newrepublic--2020-12-08--Congress’s Bipartisanship Fetish Is Killing the Covid Relief Effort

The recent good news on the coronavirus front—the vaccines are on their way—hasn ’ t negated the bad .
Deaths and hospitalizations are on the rise , and the economic situation remains extraordinarily dire .
We learned in last week ’ s job report that unemployment only dipped slightly last month as job growth slowed and hundreds of thousands of Americans gave up looking for work .
Millions more , including over 20 percent of families with children , are behind on their rent .
And researchers at Columbia University recently estimated that there will be five to 12 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there were at the beginning of this year .
But not to worry : Bipartisan accord has arrived to save the day once again .
In classic fashion , a Gang of Roughly Half a Dozen , led by Joe Manchin , has put together a grand compromise on the next coronavirus relief package .
And we can thank the ever-moderate and reasonable Mitt Romney for some of the basic contours of the deal .
“ He insisted that Republicans could go no higher than roughly $ 900 billion in new spending—a number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compromise figure—and that liability protections for employers would have to be included in some form , ” The New York Times reported last week .
“ The proposal was made final Monday night over a pizza dinner hosted by Mr. Romney in an oversize hearing room .
It would provide $ 300 a week in additional benefits to the unemployed for 18 weeks , after a $ 600-per-week unemployment benefit lapsed in July.
” The soon-to-be-finalized $ 908 billion package also includes more funds for the Paycheck Protection Program and $ 160 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s also expected to include a new , to-be-drafted eviction freeze .
As The New York Times ’ editorial board wrote in a ringing endorsement on Monday , this is all “ better than nothing.
” But how much better could ‘ better ’ have been ?
For starters , the deal doesn ’ t yet include stimulus checks that could buoy the finances of all Americans , unemployed or not , and help prod the economy along .
Last week , Manchin suggested to the Associated Press that reviving them might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ new Congress who “ can put together a different proposal that takes us further down the road for more recovery ” come January .

It’s worth noting how much worse this package is than the last major bipartisan proposals overall.
It’s worth noting how much worse this package is than the last major bipartisan proposals overall. In September, the House’s Problem Solvers Caucus put together an agreement that included another round of stimulus checks targeted to low-income Americans; a boost to unemployment benefits potentially more generous than the one in the new compromise; and $500 billion in funding for state and local governments, compared to the $160 billion now on the table. In October, the White House came to Democrats with a potential deal that would have been worth $1.8 trillion, including another round of stimulus checks for all Americans, with an additional $500 boost to child payments; $400 a week in added unemployment benefits, compared to the $300 in the newest deal; and $300 billion for state and local governments. Both deals, unfortunately, accommodated Republican demands on liability waivers and included other provisions that fell short of Democratic expectations. But both were also obviously better than the deal we have now. Both were rejected by Nancy Pelosi and Democratic leadership.
In fairness, it’s unlikely either package would have passed the Senate—McConnell declared the latter dead on arrival—but it’s interesting to consider how the past three or so months and the election might have played out if Pelosi and Democratic leaders had chosen to back one of them while upbraiding Senate Republicans for blocking it. Instead, they spent the fall raising a flurry of fairly small-ball objections to the offers on hand, presumably to deny the White House credit for devising a real proposal and to avoid granting Trump a talking point in the final stage of the campaign.
Asked Friday about her willingness to embrace the new deal given her hostility to the prior larger ones, Pelosi seemed to argue that Biden’s victory had reduced the pressure on Congress to spend heavily right away on relief. “This has simplicity,” she said. “It’s what we’ve had in our bills. It’s for a shorter period of time, but that’s OK now, because we have a new president—a president who recognizes that we need to depend on science to stop the virus, a president who understands that America’s working families need to have money in their pockets in a way that takes them into the future, without any of the contraptions of any of the other bills that the administration was associating itself with before.” But we also have a diminished Democratic majority in the House and, unless Democrats prevail in Georgia’s two runoffs, a Senate controlled by Republicans eager for a speedy return to austerity politics the moment Biden is sworn in—poor conditions for passing a large supplement to the legislation at hand.


newrepublic--2020-12-08--Why Harriet the Spy Had to Lie

Why Harriet the Spy Had to Lie

Young Louise rebelled against the materialism and stuffiness of her father ’ s life by traveling , with the help of her allowance , to Paris and Greenwich Village , where she fell in with leftist artists and intellectuals .
For a time , she lived in Bologna , Italy , ostensibly to study painting but also , Brody writes , because “ she believed it to be a communist city , one of the few outside Eastern Europe or China , and she was curious to learn what life there might be like.
” In New York City , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lesbian party scene , mixing with the likes of Djuna Barnes and the Marxist playwright Lorraine Hansberry , with whom she exchanged letters about politics and art .
At the time , Louise was working as a portrait artist and illustrator .
She did the drawings for a children ’ s book called Suzuki Beane ( 1961 ) , written by her friend Sandra Scoppettone , about a beatnik girl who lives on Bleecker Street .
The book was a hit .
One review said of Suzuki Beane that it did “ for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s On the Road did for their ( slightly ) elders.
” Buoyed by this triumph , Louise decided to try her hand at writing a children ’ s book on her own this time .
In a letter to a friend , she said she was working on something new : “ It is called Harriet the Spy and is about a nasty little girl who keeps a notebook on all her friends.
” When Harriet the Spy came out in the mid-1960s , spies were everywhere—from John le Carré ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cold ( 1963 ) and Ian Fleming ’ s James Bond books to the “ Spy vs. Spy ” comic strip in Mad Magazine—and the world had learned that the scary prospect of nuclear winter was also the stuff of bestsellers .
It was no surprise then that writers of children ’ s literature would want to get in on the fun of double agents , bad disguises , and elaborate gadgets ( though Harriet ’ s magnifying glass is not exactly the tear-gas cartridge disguised as a tin of talcum powder from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much of the book , Harriet ’ s version of spycraft is decidedly playful ; when she does not want to go to dancing school because it ’ s “ not something spies do , ” her nanny , Ole Golly , tells her about Mata Hari and how she used her wiles as a dancer to collect intelligence .
“ Now how are you going to be a spy if you don ’ t know how to dance ?
” Ole Golly asks her .
As Brody notes , Harriet the Spy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and occasional breaking and entering ” as actually quite innocent activities .
Harriet , Brody emphasizes , “ doesn ’ t spy or extort to blackmail or abuse the secrets she collects.
” Harriet ’ s people-watching games are ultimately about her ambitions as a writer and wanting to hone her skills of observation and description for artistic , rather than nuclear , purposes .
( It is , after all , her friend Janie , the scientist , who wants to “ blow up the world .
” )

When Fitzhugh tried to follow up Harriet the Spy with a novel that centered on a lesbian relationship, her agent was “quite terrified.”
Young Louise rebelled against the materialism and stuffiness of her father’s life by traveling, with the help of her allowance, to Paris and Greenwich Village, where she fell in with leftist artists and intellectuals. For a time, she lived in Bologna, Italy, ostensibly to study painting but also, Brody writes, because “she believed it to be a communist city, one of the few outside Eastern Europe or China, and she was curious to learn what life there might be like.” In New York City, she was a fixture in the downtown lesbian party scene, mixing with the likes of Djuna Barnes and the Marxist playwright Lorraine Hansberry, with whom she exchanged letters about politics and art.
At the time, Louise was working as a portrait artist and illustrator. She did the drawings for a children’s book called Suzuki Beane (1961), written by her friend Sandra Scoppettone, about a beatnik girl who lives on Bleecker Street. The book was a hit. One review said of Suzuki Beane that it did “for the kindergarten set what Jack Kerouac’s On the Road did for their (slightly) elders.” Buoyed by this triumph, Louise decided to try her hand at writing a children’s book on her own this time. In a letter to a friend, she said she was working on something new: “It is called Harriet the Spy and is about a nasty little girl who keeps a notebook on all her friends.”
When Harriet the Spy came out in the mid-1960s, spies were everywhere—from John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1963) and Ian Fleming’s James Bond books to the “Spy vs. Spy” comic strip in Mad Magazine—and the world had learned that the scary prospect of nuclear winter was also the stuff of bestsellers. It was no surprise then that writers of children’s literature would want to get in on the fun of double agents, bad disguises, and elaborate gadgets (though Harriet’s magnifying glass is not exactly the tear-gas cartridge disguised as a tin of talcum powder from To Russia With Love). For much of the book, Harriet’s version of spycraft is decidedly playful; when she does not want to go to dancing school because it’s “not something spies do,” her nanny, Ole Golly, tells her about Mata Hari and how she used her wiles as a dancer to collect intelligence. “Now how are you going to be a spy if you don’t know how to dance?” Ole Golly asks her. As Brody notes, Harriet the Spy treats “stalking, peeping, eavesdropping, and occasional breaking and entering” as actually quite innocent activities. Harriet, Brody emphasizes, “doesn’t spy or extort to blackmail or abuse the secrets she collects.” Harriet’s people-watching games are ultimately about her ambitions as a writer and wanting to hone her skills of observation and description for artistic, rather than nuclear, purposes. (It is, after all, her friend Janie, the scientist, who wants to “blow up the world.”)


newrepublic--2020-12-09--California’s Climate Policy Goes National

“ California has sort of been the vanguard here on some of the specific policies , ” said Sam Ricketts , former climate director for Washington Governor Jay Inslee ’ s presidential campaign .
“ There is much that the Biden administration can learn from in terms of California leadership , and there ’ s much the California leadership is going to continue to do to drive the policy debate forward federally.
” The Biden team is already thinking of poaching some of the state ’ s officials .
California Air and Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols , a stalwart @ @ @ @ @ @ @ efforts , is reportedly being considered to lead the Environmental Protection Agency under Biden after she retires this year .
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti , who has pushed ambitious emissions-reduction goals in the city , is being considered for transportation secretary .
And California Attorney General Xavier Becerra , who aggressively pursued more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration , many of which challenged environmental deregulations , was officially chosen this week to be Biden ’ s secretary of health and human services .
Then , of course , there is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ California senator and attorney general .
The personnel choices are expected to strengthen and rebuild a Washington–West Coast relationship that suffered during the Trump years .
Blumenfeld knows Harris personally from her attorney general days , when he led the EPA ’ s Region 9 office in San Francisco .
“ The vice president–elect is a very strong environmentalist … she understands that intersectionality of racism and environmental protection and equity , and I think having knowledge of California in D.C. is incredibly valuable , ” said Blumenfeld , who added he expects @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the White House .
“ We hope we can share the things that we ’ ve learned to make the administration as successful as it possibly can be .
”

“We hope we can share the things that we’ve learned to make the administration as successful as it possibly can be.”
“California has sort of been the vanguard here on some of the specific policies,” said Sam Ricketts, former climate director for Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s presidential campaign. “There is much that the Biden administration can learn from in terms of California leadership, and there’s much the California leadership is going to continue to do to drive the policy debate forward federally.”
The Biden team is already thinking of poaching some of the state’s officials. California Air and Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols, a stalwart of the state’s climate policy efforts, is reportedly being considered to lead the Environmental Protection Agency under Biden after she retires this year. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has pushed ambitious emissions-reduction goals in the city, is being considered for transportation secretary. And California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who aggressively pursued more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration, many of which challenged environmental deregulations, was officially chosen this week to be Biden’s secretary of health and human services. Then, of course, there is Vice President–elect Kamala Harris, formerly a California senator and attorney general. The personnel choices are expected to strengthen and rebuild a Washington–West Coast relationship that suffered during the Trump years.
Blumenfeld knows Harris personally from her attorney general days, when he led the EPA’s Region 9 office in San Francisco. “The vice president–elect is a very strong environmentalist … she understands that intersectionality of racism and environmental protection and equity, and I think having knowledge of California in D.C. is incredibly valuable,” said Blumenfeld, who added he expects Harris to be a “translator” for the White House. “We hope we can share the things that we’ve learned to make the administration as successful as it possibly can be.”


newrepublic--2020-12-09--The End of the Businessman President

The End of the Businessman President

The entrepreneurial spirit , as Schumpeter called it , eclipsed the organization man in the 1980s and 1990s .
A regime of economic productivity centered on financial metrics like return on investment , shareholder value , and quarterly earnings made the corporate executive into an errand boy for Wall Street—or sometimes , with the growth of executive stock options and performance bonuses , a market guru himself .
A potent brew of financialization and anti-institutionalism ( along with massive layoffs , outsourcing , hostile takeovers , and the shift to the so-called knowledge economy ) called into question both the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ business model of twentieth-century industrial capitalism .
The new icons were no longer business statesmen like General Electric ’ s Gerard Swope .
Now they were more like GE ’ s Jack Welch , who famously laid off 100,000 workers to increase the company ’ s share price when he took over as chairman and CEO in 1981 .
Significantly for understanding the rise of Donald Trump , it was during this era that America saw the emergence of the celebrity CEO .
Jack Welch , whom Fortune dubbed “ manager of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ biggest .
( He was also an on-again , off-again Trump supporter in 2016 , but died this year disenchanted with the Trump administration ’ s track record . )
Welch was known as the controversial face of GE who closed plants and cut the workforce down to the quick .
But within a few years , “ Neutron Jack ” —an epithet coined to describe his cavalier demolition of human workforces—became a badge of managerial honor because his risky transformation of the firm ’ s corporate control led to soaring profits and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to divulge Welch ’ s managerial secrets .
One was called The New GE : How Jack Welch Revived an American Institution .
Another was Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will : How Jack Welch Is Making General Electric the World ’ s Most Competitive Company .
Both flew off the shelves in the early 1990s .
A 1991 book called Sam Walton : The Inside Story of America ’ s Richest Man told the rags-to-riches story of the discount-store owner from the Ozarks who became a chain store titan .
Walton @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own book , Sam Walton , Made in America .
Other CEOs followed suit .
HP ’ s David Packard , Walt Disney ’ s Michael Eisner , George Soros , Michael Bloomberg , even Dave Thomas of Wendy ’ s and Tom Monaghan of Domino ’ s all published biography-cum-leadership books in the final decades of the twentieth century .
These celebrity CEOs traded on the old myth of the competent professional manager but explained their success in terms of entrepreneurial innovation and anti-institutional disruption .
But none prefigured Trump better than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rebranded New Chrysler Corporation during the ’ 80s .
A former president at Ford Motor Company whose background in design and sales included the wildly successful branding of the Mustang muscle car , Iacocca staked his professional reputation on resuscitating Chrysler , a company that had lagged behind competitors and taken on massive debt .
His first move was to do what anyone in his position would do : He cut wages and reorganized the firm .
But Iacocca would have been weighed in the scales and found wanting if not for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loan of $ 1.5 billion from the U.S. Congress .
And the company did not skip a beat , producing popular convertibles , minivans , and Jeeps that Iacocca personally advertised on national television .
Using folksy turns of phrase ( “ If you can find a better car , buy it !
” ) and walking with the camera through factories and showrooms , he talked up the latest models and spun a story about Chrysler as the underdog .
He looked good on camera .
He sounded trustworthy and confident .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ acting skills was his genius for branding .
As head of Chrysler , he transformed the ugly reality of a business limping along on a government bailout into a Rocky Balboa story of a company come back to win one last fight for American industry against Japanese automakers .
And Americans rewarded the company , which paid back its government bailout seven years ahead of schedule .
It was enough to make Iacocca consider running for president in 1988 .
( One of the chapters of his 1986 autobiography was titled , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were formed .
Money was raised .
Bumper stickers were produced with the slogan “ I Like I.
” But Speaker of the House Tip O ’ Neill convinced him it was a bad idea .
“ You ’ re used to running a big corporation , ” O ’ Neill told him .
“ You can ’ t run a government that way .
”

This “be true to yourself” rhetoric has a markedly contemporary ring to it, but it’s consistent with long-standing strains of self-improvement within American culture. The ideal of the self-starter is a close relative to the frontiersman, that genuinely American character type whom the historian Frederick Jackson Turner credited as the true father of this democracy: “born of free land,” he wrote, “strong in selfishness, intolerant of administrative experience and education.” The myth of the entrepreneur is a variation on this older ideal of the self-made man—and it’s classically always a man—who, like Benjamin Franklin rising up early in his printer’s shop, has the discipline and experience to generate his own success. He is emphatically not an organization man. He’s not even a professional, insofar as a profession bears the imprint of an institution or a guild. Even Joseph Schumpeter, the twentieth century’s great champion of creative destruction, admitted that the purest type of entrepreneur is “the promotor who does nothing but ‘setting up’ new business concerns.”
The entrepreneurial spirit, as Schumpeter called it, eclipsed the organization man in the 1980s and 1990s. A regime of economic productivity centered on financial metrics like return on investment, shareholder value, and quarterly earnings made the corporate executive into an errand boy for Wall Street—or sometimes, with the growth of executive stock options and performance bonuses, a market guru himself. A potent brew of financialization and anti-institutionalism (along with massive layoffs, outsourcing, hostile takeovers, and the shift to the so-called knowledge economy) called into question both the social function of the executive and the business model of twentieth-century industrial capitalism. The new icons were no longer business statesmen like General Electric’s Gerard Swope. Now they were more like GE’s Jack Welch, who famously laid off 100,000 workers to increase the company’s share price when he took over as chairman and CEO in 1981.
Significantly for understanding the rise of Donald Trump, it was during this era that America saw the emergence of the celebrity CEO. Jack Welch, whom Fortune dubbed “manager of the century,” was one of the biggest. (He was also an on-again, off-again Trump supporter in 2016, but died this year disenchanted with the Trump administration’s track record.) Welch was known as the controversial face of GE who closed plants and cut the workforce down to the quick. But within a few years, the epithet “Neutron Jack”—coined to describe Welch’s cavalier demolition of human workforces—became a badge of managerial honor because his risky transformation of the firm’s corporate control led to soaring profits and a new future. Popular books promised to divulge Welch’s managerial secrets. One was called The New GE: How Jack Welch Revived an American Institution. Another was Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will: How Jack Welch Is Making General Electric the World’s Most Competitive Company. Both flew off the shelves in the early 1990s. A 1991 book called Sam Walton: The Inside Story of America’s Richest Man told the rags-to-riches story of the discount-store owner from the Ozarks who became a chain store titan. Walton turned around the next year with his own book, Sam Walton, Made in America. Other CEOs followed suit. HP’s David Packard, Walt Disney’s Michael Eisner, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, even Dave Thomas of Wendy’s and Tom Monaghan of Domino’s all published biography-cum-leadership books in the final decades of the twentieth century. These celebrity CEOs traded on the old myth of the competent professional manager but explained their success in terms of entrepreneurial innovation and anti-institutional disruption.


newrepublic--2020-12-09--The Rabid Illiberalism of Trump’s Desperate Election Deniers

Shamelessness appears to be the defining quality that binds the Republican Party together these days , however .
Most GOP officials have carefully avoided stating the reality of Biden ’ s victory , either because they hope to undermine it or because they fear Trump ’ s wrath if they admit the truth .
Only 25 Republican lawmakers would acknowledge that Biden is the president-elect when asked by The Washington Post last week .
Beyond Capitol Hill , things are even worse .
The Arizona Republican Party , which has broken ranks with state GOP leaders over the election ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Twitter if they would be “ willing to die ” to overturn the election results .
The Arizona GOP isn ’ t an outlier when it comes to implicit threats of violence , unfortunately .
Perhaps the most notable example came last month from Michael Flynn , a retired general who briefly served as Trump ’ s first National Security Advisor .
Flynn favorably shared a press release on Twitter on December 1 by a group that called for Trump to impose “ limited martial law ” so that the military can conduct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terms that would be more favorable to Trump .
It ’ s unsurprising that Flynn , who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with foreign governments in 2017 , appears to hold so little loyalty for the American constitutional order and for democracy itself .
But it ’ s no less jarring for a retired general to argue forcefully for what would amount to a coup .
This isn ’ t an entirely new approach to democracy in Trump ’ s orbit .
In a September interview with Infowars @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stone said that Trump should take extreme preemptive steps to ensure his victory in the November elections , which included the seizure of absentee ballots in Nevada , the nationalization of state police forces , armed voter intimidation at polling places in key states , and the arrests of Hillary and Bill Clinton , former Nevada Senator Harry Reid , Facebook ’ s Mark Zuckerberg , Apple ’ s Tim Cook , and “ anybody else who can be proven to be involved in illegal activity.
” Ironically , everything that Stone demanded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is no stranger to illegal activity : Trump commuted his conviction for lying to Congress about the Russia investigation in July of this year .
Top Republicans haven ’ t distanced themselves from Trumpworld ’ s efforts to overturn the election .
Indeed , more often than not , they have tacitly embraced those efforts .
Consider the case of Texas Senator Ted Cruz , who fought Trump for months over the GOP nomination in 2016 and then pointedly declined to endorse him at that year ’ s convention .
After four years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ now among his most supportive allies in the Senate .
Earlier this month , he even offered to argue his claims before the Supreme Court if the justices heard a lawsuit brought by Pennsylvania Republicans who asked the court to overturn the results in their state .

How did Texas reach those figures? The state cited a sworn declaration by Charles Cicchetti, an economist in California, who used “z-scores” to compare Hillary Clinton’s election results in 2016 and those of Biden in 2020. His analysis hinges on the idea that roughly equal numbers of people voted in those two elections and that it’s improbable that votes counted later would be more likely to go to Biden. This reasoning does not survive contact with even a basic familiarity with the given circumstances of the 2020 election. Americans also turned out in greater absolute and relative numbers for this presidential election than any other in the last century. Late-counted votes tilted for Biden in part because Trump actively discouraged his supporters from voting by mail. It’s embarrassing that an economist would draft this analysis, and it’s shameful that a state attorney general would submit it to the Supreme Court of the United States as evidence of anything.
Shamelessness appears to be the defining quality that binds the Republican Party together these days, however. Most GOP officials have carefully avoided stating the reality of Biden’s victory, either because they hope to undermine it or because they fear Trump’s wrath if they admit the truth. Only 25 Republican lawmakers would acknowledge that Biden is the president-elect when asked by The Washington Post last week. Beyond Capitol Hill, things are even worse. The Arizona Republican Party, which has broken ranks with state GOP leaders over the election’s legitimacy, recently asked supporters on Twitter if they would be “willing to die” to overturn the election results.
The Arizona GOP isn’t an outlier when it comes to implicit threats of violence, unfortunately. Perhaps the most notable example came last month from Michael Flynn, a retired general who briefly served as Trump’s first national security adviser. Flynn favorably shared a press release on Twitter on December 1 by a group that called for Trump to impose “limited martial law” so that the military can conduct a second presidential election, presumably on terms that would be more favorable to Trump. It’s unsurprising that Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with foreign governments in 2017, appears to hold so little loyalty for the American constitutional order and for democracy itself. But it’s no less jarring for a retired general to argue forcefully for what would amount to a coup.


newrepublic--2020-12-09--Wall Street Vultures Are Ready to Get Rich From Water Scarcity

Bloomberg reported on Sunday that California water futures are now officially on the Wall Street markets , with the United States–based CME Group heading up the 2021 contracts connected to the state ’ s billion-dollar water market .
The “ commodity ” was most recently going for $ 496 per acre-foot with the main purchasers of the futures—which were first announced by CME in September—expected to be large-scale water consumers , chiefly utility companies and the states ’ Big Ag corporations .
( California is home to the largest agriculture market in the nation . )
“ Climate change , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come , ” RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray told Bloomberg .
“ We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops.
” We ’ ve officially reached a new phase of the Mad Maxification of America .
“ Mni wiconi ” —Lakota for “ Water is life ” —is not just a snappy slogan popularized by the Standing Rock movement .
It ’ s a fact of human existence .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ California stands as a foreboding indicator of the transformation of water from basic right into a luxury good .
It ’ s a frightening expansion of a reality that already exists for poor , Black , Latinx , and Native communities across the country , from Flint , Michigan , to Navajo Nation .
Welcome to the future .
Back in 2012 , MIT News profiled the head of the company Sourcewater , which at the time had introduced the idea of creating an online exchange for gas and oil companies to quickly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ necessary to keep up with the rampant domestic fracking boom .
These companies needed water but didn ’ t want to pay a ton for its transportation ; Sourcewater helped them accomplish that .
And because American businesspeople have been conditioned to bow down to middlemen who help drive down costs , Sourcewater was viewed as a success story .
Read through the MIT News piece and you ’ ll find all the circus-like twists necessary to justify the company ’ s purported innovation .
“ Reducing the amount of truck travel via @ @ @ @ @ @ @ benefits , ” the outlet wrote of a company created to help facilitate fracking .

Bloomberg reported on Sunday that California water futures are now officially on the Wall Street markets, with the United States–based CME Group heading up the 2021 contracts connected to the state’s billion-dollar water market. The “commodity” was most recently going for $496 per acre-foot with the main purchasers of the futures—which were first announced by CME in September—expected to be large-scale water consumers, chiefly utility companies and the states’ Big Ag corporations. (California is home to the largest agriculture market in the nation.) “Climate change, droughts, population growth, and pollution are likely to make water scarcity issues and pricing a hot topic for years to come,” RBC Capital Markets managing director and analyst Deane Dray told Bloomberg. “We are definitely going to watch how this new water futures contract develops.” We’ve officially reached a new phase of the Mad Maxification of America.
“Mni wiconi”—Lakota for “Water is life”—is not just a snappy slogan popularized by the Standing Rock movement. It’s a fact of human existence. The move to sell water futures in California stands as a foreboding indicator of the transformation of water from basic right into a luxury good. It’s a frightening expansion of a reality that already exists for poor, Black, Latinx, and Native communities across the country, from Flint, Michigan, to Navajo Nation. Welcome to the future.


newrepublic--2020-12-09--Elon Musk’s Big Government Grift

Elon Musk’s Big Government Grift

The world ’ s second-richest man—and second-most irritating Twitter user , after the president—has .
After months of about Covid-19 shutdowns affecting his factories , while also that the virus would be almost gone by the end of April , Elon Musk announced Tuesday at a Wall Street Journal conference that he has bailed on San Francisco .
“ He said relocating made sense with Tesla ’ s new factory being built in Texas , ” the Journal reported .
“ He lamented that California , in his view , had become complacent with its innovators.
” Musk , more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a vaguely populist note , saying Silicon Valley “ has too much influence on the world.
” Musk himself is moving—not his car company and rocket company , SpaceX , which remain headquartered in California .
But the appeal of Texas extends well beyond a new Tesla factory , or even the state ’ s lack of capital-gains and state income taxes for individuals .
Musk ’ s growing footprint in the state is just the latest step in his lifelong mission , which he ’ s long since accomplished , to get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s largesse—even , we now know , taking advantage of programs meant to help people who earn in a lifetime what he earns every minute .
Bloomberg that a Trump administration economic program designed to spur new investment in impoverished areas has done little of the sort , instead providing tax breaks for space-travel moguls like Musk , Jeff Bezos , and Richard Branson .
The Qualified Opportunity Zones program has been criticized for doling out its benefits to huge businesses seeking the latest tax advantage , rather than the scrappy local @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The program ’ s operations—from how it chooses the sites of economic zones to how many jobs are created to whether companies even choose to take the tax benefits—are opaque , but its utility for the ultrarich is clear .
By moving to Texas and pushing more of his money into opportunity-zone ventures , Elon Musk may save billions in taxes .

To call for a UBI, after dismissing the urgent financial concerns of millions of Americans who would benefit from a stimulus package, is characteristic of Musk’s hypocrisy and political ignorance. Musk bends markets to his will and crushes unionization efforts but calls himself a socialist . At other times, he plays the libertarian—ranting against the intrusive hand of big government and claiming to be self-made despite the government handouts (and tens of thousands of dollars in seed money from his emerald mine–owning parents).
With Tesla’s high stock price unlocking enormous compensation packages, everything is going as well as it could be for Elon Musk. (Sure, his mother-in-law hates him , but that’s another matter.) Despite producing a fraction of the cars of GM or Toyota, Tesla is the most valuable car company in the world, according to the U.S. stock market, which seems to rise in inverse proportion to the health of the overall economy. Musk’s SpaceX rockets are now ferrying astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. His wayward tweets and antics—joking about taking the company private at $420 per share; smoking weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast—are brushed off as long as the proper numbers keep rising on the charts.


newrepublic--2020-12-10--Nick Kristof and the Holy War on Pornhub

Anyone who wants to know that Pornhub has engaged in abusive and exploitative behavior toward women need only listen to the women whose videos were posted to the free porn site without their consent .
That includes the abuse of people like Rose Kalemba , who has written about how she had to impersonate a lawyer to get Pornhub to remove a video that recorded a man raping her more than a decade ago .
That also includes the numerous porn performers who have spoken publicly about how Pornhub routinely allows videos they made to be pirated and posted to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the performers ’ work and leaves them with nothing .
Journalists who cover the tech company critically and with an eye toward its human costs have all been on this beat for some time .
Slate covered the monopolistic model behind Pornhub ’ s parent company , Mindgeek , more than eight years ago , citing , among others , reporting by ABC ’ s Nightline , which preceded it , with performers stating they felt they couldn ’ t speak out against the company for fear of retaliation .
A failure to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a failure to capture the real stakes of the conflict with Pornhub , and that ’ s the fundamental limitation behind the picture of abuse related by the New York Times op-ed columnist Nick Kristof in the latest entry in his long oeuvre concerning abuse , women , and sex .
When Kristof turns his notebook in the direction of women with stories of trauma , the resulting narratives most often fall somewhere between beneficent voyeurism and journalistic malpractice .
( Kristof , writing about his coverage of refugees in 2006 : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ try to figure out how far you can go in identifying a rape victim , for example , so that a column will come alive—without putting her at risk of revenge.
” ) He has yet to face any professional consequences for his role in advancing the Somaly Mam Foundation , the anti–sex trafficking organization that , thanks to him , was able to launder allegedly invented sex slave stories through the paper of record .
( New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan , in 2014 , after one of his key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trafficking : “ Nicholas Kristof Should Give Readers a Full Explanation About Somaly Mam.
” ) Kristof , meanwhile , became the mainstream writer most responsible for establishing the terms of the sex trafficking debate for liberals and conservatives alike .
Now he has pivoted from websites like Backpage , which sex workers once relied on for advertising and which was later shuttered by federal law enforcement , to websites like Pornhub .
Poised to get the Kristof bump this time is a campaign run by a religious right organization , Exodus Cry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Christian dominionist ministry , which has advanced anti-gay , anti-abortion , and antisemitic views .
Kristof ’ s Pornhub story , which took up the full front page of the Times Sunday Review section , relies on the tropes that have defined his career .
He gives graphic , detailed descriptions of “ recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls ” and their associated search terms .
Then , in a passing mention , he introduces the work of Exodus Cry—though he omits the group ’ s name .
“ An organization @ @ @ @ @ @ @ named Laila Mickelwait , documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down , ” Kristof notes .
Kristof ’ s story now sits at the top of the campaign ’ s site , boasting an “ as seen in ” featuring the paper ’ s iconic masthead .

Anyone who wants to know that Pornhub has engaged in abusive and exploitative behavior toward women need only listen to the women whose videos were posted to the free porn site without their consent. That includes the abuse of people like Rose Kalemba, who has written about how she had to impersonate a lawyer to get Pornhub to remove a video that recorded a man raping her more than a decade ago. That also includes the numerous porn performers who have spoken publicly about how Pornhub routinely allows videos they made to be pirated and posted to the site, where it profits off the performers’ work and leaves them with nothing. Journalists who cover the tech company critically and with an eye toward its human costs have all been on this beat for some time. Slate covered the monopolistic model behind Pornhub’s parent company, Mindgeek, more than eight years ago, citing, among others, reporting by ABC’s Nightline, which preceded it, with performers stating they felt they couldn’t speak out against the company for fear of retaliation.
A failure to engage with this history and wider context is a failure to capture the real stakes of the conflict with Pornhub, and that’s the fundamental limitation behind the picture of abuse related by the New York Times op-ed columnist Nick Kristof in the latest entry in his long oeuvre concerning abuse, women, and sex. When Kristof turns his notebook in the direction of women with stories of trauma, the resulting narratives most often fall somewhere between beneficent voyeurism and journalistic malpractice. (Kristof, writing about his coverage of refugees in 2006: “It’s often agonizing to try to figure out how far you can go in identifying a rape victim, for example, so that a column will come alive—without putting her at risk of revenge.”) He has yet to face any professional consequences for his role in advancing the Somaly Mam Foundation, the anti–sex trafficking organization that, thanks to him, was able to launder allegedly invented sex slave stories through the paper of record. (New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan, in 2014, after one of his key sources was exposed for lying about sex trafficking: “Nicholas Kristof Should Give Readers a Full Explanation About Somaly Mam.”) Kristof, meanwhile, became the mainstream writer most responsible for establishing the terms of the sex trafficking debate for liberals and conservatives alike. Now he has pivoted from websites like Backpage, which sex workers once relied on for advertising and which was later shuttered by federal law enforcement, to websites like Pornhub. Poised to get the Kristof bump this time is a campaign run by a religious right organization, Exodus Cry, founded by a member of a Christian dominionist ministry, which has advanced anti-gay, anti-abortion, and antisemitic views.


newrepublic--2020-12-10--The Insidious Classism of Classical Music

The point is that there are myriad class-related hurdles—material , psychological , and associative—that have prevented families of limited means from pursuing , or even wanting to pursue , this music .
And of course , a disproportionate number of these families are Black .
When we add in the fact that the top one percent now own a greater percentage of wealth than they did even in the Gilded Age , when many of our highbrow associations with classical music were formed , and when we consider that Black wealth continues to plummet as a share of the overall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discussion of diversity in classical music that neglects class issues is hugely problematic .
One of the reasons class forms such a blind spot in these discussions is that classical music ’ s leaders , critics , and spokespeople are likely to be members of the privileged set themselves .
This is what Adolph Reed meant when he asserted that identity politics is a form of class politics that is unaware of itself as such .
But the problem is as much sloppy thinking as it is bias .
Take Michael Andor Brodeur @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Washington Post on classical music and racism .
After recounting the alto Jessye Norman ’ s encounters with discrimination and racism as an international opera star , he pivots to a discussion of the current lack of minority representation in American classical music in general , implying that the former is a straightforward result of the latter and that the fix lies in simply increasing diversity in classical music ’ s ranks .
There is so much more to it than that .
Like the fact that , in 2018 , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. was $ 41,361 , while the median income of white workers was $ 70,642 .
And the fact that the median net worth of white households remains roughly 10 times that of Black households .
While the reasons for these disparities are inextricably tied to historical racism , anti-racism and diversity efforts can only do so much to make up for this massive opportunity gap .
The problem of having material access to the training , the instruments , and the inspiration will always remain .
Racism and discrimination , in other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the problem .

Yet by the mid-nineteenth century, all of that began to change, and in ways that are still very much with us today. Seeking heightened status by associating with the Continental elite, New York’s newly wealthy industrialists began to prefer their operas in their original and “sophisticated” European languages and with fewer interruptions from the lower-class rabble. This led them to build theaters of their own, where they could conspicuously consume their superior morality and taste well away from the riffraff. The original Metropolitan Opera, finished in 1883, was such a place, founded largely because the older Academy of Music—with its mere 18 luxury boxes—couldn’t satisfy the degree of public preening demanded by New York’s nouveaux riche. By contrast, the new Met had 122 boxes, arranged, as historian Joseph Horowitz has written, in a “diamond horseshoe [that] invited bejeweled boxholders to admire one another.”
The effect of these new temples of culture was to consolidate mid- and late-century notions of class and status, giving the wealthy a place where they could come to understand themselves as such. But they also allowed for the cultivation of an aesthetic and its accompanying rituals that were just as essential for hardening class boundaries. Formal dress codes and arcane concert rituals—no clapping between movements, no shifting in your seat—helped to further alienate the working class, while also disciplining the audience’s bodies, turning what might have been a space of unguarded leisure into one of corporal policing. The related aesthetic of listening to difficult masterworks in focused silence, emphasizing stern contemplation and delayed gratification over the more immediate pleasures of popular music, itself had disciplinary connotations—not least for those who might have come to the concert hall after a long working day.


newrepublic--2020-12-10--Fox News Is In Trouble

Fox News Is In Trouble

Asked during an Election Day earnings call about the prospect of a Donald Trump–branded television network , Fox News CEO Lachlan Murdoch was sanguine .
“ We love competition , ” he said .
“ We have always thrived on competition.
” Having consistently bested its cable news rivals , Fox was competing with the networks as well .
“ I will say the only difference today versus some years ago , as our audience has grown and our reach has grown , we see our competition as no longer only cable news providers , but also as the traditional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fox News ’ s top brass had reason to be confident .
They believed the election was a win-win .
If Trump won , their gravy train would continue .
If he lost , they would lead the resistance to Joe Biden , just as they had to Barack Obama .
Regardless of the outcome , viewers—and money—would flood in .
Since then , practically nothing has gone according to plan .
By calling Arizona for Biden earlier than other networks , Fox became a scapegoat for the Trump campaign .
The definitive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month isn ’ t “ Stop the Steal ” but “ Fox News sucks.
” Fox News thought it was leading the revolution , but now it ’ s being eaten by it .
Newsmax and One America News Network , Fox ’ s biggest post-election competitors , are seeing their audiences grow at a rapid clip—and seem poised to hold on to them even after Trump ’ s pathetic efforts to undo the 2020 election end .

The other, related factor is a total lack of journalistic ambition or credibility. Trump has maintained a decent enough relationship with Fox’s prime-time hosts, who have followed him, albeit with less gusto than some of their peers, into the fever swamps. His beef is with Fox’s journalists, who follow basic journalistic practices, like acknowledging that Joe Biden is the president-elect. Newsmax and OANN don’t have anyone making a play for anything resembling journalistic credibility, and Trump voters can tune in to those networks without ever hearing the truth about the 2020 election. They are 24/7 fact-free zones. They have supplanted Fox News as Trump supporters’ preferred safe space.
During the post-Arizona backlash, Fox News executives may have hoped that they could wait out the storm—that, soon enough, their viewers would move on from the disappointment of the election. Then Fox could dust off its Obama playbook, magnifying minor scandals at every turn, while continuing to warn against creeping socialism and anarchy spreading in American cities. But the president hasn’t moved on, and he has turned supporting his attacks on American democracy into his latest loyalty test. Newsmax and OANN are passing. Fox News is a distant third.
There are signs that these networks are in a strong position to continue challenging Fox News after Joe Biden ascends to the presidency. On Monday evening, Newsmax boasted a larger audience than Fox News for the first time, when its Greg Kelly Presents narrowly beat Fox News’s The Story With Martha MacCallum with 25-to-54-year-olds, the most important demographic for advertisers. The margin was narrow—Kelly averaged 229,000 viewers in the demo, and MacCallum averaged 203,000—but CNN’s Brian Stelter called it a “milestone in the cable news industry.”


newrepublic--2020-12-10--Who Gets a Say in Our Dystopian Tech Future?

Last Wednesday , Timnit Gebru , a staff research scientist and co-lead of the Ethical Artificial Intelligence team at Google , said that she had been ousted from the company over a research paper she co-authored and submitted for review .
According to Gebru ’ s account , a manager had asked her to recant or remove her name from the paper , which raised ethical concerns about A.I .
language models of the sort used in Google ’ s sprawling search engine .
Gebru , one of the most prominent ethicists in Silicon Valley and one of Google ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ position , responded by asking for transparency about the review , offering that she would remove her name from the paper if the company gave her a fuller understanding of the process and developed a road map for researchers to follow for future reviews .
If they couldn ’ t agree to those conditions , she said , she would leave the company at a later date .
Google saw that as an invitation .
They swiftly accepted what they called her resignation .
You might recognize Gebru ’ s name from the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ AI , or the explosive paper she co-authored with Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab , which proved that Amazon ’ s facial recognition program , Rekognition , was extremely biased toward white and lighter-skinned subjects .
The study found that Rekognition was adept at clocking lighter-skinned men but had a considerable failure rate when it came to women , particularly women of color : It misclassified women as men 19 percent of the time ; women of color with darker complexions were misclassified 31 percent of the time .
One can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on trans people .
Amazon attempted to refute the study , calling it “ misleading , ” but the Rekognition paper , after it was reported on widely in the national press , sowed the seed of justified fear in the public : Amazon had been marketing its technology to police departments at the time the story broke .

At the heart of the Gebru scandal is an old story, about the way whistleblowers are punished by profit-seeking executives who instinctively know how to weaponize difference markers like race or gender to win the game. But the scale Google operates at guarantees that its biases—which are intrinsic to all unequal workplaces and need to be actively corrected—will in the future expand to represent the conditions of human existence. Gebru’s work to date has shown that, perhaps inevitably, machine learning is absorbing the biases and misunderstandings that human beings are already susceptible to—in particular those that proliferate among the executive class in Silicon Valley, who get to choose whose voices are heard (literally and figuratively) and are disproportionately male. These are quickly developing technologies that, as they touch more and more parts of our lives, carry real possibilities and real risk. Gebru’s draft paper called for caution—which also potentially threatened her employer’s bottom line.
The key to Gebru et al’s paper lies in the words “language models.” Innocent-sounding enough, this is the technology that allows A.I. to mimic human expression. Remember when we collectively realized that you can create a game out of predictive text? You know how it goes: Begin a sentence on your smartphone with a prompt, then let autocomplete fill in the rest. The result is fun to read, because it’s always slightly garbled but very close to your actual writing style. It’s solipsistic and eerie at the same time, resembling the pleasure of admiring oneself in a fun-house mirror.
The technology behind predictive text relies on a statistical model of how likely one word is to follow another, created through breakthroughs in the field of natural language processing, or NLP, that allow your phone to learn your writing habits. The “natural” in this term refers to the mysterious stuff that comes out of human mouths, which professors of linguistics don’t even fully understand. The “language processing” part refers to work done by computers to read, decipher, and create useful tools out of its data. In this sense, A.I. can “understand” natural language, but in the rudimentary fashion of mimicry and impersonation—hence the parrots of the paper’s title. Google increasingly relies on NLP for communications, improving its search engine, and—crucially—revenue.


newrepublic--2020-12-10--The Democrats Are Too Old

The Democrats Are Too Old

In the lead-up to Amy Coney Barrett ’ s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in October , Democrats fretted that the party ’ s ranking member on the Judiciary Committee , Dianne Feinstein , wasn ’ t up to the task .
Fear among congressional Democrats was “ widespread , ” according to Politico .
The 87-year-old Feinstein “ gets confused by reporters ’ questions , or will offer different answers to the same question depending on where or when she ’ s asked , ” and appears “ frail.
” Those fears , in retrospect , were well founded .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ rushing to fill the vacancy that opened up after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September .
With the November presidential elections coming up , the hearings were doubly important—an opportunity to highlight a norm-busting , anti-democratic Republican Party .
But Feinstein conducted the hearings as if they were occurring in a normal political environment .
She concluded them by saying , “ This has been one of the best set of hearings that I ’ ve participated in ” and then hugging Republican Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey Graham , a gift to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tough reelection campaign .
The image of Feinstein embracing Graham only underlined how out of touch the party ’ s leadership was with its grassroots—and with reality .
Troubling reporting from The New Yorker ’ s Jane Mayer suggests that Democrats—and Feinstein ’ s own staff—have been concerned about her mental sharpness for some time .
“ They say her short-term memory has grown so poor that she often forgets she has been briefed on a topic , accusing her staff of failing to do so just after they have , ” Mayer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forgetting what she has said and getting upset.
” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer , himself a spry ( by congressional terms ) 70 years old , recently had “ serious and painful talks ” with Feinstein and encouraged her to step aside “ with her dignity intact.
” But Schumer had to repeat the conversation a second time after Feinstein forgot it .

Feinstein’s declining health points to a larger problem. The Democratic Party is ruled by a gerontocracy. Much has been made of Joe Biden being the oldest first-term president in history, but he is younger than Feinstein and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Democrats continue to win young voters by huge margins but look nothing like them. Instead of grooming younger talent, House and Senate leadership is full of members in their seventies and eighties who seem hell-bent on retaining their plum positions. This is a party that desperately needs to get younger, or else it will continue to bungle basic governance and alienate both its future leaders and the base.
Mayer’s piece is grim. Feinstein, “a stickler for detail,” still insists on micromanaging her office’s work. But she no longer has the capacity to manage the work her position demands of her. “It’s been a disaster,” a former Senate staffer told Mayer. The senator’s staff are forced to “defend her and make her seem normal” as she struggles. Ordinarily, Feinstein’s position would mean that she should be directing the party’s strategy, particularly when it comes to the judiciary, a primary focus of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. But Feinstein has not been up to the task. “Other members were constantly trying to go around her because, as chair, she didn’t want to do anything, and she also didn’t want them doing anything,” the former staffer said. Feinstein’s responsibilities are being pushed to her staff. The larger work of planning and strategizing appears to be barely happening at all.


newrepublic--2020-12-10--Now Is When We Choose How Effective the Covid Vaccines Will Be

“ The mistake was this notion that the therapeutic du jour was going to turn the tide on this crisis , ” Faust said .
“ The notion of therapeutics being a panacea , literally , has distracted the administration , and therefore the American people , from the intervention that works the best in the short term , which is the nonpharmacologic interventions .
These are things we all know we have to do but don ’ t want to do ” —wearing masks , physical distancing , staying home , washing our hands .
Although many of these @ @ @ @ @ @ @ failures come from the top .
The White House didn ’ t want to tell people “ something they didn ’ t want to hear , which was that they have to alter their behavior for longer than we all want to , ” Faust said .
The biggest mistake of the pandemic wasn ’ t putting our hopes in a vaccine , he said ; it was refusing to change our behavior in the meantime .
“ People across the political spectrum should have been rallying around masks and social distancing in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fringe continue to rally around ideas like hydroxychloroquine.
” The administration ’ s narrow focus on vaccines and medications has sometimes made it seem as though nothing else can be done to stop the virus .
After all , there hasn ’ t been an Operation Warp Speed—as the government termed the vaccine effort—for masks and protective gear or for testing , Dr. Bijay Acharya , a hospitalist in Baltimore , pointed out .
“ It ’ s so traumatic to see that everyone is going through this , and all we were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promised to nonexistent therapeutics , ” he told me .
There has been “ a very limited effort to ramp up or speed up actual things that we need to take care of these patients.
” Investing in nonpharmaceutical measures would have gone a long way in curbing the pandemic and saving lives , Acharya said—and it would still help now , and in the coming weeks and months .
But with the first press releases of the new vaccines ’ strong trial results , something tragic happened : “ Everyone stopped talking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all across the country , ” as the vaccine news “ completely overshadowed ” a major surge in cases .
Even with highly effective vaccines , there is much that needs to happen before and after the vaccines are rolled out , Acharya said .
“ I worry about having this magic vial , that people will say , ‘ Oh , yeah , we have the cure here , ’ ” and stop taking the pandemic seriously before it has actually subsided .

“The mistake was this notion that the therapeutic du jour was going to turn the tide on this crisis,” Faust said. “The notion of therapeutics being a panacea, literally, has distracted the administration, and therefore the American people, from the intervention that works the best in the short term, which is the nonpharmacologic interventions. These are things we all know we have to do but don’t want to do”—wearing masks, physical distancing, staying home, washing our hands. Although many of these measures depend upon individual actions, the failures come from the top. The White House didn’t want to tell people “something they didn’t want to hear, which was that they have to alter their behavior for longer than we all want to,” Faust said. The biggest mistake of the pandemic wasn’t putting our hopes in a vaccine, he said; it was refusing to change our behavior in the meantime. “People across the political spectrum should have been rallying around masks and social distancing in the way that a few on the fringe continue to rally around ideas like hydroxychloroquine.”
The administration’s narrow focus on vaccines and medications has sometimes made it seem as though nothing else can be done to stop the virus. After all, there hasn’t been an Operation Warp Speed—as the government termed the vaccine effort—for masks and protective gear or for testing, Dr. Bijay Acharya, a hospitalist in Baltimore, pointed out. “It’s so traumatic to see that everyone is going through this, and all we were talking about is billions of dollars being promised to nonexistent therapeutics,” he told me. There has been “a very limited effort to ramp up or speed up actual things that we need to take care of these patients.”
Investing in nonpharmaceutical measures would have gone a long way in curbing the pandemic and saving lives, Acharya said—and it would still help now, and in the coming weeks and months. But with the first press releases of the new vaccines’ strong trial results, something tragic happened: “Everyone stopped talking about deaths and the rising positivity rates all across the country,” as the vaccine news “completely overshadowed” a major surge in cases. Even with highly effective vaccines, there is much that needs to happen before and after the vaccines are rolled out, Acharya said. “I worry about having this magic vial, that people will say, ‘Oh, yeah, we have the cure here,’” and stop taking the pandemic seriously before it has actually subsided.


newrepublic--2020-12-10--Biden Is Finding New and Inexplicable Ways to Screw Up His Cabinet Picks

Biden and his allies have noted that Congress granted a similar waiver to James Mattis four years ago when Trump nominated him for the same job .
But that comparison is awkward at best .
Mattis drew broad bipartisan support because lawmakers at the time expected that he would serve as a potential check on Trump ’ s worst impulses , and because Mattis would have the stature to defy an illegal order if Trump gave one .
For obvious reasons , members of Congress didn ’ t quite say this out loud at the time , and those factors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or Austin .
Biden may yet see Austin confirmed , but he ’ ll have to expend some political capital to get it done .
Some in Bidenworld have argued that the president-elect is prioritizing experience over other factors .
But Biden ’ s hiring moves on Thursday seem to undercut those claims .
Denis McDonough , who is reportedly his pick to run the Department of Veterans Affairs , is a former White House chief of staff who also served as a member of the National Security Council in the Obama years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ background will translate to the massive health care bureaucracy that is the V.A .
( Most V.A .
leaders were also veterans ; McDonough is not . )
Biden ’ s announcement that Susan Rice , Obama ’ s former national security adviser , will lead the White House Domestic Policy Council is equally puzzling .
Rice is one of the most prominent foreign policy experts in Democratic circles and was once considered for secretary of state ; her experience with domestic policy issues appears to be minimal at best .
And then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ controversial mayor of Chicago ’ s name keeps coming up as a potential contender for Cabinet slots , including secretary of transportation or other prominent administration roles .
Emanuel , like many other Biden picks , is a familiar face from the Obama years .
But he brings no apparent qualifications for running the Department of Transportation .
His own handling of transit and environmental justice issues in Chicago is middling at best , and his role in covering up the Chicago Police Department ’ s killing of Laquan McDonald in 2014 makes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activists .
I don ’ t want to give short shrift to the challenges Biden is facing .
He could be the first Democratic president since 1885 to enter the White House without full control of Congress .
The House Democratic majority hinges on fewer than a dozen seats , and any members who resign might not be replaced for months .
To capture the Senate , Democrats would also need to win both of Georgia ’ s Senate seats in the runoff elections next month to secure a 50-member majority with Vice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
This outcome isn ’ t impossible , of course .
But Biden would be foolish to assume that it will happen when building his Cabinet .

If confirmed, Austin would be the first Black secretary of defense in the nation’s history. But his path to lead the Pentagon is far from straightforward. Federal law prohibits former military personnel from serving as secretary of defense within seven years of their retirement; Austin retired in 2016. While Congress could waive that requirement, it would require the assent of the House as well, drawing an entirely new set of lawmakers into the voting calculus. Some senators have already expressed misgivings about further eroding the principle of civilian control of the military. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren told reporters on Tuesday that she would vote against a waiver.
Biden and his allies have noted that Congress granted a similar waiver to James Mattis four years ago when Trump nominated him for the same job. But that comparison is awkward at best. Mattis drew broad bipartisan support because lawmakers at the time expected that he would serve as a potential check on Trump’s worst impulses, and because Mattis would have the stature to defy an illegal order if Trump gave one. For obvious reasons, members of Congress didn’t quite say this out loud at the time, and those factors aren’t at play for Biden or Austin. Biden may yet see Austin confirmed, but he’ll have to expend some political capital to get it done.
Some in Bidenworld have argued that the president-elect is prioritizing experience over other factors. But Biden’s hiring moves on Thursday seem to undercut those claims. Denis McDonough, who is reportedly his pick to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, is a former White House chief of staff who also served as a member of the National Security Council in the Obama years. It’s unclear how that background will translate to the massive health care bureaucracy that is the V.A. (Most V.A. leaders were also veterans; McDonough is not.) Biden’s announcement that Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser, will lead the White House Domestic Policy Council is equally puzzling. Rice is one of the most prominent foreign policy experts in Democratic circles and was once considered for secretary of state; her experience with domestic policy issues appears to be minimal at best.


newrepublic--2020-12-10--The Stubborn Classism of Classical Music


newrepublic--2020-12-10--Fox News Is in Trouble

Fox News Is in Trouble

Asked during an Election Day earnings call about the prospect of a Donald Trump–branded television network , Fox News CEO Lachlan Murdoch was sanguine .
“ We love competition , ” he said .
“ We have always thrived on competition.
” Having consistently bested its cable news rivals , Fox was competing with the networks as well .
“ I will say the only difference today versus some years ago , as our audience has grown and our reach has grown , we see our competition as no longer only cable news providers , but also as the traditional @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fox News ’ s top brass had reason to be confident .
They believed the election was a win-win .
If Trump won , their gravy train would continue .
If he lost , they would lead the resistance to Joe Biden , just as they had to Barack Obama .
Regardless of the outcome , viewers—and money—would flood in .
Since then , practically nothing has gone according to plan .
By calling Arizona for Biden earlier than other networks , Fox became a scapegoat for the Trump campaign .
The definitive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month isn ’ t “ Stop the Steal ” but “ Fox News sucks.
” Fox News thought it was leading the revolution , but now it ’ s being eaten by it .
Newsmax and One America News Network , Fox ’ s biggest postelection competitors , are seeing their audiences grow at a rapid clip—and seem poised to hold on to them even after Trump ’ s pathetic efforts to undo the 2020 election end .


newrepublic--2020-12-11--The Meat Industry’s Bestiality Problem

The Meat Industry’s Bestiality Problem

As the laws were evolving , so was agriculture .
While the meat industry had been dominated by consolidated , high-volume slaughter and processing since the nineteenth century , pro-big-farming government policy and corporate agribusiness-backed regulations accelerated this trend and spread it throughout the farming world in the late twentieth .
Consolidation and ever-tightening margins drove the meat industry to discover new efficiencies and untapped profits in the bodies of livestock animals .
The industry itself refers to this as “ commodity ” animal production : Thanks to the sophisticated tools of modern life sciences and genetics , animals themselves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were unimaginable fifty years ago .
Artificial insemination stands out as a uniquely powerful technology to standardize animal reproduction .
It allows farms to both produce homogeneous animals and to standardize the breeding process itself , removing the inconvenience and unpredictability of letting animals breed the old-fashioned way .
For example , it allows factory farms to sync the estrous cycles of entire barns of animals , which , in turn , maximizes the efficiency of impregnation , gestation , and birthing .
In other words , artificial insemination allows farms to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s clock rather than their own biological one .
The global market in livestock semen for artificial insemination also ensures that ever-more sophisticated interventions in animal genetics : Breeders are no longer limited by their own ( or neighbor ’ s ) prized studs ; they can use the semen from animals all around the world .
And refrigeration means that particularly valuable animals often continue to stud even long after they have died and been ground into sausage .
Artificial insemination was first developed to improve the productivity of dairy cattle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cattle must be continually impregnated to give milk and must be spatially confined to be milked .
These logistical details made artificial insemination a good fit for most dairy farms , and farmers could expect to offset its higher capital and labor costs with considerable productivity gains .
By 1960 , the practice had become the dairy industry standard in the U.S.. By the 1970s , it was also increasingly used in turkey production , where it helped farmers manage low fertility rates and the unusual seasonality of demand imposed by Thanksgiving .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the technology until the advent of concentrated animal feeding operations ( CAFOs ) farming—which has been pioneered with chicken mega-farms as early as the 1950s—began to dominate pork and dairy production starting in the 1980s CAFOs , in which animals—rather than grazing or foraging as naturally inclined—were raised in tightly confined quarters , meant that animal reproduction could be centralized on a smaller number of high-volume breeding farms .
Wage-laborers could then cheaply inseminate an endless stream of animals , creating the economies of scale needed to make artificial insemination profitable .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in-roads in the pork industry ; by 2000 it was employed on 70 percent of farms .
Today , it is “ near-universal , ” and the beef industry is undergoing a similar transformation .
Only in broiler chicken production is artificial insemination still relatively rare .
Chickens , the most-eaten animal in America , are bred in such massive quantities and have such high fertility that for now the technology has not been seen as cost-effective ; but even there , experts speculate that it is only a matter of time before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technology , and the production gains it enables push the industry past a tipping point .
To put it bluntly , artificial insemination is so pervasive in industrial agriculture that , if it were prohibited over concerns for animal welfare , much industrial meat and dairy production would grind to a halt overnight .

Cognitive dissonance has haunted these statutes from their inception: Bestiality, a highly stigmatized act, lends itself well to loud denunciations but not so much to moral consistency. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, for instance—infamous for racial profiling accusations, constructing the “Tent City” outdoor jail in the Arizona desert where inmates regularly suffered from heatstroke, and organizing a “posse” to round up undocumented immigrants—played a pivotal role in the passage of Arizona’s 2006 anti-bestiality statute, and zealously enforced it: In 2016, he posted fake Craigslist ads around the country to lure bestialists to Arizona where he could arrest and prosecute them. But Arpaio’s sympathy—unsurprisingly, given that he rarely extended it to humans—was highly selective: He happily scarfed down hamburgers at political meet-and-greets, despite most cattle suffering just as much as the abused dogs and cats for which Arpaio established a no-kill rescue shelter inside an abandoned prison.
As the laws were evolving, so was agriculture. While the meat industry had been dominated by consolidated, high-volume slaughter and processing since the nineteenth century, pro-big-farming government policy and corporate agribusiness-backed regulations accelerated this trend and spread it throughout the farming world in the late twentieth. Consolidation and ever-tightening margins drove the meat industry to discover new efficiencies and untapped profits in the bodies of livestock animals. The industry itself refers to this as “commodity” animal production: Thanks to the sophisticated tools of modern life sciences and genetics, animals themselves are mass-produced to be interchangeable in ways that were unimaginable 50 years ago.
Artificial insemination stands out as a uniquely powerful technology to standardize animal reproduction. It allows farms both to produce homogeneous animals and to standardize the breeding process itself, removing the inconvenience and unpredictability of letting animals breed the old-fashioned way. For example, it allows factory farms to sync the estrous cycles of entire barns of animals, which, in turn, maximizes the efficiency of impregnation, gestation, and birthing. In other words, artificial insemination allows farms to guarantee that animals breed on the market’s clock rather than their own biological one. The global market in livestock semen for artificial insemination also ensures ever-more-sophisticated interventions in animal genetics: Breeders are no longer limited by their own (or neighbor’s) prized studs; they can use semen from animals all around the world. And refrigeration means that particularly valuable animals often continue to stud even long after they have died and been ground into sausage.


newrepublic--2020-12-11--The Year We Learned to Live Like Life Doesn’t Matter

It ’ s bad .
This week marked a record in Covid-19-related deaths , and we are currently seeing an average of 209,864 Covid cases per day .
Nearly 300,000 people in the United States have died since the beginning of the pandemic , with worse expected on the horizon .
And yet these numbers no longer shock .
In fact , Americans seem to have become habituated to them .
Habituation is a behavioral term that basically means getting used to it .
People learn to filter out input that isn ’ t essential .
If a car alarm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ubiquitous ambulance sirens—and there ’ s nothing you can do about it , you learn to live with the noise , and it fades into the background .
It seems like the same thing has happened with Covid deaths .
Alarming headlines circulated in late May after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that deaths from the virus surpassed the 100,000 mark .
The New York Times created a striking visual package accompanied by short obituaries in an effort to make the number , staggering as it was , feel more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death at this scale has become just another part of living in America .
In psychodynamic terms , we use defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from unpleasant thoughts or feelings .
We compartmentalize the horrors we see on the news every day when we avoid thinking too much about what is going on .
It ’ s sad that things are how they are—terrible , even—but what can you do , really ?
Or we rationalize them .
We tell ourselves that God looks out for us in a narrow and direct way @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus just doesn ’ t have the right divine protection .
Or we tell ourselves that Covid-19 is a fate for certain categories of people—for service workers , for immigrants , for people in jails and prisons .
We broaden the scope of whom we accept as disposable , and we tell ourselves that we ’ re safe .

There is protest. Workers have walked off the job or refused to go back. Communities have taken to the streets in defense of their neighbors. There is power there, both in what’s being built and in a disruption that acknowledges what is different and unacceptable. But the systems that govern our daily lives insist that we go on with life as usual.
This is hardly a new development in America. From mass shootings and people who die from lack of health insurance to the country’s founding in slavery and Native genocide, brutality has long been a central part of American life. It’s seen in what the journalist Chris Hedges has called the “sacrifice zones” of Houston, Texas, and in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, where chemical refineries and other heavy industry contribute to high rates of cancer and asthma. Similarly, it’s seen in the political indifference to the effects of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, or the way that American military violence abroad is taken as a given. We adjust to greater and greater amounts of brutality, or we figure out ways to excuse or ignore them, because they are all too often the only thing offered to us by the state.
On Election Day in Somerville, Massachusetts, Leah Zallman, a young doctor and researcher who worked with immigrant populations, was killed on her way home from her local polling place. She wasn’t killed in the ways that you might fear in 2020—by Covid-19 or by right-wing militia groups. Her cause of death was much more quotidian: A pickup truck hit her by accident, and she died from her injuries in the hospital. Every year, almost 6,000 pedestrians in this country are killed by vehicles, and the problem is getting worse. But most of us don’t walk around all day upset about it. We just take it as a given that vehicles kill pedestrians and that it would be impossible to build cities less centered around cars, even though we’ve done it before in this country and such cities currently exist around the world. Perhaps we write letters to our elected officials or show up at protests or local hearings. But this is slow work that more often than not yields disappointment. So we focus on our to-do lists, or we tell ourselves that we always look both ways at an intersection.


newrepublic--2020-12-11--Inside the Hostage Crisis of America’s Dying Restaurants

Dave was walking to work in one of Pittsburgh ’ s hippest neighborhoods , past the shuttered artisan candle shops and clothing boutiques that sell overpriced vintage workwear , when he noticed the sobbing .
He couldn ’ t register the noise at first , perhaps even attributing it to someone else , but soon felt the unmistakable scratch of his vocal chords as he wept .
He slid into an alleyway to hide between two buildings and called his partner , who thought he ’ d been mugged , or perhaps hit by a car , but no .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ later recognized as a panic attack triggered by a return to work just two months after he ’ d contracted a case of Covid-19 that put him in the hospital .
He went home and stayed there for days , sullen .
“ I got into this to make martinis , listen to people , maybe make someone smile , ” Dave , who asked I only use his first name , said of his career as a bartender .
“ Now , all of a sudden I ’ m on the front @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a different posh neighborhood a couple miles southeast , another bar sat mostly empty .
A half-capacity limitation had been ordered by the state , and patrons were still unsure of the safety of returning .
The Harris Grill , a Shadyside staple since 2004 , had already lost its sister location in Mount Washington due to financial losses brought on by the pandemic lockdown .
“ I was looking at numbers for a weekend like , Holy shit , we did great , ” Rodney Schwartz , part of the restaurant ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ And these are numbers that , in a normal December , I ’ d be like , Jesus Christ , why are we failing so badly ?
” Cash reserves are depleted , and there ’ s still no official help on the way to supplant Payment Protection Program loans that have long been spent .
“ I ’ ve got a convection oven I ’ m holding together with duct tape , ” Schwartz said , the smirk nearly audible as he describes leaning against the door to keep the heat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Getting someone out here to repair that is gon na be a thousand bucks , and I don ’ t have a thousand extra bucks right now.
” In the absence of uniform policy prescriptions and robust federal aid , states and localities are left cobbling things together with wildly incoherent mandates , like leaving indoor dining open while shuttering public schools .
Even with dining open in some capacity , independently owned bars and restaurants are on life support .
Despite an effective early effort , Pennsylvania ’ s governor ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shutdown is on the way , maybe owing to the state ’ s terror at facing yet another lawsuit after a Trump-appointed judge ruled its initial March shutdown unconstitutional .

Workers, though, were less likely to celebrate these reopenings. Even as risks for diners were being minimized (in theory, at least), the people on staff were still facing real danger in the back of house and on their commutes. The money just wasn’t the same, either. Dave returned to work in June to find that his hourly wage, which had been raised significantly during the delivery-only period to account for lost tips, was back to its place below the minimum wage. However, unlike before, at 50 percent capacity (and often much less, as customers were hesitant to return), his tips were meager even on a good night. “I was basically being paid half as much for more work,” he said, noting that while traffic was lighter, so was the staff, meaning his list of responsibilities had grown. Now, after trying to go back on that day in September, he’s stuck at home after a 10-year career in the industry, afraid to go near a bar again as the mental strain of being hospitalized twice in three months lingers.
Dave is a fairly extreme example, but there’s no shortage of things that can go wrong for workers like him. Service industry jobs are disproportionately worked by people of color, who are currently suffering the highest infection and death rates of the pandemic. Meanwhile, these jobs are still down 25 percent from their pre-pandemic levels, and many of them may be gone forever. Most are struggling through it, perhaps taking the odd week off here and there to gather their fortitude if they’re able to take any time at all. Then it’s back to work for another shift of serving complete strangers whose adherence to coronavirus guidelines and restrictions is only enforced by the honor system. They know they are, through a simple numbers game as infection rates rise, serving sick people, just as the owners know that sick people are coming through their doors. That’s the hell of the present moment, and the people in power created it.
“We’re the arts program of the state budget,” said Joey Hilty, chef and owner of The Vandal, a fine-dining spot in Lawrenceville. The Vandal has not resumed indoor dining, instead opting to go takeout-only to protect the safety of its workers. He’s observed something darker in the government’s refusal to step in and help independent restaurants: At the end of the day, it’s about what industries contribute to the state’s bottom line, and independent restaurants are a drop in the bucket. “I’m a realist about this stuff. What value do we really create, at least from their view?”


newrepublic--2020-12-11--The American Fetish for Elderly Elites

The American Fetish for Elderly Elites

I think a lot about the time Prince Philip flipped his Land Rover .
Not so much about the crash itself , wherein the 97-year-old British royal collided in 2019 with another car on a country road .
More about the preemptively aggressive statement Edmund King , president of the Automobile Association , gave after it , defending the honor of elderly drivers : “ Many commentators use high profile car crashes involving elderly drivers as a reason to call for bans or restrictions on older drivers , ” he told The Telegraph .
“ If driving restrictions based on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be more likely to restrict young drivers rather than older drivers.
” It was a wacky artifact of a culturally inconsistent sensitivity around age .
It ’ s also misleading : Teenagers do have high accident rates—much higher than the 70-to-79 age bracket ’ s ( which , it should be noted , is also elevated ) .
But it gets murkier when you dig deeper : In studies on both sides of the Atlantic claiming to show young drivers are more risky than old ones , teens often get compared to younger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2015 numbers on the AAA Foundation website , “ fatal crash involvements per 100 million miles driven were the greatest for drivers age 80 and older.
” In analysis the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety posted last year , 16-to-19-year-olds had a fatal vehicle crash involvement rate of 4.8 per 100 million miles driven , while individuals age 80 or over had a rate of 5.4 .
But there King was , all the same , defensive at the idea that such a high-profile crash might lead to more scrutiny of senior drivers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alone , either : Policies that might institute testing provisions for elderly drivers analogous to those almost universally applied to young drivers are routinely denounced as discriminatory . )
I thought about the AA president ’ s solicitous regard for Prince Philip ’ s ego this week while reading The New Yorker ’ s story about Senator Dianne Feinstein ’ s alleged cognitive deterioration .
And not just because an ex-aide explicitly compared asking the oldest member of the Senate to retire to taking “ the car keys away from an elderly relative.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Capitol , the senator ’ s colleagues have been helping to cover for her declining health for years , all while applying delicate and ineffective pressure to get her to retire .

I think a lot about the time Prince Philip flipped his Land Rover. Not so much about the crash itself, wherein the 97-year-old British royal collided in 2019 with another car on a country road. More about the preemptively aggressive statement Edmund King, president of the Automobile Association, gave after it, defending the honor of elderly drivers: “Many commentators use high profile car crashes involving elderly drivers as a reason to call for bans or restrictions on older drivers,” he told The Telegraph. “If driving restrictions based on age and safety were introduced we would be more likely to restrict young drivers rather than older drivers.”
It was a wacky artifact of a culturally inconsistent sensitivity around age. It’s also misleading: Teenagers do have high accident rates—much higher than the 70-to-79 age bracket’s (which, it should be noted, is also elevated). But it gets murkier when you dig deeper: In studies on both sides of the Atlantic claiming to show young drivers are more risky than old ones, teens often get compared to younger seniors—i.e., around age 75—but according to 2015 numbers on the AAA Foundation website, “fatal crash involvements per 100 million miles driven were the greatest for drivers age 80 and older.” In analysis the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety posted last year, 16-to-19-year-olds had a fatal vehicle crash involvement rate of 4.8 per 100 million miles driven, while individuals age 80 or over had a rate of 5.4. But there King was, all the same, defensive at the idea that such a high-profile crash might lead to more scrutiny of senior drivers. (He wouldn’t be alone, either: Policies that might institute testing provisions for elderly drivers analogous to those almost universally applied to young drivers are routinely denounced as discriminatory.)


newrepublic--2020-12-11--Is Joe Biden Just Being Stubborn?

Is Joe Biden Just Being Stubborn?

If the staggered unveiling of President-elect Joe Biden ’ s Cabinet has done little to enthuse the ( broadly defined ) left , it has also not yet been quite as disastrous as some predicted ( and that will remain true so long as Rahm Emanuel remains outside the administration ) .
What it has been , so far , is very puzzling .
Take what happened to Marcia Fudge .
The Ohio representative was openly lobbying to be made secretary of agriculture , in order to focus the department ’ s attention on hunger and food security .
She @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the job and had even gone to the press with plans for what she wanted to do if selected : Her goal , as she explained in an interview last month , was to change the perception that the department only exists to help rural whites .
“ As this country becomes more and more diverse , we ’ re going to have to stop looking at only certain agencies as those that people like me fit in , ” she told Politico .
“ You know , it ’ s always ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in labor or HUD .
’ ”

Vilsack, meanwhile, probably is a bad choice, and it’s one the Biden team has already had to defend to civil rights leaders angry about Vilsack’s treatment of Shirley Sherrod, whom he fired from her position as Georgia state director of rural development following the release of a deceptively edited video. As Alexander Sammon pointed out in The American Prospect, not even the kind of “rural white people” Biden seems to be trying to placate actually like the former agriculture secretary, meaning it’s a move that looks like it will turn off both white and Black voters.
So: two Cabinet picks that pleased almost no one and made various important allies unnecessarily mad. And this isn’t even the first time Biden’s team has pulled off that impressively self-defeating feat.
At Discourse Blog, Paul Blest has a good rundown of other times that Biden has ended up alienating his allies without managing to please anyone. New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham lobbied for Health and Human Services. Biden’s team offered her Interior instead, despite tribal groups and Democrats strongly pushing Representative Deb Haaland for the job. Biden advisers privately trashed Haaland to the press while floating a candidate who seemed to come out of left field, former Deputy Interior Secretary Michael Connor. Meanwhile, despite well-documented Democratic support for Grisham at HHS, Biden’s team went, again, with a candidate who hadn’t been on anyone’s shortlist (as far as I can tell): California Attorney General Xavier Becerra.


newrepublic--2020-12-14--The Desperate Last Days of Local News

The Desperate Last Days of Local News

In April , CNHI also consolidated a number of its northeastern Kentucky weeklies into one daily , for example merging The Morehead News with a paper covering a town 55 miles away .
“ Many dailies have swallowed up sister weeklies , but it ’ s unusual if not unprecedented for such consolidation over such a distance , ” Cross wrote .
In the following months , Indiana , Iowa , Oklahoma , and Florida endured more mergers of long-standing papers .
The three North Florida CNHI papers to close in July—the Suwannee Democrat , the Mayo Free Press , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communities since the 1800s .
Abernathy , the UNC professor , said there are “ degrees of aggressive management ” of investment entities over journalism , and thinks CNHI “ is by no means the worst.
” That said , Abernathy predicts CNHI will continue to sell off its properties , pointing to the summer of 2018 , when CNHI announced its plans to step back from newspaper ownership , and noted the pension fund has faced mounting pressure to increase the return on its investments .
While the Retirement Systems of Alabama @ @ @ @ @ @ @ CNHI , back in 2001 the pension fund was fully funded , but since then its investments have frequently fallen short of expectations .
By 2015 , it faced $ 13 billion in state pension debts and $ 11 billion in unfunded liabilities .
“ Like the readers and advertisers who abandoned the CNHI papers in recent years , RSA has decided to shed its newspaper habit , ” Abernathy wrote .
In effect , the local news crisis is converging with the nation ’ s looming pension crisis .
No pension fund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ investment Alabama ’ s made back in the late twentieth century .
Ultimately , though , it ’ s not just financial investment vehicles that can not be counted on to give local journalism the security it needs to effectively serve communities .
Billionaires—once viewed as potential media saviors—are increasingly ducking out , too .
Earlier this year , Warren Buffett , who at the time was the third-richest man in the world with a net worth of $ 88 billion , felt dissatisfied with the returns on his chain of newspapers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a change in tune when , just a few years earlier , he told CNN , “ In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community , there is no more important institution than the local paper.
” Likewise Laurene Powell Jobs , who has a $ 21 billion net worth , waded into journalism but has made brutal cuts .
In 2019 , she purchased a majority stake in The Atlantic , and just two months into the Covid-19 pandemic , the company laid off nearly 20 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , despite Powell being financially equipped to help her magazine weather the tough advertising tides of the pandemic many , many times over .
Powell Jobs also purchased the award-winning magazine California Sunday in November 2018 , only to shutter the entire publication in October .

In April, CNHI also consolidated a number of its northeastern Kentucky weeklies into one daily, for example merging The Morehead News with a paper covering a town 55 miles away. “Many dailies have swallowed up sister weeklies, but it’s unusual if not unprecedented for such consolidation over such a distance,” Cross wrote. In the following months, Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Florida endured more mergers of long-standing papers. The three North Florida CNHI papers to close in July—the Suwannee Democrat, the Mayo Free Press, and The Jasper News—had covered rural Florida communities since the 1800s.
Abernathy, the UNC professor, said there are “degrees of aggressive management” of investment entities over journalism, and thinks CNHI “is by no means the worst.” That said, Abernathy predicts CNHI will continue to sell off its properties, pointing to the summer of 2018, when CNHI announced its plans to step back from newspaper ownership, and noted the pension fund has faced mounting pressure to increase the return on its investments. While the Retirement Systems of Alabama does not break out financial results for CNHI, back in 2001 the pension fund was fully funded, but since then its investments have frequently fallen short of expectations. By 2015, it faced $13 billion in state pension debts and $11 billion in unfunded liabilities. “Like the readers and advertisers who abandoned the CNHI papers in recent years, RSA has decided to shed its newspaper habit,” Abernathy wrote. In effect, the local news crisis is converging with the nation’s looming pension crisis. No pension fund would now consider making the kind of investment Alabama’s made back in the late twentieth century.
Ultimately, though, it’s not just financial investment vehicles that cannot be counted on to give local journalism the security it needs to effectively serve communities. Billionaires—once viewed as potential media saviors—are increasingly ducking out, too. Earlier this year, Warren Buffett, who at the time was the third-richest man in the world with a net worth of $88 billion, felt dissatisfied with the returns on his chain of newspapers and decided to sell. That was quite a change in tune when, just a few years earlier, he told CNN, “In towns and cities where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important institution than the local paper.”