Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
Thanks again for the article and I finally got around to reading it.
I think the issue is what has changed since 9/11 and how we reacted in its aftermath. Do I think I gave up some rights protected by the Bill of Rights for enhanced security? Perhaps. But I don't think anything has really changed over all. None of the amendments cited as far as I'm concerned have been infringed upon.
As a liberal who would be the first to question my Bill of Rights being under attack I don't have a problem in the work insuring the safety of me and my family.
What I am concerned about is people trying to take away my right to vote. Until recently I never needed a photo ID to vote and now I do. I have been voting for 54 years. WTF has changed that I need to prove who I am?
Thanks and welcome. I'll have to print that off and get back to you.
John Whitehead's Commentary:
Overthrowing the Constitution: All Sides Are Waging War on Our Freedoms.
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” ~ Abraham Lincoln
It is both apt and ironic that the anniversary of 9/11, which paved the way for the government to overthrow the Constitution, occurs the week before the anniversary of the day the U.S. Constitution was adopted on September 17, 1787.
All sides are still waging war on our constitutional freedoms, and “we the people” remain the biggest losers.
This year’s presidential election is no exception.
As Bruce Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, warns in a recent article in the Baltimore Sun, “In November, the American people will have a choice between Harris-Walz and Trump-Vance. But they will not have a choice between an Empire and a Republic.”
In other words, the candidates on this year’s ballot do not represent a substantive choice between freedom and tyranny so much as they constitute a cosmetic choice: the packaging may vary widely, but the contents remain the same.
No matter who wins, the bureaucratic minions of the Security/Military Industrial Complex and its Police State/Deep State partners will retain their stranglehold on power.
Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris have the greatest of track records when it comes to actually respecting the rights enshrined in the Constitution, despite the rhetoric being trotted out by both sides lately regarding their so-called devotion to the rule of law.
Indeed, Trump has repeatedly called for parts of the Constitution to be terminated, while both Harris and Trump seem to view the First Amendment’s assurance of the right to free speech, political expression and protest as dangerous when used to challenge the government’s power.
This flies in the face of everything America’s founders fought to safeguard.
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.
Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.
In the 23 years since the USA Patriot Act — a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA — was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.
The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments — the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments — and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.
The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.
The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens — no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.
This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.
Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.
The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).
In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.
The federal government has also made liberal use of its post-9/11 powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.
In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.
We’re also being subjected to invasive pat-downs and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.
In this way, “we the people” continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.
The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
A recitation of the Bill of Rights — set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, over-criminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts) — would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.
What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.
Here is what it means to live in a permanent state of crisis with our freedoms locked down:
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.
Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption. Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces — complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc. — it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most — a standing army on American soil.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or encroaching on your private property unless they have evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution — civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums — that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions — and thereby help balance the scales of justice — is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty — the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers — is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.
As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite — the president, Congress and the courts.
Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.
In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.
We are supposed to be the masters and they — the government and its agents — are the servants.
We the American people — the citizenry — are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.
Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.
As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”
Americans are constitutionally illiterate.
Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.
Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.
So, what’s the solution?
Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties” is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.
From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.
Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.
Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.
A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.
The powers-that-be want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own. They also want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day.
Yet there are 330 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.
Tyranny wouldn't stand a chance.
__________________
About John W. Whitehead:
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at https://www.rutherford.org.
Publication Guidelines / Reprint Permission:
John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please contact staff@rutherford.org to obtain reprint permission.
https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/overthrowing_the_constitution_all_sides_are_waging_war_on_our_freedoms
•
Supreme Court curbs SEC powers to enforce securities laws
PUBLISHED THU, JUN 27 202410:21 AM EDTUPDATED 1 MIN AGO
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday put new limits on the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to enforce securities laws — the latest ruling in a series of cases that take aim at federal agencies.
The court ruled 6-3 that adjudication of cases by in-house judges violates the right to trial by jury.
The case is one of several on the docket involving conservative and business-led attacks on the power of federal agencies. The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is often sympathetic to such arguments.
The challenge zeroed in on how the SEC enforces securities laws, including those prohibiting insider trading. The SEC has long used in-house proceedings presided over by administrative law judges. The agency can also sue in federal court. In both sets of proceedings, it can seek financial penalties.
Those subject to the in-house adjudication have complained, saying the process violates their rights and gives the SEC too much power by essentially creating a home-court advantage.
More from NBC News:
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/27/supreme-court-curbs-sec-powers-to-enforce-securities-laws.html
I was in NYC over the weekend and saw the parade.
THE NEW YORK TARTAN DAY PARADE
https://www.nyctartanweek.org/events/the-new-york-tartan-day-parade-2/
Lots of Scotties and Westies joined in.
Princess Kate reveals she is in the early stages of treatment for cancer
PUBLISHED FRI, MAR 22 20242:00 PM EDTUPDATED 26 MIN AGO
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/22/princess-of-wales-kate-middleton-reveals-she-is-in-the-early-stages-of-cancer-treatment.html
God bless her and hopefully now everyone will leave her alone. That is NOT an easy thing for anyone to say and people need to respect her privacy.
And I'm sure my favourite super-Cat insurers wouldn't touch him with a ten foot bargepole:
https://www.bhspecialty.com/who-we-are/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-exposed-reason-trumps-174241835.html
It looks like Lloyd's of London shot him down since they are the insurer of last resort.
Considering the name of the board I'm sure Scion would find it acceptable.
I can’t post on premium boards like the one devoted to spelling errors any more, but I enjoyed this twofer so much I couldn’t resist posting it here instead:
“ The board is full of mentally challenged losers waisting their days like board housewives”
Incidentally this was reported to Admin but apparently it’s acceptable nowadays.
Thanks so much! That is very kind of you. I always feel tempted to post Shower Cap's Blog on a Saturday morning but since I let my iHub membership lapse I have been unable to do so. Now I can, and will.
Hope all is well with you. I worked with Admin to have us added as moderators, keeping Scion as well and moving this to a free board so you could post here again.
I have always found your posts insightful.
Neither party, Repugnant or Democrap is acting on behalf of WE THE PEOPLE...
Brian May, best known as Queen's guitarist, helped NASA return its 1st asteroid sample to Earth
The legendary guitarist recently put his doctorate in astrophysics to use to help NASA return its first-ever asteroid sample to Earth. The sample was taken from the asteroid Bennu.
Eric Lagatta
USA TODAY
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/09/29/queen-guitarist-brian-may-nasa-asteroid/71004336007/
When he's not rocking out on stage as a founding member of Queen, Brian May enjoys a healthy scientific interest in outer space.
But it's no mere hobby for the 76-year-old guitar legend to gaze upon the stars or research the nature of the universe. May, an accomplished scientist who has a doctorate in astrophysics, recently helped NASA return its first ever asteroid sample to Earth.
The sample consisting of rocks and dust was obtained from the asteroid Bennu and arrived Sunday back in Earth's orbit. May was an integral part of the mission, creating stereoscopic images that allowed the mission's leader and team to find a safe landing spot on the asteroid, which has the potential to crash into Earth sometime in the future.
"This box when it is opened of material from the surface of Bennu can tell us untold secret of the origins of the universe, the origins or our planet and the origins of life itself," May said Monday in a statement on his website. "What an incredibly exciting day."
Brian May, left, and Adam Lambert from the band Queen perform in June 2022 at the Platinum Jubilee concert taking place in front of Buckingham Palace, London.
Record-setting space flight:NASA astronaut returns to Earth after American record 371 days in space
Brian May was rehearsing for Queen tour when sample reached Earth
“Biden Issues a Blistering Attack on Trump
During an appearance in Arizona, President Biden portrayed former President Donald J. Trump as a budding autocrat with no fidelity to the tenets of American democracy.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/us/politics/biden-mccain-library.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Appeals Court Rejects Trump’s Effort to Delay Trial in Fraud Case
Former President Donald J. Trump had sued the judge presiding over his case, Arthur F. Engoron, aiming to pause a trial that will likely begin as soon as Monday.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/28/nyregion/trump-fraud-judge-appeal.html?campaign_id=57&emc=edit_ne_20230928&instance_id=103917&nl=the-evening®i_id=1477058&segment_id=145978&te=1&user_id=3b6708353eb4d86d1549f97d1e8d7b46
By Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess
Sept. 28, 2023
Updated 6:13 p.m. ET
Donald J. Trump’s civil fraud trial over accusations that he inflated the value of his properties by billions of dollars will likely begin Monday after a New York appeals court rejected the former president’s attempt to delay it.
The appeals court, in a terse two-page order Thursday, effectively turned aside for now a lawsuit that Mr. Trump had filed against the trial judge, Arthur F. Engoron. The lawsuit had sought to delay the trial and ultimately throw out many accusations against the former president.
Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks, insurers while building real estate empire
By MICHAEL R. SISAK
Updated 4:54 PM CDT, September 26, 2023
NEW YORK (AP) — A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.
Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.
Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.
A message seeking comment was left for a Trump spokesperson. Trump has long insisted he did nothing wrong.
The decision, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.
Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.
Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.
“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”
Manhattan prosecutors had looked into bringing criminal charges over the same conduct but declined to do so, leaving James to sue Trump and seek penalties that aim to disrupt his and his family’s ability to do business in the state.
Engoron’s ruling, in a phase of the case known as summary judgment, resolves the key claim in James’ lawsuit, but several others remain. He’ll decide on those claims and James’ request for $250 million in penalties at a trial starting Oct. 2. Trump’s lawyers have asked an appeals court for a temporary delay.
Trump’s lawyers, in their own summary judgment bid, had asked the judge to throw out the case.
Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.
[...]
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-letitia-james-fraud-lawsuit-1569245a9284427117b8d3ba5da74249
Scion where ever you may be this took a long time coming.
Trump and company liable for fraud in New York lawsuit, judge rules
PUBLISHED TUE, SEP 26 20234:35 PM EDTUPDATED 1 MIN AGO
thumbnail
Dan Mangan
KEY POINTS
A judge ruled that former President Donald Trump and his company are liable for fraud in a lawsuit by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
Judge Arthur Engoron as part of that decision cancelled the New York business certificates of Trump and the other defendants in the suit in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Engoron in his ruling found that Trump had made false and misleading valuations for multiple real estate assets in statements to insurers and banks over the course of years.
Because of those misstatements, Trump had inflated his true net worth by billions of dollars.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/26/trump-and-company-liable-for-fraud-in-new-york-lawsuit-judge-rules.html
I've waited a long time for this. And it's time he's being held accountable. Bank and insurance fraud are definite no-nos.
The company I worked for is the largest insurance broker in the world. We were incorporated in the US but we moved to London several years ago since all the re-insurers were based there and they had a lower tax rate. Then once the UK left the EU we moved across the water to Ireland.
I'm sure many companies based in London did the same thing.
It’s not such a bad problem to have.
If our current coalition government wants to keep Sinn Fein out of power (although I think they have reasonable policies, my own memories of living in London in the 70s and 80s, the fate of Northern Ireland’s “Disappeared” and the lingering suspicions of ties to organised crime rings both sides of the border makes me less than enthusiastic about SF) then they’ll focus on housing, infrastructure and health. The first two will also have a positive virtuous circle effect on more inward investment and therefore more tax revenues.
Ireland’s Latest Fiscal Headache: What to Do With 10 Billion Euros
The government in Dublin has a big budget surplus, thanks to a boom in tax revenue from multinational companies. Build more housing? Or a subway? Sock it away? Whatever the case, someone will be unhappy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/business/ireland-fiscal-budget-surplus.html?te=1&nl=the-morning&emc=edit_nn_20230915
By Ed O’Loughlin
Reporting from Dublin
Sept. 15, 2023
Updated 11:08 a.m. ET
Fifteen years after a collapsed housing bubble forced Ireland to borrow tens of billions of dollars or risk going bust, the country is discovering that having too much money can also be a problem.
Swollen by rising corporate tax revenue, mainly from American tech and pharmaceutical corporations, the government is expecting to have a record budget surplus of 10 billion euros ($10.9 billion) this year. Next year, the windfall is projected to be even larger, reaching €16 billion.
For years, Ireland’s low corporate tax rate has lured multinational organizations to set up overseas subsidiaries here. Their tax payments have created a financial cushion for the government, while stirring the ire of other countries.
Although plans promoted by the United States and others to create a global corporate tax rate have slowly progressed — a change that could undermine Dublin’s position as a low-tax haven — the payments to Ireland have ballooned.
Which leaves Irish lawmakers in a quandary. As the government prepares its annual budget statement in October, it must settle the tricky question of what to do with this pot of money.
Chief among the options: save it for the future; pay off debts; invest in badly needed housing or some other infrastructure, like hospitals, schools and a subway system for Dublin; or give it away in tax cuts and support payments.
Yet for peculiarly Irish reasons, none of these apparent boons would be, in itself, an easy option.
“Whatever they do, it will leave some people feeling very grumpy,” said Cliff Taylor, a business columnist at The Irish Times. There is talk, he said, of putting the money aside in a sovereign wealth fund, to help support rising pension costs as the population ages.
“But if they do that,” he said, “other people will say that we urgently need to spend money today on things like housing and transport and health, and changing our energy system to cope with climate change.”
A recent poll suggested that 40 percent of the public preferred that Ireland’s budget surplus be spent on public transport, housing, hospitals and schools. Credit...Ellius Grace for The New York Times
Looming over the debate are warnings that this annual windfall is unpredictable, and that the country must not become dependent on it. Ireland’s infrastructure, especially its housing, is by common agreement in dire condition. New construction, which produced a glut of homes during the Celtic Tiger housing boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, collapsed when the bubble burst in 2008, and the government was forced to borrow $77 billion from international lenders to stay afloat.
Ireland, with one of the fastest growing populations in Europe, now has a severe shortage of homes and apartments. High rents have left many young people struggling to find a place to live. And the number of homeless people, including working families, has steadily climbed.
The lack of housing and other infrastructure is now becoming a serious obstacle to economic growth, according to the Irish Business and Employers Confederation, a lobbying group representing both domestic and multinational businesses.
“Companies can’t attract or retain the people they need,” said Fergal O’Brien, the group’s executive director of lobbying. “The economy is doing well right now, but our members are saying they are leaving so much potential on the table.”
One proposal that has won backing in public opinion polls and by the business confederation would be to set aside some or all of the surplus money for long-term spending projects, based on a national plan.
A recent Irish Times poll suggested that 40 percent of the public preferred that the extra money be spent on “public transport, housing, hospitals and schools,” while another 25 percent favored spending on public services like health and education. Only 9 percent selected tax cuts as their first choice. Five percent or less preferred paying down national debt or saving for future pensions costs.
But one obstacle to spending money on major projects, said Eoin Reeves, an economics professor at the University of Limerick, is that the Irish government has not been efficient at spending large sums of money on big investments.
Image
A view of building with a curving shape. At the ground level are temporary fences.
Construction of Ireland’s national children’s hospital began in 2015. It was supposed to open three years ago, and projected costs have grown. Credit...Ellius Grace for The New York Times
In good times, he said, governments have spent money on big projects. “But then as soon as things get tough, they stop,” said Professor Reeves, an expert on public procurement. “Ideally, you’d earmark funds in advance to keep the spending up and to stimulate the economy when there’s a downturn, but we never get that right. We never think in terms of the long-term.”
Even by global standards, big infrastructure projects in Ireland tend to be completed late and far over budget. In 2015, a new 3,000-bed national children’s hospital in Dublin was projected to open by 2020, at a cost of €650 million. Its opening date has now been postponed until next year and at a cost of almost €2.2 billion — which reportedly could make it the most expensive hospital in the world, in terms of cost per bed.
Badly congested, Dublin is one of the few capitals in Europe without a subway, yet plans for a line to its busy airport, with an estimated price tag in 2000 of €3.5 billion, have been repeatedly postponed or modified. The latest plan, if it ever gets underway, would take about 10 years to construct, at a cost of €7 billion to €12 billion.
“If you wrote a book of case studies to show how badly things can go wrong with mega projects, for a small country we sure could offer a few clangers as entries,” Professor Reeves said.
Rory Hearne, a lecturer on housing issues at Maynooth University, said that free-market policies had long prevailed at the government level, contributing to what seems to be an ideological aversion among lawmakers to big spending on services or construction.
He also sees a generation gap in the debate.
“The people making these decisions in government and the civil service are relatively privileged people in their 50s,” he said. “These are the people who are saying we should put money away for a so-called rainy day fund — when people in their 30s are saying they are drowning right now.”
Image
Many people sit at sidewalk tables outside a restaurant at a street corner. Words on the restaurant’s red building says “Metro Café.
Younger residents with high rents tend to oppose plans to set aside the surplus for a “rainy-day fund.”Credit...Ellius Grace for The New York Times
An election is expected within the next two years, and the center-left Sinn Fein party has been polling well on promises to use public money to build affordable housing. That may prompt the present administration, jointly led by Prime Minister Leo Varadkar of the center-right party Fine Gael and the deputy prime minister, Micheal Martin of the center-right party Fianna Fail, to try to court short-term popularity through tax cuts and giveaways when they announce their next budget in October. The ministers are already hinting at a possible cut in the universal service charge, a form of income tax.
One final puzzle for Ireland’s policymakers is that no one knows for sure how long these good times will last.
Much of the surplus corporation tax comes from U.S.-based corporations like Meta, Apple, Google and Pfizer, who channel some or all of their non-American business and intellectual property through Irish subsidiaries. These subsidiaries are taxed at a rate of 11.5 percent, but the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is leading an effort to create a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent, which could flatten Ireland’s tax-rate advantage.
Last year, the Fiscal Council, an official advisory body, warned that Ireland was over-reliant on “excess” corporation taxes, which had amounted to €22 billion over the past seven years. The booking of these earnings in Ireland has also distorted gross national product calculations, because they reflect economic activity not taking place in the country. In 2016, Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize winner, used the phrase “leprechaun economics” to describe an abrupt 26 percent jump in Ireland’s economic output, later revealed to have been largely caused by corporate and tax restructuring at a single corporation — Apple.
What flows in so easily might easily flow out again, Mr. Taylor of The Irish Times said. “American tax laws could change very quickly, or American policies could change,” he said. “The taxes might go somewhere else.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/business/ireland-fiscal-budget-surplus.html?te=1&nl=the-morning&emc=edit_nn_20230915
sunspotter, And the press, eh. Surprised you didn't mention Murdoch
Sky will cost Rupert Murdoch $2.5bn less after Brexit vote
Plunge of sterling means 21st Century Fox is paying 15% less than it would have before EU referendum
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/12/sky-rupert-murdoch-brexit-vote-21st-century-fox-eu-referendum
Many sources say Murdoch had a relatively major influence in the Brexit vote.
Why does Rupert Murdoch want a Brexit?
Newstalk 13.49 15 Jun 2016
[...]...he figured it would be the "40 years" of anti-European stories The Sun has run that will have had the bigger impact.
https://www.newstalk.com/business/why-does-rupert-murdoch-want-a-brexit-592236
Even the Murdoch press is now waking up to the truth: Brexit was an act of self-harm
Michael Heseltine
When the most anti-EU newspapers are pointing to the policy’s inevitable failures, it’s time our government admitted the truth
Sat 11 Jun 2022 00.48 AEST
[...] ...It may take time. Brexit took 43 years. Initially, that process began slowly. It picked up pace and virulence with the acquisition of major newspapers by Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black, and with the replacement of David English, a staunch European, with Paul Dacre at the Daily Mail. Over time, the public were fed a diet of deception, culminating in the lies of the Brexit .. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/27/case-for-brexit-built-on-lies-five-years-later-deceit-is-routine-in-our-politics .. campaign itself.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/10/rupert-murdoch-press-brexit-eu
I didn’t realise the former guy had three sons:
I saw your post and I'll respond here. I have had the same thing happen to me and I finally gave up posting there. It's good to be Queen. They don't want discouraging words.
Scotland’s iconic Orkney Islands considering quitting Britain to become part of Norway
PUBLISHED MON, JUL 3 20239:50 AM EDT
KEY POINTS
Scotland’s iconic Orkney Islands archipelago is looking at ways it might split off from the U.K. and potentially become a self-governing territory of Norway.
Under new proposals brought forward by the local council, the Orkney Islands will explore “alternative forms of governance,” including changing its legal status within Britain.
The goal is to secure greater economic independence, according to council leader James Stockan, who brought the motion.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/03/scotlands-orkney-islands-consider-quitting-the-uk-to-join-norway.html
We have been here five years now, and we are very glad we moved.
And we were only escaping Brexit and the Tories.
My wife is American and swears she will never live there again. We visit at least once a year and I see her point.
Moving to Ireland is back on the table. The shootings here are getting out of control.
A 20-year-old woman was shot and killed after accidentally turning into the wrong driveway in upstate New York, officials say
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/18/us/woman-shot-wrong-driveway-upstate-new-york/index.html
White homeowner accused of shooting Black teen who went to the wrong house in Kansas City will face 2 felony charges, officials announce
https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/17/us/kansas-city-teen-shot-wrong-house/index.html
Northern Ireland Is Far Too Quiet
April 9, 2023
By Clare Dwyer Hogg
Ms. Dwyer Hogg is a playwright, poet and journalist who lives in Northern Ireland.
HOLYWOOD, Northern Ireland — In 1998, two jagged, conflicting philosophies agreed to end the violence known as the Troubles and create a power-sharing government in Stormont, the seat of Northern Ireland’s devolved assembly.
The Good Friday Agreement was a tortuous thing to wrangle. A host of individuals — some on the world stage, others forever anonymous — took meetings in living rooms and shadowy fields. People prayed in churches of all denominations. It failed and failed and failed until it didn’t.
To say there were compromises is one of those instances of the English language having scant resemblance to reality. People in prison for murder were freed. More than 1,000 murders were left unsolved. People on all sides kicked some hopes down the road and gave up on others completely. Everybody sewed up their wounds, believing in an eventual healed scar.
On Tuesday, President Biden will arrive in Northern Ireland to mark the anniversary of the agreement. He will spend about a day here — the rest of the week he’ll be in the Republic of Ireland — and excitement is high. Photos of the president’s security vehicles arriving at Belfast International Airport were in the newspapers, and videos of the motorcade have swept our landscape into scenes we usually only see in the movies. The following week, the Clintons are coming.
The mood should be celebratory, and it is. But perhaps the arrival of these public figures is as much about reassurance as it is about toasting a job well done.
I am part of a generation that as children thought bomb scares and military patrols were normal. For 25 years there has largely been an absence of war, and we’ve never taken it for granted. But I think we have the mistaken impression here that that absence is peace. If only it were peace, we’d all be fine. But it’s not.
Stormont has been inactive for almost a year because one of the main parties has refused to take its seats; the terrorism threat level was recently raised to “severe” after an off-duty police officer was shot. The shooting was claimed by a dissident republican group called the New I.R.A. and paramilitaries are estimated to still have thousands of members operating like organized crime gangs and doling out what are colloquially known as “punishment beatings,” like bullets through kneecaps.
Peace in Northern Ireland is a matchstick tower, and recently there has been a shifting of the ground below.
One of the central tenets of the agreement was that the border between Northern Ireland — or the North of Ireland, depending on your political persuasion — and the Republic of Ireland would no longer be a hard border. What we mean by a “hard border” here can be characterized by its opposite — today, I only really notice I’ve crossed it because the road signs change from miles to kilometers and my phone beeps to tell me that I’ve changed countries. But throughout my childhood I crossed a hard border at least eight times a year to visit family in the south, in Cork. Back then there were watchtowers and helicopters, the northern side was patrolled by the British army and soldiers with machine guns checked our passports. People have told me that they always felt like the air on the border was taut; everyone was very aware of what a wrong word and a hair trigger could do.
When the border was dismantled as part of the peace process, there was a sense that a bulwark against collectivism had been demolished. And since both north and south were part of the European Union, it even made good geopolitical sense.
Being part of the E.U. did something metaphysical, too: Citizens of Northern Ireland could then and can still choose to hold British or Irish passports, or both. But we were also all European, and our passports bore the little circle of stars that represented the E.U. We could all formalize our national identity as we saw fit and remain part of something international.
But then England, Scotland and Wales left the E.U. and all the people in Northern Ireland who held British passports exited with them, while those who held Irish passports remained European. Nobody moved a muscle.
Northern Ireland did not collapse into chaos overnight, but something deeper was afoot. Insecurities about identity that had been slumbering started to wake.
To avoid a hard border with the Republic, a post-Brexit trade agreement called the Northern Ireland Protocol allowed the north to, in effect, stay in the European single market for goods. This endowed certain advantages on businesses here that trade with Europe, but it also meant that some goods coming into Northern Ireland from Britain would be subject to customs checks.
Unionists were spooked to see Northern Ireland treated differently than the rest of the U.K. Quickly — we love a political sign here — posters declaring “NO BORDER IN THE IRISH SEA” appeared on lampposts. To some that statement is magical thinking, since the sea itself is an immutable border. But Unionists, especially members of the Democratic Unionist Party, feared that every form stamped would erode British identity; each one a de facto declaration that Northern Ireland is separate.
In an election last May, about a year after the protocol came into effect, Sinn Fein, the main nationalist party, became the largest party in Stormont for the first time in the 100-year history of Northern Ireland. Members of the D.U.P., the second largest, refused to take their seats until the British government renegotiated the protocol. (They were able to do this because, per the Good Friday Agreement, government cannot sit in Stormont without both parties present.) Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, negotiated a new arrangement with the E.U. in February that simplifies the customs arrangements but leaves some E.U. law in place in Northern Ireland. The D.U.P. said it still wasn’t good enough. The British government’s position, more or less, is that it’s the best they’re getting.
Civil servants kept the lights on, as they did between 2017 and 2020, when Stormont collapsed over a domestic scandal. But a budget for Northern Ireland was not agreed for 2022-23 and the deficit is ballooning, and payments to help with high energy bills over winter were delayed.
The unfolding of Brexit has elucidated several facts long suspected, one of which is that the British government is not overly concerned about us. But it’s remarkable to me that citizens who took part in a democratic election have almost silently allowed the absence of government to take place. There have been articles, tweets and grumbling, but notably few demonstrations.
As long as there is peace, this absence of dissent seems to say, anything is better than the Troubles.
There are exceptions. The controversial Northern Ireland Legacy Bill introduced by the British government in May 2022 would grant amnesty to perpetrators of the unsolved murders of the Troubles. This is one rare thing in the north that united all the major political parties in opposition and brought people out into the street in protest. At least we are talking about some of the silences that smother democracy.
This month we remember that a version of peace was gifted to us by a brittle matchstick tower constructed a quarter of a century ago. We can celebrate that, but we need to tend to it, too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/09/opinion/northern-ireland-biden-good-friday.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Good posts, thanks.
One of my most favorite guitarists passed away yesterday. He could make a guitar sing all by himself.
The Guitar Gods - Jeff Beck: "Apache" / "Sleepwalk"
Well this sucks. I saw him back in 1968 at the Fillmore East. One of the most incredible guitarists you'd ever see.
Jeff Beck, Guitarist With a Chapter in Rock History, Dies at 78
His playing with the Yardbirds and as leader of his own bands brought a sense of adventure to their groundbreaking recordings.
Give this article
246
A black and white photo of a long-haired young man holding an electric guitar.
Jeff Beck performing in 1969. He was one of the most influential guitarists in rock history.Credit...David Redfern/Redferns, via Getty Images
By Jim Farber
Published Jan. 11, 2023
Updated Jan. 12, 2023, 10:51 a.m. ET
Jeff Beck, one of the most skilled, admired and influential guitarists in rock history, died on Tuesday in a hospital near his home at Riverhall, a rural estate in southern England. He was 78.
The cause was bacterial meningitis, Melissa Dragich, his publicist, said.
During the 1960s and ’70s, as either a member of the Yardbirds or as leader of his own bands, Mr. Beck brought a sense of adventure to his playing that helped make the recordings by those groups groundbreaking.
In 1965, when he joined the Yardbirds to replace another guitar hero, Eric Clapton, the group was already one of the defining acts in Britain’s growing electric blues movement. But his stinging licks and darting leads on songs like “Shapes of Things” and “Over Under Sideways Down” added an expansive element to the music that helped signal the emerging psychedelic rock revolution.
Three years later, when Mr. Beck formed his own band, later known as the Jeff Beck Group — along with Rod Stewart, a little-known singer at the time, and the equally obscure Ron Wood on bass — the weight of the music created an early template for heavy metal. Specifically, the band’s 1968 debut, “Truth,” provided a blueprint that another former guitar colleague from the Yardbirds, Jimmy Page, drew on to found Led Zeppelin several months later.
Image
A black and white photo of four young men sitting on the floor in front of a white wall.
The Jeff Beck Group in 1967, including, from left, Ron Wood, Mr. Beck, Mickey Waller and Rod Stewart.Credit...Ivan Keeman/Redferns, via Getty Images
In 1975, when Mr. Beck began his solo career with the “Blow by Blow” album, he reconfigured the essential formula of that era’s fusion movement, tipping the balance of its influences from jazz to rock and funk, in the process creating a sound that was both startlingly new and highly successful. “Blow by Blow” became a Billboard Top 5 and, selling a million or more copies, a platinum hit.
Along the way, Mr. Beck helped either pioneer or amplify important technical innovations on his instrument. He elaborated the use of distortion and feedback effects, earlier explored by Pete Townshend; intensified the effect of bending notes on the guitar; and widened the range of expression that could be coaxed from devices attached to the guitar like the whammy bar.
Drawing on such techniques, Mr. Beck could weaponize his strings to hit like a stun gun or caress them to express what felt like a kiss. His work had humor, too, with licks that could cackle and leads that could tease.
“Even in the Yardbirds, he had a tone that was melodic, but in your face — bright, urgent and edgy,” wrote Mike Campbell, of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, for an article in Rolling Stone magazine to accompany a poll that named Mr. Beck the fifth greatest guitar player of all time. “It’s like he’s saying: ‘I’m Jeff Beck. I’m right here. You can’t ignore me.’”
Editors’ Picks
How to Make Your Smartphone Photos So Much Better
Isn’t My Granddaughter Too Young to Walk Home Alone?
AI’s Best Trick Yet Is Showering Us With Attention
“Everybody respects Jeff,” Mr. Page said in a 2018 documentary titled “Still on the Run: The Jeff Beck Story.” “He’s an extraordinary musician. He’s having a conversation with you when he’s playing.”
Despite the accolades, Mr. Beck never achieved the sales or popularity of the guitarists considered to be his peers, including Mr. Page, Mr. Clapton and one of the players he admired most, Jimi Hendrix. Only two of his albums achieved platinum status in the United States, including “Wired,” his 1976 follow-up to “Blow by Blow.”
“Part of the reason is never having attempted to get into mainstream pop, rock or heavy metal or anything like that,” he told the arts website Elsewhere in 2009. “Shutting those doors means you’ve only got a limited space to squeeze through.”
It hurt, too, that the mercurial Mr. Beck often worked without a lead singer, and that his groups seldom lasted long. His first band, with Mr. Stewart and Mr. Wood, stood on the cusp of superstardom, with an invitation to play Woodstock. But Mr. Beck turned down the offer, and the group dissolved shortly thereafter.
Another band he led that held commercial promise, Beck, Bogert & Appice (featuring the rhythm section of Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice, formerly of Vanilla Fudge) earned a gold album in 1973, but Mr. Beck scotched the project after less than two years. Not that he minded his status in the industry.
“I’ve never made the big time, mercifully,” Mr. Beck told Rolling Stone in 2018. “When you look around and see who has made it huge, it’s a really rotten place to be.”
Image
A black and white photo of Mr. Beck playing guitar and looking intently toward the camera.
Mr. Beck performing in London in 1976, where he was opening for Alvin Lee. “I’ve never made the big time, mercifully,” he told a reporter.Credit...Watal Asanuma/Shinko Music, via Getty Images
Grammys and Gold
Even so, he earned eight gold albums over more than six decades. He also amassed seven Grammys, six in the category of best rock instrumental performance and one for best pop collaboration with vocals. He was inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame twice, as part of the Yardbirds in 1992 and as a solo star in 2009.
“Jeff Beck was on another planet,” Mr. Stewart said in a statement on Wednesday. “He took me and Ronnie Wood to the USA in the late 60s in his band the Jeff Beck Group, and we haven’t looked back since. He was one of the few guitarists that when playing live would actually listen to me sing and respond. Jeff, you were the greatest, my man.”
Geoffrey Arnold Beck was born on June 24, 1944, in South London to Arnold and Ethel Beck. His mother was a candy maker, his father an accountant. Mr. Beck told Guitar Player Magazine in 1968 that his mother had “forced” him to play piano two hours a day when he was a boy. “That was good,” he said, “because it made me realize that I was musically sound. My other training consisted of stretching rubber bands over tobacco cans and making horrible noises.”
He became attracted to electric guitar after hearing Les Paul’s work and was later drawn to the work of Cliff Gallup, lead guitarist for Gene Vincent’s band, and the American player Lonnie Mack. He became entranced not only by the sound of the guitar but also by its mechanics.
“At the age of 13, I built two or three of my own guitars,” Mr. Beck wrote in an essay for a book about his career published in 2016 titled “Beck 01: Hot Rods and Rock & Roll.” “It was fun just to look at it and hold it. I knew where I was headed.”
He enrolled in Wimbledon College of Art but spent more time playing in bands. Dropping out of school, he began to do studio session work and in 1965 was invited to join the Yardbirds through Jimmy Page, whom Mr. Beck had befriended as a teenager and who had just turned that job down.
Though he was with the Yardbirds for only 20 months, Mr. Beck played on most of their successful songs, starting with “Heart Full of Soul,” which broke the Top 10 in Billboard and got to No. 2 in Britain. It was fired by his burning lead guitar line, which took influence from Indian music and which served as the song’s hook.
In 1966, the Yardbirds’ single “Shapes of Things,” which got to No. 11 in the United States (No. 3 in Britain), included a frantic double-time solo by Mr. Beck that became one of the band’s most celebrated showcases.
Image
Mr. Beck, smiling and wearing sunglasses and an off-white pullover sweater, is seated, surrounded by sound equipment, holding an electric guitar, and looking off to the left of the picture.
Mr. Beck at a rehearsal in 2010. He released a new album that year, “Emotion & Commotion,” which won a Grammy.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
At the suggestion of his manager, Mr. Beck recorded an instrumental piece for a potential solo project in May 1966 titled “Beck’s Bolero.” It featured on rhythm guitar Mr. Page (who received writing credit on the song), the Who’s Keith Moon on drums, the future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and the in-demand session pianist Nicky Hopkins.
A signature instrumental with a complex, unfolding structure, the song wasn’t released at the time, dashing Mr. Beck’s hope that this lineup would comprise his next band. Instead, he soldiered on with the Yardbirds, who then added Mr. Page, first on bass and later in a dueling lead guitar role with Mr. Beck. That fleeting lineup was immortalized in “Blow Up,” the Mod-era film by the director Michelangelo Antonioni, in which they performed a manic version of their song “Train Kept A-Rollin,’” recast as “Stroll On.”
Tensions which had been brewing between Mr. Beck and the rest of the Yardbirds came to a boil on an exhausting U.S. tour that fall, compelling him to quit. He later considered this period the low point of his career.
“All of a sudden, you’re nobody,” he told Rolling Stone in 2016. “Because the band were able to carry on” with Mr. Page, “it was almost like I was airbrushed out of it.”
Even so, a single was released under his own name in March 1967, “Hi-Ho Silver Lining,” which featured a rare vocal by Mr. Beck, which he abhorred. “I sound unbearably bad,” he told Music Radar in 2021.
Still, the song got to No. 15 in Britain, and its B-side provided a home for “Beck’s Bolero.”
He found more satisfaction by forming the first Jeff Beck Group, with Mr. Stewart, Mr. Wood, and Mr. Hopkins along with the drummer Mickey Waller. Columbia Records signed them and issued their debut, “Truth,” in the summer of 1968. It boasted a new, heavier version of the Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things,” along with “Beck’s Bolero.”
“Truth” got to No. 15 in Billboard and went gold, fired by its fresh mix of booming rock and emotive soul. Its follow-up, “Beck-Ola,” which subbed the drummer Tony Newman for Mr. Waller, was released a year later and mirrored the debut’s success. But the band imploded almost immediately after.
“I don’t know what happened,” Mr. Beck told Music Radar. “It was a lack of material,” he said, plus, he surmised, Mr. Stewart “wanted to see his name up there instead of mine.”
Image
A photo of Mr. Beck playing an electric guitar, wearing a sleeveless black vest, black pants with a white stripe on the side, and wide metal bands on his otherwise bare arm. A drum set and stage lights are visible behind him.
Mr. Beck performing at Madison Square Garden in 2010 on a tour with Eric Clapton, the guitarist he had replaced in the Yardbirds.Credit...Chad Batka for The New York Times
One Band, Then Another
In the fall of 1969, Mr. Beck tried to rally by planning a new group with Mr. Bogert and Mr. Appice, but that fell apart after Mr. Beck fractured his skull in a car accident. In the meantime, the two other musicians formed the blues-rock band Cactus.
Following a long convalescence, a new version of the Jeff Beck Group emerged in 1971, with the soul singer Bobby Tench, the drummer Cozy Powell and the keyboardist Max Middleton, who encouraged Mr. Beck to explore jazz.
Their debut, “Rough and Ready,” released in October, featured more original compositions from Mr. Beck than usual, but it barely made Billboard’s Top 50. Its chaser, “Jeff Beck Group,” which tipped toward the soulful side of their sound, did better, breaking Billboard’s Top 20 and going gold.
Again, however, the changeable Mr. Beck yearned for something new, so when Cactus broke up, he reconvened with Mr. Bogert and Mr. Appice — the rhythm section he had considered earlier — to form the power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice.
A notable track on their 1973 debut album, “Beck, Bogert & Appice,” was a version of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition.” But Mr. Beck was dissatisfied with both his band’s version of the song and the band itself, and so, during the recording of a second album, produced by Jimmy Miller, he broke up the group, although a live album, “Beck, Bogert & Appice Live in Japan,” came out afterward, in 1975 — a year that changed Mr. Beck’s career.
Daringly, Mr. Beck devoted most of the “Blow by Blow” solo album, recorded in 1974 and released in 1975, to instrumentals, inspired by the creativity of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and the soaring work of the band’s fusion guitarist, John McLaughlin.
To help capture that group’s feel, Mr. Beck hired the producer George Martin, who had overseen Mahavishnu’s album “Apocalypse” the year before (and who had achieved his greatest renown with the Beatles). Mr. Beck told The New Statesman magazine in 2016 that Mr. Martin had provided “a massive pair of wings.”
“Just knowing that somebody with such sensitive ears was approving of what was going on, you were flying,” he said.
Mr. Beck’s follow-up album, “Wired,” featured two players from Mahavishnu: the drummer Narada Michael Walden and the keyboardist Jan Hammer, expanding the fusion element in the music. Mr. Beck later toured with Mr. Hammer’s band, resulting in the album “Jeff Beck with the Jan Hammer Group Live,” which went gold in 1977.
Mr. Hammer was also instrumental in Mr. Beck’s 1980 album, “There & Back,” which got to No. 21 on Billboard’s chart. In 1985, Mr. Beck returned to working with vocalists for his “Flash” album, on which Mr. Stewart sang a version of Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.” (The video became an MTV hit.) Another instrumental recording, “Jeff Beck’s Guitar Shop,” issued in 1989, became his final gold album.
Starting in the 1990s, Mr. Beck began to do prodigious session work, providing solos on albums by Jon Bon Jovi, Roger Waters, Kate Bush, Tina Turner and others. He showed the continued breadth of his style with his “Emotion & Commotion” album in 2010, which included the standard “Over the Rainbow” and Puccini’s “Nessun Dorma.” The latter track won a Grammy, and the album reached No. 11 in Billboard.
Over the next few decades, Mr. Beck continued to tour and to record, most recently yielding a collaboration album with the actor and guitarist Johnny Depp, titled “18,” in 2022.
Mr. Beck married Sandra Cash in 2005, and she survives him.
To his fans, and to himself, Mr. Beck was so deeply identified with his guitar — particularly the Fender Stratocaster — that he seemed inseparable from it.
“My Strat is another arm,” he told Music Radar. “I’ve welded myself to that. Or it’s welded itself to me, one or the other.”
He added: “It’s a tool of great inspiration and torture at the same time. It’s forever sitting there, challenging you to find something else in it. But it is there if you really search.”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/11/arts/music/jeff-beck-dead.html
I have this song saved in my mailbox since Scion sent it to me several years ago and I post it annually for him.
https://classicalfm.ca/station-blog/2018/12/20/light-shines-world-marilyn-lightstones-winter-solstice-song/
Do you have any information about Scion? I have been under the weather myself but now on the mend.
Where ever you may be I thought you'd appreciate this post.
Queen Elizabeth II Dies at 96; Was Britain’s Longest-Reigning Monarch
She ruled for seven decades, unshakably committed to the rituals of her role amid epic social and economic change and family scandal.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/world/europe/queen-elizabeth-dead.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Her life was somewhat complicated but she managed over the course of 70 years to maintain grace and dignity.
McKinsey Opened a Door in Its Firewall Between Pharma Clients and Regulators
The firm let consultants advise both drugmakers and their government overseers, internal records show. “Who we know and what we know” was part of their pitch.
By Chris Hamby, Walt Bogdanich, Michael Forsythe and Jennifer Valentino-DeVries
April 13, 2022
Updated 11:40 a.m. ET
Jeff Smith, a partner with the influential consulting firm McKinsey & Company, accepted a highly sensitive assignment in December 2017. The opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma, beleaguered and in financial trouble, wanted to revamp its business, and an executive there sought out Dr. Smith.
Over the following weeks, he traveled to Purdue’s offices in Stamford, Conn., meeting and dining with executives. His team reviewed business plans and evaluated new drugs that Purdue hoped would help move the company beyond the turmoil associated with OxyContin, its addictive painkiller that medical experts say helped to spark the opioid epidemic.
But the corporate reorganization was not Dr. Smith’s only assignment at the time. He was also helping the Food and Drug Administration overhaul its office that approves new drugs — the same office that would determine the regulatory fate of Purdue’s new line of proposed products.
The story of Dr. Smith’s simultaneous work for Purdue and its federal regulator is told through previously undisclosed internal McKinsey records. More broadly, they contain evidence of a porous firewall between the consulting firm’s work for private companies and for the authorities that oversee them.
A review by The New York Times of thousands of internal McKinsey documents found that the firm repeatedly allowed employees who served pharmaceutical companies, including opioid makers, to also consult for the F.D.A., the drug industry’s primary government regulator.
And, the documents show, McKinsey touted that inside access in pitches to private clients. In an email in 2014 to Purdue’s chief executive, a McKinsey consultant highlighted the firm’s work for the F.D.A. and stressed “who we know and what we know.”
Did you know you can share 10 gift articles a month, even with nonsubscribers?
Share this article.
The documents reviewed by The Times were obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which on Wednesday released initial results from its investigation into McKinsey’s work with the federal government, and by a coalition of state attorneys general as part of a 2021 settlement resolving an investigation into the firm’s work with Purdue. The records detail the firm’s work for Purdue and other opioid manufacturers over a 15-year period, from 2004 to 2019.
Editors’ Picks
Let Him Entertain You: Billy Crystal Returns to Broadway
The Bedbug Hunter
‘Seek and Hide’ Grapples With the Complexity of the Right to Privacy
ImageJeff Smith, now a McKinsey senior partner, simultaneously did work for the opioid maker Purdue Pharma, above, and its regulator, the F.D.A., below.
Jeff Smith, now a McKinsey senior partner, simultaneously did work for the opioid maker Purdue Pharma, above, and its regulator, the F.D.A., below.
Image
Since 2010, at least 22 McKinsey consultants have worked for both Purdue and the F.D.A., some at the same time, according to the committee’s 53-page report drafted by its Democratic majority. The firm provided no evidence to the committee that it had disclosed the potential conflicts of interest as required under federal contracting rules — an “apparent violation,” the report said.
McKinsey also allowed employees advising Purdue to help shape materials that were intended for government officials and agencies, including a memo in 2018 prepared for Alex M. Azar II, then the incoming secretary of health and human services under President Donald J. Trump. References to the severity of the opioid crisis in a draft version of the memo, the documents show, were cut before it was sent to Mr. Azar.
“Today’s report shows that at the same time the F.D.A. was relying on McKinsey’s advice to ensure drug safety and protect American lives, the firm was also being paid by the very companies fueling the deadly opioid epidemic to help them avoid tougher regulation of these dangerous drugs,” Representative Carolyn Maloney, the New York Democrat who chairs the committee, said in a statement.
McKinsey says that its consultants are forbidden to share confidential information or discuss their work with clients that have competing interests, and in a statement a spokesman disputed that there was a disclosure requirement related to the work it did for the F.D.A.
“Since McKinsey has not advised the F.D.A. on specific regulatory decisions or on specific pharmaceutical products, our consulting engagements with pharmaceutical companies did not create a conflict of interest with McKinsey’s consulting work for the F.D.A.,” the spokesman said. “Because there was not a conflict of interest, there was not a requirement for a disclosure.”
Dr. Smith, who this year was promoted to senior partner, did not respond to phone calls or emails seeking comment. One former McKinsey consultant familiar with his work said Dr. Smith’s assignment at the F.D.A. was “very high-level project management” and could not have helped Purdue. The former consultant spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was subject to a nondisclosure agreement.
For nearly a century, McKinsey has taken on clients in the same industries, with internal rules meant to prevent trade secrets from leaking to competitors. As McKinsey expanded to 67 countries, serving many of the world’s biggest companies, it also began to mine a new source of revenue: governments, including in the United States, Europe and Asia. It wasn’t until McKinsey began to work extensively with federal agencies that potential conflicts of interest drew the attention of Congress.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers last month introduced legislation aimed at preventing conflicts of interest in federal contracting, citing McKinsey’s experience with Purdue and the F.D.A. And last week, seven Democratic senators called on the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate what they described as McKinsey’s failure to disclose its work with opioid makers even as it consulted for the F.D.A. “on issues related to opioids.”
McKinsey’s own guidelines on dealing with conflicts of interest for government work, which are based on federal rules, state that “even the appearance” of a conflict compels its consultants to make a report to the government client’s contracting officer.
Ms. Maloney said she planned to hold a hearing and summon a top McKinsey partner to testify about the documents obtained by the committee from the firm. The other documents will be made public as part of an agreement between McKinsey and the attorneys general, led by Massachusetts and Colorado.
In a statement, the F.D.A. said that the agency relies on its contractors to assess and report potential conflicts of interest. “The F.D.A.’s contracts with McKinsey were related to internal and process issues,” the agency said. “The contracts did not include work on specific drug products or product classes, including opioids.”
In one F.D.A. proposal, McKinsey did note that Dr. Smith had previously served an unnamed opioid manufacturer, and in its statement to The Times, the firm’s spokesman said it had “repeatedly made the agency aware of our industry experience and our colleagues’ expertise in the pharmaceutical industry.”
But the committee’s report criticized McKinsey’s disclosures as “isolated and vague” and not in accordance with the firm’s own policy. The F.D.A. has previously said it was unaware of McKinsey’s work for Purdue until 2021.
Cultivating a Friend in Trump’s Cabinet
The committee identified 37 F.D.A. projects staffed by McKinsey consultants who also worked for Purdue. Additional documents suggest that McKinsey’s work for the agency, including by Dr. Smith, was even more extensive.
Dr. Smith worked on more than 40 projects for the F.D.A. between 2007 and 2019, while also serving Purdue in at least a half-dozen initiatives — advising the drugmaker on interactions with the regulator and, in one case, helping secure approval of a new opioid product, according to the documents obtained by the attorneys general.
The documents also identify other McKinsey consultants who both worked with the F.D.A. and advised drugmakers on regulatory issues.
Navjot Singh, a partner, led more than 80 McKinsey projects at the agency between 2007 and 2019. Emails and presentations from that period show that he also worked on multiple projects for Purdue. The McKinsey team advising Purdue solicited his insight in an email discussing “F.D.A. issues,” and the firm in 2014 offered him to Purdue as an expert in “regulatory agencies.”
He did not respond to emails or phone calls seeking comment.
Several of McKinsey’s F.D.A. projects pertained directly to work the firm was doing for Purdue at the same time.
Image
Navjot Singh, a McKinsey partner who led scores of projects with the F.D.A., also worked on multiple projects for Purdue.
Navjot Singh, a McKinsey partner who led scores of projects with the F.D.A., also worked on multiple projects for Purdue.Credit...via YouTube
In 2011, the F.D.A. hired McKinsey to advise its office overseeing drug companies’ agency-approved plans to monitor the safety of potentially risky products such as opioids. Dr. Smith worked on the project while also advising Purdue on an effort that would, among other things, demonstrate whether OxyContin was meeting those requirements.
In 2016, while Dr. Smith advised the F.D.A. on its use of data for tracking drug safety, colleagues sought his counsel on how the firm might draw on that work with the agency to help Purdue.
The documents indicate multiple occasions when McKinsey promoted its connections with federal regulators when pitching its services to pharmaceutical clients.
“We serve the broadest range of stakeholders that matter for Purdue,” one consultant, Rob Rosiello, wrote in the 2014 email to Purdue’s chief executive. He added, “One client we can disclose is the F.D.A., who we have supported for over five years.”
Earlier, in a 2009 presentation offering its services to a pharmaceutical industry group, McKinsey wrote that it directly supported regulatory bodies “and as such have developed insights into the perspectives of the regulators themselves.”
More recently, McKinsey also sought to cultivate closer ties to Mr. Azar, who was nominated in November 2017 by Mr. Trump to be the nation’s top health official. McKinsey collected at least $400 million advising pharmaceutical companies in 2018 and 2019, according to its internal records.
The firm’s relationship with Mr. Azar began well before his appointment. In February 2017, Mr. Azar, who had left his job as president of the drugmaker Eli Lilly’s U.S. business, emailed Martin Elling, a senior partner who co-led the firm’s work with Purdue.
“I’d really value sitting with you guys and talking through ideas you may have and advice on how to look at and for opportunities,” Mr. Azar wrote to Mr. Elling. Other emails show that Mr. Elling and others at McKinsey had scheduled a meeting with Mr. Azar at the firm’s Midtown Manhattan office on May 1, 2017.
Later, upon learning of Mr. Azar’s Senate confirmation in January 2018, Mr. Elling wrote to him: “One giant step! Congratulations.”
Mr. Azar replied: “Thanks guys. Very grateful for all your help. Let me get my sea legs over there and we can chat about the practice and connection to HHS.”
The documents don’t explain the nature of the “help” provided to Mr. Azar by McKinsey. Mr. Azar declined to be interviewed but issued a statement asserting that McKinsey had “played no role in my appointment as secretary” and that, contrary to the email suggestion, he had had no meetings with McKinsey “as a follow-up to their notes of congratulations.”
Image
The records include emails between a McKinsey senior partner and Alex M. Azar II, who became health secretary. “Very grateful for all your help,” Mr. Azar wrote after his confirmation.
The records include emails between a McKinsey senior partner and Alex M. Azar II, who became health secretary. “Very grateful for all your help,” Mr. Azar wrote after his confirmation.Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times
The McKinsey spokesman said the firm was “not aware” that it played any role helping Mr. Azar get nominated for his cabinet post.
McKinsey consultants had begun drafting a detailed memo to Mr. Azar before his confirmation, the documents show, in which they outlined major issues he would face. One paragraph offered a blunt assessment of the continued severity of the opioid crisis. It said that two programs Mr. Azar would oversee as secretary — Medicare and Medicaid — were contributing to the problem by allowing opioids to be dispensed to people prone to abuse them and in doses that were too high.
But those references were deleted after a consultant working for Purdue, Arnab Ghatak, objected to them. In addition, heeding some of Mr. Ghatak’s suggestions, the final version added language that broadened responsibility for the crisis to include generic manufacturers and illicit heroin use.
Also the statement that “a substantial portion of the ongoing prescribing in Medicaid in Medicare remains potentially inappropriate” seems like an assertion without enough supporting facts.
McKinsey & Company consultant Arnab Ghatak, the longtime co-leader of the firm’s work for Purdue Pharma, weighed in on a memo being prepared in 2018 for Alex Azar, who would be confirmed as the nation's top health official days later.
The problem with inviting a consultant for Purdue to weigh in on the Azar memo wasn’t lost at the time on McKinsey’s managers, the documents show. Tom Latkovic, a McKinsey senior partner, said that conferring with Mr. Ghatak had been a mistake.
“His view is we shouldn’t say anything on topic to anyone,” Mr. Latkovic wrote in an email. “He told me the word ‘epidemic’ and/or ‘crisis’ are hyperbolic. That’s where he is coming from.”
Mr. Azar’s statement to The Times said that addressing the opioid crisis was among his top priorities as secretary. “I was the first Republican health secretary to declare that addiction is a disease, never a moral failing,” the statement said.
A former McKinsey partner, Paul Mango, served as Mr. Azar’s deputy chief of staff for policy. Both left the department at the end of the Trump administration.
‘These Guys Will Be Deposed’
The memo for Mr. Azar was not the only source of frustration for consultants at McKinsey working with government agencies and civic institutions to counter the opioid crisis.
In 2018, for example, Mr. Latkovic and his colleagues prepared publications with titles such as “Why We Need Bolder Action to Combat the Opioid Epidemic.” Drafts were sent for review to other McKinsey consultants serving pharmaceutical companies.
“We really want to make sure you are comfortable with the content, and that you don’t feel your respective clients would be concerned in any way,” one manager wrote when soliciting feedback from two consultants who had worked with opioid manufacturers.
Mr. Latkovic complained in an email that one colleague working with the drugmakers “waters down whatever I say.”
As Purdue’s legal troubles festered, McKinsey partners overseeing the firm’s work with the opioid maker appear to have taken steps to limit material that could be subpoenaed, according to the documents. In one text message exchange with Mr. Ghatak in May 2017, Laura Moran, a partner, said she would not email slide decks to Purdue but would instead provide printed copies.
“These guys will be deposed,” she wrote to Mr. Ghatak. “Best our emails are not sucked into it.”
In late August 2018, after Massachusetts and New York had sued Purdue over its marketing of opioid products, Mr. Elling wrote an email to himself that said “delete old pur documents from laptop.”
Mr. Elling and Mr. Ghatak were fired after The Times reported in 2020 that they had discussed purging documents from McKinsey’s work with Purdue. In February 2021, McKinsey agreed without admitting wrongdoing to pay about $600 million to settle state investigations into its role in helping “turbocharge” sales at opioid makers. Neither responded to emails or phone calls seeking comment. Ms. Moran could not be reached for comment.
When some of McKinsey’s work with Purdue was revealed by the news media in early 2019, a consultant named Sarah Nam reached out to Dr. Smith.
“I am still struggling to come to terms with how our practice’s broader work impacts public health,” she wrote. Apparently unaware of Dr. Smith’s work for Purdue, she continued, “I know you lead work in combating the opioid crisis with public health institutions and regulators (on the complete other side), and would love to get your thoughts.”
His reaction to the public disclosure of the firm’s work for Purdue had been quite different. After a colleague suggested they talk through what to say to the F.D.A., Dr. Smith replied, “Yes, let’s discuss how to manage this.”
In the three years since the firm’s work with Purdue was made public, McKinsey has taken steps to overhaul the way it selects clients, and has tripled its staff members who oversee compliance, risk management and professional standards, the McKinsey spokesman said in the statement.
“McKinsey will continue to take steps to strengthen our policies, professional standards, and our risk and governance processes to ensure our work is consistent with our values and the high expectations we set for ourselves,” the statement said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/business/mckinsey-purdue-fda-records.html
In the Ocean, It’s Snowing Microplastics
Tiny bits of plastic have infiltrated the deep sea’s main food source and could alter the ocean’s role in one of Earth’s ancient cooling processes, scientists say.
By Sabrina Imbler
April 3, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET
As long as there has been marine life, there has been marine snow — a ceaseless drizzle of death and waste sinking from the surface into the depths of the sea.
The snow begins as motes, which aggregate into dense, flocculent flakes that gradually sink and drift past the mouths (and mouth-like apparatuses) of scavengers farther down. But even marine snow that is devoured will most likely be snowfall once more; a squid’s guts are just a rest stop on this long passage to the deep.
Although the term may suggest wintry whites, marine snow is mostly brownish or grayish, comprising mostly dead things. For eons, the debris has contained the same things — flecks from plant and animal carcasses, feces, mucus, dust, microbes, viruses — and transported the ocean’s carbon to be stored on the seafloor. Increasingly, however, marine snowfall is being infiltrated by microplastics: fibers and fragments of polyamide, polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate. And this fauxfall appears to be altering our planet’s ancient cooling process.
Every year, tens of millions of tons of plastic enter Earth’s oceans. Scientists initially assumed that the material was destined to float in garbage patches and gyres, but surface surveys have accounted for only about one percent of the ocean’s estimated plastic. A recent model found that 99.8 percent of plastic that entered the ocean since 1950 had sunk below the first few hundred feet of the ocean. Scientists have found 10,000 times more microplastics on the seafloor than in contaminated surface waters.
Marine snow, one of the primary pathways connecting the surface and the deep, appears to be helping the plastics sink. And scientists have only begun to untangle how these materials interfere with deep-sea food webs and the ocean’s natural carbon cycles.
“It’s not just that marine snow transports plastics or aggregates with plastic,” Luisa Galgani, a researcher at Florida Atlantic University, said. “It’s that they can help each other get to the deep ocean.”
Marine snow-making
ImagePlastic waste washing up on a beach in Bali, Indonesia. Surface surveys have accounted for only about one percent of the ocean’s estimated plastic.
Plastic waste washing up on a beach in Bali, Indonesia. Surface surveys have accounted for only about one percent of the ocean’s estimated plastic.Credit...Agung Parameswara/Getty Images
The sunlit surface of the sea blooms with phytoplankton, zooplankton, algae, bacteria and other minuscule life, all feeding on sunbeams or one another. As these microbes metabolize, some produce polysaccharides that can form a sticky gel that attracts the lifeless bodies of tiny organisms, small shreds of larger carcasses, shells from foraminifera and pteropods, sand and microplastics, which stick together to form larger flakes. “They are the glue that keeps together all the components of marine snow,” Dr. Galgani said.
Marine snowflakes fall at different rates. Smaller ones have a more languid descent — “as slow as a meter a day,” said Anela Choy, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Bigger particles, such as dense fecal pellets, can sink quicker. “It just skyrockets to the bottom of the ocean,” said Tracy Mincer, a researcher at Florida Atlantic University.
Plastic in the ocean is constantly being degraded; even something as big and buoyant as a milk jug will eventually shed and splinter into microplastics. These plastics develop biofilms of distinct microbial communities — the “plastisphere,” said Linda Amaral-Zettler, a scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, who coined the term. “We sort of think about plastic as being inert,” Dr. Amaral-Zettler said. “Once it enters the environment, it’s rapidly colonized by microbes.”
Image
A sample of South Atlantic water containing plankton and microplastics. Ocean plastics commonly develop a filmy “plastisphere” of distinct microbial communities.
A sample of South Atlantic water containing plankton and microplastics. Ocean plastics commonly develop a filmy “plastisphere” of distinct microbial communities.Credit...Morgan Trimble/Alamy
Microplastics can host so many microbial hitchhikers that they counteract the natural buoyancy of the plastic, causing their raft to sink. But if the biofilms then degrade on the way down, the plastic could float back up, potentially leading to a yo-yoing purgatory of microplastics in the water column. Marine snow is anything but stable; as flakes free-fall into the abyss, they are constantly congealing and falling apart, rent by waves or predators.
“It’s not as simple as: Everything’s falling all the time,” said Adam Porter, a marine ecologist at the University of Exeter in England. “It’s a black box in the middle of the ocean, because we can’t stay down there long enough to work out what’s going on.”
To explore how marine snow and plastics are distributed in the water column, Dr. Mincer has begun to sample deeper waters with a dishwasher-size pump full of filters that dangles on a wire from a research boat. The filters are arranged from big mesh to small to filter out fish and plankton. Running these pumps for 10 hours at a stretch has revealed nylon fibers and other microplastics distributed throughout the water column below the South Atlantic subtropical gyre.
But even with a research boat and its expensive and unwieldy equipment, an individual piece of marine snow is not easily retrieved from deep water in the actual ocean. The pumps often disturb the snow and scatter fecal pellets. And the flakes alone offer little insight into how fast some snows are sinking, which is vital to understanding how long the plastics linger, yo-yo or sink in the water column before settling on the seafloor.
“Is it decades?” Dr. Mincer asked. “Is it hundreds of years? Then we can understand what we’re in here for, and what kind of problem this really is.”
Instant marine snow
Image
Experimental “mesocosms” created by the researcher Luisa Galgani and her team on the Greek island of Crete, to mimic and observe marine snow. “In the mesocosm, you are manipulating a natural system,” she said.
Experimental “mesocosms” created by the researcher Luisa Galgani and her team on the Greek island of Crete, to mimic and observe marine snow. “In the mesocosm, you are manipulating a natural system,” she said.Credit...Luisa Galgani, Chiara Esposito, Paraskevi Pitta
To answer these questions, and work within a budget, some scientists have made and manipulated their own marine snow in the lab.
In Exeter, Dr. Porter collected buckets of seawater from a nearby estuary and loaded the water into continuously rolling bottles. He then sprinkled in microplastics, including polyethylene beads and polypropylene fibers. The constant churning, and a squirt of sticky hyaluronic acid, encouraged particles to collide and stick together into snow.
“We obviously don’t have 300 meters of a tube to make it sink,” Dr. Porter said. “By rolling it, what you’re doing is you’re creating a never-ending water column for the particles to fall through.”
After the bottles rolled for three days, he pipetted out the snow and analyzed the number of microplastics in each flake. His team found that every type of microplastic they tested aggregated into marine snow, and that microplastics such as polypropylene and polyethylene — normally too buoyant to sink on their own — readily sank once incorporated into marine snow. And all the marine snow contaminated with microplastics sank significantly faster than the natural marine snow.
Image
Tubes of marine snow in the lab of Adam Porter at the University of Exeter in England. “It’s not as simple as: Everything’s falling all the time,” Dr. Porter said.
Tubes of marine snow in the lab of Adam Porter at the University of Exeter in England. “It’s not as simple as: Everything’s falling all the time,” Dr. Porter said.Credit...Adam Porter
Dr. Porter suggested that this potential change of the speed of the snow could have vast implications for how the ocean captures and stores carbon: Faster snowfalls could store more microplastics in the deep ocean, whereas slower snowfalls could make the plastic-laden particles more available to predators, potentially starving food webs deeper down. “The plastics are a diet pill for these animals,” said Karin Kvale, a carbon cycle scientist at GNS Science in New Zealand.
In experiments in Crete, with funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program, Dr. Galgani has tried mimicking marine snow on a larger scale. She dropped six mesocosms — huge bags that each contained nearly 800 gallons of seawater and recreated natural water movement — in a large pool. Under these conditions, marine snow formed. “In the field, you mostly make observations,” Dr. Galgani said. “You have so little space and a limited system. In the mesocosm, you are manipulating a natural system.”
Dr. Galgani mixed microplastics into three mesocosms in an attempt to “recreate a sea and maybe a future ocean where you can have a high concentration of plastic,” she said. The mesocosms laden with microplastics produced not just more marine snow but also more organic carbon, as the plastics offered more surfaces for microbes to colonize. All this could seed the deep ocean with even more carbon and alter the ocean’s biological pump, which helps regulate the climate.
“Of course, it’s a very, very big picture,” Dr. Galgani said. “But we have some signals that it can have an effect. Of course, it depends on how much plastic there is.”
A plastic feast
Image
Vampire squids, which live in deep waters, were collected from a contaminated patch of the Atlantic Ocean and found to have alarmingly high levels of plastic in their stomachs.
Vampire squids, which live in deep waters, were collected from a contaminated patch of the Atlantic Ocean and found to have alarmingly high levels of plastic in their stomachs. Credit...Steve Downer/Science Source
To understand how microplastics might travel through deep-sea food webs, some scientists have turned to creatures for clues.
Every 24 hours, many species of marine organism embark on a synchronized migration up and down in the water column. “They do the equivalent of a marathon every day and night,” Dr. Choy said. Guilherme V.B. Ferreira, a researcher at the Rural Federal University of Pernambuco in Brazil, wondered: “Is it possible they are transporting the plastics up and down?”
Dr. Ferreira and Anne Justino, a doctoral student at the same university, collected vampire squids and midwater squids from a patch of the tropical Atlantic. They found a plethora of plastics in both species: mostly fibers, but also fragments and beads.
This made sense for midwater squids, which migrate toward the surface at night to feed on fish and copepods that eat microplastics directly. But vampire squids, which live in deeper waters with fewer microplastics, had even higher levels of plastic, as well as foam, in their stomachs. The researchers hypothesize that the vampire squids’ primary diet of marine snow, especially meatier fecal pellets, may be funneling plastics into their bellies.
“It’s very concerning,” Ms. Justino said. Dr. Ferreira said: “They are one of the most vulnerable species for this anthropogenic influence.”
Ms. Justino has excavated fibers and beads from the digestive tracts of lanternfish, hatchetfish and other fish that migrate up and down in the mesopelagic, 650 to 3,300 feet down. Some microbial communities that settle on microplastics can bioluminesce, drawing in fish like a lure, said Dr. Mincer.
In the Monterey Bay Canyon, Dr. Choy wanted to understand if certain species of filter feeders were ingesting microplastics and transporting them into food webs in deeper water. “Marine snow is one of the major things that connects food webs across the ocean,” she said.
Image
The large, mucusy house of a deep-sea larvacean. When the larvaceans move out, their microplastic-laden houses sink into the deep.
The large, mucusy house of a deep-sea larvacean. When the larvaceans move out, their microplastic-laden houses sink into the deep.Credit...NOAA Ocean Exploration
Dr. Choy zeroed in on the giant larvacean Bathochordaeus stygius. The larvacean resembles a tiny tadpole and lives inside a palatial bubble of mucus that can reach up to a meter long. “It’s worse than the grossest booger you’ve ever seen,” Dr. Choy said. When their snot-houses become clogged from feeding, the larvaceans move out and the heavy bubbles sink. Dr. Choy found that these palaces of mucus are crowded with microplastics, which are funneled to the deep along with all their carbon.
Giant larvaceans are found across the world’s oceans, but Dr. Choy emphasized that her work was focused on the Monterey Bay Canyon, which belongs to a network of marine protected areas and is not representative of other, more polluted seas. “It’s one deep bay on one coast of one country,” Dr. Choy said. “Scale up and think about how vast the ocean is, especially the deep water.”
Individual flakes of marine snow are small, but they add up. A model created by Dr. Kvale estimated that in 2010, the world’s oceans produced 340 quadrillion aggregates of marine snow, which could transport as many as 463,000 tons of microplastics to the seafloor each year.
Scientists are still exploring exactly how this plastic snow is sinking, but they do know for sure, Dr. Porter said, that “everything eventually sinks in the ocean.” Vampire squids will live and die and eventually become marine snow. But the microplastics that pass through them will remain, eventually settling on the seafloor in a stratigraphic layer that will mark our time on the planet long after humans are gone.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/science/ocean-plastic-animals.html
Empty canals, dead cotton fields: Arizona farmers are getting slammed by water cuts in the West
PUBLISHED SUN, APR 3 20228:00 AM EDT
Emma Newburger
@EMMA_NEWBURGER
KEY POINTS
On the drought-stricken land where Pinal County farmers have irrigated crops for thousands of years, Nancy Caywood stopped her pickup truck along an empty canal and pointed to a field of dead alfalfa.
“It’s heart wrenching,” said Caywood, a third-generation farmer who manages 247 acres an hour outside of Phoenix.
An intensifying drought and declining reservoir levels across the Western U.S. prompted the first-ever cuts to Arizona farmers’ water supply from the Colorado River.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/03/arizona-farmers-are-slammed-by-water-cuts-in-the-west-amid-drought.html
Read the Full Text of Mark Pomerantz’s Resignation Letter
The former prosecutor who investigated Donald J. Trump believed that the former president was “guilty of numerous felony violations.”
March 23, 2022
The following is the full text of the resignation letter by Mark Pomerantz, who had investigated former President Donald J. Trump, but left after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, halted an effort to seek an indictment.
Dear Alvin,
I write to tender my resignation as a Special Assistant District Attorney and to explain my reasons for resigning.
As you know from our recent conversations and presentations, I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the Penal Law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual Statements of Financial Condition. His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people. The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did.
In late 2021, then-District Attorney Cyrus Vance directed a thorough review of the facts and law relating to Mr. Trump’s financial statements. Mr. Vance had been intimately involved in our investigation, attending grand jury presentations, sitting in on certain witness interviews, and receiving regular reports about the progress of the investigation. He concluded that the facts warranted prosecution, and he directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump and other defendants as soon as reasonably possible.
This work was underway when you took office as District Attorney. You have devoted significant time and energy to understanding the evidence we have accumulated with respect to the Trump financial statements, as well as the applicable law. You have reached the decision not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges at the present time. The investigation has been suspended indefinitely. Of course, that is your decision to make. I do not question your authority to make it, and I accept that you have made it sincerely. However, a decision made in good faith may nevertheless be wrong. I believe that your decision not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the existing record, is misguided and completely contrary to the public interest. I therefore cannot continue in my current position.
Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.
In my view, the public interest warrants the criminal prosecution of Mr. Trump, and such a prosecution should be brought without any further delay. Because of the complexity of the facts, the refusal of Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization to cooperate with our investigation, and their affirmative steps to frustrate our ability to follow the facts, this investigation has already consumed a great deal of time. As to Mr. Trump, the great bulk of the evidence relates to his management of the Trump Organization before he became President of the United States. These facts are already dated, and our ability to establish what happened may erode with the further passage of time. Many of the salient facts have been made public in proceedings brought by the Office of the Attorney General, and the public has rightly inquired about the pace of our investigation. Most importantly, the further passage of time will raise additional questions about the failure to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his criminal conduct.
To the extent you have raised issues as to the legal and factual sufficiency of our case and the likelihood that a prosecution would succeed, I and others have advised you that we have evidence sufficient to establish Mr. Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and we believe that the prosecution would prevail if charges were brought and the matter were tried to an impartial jury. No case is perfect. Whatever the risks of bringing the case may be, I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice. As I have suggested to you, respect for the rule of law, and the need to reinforce the bedrock proposition that “no man is above the law,” require that this prosecution be brought even if a conviction is not certain.
I also do not believe that suspending the investigation pending future developments will lead to a stronger case or dispel your reluctance to bring charges. No events are likely to occur that will alter the nature of the case or dramatically change the quality or quantity of the evidence available to the prosecution. There are always additional facts to be pursued. But the investigative team that has been working on this matter for many months does not believe that it makes law enforcement sense to postpone a prosecution in the hope that additional evidence will somehow emerge. On the contrary, I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating.
I fear that your decision means that Mr. Trump will not be held fully accountable for his crimes. I have worked too hard as a lawyer, and for too long, now to become a passive participant in what I believe to be a grave failure of justice. I therefore resign from my position as a Special Assistant District Attorney, effective immediately.
Sincerely,
Mark F. Pomerantz
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/nyregion/mark-pomerantz-resignation-letter.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Trump Is Guilty of ‘Numerous’ Felonies, Prosecutor Who Resigned Says
Mark F. Pomerantz, who had investigated the former president, left after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, halted an effort to seek an indictment.
By William K. Rashbaum, Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich
March 23, 2022
One of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated Donald J. Trump believed that the former president was “guilty of numerous felony violations” and that it was “a grave failure of justice” not to hold him accountable, according to a copy of his resignation letter.
The prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted his resignation last month after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, abruptly stopped pursuing an indictment of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Pomerantz, 70, a prominent former federal prosecutor and white-collar defense lawyer who came out of retirement to work on the Trump investigation, resigned on the same day as Carey R. Dunne, another senior prosecutor leading the inquiry.
Mr. Pomerantz’s Feb. 23 letter, obtained by The New York Times, offers a personal account of his decision to resign and for the first time states explicitly his belief that the office could have convicted the former president. Mr. Bragg’s decision was “contrary to the public interest,” he wrote.
“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did,” Mr. Pomerantz wrote.
Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne planned to charge Mr. Trump with falsifying business records, specifically his annual financial statements — a felony in New York State.
Mr. Bragg’s decision not to pursue charges then — and the resignations that followed — threw the fate of the long-running investigation into serious doubt. If the prosecutors had secured an indictment of Mr. Trump, it would have been the highest-profile case ever brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and would have made Mr. Trump the first American president to face criminal charges.
Read the letter
Read the Full Text of Mark Pomerantz’s Resignation Letter
Earlier this month, The Times reported that the investigation unraveled after weeks of escalating disagreement between the veteran prosecutors overseeing the case and the new district attorney. Much of the debate centered on whether the prosecutors could prove that Mr. Trump knowingly falsified the value of his assets on annual financial statements, The Times found, a necessary element to proving the case.
While Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz were confident that the office could demonstrate that the former president had intended to inflate the value of his golf clubs, hotels and office buildings, Mr. Bragg was not. He balked at pursuing an indictment against Mr. Trump, a decision that shut down Mr. Pomerantz’s and Mr. Dunne’s presentation of evidence to a grand jury and prompted their resignations.
Mr. Bragg has said that his office continues to conduct the investigation. For that reason, Mr. Bragg, a former federal prosecutor and deputy New York State attorney general who became district attorney in January, is barred from commenting on its specifics.
Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had decided in his final days in office to move toward an indictment, leaving Mr. Trump just weeks away from likely criminal charges. Mr. Bragg’s decision seems, for now at least, to have removed one of the greatest legal threats Mr. Trump has ever faced.
The resignation letter cast a harsh light on that decision from the perspective of Mr. Pomerantz, who wrote that he believed there was enough evidence to prove Mr. Trump’s guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“No case is perfect,” Mr. Pomerantz wrote. “Whatever the risks of bringing the case may be, I am convinced that a failure to prosecute will pose much greater risks in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice.”
In a statement responding to the letter, Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Ronald P. Fischetti, said that charges were not warranted and that Mr. Pomerantz “had the opportunity to present the fruits of his investigation to the D.A. and his senior staff on several occasions and failed.”
Mr. Fischetti, who was Mr. Pomerantz’s law partner in the 1980s and early 1990s, added: “We should applaud District Attorney Alvin Bragg for adhering to the rule of law and sticking to the evidence while making an apolitical charging decision based solely on the lack of evidence and nothing else.”
In its own statement, Mr. Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, called Mr. Pomerantz “a never-Trumper” and said: “Never before have we seen this level of corruption in our legal system.”
Mr. Trump has long denied wrongdoing and leveled personal attacks on the people investigating him, including a thinly veiled reference to Mr. Pomerantz. In one statement, he claimed that lawyers from Mr. Pomerantz’s former law firm had “gone to work in the district attorney’s office in order to viciously make sure that ‘the job gets done.’ ”
Mr. Pomerantz, who confirmed his resignation in a brief interview last month, declined to comment on the letter when contacted by The Times this week.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg, Danielle Filson, said that the investigation was continuing and added: “A team of experienced prosecutors is working every day to follow the facts and the law. There is nothing more we can or should say at this juncture about an ongoing investigation.”
In his letter, Mr. Pomerantz acknowledged that Mr. Bragg “devoted significant time and energy to understanding the evidence” in the inquiry and had made his decision in good faith. But, he wrote, “a decision made in good faith may nevertheless be wrong.”
Mr. Pomerantz contrasted Mr. Bragg’s approach with that of Mr. Vance, who made the Trump investigation a centerpiece of his tenure and convened the grand jury last fall. Mr. Pomerantz’s letter said that shortly before leaving office, Mr. Vance had directed the prosecutors to pursue an indictment of Mr. Trump as well as “other defendants as soon as reasonably possible.”
The letter did not name the other defendants, but the recent Times article reported that the prosecutors envisioned also charging Mr. Trump’s family business and his longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, who had already been indicted along with the company last year, accused of a yearslong scheme to evade taxes.
Mr. Bragg has told aides that the inquiry could move forward if a new piece of evidence is unearthed, or if a Trump Organization insider decides to turn on Mr. Trump. Some investigators in the office saw either possibility as highly unlikely.
“There are always additional facts to be pursued,” Mr. Pomerantz wrote in his letter. “But the investigative team that has been working on this matter for many months does not believe that it makes law enforcement sense to postpone a prosecution in the hope that additional evidence will somehow emerge.”
He added that “I and others believe that your decision not to authorize prosecution now will doom any future prospects that Mr. Trump will be prosecuted for the criminal conduct we have been investigating.”
As of late December, the team investigating Mr. Trump was mostly united around Mr. Vance’s decision to pursue charges — but that had not always been the case, The Times reported this month. Last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the team, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they believed were gaps in the evidence.
Initially, Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne had envisioned charging Mr. Trump with the crime of “scheme to defraud,” believing that he falsely inflated his assets on the statements of financial condition that had been used to obtain bank loans. But by the end of the year, they had changed course and planned to charge Mr. Trump with falsifying business records — a simpler case that essentially amounted to painting Mr. Trump as a liar rather than a thief.
Mr. Pomerantz, who joined the investigation more than a year ago, said in the letter that Mr. Trump’s financial statements were “false” — that he had lied about his assets to “banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people.”
Mr. Pomerantz is not the only one involved in the investigation to suggest that Mr. Trump or his company broke the law. The New York attorney general, Letitia James, whose office is assisting the criminal investigation and conducting its own civil inquiry, has filed court papers in the civil matter arguing that she has evidence showing that the Trump Organization had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices.
Mr. Trump has accused Mr. Bragg and Ms. James, both of whom are Black Democrats, of carrying out a politically motivated “witch hunt” and being “racists.”
Ms. James’s inquiry, which can lead to a lawsuit but not criminal charges, continues as she seeks to question Mr. Trump and two of his adult children under oath. The Trumps recently appealed a judge’s order that they submit to Ms. James’s questioning.
In another court filing, Ms. James disclosed that Mr. Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, had cut ties with him and essentially retracted a decade’s worth of his financial statements.
Mazars was shaping up to be a crucial witness in the criminal investigation as well. In January, Mr. Pomerantz questioned Mr. Trump’s accountant at Mazars before the grand jury, zeroing in on exaggerations in the financial statements.
But the statements also contained disclaimers, including acknowledgments that Mazars had neither audited nor authenticated Mr. Trump’s claims, potentially complicating the case. And some of Mr. Bragg’s supporters have argued that it would have been a difficult case to win.
Still, Mr. Pomerantz wrote that he and other prosecutors believed that they had amassed sufficient evidence to establish the former president’s guilt, writing that, “We believe that the prosecution would prevail if charges were brought and the matter were tried to an impartial jury.”
Addressing an apparent belief in Mr. Bragg’s office that they might lose at trial, Mr. Pomerantz wrote, “Respect for the rule of law, and the need to reinforce the bedrock proposition that ‘no man is above the law,’ require that this prosecution be brought even if a conviction is not certain.”
Mr. Pomerantz is a former head of the criminal division in the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan, as well as a longtime defense lawyer. He worked on the Trump investigation pro bono.
Mr. Dunne at the time was serving as Mr. Vance’s general counsel, a job he had held since early 2017. In that role, he had successfully argued before the Supreme Court, winning access to Mr. Trump’s tax records.
Mr. Dunne has declined to comment.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/23/nyregion/trump-investigation-felony-resignation-pomerantz.html
Deutsche Bank defends decision not to exit Russia: It’s not ‘practical’ right now
PUBLISHED THU, MAR 10 20229:25 AM ESTUPDATED 34 MIN AGO
KEY POINTS
Deutsche Bank’s CFO said Thursday it is not “practical” to close its Russia business, despite similar moves by major corporations seeking to distance themselves from the pariah state.
Speaking to CNBC, James von Moltke said the decision hinged on the bank’s duty of care to its clients in the country.
The comments come as the list of Western companies closing or pausing their Russia operations grows.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/10/deutsche-bank-says-not-practical-to-exit-russia-business.html
Translation: The laundry is still in the washing machine.
Over 300 Companies Have Withdrawn from Russia - But Some Remain
March 9, 2022
Since Putin's devastating invasion of Ukraine began, over 310 companies have announced their withdrawal from Russia in protest.
Nevertheless, some western companies have continued to operate in Russia undeterred; we identify several dozen companies with particularly significant exposure to Russian markets. In the days since we initially published our list, many of the "remain" companies have responded to public backlash and decided to withdraw, and we are continuously revising our list to reflect these decisions as they are made.
The full, current list of companies that have curtailed operations in Russia as well as those that remain, as of March 9, can be seen below.
Download the list by clicking here.
The list is updated daily by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and his research team at the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. We are pleased that our list has been cited by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Axios, CBS, CNBC, CNN, MSNBC, Fortune, Huffington Post, Meduza, NPR, BBC, and Investment Executive, among others, as the most authoritative and comprehensive record of the corporate exodus from Russia, but we always welcome additional tips and insights from our readers around the world.
https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over-300-companies-have-withdrawn-russia-some-remain
A New Iron Curtain Is Falling
The isolation of the Russian economy is striking in its speed and scope.
International pariah
Each day brings more economic punishments for Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. The sudden isolation of the Russian economy is striking in its speed and scope.
Yesterday, President Biden banned U.S. imports of Russian oil; Britain said it would phase out Russian oil imports by year end; and the E.U. pledged to shun Russian energy “well before 2030.” Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, said yesterday that it would stop buying Russian crude, after facing criticism for buying a tanker’s worth days earlier. Such unilateral corporate moves have compounded governments’ actions, cleaving Russia from the global economy, with uncertain and unpredictable consequences.
“Defending freedom is going to cost,” Biden said in announcing the import ban. Russia accounts for about 10 percent of the world’s oil supply, so any disruptions are likely to push up prices. Crude oil, which at around $125 a barrel is double its prepandemic level, could rise as high as $175, according to Goldman Sachs. The U.S. national average price of gasoline sits at $4.25 per gallon, a record. That is contributing to inflation and eating into consumers’ budgets, which could slow the U.S. economy (and hit countries that rely on Russian energy even harder).
The effect of the embargoes and sanctions are clearer for the Russian economy, which S&P estimates will shrink by nearly 9 percent this year. Fitch said Russia is at risk of “imminent” default after cutting the country’s credit rating deeper into junk territory. President Vladimir Putin has ordered restrictions on Russian exports of unspecified raw materials, which will further limit the country’s trade revenues.
Replacing Russian oil won’t be easy, as the U.S. and other buyers chase limited supplies. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait could add 2.5 million barrels, but all are all members of OPEC Plus, an alliance of oil-producing nations that includes Russia. Venezuela and Iran could contribute about 1.5 million barrels a day, but that would require lifting American sanctions. U.S. producers could also ramp up production, but it would take investment and time.
American brands quitting Russia has more than symbolic significance. After years of cultivating the Russian market, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and PepsiCo were among the companies yesterday that announced a pause to their operations there. Since Soviet times, these firms came to symbolize the opening of Moscow to the West. Starbucks also said it would close all of its locations and Yum Brands said some of its KFC and Pizza Hut locations would suspend operations.
Although these companies’ Russian operations account for single-digit percentages of group profits, their absence will be felt: McDonald’s, for example, employs 62,000 people in Russia. (The company said it would continue to pay salaries.) “It appears that much of the Russian populace knows little about the attack on Ukraine,” Louis Wells of Harvard Business School told DealBook. “If McDonald’s and Coca-Cola disappear along with Ikea and other foreign brands, people have to ask why.”
The pressure on companies to act is growing, from investors, employees and social media campaigns. The list of company actions compiled by Jeffrey Sonnenfeld of the Yale School of Management, updated daily, is a focus for a variety of stakeholders, and a major point of discussion in the boardrooms of companies highlighted because they have yet to disclose their Russia plans.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/business/dealbook/russia-ukraine-isolated.html
I'd like to think cooler heads would prevail in Russia.
I've said before, there is no exit, just an end. There is also no good ending, just bad, worse, or final. Can the world make a better beginning after? That is a big question.
Putin Has No Good Way Out, and That Really Scares Me
March 8, 2022
By Thomas L. Friedman
Opinion Columnist
If you’re hoping that the instability that Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine has wreaked on global markets and geopolitics has peaked, your hope is in vain. We haven’t seen anything yet. Wait until Putin fully grasps that his only choices left in Ukraine are how to lose — early and small and a little humiliated or late and big and deeply humiliated.
I can’t even wrap my mind around what kind of financial and political shocks will radiate from Russia — this country that is the world’s third-largest oil producer and possesses some 6,000 nuclear warheads — when it loses a war of choice that was spearheaded by one man, who can never afford to admit defeat.
Why not? Because Putin surely knows that “the Russian national tradition is unforgiving of military setbacks,” observed Leon Aron, a Russia expert at the American Enterprise Institute, who is writing a book about Putin’s road to Ukraine.
“Virtually every major defeat has resulted in radical change,” added Aron, writing in The Washington Post. “The Crimean War (1853-1856) precipitated Emperor Alexander II’s liberal revolution from above. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) brought about the First Russian Revolution. The catastrophe of World War I resulted in Emperor Nicholas II’s abdication and the Bolshevik Revolution. And the war in Afghanistan became a key factor in Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms.” Also, retreating from Cuba contributed significantly to Nikita Khrushchev’s removal two years later.
In the coming weeks it will become more and more obvious that our biggest problem with Putin in Ukraine is that he will refuse to lose early and small, and the only other outcome is that he will lose big and late. But because this is solely his war and he cannot admit defeat, he could keep doubling down in Ukraine until … until he contemplates using a nuclear weapon.
Why do I say that defeat in Ukraine is Putin’s only option, that only the timing and size is in question? Because the easy, low-cost invasion he envisioned and the welcome party from Ukrainians he imagined were total fantasies — and everything flows from that.
Putin completely underestimated Ukraine’s will to be independent and become part of the West. He completely underestimated the will of many Ukrainians to fight, even if it meant dying, for those two goals. He completely overestimated his own armed forces. He completely underestimated President Biden’s ability to galvanize a global economic and military coalition to enable Ukrainians to stand and fight and to devastate Russia at home — the most effective U.S. coalition-building effort since George H.W. Bush made Saddam Hussein pay for his folly of seizing Kuwait. And he completely underestimated the ability of companies and individuals all over the world to participate in, and amplify, economic sanctions on Russia — far beyond anything governments initiated or mandated.
When you get that many things wrong as a leader, your best option is to lose early and small. In Putin’s case that would mean withdrawing his forces from Ukraine immediately; offering a face-saving lie to justify his “special military operation,” like claiming it successfully protected Russians living in Ukraine; and promising to help Russians’ brethren rebuild. But the inescapable humiliation would surely be intolerable for this man obsessed with restoring the dignity and unity of what he sees as the Russian motherland.
Incidentally, the way things are going on the ground in Ukraine right now, it is not out of the realm of possibility that Putin could actually lose early and big. I would not bet on it, but with every passing day that more and more Russian soldiers are killed in Ukraine, who knows what happens to the fighting spirit of the conscripts in the Russian Army being asked to fight a deadly urban war against fellow Slavs for a cause that was never really explained to them.
Given the resistance of Ukrainians everywhere to the Russian occupation, for Putin to “win” militarily on the ground his army will need to subdue every major city in Ukraine. That includes the capital, Kyiv — after probably weeks of urban warfare and massive civilian casualties. In short, it can be done only by Putin and his generals perpetrating war crimes not seen in Europe since Hitler. It will make Putin’s Russia a permanent international pariah.
Moreover, how would Putin maintain control of another country — Ukraine — that has roughly one-third the population of Russia, with many residents hostile to Moscow? He would probably need to maintain every one of the 150,000-plus soldiers he has deployed there — if not more — forever.
There is simply no pathway that I see for Putin to win in Ukraine in any sustainable way because it simply is not the country he thought it was — a country just waiting for a quick decapitation of its “Nazi” leadership so that it could gently fall back into the bosom of Mother Russia.
So either he cuts his losses now and eats crow — and hopefully for him escapes enough sanctions to revive the Russian economy and hold onto power — or faces a forever war against Ukraine and much of the world, which will slowly sap Russia’s strength and collapse its infrastructure.
As he seems hellbent on the latter, I am terrified. Because there is only one thing worse than a strong Russia under Putin — and that’s a weak, humiliated, disorderly Russia that could fracture or be in a prolonged internal leadership turmoil, with different factions wrestling for power and with all of those nuclear warheads, cybercriminals and oil and gas wells lying around.
Putin’s Russia is not too big to fail. It is, however, too big to fail in a way that won’t shake the whole rest of the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/opinion/putin-ukraine-russia-war.html
Fighting Disinformation Can Feel Like a Lost Cause. It Isn’t.
March 7, 2022
By Jay Caspian Kang
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about disinformation and how it has been used as a cudgel to dismiss and silence opinions that some people might not like. This doesn’t mean that disinformation isn’t a problem — the speed with which unverified, mislabeled or outright false news came out of Ukraine was a grim reminder of this — but it’s become increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what’s a purposeful attempt to mislead the public and what’s being called disinformation because of a genuine difference of opinion.
Plus, we really can’t trust that technology can solve the trouble it creates. After the 2016 election, the tech giants attempted to fix the disinformation problem by placing labels on potentially harmful posts. This, in theory, isn’t a bad idea if one can somehow corral and then sort every bit of online information. A 2020 study found that the filters for this sort of project could not possibly catch all of the disinformation, which presented a problem: If you can identify only, say, 20 percent of the bad information and label it as such, what happens to the 80 percent? The researchers found that readers would be more likely to assume that the unlabeled disinformation was trustworthy.
Given the difficulty of regulating every online post, especially in a country that protects most forms of speech, it seems far more prudent to focus most of our efforts on building an educated and resilient public that can spot and then ignore disinformation campaigns.
An educational alternative
Over the past five years, Finland has become one of the world’s leaders in disinformation education. High school students there are given a series of political topics and asked to compile lists of stories and commentary from across the internet. They’re then tasked with investigating the veracity of claims. In some schools, even elementary school students are given a “tool kit” that provides them with ways to spot dubious information online.
Finland also ranks at the top of the “Media Literacy Index,” a metric developed by the Open Society Institute of Sofia that tries to gauge which countries have “the highest potential to withstand the negative impact of fake news and misinformation due to the quality of education, free media and high trust among people.” But it’s hard to really know what rankings like this actually reflect. Four of the five highest-ranking countries — Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Ireland — are also in the top 25 wealthiest countries when it comes to per capita G.D.P. So is a country’s level of “media literacy” anything more than a measure of the wealth and the education of its population? How can we tell if a country’s disinformation curriculum is the reason its population is relatively protected against online falsehoods?
A potentially useful outlier is Estonia, a country that has roughly the population of San Diego. In 2010, after years of political turmoil and a wide-ranging series of cyberattacks, the government of Estonia decided to mandate “media literacy” education for all of its public school students. Elementary and middle school students are taught everything from how online content is created to how statistics can be manipulated. In high school, lessons about social media, trolls, the difference between fact and opinion and what makes a good source help students become more critical thinkers.
All this seems promising, especially when you consider that Estonia, a relatively poor country, has media literacy rates that surpass those of much wealthier countries like Germany and Sweden. Perhaps misinformation education alone can make the difference for poorer countries, or even countries with great wealth disparities, such as the United States. But would a solution in Estonia work in a country as different from it as America?
The huge gap we need to close
In my last newsletter about disinformation, I wrote about a study by the Stanford History Education Group that showed that American high school students were failing basic media literacy and disinformation-spotting tests. Today, I want to dive a bit deeper into the results, which were largely divided by class and race.
Poorer students mostly did much worse than wealthy students. White, Asian and students of “two or more races” on average scored up to three times as high as Black students when it came to “evaluating evidence.” Those disparities held for the most part throughout the study.
Students who qualified for free or reduced lunch did about half as well at “evaluating evidence” as other students. Those whose mothers had an advanced degree fared far better than those whose mothers had not finished high school. Students who received “mostly A’s” on their report cards scored higher than those who got “mostly C’s and D’s.”
What all this suggests, then, is that America’s disinformation problem isn’t all that much different from pretty much every other educational problem in this country. The same class and race disparities exist in standardized testing, grade point average and even the quality of essays students write for college applications. They also show up in vaccination rates and in levels of mistrust of public health officials. We live in a country where profound inequality affects nearly every part of a person’s life. Why would we expect disinformation resistance to be any different?
Lessons that work
So how do we create a more disinformation-resistant public in a country with such rampant inequality?
As of last year, there were 14 states that offered some form of mandatory media literacy education, but there’s a lot of variation in what “media literacy” actually means. Florida, Utah and Texas are seen as leaders in media literacy education, but it’s difficult to gauge how effective their programs are. Bad information morphs so quickly from, say, an erroneous and dubiously sourced article into a social media post to even a newsletter that lands in your inbox. Given the fact that disinformation is such a moving target, it’s possible that any lesson about it may be out of date before it can even land on a student’s desk.
Joel Breakstone, the director of the Stanford History Education Group, believes that there needs to be more attention paid to what, exactly, is taught in these media literacy programs. Frequently used lessons like the memorably named Currency Reliability Authority Purpose (CRAP) test asks students to put their information through a gauntlet of questions. But Breakstone believes they do not really work for a variety of reasons, the most salient being that most people don’t really know how to check sources and the reliability of information.
What he and his group suggest, instead, is a more comprehensive approach that teaches kids how to assess not only the reliability of the specific information they’ve found online, but also who published it and for what purpose. In doing this, students are looking at the whole ecosystem in which the information resides, which improves their ability to question things that may seem as if they come from sources that look reputable enough. When Breakstone’s group incorporated these lessons into a 12th-grade civics course, they found almost immediate improvement in the students’ ability to think critically about that information.
These efforts won’t magically increase the vaccination rate in America or keep your uncle from taking on some very strange beliefs, but they seem to represent the only viable solution to a problem that seems specifically designed to exploit the American traditions of inequality and mistrust.
Have feedback? Send a note to kang-newsletter@nytimes.com.
Jay Caspian Kang (@jaycaspiankang), a writer for Opinion and The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Loneliest Americans.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/07/opinion/fighting-disinformation-education.html
Police arrest more than 3,000 people as protests grow across Russia.
Despite the threat of yearslong prison terms, thousands of Russians joined antiwar rallies across the country on Sunday in a striking show of the pent-up anger in Russian society about President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The police reported more than 3,000 arrests across the country — the highest nationwide total officially reported in any single day of protest in recent memory. An activist group that tracks arrests, OVD-Info, reported detentions in 49 different Russian cities.
Video from independent Russian news outlets covering the protests showed throngs of people chanting “No to war!” on St. Petersburg’s central avenue, Nevsky Prospekt, and on Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square, just outside the Kremlin walls. Other clips showed protesters being beaten and kicked by the police, including next to a stand of balloons and gift boxes inside Moscow’s storied children’s department store, Detsky Mir — next door to the headquarters of the domestic intelligence agency, the F.S.B.
In the city of Kaliningrad near the Baltic Sea, a woman protesting the war was recorded in a video posted on Twitter telling a police officer that she had survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
“Are you here to support the fascists?” the officer responded, repeating the Kremlin narrative about the war in Ukraine, before calling over other policemen and telling them: “Arrest them all.”
The thousands of Russians who protested on Sunday represented only a slice of those furious over the invasion. Thousands more fled the country in the last 10 days, as their savings evaporated amid the collapse of the ruble and the West’s crushing sanctions.
“There is no more Russia,” Anton Dolin, one of Russia’s best-known film critics, wrote on Sunday, announcing his departure. “We are suffering a catastrophe — no, not an economic or political one. This is a moral catastrophe.”
In a phone interview from Latvia, Mr. Dolan, 46, described how he spent four hours in the cold waiting to cross the border on foot Saturday with his wife, two children, their dog and a few suitcases.
“We have realized we are most probably departing for a long time,” he said. “We never prepared for this departure and never in our lives even thought we would ever leave Russia.”
Mr. Putin remained defiant, despite phone calls with the presidents of France and Turkey on Sunday in which both leaders urged Russia to consider a cease-fire.
“An end to the special operation is only possible if Kyiv stops its military action and fulfills Russia’s well known demands,” the Kremlin said.
By Sunday, the Russian government had blocked access inside the country to the websites of virtually all popular independent media outlets reporting on the war. Mr. Putin on Friday signed a law punishing “false news” about the war with prison sentences of up to 15 years.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/03/06/world/ukraine-russia
How the Manhattan D.A.’s Investigation Into Donald Trump Unraveled
The criminal investigation into the former president crashed amid a disagreement about the merits of bringing a case. The debate pitted a new district attorney against two veteran prosecutors who had pursued a case against Mr. Trump for years.
By Ben Protess, William K. Rashbaum and Jonah E. Bromwich
March 5, 2022
Updated 1:02 p.m. ET
On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States.
The prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald J. Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Mr. Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges.
But Mr. Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne about whether they could show that Mr. Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.
The questioning was so intense that as the meeting ended, Mr. Dunne, exasperated, used a lawyerly expression that normally refers to a judge’s fiery questioning:
“Wow, this was a really hot bench,” Mr. Dunne said, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. “What I’m hearing is you have great concerns.”
The meeting, on Jan. 24, started a series of events that brought the investigation of Mr. Trump to a sudden halt, and late last month prompted Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne to resign. It also represented a drastic shift: Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had deliberated for months before deciding to move toward an indictment of Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg, not two months into his tenure, reversed that decision.
Mr. Bragg has maintained that the three-year inquiry is continuing. But the reversal, for now, has eliminated one of the gravest legal threats facing the former president.
This account of the investigation’s unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events, pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in U.S. history. Had the district attorney’s office secured an indictment, Mr. Trump would have been the first current or former president to be criminally charged.
Mr. Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration, with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.
Mr. Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, had not taken issue with Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Mr. Trump’s intent — a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records — and about the risks of relying on the former president’s onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, as a key witness.
Editors’ Picks
William P. Barr’s Good Donald Trump and Bad Donald Trump
2022 Oscar Nominations: Full Ballot
Nightlife Inflation: The Cost of Going Out Is Going Up
Mr. Cohen’s testimony, the prosecutors leading the investigation argued, could help to establish that Mr. Trump was intentionally misleading when he exaggerated the value of his properties. The financial statements Mr. Trump submitted to banks to secure loans — documents that say “Donald J. Trump is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation” of the valuations — could also support a case.
Mr. Bragg was not persuaded. Once he told Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne that he was not prepared to authorize charges, they resigned. Explaining the resignation to his team of prosecutors in a meeting a day later, Mr. Dunne said he felt he needed “to disassociate myself with this decision because I think it was on the wrong side of history.”
Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz also bristled at how Mr. Bragg had handled the investigation at times. Mr. Bragg left the pivotal Jan. 24 meeting before the discussion ended, though several of his top aides stayed behind. And after that day, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz — two of New York’s most prominent litigators, who had become accustomed to driving the case — were not included in closed-door meetings where decisions were made.
Image
Mark Pomerantz, one of two lawyers who were leading a criminal inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump’s business practices. The two resigned last week after the investigation came to a sudden halt.
Mark Pomerantz, one of two lawyers who were leading a criminal inquiry into former President Donald J. Trump’s business practices. The two resigned last week after the investigation came to a sudden halt.
Credit...David Karp/Associated Press
Mr. Bragg’s choice not to pursue charges is reminiscent of the high hurdle that others have failed to clear over the years as they sought to hold Mr. Trump criminally liable for his practices as a real estate mogul. Mr. Trump famously shuns email, and he has cultivated deep loyalty among employees who might otherwise testify against him, a one-two punch that has stymied other prosecutors in search of conclusive proof of his guilt.
In the Manhattan investigation, the absence of damning emails or an insider willing to testify would make it harder to prove that any exaggerations were criminal. Mr. Trump, who has a history of making false statements, has in the past referred to boastful claims about his assets as “truthful hyperbole.”
The interviews with people knowledgeable about the Manhattan investigation also highlight the success of Mr. Trump’s efforts to delay it.
He fought many of the subpoenas issued by the district attorney. In one of those battles — for Mr. Trump’s tax returns and other financial documents — it took nearly 18 months and two trips to the Supreme Court for Mr. Vance’s office to obtain the records. As a result, the ultimate decision of whether to pursue charges fell to Mr. Bragg, his more skeptical successor.
A public uproar over his handling of the investigation has added to the turbulence of Mr. Bragg’s early tenure.
As he was weighing the fate of the Trump investigation, Mr. Bragg was also contending with a firestorm over a number of criminal justice reforms he introduced in a memo his first week in office. The memo immediately embroiled his administration in controversy, a public relations debacle that worsened with a handful of high-profile shootings, including the killing of two police officers in late January.
Although it is unclear whether those early travails influenced Mr. Bragg’s management of the Trump inquiry, there is no doubt that they contributed to his frenzied first days in office.
Mr. Bragg’s decision on the Trump investigation may compound his political problems in heavily Democratic Manhattan, where many residents make no secret of their enmity for Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bragg has told aides that the inquiry could move forward if a new piece of evidence is unearthed, or if a Trump Organization insider decides to turn on Mr. Trump. Other prosecutors in the office saw that as fanciful.
Mr. Trump has long denied wrongdoing and has accused Mr. Bragg and Ms. James, both of whom are Democrats and Black, of carrying out a politically motivated “witch hunt” and being “racists.”
Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg, said that the investigation into Mr. Trump was continuing under new leadership.
“This is an active investigation and there is a strong team in place working on it,” Ms. Filson said. She added that the inquiry was now being led by Susan Hoffinger, the executive assistant district attorney in charge of the office’s Investigation Division.
Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne declined to comment.
The Brain Trust
ImageCyrus R. Vance Jr., the previous Manhattan district attorney, began the investigation into Mr. Trump, including whether he had intentionally inflated the value of his assets to defraud lenders.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the previous Manhattan district attorney, began the investigation into Mr. Trump, including whether he had intentionally inflated the value of his assets to defraud lenders.Credit...Desiree Rios for The New York Times
Mr. Vance and his top deputies were riding high last summer.
They had just announced criminal tax charges against Mr. Trump’s family business and his longtime finance chief, Allen H. Weisselberg. The next step for Mr. Dunne, Mr. Pomerantz and their team was to build a case against Mr. Trump himself.
The two were suited to the task. Mr. Pomerantz, 70, had once run the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. He had also been a partner at the prestigious law firm Paul Weiss, and he came out of retirement to work on the investigation without pay.
Mr. Dunne had begun his career trying cases as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, gone on to become a partner at another top firm, Davis Polk, and was a former president of the New York City bar association. As Mr. Vance’s general counsel, he had successfully argued before the Supreme Court, winning access to Mr. Trump’s tax records.
Helped by lawyers from Ms. James’s office, which was conducting a separate, civil inquiry into Mr. Trump, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz pressed ahead with their investigation into whether Mr. Trump had used his financial statements to deceive lenders about his net worth and secure favorable loan terms. Mr. Cohen had testified before Congress that Mr. Trump was a “con man” who “inflated his total assets when it served his purposes.”
By the fall, a number of the prosecutors assigned to the investigation thought it was likely that Mr. Trump had broken the law. Proving it would be another matter.
Image
Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, has been leading a parallel inquiry focused on whether financial statements for Mr. Trump’s family company intentionally included false information.
Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, has been leading a parallel inquiry focused on whether financial statements for Mr. Trump’s family company intentionally included false information.Credit...Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Soon, some of the career prosecutors who had worked on the inquiry for more than two years expressed concern. They believed that Mr. Vance, who had decided not to seek re-election, was pushing too hard for an indictment before leaving office, and that the evidence gathered so far did not justify the speed at which the inquiry was moving.
Sign up for the New York Today Newsletter Each morning, get the latest on New York businesses, arts, sports, dining, style and more. Get it sent to your inbox.
The debate was born of painful experience from past investigations, including one involving the Trump family. In 2012, in the first of his three terms, Mr. Vance closed an investigation into accusations that Mr. Trump’s son Donald Jr. and his daughter Ivanka had misled potential buyers of apartments at one of the Trump Organization’s New York hotels, Trump Soho. The decision trailed Mr. Vance for years, subjecting him to criticism after Mr. Trump was elected president.
Concern among the office’s career prosecutors about the investigation into the former president came to a head in September at a meeting they sought with Mr. Dunne. Mr. Dunne offered to have them work only on the pending trial of Mr. Weisselberg or leave the Trump team altogether.
Two prosecutors eventually took him up on the latter.
Mr. Vance pressed on, and in early November, convened a new special grand jury to start hearing evidence against the former president. Still, he had yet to decide whether to direct the prosecutors to begin a formal grand jury presentation with the goal of seeking charges. As his tenure drew to a close in December, he consulted a group of prominent outside lawyers to help inform what would be his final decision.
The group was referred to internally as “the brain trust” — a handful of former prosecutors that included two senior members of Robert S. Mueller’s special counsel inquiry into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Before they all convened for a meeting on Dec. 9, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz circulated hypothetical opening arguments in advance: one for the prosecution; another for the defense.
In the meeting, which lasted much of the day, the outside lawyers raised a number of questions about the evidence and the lack of an insider witness. Mr. Weisselberg, who has spent nearly a half-century working as an accountant for the Trump family, had resisted pressure from the prosecutors to cooperate.
The brain trust puzzled over how to prove that Mr. Trump had intended to commit crimes, and the group questioned Mr. Cohen’s potential strength as a witness at trial. A former Trump acolyte turned antagonist, Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal charges of lying to Congress on behalf of Mr. Trump and paying hush money to a pornographic actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump.
Neither Mr. Bragg nor his team were aware of, or invited to, the Dec. 9 meeting.
And there are differing accounts of how well the brain trust responded to the evidence, with one participant calling the reaction “mixed at best,” but another saying that there was agreement that the prosecutors had credible evidence to support charges and that no one recommended against a case.
The deliberations led prosecutors to simplify the charges they planned to seek to make it easier to win a conviction, and Mr. Vance was soon persuaded. Three days later, Mr. Dunne sent the team an email announcing that they would proceed. The plan, he said, was to seek charges from the panel in the spring.
Most of the remaining career prosecutors were on board. But that week, a third prosecutor left the investigation into Mr. Trump.
‘Time Is of the Essence’
Image
Carey Dunne, Mr. Vance’s general counsel. A leader, with Mr. Pomerantz, of the Trump inquiry, Mr. Dunne became frustrated, and he ultimately resigned, over questions about the strength of the case.
Carey Dunne, Mr. Vance’s general counsel. A leader, with Mr. Pomerantz, of the Trump inquiry, Mr. Dunne became frustrated, and he ultimately resigned, over questions about the strength of the case.Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
With Mr. Vance about to leave office, the investigators’ attention turned to their future boss.
Born in Harlem and educated at Harvard, Mr. Bragg won a hotly contested Democratic primary last year with a campaign that balanced progressive ideals with public safety. He had served as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and also in the state attorney general’s office, where he rose to become a top deputy managing hundreds of lawyers.
Understand the New York A.G.’s Trump Inquiry
Card 1 of 6
An empire under scrutiny. The New York State attorney general is currently conducting a civil investigation into former president Donald Trump’s business practices. Here’s what to know:
The origins of the inquiry. The investigation started after Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, testified to Congress that Mr. Trump and his employees had manipulated his net worth to suit his interests.
The findings. Ms. James detailed in a recent filing what she said was a pattern by the Trump Organization to inflate the value of the company’s properties in documents filed with lenders, insurers and the Internal Revenue Service.
The potential impact. Because the investigation is civil, the attorney general cannot file criminal charges and would have to sue Mr. Trump. Ms. James could seek financial penalties and try to shut down certain aspects of Mr. Trump’s business.
Mr. Trump’s lawsuit. In December Mr. Trump sued Letitia James, the New York attorney general, seeking to halt the inquiry. The suit argues that the attorney general’s involvement in the inquiry is politically motivated.
Pushing back. Lawyers for the Trump family had sought to prevent Ms. James from obtaining documents as part of the inquiry and interviewing Mr. Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump under oath. But a State Supreme Court judge in Manhattan has rejected the efforts.
At the attorney general’s office, Mr. Bragg had overseen a significant amount of civil litigation against Mr. Trump and his administration — cases he often cited in the district attorney race. One of the most prominent suits he was involved in accused the Trump family’s charitable foundation of “a shocking pattern of illegality” and led to the foundation’s dissolution.
Mr. Bragg first got involved in the district attorney’s criminal investigation in the final days of last year. He and his top deputies, including an experienced criminal lawyer, Peter Pope, met with Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne over the holidays, appearing eager to get up to speed.
Mr. Bragg’s first priority upon taking office was adopting a new set of policies that essentially reduced the list of crimes for which he would seek jail time. The decision, which was announced internally in a memo on Jan. 3, prompted a fierce backlash from law enforcement, elected officials and some members of the public.
Mr. Dunne emailed Mr. Bragg and his team that day, emphasizing the need to make a decision about the Trump case within two weeks. “Time is of the essence,” Mr. Dunne wrote.
Two days later, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz provided Mr. Bragg with a briefing on the investigation, doing so over Zoom because of an earlier outbreak of Covid-19 cases in the office.
During this meeting, the two prosecutors emphasized the grand jury’s expiration in April. A grand jury presentation might take up to three months, and they would need additional resources to carry it out.
Mr. Bragg signaled a strong interest in the investigation and committed to adding two prosecutors to the team.
When they met again on Jan. 11 to focus on Mr. Trump’s financial statements, Mr. Bragg’s team, appearing engaged and receptive, asked a number of questions and offered suggestions for how to present a case against Mr. Trump to a jury.
Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz then resumed their grand jury presentation, questioning Mr. Trump’s longtime accountant from Mazars USA on Jan. 19 and a real estate valuation expert the next day.
That week, Ms. James filed explosive court papers in her civil inquiry, outlining an array of new evidence that she said showed the Trump Organization had engaged in “fraudulent or misleading” practices. She also disclosed that Mazars had cut ties with Mr. Trump and had essentially retracted a decade’s worth of his financial statements. (The statements also contained a number of disclaimers, including acknowledgments that Mazars had neither audited nor authenticated his claims.)
But for the criminal investigation, the early momentum under Mr. Bragg did not last. In mid-January, a career prosecutor in the office circulated two memos to Mr. Bragg’s aides detailing potential difficulties in making the case.
Image
Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief, who was charged him with tax fraud last year by Manhattan prosecutors. He has declined to cooperate in their investigation.
Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s longtime finance chief, who was charged him with tax fraud last year by Manhattan prosecutors. He has declined to cooperate in their investigation.Credit...Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
Around that time, Mr. Weisselberg’s lawyers filed legal papers seeking to dismiss the earlier indictment, a routine filing that nevertheless appeared to raise alarms for Mr. Bragg and his team about using Mr. Cohen to prosecute Mr. Trump. The papers took aim at Mr. Cohen, claiming that he was pursuing a “vendetta” against Mr. Weisselberg as revenge for the accountant’s having testified against him before a federal grand jury in the hush money case.
It was the next day, Jan. 24, that Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne faced the “hot bench.”
There, Mr. Bragg expressed concern about calling Mr. Cohen as a witness. He and his aides also emphasized the potential difficulty of proving that Mr. Trump had intended to break the law.
“Michael Cohen’s credibility was established when he testified voluntarily under oath before Congress and turned over documents that speak for themselves,” said Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Mr. Cohen, who added that he had recently spoken to one of the prosecutors and was told that they had enough evidence to convict Mr. Trump beyond a reasonable doubt.
Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz soon contacted Mr. Bragg’s aides to suggest suspending the grand jury presentation. They were concerned that if the presentation further progressed but was shut down before charges were sought, it could hurt Mr. Bragg if he ever convened another grand jury in the future. Mr. Trump’s lawyers could argue that they were hunting for a more favorable panel, and a judge could find that the prosecutors were not entitled to a second bite of the apple.
Mr. Bragg’s aides agreed that it was wise to stand down.
One Decision, Two Resignations
Mr. Pomerantz did not take kindly to the setback. In an email soon after the Jan. 24 meeting, he threatened to resign if Mr. Bragg did not make a final decision about the future of the investigation.
He also offered to make a series of presentations about crucial issues in the case in an effort to speed up Mr. Bragg’s decision. Mr. Bragg agreed, and Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne delivered three presentations beginning early last month. After some of the meetings, Mr. Bragg’s team met behind closed doors without the two prosecutors.
Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne had one final chance to sway Mr. Bragg in a meeting on Valentine’s Day. The topic: Which laws had Mr. Trump broken?
For months, the prosecutors had envisioned charging Mr. Trump — and possibly Mr. Weisselberg and the Trump Organization — with the crime of “scheming to defraud” for falsely inflating his assets on the statements of financial condition that had been used to obtain bank loans.
But by the end of the year, the prosecutors had switched gears, in part because Mr. Trump’s lenders had not lost money on the loans but had in fact profited from them. The new strategy was to charge Mr. Trump with conspiracy and falsifying business records — specifically his financial statements — a simpler case that essentially amounted to painting Mr. Trump as a liar rather than a thief.
The case still was not a slam dunk, Mr. Dunne acknowledged at the meeting. But he argued that it was better to lose than to not try at all.
“It’s a righteous case that ought to be brought,” Mr. Dunne told Mr. Bragg.
Either way, they needed an answer, and Mr. Bragg promised to deliver one within a week. In the ensuing days, he called numerous members of the team and peppered them with questions.
On the morning of Feb. 22, Mr. Bragg notified them of his decision: He did not want to continue the grand jury presentation.
Mr. Pomerantz resigned the next day. Mr. Bragg asked Mr. Dunne to stay, but within hours, he joined Mr. Pomerantz in leaving.
Mr. Dunne, however, left the door open to a possible return. If Mr. Bragg reconsidered his decision, Mr. Dunne told colleagues, he would gladly come back.
Nate Schweber contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/nyregion/trump-investigation-manhattan-da-alvin-bragg.html
The Week That Awoke the World
March 3, 2022
Ukrainian volunteers make Molotov cocktails to fight Russian forces.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
Over the last several years, that famous poem has been quoted countless times: “The centre cannot hold,” William Butler Yeats wrote, before adding, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.” People cited it so often because it was true.
But it was not so true this past week. The events in Ukraine have been a moral atrocity and a political tragedy, but for people around the world, a cultural revelation. It’s not that people around the world believe new things, but many of us have been reminded what we believe, and we believe them with more fervor, with more conviction. This has been a convicting week.
The Ukrainians have been our instructors and inspirers. They’ve been the ordinary men and women in the Times video lining up to get weapons to defend their homeland. They’ve been the lady telling a Russian invader to put sunflower seeds in his pocket. They’ve been the thousands of Ukrainians who had been living comfortably abroad, who surged back into the country to risk death to defend their people and way of life.
We owe them such a debt. They have reminded us not only what it looks like to believe in democracy, the liberal order and national honor but also to act bravely on behalf of these things.
They’ve reminded us that you can believe things with greater and lesser intensity, faintly, with words, or deeply and fervently, with a conviction in your bones. They’ve reminded us how much the events of the past few years have conspired to weaken our faith in ourselves. They’ve reminded us how the setbacks and humiliations (Donald Trump, Afghanistan, racial injustice, political dysfunction) have caused us to doubt and be passive about the gospel of democracy. But despite all our failings the gospel is still glowingly true.
This has been a week of restored faith. In what exactly? Well, in the first place, in leadership. We’ve seen so many leadership failures of late, but over the past week Volodymyr Zelensky emerged as the everyman leader — the guy in the T-shirt, the Jewish comedian, the guy who didn’t flee but knew what to say: “I need ammunition, not a ride.”
It wasn’t only Zelensky. Joe Biden masterly and humbly helped organize a global coalition. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany understood the moment. So did Emmanuel Macron of France and Fumio Kishida of Japan. Across governments, businesses and the arts, we were well led this week.
There’s been restored faith in true patriotism. Over the past few years, we’ve seen so much sour ethnonationalism from the right, an angry and xenophobic form of patriotism. From the left we’ve seen a disdain of patriotism, from people who vaguely support abstract national ideals while showing limited gratitude toward one’s own inheritance; people who rightly focus on national crimes but while slighting national achievements. Some elites, meanwhile, have drifted into a soulless globalism, an effort to rise above nations into an ethereal multilateral stratosphere.
But the Ukrainians have shown us how the right kind of patriotism is ennobling, a source of meaning and a reason to risk life. They’ve shown us that the love of a particular place, their own land and people, warts and all, can be part and parcel of a love for universal ideals, like democracy, liberalism and freedom.
There’s been a restored faith in the West, in liberalism, in our community of nations. There has been so much division of late, within and between nations. But now I wake up in the morning, pick up my phone and am cheered that Sweden is providing military aid to Ukraine, and I’m awed by what the German people now support. The fact is that many democratic nations reacted to the atrocity with the same sense of resolve.
The same is true at home. Of course, there are bitter partisans who use the moment to attack the left for being weak, or to accuse the right of being pro-Putin. There are always going to be people who are happy to be factually inaccurate if it will make them socially divisive. But at this point almost every member of Congress is united about our general cause.
That’s because we have learned to revile that which people for centuries took for granted — that big countries would gobble up small countries, that the powerful would do what they could and that the weak would suffer what they must. This week, perhaps, we’ve come to value more highly our modern liberal ethic.
There’s been a mood of democratic pessimism, as authoritarianism has spread and strutted. Academics of left and right have criticized liberalism. This week we have a clearer view of the alternative. It looks like Vladimir Putin.
The creed of liberalism is getting a second wind. There’s a school of academic realists who imagine that foreign affairs is all about cold national interest, conducted by chess master strategists. But this week we saw that foreign affairs, like life, is a moral enterprise, and moral rightness is a source of social power and fighting morale.
Things will likely get even more brutal for the Ukrainians. But the moral flame they fueled this week may, in the end, still burn strong.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/opinion/ukraine-russia-awoke-world.html
Followers
|
195
|
Posters
|
|
Posts (Today)
|
0
|
Posts (Total)
|
48184
|
Created
|
09/13/07
|
Type
|
Free
|
Moderator BullNBear52 | |||
Assistants scion DownWithPumpers Phoenix-Rising MrGoodBuddy sunspotter |
Posts Today
|
0
|
Posts (Total)
|
48184
|
Posters
|
|
Moderator
|
|
Assistants
|
Volume | |
Day Range: | |
Bid Price | |
Ask Price | |
Last Trade Time: |