Category Archives: Populism

EFF leader Julius Malema gives the party's virtual eighth anniversary speech on 26 July 2021 in Ekurhuleni, Gauteng. (Photo: Gallo Images / OJ Koloti)

Eight years since its founding, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has grown into a political party able to conduct a virtual anniversary rally on a zero-rated data stream from its website on Monday.

Party leader Julius Malema used the occasion to challenge President Cyril Ramaphosa to withdraw his army from the looting hotspots and visit those areas himself to turn the toxic tide. We want to challenge Ramaphosa to remove the soldiers from the streets and confront the people of South Africa, he said.

He must stop hiding behind the uniform of the soldiers and confront the reality that our people are confronted with on a daily basis. If you are a man, Ramaphosa, and you know you have been elected legitimately by the people of South Africa who love you, and that you did not buy the presidency through the money of the white monopoly capital, then go and speak to the masses on the ground, he said.

That is, incidentally, exactly what Ramaphosa did as the worst of the looting subsided, when he visited the eThekwini Metro to address patriotic clean-up teams. Fortunately for Malema, he didnt have to conduct this birthday rally next to some wreck of a looted mall or address edgy residents, because the EFF miraculously complied with Covid-19 lockdown regulations again after hosting a few super-spreader rallies and marches which epidemiologists said could have contributed to the high numbers of infections and deaths during the surge of the pandemics third wave.

In 2013, for example, the party held its founding rally in Marikana where it had real street-cred among the mining community, and when the area was a no-go zone for ANC leaders after the fatal shooting of striking mineworkers the year before.

There are also Malemas mind-altering half-truths and contradictions which he delivers like a seer:

Some of you even call us prophets, Malema told his virtual audience. We are not prophets, we use proper tools of analysis.

He produced a snippet from the EFFs founding manifesto:

Any form of generalised uprising will be harshly suppressed by the state machinery in order to prevent it from escalating to a level where a sitting government can be toppled, he read.

While it could still happen in future, what has happened at many malls in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng was not a generalised uprising and state machinery didnt harshly suppress it.

Instead, vigilante citizen groups defended themselves while police (state machinery, according to Malema) were overrun and/or looked on. Soldiers were eventually sent in with orders not to shoot. More than 300 deaths resulted from the violence, but analysis on this grim figure is still lacking and theres no clear evidence yet that a significant number of these died at the hands of state machinery. If this was the case, more information on it would have surfaced by now.

Perhaps the man who calls himself the commander-in-chief of an army of economic freedom fighters is just offended by the sight of soldiers he cant order around.

Soldiers were set on the streets of South Africa to threaten [those who tried to protest against this government] from exercising their democratic right, just as the EFF had predicted, Malema went on. While he condemned the looting and the destruction of property (he implied leaders should have used their power of persuasion to make this stop), he said the EFF sided with the people who were engaged in the activities of looting and fighting to provide food for their children.

Its unclear where the EFF stands in relation to the people who were engaged in the activities of looting a million rounds of live ammunition; those of the people who were engaged in the activities of looting appliances loaded into luxury cars; or those whose Twitter accounts carried messages of encouragement to the looters from the comfort of Nkandla, such as Duduzile Sambudla-Zuma, who also happened to tweet a video on Monday of herself delivering a birthday message to the EFF.

While he said what happened two weeks ago was not an insurrection or attempted coup, he warned that the state will intensify their attack on defenceless people who are not toppling government through any undemocratic method but through protest and showing their dissatisfaction against this kleptocratic government of the ANC.

Presumably, elections fit in here somewhere too.

Malema also addressed possible misunderstandings on whether he wanted to incite further looting at the height of the unrest:

No soldiers on our streets! Otherwise, we are joining. All fighters must be ready they wont kill us all, read his tweet on Monday, 12 July. It amounted to nothing, and thats exactly the way he intended it, Malema said.

Whatever was supposed to have happened, there is still a greater likelihood of Malema successfully fomenting a generalised uprising than winning a majority of the votes in the upcoming local government elections, even if these are postponed to February 2022.

Even though the 1.8 million votes in the 2019 general election was an impressive feat for this young upstart party, the 10.7% of the electorate that this represents is still a lot smaller than the big dreams of its leader.

Eight EFF years later, Malemas a pleaser and a populist, and the contradictions in his statements represent a desire to be all things to all people, and so to become a kingmaker ready to exploit the gap available for strongmen in South Africas immature coalition politics. Only time will prove if the people of South Africa will take his bait in greater numbers. DM

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Eight years later, Julius Malemas path to relevance is still characterised by peddling populism and violence - Daily Maverick

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New Delhi: Published in the United States last year to considerable critical acclaim, the book Brand New Nationby Ravinder Kaur breaks new ground in its analysis of contemporary India.

The book, published by HarperCollins India, will be released on 2 August on SoftCover, ThePrints e-venue to launch select non-fiction books.

Ravinder Kaur is an Associate Professor of Modern South Asian Studies at the University of Copenhagen. She is also the author of Since 1947: Partition Narratives among the Punjabi Migrants of Delhi (2007, 2018).

The book discusses in detail the on-ground experience of the relentless transformation of the nation-state into an attractive investment destination for global capital and also goes on to explain how the infusion of capital not only rejuvenates the nation but also produces investment-fuelled nationalism, populist energy that can be turned into a powerful instrument of coercion.

Grounded in the history of modern India, Kaur focuses on how the forces of identity economy, identity politics, publicity, populism, violence and economic growth are rapidly rearranging the liberal political order the world over.

In this subtle, insightful and often witty book, Ravinder Kaur shows how the New India came into being with its distinctive mix of market and Hindu fundamentalisms, plutocracy and deprivation, mass agitation and state repression, says Pankaj Mishra, author of Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and Empire.

Christophe Jaffrelot, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, writes, Ravinder Kaur convincingly argues that the era of happy globalization is over in India and that it is largely responsible for the dominant repertoire of national-populism under Modi.

Also read: Former RBI governor Bimal Jalan traces Indias economic history & lessons for future in a new book

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Regarding the return of populism and the increased demise in legitimacy of many democratic governments throughout the region, Gutirrez pointed out: "It is true that the elites of Latin America have fell short and are not up to the task. They confused freedom and democracy with privileges when in reality they are rights and responsibilities that must be fought for every day ".

In relation to the recent outbreak of demonstrations in Colombia, former President Pastrana declared: "We have to be careful with these kinds of claims that democracy is not working. If we review Colombian democracy and the numbers, we see economic growth, improvements in education, health and living. There are many things that have been working. Unfortunately today we have a pandemic and that has taken us back 10 or more years and we have to work together. But democracy has worked ".

Gutirrez added: "The populist madness of the radical left, empowered by the corruption of the incompetent right, is the greatest threat that freedom and democracy face in Latin America today".

In turn, Pastrana pointed out the intentions to destabilize the region with Colombia as its main objective: "Look what happened in Chile in 2019 with the increase in the subway rate. Here's an organized attack. When these left-wing governments were in power, they had the greatest amount of money, but the living conditions of the poorest people were not improved, resources were lost in an absolute corruption, never seen before in the region. Colombia is definitely at risk of falling".

Gutirrez concluded the meeting by saying: "If Latin America has any challenge today, it is to ensure that the ideas of Liberty, Justice and republican democracy do not end up in the cemetery of forgotten ideas".

To see the full conversation, click here.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1582548/DG_and_Pastrana.jpg

SOURCE Fundacin Libertad y Desarrollo

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Dionisio Gutirrez meets with Andrs Pastrana to discuss the situation in Colombia - PRNewswire

University students hold banners outside Parliament against planned education reforms that would allow police to patrol campuses, in Athens, on February 11. [Thanassis Stavrakis/AP]

The political clash around Greeces education system is, in fact, a clash between two different world views. It is not a new conflict, in fact, as it is something Greek society went through four decades ago. Conflicts of this sort tend to go through several stages. One side tries to bring the common denominator as low as it can. They believe performance evaluation is an anathema, perceive education along the lines of the old public sector and will do everything to make sure that the status quo remains unchanged. At some point they managed to impose the straightjacket of mediocracy on private education as well, all but banning performance assessment and the dismissal of incompetent professors. Many big mistakes were made during that period. The leftist administration abolished so-called experimental and model schools on the back of the absurd argument that these institutions cultivate inequalities. These are, in fact, public schools that motivate children that do not have the means to attend a private school to develop their skills and excel.

Standing out was treated as a crime. The tsunami of populism left nothing untouched. Even established private schools went down the path of compromise and mediocrity. Populism found a mate in the modern Greek fast money culture, a combination that unraveled any progress made in the previous decades.

Societies move on; they change. Thats good. No one wants to go back to the time when teachers would hit their pupils with a ruler. The pendulum had to swing all the way to one side before coming to a halt in the middle. The only problem is that we wasted too many years. Many generations of students have come out of the education system with a disastrous combination of impossible expectations and low skills, which is most of all unfair to them.

Now something seems to be changing. Were taking steps forward, notwithstanding the compromises and half measures. Greece will never manage to pull itself out of the mess unless it manages to improve on the education of its children. The champions of inertia are waging a fight against reform; it is in their political interest that nothing changes. They are trying to protect their clients who are afraid of evaluation and competition. At the same time, they continue manufacturing angry clients young people entering the labor market with more delusions than skills.

This crucial battle must not be lost in the implementation of reforms. We cannot afford to waste another 10 or 20 years.

Originally posted here:

We cant afford to waste any more time - Kathimerini English Edition

ByFilippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees|29 July 2021|Espaol

Signature of the 1951 Refugee Convention in Geneva, Switzerland. Arni/UN Archives

The 1951 Refugee Convention, the bedrock of international protection for people forced to flee their homes, has saved countless lives. Today, on its 70th anniversary, its critics claim it is the outdated product of another era. But if it is not defended and honoured, millions will pay the price.

Over the past seven decades, there is barely a corner of the world that has not faced the challenges of forced displacement. At the end of last year, the number of those uprooted from their homes, including refugees and the internally displaced, had reached 82.4 million a number that has more than doubled over the past decade.

The causes and dynamics of human displacement are constantly in flux but the Refugee Convention has always evolved to reflect those changes. The modern embodiment of the principle of asylum, it has been supplemented by numerous other landmark legal instruments over the past 70 years strengthening rights for women, children, the disabled, the LGBTIQ+ community, and many others.

Some governments, pandering to or encouraged by a narrow-minded and often misinformed populism, have in recent months attempted to reject the conventions underlying principles. But the problem is not with its ideals or its language. The problem lies in ensuring that states everywhere comply with it in practice.

When 200,000 Hungarians fled in 1956, almost all of them were taken in by other countries within months. When I began working in the humanitarian field in Thailand in the early 1980s hundreds of thousands of refugees in Indochina were being resettled throughout the world.

Today, such a response is increasingly rare. While refugees and migrants continue to make perilous and sometimes fatal journeys across deserts, seas and mountains in fear of their lives, the international community is manifestly failing to unite in search of durable solutions for these desperate people.

Worse, we are now seeing moves to deny refugees asylum and even to outsource responsibility for their protection by warehousing them elsewhere. Yet if the richest states, blessed with the greatest resources, respond by building walls, closing borders and pushing back people journeying by sea, why should others not follow suit? Nearly 90 per cent of the worlds refugees are located in developing or the least developed countries. What should these states make of such contempt for the ideal of protection?

There are many ways of reducing the numbers of the forcibly displaced. Determined action to end conflict, defending and honouring human rights, addressing environmental degradation all these would be effective, since they would address the root causes of human displacement.

Yet there is not enough political will for such solutions. Long-standing conflicts smoulder while new ones ignite. Climate change and environmental disasters are increasingly factors in displacement crises, yet countries are struggling to agree on joint action to limit rising temperatures. This summer alone, North America has been ravaged by heatwaves and wildfires, while Central Europe and China have been hit by severe flooding. The consequences of these extremes, as they affect more and more parts of the planet, will inevitably have an impact on human displacement.

Those of us fortunate enough to live in relative prosperity and stability cannot take these gifts for granted the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic makes this clear. And those who think the Refugee Convention is either irrelevant or a nuisance may one day find themselves grateful for the protections it affords them.

There are reasons to be positive. At present, 149 states are parties to the convention, making it one of the most supported international treaties in the world. Like many other instruments of international law, it reflects common values of altruism, compassion and solidarity. Whenever I visit refugees and the communities that host them, I meet dedicated people who put those values into practice with astonishing generosity.

It might seem strange to be so passionate about a UN treaty. But the 1951 Refugee Convention is a reminder of our desire and determination to build a better world. Its 70th anniversary is a chance for us to revitalise our commitment to that ideal. Let us renew that vow, not break it.

This article was first published in European media on 28 July.

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Stand up for the Refugee Convention or millions will pay the price - UNHCR

The rights muted response to Bidens orders underscores the remarkable ideological shift thats occurring in Washington, D.C. A Republican Party once closely allied with corporate America finds itself increasingly less so in the Donald Trump era. Indeed, in the aftermath of Bidens orders, even officials in Trumps orbit were saying the politics were smart.

Both [Biden and Trump] have elements in their constituencies that want this, and, by the way, theyre on solid ground with the rest of America, said a Trump adviser. America has a love-hate relationship with these companies.

But, so far, much of the GOPs newfound economic populism has been delivered in words rather than action. And thats given Democrats space to pursue an agenda that, even just five years ago, likely would have sparked massive blowback.

People will understand who's on their side and who's not, said Cedric Richmond, a senior White House adviser and director of the Office of Public Engagement. There will be Democrats who are on the side of working families, and not Republicans. For them, I think it's a terrible mistake.

The executive order Biden issued earlier this month included 72 initiatives in all. Among the most consequential were his moves calling for greater scrutiny of tech acquisitions, bolstering competition for generic drug makers and importers from Canada, allowing hearing aids to be sold over the counter, standardizing plans for health care shoppers trying to compare insurance options, and protecting certain meat-packing workers from what are seen as artificially low wages.

It was another prong in what economic observers view as an increasingly populist White House agenda. Earlier, Biden had stated his commitment to waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines and nominated Amazon critic and anti-monopoly advocate Lina Khan to chair the Federal Trade Commission.

Some of Bidens actions came on issues that already had Republican support, including the effort to bring down the price of hearing aids, discouraging agricultural consolidation and limiting so-called noncompete agreements that harm U.S. workers, among others. Twenty-one Republicans backed Khans nomination.

The cross-partisan appeal around anti-monopoly policies traces back even further. During the 2016 election, Trump ran on promises to combat big mergers and take on massive corporations that he said posed a huge antitrust problem. Following Trumps loss, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) have called for sweeping antitrust reform in Congress that at times echoes Democratic efforts. Fox News Tucker Carlson, one of the most influential voices to the right, cheered the choice of Khan to lead the FTC.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), pictured, and Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) have called for sweeping antitrust reform. | Amanda Andrade-Rhoades/AP Photo

Theres an increased recognition that concentration across all corporate sectors is really stifling the economy and hurting people, said David Segal, executive director of digital rights group Demand Progress and co-chair of the Freedom from Facebook and Google coalition. In some cases its an actual recognition of that and in others theres a recognition at least of the political salience of the issue.

Instead of going after Biden for targeting big businesses, Republicans have focused on Covid-related policies and spending, immigration and fears of inflation. Meanwhile, party activists and much of the conservative media ecosystem are prioritizing cultural war issues, from conspiracies about Dr. Seuss works being prohibited to the teaching of critical race theory in schools.

Celinda Lake, one of Bidens lead campaign pollsters, called it a departure from Trump, who engaged repeatedly in cultural warfare but also weaved in economic populist threads. They seem to be only doing one right now. And that's surprising and its ceding a lot of terrain to us, Lake said.

The White House has been pleased with the open field theyve been given to chart a more populist path. In strategy calls with allied groups, administration officials have pointed to polling showing strong support for taxing the wealthy, while Lake said survey data shes reviewed found high popularity across the ideological spectrum for breaking up Big Tech and making companies like Amazon pay more in taxes.

I think [Republicans] are worried about getting on the wrong side of some of that, she said of the GOP elected officials who largely didnt cheer Bidens actions, but didnt criticize them either.

Segal, a former state lawmaker from Rhode Island, said the Biden administration reflects a more modern Democratic Party one animated by liberal figures like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and more willing to embrace antitrust issues. Biden at several points has called out Amazon and Facebook, telling a TV reporter Friday that the social media giant is killing people by failing to police its users trafficking in vaccine disinformation.

Biden himself has moved. He's brought in some people who are progressive and very concerned and willing to use public power to regulate industries for the betterment of society, Segal said. And there are certain other people who might have been more corporatist in their leanings, a couple of decades ago, who seem to have shifted in their thinking about these issues, at least in some cases.

Biden said Friday that Facebook is killing people by failing to police its users trafficking in vaccine disinformation. | AP Photo/Matt Rourke

James Sherk, director of the Center for American Freedom at the America First Policy Institute, a policy nonprofit led by Trump White House officials, said there is agreement among the right and left on antitrust issues. But he argued that the agreement was limited.

I think there is a growing recognition on the right that some of these concentrated corporate powers can be a problem and its been used to drive a political agenda that folks on the right disagree firmly with, he said. I think that tech platforms de-platforming Trump was a watershed moment for people on the right.

Democrats though, he added, are quite happy with tech platforms playing ideological censor and policing discourse and taking down what they term misinformation.

Sherk predicted that instead of trying to work with the Biden administration, conservatives, including his group, would focus on changes at the state level instead. One recent example was legislation by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that would fine social media companies if they censored political candidates and other users. A federal judge in Florida issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which would have gone into effect at the beginning of July, citing the First Amendment and Section 230 laws.

Others in Trumps orbit concede that there is symmetry between the last administration and the current one on anti-monopoly issues. And they fear that the overlap may actually create a coalition for federal policy to be put in place.

Its really amazing, we have something Biden and Trump agree on, they want to go after big tech companies, said Stephen Moore, who was an economic adviser to Trump. Its a dangerous time because we have the Josh Hawleys of the world linking forces with the Elizabeth Warrens of the world, and its really troubling to me as a free market guy.

While elected Republicans have been relatively quiet about Bidens orders taking aim at corporate power, business groups have not. Neil Bradley, of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, contended that the action smacks of a government knows best approach to managing the economy, while the Business Roundtables Josh Bolten added it could undermine rather than enhance U.S. competitiveness.

But the Chamber carries far less weight with Republicans than it has in the past, owing to its decision during the past election to back several Democratic candidates and its repeated breaks with Trump on issues like tariffs and immigration. And unlike during the Obama years when the Chambers opposition to legislative initiatives caused deep alarm inside the administration the Biden White House has shown no hesitancy around its anti-monopoly platform.

Instead, White House officials have proactively argued that new business formation has slowed considerably over the last four-plus decades because of corporate concentration of power. And in interviews, Bidens economic advisers and liaisons to corporate America framed the effort as needed to increase competition.

The pandemic has demonstrated how important it is to have a competent government that is looking out for people's best interest, Ramamurti said. And I think as a result, has opened the door to other types of competent targeted actions that are intended to improve people's lives.

Richmond said he wasnt surprised by the relatively staid pushback from the right. The administration is in frequent touch with major CEOs, business leaders and industry associations, and Biden himself telegraphed the trajectory of where he was headed during the campaign and in the White House.

Kitchen table issues are issues you win elections on, Richmond said. We have a robust economy coming back. I think those are the things that people will sit around the table and recognize.

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Its ceding a lot of terrain to us: Biden goes populist with little pushback - POLITICO

Marvel Studios superhero spy thriller Black Widow opened last weekend to the tune of $215 million in global revenue. Those earnings come partly due to the films dual release in theaters and on Disney+ the same day. Disney boasted that the $30 upcharge raked in $60 million, with domestic theatrical screenings clearing $80 million.

While the release initially appears to be a success, a closer look at variables like box office dropoff and multi-person viewing at home amounted to a muddled narrative. Further confounding the data is the pandemic, which makes it difficult to know how many viewers opted to stay home rather than go to the theater, and vice versa. With these different factors, its unclear what long-term effect(s) the dual theater-PVOD model has on the film industry.

On the TV side, nominees for the 2021 Emmy Awards were announced on Tuesday. The confusing and far-flung list of nods has left many scratching their heads, with only 12 shows receiving more than single-digit nominations. Prestige shows, like HBOs Mare of Easttown and Netflixs The Queens Gambit, received a fair share of recognition, but so did less typical popcorn fare like Netflixs Emily in Paris and Disney+s The Mandalorian, which earned 24 nominations, including Best Drama. Meanwhile, critical favorites like Showtimes The Good Lord Bird were snubbed.

The shake-up is partly due to a newly democratized Emmys voting system, allowing all Television Academy members to cast their ballots for an unlimited number of nominees in a broader range of categories. As a result, a slew of major and minor cast members from shows like Netflixs The Crown and the filmed version of Broadways Hamilton on HBO have crowded the major acting categories.

These nomination trends may indicate that Academy members are watching the same cluster of heavily-advertised shows that have received more media attention, rather than branching out to shows and actors that could greatly benefit from nominations.

The recent trend towards populist voting has sparked a movement over the past few years to try to streamline the system and get voter committees to commit to watching a certain number of shows towards a more representative breadth of nominees. This years nominees may finally push the Academy in that direction.

Excerpt from:

The confusing success of 'Black Widow' and the populism of the Emmys - KCRW

WhatsApp founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum make a good case study. They launched a product that 2.5bn people use to freely communicate worldwide, generating $5bn (3.6bn) to $10bn in annual revenue. The pair pocketed $15bn upon selling to Facebook. Did they deserve it? Its an unimaginable sum, but as Nobel Prize winning economist William Nordhaus has explained, transformative innovators like this are only capturing a tiny slither of the total productive value to customers.

Investors clearly think top CEOs matter a lot too. With technology and tastes changing quickly, firms prospects can hinge on a few decisions over whether to adopt risky new products or overhaul corporate practice. Observe the diverging fortunes of BlackBerry and Apple.

When CEOs resign, get poached, or die, in fact, companies valuations shift in pronounced ways, suggestive of executives potential multiplicative impacts on businesses profitability. In 2013, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts left to join Apple, having overseen Burberrys market valuation growing from 2bn to 7bn. Burberrys share price fell 7pc.

It stands to reason that failure to compensate existing executives sufficiently harms value too. In 2019, Namal Nawana, then CEO of UK medical devices firm Smith and Nephew, resigned, saying his 1m plus base salary wasnt enough. Under him, the companys value had grown so much that even if his personal impact was just 1pc of it, the uplift was 10 times his base pay. His resignation wiped off 1.4bn in value.

These instances dont reflect random stock volatility either. When CEOs experience unexpected family deaths distracting them from their jobs, stock prices shift.

Those with skin in the game then think founders and CEOs make a substantive difference to companies fortunes, even if the Left-wing populist doesnt.

So what would abolishing billionaires achieve? The risks are clear: though not everyone is money-driven, confiscation will disincentivise at least some of the socially productive activity driving high wealth.

With so much of billionaires current wealth locked in businesses (just 2pc is in private property, such as houses and yachts), high-net wealth taxes would force firm sales, encourage more consumption, and incentivise billionaires to give more to tax-exempt, often political, causes. Why is this economically more desirable than reinvestment in productive business assets?

And for what public revenue gain? Confiscating all but a billion each from the top 10 British billionaires would have funded 2020 UK government spending for one and a half months. A more realistic annual wealth tax would be shot with exemptions to avoid harming asset rich, cash poor farmers and other essential businesses.

Wealth taxes were scrapped in most of Europe, in fact, as they became symbolic gestures, raising, on average, just 0.2pc of GDP, as millionaires and billionaires fled and carve-outs piled up. What would that sum pay for? The royal yacht and a few infrastructure projects?

The Lefts anti-wealth populism sells the public a pig in a poke. Economists have previously calculated that 83pc of the global Forbes billionaire list made money from productive activities, not political connections. Talk of abolishing billionaires runs aground on the historical experience of taxing wealth, let alone the implications of much cruder, blanket confiscation of resources.

Ryan Bourne is the author of Economics In One Virus and an economist at the Cato Institute

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The Left is on another planet if it thinks a billionaire tax will work - Telegraph.co.uk

Jul 24th 2021

RONALD REAGANs tub-thumper for Barry Goldwater in 1964, Barack Obamas silky-smooth Democratic Convention speech of 2004: the political annals are replete with moments when a significant new talent announced itself. Could it be that in February Ron DeSantis of Florida produced another? The scene was a press conference in Tallahassee. The subject under discussion was the Republican governors view that conservatives are discriminated against by social and mainstream media companies. Dont say it isnt so, he told the assembled reporters: You can whiz on my leg, but dont tell me its raining.

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Mr DeSantiss phrase, now available on a range of conservative merchandise, expressed the dominant Republican view of big tech and the media: both knowing and dismissive. And he was able to utter it with rare authority. Mr DeSantis, who is second only to Donald Trump in popularity among Republicans, owes his rise not only to his record of sticking it to the liberal media but also, more impressively, to his knack of being vindicated almost whenever he has done so.

Having entered the Republican gubernatorial primary as a little-known House member, he launched a campaign so sycophantically pro-Trump that he became a figure of fun for the national media. He proceeded to win the former presidents endorsement and the primary. That put him in a fight against Andrew Gillum which the polls gave him little chance of winning, especially after he was accused of making a racist dig at his black opponent. He denied the charge and won that one, too. Whereupon, instead of becoming the divisive, ineffective governor he was predicted to be (including by some of his former congressional colleagues), he swung amenably to the centre. He raised teachers salaries, launched an effort to protect the Everglades, took a relaxed view of medical marijuanaand watched his ratings climb. When covid-19 struck last year, Mr DeSantis was one of the most popular governors in the country, an impressive feat in one of Americas most polarised states.

His management of the pandemic has since cost him much of his non-Republican support. Defying the public-health experts in his own administration, he refused to introduce a state-wide mask mandate and, after an initial month-long lockdown, pushed for Floridas businesses and schools to get back to normal even as the virus raged through the state. Retreating into a kitchen cabinet dominated by his chief-of-staff and his wife, Casey DeSantis, a popular former television journalist who oozes the charisma that the bullocking governor lacks, he was said to have shunned the experts entirely. He was widely criticised (including in this column). Yet it must be acknowledged that, again bucking his critics, he got most of the big calls right.

He did a better job of protecting care-homes than several of his media-beloved Democratic counterparts, including Andrew Cuomo of New York. He was dead right on schools. The mask mandates imposed by Floridas local authorities largely compensated for his own reticence on the issue. No doubt Floridas outdoors lifestyle helped, too. Yet the net result is a death toll that puts the state in the middle of the national pack and, after the haranguing Mr DeSantis received, this has been interpreted on the right as his greatest, media-crushing vindication yet. Its cocaine to the base, says a grudging Republican admirer of the governor. In the event that Mr Trump does not run for re-election in 2024, 40% of Republicans say they would pick Mr DeSantis instead.

This has got conservative donors excited. Many loathe Mr Trump but fear that their preferred alternativesincluding Mike Pence, Nikki Haley or just about anyonecould not retain the former presidents diehard followers. Mr DeSantis, whose presidential ambition is no secret, is the first alternative to hint that he could. His name is being cheered raucously at right-wing populist gatherings even as Mr Pences is jeered and the politically discombobulated Ms Haley goes unmentioned. Ifas that and much else suggestsconservatives are still committed to Trump-style populism, Republican elites are beginning to hope that Mr DeSantis might be the man to smooth its rougher edges.

That at least seems plausible. His string of unheralded successes suggests he is an astute politician. He is plainly intelligent. Most of the rights faux populists (a group that also includes Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the debutant J.D. Vance) are alumni of Harvard or Yale; Mr DeSantis has degrees from both. Admiring former acolytes of the governor (a small bandhe has a reputation for being beastly to his staff) say he made his decisions on the pandemic after immersing himself in public-health policy, as well as politics. He would surely be better than Mr Trump.

That is setting the bar pretty low, however. And the beguiling idea of Mr DeSantis as a shy pragmatist and secret wonk could also soon seem out-of-date. An anti-government wrecker in the House, turned Trump populist, turned moderate governor, whose re-election campaign is now hawking Dont Fauci my Florida mugs, the governor appears to have no firm convictions of any kind. This makes it hard to imagine him channelling the wild enthusiasms of Mr Trumps supporters in a productive way.

Indeed, the closer he gets to national power, the more he is pandering to them. He has in recent months engineered a series of dire state laws, including bans on mask mandates, vaccine passports, critical race theory, the right of social media companies to suspend politicians and certain kinds of political protest. It remains to be seen how many of these measures will survive legal scrutiny. But even if none does, they constitute the record he wants to run on. The governor is an able politician and so far a winning one. But his rise does not augur an improved version of Trump populism so much as its triumph.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "The rise of Ron DeSantis"

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The Biden administration made its case on Wednesday for why multinational corporations should support an international tax agreement aimed at cracking down on tax shelters, with a top official arguing that the deal would restore order to globalization and blunt the forces of protectionism and populism that have posed a threat to business in recent years.

The comments, by Itai Grinberg, a Treasury Department official who is representing the United States in the negotiations, offered a new rationale for the agreement, which would entail the largest overhaul of the international tax system in decades. If enacted, the deal would usher in a global minimum tax of at least 15% and allow countries to impose new taxes on the goods and services of the largest and most profitable corporations regardless of where the companies are based.

But the Biden administration sees the agreement as more than an end to the race to the bottom on corporate taxes that has been a boon to tax havens.

We believe this deal is part and parcel of restoring the foundation for the continued success of the liberal international economic order as we have known it over the last 75 years, Grinberg, the Treasurys deputy assistant secretary for multilateral tax, told the National Association for Business Economics.

The Biden administration has been pushing for the agreement as part of its plan to raise taxes on companies in the United States without making them less competitive around the world and to get dozens of countries to drop new digital services taxes that have targeted American technology companies. More than 130 countries have signed on to a framework of the deal, which is being negotiated through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Although large companies have been anxious about the prospect of higher taxes, Grinberg argued that they had more to gain from a tax agreement. He suggested that a lack of clarity and consensus in the international tax system was leading to greater double taxation that, if left unchecked, could cause corporations to pull back cross-border investment.

The effect of those diminished transactions would spread well beyond big companies and their shareholders, because the activity of multinationals is the backbone of the success of globalization, Grinberg said. And none of that would be good, because although it certainly has its flaws, globalization has brought benefits not just for multinational corporations but for people in the United States and around the world.

The Biden administration has argued that its international tax proposals would bring more fairness to the United States and to economies around the world. They would do so, it says, by putting an end to a system that allows corporations to pay less tax than middle-class workers and by giving nations more tax revenue that they could spend on infrastructure and other public goods. Grinberg said this would be in the interest of corporations, arguing that the sense of unfairness was creating a landscape that is problematic for global businesses.

Could globally engaged multinational business succeed if economic populism, protectionism and anti-immigrant sentiment were to become the order of the political day? he said.

Much remains to be done between now and October, when international negotiators hope to complete the pact. Ireland, Estonia and Hungary have yet to join the agreement, and their resistance could block the European Union from moving ahead with the plan.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Treasury official: Tax deal would help make globalization work - Finance and Commerce