fresh audio product: • Naomi Hossain @naomihossain.bsky.social on politics in Bangladesh • Stuart Schrader @stschrader1.bsky.social on “authoritarianism from below”—the role of local cops in the Trump crackdowns www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Radio.html#S...

TIL there are 18 PE-backed car wash operators and Leonard Green is doing an LBO of one of them for the second time.

“This is the ‘killer app’ and its precise method of killing you will be social scientists boring you to death talking about it.” So far I’m enjoying the talk, including this post. But can see how lethality may soon increase.

It’s ok, Karp carries the spirit of the American worker with him on the world’s first completely anti-woke private jet.

This is fine 😐 www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

If you appreciated my @nybooks.com article, you'll love my new book Blue Power: How Police Organized to Protect and Serve Themselves, out from @basicbooksgroup.bsky.social in April. Order with discount code BLUE20 at www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/stuar...

Teachers unions think Apollo may have misled folks back in 2021 about its Epstein ties. Published this 2+ hours ago. Still no comment from Dechert, which did the investigation. www.axios.com/2026/02/17/e...

Want to explore the EPI State of Working America Data Library in #RStats? The 🐣 swadlr 🐣 package lets you search available datasets and pull time series directly economic.github.io/swadlr/

Rest in Power Reverend Jackson. You are loved. @uaw.org @ctulocal1.bsky.social @afacwa.org

🎉 congrats! www.instagram.com/p/DU2VZ2fDRAx/

And that's why they could never afford to by a home.

2/2] Grad workers’ labor can’t be replaced, and those of us who work with them should refuse to help the administration undermine a strike. Penn can settle this by negotiating a fair contract today. If you work at Penn, sign now to pledge that you won’t be a strikebreaker tinyurl.com/NoStrikebrea...

As the clock ticks on GETUP-UAW’s strike deadline, administrators are trying to intimidate dep’t chairs into strikebreaking, demanding “continuity plans” for courses. Hundreds of Penn faculty and staff are saying no by signing AAUP-Penn’s no-strikebreaking pledge [1/2]

🎁 🔗 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

I’ve written a manual for @etuc-ces.bsky.social on platform work and health & safety. There’s nothing more important than life, and the way platform work is typically organised is systematically putting platform workers’ lives at risk. The story of Sebastian Galassi summed this up for me🧵

The pace at which US wealth concentration is rising is simply staggering The concentration of AI wealth into the hands of a few tech barons + plutocratic capture ==> unchartered territory

If you want a picture of the future, imagine an AI agent screaming ‘RTFM’ to your human face – forever. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/when...

And somehow it still pales in comparison to PE/HF pay.

How and why police actually support the federal invasions—I have been working on this article for ~6 months, trying to make sense of Trump’s nationwide surge of DHS officers, how it has evolved, what brought us here, and what will remain after it ends.

Ooh, a private equity roll up lawsuit: “Private equity has played a pivotal role in this destruction of competition,” the lawsuit claims, alleging that American Industrial Partners rolled up potential competitors through Rev Group.

Apollo's software exposure may still be relatively low, but...? Bloomberg article from Monday on the left. Article from the quoted posted on the left. 2/9 article: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Oh look, there are still some distributional questions left to be pushed off to the market. hoodline.com/2026/02/okla...

We do indeed need anti-fascist economics. And anti-fascist economists. Can’t wait for this book.

Running the government like a business… www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

I have a new piece out today in Phenomenal World, on the economics of a freeze in NYC regulated rents. www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/aft...

What does collaboration with ICE look like in PA? ICE can access state data without a warrant. Troopers cannot ask about immigration status, but can and do tell ICE if they otherwise discover someone is undocumented. And prisons honor some ICE detainers. www.spotlightpa.org/news/2026/02...

One more for today since this was a relatively quick copy-and-paste.

New post from me for @kettering.org's "From Many, We" blog on inclusive populism and how to oppose Trump's unconstitutional actions without defending our broken political institutions. Trying to be a more authentic populist won't work; we need a different vision of the people. Please read and share!

"The Financial Stability Oversight Council Improvement Act — a bipartisan bill that now heads to the Senate — would mandate that FSOC work with nonbanks and their primary regulators to address risks before designating firms as systemically important financial institutions, or SIFIs."

BlackRock takes first DeFi step, lists BUIDL on Uniswap as UNI jumps 25% BlackRock will make shares of its $2.2 billion tokenized U.S. Treasury fund tradable on the decentralized exchange Uniswap. #crypto #defi #uni

In the age of asset manager capitalism medium-sized asset managers are seeking scale via mergers to be able to compete with BlackRock & Vanguard.

Scoop–CFPB just fired employee alexisgoldstein.bsky.social for allegedly disrupting &documenting a meeting a year ago between CFPB & DOGE www.bloomberg.com/news/article... She says she's being retaliated against after asking DOGE visitors who they were & if they'd completed training on handling info

Imagine running for congress (against Analilia Mejia) and your story is that you’re the OTHER corrupt Alan Bond. www.ai-cio.com/news/manager...

Georgia is expected to lose $2.5 BILLION to data center sales tax exemptions in FY 2026, according to the state’s updated fiscal projections. That’s 664% higher than the previous estimate made just a few months earlier of $327 million. 🧵 goodjobsfirst.org/georgia-data...

“Black also had a $484 million loan from Bank of America backed by his extensive art collection… Tapping loans for their expenses can come with big tax advantages, allowing them to avoid incurring capital-gains taxes by selling holdings.“

On the hellish detention and deportation system built by EU countries. With quotes from the current and the former German chancellors expressing their commitment to the inhumane cruelty of this apparatus, described here in forensic detail.

Our substack is now (also) a @leaflet.pub publication, which you can subscribe to via bluesky or rss. So far, I've only ported the intro post, but will get around to the rest after finishing the severely overdue second BlackRock post.

Anthropic's head of safety just resigned. Most likely a protest against the company's pivot to working with Palantir and Gulf Arab states. The "don't be evil" stage gets shorter. (I still think Anthropic is the most morally run of the AI corps but it's like cherrypicking rooms on fire.)

CalPERS adopting the 'total portfolio approach' has generated a lot of news. An aspect of the story that hasn't received as much attention is private markets managers counting on it leading to greater inflows to their funds. Here's Apollo's Rowan on their earnings call yesterday.

🚨 BDCs manage around $500bn of private credit. How exposed are they to AI-disruption? Lots and lots of cool charts. www.ft.com/content/3f88...

man, wtf? giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

"To the extent our funds perform well, we can support a better retirement for tens of millions of pensioners, including teachers, nurses and firefighters." -Blackstone 10-K, p.7, filed Feb 28, 2025

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... @benbraun.bsky.social

Fascinating interview with Michael Quinlan on convict labor and resistance in 19th c. Australia. newpol.org/the-origin-o...

For the record, I am not involved in the Philadelphia-based “Kane Analytics.”

Scoop: The US labor board is giving up oversight over Elon Musk's SpaceX, and abandoning its yearslong case over the firing of engineers behind an open letter that criticized Musk www.bloomberg.com/news/article... NLRB prosecutors now say NMB, not NLRB, has jurisdiction over SpaceX

watching a recording of a pension fund meeting and someone unintentionally (i think) put up a M-C-M slide.