Politics & Stuff

[Vesper 30,226]

Making Europe weak again

Joschka Fischer 3rd October 2024

As the US election looms, Europe’s far-right surge threatens its democratic stability and unity amid rising global challenges.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/making-europe-weak-again

People walk toward a banner advertising the European elections outside the European Parliament in Brussels (photo: Alexandros Michailidis/shutterstock.com)

 

After November 5, the world will know whether Americans have turned away from global leadership or decided to maintain it, along with their country’s commitment to longstanding alliances such as NATO. These are the stark alternatives represented by the isolationist Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, respectively. 

But as the world fretfully watches the US election unfold, Europeans, in a sense, have already voted. Recent elections in the two largest European Union member states, France and Germany, were disheartening, to say the least, resulting in significant gains for the anti-Western, anti-European far right. 

Although the far right was denied an outright parliamentary majority in both countries, its gains were too substantial to be ignored. Looking ahead, it will be more difficult in either country to form a stable majority of democratic forces, and thus easier for the far right eventually to gain power through electoral channels. 

In France, after the political centre’s demoralising defeat in the June European elections, President Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly dissolved the National Assembly and called a snap election. But far from clarifying matters, this resulted in a hung parliament. Although an alliance of left-wing parties won the most seats, they fell far short of securing a majority. 

For his part, Macron refused to cooperate with either the far left or with Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, which had won the most seats in the European elections. With little other choice, he appointed a prime minister from the ranks of the Gaullist center-right Republicans, which has shrunk to a minor party in parliament. His choice, Michel Barnier, previously led the EU’s Brexit negotiations with the United Kingdom, and is seen as a steady hand. But, in fact, Macron has opened the door to indirect government participation by National Rally, by dint of Macron’s dependence on the party’s tacit support for Barnier. 

A similar situation now looms in Germany, where state elections in Thuringia and Saxony also failed to produce majorities in the center. As a result, the only way to keep the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) out of state government is to include the newly formed Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a pro-Russia party whose main goal is to end the war in Ukraine by pursuing “peace” on Vladimir Putin’s terms. 

Notwithstanding the centre-left Social Democratic Party’s narrow victory in Brandenburg, Germany’s recent state elections bode ill for the federal elections next September. For now, the weakness of the democratic centre in both France and Germany could effectively give Putin a seat at the cabinet table in both countries. 

Of course, politically, France and Germany are not Hungary or Slovakia. But nor are Hungary and Slovakia as central to the future of the EU as France and Germany are. If the French and Germans falter because they cannot form a majority government of the center, the broader EU is almost certain to stagnate and become paralyzed in the face of Putin’s war of conquest. Worse, in a rapidly changing world order that is increasingly defined by great-power rivalries, Europe would effectively be pushed off the global stage. 

In other words, Europe faces a triple threat – one that came into sharper focus following this year’s elections. Its democratic order is threatened by nationalism from within, violent revisionism from without, and the potential return of an American president who holds NATO (and the security it has delivered) in contempt. 

Nationalism has been resurgent across Europe for at least a decade, having delivered its first big, dangerous result with the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016. But the consequences of this revival continue to shock wherever they emerge. The significance of the far right making strong electoral gains in Germany cannot be overstated. Such developments are and will remain deeply debilitating for the EU as it navigates an increasingly challenging geopolitical environment. 

A Europe that remains ideologically beholden to the era of nation-states will not be able to pursue further integration, which is necessary for preserving its sovereignty in today’s world. Nor will it be able to devise effective, coherent policies to manage issues such as immigration, even though Europe needs newcomers to address its demographic crisis. If Europeans continue to support neo-nationalist parties, they will undermine themselves. 

Europe’s only chance in today’s dangerous world is to show strength through unity. The stronger that nationalist forces become, the weaker Europe will be.

[Fernando 6,585]

1 hour ago, NikkiCFC said:

Israel has the right to defend themselves. Yes, civilian casualties are very unfortunate and sad but it happens in all wars and on all sides. I wish they are more careful with that but flip flop terrorists hiding behind civilians doesn't help. 

Israel is first line of defense for Europe. They are fighting for whole continent indirectly. Didn't see much being done after all those attacks in Paris, Belgium, London, Manchester... Even people of Lebanon and Syria and region should be thanking Isreal and in grand scheme of things they will because Israel will liberate them and give them a chance for fresh start without these organizations running their countries. In fact, intellectual and democratic people there already know who their real enemy is. I feel such a awe for Isreal and Jewish people. There, I said it. Unpopular opinion but I'm sure future president of USA has exactly the same one. 

I think that is the issue, there is no easy way to resolved the issue with the terrorism all around Israel. 

It kind of of reminds me of the human rights criticize Bukele because how he handle the gangs in el Salvador.....

Now not to say Israel is a saint because it's not, they done some bad stuff, but the world does not do much. 

Again similar to Russia, all they do is talk and nothing is done. In el Salvador was nothing but talk but someone had to come in and do the dirty work. 

With Russia is all talk and no one is stepping in. 

With Israel is all talk and no one is stepping in and dealing with the situation. 

This world is all just talk and nothing else. No one takes a stand to do any really good. 

[Vesper 30,226]

 

[Vesper 30,226]

3 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

Israel will liberate them

Yes, liberate them from their land.

Pro tip:

If you don’t want to be attacked, don't illegally take people's land.

Israel is not Europe's first line of defence, they are a systemic controller-contrived entity that puts much of Europe under the cosh with their zio fascist actions.

And fuck the USA for being the zio's bitch.

I have zero love for murderous Islamic terrorists and their religion is arguably the worst on the planet, but Israel is every bit as much to blame as the other side.

One of the most ludicrous statements I have ever heard in international relations is when the Zionists and their bought and paid for American shills say that Israel is the US's greatest ally.

Israel and it's hyper Zionist diaspera has, since day one, committed, against the US, olympian level industrial espionage and intellectual property theft, systemic bankster manipulation at a myriad number of levels, blackmail, spying, selling out US assets, etc etc, all the while bleeding the US for hundreds of billions of dollars and putting the yanks in geo-military and  geo-economic  jeopardy over and over and over again. 

With 'allies' like the zio-fascists, who needs enemies?

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

5 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

Israel has the right to defend themselves.

As do Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen,  and Palestinians - all attacked and massacred with US weapons supplied to Israel. Hezbollah is a resistance movement set up after Israel invaded in 2006 and after they massacred women and children in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. Similarly Hamas after massacres in Gaza. Hamas enabled and funded by israel to split the Palestinians from the PA.

3 hours ago, Fernando said:

Israel is first line of defense for Europe.

They are the instigator of state terror, backed by US and European governments that results in blowback to Europes capitals

 

5 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

I feel such a awe for Isreal and Jewish people.

Dont be influenced by their apparent 'rainbow culture' and empathy for gay people -  every European ultra right wing parties that are racist and homophobic have financial and economic links with Israels government.

Israel must tread carefully in its ties to Europe's far-right gov'ts - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)

Israeli Pivot Toward European Far Right Pushed by Likud Lawmaker - Israel News - Haaretz.com

[robsblubot 3,595]

11 hours ago, cosmicway said:

In addition if you tax the rich companies will close down.
How do you mean to separate viability of industries from "taxing the rich" ?

You've been discussing taxes in the previous page, which is only part of how companies, and the rich, avoid cost. The largest company both pay little to no taxes, especially local taxes, and the worst offenders do not really pay the cost of their business. Oil companies are notorious in that as they will get bailed out on oil spills.
They are free market capitalists when the business is lucrative, but are socialists when it is not.

7 hours ago, NikkiCFC said:

Israel has the right to defend themselves. Yes, civilian casualties are very unfortunate and sad but it happens in all wars and on all sides. I wish they are more careful with that but flip flop terrorists hiding behind civilians doesn't help. 

Israel is first line of defense for Europe. They are fighting for whole continent indirectly. Didn't see much being done after all those attacks in Paris, Belgium, London, Manchester... Even people of Lebanon and Syria and region should be thanking Isreal and in grand scheme of things they will because Israel will liberate them and give them a chance for fresh start without these organizations running their countries. In fact, intellectual and democratic people there already know who their real enemy is. I feel such a awe for Isreal and Jewish people. There, I said it. Unpopular opinion but I'm sure future president of USA has exactly the same one. 

Couldn't agree more. Israel represents western values; women and men are more equal (women even join the military for ex).
The geopolitical aspect of the conflict is very important for the US.
There is no justification for the Hamas' attack on civilians, so any high ground they may have enjoyed, as underdogs, goes down the drain after that for me.

The very long history of that land makes the whole thing even more complicated. Social media has a bias towards the underdog and simple strong arguments; complex nuanced ideas are not liked by the algorithms.
 

[robsblubot 3,595]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/opinion/yuval-harari-ai-democracy.html

"Democracy is a conversation. Its function and survival depend on the available information technology. For most of history, no technology existed for holding large-scale conversations among millions of people. In the premodern world, democracies existed only in small city-states like Rome and Athens, or in even smaller tribes. Once a polity grew large, the democratic conversation collapsed, and authoritarianism remained the only alternative.

Large-scale democracies became feasible only after the rise of modern information technologies like the newspaper, the telegraph and the radio. The fact that modern democracy has been built on top of modern information technologies means that any major change in the underlying technology is likely to result in a political upheaval.

This partly explains the current worldwide crisis of democracy. In the United States, Democrats and Republicans can hardly agree on even the most basic facts, such as who won the 2020 presidential election. A similar breakdown is happening in numerous other democracies around the world, from Brazil to Israel and from France to the Philippines.

In the early days of the internet and social media, tech enthusiasts promised they would spread truth, topple tyrants and ensure the universal triumph of liberty. So far, they seem to have had the opposite effect. We now have the most sophisticated information technology in history, but we are losing the ability to talk with one another, and even more so the ability to listen." Yuval Noah Harari

[Fernando 6,585]

3 hours ago, Fulham Broadway said:

As do Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen,  and Palestinians - all attacked and massacred with US weapons supplied to Israel. Hezbollah is a resistance movement set up after Israel invaded in 2006 and after they massacred women and children in Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. Similarly Hamas after massacres in Gaza. Hamas enabled and funded by israel to split the Palestinians from the PA.

They are the instigator of state terror, backed by US and European governments that results in blowback to Europes capitals

 

Dont be influenced by their apparent 'rainbow culture' and empathy for gay people -  every European ultra right wing parties that are racist and homophobic have financial and economic links with Israels government.

Israel must tread carefully in its ties to Europe's far-right gov'ts - The Jerusalem Post (jpost.com)

Israeli Pivot Toward European Far Right Pushed by Likud Lawmaker - Israel News - Haaretz.com

Hezbollah is a resistance group?

You lost me there. 

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

5 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Hezbollah is a resistance group?

You lost me there. 

Founded after Shatila and sabra massacres

Hezbollah - Wikipedia

[robsblubot 3,595]

34 minutes ago, Fernando said:

Hezbollah is a resistance group?

You lost me there. 

Every military on earth is called "defense" (defense spending), so "resistance" is just an additional step. 😉 

Edited October 3, 2024 by robsblubot

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

Alistening device was found in Boris Johnson’s personal bathroom at the Foreign Office after it had been used by Benjamin Netanyahu, the former Prime Minister has claimed.

Mr Johnson has alleged that when the Israeli Prime Minister visited his department , his security team found bugging devices in the toilets after he had used the facilities. 

Around the same time, Israel was accused of planting listening devices in the White House.

According to US officials, Washington concluded that Israel was likely behind the placement of cellphone surveillance devices that were found near the White House and other sensitive locations around the capital.

Reuters

[Vesper 30,226]

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2024-10-03-good-to-be-king-harrington-abrahamian-review/

This article appears in the October 2024 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.

Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism

By Brooke Harrington

Norton

---

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World

By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

Riverhead

 

The greatest observers of how money influences people and corrupts institutions are not, as a general rule, those who possess it. They are instead those who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald recognized a century ago, live and work in close proximity to them. This is the insight that both inspires and informs sociologist Brooke Harrington’s trenchant new book Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism.

Harrington grew up in the extremely monied Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, a place so familiar to Fitzgerald he drew on it when writing The Great Gatsby. But even though she attended the same public school as the heirs to great American fortunes, Harrington comes from the wannabe class, with a working mom, a dad whose attempts to make a fortune eventually only earned him a term in jail, and a sister so severely disabled that the family was forced to rely on state funds to get by financially. The cognitive dissonance must have been overwhelming.

In the manner of bright and somewhat neglected children, Harrington intellectualized this conflict. She studies the stealth-like ways of the richest among us, first to survive attending school with these young scions, and then in adulthood as a sociologist researching the impact of inequality.

This, in turn, leads her to the extremely opaque area of offshore finance, a world that encompasses everything from anonymous Delaware corporations to “peripheral fiscal paradises” like the Cook Islands, Panama, and the Bahamas, where a not unsubstantial part of the economy consists of “helping wealthy foreigners break their own countries’ laws.” Economist Gabriel Zucman estimates total offshore wealth accounts for 10 percent of global GDP and that this institutionalized tax evasion is costing $200 billion in global revenue annually.

Needless to say, it’s an area where scholarly study is desperately needed. Everyone from Russian oligarchs to Third World dictators takes advantage of the ever-growing, secretive financial world of anonymous shell companies and arcane interpretations of murky laws. A rogues’ gallery of governments and lawyers and accountants assist the globe’s wealthiest men and women as they hide their money—from not just the taxman, but also political and business rivals, not to mention the occasional ex-spouse.

Harrington quickly and unsurprisingly runs into brick walls attempting to learn more about this secretive system of wealth, until she recalls something she first noted about the rich families she encountered as a child: They rarely do anything for themselves. They need help, even with something as mundane as changing a light bulb. (This is literally true. Harrington tells us she went to summer camp with a chewing gum heiress whose parents were unable to perform this basic life task.) The same is the case when it comes to something as significant as managing and investing money. So Harrington gets credentialed in wealth management, specializing in her target, offshore finance. She’ll study the rich by studying their financial consiglieres and enablers.

As an academic, Harrington is granted no access. As a peer, even though she isn’t working in wealth management and informs everyone she is doing academic fieldwork, she’s viewed as not just an equal, but someone with whom secrets can be shared. In sociological terms, she performs immersive fieldwork, gaining the trust of wealth managers so she can reveal this world to the rest of us.

While conducting fieldwork research in this system, the rationalizations she hears are endless. Offshore finance was pitched to newly independent nations after World War II as a way of financially prospering while sticking it to their former masters. Call it a form of “postcolonial resistance.” Many—though not all!—of the wealth managers enabling offshore finance deny the gravity of what they are doing. “Most of what we do is paperwork,” one such financial factotum tells Harrington, but that’s yet another bit of excuse-making. It’s not just paperwork, any more than Hannibal Lecter is simply an expert in adventurous dining.

Abrahamian’s concern is the growth of what she describes as the extraterritorial state—a place where the rules don’t apply.

Instead, these occasionally conflicted but often boastful men (they are not infrequently men) are inadvertently facilitating the destruction of fair and just economies, not to mention political systems, around the globe. A number identify more with their über-wealthy clients. “Social democracy,” one sniffs, “is creating too big demands on the wealth creators.” The resulting missing money (at least from public coffers) is no small part of the ongoing collapse of both our public services and political culture. Democracy, as a rule, decreases as wealth inequality rises. It distorts the economics of day-to-day life as well. Anonymous money has sent the value of everything from fine art to real estate skyrocketing, as the wealthy shelter money in alternative assets and in pied-à-terre condos in cities like New York and London.

While the rich obviously benefit immensely, it doesn’t really help the residents of the assorted global tax havens. The inflow of cash rarely trickles down to them. Instead, many continue to live in poverty and near-poverty, even as the open contempt for the tax laws of other nations leads to an increase in contempt for the laws of their own, and everything from petty corruption to violent crime soars. A fisherman in the Cook Islands tells Harrington, “Everyone calls us the Crook Islands now,” while Panama City, another favored destination, at one point had one of the highest murder rates in the world.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. The term “offshore” itself is something of a misnomer. The United States is the premier destination for those who would hide money, courtesy of some of our national virtues: regulatory laxness and, bluntly, legalized corruption. Why bother with the Bahamas if a black-box Delaware corporation will do?

Here in the U.S., these rich evading Uncle Sam probably increase the taxes the rest of us pay by at least 15 percent, even as we are still routinely told “we can’t afford” for the government to do everything from spending on mass transit to offering paid maternity leave. White-collar crime is common, while prosecutions for it are less so. A recent investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists revealed that even though the IRS has had explicit authority since 2010 to go after offshore maneuvers undertaken to avoid taxes, it rarely took action until recently, seemingly as a result of a combination of BigLaw lobbying and agency employees being aware that their greatest chance at riches was to take advantage of the revolving door and go work for the firms doing their darndest to cheat the American public.

This secrecy is corrosive in another way too. The same laws and financial investment techniques that enable tax dodging are also in no small part responsible for the flood of dark money into our politics. It is yet another reason why we’ve got the best government money can buy—for the monied elite, that is. A study conducted a decade ago by Martin Gilens, then at Princeton University, and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University found that American government actions and policies are much more responsive to the sentiments of the wealthy than the majority. The anti-democratic thrust of offshore finance offers up a reason why.

The Cook Islands is one of the new independent territories after World War II that turned to offshore finance to prosper.

Offshore is not Harrington’s first book on the topic—that would be 2016’s Capital Without Borders: Wealth Managers and the One Percent—but her latest benefits from almost a decade’s worth of knowledge and events. Donald Trump’s election to the White House led many to ponder how much of his wealth came not from smart investing strategies but by turning his eponymously named real estate residential towers into a parking lot for Russian oligarchs’ prodigious wealth. Leaks like the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers also revealed to the public in excruciating detail how everyone from Queen Elizabeth to high-ranking elected officials hid their funds in complicated offshore financial arrangements. We know a lot more than we used to about the consequences of offshore finance, and Harrington has more secrets to tell. But it’s still not enough.

The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World, by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian, is another attempt to unravel this secretive space, albeit from a different vantage point. Abrahamian’s concern is the growth of what she describes as the extraterritorial state—a place where, in significant ways, it can be said the rules don’t apply, at least not the way one would think they should. This world encompasses the world of offshore money that is Harrington’s concern, but it is bigger than that. Whether a person or nation wants to get around money-laundering laws, the taxman, environmental or labor regulations, or rules governing asylum requests, there is a geographical place where it can happen.

As Abrahamian explores Swiss banking laws, fine art storage, factories on the African island nation of Mauritius where workers earn a fraction of what they would in developed countries, or Australia’s penchant for stashing migrants offshore so it doesn’t need to consider possibly legitimate claims for asylum, it’s hard not to suspect all this is an extralegal version of “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” but with much more consequence.

These books are, in many ways, mirror images of one another. Harrington’s book is short—a mere 120 pages—and can be read in one sitting. Abrahamian’s is more discursive and reads like a series of connected magazine articles. I wished Harrington’s book was longer, while Abrahamian’s, overflowing with descriptions and histories, could have benefited from an editor with a more merciless red pen. Neither, unfortunately, spends much time parsing the world of cryptocurrency, though the “currency”—note the quote marks—opens up new frontiers in cash laundering, tax avoidance, and incentivizing criminal behavior.

Abrahamian echoes many of Harrington’s critiques, pointing to the inequality endemic to these places. (The lack of labor rights enforcement in Mauritius? A feature, not a bug.) But she also believes they’ve existed for hundreds of years for a reason: They serve to reconcile the competing imperatives of nationalism and globalism. These two competing views lead to something of a cop-out at the end of her book: a declaration that they cannot be viewed as “all good, or all evil” and instead offer us an alternative way of viewing our world and how it came to be. All true, but given some of the financial human horrors described in the book, a sterner conclusion is called for.

Harrington is tougher. She concludes her book by making the commonsense suggestion that we need not just a return to shame culture—make cash laundering and tax dodging embarrassing again!—but also more enforcement. Returning to her childhood, and the insight that started her curiosity about wealth managers, she calls for governments to make it partially or fully illegal for licensed professionals to assist the rich in shielding their money in offshore vehicles.

This stuff is enormously complicated. It requires knowledge of not just finance, but laws in multiple jurisdictions. Few billionaires have the wherewithal to comprehend it without the aid of trusted and discreet experts. But a salaryman, no matter how well paid or well credentialed, is still just the staff. We will never, to riff off F. Scott Fitzgerald, be able to fully stop the wealthy from smashing things up and wanting to retreat back into a world cushioned by their money. But we sure can make it harder for them to find enablers to smooth their path to doing just that.

Edited October 4, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,226]

https://prospect.org/power/2024-10-02-conyers-biolab-explosion-private-equity/

Smoke billows from a fire at the BioLab facility in Conyers, Georgia, on September 29, 2024.

 

While attention has rightly been paid to the devastation of western North Carolina and other areas in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, a non-natural disaster in the Southeast that appears to be unrelated to the storm transpired simultaneously. Over the weekend, a chemical plant in Conyers, Georgia, exploded in a massive warzone-level blast. Billowing clouds of smoke could be seen from miles away. The nearby stretch of the I-20 highway shut down, 17,000 residents have been evacuated, and another 90,000 have been ordered to shelter in place. That order was reimposed Tuesday morning after briefly lifting, when a weather change blew the toxic clouds back over a populated area.

There are conflicting indications from authorities about safety and air quality. According to local reporting, residents are already exhibiting symptoms such as shortness of breath, lung tightness, coughing, and eye irritation. A law firm is investigating the matter and offering free consultations with affected residents, advising a local news site that victims “may be entitled to compensation.”

But will the company that owns the plant have any cash left over for the victims of its negligence? A cursory look at its capital structure raises doubts.

More from Maureen Tkacik | Luke Goldstein

The explosion came from a facility owned by the swimming pool and spa water treatment manufacturer BioLab, Inc., which itself is owned by the private equity firm Centerbridge Partners. The plant has a long recent history of explosions, fires, and workplace safety violations. Four years ago, a similar explosion at another plant in Georgia subsumed the vicinity in a chlorine vapor cloud, just one month after a major fire at a BioLab plant in Louisiana triggered a nationwide shortage of pool products.

After the most recent BioLab fire earlier this summer in Westlake, Louisiana, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board found the company responsible for negligence and five separate safety violations that led to the fire. BioLab was fined a measly $2,500, paid to local authorities, for the disruption caused by a separate shelter-in-place.

Despite these repeated accidents, the Rockdale County economic development authority in Conyers paid the company an undisclosed amount in tax breaks for an expansion of the BioLab site in 2019.

BioLab is saying it took all proper precautions leading up to the explosion this weekend. In a statement to the Prospect, a spokesperson said, “Over the years, our company has been rigorous about actioning enhancements to our facilities, policies, and practices … We also conduct periodic tests and evaluations of our fire protection systems based on industry standards, as well as walk-throughs with the local Fire Department.”

But how all these incidents keep stacking up raises further questions. BioLab’s private equity owners also have a long recent history of extracting enormous dividends from the business, financed not by the company’s profits but by multibillion-dollar debt issuances and the recent sale of a partner company that manufactures automotive products.

Translated into plain English, this means that if the explosion totals BioLab’s chlorine plant and forces the company into bankruptcy, unsecured creditors will likely get nothing.

Just two and a half months ago, the parent company, KIK, owned by Centerbridge, announced it would be selling BioLab’s sister company, which makes Prestone-branded antifreeze, among other automotive products, to the chemical conglomerate Recochem for $850 million. A credit rating report on the transaction said that Centerbridge would be using the proceeds of the sale to pay investors “sizable dividends” and “modestly reduce its balance sheet debt,” adding that the transaction would significantly “elevate” BioLab’s indebtedness to 8.4 times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Based on the S&P Global ratings analysis, it appears that the $850 million sale was almost entirely pocketed by investors through the accompanying dividend.

That marked the third or fourth time since BioLab’s twin explosions in 2020 that Centerbridge had ratcheted up the company’s debt load to line its own pockets. In December 2020, BioLab floated a $775 million term loan to finance a dividend, and then the following month it returned to the market to float an even bigger loan. In December 2021, it floated another $170 million in “add-on” term loan debt, and then in June it launched still another $925 million loan sale to finance a dividend.

The BioLab bonanza is part of a broader—and quite dangerous—industry trend. Dividend recapitalizations, in which private equity–owned companies issue debt to finance payouts, are back in a big way, and on track to surge past the record level set in 2021. Centerbridge has cashed in mightily on this trend. The firm just last month pocketed more than $250 million on a dividend recap of a home health agency it co-owns.

What’s truly alarming about this trend is that interest rates have been about 500 basis points higher than they were during the last dividend recap bonanza, meaning the price that workers, customers, and stakeholders of these companies must shoulder to service the debt resulting from these transactions is substantially higher—as is the risk that they will push companies into bankruptcy.

On the occasion of BioLab’s last monster dividend in June, the credit rating agency S&P Global estimated that the parent company would still generate enough profit to make its interest payments, but it hedged that confidence with an astonishing admission: It was grading the unsecured debt at a “recovery rating” of “6,” denoting “negligible (0%-10%; rounded estimate: 0%) recovery in the event of a default.” Translated into plain English, this means that if the explosion totals BioLab’s chlorine plant and forces the company into bankruptcy, unsecured creditors will likely get nothing. That includes the company’s pension funds and any contractors, staffing agencies, or suppliers to whom BioLab owes money—as well as anyone who tries to sue BioLab for the harms, environmental or otherwise, caused by its series of toxic infernos.

Somewhat ironically, Centerbridge founder Mark Gallogly, a Democratic mega-donor who has contributed millions of dollars to Democratic politicians and committees over the years, is married to an environmental scientist and identifies as a “climate activist.” The couple has given well over $800,000 to Democrats this election cycle. Just a few months ago, Gallogly even went on CNBC to beseech viewers to vote for Joe Biden because of climate change. (Gallogly retired as managing principal of Centerbridge in 2020 but still owns a chunk of the company.)

Centerbridge did not respond to a request for comment from the Prospect.

Poisoning communities with toxic negligence and then using bankruptcy discharges to get out of paying for it is such a common private equity playbook at this point, Gallogly probably doesn’t see the contradiction. After all, Biden BFF David Rubenstein’s Carlyle Group left a far bigger environmental disaster when a Philadelphia oil refinery it owned blew up in 2019 after Carlyle siphoned at least $600 million in dividends from the dilapidated facility, then abandoned it altogether in bankruptcy the year earlier. (That cleanup is projected to cost well over a billion dollars, with most of it shouldered one way or another by taxpayers; the refinery also owed the Environmental Protection Agency hundreds of millions of dollars when it filed for bankruptcy.)

In a similar saga two years ago involving a sterilization plant just 26 miles away from BioLab’s pool products factory, the company Sterigenics, co-owned by the private equity firm helmed by former Obama administration Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, knowingly exposed local residents of the area surrounding its facilities in Georgia and Illinois to carcinogenic emissions, all while issuing billions of dollars in debt to pay dividends to investors, according to published reports. While Sterigenics has yet to file for bankruptcy protection, it used the threat of it to settle lawsuits with more than 870 residents who had been sickened by its toxic fumes for about $400 million, a fairly paltry sum given evidence assembled by the EPA that residents of the contaminated areas developed cancer at a rate nine times the national average.

This bankruptcy play is a familiar strategy that Centerbridge could very well turn to, if lawsuits and federal fines cause their chemical cash cow to go up into financial flames.

Edited October 4, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,226]

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-10-02-who-are-the-undecided/

Former President Donald Trump gestures at a campaign event at Dane Manufacturing, October 1, 2024, in Waunakee, Wisconsin.

 

That thing some call the “discourse” has turned, as we swing into the final month of the 2024 presidential election, to the mystery of undecided voters. Potentates of the political press say that’s why Kamala Harris has to talk more about “issues” in interviews with other potentates of the political press. Or else how in the world are undecided voters going to decide who to vote for in five weeks?

That inspires me to return to the most important piece of political journalism I have ever encountered. It came out in 2004 on the website of The New Republic. I was so impressed by it, in fact, that I sought out its author. It turned out he lived in the same city as me, Chicago, scratching out a living as a freelance lefty writer and doing a little theater with his wife Kate. His name was Christopher Hayes, and it has been a joy watching his career flourish ever since.

The future MSNBC host’s TNR piece was an account of the lessons he learned canvassing among undecided voters in Wisconsin for John Kerry. It incinerates a basic foundation of how political junkies think: “Perhaps the greatest myth about undecided voters is that they are undecided because of the ‘issues.’ That is, while they might favor Kerry on the economy, they favor Bush on terrorism; or while they are anti-gay marriage, they also support social welfare programs.”

Chris noted that while there were a few people he talked to like that, “such cases were exceedingly rare. More often than not, when I asked undecided voters what issues they would pay attention to as they made up their minds I was met with a blank stare, as if I’d just asked them to name their favorite prime number … the very concept of the ‘issue’ seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to.”

You would think others among the veritable armadas of mainstream journalists reporting out what undecided voters think would have met with such blank stares themselves. It is a testament to how bad framing narratives and rigid, ossified genre conventions distort perception so much that no mainstream journalist ever admits such a thing. Instead, they ram voters’ responses into their false frame, square-peg-in-round-hole style. They let objective reality take the hindmost.

But back to the Badger State in 2004.

Hayes: “I tried other ways of asking the same question: ‘Anything of particular concern to you? Are you anxious or worried about anything? Are you excited about what’s been happening in the country in the last four years?’”

But those questions harvested “bewilderment” too. “As far as I could tell, the problem wasn’t the word ‘issue’ … The undecideds I spoke to didn’t seem to have any intuitive grasp of what kinds of grievances qualify as political grievances.”

That’s the part that stuck with me word for word, almost two decades on. Some mentioned they were vexed by rising health care costs. “When I would tell them that Kerry had a plan to lower health-care premiums, they would respond in disbelief … as if you were telling them that Kerry was promising to extend summer into December.”

You would think these experimental results might be easily repeated, any time a journalist canvasses undecided voters. After a few times, you might think journalists might have adjusted how they conceptualize voters, as something besides bundles of issue opinions.

Nevertheless, they persisted.

CNN, September 18: “Harris isn’t giving the specifics some undecided voters say they want.” Multiple that a gajillion-fold, in the way gajillions of marine invertebrates make a coral reef, and you have the structure of agenda-setting in elite political journalism’s discourse about undecided voters and “issues.” Unless Chris Hayes is a very good liar, it bears little resemblance to reality. So what’s going on here, and how could things be better?

ALLOW ME AN ABRUPT TRANSITION. A few weeks back, I spoke to a group of graduate students at the City University of New York’s Newmark School of Journalism. I tried to impress upon them two takeaways.

The first is that mainstream journalism’s rigid genre conventions—granting equal weight to “both sides,” passing on what both say without “editorializing” as to the truth value of the claim, let alone explaining how one side intentionally and skillfully exploits those norms to direct more attention to the lie than to the truth—may have evolved with the intent of delivering maximal fairness and accuracy. But in the here and now, they utterly fail to convey reality. I invited them to imagine themselves as historians 75 years hence, reading, say, front-page articles from The New York Times in 2016. They might conclude that Hillary Clinton was equally as corrupt as Donald Trump, or even more corrupt. Reading newspapers from 2022, they’d suspect that Americans were suffering Weimar-like inflation. Or from this year, when they’d suspect an explosion of violent crime, when crime actually is down.

Or they might conclude that in October of 2024, Kamala Harris lost favor among millions of undecided voters because, after “promising to crack down on supposed price gouging by supermarkets … she skipped over the issue preoccupying millions of Americans in her Tuesday interview in Philadelphia and pivoted to another message.”

Then, digging deep into the sources, they may argue that the picture newspapers conveyed was about as accurate as that served to Soviet citizens by the state newspaper Pravda.

“The very concept of the ‘issue’ seemed to be almost completely alien to most of the undecided voters I spoke to.”

My second point to the students is that journalistic norms are not a suicide pact.

If the authoritarians in control of the Republican Party achieve enough power, they will start methodically knocking off liberal institutions, including politically independent journalism. I told them that I do not envy them, because their generation of journalists faces the staggering burden of reconceptualizing their profession’s inherited rules for delivering fairness and accuracy. Not to do journalism in a way that helps Trump lose, but to do it in a way that lets news consumers accurately grasp this election’s stakes.

Because if they do not, and the #bothsides norms now in place survive unchanged, they might be the last generation of politically independent journalists.

THIS BUSINESS OF “UNDECIDED VOTERS” is a perfect case study. Who are they, and how do they actually decide—if not, that is, by paying attention to issues? I have a theory about that for this particular election, and also the ones in 2016 and 2020, though not knowing any, nor having talked to any, I can only call it a hypothesis. My analysis starts with an astonishing fragment from Donald Trump’s acceptance speech this past summer.

It was the part after he said, “I don’t have wars,” that he stops them “with just a telephone call.” He promised, “We will replenish our military and build an Iron Dome missile defense system to ensure that no enemy can strike our homeland,” that it would be “built entirely in the U.S.,” and would be just like the one in Israel (“Three hundred forty-two missiles were shot into Israel, and only one got through a little bit”), or the one Ronald Reagan proposed “many years ago, but we really didn’t have the technology many years ago.”

Barely any media people mentioned it; no fact-checks from The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, PBS, nor all three broadcast networks—which was when I stopped looking—thought to debunk it. I suppose because “Iron Dome or no Iron Dome” wasn’t on their bingo card of “issues.” Though I did hear some make fun of what had come next, when Trump, unprompted, said, “Remember, they called Starship, Spaceship? Anything to mock him.”

And it’s true. Every one of Reagan’s expert advisers who wasn’t a kook told him his dream was impossible, so he announced it in a speech without telling them he was going to. $50 billion (in 1980s dollars) was wasted in research; and it was still impossible, as it is still impossible now. Nonetheless, the Soviet Union was so terrified by the speech that it was one of the reasons they put their nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert, leading to a series of misunderstandings that almost ended the world. So when it came to evaluating the proposal on objective terms, the “Strategic Defense Initiative” (its official name) only deserved to be mocked. So, they mocked.

But Mr. Trump: They mocked it by calling it “Star Wars,” not “Starship” or “Spaceship,” you idiot.

But who was the idiot? The next year, despite an endless train of similar idiocies, Reagan won 49 states. How many of his 54,455,472 voters, it would be interesting to be able to know, were undecided between him and Walter Mondale before they heard this stern national father promise a magic shield covering every inch of the skies above our nation that could protect us from evil?

See what I’m saying? Objectively, Trump’s “Iron Dome” deserves nothing but mockery. Israel’s Iron Dome protects a nation of some 8,630 square miles (not counting illegally occupied territory) from rockets that can’t be targeted but are just hurled toward a general vicinity, with explosives made of sugar and fertilizer. Trump’s Iron Dome would have to protect a nation of 3,809,525 square miles from the most sophisticated guided projectiles on Earth, holding 15 thermonuclear warheads with a total yield of approximately 3,000 times the force of the bomb that flattened Hiroshima in 1945.

Objectively speaking, worth nothing but mockery. But subjectively: Why did Trump promise to “build an Iron Dome over our country”? To be sure that “nothing can come and harm our people … It’s America first, America first.”

Millions of pages have been filled by scholars explaining the psychological appeal of fascism, most converging on the blunt fact that it offers the fantasy of reversion to an infantile state, where nothing can come and harm you, because you will be protected by an all-powerful figure who will always put you first, always put you first. It is simply indisputable that this promise can seduce and transform even intelligent, apparently mature, kind-hearted people formerly committed to liberal politics. I’ve written before in this column about the extraordinary film The Brainwashing of My Dad, in which director Jen Senko describes the transformation of her Kennedy-liberal dad under the influence of right-wing talk radio and Fox News—and also how, after she explained the premise of her film for a Kickstarter campaign, scores of people came out of the woodwork to share similar stories about their own family members.

Might not these impairments render Trump a better fascist seducer, as his invitations to infantile regression become ever more primal, ever more basic, ever more pure?

I’ve learned a lot about the psychological dynamics at work from the X feed of a psychologist named Julie Hotard, who drills down on the techniques Fox uses to trigger infantilization in viewers. The people at Fox who devise these scripts, one imagines, are pretty sophisticated people. Trump’s gift is to be able to grunt out the same stuff just from his gut. Trump’s appeals have become noticeably more infantile in precisely this way. When he addresses women voters, for instance: “I am your protector. I want to be your protector … You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger …”

Or when he grunts the other side of the infantilizing promise: that he will be your vengeance. His promise to destroy anything placing you in danger. Like when he recently pledged to respond to “one really violent day” by meeting criminals with “one rough hour—and I mean real rough. The world will get out and it will end immediately.”

Or when he posted the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel (“O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls”) illustrated by a 17th-century painting of said saint curb-stomping a defeated devil, about to run a sword through his head.

Even on the liberal-left, many interpret the way Trump seems even more to be going off the rails these last weeks as a self-defeating lack of control, or as a symptom of cognitive impairment. They almost seem to celebrate it. The New Republic’s email newsletter, which I cannot stand, is full of such therapeutic clickbaity headlines canvassing the same examples I talk about here: “Trump Proposes Stunningly Stupid Idea for Public Safety”; “Ex-Aide Says Trump’s ‘Creepy’ Message to Women Shows He’s Out of Touch”; “Trump Appears to Have Lost a Total Grasp on Things.”

I certainly don’t disagree that Trump is becoming more cognitively impaired and out of touch with reality. But might not these impairments render him a better fascist seducer, as his invitations to infantile regression become ever more primal, ever more basic, ever more pure?

Thus, finally, my hypothesis about undecided voters.

I imagine that what at least some of them—certainly more than those supposedly entering the two candidates’ issue positions onto spreadsheets to study, ruling out the candidate not “specific” enough about their fiscal policies—are undecided because they are poised at a threshold. “Undecided” is a way station between the final surrender to the Trumpian fantasy, and all the imaginary comforts it offers, and sticking with the rest of us in the reality-based community, despite all the existential terrors the real world affords.

Is my theory correct, or is it nonsense? Honestly, I can’t say—or can’t say without the kind of resources reporters from The New York Times, Washington Post, or the network news operations enjoy. Because to figure that out, you’d have to talk to people. I mean really talk to people. Which means, first, earning enough of their respect and trust to get them talking about how they really see the world.

Like, in 2004, Chris Hayes did—unburdened by the rigid conceptual frames that make it impossible to see politics as it is, instead of how our agenda-setting elite political journalists wish it to be.

Edited October 4, 2024 by Vesper

[Vesper 30,226]

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/the-democrats-hispanic-voter-problem-373

Democrats are steadily losing ground with Hispanic voters. The seriousness of this problem tends to be underestimated in Democratic circles for several reasons: (1) they don’t realize how big the shift is; (2) they don’t realize how thoroughly it undermines the most influential Democratic theory of the case for building their coalition; and (3) they believe that any Hispanic flirtation with the GOP is merely temporary—they will “come back home” to the Democrats.

On the second point, consider that most Democrats like to believe that, since a relatively conservative white population is in sharp decline while a presumably liberal nonwhite population keeps growing, the course of social and demographic change should deliver an ever-growing Democratic coalition. It is simply a matter of getting this burgeoning nonwhite population to the polls.

But consider further that, as the Census documents, the biggest single driver of the increased nonwhite population is the growth of the Hispanic population. They are by far the largest group within the Census-designated nonwhite population (19 percent vs. 12 percent for blacks). While their representation among voters considerably lags their representation in the overall population, it is fair to say that voting trends among this group will decisively shape voting trends among nonwhites in the future since their share of voters will continue to increase while black voter share is expected to remain roughly constant.

It therefore follows that, if Hispanic voting trends continue to move steadily against the Democrats, the pro-Democratic effect of nonwhite population growth will be blunted, if not cancelled out entirely, and that very influential Democratic theory of the case falls apart. That could—or should—provoke quite a sea change in Democratic thinking.

It’s getting late enough in the current cycle to venture an assessment of whether the rightward drift of Hispanics is continuing. Short answer: it is. Let’s take a look at some of the data.

1. For context, it’s useful to review what happened in the 2020 election. In that election, Hispanics, after four years of Trump, gave him substantially more support than they did in 2016. According to Catalist, in 2020 Latinos had an amazingly large 16-point margin shift toward Trump. Among Latinos, Cubans did have the largest shifts toward Trump (26 points), but those of Mexican origin also had a 12-point shift and even Puerto Ricans moved toward Trump by 18 points.

2. Latino shifts toward Trump were widely dispersed geographically. Hispanic shifts toward Trump were not confined to Florida (28 points) and Texas (18 points) but also included states like Wisconsin (20 points), Nevada (18 points), Pennsylvania (12 points), Arizona (10 points), and Georgia (8 points).

3. These shifts were also heavily concentrated among working-class (noncollege) Hispanics, which is the overwhelming majority of Hispanic voters. Catalist data indicate that the decline in the Democratic margin among working-class Hispanics was 19 points between 2016 and 2020, compared to 9 points among college Hispanics.

4. A strong working-class Hispanic shift is consistent with detailed precinct-level analysis of the 2020 vote in Hispanic (and Asian) neighborhoods released by The New York Times in December of 2020. And a just-released analysis of precinct voting in Philadelphia by The Philadelphia Inquirer shows a stunning 75 percent net increase in the vote for Trump in working-class Hispanic precincts between 2016 and 2020.

5. The latest data indicate that the Democratic margin among Hispanics is continuing to fall this cycle. Cook Political Report maintains a database of crosstabs from high quality surveys and finds the average margin for Harris among Hispanics to be around 12 points. That’s an 11-point drop from Biden’s 23-point margin among Hispanics in 2020 (which in turn was a 16-point drop from Clinton’s advantage in 2016).

6. Similarly, Adam Carlson at the Split Ticket site maintains a “2024 General Election Crosstab Aggregator.” His most recent average for Hispanics finds a 14-point margin for Harris among these voters, making for a slightly lower drop of 9 points relative to 2020.

7. The super-high quality New York Times/Siena poll (A+ in Nate Silver’s pollster ratings) polled twice in September and found Harris leading by an average of 13 points among Hispanics across the two polls, implying a 10-point drop in Democratic support relative to 2020. All pretty consistent.

8. A very recent bipartisan national poll of Latinos, conducted for NBC News/Telemundo, finds Harris ahead of Trump by 14 points. In their comparison to merged NBC data from previous cycles, this represents a drop of 22 points in Hispanic margin compared to 2020 (though if compared to the Catalist post-election data cited above the implied drop is less).

9. There are some very interesting internals from this poll that are worth mentioning. Among men, Trump and Harris are exactly even at 47 percent support for each candidate while Harris leads among women by 20 points.

10. Among Hispanics under 35, Harris only leads Trump by 10 points, a 34-point drop from their 2020 merged data.

11. Among Latino men under 50, Trump actually leads Harris by 9 points. Trump also leads by 13 points among all working-class Latino men.

12. Interestingly, while Trump is preferred over Harris among all Hispanic voters on dealing with inflation and the cost of living and the economy generally, his biggest lead over Harris (13 points) is actually on “securing the border and controlling immigration”(!)

13. Finally, the NBC News writeup notes:

In this poll, 54 percent of Latino voters prefer a Democratic-controlled Congress, versus 42 percent who want Republicans in charge.

That 12-point lead represents a steady decline from September 2012 (when the Democrats’ advantage was 45 points), September 2016 (when it was 34 points), October 2020 (26 points) and September 2022 before that midterm election (21 points).

The times they are a-changin’! While we are still far away from Democrats losing majority support among Hispanics, the signs of a continuing rightward shift among these voters are unmistakable. Combined with general deterioration among working-class voters of all races, it appears Democrats, win or lose in this election, are in urgent need of a new theory of the case for growing their coalition. Without it, any majorities they attain will be tenuous, undercutting their ability to govern effectively. And, no doubt, leaving the American people increasingly frustrated.

[cosmicway 1,333]

11 hours ago, robsblubot said:

You've been discussing taxes in the previous page, which is only part of how companies, and the rich, avoid cost. The largest company both pay little to no taxes, especially local taxes, and the worst offenders do not really pay the cost of their business. Oil companies are notorious in that as they will get bailed out on oil spills.
They are free market capitalists when the business is lucrative, but are socialists when it is not.

Reagan believed in trickle down economy.
With socialism it is trickle up.

[Vesper 30,226]

10 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

Reagan believed in trickle down economy.
With socialism it is trickle up.

there are extremely few actual socialist nations on the planet

certainly there are none in the OECD

[cosmicway 1,333]

1 hour ago, Vesper said:

there are extremely few actual socialist nations on the planet

certainly there are none in the OECD

This is a Manchester United approach from you.
The weather - the balls - the pitch ...
Why are n't there more ?

[Vesper 30,226]

11 minutes ago, cosmicway said:

This is a Manchester United approach from you.
The weather - the balls - the pitch ...
Why are n't there more ?

who knew?

Manure are commies!

they do have a Red Army

 

 

[Fulham Broadway 17,333]

You are Kemi Badenoch. Can you make it through a whole hour without saying insane shit?

2nd October 2024

YOU are Kemi Badenoch and the microphones are hot. Can you manage a whole hour without spouting lunatic nonsense? Find out: 

11am: you are asked an easy question about lightening the tax burden. How do you answer? 

A) Launch into an attack on the minimum wage, claiming small businesses cannot afford staff and have the right not to pay them or indeed to pay tax, as should large corporations
B) Assert that maternity pay is inherently unjust, crippling businesses who would prefer simply to be able to fire pregnant women as they did in the 1890s without issue

11.20pm: an interviewer asks what went wrong for the Conservatives in the last election. What’s your response? 

A) Blame civil servants, ten per cent of whom are career criminals who should be locked up for daring to oppose you by pointing out practical obstacles to your visionary policies and you’ve got a list, don’t worry about that
B) Blame the biased left-wing Marxist terrorist media hell-bent on destroying this country because why else would they offer anything but glowing praise? A crackdown on press freedom is a necessity and the Munchetty woman should be hung, drawn and quartered

11.40pm: a fellow MP gives you a wave. How do you react? 

A) With extreme prejudice. Claim immediately that if you are not elected leader by 100 per cent of MPs and members that traitorous forces have illegally seized power and detail plans, already drawn up, for a military coup purging the ideologically unsound
B) Outline, furiously, your vision for Britain where the NHS is abolished, the BBC is shuttered, every right-thinking person carries a gun and the is EU decapitated by a lightning strike on Brussels to reduce the whole of Europe to a client state of the UK

11.59pm: someone coughs. 

A) Pushed beyond reasonable endurance, you deliver a Downfall-style rant about laying waste to enemies both inside and outside the UK until you rule, proudly and justly, over a nuclear wasteland because a clean slate would be better than this
B) Tell the obvious truth that only landowners should have the vote and even then only in the south-east, listing your favourite dictatorships in order and praising their efficiency. Add that newsagents should be arrested and children forced to work and smoke fags.

ANSWERS

Mostly As: Sadly, your common-sense views have been misrepresented by the media to make it look as if your views are bizarre, abhorrent and hated by the majority. When they are not.

Mostly Bs: Sadly, there is no way that you, as Kemi Badenoch, are able to get through a whole hour without lapsing into an unhinged tirade about hidden enemies up to and including whoever’s bringing your tea. If you do not win the leadership in a landslide it is fixed.