Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• When Private Equity Takes Over a Nursing Home: After an investment firm bought St. Joseph’s Home for the Aged, in Richmond, Virginia, the company reduced staff, removed amenities, and set the stage for a deadly outbreak of COVID-19. (New Yorker)
• How a Corporate Law Firm Led a Political Revolution: The untold story of Jones Day’s push to move the American government and courts to the right. (New York Times)
• Whistleblowing Is Broken: Like so much else, the act of informing on bad actors for good reasons has become tainted. (The Atlantic)
• Early Government Warning Failed to Avert Energy Crisis for British Industry: Ministers told of risks even before Russia’s war in Ukraine ‘Project Shine’ found chemical and fertilizer makers exposed. (Bloomberg)
• Inside the secret world of trading nudes: Not only were these intimate images being shared for an audience of thousands, but men – lurking behind the mask of anonymity – were teaming up to expose the real-life identities of these women, a practice known as doxing. Addresses, phone numbers and social media handles were being swapped online – the women then being targeted with lurid sexual comments, threats and blackmail. (BBC) but see A Dad Took Photos of His Naked Toddler for the Doctor. Google Flagged Him as a Criminal. Google has an automated tool to detect abusive images of children. But the system can get it wrong, and the consequences are serious. (New York Times)
• How a Secretive Billionaire Handed His Fortune to the Architect of the Right-Wing Takeover of the Courts: In the largest known political advocacy donation in U.S. history, industrialist Barre Seid funded a new group run by Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo, who guided Trump’s Supreme Court picks and helped end federal abortion rights. (Money is speech? One-person one vote?) (ProPublica)
• Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner: $750,000. Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, say an appraisal company undervalued their home based on their race. The couple has filed a lawsuit in Maryland. (New York Times)
• How Andrew Tate built an army of lonely, angry men: Andrew Tate’s brand of hyper-toxic masculinity is a cynical attempt to game TikTok – and it’s working. The real question is why so many young men are taken in by it. (GQ)
• Former Fox News politics editor says network stoked ‘paranoia and hatred’: Chris Stirewalter, who was forced out after Donald Trump’s electoral defeat, says Fox failed its viewers with 2020 election coverage (The Guardian) see also A Reliable Source of Concern: Why Brian Stelter’s axing is a very bad omen for CNN. (Slate)
• Donald Trump and the Sweepstakes Scammers In the eighties, an eclectic group of con artists dominated the market for promotional games, and rigged them—till it all came crashing down. (New Yorker)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Eric Balchunas, Senior ETF Analyst for Bloomberg, where he is co-creator of the Bloomberg podcast Trillions, and co-host of Bloomberg TV’s ETF IQ. He has authored several books, most recently “The Bogle Effect: How John Bogle and Vanguard Turned Wall Street Inside Out and Saved Investors Trillions.”
Under-policed and over-imprisoned
Source: Marginal Revolution
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