10 Sunday Camp Kotok Reads – The Big Picture

• How ‘Deepfake Elon Musk’ Became the Internet’s Biggest Scammer: An A.I.-powered version of Mr. Musk has appeared in thousands of inauthentic ads, contributing to billions in fraud. (New York Times)

• Secretive Dynasty Missed Out on Billions While Advisers Got Rich: Peter Harf and Olivier Goudet became billionaires while managing the Reimanns’ money. The family would have done better if they’d put their wealth in a low-cost index fund. (Bloomberg)

• Insurance lobbyists block federal crackdown on costly retirement advice: The financial services industry has blocked the Biden administration from requiring brokers to put retirees’ needs first — above lucrative commissions. (Washington Post)

• The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street: Walmart didn’t just happen. The rise of Walmart & Amazon, its online successor was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers. (Pluralistic) see also How hotels are colluding to jack up room rates, according to two lawsuits.  If you traveled this summer, the rate you paid at hotels may have been artificially inflated. According to two lawsuits, numerous hotel operators are participating in an illegal scheme to increase their prices. In a traditional price-fixing arrangement, rival executives gather in a smoke-filled room to rig rates. In the modern version, competitors do not need to talk. Instead, companies who ordinarily would compete send their internal data to a third party. The third party then uses an algorithm to advise the companies on the “optimal” prices to charge customers. (Popular Information)

• Dozens of pregnant women, some bleeding or in labor, being turned away from ERs despite federal law: Even as the Biden administration publicly warned hospitals to treat pregnant patients in emergencies, facilities continue to violate the federal law. The issue became a focus for the administration following reports of women being improperly treated in emergency rooms after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago. (What does “Pro-Life” mean today?) (AP News)

• Everyone Knew About the A-Team: How did the Alexander brothers become real-estate elites while allegedly raping or assaulting more than a dozen women? (Curbed)

• ‘Originalism is a dead letter’: Supreme Court majority accused of abandoning legal principles in Trump immunity ruling: Critics on the left and the right said the decision finding absolute immunity for certain official acts lacks any basis in the Constitution or historic tradition. (NBC News) see also The target of the right’s ‘revolution’ is pluralistic democracy itself: The president of the Heritage Foundation said, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be. (Washington Post)

• How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points? Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse. (New York Times) see also Laundering Carbon and the New Scramble for Africa August: The carbon offset market is an integral part of efforts to prevent effective climate action… (Climate & Capitalism)

• How a Republican who blocked gun violence research came to regret it: Former Arkansas Republican Rep. Jay Dickey led an effort to bar research into gun violence at the federal level then had a change of heart. (Washington Post)