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      Bill Gates and the Zero-Sum Vaccination Game

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      The debate is raging once again about the true origin of COVID-19. Was it zoonotic, originating in a bat cave and then infecting exotic meat in Wuhan’s wet market as the majority of scientists claimed throughout 2020? At the approach of the November election, US President Donald Trump preferred to believe the pandemic was a plot to destroy his presidency conducted by a man he previously called an intimate “friend,” China’s President Xi Jinping. The virus was already spreading when Trump explained to World Economic Forum in Davos the nature of his relationship with Xi: “He’s for China, I’m for the US, but other than that, we love each other.”

      Four months later, Trump began contradicting scientists and blaming Xi’s China by claiming “that the virus originated in a laboratory and was accidentally released.” In September, he preferred to suggest to his voters that COVID-19 was the result of an Asian conspiracy designed to undermine his presidency. This sparked a wave of anti-Asian attacks in the US that have continued to this day.

      Prominent scientists today recognize that Trump’s initial assessment may have been right. Their colleagues who dismissed the idea of an accidental release of the virus from a Wuhan laboratory were either misled or disingenuously defensive of an equally unproven thesis. The scientists may have been impelled to reject the suspicion of a laboratory accident not only out of a lack of direct evidence, but also out of fear of the political blame game the president was beginning to exploit to distract attention from his own failure to respond appropriately to the crisis.

      Trump obviously preferred to see the war against a virus as a PR opportunity to bolster his image as a fearless leader. Allowing politicians to place blame on China, even for an accident, might have become as dangerous for the world as the virus itself, adding to the reigning misery rather than resolving the mystery of the origin of the disease.

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      Science itself and its public image have taken a hit from this ongoing catastrophe. The honored, if not revered Dr. Anthony Fauci admitted to prioritizing the distribution of masks among the medical community above the general public at a time when little was still known about how contagious COVID-19 was and how it spread. Political leaders across the globe, including Trump, all found themselves in a thankless position as they were required to demonstrate their leadership with insufficient knowledge of the nature of the challenge and a penury of material means to confront it.

      Many deserve to share the blame for a situation that, despite progress with vaccines, is still in many ways worsening. But, as Alexander Zaitchik exposes in an important article in The New Republic, the person perhaps most to blame for our global failure to respond effectively is neither a scientist nor a politician. His name is Bill Gates.

      Most rational people would reason that a global crisis requires a global response. Most realists recognize that in a civilization dominated by sovereign nation-states, summoning a unified response to any global crisis will never be easy. Humanity’s quasi-universal awareness of the problem of global warming over the decades demonstrates the difficulty of mobilizing humankind to implement even a minimalist response.

      In his article, “How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines,” Zaitchik narrates a depressing story that began in February 2020, when the nature of the COVID-19 threat had become clear. In conformity with its mission, the World Health Organization (WHO) coordinated a “research and innovation forum to mobilize international action” aimed at combating the spreading epidemic. It sought to “maintain broad and open channels of communication, since collaboration and information-sharing minimize duplication and accelerate discovery.”

      Collaboration and sharing of science would be critical to any effective response. With most research publicly funded — a point Mariana Mazzucato made this week — it specifically recommended patent pooling. Zaitchik notes that optimism was still possible: “Battle-scarred veterans of the medicines-access and open-science movements hoped the immensity of the pandemic would override a global drug system based on proprietary science and market monopolies.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Proprietary science:

      An oxymoron to the extent that “science” simply means human knowledge and cannot be owned or commodified.

      Contextual Note

      The WHO was thus prepared to play the role assigned to its mission as stated in its constitution: “The health of all peoples is fundamental to the attainment of peace and security and is dependent upon the fullest co-operation of individuals and States.” Aware of the challenge lying ahead of them, the team began to prepare its campaign. Alas, it hadn’t counted on the intervention of the globe’s self-appointed Mr. World Health, Bill Gates, whose title derives from his contributing billions of dollars to the causes he believes in (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested $1.75 billion in the development and distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine). Among them is the most sacred of all causes: intellectual property. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Zaitchik describes in detail how Gates — a man with no skills in science, security or politics — has positioned himself to dictate to the world how contemporary science will affect every human being’s security. The key, following the logic of all capitalistic projects, is the management of scarcity. Without scarcity, industry cannot survive and prosper. Little does it matter that because of scarcity many humans simply will not survive.

      Before Gates’s intervention, the group sought “to create a voluntary intellectual property pool inside the WHO.” In so doing, they demonstrated their naivety: “That pharmaceutical companies and their allied governments would allow intellectual property concerns to slow things down — from research and development to manufacturing scale-up — does not seem to have occurred to them.” But that is exactly what happened, thanks to Gates’s overpowering voice (measured by billions of dollars rather than decibels) and his “reputation as a wise, beneficent, and prophetic leader.” When the dust cleared, what emerged was “a zero-sum vaccination battle that has left much of the world on the losing side.”

      Zaitchik documents the ensuing catastrophe due largely to “Gates’s dedication to monopoly medicine” and his “unwavering commitment to drug companies’ right to exclusive control over medical science and the markets for its products.” No one other than powerful governments can hope to compete with Gates’s cash reserves. But Gates’s own government, in Washington, DC, — whether under a Democrat or a Republican president — would never compete as a matter of principle. Competition is a private game. No other government in the world has the power to compete. The US government, like Gates himself, appears addicted to “politically constructed and politically imposed monopolies.”

      Historical Note

      The egregious oxymoron “proprietary science” would have seemed strange to the ears of anyone living before the industrial revolution. Were he alive today and imbued with modern economic culture, the 15th-century German printer, Johannes Gutenberg, would be claiming a percentage of every book, journal or magazine produced thanks to his invention of the printing press. Instead, Adolph II of Nassau, Archbishop of Maintz rewarded Gutenburg — the Bill Gates or Elon Musk of his day — for his innovation “with the title of ‘Gentleman of the Court’.” He also received “a court outfit, a stipend and two tonnes of grain and wine, tax-free.” The wine can be explained by the fact that Gutenberg’s inspiration for the printing press came from observing a wine press.

      Gates deserves to be similarly honored for his invention of MS-DOS. Rather than the billions extracted from the Earth’s entire population thanks to his skill at monopoly creation and predatory business practices, he should have received from the governor of the state of Washington an appropriate title (“Gentleman of the coding room”), a flashy suit of clothes with a matching raincoat (for Seattle weather), a generous stipend (a million of two per year would be appropriate) and maybe an unlimited supply of canned foods, since he is a believer in and expert practitioner of canned economic and scientific wisdom.

      As many of the rest of us queue up for one of the competing vaccines that promise to bail us all out — despite their disparities in performance adding to the confusion created by the incompetence of competitive governments — we should reflect on what all this tells us about an economic system whose vaunted efficiency Gates believes in and practices while using his money and clout to impose it on an unwilling world.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      George W Bush is back – but not all appreciate his new progressive image

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      He’s back.George W Bush, the former US president, returns to the political stage this week with a promotional book tour comprising numerous “virtual conversations” and TV and radio interviews, including a late night talkshow.The media appearances, focused on immigration reform, look set to confirm Bush’s improbable journey from reviled architect of the devastating Iraq war to elder statesman venerated even by some liberals. The Republican’s approval rating has soared since he left office in 2009 and he has been praised by his Democratic successor, Barack Obama.Not everyone, however, is comfortable with the rehabilitation of a leader whose “war on terror” yielded waterboarding and other forms of torture. They argue that Americans with short memories have become overly eager to embrace Bush, 74, as a folksy and avuncular national treasure.“I’m hoping there’ll be some pushback against this because I think it’s an absolute scandal that man should be rehabilitated and tarted up as in any way progressive,” said Jackson Lears, a cultural historian.Lears added: “This is a man who, in company with [vice-president Dick] Cheney of course, created more permanent and long-lasting damage to the presidency and the American system of government than probably anyone before or since.”Bush’s new book, Out of Many, One, fits his new image. The 43rd president has painted 43 portraits of immigrants he has got to know and has written their stories. His purpose, says his office, is to put human faces on the important debate around immigration and the need for reform.Bush’s publicity blitz will be reminiscent of that undertaken by Obama last November for the publication of his presidential memoir. It includes a virtual conversation with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the immigrant Hollywood actor and former governor of California, hosted by the George W Bush Presidential Center on Sunday.There will be an event with his daughter, Barbara Bush, via Barnes & Noble and further virtual conversations hosted by other bookshops. Media appearances range from an opinion column in the Washington Post newspaper to a three-part CBS interview in which anchor Norah O’Donnell visits Bush and his wife, Laura, at their ranch in Texas.Bush tells O’Donnell that the immigration system was one of the biggest disappointments of his presidency. “I campaigned on immigration reform,” he says. “I made it abundantly clear to voters this is something I intended to do.”But Lears, a history professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey and editor of the journal Raritan Quarterly, finds the notion of Bush as a champion of immigrants as “self-parodic”.He said: “It’s almost beyond belief that he would be celebrated for that or any other kind of humane gestures of inclusion and tolerance.“He was a man who wrapped his very narrow-gauge nationalism, his chauvinism and militarism in the rhetoric of righteousness. He was an evangelical Christian and that, to me, is more offensive in many ways than Trump’s style, which was overt, offensive and repellent.”Bush’s broadcast interviews will also include Fox News, National Public Radio, Telemundo and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! – a late-night show hosted by comedian Jimmy Kimmel. His counterpart on NBC, Jimmy Fallon, suffered a backlash for being too soft on Donald Trump and playfully stroking the candidate’s hair just weeks before the 2016 election.The promotional tour, and direct intervention on immigration, will put the seal on Bush’s comeback to the public stage. After Joe Biden’s inauguration, he made a joint TV appearance with Bill Clinton and Obama that presented the trio as guardians of democracy in the wake of Trump’s scorched earth assault on institutions.Yet for some it was hard to reconcile this conceit with the man who once faced demands to be prosecuted for war crimes over the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”, or torture, at CIA “black sites” in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks.Bush’s legacy includes the illegal invasion of Iraq in search of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. He resisted LGBTQ+ rights, botched the government response to Hurricane Katrina and presided over the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.Lears also criticizes Bush for an unconstitutional expansion of executive power that holds today. “This man committed more impeachable offences than you can shake a stick at and he’s being celebrated now in this mindless way,” he said.“I think of it as a yet another unintended and catastrophic consequence of Trump derangement syndrome: the sense that, well, maybe he wasn’t so bad after all because, after all, he and Laura and Barack and Michelle like each other. This seems to be the mentality that we’re dealing with.“It’s an enormous blind spot now and it’s perfect that an airhead like Jimmy Kimmel would be participating in this rehabilitation. I can’t imagine anything that would better signify the depths to which our public discourse has fallen than George Bush being celebrated on Jimmy Kimmel.”But even many of Bush’s critics have acknowledged some successes from his administration such as the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, or Pepfar, a historic global health initiative that saved or improved millions of lives in Africa. But they object to the way in which his long list of failures is being whitewashed because at least he is not Trump.Dan Kovalik, an author who teaches international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, said: “America is the land of amnesia. It’s not a country where people remember what happened yesterday, much less what happened in the Bush years. Also, because Trump was so bad, at least in terms of his personality, everyone else looks good by comparison.” More

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      Joe Biden’s southern border challenge: reversing Trumpism

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      The 46th US president took office promising a more welcoming immigration policy. But Republicans are calling a new wave of migrants at the southern border a ‘crisis’ and demanding action. In this episode of Full Story, Washington bureau chief David Smith describes the pressure Biden is under to respond to the issue. Plus, the Guardian’s Nina Lakhani describes what she witnessed on the border in Texas, where migrants are still being detained, and many sent straight back across the border

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      Read Nina Lakhani’s story about her visit to the US-Mexico border in Texas here. More

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      The US is pulling out of Afghanistan. But it will never leave those of us who served there

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      I am one of more than 800,000 American military veterans who have served in Afghanistan since 2001. Tens of thousands more served in other capacities, from intelligence and diplomacy to aid and development. It’s fair to ask whether the end of the war affects how one views his or her own small role in the effort. If we didn’t “win”, whatever winning means in a war like this, did we matter? Were the sacrifices in vain?A cold accounting might tally the costs in blood, treasure and time against the benefits to Afghanistan’s development and security or the reduction of al-Qaida’s capabilities. A historian’s perspective, a strategist’s assessment of alternatives and time, above all else, will tell.Rather, consider a more familiar and human frame: sport. Two boxers stand in the ring. Ten athletes race for the gold medal. A thousand enter the marathon. Was it worth it only for the winner? Would you appear for the Olympics even if you knew in advance you would lose?The value of the individual veteran’s experience in Afghanistan is not dependent on the outcome of a battle, the shifts in a policy or the determinations of a historian. To quote President Theodore Roosevelt, “It’s not the critic that counts … the credit belongs to the man [sic] in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming.” The game changes you, regardless of the result.Nowadays, I live in the suburbs of Washington DC. The eggbeater whirr of a helicopter is a routine accompaniment to the other sounds of our suburban neighborhood, close by a local hospital. Nearly 20 years ago, leading a platoon of 25 American mountain infantry in Afghanistan, I could have told you the distance, firepower and model of a helicopter from its signature melody in a matter of seconds.Reflecting on President Biden’s announcement about the end, for now, of American troops in Afghanistan, these hospital helicopters carry me back.There was the double-rotored Chinook that deposited our advance party in Gardez, a peaceful city at the time.A nearby mountain pass reminded us that hadn’t always been the case. Two decades earlier, a large Soviet force was pinned down and decimated by Afghan mujahideen. Their hasty fighting positions remained by the roadside. In Gardez, our platoon was the muscle to protect a reconstruction team of diplomats and development workers. There were textbooks and school supplies to liberate from former Taliban warehouses, endless councils with local elders, and mostly uneventful patrols along roads bounded by tall fields of marijuana and hashish drying in the relentless sun. On one mission we helped army veterinarians vaccinate what must have been a thousand livestock: goats, sheep and camels streaming towards our tent from all points of the compass.Even then it was clear a generation or more would pass before Afghanistan’s economic and political development would catch up with the lofty communiques of the US and our Nato allies. This was an order of magnitude more challenging than the reconstruction of Japan and Germany after the second world war.There was the dragonfly silhouette of an Apache attack helicopter, call sign “Widow maker”, as it banked against the midday sun near Khand Narai pass.Soon after arriving in Afghanistan, we had relocated closer to the jagged mountain border with Pakistan. The Apache released its missiles on my target, an enemy sniper who moments earlier fatally punctured Chris’s chest. Hours before, we had scrambled in response to another unit ambushed near the Pakistan border. Chris had driven in my Humvee. We’d never have reached the firefight without his navigation. With the sniper dead, we stumbled to safer ground, carrying Chris on a stretcher. Slippery with blood, I struggled to keep a grip. It was a lonely and cold drive home.Every week, it seemed, more and more “insurgents” – the catch-all label for Taliban, al-Qaida and other people shooting at us – were emboldened to leave their sanctuary inside Pakistan and walk across the largely unmonitored border into Afghanistan. We could plainly see what policymakers at the time wouldn’t acknowledge: the Taliban, and their allies, were gaining strength.What we hadn’t realized yet was how the game had changed. We were still measuring success by our head-to-head encounters. They knew it was a political contest. To discredit the Afghanistan government in the eyes of local villagers, our adversaries didn’t need to compete in the election or construct new roads and clinics. They only needed to show the government couldn’t keep those villagers safe. In one brazen move, they beheaded all the police at a local outpost. One act of terror silenced a hundred potential collaborators. Across a large province, half the size of Switzerland, an American force in the hundreds was insufficient for the task. It always would be.There was the Blackhawk medevac helicopter with its red cross markings, attempting a second landing on Losano Ridge.If I’d had the time, I could have counted each of the bullet holes in its fuselage from its first bold attempt to land in the midst of a 12-hour battle. In what had become a familiar drill, my fellow lieutenant’s platoon had drawn fire near the border that morning and we arrived soon after with reinforcements. As one of my men crested a hill to my flank, an ambush erupted from what sounded like every direction. Evan, age 19, was shot and killed in the opening act. Four of his buddies pulled him up a steep hillside, under withering machine gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades, to the landing zone we marked for the Blackhawk. I remember the skids lifting off the ground, evading incoming fire. The helicopter raced north with Evan. Maybe 40, maybe 60 insurgents were killed by the time we rumbled home that September night, shivering and shattered. When we said roll call, it was the one name without a response I would never forget.There were the helicopters that brought celebrities and public officials for their combat visits. They kept the engines on because the visits were short. There were resupply helicopters laden with ammo, food and mail. Even at the outer perimeter of American firepower we ate frozen king crab legs and steak. Once when the water resupply failed, we made do with diet iced tea. When our replacements began to arrive by helicopter in the spring, we even became a little nostalgic and put on the airs of grizzled old-timers.I left Afghanistan in 2004, but Afghanistan never left me. I remember the smile when we helped an elderly woman carried to our clinic on her husband’s back. I remember the solidarity of our platoon as we returned to patrol after Evan and Chris died. I remember the laughter of a bonfire skit and the stink of one sergeant’s boots. I can recall almost every moment of some battles, but hardly any of others. On some days it’s a worn photo that reminds; on others, the sounds of a helicopter.I do not regret trading early career opportunities for a uniform. I do not begrudge the policy mistakes echelons above my reality. I no longer mourn those who did not return. Instead, I celebrate how they lived with integrity and courage. I cherish our band of brothers. I try to pass on what I learned to my children, students and colleagues.Yes, it mattered. We played and it counted. For us. More

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      Empire of Pain review: the Sacklers, opioids and the sickening of America

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      By 2016, opioids had torn a piece out of Appalachia and the rust belt. The deep drop in life expectancy among white Americans without four-year degrees would no longer be ignored. OxyContin, Purdue Pharma’s highly addictive painkiller, helped elect Donald Trump.In Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe methodically and meticulously chronicles this tale of woe and crisis, indifference and corruption. His Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty lays bare the price exacted by the family’s drive for wealth and social mountaineering.The Sackler name came to dot the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian, Tate Modern and the Louvre. They rose – others paid dearly.Keefe is a veteran writer at the New Yorker. His 2019 bestseller, Say Nothing, chillingly examined the convergence of youth, zealotry and destruction in Northern Ireland. He even solved the mystery behind a disappearance.Like Say Nothing, Empire of Pain is drenched in misery, this time the byproduct of OxyContin, the go-to drug for Purdue. Since 1999, opioid-related deaths have risen more than fivefold. By the numbers, opioids have killed more than 450,000 in the US in two decades.Keefe’s book builds upon The Family that Built an Empire of Pain, a 2017 long read. Empire of Pain is filled with firsthand interviews and takeaways from confidential and original documents. It is a chilling and mesmerizing read, “substantially built on the family’s own words”. Which is what makes it so damning.The Sacklers did not cooperate. Indeed, they sought to derail publication. Keefe raises the possibility he was placed under surveillance, an attempt to intimidate him and his family. Nonetheless, the Sacklers’ indifference and smugness rise off the pages like steam from a sewer.In one 1996 email, Richard Sackler, Purdue’s chairman and president, demands the company become as feared as a “tiger with claws, teeth and balls”. Asked repeatedly at deposition years later if Purdue played any role in the opioid crisis, he steadfastly answers: “I don’t believe so.”A cousin, Kathe Sackler, actually boasts that OxyContin was a “very good medicine” and a “safe medicine”. She also claims credit for coming up with the “idea”. But she doesn’t end there.Confronted with the question, “Do you recognize that hundreds of thousands of Americans have become addicted to OxyContin?”, she can only muster: “I don’t know the answer to that.”The drumbeat surrounding the monster birthed by Purdue is as old as the century itself. Barry Meier, then of the New York Times, published Pain Killer: An Empire of Deceit and the Origin of America’s Opioid Epidemic, in 2003.Yet faced with pushback from Purdue and the Sacklers, the powers that be swept the crisis under the rug. Even the Times came down with a case a temporary case of cold feet.In 2007, under George W Bush, the US justice department only delivered a relative slap on the wrist. The Sacklers, major Republican donors, had unleashed a full-scale counter-attack starring Rudy Giuliani, Mary Jo White, formerly in charge of the southern district of New York and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and a bevy of high-priced legal talent.Strings were seemingly pulled, career prosecutors’ findings and recommendations discounted and binned. Purdue agreed to pay $600m to resolve a felony charge of misleading and defrauding physicians and consumers. Three executives entered guilty pleas and agreed to $34.5m in penalties. None of the individuals criminally charged were Sacklers.In the words of a former DoJ lawyer, this was “a political outcome that Purdue bought”. The company named its in-house law library after one of the designated-offenders and paid millions in post-employment compensation: a reward for taking a bullet for the team.Paul McNulty, then deputy attorney general, helped handcuff justice. John Brownlee, the federal prosecutor for the western district of Virginia, clashed with McNulty over the disposition of the case. Word spread that Brownlee’s job tenure was shaky. He resigned in April 2008. For the record, James Comey, McNulty’s predecessor as deputy AG, resisted Purdue’s entreaties.Among hundreds of interviews, Keefe spoke to Brownlee and Rick Mountcastle, the line prosecutor and career lawyer who handled the case. Still at DoJ, Mountcastle raises the possibility Purdue had an inside man at the Food and Drug Administration who enabled OxyContin in exchange for the prospect of future employment.Based on a 1995 email, Mountcastle began to suspect that Curtis Wright, then an FDA examiner, had turned a blind eye to the dangers posed by OxyContin. Purdue would later tap Wright to be an executive director. In 2003, Wright testified that he still believed addiction to OxyContin was “rare”.“I think there was a secret deal cut,” Mountcastle tells Keefe. “I can never prove it, so that’s just my personal opinion. But if you look at the whole circumstances, nothing else explains it.”Regardless, the FDA helped pave the way for an opioid epidemic. Dr David Kessler, FDA commissioner when OxyContin received the agency’s approval, acknowledged “certainly one of the worst medical mistakes”.Donald Trump spoke of the toll of the opioid crisis but in 2020, as election day loomed, his Department of Justice announced a “global resolution” of the government’s investigation into Purdue and the Sacklers. By then, the company was in bankruptcy and the target of a barrage of civil lawsuits.The Sacklers agreed to pay a $225m civil penalty, little more than the 2% they had taken from Purdue. But no one would be prosecuted. Asked why the government had not brought criminal charges against the Sacklers, Jeffrey Rosen, Bill Barr’s deputy attorney general, declined to say.The government, Keefe writes, was “so deferential toward the Sacklers that nobody even bothered to question them”. More

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      Existential challenges from China, climate and more demand new US industrial policy | Robert Reich

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      America is about to revive an idea that was left for dead decades ago. It’s called industrial policy and it’s at the heart of Joe Biden’s plans to restructure the US economy.When industrial policy was last debated, in the 1980s, critics recoiled from government “picking winners”. But times have changed. Devastating climate change, a deadly pandemic and the rise of China as a technological powerhouse require an active government pushing the private sector to achieve public purposes.The dirty little secret is that the US already has an industrial policy, but one that’s focused on pumping up profits with industry-specific subsidies, tax loopholes and credits, bailouts and tariffs. The practical choice isn’t whether to have an industrial policy but whether it meets society’s needs or those of politically powerful industries.Consider energy. The fossil fuel industry has accumulated “billions of dollars in subsidies, loopholes and special foreign tax credits”, in Biden’s words. He intends to eliminate these and shift to non-carbon energy by strengthening the nation’s electrical grid, creating a new “clean electricity standard” that will force utilities to end carbon emissions by 2035 and providing research support and tax credits for clean energy.It’s a sensible 180-degree shift of industrial policy.A proper industrial policy requires that industries receiving public benefits act in the public interestThe old industrial policy for the automobile industry consisted largely of bailouts – of Chrysler in 1979 and General Motors and Chrysler in 2008.Biden intends to shift away from gas-powered cars entirely and invest $174bn in companies making electric vehicles. He’ll also create 500,000 new charging stations.This also makes sense. Notwithstanding the success of Tesla, which received $2.44bn in government subsidies before becoming profitable, the switch to electric vehicles still needs pump priming.Internet service providers have been subsidized by the states and the federal government and federal regulators have allowed them to consolidate into a few giants. But they’ve dragged their feet on upgrading copper networks with fiber, some 30 million Americans still lack access to high-speed broadband, and the US has among the world’s highest prices for internet service.Biden intends to invest $100bn to extend high-speed broadband coverage. He also threatens to “hold providers accountable” for their sky-high prices – suggesting either price controls or antitrust enforcement.I hope he follows through. A proper industrial policy requires that industries receiving public benefits act in the public interest.The pharmaceutical industry exemplifies the old industrial policy at its worst. Big pharma’s basic research has been subsidized through the National Institutes of Health. Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act bankroll much of its production costs. The industry has barred Americans from buying drugs from abroad. Yet Americans pay among the highest drug prices in the world.Biden intends to invest an additional $30bn to reduce the risk of future pandemics – replenishing the national stockpile of vaccines and therapeutics, accelerating the timeline for drug development and boosting domestic production of pharmaceutical ingredients currently made overseas.That’s a good start but he must insist on a more basic and long-overdue quid pro quo from big pharma: allow government to use its bargaining power to restrain drug prices.A case in point: the US government paid in advance for hundreds of millions of doses of multiple Covid-19 vaccines. The appropriate quid pro quo here is to temporarily waive patents so manufacturers around the world can quickly ramp up. Americans can’t be safe until most of the rest of the world is inoculated.Some of Biden’s emerging industrial policy is coming in response to China. Last week’s annual intelligence report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warns that Beijing threatens American leadership in an array of emerging technologies.Expect more subsidies for supercomputers, advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other technologies linked to national security. These are likely to be embedded in Biden’s whopping $715bn defense budget – larger even than Trump’s last defense budget.Here again, it’s old industrial policy versus new. The new should focus on cutting-edge breakthroughs and not be frittered away on pointless projects like the F35 fighter jet. And it should meet human needs rather than add to an overstuffed arsenal.Biden’s restructuring of the American economy is necessary. America’s old industrial policy was stifling innovation and gouging taxpayers and consumers. The challenges ahead demand a very different economy.But Biden’s new industrial policy must avoid capture by the industries that dominated the old. He needs to be clear about its aims and the expected response from the private sector, and to reframe the debate so it’s not whether government should “pick winners” but what kind industrial policy will help the US and much of the world win. More

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      Are US corporations really taking a stand for voting rights?

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      Despite a wave of public statements by corporations opposing legislation that would make it harder for people to vote, election reform advocates doubt American capitalism is really coming to the rescue of American democracy.Activists are welcoming corporate involvement in the fight against bills introduced by Republicans in state legislatures across the US to erect barriers to voting that disproportionately affect people of color and other groups that often vote Democratic.Hundreds of companies and business leaders lent their names this week to a two-page ad declaring “we must ensure the right to vote for all of us”, published in the country’s biggest papers.But past corporate interventions in social justice campaigns, including statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters last summer, did not go far beyond words, activists say.The pursuit of lower taxes and lax regulations, meanwhile, has led corporations to continuously finance the Republican party’s most corrosive projects, from voter suppression to the takeover of the judiciary to the big election lie that led to the sacking of the Capitol in January, they say.“Of course we welcome corporate support against outrageous voter suppression efforts by GOP state legislatures that make it harder for voters, particularly from communities of color and other historically marginalized communities, to vote,” said Ben Jealous, president of People For the American Way.It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers“That reaction is no doubt driven by their fears of losing business from their customers in the midst of heated public anger over such aggressive and targeted voter suppression, and we hope they will put their money where their mouth is and take real action to stop such proposals.”Thenewspaper ad was organized by two African American business leaders – Kenneth Frazier, chief executive of Merck, and Kenneth Chenault, former head of American Express – who have said such bills are racially discriminatory, even as Republicans insist election security is their deepest concern.The corporate decision to speak out created a rare moment of discombobulation for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who warned chief executives to “stay out of politics” before clarifying a day later, with no hint of self-consciousness: “I’m not talking about political contributions.”But the surface friction between McConnell and his erstwhile patrons belies the mildness of most corporate criticism of anti-voter laws and obscures companies’ ambivalence when it comes to taking a stand on voting rights, activists said.Large Georgia-based companies including AT&T, Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola did not voice concerns last month about legislation to restrict voting in the state until they came under public pressure. Their eventual statements were measured.“We are working together with other businesses through groups like the Business Roundtable to support efforts to enhance every person’s ability to vote,” said AT&T’s chief executive, John Stankey. “In this way, the right knowledge and expertise can be applied to make a difference on this fundamental and critical issue.”The same three companies declined to sign the ad published in the New York Times and Washington Post last week, referring media to their statements about Georgia, though similar high-profile clashes are playing out in Michigan, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere.Walmart declined to sign the ad, with its chief executive, Doug McMillon, who chairs the Business Roundtable, telling employees: “We are not in the business of partisan politics.”Walmart’s reticence was spotlighted by LaTosha Brown and Cliff Albright, co-founders of Black Voters Matter, in a statement that praised the newspaper ad as a “righteous decision to stand up to racism, disenfranchisement, and voter suppression” and criticized those who did not sign.“They – and all of these other companies – continue to issue misleading statements that create a false equivalency between securing elections and attacking voting rights,” Black Voters Matter said. “These corporations are pandering to a big lie that is being used to justify voter suppression. That’s partisan.”Michael Serazio, a professor of communications at Boston College, said corporations appeared to be taking a “proactive” approach on voting rights to protect their bottom lines.“It does feel, on this one, that some of these companies are getting out ahead of a potential boycott from consumers, before the boycott around the laws was going to kick off,” Serazio said.Corporations increasingly feel pressure from consumers and in some cases employees on social and political issues, Serazio said.“Without question, the broader trend over the last decade has been corporations responding to a perceived or real sense that consumers want them to take a stand on political issues that they wouldn’t have done before.”But corporations simultaneously shovel money into the coffers of the very politicians who engineer the policies the companies claim to detest.A report this month by Public Citizen, a government watchdog, found corporations had given more than $50m in campaign donations in recent years to legislators who advanced anti-voter laws and promoted Donald Trump’s big election lie.Josh Silver, director of Represent.us, a non-partisan elections reform group, said corporations have “an extraordinarily important role” to play in the struggle over voting rights and there was “cause for hope”.“But it’s also practical for them,” Silver said. “They have to choose whether to side with an increasingly authoritarian [Republican party], or the majority of their workers and their consumers.“This is not just altruism.” More

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      Trumpism lives on in new thinktank – but critics say it’s ‘just a grift’

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      Malcolm X, Mark Twain, Malcolm Gladwell. Lewis Carroll, Steve Jobs. Douglas Adams, Mohandas Gandhi, Rocky Balboa – all seem unlikely sources of inspiration for a definition of Trumpism.Yet these are among the prominent figures quoted by members of a new thinktank dedicated to resurrecting former US president Donald Trump’s populist-nationalist agenda.The America First Policy Institute (AFPI) describes itself as both “non-profit” and “non-partisan”. Critics, however, regard it as a cash cow for alumni of the Trump administration whose stained reputations make it hard to find gainful employment.Despite Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp”, the AFPI reportedly has a first-year budget of $20m, which it hopes to double to $40m next year, and plans to expand beyond its current headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, to locations that include a spacious office on Washington’s Capitol Hill.The AFPI unveiled a website this week replete with images of the Stars and Stripes and Mount Rushmore. It profiles 35 team members with, in most cases, an inspirational quotation from a famous person.The board chair, Linda McMahon, for example, a former professional wrestling executive who led Trump’s Small Business Administration, attributes a line to the actor and comedian Lucille Ball: “If you want something done, give it to a busy woman to do it.”Pam Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general who defended Trump against impeachment, quotes the French fashion designer Coco Chanel: “Keep your heels, head and standards high.” Kaelan Dorr, who was senior adviser at the treasury department, dips into film fiction with the boxer Rocky, played by Sylvester Stallone: “Every champion was once a contender who refused to give up.”But vice-chair Larry Kudlow, former economic adviser to Trump, simply quotes himself: “Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.”Trump this week gave the organization his blessing, issuing a statement in praise of its “patriots” as “some of the greatest champions for freedom, free enterprise, national greatness, and the primacy of American workers, families, and communities, that our Nation has ever seen”.The former president said these “freedom warriors” have his full support “as they work not only to preserve the historic accomplishments of my Administration, but also to propel the America First Agenda into the future”.The team includes Rick Perry, former energy secretary, and John Ratcliffe, ex-director of national intelligence. Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, will be informal advisers to the group, according to the Axios website.The AFPI’s president and chief executive is Brooke Rollins, whose past roles have included policy director for Perry when he was governor of Texas, head of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) thinktank and Trump’s top domestic policy adviser.With priorities including criminal justice reform, government efficiency and education reform, Rollins oversaw a significant expansion and enhanced profile of the TPPF during her 15 years there, a formula she hopes to replicate at the new thinktank. Her successor as chief executive of the TPPF, Kevin Roberts, said: “She loves ideas. She loves policy.“She wants to be able to continue to promote the great successes that came from the Trump administration, many of them originating in states; that really makes sense when you think about what she was doing before she went to the White House. I think she’s going to be a forceful and classy voice of objection to some of the priorities of the Biden administration. She’s going to do an exceptional job in leading the group.”Roberts believes that Trump’s policy achievements on criminal justice reform, the US-Mexico border and the pre-pandemic economy are worth preserving, studying and developing. “I think bottling that up into a thinktank and asking questions from an academic point of view – how was it that we achieved that? – is really important,” he said.The AFPI is organized around 20 “policy centers”, such as homeland security and energy independence. A profile of the “Center for 1776” rails against “academic elites and demagogues” who are choosing to “embrace identity politics, division, and submission”. It appears to be picking up where Trump’s “1776 Commission”, a thinly disguised rightwing backlash against the New York Times’s 1619 Project, left off.But some observers found irony in the notion that a president who exhibited few ideological commitments – other than “owning the libs” and Republican orthodoxy on tax cuts for the rich – is now spawning a policy institute.Michael D’Antonio, an author and political commentator on CNN, said: “I guess I give them credit for exhibiting creativity. I didn’t expect that the level of gall would reach the point where they would actually create an institute devoted to policies that never existed in the first place.Many of these people are so disgraced that their options for gainful employment outside of this make-believe world of Trump policy are very limited“Trump is nothing if not energetically imaginative and this is a great way to suggest that there was something that never existed. Maybe they could at last develop Trump-related policies. So maybe now there’ll be a healthcare plan and it could come from this institute.”D’Antonio suggested that the AFPI will spend time attacking Joe Biden and is unlikely to impress political scholars. “I can’t imagine anyone outside of the Trumpian universe taking anything that they produce seriously,” he added. “It’s not exactly a team of policy superstars. Many of these people are so disgraced that their options for gainful employment outside of this make-believe world of Trump policy are very limited.”When a president leaves office, his former staff often slot into lucrative work on a corporate board or in the lobbying industry. Trump’s uniquely divisive leadership appears to have stigmatized former aides, although several – including Kudlow – have taken roles at Fox News, Fox Business or other conservative media. The AFPI offers another refuge.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, wondered: “How could anything having to do with Trump have the word ‘think’ in it? No. It’s all just a grift. It won’t be a thinktank. It’ll be a vehicle for people to give money to pay people who worked for Trump and can’t get hired elsewhere to keep Trump relevant.”As Trump resides at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, teasing another run for president in 2024, organizations have sprung up to carry on his legacy. They include the Conservative Partnership Institute, established by the former Republican senator Jim DeMint, and America First Legal, a legal group set up by the former White House policy adviser Stephen Miller.The AFPI will easily be the biggest and may help Trump maintain his grip on the Republican party, but will have to work hard to establish credibility in Washington’s already crowded hive of policy thinktanks.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, which traces its origins to 1916, said: “This is not the first research centre or joint venture to have been established to give a patina of intellectual respectability to Trumpism and it probably won’t be the last.“After all, there are a lot of unemployed Trump alumni and, to be fair, if you strip away all of the unacceptable personal stuff, all of the prejudice, you are still left with a handful of ideas that form the core of Trumpism, for better or for worse. It obviously represents a shift in the intellectual centre of gravity within the Republican party.”Galston, a former policy adviser to Bill Clinton, added: “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that, in four years or eight years, we’ll look back on this flurry of intellectual activity in the Trumpist wing of the Republican party and say this is where the political eruption that Donald Trump represents was organised into something that the party could newly coalesce around.”The AFPI also includes Paula White-Cain, a Trump spiritual adviser and televangelist who will lead a “Center for American Values”. Her online profile quotes the African American poet Maya Angelou: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” More