2:00PM Water Cooler 4/11/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

American Goldfinch, Hyland-Bush Lakes Park–Visitor Center, Hennepin, Minnesota, United States.

In Case You Might Miss…

(1) Mandy Cohen et al. write a paywalled article in the NEJM that erases Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions from public health, and warns aerosol scientists and ventilation engineers that their work won’t be funded.

(2) Biden ballot access fight in Ohio and Alabama.

(3) Trump at Chick-Fil-A.

(4) Taibbi on class (interview with Les Leopold).

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

Biden Administration

Four years after the start of an airborne pandemic:

Today, @ARPA_H announced the BREATHE program to revolutionize how we monitor and improve indoor air quality.

The Biden-Harris Administration has prioritized improving indoor air quality as an effective tool for keeping people healthy. https://t.co/YioYQLXimi

— White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (@WHOSTP) April 10, 2024

Sounds impressive, until you realize that CDC — our premier public health agency — just threw aerosol scientists and ventilation engineers under the bus and erased Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions from the public health lexicon. So you have to wonder what “revolutionize” and “prioritized” really mean.

2024

Less than a year to go!

RCP Poll Averages, April 5

Here is Friday’s RCP poll. Trump is still up in all the Swing States (more here), but still leading with one exception: PA. I’ve highlighted it again, (1) because BIden is now up there, and (2) it’s an outlier, has been for weeks. Why isn’t Trump doing well there? (I’ll work out a better way to do this, but for now: Blue dot = move toward Biden; red dot = move toward Trump. No statistical signficance to any of it, and state polls are bad anyhow!)

Trump (R): “Prosecutor assigned to probe Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones in Trump election interference case” [The Hill]. “A Georgia prosecutor has been assigned to criminally investigate the state’s Republican lieutenant governor, Burt Jones, for his alleged role in former President Trump’s attempt to subvert the state’s 2020 election results. Pete Skandalakis, executive director of the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, tasked himself with the probe 21 months after the Fulton County district attorney’s office was disqualified from Jones’s case. The office was disqualified because Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis (D) headlined a fundraiser for a Democratic candidate who went on to face Jones in his race for lieutenant governor. The judge overseeing the matter described Willis’s decision to partake as a ‘what are you thinking?’ moment.” And not for the last time! More: “In a brief statement Thursday announcing his appointment, Skandalakis’s office said ‘no further comments will be made at this time.’ Jones was one of 16 pro-Trump electors who falsely signed documents claiming the former president won the state in 2020. While he was a state senator, he also attempted to convene a special session of Georgia’s Legislature with the aim of overturning President Biden’s win. Jones said in a statement to The Hill that he looks forward to a ‘quick resolution’ of the matter, slamming Willis for making a ‘mockery of this legal process.’”

Trump (R): “The porn star, the president and a ‘hush money’ payment” [Agence France Presse]. “In 2011, as Trump was contemplating a White House run against Democrat Barack Obama, ‘In Touch’ magazine contacted [Stormy] Daniels about the Lake Tahoe encounter. Daniels took a polygraph exam, which she says she passed, and was to have been paid $15,000. The story never ran, squashed by Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer nicknamed ‘The Pitbull.’ Daniels said she was threatened soon afterwards by a man in a parking lot who warned her to ‘Leave Trump alone.’ The Lake Tahoe story resurfaced in the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign in which Trump was the Republican nominee and at a time when he was already facing flak for crude remarks about women made in an ‘Access Hollywood’ tape. The National Enquirer, a tabloid owned by a Trump ally, discovered that Daniels was seeking bidders for her potentially damaging story about her tryst with Trump. The tabloid put her in touch with Cohen. Cohen, who has since turned against Trump, acknowledged arranging a $130,000 ‘hush money’ payment to Daniels in exchange for her silence about the 2006 encounter. Daniels and Trump — under the pseudonyms Peggy Peterson and David Dennison — entered into a nondisclosure agreement prepared by Cohen. Trump’s reimbursements to Cohen for the $130,000 payment form the basis of the 34 counts of falsifying business records he faces as part of a scheme to ‘unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election.’” • I so don’t want to read Bragg’s filing, but I’m going to have to gear up and do it. The “hush money” frame bores me to tears. In a world where Jeffrey Epstein and P. Diddy have hours of videotape showing whole elite cadres at play, we’re worried because a billionaire paid off a mistress? Really? OTOH, if Trump used campaign money to do that, it strikes me as wrong (and perhaps illegal). But in AFP’s explanation, which makes Bragg’s case seem convoluted and creaky, that doesn’t seem to be the case; in fact, a flex net (Enquirer editor + Cohen) seems to have handled the matter for Trump. That seems to be where the falsified business records aspect comes in, but isn’t that normally a misdemeanor? Did the “unlawfully influence the 2016 presidential election” part turn it into a felony? What in a candidate’s life does not influence an election? If Melania changed her cosmetics so she looked better on TV, that could “influence the election” ffs. So I suppose Bragg should be looking into her records too. All this is a long-winded and exasperated way of saying, again, I need to read Bragg’s filing. But from the press coverage, the case should never have been brought, and wouldn’t have been if Trump weren’t Trump, and New York weren’t a Democrat state.

Trump (R): “Can I have thirty milkshakes?”

I don’t care of it’s a photo op. Of course it’s a photo op!

Biden (D): “Resurgent inflation looms over Joe Biden’s White House bid” [Financial Times]. “The 3.5 per cent annual increase in the March consumer price index followed a 3.2 per cent gain a month earlier, and has made it suddenly much harder for Biden to argue that inflation is continuing to move steadily downwards since hitting a multi-decade peak in the summer of 2022. If followed by other higher than expected inflation figures in the coming weeks, it could also lead the Federal Reserve to push back interest rate cuts that would bring relief from high borrowing costs for many American households this year. Even though the US economy has created more than 15mn jobs under Biden’s watch, the jump in inflation during his tenure has cast a cloud over his handling of the economy and remains one of his biggest political weaknesses heading into the November vote. White House officials on Wednesday said that they had always expected the process of bringing down inflation to be bumpy — and that they believe inflation will soon begin easing again.”

Biden (D): “Biden Zeitgeist Watch” [Joe Klein, Sanity Clause]. I suppose I should be gratified that Klein — “Joke Line,” back in the days of the blogosphere — has adopted “Zeitgeist Watch” as a trope [lambert blushes modestly], and I agree with the bottom line at the end: “Biden is in trouble. He needs to talk to people outside his inner circle—and then take action—if he’s going to have a chance in November.” • But not much of what’s in between.

Biden (D): “GOP-run states are warning that they could keep Biden off the ballot” [Business Insider]. “It all comes down to deadlines that fall before Biden is officially nominated, and both Ohio and Alabama officials say Biden could be too late…. [T]he state of Alabama requires political parties to provide their certificate of nomination no later than 82 days before the election, which is set for November 5. The Democratic National Convention — where Biden would get the formal nod — is scheduled to begin four days after that deadline, on August 19th. The same issue arose in 2020 when the Republican National Convention, where Trump was officially nominated, happened after Alabama’s deadline. But Trump was still allowed on the ballot that year because the state’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a special bill making a one-time exception to its deadline. Alabama officials could do the same thing again this year for the Democrats — if they wanted to. The state of Ohio, run by GOP Gov. Mike DeWine, has also flagged that the Democratic convention is happening after Ohio’s own August 7 deadline. Like Alabama, Ohio requires political parties to give their official nominations before the deadline if they want to appear on the ballot. And ahead of the 2020 election, the state also made a one-time exception to that rule because both the DNC and RNC that year were scheduled for after the deadline, a spokesperson for the Ohio Secretary of State confirmed to BI.” But: “‘Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states,’ a spokesperson for the Biden campaign said in a statement shared with BI. ‘State officials have the ability to grant provisional ballot access certification prior to the conclusion of presidential nominating conventions.’ ‘In 2020 alone,” the statement continues, ‘states like Alabama, Illinois, Montana, and Washington all allowed provisional certification for Democratic and Republican nominees.’”

Biden (D): “Joe Biden campaign hints at litigation if Alabama keeps president off ballot” [Alabama Reflector]. “In a letter to Mike Jones, general counsel for the Alabama Secretary of State’s office, Birmingham Attorney Barry Ragsdale, representing the campaign, said the party could provisionally certify Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris as Democratic Party’s nominees by an Aug. 15 deadline…. [Alabama Secretary of State Wes] Allen on Thursday doubled-down on his stance. ‘On January 16, 2023, I took an oath to uphold Alabama law and that is what I am going to do. My office will accept all certifications that comply with Alabama [law]. That statute does not provide for ‘provisional certifications’ or any other exceptions,’ he said in a statement to the Reflector.

Biden (D): “Ohio and Alabama Are Playing Ballot Games With Biden” [Bloomberg]. “Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told Cleveland.com that no major-party presidential nominee, let alone the incumbent president, has ever been excluded from a state ballot over what is essentially a technicality. Deliberately leaving the Democratic nominee off the ballot because a deadline was missed by two weeks or less is a cynical and offensive approach to what should be a mostly nonpartisan office. Secretaries of state, no matter their party, are charged with administering elections on behalf of all voters. Most take a fair and scrupulously neutral approach to the job…. Rules for thee but not for me is seldom a good idea — especially when it comes to what should be the impartial administration of elections that are the very foundation on which our democracy rests.” • In this case, “our democracy” is not used cynically….

Kennedy (I): “Rep. Ro Khanna calls on RFK Jr.’s running mate to step down. Here’s how Nicole Shanahan responded” [CBS]. “Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California called on Nicole Shanahan, the running mate of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, to step down, warning that supporting Kennedy could pave the way for former President Donald Trump to win the election. He made his pitch to her in a letter he shared with CBS News, though he hadn’t yet sent it to Shanahan.” Courteous! More: “‘Even Trump himself, and other members of his team, have admitted that a RFK Jr. ticket will help his reelection,’ Khanna wrote in his letter. ‘While you may have fair disagreements on the Democratic Party’s platform, it is clear that a second term for Trump would be disastrous for climate and undo the work of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the most significant action Congress has taken on clean energy and climate change in our nation’s history,’ Khanna went on. When reached by CBS News, Shanahan opted to post her response to the letter on social media, making it clear she had little patience for Khanna’s latest thoughts on the Kennedy campaign.” • Here it is:

[1] Chair of Pershing Capital, a large hedge fund.

[2] Prominent Democrat troll, account with 748K followers (I have always found “dumbass” to be an especially graceless locution, but hitherto I have associated it with conservatives. Live and learn!)

“RFK’s running mate Nicole Shanahan tears into Democrat Ro Khanna for calling on her to ditch the presidential candidate because it could help Trump win: ‘How anti-democratic!’” [Daily Mail]. “Following her post to X, RFK Jr. posted: ‘I’m so grateful for your courage and grace Nicole. ‘I have always admired RoKhanna. His flip flop here is disappointing. The party has power to bludgeon men of character into wavering.’” • Ouch!~

NE: “Charlie Kirk: Making Nebraska Winner-Take-All Unlocks The West For Trump” [RealClearPolitics]. KIRK: “If we are able to get Nebraska to become winner-take-all and no longer do this goofy system where they have one electoral vote for the liberal city of Omaha. Joe Biden would then not be able to get to 270 electoral votes, it would end in a 269 tie and it would go to the House of Representatives and Donald Trump will become president of the United States.” But there’s a snag: “For many reasons I don’t want to get into right now the legislature was not able to get their act together last week. Fine. Special session. We have the votes if a special session is called to get this done…. Phase one is the governor of Nebraska, who has been terrific on this, Governor Pillen, has to call a special session. This is a call to action for the entire War Room posse, not just Nebraska. All across the country to contact the governor of Nebraska and say call a special session to go to winner-take-all.” • Lot of moving parts here. Let’s wait and see.

“How Taxpayers Will Heavily Subsidize Democrat Boots on the Ground This Election” [RealClearInvestigations]. • Because tax-exempt Democrat NGOs optimize for demographics that will support them. Perhaps we should take out the demographic aspect and target based on sortition….

“Republicans Flag Problems in Small-Donor Cash Crunch” [RealClearPolitics]. “In its first year of operation, [Republican donation platform] WinRed and Trump’s combined efforts had a good track record. Trump, for instance, amassed $626.6 million from small-dollar donors, 35% more than Joe Biden did during the 2020 cycle. So far in the 2024 campaign, however, Trump can’t count on such a significant small-dollar advantage to make up for Democrats’ overall grassroots fundraising advantage. Last year, he raised just $51 million from small donors, less than half what he raised in 2019. Meanwhile, ActBlue collected $959,627,475, nearly a billion dollars, in small increments through the end of February, compared to WinRed’s $430,965,507 as of December of last year, the latest federal election records available. The RNC says that large and small donations to entities supporting Trump have steadily risen since November when it became clear that he would be the nominee. They also point to the former president’s April 6 Palm Beach fundraiser, which hauled in a record $50.5 million following Biden’s star-studded event on March 28 in New York that brought in $26 million…. The next Federal Election Commission filing deadline will provide a clearer picture, but many Republicans are on edge, angry that WinRed hasn’t lived up to its hype and worried that leadership changes at the RNC and in the House and Senate will all contribute to a GOP money chase loss in a critical election year.”

Pandemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Transmission: H5N1

“CAFOs, novel influenza, and the need for One Health approaches” [One Health]. This is very dense and I can’t summarize it (though it’s worth a read, clearly). APHIS, in its mission statement, supports One Health. Here is a diagram of the “One Health Triad”:

Elite Maleficence

“Integrating Public Health and Health Care — Protecting Health as a Team Sport” [Charlene A. Wong, M.D., M.S.H.P., Debra Houry, M.D., M.P.H., and Mandy K. Cohen, M.D., M.P.H., NEJM]. Here, in its entirety, is the Abstract: “Protecting health is a team sport — yet the public health and clinical care systems meant to advance this goal have been siloed for too long.” • I guess the public isn’t on the team, the article is paywalled. (Strange that Mandy didn’t get the paywall lifted, because NEJM has been quite good at making Covid articles open access). Fortunately, some kind soul imaged the article:

And guess what! There are other people Mandy doesn’t want on her team besides the public! Table 1:

(For the panel at top left: CDC doubles or triples down on Covid as a seasonal respiratory virus, when (a) Covid is not seasonal, and (b) is respiratory in transmission but not in its effects, which are vascular, neurological, and long-lasting, unlike RSV, say. Of course, CDC wants to put all these infections in the same cubes and on the same lanyards back in Atlanta, so here we are.)

More importantly: Note the three-times repeated mantra: Vaccines _{MR SUBLIMINAL Ka-ching!}, testing _{MR SUBLIMINAL Ka-ching!}, treatment _{MR SUBLIMINAL Ka-ching!}. Mandy erases non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) _{MR SUBLIMINAL Zero ka-ching!} entirely, since NPIs are none of those there. Apparently, going forward as we say, ventilation, masking, and quarantine are to be erased from the public health lexicon (quarantine despite its use since the mid-17th century). Notice also that vaccines, testing, treatment do not include prevention (“better than cure”), which is what NPIs accomplish; so not only are NPIs erases, but the personnel who could design and implement preventive strategies for airborne diseases are comprehensively rejected. CDC wants no input from aerosol scientists or ventilation engineers (like ASHRAE or, for that matter, NIOSH). They’re not on Mandy’s team! This is also shown in the text of the document:

The scope of “collaborative efforts” with “health care partners” is defined by Table 1. Hence, no investment for “data, lab, or workforce” that includes NPIs, ventilation, or aerosol tranmission generally. Needless to say, this does not bode well for the upcoming HICPAC guidance, where hospitals tried to ram through reducing NPIs until a public outcry stopped them, at least temporariliy.

Finally, “vaccines, testing, treatment” is also a comprehensive rejection of the “Swiss Cheese Model” of multiple layers of protection. Going forward, those and the model itself are to be outside the scope of “public health” entirely.

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (Biobot) Our curve has now flattened out at a level far above valleys under Trump. Not a great victory. Note also the area “under the curve,” besides looking at peaks. That area is larger under Biden than under Trump, and it seems to be rising steadily if unevenly.

[2] (Biobot) No backward revisons….

[3] (CDC Variants) As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.

[4] (ER) CDC seems to have killed this off, since the link is broken, I think in favor of this thing. I will try to confirm. UPDATE Yes, leave it to CDC to kill a page, and then announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC should explain where to go to get equivalent data, if any. I liked the ER data, because it seemed really hard to game. And speaking of Emergency Departments:

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Looks like a very gradual leveling off to a non-zero baseline, to me. I suppose to a tame epidemiologist it looks like “endemicity,” but to me it looks like another tranche of lethality.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland) Flattening.

[9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Now up, albeit in the rear view mirror.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) JN.1 dominates utterly.

[11] Looks like the Times isn’t reporting death data any more? Maybe I need to go back to The Economist:

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US fell by 11,000 to 211,000 in the week ending April 6th, the lowest in one month, and below market expectations of 215,000. The decline countered the increase brought by the upwardly revised, two-month high in the earlier week to add further evidence of a tight labor market in the US economy, in line with the strength in the latest jobs report, to add leeway for the Fed to hold rates higher for longer to combat inflation.”

Inflation: “United States Producer Prices” [Trading Economics]. “Producer Prices in the United States increased to 143.69 points in March from 143.47 points in February of 2024. Producer Prices in the United States averaged 116.59 points from 2009 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 143.69 points in March of 2024 and a record low of 100.20 points in November of 2009.”

Finance: “Credit-card delinquency rates were worst on record in Fed study” [Yahoo Finance]. “Almost 3.5% of card balances were at least 30 days past due as of the end of December, the Philadelphia Fed said. That’s the highest figure in the data series going back to 2012, and up by about 30 basis points from the previous quarter. The ‘Stress among cardholders was further underscored in payment behavior, as the share of accounts making minimum payments rose 34 basis points to a series high,’ according to the report.” • Best economy ever!

Tech: We own our own search data:

So, does that mean the NSA has to disgorge all Google search histories from its Utah Data Center?

Manufacturing: “Amid cover-up of whistleblower John Barnett’s ‘suicide,’ new Boeing whistleblower exposes safety violations in manufacture of 787 Dreamliner” [WSWS]. “Like Barnett, Salehpour told the Times he had been repeatedly retaliated against for bringing up his concerns about the shortcut methods employed by Boeing on Dreamliner jets. The engineer’s attorney, Debra S. Katz, said that when Salehpour approached his supervisors with his concerns or tried to bring them up at safety meetings, he was silenced and transferred to another product line, the 777.” • Surprisingly, WSWS omits that Salehpour was threatened with violence by his superiors. Hat tip to alert reader Car Burglar for noticing this passage in the Seattle Times piece:

“At one point, his [787] boss threatened him with physical violence,” [Salehpour lawyer Debra Katz] added. “That was documented. That actually was in writing. He turned the threat of physical violence over to HR and HR did not discipline the offending supervisor.”

Given the threat of violence, no doubt the Charleston police are diligently interviewing Boeing’s managers. Although the fact that the supervisor feft free to put a threat of violence in writing suggests a sense of impunity…

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 54 Neutral (previous close: 61 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 63 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 10 at 2:00:01 PM ET.

Zeitgeist Watch

“As bans spread, fluoride in drinking water divides communities across the US” [USA Today]. “In February, the Board of County Commissioners in Union County, whose seat is Monroe, voted 3-2 to stop adding fluoride to drinking water at the Yadkin River Water Treatment Plant, the only water source wholly owned and operated by the county. But the decision came after heated discussions among residents and county officials. ‘My children had the blessing of growing up with fluoride in their water and … they have very little dental issues,’ said Commissioner Richard Helms ahead of the vote. A fellow commissioner saw it differently: ‘Let’s stop putting something in the water that’s meant to treat us, and give people the freedom to choose,’ said David Williams.” • For those who came in late:

[embedded content]

I have often thought that General Ripper was directionallly correct — flouride, no; but PFAS, Endocrine Disruptors, and heaven knows what else.

The Gallery

“Pompeii: Breathtaking new paintings found at ancient city” [BBC]. “A third of the lost city has still to be cleared of volcanic debris. The current dig, the biggest in a generation, is underlining Pompeii’s position as the world’s premier window on the people and culture of the Roman empire. Park director Dr Gabriel Zuchtriegel presented the ‘black room’ exclusively to the BBC on Thursday. It was likely the walls’ stark colour was chosen to hide the smoke deposits from lamps used during entertaining after sunset. ‘In the shimmering light, the paintings would have almost come to life,’ he said.” • For example:

Class Warfare

“The Real Book About the ‘White Working Class’” (interview with Matt Taibbi) [Les Leopold, Racket News]. I’m so happy Taibbi covered this topic, and in a not-paywalled post to boot (I was getting a little tired of reading about how those eugenicist Great Barrington goons wrapped themselves in the First Amendment). The whole piece is worth reading, but here is a key analytical tool, crisply explained:

The passage of NAFTA led to a lot of job losses, but a bigger cause is a phenomenon I’ve covered here and which Leopold tackles: stock buybacks.

Buybacks happen when big companies use cash or borrow funds to buy their own stock on the marketplace, then retire the shares. Both the buying and the retiring tend to drive share prices up, which is a good thing for executives compensated in company stock, but less advantageous for those not privy to the company’s plans.

The implications of this are crucial. As Leopold notes below, most people assume layoffs are just cold hard economic reality, the unavoidable result of market forces taking their toll on uncompetitive businesses. But it’s not always true. Healthy companies will cut jobs just to up share prices for executives, who increasingly are compensated in company equity. Leopold cites a stat saying 85% of executive compensation comes in the form of stock awards, creating massive incentives to spend on buybacks. I’ve seen both higher and lower numbers, but even the low end (Harvard Business Review put the number at 59% globally and 75% in “the Americas”) is significant.

In the end, Leopold posits that while Democratic voters believe they need to shift to more illiberal positions to win working class voters, they’d more likely need to emphasize mass layoffs as a root of rural anger, which would force them to choose between Wall Street donors and rural votes.

More:

[TAIBBI:] What’s the biggest misconception about layoffs?

[LEOPOLD:] Most people think that mass layoffs are inevitable, right? They’re the result of technology, globalization. You can’t do anything about it, and that’s why nobody cares about it. Oh, AI is going to come in, something else is going to come in. We’re going to lay off workers. You can’t do anything about it. And all you have to do is open the hood a little bit, and what you’ll find behind most mass layoffs is a stock buyback and/or a leveraged buyout. They’ve taken a shitload of loans using a company as collateral and now to service those loans, you lay off a couple thousand workers and you’re all set. It’s remarkable. And then the BS that they tell working families is, “don’t worry, your kids, they’re going to get educated. They’re going to get high-tech jobs.” But last year, the high-tech industry laid off 262,000 workers, and so far it’s 57,000 this year.

TAIBBI: Yikes.

[LEOPOLD:] These are booming, highly profitable industries. They’re also the leaders in stock buybacks. The best way to pay for stock buyback is just lop off a bunch of workers. Of course you probably know that better than I do. This has been ripping through the news industry, all kinds of consolidations that go on where a private equity company comes in and the first thing they do is cut costs. Right? Lay off workers.

And:

[LEOPOLD:]So this whole issue has just been swept under the rug. It’s hard for me to get it out from under the rug. We estimate 30 million people have gone through a mass layoff since 1996.

[TAIBBI:]: That number is amazing. It would explain almost the entire shift in American politics.

[LEOPOLD:] I hate to be so focused on one force, but it’s a powerful force. I mean, think about it. Look, you and I are lucky. We have skills where we can move around. It’s not devastating, but can you imagine if you just go from one unstable situation to another? I saw it in these Oberlin workers. A couple of them got very anti-liberal. They used to respect this liberal college and its values, but now they’ve been treated like this for no reason and goodbye. They don’t respect them anymore. I asked the question at a steelworkers’ workshop with about 50 people in there. I said, how many people here have gone through a mass layoff. It was 48.

Mass layoffs, mass infection…

News of the Wired

“Watch your garden glow with new genetically modified bioluminescent petunias” [NPR]. “The petunia with bright, white flowers looks like something you’d buy in spring at a garden nursery. But, when the lights are turned out, the petals slowly start lighting up with a greenish, white glow. The plant is always glowing, it’s just our eyes that need to adjust to see the light. The newest buds are the brightest and punctuate the glowing flowers. ‘That’s why we call it the Firefly Petunia. Because these bright buds resemble fireflies sitting on top of the plant,’ [Keith] Wood [of Light Bio] explained. And despite its name, this plant doesn’t have any firefly genes, rather four genes from a bioluminescent mushroom and a fifth from a fungi.” • Perhaps a kind reader would like to test?

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From A:

A writes: “Here are a couple of wintry milkweed views. They come from a neighbor’s sidewalk garden just east of the Union Street bridge over the Gowanus Canal. Having no outdoor space to cultivate, I am most grateful to those who gladden my eyes by their urban gardening.”

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:

Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:

If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!