Friday Roundup - Georgia DA Willis, ESG, Tucker Carlson, Jon Stewart
Friday Roundup - Georgia DA Willis, ESG, Tucker Carlson, Jon Stewart
It was another big week in The Country; these are the best stories we didn't get to this week!
Yesterday’s hearing in Georgia to determine if DA Fani Willis and her ex-boyfriend and overpaid contract prosecutor Nathan Wade should be recused from the Trump et al. criminal trial due to self-dealing conflicts of interest, was a Hollywood TV writer’s dream. It had everything: a jilted DA who was so spitting mad she at times looked physically unable to control her rage like a “Jerry Springer” guest, an estranged friend who threw the DA under the bus in “Days of Our Lives” melodramatic fashion, a sordid, secret affair that seemed to include clandestine meetings in locations around the US and world that included gobs of unreported cash changing hands that resembled “Catch Me If You Can,” a dubious cash-related alibi with no record of transactions that sounded more like a “that’s not my weed” defense on an episode of “On Patrol Live,” the elected DA Willis storming the court to testify - despite her attorneys stating she would not testify - and who proceeded to call everyone a liar whilst throwing printed versions of the pleadings around the court like an old episode of “Law and Order,” a set of star-crossed attorney lovers who coyly answered questions as tangentially as they could imagine like one of the amoral verbal jousters on “Suits,” Ms. Willis claiming she stole $50,000 from her election campaign to pay her lover back for trips in “House of Cards” style corruption, and the now infamous DA overruling her own lawyer’s objection to a question, reprimanding her counsel for objecting, instructing the court that the question was not speculative, and providing an answer to the just-objected question before the judge could rule on said objection. It was some of the most fascinating TV I’ve ever watched, as one person (sorry, I can’t remember who) tweeted it was the slowest car crash ever seen. Hell hath no fury, as they say.
What I gleaned from the hearing is that not only are DA Fani Willis and contract counsel Nathan Wade grifters out to bilk the taxpayers out of as much money as possible (DA Willis at one point said she loved a municipal judgeship she had had in the past because she got paid $100,000 and only had to work 2 days a week, allowing her to double-dip as a high-paid lawyer at the same time), and not only will be they be summarily dismissed from this prosecution for their stunning conflicts of interest and bad behavior, but DA Willis’ testimony in particular rises to the level of questioning whether she should be a District Attorney at all. She was shockingly, seriously unserious. I expect the judge to dismiss them both quickly from the Trump trial, and an impeachment or similar process to begin in Georgia to remove the DA. Hopefully, with some more live testimony!
ESG is dead, according to every one. When BlackRock, who by all reports was the progenitor and main proponent of the ESG scheme, has left the Climate Action pressure group, you know its on its last breath. The erstwhile attempt to enforce radical climate policy onto US corporations via an unelected body of investors was always dubious to this writer. The ESG crowd, which attempted to force all major corporations to report on their Environmental, Social and Governance policies, and through a series of arbitrary standards and rules, change their behavior to meet the climate activist agenda, has been punished in recent years, primarily because the ESG funds performed well below market. It was also one of those magic buzzwords that catch on in corporate America - the corporate-speak jargon - and that every CEO mentions as many times as possible (like its predecessors “cloud computing,” “machine learning,” and now, of course, “artificial intelligence”) that then became the darling of asset managers, who charge more in fees for worse returns that are allegedly climate-focused. But the movement was always political. As an example of its folly, perhaps the most climate-focused successful business ever - Tesla - was rated poorly by these ESG actors while oil companies like Mobil and Chevron were ranked high. The most shocking part of the ESG saga is that firms like Blackrock and others could so convincingly dupe investors to buy into a climate- positive managed fund that didn’t actually help the climate, and make them pay more for the privilege of doing so. What a country. I just hope that abandoning the ESG standard is not a ruse whereby Larry Fink and team continue to exert policy pressure on public corporations in secret to accomplish the same objectives of the ESG standards while dropping the name. We do not argue here that the objective of climate conscious investing is bad per se, but when extremely powerful asset managers are able to force companies to do things the government and the people have not approved themselves, we can sink quickly into an oligarchic investors-as-government regime.
Tucker Carlson continues to get much of the country to hate him. He must be number two after Trump as the most polarizing figure in the American discourse. I don’t often agree with everything he says but I often appreciate the topics he brings to light and the information he shares, which no major corporate news organization will touch.
As an example, he famously interviewed Vladimir Putin last week. I watched the entire interview and found it fascinating to hear words directly from Putin’s mouth, rather than readouts of Putin’s thoughts run through CIA-filtered Senators and news media types. Carlson really didn’t perform all that well, as Putin filibustered him for most of the 90 minutes, but there are some very interesting moments. I highly recommend folks watch, but I guess I don’t really need to tell you that as it has 203 million views on X. That’s 70 million more than the Super Bowl.
But what’s been fascinating is that Tucker has been continuing to report from Moscow, detailing the beauty, cleanliness and security of the Russian Capitol. While some have made a good counterpoint that the state of Moscow does not represent the vast amounts of poverty, lack of civil rights and abuses rampant in Russia, it nonetheless shows a dramatic bas-relief compared to the dire conditions of American cities like New York City, Baltimore, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angelos, Seattle, Portland and many others.
The backwards, brutal oligarchy of Russia, where citizens have no rights, can nonetheless create and maintain a clean, well-run, city without open air drug dens and constant theft and mayhem. What a stark contrast between that and our once-great American cities. It’s shameful.
Jon Stewart is back on the Daily Show, and the clips I’ve seen bring back fond memories of his reign there, before the troubles (which started the day Trump was elected and any good will or commonality between left and right seemed to break in half). Trevor Noah, his replacement, was never up to it, just unfunny and uninspired. I did notice that Mr. Stewart in his first show back cleverly attempted (in an otherwise great, funny bit) to tie Joe Biden’s age together with Donald Trump’s. It wasn’t, in his view, that Joe Biden is by four years the oldest person ever to run for President (breaking his own record from 2020) but instead that the two were the oldest pair to run. It’s a subtle attempt to obfuscate President Biden’s steep decline by tying the two together. It doesn’t work though, as you consider that at these late ages, every year that passes shows more decline - just go back and watch Biden clips from 2019 and compare them to today. But I wonder if some independent voters will buy Mr. Stewart’s sleight-of-hand. Voters will need to consider why Joe Biden was found to be too old and of such poor memory that he would likely not be convicted for the same crime for which they’ve charged Trump. If Trump’s age is a similar issue, why is he ok to stand trial?