May 2022 – Page 3 – Irregular Bullshit

Does a “‘seismic shift’ in investor sentiment” really mean a ‘seismic shift’ in Softbank sentiment?

May 12, 2022benfell

Gig economy (neoliberal wet dream)

Bezzle

No investment firm has been as talked about in Silicon Valley as SoftBank — the mere utterance of which can send tremors down the spines of rival firms or the competitors to SoftBank’s portfolio companies. It is behind the (unprofitable) tech companies familiar to so many of us: Uber. Slack. WeWork. DoorDash.^[1]

Historically—I don’t know if this remains the case—Softbank has been Uber’s biggest investor.^[2] So now I’m wondering if, when Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi referred to a “‘seismic shift’ in investor sentiment,”^[3] he might actually have been referring to Softbank, which, with high tech industry stocks falling, seems headed for some investor pain.^[4]

Jacky Wong, “SoftBank’s Tech Boom Goes Bust—Again,” Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbanks-tech-boom-goes-bustagain-11652357244

Police White supremacist gangs

Andy Sheehan, “Police traffic stops decreasing in Pittsburgh’s communities of color,” KDKA-TV, May 11, 2022, https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/police-traffic-stops-decreasing-in-pittsburghs-communities-of-color/

Residential schools

Mark Walker, “Report Catalogs Abuse of Native American Children at Former Government Schools,” New York Times, May 11, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/11/us/politics/native-american-children-schools-abuse.html

John Fetterman

Jonathan Tamari, “Trump just warned Republicans that Kathy Barnette ‘will never be able to win’ the Pa. Senate race,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 2022, https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/donald-trump-kathy-barnette-pa-senate-20220512.html

Jonathan Tamari, Julia Terruso, and Ryan W. Briggs, “The ‘knives are coming out’ for Kathy Barnette as Republicans, and Trump, scramble to stop her,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12, 2022, https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/kathy-barnette-oz-mccormick-attack-pa-senate-20220512.html

Abortion

Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/

Anna North, “Abortion has been treated as a fringe issue by Democrats for decades. This is the result,” Vox, May 5, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/5/5/23057317/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade

Martin Pengelly, “Louisiana Republicans advance bill to make abortion a crime of murder,” Guardian, May 5, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/05/louisiana-abortion-bill-murder-republicans

William Rivers Pitt, “Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect ‘Roe.’ They Failed,” Truthout, May 6, 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-had-50-years-to-save-and-protect-roe-they-failed/

Margaret Atwood, “‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion,” Guardian, May 7, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/07/enforced-childbirth-is-slavery-margaret-atwood-on-the-right-to-abortion

Jennifer Haberkorn, “Abortion pills: A post-Roe game changer — and the next battleground,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2022, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-05-05/medication-abortion-safety-net-battleground

Amy Davidson Sorkin, “How Alito’s Draft Opinion on Abortion Rights Would Change America,” New Yorker, May 8, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/16/how-alitos-draft-opinion-on-abortion-rights-would-change-america

David Charter, “Republican states plot to make birth control a crime,” Times, May 9, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/republican-states-plot-to-make-birth-control-a-crime-sljmb2s7f

Sarah Gantz, “Outside Philly and Pittsburgh, it can be as hard to get an abortion in Pa. as in Mississippi,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 9, 2022, https://www.inquirer.com/health/abortion-roe-v-wade-overturned-20220509.html

Eriq Gardner, “Was Politico’s Supreme Court Leaker an Inside Man?” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/was-politicos-supreme-court-leaker-an-inside-man/

Peter Hamby, “The Dark Truth Behind the SCOTUS Ruling,” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/the-dark-truth-behind-the-scotus-ruling/

Jill Elaine Hasday, “On Roe, Alito cites a judge who treated women as witches and property,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/alito-roe-sir-matthew-hale-misogynist/

Vanessa Williamson and John Hudak, “The War on Abortion Drugs will be just as racist and classist,” Brookings, May 9, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2022/05/09/the-war-on-abortion-drugs-will-be-just-as-racist-and-classist/

Jordain Carney, “Senate GOP, Manchin block abortion rights legislation,” Hill, May 11, 2022, https://thehill.com/news/senate/3485010-senate-gop-manchin-block-abortion-rights-legislation/

Josh Gerstein, Alexander Ward, and Ryan Lizza, “Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe is still the only one circulated inside Supreme Court,” Politico, May 11, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/11/alito-abortion-draft-opinion-roe-00031648

Molly Jong-Fast, “It’s Mask Off for the Supreme Court,” Atlantic, May 12, 2022, https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/wait-what/627d0d9366d6b500218d7450/supreme-court-partisanship-roe-v-wade/

Ukraine

Times of Israel, “Putin apologizes for Russian FM’s ‘Jewish Hitler’ remarks, Bennett’s office says,” May 5, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-apologizes-for-russian-envoys-hitler-comments-bennetts-office-says/

Christian Esch, Susanne Koelbl, and Fritz Schaap, “Putin’s Disaster and What Could Happen Next,” Spiegel, May 6, 2022, https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/putin-s-disaster-and-what-could-happen-next-a-e8c89bfa-b7a3-4e32-908a-7642a301eda6

Anthony Faiola, “How millions of Russians are tearing holes in the Digital Iron Curtain,” Washington Post, May 6, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/06/russia-vpn-putin-censorship-disinformation/

Thomas Latschan, “Mysterious series of deaths among Russian oligarchs,” Deutsche Welle, May 7, 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/mysterious-series-of-deaths-among-russian-oligarchs/a-61719107

Jamie Seidel, “Russia-Ukraine War: Putin’s Plan B is failing as Russian troops ‘pushed out’ of Donbas,” New Zealand Herald, May 7, 2022, https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/russia-ukraine-war-putins-plan-b-is-failing-as-russian-troops-pushed-out-of-donbas/H73PJNRK3TJDUIN7YUCMI4DNM4/

Associated Press, “Russia marks WWII victory overshadowed by Ukraine,” May 9, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-world-war-ii-2d4f0f3a1e59cdad92b26c521ed08669

Max Boot, “Putin is trapped in a quagmire and doesn’t know how to get out,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/putin-victory-day-russia-ukraine-quagmire/

Julia Ioffe, “About a Boy: The Roots of Putin’s Evil,” Puck News, May 10, 2022, https://puck.news/about-a-boy-the-roots-of-putins-evil/

Matthew Lee, “US, Western Europe fret over uncertain Ukraine war endgame,” Associated Press, May 11, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-western-nato-a990adcad47a34764d64b03bdcd69f7b

Dominic Nicholls, Joe Barnes, and JohnJo Devlin, “Finland and Sweden joining Nato shows just how terribly Vladimir Putin has miscalculated,” Telegraph, May 11, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/11/finland-sweden-joining-nato-shows-just-terribly-vladimir-putin/

Sune Engel Rasmussen, “Finland Says It Will Apply to Join NATO in Response to Russia’s Ukraine Invasion,” Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/finlands-leaders-announce-intention-to-apply-for-nato-membership-11652340796

Mark Trevelyan, “Russia says Finnish entry to NATO poses threat to which it will respond,” Reuters, May 12, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-says-finland-joining-nato-is-definitely-threat-russia-2022-05-12/

^[1]Theodore Schleifer, “SoftBank, the most powerful — and controversial — tech investor in Silicon Valley, explained,” Vox, May 10, 2019, https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/10/18563267/softbank-vision-fund-explainer-uber-wework-slack-ipo ↩
^[2]Theodore Schleifer, “SoftBank, the most powerful — and controversial — tech investor in Silicon Valley, explained,” Vox, May 10, 2019, https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/10/18563267/softbank-vision-fund-explainer-uber-wework-slack-ipo ↩
^[3]Reuters, “Uber to cut costs, slow down hiring, CEO tells staff,” May 9, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uber-cut-costs-slow-down-hiring-ceo-tells-staff-cnbc-2022-05-09/↩
^[4]Jacky Wong, “SoftBank’s Tech Boom Goes Bust—Again,” Wall Street Journal, May 12, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbanks-tech-boom-goes-bustagain-11652357244 ↩

Once again, the Democrats prove what we already knew

May 11, 2022benfell

Abortion

The Democrats continue to be absolutely and contemptibly worthless.^[1] It shouldn’t even be news at this point because it’s just the same old thing,^[2] but of course the Hill covered it^[3] anyway because that’s what the Hill does. But, oh yeah, vote blue no matter who.

And this should be completely unsurprising:

The Supreme Court is set to gather Thursday [May 12] for the first time since the disclosure that it voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, and there’s no sign that the court is changing course from issuing that ruling by the end of June.^[4]

Irin Carmon, “Can Republicans Stop Patients From Leaving the State for an Abortion? Some Are Willing to Try,” New York, May 4, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/can-republicans-stop-out-of-state-abortion-patients.html

Erin McCarthy, “Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf vows to protect abortion rights, but can only do so for the next eight months,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 4, 2022, https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/abortion-rights-pennsylvania-governor-wolf-20220504.html

Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022

Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/

David Charter, “Republican states plot to make birth control a crime,” Times, May 9, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/republican-states-plot-to-make-birth-control-a-crime-sljmb2s7f

Eriq Gardner, “Was Politico’s Supreme Court Leaker an Inside Man?” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/was-politicos-supreme-court-leaker-an-inside-man/

Peter Hamby, “The Dark Truth Behind the SCOTUS Ruling,” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/the-dark-truth-behind-the-scotus-ruling/

Jordain Carney, “Senate GOP, Manchin block abortion rights legislation,” Hill, May 11, 2022, https://thehill.com/news/senate/3485010-senate-gop-manchin-block-abortion-rights-legislation/

Twitter

Spencer Jakab and Dan Gallagher, “Musk’s Twitter Deal Is No Sure Thing,” Wall Street Journal, May 11, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/musks-twitter-deal-is-no-sure-thing-11652287373

Work

Emma Ockerman, “Fed official says he doesn’t buy the ‘Great Resignation’ — suggests employers play up labor shortage to avoid paying higher wages,” MarketWatch, May 10, 2022, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-official-doesnt-really-buy-the-great-resignation-suggests-businesses-play-up-worker-shortages-to-avoid-paying-higher-wages-11652117795

Recession

William D. Cohan, “The Big One Is Here,” Puck News, May 11, 2022, https://puck.news/the-big-one-is-here/

^[1]Jordain Carney, “Manchin joins with Senate GOP to block bill guaranteeing abortion access,” Hill, February 28, 2022, https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/596223-manchin-joins-with-senate-gop-to-block-bill-guaranteeing-abortion-access/; Jordain Carney, “Senate GOP, Manchin block abortion rights legislation,” Hill, May 11, 2022, https://thehill.com/news/senate/3485010-senate-gop-manchin-block-abortion-rights-legislation/; Carl Hulse, “Republicans Block Abortion Rights Measure in Senate,” Washington Post, February 28, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/us/politics/abortion-rights-measure-senate.html; Anna North, “Abortion has been treated as a fringe issue by Democrats for decades. This is the result,” Vox, May 5, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/5/5/23057317/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade; William Rivers Pitt, “Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect ‘Roe.’ They Failed,” Truthout, May 6, 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-had-50-years-to-save-and-protect-roe-they-failed/; Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022 ↩
^[2]Anna North, “Abortion has been treated as a fringe issue by Democrats for decades. This is the result,” Vox, May 5, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/5/5/23057317/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade; William Rivers Pitt, “Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect ‘Roe.’ They Failed,” Truthout, May 6, 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-had-50-years-to-save-and-protect-roe-they-failed/; Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022 ↩
^[3]Jordain Carney, “Senate GOP, Manchin block abortion rights legislation,” Hill, May 11, 2022, https://thehill.com/news/senate/3485010-senate-gop-manchin-block-abortion-rights-legislation/↩
^[4]Josh Gerstein, Alexander Ward, and Ryan Lizza, “Alito’s draft opinion overturning Roe is still the only one circulated inside Supreme Court,” Politico, May 11, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/11/alito-abortion-draft-opinion-roe-00031648 ↩

The ‘jungle rules-based order’

May 11, 2022benfell

Pennsylvania

Speed limit enforcement

Thomas Fitzgerald, “Speeding tickets and crashes fell after enforcement cameras came to Roosevelt Blvd,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 10, 2022, https://www.inquirer.com/transportation/roosevelt-boulevard-speeding-enforcement-cameras-crashes-deaths-20220510.html

John Fetterman

By all accounts, Mr. [John] Fetterman is leading the race. In a poll by Franklin & Marshall College conducted in late April, his lead over Mr. [Conor] Lamb was registered at 53% to 14% among registered Democrats, with Mr. [Malcolm] Kenyatta coming in third at 4%.^[1]

Around Pittsburgh, Conor Lamb is overwhelmingly winning the yard sign race. Usually, I don’t care much about local results in statewide or national races, but this will be a time to watch how John Fetterman does in Allegheny County. As I have understood the electoral imbalance in Pennsylvania, Democrats need to do well in both the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metropolitan areas to prevail against a viciously deep red Trumpist remainder of the state. But I really can’t argue with this:

Mr. [John] Fetterman, the front-runner who is running against U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta in next Tuesday’s Democratic primary, said it’s not about turning the reddest counties blue, but about trimming into the margins here and halting the enthusiasm behind the eventual GOP nominee.^[2]

The trick is that Pittsburgh suburbs seem to be turning redder; at the very least, it would be a mistake to describe signs and flags declaring support for Donald Trump merely as “lingering.” These signs and flags are numerous and are continually being refreshed with new slogans, including those explicitly offering profane epithets against Joe Biden, who will not be back on the ballot for at least two more years.

Julian Routh, “John Fetterman, Democratic front-runner for Senate, makes blitz through southwestern Pa. ahead of primary,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 10, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/05/10/us-senate-candidate-john-fetterman-southwestern-pennsylvania-counties-ahead-of-primary/stories/202205100137

Ukraine

“To be honest, we are still not talking about the endgame,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis lamented to the The Associated Press in an interview on Monday. He said any territorial concessions in Ukraine would usher in a world where the “rules-based order” has been replaced by a “jungle rules-based order.”^[3]

I hope this will not be understood as a criticism of Gabrielius Landsbergis; on the contrary, I agree with him. The trouble is that that “jungle rules-based order” may be the only order that Vladimir Putin really understands:

The dvor taught Putin many things, lessons that shape his thinking and actions to this day: that might makes right, that existing hierarchies can only be changed through violence, that force is the only language that matters, that power is always a zero-sum game. There are no win-win outcomes in the dvor. ^[4]

From this, Landsbergis’ other point, that ultimately Putin must go, even if it is seen as escalatory to call for “regime change,” follows.^[5] In truth, Joe Biden has seen this, even if only in moral outrage, and even if his aides had to walk back his exclamation.^[6]

At the same time, [Ian] Kelly said that no matter how many miscalculations Putin has made about the strength and will of Ukraine to resist or the unity and resolve of the NATO allies, Putin cannot accept defeat or anything short of a scenario that he can claim has achieved success.

“It would be political suicide for Putin to withdraw,” Kelly said. “It’s very difficult to see how you could get a negotiated solution at this point. Neither side is willing to stop fighting and probably the likeliest outcome is a war that lasts a couple of years. Ukraine would be a festering sore in the middle of Europe.”

U.S. officials, starting with President Joe Biden, seem to agree, even after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised eyebrows by saying after a visit to Kyiv last month that Washington’s goal is not only to help Ukraine defend itself but to “weaken” Russia to the point where it does not pose a threat.

[Vladimir] Putin “doesn’t have a way out right now, and I’m trying to figure out what we do about that,” Biden said on Monday even after he signed legislation designed to reboot the World War II-era “lend-lease” program and appealed to Congress to approve a $40 billion package of military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine.

So what to do? French President Emmanuel Macron has placed a premium on a negotiated settlement that saves face for both Russia and Ukraine.

“We will have a peace to build tomorrow, let us never forget that,” Macron said on Monday. “We will have to do this with Ukraine and Russia around the table. The end of the discussion and the negotiation will be set by Ukraine and Russia. But it will not be done in denial, nor in exclusion of each other, nor even in humiliation.”^[7]

I think humiliation is a necessary part of the solution. It is what Putin will understand.

I am, by no means, doing justice to Lawrence Freedman’s article^[8] with this passage:

Using nuclear weapons in these circumstances would not solve any military or political problems for Russia in its war against Ukraine and would create many new ones. It would turn the world into an even more hazardous place, including for Russia. Against this is the objection that this analysis is too rational. Putin appears unhinged and capable of anything (although he would still need underlings to carry out the orders to launch). He certainly does not want us to forget that Russia is a great nuclear power and has had missile tests to prove the point.^[9]

Freedman offers substantial insight into escalation. Frankly, I’m still thinking about this article, but he juxtaposes two possibilities, the first being escalation as a calculated, rational decision that wins an advantage for the escalating side, even if it compels their opponent to escalate further, and the second being that U.S. strategic theorist Herman Kahn’s “escalation ladder,” which Freedman is exploring in the context of the Ukraine war, is “too mechanistic and too optimistic about the rationality of the decision-makers.”^[10]

Those possibilities might be taken in binary, mutually exclusive form, as rational or not rational, with no gradation between the two, no possibility that the two might occur simultaneously. This would surely be a mistake. Remember instead what I’ve said about social theories: While you might find one that offers post hoc explanatory value, they usually do not offer predictive value.

Lawrence Freedman, “A ‘strategic nuclear exchange’ would offer Putin zero military gains,” New Statesman, May 4, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/05/a-strategic-nuclear-exchange-would-offer-putin-zero-military-gains

Delia Gallagher, “Pope Francis warns pro-war Russian patriarch not to be ‘Putin’s altar boy,’” CNN, May 4, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/04/europe/pope-francis-patriarch-kirill-ukraine-invasion-intl/index.html

Thomas Latschan, “Mysterious series of deaths among Russian oligarchs,” Deutsche Welle, May 7, 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/mysterious-series-of-deaths-among-russian-oligarchs/a-61719107

Associated Press, “Russia marks WWII victory overshadowed by Ukraine,” May 9, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-world-war-ii-2d4f0f3a1e59cdad92b26c521ed08669

Julia Ioffe, “About a Boy: The Roots of Putin’s Evil,” Puck News, May 10, 2022, https://puck.news/about-a-boy-the-roots-of-putins-evil/

^[1]Julian Routh, “John Fetterman, Democratic front-runner for Senate, makes blitz through southwestern Pa. ahead of primary,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 10, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/05/10/us-senate-candidate-john-fetterman-southwestern-pennsylvania-counties-ahead-of-primary/stories/202205100137 ↩
^[2]Julian Routh, “John Fetterman, Democratic front-runner for Senate, makes blitz through southwestern Pa. ahead of primary,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 10, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/05/10/us-senate-candidate-john-fetterman-southwestern-pennsylvania-counties-ahead-of-primary/stories/202205100137 ↩
^[3]Matthew Lee, “US, Western Europe fret over uncertain Ukraine war endgame,” Associated Press, May 11, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-western-nato-a990adcad47a34764d64b03bdcd69f7b ↩
^[4]Julia Ioffe, “About a Boy: The Roots of Putin’s Evil,” Puck News, May 10, 2022, https://puck.news/about-a-boy-the-roots-of-putins-evil/↩
^[5]Matthew Lee, “US, Western Europe fret over uncertain Ukraine war endgame,” Associated Press, May 11, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-western-nato-a990adcad47a34764d64b03bdcd69f7b ↩
^[6]Tarini Parti and and Drew Hinshaw, “Biden Says Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘Cannot Remain in Power,’” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-and-polands-leader-look-to-boost-support-for-ukraine-11648304117 ↩
^[7]Matthew Lee, “US, Western Europe fret over uncertain Ukraine war endgame,” Associated Press, May 11, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-western-nato-a990adcad47a34764d64b03bdcd69f7b ↩
^[8]Lawrence Freedman, “A ‘strategic nuclear exchange’ would offer Putin zero military gains,” New Statesman, May 4, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/05/a-strategic-nuclear-exchange-would-offer-putin-zero-military-gains ↩
^[9]Lawrence Freedman, “A ‘strategic nuclear exchange’ would offer Putin zero military gains,” New Statesman, May 4, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/05/a-strategic-nuclear-exchange-would-offer-putin-zero-military-gains ↩
^[10]Lawrence Freedman, “A ‘strategic nuclear exchange’ would offer Putin zero military gains,” New Statesman, May 4, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/05/a-strategic-nuclear-exchange-would-offer-putin-zero-military-gains ↩

Donald Trump will be welcome on Twitter again

May 10, 2022benfell

Supply chain

Bob Tita, “Truckers Want More Trucks Than Industry Can Build,” Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/truckers-want-more-trucks-than-industry-can-build-at-the-moment-11652094004

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Rebecca Elliott, “Elon Musk Says He Would Reverse Donald Trump’s Twitter Ban,” Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-would-reverse-twitters-donald-trump-ban-11652204279

Abortion

As we consider the potential implications of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, one open question is how states will enforce the abortion bans that are expected in at least twenty-six states. History suggests that the prospective anti-abortion laws are likely to echo the “War on Drugs;” they will not eliminate the behavior that is outlawed, but will, through biased, targeted enforcement, disproportionately harm poor people and people of color.^[1]

Democrats are now left empty-handed and heartbroken. California Governor Gavin Newsom summoned the rage on Wednesday at an event in Los Angeles. “Where the hell is my party?” Newsom said. “This is a concerted, coordinated effort and yes, they’re winning. They are. They have been. Let’s acknowledge that. Where’s the counter-offensive?”

The answer, governor, is that there is none. The pro-choice left now has to brace for a long chapter in the darkness, and I’m not sure the Democrats who became politically sentient in the Trump era can fully grasp how arduous it will be. Pundits immediately leapt to the question of what the ruling might mean for November’s midterms, whether it might animate suburban women or core Democratic voters. Who knows? But deflated Democrats are probably asking themselves something else right now: What the hell does my vote for Adam Schiff or Maggie Hassan or Raphael Warnock this November have to do with saving Roe? Chipping in $15 bucks to the D.N.C., or posting a stylized explainer graphic about reproductive rights on Instagram—that’s not going to do the trick.^[2]

How indeed does one sensibly argue that Democrats offer substantive rather than merely rhetorical support for abortion rights?^[3] It’s clear rather that Democrats cannot even unify themselves behind this issue.^[4] And now a wide range of rights will be under threat, even in states that have explicitly legalized abortion.^[5] Because, you know, other things, like fundraising, are always more pressing.^[6]

Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, “Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows,” Politico, May 2, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473

Caroline Kitchener, “The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide ban,” Washington Post, May 2, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/

Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow, “Roberts directs investigation into leaked draft of abortion opinion,” Washington Post, May 3, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/03/supreme-court-leak-investigation-abortion-roe-wade/

Mike DeBonis and Seung Min Kim, “Collins and Murkowski on the defensive after leaked Roe draft opinion,” Washington Post, May 3, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/03/murkowski-collins-roe-abortion-opinion/

Josh Gerstein, “What falls after Roe? Liberals warn of a privacy rights nightmare,” Politico, May 3, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/03/supreme-court-abortion-privacy-rights-00029871

Oriana Gonzalez, “Collins says Kavanaugh and Gorsuch possibly broke promise on Roe v. Wade,” Axios, May 3, 2022, https://www.axios.com/susan-collins-kavanaugh-gorsuch-abortion-court-leak-d6d1dad3-15d4-4269-b2ee-b5b5b2a4ea94.html

Molly Jong-Fast, “My Mother Was Wrong,” Atlantic, May 3, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-abortion-peaceful-protest/629746/

Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022

Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/

David Charter, “Republican states plot to make birth control a crime,” Times, May 9, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/republican-states-plot-to-make-birth-control-a-crime-sljmb2s7f

Eriq Gardner, “Was Politico’s Supreme Court Leaker an Inside Man?” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/was-politicos-supreme-court-leaker-an-inside-man/

Peter Hamby, “The Dark Truth Behind the SCOTUS Ruling,” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/the-dark-truth-behind-the-scotus-ruling/

Ukraine

A while ago, I wrote,

Molly Jong-Fast points to an ideological compatibility between Vladimir Putin and some Trumpists.^[7] This would entail homophobia, transphobia, and conservative Christianity. But I think Trumpists also see Putin as strong—everybody else might mock photographs of a bare-chested Putin riding horseback but Trumpists are also deeply into toxic masculinity. Between these two factors, Putin is, for many Trumpists, irresistible.^[8]

It turns out there’s something to this in the sick way that, as C. J. Pascoe described it, the ‘fag’ epithet is a means to enforce conformity among high school boys.^[9] In Vladimir Putin’s case, however, the setting is not a high school, but rather the dvor:

[Vladimir] Putin’s was a generation of latchkey kids. If girls were drafted into household work after school and were subject to strict behavioral limits, the boys grew like wild grass in the dvor. The dvor, literally, was the yard, the open spaces between blocks of newly built apartment complexes or, as in Putin’s neighborhood, in the cavernous courtyards, built like wells, of the old Leningrad buildings. But it was also a social Serengeti, a school of life that shaped the boys who graduated from it. The curriculum included everything from chasing soccer balls to fighting over turf, and learning to live according to an exacting code of conduct, one founded on physical force, strict hierarchies (which could only be changed through violence), and a warped, cartoonish idea of male honor. And because the dvor was small and intimate, it stripped its inhabitants of the anonymity afforded to them by the big city outside, making it easy to enforce this code. There was no hiding in the dvor. Reputation was destiny here, and image had to be meticulously tended to, because its staining was nearly impossible to undo.^[10]

Will Dunn, “‘He has embarked on a war he can’t stop’: Mikhail Khodorkovsky on Putin’s next move,” New Statesman, May 3, 2022, https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/ukraine/2022/05/he-has-embarked-on-a-war-he-cant-stop-mikhail-khodorkovsky-on-putins-next-move

Mary Ilyushina, Miriam Berger, and Timothy Bella, “Russian TV shows simulation of Britain and Ireland wiped out by a nuke,” Washington Post, May 3, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/03/russia-ireland-nuclear-weapons-video-ukraine/

Richard Kemp, “Vladimir Putin’s military cupboard is bare,” Telegraph, May 3, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/vladimir-putins-military-cupboard-bare/

Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. His Oligarchs,” Puck News, May 3, 2022, https://puck.news/putin-vs-his-oligarchs/

Thomas Latschan, “Mysterious series of deaths among Russian oligarchs,” Deutsche Welle, May 7, 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/mysterious-series-of-deaths-among-russian-oligarchs/a-61719107

Associated Press, “Russia marks WWII victory overshadowed by Ukraine,” May 9, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-world-war-ii-2d4f0f3a1e59cdad92b26c521ed08669

Julia Ioffe, “About a Boy: The Roots of Putin’s Evil,” Puck News, May 10, 2022, https://puck.news/about-a-boy-the-roots-of-putins-evil/

^[1]Vanessa Williamson and John Hudak, “The War on Abortion Drugs will be just as racist and classist,” Brookings, May 9, 2022, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2022/05/09/the-war-on-abortion-drugs-will-be-just-as-racist-and-classist/↩
^[2]Peter Hamby, “The Dark Truth Behind the SCOTUS Ruling,” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/the-dark-truth-behind-the-scotus-ruling/↩
^[3]Anna North, “Abortion has been treated as a fringe issue by Democrats for decades. This is the result,” Vox, May 5, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/5/5/23057317/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade; William Rivers Pitt, “Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect ‘Roe.’ They Failed,” Truthout, May 6, 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-had-50-years-to-save-and-protect-roe-they-failed/; Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022 ↩
^[4]Jordain Carney, “Manchin joins with Senate GOP to block bill guaranteeing abortion access,” Hill, February 28, 2022, https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/596223-manchin-joins-with-senate-gop-to-block-bill-guaranteeing-abortion-access/; Carl Hulse, “Republicans Block Abortion Rights Measure in Senate,” Washington Post, February 28, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/us/politics/abortion-rights-measure-senate.html ↩
^[5]Irin Carmon, “Can Republicans Stop Patients From Leaving the State for an Abortion? Some Are Willing to Try,” New York, May 4, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/can-republicans-stop-out-of-state-abortion-patients.html; David Charter, “Republican states plot to make birth control a crime,” Times, May 9, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/republican-states-plot-to-make-birth-control-a-crime-sljmb2s7f; Josh Gerstein, “What falls after Roe? Liberals warn of a privacy rights nightmare,” Politico, May 3, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/03/supreme-court-abortion-privacy-rights-00029871; Jennifer Haberkorn, “Abortion pills: A post-Roe game changer — and the next battleground,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2022, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-05-05/medication-abortion-safety-net-battleground; Caroline Kitchener, “The next frontier for the antiabortion movement: A nationwide ban,” Washington Post, May 2, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/02/abortion-ban-roe-supreme-court-mississippi/; Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/↩
^[6]Peter Hamby, “The Dark Truth Behind the SCOTUS Ruling,” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/the-dark-truth-behind-the-scotus-ruling/; Anna North, “Abortion has been treated as a fringe issue by Democrats for decades. This is the result,” Vox, May 5, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/5/5/23057317/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade; William Rivers Pitt, “Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect ‘Roe.’ They Failed,” Truthout, May 6, 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-had-50-years-to-save-and-protect-roe-they-failed/; Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022 ↩
^[7]Molly Jong-Fast, “The Far Right Is Now Anti–anti-Putin,” Atlantic, March 16, 2022, https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/wait-what/62323220199fdd002140baa5/gop-tucker-carlson-putin-propaganda/↩
^[8]David Benfell, “What will Omicron subvariant BA.2 do in the U.S.?” Irregular Bullshit, March 17, 2022, https://disunitedstates.com/2022/03/17/what-will-omicron-subvariant-ba-2-do-in-the-u-s/↩
^[9]C. J. Pascoe, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School (Berkeley: University of California, 2007).↩
^[10]Julia Ioffe, “About a Boy: The Roots of Putin’s Evil,” Puck News, May 10, 2022, https://puck.news/about-a-boy-the-roots-of-putins-evil/↩

The (selective) evidence for Vladimir Putin’s sanity

May 10, 2022benfell

Gig economy (neoliberal wet dream)

Bezzle

Remembering, as I do, all too well, the dot-com crash, that “‘seismic shift’ in investor sentiment” that Uber Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi refers to^[1] reminds me of when, seemingly all at once, venture capitalists folded up their checkbooks. More fundamentally, Uber’s CEO is admitting that he continues to rely on investors for operating funds, which is to admit that his company continues to lose money.

When the dot-com boom bust, it took out a lot of companies, some with actual business plans, many without, some good companies, like the one where I had the only good job of my entire life, and a lot of not so good companies. Uber is known to be hemorrhaging vast quantities of money with no real plan for ever being profitable.^[2] While it’s unclear whether what Khosrowshahi calls a “seismic shift” is temporary or longer-lasting,^[3] what gets my attention is his outsized reaction to it,^[4] which has to suggest a vulnerability.

Reuters, “Uber to cut costs, slow down hiring, CEO tells staff,” May 9, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uber-cut-costs-slow-down-hiring-ceo-tells-staff-cnbc-2022-05-09/

COVID-19 Pandemic

Katie Shepherd and Niha Masih, “Nearly 15 million deaths related to covid-19, WHO estimates,” Washington Post, May 5, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/05/covid-excess-global-deaths-nearly-15-million/

Yasmeen Abutaleb and Joel Achenbach, “Coronavirus wave this fall could infect 100 million, administration warns,” Washington Post, May 6, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/06/fall-winter-coronavirus-wave/

Marc Fisher et al., “After 1 million deaths, covid leaves millions more forever changed,” Washington Post, May 7, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/07/one-million-covid-deaths-families/

Abortion

Molly Jong-Fast, “My Mother Was Wrong,” Atlantic, May 3, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-abortion-peaceful-protest/629746/

Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022

Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/

David Charter, “Republican states plot to make birth control a crime,” Times, May 9, 2022, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/republican-states-plot-to-make-birth-control-a-crime-sljmb2s7f

Eriq Gardner, “Was Politico’s Supreme Court Leaker an Inside Man?” Puck News, May 9, 2022, https://puck.news/was-politicos-supreme-court-leaker-an-inside-man/

Ukraine

I had associated Max Boot with neoconservatism, so it’s more than a little surprising to me that he wrote this:

[Vladimir] Putin is now in a strategic quandary that should be familiar to Americans after our misbegotten wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq — only many times worse. Russia has launched a “war of choice” based on bad intelligence (such as the assumption that Ukrainians would welcome the Russians as liberators). The war is going badly, but once troops are committed, emotions run high and national prestige is on the line. Both escalation and withdrawal are too painful to contemplate. The easiest thing to do is to continue doing what you’ve been doing, even if there is scant hope that the results will get any better.^[5]

Afghanistan and Iraq were, or are, flatly, wars of neoconservative ambition, imperialism, if you will; neoconservatism arose as a reaction to, among other things, the antiwar movement that sought to get the U.S. out of southeast Asia.^[6] Boot’s argument is that it required a change of U.S. leadership to get the country out of each of those wars (it took Richard Nixon more than one term to extract us from Vietnam, so I think I’m unlikely to be alone in doubting this example) and that the same is required, even if unlikely, in Russia.^[7]

Boot doubts that Vladimir Putin will use nuclear weapons because “that would be the action of a madman who fears that the end is near. Putin’s troops are carrying out unspeakable war crimes, but he is far from Hitler-in-the-bunker territory.” And Boot sees in a relatively subdued (read, less bellicose) Victory Day celebration, where Putin did not escalate the war on Ukraine, signs of recognition of reality rather than insanity, as Boot puts it, that “while Putin is isolated [but apparently not in Hitler-in-the-bunker territory] and prone to miscalculation, he is not insane.” Boot’s claim that Putin “far from Hitler-in-the-bunker territory” must stand against evidence, evidence that Boot recognizes,^[8] that the Kremlin sees or at least portrays the war in Ukraine hysterically in existential terms.^[9] We can certainly hope that Boot is right at the same time we recognize that this chain of reasoning seems tenuous.

Boot’s assessment of Putin rests on Putin’s apparent recognition that a general “mobilization [with a declaration of war rather than a ‘special military operation’] would bring more problems than it would solve” and that “the war is not going his way.”^[10] That’s two data points against a boatload (the Moskva, perhaps?) of delusional crap^[11] that Putin continues to justify his war with,^[12] even if we set aside Putin’s simultaneously ludicrous and terrifying hubris of a “historic mission.”^[13] Again, we can certainly hope Boot is right, even if we think his evidence is selective.

Cnaan Liphshiz, “Speaking about Zelensky, Russian foreign minister says Hitler also had Jewish ancestry,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 2, 2022, https://www.jta.org/2022/05/02/global/speaking-about-zelensky-russian-foreign-minister-says-hitler-also-had-jewish-ancestry

Missy Ryan et al., “Russia planning to annex new areas of Ukraine, U.S. intelligence finds,” Washington Post, May 2, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/05/02/russian-annex-territory-invasion/

Richard Kemp, “Vladimir Putin’s military cupboard is bare,” Telegraph, May 3, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/vladimir-putins-military-cupboard-bare/

Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. His Oligarchs,” Puck News, May 3, 2022, https://puck.news/putin-vs-his-oligarchs/

Thomas Latschan, “Mysterious series of deaths among Russian oligarchs,” Deutsche Welle, May 7, 2022, https://www.dw.com/en/mysterious-series-of-deaths-among-russian-oligarchs/a-61719107

Associated Press, “Russia marks WWII victory overshadowed by Ukraine,” May 9, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-world-war-ii-2d4f0f3a1e59cdad92b26c521ed08669

^[1]Reuters, “Uber to cut costs, slow down hiring, CEO tells staff,” May 9, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uber-cut-costs-slow-down-hiring-ceo-tells-staff-cnbc-2022-05-09/↩
^[2]Matthew Beedham, “Uber: Is this the beginning of the end for the ride-hailing Goliath?” Next Web, March 2, 2021, https://thenextweb.com/shift/2021/03/02/uber-is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-ride-hailing-goliath/; Cory Doctorow, “End of the line for Uber,” Pluralistic, August 10, 2021, https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more; Cory Doctorow, “The Big Lie that keeps the Uber bezzle alive,” Pluralistic, February 11, 2022, https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/11/bezzlers-gonna-bezzle/; Richard Durant, “Uber’s Profitability Problem Is Structural,” Seeking Alpha, August 21, 2019, https://seekingalpha.com/article/4287055-ubers-profitability-problem-structural; Ryan Felton, “Uber Is Doomed,” Jalopnik, February 24, 2017, https://jalopnik.com/uber-is-doomed-1792634203; Hubert Horan, “Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-Two: Profits and Cash Flow Keep Deteriorating as Uber’s GAAP Losses Hit $8.5 Billion,” Naked Capitalism, February 7, 2020, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-two-profits-and-cash-flow-keep-deteriorating-as-ubers-gaap-losses-hit-8-5-billion.html; Hubert Horan, “Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-Nine: Despite Massive Price Increases Uber Losses Top $31 Billion,” Naked Capitalism, February 11, 2022, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html; George Maier, “Will Uber still exist by the end of the decade?” London School of Economics, October 29, 2021, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2021/10/29/will-uber-still-exist-by-the-end-of-the-decade/; Tom McKay, “Uber Says It’s on Track to Maybe Make a Fake Profit,” Gizmodo, September 21, 2021, https://gizmodo.com/uber-says-its-on-track-to-maybe-make-a-fake-profit-1847716786; Yves Smith, “Uber Is Headed for a Crash,” New York, December 4, 2018, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/12/will-uber-survive-the-next-decade.html; Trading Places Research, “Uber And Lyft: The Limits Of The Amazon Model,” Seeking Alpha, August 15, 2021, https://seekingalpha.com/article/4449578-uber-and-lyft-the-limits-of-the-amazon-model ↩
^[3]Sebastian Herrera and Akane Otani, “The Tech Industry’s Epic Two-Year Run Sputters,” Wall Street Journal, May 8, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tech-industrys-epic-two-year-run-sputters-11652002382 ↩
^[4]Reuters, “Uber to cut costs, slow down hiring, CEO tells staff,” May 9, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uber-cut-costs-slow-down-hiring-ceo-tells-staff-cnbc-2022-05-09/↩
^[5]Max Boot, “Putin is trapped in a quagmire and doesn’t know how to get out,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/putin-victory-day-russia-ukraine-quagmire/↩
^[6]David Benfell, “Conservative Views on Undocumented Migration” (doctoral dissertation, Saybrook, 2016). ProQuest (1765416126).↩
^[7]Max Boot, “Putin is trapped in a quagmire and doesn’t know how to get out,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/putin-victory-day-russia-ukraine-quagmire/↩
^[8]Max Boot, “Putin is trapped in a quagmire and doesn’t know how to get out,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/putin-victory-day-russia-ukraine-quagmire/↩
^[9]David Benfell, “Where does Vladimir Putin stop?” Not Housebroken, April 26, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/04/where-does-vladimir-putin-stop/↩
^[10]Max Boot, “Putin is trapped in a quagmire and doesn’t know how to get out,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/putin-victory-day-russia-ukraine-quagmire/↩
^[11]David Benfell, “Vladimir Putin is a fool,” Not Housebroken, March 29, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/01/24/vladimir-putin-is-a-fool/↩
^[12]Associated Press, “Russia marks WWII victory overshadowed by Ukraine,” May 9, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-world-war-ii-2d4f0f3a1e59cdad92b26c521ed08669; Max Boot, “Putin is trapped in a quagmire and doesn’t know how to get out,” Washington Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/09/putin-victory-day-russia-ukraine-quagmire/↩
^[13]David Benfell, “Where does Vladimir Putin stop?” Not Housebroken, April 26, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/04/where-does-vladimir-putin-stop/↩

If I had to guess, Republicans will take full control of Pennsylvania state government, and my election forecast for 2022 and 2024 remains unchanged

May 9, 2022benfell

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Carter Walker, “Audit the Vote gave us its canvassing data to check the results. It was riddled with errors,” LNP, May 8, 2022, https://lancasteronline.com/news/politics/audit-the-vote-gave-us-its-canvassing-data-to-check-the-results-it-was-riddled/article_8f0a6c2a-cd6e-11ec-9f73-b3e07fd7b64b.html

John Fetterman

Somebody will win the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, but no present candidate, even with Donald Trump’s endorsement, is pulling ahead to meet^[1] likely Democratic nominee John Fetterman.^[2] As I drive around Pittsburgh, 1) I still see few signs for Mehmet Oz, Trump’s favorite;^[3] 2) it now looks generally like Conor Lamb is winning the yard sign race (I frankly saw many more signs for Fetterman around Erie); and 3) arch-Trumpist Doug Mastriano has yard signs all over the fucking place. Josh Shapiro, the likely Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania governor, definitely is not generating enthusiasm around southwestern Pennsylvania.

Gillian McGoldrick, “Trump supporters still unsure about Oz in Pa.’s U.S. Senate GOP race, despite former president’s endorsement,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 9, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/05/09/donald-trump-dr-oz-senate-run-endorsement-greensburg-rally-dave-mccormick-pa-republican-primary-polling/stories/202205080176

Abortion

Even if you oppose Roe v. Wade, which Samuel Alito’s leaked draft decision would overturn,^[4] the decision’s implications for privacy and freedom of movement^[5] ought to be supremely troubling. But I’m still just not seeing the sort of movement, that Amy Davidson Sorkin calls for,^[6] that would be likely to alter electoral outcomes in 2022 and 2024. My forecast,^[7] therefore, remains, for now, unchanged.

Though apparently genuine, the draft is, of course, just a draft.^[8] But my impression is that judges like to show themselves unimpressed by public opinion; I think the justices will simply dig in their heels, no matter how vociferous the outcry. And so we will be left with an utterly and contemptibly worthless Democratic Party^[9] the same Democratic Party that has failed to codify abortion rights for decades,^[10] and that will likely soon lose power, quite possibly forever,^[11] to try to restore sanity.

Molly Jong-Fast, “My Mother Was Wrong,” Atlantic, May 3, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-abortion-peaceful-protest/629746/

Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022

Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/

Ukraine

Associated Press, “Russia marks WWII victory overshadowed by Ukraine,” May 9, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-world-war-ii-2d4f0f3a1e59cdad92b26c521ed08669

^[1]Gillian McGoldrick, “Trump supporters still unsure about Oz in Pa.’s U.S. Senate GOP race, despite former president’s endorsement,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 9, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/05/09/donald-trump-dr-oz-senate-run-endorsement-greensburg-rally-dave-mccormick-pa-republican-primary-polling/stories/202205080176 ↩
^[2]Gillian McGoldrick, “New Pa. U.S. Senate poll: John Fetterman pulling ahead as Democratic favorite, GOP race still wide open,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 14, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/04/14/fetterman-pulls-ahead-as-democratic-favorite-gop-pa-senate-race-still-wide-open-in-april-f-m-poll/stories/202204130138; Daniel Strauss, “Is Conor Lamb Collapsing Against John Fetterman in Pennsylvania?” New Republic, April 21, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166164/conor-lamb-collapsing-john-fetterman-pennsylvania ↩
^[3]Gillian McGoldrick, “Trump supporters still unsure about Oz in Pa.’s U.S. Senate GOP race, despite former president’s endorsement,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 9, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2022/05/09/donald-trump-dr-oz-senate-run-endorsement-greensburg-rally-dave-mccormick-pa-republican-primary-polling/stories/202205080176 ↩
^[4]Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward, “Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows,” Politico, May 2, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473 ↩
^[5]Irin Carmon, “Can Republicans Stop Patients From Leaving the State for an Abortion? Some Are Willing to Try,” New York, May 4, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/can-republicans-stop-out-of-state-abortion-patients.html; Josh Gerstein, “What falls after Roe? Liberals warn of a privacy rights nightmare,” Politico, May 3, 2022, https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/03/supreme-court-abortion-privacy-rights-00029871; Amy Davidson Sorkin, “How Alito’s Draft Opinion on Abortion Rights Would Change America,” New Yorker, May 8, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/16/how-alitos-draft-opinion-on-abortion-rights-would-change-america ↩
^[6]Amy Davidson Sorkin, “How Alito’s Draft Opinion on Abortion Rights Would Change America,” New Yorker, May 8, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/05/16/how-alitos-draft-opinion-on-abortion-rights-would-change-america ↩
^[7]David Benfell, “My 2024 forecast,” Not Housebroken, March 10, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/10/my-2024-forecast/↩
^[8]Robert Barnes and Ann E. Marimow, “Roberts directs investigation into leaked draft of abortion opinion,” Washington Post, May 3, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/03/supreme-court-leak-investigation-abortion-roe-wade/↩
^[9]David Benfell, “Democrats and contradiction,” Not Housebroken, January 20, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/11/18/democrats-and-contradiction/↩
^[10]Anna North, “Abortion has been treated as a fringe issue by Democrats for decades. This is the result,” Vox, May 5, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/5/5/23057317/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade; William Rivers Pitt, “Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect ‘Roe.’ They Failed,” Truthout, May 6, 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-had-50-years-to-save-and-protect-roe-they-failed/; Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022 ↩
^[11]David Benfell, “My 2024 forecast,” Not Housebroken, March 10, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/10/my-2024-forecast/↩

Who died?

May 8, 2022benfell

COVID-19 Pandemic

The 1 million dead may seem like a random group, yet they fall into clear patterns: Those killed by covid were mostly old; disproportionately low income, Black or Hispanic; and overwhelmingly unvaccinated. People who did not get the shot were 53.2 times more likely to die than fully vaccinated and boosted people.^[1]

The story does not explore these statistics, instead delving into narratives of people who had lost loved ones to COVID-19 in the U.S.^[2] The latter, frankly, seemed to me simultaneously a bit much and utterly disproportionate to the problem.

Nearly 15 million have died around the world.^[3] Every one of them has a story, surely a vast majority left behind loved ones who have their stories. While there certainly is a place for such inquiry, it should have a point, a research question more specific than, What are fewer than ten—that’s right, I didn’t even bother to count them—random stories of random folks who lost people they cared about to the disease? And we should but do not know how these reporters selected folks to get stories from.

Recently, I have been thinking that I have seen such fine work done by journalists with Master’s degrees that perhaps, just as we have a Master’s of Fine Art as a terminal degree, we might have a Master’s of Journalism as a terminal degree because I have seen so little room for improvement in so much that I’m seeing. I had not conceived such a degree as a corrective. But I’m sorry to say this^[4] could be an example of why such a degree might be needed, for it exposes an absence of rigor that could be remedied in such a program.

Pennsylvania infrastructure

Ed Blazina, “Pennsylvania taking baby steps away from gas tax, toward fee for miles driven,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 7, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2022/05/07/pennsylvania-transportation-funding-gasoline-tax-miles-driven-fee/stories/202205080120

Ukraine

Paula Erizanu, “‘I don’t feel safe here’: Transnistria fears could spark Moldova exodus,” Guardian, May 1, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/01/i-dont-feel-safe-here-transnistria-fears-could-spark-moldova-exodus

Joseph Menn, “Hacking Russia was off-limits. The Ukraine war made it a free-for-all,” Washington Post, May 1, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/05/01/russia-cyber-attacks-hacking/

Nataliya Vasilyeva, “‘I want to see Putin hanged’, says Gazprom executive who fled Russia,” Telegraph, May 1, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/01/want-see-putin-hanged-says-gazprom-executive-fled-russia/

Richard Kemp, “Vladimir Putin’s military cupboard is bare,” Telegraph, May 3, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/vladimir-putins-military-cupboard-bare/

Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. His Oligarchs,” Puck News, May 3, 2022, https://puck.news/putin-vs-his-oligarchs/

^[1]Marc Fisher et al., “After 1 million deaths, covid leaves millions more forever changed,” Washington Post, May 7, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/07/one-million-covid-deaths-families/↩
^[2]Marc Fisher et al., “After 1 million deaths, covid leaves millions more forever changed,” Washington Post, May 7, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/07/one-million-covid-deaths-families/↩
^[3]Katie Shepherd and Niha Masih, “Nearly 15 million deaths related to covid-19, WHO estimates,” Washington Post, May 5, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/05/covid-excess-global-deaths-nearly-15-million/↩
^[4]Marc Fisher et al., “After 1 million deaths, covid leaves millions more forever changed,” Washington Post, May 7, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/07/one-million-covid-deaths-families/↩

The bottom line: Democrats don’t give a damn

May 7, 2022benfell

Abortion

It’s been gnawing at me for a while that Democrats have chosen the path of indifference and inaction, to just hold a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act in the Senate without putting each and every senator who says they are pro-choice on the record for eliminating the arcane and anti-democratic procedural filibuster, the only true vote at this point that might enshrine Roe into federal law.

Now that someone from within the Supreme Court leaked a draft opinion in which five conservative zealots will finally get to live out their career-long dreams of ending Roe v. Wade, it is clear to me that the Democratic Party, as an institution, does not care more about keeping my doctors and nurses out of jail than Republicans do about putting them there. If they did, they would not throw up their hands and say that there’s nothing they can do to protect women. They would not ask us for donations or votes in November to expand the power voters already gave them in 2020 by handing them the White House, Senate, and House.^[1]

Meanwhile, on the Republican side:

In March, anticipating the very decision that [Samuel] Alito drafted, a Missouri lawmaker introduced an amendment that copies Texas’s bounty-hunter law to allow private citizens to sue people who help abortion patients leave the state. In recent years, thousands of Missourians have already been crossing the border to Illinois for abortions, many more than have been able to be seen by the state’s last remaining clinic. The provision didn’t succeed this time around, but its author, state Representative Mary Elizabeth Coleman, wasn’t wrong when she responded to claims the provision was unconstitutional by telling the Washington Post, “That’s what they said about the Texas law, and every bill passed to protect the unborn for the last 49 years.” It’s only unconstitutional until you get the right court.^[2]

Medication abortion, in which a woman takes two drugs to terminate an early pregnancy at home, became the most commonly used method in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly after the Food and Drug Administration stopped requiring the prescription be dispensed at healthcare facilities and allowed it to be delivered directly to users. Many online pharmacies around the world ship them without a prescription at all. . . .

Nineteen states prohibit pills from being prescribed via telehealth appointments or delivered in the mail, and 32 states limit which healthcare professionals can prescribe abortion pills, according to Guttmacher.

Mailing abortion pills to a patient is banned in Arizona, Arkansas and Texas. Similar bans in Montana, Oklahoma and South Dakota were blocked by the courts.

Just this year, more than a dozen states introduced restrictions on medication abortion, including complete bans, a prohibition on mailing pills and a ban on using telehealth to provide them.

Others are focusing on banning all self-managed abortions. The practice is illegal in Nevada, South Carolina and Oklahoma, but patients have been arrested in other states too.^[3]

The simple truth is that Democrats, for all their words, don’t give enough of a damn to prevent^[4] women from being enslaved by the state:^[5]

Women who cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have babies are enslaved because the state claims ownership of their bodies and the right to dictate the use to which their bodies must be put. The only similar circumstance for men is conscription into an army. In both cases there is risk to the individual’s life, but an army conscript is at least provided with food, clothing, and lodging. Even criminals in prisons have a right to those things. If the state is mandating enforced childbirth, why should it not pay for prenatal care, for the birth itself, for postnatal care, and – for babies who are not sold off to richer families – for the cost of bringing up the child?^[6]

But really, the Democrats expect abortion rights supporters to vote for them because, mostly, they aren’t themselves actively attempting to enslave women but are, rather, enabling those who do.

Molly Jong-Fast, “My Mother Was Wrong,” Atlantic, May 3, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-abortion-peaceful-protest/629746/

Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022

Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/

Work

The Los Angeles Review of Books article is actually rather disappointing and I’m not sure how much this is really the authors’, these being Max Haiven, Graeme Webb, and Xenia Benivolski, fault. It, the article, summarizes much that is already known about Amazon and proffers a methodology, “worker inquiry,” that appears to be a variation on action research I have not seen before.^[7] The description of this methodology is vague and scattered rather than systematic; it fails to explain how worker inquiry is related to and different from other methodologies; and the report on inquiry already conducted—focus group research?—is similarly vague and scattered.^[8] I read the article and while it is clear that this inquiry is in progress, I still don’t know with any precision what they’re doing. I can’t rule out that these authors with their co-researchers, Amazon workers and ex-workers, will produce something useful—indeed, they very well might—but this LARB article appears as a profoundly unsatisfactory compromise between a research proposal intended for a scholarly audience and work intended for a culturally- or intellectually-inclined audience of the Los Angeles Review of Books. It will satisfy neither audience.

The larger question is why it even appears in, yes, a relatively high-brow publication, but no, not a scholarly publication. What I fear is that this reflects a continuing breakdown of academia as traditionally understood, where now

That there’s a market for Chegg’s predatory practices at all reflects the grim reality of higher education in the 2020s. As stories about the New Faculty Majority reveal, a critical mass of faculty members don’t make enough money to support themselves and their families.^[9]

Haiven and Webb appear to be affiliated scholars, though Webb may be an adjunct, paid next to nothing. If Benivolski is affiliated, her biography doesn’t say it. They are paying their co-researchers, both in the initial and forthcoming phases of their project. They do not say where this money comes from, nor do they overtly solicit contributions. But they will require money to pay their budding science fiction authors and facilities to train them to be authors. The funding question here is huge and the answer’s omission glares.^[10] So what I have to suspect is that they are asking for money without asking for money, trying (desperately?) to build some popular support for any more formal research proposals they submit to philanthropic organizations.

My understanding is that funding for social science research, let alone that using a non-mainstream methodology,^[11] is near nil.

Kate Eichhorn, “The Gig Economy Comes for Scholarly Work,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-gig-economy-comes-for-scholarly-work

Max Haiven, Graeme Webb, and Xenia Benivolski, “Is Amazon the Borg? We Asked Their Workers,” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 7, 2022, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/is-amazon-the-borg-we-asked-their-workers/

Ukraine

Catherine Belton and Greg Miller, “Cracks emerge in Russian elite as tycoons start to bemoan invasion,” Washington Post, April 29, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/29/russia-oligarchs-ukraine-invasion-dissent/

Bloomberg, “Russia Will Quit International Space Station Over Sanctions,” April 30, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-30/russia-will-quit-international-space-station-over-sanctions

Richard Kemp, “Vladimir Putin’s military cupboard is bare,” Telegraph, May 3, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/vladimir-putins-military-cupboard-bare/

Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. His Oligarchs,” Puck News, May 3, 2022, https://puck.news/putin-vs-his-oligarchs/

^[1]Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022 ↩
^[2]Irin Carmon, “Can Republicans Stop Patients From Leaving the State for an Abortion? Some Are Willing to Try,” New York, May 4, 2022, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/05/can-republicans-stop-out-of-state-abortion-patients.html ↩
^[3]Jennifer Haberkorn, “Abortion pills: A post-Roe game changer — and the next battleground,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2022, https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-05-05/medication-abortion-safety-net-battleground ↩
^[4]Jordain Carney, “Manchin joins with Senate GOP to block bill guaranteeing abortion access,” Hill, February 28, 2022, https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/596223-manchin-joins-with-senate-gop-to-block-bill-guaranteeing-abortion-access/; Anna North, “Abortion has been treated as a fringe issue by Democrats for decades. This is the result,” Vox, May 5, 2022, https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2022/5/5/23057317/abortion-supreme-court-roe-v-wade; William Rivers Pitt, “Democrats Had 50 Years to Save and Protect ‘Roe.’ They Failed,” Truthout, May 6, 2022, https://truthout.org/articles/democrats-had-50-years-to-save-and-protect-roe-they-failed/; Meredith Shiner, “Democrats Can Go Scorched Earth on Abortion Rights, or Go Home,” New Republic, May 4, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/166293/democrats-abortion-rights-roe-2022 ↩
^[5]Margaret Atwood, “‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion,” Guardian, May 7, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/07/enforced-childbirth-is-slavery-margaret-atwood-on-the-right-to-abortion ↩
^[6]Margaret Atwood, “‘Enforced childbirth is slavery’: Margaret Atwood on the right to abortion,” Guardian, May 7, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/07/enforced-childbirth-is-slavery-margaret-atwood-on-the-right-to-abortion ↩
^[7]Action research is not my specialty. It is certainly within the umbrella of methodologies that human scientists may apply, but the very fact it is a qualitative rather than quantitative methodology now very unfortunately means it will be a fringe methodology for mainstream academia. That, by itself, will limit the impact of this work, regardless of any other merit.↩
^[8]Max Haiven, Graeme Webb, and Xenia Benivolski, “Is Amazon the Borg? We Asked Their Workers,” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 7, 2022, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/is-amazon-the-borg-we-asked-their-workers/↩
^[9]Kate Eichhorn, “The Gig Economy Comes for Scholarly Work,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 2022, https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-gig-economy-comes-for-scholarly-work ↩
^[10]Max Haiven, Graeme Webb, and Xenia Benivolski, “Is Amazon the Borg? We Asked Their Workers,” Los Angeles Review of Books, May 7, 2022, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/is-amazon-the-borg-we-asked-their-workers/↩
^[11]There is a difference in tone between the third and fourth editions of the SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, the fourth being starkly more defensive, that informs me that the only research now favored in academia is quantitative. This was a battle that was lost not on the merits but to neoliberal imperative. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2008); Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., Landscape of Qualitative Research, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2008); Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, 3rd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2008); Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln, eds., SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, 4th ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2011).↩

Israel excuses the ‘inexcusable’

May 6, 2022benfell

Abortion

Molly Jong-Fast, “My Mother Was Wrong,” Atlantic, May 3, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/supreme-court-overturn-abortion-peaceful-protest/629746/

Alexandra Martinez, “Birth control, gay and interracial marriage, and more may be at risk if Roe v. Wade falls,” Prism, May 5, 2022, https://prismreports.org/2022/05/05/civil-rights-roe-v-wade/

Ukraine

[Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov’s remarks are both inexcusable and scandalous and also a terrible historical error. The Jews did not murder themselves in the Holocaust. The lowest form of anti-Jewish racism is to blame Jews of antisemitism.^[1]

“The [Israeli] prime minister [Naftali Bennett] accepted the apology of President [Vladimir] Putin for comments by [Sergei] Lavrov and thanked him for clarifying the president’s view of the Jewish people and the memory of the Holocaust,” Bennett’s office said.^[2]

Richard Kemp, “Vladimir Putin’s military cupboard is bare,” Telegraph, May 3, 2022, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/05/03/vladimir-putins-military-cupboard-bare/

Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. His Oligarchs,” Puck News, May 3, 2022, https://puck.news/putin-vs-his-oligarchs/

^[1]Yair Lapid, quoted in Cnaan Liphshiz, “Speaking about Zelensky, Russian foreign minister says Hitler also had Jewish ancestry,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 2, 2022, https://www.jta.org/2022/05/02/global/speaking-about-zelensky-russian-foreign-minister-says-hitler-also-had-jewish-ancestry ↩
^[2]Times of Israel, “Putin apologizes for Russian FM’s ‘Jewish Hitler’ remarks, Bennett’s office says,” May 5, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/putin-apologizes-for-russian-envoys-hitler-comments-bennetts-office-says/↩

Faux profitability

May 5, 2022benfell

Gig economy (neoliberal wet dream)

Bezzle

Hubert Horan has not, as far as I know, yet reacted to the latest on Uber and Lyft faux profitability.^[1] My assumption is that the companies continue as they have:

Uber also continued its ongoing efforts to mislead reports and investors by emphasizing its “EBITDA Profitability” metric, which is not a measure of either profitability or EBITDA [Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization]. An honest EBITDA measure would deduct interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, which account for 6% of Uber’s total expenses. Such a measure would provide no new useful information for investors since it would closely track more widely understood measures such as GAAP [Generally Accepted Accounting Principles] Net Income and Operating Profitability. Uber’s bogus EBITDA measure deducts additional expenses ($6.6 billion in the last three years) that can vary widely from year to year that can account for as much of 20% of total expense. And its “Segment Adjusted EBITDA Profitability” which purports to measure the separate profitability of ridesharing and food delivery, is even worse, since it deducts another $500 million per year of core expenses, including Uber’s IT costs. [4] A 189 slide deck that Uber management presented at its February 10thInvestor Day made aggressive promises about improved EBITDA profitability, but never mentioned when it might achieve honest GAAP profitability. [5] . . .

Lyft’s published GAAP net loss in 2021 was just over $1 billion on $3.2 billion in revenue, a negative 31% profit margin. Its cumulative losses over the five years when it has published financial reports now total $7.6 billion. This included gains from selling its failed autonomous vehicle operations to Toyota, which will total over a half billion dollars over the next few years but (as with Uber’s divestures of its failed operations) have nothing to do with the market performance of its ongoing business. As seen in the table below, adjusting for this increases Lyft’s 2021 loss by $120 million, so this is a smaller problem than Uber’s $3.2 billion profit overstatement.

Lyft’s operations remain cash negative, burning $100 million in 2021. This was almost identical to its operating cash burn in 2019 but a huge improvement over the $1.3 billion burned in 2020. Lyft has burned through 55% of the cash it had at the end of 2018 and would have burned through 65% but for its ability to convert some of its failed AV assets into cash.^[2]

Horan accuses both Uber and Lyft of intentionally misleading investors.^[3] As I said, I’m assuming this continues and, unfortunately, Jackie Davalos is among the deluded as she refers to Uber’s profitability without any qualification whatsoever.^[4] But my earlier question remains: For how much longer can this go on?

Tina Bellon, “Lyft shares tank 26% on higher cost of getting drivers back on street,” Reuters, May 3, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/technology/lyft-says-customers-spending-despite-inflation-results-top-targets-2022-05-03/

Jackie Davalos, “Uber Sidesteps Lyft’s Debacle With Optimism Over Riders, Profit,” Bloomberg, May 4, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-04/uber-beats-sales-estimates-delivers-upbeat-forecast

Pittsburgh

Century III Mall

Mark Belko, “Amazon might have its eye on Century III Mall, Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills sites,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 5, 2022, https://www.post-gazette.com/business/development/2022/05/04/century-iii-mall-galleria-at-pittsburgh-mills-amazon-west-mifflin-churchill-frazer-new-stanton-north-versailles-warehouse/stories/202205040074

COVID-19 Pandemic

Among high-income countries, the United States did the worst in terms of excess death rate. We have experienced disproportionately high excess death rates because of the way we handled the pandemic.^[5]

But the world toll must be attributed in part to the claims of intellectual property.^[6]

^[1]Tina Bellon, “Lyft shares tank 26% on higher cost of getting drivers back on street,” Reuters, May 3, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/technology/lyft-says-customers-spending-despite-inflation-results-top-targets-2022-05-03/; Jackie Davalos, “Uber Sidesteps Lyft’s Debacle With Optimism Over Riders, Profit,” Bloomberg, May 4, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-04/uber-beats-sales-estimates-delivers-upbeat-forecast ↩
^[2]Hubert Horan, “Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-Nine: Despite Massive Price Increases Uber Losses Top $31 Billion,” Naked Capitalism, February 11, 2022, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html ↩
^[3]Hubert Horan, “Can Uber Ever Deliver? Part Twenty-Nine: Despite Massive Price Increases Uber Losses Top $31 Billion,” Naked Capitalism, February 11, 2022, https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/02/hubert-horan-can-uber-ever-deliver-part-twenty-nine-despite-massive-price-increases-uber-losses-top-31-billion.html ↩
^[4]Jackie Davalos, “Uber Sidesteps Lyft’s Debacle With Optimism Over Riders, Profit,” Bloomberg, May 4, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-04/uber-beats-sales-estimates-delivers-upbeat-forecast ↩
^[5]Steven H. Woolf, quoted in Katie Shepherd and Niha Masih, “Nearly 15 million deaths related to covid-19, WHO estimates,” Washington Post, May 5, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/05/covid-excess-global-deaths-nearly-15-million/↩
^[6]David Benfell, “The lethal dishonesty of ‘intellectual property’ in a pandemic,” Not Housebroken, November 30, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/03/21/the-lethal-dishonesty-of-intellectual-property-in-a-pandemic/↩