There is a new blog post entitled, “The trouble with reparations isn’t what you think it is.”
Fabian Mendez Ramos, “Uncertainty in ending extreme poverty,” Brookings Institute, June 4, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2019/06/04/uncertainty-in-ending-extreme-poverty/
Mitch McConnell spent eight years obstructing Barack Obama. What on earth made anyone expect he would be any different now that McConnell’s opponents control the House?
Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine, “Republicans whistle past the ‘legislative graveyard,’” Politico, June 10, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/10/senate-republicans-legislative-agenda-graveyard-1356894
If Theresa May’s stewardship of Brexit was ludicrous, the race to replace her may be more so.
Cartoon by Ben Jennings, via the Guardian, June 9, 2019, fair use.
Byron Tau, “House Democrats, DOJ Reach Deal on Mueller Probe Evidence,” Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-democrats-doj-reach-deal-on-mueller-probe-evidence-11560183328
There is a new blog post, entitled, “An invitation to violence.”
The words were true when Mexican President Porfirio Díaz spoke them. They remain true today, and never more so than with Donald Trump as U.S. president: “Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!”[1]
I’m not inclined to take the agreement between Mexico’s government and the Trump administration all that seriously. Mexico has promised what it cannot deliver. The claim that “Mexico is also taking decisive action to dismantle human smuggling and trafficking organizations as well as their illicit financial and transportation networks”[2] strikes me as unlikely: We’re talking largely about narcotics cartels and gangs here, with whom, Mexico’s recognized government effectively shares co-sovereignty in large parts of the country. If Mexico were capable of dismantling these organizations, it would have, long ago. It can’t.
The immediately preceding claim, that “Mexico will take unprecedented steps to increase enforcement to curb irregular migration, to include the deployment of its National Guard throughout Mexico, giving priority to its southern border”[3] elides that Mexico has long served as an arm of U.S. migration policy. And the New York Times notes that Mexico had already agreed to this step “during secret talks in Miami between Kirstjen Nielsen, then the secretary of homeland security, and Olga Sanchez, the Mexican secretary of the interior, the officials [from both countries] said.”[4] We are not talking about a rich country here; if the U.S. is serious about having Mexico keep these commitments, the latter country will need a great deal more money and resources than it has.
Which, of course, would be quite the inverse of Trump’s promise that Mexico would pay for the wall.
Mr. Trump’s decision to use trade as a bludgeon against Mexico was driven in part by his obsession with stopping what he falsely calls an invasion of the country and in part by a desire to satisfy his core supporters, many of who have grown angry at his inability to build his promised border wall.
Many of his top advisers, including those who oversee his political and economic agendas, were opposed to the tariff threat. But the president’s ire is regularly stoked by the daily reports he receives on how many migrants have crossed the border in the previous 24 hours.[5]
But Trump needed to appear to be bullying Mexico, he did bully Mexico to some extent, and this agreement sounds good, at least to Trump’s authoritarian populist base. And with Trump, this is what really matters. The agreement largely kicks the can down the road, saying “in the event the measures adopted do not have the expected results, they will take further actions.” It combines this with a promise of further discussions.[6] I expect nothing and if nothing happens there would thus be no call for “further actions.”
Finally, the agreement advocates “promoting development and economic growth in southern Mexico and . . . . promoting prosperity, good governance and security in Central America.”[7] But extreme poverty is only one of the push factors propelling migrants north. Central America, in large part due to U.S. policies, is an incredibly violent place. People are leaving for fear of their lives.
The poverty is also largely due to U.S. policies, especially including so-called “free” trade, which freed U.S. farmers to shaft Latin American farmers; and climate change, which even the neoliberal politicians refuse to take seriously.
Department of State, “U.S.-Mexico Joint Declaration,” June 7, 2019, https://www.state.gov/u-s-mexico-joint-declaration/
Michael D. Shear and Maggie Haberman, “Mexico Agreed to Take Border Actions Months Before Trump Announced Tariff Deal,” New York Times, June 8, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/us/politics/trump-mexico-deal-tariffs.html
The ethnic cleansing will continue until morale improves.
Times of Israel, “US envoy says Israel has ‘right’ to annex parts of West Bank,” June 8, 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-envoy-says-israel-has-right-to-annex-parts-of-west-bank/
It appears I have moved into an early gentrification situation.
Something I noticed right away when I moved in was a notice above the mailboxes threatening residents with huge bills for clearing drains of stuff that shouldn’t be put down drains. A related clue was that one of the outlets in my apartment didn’t work.
It turns out the outlet doesn’t work because of a “loose neutral.” Which happened because they removed a garbage disposal in the kitchen. “People were abusing them,” the maintenance worker explained.
Then there’s the garbage. I don’t know whether trash is getting blown out of the garbage bins or just not making it in the bins in the first place. But there’s been an awful lot of litter on the lawns around my building. And apparently enough of it went down the storm drain in the parking lot that during recent heavy rains, it clogged.
The other day, management sent out an email to residents taking notice of personal belongings in common areas. It seems these will now be discarded without further notice. All of a sudden the trash is getting picked up. And I saw maintenance workers hauling children’s toys out of the basement (this would be where the laundry machines are) in a nearby building.
The corporation that owns this complex is one I’ve seen before in the San Francisco Bay Area, probably on the peninsula. So they’re nationwide. The complexes I’d seen before were high end complexes, meant to appeal to well-paid high tech workers.
While my apartment is nice on the inside, the outside has left something to be desired. But I’ve been noticing efforts to spruce things up. And I’m interpreting the rest as a conflict between residents who presumably predate this corporation’s purchase of the complex and the new management. The residents are used to things being a certain way. The management wants to make improvements, presumably to attract higher class residents (and charge higher rents).
Like, it must be admitted, me.
It’s business as usual.[1]
Shane Goldmacher and Stephanie Saul, “Democratic Candidates Woo Silicon Valley for Donations, Then Bash It,” New York Times, June 7, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/us/politics/democrats-2020-donations-silicon-valley.html
Andrew Sheeler, “Democrats say they don’t take Big Tobacco money. But JUUL had a sponsorship at convention,” Sacramento Bee, June 7, 2019, https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article231228168.html
Drug stores sell highly processed food even in underserved neighborhoods. It’s only a marginal improvement over what many poor people were eating before.[2]
Gabrielle Canon, “‘Food deserts’ become ‘food swamps’ as drugstores outsell major grocers,” Guardian, June 4, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/04/food-swamps-cvs-outsells-trader-joes-whole-foods-processed-shopping
Politicians get away with lying in Britain too.[3]
Gareth Davies, “Boris Johnson has misconduct allegations quashed in High Court,” Telegraph, June 7, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/07/boris-johnson-has-misconduct-allegations-quashed-high-court/
Tracy Wilkinson and Noah Bierman, “Trump announces deal to avoid tariffs on Mexico,” Los Angeles Times, June 7, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-pol-us-mexico-tariffs-immigration-talks-20190607-story.html
As I note on my page to online service providers, there is a problem with various forms of abusive, harassing, and threatening speech on social media.[1] Particularly since the 2016 elections, in which Russian trolls have been alleged to have played a part in Donald Trump’s election, providers such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have come under increasing pressure to regulate speech and have responded unevenly: Trump is exempt on Twitter; his critics are anything but.[2] And there is no process for adjudicating competing claims as to what speech should be allowed and which should be forbidden. It’s just what some underpaid flunkie or, even worse, artificial idiocy, decides should be allowed or forbidden.
Yes, the targeted speech is a problem. My problem is that its censorship will inevitably—accuse me of a slippery slope argument to your heart’s content—widen to include other forms of speech as well. I have a new blog post, entitled, “The public square of the Internet.” Whatever the solution to problematic speech, it cannot be this.
Jay Inslee, one of numerous candidates for the neoliberal nomination, says the Democratic National Committee will not only refuse to hold a debate focused on climate change; it will bar any candidates who participate in such a debate from the debates it sanctions.[3] This, as the news on climate change keeps getting worse, as climate scientists consistently find that their earlier estimates of climate change impacts understate the problem.
Progressives should be further alarmed that, once again, the mainstream Democratic Party establishment seeks to monopolize the terms of the campaign. This is how you rig elections. This is how the establishment defeated Bernie Sanders in 2016. This is how you constrain policy options to those which do not threaten the establishment. And this is only one reason why I now refuse to call it the Democratic Party but rather the neoliberal party. Because it is incorrigibly so. And here’s an example:
THE THING ABOUT THE HYDE AMENDMENT … Over the last day, there’s been a pile-on on JOE BIDEN – Beto O’Rourke, Elizabeth Warren and others have ganged up against the former VP over his support of the Hyde Amendment, language that prohibits most federal funding for abortion.
BUT … If you are or have been a member of Congress – 15 people in this field – and you’ve voted for big spending packages, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve also voted for the amendment. OF COURSE, Biden is actively supporting it, and that’s a bit unique. But this language has been a part of a lot of funding bills and gotten plenty of votes from Democrats over the years.[4]
Compromise with evil is evil: I have another new blog post, entitled “Slavery, rape, and abortion bans.” Meanwhile Joe Biden has withdrawn his support for the Hyde amendment:
Women’s rights and health care are under assault in a way that seeks to roll back every step of progress we’ve made over the last 50 years. If I believe health care is a right, as I do, I can no longer support an amendment that makes that right dependent on someone’s zip code.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 7, 2019
Anthony Adragna, “DNC opts against climate change debate, Inslee says,” Politico, June 5, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/05/dnc-opts-against-climate-change-debate-inslee-says-1355867
Karen Tumulty, “On abortion, Biden shows he is out of step with his party,” Washington Post, June 5, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/on-abortion-biden-shows-he-is-out-of-step-with-his-party/2019/06/05/e83ddc30-87cd-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html
Jake Sherman, Anna Palmer, and Daniel Lippman, “Guess who else voted against federal funding for abortion?” Politico, June 6, 2019, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2019/06/06/guess-who-else-voted-against-federal-funding-for-abortion-443667
Michael Price, “Closest-known ancestor of today’s Native Americans found in Siberia,” Science, June 5, 2019, doi:10.1126/science.aay2891
When we get to quantum physics and quantum computing, we are so far beyond anything I learned in high school (my only physics class) or community college immediately thereafter (where I studied business data processing), it’s ridiculous. But the issue of Schrödinger’s cat sounds to me like an information problem: You don’t know if the cat is dead or alive because you haven’t looked in the box.
That’s not how anybody states it. They say, that until you look in the box, the cat is simultaneously dead and alive. Which seems to involve anthropocentric, epistemological, or other presumptions I really don’t follow. After all, the point of the thought experiment is that the release of the poison, killing the cat, is triggered by a random event, the decay of a radioactive atom.
In quantum physics, the act of observation is apparently significant and to a degree well beyond that of introducing a thermometer into the medium whose temperature you seek to measure—the thermometer itself presumably has a different temperature, so to some (hopefully) small degree, it changes the very temperature you seek to measure. How observation can be significant with radioactive decay is a mystery to me—you detect decay by what it emits and by the quantity of original material remaining. Quantum physics is weird in many ways, and this is one of them.
In a more conventional understanding, you can only estimate radioactive half-lives, not the fate of an individual atom at any given point. The idea here is that over a given period of time, the half life, half of a group of radioactive atoms will likely have decayed. It’s a statistical thing, meant to apply over numerous aggregates, not even to any one aggregate. Hence the question of Schrödinger’s cat: What we know about an aggregate of aggregates tells us nothing about the individual atom; its decay occurs randomly.
Now these scientists are saying that the decay of an atom can be detected and even reversed as it occurs, that the decay is not entirely instant. Which would be good news for the cat, but apparently also in preventing errors in quantum computing.[1]
Nicola Davis, “Schrödinger’s cat could be saved, say scientists,” Guardian, June 3, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jun/03/feline-fine-fate-of-schrodingers-cat-can-be-reversed-study
David Shultz, “Have physicists found a way to save Schrödinger’s cat?” Science, June 3, 2019, https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/06/have-physicists-found-way-save-schr-dinger-s-cat
Darren Samuelsohn, “Judge OK without public release of Flynn-Kislyak transcript,” Politico, June 4, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/04/flynn-kislyak-transcript-1353483
Until now, I’ve mostly seen the prospect of yet another recession more as speculation seemingly founded on a notion that the alleged expansion (it’s an expansion only if you discount externalities, such as climate) couldn’t go on forever. And certainly, psychology is a factor: The very fact that the Wall Street Journal publishes an article speculating on the possibility of a recession[1] will mean people will think about the possibility of a recession. The question is when or if that thinking becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Another question is whether, in passages to warm capitalist libertarians’ hearts, the article is correct to allocate considerable blame for past recessions to the Federal Reserve[2] (capitalist libertarians even blame the Great Depression that began with a stock market crash in 1929 on, yes, the Federal Reserve).
But there are a few storm clouds now: One is Donald Trump’s idiocy on tariffs, which a lot of folks, importantly including Republican Congress members, translate as taxes on U.S. consumers and businesses.[3] They’re dubious with China, fully delusional in trying to get Mexico to stem the flow of migrants into the U.S.[4] Another is Brexit, which now seems certain to be hard, with its predicted devastating consequences for the British economy—one question will be how these spill out into the world economy. Then there’s a bipartisan antitrust crackdown on big high tech[5] that I have to say I didn’t see coming.
It might well be that none of those, by themselves or even in combination with each other, would push the economy past a tipping point. But it is a positivist (and brain-dead) linear model of causation that expects a single cause and a single effect (yes, really, and no, I couldn’t believe it either—this was an “are you fucking kidding me” moment for me when I learned of this). I am, among other things, a systems theorist and I know that there are always other factors at work.
But if a threat hits the economy, policy makers may have a difficult time finding further tax or spending capacity to limit the impact. As Canada experienced in the early 1990s, fiscal belt tightening in a downturn can make a recession even worse.
The Fed is also constrained. With interest rates already very low, it has little room to cut them to spur borrowing, spending and investment in a downturn.[6]
What I’m not is an economist and, frankly, if I were, you’d have even less reason to listen to me if I were forecasting a recession (if, indeed, human science is a mother to the social sciences,[7] economics would be the mean and vicious, ugly-to-the-bone stepchild). I’m not. I simply don’t have the training or the data, nor do I have any particularly educated insight into the economy. But I’m starting to see reason for people to worry.
The silver lining is that if a well-timed recession occurs, later this year, or better still, early to mid-next year, it will boost the prospects for a Green New Deal. So-called “creative destruction” has destroyed too much: I drive past shuttered manufacturing facilities and through devastated communities—McKeesport, I’m thinking of you, but you’re not the only one by a very long stretch—every day. I see the poverty that has resulted.
The neoliberal rationalization that yes, workers might be getting paid less and might be treated like shit, but at least they’re paying lower prices for products now made overseas, doesn’t really fly here because these folks aren’t buying much at all. They don’t have the money. The alleged expansion hasn’t reached these folks any more than it has me. And if I’m going to talk about tipping points, another recession, especially a severe recession, might be one.
Jon Hilsenrath, “After Record-Long Expansion, Here’s What Could Knock the Economy Off Course,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-record-long-expansion-heres-what-could-knock-the-economy-off-course-11559591043
Republican lawmakers aren’t eager to be drawn into a conflict with the president. But some feel they might have to take action following a growing consensus within the GOP that these new tariffs would amount to tax increases on American businesses and consumers — something that would represent a profound breach of party orthodoxy.[8]
There’s another reason Republican congress members might not really want to have this particular fight with Donald Trump: Authoritarian populists are very often the ones who’ve lost jobs in so-called “free” (for whom? to do what? to whom?) trade. They’re also a large (if not the larger) part of Trump’s base. It may indeed be sheer idiocy, but so-called “free” trade is not an argument that will win them over. And they’re already incensed over migration, Trump’s excuse for tariffs on Mexico. He’s pushing all the right buttons for them and they’re loving it. That said, at least some Republican senators seem to think they have the votes to override Trump’s veto and stop the tariffs.[9]
Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim, and Damian Paletta, “GOP lawmakers discuss vote to block Trump’s new tariffs on Mexico, in what would be a dramatic act of defiance,” Washington Post, June 3, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/citing-mexico-tariffs-threat-lawmakers-say-n-american-trade-deal-is-in-peril/2019/06/03/73c4eaac-863c-11e9-a491-25df61c78dc4_story.html
Erica Werner et al., “GOP lawmakers warn White House they’ll try to block Trump’s Mexico tariffs,” Washington Post, June 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexico-sees-80-percent-chance-of-a-deal-to-head-off-trump-tariffs/2019/06/04/53bdce08-86c4-11e9-98c1-e945ae5db8fb_story.html
There’s an acronym, FAANG, used to refer to the really big high tech firms, standing for Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. Four of those companies, but apparently not Netflix, will now be the subject of antitrust scrutiny.[10] I’m having a hard time imagining what the results of punitive measures might look like, which probably says as much about the need for antitrust action as it does my own limited imagination.
Dan Gallagher, “Big Tech’s Weird Day of Reckoning,” Wall Street Journal, June 4, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-techs-weird-day-of-reckoning-11559641888
Tom Hoggins, “Tesla is ‘structurally unprofitable’, analysts say,” Telegraph, June 3, 2019, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/06/03/tesla-structurally-unprofitable-analysts-say/
So yesterday, we had Donald Trump’s pal, the ambassador to Britain, saying Britain’s National Health Service would be on the table for post-Brexit trade negotiations.[11] I called it an “own goal” because it gives Brits a reason to vote against Nigel Farage, whom Trump would undoubtedly love to win a general election and become prime minister.[12] So guess what Trump did today? He doubled down on the “own goal.” He might have backtracked later,[13] but I’m guessing the damage is done. Typical. And this is how you know the man’s a fucking idiot, because stupid just doesn’t come much stupider than this.
Adam Taylor, “Brits are fiercely protective of their health-care system. Trump suggested he wants it included in trade talks,” Washington Post, June 4, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/06/04/brits-are-fiercely-protective-their-health-care-system-trump-suggested-he-wants-it-included-trade-talks/
I came across this old book review in the New Yorker which argues that moral indignation rather than dehumanization lies behind some extreme cruelty.[1] It’s an interesting hypothesis, but I’m unconvinced: The argument is left unmade for me.
The thing about arguments of this nature is they seek to plumb the depths of motivation and belief in other people, which we can never really know. We can only know what they say or write. People rarely even fully know themselves anyway and people who express cruelty towards other people strike me as spectacularly unreliable sources.
Paul Bloom, “The Root of All Cruelty?” review of Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, by David Livingstone Smith, and Virtuous Violence: Hurting and Killing to Create, Sustain, End, and Honor Social Relationships, by Alan Fiske and Tage Rai, New Yorker, November 20, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/the-root-of-all-cruelty
Cartoon by Nicola Jennings, via the Guardian, June 2, 2019, fair use.
So Donald Trump made one of his pals ambassador to the United Kingdom. Said pal wants Britain to privatize its National Health Service or at least to “put it up for negotiation” in a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.S. Britons, except perhaps those in with Nigel Farage, are outraged.[2] I suspect this is what, in soccer, they call an “own goal:” If voters were lacking a reason to vote against Farage, they certainly have one now.
Jessica Elgot and Patrick Wintour, “Donald Trump to land in UK amid rising anger over trade demands,” Guardian, June 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/02/donald-trump-to-land-in-uk-amid-rising-anger-over-trade-demands
It seems California Democrats, at least those who attended a state party convention, are in no mood for so-called “centrism” (for which, read “neoliberalism”).[3] The problem here, as it was in 2016, is that neoliberals will never relinquish control of the Democratic Party to progressives in anything like the way that the Republicans acquiesced to authoritarian populists and social conservatives—they’ll just keep pointing to those nine percent response rate polls that favor the “touchy feely” misogynist pervert, Joe Biden, ironically claiming the mantle of “pragmatism.” Which means that progressives who run as Democrats are in fact, even if unintentionally, supporting neoliberalism by attracting progressive votes to a determinedly neoliberal party and thus helping neoliberals to gain or remain in power.
And we must not be deluded by neoliberal fantasies that Republicans will be more sensible when Donald Trump leaves office:[4] Barack Obama spent his entire presidency appeasing them; Mitch McConnell hasn’t stopped shamelessly obstructing Democrats, now for over ten fucking years. These fantasies are bullshit, just like the progressive fantasies that impeachment grandstanding will solve a damned thing.
Sophia Bollag and Hannah Wiley, “Boos for the moderates: San Francisco convention fires up left-leaning Democratic activists,” Sacramento Bee, June 2, 2019, https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article231018043.html
Sean Sullivan, “Liberals go after Joe Biden, trying to blunt his presidential candidacy and the recent centrist surge in the Democratic Party,” Washington Post, June 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/liberals-go-after-joe-biden-trying-to-blunt-his-presidential-candidacy-and-the-recent-centrist-surge-in-the-democratic-party/2019/06/02/b0e20be4-8543-11e9-a491-25df61c78dc4_story.html
The problem remains that Palestinians will not—and should not—accept anything less than full independence from the Israeli colonization that the Israeli right, which has a stranglehold on Israeli and U.S. politics, insists is a precondition for Israeli security. Let me clear: Colonization is never legitimate, and the Israeli version of it, in often violently seeking to erase the Palestinians by calling them “Arabs,” or by seeking to subsume them into Jordan and Egypt, fulfils one definition of genocide; it is, at the very least, ethnic cleansing. Israel, having been founded largely in response to genocide, delegitimizes itself with these policies.
John Hudson and Loveday Morris, “Pompeo delivers unfiltered view of Trump’s Middle East peace plan in off-the-record meeting,” Washington Post, June 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/exclusive-pompeo-delivers-unfiltered-view-of-trumps-middle-east-peace-plan-in-off-the-record-meeting/2019/06/02/94527d80-3a2c-4f04-b8f9-dd3fd78a5a8c_story.html
Spencer S. Hsu, “Judge rejects House suit to block transfer of billions of dollars for Trump border wall,” Washington Post, June 3, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/judge-rejects-house-suit-to-block-transfer-of-billions-of-dollars-for-trump-border-wall/2019/06/03/15b58402-7e31-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html
There is a new blog post, entitled, “Reality intervenes, but we never challenge the thinking.”
If any journalists need a screenshot of the new visa question, please use this one as I took it myself versus the one I posted which was passed to me by a colleague and I'm not sure of the origin. This one actually shows more detail anyway. pic.twitter.com/iDZvk3LIOv
— (((Greg Siskind))) (@gsiskind) May 31, 2019
Check your loyalty before you apply.
Vinson Cunningham, “How the Idea of Hell Has Shaped the Way We Think,” review of The Penguin Book of Hell, by Scott G. Bruce, New Yorker, January 14, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/21/how-the-idea-of-hell-has-shaped-the-way-we-think
In which Eliot Cohen discovers corruption and sycophancy in the Navy.[1] I guess he was born yesterday.
Eliot A. Cohen, “A Stain on the Honor of the Navy,” Atlantic, May 30, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/uss-john-s-mccain-scandal-stains-navy/590575/
Julia Carrie Wong, “‘A white-collar sweatshop’: Google Assistant contractors allege wage theft,” Guardian, May 29, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/28/a-white-collar-sweatshop-google-assistant-contractors-allege-wage-theft
It appears the knives are out for Binyamin Netanyahu.[1] It’s probably too early to say he’s finished, but it sure looks like he might be.
Times of Israel, “Ehud Barak says Netanyahu is ‘finished,’ predicts Likud will turn on him,” May 31, 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/ehud-barak-says-netanyahu-is-finished-predicts-likud-will-turn-on-him/
Bernard Avishai, “A Climax to the Saga of Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman,” New Yorker, June 1, 2019, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/a-climax-to-the-saga-of-benjamin-netanyahu-and-avigdor-lieberman
Alexia Fernández Campbell, “California is cracking down on the gig economy,” Vox, May 30, 2019, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/30/18642535/california-ab5-misclassify-employees-contractors
