Matt Stoller says about 60% of the inflation hike comes from rising corporate profits. How does he know? Long story short: inflation is five percentage points higher than it was in 2019, and the sharp spike in corporate profits probably accounts for three of those five percentage points -- and n.b. we have investment managers on the record saying that they want to find corporations with "pricing power," a power you don't have unless you also have monopoly power. Thus inflation isn't just a thing that happens, but a thing people with unearned power make happen. You'll also understand "why economists tend to dislike rules against profiteering" -- because "(p)rice gouging, they believe, transmits important information." Well, as long as we have "important information," it must be OK that people get hurt! (And seriously, why do we listen to Larry Summers? Like the proverbial fool who thinks everything's a nail because all he's got is a hammer, Mr. Summers's one solution to every problem is STOP ALLZ TEH GUBMINT SPENDINGZ!!!!)
Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says his administration will prosecute anyone who might have helped the St. Louis Post-Dispatch expose a massive security issue in a state website. Well, waaaaaaaaaah -- I mean, if you don't want to be embarrassed, don't earn embarrassment, and blowing the whistle on a state security issue ain't the same as "attempt(ing) to steal personal information and harm Missourians." Hate to beat a dead horse, but this is what happens when Democrats don't run economic populist candidates -- know-nothing, do-nothing right-wingers like Mike Parson coast to re-election.
Robyn Pennachia at Wonkette describes the mercurial rise of an anti-abortion Missouri state legislator who, our "liberal" media tell us, listens to Lizzo and Beyoncé and watches The West Wing, and I must admit that I, too, have long found it tiresome that our "liberal" media outlets go mining for the "unexpected" personal traits of right-wingers. It has the effect of "normalizing extreme viewpoints," as Ms. Pennachia says, and I wouldn't expect any right-winger to be impressed that "Okie from Muskogee" and "The Fighting Side of Me" are two of my favorite Merle Haggard songs (though neither one is "Branded Man" or "Uncle Lem."
Now an Oklahoma legislator, with obviously no intimate knowledge of Texas's notorious anti-abortion law, not only wants to give parents the "right" to demand that school libraries remove a book, but give them the "right" to "earn" a $10,000 bounty for every day the school doesn't comply. None of these efforts should survive even cursory legal scrutiny -- seriously, have none of them have ever heard of standing to sue? -- but perhaps a few authors will get a boost in their book sales if they get banned in Oklahoma. Why, authors could even try to get their Oklahoma buddies to demand that a book gets banned and then split the bounty! These right-wingers never think anything through.
J. Alexander Navarro at The Conversation reminds us that when folks got tired of wearing masks and social distancing in the 1918 flu pandemic, they paid and paid and paid. Today's lazy, entitled right-wingers won't listen to that, so maybe they'll listen to this: people don't actually want to fuck you as much as you think, so maybe you're not losing out all that much if you cover up that mug of yours.
Finally, Matt Novak at Gizmodo runs down "Fox News' Worst Lies About Covid-19 From 2021." I was actually disappointed to hear that Fox had peddled the BIG GUMMINTZ LYINGZ ABOUTZ TEH DEATHZ!!!! lie (which lie depends on a misunderstanding about the difference between reported deaths and confirmed deaths, not to mention the difference between correlation and causation), because when a relative parroted it to me for the first time I thought maybe it came from some YouTube "celebrity," not plain old rubbish-peddling Fox News. This is why we demand that our cable corporations stop carrying Fox News.
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