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AZ-GOV: GOP Candidate's Staffer Has a Murder-for-Hire Past

The Salon report laid out Ulibarri’s violent criminal history, including targeting law enforcement, which The Daily Beast has independently confirmed through state and federal court records.

According to a superseding federal indictment, the Justice Department alleged in 2014 that Ulibarri had “attempted to kill” an FBI informant to stop the informant from testifying at a cocaine distribution and money laundering trial. Ulibarri later admitted in a plea agreement that he had in fact told an undercover FBI informant—while trying to sell him heroin—that Ulibarri knew that the first informant was working for the feds and that he and others “were hiring a hitman to kill” him, for $20,000.

Ulibarri claimed in his agreement that he had not been serious about the murder plot, but was only using it to try to get more money out of his supposed heroin client.

“In May 2014, I met with a confidential source (CHS1) to discuss selling heroin to CHS1. In those meetings, I told CHS1 that I and some others were hiring a hitman to kill another confidential source (CHS2) for $20,000,” Ulibarri wrote in his agreement, noting that “CHS2” was a “testifying cooperator” in the trial.





https://www.thedailybeast.com/arizona-gop-gubernatorial-candidate-kari-lakes-staffer-has-a-murder-for-hire-past?ref=wrap

McKinsey Charged in South African Corruption Case

The South African branch of McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm, was charged in a corruption scandal involving work the company completed advising the country’s state-owned freight rail and port operator. It may be the first time in McKinsey’s 96-year history that the firm has faced criminal charges.

South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority added McKinsey and one of its former top consultants in the country to a long list of defendants in a case involving a locomotive purchase contract for the state-owned operator, Transnet, the authority said in a statement on Friday. McKinsey oversaw work on the bid, which, at the time it was announced in 2012, was the country’s largest-ever public procurement.

The other defendants, including the former chief executive of Transnet, are facing charges including fraud, corruption and money laundering. It was not clear from the statement what specific charges McKinsey and its former senior partner, Vikas Sagar, would face. A spokesperson for the authority was not available to comment.

“We believe the charges filed against our South Africa office are meritless and we will defend against them,” a spokesman for McKinsey said in a statement.



https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/30/world/africa/mckinsey-corruption-case-south-africa.html

Eurozone inflation jumps to record 10% in September: data

Factory Jobs Are Booming Like It's the 1970s

WASHINGTON — Ever since American manufacturing entered a long stretch of automation and outsourcing in the late 1970s, every recession has led to the loss of factory jobs that never returned. But the recovery from the pandemic recession has been different: American manufacturers have now added enough jobs to regain all that they shed — and then some.

The resurgence has not been driven by companies bringing back factory jobs that had moved overseas, nor by the brawny industrial sectors and regions often evoked by President Biden, former President Donald J. Trump and other champions of manufacturing.

Instead, the engines in this recovery include pharmaceutical plants, craft breweries and ice-cream makers. The newly created jobs are more likely to be located in the Mountain West and the Southeast than in the classic industrial strongholds of the Great Lakes.


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/business/factory-jobs-workers-rebound.html

Meta Will Freeze Most Hiring, Zuckerberg Tells Employees

In May, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, froze hiring for engineers and low-level data scientists.

In July, Mr. Zuckerberg warned employees to buckle up for an “intense period” of 18 to 24 months, and asked managers to start identifying weak performers.

This week, he told his employees that the company would freeze hiring and reduce budgets across most teams at Meta, leading to layoffs in parts of the company that have previously seen unchecked growth.

It was the most recent sign of trouble for the company previously called Facebook. For years, Meta reported record growth, impressing its investors with its ability to exceed financial forecasts and deliver revenue. But this year’s quarterly earnings reports have been less rosy, as Meta grapples with upheaval in the global economy as well as competitive and regulatory threats.




https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/technology/meta-hiring-freeze.html

How McKinsey Got Into the Business of Addiction

But the client came with a reputational risk, and McKinsey preferred to keep the arrangement secret. Although its product was conceived as a way to help adults stop smoking, Juul stood accused of marketing nicotine to teenage nonsmokers, addicting a new generation in much the same way the cigarette industry hooked their parents. This month, several years after McKinsey took the company as a client, Juul agreed to pay $438.5 million to settle government investigations into its marketing practices, though it did not acknowledge wrongdoing in the settlement. Those marketing practices had included using young models, social media and flavored nicotine.

McKinsey, which was not involved in the settlement, said its work with Juul had focused on youth vaping prevention. That work was just the latest in a decades-long history of consulting for companies that sell addictive products. The full story of McKinsey’s role in advising these companies — while also consulting for their government regulators — has never been told.

Last year, McKinsey agreed to pay more than $600 million to settle state investigations into its role in helping Purdue Pharma and other drugmakers fuel the opioid epidemic. And for decades, McKinsey has helped manufacturers boost sales of the most lethal consumer product in American history — cigarettes.

As recently as 2016, more than 50 years after the surgeon general confirmed the link between smoking and cancer, McKinsey still saw merit — and profits — in continuing to help companies sell more cigarettes.

In a slide deck prepared for Altria, formerly Philip Morris, McKinsey offered ideas for how the tobacco company could keep customers and lure new smokers. It presented a mock-up of what a Marlboro smartphone app would look like, complete with a way for loyal smokers to win points redeemable for small prizes.




https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/29/business/mckinsey-tobacco-juul-opioids.html

Kid Koala - Emperor's Main Course

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