Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Inside the Delirious Rise of ‘Superfake’ Handbags: Can you tell the difference between a $10,000 Chanel bag and a $200 knockoff? Almost nobody can, and it’s turning luxury fashion upside down. (New York Times)
• ‘We’re All Worse Off’ Britain is now paying the price for its decision to leave the European Union. (The Atlantic)
• Straw Ban Arguments: How the overhyped environmental dangers of single-use plastic straws were turned into a great moral crusade by a 9-year-old. (Tablet)
• US debt ceiling crisis can be explained in three words: Marjorie Taylor Greene OK, it’s not 100% fair to blame America hurling toward an economic crisis solely on the Georgia congresswoman, but she and her fellow MAGA lawmakers are certainly at the root of the US’s dilemma. (USA Today)
• 10-year-olds among hundreds of children found working at McDonald’s restaurants: Two 10-year-olds were discovered working unpaid and until as late as 2 a.m. at one McDonald’s restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky, operated by Bauer Food LLC, the Labor Department said in a news release. (NBC News) see also Unhappy meals: One of the franchises, Bauer Food LLC, also illegally employed two 10-year-olds. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, minors under the age of 14 are generally not permitted to work. Despite this, the two children did a variety of tasks like prepping food, cleaning the store, and taking drive-thru orders — working as late as 2 AM. According to the Labor Department, one of the 10-year-olds also operated a deep fryer, which is prohibited for workers below the age of 16. Neither of the 10-year-olds were even paid for their work, the Labor Department determined. (Popular Information)
• The Fugitive Princesses of Dubai As the emirate’s ruler espoused gender equality, four royal women staked their lives on escaping his control. (New Yorker)
• Dumbing Down Red-State Universities Will Provoke a Brain Drain: Universities in these states are on the glide path to uselessness, especially since the assault on higher education is unfolding in the same states that are at war with women’s reproductive health and voting rights. Already we have seen faculty candidates, college-age students and medical professionals checking these states off their lists. This trend is almost certain to get worse before it gets better as America devolves into two countries: one that nurtures brainpower, and one that watches proudly as it drains away. (Los Angeles Times) see also The doctors leaving anti-abortion states: ‘I couldn’t do my job at all’ Four months after Roe v Wade was overturned, some providers have left states restricting abortions or changed careers. (The Guardian)
• The pro-Trump pastors embracing ‘overt white Christian nationalism’ Group Pastors for Trump is drawing sharp rebukes from mainstream Christian leaders for being extremist, distorting religious teachings and endangering American democracy. (The Guardian)
• Clarence Thomas Had a Child in Private School. Harlan Crow Paid the Tuition. Crow paid for private school for a relative Thomas said he was raising “as a son.” “This is way outside the norm,” said a former White House ethics lawyer. (ProPublica) see also Clarence Thomas’s ethics are not the Supreme Court’s only problem. “The ethical conduct of the Supreme Court has been under growing scrutiny,” Emmarie Huetteman wrote. “Questions have been raised over Justice Clarence Thomas’s appearances before Republican-backed groups and his acceptance of favors from a contributor in Texas, Harlan Crow, as well as over his wife, Virginia Thomas, and her job as a conservative advocate.” Huetteman hasn’t worked for the NYT since 2017. So how’d she capture the current gestalt so accurately? Because it hasn’t changed since 2011, when she wrote the passage above. (Washington Post)
• The deputy and the disappeared: A Latino man and a Black man went missing three months apart in Florida. Both vanished after getting in a patrol car driven by the same White deputy sheriff. (CNN)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Julian Salisbury, Chief Investment Officer of Goldman Sachs Asset & Wealth Management, with $737 billion in assets under management. He is a member of the Management Committee and Co-Chair of the Asset Management Investment Committees, (private equity, infrastructure, growth equity, credit, and real estate).
FDIC-reported bank failures (no IBs and non-U.S. banks).
Source: Observable
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