Richard Bedard

"We put a 10% tariff on an island that only has penguins." https://t.co/XY7q2LVQU0

RT @JamesSurowiecki: Just figured out where these fake tariff rates come from. They didn't actually calculate tariff rates + non-tariff bar…

Reflections from a past syllabus: "The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between the true and the false no longer exist."

This should be required viewing. Democracy is much more fragile than people think. And democracy can be lost, not in a violent coup, but in a series of small, escalating transgressions, the significance of which can be too easily overlooked in the moment. https://t.co/7zqhS59zze

Ugh, WSJ with the Bad Headline of the Day: https://t.co/vTpeiIQ2qh

To be clear, that preceding tweet is just the idle musing of a Harvard government major who has a fascination with how democracies can go off the rails. As an apolitical journalist, it has nothing to do with anything, of course, except my overactive imagination.

What's a blueprint for getting rid of an entrenched democracy? What I'd do: #1 Mass-fire federal gov. workers; install loyalists #2 Cripple courts, legal system because dangerously fact-based (invoke emergency orders?) #3 Silence critics in media/entertainment Doable? Not sure.

Recently got a big stack of music CDs, free, which I promptly transferred to my PC and into my iTunes rotation. One was the Backstreet Boys, and I can't believe how quickly I've come to loathe them. (YMMV)

Headline sounds like The Onion but it's not. https://t.co/LrWRZefNPU

An FT Specialist pub surveyed health insurance industry readers about the killing of CEO Brian Thompson, and the public reaction. Comments were fascinating. Apols for the paywalled link, but no one's done this story yet (there are free trials): https://t.co/TWtxKxlTrA

Actually, the whole article is worth sticking around for: a deep dive into a financial trend du jour, "synthetic risk transfer" (coming to a bank near you): https://t.co/FEIvWm5SQL

Nice lead in the FT: When Wirecard went belly up a few years ago, Deutsche Bank ended up with a loss of just €18mn — miraculously little for a bank that had up until then made a habit of ambling into nearly every major financial cow pie in the world.

Some wondered why the CEO killer would be dumb enough to be caught carrying around a manifesto. Maybe because it was intended to be a suicide note, and he was trying to work up the nerve.

So police do know gunman's name, mayor says, but won't release it so as not to tip him off. Weird, as saying that tips him off but without advantage of enlisting public. My guess: if Adams is being honest, the name will come out today or tomorrow. https://t.co/YAZMCUTIWE

Another thought on the Brian Thompson investigation: What the NYC police are doing is clever. They seem to be leaking just enough interesting-but-not-vital-to-the-investigation details to keep the story in the headlines, so the public remains aware of this guy.