Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption, and policy failures:
• Behind the Florida Condo Collapse: Rampant Corner-Cutting Inadequate waterproofing, thin columns and faulty concrete emerge as leading possibilities in Champlain Towers South tragedy (Wall Street Journal)
• Life After White-Collar Crime: Every week, fallen executives come together, seeking sympathy and a second act. (New Yorker)
• Hospitals and Insurers Didn’t Want You to See These Prices. Here’s Why. This year, the federal government ordered hospitals to begin publishing a prized secret: a complete list of the prices they negotiate with private insurers. The insurers’ trade association had called the rule unconstitutional and said it would “undermine competitive negotiations.” Four hospital associations jointly sued the government to block it, and appealed when they lost. (New York Times)
• Big Box Stores’ Other Shoe Drops Lowe’s is a parasite that is killing its host.. (Medium) see also Target Was Unusually Cozy With the Police. Now It’s Trying to Reconcile With Black America For years, America’s most upbeat retailer funded surveillance to make inner cities safe—for some. Now it’s trying to convince people of color that it’s changed. (Businessweek)
• How equality slipped away For 97 per cent of human history, all people had about the same power and access to goods. How did inequality ratchet up? (Aeon)
• Armed Picnics and Snipers at Family Dollar: Life in a town with a government-approved militia (Mother Jones)
• How journalism saved ‘Jeopardy!’ from an unworthy host after an utter failure of corporate vetting Claire McNear of the Ringer, a reporter and author, diligently did what Sony, the show’s parent company, failed to do. McNear vetted Richards with material that was out there in plain sight, finding many instances of sexist and offensive remarks he had made on a podcast, aptly titled “The Randumb Show,” including calling his co-host a “booth slut” and using crude stereotypes about Jews, Asians and poor people. (Washington Post)
• Nursing Homes Keep Losing Workers Employment has continued to fall as job losses in other sectors reverse; low wages, burnout and fear of Covid-19 keep staff away (Wall Street Journal)
• Big business pledged nearly $50 billion for racial justice after George Floyd’s death. Where did the money go? Now, more than a year after America’s leading businesses assured employees and consumers they would rise to the moment, a Washington Post analysis of unprecedented corporate commitments toward racial justice causes reveals the limits of their power to remedy structural problems. (Washington Post) see also ‘Pain compliance’: Video shows trooper pummeling Black man Graphic body camera video kept secret for more than two years shows a Louisiana State Police trooper pummeling a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight — an attack the trooper defended as “pain compliance.” (AP)
• The Mississippi clinic at the center of the fight to end abortion in America The state’s last abortion clinic, known as the ‘Pink House,’ is at the heart of a Supreme Court case that could severely restrict abortion access for millions of largely poor women. (Washington Post)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Joan Solotar, Blackstone’s Global Head of Private Wealth Solutions. PWS manages over 100 billion dollars of the private equity giant’s $684 billion in assets. She has been named to Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance list.
Those on ideological right favor fewer COVID-19 restrictions in most advanced economies, but the US is an extreme outlier
Source: Pew Research Center
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