Quotulatiousness

June 7, 2024

Nigel Farage’s challenge to the Conservatives

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ed West perhaps goes a bit far in comparing Nigel Farage and his Reform UK to Lenin’s Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, but he’s not wrong about what the rise of Farage’s party might mean to the already dim re-election hopes of Rishi Sunak’s bedraggled clown posse:

“Nigel Farage” by Michael Vadon is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 .

I imagine that the last remaining serotonin emptied from the bodies of the Tory election team when they heard that Nigel Farage was to return as leader of the Reform Party and stand at Clacton.

The likelihood is that Farage will win that seat, and the reception he received was certainly electric. And Clacton is not even among Reform’s top 20 targets, according to Matt Goodwin.

It’s possible that the party could overtake the Tories in some polls, although I doubt that they will beat them on election day. That is certainly Farage’s aim, and as he said on Monday: “I genuinely believe we can get more votes in this election than the Conservative Party. They are on the verge of total collapse … I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. I will surprise everybody.”

Contrary to the jokes about Farage failing to get elected, or the criticism that he is a “serial loser“, he is arguably the most successful politician of the past decade. He built up a minuscule party of ‘fruitcakes and gadflies’ to win two successive European elections. He made Brexit happen, and then stood his candidates down in a number of seats to ensure the Leave alliance remained united in 2019, securing Boris Johnson a victory.

For which he didn’t get the thanks he felt was due, something he alluded to at Monday’s press conference. From what I understand the Tory establishment treated him with a snooty disdain which many an outsider has experienced with the British upper class. And for those making the old point that Farage’s private school background bars him from being a true outsider, that’s not how high society works. Populist movements claiming to represent the downtrodden or disenfranchised have invariably been led by people from highly educated or privileged backgrounds, whether of the Left or Right.

Farage’s targeted constituency certainly fits that bill. Clacton is the town that Matthew Parris called “Britain on crutches” in a piece warning the Tories not to desert their traditional middle-class voters. But the problem for the party is that, through a combination of authoritarian vibes and very liberal policies, they have managed to lose both. Rather than making moderate, soothing sounds while using the British executive’s immense power to shape the country around their will, they have done the exact opposite.

The Government’s disastrous polling figures are not some great mystery. Conservatives don’t tend to have the same emotional attachment to their party as the Labour family does. They vote Tory because they want them to do three things: cut immigration, put more criminals away, and lower taxes. It’s nothing more complicated than that, and they’ve failed on all three.

It is obviously the former that has provoked the most bitterness towards the party. I’m a great believer in Stephen Davies’s analysis of alignment in politics, and the central issue in British politics is immigration, multiculturalism and diversity. Labour are unquestionably on one side of this issue; the Tories are broadly pro-multiculturalism and, while issuing soundbites critical of high immigration, have raised it to record levels. If both main parties are seen to be on one side, something else will fill that gap in the market. Political parties are amoral bodies seeking voting coalitions, and the side which is most united in aligning its core groups around primary and secondary issues will win.

Redeployment! – Millions of men from Europe to Asia

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Europe, Germany, History, Japan, Pacific, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 5 Jun 2024

Now that Japan is the only Axis power still in the fight, Allied forces — especially American ones — must redeploy to prepare for the final invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. But how do you move millions of men halfway around the globe? And which ones go — veterans, new recruits, or some combination? Who decides? Where exactly do you send them to prepare too, with some many eastern ports like Manila a shambles? Let’s take a look.
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Since 2015, the Trudeau Liberals have done a fantastic job of suppressing the Canadian economy

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

If Canadians elected Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party to make major changes from what had gone on under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, then they got their wish in so many different ways, but especially economically:

Reports of Canada’s dismal economic outcomes seem never to end. Why should they? For years Canadians have had the same federal government delivering the same deleterious economic policies and the same expansion in regulatory initiatives and spending that have invariably depressed economies and reduced standards of living whenever and wherever they are imposed. Therefore, until the federal government or its policies change, we should not expect the miserable results to materially improve.

The latest negative report is the release of Canada’s 2024-Q1 GDP numbers on Friday, which again showed sluggish growth relative to population, resulting in yet another quarterly decline in real GDP per capita. Relative to 2015-Q3, the last full quarter before the Trudeau government took office, cumulative real GDP per capita is up only about 0.7 per cent. A recent RBC Economics analysis showed from around 1991 to 2015, cumulative real GDP per capita growth in Canada approximately tracked with the U.S., but not since Justin Trudeau took office. Compared to 0.7 per cent growth in Canada from 2015-Q3 to 2024-Q1, real GDP per capita is up 15.7 per cent in the U.S. in the same time period.

Where the 0.7 per cent comes from matters, too. In real per capita terms, some components of GDP — mainly government — expanded while others contracted. Alarmingly, business investment, which drives productivity and standards of living, is down 13.9 per cent. This includes real per capita reductions of 15.2 per cent in residential structures, 18.4 per cent in machinery and equipment, and 19.3 per cent in non-residential structures, with an increase in intellectual property investment not nearly enough to offset the reductions in other categories.

To understand why business investment and economic performance in Canada are so poor under the Trudeau government, let us consider the following representative example of its economic strategy.

The government believes many families struggle with the cost of caring for young children, which is a legitimate concern. A reasonable solution, which the Harper government implemented in 2006, is to send money to families with young children and let parents buy for their children what they need. After the Liberals expanded that program, they could have left it at that, but what have they done instead? The government initiated a national takeover of child care, effectively expropriating child care entrepreneurs’ businesses by flooding their sector with public money and then controlling private companies’ revenues and operations. The result is child care entrepreneurs’ investments have been wiped out or severely reduced, control of their business operations have been wrestled away by government, and they are unable to properly serve their customers (the families), as evidenced by the drastic reduction in parental options and widespread shortages.

Battlefield Normandy – The battle of Authie D-DAY + 1

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The AceDestroyer
Published Dec 20, 2018

June 7, also known as D-Day +1 marked the first battle between the Canadians and the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend during the Normandy campaign. When the Canadians attacked Authie, the German 12th SS counterattacked and a large tank on tank battle commenced. The first encounter between the two divisions was immediately a bloody one. The battle unfortunately had a barbaric end as members of the SS murdered several Canadian POW’s in cold blood. Here’s the battle of Authie.
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QotD: Wine labels

Filed under: Business, Humour, Quotations, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

One cannot fail to notice the contemporary marketing of wines by means of fun-and-funky labels, with their fractal curves, tropical fruit juice colors, and animals designed to appeal to the inner child, that cretinous monster who lurks inside us all. There is an undeniable increase in animals, for example, on wine labels, a trend which is bound to grow. All one can do to protest this development is to point out that the quality of a wine is probably in inverse proportion to the ferocity of the animal on its label. Beware, therefore, of labels with eagles, tigers, or bears (though I have not yet seen sharks, leopard seals, or velociraptors, it is only a matter of time).

Lawrence Osborne, The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, 2004.

June 6, 2024

The reason Germany failed on D-Day (Ft. Jonathan Ferguson)

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Imperial War Museums
Published Jun 5, 2024

Adolf Hitler was looking forward to D-Day. His plan was simple. Reinforce the western defences, launch a furious counterattack, and “throw the Allies back into the sea”. After that, he could turn his full strength against the Soviet Union and end the war. For Hitler, the outcome of this campaign would be decisive.

In the previous episode of our D-Day series we looked at the air battle for Normandy. This time IWM Curator Adrian Kerrison covers the fighting on land. Why were some beaches bloodier than others? Why did German counterattacks fail? And why did it take so long for the Allies to breakout?

To help us answer some of those questions we’ve brought in the Royal Armouries’ Jonathan Ferguson to look at some of the most important weapons of D-Day.
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80 years ago

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, France, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Battlefield Normandy – The Battle of Juno Beach 6 June 1944

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The AceDestroyer
Published Nov 18, 2018

Hello and welcome to the first episode of my Battlefield Normandy series. This part is all about the landings at Juno beach on June 6 1944, and what happened on the first day of the Allied landings in Normandy. In this episode we will take a look at all the landing beaches and the subsequent fighting. You can find the maps on my Facebook page. The next episode will be about the battle of Authie on June 7, when the Canadians first met the 12th SS Hitlerjugend. I hope you’ll enjoy this video and find it helpful.
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QotD: Herbert Hoover as Woodrow Wilson’s “Food Dictator”

Filed under: Food, Government, History, Quotations, USA, WW1 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

In 1917, America enters World War I. Hoover […] returns to the US a war hero. The New York Times proclaims Hoover’s CRB work “the greatest American achievement of the last two years”. There is talk that he should run for President. Instead, he goes to Washington and tells President Woodrow Wilson he is at his service.

Wilson is working on the greatest mobilization in American history. He realizes one of the US’ most important roles will be breadbasket for the Allied Powers, and names Hoover “food commissioner”, in charge of ensuring that there is enough food to support the troops, the home front, and the other Allies. His powers are absurdly vast – he can do anything at all related to the nation’s food supply, from fixing prices to confiscating shipments from telling families what to eat. The press affectionately dubs him “Food Dictator” (I assume today they would use “Food Czar”, but this is 1917 and it is Too Soon).

Hoover displays the same manic energy he showed in Belgium. His public relations blitz telling families to save food is so successful that the word “Hooverize” enters the language, meaning to ration or consume efficiently. But it turns out none of this is necessary. Hoover improves food production and distribution efficiency so much that no rationing is needed, America has lots of food to export to Europe, and his rationing agency makes an eight-digit profit selling all the extra food it has.

By 1918, Europe is in ruins. The warring powers have declared an Armistice, but their people are starving, and winter is coming on fast. Also, Herbert Hoover has so much food that he has to swim through amber waves of grain to get to work every morning. Mountains of uneaten pork bellies are starting to blot out the sky. Maybe one of these problems can solve the other? President Wilson dispatches Hoover to Europe as “special representative for relief and economic rehabilitation”. Hoover rises to the challenge:

    Hoover accepted the assignment with the usual claim that he had no interest in the job, simultaneously seeking for himself the broadest possible mandate and absolute control. The broad mandate, he said, was essential, because he could not hope to deliver food without refurnishing Europe’s broken finance, trade, communications, and transportation systems …

    Hoover had a hundred ships filled with food bound for neutral and newly liberated parts of the Continent before the peace conferences were even underway. He formalized his power in January 1919 by drafting for Wilson a post facto executive order authorizing the creation of the American Relief Administration (ARA), with Hoover as its executive director, authorized to feed Europe by practically any means he deemed necessary. He addressed the order to himself and passed it to the president for his signature …

    The actual delivery of relief was ingeniously improvised. Only Hoover, with his keen grasp of the mechanics of civilization, could have made the logistics of rehabilitating a war-ravaged continent look easy. He arranged to extend the tours of thousands of US Army officers already on the scene and deployed them as ARA agents in 32 different countries. Finding Europe’s telegraph and telephone services a shambles, he used US Navy vessels and Army Signal Corps employees to devise the best-functioning and most secure wireless system on the continent. Needing transportation, Hoover took charge of ports and canals and rebuilt railroads in Central and Eastern Europe. The ARA was for a time the only agency that could reliably arrange shipping between nations …

    The New York Times said it was only apparent in retrospect how much power Hoover wielded during the peace talks. “He has been the nearest approach Europe has had to a dictator since Napoleon.”

Once again, Hoover faces not only the inherent challenge of feeding millions, but opposition from the national governments he is trying to serve. Britain and France plan to let Germany starve, hoping this will decrease its bargaining power at Versailles. They ban Hoover from transporting any food to the defeated Central Powers. Hoover, “in a series of transactions so byzantine it was impossible for outsiders to see exactly what he was up to”, causes some kind of absurd logistics chain that results in 42% of the food getting to Germany in untraceable ways.

He is less able to stop the European powers’ controlled implosion at Versailles. He believes 100% in Woodrow Wilson’s vision of a fair peace treaty with no reparations for Germany and a League Of Nations powerful enough to prevent any future wars. But Wilson and Hoover famously fail. Hoover predicts a second World War in five years (later he lowers his estimate to “thirty days”), but takes comfort in what he has been able to accomplish thus far.

He returns to the US as some sort of super-double-war-hero. He is credited with saving tens of millions of lives, keeping Europe from fraying apart, and preventing the spread of Communism. He is not just a saint but a magician, accomplishing feats of logistics that everyone believed impossible. John Maynard Keynes:

    Never was a nobler work of disinterested goodwill carried through with more tenacy and sincerity and skill, and with less thanks either asked or given. The ungrateful Governments of Europe owe much more to the statesmanship and insight of Mr. Hoover and his band of American workers than they have yet appreciated or will ever acknowledge. It was their efforts … often acting in the teeth of European obstruction, which not only saved an immense amount of human suffering, but averted a widespread breakdown of the European system.

Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Hoover”, Slate Star Codex, 2020-03-17.

June 5, 2024

Hollywood has been here before … and they learned nothing

Filed under: History, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Gioia illustrates the mind-blowing dominance of westerns on TV and in the theatre in the 1950s and how quickly the boom was over and has never come close to recovering:

Eight of the top ten shows during the 1958-59 season were westerns.

Spaceships were in the news every day back then, but on TV it was just horses — and occasionally a covered wagon. Each of the three networks was caught up in a time warp, partying like it was 1899.

Any fool could see that they were saturating the market. Yet the studios kept launching new westerns with regularity, although with less confidence, for another decade, more or less.

Back in 1955, the three US TV networks had introduced three new western-themed series — Gunsmoke, Cheyenne, and Wyatt Earp. But two years later, the networks ramped up their investment in cowboys, launching nine new westerns that fall.

And it got worse.

In 1958, these three networks introduced ten more western series. On some nights, you could watch cowboys for two hours straight on ABC. CBS and NBC also started scheduling back-to-back Wild West shows.

I need to stress that the western was already an exhausted genre long before 1960. Movie theaters had relied on cowboys as an audience draw going back at least to Broncho Billy Anderson and The Great Train Robbery (1903).

And cheap books and magazines with stories of the Wild West had already been around for decades at that point. By my measure, nostalgia for the old West dates back to the launch of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show on May 19, 1883 in Omaha, Nebraska — four years after the invention of the gasoline engine.

Poster for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show — the first major cowboy nostalgia business

[…]

Younger viewers were the first to abandon the western — a telling sign, especially when you consider that, back in the 1930s, children and teens had been the core audience for the genre.

By the time Gunsmoke went off the air in 1975, the few remaining fans were old-timers — maybe the same ones who had gone to movie theaters to cheer for Roy Rogers in the 1930s. That show had been the most popular TV series in the US for four seasons in the late 1950s. But a cowboy series would never do that again.

Youngsters lost interest in westerns despite a proliferation of merchandise. During my childhood, I paid no attention to the cowboy genre — nor did any of my friends. But brand merchandise was everywhere. We could buy Gunsmoke comic books, trading cards, lunchboxes, and — of course! — toy guns, among other paraphernalia.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that these products did not develop the market — they merely saturated it.

What Troops Ate On D-Day – World War 2 Meals & Rations

Filed under: Food, History, Military, USA, WW2 — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Tasting History with Max Miller
Published May 21, 2024

D-Day Scrambled Eggs and Bacon served with toast and D-Day Lemonade

City/Region: United States of America
Time Period: 1944

The food in the final days leading up to D-Day was a definite improvement over the sad, dry sandwiches some soldiers had been getting. All-you-can-eat meals of steak, pork chops, sides, lemon meringue pie, ice cream, and even popcorn and candy during movie screenings kept the sequestered troops well fed. The last meal served before the landing was breakfast in the very early hours of the morning, said by many to be scrambled eggs and bacon.

This meal was made in the south of England, but the bacon was from the U.S., so American-style bacon is best here. The eggs don’t taste bad, but the texture is not like fresh scrambled eggs at all (more like tofu). The bacon is real, though, and that really saves the dish. Powdered eggs can be found online and at camping stores.

    No. 749. Scrambled Eggs
    Water, cold … 2 1/2 quarts (2 1/2 No. 56 dippers)
    Eggs, powdered … 1 1/2 pounds (1/2 3-pound can)
    Salt … To taste
    Pepper … To taste
    Lard or bacon fat … 1 pound (1/2 No. 56 dipper)

    Sift eggs. Pour 1/3 of the water into a utensil suitable for mixing eggs. Add powdered eggs. Stir vigorously with whip or slit spoon until mixture is absolutely smooth. Tip utensil while stirring.
    Add salt, pepper, and remaining water slowly to eggs, stirring until eggs are completely dissolved.
    Melt fat in baking pan. Pour liquid eggs into hot fat.
    Stir as eggs begin to thicken. Continue stirring slowly until eggs are cooked slightly less than desired for serving.
    Take eggs from fire while soft, as they will continue to thicken after being removed from heat.

    No. 750. Diced Ham (or Bacon) and Scrambled Eggs
    Add 3 pounds of ham or bacon to basic recipe for scrambled eggs; omit lard. Fry ham or bacon until crisp and brown.
    Pour egg solution over meat and fat. Stir and cook as in basic recipe. Additional fat may be needed if ham is used.
    — TM 10-412 US Army Technical Manual. Army Recipes by the U.S. War Department, 1946

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“Stop viewing every inconvenience discovered in the economy as a market failure needing government intervention”

Filed under: Americas, Economics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Argentine President Javier Milei visited the Hoover Institution at Stanford and spoke about his approach to addressing Argentina’s many economic issues during his first six-months in office:

Milei recalled his years as an economist with HSBC Argentina and work advising a large pension fund. He explained how he had to remain adaptable to changing market conditions and new ideas and not make assumptions based on static economic models.

“Reality is complex, but when the model doesn’t match reality, you get rid of it,” he said. “You don’t get angry with reality.”

Milei argued that many twenty-first-century leaders see every failure of an economic model as proof of a market failure warranting government intervention.

He added that the state interventions are slowly strangling our ability to generate economic growth.

“Let us not allow the fatally conceited to destroy our lives with regulations.”

Throughout his speech of more than one hour, Milei brought up luminaries who’ve shaped his worldview, including Adam Smith, Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Henry Hazlitt, and Murray N. Rothbard. He described how they influenced his view that everything should flow from the promotion of private enterprise and maximum possible growth, and that state intervention often only exacerbates the problem it was intended to solve.

Milei described himself as a libertarian and a minarchist who believes the role of the state is only to protect individuals and their property from aggression.

While talking about the challenges of governing and the Austrian school of economists who influenced his worldview, he suggested that it may have been his love of conflict that brought him away from work as an economist and television commentator and into the position he finds himself today.

“That’s probably why I got into politics. I love conflict.”

Milei said that his government is working to tame inflation and get public spending under control, and he applauded his economy minister, Luis Caputo, sitting in the audience.

“He’s in charge of the chainsaw operation,” Milei said, alluding to the chainsaw he brought with him to campaign rallies to symbolize his anti-spending agenda. “We are getting rid of a whole lot of things.”

“I am very happy when my economy minister gets applause. He’s making the greatest adjustment not only in the history of Argentina but in the whole history of humanity. We have already adjusted by 13 percent of GDP.”

He then turned to confront those he called “statists” and “regulators” who oppose his efforts in Argentina.

“They’re sitting in an office, and they create regulation just to justify their own existence,” he said. “This has a direct impact on innovation … They regulate just out of ignorance or just to justify the chair [they sit on], and they’re ruining our lives.”

He argued that most people in economics can’t even articulate where the state ends and the market begins.

“The market is ourselves,” he said. “When there’s talk of the market, we are the market.”

He described the market as a “social cooperation process” where “property rights are voluntarily exchanged”. He contrasted this with interaction with the state, where participants are compelled to act in a certain way.

“State intervention is always bad, because it’s based on coercion, on force, and nothing based on coercion can be good.”

HMCS Charlottetown: A formidable submarine-hunting force in Nato’s fleet

Filed under: Britain, Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forces News
Published Mar 1, 2024

Conceived in the middle of the Cold War era, the Canadian Royal Navy frigate HMCS Charlottetown has evolved over three decades of service, becoming one of the most capable and adaptable ships in Canada’s navy.

After setting sail for Nato’s Exercise Steadfast Defender in the North Sea, she made a stop in Edinburgh en route to participating in the alliance’s largest training mission since the Cold War.
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QotD: Mental health at “Flyover State”

Filed under: Education, Humour, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

As y’all undoubtedly know, mental illness is something of a badge of honor in the ivory tower. Screw HIPAA; most people in academia are willing, indeed eager, to tell you all about their mental problems. The students mostly do it to get out of classwork, of course — the minute you get the letter from Student Services, you can go ahead and start filing the “incomplete” paperwork with the registrar — but grad students and professors collect DSM diagnoses and SSRI prescriptions like the Japanese collect Pokemon and used panties.

Given that, and given how lunatic professors’ actual beliefs are, there’s pretty much nothing you can’t get away with saying in the ivory tower if you play your cards right. In much the same way Jon Stewart rode his “clown nose on / clown nose off” act to adulation from the smart set, you can say whatever you want if you keep it ambiguously crazy. (You know how it goes — if you agree with Stewart, he’s doing straight political commentary; but if you disagree with him to the point where he might lose sponsors, c’mon man, he’s just a tv comedian).

I’ll give you an example. Back in 2008, during the Democratic primaries, it was all the rage on campus to be anti-Obama. You’ll just have to trust me on that, I guess, but if you believed my previous “inside the ivory gulag” posts, I’m sure you’ll understand why that fad existed — everyone’s playing the “more radical than thou” game, and what’s more radical than being against the black guy, because his positions are such weak sauce Liberal boilerplate? The real People’s Candidate back then was Dennis Kucinich, and if normal people remember anything about him, it’s that he was more than a little Fox Mulder-y on the question of extraterrestrial life.

Anyway, whenever anyone asked me who I was voting for, I’d give Obama both barrels, always from the most extreme conservative position … but when I noticed the SJW I was talking to had finally cottoned to that, I ended with something like “And what’s worst is that unlike some candidates, Obama refuses to take the saucer people menace seriously!!”

Severian, “Friday Mailbag”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-06-04.

June 4, 2024

How Wall Street billionaires are reacting to the verdict against Trump

Filed under: Business, Law, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Under normal circumstances, you might think that Trump would find doors closed to him among the big-money folks on Wall Street after his trial ended with 34 guilty verdicts … yet the opposite is reported to be happening and his campaign is being inundated with big financial donations:

My quite strong suspicion is that Leticia James and Alvin Bragg have caused alarm by targeting business records and real estate valuations in corporate borrowing, things that everyone shares in finance, insurance, and real estate, for criminalization and destructive litigation. My bet is that capital is turning hard against lawfare, seeking to disincentivize and punish an attack on the basics of corporate business. People in business are horrified by a flamethrower of a prosecution over old business records.

So Bloomberg’s interpretation is that Wall Street is standing with Trump despite the verdict, but my bet is that Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and other business interests are turning against Democrats because of the verdict — because Democratic prosecutors in New York (and especially Manhattan), America’s financial capital, are doing things like turning seven year-old business record misdemeanors into a long list of Frankenstein felonies.

That interpretation makes capital’s support for Trump self-interested rather than morally outraged, though not over Bloomberg’s explanation of lower taxes, as people who keep business records turn against the party that bizarrely overcriminalizes the handling of business records when the target becomes politically unfashionable. If capital turns against the Democratic Party — if the ATM machine stops spitting out campaign funding — the moment becomes pretty significant, and Alvin Bragg becomes the dog who caught the car.

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