Trump Losing Empire, Biden Wins on Many Fronts
Tuesday was a banner day for good causes and good people around the country. It wasn’t perfect, but if you’re a Republican political consultant, you’ve got a lot on your plate.
The current narrative being driven for the public’s perception is best described using a horse race metaphor, and too much coverage gives the illusion that we’re headed into the final stretch. In reality the players are just lining up at the gate trying to envision track conditions.
Forget the names on the ballot; it’s democracy vs autocracy, a theocratic state vs the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law vs royal commands.
Yesterday was a good day for the forces of light. Here are a few examples, leaving the “yes, but” negativity out (for now).
Our former president is apparently losing the remnants of the empire he inherited from daddy.
The current President joined a UAW picket line, sending the best economic message he could convey going into 2024.
A monopoly dominating vast parts of the economy, Amazon, is facing the mother of all antitrust lawsuits with the potential to affect everybody’s lives.
The Federal Communications Commission has reversed a Trump-era policy, meaning that Net Neutrality may yet make the digital world a fairer place.
If I had the time and space, I’d also write about a federal judge striking down Texas’ anti-drag law, Alabama losing yet another redistricting case before the Supreme Court, Gov. Newsom’s signing of a package of laws aimed at guns, and the FCC’s decision to put the communications industry back on the road to Net Neutrality.
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Ex-president Donald Trump’s habit of lying caught up with him as New York State Court Judge Engoron has granted a partial summary judgment, sanctioning his legal beagles, canceling his business permits, and setting a process in motion to sell off his assets.
It turns out that, while he got away with the thirty thousand or so lies told as president, Trump isn’t going to get away with inflating and deflating his worth on business and tax documents. And the ruling is only a partial judgment; the ex-president will still face trial on additional charges leading to $250 million in penalties.
Here’s a snippet from the ruling:
The judge reveals his unhappiness with the tactics used by the defense team, likening their characterization of fraudulent financial statements to a Chico Marx line in the comedy “Duck Soup”: “Well, who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
Tick Tock… NY Atty General Letitia James has made criminal referrals: “We are referring those criminal violations that we have uncovered to the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and the Internal Revenue Service.”
The former president took to his siloed social media app to cite polling (including one from Xitter expert troller Catturd) as an explanation for NY State’s case, along with the usual victim posturing, and insults to perceived enemies.
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President Biden joined striking UAW workers in a picket line in Belleville, Michigan on Tuesday. Beyond the obvious campaign oriented imagery involved, the symbolism of his appearance represented a break with the Democratic Party's 30+ year embrace of neoliberalism. He's backing the union in a strike to reverse: 1) the wage cuts in Obama's auto bailout; and 2) Clinton's industrial policies. (I wouldn’t infer that neoliberalism is dead, but this is significant)
The Hot Labor Summer, which already racked up gains for UPS workers and Hollywood writers, is becoming a Hot Labor Fall. with potential actions from culinary workers in Las Vegas, hospital employees in California, and airline employees at American Airlines.
Hot tip: If your CVS pharmacist is missing today, that’s because they’re staging a nationwide walk out to protest being overworked and unable to provide the care that people expect.
Ultimately, if labor continues to be successful, the US economy will face challenges. Expect mainstream press articles saying this is a bad thing. After forty plus years of corporations/wealthy individuals having an outside influence on policy, the Overton window is shifting in a more inclusive direction.
Another element to factor into the political/economic landscape will be the increasing influence of Biden appointees in the regulatory realm.
On Tuesday, the Federal Trade Commission and the Attorney Generals of seventeen states file suit alleging that Amazon abused its powers to squeeze merchants and thwart rivals — resulting in higher prices and lower-quality goods for the tens of millions of American households who regularly shop at the company’s online superstore.
This case against Amazon is huge, audacious, and represents an about-face on policies regarding monopolies. It is NOT, as stenographers with Politico and other news outlets are spinning, a “decisive test of new liberal antitrust theories.” Rather, it’s a return to the original intent of the trust busters at the end of the nineteenth century.
Cory Doctorow’s explainer/op-ed in the New York Times cuts through the bs flooding the mediascape.
Speaking for his landmark antitrust bill of 1890, Senator John Sherman said: “If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation and sale of any of the necessaries of life. If we would not submit to an emperor we should not submit to an autocrat of trade.”
This suspicion of corporate power died in the Reagan era, when regulators adopted a new posture grounded in the idea that monopolies were evidence of efficiency and should be nurtured, and that “consumer welfare” in the form of low prices was an absolute good of antitrust law. Amazon is surely the king of our time. Our antitrust laws were fashioned specifically to guard against this overwhelming corporate power — both its accumulation and its abuse.
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Wednesday’s Stuff You Should Read
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Column: The writers’ strike was the first workplace battle between humans and AI. The humans won By Brian Merchant at The Los Angeles Times
I’ve spent the last five or so years researching and writing about those real Luddites, so I can assure you that they were smart, tech-savvy workers who saw entrepreneurs trying to automate their jobs or displace them with machines, and responded with force only after peaceful efforts to rein in the “machinery hurtful to commonality” failed. They were fine with most tech, but drew a line at the stuff that exploited them for the sole purpose of enriching another.
As such, in drawing that red line against AI, a tactic that proved so successful, the writers pulled a page out of the old-school Luddite playbook. And, like the Luddites of the early Industrial Revolution, who were for a time as beloved in England as Robin Hood, it proved extremely popular. It’s worth cheering too, as this is, I expect, just the beginning. Hollywood is far from the only industry eager to cut costs by automating work with generative AI.
From the beginning of the strike, I’ve argued that the writers are leading the way in showing workers everywhere how to resist potentially exploitative uses of AI in the workplace — and now, more than ever, that’s been shown to be true. There is great power in drawing a hard line, in refusing to let a boss use technology to erase your job, in speaking up about how you would or would not like technology to shape your life. And, if it seems that it’s only going to degrade or disrupt your way of life, there is great power in saying no. Just ask the writers.
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There is no laptop: Hunter Biden sues Rudy Giuliani Via Daily Kos (No laptop? You mean the right wingers lied to us? Shocking!)
Hunter Biden has filed a civil suit against Rudy Giuliani, a number of shell companies through which Giuliani does business, and Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello. The suit charges Giuliani and Costello with violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, specifically accessing Hunter Biden’s personal information “without authorization or exceeding authorized access,” resulting in the “total annihilation” of his digital privacy.
Additionally, the suit reminds the court—and everyone else—that for all the talk of “Hunter Biden’s laptop,” there is no laptop. There never was. Instead, “Defendants themselves admit that their purported possession of a ‘laptop’ is in fact not a ‘laptop’ at all. It is, according to their own public statements, an ‘external drive’ that Defendants were told contained hundreds of gigabytes of Plaintiff’s personal data.”
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Inuit: Our Fraud Fights Racism By Cory Doctorow
Today's key concept is "predatory inclusion": "a process wherein lenders and financial actors offer needed services to Black households but on exploitative terms that limit or eliminate their long-term benefits"
Perhaps you recall predatory inclusion from the Great Financial Crisis, when predatory subprime mortgages with deceptive teaser rates were foisted on Black homeowners (who were eligible for better mortgages), resulting in a wave of Black home theft in the foreclosure crisis.
Before these loans blew up, they were styled as a means of creating Black intergenerational wealth through housing speculation. They turned out to be a way to suck up Black families' savings before rendering them homeless and forcing them into houses owned by the Wall Street slumlords who bought all the housing stock the Great Financial Crisis put on the market