Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• The first rule in Trump’s Washington: Don’t write anything down: A new culture of secrecy in government is taking root — among career staffers and new political appointees alike. (Washington Post)
• How Republican E.V. Cuts Could Put U.S. Carmakers Behind China: China’s lead in electric vehicle technology, which is already huge, could become insurmountable if incentive programs are slashed, auto experts and environmentalists say. (New York Times) see also Tesla’s Global Vehicle Deliveries Plunged in Second Quarter: Global vehicle sales fall 13.5% as the electric-vehicle maker struggles to reverse months of declining sales. (Wall Street Journal)
• Who profits most from Medicaid? Employers like Walmart and Amazon, many of whose workers rely on the program: These corporations are enormously profitable. Last year, Walmart earned $19.4B on sales of $681B; McDonald’s earned $8.2B billion on sales of $26B, and Amazon earned $59B on sales of $638B. Yet millions of their full time workers rely on public assistance. If the Republican Congress pursues its campaign to strip access to government programs away from more Americans, more of those workers will be trapped in a poverty spiral. (Los Angeles Times)
• Housing market at risk of “sustained downturn” as price growth cools: Home prices rose 2.7% in April, compared with a year earlier, down from a 3.5% jump in March, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index released Tuesday. (Axios)
• Taliban bride: Women in Afghanistan are prisoners in their own homes. This is the story of Marjan, married at 12 to a Taliban fighter. (Aeon)
• China Steals Language and Home Life From Tibetan Kids as Young as 4: Beijing is building a broad network of preschools across Tibetan areas, seeking to inculcate loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party early in life. (Wall Street Journal)
• That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose. Endless wait times and excessive procedural fuss—it’s all part of a tactic called “sludge.” (The Atlantic)
• The alarming rise of US officers hiding behind masks: ‘A police state’ Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions’ (The Guardian)
• How to Wreck the Nation’s Health, by the Numbers. After decades as a physician studying the factors that determine our risks of getting sick and how long we live, I am convinced that the actions of the Trump administration will cost lives. Researchers like me know the data. For years we have warned that Americans have shorter life expectancies and higher disease rates than people in other high-income countries. Now, the poor health of Americans is about to get worse. (New York Times) see also The seven things that make ADHD much worse: Experts point to a range of lifestyle and environmental triggers that can worsen this neurodevelopmental disorder. Here’s how to fix them (Telegraph)
• A Pro-Russia Disinformation Campaign Is Using Free AI Tools to Fuel a ‘Content Explosion’ Consumer-grade AI tools have supercharged Russian-aligned disinformation as pictures, videos, QR codes, and fake websites have proliferated. (Wired)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business next week with Kate Moore, Chief Investment Officer of Citi Wealth; responsible for overseeing investments, portfolio strategy and asset allocation for the trillion dollars Citi Wealth manages. Previously, she was Head of Thematic Strategy and PM for the Global Allocation Fund at BlackRock.
More Americans are out of work longer, as employers hold back on both hiring and firing
Source: Sherwood
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