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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 30, 2023 [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-07-31
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – July 30, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
A rare opportunity to be heard
Antitrust Guidelines and Overthrowing a Corrupt Priesthood
Matt Stoller [BIG, via Naked Capitalism 7-23-2023]
Today’s issue is about an obscure but important document on corporate power released this week known as merger guidelines. It is in many ways the overthrow of the corrupt antitrust priesthood…. this particular issue of BIG is important. There aren’t a lot of real actions people can take to influence government, but this one is real, and will make a meaningful difference in whether we truly address corporate power…. Over the past four days, I’ve been watching the business press go crazy about an obscure document that the antitrust agencies put out, known as ‘merger guidelines.’ And like the Catholic Church of the 1500s, or really members of any authoritarian social hierarchy, the antitrust priesthood is very upset. For instance, Larry Summers, the avatar of Democratic Party economic policymaking under both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, is in a rage, asserting these represent a “war on business.” Biglaw firms are sending out alerts to clients, saying “investors, boards and C-suites should anticipate significant delays and expenses associated with a far broader range of proposed transactions.” And the House Republicans are even trying to defund the very ability of the government to publish this document in their government funding bills. Why does this document create such anger? The answer is that it is an attempt to return antitrust back to the rule of law, and away from the corporate revolution of the 1980s…. Nearly every major dangerous social trend today, from wage inequality to regional collapse to social despair to the inability to efficiently shift energy sources, is a result of monopolization, and mergers are the primary mechanism through which firms monopolize. In 1890, 1913, 1950, and 1975, Congress passed various laws to deal with it. The current key law on mergers today is called the Clayton Act, and it is still on the books. Unfortunately, because of the Reagan administration, and the ideological acceptance by the Democrats of what Reagan wrought, under-enforcement has been so poor that, well, Ticketmaster…. Now, here’s where you come in. Two days ago, I asked a question to Antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter at a Federalist Society event about the role of public comments in this process, and he said that hearing from the public is incredibly important in helping the agencies understand how markets actually work. Thousands of people chimed in a year and a half ago, including doctors, writers, truck drivers, nurses, and software programmers. Now it’s time to do it again. These guidelines are in draft form, they will be finalized soon. There are 60 days to give our feedback. The government has set up a site on Regulations.gov where you can tell them about your experience with mergers, or offer thoughts on antitrust law, mergers, big business, or unfair methods of business. It looks like this, click on the comment button in the red circle. So that’s how you can help. Tell the government about your experience with mergers through this site. There are already over one hundred comments, and you can browse and read them.
Oligarchy — not a republic if you can’t keep it
The Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges
Tyler Cowen, via Naked Capitalism 7-25-2023]
Affirmative Action for rich kids: It’s more than just legacy admissions
[NPR, via The Big Picture 7-27-2023]
Chetty and his colleagues provide compelling evidence that fancy schools are promoting a kind of neo-aristocracy, with admission programs that help to perpetuate a family’s class privilege from one generation to the next
Climate and environmental crises
Warning of a forthcoming collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation
[Nature, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-25-2023]
“The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region. In recent years weakening in circulation has been reported, but assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on the Climate Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) model simulations suggest that a full collapse is unlikely within the 21st century. Tipping to an undesired state in the climate is, however, a growing concern with increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Predictions based on observations rely on detecting early-warning signals, primarily an increase in variance (loss of resilience) and increased autocorrelation (critical slowing down), which have recently been reported for the AMOC. Here we provide statistical significance and data-driven estimators for the time of tipping. We estimate a collapse of the AMOC to occur around mid-century under the current scenario of future emissions.”
‘
Project 2025’: plan to dismantle US climate policy for next Republican president
[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 7-29-2023]
COVID
Anxiety And Depression Are Associated With Limbic Atrophy And Severe Disruption Of Brain Functional Connectivity After Mild COVID-19 Infection (S21.007)
[Neurology, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-25-2023]
N = 254. From the Conclusion: “These findings indicate structural and functional alterations may occur even after mild infection. The combination of anxiety and depression is associated with atrophy of the limbic system and a severe pattern of abnormal cerebral functional connectivity. The magnitude of these changes suggests an association with cognitive dysfunction. Further analyses are necessary to yield specific treatment targets to prevent persistent deficits and improve quality of life.”
Kashyap Patel, MD, Sees Link Between COVID-19 and Cancer Progression, Calls for More Biomarker Testing
[American Journal of Managed Care, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-25-2023]
“Since March 2020, the longtime community oncologist has seen multiple patients in his Rock Hill, South Carolina, based-clinic with cholangiocarcinoma, and these patients are developing the rare cancer 20 to 30 years earlier than the typical age at presentation, which is usually 65 years or older.1 In the past year alone, physicians in Patel’s practice saw 7 patients with this cancer, and 3 have died. It is not just a single cancer type, either. Patel and his colleagues, both in the United States and those he knows overseas, have seen patients with rapidly progressing cancers of several types, such as breast cancer and renal cell carcinoma. During an interview with Evidence-Based Oncology™(EBO), Patel said several did not even have time to receive treatment and died within weeks of diagnosis…. With COVID-19 added to the mix, Patel now fears a ‘perfect storm’ of factors will trigger inflammatory responses in some patients, causing cancer to arrive years earlier than normal and making it deadlier once it is diagnosed. ‘If you go back and look at the post–COVID[-19] recovery phase—we are coming out of almost like a hibernation—a lot of people don’t know how to deal with the stress,’ Patel said.” Denial helps. More: “‘Combined with the obesity pandemic, people didn’t exercise a lot with the fear of going out in the pandemic, and the alcohol intake has increased. All of this descends down on inflammation, and I think it’s creating a perfect storm between [these] risk factors, and we need to learn how to deal with that.'”
I keep trying to tell y’all that there are many hidden layers to creating the ILLUSION that our leaders “moved on” from Covid, in order to convince people it’s over
Stephanie Tait [Thread Reader, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-25-2023]
“I keep trying to tell y’all that there are many hidden layers to creating the ILLUSION that our leaders “moved on” from Covid, in order to convince people it’s over. They still protect themselves, they just hide it so YOU won’t know you need to as well…. So in the end, the Biden admin didn’t LOOK like they were pulling the same ‘scamdemic’ playbook as Trump, but in reality they had the SAME goals but were just FAR smarter about how to implement them. Remember ‘no more tests, no more cases?’ Look around. 👀 They told you Covid was over, and systematically pushed folks to take more risks & drop all precautions, all while showing you Biden’s unmasked face doing all the things to sell just how safe it is now. If y’all actually understood the reality of what Biden’s admin has done, you’d be rioting in the damn streets. And he CERTAINLY wouldn’t be the candidate for ‘24. He’d be too untenable for them to even THINK about running (let alone without a primary.) It literally keeps me up at night. And people just clearly have NO clue, walking around like everything’s fine. Dystopian as hell. Phew. ”
Enhanced Ventilation and Cleaner Air in Buildings (webcast)
[National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-27-2023]
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-27-2023]
x Workers were only satisfied with their air quality when CO2 < 600 ppm. Sobering. pic.twitter.com/nafJ88UBBw — Prof. Jose-Luis Jimenez (@jljcolorado) July 27, 2023
War
[Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 7-24-2023]
x Just to be clear, Stanford professor Fukuyama endorses this article's view that Azov is "virtuous" due to their "masculinity" and "virility" as opposed to “emasculated” “deracinated Westerners” & “self-neutered progressive men” who are queasy with the neo-Nazi group. pic.twitter.com/HkTBNNFGuf — Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) July 23, 2023
Uber Russia-hawk Victoria Nuland rises to acting deputy secretary of state
[Responsible Statecraft, via Naked Capitalism 7-26-2023]
The United States Refuses to Play by the World’s Rules
Rebecca Gordon [TomDispatch, via Naked Capitalism 7-26-2023]
Global power shift
Huawei to restart 5G mobile chip output as early as this year
[Nikkei, via Naked Capitalism 7-29-2023]
..If Huawei succeeds in getting its mobile chips back into production, it would mark a major win for China. Beijing has spent years and millions of dollars attempting to develop a complete domestic chip industry to counter Washington's clampdown on Huawei and other Chinese tech companies, which includes sweeping export controls introduced last October. In a further blow to China's chip ambitions, Japan and the Netherlands recently joined the U.S. in introducing export restrictions on advanced semiconductor equipment. To make Huawei's chips, SMIC will use 7-nanometer process technology, the most advanced available in China. This is still about two generations behind chips made for global leaders, however, with Apple's iPhone mobile processor produced by Taiwan Semiconduct…. Huawei was once the world's second-biggest smartphone maker, trailing only Samsung in shipments. Last year, however, it had a global market share of only about 2%, mostly in China, Canalys data showed, compared to its peak of 17.6% in 2019.
Why America Is Losing the Tech War with China
[National Interest, via Naked Capitalism 7-26-2023]
Vietnam to up annual raw rare earths output to 2m tonnes by 2030
[Nikkei, via Naked Capitalism 7-26-2023]
The carnage of mainstream neoliberal economics
MAGA-fied GOP Wants Little to Do With the Chamber of Commerce
[Businessweek, via The Big Picture 7-25-2023]
The business lobby finds the policy interests of corporate America are less important to an increasingly populist Republican Party... US Chamber of Commerce was championing a deal between the Biden administration and House Republican leaders to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a government shutdown. So the nation’s largest business lobby went into overdrive, huddling with 150 members of Congress and flying state and local chamber officials to Washington to bolster its case with lawmakers. One of the most urgent items this year for thewas championing a deal between the Biden administration and House Republican leaders to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a government shutdown. So the nation’s largest business lobby went into overdrive, huddling with 150 members of Congress and flying state and local chamber officials to Washington to bolster its case with lawmakers. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minnesota) wishes the chamber hadn’t bothered. It was his job in early June to round up support for a debt-ceiling bill negotiated by GOP leaders, and he says the chamber’s involvement made this more difficult. “That probably cost us numerous votes,” he says. “It should have had 218 Republicans voting for it. Instead we got 149. All the chamber did by trying to weigh in was convince them that it was a bad idea. So, yeah, they had influence. Unfortunately it wasn’t the influence they think they had.”
NC’s reckless school voucher program is about to get a lot of money Justin Parmenter, July 25, 2023 [Charlotte Observer, via North Carolina Education Roundtable] $4.6 million in taxpayer funds that year. School year 2022-23 saw nearly $134 million distributed, the vast majority to private schools. The new legislation would take that figure north of a half a billion dollars a year by school year 2032-33. Opportunity Scholarship was first implemented in school year 2014-15 and doled out a merethat year. School year 2022-23 saw nearly $134 million distributed, the vast majority to private schools. The new legislation would take that figure north of a half a billion dollars a year by school year 2032-33. You’d think the self-styled party of fiscal responsibility would want to ensure that taxpayers are getting a good return on an investment of more than a half a billion dollars a year. You’d be wrong. least accountable voucher system in North Carolina. Not only do voucher-accepting schools have no requirements for teacher licenses, accreditation or standard curriculum, but these schools have no requirement to participate in the state’s end of year testing program. That means we have no way of knowing whether any student who has left a traditional public school for a voucher school is getting better academic outcomes or not. Republican legislators have created one of the country’sin North Carolina. Not only do voucher-accepting schools have no requirements for teacher licenses, accreditation or standard curriculum, but these schools have no requirement to participate in the state’s end of year testing program. That means we have no way of knowing whether any student who has left a traditional public school for a voucher school is getting better academic outcomes or not. Republicans’ anything-goes approach to voucher management means abundant opportunities for fraud by unscrupulous, profit-driven actors, and the school privatization space is filled with them. Small-town GOP officials are torn over Biden’s clean energy cash [Washington Post, via The Big Picture 7-29-2023] This emphasis on rural areas puts local GOP officials in the position of overseeing massive amounts of development funded by Biden’s law. Of the approximately $70 billion in new clean energy investment dollars announced since the climate law passed, roughly $51 billion — or 70 percent — is in counties won by Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, according to Jack Conness, a policy analyst at Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, a nonpartisan think tank.
A Major Polling Company Is Throwing Its Weight Behind Huge Conspiracy Theories [Huffpost, via The Big Picture 7-23-2023] Rasmussen Reports is polling — and pushing — election denialism and COVID-19 vaccine skepticism. Can they still be the Walmart of pollsters? [Twitter, via Naked Capitalism 7-29-2023] . x In a 2004 interview with@Harper, John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator, admitted that the Nixon Administration invented the war on drugs in order to imprison Black-Americans and hippies, two groups he felt threatened by. Ehrlichman in his own words: pic.twitter.com/BcpEsV3Y5B — The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) July 28, 2023 . Conservatives Have a New Master Theory of American Politics Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine]. “Earlier this year, I was introduced to a Republican at a small gathering. I asked him what he made of the new theory sweeping the right, which held that radical leftists had conducted a ‘long march through the institutions,’ seizing control of American culture, education, and business, and thus forcing Republicans to use government to dislodge their power. This theory has largely been associated with the new, Trumpier factions of the right that have risen up as alternatives to traditional conservatism. Since the man I met was exactly the sort of Republican the Trumpists are plotting to displace from power — (Jewish coastal elitist, donor, mortified by Donald Trump, vocally pro–gay marriage yet intrigued by Ron DeSantis, etc.) — I assumed he would express either ignorance of the long-march theory or else outright opposition. Instead, to my surprise, the only portion of my account he questioned was the word ‘theory.’ To his mind, the long march and its grim implications for the party’s strategy were simply an obvious truism.”
The (anti)Federalist Society Infestation of the Courts
Alito says Congress has ‘no authority’ to regulate Supreme Court
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 7-29-2023]
Leonard Leo’s Slippery Trick for Dodging the Scrutiny of Congress
Matt Ford, July 27, 2023
Leonard Leo, the éminence grise of the conservative legal movement, said on Tuesday that he won’t cooperate with the Senate Judiciary Committee’s ethics investigation into some members of the Supreme Court. In a seven-page letter sent by his lawyers, he claimed the committee’s attempt to learn more about his interactions with some of the court’s conservative members “infringes two provisions of the Bill of Rights.”
Alabama defies Supreme Court order for additional majority-Black district
[The Week, via Naked Capitalism 7-25-2023]
Republicans think it's okay to ignore Supreme Court rulings they don't like
Dartagnan, July 28, 2023 [DailyKos]
Justice Department sues Texas over floating barrier in Rio Grande River
[The Hill, via Naked Capitalism 7-25-2023]
Mexico requests reopening of lawsuit against US gun manufacturers
[Mexico News Daily, via Naked Capitalism 7-27-2023]
How Harlan Crow Slashed his Tax Bill by Taking Clarence Thomas on Superyacht Cruises
[ProPublica, via The Big Picture 7-23-2023]
In lavishing gifts on the Supreme Court justice, the billionaire GOP donor may have violated tax laws, according to tax experts.
[CNN, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-26-2023]
“Speaker Kevin McCarthy in recent weeks has heard similar advice from both a senior House Republican and an influential conservative lawyer: prioritize the impeachment of President Joe Biden over a member of his Cabinet. Part of the thinking, according to multiple sources familiar with the internal discussions, is that if House Republicans are going to expend precious resources on the politically tricky task of an impeachment, they might as well go after their highest target as opposed to the attorney general or secretary of homeland security… Speaking to CNN on Tuesday, McCarthy signaled that Republicans have yet to verify the most salacious allegations against Biden, namely that as vice president he engaged in a bribery scheme with a foreign national in order to benefit his son Hunter Biden’s career, an allegation the White House furiously denies. But he said that launching an impeachment inquiry would unleash the full power of the House to turn over critical information, mirroring an argument advanced by House Democrats when they impeached then-President Donald Trump in 2019. ‘How do you get to the bottom of the truth? The only way Congress can do that is go to an impeachment inquiry,’ McCarthy said Tuesday, stopping short of formally moving to open such a probe…. As another senior GOP source put it: “When you’re going deer hunting, you don’t shoot geese in the sky.'”
Biden’s Relentless Lawfare Against Trump Could Backfire
[Tipp Insights, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 7-25-2023]
[END]
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