Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Billionaire Clans Spend Nearly $2 BILLION On 2024 Elections: 150 Families Have Already Outpaced By $700 Million What 600 Individual Billionaires Spent in 2020. (The Tax Decode)
• Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula: It’s probably leaching chemicals into your cooking oil. (The Atlantic)
• Guns. Knives. Bats. Hammers. Hatchets. Spears. As incidents of road rage escalate across the country, aggressive drivers in Texas try to understand what triggers anger. (Washington Post)
• A Pregnant Teenager Died After Trying to Get Care in Three Visits to Texas Emergency Rooms: It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban. (ProPublica) see also She had a miscarriage — then got arrested under an abortion law. Even before Roe v. Wade fell, a broad consensus had emerged across much of the antiabortion movement that women who seek abortions should not be prosecuted. The abortion bans that have taken effect since Roe was overturned, as well as abortion restrictions that existed before the 2022 Supreme Court ruling, do not allow women who terminate their pregnancies to be punished, instead targeting doctors and others who help facilitate abortions. (Washington Post)
• X Algorithm Feeds Users Political Content—Whether They Want It or Not: A WSJ experiment finds that accounts supporting Trump and Harris dominate feeds of new X users who wanted cooking and crafts (Wall Street Journal)
• How elderly dementia patients are unwittingly fueling political campaigns: how deceptive political fundraising has misled elderly Americans into giving away millions of dollars. A single donation sparks a flurry of text messages and emails from candidates and political organizations across the country. Ultimately, some of these elderly, vulnerable consumers have unwittingly given away six-figure sums – most often to Republican candidates – making them among the country’s largest grassroots political donors. (CNN)
• ‘Take Back the States’: The Far-Right Sheriffs Ready to Disrupt the Election: Constitutional Sheriffs are duly elected lawmen who believe they answer only to God. They’ve spent the last six months preparing to stop a “stolen” election—by any means necessary. (Wired)
• Fiona Hill on America’s Emerging Oligarchy: The longtime Russia expert explains why Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are all talking to each other. (Politico)
• Inside the Movement Behind the Election Lies: For years, Republican activists have huddled in video meetings to talk about remaking democracy and plan for the election. The New York Times has obtained the recordings. (New York Times) see also Election Fraud Conspiracy Theories Are Already Thriving Online: Pro-Trump groups have spent years building election denial networks that, combined with Big Tech’s hands-off approach and continued foreign interference, have created a toxic information ecosystem. (Wired)
• The Most Opinionated Man in America: Mike Solana, a Peter Thiel protégé, has made his Pirate Wires newsletter a must-read among the anti-woke investor class—and a window into what the most powerful people in tech really think. (The Atlantic)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Annie Lamont, co-founder and managing partner of Oak HC/FT. The firm was named one of the 10 best-performing venture capital firms in the world. She has been named to the Forbes Midas List (5X), Top 100 Venture Capitalists, and 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare. She has received multiple Lifetime Achievement awards as well. Lamont is also the First Lady of Connecticut, married to Governor Ned Lamont.
