Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Rudy Then and Rudy Now: None of his doofus mishaps endear him to his detractors. His toxicity levels are too high. When Giuliani was revealed as a mystery contestant on Fox’s The Masked Singer, one of the judges, Ken Jeong (Knocked Up, the Hangover movies), walked off the set in disgust. A rundown wind-up doll, Giuliani seems oblivious to the slapping waves of mocking laughter or outright ire that he provokes, unchastened, undaunted, and is never at a loss for half-assed excuses or conspiracy-mongering. Today he is reportedly broke, without allies, suspended from practising law in New York and Washington, on the verge of indictment for election tampering, looking ever more vagabond. How did such a snub-nosed bullet of a phenomenon become such a miasmic mess? (London Review of Books)
• American Dream For Rent: Investors elbow out individual home buyers Metro Atlanta is ground zero for corporate purchases, locking families into renting. (Atlanta Journal Constitution)
• Minerals are crucial for electric cars and wind turbines. Some worry whether we have enough. Minerals are crucial for electric cars, wind turbines, and solar panels. Some worry whether the future supply can meet the rising demand. (Washington Post)
• Data from New Jersey is a warning sign for young sports bettors: A small group of bettors seem to be most at risk. About 5% of all sports bettors placed nearly half of all bets and spent nearly 70% of the money. That means the people losing the most money are the most essential to operator profits. (The Conversation)
• Ford Bought a Newspaper at the Height of His Career. It’s a Warning for Musk. The Tesla founder’s ownership of Twitter could pose risks for him, just as Ford’s ownership of a newspaper created controversy. (Barron’s)
• How the Wealthy Save Billions in Taxes by Skirting a Century-Old Law: Congress outlawed tax deductions on “wash sales” in 1921, but Goldman Sachs and others have helped billionaires like Steve Ballmer see huge tax savings by selling stocks for a loss and then replacing them with nearly identical investments. (ProPublica)
• In America, you have to opt out of religion in public life. That’s backward. That’s because, despite the promise of our Constitution, we don’t really live in a secular nation. In a secular nation, nonreligious recovery would be the default option, and a citizen who felt the need to seek God’s help would have the right to ask for AA instead. (Washington Post)
• The People Onscreen Are Fake. The Disinformation Is Real. “This is the first time we’ve seen this in the wild,” said Jack Stubbs, the vice president of intelligence at Graphika, a research firm that studies disinformation. Graphika discovered the pro-China campaign, which appeared intended to promote the interests of the Chinese Communist Party and undercut the United States for English-speaking viewers. (New York Times)
• Covidiocy Marches On: Revisionism and recriminations abound as skepticism of “establishment” science becomes a tribal identity marker on the right. (The Bulwark)
• Tyre Nichols wasn’t murdered because of “affirmative action”: Instead of defending an indefensible murder, right-wing pundits have latched on to a narrative that’s somehow even more appalling (The Watch)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Rick Rieder, Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income at BlackRock, Head of the Global Allocation Investment Team, and Senior Managing Director. Rieder helps to manage $2.5 trillion in fixed-income assets as a member of BlackRock’s Global Operating Committee and is Chairman of the firm-wide BlackRock Investment Council.
Study: Steve Bannon’s “War Room” Podcast Is Top Misinformation Spreader with more falsehoods than other political talk show.
Source: New York Times
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