2:00PM Water Cooler 9/5/2024 | naked capitalism

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

The good news for Trump is that Kamala’s post-convention “bounce” seems to have been slight. The good news for Kamala is Trump’s continued deterioration in North Carolina, plus taking a slight lead in Pennsylvania. Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads, top to bottom — are within the margin of error.

“Historian who accurately predicted 9 of last 10 presidential elections makes his 2024 pick” (USA Today). “Allan Lichtman, the historian who correctly predicted the outcome of nine out of the ten most recent presidential elections, has made his guess on who will reclaim the White House this year. Spoiler alert: it’s Vice President Kamala Harris. Lichtman said in a video, (clickbait) first reported by The New York Times, that he based his prediction on thirteen keys or ‘big picture true false questions that tap into the strength and performance of the White House Party.’” • See here for Lichtman’s prediction system, which goes all the way back to 1860. Here is the chart for this year:

Allan Lichtman Officially Predicts That Kamala Harris Will Win the Election! https://t.co/ADRx7uqbMd pic.twitter.com/NngkRXCzTV

— 13 Keys Tracker (@13_keys_tracker) September 5, 2024

More: “‘Foreign policy is tricky, and these keys could flip,’ he said in the video. ‘The Biden administration is deeply invested in the war in Gaza, which is a humanitarian disaster with no end in sight. But even if both foreign policy keys flipped false, that would mean that there were only five negative keys, which would not be enough for Donald Trump to regain the White House.’” • One wonders whether debacles in both Gaza and Ukraine would affect the results of Lichtman’s prediction sustem. Dunno about an incumbent seeking re-election. Isn’t that false?

* * *

The Debate (September 10)

* * *

Trump (R): “Two RT Employees Indicted for Covertly Funding and Directing U.S. Company that Published Thousands of Videos in Furtherance of Russian Interests” (press release) (Office of Public Affairs, Department of Justice). Aren’t we paying the Censorship Industrial Complex a lot of money to prevent this sort of thing? Anyhow: “The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with ,’ said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. ‘The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.’ ‘Our approach to combating is actor-driven, exposing the of adversaries of influence from behind the curtain,’ said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. ‘As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, including the charged defendants, co-opted online commentators by funneling them nearly $10 million to pump across social media to U.S. audiences. The Department will not tolerate foreign efforts to by .’ ‘Covert attempts to and into unwittingly consuming foreign propaganda represents ,’ said FBI Director Christopher A. Wray.” • The rhetoric seems a little over-heated (helpfully underlined); can they possibly believe that they’re saying? Anyhow, it’s good to have the sources of “division” identified at last. And now do Israel and The Lobby.

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Airborne Transmission

“Indoor air monitoring goes to school” (Chemical and Engineering News). How it started: “(I)t wasn’t until the day after the US ended its COVID-19 public health emergency in May 2023 (ha ha) that the CDC provided a precise ventilation target of five air changes per hour in any occupied space. For schools to meet this target, the air in every classroom would need to be completely refreshed every 12 min. In Denver, Hernandez says, ‘none of these schools could do that.’” How it’s going: “In Colorado and Boston, collaborations between scientists and school districts that helped get students safely back to school at the height of the pandemic have continued and expanded. The indoor air monitoring programs that begun during the pandemic are now ensuring that kids headed back this fall are breathing clean air in homeroom.” Two cities… And: “With hundreds of schools now actively monitoring indoor air quality, it is perhaps surprising that it took a global pandemic to get air sensors into classrooms. The onus of monitoring and regulating the air pollutants inside buildings has always fallen to building managers. The US Environmental Protection Agency ‘doesn’t have broad responsibility for monitoring indoor air or ensuring its quality in the same way we are authorized for ambient air,’ says Vito Ilacqua, acting director of the agency’s Center for Scientific Analysis. In other words, there is no Clean Air Act for indoor spaces.” • Sigh.

“Are chronic absenteeism interventions working?” (K-12 Dive). “About one-quarter (23%) of school districts surveyed said none of the strategies they put in place to combat chronic absenteeism have been particularly effective, according to an analysis of data published Tuesday by Rand Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education. One explanation, according to researchers’ interviews with district leaders, is a cultural shift occurring since COVID-19-related school building closures, in which students and families view school attendance as optional and less important.” • Or maybe — work with me, here — the kids are just sick all the time.

Elite Maleficence

Cute!

Good morning!#CDCKills pic.twitter.com/NzdzPmbEOT

— 🐀 (@Guiness_Pig) September 3, 2024

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

(12) Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Challenger Job Cuts” (Trading Economics). “US employers announced 75,891 job cuts in August 2024, the most in five months, and the most for the month since 2009 when excluding the pandemic-induced crash in 2020. The result was in line with other key releases in reflecting the softening of the US labor market, strengthening the rhetoric for doves in the FOMC. Among different sectors, tech companies announced the most cuts….”

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” (Trading Economics). “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US dropped by 5,000 from the previous week to 227,000 on the period ending August 31st, below market expectations of 230,000, and reaching a new 7-week low.”

Employment Situation: “United States ADP Employment Change” (Trading Economics). “Private businesses in the US added 99K workers to their payrolls in August 2024, the lowest number since January 2021, following a downwardly revised 111K in July and well below forecasts of 145K. Figures showed the labor market continued to cool for the fifth straight month while wage growth was stable.”

Tech: “Intel’s Money Woes Throw Biden Team’s Chip Strategy Into Turmoil” (Bloomberg). “The Biden-Harris administration’s big bet on Intel Corp. to lead a US chipmaking renaissance is in grave trouble as a result of the company’s mounting financial struggles, creating a potentially damaging setback for the country’s most ambitious industrial policy in decades. Five months after the president traveled to Arizona to unveil a potential $20 billion package of incentives alongside Chief Executive Officer Pat Gelsinger, there are growing questions around when — or if — Intel will get its hands on that money. Intel’s woes also may jeopardize the government’s ability to reach its policy goals, which include establishing a secure supply of cutting-edge chips for the Pentagon and making a fifth of the world’s advanced processors by 2030. Intel is mired in a sales slump worse than anticipated and hemorrhaging cash, forcing its board to consider increasingly drastic actions — including possibly splitting off its manufacturing division or paring back global factory plans, Bloomberg reported last week. That threatens to further complicate its quest for government funding, at a time when Intel desperately needs the help. The Silicon Valley company is supposed to receive $8.5 billion in grants and $11 billion in loans from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, but only if the chipmaker meets key milestones — and after significant due diligence. That process, which applies to all Chips Act winners, has been clear from the outset, and aims to ensure that companies only get taxpayer dollars once they’ve actually delivered on their promises. Intel, like other potential recipients, hasn’t received any money yet. In ongoing negotiations, Intel has grown frustrated with what it sees as the government dragging its feet and has urged officials to release funding faster….” • Who’s running Intel? Zelensky?

Real Estate: “Creative destruction rips through US commercial property” (Financial Times). “The financial train wreck laying waste to parts of the market for big office buildings in some of America’s largest cities is showing no signs of abating, even as the US economy as a whole continues to be chugging along just fine. The questions remain as to why this is happening and whether the bottom has been reached. The detritus is strewn everywhere…. Part of the problem for owners of these buildings, and their lenders, is the fundamental change in the nature of work, post-pandemic. Between high-speed internet access, video calls and working-from-home privileges, people aren’t going to an office to work as often as before — although that partly depends on the city, with Miami and New York City having much higher levels of employees back in the office compared with San Francisco and Los Angeles. Less office space is now needed. ‘The vacancy rates are the highest I’ve ever seen,’ Flexner said. It does seem bleak, and there are genuine negative knock-on effects for restaurants, retail stores and other businesses that depend on the foot traffic and commerce generated by a bustling office complex…. As for these struggling commercial office towers, Schumpeter’s logic is likely to prove true. (Tom Flexner, a former vice-chair at Citigroup) said many of these buildings would be razed, taken down to the raw land, at great cost, and then would rise again as residential properties or new commercial properties designed to meet the demands of the evolving office culture. Until then, the bloodbath will continue and the pain will be considerable for both equity and debtholders.”

Real Estate: “Frenzy over Venezuelan gang in Aurora reaches crescendo, fueled by conflicting information and politics” (Denver Post). “The mayor’s claim of a gang takeover is disputed by other city officials, who say the longstanding disarray and poor conditions at the apartment buildings were the fault of poor oversight by CBZ Management — not because of criminal acts by Tren de Aragua members. ‘There’s this hysteria that we apparently have a gang problem, but what we have is a slumlord problem in the city of Aurora,’ City Councilwoman Alison Coombs said.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 47 Neutral (previous close: 52 Neutral) (CNN). One week ago: 60 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Sep 5 at 1:10:04 PM ET.

Book Nook

“Just say it, Henry” (London Review of Books). The prefaces of Henry James. “People who are impatient with the late James may think his view of human reality is over-refined and unreal. It isn’t. It is a version of the world in which we live… (W)e occupy a delicate weave of emotions and beliefs that half beguiles us into thinking of ourselves as its centre, until something is seen or something happens which tells us, irrefutably, that we are not. We live in a state of bewilderment, even though we do not want to acknowledge it, and indeed may not always know it. James’s late style evolved along with this multiplex vision of human reality, and it is not so much a vehicle for that vision as its enabling condition. That fusion of style and content was a great event in the literary history of the early 20th century…. The best moments in the prefaces are not just about the fiction but share with the later fiction a fascination with the dirty things that they are trying not to talk about, or from which they may even be flinching or recoiling.” • Hence the inverted commas, the adverbs, the endless circumlocutions….

Class Warfare

“Ultra-Rich Families Set to Control $9.5 Trillion by 2030, Deloitte Says” (Bloomberg) “The wealth of ultra-rich families will likely swell to $9.5 trillion by 2030, according to estimates from consultancy Deloitte, as family offices grow and morph to rival hedge funds. The figure would mark a 73% jump from the current $5.5 trillion controlled by people represented by family offices, according to the report. The number of investment firms for the wealthy is expected to grow by one-third over the same time period, to 10,720. As wealth inequality concentrates more money in the hands of the very rich, and as it becomes easier to open a family office, the industry is catching up with hedge funds in size and — in some cases — hiring from a similar pool of professional investors.” • Trees grow to the sky?

News of the Wired

Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert (UNDERSCORE) strether (DOT) corrente (AT) yahoo (DOT) com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From MarkT:

MarkT writes: “Another winter walkd among the giant tree ferns in Akatarawa Forest Park, Wellington, New Zealand.”