Climate Crisis Driving Govt Financial Crisis, Removing Netanyahu, Taiwan Challenging Starlink's Monopoly, Why Some Mergers are Good - and Defunding the Police (White Collar Edition)
Roundup #8
Climate Change Will be the Next Government Financial Crisis
Wildfires, hurricanes, tornados, floods: extreme weather is becoming an increasing constant in our lives. And whether MAGA Republicans believe it’s a problem, insurance companies sure do - and are increasingly raising homeowner insurance rates and even dropping coverage altogether.
As Bloomberg detailed in a recent story
At this rate, climate change will soon have local governments on the hook for trillions in homeowners insurance for houses that may become unsellable without governments continuing those programs - a catch-22 that promises an epic political and economic crash in the future if not dealt with soon.
Removing Netanyahu as Policy Goal
Biden appears to have had enough of Netanyahu and has sharply increased criticism of his conduct of the war in Gaza - giving a greenlight for other leaders like Chuck Schumer to call for new elections in Israel to oust Bibi.
Israel’s leaders are outraged, calling it an attempt to “overthrow” the government.
And Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. had this to say:
When the millions of Palestinians under Occupation get a vote, talking about "sovereign democracies" may have meaning. In the meantime, as Israel bombs Gaza to remove Hamas from governance there, hard to take a comment like this seriously.
Netanyahu wants war more than any financial support from the US. Israel has a half-trillion-dollar economy now & hardly depends on our aid for survival. What is clear is that Biden is now playing to the anti-Netanyahu public who may need to take Bibi out in elections for any reasonable peace settlement- and Bibi desperately wants the war to go on in hopes of delaying those elections as long as possible.
The reality is that both Hamas and Likud are guilty of war crimes and replacing both should be a top goal of any U.S. policy now.
Taiwan May Build First Competition for Starlink - Since their Lives Depend on it.
Taiwan has been watching Elon Musk screw over Ukraine by restricting access to its Starlink satellite Internet service - and the country is now working to create its own alternative.
As Taiwan officials note, Musk is extremely dependent on the Chinese market, with a large manufacturing operation in Shanghai, so they fully expect Musk to side with China in any invasion of the island. Given the costs of such a satellite network, it may well take a government whose citizens’ lives may depend on an independent communication network to invest the billions of dollars needed.
It is completely insane that the world has became so dependent on a psychotic billionaire for critical communications technology- so it’s positive change that a country like Taiwan is challenging its monopoly.
Some Mergers are Good- as Microsoft’s New Activision Workers Get Unionized
Last week, it was announced that 600 workers at Microsoft, who were part of the Activision unit acquired by the company in a recent merger, had their union recognized by the company. This victory, as the announcement notes, is due to a Labor Neutrality agreement Microsoft agreed to as a condition for that merger.
I’ve done a lot of work over the last few decades fighting monopolies, particularly in the tech industry. Back in the 1990s, I ran a project at what was called NetAction challenging the emerging Microsoft monopoly. Since then I’ve written extensively about tech monopolies, particularly writing early on a decade ago about Google’s monopolistic problems.
But I’ve also argued that many in the “new antitrust movement” can tend to sacrifice every other priority to a sometimes fundamentalist dedication to blocking mergers, even when those mergers may strongly benefit. When AT&T sought to merge with T-mobile, they promised a similar kind of labor neutrality for the non-union workforce at Tmobile. However, the tech antitrust forces organized vigorously to block the merger. But did little when anti-union Sprint and anti-union Tmobile would merge a few years later to entrench another anti-union behemoth. At the time, I highlighted that this was a case where progressives should be supporting a merger.
It’s with some personal bemusement that Microsoft has emerged as one of the most positive actors in the tech field, on issues ranging from consumer privacy to now union rights. That in many ways is owed to them facing serious antitrust pushback against their bad practices in the 1990s and 2000s. Which goes to show that antitrust activism is desperately needed - but there’s also times to actually enjoy the fruits of victory through delivering better labor conditions and other benefits when a merger will deliver that.
Defunding the Police - The White Collar Edition
It’s a sick joke that the only only police being defunded after the whole Black Lives Matters protests are those targeting largely white people committing largely white-collar crimes.
But that’s the reality of the GOP budget pushed through, cutting law enforcement efforts at the DOJ, FBI and EPA.
Following up on the last budget deal which slashed funding for the IRS, what these budget deals also highlight is that when push comes to shove in bargaining, the GOP will ALWAYS jettison their grassroots culture issues like abortion if that means they can protect their corporate criminal donors from legal challenge.