Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Trump’s Year of Anarchy: The Unconstrained Presidency and the End of American Primacy. (Foreign Affairs)
• The Crypto CEO Who’s Become Enemy No. 1 on Wall Street: Coinbase chief Brian Armstrong is clashing with Jamie Dimon and other bank stewards over the future of finance. (Wall Street Journal)
• Injury to Buildings and Vegetables: The ability to impose pollution on others is another aspect of class rule. (N+1)
• US Has Investigated Claims That WhatsApp Chats Aren’t Private: US law enforcement has been investigating allegations by former Meta Platforms Inc. contractors that Meta personnel can access WhatsApp messages, despite the company’s statements that the chat service is private and encrypted, according to interviews and an agent’s report seen by Bloomberg News. (Bloomberg)
• Trapped in the hell of social comparison: A hypothesis about why Americans are unhappy with their economy. (Noahpinion)
• On the architecture of unreality: Bari Weiss is not a journalist. She is a propagandist with a journalist’s title. She has an agenda. She has interests. And they align with the interests of those who think keeping the current regime in charge of our national affairs is theirs. It is why she brings the reactionary fraud Niall Ferguson to CBS: to lend the appearance of intellectual heft to what is, in fact, a project of epistemological sabotage. (Notes from the Circus) see also The commenters won: We are ruled, as it turned out, not only by ghouls, fascists, sociopaths, salesmen, influencers, mediocrities, and abusers, but by something stranger and potentially worse: Gawker commenters. Which Trump administration official is a former Gawker commenter? (Read Max)
• The Height of Close-Combat Weaponry Is on This Woman’s Doorstep: In pursuit of illegal immigrants, federal agents are carrying the instruments of war, fine-tuned and perfected for killing at short range. (New York Times)
• The Sins on the River Road Cannot Be Erased: How did a tiny industrial hub in Louisiana find itself at the center of America’s culture war? For St. John the Baptist Parish, the history is much deeper—and the costs of one age are stacked on the costs of another. (The Ringer)
• Police Who Once Backed ICE’s Mission Are Losing Faith in Its Tactics: In Minnesota and places where agents are deployed en masse, law-enforcement leaders are challenging whether they are adhering to the stated mission. ICE says operations are lawful and targeted. (Wall Street Journal) see also Police and ICE Agents Are on a Collision Course: After another fatal ICE shooting in Minneapolis, the rift between local police and federal agents is becoming a rupture. (The Atlantic)
• Forgotten Star Dorothy Stratten Almost Lived the Hollywood Fairy Tale. It Ended as a Horror Story. Peter Bogdanovich, Bob Fosse, and Hugh Hefner all loved her, in their own ways—for better and worse. This reexamination of Stratten’s life, rape, and murder casts a new light on the angel who was a centerfold. (Vanity Fair)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Kate Burke, CEO of Allspring Global Investments a global asset manager with more than 600 billion dollars in assets under advisement. She is also a director on the firm’s board. Previously, she was at AllianceBernstein as COO/CFO.
Average 50-something American is worth $1.4 million; Average 20-something $127,730
Source: Empower
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