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The Latest Articles by Michael Hiltzik

Michael Hiltzik: Greedy railroads are to blame for rail strike threat. Why should Congress help them?

The prevailing take on the looming national rail crisis is that a few recalcitrant railroad unions are poised go on strike Dec. 9, provoking an industrywide labor walkout that would inflict a "crippling" blow to the U.S. economy.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Thinking of putting crypto in your 401(k)? Think twice

The federal government has some advice for workers contemplating adding bitcoin or another cryptocurrency to their retirement holdings: Don't.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: How Sam Bankman-Fried exploited the 'effective altruism' fad to get rich and con the world

The most uplifting aspect of the Sam Bankman-Fried story was always that he guided his way to a putative cryptocurrency fortune of more than $16 billion by following a philosophy of charitable giving known as "effective altruism."

Los Angeles Times

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Michael Hiltzik: The right wing gets its knives out for California's new medical misinformation law

Painfully aware of how attacks on COVID vaccines and anti-pandemic policies have undermined public health, California enacted a law this year that makes spreading medical misinformation and disinformation about the pandemic grounds for revoking a doctor's license.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: 'Moderates' like Mitt Romney are threatening Social Security. Democrats don't have to let them

You may have thought that the drubbing Republicans received in the recent election would have prompted party leaders to think more warily about promoting policies that nauseate the voting public.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Dear Elon, I can save Twitter for you. Here are my terms

Dear Elon,

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Crypto tycoon Sam Bankman-Fried didn't lose a $16 billion fortune. His 'fortune' was never real

The Greek tragedy unfolding in the financial press over the last week is the story of Sam Bankman-Fried, the would-be cryptocurrency tycoon and political kingmaker whose multibillion-dollar empire has sunk like the Titanic after its encounter with the iceberg.

Los Angeles Times

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Michael Hiltzik: A cryptocurrency billionaire implodes, showing that the whole field is built on quicksand

For a while there, Sam Bankman-Fried looked like the real thing.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: A cryptocurrency billionaire implodes, showing that the whole field is built on quicksand

For a while there, Sam Bankman-Fried looked like the real thing.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Is Elon Musk a genius or an idiot?

At the heart of Elon Musk's public persona is his image as an engineering and managerial genius.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Meta and Twitter show the drawbacks of giving self-satisfied billionaires too much power

Back in the prehistoric era — in 2012, when Facebook staged one of the most hyped initial public stock offerings of all time — I warned the company's newly minted shareholders that they had become wedded to Mark Zuckerberg.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: ProPublica and Vanity Fair are pushing the COVID lab-leak theory, but their exposé is a train wreck

Since its founding in 2007, the independently funded investigative organization ProPublica has exposed wrongdoing at all levels of government and shined a light on corporate misbehavior, collecting six Pulitzer Prizes in the process and securing a reputation for painstaking, accurate journalism.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Republicans keep harping on inflation, but don't have any answers for it

Even if you didn't know from your household accounts that inflation has been running hot this year, your local Republican officeholders and candidates would make sure it wasn't a secret.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Obscenely rich dialysis firms are spending millions to defeat California's tighter regulations

A good rule of thumb for assessing the value of a business is to look at how much its owners will spend to defend it from regulations. By that measure, the dialysis business is very valuable indeed.

Los Angeles Times

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Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Those math and reading scores were horrible, but beware of the political spin

There's nothing good to say about the newly-released national test scores in reading and math for fourth- and eighth-graders, showing sizable declines in the vast majority of states as a result of the pandemic.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Britain's prime minister followed the GOP's economic plan. She lost her job in record time

Fox Business talking head Larry Kudlow was over the moon on Sept. 23.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: How Congress could rein in the rogue Supreme Court

If the Supreme Court's decisions in 2022 made your skin crawl, what with its eviscerating abortion rights, hobbling gun restrictions and undermining the government's ability to address global warming, strap yourself in: The 2022-23 session could be as bad, or worse.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Overt racism and antisemitism have become part of our political discourse. How did that happen?

The fact that the Republican Party has a vacuum for its policy platform isn't necessarily a problem for the U.S., even if the GOP does manage to take control of one or both chambers of Congress.

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Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: GOP promises to gut your Social Security, Medicare if it takes power

It used to be a truism that no elected office-holders would dare to tamper with Social Security if they wished to keep their jobs.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: Think food inflation is bad now? Wait till Kroger and Albertsons merge

The gargantuan proposed $24.6-billion merger of supermarket behemoths Kroger and Albertsons is being touted by the merger partners as a boon to consumers.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: The Supreme Court holds the internet's fate in its hands, and you should be terrified

Almost no one noticed in 1996 when Congress gave online social media platforms sweeping legal immunity from what their users posted on them.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: An abrupt format change at a beloved Bay Area station shows what's wrong with the radio business

Listeners of San Francisco's KGO radio station woke up to a shock Monday.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: The artificial intelligence field is infected with hype. Here's how not to get duped

The star of the show at Tesla's annual "AI Day" (for "artificial intelligence") on Sept. 30 was a humanoid robot introduced by Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk as "Optimus."

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: How the GOP counts on Democrats' goodwill to conceal its own cruelty

In a world where Republicans set political standards, one could expect that migrants would be abandoned in remote places without hope of succor and that funding for infrastructure construction and disaster relief would be provided only to GOP-led communities.

Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik: How did America get addicted to a policy that fails everyone but the rich?

Here's the central riddle of U.S. politics since the Great Depression:

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