Strike Up The Band, Con't

 Looks like after almost four months, SAG-AFTRA union negotiators have reached a tentative deal with the studios for a new contract.

After a grueling 118 days on strike, SAG-AFTRA has officially reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract with studios, a move that is heralding the end of the 2023 actors strike.

The SAG-AFTRA TV/Theatrical Committee approved the agreement in a unanimous vote on Wednesday, SAG-AFTRA announced. The strike will end at 12:01 a.m. Thursday. On Friday, the deal will go to the union’s national board for approval.

The performers union announced the provisional agreement Wednesday, after about two weeks of renewed negotiations. The development came not long before a deadline of 5 p.m. that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers had set for the union to give their answer on whether they had a deal.

The union is so far providing some details of the agreement, more of which will likely emerge in the next few days prior to the union’s ratification vote. In a message to members on Wednesday night, the union said the pact is valued at over $1 billion and includes pay increases higher than what other unions received this year, a “streaming participation bonus” and regulations on AI. The tentative deal also includes higher caps on health and pension funds, compensation bumps for background performers and “critical contract provisions protecting diverse communities.” If the deal is ratified, the contract could soon go into effect, and if not, members would essentially send their labor negotiators back to the bargaining table with the AMPTP.

In a statement on Wednesday night, the AMPTP said, “Today’s tentative agreement represents a new paradigm. It gives SAG-AFTRA the biggest contract-on-contract gains in the history of the union, including the largest increase in minimum wages in the last forty years; a brand new residual for streaming programs; extensive consent and compensation protections in the use of artificial intelligence; and sizable contract increases on items across the board. The AMPTP is pleased to have reached a tentative agreement and looks forward to the industry resuming the work of telling great stories.”

When negotiations restarted on Oct. 2 for the first time since SAG-AFTRA called its work stoppage in July, hopes were high in the industry that Hollywood’s largest union could come to terms with major companies quickly. Just like they had in the final days of the writers’ negotiations, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, Disney CEO Bob Iger, and NBCUniversal Studio Group chairman and chief content officer Donna Langley attended the talks at the union’s national headquarters in Los Angeles. But the studio ended up walking out on Oct. 11 over SAG-AFTRA’s proposal to charge a fee per every streaming subscriber on major platforms in a move that the union’s chief negotiator called “mystifying” (Sarandos called the ask “a bridge too far“).

The sides reconvened Oct. 24 after a nearly two-week break. This time, the studios came in with a more generous offer to increase actors’ wage floors and a slightly modified version of a success-based streaming bonus they had previously offered the WGA. The two sides exchanged proposals for much of the week in a tense situation that had the industry on edge. Even as a deal came into sight, progress was slow, especially when it came to putting the contract’s inaugural guardrails on artificial intelligence: The union considers the rapidly advancing technology an absolutely existential issue for members and sought to close any potential loopholes that could lead to future issues. On Saturday the studios presented what the union characterized as the companies’ “last, best and final,” overarching offer (still, the two sides kept swapping offers after).

When the union’s previous contract expired in mid-July and SAG-AFTRA went out on strike, many outstanding issues were left on the table. Setting terms for the use of AI was a major sticking point between union and studio negotiators, as was a proposal to provide casts with additional streaming compensation. Union negotiators sought to institute an unusually large minimum rate increase in the first year of the contract, a host of ground rules for self-taped virtual auditions and major increases to health and pension contributions “caps” that have not been changed since the 1980s. Meanwhile, as the entertainment business continues to experience a period of contraction, major companies looked to preserve some measure of flexibility and cost control.

Looks like another major union scored another big win in the Biden era.  Hopefully we'll get back to production on your favorite shows and movies, and it'll be far more equitable for the people making them.

 

 

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump's testimony in front of NY civil judge Arthur Engoron today went about as badly as most Trump-watchers (including myself) expected it to go.

As Donald Trump prepared to take the stand in the civil fraud trial that could destroy his business empire, the ex-president and his attorneys settled on a strategy built on spite and unbridled antagonism. According to two sources familiar with the matter and another person briefed on Team Trump’s legal strategies, Trump and his lawyers want to intentionally provoke the judge into a nuclear-level overreaction.

They certainly seem to be carrying out the plan on Monday. Trump dodged questions and ranted about this “haters” while on the witness stand, leading Judge Arthur Engoron to scold him repeatedly and push the former president’s attorneys to rein in their client. “I beseech you to control him if you can,” Engoron implored. “If you can’t, I will. I will excuse him and draw every negative inference that I can.”

An explosive response from Engoron could include ordering Trump to be remanded to a jail cell for the night. The judge in the case had already imposed a gag order on Trump, warning him to refrain from attacks on the judge’s staff. Late last week, the order was expanded to also include Trump’s attorneys. Trump has still shown a brazen willingness to violate it repeatedly. And as bizarre as it may sound, there are attorneys and political advisers to Trump who have told the former president that a so-called “remand order” to put him in custody for repeatedly breaching the judge’s rulings might be a good thing — both legally and politically.

The ex-president’s legal advisers had long ago told Trump that his chances of winning at trial are close to zero — hence, their scorched-earth, “Fyre Festival”-style courtroom performances. According to the three sources, several Trump attorneys and other key allies have advised him that the more the New York judge supposedly “overreacts” — including perhaps remanding Trump — the better their case for an appeal will be.

“I call it the Chicago 7 disruption strategy,” Alan Dershowitz, the celebrity lawyer who defended then-President Trump during his first impeachment, tells Rolling Stone.

“When a defendant honestly believes he can’t possibly get a fair trial from the judge, one of the tactics is to antagonize the judge to a point of causing reversible errors,” Dershowitz says. “That is what happened in the Chicago 7 case, and I was one of the lawyers on the appeal in that case. Abbie Hoffman provoked Judge Hoffman to such a degree that the judge made mistake after mistake. And courts of appeal often reverse convictions or verdicts when the judge has made serious errors.”

In recent weeks, the former president and some of his lawyers in the New York civil fraud trial have discussed the likelihood of Engoron very aggressively responding to Trump team’s strategy of relentless hostility and defiance. The tactics have included attacks on Engoron’s court clerk, filibustering the prosecution’s witnesses with repetitive questions, and raising legal arguments the judge had already specifically prohibited.

This has included Trump asking his legal advisers if the judge would, or could, actually go so far as to send him to jail for a short time, the sources tell Rolling Stone. Trump has been told such an order is probably unlikely — though Engoron has publicly put the option on the table. This is one reason why Trump and his counselors have kept up with their brazen strategy of infuriating a judge who has openly threatened the former president with possible jail time.

The legal team has further assured Trump that even if he were remanded, they would likely be able to deploy a variety of legal tactics to keep him from spending any time behind bars. According to two other sources with knowledge of the situation, some Trump advisers have already reached out to certain outside attorneys to see if those lawyers would be interested in joining that potential fight to keep Trump out of jail. (Some of those lawyers have preemptively turned Team Trump down.)

In addition, there have been recent conversations among some of Trump’s 2024 campaign brass of how much of an immediate fundraising boost they would enjoy, if a New York judge were to try to put Trump in a cell for even a minute. “All the cash in the world,” one Trump political adviser says.

Our legal system is not built to handle Trump. As I told you months ago, the Trump plan is to goad Engoron and the other judges in his various cases into an either ruinous sanction that will be used for grounds to appeal, or to make the case impossible to prosecute, or both.

Right now Trump is running his playbook perfectly. Judge Engoron clearly knows this. So how much will he continue to let Trump get away with? 

The answer appears to be as much as Trump can and everyone in America knows it.

Last Call For Mitch Better Have My Money, Con't

GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell has long-controlled the big campaign money for Senate Republicans, and with Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley waiting in the wings to dethrone him, McConnell is suddenly facing a fight with Hawley that Democrats are all to willing to engage in.

 

Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell bluntly warned Republican senators in a private meeting not to sign on to a bill from Sen. Josh Hawley aimed at limiting corporate money bankrolling high-powered outside groups, telling them that many of them won their seats thanks to the powerful super PAC the Kentucky Republican has long controlled.

According to multiple sources familiar with the Tuesday lunch meeting, McConnell warned GOP senators that they could face “incoming” from the “center-right” if they signed onto Hawley’s bill. He also read off a list of senators who won their races amid heavy financial support from the Senate Leadership Fund, an outside group tied to the GOP leader that spends big on TV ads in battleground Senate races. On that list of senators: Hawley himself, according to sources familiar with the matter.

McConnell has long been a chief opponent of tighter campaign finance restrictions. But there’s also no love lost between McConnell and Hawley, who has long criticized the GOP leader and has repeatedly called for new leadership atop their conference. Just on Tuesday, Hawley told CNN that it was “mistake” for McConnell to be “standing with” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, in their push to tie Ukraine aid to an Israel funding package.

Hawley’s new bill, called the Ending Corporate Influence on Elections Act, is aimed at reversing the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that loosened campaign finance laws – an effort that aligns the conservative Missouri Republican with many Democrats. Hawley’s bill would ban publicly traded corporations from making independent expenditures and political advertisements – and ban those publicly traded companies from giving money to super PACs.

In an interview, Hawley defended his bill and said that corporate influence should be limited in elections.

“I think that’s wrong,” Hawley told CNN. “I think it’s wrong as an original matter. I think it’s warping our politics, and I see no reason for conservatives to defend it. It’s wrong as a matter of the original meaning of the Constitution. It is bad for our elections. It’s bad for our voters. And I just think on principle, we ought to be concerned.”

 

Now, this is far less about corporate influence in elections as it is Josh Hawley trying to critically damage Mitch McConnell's power in Senate GOP politics. But there should be 51 Democratic votes for Hawley's bill on principle, and I'm betting Hawley can find 8 other Republicans to beat a filibuster. Mitch is betting he can too, hence the warning. 

Still, if Hawley's willing to chokeslam dark money over a grudge against Mitch, Democrats should be scrambling to get this bill passed in both the House and Senate and put it on Biden's desk ASAP.

Coal Plant Collapse In Kentucky

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has declared a state of emergency in Martin Count on the border with WV after a coal plant facility building collapsed last night and officials are telling folks to expect the worst.

One is confirmed dead following a building collapse at an idled coal production plant in Martin County that trapped two workers Tuesday evening, according to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office.

Early Wednesday morning, Gov. Andy Beshear declared a State of Emergency as crews continued to search for the trapped workers.

Gov. Beshear announced the State of Emergency on social media.

The collapse at the idled coal production plant was reported around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Just more than 15 minutes later, first responders arrived to find a more than 10-story coal preparation plant had collapsed while the men were working inside to prepare the structure for demolition.

Sheriff Kirk explained that the coal preparation plant had been idle for some time. He said the two workers were salvaging the plant, taking some machinery out of it when it collapsed.

The sheriff said, to the best of investigators’ knowledge, the workers were on the bottom floor when the collapse happened. The building essentially toppled all around the two workers.

Around 11 p.m., at least four firefighters were inside the building and maintained contact with the one trapped worker.

The Martin County Sheriff confirms the worker crews had made contact with is the one that passed away Wednesday morning. That rescue mission has now turned into a recovery mission, officials say.

No word if any contact has been made with the second worker trapped under the collapsed building.

The family of the deceased worker has been notified, but officials have not released a name.

Crews from a number of agencies are on the scene, including Pikeville, Ashland, Warfield, Inez, Martin, and Prestonsburg.

The American Red Cross is providing canteen services for first responders on scene.

A warming station is being opened for the families of the two men trapped at Buck Branch Church in Pilgrim, Kentucky. Donations are also being accepted at the church for the families.

 

King Coal is a hard monarch. Certainly this part of Kentucky is used to industrial and mining accidents, but it's never a good thing when it happens. Even cleaning up after coal can lead to tragedy, and the last thing Eastern KY needs is more tragedy after fires, floods, mine disasters, and even a tornado or two over the time I've lived in the state. 

Coal keeps on taking.

Ridin' With BidenGPT

The White House has issued a long-anticipated executive order involving the regulation of artificial intelligence systems, which I know absolutely sounds like part of the opening exposition in the first five minutes of a Terminator franchise movie, but this is a dose of necessary reality here in 2023.

 

President Joe Biden signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence Monday, setting the stage for some industry regulations and funding for the U.S. government to further invest in the technology.

The order is broad, and its focuses range from civil rights and industry regulations to a government hiring spree.

In a media call previewing the order Sunday, a senior White House official, who asked to not be named as part of the terms of the call, said AI has so many facets that effective regulations have to cast a wide net.

“AI policy is like running into a decathlon, and there’s 10 different events here,” the official said.

“And we don’t have the luxury of just picking ‘we’re just going to do safety’ or ‘we’re just going to do equity’ or ‘we’re just going to do privacy.’ You have to do all of these things.”

The official also called for “significant bipartisan legislation” to further advance the country’s interests with AI. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., held a private forum in September with industry leaders but has yet to introduce significant AI legislation.

Some of the order builds on a previous nonbinding agreement that seven of the top U.S. tech companies developing AI agreed to in July, like hiring outside experts to probe their systems for weaknesses and sharing their critical findings.

The order leverages the Defense Production Act to legally require those companies to share safety test results with the federal government.

It also tasks the Commerce Department with creating guidance about “watermarking” AI content to make it clear that deepfaked videos or ChatGPT-generated essays were not created by humans.

The order adds funding for new AI research and a federal AI hiring surge. The White House has launched a corresponding website to connect job seekers with AI government jobs: AI.gov.

Fei-Fei Li, a co-director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said in an interview that government funding is crucial for AI to be able to tackle major human problems.

“The public sector holds a unique opportunity in terms of data and interdisciplinary talent to cure cancer, cure rare diseases, to map out biodiversity at a global scale, to understand and predict wildfires, to find climate solutions, to supercharge our teachers,” Li said. “There’s so much the public sector can do, but all of this is right now starved because we are severely lacking in resources.”

 

And while this is a start, these remain guidelines without real enforcement consequences. Actual laws have to be written by Congress, and they keep dragging their feet as AI keeps getting further and further ahead. Ethical, social, and environmental concerns are great to have, but all this lacks any real hard and fast penalties for companies that violate them.

As it is, the major players in AI like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, all have a long history of violating federal antitrust, commerce and labor regulations. Asking them to play nicely here is not going to hold up for much longer when trillions are at stake in the years ahead for whichever company masters the process of successfully stealing a planet's worth of intellectual property to feed their Frankenstein's Monster first.

We're going to need something much, much stronger, if not an international treaty with watchdog organizations and monitoring the way we have for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons currently.

 

On top of that, we have to make it stick. We're not going to of course, not until it's well far past being too late. 

We may already be past that point now, to be frank.

Last Call For America's Kids Getting Zucked Up

A huge multistate lawsuit against Instagram and Facebook parent company Meta was announced this week as 41 states are suing the social media giant over addicting tens of millions of kids on purpose. 

 

Dozens of states sued Instagram-parent Meta on Tuesday, accusing the social media giant of harming young users’ mental health through allegedly addictive features such as infinite news feeds and frequent notifications that demand users’ constant attention.

In a federal lawsuit filed in California by 33 attorneys general, the states allege that Meta’s products have harmed minors and contributed to a mental health crisis in the United States.

“Meta has profited from children’s pain by intentionally designing its platforms with manipulative features that make children addicted to their platforms while lowering their self-esteem,” said Letitia James, the attorney general for New York, one of the states involved in the federal suit. “Social media companies, including Meta, have contributed to a national youth mental health crisis and they must be held accountable.”

Eight additional attorneys general sued Meta on Tuesday in various state courts around the country, making similar claims as the massive multi-state federal lawsuit.

And the state of Florida sued Meta in its own separate federal lawsuit, alleging that Meta misled users about potential health risks of its products.

Tuesday’s multistate federal suit — filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California — accuses Meta of violating a range of state-based consumer protection statutes, as well as a federal children’s privacy law known as COPPA that prohibits companies from collecting the personal information of children under 13 without a parent’s consent.

“Meta’s design choices and practices take advantage of and contribute to young users’ susceptibility to addiction,” the complaint reads. “They exploit psychological vulnerabilities of young users through the false promise that meaningful social connection lies in the next story, image, or video and that ignoring the next piece of social content could lead to social isolation.”

The federal complaint calls for court orders prohibiting Meta from violating the law and, in the case of many states, unspecified financial penalties.

“We share the attorneys generals’ commitment to providing teens with safe, positive experiences online, and have already introduced over 30 tools to support teens and their families,” Meta said in a statement. “We’re disappointed that instead of working productively with companies across the industry to create clear, age-appropriate standards for the many apps teens use, the attorneys general have chosen this path.”

The wave of lawsuits is the result of a bipartisan, multistate investigation dating back to 2021, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said at a press conference Tuesday, after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen came forward with tens of thousands of internal company documents that she said showed how the company knew its products could have negative impacts on young people’s mental health.

“We know that there were decisions made, a series of decisions to make the product more and more addictive,” Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told reporters. “And what we want is for the company to undo that, to make sure that they are not exploiting these vulnerabilities in children, that they are not doing all the little, sophisticated, tricky things that we might not pick up on that drive engagement higher and higher and higher that allowed them to keep taking more and more time and data from our young people.”

Tuesday’s multipronged legal assault also marks the newest attempt by states to rein in large tech platforms over fears that social media companies are fueling a spike in youth depression and suicidal ideation.

“There’s a mountain of growing evidence that social media has a negative impact on our children,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta, “evidence that more time on social media tends to be correlated with depression with anxiety, body image issues, susceptibility to addiction and interference with daily life, including learning.”

The suits follow a raft of legislation in states ranging from Arkansas to Louisiana that clamp down on social media by establishing new requirements for online platforms that wish to serve teens and children, such as mandating that they obtain a parent’s consent before creating an account for a minor, or that they verify users’ ages.

 

I predict a big multibillion dollar settlement, followed by hefty new rules for social media in the US concerning children for Meta in order to head off federal regulations, but I don't think that will hold for long. If Meta really did make as an addictive product as possible, they're going to deserve all the legal smoke they can get.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The judge in Donald Trump's NY civil fraud case has ordered Ivanka Trump to testify.

The judge overseeing the $250 million civil trial against Donald Trump and his company ordered the former president's daughter Ivanka Trump to testify in the case.

Judge Arthur Engoron said Friday she could not be called as a witness before Nov. 1, giving her time to appeal the ruling if she chooses.

Trump's attorneys had challenged New York Attorney General Letitia James' subpoena to Ivanka Trump, noting an appeals court had ruled earlier this year that she should be dropped as a defendant in the case over statute of limitations issues.

They contended the AG's office was trying "to continue to harass and burden President Trump’s daughter long after" the appeals court "mandated she be dismissed from the case."

They also argued that the AG waited too long to subpoena her, and argued the office doesn't have jurisdiction over her because she no longer lives in the state.

The AG's office countered that Ivanka Trump, a former White House official, still has information important to their case.

"While no longer a Defendant in this action, she indisputably has personal knowledge of facts relevant to the claims against the remaining individual and entity Defendants. But even beyond that, Ms. Trump remains financially and professionally intertwined with the Trump Organization and other Defendants and can be called as a person still under their control," the AG contended in a court filing.

The office said it wanted to ask her questions about Trump's former Washington, D.C. hotel, and noted she profited from the sale.

"Ms. Trump remains under the control of the Trump Organization, including through her ongoing and substantial business ties to the organization," the AG argued, adding that she "does not seem to be averse to her involvement in the family business when it comes to owning and collecting proceeds from the OPO (hotel) sale, the Trump Organization purchasing insurance for her and her companies, managing her household staff and credit card bills, renting her apartment or even paying her legal fees in this action. It is only when she is tasked with answering for that involvement that she disclaims any connection."

Ivanka Trump's siblings Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump and their father are all expected to testify in the case and have been listed as witnesses by both the AG and the defense.

 

Again, it's not like Donald Trump was able to consistently commit corporate fraud without the knowledge of the other officers of the Trump Corporation, i.e. Ivanka and her two chucklehead brothers.  We'll see what comes of this, but I expect the ruling against Trump is going to be enough to really hurt.

We'll see

 

 

 

Oil's Well That Ends Badly, Con't

Yet another massive oil giant consolidation buyout as Chevron buys Hess for $53 billion as record oil industry profits fuel tens of billions in stock buybacks and ludicrous executive bonuses, all while Americans continue to get robbed at the pump.

Chevron announced Monday that it has agreed to buy rival Hess in yet another oil industry consolidation deal.

Cash-rich oil giants are taking advantage of high prices and surging profits to snap up assets and boost returns for shareholders even as pressure builds for them to invest more in renewable energy.

The deal, worth $53 billion plus debt, would give Chevron even greater access to US shale production in Texas’ Permian Basin, a part of the industry where Chevron (CVX) has been a leader for years. Hess (HES) also has large oil assets in Guyana, which Chevron said would help grow its production over the next decade.

“This combination positions Chevron to strengthen our long-term performance and further enhance our advantaged portfolio by adding world-class assets,” said Chevron Chairman and CEO Mike Wirth.

Wirth said Chevron and Hess will be able to merge seamlessly, sharing “similar values and cultures,” including a commitment to “lowering carbon,” although environmental advocates have been very critical of oil companies’ slow acceptance of renewable energy alternatives.

Chevron said buying Hess would increase the company’s free cash flow, giving the company more cash on hand in the long term to do more share repurchases. Chevron said that it would increase buybacks of its stock by $2.5 billion to $20 billion a year.

Critics have slammed oil companies for spending tens of billions of dollars on stock buybacks rather than easing the pain for consumers at the pump or investing more heavily in the energy transition. Already cash rich, oil companies have scored record profits after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pinched oil supplies and sent prices higher.

ExxonMobil (XOM) last year made a record $1,874 of profit for every second during the course of 2022.

Those profits have made oil companies deal-happy. Two weeks ago, Exxon announced it would buy shale company Pioneer for $60 billion, a deal that would more than double Exxon’s Permian Basin operations if it is completed.

It’s not clear whether ExxonMobil or Chevron will face antitrust hurdles to completing their deals. The Biden administration has been far more active in challenging corporate power on antitrust grounds than recent administrations.

Shares of Chevron slipped 3% in premarket trading following the deal announcement, while Hess’ shares were slightly higher. Since the start of 2022, just ahead of the big run-up in oil prices following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hess shares are up 120%, while Chevron shares are up 42%.

 

Again, the industry is raking in record profits at our expense and any efforts to do anything about it get opposed by two-thirds of Congress and two-thirds of SCOTUS, all while the planet roasts. Something's got to give soon, whether it's the oil industry or the people at the pump.

Oil's been hovering around $80 all year, with gas prices around $3.50 a gallon. A brand-new Middle East war sparked by Israel and Hamas will only drive oil back up above $100 a barrel or higher, and the industry titans will only get more money as a result.

Our unsustainable energy situation is getting even more unsustainable. A crack-up is coming and when it does, all bets are off.

Getting Drugged Out

With pharmacy chain Rite Aid filing for bankruptcy this week, and the other big pharmacy chains in CVS and Walgreens expected to close hundreds of locations, it's looking like the pharmacy may go the way of the video store by the end of the decade.

 

Drugstore chains for decades saturated US cities, suburbs and small towns with new stores.

Now, they are closing thousands of stores, leaving gaps in communities for medicines and essentials. Researchers find pharmacy closures lead to health risks such as older adults failing to take medication.

Rite Aid, the third largest standalone pharmacy chain, filed for bankruptcy Sunday and will reportedly close roughly 400 to 500 of its approximately 2,200 stores.

Rite Aid was undone by competition from larger rivals, its $3.3 billion debt load, and expensive legal battles for its alleged role in fueling the opioid crisis.

It comes amid walkouts by Walgreens pharmacists and technicians around the country and at CVS stores in Kansas City over low pay and understaffed stores.
Drug store struggles

Rite Aid’s bankruptcy reflects long-term struggles in the retail pharmacy industry.

The majority of drugstores’ sales comes from filling prescriptions. But their profits from that segment have declined in recent years because of lower reimbursement rates for prescription drugs.

The front end of drugstores, where they sell snacks and household staples, also face pressure.

CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid are eliminating some locations as they face rising competition for these items from Amazon, big-box stores with pharmacies like Walmart, and Dollar General in rural areas.

Although drugstores benefited during the pandemic from people getting Covid-19 vaccines, fewer consumers visited stores to shop and prescription volumes fell because people were getting fewer elective procedures.

“The pandemic was not a strong time for drugstores,” said David Silverman, a senior director at Fitch Ratings.

Theft has become a problem for drugstores in some locations, and some stores have resorted to locking up products to prevent theft. But this has made the customer experience worse.

“Theft appears to be hitting drug retailers more than other categories,” Silverman said.

Drugstores are trying to pivot into the more lucrative health care industry in recent years and become primary care providers. CVS acquired health insurer Aetna, and Walgreens took a majority stake in primary care network VillageMD.

But this strategy requires fewer brick-and-mortar retail stores.

 

Walmart and Target were always threats to drugstore chains, but Amazon is going to finish them off.  Cheap prescriptions that you don't have to pick up and the pharmacist doesn't run out of? Yeah, I can already see how this is going to go.

 

On the other hand, if the Supreme Court gets rid of by-mail abortion pills, I can certainly see brick-and-mortar pharmacy companies ganging up on Amazon.

 

On the gripping hand, if your local chain drugstore isn't careful, they may put themselves out of business too if Congress and/or SCOTUS decide pills by mail is too dangerous. I don't see that happening, but who knows with this Congress, and this SCOTUS?

 

 

Sunday Long Read: Pool Fools

Devin Friedman wanted a pool. The pool contractor wanted him to pay by app, in this case, mobile banking app, Zelle. And in our Sunday Long Read this week, we find out how Devin and his wife spent $31,500 on a pool that wasn't a pool, but a scam.

 

I was trying to reach Gary Kruglitz, the proprietor of Royal Palace Pools and Spas. Gary cuts a certain figure. Just a hair over 6 feet tall, wears a mustache, square wire-rimmed bifocal glasses, thin short-sleeved dress shirts through which it is occasionally possible to glimpse just the hint of nipple when the lighting is right. He has an unusually high voice for a man his size, as if a Muppet crawled down his throat one night and couldn't get out again. I wouldn't say Gary is perplexed by this modern world we find ourselves living in as much as he might not be aware it exists. Sometimes when you talk to him, he'll look up from his papers, turn in your direction, and blink, like a bird that has heard something in the underbrush.

Gary — I changed his name so I could be as honest about him and his nipples as possible — spends his days working out of his pool warehouse, in an office covered desk-to-credenza in product manuals and spa brochures and invoices produced in gold-, pink-, and white-triplicate. A man trapped in the amber of another era, the type of guy who answers his phone yellllow and says bye now when he hangs up. But at this moment, Gary was not answering his phone at all. And I was desperate to reach him, because my wife and I had paid him a deposit of $31,500 to build us a pool, and he had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth.

"I'm sorry, Gary is not available right now," said Cheryl when I phoned that morning.

As best I could tell, there were three women who worked at Royal Palace Pools. Cheryl, Cheryl, and Sheryl. (Could be wrong on that.) The Cheryls didn't have offices. They stood point at the front of the store, behind the glass cases where the chlorine tablets and pool thermometers are displayed. There was a rumor that one of the Cheryls — Sheryl — was Gary's wife, but I couldn't imagine Gary making love, or having breakfast each morning with someone in his home. I believed the likelier scenario was that each night when the Cheryls went home, Gary climbed into an empty Jacuzzi shell with a bag of Funyuns and a worry-worn pad of invoices that served as his transitional object, pulled the thermal cover over himself, and waited in the dark with his eyes open until he could go back to the office. Regardless, if you wanted to get in touch with him, there was going to be at least one Cheryl between you and Gary.

"Do you know where he is?" I said. "This is urgent."

"Um. And who is this?" said Cheryl.

I gave her my name and her tone changed a bit.

"I see," she said tightly. "Well, I'll tell him that you called. Again."

"Please do," I said, trying to sound both grateful and angry. Then I hung up.

It's true that my wife and I had been calling Gary a lot. About a year and a half prior, we'd walked into his office in the Berkshires, in Massachusetts — home to white folks who love the Boston Pops, farm to table, and Lyme disease — and signed a contract for Gary to build a pool in our backyard. It made me feel a little bit like an asshole to be honest, the idea of having a pool. Just the rich-person-ness of it. But what is life if not a long march toward losing all your morals and shame. And thanks to the support of my friends and family, I was able to bury my feelings deep inside and become invested in the idea of having a pool. A pool could be evidence that my life hadn't amounted to nothing. When I found myself at a party with intimidating people, I would sometimes say to myself, I am a person with a swimming pool, so I could believe I had the same right to exist as anyone else. And people would have to be friends with me, right? Because who doesn't want a friend with a pool? It would be like when Jeff Allen's mom used to let him have pool parties at his house in eighth grade. Sure, after everyone ate all the grilled cheeses his mom had cut into triangles and sneaked shots of vodka and then thrown up in the bushes, they all left and didn't invite him to come along. But wasn't that better than sitting at home alone on a Friday night, which was probably what Jeff would have been doing otherwise? Wasn't that a win?

(Side note: Jeff grew up to be a heavy Facebook poster who writes screeds about how if people are so sure a man has a right to marry a man, then shouldn't a man have the right to marry a dog? He lives in Tennessee now with his wife, Krystal, whom he proposed to by having a trained dolphin swim up to her strapped with an engagement ring. Some people stay true to themselves.)

Originally, the pool work was supposed to commence in April 2020. But obviously that didn't happen, because that was when everyone was sealed in their homes rinsing groceries in a solution of three parts water to one part Clorox. But now it was 2021. The construction trade was beginning to lurch back to life. There were delays, of course. We were in the throes of the great pandemic renovation boom, and there weren't enough workers or materials. Container ships were lined up for miles at the ports, and the cost of lumber had become something normal people talked about. The New York Times was publishing hate-reads about people from cities moving to places like the Berkshires and building swimming pools and bringing their obnoxious, demanding, me-first city culture with them.

And so that March, we began calling Gary to say me first. Can you ensure we'll be first in line once the ground thaws? He'd try, he said. We took that as a promise.

We called him in April. We called him in May. The further into summer we got, the less responsive he became. If you've hired a contractor, this will sound familiar. Why answer the phone just to get yelled at by some people from a New York Times hate-read? June crept along, and Gary went completely dark. We were anxious. We felt wronged. We let our feelings be known: Gary, and here I'm paraphrasing our email, we Karen-ed our way into being first in line to build a pool in the spring and now here it is in the middle of summer and we literally cannot get ahold of you.

Finally, on July 5, we received a response. Gary emailed us that he was ready to begin. He said he could start within the week and reminded us that, according to the contract, we owed him $30K-plus before construction commenced. We checked the contract and saw that he was right. He sent another email with instructions for payment. Because a lot of bank branches were still closed, and the crew wanted their money, he requested that we transfer the money via Zelle. But because there are daily Zelle limits, he said, we should just transfer a little bit every day.

We Zelle-ed $3,500 on the 6th, $3,500 on the 7th, $5,000 on the 8th and again on the 9th. Now that he was getting his money, Gary was more responsive. Do you have all the materials you were waiting for, we asked in an email. Yep, mostly. Can you start next week? Yes. The emails were strange. We sometimes had to read them aloud: What if you put a period here, would it make sense then? What if there were a verb? But Gary's emails had always been weird. After all, you don't go into the Cheryls business because you care about the syntax in your electronic correspondence. This man ran his company from an AOL account, which I didn't even know you could still have.

After we Zelled more money, we got worried. What if Gary said he never got his deposit? We asked him to send us a signed receipt for the $23,000-ish we'd sent. Certainly, he said, I'm on a job, give me a few minutes. A few minutes later we got a signed receipt from Royal Palace Pools and Spas, printed on letterhead and photographed. All we had to do was send another $3,500 on the 12th and another $5,000 the 13th, his start date. If things went our way, the construction would be finished in a few weeks.

And then July 13 arrived. Early that morning we received an email from Gary that he was down the road with his crew and would be there imminently. But hours passed, and he didn't show. That's when we reached Cheryl and she said, "Oh, it's you," and told me she'd get him a message. We started calling every 15 minutes. This guy had taken our money and who knows when — or if — he was ever going to start building us a hate-read-worthy swimming pool.

Then, early that afternoon, we got Gary on the phone. Yellllow he said. We asked him where he was. He was confused by that. He was at the office, he said. But you told us you were on your way here, we said. You emailed us and said you were already on the road.

Gary was silent for a moment.

"I haven't emailed you in a month," he said.

Then my wife said holy fuck.

 

Zelle made it astonishingly easy to pay "Gary" and also astonishingly easy to scam Devin. The cautionary tale here this week is in an era of massive disinformation, that information can also include the ones and zeroes in your checking account. It's the biggest P2P banking app in Americ, way bigger than Venmo. And the fraud and scam potential for it is massive.

And worse, nobody's actually responsible for covering that fraud, because there are no laws or backstop behind it like bank deposits and the FDIC for example. On top of that, the one federal agency that should be involved, the Consumer Banking Protection Bureau, is currently facing a Supreme Court case that argues that the entire agency is unconstitutional, because the banks and the GOP want it gone.

So yes, take Devin's pool as an example. Be careful out there.

 

Be careful out there.

Last Call For The Big Lie, Alexa Edition

The thing with AI is that as with any computer database, if you feed it garbage input, it'll give you garbage output, and that applies to Amazon's Alexa digital assistant just like any other search engine or social media outlet.

Amid concerns the rise of artificial intelligence will supercharge the spread of misinformation comes a wild fabrication from a more prosaic source: Amazon’s Alexa, which declared that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Asked about fraud in the race — in which President Biden defeated former president Donald Trump with 306 electoral college votes — the popular voice assistant said it was “stolen by a massive amount of election fraud,” citing Rumble, a video-streaming service favored by conservatives.

The 2020 races were “notorious for many incidents of irregularities and indications pointing to electoral fraud taking place in major metro centers,” according to Alexa, referencing Substack, a subscription newsletter service. Alexa contended that Trump won Pennsylvania, citing “an Alexa answers contributor.”

Multiple investigations into the 2020 election have revealed no evidence of fraud, and Trump faces federal criminal charges connected to his efforts to overturn the election. Yet Alexa disseminates misinformation about the race, even as parent company Amazon promotes the tool as a reliable election news source to more than 70 million estimated users.

Amazon declined to explain why its voice assistant draws 2020 election answers from unvetted sources.

“These responses were errors that were delivered a small number of times, and quickly fixed when brought to our attention,” Amazon spokeswoman Lauren Raemhild said in a statement. “We continually audit and improve the systems we have in place for detecting and blocking inaccurate content.”

Raemhild said that during elections, Alexa works with “credible sources” like Reuters, Ballotpedia and RealClearPolitics to provide real-time information.

After The Washington Post reached out to Amazon for comment, Alexa’s responses changed.

To questions The Post had flagged to the company, Alexa answered, “I’m sorry, I’m not able to answer that.” Other questions still prompt the device to say there was election fraud in 2020.

Jacob Glick, who served as investigative counsel on the Jan. 6 committee, called Alexa’s assertions nearly three years after the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol “alarming.”

“If major corporations are helping to give life to the ‘big lie’ years after the fact, they’re enabling the animating narrative of American domestic extremism to endure,” said Glick, who now serves as a policy counsel at the Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. “They should be doing everything they can to stop the ‘big lie’ in its tracks, lest we see history repeat itself.”

They should be, but why would they bother when the Biden administration is suing the pants off of Amazon over antitrust violations? If I'm an evil tech billionaire like Bezos or Musk or Zuckerberg, I'm putting my thumb on the scale to turn the country over to Trump and the fascists in order to get a better deal.

The point is that nobody should be surprised that three years later that Alexa is drawing on Big Lie bullshit and spreading it to tens of millions. We're at the point where The Big Lie has been "fact" to a majority of the GOP since November 2020.

Why wouldn't Big Tech look the other way?

Last Call For No Solving For X

As we come up on the one-year anniversary of Elon Musk taking over X/Twitter/Whatever, Miles Klee at Rolling Stone documents the atrocities as the once-premiere social media platform is now a toxic neo-Nazi-filled trash fire destined for the wrecking ball.

ON OCT. 26, 2022, Elon Musk enjoyed his first and last good day as the head of Twitter (now X). Following a $44 billion acquisition he tried to scuttle but was legally forced into closing, he attempted a bit of prop comedy — entering the company’s headquarters with a porcelain sink while flashing a mischievous smile. It was all the setup to a groaner of a pun announcing his arrival: “Let that sink in!” he declared in the video caption of his entrance. It was a master class in cringe.

Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in! pic.twitter.com/D68z4K2wq7— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2022

Nearly a year later, you’d be hard pressed to name a single improvement to the site under Musk’s direction. His biggest ideas have all blown up in his face: An $8 monthly subscription fee for a blue check that verified users then needed the option of hiding to avoid mockery. The abandonment of a valuable brand name and logo in favor of the meaningless “X,” which prompted a trademark lawsuit and led to the installation of a garish metal X structure on the roof of Twitter’s office — city inspectors had it removed just days later. Musk’s latest move is to have headlines stripped from article links, leaving only an image and media source, which he seems to believe looks better and will keep users scrolling. But for those who follow news on the app, it makes X that much more pointless.

i love clicking on a stock Getty image and having no clue what the article is going to be about, great job https://t.co/vYpw9aYgIZ— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) October 4, 2023

Of course, these mistakes pale in comparison to the rancid vibes Musk has cultivated by reinstating right-wing extremists and peddlers of misinformation previously banned from the platform, amplifying their conspiracy theories, and ensuring their garbage posts are shoved into “For You” feeds by Twitter’s algorithms. He buys into white supremacist propaganda, panders to anti-LGBTQ hate accounts, and, with advertisers fleeing these intolerable conditions, found a way to blame the catastrophic loss of revenue on a Jewish civil rights group that combats antisemitism.

How much longer can this wreckage of a formerly semi-functional website stay afloat? Although it has shed millions of daily active users since Musk started tinkering with it, the endgame is more likely to come down to money. Seven banks led by Morgan Stanley hold some $13 billion in debt after backing Musk’s blockbuster deal last year, and the company itself is presumably worth much less at this point — even according to his own math. If X can’t keep making its $300 million quarterly interest payments, the financial firms may repossess it in order to recoup a fraction of their losses.

 

I'm still in the camp that says Elongated Muskrat is doing this on purpose, that he spent tens of billions on Twitter in order to destroy it ahead of the 2024 elections in order to sow chaos going into the 2024 elections. With Facebook/Threads/Whatever now out of the election integrity game, there's little hope to stop voters from being targeted with voting disinformation to a degree that it could throw the entire ballgame to the GOP and Trump's promised authoritarian takeover attempt of the federal government.

 

Whether or not voters can see the light in all this coming darkness, well, we have to try to light the way.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump continues to attack judges, prosecutors and court officers running his criminal and fraud trials on social media, despite now being under multiple gag orders, and as I have been saying for a while now, he's doing it on purpose in order to dare someone to put him in jail.

Trump continued to complain online after arriving in court on Wednesday.

"Just arrived at the Witch Hunt Trial taking place in the very badly failing (so sadly!) State of New York, where people and companies are fleeing by the thousands," he wrote. "Corrupt Attorney General, Letitia James, is a big reason for this. Statute 63(12) is meant to be used for Consumer Fraud. It has never been used before on a 'case' such as this, especially since I did absolutely nothing wrong. I borrowed money, paid it back, in full, and got sued, years later, with a trial RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF MY CAMPAIGN. I am not even entitled, under any circumstances, to a JURY. This Witch Hunt cannot be allowed to continue. It is Election Interference and the start of Communism right here in America!"

"Despite the gag order — which again, is limited only to the judge's staff — Trump is back on Truth Social this morning with a post taking aim at New York Attorney General Tish James and filled with words from a Trump legal bingo card," tweeted MSNBC legal analyst Lisa Rubin.

Attorney Bradley Moss argued that the post itself "does not cross the line," opining that "this post was reviewed by the lawyers" before it was sent.

While the Truth Social posts may not have violated the judge's order, some legal experts predicted that he would "almost certainly" violate it.

"If we're gonna ask, is Trump gonna violate a gag order? Almost certainly, yes," former acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal told MSNBC. "It's more likely that he'll violate the gag order than almost anything... I mean, we're talking a significant probability he's going to violate the gag order, and then the question is: Will the judge at that point take the really heavy medicine of putting a former president in jail, or will there be some sort of warning and monetary fine first?" he said, adding he expects the latter but the outcome would depend on exactly how Trump violates the order.

"It's kind of like failing kindergarten," Katyal added. "To get a gag order imposed, you have to try. Trump managed to work at it and do it. And succeed. But it took a lot of work on his part. Now, I think the judge is basically saying, you attack a member of my staff, there will be serious sanctions, including even up to jail."

CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elliot Williams suggested during Wednesday's edition of "CNN This Morning" that a prison stint is the only way to get the former president to comply with the gag order.

"In order to have a serious sanction against a defendant who's a billionaire, you really have to be sanctioning him hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions of dollars to really sort of stick it to him," Williams said. "And that's just not going to happen under the laws of New York court policy or procedure.

"You could put him in prison," he continued, addressing host Poppy Harlow. "You could do that. It's less likely but it's certainly doable and, frankly, Poppy, that's the one thing I think will work at this point because — just think about it — nothing has worked whether it is warnings, threats of gag orders or anything else. You've got one penalty left, right?" 

 

Luckily, Judge Engoron still has other options other than trying to jail Trump.

 

Trial attorney Bernard Alexander, who specialized in employment law and civil rights cases, told Insider, however, that Trump is unlikely to incur those kinds of penalties even if Engoron finds he's failed to comply with the gag order. Any decision the court makes, Alexander said, will have to strike a balance between maintaining the former president's right to free speech and the legal objective of holding a fair trial.

"For one thing, the judge can prevent Trump's legal team from presenting certain evidence. But judges prefer not to put their thumb on the scales of justice that way," Alexander told the outlet, adding that if Trump's trial had a jury, the judge could instruct the jury to consider the violation in their decision.

Alexander went on to say that the court could also impose a fine against Trump, "but that would be meaningless," and noted that judges in civil cases usually don't order people to go to jail, so Engoron will have to be creative in the sanction he chooses to issue to dissuade Trump from theoretically continuing to violate the order.

"Trump has money and he uses it to bully people. He can keep paying fines amounting to thousands of dollars – which is what would have to be imposed in a case like this – without giving it a second thought," Alexander told Insider. "The sanction must be something effective to reign Trump in, in order for him to take it seriously."

Alexander expressed that he was not surprised the order was issued and deemed it the correct course of action for Engoron.

"The judge is trying to maintain the integrity of the court and proceed with as light a touch as possible to allow the case to progress without any hint that the court is being impartial. The more Trump violates the rules, the more the judge has to act to maintain integrity and control," he said.

 

Trump is trying to get into as much trouble as possible in order to raise MAGA outrage and to sink the entire legal process.  Trump is already appealing the fraud liability finding by Judge Engoron even as the trial continues. It's a mess but a calculated one. 

Trump is trying to break the system to the point where it can't be used to punish him. We keep saying that Trump is not above the law, but he's also an unprecedented bad actor with considerable power to harm the country. Keep that in mind.

And no, he's not going to get locked up for violating gag orders as Liz Dye explains.

 

Shorn of all of the BS, Trump’s argument against a gag order boils down to “I’m running for president, and telling me to keep quiet is going to be a massive interference in the political process.” There’s also an unspoken element of “You and what army?”

The reality is that, absent a conviction, no judge is going to lock up the former president, who is running to return to office and who has a secret service detail and millions of angry followers. In some sense, every party to this transaction already knows that the court simply cannot treat Trump like any other defendant. And so they’re trying to fashion a solution which will nudge the former president to behave slightly better, knowing that a severe restriction is likely to provoke a showdown which will gum up the works for everyone.

In practical effect, this boils down to putting the squeeze on Trump’s lawyers and hoping that they’ll do their best to keep their client in line.

In an earlier round of motions, prosecutors argued for a protective order blocking Trump from disclosing any evidence turned over in discovery. Trump’s lawyers howled that this was a violation of their client’s First Amendment rights, just as they’re doing now. Judge Chutkan wound up imposing a narrower order blocking the disclosure of “sensitive information” such as grand jury transcripts, witness interviews, and personally identifying information. In practical effect, she ordered Trump not to post witness information on Truth Social.

But more than that, she imposed an obligation on Trump’s lawyers to safeguard that information by refusing to let Trump keep copies or take notes on it. And she put the kibosh on Trump’s plans to share that information with “volunteer attorneys or others without paid employment arrangements to assist with the preparation of this case” — a category of people which might include unindicted co-conspirators like Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Trump’s fixer Boris Epshteyn. By placing the onus on Trump’s counsel to control the flow of sensitive information, Judge Chutkan has so far managed to keep Trump from posting it online. Because while no judge wants the chaos that will come from sanctioning Donald Trump for his speech, they’ll happily sanction his lawyers in a heartbeat.

Trump’s desire to postpone his trial provides another lever Judge Chutkan can use to keep him in line. At an August hearing on the parameters of the first protective order, she tacitly warned Trump that the more he potentially poisoned the jury pool, the less inclined she would be to delay the trial.

“Even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they can be reasonably interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the process,” she said. “The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case which could taint the jury pool … the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly.”

Judge Chutkan has scheduled an October 16 hearing on the motion for a gag order. This would not appear to indicate that she views the matter of Trump’s social media posts as particularly urgent. In the meantime, the former president has directed most of his ranting toward Justice Engoron as the New York trial unfolds this week. Perhaps the sheer volume of Trump’s legal woes will keep him out of trouble with judges, if only because every time he gets tempted to do something deeply damaging in one case, he’ll be distracted by proceedings in another.

 

Having said all that, Trump's going to continue to Trump. Whether or not real pain can even be applied to him, well, we'll see.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Again, Trump is deliberately attacking judges, prosecutors, and court officers during his trials in order to drive hatred towards them, but also to play a game of high-stakes chicken where Trump believes he can force judges to take action against him and "prove" the trials -- and the charges against him -- are nothing more than punishment for a corrupt and evil government. He's trying to martyr himself and create a groundswell of support to win in 2024. Tuesday's actions at his civil trial were no exception to this plan.

 

The New York judge presiding over Donald Trump's civil fraud trial on Tuesday issued a gag order after the former president attacked his clerk by name and shared her image on social media.

“Personal attacks on members on my court staff are unacceptable, inappropriate, and I won't tolerate it [in my courtroom],” said New York State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron.

He added later to "consider this a gag order for all parties from posting about any members of my staff."

The judge rebuked the "untrue and personally identifying posts" about a staff member.

“Schumer’s girlfriend, Alison R. Greenfield, is running this case against me. How disgraceful! This case should be dismissed immediately!!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform, along with a picture of the clerk and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

The post appeared to show a photograph of Greenfield standing next to Schumer, without any more context. Fact-checkers note that false rumors about Schumer and infidelity appear to trace their origins to a now-shuttered satirical website.

Engoron didn't mention the former president by name, but the remarks clearly referred to him. The judge said he ordered the post deleted, and it was. Trump deleted his Truth Social post.

 

And as usual, if somebody gets hurt here, it won't of course be Trump. Again, the plan is to force a judge to sanction Trump in order to massively increase the outrage and the violence.

Our system is not set up to handle a criminal like Trump.

Sunday Long Read: Sub-Optimal Outcomes

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes from Vanity Fair's Susan Casey, who takes a look at all the human mistakes, errors, disasters and bad choices that led to the end of OceanGate and the tragic underwater deaths of all aboard the Titan submarine.

 

FATE CLEARED UP the weather, blew off the fog, and calmed the waves, as the submersible and its five passengers dived through the surface waters and fell into another world. They entered the deep ocean's uppermost layer, known as the twilight zone, passing creatures glimmering with bioluminescence, tiny fish with enormous teeth. Then they entered the midnight zone, where larger creatures ghost by like alien moons. Two miles down, they entered the abyssal zone—so named because it's the literal abyss.

Deeper means heavier: pressures of 5,000, then 6,000 pounds per square inch. As it descended, the submersible was gripped in a tightening vise. Maybe they heard a noise then, maybe they heard an alarm.

I hope they watched the abyss with awe through their viewport, because I'd like to think their last sights were magnificent ones.

AS THE WORLD now knows, Stockton Rush touted himself as a maverick, a disrupter, a breaker of rules. So far out on the visionary curve that, for him, safety regulations were mere suggestions, "if you're not breaking things, you're not innovating," he declared at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. "To me, the more stuff you've broken, the more innovative you've been."

In a society that has adopted the ridiculous mantra "move fast and break things," that type of arrogance can get a person far. But in the deep ocean, the price of admission is humility—and it's nonnegotiable. The abyss doesn't care if you went to Princeton, or that your ancestors signed the Declaration of Independence. If you want to go down into her world, she sets the rules.

And her rules are strict, befitting the gravitas of the realm. To descend into the ocean's abyssal zone—the waters from 10,000 to 20,000 feet—is a serious affair, and because of the annihilating pressures, far more challenging than rocketing into space. The subs that dive into this realm (there aren't many) are tested and tested and tested. Every component is checked for flaws in a pressure chamber and checked again—and every step of this process is certified by an independent marine classification society. This assurance of safety is known as "classing" a sub. Deepsea submersibles are constructed of the strongest and most predictable materials, as determined by the laws of physics.

In the abyss, that means passengers typically sit inside a titanium pressure hull, forged into a perfect sphere—the only shape that distributes pressure symmetrically. That means adding crush-resistant syntactic foam around the sphere for buoyancy and protection, to offset the weight of the titanium. That means redundancy upon redundancy, with no single point of failure. It means a safety plan, a rescue plan, an acute situational awareness at all times.

It means respect for the forces in the deep ocean. Which Rush didn't have.

UNFORTUNATELY, June 18, 2023, wasn't the first time I'd heard of Rush, or his company OceanGate, or his monstrosity of a sub. He and the Titan had been a topic of conversation talked about with real fear, on many occasions, by numerous people I met over the course of five years while reporting my book The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean. I heard discussions about the Titan as a tragedy-in-waiting on research ships, during deep-sea expeditions, at marine science conferences. I had my own troubling encounter with OceanGate in 2018 and had been watching it with concern ever since.

Everyone I met in the small, tight-knit world of manned submersibles was aware of the Titan. Everyone watched in disbelief as Rush built a five-person cylindrical pressure hull out of filament-wound carbon fiber, an unpredictable material that is known to fail suddenly and catastrophically under pressure.

It was as though we were watching a horror movie unfold in slow motion, knowing that whatever happened next wouldn't be pretty. But like screaming at the screen, nothing that came out of anyone's mouth made any difference.

 

Every single choice documented here was inevitably going to lead to death and destruction, and et OceanGate and Stockton Rush --and the people around him -- let it happen anyway. So many failure points were passed were any one of them could have shut the farcical show down for good, but that only happened after the tragic end.

 

A man thought he was better than the hard science of diving. He thought the rules didn't apply to him. He was wrong, and people died as a result. 

It wasn't the first time, it turns out.

Prime Time Drama

The Biden Administration is filing an anti-trust suit against Amazon over having monopoly power large enough to "warp the entire internet economy".

 

The Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. government’s primary business regulator, sued Amazon on Tuesday, alleging that the company has used its market power to warp ecommerce across the internet.

The allegations focus on the company’s primary marketplace, Amazon.com, and paint a picture of a company able to use its size and power to pressure sellers to agree to its terms and warp the prices of goods.

“There is immediate harm that is ongoing here,” FTC Chair Lina Khan said at a news conference ahead of the lawsuit announcement. “Sellers are paying one of every $2 to Amazon. Shoppers are paying higher prices as a result, not just on Amazon but across the internet. And the public as a whole has been deprived of the benefits of open and fair and free competition. And so that’s what this case is really about, and those are the harms that we’re looking to fix.”

The FTC made the allegations in an antitrust lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington state, backed by the attorneys general of 17 states, including two Republicans. Amazon is based in Washington state.

The lawsuit is the most aggressive action yet by Khan, a longtime critic of Amazon who was brought in to the FTC by President Joe Biden to reinvigorate the government’s enforcement of competition laws particularly around technology companies.

The FTC alleges that Amazon deters sellers from discounting goods and lowering prices below what is available on Amazon, pushing prices higher across the internet. It also argues that Amazon pushes sellers into its fulfillment services, making it more expensive for sellers to offer their goods elsewhere.

California lodged similar complaints in a lawsuit filed just more than a year ago.

Kahn declined to directly address whether she hoped the suit would lead to a breakup of Amazon into smaller companies, but stressed that it showed Amazon had established an unfair advantage.

“Each element of Amazon’s monopolistic strategy here is working in tandem, and so the cumulative impact of Amazon’s unlawful conduct is greater than the harm caused by any particular element,” she said. “So you have a feedback loop between these different practices in a way that amplifies the overall exclusionary effects.”

In a statement posted to Amazon’s website, David Zapolsky, Amazon's senior vice president for global public policy, said: “The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices, and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon’s store.”

 

Amazon's defense is "Nu-uh, we're helping."

 

By the way, that $89 year of Amazon Prime is now $139, a nearly 50% price hike from just five years ago. On top of everything else, they get you coming and going.

As I've said before, breaking up Amazon, Google, and Meta needs to happen sooner rather than later. Lina Kahn may have lost a few battles, but this is the one she needs to win.

Unionized, Galvanized And Ionized, Con't

Donald Trump went to a non-union auto plant in Michigan on Thursday, with non-union workers on a non-union floor, to demand that actual striking union auto workers support him in 2024 or else.

 

Former president Donald Trump sharpened a stridently nationalist pitch for a general election rematch against President Biden, trading the GOP primary debate stage for a factory floor where he demanded union support for his vision of more aggressive state intervention in industrial policy.

With public surveys consistently showing him with a double-digit lead over his Republican rivals nationally and in early nominating contests, Trump sought to portray the next election as a choice between certain doom for the auto industry or utopian-sounding industrial growth built on trade restrictions, fossil fuels and even expropriation of foreign assets.

“I’m here tonight to lay out a vision for a revival of economic nationalism,” Trump said. “The Wall Street predators, the Chinese cheaters and the corrupt politicians have hurt you. I will make you better. For years, foreign nations have looted and plundered your hopes, your dreams and your heritage, and now they’re going to pay for what they have stolen and what they have done to you, my friends.”

He added: “We’re going to take their money. We’re going to take their factories. We’re going to rebuild the industrial bedrock of this country.”

A campaign spokesman did not immediately clarify what Trump meant by taking “their” money and factories.

Without specifying how, Trump suggested he could restore domestic manufacturing immediately and with a pen stroke.

“A vote for President Trump means the future of the automobile will be made in America,” he said to chants of “USA.”

“It will be fueled by American energy. It will be sourced by American suppliers. It will be sculpted from American iron, aluminum and steel, and it will be built by highly skilled American hands and high wage American labor. We’ll do it first day in office; it’ll be signed out first day in office.”

Trump offered his support to striking members of the United Auto Workers but demanded the union’s official endorsement or else warned of their imminent extinction. He excoriated Biden administration policies encouraging domestic investment in electric vehicles, calling them an existential danger to U.S. manufacturing and describing efforts to limit planet-warming emissions as irreconcilable with auto industry jobs.

“It’s a government assassination of your jobs and of your industry, the auto industry is being assassinated,” he said. “To the striking workers, I support you when you go to fair wages and greater stability. And I truly hope you get a fair deal for yourselves and your families. But if your union leaders will not demand that Crooked Joe repeal his electric vehicle mandate immediately, then it doesn’t matter what hourly wage you get. It just doesn’t make a damn bit of difference because in two to three years you will not have one job in this state.”

A Biden campaign spokesman accused Trump of mischaracterizing the current administration’s policies. “Trump had the United States losing the EV race to China and if he had his way, the jobs of the future would be going to China,” spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.

 

Open threats to auto workers to either join his nationalization of the auto industry or be destroyed. That's the kind of second term Trump wants, and he's making the threats very clear. He has been for months.

 

And still half the country is willing to re-elect him, not in spite of the carnage he'll wreak upon America, but so they can be backing up the bad guys. Penty of our neighbors, co-workers, and family want a healthy chunk of Americans reduced to second-class status so that they believe they can benefit, or at least stay out of the crosshairs for a while.

History of course tells us what happens to those collaborators.

 

 

Orange Meltdown, Con't

New York Judge Arthur Engoron has found Donald Trump liable for years of inflated property values resulting in fraudulent Trump Organization loans in NY AG Tish James's $250 million civil fraud case against Trump.

 

A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.

Judge Arthur Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

Engoron ordered that some of Trump’s business licenses be rescinded as punishment, making it difficult or impossible for them to do business in New York, and said he would continue to have an independent monitor oversee the Trump Organization’s operations.

Trump’s lawyer and spokesperson Alina Habba said they intend to appeal the decision, calling it “an affront to our legal system” and “fundamentally flawed at every level.”

Trump has long insisted he did nothing wrong. His son, Eric, railed against the decision Tuesday in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, calling it “an attempt to destroy my father and kick him out of New York.”

“Today, I lost all faith in the New York legal system,” said Eric Trump, an executive in his father’s company and a defendant in the lawsuit. “Never before have I seen such hatred toward one person by a judge — a coordinated effort with the Attorney General to destroy a man’s life, company and accomplishments.”

The decision, days before the start of a non-jury trial in James’ lawsuit, is the strongest repudiation yet of Trump’s carefully coiffed image as a wealthy and shrewd real estate mogul turned political powerhouse.

Beyond mere bragging about his riches, Trump, his company and key executives repeatedly lied about them on his annual financial statements, reaping rewards such as favorable loan terms and lower insurance costs, Engoron found.

Those tactics crossed a line and violated the law, the judge said, rejecting Trump’s contention that a disclaimer on the financial statements absolved him of any wrongdoing.

“In defendants’ world: rent regulated apartments are worth the same as unregulated apartments; restricted land is worth the same as unrestricted land; restrictions can evaporate into thin air; a disclaimer by one party casting responsibility on another party exonerates the other party’s lies,” Engoron wrote in his 35-page ruling. “That is a fantasy world, not the real world.”

 

Trump is pretty well fucked, innit he? 

Well, he would be if I didn't expect the entire case to be overturned on statutes of limitations issues on appeal, and Trump won't have to pay a dime, but otherwise, he's fucked. If Judge Engoron's ruling holds, the Trump Organization is effectively done in the state of New York.

With Judge Engoron's decision made, we'll see what the NY appellate court now says about the statue of limitations on the fraud charges, possibly as soon as Thursday.

Stay tuned.