DL Open Thread: Saturday, June 15, 2024

Business CEO’s See The Real Trump.  I mean, they’ll support him anyway, but still…:

Several CEOs “said that [Trump] was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought [and] was all over the map,” CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin reported Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Among the topics on which Trump offered scant details were how he would reduce taxes and cut back on business regulations, according to two other people in the room who spoke to CNBC.

Meeting attendees and people who spoke with them were granted anonymity in order to speak freely about the private event.

The same CEOs who were struck by Trump’s lack of focus “walked into the meeting being Trump supporter-ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction,” Sorkin reported.

“These were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to [Trump but] actually walked out of the room less predisposed” to him, Sorkin said.

Remember, kids, ‘less predisposed’ isn’t the same as ‘opposed’.

A Top State Auditor Reveals How Remote Work And AI Are Creating A New Era In Fraud.  Proof, among other things, as to why you need a State Auditor who knows what to look for–and doesn’t use that information to commit fraud themselves:

Few states have a better view into the latest ways people are stealing and otherwise misspending local government dollars than Washington.

Its Office of the State Auditor is the second-biggest state auditing shop in the country by budget ($64 million) and fifth by employee count (400). By state statute, the office must regularly examine the books and operations of Washington’s every town, county, port, stadium authority, asparagus commission, cemetery district, drainage district and mosquito control district. It conducts as many as 2,400 state and local audits a year, rooting out fraud and waste.

A highly-recommended interview.  Read.  Learn stuff.

How The Federal Government Gave Freed Slaves Land–Then Took It All Back Within A Year And A Half.  Brilliant award-worthy investigative reporting from a Pro Publica collaboration:

Black Americans have been demanding compensation and restitution for their suffering since the end of the Civil War.

40 Acres and a Mule remains the nation’s most famous attempt to provide some form of reparations for American slavery. Today, it is largely remembered as a broken promise and an abandoned step toward multiracial democracy. Less known is that the federal government actually did issue hundreds, perhaps thousands, of titles to specific plots of land between 4 and 40 acres. Freedmen and women built homes, established local governments, and farmed the land. But their utopia didn’t last long. After President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, his successor, Andrew Johnson, stripped property from formerly enslaved Black residents across the South and returned it to their past enslavers.

This article makes me wish we had more readers during the weekend–because everybody should read this.

Rethugs Gotta Rethug–Wisconsin-Style:

Wisconsin Republicans are withholding $125m designated for cleanup of widespread PFAS contamination in drinking water and have said they will only release the funds in exchange for immunity for polluters.

The move is part of a broader effort by Republicans in the state to steal power from the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, the funding’s supporters say, alleging such “political games” are putting residents’ health at risk.

“People really feel like they’re being held hostage,” said Lee Donahue, mayor of Campbell, which is part of the La Crosse metropolitan area and has drinking water contaminated with astronomical levels of PFAS. “It’s ridiculous, and some would argue that it’s criminal, that they are withholding money from communities in dire need of clean drinking water.”

I will hold you hostage no longer.  Until tomorrow.