Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption, and policy failures:

• America Needs a Better Plan to Fight Autocracy. By enabling Putin and other global kleptocrats, the West undermined democracy. It’s time to change tactics. (The Atlantic) see also What If the Constitution Keeps Eroding American Democracy? The US system has a pretty radical lack of respect for majority rule, and that problem is getting worse. Apocalyptic warnings from liberals won’t change that. (Bloomberg)

• The Moral Hazard Lessons From Nickel Market Disaster Every crisis brings buses, and the global disruption caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine may well bring more (Wall Street Journal)

• Covid success to covid disaster: What happened in Hong Kong? Hong Kong’s tragic turn underscores the importance of effective vaccines to protect against omicron. (Grid)

• The Metaverse and NFT Boom Is About to Go Bust The world is already getting bored of the apes (OneZero)

• How ‘Ukrainian bioweapons labs’ myth went from QAnon fringe to Fox News A feedback loop involving Russia and Tucker Carlson is promoting claims of US funding for biological weapons in Ukraine (The Guardian)

• Welcome to Londongrad, Where Kleptocrats Wash Their Money Clean For years, Russian wealth has poured into Britain with few questions asked, helping to finance political campaigns and buoying the luxury property market. Russian oligarchs have been so happy to avail themselves of Britain’s laissez-faire regulatory climate to park their wealth and launder dirty money that the nation’s capital has earned the moniker Londongrad. (New York Times) see also How Putin’s Oligarchs Bought London From banking to boarding schools, the British establishment has long been at their service, discretion guaranteed. (New Yorker)

• The Red State Murder Problem The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions. In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden. 8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century. (Third Way)

• The painful, cutting and brilliant letters Black people wrote to their former enslavers Some are exquisite condemnations from learned and accomplished men who escaped their enslavement. Some are brief queries, shots in the dark, dictated by illiterate women. One is brilliant sarcasm, humorously calculating and requesting back wages. All of these letters from Black Americans to the people who once controlled their lives show a desire for freedom and a desperate longing to be reunited with their families. (Washington Post)

• Is Ginni Thomas a Threat to the Supreme Court? Behind closed doors, Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife is working with many groups directly involved in controversial cases before the Court. (New Yorker)

• The military-intelligence veterans who helped lead Trump’s campaign of disinformation: After Donald Trump lost the White House, ex-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and three other current and former US Army officers challenged the vote’s legitimacy and pushed baseless conspiracy claims. Military ethicists say their actions threaten to weaken the public’s faith in democracy. (Reuters)

Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Darren Palmer, General Manager of Battery EVs at Ford. He has overseen the development and rollout of Ford’s Mustang Mach E, F150 Lightning, and the E-Transit van. The 30 year Ford veteran is part of their Team Edison skunkworks group and is overseeing Ford’s $50B shift to electrification, and will be driving the split into two firms, EV, and legacy business.

Ending a pandemic costs money. Congress isn’t willing to pay

Source: Grid

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To learn how these reads are assembled each day, please see this.