Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• A chilling Washington Post account of the January 6th insurrection — Before, During and After — it was much worse than we realized, and came closer to succeeding than anyone imagined:
–Red Flags: Warnings of violence precipitated Capitol riot (WaPo)
–Bloodshed: Trump stands back as rioters breach Capitol (WaPo)
–Contagion: Disinformation take hold across the U.S. (WaPo)• How Britain Turned Into the World’s Most Self-Destructive Society: When a Society Backs a Government That’s Literally Sh*tting On It, Something’s Gone Terribly, Bafflingly Wrong (Eudaimonia)
• We chartered a boat with a logistics expert to look at port congestion up close and saw how American greed is leading to shortages and empty shelves. I blame 150 years of supply chain optimization. It’s a sign of their success, that’s causing the congestion. (Yahoo News)
• How American leaders failed to help workers survive the ‘China Shock’ It was not a surprise to economists that China, with its endless supply of cheap labor, killed American manufacturing jobs. But most economists, like most American leaders, had believed that workers would adapt. Standard economic theory said that the non-college-educated workers who lost their jobs would move or retrain and find work in other places or sectors. But they didn’t. Most stayed put and were never fully employed again. (NPR)
• The Butcher of Havana: How a drifter from Milwaukee became the chief executioner of the Cuban Revolution—and a test case for U.S. civil rights. (The Atavist)
• The Demand for Money Behind Many Police Traffic Stops: Busted taillights, missing plates, tinted windows: Across the U.S., ticket revenue funds towns — and the police responsible for finding violations. (New York Times) see also Why Many Police Traffic Stops Turn Deadly: Officers, trained to presume danger, have reacted with outsize aggression. For hundreds of unarmed drivers, the consequences have been fatal. (New York Times)
• Here’s Why Rapid COVID Tests Are So Expensive and Hard to Find Months-long silences. Mysterious rejections. Here’s what’s behind the shortages of a critical tool for ending the pandemic. (ProPublica)
• Inside the World’s Most Blatant Covid-19 Coverup: Secret Burials, a Dead President Tanzania denied the existence of the pandemic for months, even as thousands likely died. The country is a clue to its hidden global toll. (Wall Street Journal)
• 9 cities that could be underwater by 2030 With sea levels rising worldwide, several major metropolises are at risk of being submerged (Time Out)
• Babies Are Dying of Syphilis. It’s 100% Preventable.The United States’ inability to curb a treatable sexually transmitted disease shows the failures of a cash-strapped public health system. Increasingly, newborns are paying the price. (ProPublica)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Tom Gayner, Markel Corporation’s co-president and chief investment officer of the financial-holding company He has been dubbed the “next Warren Buffett.” From 2000 to 2015 Gayner returned an average of 11.3% annually, while the S&P 500 index of big U.S. stocks returned 4.2%, (including dividends).
Spot the Outlier in Early Childcare Spending
Source: New York Times
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