Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• How Putin became the victim of his own lies Vladimir Putin and the dangers of yes-men. (Vox) see also The Kremlin and QAnon Are Spinning the Same Dangerous Lies Americans have amplified the Kremlin’s ‘biolab’ conspiracy theory in the internet’s echo chambers. (Bloomberg)
• The death spiral of an American family: After generations of stability, a son reckons with an inheritance of debt, desperation and a fall from the middle class (Washington Post)
• Criminal hackers are preying on the world’s sympathies for Ukraine Experts predict that scammers will only intensify their efforts to profit from the Ukraine crisis as it continues. (Grid)
• The DSA Comes for Immigrant Landlords of Color: New York City’s cosplay Castros sentence a new generation of owners and tenants to socialist squalor (Tablet)
• Afghanistan’s last finance minister, now a D.C. Uber driver, ponders what went wrong The question of what happened and who was at fault haunted Payenda. He blamed his fellow Afghans. “We didn’t have the collective will to reform, to be serious,” he said. He blamed the Americans for handing the country to the Taliban and betraying the enduring values that supposedly had animated their fight. He blamed himself. (Washington Post)
• Sandy Hook and the Troubling Psychology of Conspiracy Theories: Deniers of the school shooting gathered in a private Facebook group. Their posts lend a window into how and why cruel rumors take off. (Wired) see also Facebook Has a Child Predation Problem: The platform can be quicker at recommending groups built around child predation than it is to remove them. (Wired)
• How Russia and Right-Wing Americans Converged on War in Ukraine Some conservatives have echoed the Kremlin’s misleading claims about the war and vice versa, giving each other’s assertions a sheen of credibility. (New York Times)
• Lights Out: Profitable Utility Company Shut Off Electricity to Homes Hundreds of Thousands of Times: Three months into the pandemic, Michigan’s largest power company, DTE Energy, began ramping up power shut-offs for customers behind on their bills. A regulatory system built to prioritize investors, not affordability, let it happen. (ProPublica)
• Nearly half the country requires no permit to carry a concealed weapon — and it’s a growing trend The push to end restrictions on concealed carry is reminiscent of one made by lobbyists and gun rights activists 30 years ago with “shall issue” permitting. States adopted laws that held authorizing agencies shall issue concealed-carry permits to anyone who meets the basic requirements set by the state, such as completing a training course or passing a background check — a shift that rapidly expanded who could carry a concealed weapon. (Washington Post)
• How White Victimhood Fuels Republican Politics. Public opinion research shows that white Americans — and especially Republicans — see whites as victims of discrimination more than Hispanic or Black Americans. Only 17% of Republicans and Republican-leaning Americans said there is “a lot” of discrimination against Black people in today’s society. That number rose to 26% when Republicans were asked whether they believed white people faced “a lot” of discrimination. (FiveThirtyEight)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Samara Cohen, BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer for ETFs & Index Investments. BlackRock manages over $10 trillion in assets, and Cohen’s Index / ETF group is responsible for $6 trillion of it.
Nearly half the country requires no permit to carry a concealed weapon — and it’s a growing trend
Source: Washington Post
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