Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – August 8, 2021
by Tony Wikrent
This is the best time all year to see the ringed magnificence of Saturn
[Syfy Wire, via The Big Picture 8-5-2021]
Saturn takes 29 years to orbit the Sun once. Earth is closer to the Sun and moves much more rapidly, completing an orbit in one year. If Saturn didn’t move then opposition would occur once every Earth year. But Saturn does orbit around the Sun, in the same direction as Earth does, so we have to spend a little bit of extra time catching up to it.
The pandemic
Vaccine Mandates Are as American as Apple Pie
[Portside, via Naked Capitalism 8-1-2021]
Opinion: Require the vaccine. It’s time to stop coddling the reckless.
Ruth Marcus, WaPo, via Naked Capitalism 8-2-2021]
“The C.D.C. Needs to Stop Confusing the Public”
Zeynep Tufecki [New York Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-4-2021]
GRAPH: Who’s vaccinated and who’s not
[The Big Picture 8-1-2021]
[Twitter, via DailyPoster 8-4-2021]
“Congress Is Slashing a $30 Billion Plan to Fight the Next Pandemic”
[The Atlantic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-3-21]
“Biden proposed $30 billion to address the [the country’s pandemic-preparedness budget], which advocates say could permanently mitigate the risks of future outbreaks. The investment would replenish medical stockpiles, proactively develop vaccines for major types of viruses, and ensure that the United States has a permanent production base of face masks and respirators. In effect, it would amount to an Apollo program–like push to guarantee that a global pandemic could never shut down the country again. Yet those funds have been slashed in the current negotiations over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package as part of a push to slim it down, according to a source familiar with the situation. (I agreed not to name this person because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the negotiations.) While the exact amount is still in flux, it is significantly less than requested.”
….Looming over this funding fight is a broader question: What reforms, if any, will the federal government make to its public-health agencies after their significant failures over the past 16 months? After 2,977 people were murdered on September 11, 2001, Congress started a war and revised the country’s approach to policing, surveillance, and national security within six weeks; it opened a new federal agency and commissioned a bipartisan fact-finding panel within 14 months. Although the wisdom of some of those decisions is debatable, COVID-19 has now killed more than 600,000 Americans. The federal government’s failures have been, in some ways, just as stark as 20 years ago: The CDC, for instance, did not know how many people were sick throughout the early months of the pandemic. Yet Congress has demonstrated little haste so far in determining what went wrong and how the country’s public-health institutions can prevent it from happening again.
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
Revealed: the true extent of America’s food monopolies, and who pays the price
[Guardian, via The Big Picture 8-1-2021]
A handful of powerful companies control the majority market share of almost 80% of dozens of grocery items bought regularly by ordinary Americans, new analysis reveals. A joint investigation by the Guardian and Food and Water Watch found that consumer choice is largely an illusion – despite supermarket shelves and fridges brimming with different brands.
What’s the true cost of shipping all your junk across the ocean?
[Grist, via Naked Capitalism 8-1-2021]
….a recent report [by] Two environmental groups, Pacific Environment and Stand.earth, worked with prominent maritime researchers to track goods imported by the 15 largest retail giants in the United States. They then quantified the greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants associated with those imports, usually ferried across the oceans on cargo ships running on dirty bunker fuel. In 2019, importing some 3.8 million shipping containers’ worth of cargo generated as much carbon dioxide emissions as three coal-fired power plants. These shipments also produced as much smog-forming nitrous oxide as 27.4 million cars and trucks do in a year, according to the report.
Climate and environmental crises
Beyond human endurance: How climate change is making parts of the world too hot and humid to survive
[Washington Post, via The Big Picture 8-2-2021]
Deadly heat waves have swept the globe and will continue to because of climate change. The trends are prompting doomsday questions: Will parts of the world soon become too hot to live in? How will we survive?
Bottled water is 3,500 times worse for the environment than tap water, say scientists
[Euronews, via Naked Capitalism 8-7-2021]
Creating new economic potential - science and technology
For The First Time, Researchers Just Watched How Plants Slurp Up Water
[sciencealert, August 7, 2021]
"To observe water uptake in living plants without damaging them, we have applied a sensitive, laser-based, optical microscopy technique to see water movement inside living roots non-invasively, which has never been done before," explained Webb.
By detecting how light photons scatter from a narrow laser source, Raman microspectroscopy provides real time, molecular level imaging, under natural conditions, without the need for molecular labeling.
“Electric vehicles: recycled batteries and the search for a circular economy” [Financial Times, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-2-2021]
“[T]he most glaring problem for electric vehicles [is that w]hile they are ‘zero emission’ when being driven, the mining, manufacturing and disposal process for batteries could become an environmental disaster for the industry as the technology goes mainstream… The metals used in batteries typically originate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia and Chile, dug out of open-pit mines or evaporated from desert ponds. But [former Tesla engineer JF] Straubel believes there is another “massive, untapped” source: the garages of the average American. He estimates there are about 1bn used batteries in US homes, sitting in old laptops and mobile phones — all containing valuable metals. The process of breaking down these batteries and repurposing them is known as ‘urban mining.’ To do this at scale is a gargantuan task: the amount of battery material in a high-end electric vehicle is roughly 10,000 times that of a smartphone, according to Gene Berdichevsky, chief executive of battery materials start-up Sila Nano. But, he adds, the amount of cobalt used in a car battery is about 30 times less than in a phone battery, per kilowatt hour. ‘So for every 300 smartphones you collect, you have enough cobalt for an EV battery.'”
In the US, Life Cycle Emissions For EVs Are Already 60-68% Lower Than Gasoline, Study Finds
[ars technica, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-5-2021]
“Today in the US market, a medium-sized battery EV already has 60–68 percent lower lifetime carbon emissions than a comparable car with an internal combustion engine. And the gap is only going to increase as we use more renewable electricity. That finding comes from a white paper (.pdf) published by Georg Bieker at the International Council on Clean Transportation. The comprehensive study compares the lifetime carbon emissions, both today and in 2030, of midsized vehicles in Europe, the US, China, and India, across a wide range of powertrain types, including gasoline, diesel, hybrid EVs (HEVs), plug-in hybrid EVs (PHEVs), battery EVs (BEVs), and fuel cell EVs (FCEVs). (The ICCT is the same organization that funded the research into VW Group’s diesel emissions.) The study takes into account the carbon emissions that result from the various fuels (fossil fuels, biofuels, electricity, hydrogen, and e-fuels), as well as the emissions that result from manufacturing and then recycling or disposing of vehicles and their various components. Bieker has also factored in real-world fuel or energy consumption—something that is especially important when it comes to PHEVs, according to the report. Finally, the study accounts for the fact that energy production should become less carbon-intensive over time, based on stated government objectives. According to the study, the life cycle emissions of a BEV driving around in Europe today are 66–69 percent lower than a comparable gasoline-powered car. In the US, that range is 60–68 percent less over its lifetime. In China and India, the magnitude is not as great, but even so, a BEV is still cleaner than a fossil-burner. China is at 37–45 percent fewer emissions for BEVs, and India shows 19–34 percent.”
Restoring balance to the economy
Building Digital Commons — Scott Ferguson interviews Cory Doctorow
[Money on the Left, via Mike Norman Economics 8-7-2021]
Cory Doctorow joins Money on the Left to discuss what Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) means for building digital commons. Award-winning science fiction writer, prolific blogger, and long-time digital activist, Doctorow explains how MMT has shaped his ongoing work in the realms of digital rights management and anti-monopoly politics. He walks us through his important critical genealogy of Intellectual Property law as well as his contribution to the urgent anti-monopoly accord called the “Access to Knowledge Treaty.” Next, we get a quick preview of two new science fiction books he is completing, both of which engage MMT as a central component of their plots. Finally, Doctorow indulges our curiosity about his aesthetic practice of posting sundry pop and other ephemeral imagery to social media….
My friend Steven Brust, who’s a Trotskyist fantasy writer, says that the way that you can tell if someone’s on the right or the left is you ask them what’s more important, human rights or property rights. And if they say property rights are a human right, they are on the right. That’s the line on which the right and the left cleave. It is the difference between a leftist and liberal. If property rights are there to accomplish some policy goal, but can be modified or eliminated in realms where they don’t accomplish that goal, then you’re a leftist.
Progressives Run the Table on Regulatory Posts
Robert Kuttner, August 6, 2021 [The American Prospect]
Information Age Dystopia
“Is the Cookie Web Tracker Dying?”
[The Markup, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-2-2021]
“Google, which brought the business model of tracking users for ad targeting to massive scale, has been slower to adopt similar changes. After initially pledging in 2020 to block third-party tracking for users of its Chrome browser by 2022, Google pushed the date for the change back to 2023. For now, however, cookies are still nearly ubiquitous. When The Markup scanned more than 80,000 popular websites using our web privacy inspection tool Blacklight, we found that 87 percent loaded cookies from third parties or from tracking network requests.” • Good round-up.
Behind the Mercenary Spyware Industry
[Slate, via The Big Picture 8-1-2021]
As soon as your phone is infected, the Pegasus operator can see whatever you see. They can see your encrypted chats. They can see the messages you send. They can see the pictures you take of your friends and yourself. They can read your notes to yourself, look at your web browsing. They can even activate the camera and microphone and listen in, from your pocket, to the room that you’re in. It’s incredibly invasive stuff.
How Unemployment Insurance Fraud Exploded During the Pandemic
[ProPublica, via The Big Picture 8-1-2021]
Bots filing bogus applications in bulk, teams of fraudsters in foreign countries making phony claims, online forums peddling how-to advice on identity theft: Inside the infrastructure of perhaps the largest fraud wave in history.
Institutionalists = Obstructionists
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 8-1-2021]
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 8-2-2021]
[Twitter, via The DailyPoster 8-4-2021]
Everywhere you look America’s housing crisis is getting worse
[Business Insider, via Naked Capitalism 8-4-2021]
John Blake [CNN, via Naked Capitalism 8-3-2021]
Evoking Jim Crow may cause some people to cringe because the comparison seems overblown. No White vigilantes are gunning down or lynching would-be Black voters. No White mobs are brazenly murdering Black elected officials or launching what's been described as the nation's only successful coup -- against a Southern city filled with Black leaders. All of this happened during that era.But there are two lessons today's Democratic leaders can learn from the mistakes their White counterparts made in the late 19th century:Economic appeals to White voters driven by racial resentment have limited value. And when you refuse to go all out to protect your most loyal voters, the results can be disastrous.These aren't abstract lessons for me. I am a Black voter in Georgia, the epicenter of the new voting rights struggle.I watched Black voters save Biden's presidency during his primary run last year. I glowed with pride when he picked Kamala Harris, my classmate at Howard University, to be his vice president. I watched Black voters flood voting precincts in a pandemic and honk their horns in jubilation after they delivered the Oval Office and control of Congress to the Democrats.What I am seeing now, though, is a rising sense of betrayal among Black voters. Many don't think Democratic leaders are pushing hard enough on voting rights. More are frustrated by Democratic leaders like Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who says he won't support gutting the filibuster and insists on Republican buy-in to support a new voting rights bill. (He did propose a compromise on voting rights legislation that won the support of voting rights activist Stacey Abrams.)
[The Intercept, via DailyPoster 8-8-2021]
“In November, after Biden’s election, and amid increased pressure to cancel student debt, the Swigs quietly circulated a memo among key Capitol Hill figures, making the dubious case that debt cancellation at the executive level is illegal. The argument in the memo gets much of its weight by virtue of the wealthy couple who produced it, as the Swigs are not just major funders of progressive nonprofits, but also have significantly bankrolled Pelosi and her House Democratic caucus.”
[Vanity Fair, via Avedon’s Sideshow 8-7-2021]
She got a $30.8 million golden parachute in a corporate merger. Now, they're being laid off and the medicines they produced are set to be manufactured overseas. Will anyone step up to save their jobs, and protect America's drug supply? On July 31, one of America's largest pharmaceutical-manufacturing plants is scheduled to shut its doors. Set on 22 acres in Morgantown, West Virginia, the plant, built in 1965 by the once-storied American generic-drug company Mylan Laboratories, has made 61 drug products, including a substantial portion of the world's supply of levothyroxine, a critical thyroid medicine. Its 1,431 highly trained workers—analytical chemists, industrial engineers, and senior janitors among them—are represented by the steelworkers union. All are slated to be laid off by month's end. The Biden administration has a stated goal of increasing domestic production of pharmaceuticals, and the Morgantown plant is one of a dwindling number of facilities on home soil that produce vital and affordable medicine for the U.S. market."
The Dark Side
The Big Money Behind the Big Lie
Jane Mayer [NewYorker, via Naked Capitalism 8-3-2021] ???
One of the movement’s leaders is the Heritage Foundation, the prominent conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. It has been working with the American Legislative Exchange Council (alec)—a corporate-funded nonprofit that generates model laws for state legislators—on ways to impose new voting restrictions. Among those deep in the fight is Leonard Leo, a chairman of the Federalist Society, the legal organization known for its decades-long campaign to fill the courts with conservative judges. In February, 2020, the Judicial Education Project, a group tied to Leo, quietly rebranded itself as the Honest Elections Project, which subsequently filed briefs at the Supreme Court, and in numerous states, opposing mail-in ballots and other reforms that have made it easier for people to vote.
Another newcomer to the cause is the Election Integrity Project California. And a group called FreedomWorks, which once concentrated on opposing government regulation, is now demanding expanded government regulation of voters, with a project called the National Election Protection Initiative.
These disparate nonprofits have one thing in common: they have all received funding from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Based in Milwaukee, the private, tax-exempt organization has become an extraordinary force in persuading mainstream Republicans to support radical challenges to election rules—a tactic once relegated to the far right. With an endowment of some eight hundred and fifty million dollars, the foundation funds a network of groups that have been stoking fear about election fraud, in some cases for years. Public records show that, since 2012, the foundation has spent some eighteen million dollars supporting eleven conservative groups involved in election issues.
Jane Mayer: ‘Dark Money’ Is Threatening The Elections Of 2020, 2024 [interview and useful summary of above post]
[NPR, via Naked Capitalism 8-7-2021]
What's being talked about now and experimented with in Arizona is the idea that the state legislatures themselves would pick the electors.… Now, this is a radical doctrine, but it's being promoted by lawyers on the right and nonprofit groups that are heavily funded on the right. And it is being truly experimented with in Arizona, where there was a piece of legislation that was a bill proposed to do exactly that — to allow the state legislature in Arizona to overturn a presidential election and decide itself where the electors should cast their ballots and for whom….
I went out to Arizona to take a look at this audit, and what I discovered was it's not taking place in a vacuum. And it's actually not just an Arizona thing. It's being funded by out-of-state interests, deep-pocketed people who are allies of Donald Trump — that's specifically the audit — and it's taking place against a backdrop of this spreading belief that voter fraud is rife in America and that elections can't be trusted. And that is being spread by national groups, some of them quite well-known and established in Republican circles. And so I kept sort of peeling back the onion to try to figure out, where is this coming from? And the picture began to clarify that actually there's a money stream and an awful lot of it is coming from one single huge foundation in Milwaukee, Wis., which is funding all of these other groups that are pushing the idea that voter fraud is a serious problem in America and that we can't trust our elections. And that one huge foundation is the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin….
And this is where it gets really radical. Among the directors of the Public Interest Legal Foundation is, for instance, a lawyer named John Eastman who was one of the speakers at Trump's rally on Jan. 6. And at that rally, he argued that people needed to challenge the election returns and stop the certification of the vote on Jan. 6. As we all know, that just preceded by a couple hours the crowd charging the capital, ransacking it and trying to stop the certification. So you can see the connections between a huge foundation on the right, the Bradley Foundation, which funds the Public Interest Legal Foundation, whose director spoke at the Jan. 6 rally and tried to overturn that election or at least stop it, halt it at that moment. And the money flows from one to the other, and the same characters are involved.
[Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball, via Naked Capitalism 8-7-2021]
— Democrats tried but failed to get a seat at the redistricting table in four large Southern states in the 2018 and 2020 cycles: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Texas.
— The consequences for redistricting are vitally important. It’s easy to imagine Republicans squeezing a half-dozen extra seats out of just these four states in 2022, and that may be just a floor on their potential gains.
— However, Republicans could also overreach, and court battles appear likely in all of these states.
The MyPillow Guy Really Could Destroy Democracy
[The Atlantic, via The Big Picture 8-1-2021]
In the time I spent with Mike Lindell, I came to learn that he is affable, devout, philanthropic—and a clear threat to the nation.
I’m a Parkland Shooting Survivor. QAnon Convinced My Dad It Was All a Hoax.
[Vice, via The Big Picture 8-1-2021]
He was part of the final graduating class of survivors of the 2018 shooting, and they all had just marked the third anniversary of the day 17 people were killed, nine of whom were Bill’s classmates.But Bill also had to deal with his father’s daily accusations that the shooting was a hoax and that the shooter, Bill, and all his classmates were paid pawns in a grand conspiracy orchestrated by some shadowy force. “I don’t know how to help someone that far gone.”
.
No comments:
Post a Comment