Category: Legislation

I Missed This

No Comments

Last week,

the House Juciciary Committee passed some rather expansive anti-monopoly billis, which is generally a good thing, as Matt Stoller notes:

………

And now to the good, bad, and meaning of the break-up votes. Here’s Jerry Nadler, the Chair of the Judiciary Committee.

The Good

The Judiciary Committee wrote and passed six different bills, two of them being general purpose antitrust acts and four being big tech-specific ones. These bills are an outgrowth of the 16-month investigation into Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook, with an analysis of millions of documents and hundreds of witnesses.

I would note the fact that only two of them being general is a bad thing.

Monopolies and ologopolies in insurance, banking, media, finance, pharmaceuticals, groceries, etc. need to be reined in as well.

………

So what do these bills do?

The first two are relatively simple. The first increases the amount of money that our antitrust enforcers can use to bring cases and regulate markets. (The FTC’s budget is $351 million, this would boost it to $418 million, while the Department of Justice Antitrust Division would go from $188 million to $252 million.) I wasn’t so keen on this one for a long time, because the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division are terrible and asking for more resources was an excuse for bad legal strategy. But with Lina Khan at the FTC, I’m more optimistic that she can restore the agency’s legitimacy. Or at least, now I know there’s someone there who recognizes the task at hand.

The second is a bill that is very procedural, but antitrust is a weedy area, and it matters. One of the techniques that monopolists use to avoid scrutiny is to move cases brought by state attorneys general to courts that are friendlier to big corporations. California, for instance, is well-known for tech-friendly judges – Google tried to move one key antitrust case on adtech to its home state. But big pharma does it too. In 2016, 40 state attorneys general filed suit in Connecticut against 18 pharmaceutical companies alleging price-fixing and market allocation of 15 generic drugs. The pharmaceutical companies, most of which were headquartered in the Philadelphia-area, successfully transferred the case to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. It still hasn’t gone to trial. The second bill stops this nonsense, and lets state AGs keep the cases in the district they choose to bring suit. (Jurisdictional fights have always been a problem – in my book I profiled a 1937 suit over the monopolist Alcoa, in which the firm got the suit moved to its home town of Pittsburgh, and Congress in response nearly passed a law making it easier to remove judges.)

These two bills might not seem like a big deal. However, if these two bills were all that passed, they would still comprise the single most important strengthening of Federal antitrust law in a generation. For decades, antitrust was just not important, and the Judiciary Committee didn’t bother to focus on it. So to have these markups, and pass these bills, is in itself meaningful.

More money to enforcers and making it more difficult to judge shop (which should also apply to federal bankruptcy proceedings) are a good thing, but explicitly listing harms to competitors, and evaluating whether the behavior will lead to greater consolidation, a refutation of Robert Bork’s corrupt and hypocritical views on antitrust, are badly needed as well.

The other four bills solved for problems specific to Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook, problems ostensibly laid out in the big tech report by the subcommittee last year. Here are the four bills and what they did.

1) The ACCESS Act mandates that big tech firms have to make their systems open to competitors and business rivals, in the same way that AT&T customers can talk to T-Mobile customers, or users of different email systems can communicate with one another.

2) The merger bill makes it harder for big tech firms to buy rivals.

3) The nondiscrimination bill is intended to ban the ability to big tech firms to preference their own products, the way Google substitutes its own reviews for Yelp reviews, even if Yelp’s reviews are better.

4) The break-up bill is supposed to split apart big tech firms by prohibiting platforms from owning any line of business that uses that platform.

All four passed the committee, which is extraordinary and unexpected. And not only did they pass, but they passed with both Republicans and Democrats working on them.

These bills do not address a bigger question, which is that many agencies refuse to enforce the law, (Stoller gives the example of the FTC refusing to enforce the Robinson-Patman act, which led to an explosion of store mega-chains) and judges who have 50 years of precedent to defer to the word of the monopolists in court.

I think that the laws need to be completely rewritten to reject the past 50 years of jurisprudence, as well as placing the burden of proof on the accused monopolists.

It’s a good start though.

Right-Wingers Hate Their Cable Companies More Than They Hate Democrats

No Comments

This is why the Republican dominated legislature in Ohio has backtracked on its attempt to ban municipal broadband.

People really, really, really, really, really, really hate their cable companies:

After coming close to imposing a near-total ban on municipal broadband networks, Ohio’s Republican-controlled legislature has reportedly dropped the proposed law in final negotiations over the state budget.

The final budget agreement “axed a proposal to limit local governments from offering broadband services,” The Columbus Dispatch wrote. With a June 30 deadline looming, Ohio’s House and Senate approved the budget and sent it to Gov. Mike DeWine for final approval on Monday night, the Dispatch wrote.

As we wrote earlier this month, the Ohio Senate approved a version of the budget containing an amendment that would have forced existing municipal broadband services to shut down and prevented the formation of new public networks. The proposed law was reportedly “inserted without prior public discussion,” and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment. It was approved in a party-line vote as Democrats opposed the restrictions in municipal broadband.

The House version did not contain the amendment, and it was dropped during negotiations between the House and Senate.

Lawmakers apparently relented to public pressure from supporters of municipal broadband and cities and towns that operate the networks. People and businesses from Fairlawn, where the city-run FairlawnGig network offers fiber Internet, played a significant role in the protests. FairlawnGig itself asked users to put pressure on lawmakers, and the subscribers did so in great numbers.

If Democrats want to win, they should claim that Republicans want the cable companies to have monopolies on broadband (true), and that they support robocalling by Indian and Pakistani telemarketers. (True enough)

We’d have 65 seats in the Senate, and 320 in the House.

 

From the Department of About F%$#ing Time

No Comments

The Department of Justice has sued Georgia over over its new racist voting laws. 

Personally, if evidence of a conspiracy to deprive citizens of their civil rights is found, and this is clearly fits the legal definition of a conspiracy, I’d like to see a criminal investigation with some of the principals subject to the risk of jail time:

Justice Department officials announced a federal lawsuit Friday against Georgia over new statewide voting restrictions that federal authorities allege purposefully discriminate against Black Americans, the first major action by the Biden administration to confront what it describes as efforts by Republican-led jurisdictions to limit election turnout.

The legal challenge takes aim at Georgia’s Election Integrity Act, which was passed in March by the state legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp (R). The law imposes new limits on the use of absentee ballots, makes it a crime for outside groups to provide food and water to voters waiting at polling stations, and hands greater control over election administration to the legislature.

The 46-page federal court filing came as numerous GOP-majority state governments have been seeking to impose new voting restrictions in the wake of President Biden’s victory over Donald Trump last November. Trump has spent months waging a baseless effort to discredit the result, making false and unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud.

In Georgia, Black voters helped drive record turnout for the presidential election and handed the state to Biden, who became the first Democrat to win its electoral votes in 28 years. High levels of Black voter turnout also helped Democrats Raphael G. Warnock and Jon Ossoff sweep the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia in January, ensuring full Democratic control of Congress.

Among other things, this lawsuit moves to bring Georgia under the preclearance provisions of the Voting Rights Act again, and this is a good thing.

Politicians should not be allowed to prevent people from voting because they vote against those politicians. 

As an aside, if you live in Georgia, register as a Republican, and vote for the Trump-nuts in their primary so as to make a chance of Democratic victory in the general election more likely.

Bipartisan is a Synonym for Scam

No Comments

Why am I not surprised that the “Bipartisan” Senate infrastructure plan is primarily about giveaways to politically connected operators through privatization.

Privatization is where private operators are paid to take ownership of public assets.  (Think Chicago parking meter deal fiasco)   

It’s always about sacrificing the public weal to the altar of private profit:

………

But the really scary piece is labeled “Public private partnerships, private activity bonds, and asset recycling.” In the name of building world-class infrastructure, these lawmakers would sell it off in fire sales to private financiers. We have lots of experience with infrastructure privatization that strongly suggests it should be avoided.

There was a time when Democrats did oppose such schemes; it was during the Trump administration. To the extent that Trump had an infrastructure vision, it was rooted in privatization. Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro, who would each take high-level jobs in the Trump administration, wrote a paper before the 2016 election outlining their vision: $1 trillion in investment provided by private bond buyers, who would be guaranteed a tax credit to buy the bonds, interest on the debt, and an equity stake with dividends (with up to a 10 percent profit margin). It adds the usual song and dance about how private enterprise is so much more efficient than the public sector, therefore saving money overall.

It takes about two seconds to recognize how ridiculous this is. The government doesn’t require a 10 percent margin on equity, tax credits, and interest payments. That’s a layer of profit that gets built into the expenditure. Governments usually contract out design and construction to private contractors, but there are only two ways for these companies to reduce ownership and operation costs below what the public sector would spend, while still being profitable. They can cut back, either on safety or labor or maintenance; or they can extract a lot of profit from users of the infrastructure (think toll roads). If the infrastructure isn’t inherently profitable, like a bridge in New York City or a toll road in southern California might be, the upgrade probably won’t get built.

Democrats rightly and loudly objected to giving up public assets to private investors at the time. The biggest money-makers would be favored, they said, and less lucrative projects in rural or impoverished areas shunned. Governments would not only lose ownership but democratic control over roads, water systems, electrical grids, and who knows what else. As companies manage costs, it could lead to less resilient, more dangerous infrastructure. And the public would have a high likelihood of being gouged.

Bipartisanship is most often a beard used to defraud the taxpayers,

C%$# Suckers

No Comments

Mitch Mcconnell and Evil Minions™ just filibustered the”For the People” act, because if there is anything that Republicans agree on, it’s that N*****s should never vote:

Senate Republicans banded together Tuesday to block a sweeping Democratic bill that would revamp the architecture of American democracy, dealing a grave blow to efforts to federally override dozens of GOP-passed state voting laws.

The test vote, which would have cleared the way to start debate on voting legislation, failed 50-50 on straight party lines — 10 votes short of the supermajority needed to advance legislation in the Senate.

Republicans, particularly Senate Republicans, are not the opposition, they are the enemy, and must be treated as such.

About F%$#ing Time

No Comments

The House of Representatives has voted to repeal the 2002 Authoriziation of Use of Military Force (AUMF) used to invade Iraq, which is a good, if meager, first step.

It would be excellent policy to do this, so don’t expect that the Republicans will even allow a vote in the Senate:

The House voted on Thursday to revoke the authorization it gave in 2002 to invade Iraq, a step that would rein in presidential war-making powers for the first time in a generation.

The bipartisan action reflected growing determination on Capitol Hill to revisit the broad authority that Congress provided to President George W. Bush following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through measures that successive presidents have used to justify military action around the world.

The 2002 authorization was repeatedly applied well beyond its original intent, including in a campaign much later against the Islamic State in Iraq and for the killing of the Iranian general Qassim Suleimani last year.

The vote was 268 to 161, with 49 Republicans joining 219 Democrats in favor of the bill. The debate now moves to the Senate, which is expected to take up similar legislation as the United States military completes its withdrawal from Afghanistan after nearly two decades of fighting there.

………

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said on Wednesday that he would put a similar measure on the Senate floor. A blueprint written by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana, will be considered next week by the Foreign Relations Committee.

President Biden said this week that he backed the House measure, making him the first president to accept such an effort to constrain his authority to carry out military action since the war in Afghanistan began 20 years ago. Mr. Biden’s decision came on the heels of announcing a full troop withdrawal from the country.

This is the minor AUMF in the scheme of things though.  It’s the post 911 one that is the one where the vast bulk of military deployments have found legal justification.

Even if the Senate joins the House in repealing the 2002 authorization, Congress would still leave in place a much broader authorization, passed three days after the Sept. 11 attacks, on approving the use of force against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Successive presidents have cited the 2001 authorization to justify operations against “associated forces,” and critics say it has given presidents excessive latitude to wage “forever wars” without further congressional approval in the Middle East and beyond.

Until now, the Senate has refused to bring up legislation to repeal the authorization of military force, and the House has done so only as an amendment to broader legislation that never went anywhere.

The 2002 AUMF has not been used in over a decade, but the 2001 AUMF is still being used today.

Baby steps, I guess.

Of Course They Did

No Comments

A bipartisan group in the Senate has come up with a new infrastructure bill. 

Why am I not surprised that whenever you add Republicans to a group, their first move is to put the kibosh on any tax increases for the rich?

Basically, the Republicans in the group with the acquiescence of the corporate “Democrats” in the group, are determined to make their bill as meaningless as possible:

A bipartisan Senate group is taking tax increases off the table as lawmakers try to craft an infrastructure proposal after GOP talks with the White House collapsed Tuesday.

Raising taxes on high-income earners and corporations has been a key part of President Biden‘s infrastructure plan, making it nearly impossible to garner enough GOP support for legislation that can clear the Senate.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is in the bipartisan group, said tax increases are not under consideration as senators attempt to reach consensus on how to pay for their plan.

………

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), another member of the bipartisan group, also told reporters on Wednesday that Republicans won’t agree to tax increases as part of infrastructure talks.

The group is expected to be looking at a proposal of around $900 billion, but they’ve been careful not to publicly release a number, saying the level of spending isn’t yet locked in. Biden’s initial infrastructure proposal exceeded $2.2 trillion.

This is why you don’t waste your time trying to cut a deal with Republicans. 

They are never going to agree to raising taxes on the rich, one of the most popular policies in the United States right now, and they don’t want the country to succeed, because it would hurt their electoral chances.

Negotiating in good faith is in opposition to core Republican values.

 

A Good Start

No Comments

New York State Senate has just passed a wide ranging antitrust law which appears to have some serious teeth.

It eschews Robert Bork’s corrupt and hypocritical sham that ignored the whole history, and recast antitrust as something that only applied when consumers were immediately charged more money.

The changes in the law:

  • It lowers the presumption of market dominance from 80%+ to 40%.
  • It allows private plaintiffs to file under the law.
  • It makes “Unilateral power to set wages or contractual provisions that restrict workers from moving from their current employer to a competitor,” evidence of market dominance.
  • Dominant firms would forbidden from, predatory pricing.

There is a good primer here. 

This has not passed the state assembly yet, and it is not clear if “Ratfaced Andy” would sign the bill into law.

You are getting a lot of bullsh%$ about how this will harm small business, but that’s a lie.

Business who would be subject to this would people like Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and dominant hospitals in a regions, who all need to be taken down for the good of society:

The New York state Senate passed legislation Monday making it easier for plaintiffs to win antimonopoly lawsuits, in the latest state-led effort to rein in large technology companies in the absence of action by Congress.

The antitrust bill was opposed by business groups and backed by unions and other critics of corporate giants such as Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. To become law, it must also pass the state assembly and be signed by the governor.

Monday’s 43-20 party line vote represented an incremental victory for advocates of tougher antitrust laws, who will seek to use it as a springboard to tougher laws in other states and at the federal level.

“We have a problem in this country. We have a problem that there is tremendous market power in very, very few hands,” said New York state Sen. Michael Gianaris, a Democrat and the bill’s lead sponsor, at a virtual press conference Monday. “Small startups and medium-sized businesses don’t have the opportunity to grow and innovate.”

………

Mr. Gianaris said he would continue fighting for the New York bill if it doesn’t become law during the state legislature’s current session, which ends this week. No further legislative days are scheduled this year, although more could be added.

If the bill isn’t passed this year it would have to be reintroduced next year. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office had no immediate comment.

Congress is considering changes to federal antitrust law, but those efforts haven’t advanced significantly this year as lawmakers focus on other priorities. States including Maryland and Florida have enacted new statutes aimed at powerful tech companies.

The proposed New York law takes broader aim. It would make it unlawful for a company “with a dominant position in the conduct of any business…to abuse that dominant position.” A company would generally be presumed dominant if it had a greater than 40% market share.

That is a more plaintiff-friendly standard than current U.S. antitrust laws at the federal and state level. Generally under those laws, a company is considered a monopoly if it controls two-thirds of a market, and its conduct isn’t considered anticompetitive unless it can be shown to harm consumers.

It’s very late in the session, so there is a good chance that it won’t pass this year, but it should be back next year.

⅔ of Republicans Vote to Kill Capitol Insurrection Investigation

No Comments

This does not surprise me.

Seeing as how many members of the Republican caucus, particularly House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are hip deep in the conspiracies behind the January 6 insurrection, it comes as no surprise that House Republican leaders aggressively whipped the vote against a commission to investigate the matter.

This is why the idea of a bipartisan commission is a bad thing; unlike 911, Republican Representatives and Senators are suspects, and not just observers: 

The House of Representatives has voted in favor of a bill that would create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the deadly attack on the Capitol in January.

The vote fell largely along party lines, with 35 Republicans joining Democrats in passing the measure. However, 175 Republicans voted against the bill, as Republican leaders endeavored to put the deadly 6 January attack behind them, and reframe the riot as a protest.

………

“It sounds like they are afraid of the truth, and that’s most unfortunate, but hopefully they’ll get used to the idea that the American people want us to find the truth,” Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, said as she sharply criticized Republicans for opposing the bill.

Three Republicans spoke in favor of the legislation: John Katko, Fred Upton and Peter Meijer. All were among the 10 who had voted days after the attack to impeach Trump for encouraging his supporters to attack the Capitol.

The Republican Party is an enemy of the Republic.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

No Comments

The Washington State legislature passed two different bills repealing the states ban on municipal broadband.  One is expansive (H.B. 1336), and the other is more limited in scope (S.B. 5383), authorizing municipal broadband only in areas that are underserved. 

There was a rush to pass a bill to break the incumbent provider’s monopoly, and when presented with two conflicting bills, Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed both bills simultaneously, which means that neither bill has precedence.

By simultaneously, I mean that the Governor claims that he signed a bill with each hand at the same time.

First, much criticisms to the State House and Senate for passing two conflicting bills.

Second, I can see no explanation for the Governor’s actions unless he wants to keep this all snarled in litigation for the next few years as a way to suck up to Comcast and it’s Evil Minions™, who will try to extract every penny from their monopoly rents int he interim:

Washington state went all in on expanding public broadband this year. So much so, that the Legislature passed two different bills aimed at extending high-speed internet to people in rural areas.

It’s possible, however, that two bills aren’t better than one. And they may partly cancel each other out.

Now that Gov. Jay Inslee has signed both measures into law, confusion is mounting about whether the two laws can co-exist.

And that debate may end up in court.

Both House Bill 1336 and Senate Bill 5383 give public utility districts and ports new authority to offer broadband internet. The idea behind both bills is to have those public entities offer broadband in remote areas where private companies don’t operate because it’s not cost effective.

But the authority granted under HB 1336 is broader, said state Sen, Lisa Wellman, D-Mercer Island. Rather than requiring PUDs and ports to focus on offering broadband to people who lack any internet service, the House bill allows the public entities to serve all customers, including people who can already access the internet through a private company, such as CenturyLink or Comcast.

………

Inslee’s office hasn’t done much to clarify matters. In an unusual move on Thursday, the governor signed both bills at the same time, one with his right hand and the other with his left. While most bill signings occur in public and are broadcast on video, Inslee signed these two bills off camera. His office didn’t explain why.

If the bills do conflict with one another, the order in which they were signed into law becomes of paramount importance. In theory, the last bill signed would take precedence over the other. If it was Hansen’s bill, Wellman said she believes her bill’s focus on expanding public broadband in remote, unserved areas would be stripped out.

“It’s such drama, I’m telling you,” said Wellman, the sponsor of SB 5383. “I’ve never been in this situation before and I don’t want to ever be again.”

………

“We are planning to seek clarification from Thurston County Superior Court on how to proceed, as this is unchartered territory,” [Secretary of State Spokesperson Kylee] Zabel wrote in an email Friday.

………

The Washington State Broadband Office is set to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars in state and federal money to expand broadband internet access across the state. Under either of the bills that passed the Legislature, public utility districts and ports would be in a better position to take advantage of that influx of new money.

………

However, the dispute over how the two bills interact could complicate public utility districts’ plans to jump into the retail broadband business, he [Russ Elliott, the director of the broadband office] said.

“I think there are a lot of people right now worried whether, if someone implements something in the vein of this legislation, are they subjecting themselves to some sort of a legal battle?” Elliott said Friday. “Unfortunately that may be the way this gets played out — someone challenges what happens under these bills. I would hate to see that.”

The legal battle is the goal.  The longer that Comcast, CenturyLink, and Frontier can string this along, the more money they can rake in.

Today in Hack Journalism

No Comments

It’s the WSJ, so it’s no surprise that their article on a tax break primarily used by speculators is cast as a betrayal of the sacred obligation that we have to family farmers.

It’s also not true, but who needs truth if it’s dull, I guess

President Biden has said his tax proposals would make big business and wealthy investors pay their fair share.

His package would also likely deliver a blow to American farm owners by limiting a longstanding tax break. The provision allows landowners to defer paying capital-gains tax when they sell investment property and put the proceeds toward the purchase of other real estate.

Farmers for generations have used the tax break to cheaply and quickly relocate farm operations to lands with better soil, diversify the crops they grow and consolidate land holdings. Some have used it when exiting the farming business at retirement. Farm owners in 2012 held 915 million acres, about 40% of the land in the continental U.S.

No, this has been used as a subsidy that primarily benefits speculators, farmers do not change farm the same way that the rest of us change socks, but Wall Street banksters do.

Farmers were hit four years ago when the Trump administration narrowed the use of this tax deferment, known as a 1031 like-kind exchange. The provision, named for a section of the tax code, used to apply to many types of personal property, including farm equipment and livestock. Farmers exchanged their old tractors and upgraded to newer and better ones without having to pay tax on their trade-ins.

A subsidy to farm equipment makers more than it is a tax break to farmers.

Also, who trades in a car or a tractor for more than they paid for it?  There is no gain to tax.

………

Farmers and land brokers said the latest proposal, capping the profits from land sales that can be tax-deferred at $500,000, would add another burden on farming.

Mr. Biden’s proposal would also raise the top capital-gains tax rate that land sellers would have to pay to 43.4% from 23.8%. It would impose capital-gains taxes at death on appreciated asset gains, a change farmers worry will make it difficult to keep land in the family. However, the Agriculture Department has said the plan would exempt farmers from those taxes at death, if the farm remains both owned and operated by family members.

Family farmers are being pushed out of farming as a result of rents charged by seed and agricultural companies, equipment companies selling them equipment that they cannot maintain, and speculators  who drive up the price of land for would be new farmers.

This tax break enriches these who prey on the family farmer, not the family farmer.

Continue Pushing

No Comments

If Joe Biden has a virtue as President, it is that he will do the right thing if he has no alternative, a characteristic that he does not share with his three predecessors. 

That being the case, the continuing efforts by Democrats in Congress to push Medicare expansion should continue:

Congressional Democrats are planning to pursue a massive expansion of Medicare as part of President Biden’s new $1.8 trillion economic relief package, defying the White House after it opted against including a major health overhaul as part of its plan.

The early pledges from some party lawmakers, led by prominent members of its liberal wing, threaten to create even more political tension around a package that is already facing no shortage of it. The expansion push comes as Biden on Wednesday stressed in his first address to Congress that he is still committed to making health care more affordable.

They specifically aim to lower the eligibility age for Medicare to either 55 or 60, expand the range of health services the entitlement covers and grant the government new powers to negotiate prescription drug prices. Party lawmakers say their approach could offer new, improved or cheaper coverage to millions of older Americans nationwide.

………

The early efforts reflect a broader belief among congressional Democrats that they must more aggressively seize on their narrow but powerful majorities to push policies that long have been stalled in Washington — no matter their cost. Many party lawmakers have pushed Biden at times to spend sky-high sums, sometimes even more than the president himself says he supports, arguing that they have a political mandate to pursue vast economic change.

Also, let us not forget, lowering the age of Medicare eligibility is also exquisitely good policy. It creates a 25% savings right off the back.

But health-care revisions are likely to present a significant challenge, threatening to open rifts not just between the two parties but within the Democratic caucus itself. In an early sign of trouble, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) told The Washington Post on Wednesday that he opposes expanding Medicare eligibility even as he supports broader adjustments to the Affordable Care Act.

Of course Manchin opposes expanding Medicare.  He’s an evil hypocrite.

………

For many Democrats, the most enticing target is Medicare, as they try to deliver on their 2020 campaign promises to make health insurance affordable and available. Biden himself endorsed a policy report after the party’s presidential primaries — part of a “unity” effort among Democratic contenders, including Sanders — that called for lowering the Medicare enrollment age and expanding the health services it covers.

Make Manchin vote against this.  Make Sinema vote against this.  Make the rest of them vote against Medicare expansion.

Make them pay the cost for being narcissistic amoral assholes.

A Stopped Clock Moment

No Comments

The 2nd worst Democrat in the Senate, Joe Manchin, has announced his support for IP waivers for generic Covid vaccines.

Of course, this might have something to do with his Kid’s business, as Heather Bresch probably still has outstanding stock options with the now a part of  Upjohn, Mylan.

Mylan is/was a generic drug manufacturer :

Sen. Joe Manchin expressed support for the World Trade Organization proposal to temporarily suspend enforcement of patent and intellectual property enforcement for Covid-19 medical treatments.

The waiver request, led by India and South Africa and backed by a coalition of countries, would allow more widespread global production and distribution of generic coronavirus vaccines, tests, and treatments.

Asked about the waiver proposal on Thursday, Manchin said it sounded like a good idea.

“I’ve always been a supporter of generics coming on,” said Manchin, speaking to The Intercept on Capitol Hill.

I really don’t care what his motivation is, it lends a some “Centrist” cred to the effort to place limits on the reach of IP.

The West Virginia Democrat referenced the fact that the U.S. government financed the research, development, and domestic deployment of coronavirus vaccines. He noted that the drug companies “shouldn’t” generate profits from a product sponsored by taxpayers.

This qualifier applies to every major pharmaceutical development over the past few decades.

Big pharma has devolved into an orgy of rent-seeking.  (Which seems to be my theme for tonight)

I Am Amused

3 Comments

Washington State, which is known, and notorious for, its regressive tax policies, has passed one of the higher levies on capital gains taxes in the nation.  (If passed, the 7% tax would take the state from 50th to 13th in the nation)

Given the enormous amount of wealth subject to the tax, and the fact that Bezos set up Amazon in Washington State specifically to avoid taxes, I am find this situation intensely amusing.

As a state that has some extreme wealth inequality, it’s also good policy:

The home of the two richest men in America is on the brink of implementing a new tax on capital gains that would raise billions of dollars for early childhood education and child care programs — while setting off a years-long legal fight that could end a nearly century-long resistance to an income tax.

Washington state legislators are finalizing language on a bill that would tax capital gains over $250,000 at a 7 percent rate, in what may prove to be one of the most substantial tax increases approved by any state legislature in 2021.

Supporters of the measure say it would fall on just a few thousand of the wealthiest families in a state full of major technology companies and budding startups, from Amazon and Microsoft — companies founded by Washington residents Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, numbers one and two on the list of the world’s richest people — to IMDb and Redfin.

In a state where the tax code remains one of the most regressive in America, the new tax would help even out the growing disparities between the wealthy and a shrinking middle class that has been pushed to the brink.

………

The capital gains tax has passed both the state House and Senate, though the two chambers have appointed members of a conference committee to hammer out several disagreements between the two versions. The legislators on the committee have until Sunday, the end of this year’s legislative session, to reach a deal.

Tara Lee, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jay Inslee (D), said Inslee would sign the bill if it makes it to his desk in time.

Legislative analysts estimate the new tax would pull in $550 million a year beginning in 2023, when it would take effect. Some estimates suggest it would impact about 8,000 tax filers, while others say it could hit up to 60,000 people — in either case, just a fraction of the 2.9 million households in the state.

………

But the proposed bill, Washington Republicans say, comes with a twist: Opponents see a longer-term legal play aimed at overturning an 85-year-old policy that has made Washington one of the few remaining states without an income tax.

Washington’s Supreme Court ruled in a landmark 1936 case that the state constitution required all property to be taxed at the same rate. The court ruled that income counted as property, striking down a graduated income tax rate that voters had approved a few years earlier.

Since then, Washington has been one of just a handful of states without an income tax. Voters have defeated six subsequent attempts to implement an income tax at the ballot box.

If the new tax on capital gains passes, Republicans see it as a path to open a new legal challenge to the validity of a graduated tax, one that might find a more receptive audience before a more liberal state Supreme Court.

………

Washington is one of just nine states that does not levy a tax on capital gains. A 7 percent rate would put Washington on par with states like South Carolina, Connecticut and Maine, which tax capital gains at about the same rate.

I rather imagine that Jeff Bezos is going to throw a sh%$-fit over this, because not paying his fair share is something that he thinks is his due.

Also, the idea that it is a camel’s nose under the door regarding an income tax is something that recommends the tax even more.

Soak the rich.  The alternative is to eat the rich, and that is not kosher.

A Good Start

No Comments

One of the problems with privacy is that law-enforcement uses private actors to collect personal information to collect data which it would otherwise be constitutionally forbidden from doing.

Senator Ron Widen has introduced the 4th Amendment is not for Sale Act to forbid this.

It’s nice, but the bill should be expanded to the point where Peter Thiel’s Palantir is driven out of business:

Federal agencies have taken advantage of legal loopholes to collect massive amounts of personal information from cell phone and internet users without congressional or judicial authorization for years, but that practice is being challenged by a bipartisan and bicameral group of lawmakers who introduced legislation on Wednesday that would prevent the U.S. government from buying individuals’ information from data brokers without a court order.

Led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a group of 20 senators introduced the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (pdf) in the upper chamber of Congress. Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) also unveiled an equivalent bill in the House.

By closing major loopholes in federal privacy laws—including the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—the newly proposed legislation seeks to protect everyone in the U.S. from unlawful searches and seizures, one of the key civil liberties spelled out in the Bill of Rights.

In a press release (pdf), the lawmakers said that “while there are strict rules for consumer-facing companies—phone companies like AT&T and Verizon and tech companies like Google and Facebook—loopholes in the law currently permit data brokers and other firms without a direct relationship to consumers to sell Americans’ private information to the government without a court order.”

………

The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act would require law enforcement agencies to obtain a court order before accessing data about people through third-party brokers that “aggregate and sell information like detailed user location data, surreptitiously gathered from smartphone apps or other sources,” The Verge reported Wednesday.

As Free Press Action explained, the bill would also prevent “police and intelligence agencies from buying data on people if the information was obtained from a user’s account or device, or via deception, hacking, violations of a contract, privacy policy, or terms of service.”

In addition, the bill would close loopholes that enable the national security state to buy metadata about U.S. residents’ international calls, texts, and emails, and to collect records about their web browsing of foreign websites. While this is information that would typically require a warrant to access, the intelligence community has found ways to circumvent the Fourth Amendment, routinely violating individuals’ constitutional rights in the process.

Call your Congress Critters and tell them to support the bill.

Not only will it force elements of the state security apparatus to behave more ethically, but it will also take money out of the pickets of the data brokers.

H/t naked capitalism.

Every Single Damn Obituary Relegates His Greatest Accomplishment to the 3rd Paragraph

No Comments

Former Senator and Vice President Walter Mondale died last night, and every single obituary downplays his role in passing the fair housing act. 

He sponsored the bill, and got it through the senate after years of effort.

The above link does not even mention the Fair Housing Act, relegating it to the throw away line describing him as a, “Champion of such liberal causes as open housing and anti-poverty programs.”

And his whole life is reduced to, “The guy wot got destroyed in the 1984 Presidential election.”

This is a disgrace.

Banking and Booze

No Comments

Louis Dejoy is trying to destroy the US Post Office, as are a majority of the board members.

They are doing so because they want the union destroyed, and because in privatization is an opportunity for looting.

The first step to fixing the USPS is to repeal the absurd requirements that it has to fund employee benefits 75 years into the future, a couple of good follow-up steps are to re-establish postal banking, and allowing the Post Office to deliver alcohol. 

There are way too many unbanked in the US, and the delivery of things like stimulus checks would be facilitated by a Post Office that has an account for every citizen, and delivering booze is lucrative:

When U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy laid out plans Tuesday for the future of the post office, he pointed to higher postage rates and slower first class mail as a means of stemming postal service losses he says could reach $160 billion.

But missing from his new 10-year plan were two ideas economists, members of Congress and consumer advocates say could generate billions of dollars for the beleaguered service and bring the post office into the 21st century: a return to postal banking and the post office’s entry into the lucrative alcohol delivery business.

“We don’t expect the post office of the 21st century will be the same as the post office of the 20th century,” said Rakim Brooks, senior campaign strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union. “People are using the mail less, and we think that the institution has to provide new services.”

Postal banking, he said, is among the new services the post office of the 21st century could — and should — provide. It would include basic banking services, including check cashing, providing low- or no-fee checking accounts, installing low-fee ATM machines, and providing wire transfer and bill payment services.

………

Long said it makes sense for post offices to double as banks, especially given the growing number of “bank deserts” in the U.S., communities in which there are no commercial banks.

………

Congress is taking notice of postal banking. Last year, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced the Postal Banking Act, aimed at providing consumers with bank accounts and mobile banking services.

In a statement, Gillibrand noted, “Postal banking is an elegant solution that would provide the USPS upwards of $9 billion a year in revenue and would address the high cost of being poor in America by eliminating payday loans, check cashing, and other predatory financial products.

………

Just as [Porter, not Mitch] McConnell believes postal banking could provide additional revenue for the Postal Service, she notes that shipping alcohol could also generate money for it.

FedEx and UPS are currently allowed to ship wine, beer and spirits, but because of Prohibition-era legislation, the Postal Service is not.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Postal Service could make an additional $50 million a year if it were to be able to ship alcohol.

………

In 2019, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., introduced the bipartisan USPS Shipping Equity Act, a bill which would enable the Postal Service to ship alcohol.

There is not a lot of support for this, because it is likely to be successful, which would run afoul of the anti-government crowd, as well the banks and private parcel carriers, who would then have less money for campaign donations.

Yeah, That’s Gonna Help

No Comments

In response to the brutal and negligent killing of Breonna Taylor by out of control police, the Kentucky State Senate has passed a bill making it illegal to insult police, because apparently police officers are beautiful cinnamon rolls too perfect for this world.

OK,the bit about cinnamon rolls came from The Onion, but God help us, the rest of this is true:

Kentucky’s Republican-majority Senate on Thursday moved forward a bill that would make it easier to arrest protesters for insulting a police officer, a measure that critics say would stifle free speech.

The bill, passed two days before the anniversary of the fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, would make it a misdemeanor to taunt or challenge an officer with words or gestures “that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person.” Conviction would be punishable by up to 90 days in jail and fines of up to $250.

State Sen. Danny Carroll (R), who sponsored the bill, said it would enable officers to arrest someone inflaming them before the encounter turns violent. The provision is meant to apply to comments that are “obviously designed to elicit a response from the officer — something to push them to making a mistake, pushing them to violence,” he said, although courts would have the final say in interpreting the rule.

“You don’t have a right to accost a police officer,” Carroll said.

In addition to criminalizing taunting police, the bill would expand the category of protest behavior considered illegal, heighten sentences for offenses related to “riots” and prevent early release for those violations. It comes as Louisville, Kentucky’s largest city, prepares for hundreds of people to gather downtown Saturday to recognize the first anniversary of Taylor being fatally shot during an early-morning raid.

………

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky called the measure “an extreme bill to stifle dissent” with broad and ambiguous language.

“It’s criminalizing speech in a way that’s directed at protesters and people who are speaking out against police action,” said Corey Shapiro, ACLU of Kentucky’s legal director. “It is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment that people should be able to criticize police action, even if it’s using offensive speech.”

The provision of the bill that would ban insulting police was modeled on laws in other states prohibiting comments that could reasonably push a person to violence, said Carroll, himself a former police officer. Those statutes, which are not specific to anti-police comments, rely on an exception to the First Amendment known as the “fighting words doctrine,” which holds that words inciting immediate violence are not constitutionally protected.

I am going to go out on a limb here, but I think that dealing with violent and verbally abusive people is a central part of a police officer’s job.

Also, the, “Fighting Words Doctrine,” has largely been vitiated over the past 4 or 5 decades, and

If you cannot deal with someone calling you a pig-felching racist douche bag without resorting to violence, you probably are:

  • A pig felching racist douche bag.
  • Completely unsuited to the job of peace officer. 

As an aside, if you do not know the definition of the word, “Felch,” DON’T look it up.

Trust me on this one.

Some Foresight Here

No Comments

I did not expect the Democrats to insert a section into the stimulus bill preventing states from cutting taxes with relief money, but this is what they did.

I guess that they have enough experience in dealing with Republican ideology to realize that giving money to states would be subject to sabotage otherwise:

A last-minute change in the $1.9 trillion economic relief package that President Biden signed into law this week includes a provision that could temporarily prevent states that receive government aid from turning around and cutting taxes.

The restriction, which was added by Senate Democrats, is intended to ensure that states use federal funds to keep their local economies humming and avoid drastic budget cuts and not simply use the money to subsidize tax cuts. But the provision is causing alarm among some local officials, primarily Republicans, who see the move as federal overreach and fear conditions attached to the money will impede upon their ability to manage their budgets as they see fit.

………

Under the new law, $25 billion will be divided equally among states, while $169 billion will be allocated based on a state’s unemployment rate. States can use the money for pandemic-related costs, offsetting lost revenues to provide essential government services, and for water, sewer and broadband infrastructure projects.

But they are prohibited from depositing the money into pension funds — a key worry of Republicans in Congress — and cannot use funds to cut taxes by “legislation, regulation or administration” through 2024.

………

Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, explained why he pushed for the language in a briefing this week, arguing that states should not be cutting taxes at a time when they need more money to combat the virus. He urged states to postpone their plans to cut taxes.

It sounds like Joe Manchin, for once, did something useful.  (You could knock me over with a mackerel)

Still, the tax language has angered Republicans — none of whom voted for the rescue package — and on Thursday, Senator Mike Braun, Republican of Indiana, introduced legislation to reverse it.

Oh, you poor delicate snowflakes.

Another Slander Thrown at the PRO Act

No Comments

As I have mentioned before, the PRO Act significantly expands the right for workers to organize as well as increasing their protections against the nefarious actions of employers and their consultants.

Rather unsurprisingly, the champions of capital over labor do not like this bill, and equally unsurprisingly, they are claiming that the Pro Act would kill freelancing. 

This is a lie, and the freelancers pushing this are useful idiots:

Private opposition to the Protecting the Right to Organize Act has so far been surprisingly muted. The proposed bill is remarkably comprehensive in nature, encompassing the most far-reaching rewrite of the National Labor Relations Act since the Taft-Hartley Act passed in 1947. Perhaps this is because few insiders believe the PRO Act can pass a deadlocked Senate without a clearer commitment by Democratic politicians to gut the legislative filibuster, but whatever the case, you have to do some digging to see any real organized campaign against the bill as a whole. Even then, it’s the usual suspects ringing the alarm bells: the Chamber of Commerce, the Associated Builders and Contractors, the HR Policy Association, and other organizations which historically have strongly opposed unionism and any pro-worker legal amendments.

The exception to this is coming from a small but vocal community of freelance writers who have taken to Twitter and other social media platforms to signal their opposition to the bill’s inclusion of the so-called “ABC Test.” The test, which contrary to popular belief has appeared in numerous state laws long before California’s Dynamex/Prop 22 episode, states that a worker is presumed to be an employee unless the employer can show that all three of the following conditions are satisfied:

  1. The worker is free from the control and direction of the hiring entity in connection with the performance of the work;
  2. The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and
  3. The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as that involved in the work performed.

………

However, the rest of these articles demonstrate a deep misunderstanding of labor law, invoking themes of forced unionization and ruined careers. These predictions are unfounded. The ABC Test, if passed as part of the PRO Act, would only affect the analysis of employee vs. independent contractors status for the purposes of the NLRA. Put simply, the relevant question is whether certain workers possess rights under Section 7 of the NLRA, which guarantees employees (and employees only) the right to strike, collectively bargain, and engage in various other “concerted activities” for “mutual aid or protection.” Those deemed independent contractors under the NLRA have no such rights, and indeed would likely be engaged in price-fixing under antitrust law if attempting such tactics.

What would the PRO Act not affect? Literally anything else. It would not change a worker’s employment status for the purposes of state laws, such as those involving minimum wage, overtime, unemployment compensation, or various benefit schemes. Thus, a worker could feasibly be classified as an employee with unionization rights under the NLRA while still qualifying as an independent contractor under said state laws. Just ask SAG-AFTRA or IATSE, who count many “freelancers” in the entertainment industry as members; they have no consistent employer but still collectively bargain for superior wages and benefits compared to non-union counterparts.

The whole, “Pity the poor freelancer,” screed becomes even more ludicrous when one sees the actual plight of the actual stringers who do work for news outlets.

A few “Superstars” might get their noses out of joint about having to pay union dues, but I care about their lot almost as little as they care about the lot of their coworkers.