Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:

Pharmacist who 'intentionally' destroyed 500 Covid vaccine doses gets three years in prison

’Joints for Jabs’: Washington state turns to marijuana giveaways to encourage residents to get vaccinated

U.S. forming expert groups on safely lifting global travel restrictions

Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, and Debt:

First they ignore you, then suddenly Paraguay 🇵🇾, Argentina 🇦🇷, Panama 🇵🇦, Brazil 🇧🇷, El Salvador 🇸🇻, and Nicaragua 🇳🇮 embrace #Bitcoin

— Tyler Winklevoss (@tyler) June 8, 2021

The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax

ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.

Economy is 'sitting on a time bomb': Deutsche Bank warns of 'devastating' effects of inflation

Biden to shore up supply chains for four sectors after 100-day reviews

The administration will bolster the production and delivery of pharmaceuticals, computer chips, advanced batteries and critical minerals.

Politics:

Unlearning “Tyranny”

…Buckley would have been gobsmacked by the notion that Harvard’s professors posed a greater threat of tyranny than the government itself.
College faculty members notoriously can say and write foolish things, but they do not, after all, have the ability to imprison you, seize your property, or shoot your dog without consequence.
Conservatives used to understand that not very subtle distinction. But that was before our Golden Age of populism cum demagoguery.

How to Stymie the Next Trump

There’s a pair of cliches that more or less guided us for the past four years of the Trump era. One, norms aren’t laws. We thought they were enforceable, but they were always just soft norms. The second was that sometimes even when you have laws, they cannot be enforced against people who simply believe that the law doesn’t affect them.

Trump’s Deranged Theory That Democrats Would Replace Biden Might Have Helped Him Lose 2020

Joe Manchin is opposing big parts of Biden’s agenda as the Koch network pressures him

Senate Approves $250 Billion Bill to Curtail China

The Senate voted on Tuesday to adopt a roughly $250 billion bill to counter China’s growing economic and military prowess, hoping that major investments in science — and fresh punishments targeting Beijing — might give the United States a lasting edge.
The proposal commits billions of dollars in federal funds across a wide array of research areas. It pours more than $50 billion in immediate funding into U.S. businesses that manufacture the sort of ultrasmall, in-demand computer chips that power consumer and military devices, which many companies currently source from China. And it paves the way for the next generation of space exploration at a time when Washington and Beijing are increasingly setting their eyes on the stars.

Biden Justice Department defends Trump in suit over rape denial

Netanyahu will look to Trump and Republicans as routes back to power in Israel, experts say

An Islamist party is part of Israel’s new coalition government. How did that happen?

Serendipity:

Global sting began by creating message service for crooks

The world's forgotten greenhouse gas

^{Badge thanks to @arcange}

^{Meme credit: kevdex10 (source)}