Submitted for your approval, one Stacey Lauretta Dash, who has decided that stapling herself to Donald Trump may have been a bad idea.
She has expressed regret for being an, “Angry, conservative, Black woman.”
I do not care.
Month: March 2021
Headline of the Day
The Problem with Moving to Florida Is You Have to Live in Florida!
It appears that expats from New York City have decided that the diminished quality of life in Florida is not worth the lower taxes and are returning to the Empire State:
Wall Street titans who moved to Miami amid New York City’s coronavirus lockdown are already eyeing a return to the Big Apple, according to a new report.
Late last year, Florida was touted as the future hub of American finance as a slew of billion-dollar businesses opened up offices in the Sunshine State.
The uber-wealthy were lured to Florida by better weather, lower taxes and fewer restrictions imposed on residents amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
But Bloomberg claims that a number of billionaires are now having second thoughts about life in Miami because the cultural and educational opportunities just don’t compare to those in the Big Apple.
‘The main problem with moving to Florida is that you have to live in Florida,’ Jason Mudrick, who oversees $3 billion at Mudrick Capital Management in NYC, told the publication.
(emphasis mine)
Yeah, and this is with Florida having a relatively mild hurricane season. (The rest of the Caribbean basin and Carolinas were not so lucky)
In addition, you have Ron Desnatis, Rick Scott, Jeb Bush, an infestation of pythons, cane toads, mass shootings, and a Grim Reaper on the beach.
Better, But Still Not Good, Initial Claims Data
Initial claims fell from 754,000 to 712,000 last week, indicating an improving, though still dismal, job market:
New filings for unemployment benefits last week neared their lowest level since the pandemic fueled a surge in layoffs last March, adding to evidence of renewed labor-market growth.
Jobless claims, a proxy for layoffs, fell to a seasonally adjusted 712,000 in the week ended March 6, down about 200,000 from an early January peak and close to a pandemic low point reached last November.
The four-week moving average, which smooths out volatility in week-to-week numbers, was 759,000 for the week ended March 6, slightly higher than the previous pandemic low recorded last November. The weekly average in 2019, the year before the pandemic started, was 218,000.
The recently passed $1.9 Trillion stimulus bill should lead to further improvements.
It should be noted though that the employment population ratio is still crap, and improving VERY slowly.
One of Teddy Kennedy’s Worst Legacies Ends
The Blue Hashed Bit
After literally years of obstruction by Edward M (Ted) Kennedy, it looks like will finally be constructing a wind farm off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.
He had objections to the project, because it was visible from the Kennedy compound.
I consider Kennedy’s legacy to be quite positive, but this piece of it I am very glad to see go:
The U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued its long-awaited final environmental impact study (FEIS) for the Vineyard Wind project off Massachusetts, which will be the first commercial-scale offshore wind farm in federal waters.
BOEM is leaning towards a preferred alternative that would combine several of the development options examined in the draft EIS. The preferred option would allow Vineyard Wind to build the desired 800 MW wind farm, but with 84 larger GE Haliade-X turbines instead of 100 smaller MHI Vestas turbines; no turbines in the northernmost portion of the lease site; and north-south / east-west row alignment with one nautical mile spacing between foundations. These terms broadly align with the parameters submitted by Vineyard Wind itself in its construction and operations plan (COP).
The study paves the way for a formal record of decision on Vineyard Wind’s EIS review, and it will almost certainly result in a permit approval matching BOEM’s preferred alternative option. As such, it represents a landmark victory for the developer and for the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has been closely watching the permitting process for this pace-setting development.
About damn time.
Not Enough Bullets
Peter Diamandis, a tech entrepreneur who seems to won every single game of bullsh%$ bingo that he has ever played, just topped himself.
No charges, of course, because nothing is a crime any more if you are rich:
In late January, tech impresario Peter Diamandis hosted an exclusive, indoor conference for a group of ultra-wealthy patrons in Los Angeles. As MIT Technology Review reported last month, the get-together, where no masks were required, became a covid-19 superspreader event.
Four days later, as staff, speakers, and attendees began testing positive for the virus, an email went out to those who had taken part. It invited them to join an “informational webinar” featuring a doctor who had been at the event—an attempt to put their minds at ease.
Diamandis had held the Abundance 360 Summit, or A360, in violation of a ban on private gatherings during a covid surge. At least 86 people were present, some having flown in from around the world; many had paid $30,000 in assorted fees for the privilege of attending in person. Everyone was tested daily, but the virus took hold nonetheless, and at least 32 people contracted covid either directly or indirectly as a result of the four-day program.
The webinar on January 30 featured Matt Cook, a trained anesthesiologist from the San Francisco Bay Area who had started a medical practice using alternative therapies. A follow-up email sharing the URL to view a recording of the call was accompanied by an order form for products from Fountain Life, a company focused on longevity treatments, of which Diamandis is a cofounder and director.
Between the webinar and the Fountain Life order form, attendees were told about a range of products that were claimed to either treat covid-19 or prevent it outright. What they were not told was that seven of the recommended products were also classified by the US Food and Drug Administration as “covid-19 fraudulent.”
The fraudulent cures included amniotic fluid, the liquid that surrounds a baby in utero and is rich in stem cells, and colloidal silver, a suspension of metal particles often touted as having antimicrobial effects, but which the FDA has said “is not safe or effective for treating any disease or condition.” Cook recommended taking both of them as an inhaled mist using a nebulizer, an electric machine similar to an asthma inhaler.
In a more enlightened time, this guy would be in jail awaiting trial.
If it were just the rich people who were exposed, I would not be outraged, but you have to figure that a lot of people who caught this were ordinary Joes who were bartending, serving canapes, and generally submitting to the whims of said rich folks.
Napoleon Turning Japanese
I found this on a web crawl. It is profoundly odd:
Too weird not to share.
Also, it shows that “Deep Fakes” might have a bright side.
Just to confirm, yes, this is the theme to Neon Genesis Evangelion.
Adding to the List
The list of, “They Who Must Not Be Named,” of course.
In this case, I am referring to actor Armie Hammer, who, somewhat like Peter Thiel, is alleged to aspire to be a vampire, though for more carnal reasons than does Thiel, who is questing for immortality.
As an aside, I do have a bit of a personal connection to the actor, in that my Grandmother came in second to his great grandfather, Armand Hammer, in a high school debate competition to him back in the day.
So, absent something like his running for US Congress, I will not mention him again.
Then again I never had cause to mention him before.
I Picked the Right Time to Switch to Verizon®
As I noted yesterday, my family and I changed my provider from Sprint® to Verizon®.
To be sure, the problem was not with Sprint® per se, it was because Verizon® gave us a better deal, particularly since we were already FIOS®, the land line fiber service, customers, particularly with regard to getting new phones for Sharon, Natalie, and Charlie. (We’ll be saving about $50 a month including various discounts, and replacing Sharon’s* and the kid’s decrepit cell phones for free.)
That being said, I have had some misgivings about the T-Mobile®‘s takeover of Sprint® a few years back, and the increasing move to T-Mobile®-ize Sprint was concerning.
What I did not expect T-Mobile® to do though was to attempt to aggressively spy on its customers to collect ad dollars, but is what they did, as the folks at The Register noted, ” Privacy Purists Prickle at T-Mobile Us Plan to Proffer People’s Personal Web, App Pursuits to Ad Promoters.” (Seriously, El Reg’s headline writers should get a Pulitzer)
T-Mobile is requiring users to opt out in order for them not to share data like, phone location, apps installed on the phones, web browsing habits.
T-Mobile® is claiming that the data is “Anonymized”, but each phone user will have a unique identifier, and by aggregating as few as 5 data points, the likelihood of specifically identifying a user becomes well more than 90%. (The term is “Profiling” or “Stalking”)
What’s more, as the folks at Ars Technica note the opt-out process is (unsurprisingly) not working reliably, “We’ve heard from customers who say they’ve had problems opting out so you may have to try multiple links or make multiple attempts,” because ATAB (All Telcos Are Bastards).
It’s a rather depressing turn of events for a wireless company that markedly improved consumer treatment in the US market a few years ago.
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Busy Day
It turns out that the phone that I wanted to bring from Sprint to Verizon was simply not compatible.
So this evening, with the aid of Craigslist, I got a cheap phone so that I have something that I can use at the office. (No phone, but I have a phone number and voice mail, not figured out why, but it’s more convenient to use the cell phone, at least until I couldn’t.)
All back to normal now though.
Went through ads, found a phone with more computing power than the entire Apollo program new for 70 bucks.
It’s not ruggedized, but it does have a removable battery, and it’s new in the box, a Moto E6.
So I gotta phone, and my Bluetooth so I can go hands free during meetings.
Royal PITA though.
Also, It appears that I have about a dozen updates to download.
I Missed This on Friday
The Return of the Scariest Job Chart Ever
Workforce participation is still at a 45 year low
Largely because we changed cell phone providers, and my attempts to BYOD have been ineffective. (Not having a cell phone right now is a major drag).
The February employment report came out on Friday, and it was generally positive from a month-to-month perspective, but the job numbers are still worse than they were at the depths of the 2007-2012 recession.
As Calculated Risk observes: (They are also responsible for the graph pr0n)
The current employment recession was by far the worst recession since WWII in percentage terms.
At the worst of the Great Recession, employment was down Down 6.29% from the previous peak.
Currently employment is down 6.21% – the current unemployment situation is about the same as the worst of the Great Recession (and there was no pandemic to contend with in 2009).
I think that saying that we, “Are not out of the woods yet,” is too week a metaphor.
I don’t think that we have even reached the halfway point in Mirkwood.
SoftBank-Funded ……… Is Never a Good Start for a Sentence
It is remarkable just how many enterprises that Softbank funds are fraudulent, criminal, or fraud and criminality adjacent.
When one looks at their investment targets, like WeWork, Uber, and DoorDash, which are basically criminal enterprises, with defrauding investors, evading transportation and safety regulations, and stealing from delivery boys (respectively) being central to their business models.
And now another SoftFank funded dodgy outfit has blown up, Greensill, which financed supply chains.
It’s model was to pay suppliers immediately at a discount, and then collect the difference when the large firms actually buying the stuff paid on a 90 day, and frequently longer, cycle.
Its finances were sufficiently sketchy that their insurer stopped writing them policies, and then the house of cards collapsed:
Supply chain finance disruptor Greensill is undone by its own financial alchemy, putting at risk thousands of jobs in the UK, Australia and the EU. The timing could not be worse for already buckling supply chains.
Disruptor seems to be a synonym for criminality and ignoring the lessons of finance learned over more than 500 years of fractional reserve banking.
On Monday, the supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital filed for insolvency after defaulting on a $140 million loan it owes to Credit Suisse. Its parent company in Australia had already filed for insolvency there. According to UK court documents, Greensill had “fallen into severe financial distress” and can no longer pay off its debts. Over the past week many of the company’s directors have been frantically jumping ship, including its chairman Maurice Thompson, Australia’s former foreign minister Julie Bishop and former Morgan Stanley executive David Brierwood.
The firm has been in trouble for some time, as I warned in a previous NC post. A number of its client companies already collapsed in 2020. In the aftermath attention switched to the financial menage á trois Greensill had formed with its primary backer, Soft Bank, and Swiss mega-lender Credit Suisse. Greensill was also under investigation by German banking regulator BaFin and the Association of German Banks, an industry group, over its German subsidiary Greensill Bank’s huge exposure to a single client: U.K.-based steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta.
Yep, SoftBank.
When you want to get in on a fraud, pump it up, and get out leaving suckers holding the bag.
Greensill’s fall from grace was as spectacular as its meteoric rise, writes the FT‘s John Plender:
Greensill Capital went from nothing in 2011, when Lex Greensill abandoned a big-bank career, doing global supply chain financing at Morgan Stanley and Citibank, to go it alone. By 2019 this upstart non-bank says it had extended $US143 billion ($185.5 billion) of financing to 10m-plus customers and suppliers in 175 countries. Its founder also notched up powerful contacts in government and hired former UK prime minister David Cameron as an adviser.
Yeah, hiring David Cameron as an adviser is another tell that they are relying on smoke and mirrors more than anything else.
It turns out that the model Greensill used was “Working” in the short term because it allowed companies to cook the books:
For large companies the advantages are twofold: they get to preserve cash on-hand by extending payment terms with vendors. They can also record the amount they owe to the supply chain finance firm or bank as accounts payable on the balance sheet rather than as debt. This makes their liquidity position appear healthier than it actually is. And that can be dangerous. Companies can conceal the true size of their debt for longer, leaving investors and creditors bearing bigger losses when they finally collapse, as happened with Spanish green energy giant Abengoa in 2015, UK outsourcing giant Carillion in 2018 and NMC Health, the former FTSE 100 private hospital company, in 2020.
They then repackaged and resold the debt, but this was dependent on these bonds being insured, and when their insurer decided to stop writing policies, and the debt became profoundly unattractive to put it mildly. so the house of cards collapsed.
Once again, though, the principals of the firm will be fine, but this collapse is ricocheting around the trans-national supply chain, and we don’t know when this game of musical chairs will end.
If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s rather similar like Bear Stearns in 2008.
One hopes that the repercussions are less severe.
Another CIA Operation Goes Pear Shaped
A court has overturned the patently bogus conviction of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, which means that he can run for the Presidency of Brazil in the next election.
Given that he is the most popular politician in Brazil by a lot, he is very likely to win.
The short version of the story is that the judge overseeing the trials colluded with prosecutors to convict da Silva of taking bribes to refurbish an apartment that he never lived in, and probably never owned.
One hopes that Lula has learned his lesson, and understands that so long as they remain in positions of power, his opponents will stop at nothing to destroy him, up to, and probably including violence and assassination against him, his family and his supporters.
They need to be turfed out, sooner rather than later:
Brazil’s former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva could be set for a sensational comeback attempt after a supreme court judge annulled a series of criminal convictions against the leftist icon and restored his political rights.
The ruling, which analysts called a political bombshell, means Lula is almost certain to challenge Brazil’s incumbent president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the 2022 presidential election.
………
Lula was president of Latin America’s largest economy for two terms, between 2003 and 2011, and oversaw a historic period of commodity-fuelled growth and poverty reduction. The Workers’ party (PT) politician, who is now 75, had hoped to seek a third term in 2018 but was sidelined after being jailed on disputed corruption charges, paving the way for Bolsonaro’s landslide victory.
Lula was released from prison in November 2019 after 580 days behind bars but remained unable to seek election after being stripped of his political rights.
The entire “Car Wash” affair, and the ascension of Bolsonaro that followed, is yet another indication of just how toxic US meddling in Latin America has been over the past 250 years.
Today in Language
Another reminder that the word ‘ultracrepidarian’ (19th century) describes someone who loves holding forth on matters they know absolutely nothing about.
— Susie Dent 💙 (@susie_dent) March 8, 2021
As my reader(s) have no doubt noticed, I rather like to use the archaic word, “Snollygoster,” to refer to dishonest people, particularly politicians.
I find the word wondrously evocative, and believe that it should enter general use again.
Well, I must thank Susie Dent for informing me about another wonderful word that has fallen out of use, “Ultracrepidarian,” which means someone who ……… Hell, it means almost every pundit on the planet earth with NY Times pundit Tom Friedman being the apogee (or perhaps nadir) of the form.
When You Follow a Defeat with an Own Goal
Following years or organizing, progressive Democrats in Nevada took 4 of 5 of the leadership positions in the state Democratic Party, out organizing the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) there.
The Nevada Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) then shot itself in the foot by convincing the entire staff of the party to quit.
You see, you want your people there, picking up the mail, conducting polls, and managing the budget, because they are the ones best placed to sabotage the new leadership, as evidenced by the years long campaign of sabotage against Jeremy Corbyn by the professional staff of the Labour Party in the UK.
Not only will the new leaders be able to hire people that they trust, but should they refuse to resign when there is a change of power, they will be difficult, or at least embarrassing, to fire:
Not long after Judith Whitmer won her election on Saturday to become chair of the Nevada Democratic Party, she got an email from the party’s executive director, Alana Mounce. The message from Mounce began with a note of congratulations, before getting to her main point.
She was quitting. So was every other employee. And so were all the consultants. And the staff would be taking severance checks with them, thank you very much.
(Emphasis mine)
As an aside, make sure that the consultants stay resigned. They are useless.
On March 6, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America took over the leadership of the Nevada Democratic Party, sweeping all five party leadership positions in a contested election that evening. [I have gotten conflicting reports on this, it appears that the party Treasurer might be the old guard candidate] Whitmer, who had been chair of the Clark County Democratic Party, was elected chair. The establishment had prepared for the loss, having recently moved $450,000 out of the party’s coffers and into the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee’s account. The DSCC will put the money toward the 2022 reelection bid of Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a vulnerable first-term Democrat.
Again, asking for unity, and when your side does not win, sabotage the winners.
Democrats never do this for Republicans, but false Democrats always do this to real Democrats.
………
Despite the pushback, Whitmer ultimately won the election, in which the state party’s governing members voted. In the certified election results, she received 244 to Segerblom’s 214; Jacob Allen won first vice chair by 101 votes; Dr. Zaffar Iqbal, on Whitmer’s progressive slate, was reelected second vice chair by 127 votes; Ahmad Adé won secretary by 39 votes; and Howard Beckerman won treasurer by three votes. [Again, note, the Las Vegas Review-Journal story has Beckerman losing.]
After the results, Mounce sent the email making clear that everyone on the small staff had resigned, including the party operations director, communications director, research director, and finance director.
An interesting coda to this is that, “The Democratic National Committee hired Mounce as their new political director last month.”
The final word on all of this is a reworking of Lyndon Johnson an old Lyndon Johnson quote: “It is better to have them outside the tent pissing in than it is to have them inside the tent pissing in.”
Reid’s machine will try to take power back, and they will do so until the sun collapses into a cinder, but with all of their inside people gone, it will become much harder for them to do so.
Thank You George Washington
George Washington was a number of things, some good, he led the Revolutionary Army successfully against the British, some awful, he owned slaves, and one thing that was absolutely remarkable, he completely shut down any suggestion that he, or anyone, be king of the United States.
Even if you have a good king, the various retainers and hangers on are toxic, because it becomes a snake pit, as is shown by the recent interview between Harry Mountbatten-Windsor and Meghan Markle and Oprah Winfrey.
I’ve read some short reports of the interviews, and realized that beyond my immeasurable pleasure in NOT having a royal family in the United States, I really don’t care.
I am grateful to the choices made by George Washington, and the more I know of him, the more I admire him.
Another Slander Thrown at the PRO Act
As I have mentioned before, the PRO Act significantly expands the right for workers to organize as well as increasing their protections against the nefarious actions of employers and their consultants.
Rather unsurprisingly, the champions of capital over labor do not like this bill, and equally unsurprisingly, they are claiming that the Pro Act would kill freelancing.
This is a lie, and the freelancers pushing this are useful idiots:
Private opposition to the Protecting the Right to Organize Act has so far been surprisingly muted. The proposed bill is remarkably comprehensive in nature, encompassing the most far-reaching rewrite of the National Labor Relations Act since the Taft-Hartley Act passed in 1947. Perhaps this is because few insiders believe the PRO Act can pass a deadlocked Senate without a clearer commitment by Democratic politicians to gut the legislative filibuster, but whatever the case, you have to do some digging to see any real organized campaign against the bill as a whole. Even then, it’s the usual suspects ringing the alarm bells: the Chamber of Commerce, the Associated Builders and Contractors, the HR Policy Association, and other organizations which historically have strongly opposed unionism and any pro-worker legal amendments.
The exception to this is coming from a small but vocal community of freelance writers who have taken to Twitter and other social media platforms to signal their opposition to the bill’s inclusion of the so-called “ABC Test.” The test, which contrary to popular belief has appeared in numerous state laws long before California’s Dynamex/Prop 22 episode, states that a worker is presumed to be an employee unless the employer can show that all three of the following conditions are satisfied:
- The worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work;
- The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and
- The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.
………
However, the rest of these articles demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of labor law, invoking themes of forced unionization and ruined careers. These predictions are unfounded. The ABC Test, if passed as part of the PRO Act, would only affect the analysis of employee vs. independent contractors status for the purposes of the NLRA. Put simply, the relevant question is whether certain workers possess rights under Section 7 of the NLRA, which guarantees employees (and employees only) the right to strike, collectively bargain, and engage in various other “concerted activities” for “mutual aid or protection.” Those deemed independent contractors under the NLRA have no such rights, and indeed would likely be engaged in price-fixing under antitrust law if attempting such tactics.
What would the PRO Act not affect? Literally anything else. It would not change a worker’s employment status for the purposes of state laws, such as those involving minimum wage, overtime, unemployment compensation, or various benefit schemes. Thus, a worker could feasibly be classified as an employee with unionization rights under the NLRA while still qualifying as an independent contractor under said state laws. Just ask SAG-AFTRA or IATSE, who count many “freelancers” in the entertainment industry as members; they have no consistent employer but still collectively bargain for superior wages and benefits compared to non-union counterparts.
The whole, “Pity the poor freelancer,” screed becomes even more ludicrous when one sees the actual plight of the actual stringers who do work for news outlets.
A few “Superstars” might get their noses out of joint about having to pay union dues, but I care about their lot almost as little as they care about the lot of their coworkers.
A Good Start
The White House has announced that anti-monopoly and net neutrality activist Tim Wu will be appointed to its National Economic Council.
I hope that this means that the Biden administration will take concrete steps to reign in the monopoly power of big tech and the telecommunications incumbents, but I fear that this is just window dressing:
Longtime tech critic Tim Wu is joining the Biden administration as an adviser on technology and competition, a signal that the White House is likely to push for policies that rein in Big Tech.
Wu will be serving on the National Economic Council as special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy, the White House said this morning. Wu confirmed the news in a tweet.
Wu is best known in tech circles as the man who coined the term “net neutrality” in the early 2000s. He has held several positions at the federal level before, including advisory roles with both the Federal Trade Commission and the National Economic Council. He has also been a full professor at Columbia University law school since 2006, where he teaches First Amendment and antitrust law.
His 2010 book The Master Switch argued that the open Internet as we knew it was barreling toward a closed-off, walled-garden future. In 2018 he published another book, The Curse of Bigness, in which he argued that US regulators’ failure to enforce antitrust laws had led to “a new gilded age” and all its attendant problems.
The rubber hits the road in two places, DoJ enforcement and Congressional legislation.
Hopefully, we will see some action there.
This Will Not End Well
This might be the best business meme of 2019 so far. pic.twitter.com/hTXul3Muy3
— ArtkoCapital (@ArtkoCapital) March 5, 2019
Pretty much
As history shows, the appointment of technocratic apolitical experts to run governments does not run well
This is because if you have a problem, the conventional wisdom, which is ideology that the aforementioned, “Technocratic apolitical experts,” subscribed to, is ALWAYS wrong.
And yes, I mean ALWAYS, because if the conventional wisdom were correct, then the problem would have been solved.
In the latest case of subverting democracy on the alter of “expertise”, the Italian government has been handed to former ECB president Mario Draghi, and he has decided the notoriously corrupt consulting firm McKinsey & Company will help run things, because, given their paying of bounties for opioid overdose deaths, white-washing of mass layoffs, instructing hospitals to game the bailout system that they were managing, suggesting that immigration detainees be starved and denied medical care, self-dealing in bankruptcies, aiding the House of Saud’s persecution of its critics, and aiding and abetting corruption in South Africa.
So, going with McKinsey to fix things in Italy is not going to be the panacea that Draghi think it will be:
Upon its formation last month, Mario Draghi’s new government was heralded by almost all Italian and international media as a rescue operation. Where the former European Central Bank (ECB) chief Draghi had “saved the euro” in the 2010s, most outlets gushed over “Super Mario” and his plan to “save Italy” by splashing a mooted €209 billion in European recovery fund cash while “reforming” its lackluster economy.
The kind of “reforms” this meant went unmentioned — and after all, this government bears no relation to voter decisions, or the coalitions that ran in the last general election. But for the fourth time since the 1990s, a president called on a technocrat from the world of finance and banking to form a cabinet, halfway through a parliament. Eight of Draghi’s twenty-three ministers are unelected technocrats, in a so-called government of experts.
If these figures are not party-political, they have similar backgrounds and instincts. Economy minister Daniele Franco is a former Bank of Italy official who drafted the famous 2011 ECB letter instructing the government to implement privatizations and cut back collective bargaining. Former Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao — today innovation and digital transition minister — is a former partner at private consultants McKinsey & Company.
Now, it has been revealed that McKinsey is going to be tasked with writing Italy’s economic plan for the coming period, to be submitted for review by the European Commission at the end of next month. Notorious for its role in the Enron scandal as well as the 2008 financial crisis — as it promoted the boundless securitization of mortgage assets — and the botched vaccine rollout in France, the firm is now being called on to shape the Draghi government’s “reform” agenda.
………
The suggestion that this is a purely “technical” collaboration — that McKinsey’s choices will not be political — is patently absurd, not least given that this claim is also widely made for Draghi’s “technical” government itself. For decades, the imposition of neoliberal recipes in Italy has been advanced through this same procedure, with the agenda advanced by privatizers couched in the dogma of “unavoidable choices.”
………
As Lorenzo Zamponi writes, it is quite possible that there is some shift since the “expansive austerity” of the 2010s — that is, Draghi will put economic reforms above a simple reduction in overall spending. Yet the appointment of McKinsey and Bocconi-school ideologues points toward the same gospel of privatization and deregulation that technocrats have been imposing on Italy for decades, without ever winning popular backing.
………
Government by experts may sound good — but only so long as we forget all the previous rounds of such “cures,” which have helped push Italian GDP below the level it was at in 1999. But La Repubblica is, in its own way, quite right to compare this move to a corporation calling in McKinsey. For a failing business isn’t a democracy either — and when the consultants call for restructuring, it’s the workers who get screwed.
Once again, the very serious people in the EU are going to take the wrong actions, based on the wrong world view, on behalf of the people already rich and powerful, and right wing populists will gain yet more ground.
This will not end well.
A Very Important Point
The single worst political mistake in Mitch McConnell’s tenure as leader was blocking the $2000 checks that Trump wanted. McConnell lost not only the policy battle, but the Senate. https://t.co/Xqj1Ruwhgr
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) March 6, 2021
Roll Tape!
The politics here are simple, and VERY important: When people see direct benefits from government, they support government, and when people do not see the benefits of government action, things like tax credits to employers, and Obamacare, which took years to cut in, they see government as a failure.
All of the “clever” actions taken by members of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) to make sure that the benefits are as indirect and invisible as possible, which was a central conceit of the Obama administration, only serve to create a political backlash against good policies.
The same goes for means testing, which is far more likely to reject someone “deserving” of the aid than someone who is not, because the latter, having more resources, are better equipped to navigate the maze of petty bureaucrats holding “Bullsh%$ Jobs.”
Another Shoe Drops
In a strong statement, the New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has called for Governor Andrew “Rat-Faced Andy” Cuomo to resign.
New York State House Speaker Carl Heastie has expressed doubts that Cuomo can continue to be effective as a leader.
There are now five women who have accused him of inappropriate behavior, and unlike many politicians, Cuomo has no reservoir of goodwill to draw upon among his fellow politicians in Albany.
Everyone in that town hates him, and the no longer fear him, so his political power, along with his once-prodigious fundraising ability are waning.
I do not think that he will resign though, too much hubris there, so either he loses the Democratic primary election, loses the general election, or is indicted on some sort of criminal charges. (I hope for the latter)
In a potentially crippling defection in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s efforts to maintain control amid a sexual harassment scandal, the powerful Democratic leader of the New York State Senate declared on Sunday that the governor should resign “for the good of the state.”
The stinging rebuke from the Senate leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins — along with a similar sentiment from the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, who questioned the “governor’s ability to continue to lead this state” — suggested that Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, had lost his party’s support in the State Capitol, and cast doubt on his ability to withstand the political fallout.
Once hailed as a pandemic hero and potential presidential contender, the governor has seen his political future spiral downward over eight perilous days in the wake of a New York Times report about Charlotte Bennett, a former aide to Mr. Cuomo.
In a series of interviews with The Times, Ms. Bennett, 25, said that Mr. Cuomo, 63, had asked her invasive personal questions last spring about her sex life, including whether she had slept with older men, and whether she thought age made a difference in relationships.
Ms. Bennett is one of five women who have come forward in recent days with allegations of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior against Mr. Cuomo, with one predating his tenure as governor.
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Ms. Stewart-Cousins is the most prominent New York State official to call for Mr. Cuomo’s resignation, and her statement carries significance: Her Senate would be the jury for any impeachment trial of the governor, if such an action were passed by the Assembly.
It also carries symbolic weight: In 2008, when Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned during a prostitution scandal, his decision was partially precipitated by a loss of support from Albany’s legislative leaders.
Mr. Heastie did not call for Mr. Cuomo to resign, but suggested that it was time for him “to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York.”
The writing is on the wall, and I hope that eventually Cuomo’s (metaphorical) blood is on the floor of the Senate.