Linky Friday: People, or Lies, Slander, and Calumny Edition

Editor’s Note: As always, all the pieces that appear in Linky Friday are for discussion purposes only, and the opinions expressed are those of the author’s themselves and people involved, not Ordinary Times.

[LF1] Rebekah Jones, the COVID Whistleblower Who Wasn’t By Charles C. W. Cooke in National Review

This is a story about Rebekah Jones, a former dashboard manager at the Florida Department of Health (FDOH), who has single-handedly managed to convince millions of Americans that Governor Ron DeSantis has been fudging the state’s COVID-19 data.

When I write “single-handedly,” I mean it, for Jones is not one of the people who have advanced this conspiracy theory but rather is the person who has advanced this conspiracy theory. It has been repeated by others, sure: by partisans across the Internet, by unscrupulous Florida Democrats such as Nikki Fried and Charlie Crist, and on television, by MSNBC in particular. But it flows from a single place: Rebekah Jones. To understand that is to understand the whole game. This is about Jones, and Jones alone. If she falls, it falls.

And boy does it deserve to fall.

Jones’s central claim is nothing less dramatic than that she has uncovered a massive conspiracy in the third most populous state in the nation, and that, having done so, she has been ruthlessly persecuted by the governor and his “Gestapo.” Specifically, Jones claims that, while she was working at the FDOH last year, she was instructed by her superiors to alter the “raw” data so that Florida’s COVID response would look better, and that, having refused, she was fired. Were this charge true, it would reflect one of the most breathtaking political scandals in all of American history.

But it’s not true. Indeed, it’s nonsense from start to finish. Jones isn’t a martyr; she’s a myth-peddler. She isn’t a scientist; she’s a fabulist. She’s not a whistleblower; she’s a good old-fashioned confidence trickster. And, like any confidence trickster, she understands her marks better than they understand themselves. On Twitter, on cable news, in Cosmopolitan, and beyond, Jones knows exactly which buttons to push in order to rally the gullible and get out her message. Sober Democrats have tried to inform their party about her: “You may see a conspiracy theory and you want it to be true and you believe it to be true and you forward it to try to make it be true, but that doesn’t make it true,” warns Jared Moskowitz, the progressive Democrat who has led Florida’s fight against COVID. But his warnings have fallen on deaf ears. Since she first made her claims a little under a year ago, Jones has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars through multiple GoFundMe accounts (and, once she realized that she was losing a percentage to credit-card fees, through paper checks); she has become a darling of the online Left; and, by pointing to her own, privately run dashboard, which shows numbers that make Florida’s COVID response look worse than it has been, she has caused millions of people to believe quite sincerely that the state’s many successes during the pandemic have been built atop fraud. Stephen Glass, the famous writer-turned-liar who spent years inventing stories but got caught when he pushed it too far, could only have dreamed of such a result.

[LF2] David Foster Wallace Won by Freddie deBoar

I have for many years been writing about the curious way in which the cultural associations of things come to overwhelm the things themselves. I’m not talking about, say, a keffiyeh or pink pussy hat, objects intentionally imprinted with identification with a specific culture. I’m talking about, for example, a Tesla. Teslas are such ideologically-loaded things. You’ve got their identification with environmental responsibility in a world wracked by global warning, similar to the ongoing public perception of the Prius. Then you’ve got the fact that they’re expensive, techy, and California-coded, and so associated with a certain class of bourgie coastal liberal. And now lately they’ve also taken on new negative tones, in certain circles, because of their association with Elon Musk, who is indeed an evil billionaire but not, perhaps, literally the biggest villain on the planet. The point is that a Tesla has become such a culturally-loaded object that (for those who are hip to the cultural conversation) it can’t just be a car. A Tesla is a car that you buy and then you have to explain to your friends what it does and doesn’t mean to you. A Camry, not so much.

“David Foster Wallace” has become such a figure. He is most often invoked now in denial and negation: you do not want to be the kind of person who reads David Foster Wallace. DFW fans, the story goes, are 20- and 30-something dudes who haunt coffee shops and grad school parties, haranguing everyone with aggressive opinions about literary merit, and trying to get laid by being perceived as sensitive and thoughtful when they’re probably aggressive sex pests. The DFW fan is disdainful of women’s fiction, though he takes care to let you know how much he loves Flannery O’Connor or other women writers he invokes purely to show he reads women. He’s a self-impressed asshole. He’s the Guy in Your MFA. (Which, for the record, wasn’t as funny as it thought it was, but skewered the correct people in today’s climate – that is, the type of white people that savvy white people would like to imagine they are not like.)

Does this actually describe any real people? There must be some. The question is whether there are enough of them, or if they are pernicious enough, to warrant what has been a mini-genre for over a decade now. To be clear:

Most people don’t read.
Most people who read don’t read fiction.
Most people who read fiction don’t read experimental fiction.
Most people who read experimental fiction don’t read 1,000 page doorstops.

When people complain about the DFW fan or the litbro or the guy in your MFA guy, sometimes someone else will say “oh, god, I know that guy,” and I think, you know, it might literally be the same guy. (How big can Cambridge’s literary scene really be?) This just can’t be a very widespread phenomenon

.

[LF3] Ending Latin America’s Economic Malaise by Eric Parrado in Diplomatic Courier

Latin America’s economic troubles long predate the pandemic. Among other pre-existing conditions, the region’s productivity has for decades lagged behind more successful economies. And the 2008 global financial crisis brought it to a crossroads. At the time, its major economies had the fiscal space to weather the financial crisis and enact reforms to secure long-term growth. But reform was put on the back burner when commodity prices soared. Millions were lifted out of poverty, and governments raised spending on wages and subsidies, which, unlike capital investments in infrastructure, are hard to roll back.

The region’s governments must not repeat these errors. Today’s open credit markets, low interest rates, higher commodity prices, and rising remittance flows are no excuse for putting off needed changes. For years, economists have been harping about the need for reforms to attract business and investment, and to make labor markets more flexible. These are still desperately needed.

Today’s open credit markets, low interest rates, higher commodity prices, and rising remittance flows are no excuse for putting off needed changes.

As a former policymaker myself, I understand how difficult it is to expend scarce political capital taking on vested interests. While international financial institutions can be helpful partners in providing economic and political support for reforms, success ultimately depends on prioritizing issues correctly. In Latin America’s case, the most important issue is fiscal policy: political leaders need to take a hard look at how they are taxing and supporting their citizens.

Fiscal management is tricky, especially when debt levels are rising and there is an urgent need to generate broad-based growth beyond the already-thriving digital economy. Just as central banks offer forward monetary-policy guidance, Latin American economies need forward fiscal-policy guidance and a clear strategy for exiting the pandemic.

Simply put, the region overall spends public money inefficiently and either taxes too little or in ways that don’t work. Latin American and Caribbean tax revenues total just 23% of GDP on average, far behind the OECD average of 34%. But whereas Brazil and Barbados have tax-collection rates of 33% of GDP, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala bottom out at 13.5% and 13.1% of GDP, respectively. Hence, the fiscal reforms that Brazil needs are different from those that Guatemala needs.

A large informal economy is one reason for low tax revenue across countries. Here, tax incentives can be used to reduce informality, particularly when coupled with stricter enforcement. Moreover, incomes, greenhouse-gas emissions (including fuel), digital services, and wealth all need to be taxed more effectively (such as by raising property taxes).

On the spending side, Latin America could save up to 4.4% of GDP per year by bringing its spending more in line with international best practices. In addition to using public infrastructure procurement contracts and pursuing greater budget transparency, this also means bolstering legislative budget offices and establishing entities to monitor the quality of government spending. Fiscal rules can also help. For example, by ensuring that public investments are protected during downturns, governments can start to move beyond short-term political spending cycles.

[LF4][LF5] Review: Elon Musk Hosts SNL by Erik Kain

Speaking of the Gen Z sketch, while it had its moments it missed more jokes than it landed. Still, I find it hilarious that it’s come under fire for “appropriating” AAVE—African American Vernacular English. For one thing, the skit was written by Michael Che, an African American. On Instagram, Che responded to the Twitter backlash writing:

“I’ve been reading about how my “gen z” sketch was misappropriating AAVE and I was stunned cause what the f**k is ‘AAVE’? I had to look it up. Turns out it’s an acronym for ‘African American vernacular english.’ You know, AAVE! That ol’ saying that actual black people use in conversation all the time…, Look, the sketch bombed. I’m used to that. I meant no offense to the ‘aave’ community. I love aave. Aave to the moon!”

I’m taking this on faith, however. It’s being reported by Deadline and The Hill, but when I went to Che’s Instagram I found a grand total of zero posts. Did he delete them all? I’m not sure. Either way, the fuss being made over the sketch seems typically ludicrous, especially when the skit’s language is described as “assorted BLACK LGBTQ+ phrases” as though slang doesn’t spread and evolve and break the artificial barriers of whatever subculture it sprang forth out of.

Nobody is safe from this nonsense, of course. You can have Public Enemy #1, Mr. Elon Musk, on your show and still catch flack for appropriating AAVE even when you’re a black comedian and writer. These people are so much fun! I just love cancel culture, don’t you?

[LF5] Experts Paint Grim Picture for NRA After Bankruptcy Gamble Goes Bust by Stephen Gutowski at The Reload

“To actually have a judge laugh at you, essentially, and say that you are filing this in bad faith,” Hackney said. “That’s a really bad fact for them. That’s not something I’d want on my record if I’m defending this organization against dissolution.”

Matthew Bruckner, a Howard University professor and bankruptcy expert, told The Reload bad-faith dismissals are rare, and the NRA has little room to appeal.

“It’s pretty hard to get a case dismissed as a bad-faith filing, but this always seemed to satisfy the hard-to-satisfy standard,” he said. “The decision seems well-grounded in the Fifth Circuit’s legal precedent, and the facts were admittedly ‘cringeworthy.’”

The bad-faith ruling also opens the NRA to new claims against the organization for the legal fees of the other parties in the case.

Among those now planning to ask for the group to pay upwards of $300,000 in costs is dissenting NRA board member Phillip Journey. He had strongly criticized LaPierre and Brewer for not informing the board before filing for bankruptcy and filed a motion to have the court appoint an examiner to go through the group’s finances. Now he and the three other board members who joined the motion want the group to carry the litigation costs.

“The judge has the authority under the statute to impose sanctions, like attorney’s fees, for misbehavior in filings,” Journey told The Reload. “So, we’re hoping NRA pays the bills.”

Professor Adam Levitin, a bankruptcy expert at Georgetown University, described the NRA’s bankruptcy strategy as “remarkably hare-brained” that raised the question, “what the hell were they thinking?” He pointed to several specific problems in the NRA’s case that led to the bad-faith determination.

“If you’re going to do a sketchy filing, the lesson from SGL Carbon was don’t tell everyone that you’re solvent and doing the filing to stiff a single creditor in your press release,” he wrote on Tuesday. “Yet, that’s exactly what the NRA did. Additionally, the pre-filing governance moves were really iffy (never telling the board of directors!), the creation of a forum-shopping sub completely blatant, and the NRA and its counsel never had their story straight about why they were filing.”

Levitin said the dismissal means claims for legal fees like the one Journey plans to pursue are likely to succeed.

“Given the “bad-faith” finding, I would think there’s good grounds for such a motion,” he said.

In addition to the fight over legal fees, the NRA will have to head back to court in Manhattan to battle James. The NRA said in a statement the bad-faith dismissal “empowers” its members, and LaPierre promised the group would “keep fighting.” The group said it is shifting its attention to fight James back in New York.

“The NRA will continue to defend the interests of the Association in New York,” Brewer said. “Our client has faith in its leadership, and its demonstrated commitment to good governance.”

Bruckner said that’s the only realistic option left for the group at this point, but their own actions suggest it isn’t a good one.

[LF6] Can Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Betrayal Expose the Grift of Cryptocurrency? by Jacob Silverman in The New Republic

This is why Musk’s about-face is such a threat to the veritable house of cards that’s been built to prop up the Bitcoin cult. If the self-styled environmental savior of the tech world—of our world—can accept what’s been known for years—that Bitcoin is an environmental catastrophe, making it unacceptable for any use—then why don’t the millions of people who praise him as a genius and innovator? Has Elon gone off the deep end, or was it the adoring masses who just days earlier were sending his every utterance viral? (As if to confirm the importance of Musk—and prominent influencers—in the crypto market, the top 10 most traded cryptocurrencies all went into the red after Musk’s tweets.)

There’s no doubt that trading Bitcoin has become tremendously profitable for some—while Musk’s comments sent its value down about 10 percent, it was still priced at around $50,000 the following day. But it’s a specious value that constantly requires rhetorical ballast from its aggressively online fans. So far, the currency’s true believers are exhibiting impressive levels of coping, trying to rationalize their sovereign’s confusion. “In retrospect I was growing quite worried in the past weeks by the enormous influence that Elon had on #bitcoin and #crypto with all that tweeting,” tweeted Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of the exchange Bitfinex and of the stablecoin Tether. “Glad we took off the band-aid. #bitcoin needs periodic shock-tests to grow stronger.”

Some people do seem to be in shock. Anthony Pompliano, one of the most prominent Bitcoin influencers, immediately embarked on a Twitter and media tear, appearing on CNBC and CNN determined “to debunk this nonsense.” He invoked the Streisand effect, saying that what’s happened is “very good” for Bitcoin, provoking even more media attention. “All the mainstream media and all the blogs and all the Twitter-verse is doing is they are marketing #bitcoin right now,” said Pompliano. “They are waking the world up to what is #bitcoin.”

He’s certainly right about the marketing aspect, but he might be correct in other ways that he doesn’t realize. Bitcoin influencers have waged a vigorous campaign over the last year to paint the cryptocurrency as environmentally friendly. In op-eds, white papers, and cable news briefs, it’s been called a battery, a way of consuming excess electricity, a catalyst for building renewable energy infrastructure, and various other convoluted explanations that amount to Bitcoin being good for the environment, rather than an annual consumer of electricity on par with the Netherlands. Critics who question these notions and say that Bitcoin’s electrical consumption is simply too great—and likely to keep increasing without enough attendant utility—are in turn dismissed as dishonest or simply too dumb to understand.

In a more honest culture, this would be a moment of reckoning for those who deny that Bitcoin is an environmental calamity beyond salvage. But those invested in Bitcoin have too much to lose. The cryptocurrency’s market cap has hovered near $1 trillion recently. It’s not just 28-year-old crypto paper-billionaires who have fortunes on the line; many everyday people have bought in. If Bitcoin ever collapses, it will go down with its most fervent supporters saying they still believe. It’s the rest of us—including one of the world’s richest men—who can’t see it for what it is.

[LF7] Is Brett Kavanaugh Out for Revenge? by McKay Coppins in The Atlantic

Astrange irony of Brett Kavanaugh’s ruinous 2018 confirmation battle is that for all the attention it commanded—and all the certainty it instilled in both supporters and opponents—Kavanaugh remained more or less a mystery when it was over. What did he believe? Whose interests was he serving? And what exactly happened in that suburban-Maryland bedroom all those years ago? Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation that he’d sexually assaulted her in high school—and the judge’s denial—foregrounded debates over predation and privilege, even as Kavanaugh himself seemed to blur into abstraction. Nearly three years later, questions remain, not only about past behavior but about the future. The cold reality is that Kavanaugh is now on the bench. And there is reason to ask whether his bitter path to the Court might influence what he does with a lifetime appointment.

Kavanaugh’s confirmation cemented a conservative majority on the Court that got even stronger last year when he was joined by Amy Coney Barrett. Kavanaugh now sits at the Court’s ideological center—illustrating how far to the right the center has shifted. Any judicial victory that liberals hope to achieve in the coming years will likely require winning over the justice whose nomination they fought most ferociously to defeat.

As much as the modern Court clings to its image as an apolitical institution—enlightened, black-robed figures dispensing wisdom from on high, guided by love of country and Constitution—the truth is that its members have always been swayed by politics, ego, and grievance. After Clarence Thomas’s confirmation was nearly quashed in 1991 by accusations of sexual harassment, he retreated into a cocoon of allies and ideologues, rarely speaking in public even as he became one of the most right-wing justices in recent history. Some wonder whether Kavanaugh will follow the same trajectory. It was he, after all, who spoke in that infamous Senate hearing about the country reaping “the whirlwind” and suffering “consequences” in a way that led many to believe he was issuing threats. “As we all know,” he told the senators who were questioning him, “in the United States political system of the early 2000s, what goes around comes around.”

While Kavanaugh’s allies insist that those comments were misinterpreted, they also say that he still privately seethes over the “smear campaign” he believes he endured. “He’s made an effort to say, ‘Look, I’m not bitter about this. I’m moving forward,’ ” one friend told me. “But I assume, when he’s lying in bed at night, it’s hard not to think about it.” Another friend put it more bluntly: “He was really angry at Democrats for what they did to him and his family.” And yet, those same friends also describe a competing impulse in Kavanaugh—a burning desire to gain readmission into polite society and enjoy all the perks associated with one of the world’s most prestigious jobs.

[LF8] The Will Truman Memorial “This will end badly” piece:
Canadians are so anxious about the blistering housing market they’re open to rate hikes to cool it by Ari Altstedter and Erik Hertzberg in Financial Post

Canadians are so alarmed by the red-hot housing market that many say they’d like to see the central bank raise the cost of borrowing to dampen demand for real estate and stabilize prices.

About 70 per cent of Canadians responding to a new Nanos Research poll conducted for Bloomberg News said the sharp increase in home prices was a major problem for the economy. Almost half were at least somewhat in favour of the Bank of Canada raising its overnight rate to slow the rise, even though such a move would also increase the cost of credit lines, credit cards and other debt.

The numbers underscore how soaring housing costs have emerged as a major issue in the public consciousness after a year in which prices jumped by 30 per cent or more in some regions. Economists at major banks have called on the government to act to reduce demand. At the same time, the Bank of Canada has made it clear it won’t raise rates until the economy absorbs its excess capacity — a milestone projected for 2022 at the earliest.

“Even though there is no consensus, the fact that one in two Canadians are good with a rate hike speaks to the appetite to cool down a hot housing market,” pollster Nik Nanos said.

Those sentiments are prompting some anxiety for Canadians — including some homeowners whose own fortunes are rising with the real estate market.

“I own a place, but I also have a son too. When I think about my son, it’s like, how is he going to survive in this world?” said Raymond Wong, a Vancouver engineer who filed a petition with Canada’s parliament saying the central bank should consider house prices when setting interest rates. “He can do everything right, do everything by the book, get an education, but at the end of the day he won’t be able to afford anything.”

The Bank of Canada’s long-standing position has been that it should be the last line of defence against threats to financial stability, as its focus is on other priorities, like maintaining healthy inflation and output growth.

Most economists say it’s still too early in the recovery for the central bank to hike rates, and it’s not clear that the survey respondents who favoured raising rates took full account of the broader effect of higher borrowing costs.

Still, Canadians’ growing alarm at the recent surge in home values could present a political problem for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The government has options other than raising interest rates to slow the housing market, like taxes and regulation, but has refrained from using them for fear of angering homeowners.

An amazingly strong week of writing here at Ordinary Times. Please read, share, and discuss all these great pieces from the week that was:

Colonial Pipeline outside Birmingham Alabama. Photo by chapstickaddict via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Colonial Pipeline Attack: The Pearl Harbor File by John McCumber
When I see incidents such as Colonial Pipeline attack, I am never surprised to learn the victim was bitten by a well-known vulnerability

Pomylka By the Lake: Cleveland Has a Ukrainian Oligarch Problem by Andrew Donaldson
Cleveland, of course, is not alone in serving as a destination for money laundered by Ukrainian oligarchs. But what to do about it?

Thursday Throughput: Brooding Cicadas Edition by Michael Siegel
Every 13 or 17 years, Cicadas mature to adulthood, fly around, make a hell of a lot of noise, and have an astonishing amount of bug sex.

Tucker Carlson on a recent episode of his Fox News show. Source: Fox News

Is Tucker Carlson The Next Trump? by Eric Medlin
The idea that Tucker Carlson could win the fanatical devotion that characterizes many Trump supporters is ludicrous

President Biden Executive Order on Cybersecurity: Read It For Yourself
President Biden has signed an Executive Order on Cybersecurity the White House says “a significant contribution toward modernizing cybersecurity defenses”.

Office of Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Last Temptation of Elise Stefanik by Dennis Sanders
Elise Stefanik’s rise is a study in character, or lack thereof. And that is the question: Did she become compromised or is this who she was?

Wednesday Writs: Debbie Does Dallas, and the Public Domain by Em Carpenter
Our case of the week, M&A Associates v. VCX, meant the American classic Debbie Does Dallas was being thrusted forever into the public domain.

What is Infrastructure? The Colonial Pipeline Cyber Attack Tells Us by John McCumber
This is what true national infrastructure looks like. This is not the poll-tested, happy face definition of infrastructure.

A Glimmer of Light in West Virginia’s Dark and Dusty Opioid Crisis by Andrew Donaldson
The opioid crisis has brought a dark and dusty sky upon places like West Virginia, and like all darkness it only abates one way. Shining light.

Source

The CDC and Misinformation Within The Parameters of Truth by Will Truman
The CDC has managed to project this image of ineffectual communicators whose nerdspeak is poorly conveyed by a scientifically illiterate media.

Professional Wrestling is More Real than Politics by Jericho Hill
Professional wrestling has more reality and truth than politics in Congress. There, I said it. I should know, I’ve worked in both.

Sunday Morning! “La Strada” by Federico Fellini by Rufus
Fellini’s heartbreaking archetypal story of how, in life, Experience comes to kick the snot out of Innocence.

Giovanni Segantini, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Honor thy Mother by L London
Only after her death did I realize those remarkable traits came from a life influenced by my mother, not despite her.