Friday, May 31, 2024
He Won’t Do Either. But Alito Needs to Resign, Not Just Recuse. By Josh Marshal
Monday, May 27, 2024
Biden Is the Best President Business Can Hope For - Bloomberg. By Matthew Yglesias
Read time: 4 minutes
No Democratic president since at least Grover Cleveland in the late 19th century has been beloved by American business. But the bleak relationship between Joe Biden and corporate America is remarkable given both the stellar financial market performance during his tenure and the nature of the alternative.
Yes, Donald Trump offers some of what business has always liked about Republicans — vows to lower corporate taxes and reduce regulation — but compared to pre-Trump Republicans, he’s put a lot of distasteful items on the menu. He wants a 60% tariff on all goods imported from China and a 10% tax on imports from elsewhere. Quite apart from any impact on consumer prices, this would crush US exporters who rely on foreign-made intermediate goods and compete with firms in Europe and Asia.
Trump is also vowing cuts to legal immigration and a dramatic increase in the deportation of people already present and working without authorization in the US. This kind of posturing is good campaign rhetoric, but in a practical sense would be devastating to the interests of thousands of US businesses that rely on all kinds of immigrant labor — skilled and unskilled, legal and illegal. The US unemployment rate is already very low, so the vacancies created by this policy wouldn’t be filled by bringing people back into the labor force. The economy’s productive capacity would contract, risking higher inflation or interest rates, which would make it harder for all businesses to invest.
Speaking of interest rates: Business has always loved the Republican approach to tax policy, but 2025 is not going to be 2017 or 2003 in terms of macroeconomic circumstances. A huge tax cut that increases the deficit would put more upward pressure on inflation and force even higher interest rates. To deal with this, Trump has floated clipping the Fed’s independence to force rates down — a disastrous idea that could cripple the US economy for years to come.
The Biden Years Have Been Very Good for the Bottom Line
Corporate profit margins for the S&P 500 are nearing a decade high
Net income margin
10
12
14 %
Q12014
Q12015
Q12016
Q12017
Q12018
Q12019
Q12020
Q12021
Q12022
Q12023
Q12024
Source: Bloomberg Intelligence
Note: As of May 23, 2024
Part of the reason may be sheer pettiness. It’s completely fair for industry to complain about Lina Khan at the FTC or Gary Gensler at the SEC, or to take issue with stray bits of political rhetoric about price gouging. But corporate America is doing just fine under Biden.
There is also an oddly asymmetrical assessment of the risks involved in the choice between Biden and Trump. Business can live with what Biden has done so far, but it is paranoid about what he might do in the future — such as taxing unrealized capital gains. Meanwhile, it is blithely confident that Trump won’t follow through on his loopier promises.
I have no idea where this confidence comes from. It’s true that Trump served a full term and the sky didn’t fall. But he also led an insurrectionary mob to try to overthrow the government. And it’s worth pointing out that the sky isn’t falling under Biden, either. Trump, meanwhile, has secured much more control over his party in Congress, whereas it’s all but certain that Biden will be checked by a Republican majority in the House, the Senate or both.
As far as I can figure, the best justification for this business coolness toward Biden is just hurt feelings. And that raises the inverse of my earlier question: Why doesn’t Biden like business more?
Biden does not have a business leader in his cabinet. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is an academic, not a friendly face on Wall Street the way Tim Geithner or Robert Rubin was. He does not really pay homage to the entrepreneurial spirit of American business or do much to court the private sector. He should consider changing direction on that, and find a bone or three to throw business on the regulatory front.
Democrats are currently obsessed with the idea that the American public is insufficiently appreciative of the economy. They’re not necessarily wrong. But telling people that they don’t know how good they’ve got it is not a great message, politically speaking. By contrast, recruiting outside validators from the business world to talk about how healthy recent growth has been, and how risky a bet on Trump would be, could actually improve the “vibes.”
Biden’s former chief of staff, Ron Klain, told an audience of leftist intellectuals last month that the president spends too much time going to ribbon-cutting ceremonies and too little time talking about his vision for the country. Maybe. Or maybe Biden should spend a bit more time schmoozing with business leaders and reassuring them that he’s not a communist and doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Elizabeth Warren on everything.
The White House often seems overly obsessed with preserving Biden’s populist street cred as a way to neutralize Trump. But politicians frequently win by playing against type. Part of Trump’s schtick is being more populist, relative to voters’ baseline expectations, than most Republicans. Biden can appeal to voters by showing them that, relative to their baseline expectations, he is more business-friendly than most Democrats.
Thursday, May 23, 2024
Tearful Paula Vennells blames senior colleagues for hiding truth
Tearful Paula Vennells blames senior colleagues for hiding truth
By Tom Witherow, Mario Ledwith, Laurence Sleator — Read time: 4 minutes
Paula Vennells broke down in tears three times as she told the Horizon IT inquiry that she was misled by senior executives at the Post Office.
The former chief executive, speaking in public about the scandal for the first time in ten years, said that she was too “trusting” of her senior team and accepted their reassurances that the IT system was working.
She blamed senior lawyers at the Post Office for failing to give her the unvarnished truth about the company’s prosecutions, and computer experts on Fujitsu for saying that their IT was as strong as “Fort Knox”.
Post Office inquiry: Paula Vennells says she’s “very, very sorry”
Vennells, 65, who ran the company from 2010 to 2019, snatched a tissue and choked as she was asked about a false statement she gave to MPs — that every Post Office prosecution involving Horizon had been successful.
Dame Moya Greene, the former chief executive of Royal Mail, which owned the Post Office until 2012, accused Vennells in a 2024 text exchange: “I think you knew.”
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She added: “You said the system had already been reviewed multiple times. How could you not have known?”
The hearing, the first of three days, came as the Metropolitan Police reassured the leading postmaster campaigner Alan Bates that they would investigate Post Office figures.
• Paula Vennells cries while giving evidence at Post Office inquiry — as it happened
In a private meeting, officers told Bates that they were “very open” about which crimes they would consider, including “corporate and individual” offences.
Bates said that he had “no sympathy” with Vennells’s tears and that her evidence was “like figure-skating on the head of a pin”.
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“It was the failure of management right the way across the board, and she was in charge of all that, the problem lies with her at the end of the day,” he said. “And I wonder about these apologies — they are just words.”
Vennells was escorted into the hearing, off the Strand, in central London, by three police officers through photographers. The last time she spoke in public about the scandal was in February 2015, in front of the business select committee, when she denied that there had been miscarriages of justice.
Alan Bates said that Vennells’s evidence was “like figure skating on the head of a pin”
Alan Bates said that Vennells’s evidence was “like figure skating on the head of a pin”
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE
She said that she was “very, very sorry” that “sub-postmasters and their families and others have suffered”. She said: “I was too trusting. I did probe and I did ask questions, and I’m disappointed where information wasn’t shared.” The first time she broke down was when she was asked about a false statement she made to MPs in 2012.
She told parliamentarians that every Post Office prosecution involving Horizon had been successful, according to minutes shown to the inquiry, which was untrue in four cases where postmasters had won, or been acquitted at trial.
“I fully accept now that Post Office knew … sorry … that the Post Office knew [this was untrue]”, she said. “Personally I didn’t know that, and I’m incredibly sorry that that happened to those people and to so many others.”
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She claimed that she did not know the Post Office carried out its own prosecutions until 2012, and that key documents never reached her. They revealed that the Post Office’s leading expert witness had misled several jury trials and named her two general counsels, Susan Crichton and Chris Aujard. Crichton has said that she did brief Vennells.
Jess Kaur lost her childhood memories after she suffered a mental breakdown while being prosecuted by the Post Office
Jess Kaur lost her childhood memories after she suffered a mental breakdown while being prosecuted by the Post Office
TOM PILSTON
Vennells broke down when she said she now accepted her claim that every case against postmasters had been successful was known by the Post Office to be untrue
Vennells broke down when she said she now accepted her claim that every case against postmasters had been successful was known by the Post Office to be untrue
PA
Vennells, however, said that she did not believe there was a “conspiracy” among Post Office staff to deny her information, saying instead that “individuals, myself included, made mistakes, didn’t see things, didn’t hear things”.
Jason Beer KC, lead counsel to the inquiry, asked if she was the “unluckiest CEO in the United Kingdom”.
• 14 key moments from Paula Vennells at the Post Office inquiry
In another dramatic moment, the inquiry was shown texts in which Greene told Vennells that she believed she “knew” about bugs in the Horizon IT system. In the exchange, from this year, Greene said: “I don’t know what to say. I think you knew.”
Vennells replied: “No Moya, that isn’t the case.” Greene said: “I want to believe you. I asked you twice. I suggested you get an independent review reporting to you. I was afraid you were being lied to.
“You said the system had already been reviewed multiple times. How could you not have known?”
The inquiry room, packed with postmasters, reacted angrily to Vennells’s tears. Jess Kaur, who lost her childhood memories after a breakdown while being prosecuted by the Post Office and who featured in the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office, said: “We’ve all cried — it doesn’t matter if she cries. She can’t remember anything, she can’t recall anything. She needs to admit to everything. She knows it’s all wrong.”
Six postmasters successfully appealed against their convictions, taking the total number to more than 110, with one going straight from the Royal Courts of Justice to hear Vennells’s evidence.
The Israeli army is caught in a doom loop in Gaza. By Economist
Read time: 6 minutes
May 16th 2024
IN RAFAH the stakes could not be higher. Supporters see Israel’s military offensive there, which began earlier this month, as a necessary assault on Hamas’s last bastion. Sceptics worry it will doom continuing talks about a hostage deal and, perhaps, the hostages themselves. Much of the world fears it will become a human tragedy, killing thousands of Palestinians and displacing a million more.
There was less drama around the Israeli campaign in Zeitoun, in northern Gaza, which began days after the fighting in Rafah. Instead there was a sense of déjà vu. Israel’s army fought there last year, at the start of this war, and returned for a two-week offensive in February. Now it is back for a third time, and perhaps not the last.
The twin campaigns say much about Israel’s faltering war effort. Though the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have real objectives to pursue in Rafah, talk of the city as Hamas’s last stand is overblown: the group’s fighters may melt away. Hamas is trying to reassert control in other parts of Gaza—and eight months into the war, Israel has no plan for how to prevent that. The refusal of Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, to talk about post-war arrangements has estranged President Joe Biden and, increasingly, his own generals as well.
Israel began its push into Rafah on May 6th, when it dropped leaflets urging residents to evacuate areas on the city’s periphery. It has moved slowly, first seizing the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza and several kilometres of land along the border. By May 14th there were reports of Israeli tanks in residential neighbourhoods in eastern Rafah, but they were still some distance from the city centre.
The border has strategic value. For decades it has been honeycombed with tunnels, which Hamas used to smuggle weapons, construction equipment and other items into Gaza. Cutting the group’s supply lines is important, though it also risks a crisis with neighbouring Egypt, which was angry that Israel did not give it much notice before it seized the crossing.
Yet for many Israeli politicians, the real focus of the Rafah offensive is Hamas itself. The IDF claims that 19 of its 24 battalions have been “dismantled” (the meaning of that term is open to interpretation), with four still intact in Rafah. Those battalions have taken on totemic importance for some Israeli officials: Mr Netanyahu has talked about them for months.
As the Israeli offensive gets under way, however, defence officials believe Hamas has already shifted a chunk of its forces elsewhere. It will leave a contingent in Rafah to harass the IDF, but there will be no dramatic showdown: like most guerrilla movements, Hamas will want to avoid head-on conflict with a better-armed foe.
Instead it is attacking Israel elsewhere. In recent days Hamas has shelled the Netzarim corridor, a line of Israeli outposts that runs the width of Gaza; fired at Kerem Shalom, the main commercial crossing between Israel and Gaza; and launched volleys of rockets at Sderot and Asheklon in southern Israel. The group is also trying to move fighters back into northern Gaza—hence the déjà vu in Zeitoun and Jabalia, another area that Israeli troops returned to this month after a long absence.
Strategists often talk of a “clear-hold-build” approach to counter-insurgency: clear an area of insurgents, hold onto the gains and build an alternative. Israel is only doing the first bit. Aside from the Netzarim corridor, there have been almost no Israeli troops in Gaza for the past two months, leaving a vacuum that Hamas has inevitably tried to fill.
A fortnight ago Mr Biden delayed a shipment of 3,500 guided bombs due for delivery to Israel. In an interview on May 8th he threatened to go further, saying he would cut off the supply of bombs and artillery shells if Israel went ahead with an offensive in Rafah. Mr Biden’s words were inelegant, and he may have overstated his own policy: a week later his administration notified Congress it was advancing a $1bn shipment of military aid, which included tank rounds and mortars. Still, he caused an uproar in Washington, where Republicans and some Democrats accused him of tying Israel’s hands in Rafah.
Map: The Economist
Yet Mr Biden has never demanded that Israel refrain from attacking the city, only that it create a plan to evacuate civilians to areas with adequate humanitarian aid. The evacuation is now under way: an estimated 600,000 Palestinians have fled Rafah this month. It has not been smooth. Some Palestinians went to al-Mawasi, a barren strip of coastline which Israel has designated a “humanitarian zone”. Others have returned to cities farther north, such as Khan Younis and Deir al-Balah, which had already been battered by months of fighting.
New arrivals to al-Mawasi describe inhuman conditions, with tents crammed together on the dunes, little food and water available and no infrastructure for sewage. After Israel seized the Rafah crossing earlier this month, Egypt halted deliveries of aid. Kerem Shalom has been repeatedly closed because of Hamas rocket attacks. In the week from May 6th, just six lorries carrying aid entered southern Gaza. Aid workers say supplies are running low across the south just as hundreds of thousands of people are on the move—not at all the organised evacuation Mr Biden urged.
This is not the first time Mr Netanyahu has ignored Mr Biden’s demands. He has refused to talk about “the day after” in Gaza, despite pleading by American officials. The Americans have promoted their own plan, which starts with an Israeli commitment to let the Palestinian Authority (PA) return to Gaza. From there they hope to broker a tripartite deal in which Saudi Arabia would normalise ties with Israel. That could unlock Arab support for reconstruction and restart a peace process between Israel and the Palestinians.
Nature abhors a vacuum
All this is easier said than done: it is hard to imagine, for example, that a weak and corrupt PA could effectively rule Gaza. But it is a better plan than the Israeli one, which is no plan at all. Mr Netanyahu has ruled out bringing the PA back to Gaza and has spent months wrongly equating it with Hamas. His far-right allies want to rebuild the Jewish settlements that Israel dismantled in 2005. While the prime minister does not share that goal himself, he does not want to upset them by promising Palestinian control of Gaza. Instead he has allowed the territory to lapse into anarchy.
Israeli generals have grumbled about this privately for months. At a press conference on May 14th Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the army spokesman, was asked whether the repeat offensives in northern Gaza were the result of the government’s failure to make post-war plans. “There is no doubt that an alternative to Hamas would put pressure on it, but that is a question for the political echelon,” he said. To many Israelis, his words sounded like a rare rebuke of Mr Netanyahu’s policy.
The next day Yoav Gallant, the defence minister, warned that Israel might be headed for prolonged military rule in Gaza. American officials agree. “They will be left holding the bag on an enduring insurgency,” Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, told CBS, a broadcast network, warning of the risks of leaving Hamas a vacuum to fill.
There is blame to go around. The idf pushed for a big ground offensive in October knowing full well that Mr Netanyahu would be loth to talk about post-war diplomacy. America supported that offensive. They are belatedly realising what should have been clear months ago: that without a plan to secure and govern Gaza, Israel will be fighting a war without end. ■
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Tuesday, May 21, 2024
Banning lab-grown meat is really bad. By Matthew Yglesias
It's stupid, but it's not funny
MATTHEW YGLESIAS
MAY 20, 2024
∙ PAID
Read time: 9 minutes
Florida governor Ron DeSantis banned lab-grown meat earlier this spring, swiftly followed by Alabama. Two states makes this an official trend, but it’s one that the press has mostly treated as a kind of cartoonish culture war story.
And it certainly is, on some level. But I think it also deserves more serious consideration. Cultured meat is still largely hypothetical at this point, but not entirely. It’s received some real investment, and (if there’s anyone reading who works in the rather large universe of climate philanthropy) is an area that deserves more funding. I think it could be a particularly impactful investment for wealthy countries and US states where residents are concerned about climate change but the jurisdiction is too small for local-specific climate targets to make a difference in a global problem.
Because if you managed to create an affordable meat alternative that was functionally identical to animal protein, that could have a gigantic impact on the global emissions trajectory — much larger impact than any conceivable local-only action or activism or advocacy. Right now, Europe is being torn apart by politically unsustainable efforts to force agricultural emissions cuts, when investing significant resources in science would be more sustainable and have a larger payoff.
At the same time, it’s worth acknowledging that proponents of a lab meat ban have a genuine theory of the case, not just a culture war troll.
The concern is that while right now it’s obviously not politically viable to ban meat, it might become viable in the future. Suppose that at some point it becomes the case that cultured beef matches conventional beef in blind taste tests for 90 percent of applications, does slightly worse in the other 10 percent, and it costs about five percent more. Well, at that point you could make a credible case to OIRA that even though banning conventional beef has costs, those costs are offset by the environmental benefits and we should do it. So for some, it’s tempting to get ahead of the issue by banning lab-grown meat now while it’s so expensive and of such limited utility that almost nobody is really focused on it.
To acknowledge that this concern is not crazy, however, is not to endorse it. It’s just to note that it’s worth taking seriously. Florida and Alabama aren’t even states with major meat-producing industries, but now that this is on the agenda, I would expect places with big beef and poultry trades — like Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, North Carolina, and Iowa — to get in on the action. And in almost every state, there is some agricultural activity.
It eventually becomes a pretty simple case of concentrated costs (to meat-producers) versus diffuse benefits to consumers, a scenario in which the government often ends up restraining free markets and productivity. These kind of bad, technology-blocking laws are particularly likely to become entrenched when they have solid right-wing vibes, which is why the agricultural sector in particular is riddled with protectionism and barriers to trade. But we also know the world is full of more-or-less non-ideological rent seeking around things like car dealership franchises and quantity restrictions on the number of medical doctors. The alacrity with which two states are moving to ban a competing technology that doesn’t really even exist yet is a major problem.
And I hope that conservatives and libertarians who care about technological progress and economic growth will see that this is bad news, and urge the political right to re-engage, in a serious way, with finding solutions to environmental issues that are market-friendly and growth-friendly, rather than going for the reactionary sledgehammer.
To see what conservatives are worried about here, consider the situation with electric cars.
Over and above the environmental benefits of electric cars, an electric vehicle has a number of inherent advantages related to the much simpler mechanism of an electric motor relative to an internal combustion engine. Indeed, in some sense electric cars are a 19th century technology that predates the internal combustion engine precisely because of this greater simplicity. Thanks to the ability to deliver a constant stream of electricity via overhead catenary or third rail, electric trains have been widely used technology for a long time and generally have superior performance compared to diesel. The main thing holding up full electrification of national railroad systems is that the up-front fixed costs of electrifying are relatively high. But if the infrastructure exists, an electric train is much better for completely non-environmental reasons. Some cities, similarly, have “trolleybuses” — buses with electric motors that are powered by overhead wire. Objections to this technology normally relate to the aesthetics of the wire, but there is no problem with the bus.
Which is just to say that despite the virtues of electric motors, the big problem with electric cars historically has been the batteries. A battery that is cheap does not hold very much charge. A battery that will provide long range costs a lot of money — and because batteries cannot be recharged as quickly as gasoline tanks can be refilled, having long range is very desirable. The upshot is that for a long time, there were no commercially viable electric cars.
Thanks to steady improvements in battery technology, though, that has changed and EV sales growth has been robust. I don’t think it’s entirely clear what the future trajectory of EV market share would be in a pure market dynamic, but batteries are going to keep getting better, and over the long run EVs will “win.” But how quickly EVs win is a function not only of battery progress, but of how much gasoline costs. When gas is expensive, “this car does not burn gasoline” is a major upside to buying an electric car. When gas is cheap, that’s less true. So the point along the “batteries are getting better” curve at which Americans (especially outside of California) want to buy EVs is further out than it would be in a country with a higher gas tax.
Now as it happens, burning gasoline is genuinely bad for the environment — it puts soot into the air and contributes to climate change. However you feel about driving an electric car, it would be much better for you if other people drove EVs and made the air cleaner. Which is just to say that while gasoline is useful, on net, there are negative externalities associated with it. So my preferred approach would be a higher gas tax (we can split the revenue between rebates and deficit reduction), which would accelerate EV adoption, and then we can let battery improvements play out however they play out. But getting congress to pass laws is hard. It’s easier to get the EPA to write rules that sort of opaquely encourage automakers to price vehicles in such a way as to accelerate EV adoption. That’s what environmentalists are pushing for, tempered to an extent by the Biden administration’s political prudence. Exactly how tough a rule ends up getting adopted is a function of the relevant science, but also, in part, a function of how much progress is made in batteries. The better EVs are, the better the cost-benefit of forcing people to buy them looks. Which means that if for whatever reason you are deeply committed to driving incredibly long distances at the fastest possible speed, it’s genuinely bad for you for EVs to get better, because that will lead to stricter rules.
Narrowly speaking, I agree that this innovation/regulation cycle is pretty dysfunctional. I would much rather price water appropriately, and let people buy whatever appliances they want, than force consumers to adopt water-efficient appliances via Energy Department rules.
That being said, we all have our distinct factional roles to play in the great dance of partisan politics. My role as a moderate, neoliberal-inclined Democrat is to urge Democrats to be a little more chill about the regulatory activism, a little more attentive to the political and substantive costs of paternalism, and a little more open to market mechanisms. But this works a lot better if you have partners on the other side. The big political debate of 2025 is going to be about extending Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. Republicans and Democrats are agreed on a very expensive extension of the middle class1 tax cuts, and Republicans want to add another very expensive extension just for rich people on top of that. They want to pay for this through some mix of higher deficits (which will mean higher interest rates under these macroeconomic circumstances) and cuts to Biden low-carbon energy subsidies.
In a better world, at least some Republicans would be offering to replace energy subsidies (which cost money) with emissions taxes (which raise money) in order to do a bigger tax cut. But Republicans currently lack any faction that advocates for taking the existence of pollution seriously, which makes it challenging to find smarter ways to address it. For all the reasons that it’s good YIMBYism is bipartisan, it’s bad that environmental issues have become purely partisan, because it becomes very challenging to do market-based reforms.
And what we now have with the lab-grown meat bans is a step even further away from the ideal path, where on the one hand the left tries to use regulatory fiat to force the path of progress and on the other hand the right tries to use regulatory fiat to halt progress.
The good news about the left’s vision of this is that at least you really can point to areas like LED lights where, after a period of initial grumbling, the technology really did improve rapidly enough that these days nobody is sad we don’t have hot, inefficient incandescent light bulbs. But the bad news is that the vision of using regulation to fend off progress also has plenty of success stories! Here in the United States, we are badly behind the curve in terms of using elevators and multi-story buildings to alleviate land scarcity. Compared to Europe and Asia, our building codes require needlessly large, expensive elevators that are purchased in unreasonably thin markets. And on many other measures, the Europeans are worse than us! They won’t eat genetically modified food! On both sides of the Atlantic, we’ve regulated nuclear fission to near-death in order to benefit fossil fuel companies. So far, nothing too terrible has happened with vaccine policy, but we are also moving backwards there despite impressive technical progress.
As I said in “What The Right Gets Right,” one of the main virtues of conservative politics is a general disposition toward believing that innovation, commerce, and growth are good.
What you see in the turn against alternative meat is a move to abandon that in favor of culture war trolling. You see something similar in conservative hostility to electric cars. You see it in the Trump/Heritage hostility to zoning reform. And I worry that we will see it if self-driving cars keep expanding — manly men who wouldn’t let their wives drive them around aren’t going to let a computer do it either.
Because conservatives are conservative, they rationalize hostility to progress and growth as advocacy for local control or concern about hypothetical liberal overreach. I’ve tried in this piece to bend over backward to emphasize that I don’t think the latter concern is totally crazy. But reacting to the concern that progress might lead to demand for more regulation by trying to make progress illegal is, in fact, genuinely crazy. There are better ways to address these concerns, and beyond that, even when the overreach does occur, it’s still the case that on balance it is good to have progress. If nothing else, you can ride electoral backlash and overturn the liberal rules. But if you go down the road of banning new stuff based on vibes, you open the door to endless rounds of rent-seeking and corruption.
It’s a really bad trend, and even though it is pretty silly, it’s not funny at all.
Sunday, May 19, 2024
How the tech industry soured on employee activism. By Zoë Schiffer
16 May 2024
A former Google employees speaks about the company's Project Nimbus last month in Berkeley, CA. (Tayfun Coskun / Getty Images)
When social justice protests swept the country in 2020, tech companies mostly welcomed employee activism. The Gaza demonstrations are getting a much different reception
I.
In the early aughts, a dominant cultural philosophy in Silicon Valley, at least from an employer branding perspective, was “bring your whole self to work." Popularized by a 2015 Ted Talk, the sentiment was not intended to be taken literally: your whole self needed to be productive, and professional, and not too radical in its politics. But the idea stands in stark contrast to the one that has replaced it: that only the part of yourself that gets work done should come to the office. Those who bring in anything else may be promptly shown the door.
Nowhere has this been more apparent than in the corporate response to employee activism over Israel and Gaza: in the past two months alone, Apple allegedly disciplined retail employees for wearing pro-Palestine paraphernalia, Google fired 50 employees in connection with protests about Israel, and Meta removed Workplace posts from employees voicing support for people in Gaza,
It’s no accident that declining tolerance for employees’ political speech has coincided with the tech industry’s self-described era of efficiency. As companies continue to conduct mass layoffs, and the hiring process remains slow and arduous, employers have more leverage than at any time since the pandemic began.
I’m sympathetic to the idea that employees should engage in activism only during non-work hours. But separating work and life isn’t always easy in a post-pandemic world, where many people work from home and routinely feel each sphere of life bleeding into the other. As the war in Gaza continues to roil workplaces across the country, I find myself doubtful that such a neat separation is possible — and curious about what the downstream impacts will be on both employees and the companies they work for.
“Increasingly, we’re seeing employers have to grapple with a thornier set of issues, because employees are using political activism as a cudgel against management,” says Bruce Barry, a professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, who specializes in workplace rights. “Just look at Google firing workers and issuing statements about what they do and don't want happening in the workplace. It’s so interesting because not that long ago, Google was a place where they were cultivating open dialogue about anything and everything.”
To help puzzle this out — and to understand what has changed since the George Floyd protests in 2020, when tech companies were likelier to celebrate their employees’ activism — I spoke to employees at Coinbase, Google, Apple, and Amazon, to get their thoughts about the tech industry’s evolving stance on employee speech.
II.
In 2020, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published a memo dictating his company’s new attitude toward workplace activism. “Be company first,” he wrote. He encouraged his staff to put “the company’s goals ahead of any particular team or individual goals.” Later, he added that Coinbase would not focus much on issues outside its core mission. It also wouldn’t engage on broader societal issues or “advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission.” Armstrong encouraged employees who didn’t align with this approach to take a severance package and leave.
The memo was instantly polarizing inside and outside Coinbase. It came during a moment when protests over police brutality had captivated the country and companies were reckoning with accusations of racism in the workplace. Diversity and inclusion hadn’t yet resulted in meaningful changes for many underrepresented minorities in tech, despite how often it was mentioned on company websites.
“Why stay and put effort into this work if it’s just tokenized into recruiting points and not actually improving the sense of belonging and psychological safety,” wrote a Coinbase employee on Slack, according to messages viewed by the New York Times.
Shortly after, the employee resigned, along with about 60 of her colleagues. At the time, Coinbase had around 600 employees.
The policy makes sense on paper — but it misses what happens when politics become personal. Vanderbilt’s Barry says he likes to show his class the Coinbase policy and ask if they think it’s good. “Students often say ‘yeah!’” he noted. “The point they're missing is, this policy works well until it doesn’t,” he added. “Firms get compelled into certain issues they can't necessarily depoliticize.”
Four years later, I was curious how the company has changed since Armstrong published his memo.The company has continued to track employee engagement through an annual survey, and says that employees generally report being happier than they were in 2020.
“The survey results indicate a steady rise in our collective sense of belonging since adopting our mission-driven strategy,” L.J. Brock, the company's chief people officer, wrote in an email to Platformer. “In our latest survey, 86 percent of employees expressed a strong sense of belonging. Additionally, those who feel a strong sense of belonging are twice as likely to remain with Coinbase and four times more engaged overall.”
I asked a Coinbase spokesperson if the company’s workplace racial diversity had declined since the memo came out.
“Our workforce demographics have remained unchanged since transitioning to a Mission First approach,” Brock said in a statement. “As a remote-first organization, we have a global presence, drawing talent from diverse locations worldwide, not just major cities.”
There is likely a bit of a selection bias going on here: Presumably most of the employees who disagreed with Armstrong have left by now, and those who have applied to work there since then know what they’re getting into.
Still, assuming Brock’s data is accurate, it seems notable that the company is as racially diverse today as it was before Armstrong’s memo went out.
III.
Last month, Google employees staged a protest over the company’s involvement in a $1.2 billion cloud contract with the Israeli government. Chris Rackow, the company’s head of global security, said in an internal memo to employees that protestors “took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers.” Employees I spoke with said the protests were more peaceful than Rackow described them as. Regardless, 50 people involved were fired.
Sundar Pichai followed up with a note addressing the event, according to Business Insider. In a section titled “mission first” — and in an echo of Armstrong’s 2020 memo — Pichai wrote: "This is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics. This is too important a moment as a company for us to be distracted."
One current Google employee I spoke with said the “mission first” policy stifles important discussions and limits worker power. He asked for anonymity as he’s not authorized to speak publicly about the company.
“The distraction is the point,” the employee explained. “In a perfect world, we would all be able to come into work, and everything would be great, and we could focus on work and have conversations about the weather. But that’s not the case. If your company is building an office in a place that’s limiting your rights as a woman, that’s probably going to matter to you.
"I think that’s why companies don't like these conversations," the employee continued. "Because if you have these conversations with colleagues and say ‘I’m not comfortable with this decision the company made, how do you feel?’ and people start realizing no one likes the decision, and then start questioning the decision, suddenly you might get employees unionizing and exerting actual pressure to try and influence that decision. And that’s the last thing companies want.”
The employee said that the constant threat of layoffs had likely dampened more widespread pushback to Google’s cloud projects with Israel. “Questions from employees about layoffs come up at nearly every company all hands,” he said. “It’s constantly been on top of mind for a lot of people since last year.”
I asked the employee whether a more permissive view toward employee speech would necessitate tolerance toward people like James Damore, the engineer who wrote the infamous 2017 memo regarding diversity and inclusion and the biological differences between men and women, and who Google subsequently fired.
He said, in a roundabout way, no. “It comes down to tolerance of intolerance,” he said. “If you try to make everyone feel accepted and welcome, you won’t actually create a welcoming environment for most people. So you have to decide if you want to create an environment that’s welcoming to people with antiquated opinions or not.”
Which opinions are “antiquated,” of course, is highly subjective.
IV.
Apple, unsurprisingly, has had no such workplace demonstrations over Gaza. Among the tech giants, the company stands out as being proudly hierarchical and unabashedly hostile toward employee speech. In the weeks following October 7, a handful of Apple employees who weren’t previously engaged in large Slack channels related to Jewish and Muslim employee resource groups started popping in and posting antagonistic messages toward each other. Apple promptly shut down the channels, Platformer has learned.
Employees I spoke to weren’t particularly upset — or even surprised — at the move. A likely difference here is in employee expectations. For the most part, Apple workers don’t bank on being able to speak freely about politics or even working conditions. When they’ve tried to push back against policies like returning to the office, those attempts have largely been quashed by management. Apple routinely shuts down Slack channels, citing breaches to its employee code of conduct.
In April, nearly 400 Apple employees sent an open letter to Tim Cook, asking that he make a statement in support of Palestinian lives. The group behind the letter, Apples4CeaseFire, told Platformer that the signatories are primarily hourly employees who work in retail or for AppleCare.
“On October 9, two days after the loss of innocent Israeli lives, Mr. Cook was quick to send us an email with the subject ‘Israel,’ where he immediately told us that his ‘…heart goes out to the victims, those who have lost loved ones, and all of the innocent people who are suffering as a result of this violence,’” the letter read. “Today, after over 150 days of violence against innocent Palestinian lives, there has yet to be a message sent expressing the same kind of concern for them.”
A week after the letter was released, Deirdre O'Brien, senior vice president of retail, sent retail employees a video acknowledging the “Middle East situation” and promising to match donations to organizations fighting famine in Gaza, Haiti, Mali, Somalia and Ukraine.
In 2022, I predicted that Apple’s corporate culture had permanently changed in the wake of return to office activism. I was wrong. Small pockets of resistance remain, but they’ve gone quiet; unwilling or unable to risk their jobs. Those truly resistant to Apple’s stance have largely left or been fired.
Tariq Ra’ouf, a retail employee in Seattle, said he’s pushing to get more corporate employees involved, but it’s been difficult. “I believe it’s because there’s a greater chance of retaliation and they have more to lose because they get paid more, and the job market is more difficult for an engineer compared to a retail worker,” he noted.
III.
Amazon, which has partnered with Google on the cloud contract with Israel, has faced relatively little public pressure on the subject from employees. Workers there have not staged a walkout, as they did in years past to protest return-to-work mandates and the company’s climate impact.
Still, pressure between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian employees is mounting.
In November, Arab employees organized an event in Amazon’s Toronto office to celebrate Palestinian culture. They spread out a Palestinian flag and set out traditional Middle Eastern desserts. An Israeli employee, offended by the event, printed out posters of those who’d been kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, and tried to share them around, but her colleagues simply ignored her. “Everyone just averted their eyes and pretended they’ve never seen it,” she said on Slack.
Online, discussions between these two factions have gotten more heated. Arab employees say they’ve been reported to HR for mentioning the word “genocide” in Slack or sharing news articles about violence directed at Palestinians. “There’s a complete double standard,” one employee said.
The employee pointed to instances in Slack of other workers saying they felt uncomfortable after seeing a barista at one Amazon office wearing a keffiyeh. “I look at her and assume she’s antisemitic and anti-Israel,” one employee said, according to screenshots reviewed by Platformer. “I saw that too,” a colleague responded. “And honestly felt quite uncomfortable given most of the people chanting to end our existence wear it.”
Prior to the outbreak of violence in October, there were about five Amazon employees involved in No Tech for Apartheid (NOTA), a group of tech workers pushing to end contracts with the Israeli government. Now, that number has swelled to around 50, according to an Amazon employee. So far, they appear to be focusing their efforts on supporting Google workers more than on pressuring Amazon executives.
V.
In rereading Armstrong’s memo this week, I was struck first by how levelheaded it seems. In some ways, this is how I think a workplace should function. I myself want to engage in some political causes — but I don’t mind doing them outside work hours. If anything, I value the idea that work is just one part of my life, and that I have time outside of work to pursue my other interests.
But for many employees, politics can feel impossible to separate from their work. Particularly if they feel that their employer is working against their own interests, or their family's interests, as has been the case for many Arab and Muslim workers since the war in Gaza broke out. If Platformer asked me to move to a state that had passed restrictive abortion laws that put my life into danger, I would feel much the same way. 'No politics at work' works only until the politics become personal.
“Employers do have a right, so to speak, to a workplace that’s not completely disrupted by politics and disagreement among the people who work there,” Barry said. “But the remedy isn't to leave all politics at home. It results in a kind of chilling effect, where people don’t want to get involved in civil society even outside of work, because they’re nervous about what their employer will do if they find out. It encourages people to disengage. That's not good for society. For a lot of people, the boundaries between work and non-work are not all that clear.”
I can imagine tech companies continuing to make space for certain types of non-work discussions — I’m reminded of Square hosting forums for employees to discuss police shootings in years past. And I also imagine they will continue to crack down on others — discussions that concern their lucrative government contracts, for example.
And as long as the steady drumbeat of layoffs continues, this strategy will likely succeed. Tech companies are happy to serve as platforms for many things, but employee activism no longer appears to be one of them.
Saturday, May 18, 2024
Welcome To Anti-Woke Hell. By Zaid Jilani
Thursday, May 16, 2024
Stormy Daniels Is the Hero America Needs. By The Rude Pundit
5/12/2024
May 12
Stormy Daniels Is the Hero America Needs
In her testimony and especially in her cross-examination, writer/director/actor Stormy Daniels became the hero that America needs right now. She was on the stand for the prosecution of Donald Trump, a rapist who is also a former president, for falsifying business records to hide the hush money he paid to Daniels for a sexual encounter in 2006. Over the course of two days, first under questioning from Manhattan prosecutor Susan Hoffinger and then under dickish cross-examination from Trump attorney Susan Necheles, Daniels put a human face on what could be a somewhat dry financial crimes case and, in a much larger sense, responded to the complete bullshit of the Trump side with cutting common sense and two feet squarely in reality.
Like in this exchange with Necheles, where Necheles was trying to say that everything Daniels was doing was just for money:
Q: That motivates you a lot in life, making more money; right?
A: Well, it is the United [States] -- that's what we do here. (Shrugs)
Can't argue with that. And it also is one of those answers that points to how completely idiotic the questions are. Let's not even get into the fact that Necheles's client monetizes everything from a cancer charity to the Bible and sells mugs with his mug shot on them. (Get it? Hilarious.)
In another exchange, Daniels schools Necheles in modern capitalism (and, as I've argued, Daniels is a more successful business person than Trump). Trying to show how much Daniels has monetized her hatred of Trump and her mainstream celebrity because she has been so vociferous in her condemnation of him, Necheles brought up some products that praise Daniels, like a prayer candle.
Q: That's one of the items you sell in your store, something called "Stormy, Saint of Indictments candle"; right?
A: Yes. That was made from a store in New Orleans.
Q: You're saying that's not you bragging about how you are the Saint of a person who got President Trump indicted?
A: No. I'm not bragging. I think it's funny that a store made those for me to sell, so I put those on my site.
Q: And you're making $40 on each of those, right?
A: No. I'm actually making about $7.
Yeah, that's how shit works in the real world. You don't make the amount that you're selling something for. That's basic online retailing, Etsy-level shit. Necheles was lying or ignorant, not Daniels.
Daniels honest answers made a mockery of Necheles questions. The lawyer really thought she was going to have a Perry Mason moment of catching Daniels in a lie, openly calling Daniels a liar to bait her in to cracking. But the things Necheles keeps quoting were not said under oath. Who gives a fuck if Daniels didn't tell In Touch magazine the whole truth? Necheles's client is an extravagant liar but refuses to go under oath and face real consequences for lying. Instead, Daniels fucked up Necheles time and again. Look at this exchange where Necheles tried to get Daniels to say everything she's doing is just acting, like Daniels does in the mostly adult films she's in.
Q: So, you have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real, right?
A: Wow. I'm a -- (Laughter.) That's not how I would put it. The sex in the films, it's very much real. Just like what happened to me in that room [with Trump].
Q: All right. But you're making fictionalized stories about sex; you write those stories?
A: No. The sex is real. The character names might be different, but the sex is very real. That's why it's pornography and that's a B movie...
Q: And you have a lot of experience in memorizing these fictional stories and repeating them; right?
A: I have of experience in repeating stories and of memorizing stories? I do a lot of that, but not just about sex, I'm pretty sure we all can do that.
Q: And you have bragged about how good you are about writing porn movies and writing really good stories and writing really good dialogue; right?
A: Yes.
Q: And now you have a story you have been telling about having sex with President Trump; right?
A: And if that story was untrue, I would have written it to be a lot better. (Laughter.)
Daniels kept on schooling Necheles. When Necheles said Daniels worked in sex clubs, Daniels retorted, "I don't work in sex clubs. I work in strip clubs. So that's a big difference." And she's right. Trust me. It's a huge difference, as anyone who ever inappropriately touched a stripper in a lap dance room has learned.
Necheles wanted to shame Daniels and her profession. Like a cop asking a rape victim why she wore a mini-skirt to a bar, Trump's lawyer had a fucking nauseating exchange with Daniels, showing a basic misunderstanding of porn, of sex, and of seeing Donald fucking Trump in his underwear.
Q: So you say you came out of the bathroom and he was on the bed in his T-shirt and boxer shorts; right?
A: Yes.
Q: And, according to you, when you saw him sitting on the bed, you became faint, the room started to spin and the blood left your hands and feet, yes?
A: Yes. It was shock. Surprise.
Q: So just so I can be clear on what you are saying, you've acted and had sex in over 200 porn movies; right?
A: 150-ish, yes.
Q: And there are naked men and naked women having sex, including yourself in those movies; right?
A: Yes.
Q: And, but according to you, seeing a man sitting on a bed, in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, was so upsetting that you got light headed, blood left your hands and feet, and you almost fainted; right?
A: Yes. When you are not expecting a man twice your age to be in their underwear -- I have seen my husband naked almost everyday -- if I came out of the bathroom and it was not my husband and it was Mr. Trump on the bed, I would probably have the same reaction.
The obscenity here isn't Daniels having sex in adult films. It's Necheles asserting that even when Daniels was off the clock, she shouldn't care if random dudes strip for her. That kind of sexist, assaultive shit should have been squashed like a bug by the judge.
Daniels was a goddamn champ, time and again, correcting Necheles, needling her, and obviously getting under her skin while she was desperately trying to get under Daniels's.
But the biggest fuckup by Necheles might have been a form that was shown to Daniels and the parties in court. It was a financial form related to Daniels being ordered to pay Trump's attorney fees for a failed defamation case a few years back. As the form was displayed on screens, Daniels whispered to the judge, "This has my address...That's got my address." Daniels was afraid of Trump seeing her address and knowing where she and her daughter live. It freaked her the fuck out.
Even Judge Merchan saw it and commented to Necheles, "She turned to me, she looked very fearful, and she said, 'That's got my address'...She is very much afraid of this form." Later, when Necheles asked Daniels why she left out information about her daughter's identity on another form, Daniels responded, "I won't fill out information that endangers my family or my daughter, no matter what."
Of course Daniels was freaked out. She had just described to Hoffinger how, in 2011, a man came up to her and her infant daughter in a parking lot in Las Vegas and threatened her, telling her to stop talking about the sexual encounter with Trump. Daniels has implied that Trump was somehow behind it, and even if he wasn't, well, Trump sure likes to make it seem like he's capable of that kind of blatant thuggery. Why wouldn't she be afraid?
That's why Daniels is a goddamned hero. It's not just because she handed Trump's attorney her ass in court. It's also and especially because she is overcoming fear and derision and threats to sit there and take this. It's because Trump dangled the promise of mainstream legitimacy in the skeeviest, most elitist way, promising her that she'd "get out of the trailer park" by sticking with him and being on his bullshit TV show, using power and money to coerce her into accepting having sex with him, and then Trump never came through, and now she's willing to risk herself to make sure everything is taken away from him.
And I'd love it if in at least some small way, Daniels wants to shove Trump onto the shit heap of history because he promised her dinner in 2006 and he never fucking delivered.
Q: And you are saying that this was a big deal that you didn't get dinner; right?
A: I was invited. It was dinnertime. I was running hungry, yeah. We talked about ordering food or going down to get food, we never got to eat. It was dinnertime, and we never ate.
Q: And you made a big point of that on numerous interviews; right?
A: Yeah, I went to go to dinner and I didn't get dinner
Fuck, yeah, Stormy Daniels. You deserved dinner and so much more. America owes you big time.
DONALD TRUMP IS CHARLIE MANSON. By Steve M
Judd Legum asks whether Donald Trump is committing a crime by directing surrogates to make statements he's preventing from making himnself:
In recent days, several high-profile Republican political figures have traveled to the Manhattan Criminal Court, where Donald Trump is on trial. Outside the courthouse, they addressed the media and attacked key witnesses, the jury, and even the judge's daughter.
The comments by Trump's Republican allies are nearly identical to attacks that Trump has made previously in interviews and social media posts. But Judge Juan Merchan has ruled that, in so doing, Trump violated the gag order he imposed to preserve the integrity of the trial....
Merchan's order prohibits Trump from "directing others to make public statements about known or reasonably foreseeable witnesses." The order also prohibits Trump from directing others to attack the jury, the court staff, or family members.
... Attorney Jeff Jacobovitz, in an appearance on MSNBC, suggested that Merchan may hold a hearing over whether Trump has violated the gag order by directing his surrogates to make these attacks on his behalf. Jacobovitz noted that "if Trump is feeding information" to his allies, it would violate the gag order.
I assume Merchan won't hold a hearing, will hold a hearing but conclude that he can't prove that Trump orchestrated the obviously orchestrated statements, or will conclude that Trump did orchestrate the statements -- and will respond by fining Trump again, with yet another really strong warning that he won't let Trump get away with this and really might throw him in jail next time. Rinse and repeat.
But here's the aspect of all this that I find most bizarre:
The red tie brigade
On Monday, Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), and Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) addressed the media in front of the courthouse. On Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum (R), Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL), former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy (R), and Congressman Cory Mills (R-FL) did the same. Tuesday's group, in an apparent show of solidarity, wore Trump's signature blue suit and red tie.
Does that remind you of anything? If you're a Boomer, it might remind you of this:
Many of the cultists even carved an “X” into their foreheads after the first day of testimony when [Charles] Manson arrived in court sporting the same. Later, when a guilty verdict was decided and the trial went to penalty phase, Manson shaved his head, proclaiming, “I am the Devil, and the Devil always has a bald head.” Some of his devotees followed suit and could be seen crouched outside in bald-headed solidarity on the days leading up to his April 19, 1971 death sentencing.
I understand that President Biden might want to remain silent about the Trump trial because he doesn't want to be seen as interfering -- but if I were a prominent Democrat who wasn't part of the Executive Branch, I'd tell reporters. "Look at these guys in their red ties. They're like the Manson girls."
Maybe it's offensive to say "Manson girls," the way everyone did at the time of the trial. Some were underage, but many weren't. Also, as Vox's Constance Grady noted a few years ago, the term "Manson girls" was shorthand for "crazed sex-mad hippie chicks who murdered for Charlie." The reality is that most had troubled lives, and sexual assault and other forms of abuse and degradation, by Manson and others, were commonplace in Manson's world.
That's what makes the behavior of the "Trump boys" worse. They're not lost runaways. They aren't being held in check by a cult leader who's using abuse and other tactics to control their minds. They're just careerist lickspittles prostrating themselves before the boss, hoping for a place on the ticket or some other form of career advancement.
But as long as they're out there, I'm wondering why Democrats or liberal activists aren't there too, giving their spin on the trial, in provocative and mediagenic ways. Trump has turned the perimeter of the courthouse into a theater where he's putting on a show and only his followers have any lines. He's still much smarter about the media than the vast majority of Democrats. It's time for Democrats to catch up.
Monday, May 13, 2024
Analysis | Biden Has Not Turned His Back on Israel. But Netanyahu Has. By David Rothkopf
The Netanyahu government has, almost from the very beginning of the Gaza war, pitted itself not just against Hamas but against the U.S. president. Pushing Biden to breaking point may trigger irreparable damage to the already deeply-strained U.S.- Israel relationship
Read time: 7 minutes
Right now, Israel's most effective leader is an 81-year-old Irish Catholic from Delaware.
At a time when the elected government in Jerusalem seems committed to demonstrating its incompetence in new ways almost every day, only Joe Biden has remained committed to the security and the future of the State of Israel.
He has done so despite significant opposition in the United States. He has done what he thought was in Israel's best interests whether Israel's elected officials embraced or condemned him. He has made mistakes, sometimes very significant ones. But the judgment displayed by him and his team has always stood in stark contrast to the recklessness of the Israeli prime minister and his top advisors.
Perhaps that is why the Netanyahu government has, almost from the very beginning of the current war with Gaza, pitted itself not just against Hamas but against Biden. The president has revealed time and again their defects by showing his much clearer understanding of what should be done to advance Israel's long-term interests.
He does so because those interests remain so intertwined with the interests of the country Biden was elected to lead, the United States. And he does so because, as the current crisis has revealed, Biden is, down to his marrow, a true and committed friend of Israel.
In the wake of the horrors of October 7, Biden instantly expressed his ironclad commitment to Israel. It has been heartfelt and unwavering ever since. But from the war's outset, Biden and his team have also, time and again, offered through their advice and actions an instructive counterpoint to the approaches of the Netanyahu government—a leadership roadmap that the extremist clique that is making decisions on behalf of the Israeli state has regularly ignored.
Biden and his administration have reached out to the victims of October 7, especially hostage families, with a sincere compassion and sense of urgency about their concerns that has been so lacking with Netanyahu that demonstrations in the streets of Israel regularly underscore the point.
From the very beginning of the war, even before Biden's visit in the wake of the terrorist attacks, Biden advisors like Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have urged that Israel conduct the war with great care to avoid civilian casualties and to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza. Netanyahu's government clearly and repeatedly ignored the advice. They waged a war without a plan, a war of revenge with the unachievable goal of eradicating Hamas.
The result is that today, seven months later, Israel is no safer than it was when the war began and because of the blood on its hands due to the slaughter of innocents in Gaza, Israel's standing in the world is lower than it has ever been. And we have not yet begun to see how the inhumanity of the Netanyahu government's approach will produce a new generation of enemies of Israel.
Months ago, President Biden, Vice President Harris and the rest of the U.S. team urged a focus on "the day after" the war. They recognized that without a clear idea about how to rebuild Gaza, to put in place effective Palestinian leadership and develop a roadmap toward a two-state solution, there would never be an enduring end to this conflict. Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and their associates scoffed and, to this day reject this despite it being the only reasonable path forward.
Instead, we're left with Netanyahu, in an embarrassing interview with D-level U.S. media personality Dr. Phil, suggesting that Arab states – with whom he had not consulted – could come in and clean up his mess, an idea that was instantly rejected by one of those for being as unfounded as it was absurd.
Most recently, the U.S. has pushed for a cease-fire, during which proper thought could be given for reassessment and a day-after plan, in large part because the current Israeli government has no such plan. More controversially, Biden has made it clear that having been ignored for months, the U.S. would no longer support Israeli actions that were likely to produce high civilian casualties.
The withholding of a shipment of offensive weapons that could cause such casualties and Biden's statement that the U.S. could and would withhold further such shipments if Netanyahu proceeded with a major operation in Rafah, was a clear message to the Israeli 'leadership' that the U.S. now saw them and their 'plans' as one of the great imminent threats to both U.S. and Israeli interests in the region.
On cue, Israel's far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir tweeted that Hamas loves Biden. Netanyahu howled. Surrogates claimed that the U.S. action would reduce leverage with Hamas.
But the U.S. has been in the middle of the negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage release. They knew the degree to which it was the Israelis and not just Hamas who were resisting coming to a deal. They heard Netanyahu's promise to go ahead with operations in Rafah whether there was a cease-fire or not. (Which of course, was itself a major disincentive to Hamas to enter into any peace deal.)
Biden's decision to use the concrete leverage of withholding arms shipments gives the U.S. was, if anything, long overdue. Ben-Gvir's idiotic accusation, in the wake of the degree to which the U.S. has supported Israel – and the degree to which Netanyahu actively helped direct funding to Hamas – was indefensible.
Among the mistakes the Biden administration has made with regard to this conflict, if anything they have been too supportive of the Netanyahu administration, too muted in their criticisms or efforts to stop the egregious abuses of the Israeli leadership. As a result, the accusations of Netanyahu allies in the Republican Party also rang hollow, especially given that they had spent the past six months blocking aid to Israel and that their party leader, Donald Trump, had backed the Netanyahu effort to prop up Hamas with funding via Qatar.
No, Biden was not the one who had turned his back on Israel. That was Netanyahu. He was the man who created the conditions for October 7. He was the one who had ignored sound guidance from Biden throughout this conflict. He and his team are the ones who have nothing but carnage to show for seven months of war. He and his team are the ones not acting in the interest of Israel but rather of themselves.
Now, Netanyahu's war cabinet has responded to the Biden promise to withhold further arms if Rafah operations are expanded by gradually expanding Rafah operations. The military benefit of such expansion is unclear. But the political objective is obvious. In Rafah, on the orders of Netanyahu, the IDF is now conducting Operation Find Biden's Red Line. They want to see just how far they can push the U.S. president before the flow of all offensive weapons is cut off.
Like everything else they are doing, it is foolish, unstrategic and of no benefit to Israel. If they succeed in finding and crossing the red line, who benefits? Certainly not Israel. U.S. arms flows are important – as Israeli government complaints about cutting them off clearly demonstrate.
But worse, pushing the relationship with Israel's best friend in the world, Joe Biden, to the breaking point is likely to produce lasting and perhaps irreparable damage to the already deeply strained U.S.- Israel relationship.
An expanded operation in Rafah can only produce bad outcomes – for the U.S.-Israel relationship, for Israel's standing in the world, for the prospects for regional peace, and in human terms for the civilians of Gaza and for Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
That is why Israel's most dependable and wise leader, Joe Biden, has taken a clear stand against it. It is also probably why the incompetent mob around Netanyahu is for it.
The strength of Biden's most recent statements should cause them to reconsider. They may think he is doing what they do and responding to political pressure or self-interest in the upcoming U.S. election. Quite the contrary. He has entered territory unfamiliar to them: Real leadership where the only consideration is what is in the best interest of the country he leads and the ally he so values.
Whether they know it or not, Israel's government has reached the FAFO stage of the Netanyahu-Biden relationship. It's not a good place for Israel's current batch of elected officials to be. But, if understood for the principles behind it, this could be a turning point that should trigger the wholehearted support of people of Israel, America's real ally in all this.
David Rothkopf is a former senior U.S. government official and the author of ten books on foreign policy and politics. He is also a podcast host and CEO of The DSR Podcast Network. Twitter: @djrothkopf
Opinion: Netanyahu and his extremist allies are endangering Israel’s long-term security. By Richard J. Davis
Editor’s Note: Richard J. Davis was the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Carter administration and former assistant Watergate special prosecutor. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
CNN —
President Joe Biden appropriately spoke out forcefully about the need to combat the surge in antisemitism in the US, the importance of supporting Israel’s security and not forgetting the brutality of the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas during his speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual Days of Remembrance ceremony at the Capitol on Tuesday.
“My commitment to the safety of the Jewish people, the security of Israel, and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state is ironclad. Even when we disagree,” he said.
But if we are to fight against antisemitism, promote the long-term security of Israel and remember the horrors of the October 7 Hamas attack we must also recognize and speak out against a dangerous failure of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government.
That failure is his inability to understand one of the basic requirements to establish long-term security for any society: those living there need to believe they have a stake in that society and can enjoy its benefits. If they do, they will want it to be as safe and secure as possible. If, however, many believe that they have no stake in a society and that they have no real hope of sharing in its success, then turning to violence to create a place in which they believe they can meaningfully participate is far more likely.
If Netanyahu understood this principle, his government would not include dangerous extremists and would not pursue policies involving the significant expansion of West Bank settlements and the recognition of illegal settlements which deny Palestinians hope for a better future. We also would not have to deal with the reality that efforts to support the long-term security of Israel, combat the scourge of antisemitism and address Gaza protests on campuses both in the US and abroad have been made more difficult by the extremism of the Netanyahu government.
Netanyahu, an outspoken critic of the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, has spent his years as prime minister promoting the expansion of settlements within the West Bank and making it clear that Palestinians have no hope of anything like their own state.
According to the New York Times, he even went so far as to voice no objection to various Arab countries providing aid to Hamas as part of demonstrating that Israel had no realistic negotiating partner. But he reached a new low when in 2022 he brought into his government the most extreme anti-Palestinian participants in Israeli politics. Their inclusion sent the clear message to Palestinians that there is no hope of a better future for them in any Israeli-controlled-land.
Netanyahu invited Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir to join his government. The former was appointed finance minister and was given responsibility for West Bank settlements. He has, however, suggested during a debate on an immigration bill it was a mistake in 1948 not to expel all Arabs from Israel; has asserted that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people;” favors all of the West Bank being incorporated into Israel; and says he supports the voluntary moving of Palestinians out of Gaza.
Ben Gvir, who has been given a national security portfolio, is arguably even worse. He has been convicted of inciting racism against Arabs and was an alleged member of a terrorist group; has idolized the killing of Palestinians; publicly threatened then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin before his assassination in 1995; and claimed that his right to travel in the West Bank was more important than the Palestinians’ right to travel. And, just late last month he reportedly questioned the Israeli Defense Forces why they were taking so many Palestinian prisoners instead of killing them (which would be a violation of international law).
After the October 7 terrorist attack, Netanyahu had an opportunity to remove Smotrich and Ben Gvir from their posts when the first offer from the opposition for a unity government involved their elimination from the cabinet. Seemingly focused on not disturbing his coalition and staying in power, Netanyahu refused. Consequently, his unity government today still gives a platform to these extremists. It also gives license to followers of these extremists to, as we have seen, attack Palestinians in the West Bank and even to attack a Jordanian aid convoy.
There is no doubt that a robust military response by Israel was justified. And there also is no doubt that Hamas’ embedding its fighters and military infrastructure within the civilian population has inevitably increased the dangers civilians face in Gaza. But as has been widely reported, the military tactics adopted by Netanyahu’s government have led to massive civilian casualties, including of international aid workers. Its approach to assistance to Gaza has led to a historic humanitarian crisis.
At the same time, Israel has continued with significant expansion of settlements on the West Bank. The message being sent is clear. As far as the Netanyahu administration is concerned, Palestinian lives do not matter, and there is no reason for them to expect a better future. As a result, however much Hamas is weakened, a new generation of terrorists is being created. And the brutality of the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas and the plight of the hostages are being drowned out.
So what should those organizations and individuals who believe in Israel and the need to fight antisemitism, whether it be on college campuses or elsewhere, do? For their own efforts to be credible they must not avoid legitimate criticism of Israel. They must condemn the participation of Smotrich and Ben Gvir in the Israeli government. They need, as the United States government is doing, to tell Israel there can be no more excuses. Israel must do what is necessary to expand and simplify the process of sending humanitarian aid to Gaza. They also need to be clear that Israel must change its military tactics to dramatically reduce civilian deaths. And, as challenging as it would be, they need to openly call for the end to the expansion of settlements in the West Bank and for a path back towards a two-state solution.
Ignoring the extremism of the Netanyahu government and the horrible humanitarian disaster in Gaza only undermines the credibility of those seeking to defend Israel and fight antisemitism. Indeed, Netanyahu’s government and its actions risk adding fuel to the dangerous fire of antisemitism. And tragically, for all too many around the world, revulsion over what his government has become risks causing them to no longer support the legitimacy of Israel itself.
Friday, May 10, 2024
Want to Reduce the Cost of Housing? Build More of It - Bloomberg. By Matthew Yglesias
Read time: 4 minutes
Everyone agrees that the rent (or the mortgage) is too high, but the best ways to make it more affordable aren’t very popular.
May 5, 2024
When it comes to the current debate over housing affordability, I feel like my position has been clear and consistent: Twelve years ago, I wrote a book called The Rent Is Too Damn High. At the same time, I also have to admit that most Americans do not share my preferred solutions.
My basic argument can be summarized in three words: Build more housing. There are a lot of ways to make that easier — feel free to buy the book! — but increased supply doesn’t seem to be what voters have in mind when they think about ways to bring down housing costs.
Only 30% to 40% of voters believe that a greater supply of housing would moderate prices, according to research from academics who are broadly sympathetic to the YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) movement. Their research also shows that this is not generalized skepticism of supply-and-demand dynamics. If you ask the same question about other commodities, people understand the linkage.
In their most recent paper, the researchers — Christopher Elmendorf, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, and the political scientists Clayton Nall of UC Santa Barbara and Stan Oklobdzija of Tulane — survey voters about what they think would work. The most popular options are rent control, government subsidies for down payments, property tax cuts and regulations to prevent Wall Street firms from buying housing.
Economically, this is basically all nonsense.
If you push subsidies into a supply-constrained market, prices will go up in response, and you’ll be left right where you started. If you impose rent control, it will help incumbent renters who never plan to move, but it only serves to exacerbate scarcity.
Meanwhile, YIMBY solutions such as changing zoning to allow for more construction are both less popular and viewed as less efficacious. Interestingly, and contrary to the “homevoter hypothesis” that supply restrictions represent a deliberate effort to inflate housing costs, the research finds that renters are more hostile to denser zoning than homeowners are.
So, are Americans doomed? Not necessarily. But the research is a potent reminder that lots of popular attention on a problem doesn’t always help solve it.
There is a healthy amount of elite awareness in the US that there are too many regulatory restrictions on housing supply — that was the view not only of Barack Obama’s economic policy team, but also Donald Trump’s and now Joe Biden’s. At the same time, bipartisan deals are usually popular regardless of the substance, and there is political upside to solving problems regardless of what people think about how you solved it.
Under the circumstances, the best path forward for supply-side reform is probably quiet bipartisanship — motivated state legislators and governors working together — rather than noisy partisan coalitions.
In Washington state, for example, a promising bill reducing minimum lot sizes passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support and a Republican lead author in a blue state. The law, unfortunately, got bottled up in the Senate, but these kind of intra-elite issues are solvable in principle. In New York, in contrast, Governor Kathy Hochul’s splashy 2023 housing reform effort failed in a way that may be unfixable. She’s the Democratic governor of a blue state, so she tried to build a partisan coalition that paired upzoning with other progressive housing reforms. Republicans attacked the package, the politics got dicey, and vulnerable Democrats started to bail. The package not only failed, but unlike the version in Washington state, the whole approach may be irredeemable. There simply isn’t enough public support for upzoning to be done on a party-line basis.
There is, however, one potential exception.
The research indicates that there is a lot of support for zoning reforms designed to facilitate “affordable housing for middle-income households.” The policy landscape is littered with so-called “inclusionary zoning” policies that aim to accomplish this. Unfortunately, as a new report from the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing shows, these policies mostly serve as regulations that further constrain the overall supply of housing.
This is a potentially fixable problem of policy design. Inclusionary zoning customarily requires a share of units to be rented out so cheaply as to be uneconomical to build. It then also requires that only certain households be eligible for the units, which both limits the number of people who can benefit and requires incredible amounts of paperwork.
One could imagine policies that fit the same high-level description while being dramatically simpler. What if any unit that’s cheaper than the average new unit in the area counted as “affordable,” and the project were then given an express lane to permitting, exemption from parking requirements, and authorization to build taller? Conventional “affordable” housing policies use metrics like 80% of area median income to define eligibility. But in other contexts it’s acknowledged that a family earning a good bit more than that is still middle class. Biden’s tax policy proposals define anyone who earns less than $400,000 — over four times the median household income — as middle class. Housing policy could be equally elastic.
Granted, these kind of limitations are not really good economics. It’s pretty clearly established that even the most upscale new developments improve overall affordability. But the important thing is to maximize supply given the constraints of politics and public opinion. As long as we take a reasonably flexible view of affordability, Americans can have a lot more new affordable housing.