of the Pemex tower in Mexico City, Mr. González Anaya warned not to expect too much.

“Some people have said to me, ‘Look, Pemex won’t go back to producing three million barrels.’ Well, no,” he said. “That’s a shame — but no. What I can say and demonstrate is the company’s solidity.”

Not everyone is sure that companies will jump at the chance to team up with Pemex.

“Two years ago, everybody wanted to partner with Pemex,” Mr. Padilla said. “They were being courted like the homecoming queen. Fast-forward two years later, and how can you go to your board and say, ‘Pemex is good for the money’?”

Another question is whether the government can speed up the transformation as a defense against Mr. Trump’s promised policies. Even if the government attracts private investment, the effect on production could take years to materialize.

“They’re not going to turn the economy around on energy reform,” said Jeremy M. Martin, an energy expert at the Institute of the Americas in San Diego.

Part of the vast network of installations at the Miguel Hidalgo refinery, one of the largest refineries in Mexico. CreditJanet Jarman for The New York Times

In the meantime, Mexico must fix the company’s many problems.

Pemex’s rusty refineries operate at about 60 percent capacity, forcing the country to import more than half of its gasoline. The company loses billions of dollars every quarter, and it owes almost $100 billion in debt and an additional $68 billion in pension liabilities. Budget cuts have halted exploration for next year.

An explosion on a fuel tanker in September was the latest in a series of fiery and often fatal accidents. Gangs routinely tap Pemex’s pipelines to steal gasoline, tipped off from inside the company.

The government continues to tax Pemex heavily, and the oil workers’ union — an ally of Mr. Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party — remains powerful.

Mr. González Anaya’s first action after arriving at Pemex was to slash the budget by 22 percent, halting expensive projects and cutting waste.

“We haven’t finished,” he said. Referring to his effort to rein in overspending, he added, “We continue, continue, continue.”

For decades, Pemex made many people very rich. The company granted inflated contracts to local business executives who cultivated political connections, according to interviews with contractors in Ciudad del Carmen. Mayors in oil states demanded Pemex cash for public works.

“The budget has been converted into plunder,” said Mariano Ruiz Funes, a former Pemex chief of staff.

Analysts argue that Pemex may have to sell off parts of the company.

“We will see a much smaller Pemex in the years to come,” Mr. Ruiz Funes said, predicting a “long and painful” adjustment. “Politically it will be difficult.”

Mr. González Anaya is not prepared to make that decision.

Pemex “is not just any company,” he said. “You can’t ask a national oil company to be Exxon.”

But in Ciudad del Carmen, the riches of that national oil company are long gone. The city has lost about 23,000 jobs since the end of 2014.

“What we’re living through in Carmen, we have never lived through something like this in contemporary Mexico,” said José Domingo Berzunza, the economic development secretary for Campeche, the surrounding state.

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