HIGHLIGHTS
- International Unions Launch Insourcing, Remunicipalization Toolkit
- Landlords Sound Alarm as L.A. City Council Turns Left
- Transit Workers Launch Strike in Virginia
JUMP TO: EDUCATION | INFRASTRUCTURE | PUBLIC SERVICES | THE REST
First, the Good News
1) National: Writing in Common Dreams, In the Public Interest Executive Director Donald Cohen says the new direct file tax filing pilot program, which will be available to some next year, shows it doesn’t have to be hard to do your taxes. “So, what’s the hold up? Well, listen to Times editorial board writer Binya Appelbaum’s explanation, also in the Times video. ‘There is a company that dominates the tax preparation industry in the United States. It makes billions of dollars by charging Americans to help them complete their taxes. It makes a product called TurboTax, which, for most Americans, is practically synonymous with doing your taxes. And it has made an industry out of something that ought to be a public service.’ That company is Intuit, and for decades it has hired the best lobbyists to block the Internal Revenue Service from offering a free tax filing tool. In a rare and unfortunate moment of bipartisanship, the company has been able to influence Republicans and Democrats alike with its fundraising prowess.”
The Wall Street Journal road tested the new program, and listed some of the pluses and minuses of the new program, with the biggest plus being the cost—it’s free. “Once it is live, a chat function will let users get help from IRS employees. The IRS won’t charge for assistance. Employees won’t try to upsell you. Taxpayers spent an average of $150 to prepare returns last year, according to the Treasury Department. IRS employees available through live chat are trained on the Direct File tool, so they should be able to guide you through any problems. That said, they aren’t there to give you customized personal financial advice. It may end up feeling more like an interactive IRS publication. Users will be able to toggle between English and Spanish. Officials say Direct File will work on desktops and smartphones.” [Sub required]
2) National: Is there a way out of the collapse of local journalism, which provides some of the leading coverage of privatization in the country? Alissa Quart, executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project has some suggestions. “On the first count, we should look to civic media models like the one proposed by communications scholar Robert McChesney. Drawing from participatory budgeting and inspired by economist Dean Baker, McChesney’s idea for reform is a local government process where citizens vote on how their county or city’s government media budget should be directed. McChesney proposes a news media voucher program—the Citizenship News Voucher—which, as he wrote in 2010, would make it so that ‘every American adult gets a $200 voucher she can use to donate government money to any nonprofit news medium of her choice. She will indicate her choice on her tax return. . . . A government agency, possibly operating out of the Internal Revenue Service, can be set up to allocate the funds and to determine eligibility.’ As for whether this reform could happen in real life—it’s already being considered. Washington, DC has started looking at a media voucher plan after a council member introduced a novel bill, which would offer government-funded vouchers to DC residents that they can donate to local journalism venues that they select.”
3) National: The federal Office of Personnel Management will be conducting a survey to analyze “artificial intelligence” in government jobs. “Last July, OPM completed the first step of its work, identifying 43 general and 14 technical competencies required for work with AI. And in a memo last week, Veronica Hinton, OPM’s associate director for workforce policy and innovation, announced the HR agency’s next task: surveying current federal employees who are already working with AI to confirm OPM’s initial list of skills. “The OPM artificial intelligence job analysis survey represents the next phase of the study and will be used to validate the AI competencies identified by technical and human resources subject matter experts as needed for performing AI work governmentwide,” Hinton wrote. ‘OPM plans to issue the OPM AI Job Analysis Survey today, the results of which will be used to develop an AI competency model.’”
4) Maryland: Maximillian Alvarez reports that “Baltimore’s co-ops show the power of a ‘solidarity economy.’ (…) “At a recent event hosted by the Baltimore Museum of Industry titled ‘Work Matters: Building a Worker-Owned Co-op,” Max moderated a panel including workers and representatives from Common Ground Bakery Café, Taharka Bros Ice Cream, A Few Cool Hardware Stores, and the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy (BRED). He talked to them about how they came to work at these different co-ops, how their businesses transitioned to more cooperative models, and they dig into the nitty gritty of what working at a co-op looks like, what it takes for workers to democratically run a business, and the real challenges, limitations, and rewards that come with this kind of work. Panelists include: Vince Green (Taharka Bros Ice Cream); David Evans (A Few Cool Hardware Stores); Craig Smith (A Few Cool Hardware Stores); Sierra Allen (Common Ground Bakery Café); Christa Daring (BRED).
5) New York: New York State has awarded $1.8 million in grants for Hudson River projects. “The Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Estuary Grants Program implements priorities outlined in the Hudson River Estuary Action Agenda 2021-2025. Over its 21 years, the program has awarded 643 grants totaling more than $28 million. Funding is provided by New York’s Environmental Protection Fund, which enables land acquisition, farmland protection, invasive species prevention and eradication, recreation access, water quality improvement, and environmental justice projects, according to a DEC statement. ‘These grants build upon local conservation efforts and priorities to sustainably improve water quality and protect the Hudson River,’ DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos said in a statement.”
6) Iowa: In a letter to the editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Martha Huffman of Williamsburg has come to the defense of public accountability for public business and records. “Senate File 2311 is a bill that should concern every Iowa voter. The bill considers the legislature should hire private CPAs and auditing companies to audit state business transactions that our state elected employees have made. Our taxpaying citizens in Iowa should not pay for private CPAs or accounting firms. the cost for this procedure would be astronomical and political. Rob Sand is our state [auditor]. He was elected by the majority of the people to do the accounting for all the state house business and records. Legislature, let Rob proceed!”
7) International: The European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), which represents 8 million public service workers across Europe, and Public Services International (PSI), a Global Union Federation of more than 700 trade unions representing 30 million workers in 154 countries, have announced the launch of “a new online training tool to support affiliates to understand the concepts, opportunities, challenges, and processes around remunicipalisation and insourcing. The toolkit is the outcome of the EPSU-PSI European Commission-funded project on insourcing and remunicipalisation—INQPS. The project development has lasted over a year of development and has involved many EPSU and PSI affiliates, who took part and contributed to six Project Steering Committees.” Online launches are scheduled for March 14 and 18.
“The toolkit features three-levels of knowledge depth, beginning with introductory videos, moving into text and infographics and ends with Q&A tests and checklists to enable trade unionists to grasp and command the key concepts of remunicipalisation/insourcing and apply it to their trade union work in a national and local environments. The toolkit also provides extensive information, resources, and case studies from the basic to the detailed, depending on the needs of the user. It will be made available on the PSI website and will continue to be developed on an ongoing basis after its launch.”
8) National: The good news out of USC Dornsife is that “despite partisan divides on topics like LGBTQ+ inclusion and racial justice in K-12 curricula, Americans overwhelmingly agree on the value of public education.” See the report.
“Drawing from a nationally representative survey of more than 3,900 U.S. adults, the study offers a more nuanced picture of public opinion than the heated debates dominating headlines. The research also provides insights for policymakers and educators navigating the complexities of public education in an increasingly polarized America. ‘We were surprised and hopeful to find such strong bipartisan support for public education and its purpose,’ said Anna Saavedra, co-author of the study, research scientist and co-director at the Center for Applied Research in Education at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. ‘That said, there are major partisan differences in beliefs about what children should be learning in public schools, particularly regarding topics related to LGBTQ and race. Local districts have the challenge of reconciling these differences in the coming years,’ said Saavedra, who is also the director of research for the USC EdPolicy Hub based at the USC Rossier School of Education.”
9) National: A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that educators across the country favor teaching students about race and gender. “When it comes to race, most U.S. public-school teachers think students should be taught that the legacy of slavery affects Black Americans today and that parents shouldn’t be able to opt their children out of lessons on racism, according to Pew. At the same time, most educators don’t think schools should teach that a child’s gender can be different from the child’s birth sex. Teachers say this topic usually doesn’t come up in class anyway, the national survey shows. Meanwhile, more than 40% of teachers said that the high-profile discussions about classroom content have had a negative impact on their jobs. Seven in 10 teachers think that, as a group, they don’t have enough influence over what they teach.” [Sub required]
10) Alaska: “Governor Dunleavy’s endorsement of charter schools raises concerns about privatization in Alaska. “Hawaii’s privatized education system serves as a cautionary tale. Investing in public schools and supporting teachers can ensure high-quality education for all,” says Ebenezer Mensah in BNN. “As a former resident of Hawaii and a current supporter of Alaska’s public schools, I have seen firsthand the potential consequences of underfunding public education and the resulting shift towards private education. Hawaii’s education system is heavily privatized, with families spending tens of thousands of dollars on tuition annually. If Alaska follows suit, families with means will undoubtedly seek alternatives to the underfunded public schools, leading to a rise in private school tuition costs. The influx of new families could also change the Christian character and philosophies of Alaska’s private schools, as well as increase competition for jobs at these institutions.”
11) California: Peter Dreier sat down with Jon Wiener of The Nation’s Start Making Sense podcast and talked about Dreier’s new article, co-authored with Mike Bonin, on the battle for control of the Los Angeles City Council, which has played a leading role in national efforts to defend the interests of renters against predatory corporate interests. The alliance of unions and community organizers terrifies LA billionaires, says Dreier.
“Jon Wiener: Yeah. I wanted to ask you about this DSA thing. They say that they are out to stop DSA from taking over the city council, Democratic Socialists of America. Is this just old-style red baiting and name-calling, or is DSA really a political force in LA City politics?
Peter Dreier: It’s mostly red baiting. The local chapter of DSA has maybe 1,000 members, which is a big increase from what it was 10 years ago. They do know how to door knock and phone bank and get people to vote, but it’s nowhere close to the power that the unions have. They’re really afraid of the unions and the community organizing groups that do tenants’ rights work, work on education reform, and try to stop the tide of chartered schools. So it’s really the billionaires, the cops, and the firefighters who don’t like a progressive city council, and they’ve been losing for the last five or six years, and billionaires don’t like to lose.”
12) Florida: Writing on Twitter/X, Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, says “there is a massive teacher & staff shortage impacting the education of Florida’s students. However, the Governor and Lawmakers continue to ignore the issue. With about 2 1/2 weeks left in the 2024 Legislative Session, Florida lawmakers must do better!”
13) Kentucky: Veteran Kentucky investigative reporter John Schaff, writing in the Northern Kentucky Tribune, says school vouchers are hurting students’ academic performance. “A couple of weeks ago at the State Capitol in Frankfort, a lobbying group called ‘EdChoice Kentucky, Inc.’ organized a rally in favor of changing the state’s constitution to funnel taxpayer money into private religious schools. Most of the people who showed up were students from Catholic and Christian schools who were bused in for the occasion. They were there to support lobbyists’ efforts to force all Kentuckians to pay tuition and expenses for students like them who are already attending private schools. Sadly, most taxpayers were probably at work and couldn’t attend the rally to hear EdChoice’s Moe Lundrigan tout his dream for a huge and costly expansion of state government: vouchers paid for by every Kentuckian, with the voucher money flowing into the pockets of out-of-state corporate big shots and churches from the ‘hood to the holler.’”
14) Wyoming: K-12 mental health services have been revived in the state budget. ““Even in my little town of Big Piney, we have an inordinate amount of children that are going to school counselors that are basically talking about suicide and are in crisis,” Speaker of the House Albert Sommers (R-Pinedale) said. Sommers learned of these circumstances through his experience on the Legislature’s Mental Health and Vulnerable Adult Task Force. It spurred him into action. ‘These are our precious resource, these children,’ Sommers said. ‘And to see them in the pain, and the crisis that’s occurring in our schools, is tragic.’ The bill, however, died when the hardline Freedom Caucus used its voting bloc to kill it upon introduction. ‘It’s not the role of government,’ caucus member and Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland) said in opposition to the bill. (…) Today, however, a slightly different version of the bill got a second chance when Sommers brought it as an amendment to the budget bill. The House voted 33-28 to put $18.5 million toward establishing a grant program intended to address K-12 mental health needs.”
15) National: The Congressional Research Service has a new report out, The Highway Funding Formula: History and Current Status Under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. “The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA; P.L. 117-58), enacted in 2021, changed the relatively simple programmatic structure for highway funding established by MAP-21. Part of this change was that the IIJA combined surface transportation reauthorization with a broader infrastructure bill funded primarily with multiyear advance appropriations. The IIJA retained the existing formula programs and created several new ones. The IIJA also created new competitive discretionary programs.
The IIJA added two new formula programs to the core highway programs that were funded from the HTF: the Carbon Reduction Program and the Promoting Resilient Operations for Transformative, Efficient, and Cost-Saving Transportation (PROTECT) Program. Two other new formula programs created by the IIJA for highway bridges and electric vehicle infrastructure were funded with multiyear advance appropriations and apportioned on the basis of formulas unique to the individual programs. The IIJA also revived a stand-alone Appalachian Development Highway System (ADHS) Program, provided for ADHS funds to be distributed according to a cost-to-complete formula, and funded the Ferry Boat Program from both the HTF and the general fund. The formula funds under the Ferry Boat Program are not apportioned to the states but are allocated to existing public ferry service entities on the basis of ferry passengers, vehicles carried, and route miles.”
16) National: The transportation industry says the Build America, Buy America Act is holding back infrastructure development. “Part of the worry is that U.S.-made materials might not be available. In that case, the federal approval process for getting foreign parts can take years. But even the prospect of certifying that components are made in the U.S. is so grueling that many suppliers choose not to do it, instead selling their goods to private industry and leaving public agencies with fewer design choices or more expensive bids. The new Build America, Buy America rules come at the same time that public agencies confront shortages of workers and materials to build projects funded by the 2021 infrastructure law. Inflation has been especially high in the construction sector, too.”
17) Alabama: A bill advancing through the state legislature could introduce so-called public-private partnerships into the airport sector, The Bond Buyer reports. “The federal Airport Investment Partnership Program allows airports to explore privatization as a way to generate private capital though experts say it has generated less interest than expected. Major terminal projects at John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia have led the way in the space. Most recently, the U.S. Virgin Islands is crafting a long-term design-build-operate-finance-maintain lease for both of its airports. Not all the agreements work out. In June 2022, the Gary Chicago International Airport dissolved its P3 eight years into what was to be a 40-year agreement. The Denver International Airport in 2019 dropped a two-year-old P3 in favor of a traditional general contractor approach.” [Sub required]
18) Florida: The Charlotte County Airport Authority recently signed a resolution pledging not to privatize the Punta Gorda Airport.
19) Louisiana: The Bayou State is set to float $1.34 billion of private activity bonds in April “as part of its largest public-private partnership to date, which will replace an aging bridge over Interstate 10 near St. Charles.” Interest and issuance costs will take a big bite out of the proceeds. “The approvals come a few weeks after state lawmakers revived the project earlier this month. The deal is tentatively set to price the week of April 1 by J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Wells Fargo Bank, NA. The $1.34 billion includes $800 million to cover construction costs for the first several years, with the remaining $523 million going to capitalized interest and issuance costs.”
20) Massachusetts: A Boston pro soccer team is being sued over its plans to redevelop a stadium. “Neighbors and park advocates have filed a lawsuit against the city and a professional women’s soccer team planning to restore and use Franklin Park’s White Stadium, stating that such a use would unconstitutionally privatize the land. Mayor Michelle Wu pushed back on that claim, however, stating that any attempts to paint the redevelopment project as a privatization of White Stadium was “either a misunderstanding or a misrepresentation.” In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court, the plaintiffs also allege that redevelopment plans would largely displace Boston Public School student-athletes and community members who regularly use the park and stadium, and were made hastily by the city and Boston Unity Soccer Partners without public input.”
21) Montana: The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports that right wing U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke (R) has come out in favor of limiting the privatization of public lands. “Zinke introduced the public lands bill as part of a roundtable discussion on Monday between himself and representatives from outdoor recreation, sportsmen and conservation organizations. Beyond seeking to add a layer of protection to public lands and increased scrutiny on their sale, Zinke said the bill will start a discussion on the addressing issues of access, restoration and wildlife corridors. ‘We were given the legacy of public lands. Now, I think we have to look at the next 100 years,’ Zinke said. The bill is bipartisan, co-sponsored by Congressman Gabe Vasquez (D-NM).”
22) Ohio/Think Tanks: Policy Matters Ohio’s Zach Schiller has unpacked Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb’s Tax Increment Financing (TIF) proposal. “None of the TIF money is to go for stadiums or private developers. But the major riverfront development outlined by Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock Management Services LLC will be covered by its own, separate TIF. Will funds from that TIF go right to Bedrock? Why does a billionaire need such assistance?
Much of the discussion of the TIF so far has centered around how much would be spent in the neighborhoods, an important question. But there are plenty of others for Cleveland City Council to take up when it evaluates the TIF ordinance.”
23) Vermont: Tonight at 6:30 ET, St. Albans residents will vote on whether to approve an $11.4 million bond paid for through tax increment financing to upgrade the city’s downtown area. “10 million of that money would be earmarked for two new four-story apartment buildings behind city hall, housing about 90 new units in total, according to city planning documents. Those units would primarily be one- and two-bedroom apartments and be considered ‘workforce housing’—meaning they would be affordable for people making between 80% and 120% of the area’s median income. The median household income in the St. Albans City area is just under $50,000, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. (…) If passed, the bond debt would be paid for through tax increment financing, or TIF. Under that structure, a municipality designates a TIF district — in this case downtown St. Albans — and pays for upgrades to the district with future tax revenues that are expected to be derived from those improvements.”
24) Revolving Door News/Ohio: HNTB, the infrastructure design behemoth, has announced it has hired Jennifer Gallagher, until recently the “director of the City of Columbus Department of Public Service where she played a key role in the implementation of transformative transportation initiatives in Columbus.” Gallagher also worked for the Ohio DOT and Franklin County Engineer’s Office.
25) National: As a private robotic satellite lands on the moon, the GAO has produced a report on FAA oversight of commercial human space flight. “The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) oversees commercial space operations with humans onboard under its broader licensing framework. FAA requires commercial launch operators to obtain a license before conducting any operation within U.S. borders—whether they carry humans or payloads, such as satellites. To obtain a license, operators must demonstrate that they can conduct the operation without jeopardizing the safety of the people and property not involved in the operation. FAA has additional licensing requirements for operations with humans onboard, such as crew training and the ability to suppress cabin fire. These requirements are intended to address risk to the uninvolved public. FAA is currently prohibited from issuing regulations directed at protecting the safety of humans onboard, with some exceptions, due to a moratorium that Congress established in 2004 to limit certain regulatory burdens on an emerging industry. This moratorium is set to expire on March 8, 2024.” [Full report]
26) National/Virginia: Transit workers represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) have launched the largest strike in years against Transdev, the private corporation operating some of the bus lines. A press release issued by Local 689 declared a ‘vast divide between the Union and the company’ as of the last meeting between the two parties. “The ATU reports that while the company’s last stated offer ‘included what appeared to be competitive wage increases for bus operators,’ it ‘deliberately failed to acknowledge’ the area’s high cost of living and excluded other benefits. The workers have been without a new contract since late November. Workers are demanding improved pay as well as retirement benefits. According to one driver, “we have people that work for 25-30 years who have retired and don’t have any income… apart from social security” in Fairfax County, one of the most expensive places to live in the United States.” Sign the petition.
27) National/Think Tanks: The Sentencing Project has produced an excellent research brief on private, for-profit prisons in the U.S., pulling together many statistics that are hard to find and laying a basis for further research and action. The author is Dr. Kristen Budd, a research analyst at the Sentencing Project. “Private for-profit prisons incarcerated 90,873 American residents in 2022, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population. Since 2000, the number of people housed in private prisons has increased 5%. Harmful crime policies of the 1980s and beyond fueled a rapid expansion in the nation’s prison population. The resulting burden on the public sector led to the modern emergence of for-profit prisons in many states and the federal system. Of the 1.2 million people in federal and state prisons, 8%, or 90,873 people, were in private prisons as of year-end 2022. States show significant variation in the use of private prisons. At one end of the spectrum, Montana incarcerates almost half of its prison population in privately run facilities, but in another 23 states, private prisons are not used at all. A total of 27 states and the federal government use private corporations like GEO Group, Core Civic, LaSalle Corrections, and Management and Training Corporation to run some of their corrections facilities.”
28) Colorado: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado is resisting the privatization of Aurora’s Public Defender’s Office. “In a December 2023 letter to the council, the ACLU cautioned that “Privatization of indigent defense services will likely cost the City of Aurora millions of dollars long-term,” explaining that the current freestanding public defender office is the gold standard and represents significant cost savings over alternative models like flat-fee or assigned-counsel systems. Policy Counsel Catherine Ordoñez of the ACLU of Colorado warned against abandoning the city’s current model, which she views as a cornerstone of fair and effective legal defense for Aurora’s indigent population.”
“Furthermore, the ACLU’s letter outlines that the Request for Proposals (RFP) process posed by the resolution presents significant conflicts of interest and is inconsistent with state and municipal law, stating, ‘Under current law, the Aurora Public Defender Commission is the only entity with legal authority to contract out the indigent defense services currently provided by the Public Defender’s Office.’”
29) International/Argentina: UNI Global Union stood in solidarity lasty week with 500,000 striking healthcare workers, demanding the negotiation of a wage increase. Argentina is undergoing massive popular resistance to the brutal scorched earth austerity and privatization policies of its new right wing president, Javier Milei , which are crushing the economy. The teachers union, CTERA, is planning a national strike on March 5. “On Monday, the teachers of CTERA will also organize a march to Congress. ‘We’ve defined a national resistance strategy that has a 48-hour strike, Monday and Tuesday, and a march on March 5 ending at the National Congress,’ [(CTERA General Secretary Sonia Alesso] specified. ‘We will not tolerate the war-like language from the national government,’ indicated Alesso. ‘We want to work like the schools in Finland and have salaries like the teachers in Finland have,’ added the secretary, alluding to comments that have been made on more than one occasion from the government about wanting an education similar to the that country’s.”
30) International/Canada: The Ontario Nurses’ Association is strongly urging Ontarians to fight the Ford government’s Blood-for-Cash Scheme. “‘Ontario nurses and health-care professionals are horrified at this government’s latest plan to enrich a private corporation while risking the health and well-being of Ontarians,’ says ONA President Erin Ariss, RN. ‘Premier Ford is laying out the red carpet for a private, multinational corporation to make off with profits from a blood and plasma supply that our patients rely on. The evidence is clear from other jurisdictions: for-profit blood and plasma collection erodes the voluntary donor base and exploits the vulnerable. This scheme will put a safe blood supply at risk in Ontario.’”
The Ontario Health Coalition has issued a new report revealing that “local hospitals in every region of Ontario have operating rooms sitting idle the majority of the time. The public has funded local hospitals for more than 70 years to build operating room capacity that is unused while the Ford government is shunting unprecedented public money to private for-profit clinics and hospitals to build new operating rooms, the Coalition reports. For the last year, the Coalition researched the unused capacity in local public hospitals through Freedom of Information requests and interviews with surgical staff.”
An it’s not just in Ontario. In the Maritime provinces, Josh Lewis says, there are signs of creeping privatization. “Here, perhaps the most concerning is a private clinic in Summerside run by a company called Medicalux which charges for services covered by Medicare. It also serves private companies. One of these companies is JD Irving. It’s no surprise that one of the Irving companies, which get an easy ride in New Brunswick with virtually no accountability, thinks it is appropriate to partake in such tomfoolery. The province is leaning more and more on Maple, a for-profit app, in lieu of access to adequate public services. But complaints of having to wait hours, and even then not being able to see a doctor, are widespread.”
32) International/U.K.: Writing in Jacobin (“The West Is Sabotaging a Global Pandemic Treaty”), Leigh Phillips says, “although Britain’s National Health Service has been eroded over the decades by wave after wave of ‘internal market’ wheezes, corporate outsourcing, and partial privatization, it remains the case that the principle of a nationalized healthcare system resolves the conflict between need and profit incentive: the provider is compensated for their work not by profits but instead via taxation, or other forms of cooperative pooling of resources.”
33) National: Nvidia, the AI chipmaker, had a spectacular performance on Wall Street this week, with its valuation topping $2 trillion. But the AI chipmaker’s revenue is not just a private sector story. Publicly-funded military research and government subsidies are part of the profit mix (sales were up 265% year-on-year). But “some investors said they were more cautious about the frenzy. Activity in corners of the stock and options market in recent sessions has shown extreme optimism about the technology, stoking fears about an AI-driven bubble.” The Economist, striking a cautionary note, says ‘the end of the era of cheap money is largely to blame.’” [Subs required]