Capitalisn't will be returning with a new co-host in September! In the meantime, as we develop the re-launch of our show, we'll be airing previously unreleased content and re-releasing some of our favorite episodes.
In light of a recent threat by the Department of Justice to bring a lawsuit against Yale University for allegedly discriminating against Asian-American and White applicants, we thought it would be worthwhile to rebroadcast a conversation Kate and Luigi had about the Harvard admission scandal last year.
Political scandal is a historically defining aspect of American politics. But, there's been very little scholarship on the political incentives that surround the production and consequences of scandals.
In a recent paper, "Political Scandal: A Theory", our very own Will Howell and Wioletta Dziuda create a new model of political scandal that makes these incentives clear. On this episode, we discuss how these incentives should reshape the way we think about political scandals.
On this episode, Bethany and Luigi discuss the recent release of the "Twitter Files" – a collection of internal Twitter documents released publicly by new CEO Elon Musk that reveal the company's internal processes and policies for dealing with controversial content, including contentious public health information and political revelations.
Despite the potential significance of these documents, they have received relatively little coverage from the mainstream media. Our hosts debate and discuss potential reasons behind this, the possible implications at the intersection of social media, politics, and the mainstream media, as well as offer solutions to the underlying democratic issues at stake.
Less than a year ago, I wrote of the almost certain regret that awaited the prosperous, urban, multiple‐degree‐holding types who voted for Gustavo Petro, Colombia's Chavista president. They thought they had supported a Nordic‐style social democrat—failing to notice that they had helped to elect a tropical socialist who, given his past as a guerrilla group member and Hugo Chávez supporter, was also a potential autocrat. Caveat emptor (or rather suffragator) indeed. But I never thought that voter's remorse would set in so quickly. Or so extremely. According to poll data from June 1, 2023, only 26 percent of Colombian citizens approved of Petro's performance as president. And this was before the scandal that shook the country's political scene last Sunday evening, when Semana magazine released a series of WhatsApp audio files sent by Armando Benedetti, Petro's former ambassador in Caracas, to Laura Sarabia, the president's former chief of staff. Among the least bombastic revelations is Benedetti's claim that Alfonso Prada, Petro's former interior minister, "stole the whole ministry with his wife." This implies massive levels of corruption around Petro, who came to power with an anti‐corruption agenda (quite cynically given his disreputable political alliances). Prada proceeded to sue Benedetti for libel. Petro's dwindling number of supporters may dismiss this as a politician's petty slander against a rival in the cabinet. Far more concerning for them—and for Petro—is Benedetti's matter‐of‐fact assertion to Sarabia that he himself obtained COP $15 billion (around USD $3.58 million at today's exchange rate) for Petro's 2022 presidential campaign, during which he served as the former candidate's right‐hand‐man and main political handler. Petro's campaign did not officially report any donation nearly as large. Its declared funds consisted mostly a series of bank loans, which were meant to be paid with the "reimbursement" sum that the Colombian state guarantees to candidates for each vote received in an election. In many countries, an insider's admission of how millions of undeclared dollars flowed into the president's campaign coffers would bring down the government. Alas, Colombia is not one of them. This is not due to a lack of unashamedly corrupt presidents; as I wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal, the opposite has been the case. Rather, since the 1950's, the Colombian elite's idiosyncratic approach to presidential corruption has followed the maxim, attributed to journalist Hernando Santos (1922–1999), that the trouble with overthrowing a president is that he may fall upon those doing the toppling. Already in Petro's case, the three‐member House of Representatives commission created to investigate Benedetti's statements includes two members of the president's own party. The enquiry will be a charade, which is a pity since the source of the undeclared campaign money is as important as the sum itself. In an interview, Benedetti told Semana that the money "did not come from entrepreneurs," meaning the legal business community. Suspicion has fallen on the Marxist guerrilla groups and other drug trafficking organizations, but also on the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro. Anonymous, the hacker group, claims that Maduro financed "part of the campaign of the current president of Colombia," but has not published evidence hitherto. What is certain is that, in regional terms, the Maduro regime has been the principal beneficiary of Petro's election. To begin with, Colombia recognized Maduro's presidency after a three‐and‐a‐half‐year hiatus, and Petro himself has met Maduro four times since his inauguration. His government, which opposes any future hydrocarbon exploration in Colombia despite dwindling reserves, has promoted the idea of importing Venezuelan natural gas. While Petro wages a political war against Colombia's key petroleum industry—crude oil has been the country's main legal export for decades—he lobbied President Joe Biden to end American sanctions against the Maduro regime. This would imply renewed Venezuelan oil exports to the U.S. market (even if socialism devastated Venezuela's oil industry well beyond immediate or even medium term repair). Petro's "shoot yourself in the foot / prosper‐thy‐neighbor" policy is devoid of any rationality. Unless, of course, Colombia's increasingly authoritarian president is somehow subject to the Venezuelan tyrant. Petro's eco‐fanatical crusade against the hydrocarbon industry is but one example of how his government is bent on destroying the few areas of the Colombian economy that are functional. Other examples include his plans to put the state in charge of centralized funding for the healthcare and pension systems, both of which are efficient—although certainly not perfect—thanks to private sector involvement and some degree of consumer choice. Where things are already problematic, Petro's policies would make them worse. For instance, he wants to make a rigid, overregulated labor market even less flexible and more hostile to businesses. Then there is the matter of rising insecurity, an old problem that, until recently, appeared mostly solved, only to resurface dangerously in the last year. Under Petro, illegal armed groups have expanded their power as they launch constant, deadly attacks against the armed forces and police. It all brings to mind the dark era of the late 1990's, when Colombia was on the verge of becoming a failed state as it came under siege from the FARC guerrillas, which are still up in arms despite the much‐touted "peace" agreement of 2016. Usually, a crisis in government breeds economic instability. Under Colombia's current government, however, the opposite has been the case. Since the Benedetti scandal broke, the peso rallied to reach its highest value against the dollar since mid‐2022, when Petro was about to win the presidential election. In October, two months after he took office, the peso reached an all‐time low against the dollar. Amid the current political turmoil, forward‐looking markets are anticipating the failure of Petro's legislative initiatives in health care, pensions, and labor law. Which is to say, there is speculation that Colombia's institutional framework has already survived Petro's statist onslaught. The weaker his position, the thinking goes, the less likely it is that non‐leftist parties will lend him their support, which he needs to obtain congressional majorities. I fear, however, that markets may be getting ahead of themselves. The Colombian congress is minimally ideological and highly transactional. There is still a good chance that, issue by issue, Petro's government can negotiate just enough votes to have his "reforms" approved, in which case only the courts will stand in the way of his agenda. Not that Petro is respectful of any check or balance. This week, he propounded the theory that, since he was elected, his government represents "the will of the people," meaning that any opposition to his political project—including from the news media—is part of an illegitimate, "soft coup." The onslaught, in other words, is far from over. In my view, the worst part about Petro's election victory is that, at this time last year, Colombia was in need of radical reforms. Above all, a chronically sluggish economy required budget discipline, public spending cuts, drastic debt reduction, a strong currency (ideally through dollarization), far lower taxes, labor market deregulation, subsoil privatization, school choice, and an end to non‐tariff barriers. By electing Petro, however, voters decided to do precisely the opposite on all fronts. As warned, most already regret it.
Momentum in Washington to cut or eliminate U.S. funding for a United Nations agency that aids Palestinians is moving forward almost entirely unchecked. But it's based on unproven allegations — largely uncritically amplified by U.S. media — that the agency's staff had links to Hamas's Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The allegations are contained in an Israeli government dossier claiming that 13 employees (one of which was not identified), out of a total of 13,000, at the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) either took part or assisted in the Hamas-led atrocities. Israel notified UNRWA of the allegations early last month and authorities at the U.N. agency immediately fired the 12 employees without conducting an investigation. News of the allegations broke soon thereafter which opened the floodgates of knee-jerk reactions, including donor countries pausing their funding for UNRWA — which could result in millions of Palestinians in Gaza stranded without aid amid a humanitarian crisis —and efforts in Washington to cut UNRWA's funding entirely and forever.Meanwhile, these debates have been buttressed by inaccurate media coverage of Israel's allegations. More specifically, many major U.S. news outlets have been leaving out one key detail when reporting on the Israeli dossier: while the Israelis make a number of claims and accusations that they say are based on intelligence and other source data, the document itself contains no direct evidence that these 12 identified UNRWA employees participated in or assisted the Oct. 7 attack. Some outlets at least tried to make this point clear in wider stories or segments on the saga. For example, the Associated Press has noted that the Israelis provided no evidence. CBS News's Debora Patta noted on the network's Nightly News program on January 29 that in the document, "Israel accuses 12 UNRWA employees of being involved in the October 7 Hamas attack, including the kidnapping of Israeli citizens," adding, "But they have yet to provide evidence substantiating these claims."CNN reported that the network "has not seen the intelligence that underlies the summary of allegations" and that that summary "does not provide evidence to support its claims." CNN anchor Anna Coren asked Ophir Falk, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu, to provide evidence — which he could not — and wondered why the alleged perpetrators haven't been arrested. "Well the first step is for them to be fired," Falk said. Outside of the AP, CBS, and CNN, major U.S. media reporting on this issue has largely accepted the Israeli claims or have even gone further as to advance the Israeli narrative on UNRWA. The New York Times, for example, has published several stories on the UNRWA saga, and none of them have mentioned that the Israeli dossier has no specific evidence (it's probably worth noting here that one of the reporters covering this issue for the Times once served in the Israeli Defense Forces).The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy article giving credence to the Israeli allegations and in another, reported that the dossier "is the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the UNRWA employees and militants." Another Journal article said the allegations are "a blow" to UNRWA without telling readers the dossier provides no evidence. Meanwhile, ABC World News Tonight's report on the dossier not only failed to tell its viewers it contains no specific evidence, but it went a step further reporting that "the U.N. has not denied the claims."Others like NBC Nightly News and the Washington Post provided lengthy coverage of the Israeli allegations and mention only in passing that the outlets have not independently verified the claims. Conversely, some non-traditional media outlets have been more forceful in their coverage of the dossier, making the lack of evidence a key feature of their reporting. For example, Breaking Points' Krystal Ball this week took the Israeli claims to task. "It is literally just a[n] evidence-free list of allegations, …no actual evidence is provided," she said, adding, "Now maybe they did participate and maybe they didn't. I can tell you there is definitely not enough that has been provided to say anything about this. Again, zero evidence provided."Most of the mainstream reports also omit key contextual information, like for example, that UNRWA routinely provides the Israeli government with a list of the names of its employees, or that many on the right in Israel, and their allies in the United States, have been trying to shut down UNRWA for decades because they believe the U.N. agency legitimizes Palestinians' claims to land they say was stolen by Israel. "There has been a long standing aim for Republicans and some Democrats in Congress to defund UNRWA long before Oct. 7, as they see the agency as responsible for enabling the right of return to be an ever growing final status issue," Joel Braunold, managing director of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, told RS. Indeed, the Biden administration worked with Senate leaders this week on an aid bill that would bar any funding from going to UNRWA and prevent any funding going to the agency that has already been allocated to it. And the House is now considering a bill that would permanently block U.S. funds to UNRWA."While the bipartisan consensus is not where the House is currently, the Overton window has shifted closer to those wishing for congressional cut off to the agency," Braunold said. Meanwhile, UNRWA says it will run out of money by the end of February if donor countries like the United States continue to withhold their funding. Top U.N. officials are pleading with donors to keep the agency funded. "Our humanitarian operation, on which 2 million people depend as a lifeline in Gaza, is collapsing," UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini said in a statement posted on X, formerly Twitter. "Palestinians in Gaza did not need this additional collective punishment."Former UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness is asking wealthy countries in the region to underwrite the aid agency should its funding collapse at the end of the month. "Some of the most desperate people in the Middle East are now facing starvation, they're facing famine, and the Arab states need to step up to the plate," he said.It appears that the Biden administration agrees with that sentiment. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby even suggested recently that the administration would support UNRWA even if a formal investigation finds that the 12 employees assisted Hamas's attack. "I do think it's important to remember that UNRWA does important work across the region, certainly in Gaza," he said last week on NBC's Today Show. "They have helped save thousands of lives and we shouldn't impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the terrible allegations lobbied against just a small number of their employees."
Baku's InterContinental hotel has a suspicious history. When the land around the hotel was put up for auction, the details of the land's address and size were purposefully blacked out.
Those sounding the loudest alarms about possible shutdowns are largely silent when Congress ignores its own budgetary rules. All that seems to matter is that government is metaphorically funded.
In July 2019, world-renowned biological researchers Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng were quietly walked out of the Canadian government's National Microbiology Lab (NML). The original allegation against them was that Qiu had authorised a shipment ...
The main finding of the two-month long investigation is that 90 percent of the loans were issued to high level officials, their children, and those who had access to closed information.
