Wednesday, June 08, 2022

Executive Excess: No War for Old Spies: Putin, the Kremlin and IntelligenceWe

When dealing with toxic two-faced people, it is difficult to know which face is uglier, the real one or the manufactured one.” 

― Matshona Dhliwayo


Managers shape how people spend their days and whether they experience joy or despair, perform well or badly, or are healthy or sick. Unfortunately, there are hoards of mediocre and downright rotten bosses out there, and big gaps between the best and the worst.” 

― Robert I. Sutton


A good manager doesn’t try to eliminate conflict; he tries to keep it from wasting the energies of his people. If you’re the boss and your people fight you openly when they think that you are wrong — that’s healthy.”

 — Robert Townsend


Leaders who don’t listen will eventually be surrounded by people who have nothing to say.


The art of smile & nod when all you wanted was to punch them in the face.


Executive Excess / Institute for Policy Studies – The CEOs at America’s largest low-wage employers are grabbing huge raises while workers and consumers struggle with rising costs: “Throughout the pandemic, essential workers have labored heroically. But while workers risked their lives, bosses have reaped the rewards. In our last report, we found that more than half of our nation’s 100 largest low-wage employers changed their own rules to ensure huge payouts for CEOs in 2020 — while workers lost wages, jobs, and even their lives. 

On average, the CEOs at these rule-rigging firms pocketed 29 percent raises while their median worker pay fell by 2 percent This 28th edition of Executive Excess extends the story. We found that last year, with the economy in recovery mode, corporate leaders shifted to new CEO pay-inflating tactics. Many low-wage corporations spent record sums on stock buybacks. Others high-handedly used the COVID-19 crisis as a cover for jacking up prices to consumers. 

Both maneuvers made it easier for CEOs to score massive bonuses. Wages at many of these companies, meanwhile, failed to keep up with inflation — and some actually declined. Worst of all, taxpayers are directly subsidizing these outrages through federal contracts. This executive excess has Americans across the political spectrum fed up. But as we’ll explore, there are solutions…”


Yes Ministers - Pew – 65% say most political candidates run for office ‘to serve their own personal interests’: “Americans remain deeply distrustful of and dissatisfied with their government. Just 20% say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time – a sentiment that has changed very little since former President George W. Bush’s second term in office. 


Clearview AI cops $13m fine in the UK, with help from Australia


Author Talks: David McCloskey explores the world of espionage


Weekly SSRN Tax Article Review And Roundup: Roberts Reviews Stanley Surrey's Memoirs Edited By Zelenak & Mehrotra



How Aussie father was swindled out of $700,000 by 'clever' fraudsters in scam that's left at least four other families broke - here's how to avoid the same fate 

The Russian offensive against Ukraine has been dogged by a cascade of intelligence failures at every level of command. This has ranged from completely failing to assess the likelihood and shape of a unified Western response and Ukraine’s determined resistance, to inadequate preparations for Ukraine’s ‘mud season’ and a bewildering lack of any effective operational security (OPSEC) measures. The irony of this, of course, is that Vladimir Putin’s ruling coterie is numerically and functionally dominated by former intelligence officers. Attempts to explain this paradox have tended to rely on conventional wisdoms of why authoritarian regimes are often bad at strategic intelligence. Such governments, the orthodoxy runs, may invest heavily in covert information collection, but they are typically poor at analysis and assessment. In part this is because of an institutional bias towards espionage that neglects analysis, partly because of a pressure to tell autocrats what they want to hear because of the personal and professional risks of doing otherwise, and partly because autocrats tend to act as their own intelligence officers and ignore the truth even when someone dares speak it, acting instead on their own judgement.

No War for Old Spies: Putin, the Kremlin and Intelligence


What to make of the many mutations on the monkeypox genome STAT 


We Should Have Seen Monkeypox ComingAtlantic