Citizen Cartwright

The biggest thinkers' insights on the biggest ideas, in 10 minutes or less

While we wait to see whether the Democratic majority is going to get a deal on $3.5 trillion, 10-year legislation that media say would be the most significant expansion of America’s social safety net since the 1960s, let’s focus on the even more expansive.

 

The Big Think website is offering “big ideas in 10 minutes or less,” in more than 2,000 interviews with many of the world’s biggest thinkers.

 

Among the topics: whether we’re alone in the universe, why people believe conspiracy theories and fake news, whether artificial intelligence will become an existential threat to humans, whether we should trust science, whether we have free will.

Also in the news

House passes standalone bill to suspend debt limit; votes in House, Senate scheduled to avert government shutdown

 

House committee subpoenas 11 organizers of Jan. 6 Trump rally

 

Senate parliamentarian tells Democrats their newest proposal to help immigrants can't be included in $3.5 trillion bill

 

Biden administration restores protections for migratory birds that were loosened under Trump

 

YouTube bans false coronavirus vaccine claims

 

Facebook shares its internal research on the mental health effects of Instagram

 

NASA’s just-launched Landsat 9 satellite can photograph entire Earth every 8 days, help monitor climate change

 

ProPublica: More than half of America’s 100 richest people use special trusts to avoid estate taxes

Protecting yourself from ‘stalkerware’ apps

 

CDC urges pregnant women to get coronavirus vaccine

 

Side effects of Pfizer's booster shots similar to first 2 doses, CDC study finds

Austin, Milley on what we need to understand about Afghanistan

The six hours of senior Pentagon leaders’ public testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday "were at times acrimonious and at times verging on political theater,” says The New York Times.

 

"Republican senators who had in the past defended President Donald J. Trump’s desire to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan demanded resignations from military leaders who carried out a Democratic president’s orders to withdraw,” says the Times. "Democrats, who are traditionally tougher on military leaders, on this occasion, provided solace in the form of softer questioning and traced flaws back to the Trump administration.”

 

Media get clicks by focusing on the theater. Let’s focus instead on the military's assessment of what happened in Afghanistan and the lessons to be explored.

 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said: "We helped build a state, but we could not forge a nation. The fact that the Afghan army we and our partners trained simply melted away – in many cases without firing a shot – took us all by surprise. It would be dishonest to claim otherwise. 

"We need to consider some uncomfortable truths: that we did not fully comprehend the depth of corruption and poor leadership in their senior ranks, that we did not grasp the damaging effect of frequent and unexplained rotations by President Ghani of his commanders, that we did not anticipate the snowball effect caused by the deals that Taliban commanders struck with local leaders in the wake of the Doha [peace] agreement, that the Doha agreement itself had a demoralizing effect on Afghan soldiers, and that we failed to fully grasp that there was only so much for which – and for whom – many of the Afghan forces would fight.”

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said: “Over the course of four Presidents, 12 Secretaries of Defense, seven Chairmen, ten CENTCOM Commanders, 20 Commanders in Afghanistan, hundreds of Congressional Delegation visits, and 20 years of congressional oversight, there are many lessons to be learned. 

"Some of the key ones that require thoughtful examination are the decisions to reduce forces in Afghanistan in order to invade Iraq. We need to fully examine the role of Pakistan 
sanctuary. We need to completely understand the degree to which corruption contributed to the collapse of the Afghan government. We need to fully understand the mission creep 
where we transitioned from a Counter Terrorism mission to nation building. And on the military side we need to understand how we developed, trained, and equipped the ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces] and why they collapsed in only 11 days.”

Also in the news

North Korea says it's successfully tested a new 'hypersonic missile'

Turmoil in Haiti, Ethiopia a focus of global concern at U.N. General Assembly

Debt limit bill stalls again in Senate as pressure increases

Sen. Elizabeth Warren tells Fed Chair Powell at hearing he’s a ‘dangerous man’ and she’ll oppose his renomination

Biden nominates 9 attorneys for federal prosecutor posts

WSJ: More than 130 federal judges broke the law by hearing cases in which they had a financial interest

AP explainer: Why Facebook is holding off on kids’ version of Instagram

MacArthur Foundation announces its ‘genius’ grant recipients for 2021

Pfizer sends first data to FDA on coronavirus vaccines for younger children

Private equity, public firms got coronavirus relief intended for small business

As you know, amid the coronavirus shutdowns in the spring of 2020, the federal Paycheck Protection Program was created to help companies pay their employees.

 

Initially, there were no restrictions on borrowing by companies that had access to other capital. But after an outcry over large firms getting loans, the Treasury Department said "PPP borrowers should consider their ability to access alternative sources of liquidity sufficient to support their ongoing operations" when certifying their need for a loan.

 

Private equity:

 

My thanks to the reader who alerted me to this report.

 

About $1.2 billion of PPP and Economic Injury Disaster Loan pandemic relief money, earmarked for small businesses, went to companies backed by large and well-funded private-equity firms, according to a report by the left-leaning nonprofit Americans for Financial Reform in partnership with the Anti-Corruption Data Collective and Public Citizen.

 

At the time these companies received the government funding, their large private-equity owners, a group of more than 100 firms that includes Energy Capital Partners, Apollo Global Management and Ares Management Corp., had $900 billion in uninvested cash, the report says.

 

Private-equity firms have taken over broad swaths of American industry — health care, retailing and energy — in recent years, says longtime financial reporter Gretchen Morgenson of NBC News. Using large amounts of debt to finance their acquisitions, private-equity firms buy companies, aim to increase their profits, and then try to resell them a few years later for more than they paid. 

 

While the executives heading private-equity firms have benefitted greatly from their operations, there are costs for workers and other stakeholders in these debt-fueled takeovers, academic researchers say. One cost is a greater likelihood of bankruptcy; a study showed such failures occurred at 10 times the rate of other companies. Reduced levels of employment at companies bought by private-equity firms also follow those acquisitions, according to another study.

 

Publicly traded companies:

 

A ProPublica analysis of Securities and Exchange Commission filings has found that at least 120 publicly traded companies that got PPP loans of more than $500,000 have been allowed to keep the money.

In addition, at least 30 companies announced plans to go public after getting their loans, bringing in investor money that they often used to pay off other debts — but not the ones they owed to the federal government, all of which were forgiven, ProPublica says.

 

"By many metrics, the federal government’s response to the pandemic succeeded in alleviating the worst effects of the most abrupt pause in economic activity America has ever experienced. Unlike most safety net programs, it did so by erring on the side of generosity. The government’s supplemental unemployment insurance and stimulus checks were enough to actually lower poverty last year.”

 

"Waste is inevitable in any economic rescue mission. But some of it is avoidable,” ProPublica says. "Experts say Congress could have created a threshold of financial health at which PPP loans would have to be repaid — without denying the lifeline many firms needed."

Also in the news

Reparations for centuries of racism draw scrutiny at U.N. General Assembly, but those who’d pay say little

 

'Nothing new here' as Congress maneuvers to avoid government shutdown, raise debt limit

 

Biden administration moving to protect undocumented Dreamers via new rule

 

Two Federal Reserve officials to depart amid scrutiny over investment trades

 

Ford to spend $11.4 billion on new electric vehicle, battery plants in former coal states Tennessee, Kentucky

 

Major crimes were down overall in U.S. in 2020, but homicides hit biggest 1-year increase on record

 

AP/PBS: Far-right cryptocurrency following ideology across borders

Genetic testing increasingly enables cancer treatment without chemotherapy

Coronavirus: Boosters, global inequity, local triage, promising pills

Let’s sprint through what's happened since you and I last chatted two weeks ago.

 

Booster shots:

The FDA and CDC last week authorized the Pfizer booster for people over 65 who got their second dose of the vaccine at least six months ago, adults with underlying conditions, and frontline workers such as teachers and healthcare workers whose jobs put them at risk.

 

Here is an explainer, from The Associated Press.

 

Booster profits: Pfizer and Moderna booster shots will be “almost pure profit” compared with the initial doses, says WBB Securities CEO Steve Brozak. That’s because the research and development spending already has been done.

 

Drugstore chains CVS and Walgreens could bring in more than $800 million in revenue each, says Jeff Jonas, a portfolio manager with Gabelli Funds.

 

Global inequity: Leaders from developing countries at the U.N. General Assembly warned rich countries last week of the dangers of leaving them behind.

 

Chad President Mahamat Idriss Déby Itno said: “The virus doesn’t know continents, borders, even less nationalities or social statuses. The countries and regions that aren’t vaccinated will be a source of propagating and developing new variants of the virus. In this regard, we welcome the repeated appeals of the United Nations secretary-general and the director general of the [World Health Organization] in favor of access to the vaccine for all. The salvation of humanity depends on it.”

 

By mid-September, fewer than 4 percent of Africans had been fully vaccinated and most of the 5.7 billion vaccine doses given around the world were in 10 rich countries, says AP.

 

The WHO says 15 percent of promised donations of vaccines, from rich countries that have access to large quantities of them, have been delivered.

 

President Biden announced at a global vaccination summit convened virtually on the sidelines of the General Assembly that the United States will double its purchase of Pfizer shots to share with the world to 1 billion doses, with the goal of vaccinating 70 percent of the global population within the next year.

 

Local triage: 

As the delta variant drives a new wave of coronavirus cases, Alaska and Idaho have activated statewide “crisis standards of care.” Health systems can prioritize patients for scarce resources based mainly on their likelihood of survival and can deny treatment. The decisions affect coronavirus and non-coronavirus patients, says The Washington Post. 

 

Some healthcare providers in Montana also have turned to crisis standards, and Hawaii’s governor this month has released health workers from liability if they have to ration care.

   

Public health cutbacks: 

Even as coronavirus hospitalizations in some areas are climbing to the highest numbers at any point in the pandemic, new laws in at least 26 states aim to permanently weaken government authority to protect public health, says AP.

 

And at least 303 public health leaders have retired, resigned or been fired since the pandemic began, according to an ongoing analysis by Kaiser Health News and AP. That means 1 in 5 Americans has lost a local health leader during the pandemic, AP says.

 

Promising pills:

At least three promising antiviral pills for the coronavirus are being tested in clinical trials, with results expected as soon as late fall or winter, says Carl Dieffenbach of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who's overseeing antiviral development.

Also in the news

Germany's center-left Social Democrats narrowly beat party of outgoing Chancellor Merkel

 

Two-thirds of Swiss voters back same-sex marriage

 

Many Haitians deported from Texas returning to homeland for first time in years or decades

 

Senate to hold test vote on House-passed spending bill, debt limit increase

 

Pelosi announces Thursday vote on $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill

House votes 218-211 to protect abortion rights amid state challenges

House Budget Committee approves Democrats’ $3.5 trillion bill

Republican review finds no proof Arizona election was stolen from Trump

Dan Balz in WPost: Arizona audit debunks Trump false claims; poison of misinformation still threatens electoral process

Linda Greenhouse in NYTimes: What we lost when Sandra Day O’Connor retired from Supreme Court

 

James Webb Space Telescope to be 100 times as powerful as Hubble, will change the way we see the universe

 

Birds made a comeback in North America as human activity decreased during pandemic, researchers say

Note to readers

My usual August time off was superceded by trying to understand what was happening in Afghanistan. So I’m going to take two weeks off now. See you next on Monday, Sept. 27!

One of the many poignant moments on 9/11

As we mark 20 years since the 9/11 attacks, Washington Post nonfiction book critic Carlos Lozada has written an essay on the books that have tried to make sense of it all.

 

I’ve always been grateful to the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93, who may have saved the lives of my family that day. I live and work five blocks from the U.S. Capitol, and on 9/11, my 10-year-old daughter was at school, even closer to the Capitol.

Lozada writes: "The civilians aboard United Airlines Flight 93, whose resistance forced the plane to crash into a Pennsylvania field rather than the U.S. Capitol, were later lionized as emblems of swashbuckling Americana. But one offhand detail in the 9/11 Commission report underscores just how American their defiance was. The passengers had made phone calls when the hijacking began and had learned the fate of other aircraft that day. 'According to one call, they voted on whether to rush the terrorists in an attempt to retake the plane,' the commission report states. 'They decided, and acted.'"

"They voted on it," Lozada says. "They voted. Even in that moment of unfathomable fear and distress, the passengers took a moment to engage in the great American tradition of popular consultation before deciding to become this new war’s earliest soldiers."

 

In that stressful-beyond-imagining moment of their lives, these Americans’ visceral reaction was to vote. Twenty years later, voting is at risk. Let’s do what we can to honor the passengers of Flight 93 and everyone else who's defended American democracy at great personal cost.