Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Federal Officials Trade Stock in Companies Their Agencies Oversee: Hidden records show thousands of senior executive branch employees owned shares of companies whose fates were directly affected by their employers’ actions, a Wall Street Journal investigation. (Wall Street Journal)
• How America turned against the First Amendment: Moderation laws. Book bans. Courts that keep getting played. America’s politicians are tired of the First Amendment getting in their way, and no one seems to care. (The Verge) see also Musk’s Twitter Roils With Hate Speech as Trolls Test New Limits: Hateful and racist rhetoric swelled on the network as some politicians rejoiced. ‘Free speech. Liberal tears.’ (Bloomberg)
• The Ferrari Fugitives: Josh Cartu and his brothers collected race cars, hung out with celebrities and bounced between luxury villas in private jets. But behind their playboy façades was a dark secret: they had thousands of jilted investors and an army of investigators on their tail. (Toronto Life)
• Why Are U.S. Transit Projects So Costly? This Group Is on the Case. The U.S. is one of the most expensive countries in the world for building transit, according to the Transit Costs Project. A research group at the NYU Marron Institute of Urban Management is working to understand why. (Governing)
• The Untold Story of ‘Russiagate’ and the Road to War in Ukraine: Russia’s meddling in Trump-era politics was more directly connected to the current war than previously understood. (New York Times Magazine)
• US Traffic Safety Is Getting Worse, While Other Countries Improve: The rising rate of road deaths in the US continues to defy global trends. Here’s what traffic planners in other nations could teach their American counterparts. (CityLab)
• ‘We’re not ready’: NY, NJ still building for extreme weather 10 years after Hurricane Sandy: A decade after Sandy, New York and New Jersey officials are still working on resiliency projects that total billions of dollars. (Politico) see also Hurricane Sandy Devastated Coney Island 10 Years Ago. So Why Has NYC Added Almost 2,000 Homes to the Area Since? Gleaming new high-rise towers, built to the latest standards, stand alongside older family homes, badly in need of retrofitting. Climate change puts both at risk — although on starkly different timetables. (The City)
• NASA Finds More Than 50 Super-Emitters of Methane: While mapping minerals in Earth’s deserts, the agency’s new detector on the ISS spotted massive contributors to climate change. (Smithsonian Magazine)
• The attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband is the culmination of longtime GOP hate-mongering: For years, Republicans made Nancy Pelosi out to be a public enemy. The attack on her home is the result. (Vox) see also ‘Eye-popping’ new survey on Americans’ acceptance of political violence should be a wake-up call to leaders. (Los Angeles Times)
• Commanders boss Dan Snyder claims ‘dirt’ on NFL owners, Goodell. “The NFL is a mafia,” Snyder told an associate. “All the owners hate each other.” “That’s not true,” one veteran owner says. “All the owners hate Dan.” (ESPN)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with financial historian Edward Chancellor. He is currently a columnist for Reuters Breakingviews and an occasional contributor to the Wall Street Journal and MoneyWeek. In 2008, he received the George Polk Award for financial reporting. Chancellor is the author of “Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation.” His new book “The Price of Time: The Real Story of Interest” is a nominee for FT’s 2022 Business Book of the Year.
How Russia Pays for War
Source: New York Times
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