#Robert Bork

[robertreich]

Who’s to Blame for Out-Of-Control Corporate Power?    

One man is especially to blame for why corporate power is out of control. And I knew him! He was my professor, then my boss. His name… Robert Bork.

Robert Bork was a notorious conservative who believed the only legitimate purpose of antitrust — that is, anti-monopoly — law is to lower prices for consumers, no matter how big corporations get. His philosophy came to dominate the federal courts and conservative economics.

I met him in 1971, when I took his antitrust class at Yale Law School. He was a large, imposing man, with a red beard and a perpetual scowl. He seemed impatient and bored with me and my classmates, who included Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham, as we challenged him repeatedly on his antitrust views.

We argued with Bork that ever-expanding corporations had too much power. Not only could they undercut rivals with lower prices and suppress wages, but they were using their spoils to influence our politics with campaign contributions. Wasn’t this cause for greater antitrust enforcement?

He had a retort for everything. Undercutting rival businesses with lower prices was a good thing because consumers like lower prices. Suppressing wages didn’t matter because employees are always free to find better jobs. He argued that courts could not possibly measure political power, so why should that matter?

Even in my mid-20s, I knew this was hogwash.

But Bork’s ideology began to spread. A few years after I took his class, he wrote a book called The Antitrust Paradox summarizing his ideas. The book heavily influenced Ronald Reagan and later helped form a basic tenet of Reaganomics — the bogus theory that says government should get out of the way and allow corporations to do as they please, including growing as big and powerful as they want.

Despite our law school sparring, Bork later gave me a job in the Department of Justice when he was solicitor general for Gerald Ford. Even though we didn’t agree on much, I enjoyed his wry sense of humor. I respected his intellect. Hell, I even came to like him.

Once President Reagan appointed Bork as an appeals court judge, his rulings further dismantled antitrust. And while his later Supreme Court nomination failed, his influence over the courts continued to grow.  

Bork’s legacy is the enormous corporate power we see today, whether it’s Ticketmaster and Live Nation consolidating control over live performances, Kroger and Albertsons dominating the grocery market, or Amazon, Google, and Meta taking over the tech world.

It’s not just these high-profile companies either: in most industries, a handful of companies now control more of their markets than they did twenty years ago.

This corporate concentration costs the typical American household an estimated extra $5,000 per year. Companies have been able to jack up prices without losing customers to competitors because there is often no meaningful competition.

And huge corporations also have the power to suppress wages because workers have fewer employers from whom to get better jobs.

And how can we forget the massive flow of money these corporate giants are funneling into politics, rigging our democracy in their favor?

But the tide is beginning to turn under the Biden Administration. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are fighting the monopolization of America in court, and proposing new merger guidelines to protect consumers, workers, and society.

It’s the implementation of the view that I and my law school classmates argued for back in the 1970s — one that sees corporate concentration as a problem that outweighs any theoretical benefits Bork claimed might exist.

Robert Bork would likely regard the Biden administration’s antitrust efforts with the same disdain he had for my arguments in his class all those years ago. But instead of a few outspoken law students, Bork’s philosophy is now being challenged by the full force of the federal government.

The public is waking up to the outsized power corporations wield over our economy and democracy. It’s about time.

#youtube #corporations #power #Robert Bork #economy #history #video #videos

[o-the-mts]

#antitrust #monopolies #corporatism #robert bork #us politics

[n0thingiscool]

Stop calling capitalists "scholars". A scholar should be known as someone who learns in depth to benefit everyone. Half the pro anti- trust twats in this journal are hardly scholastic. All they are, are vultures attempting to legitimize vulture tactics. None of these people have any reasonable pretense to better society. They only work to serve their capitalist masters at the misfortune of society. Fuck the Chicago School. Fuck Robert Bork. And fuck price theory. All any of this shit is, is the same bitch ass concept of libertarianism in the markets. And any person who isn't a douche understands libertarian theory has no place in a public market.

#the yale law journal #Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox #lina khan #robert bork #Chicago school anything is generally mediocrity wrapped up in fancy paper #Chicago school #price theory #economics is such a sad science #capitalists #crony capitalism

[dinios-kol]

there was a whole tweet screenshot deal going around on here comparing trumpies fealty to him to north korea, fuckin the one below (which he has the audacity to pin)

and i looked at the notes on the post, and no one decided to point out that the fucker who made the tweet is the grandson of THE robert bork, the malicious right-wing ghoul who was so far right he couldn't get nominated to the supreme court during reagan's reign????

so all told, can we at least be SOMEWHAT cognizant about which idiots get posted on here?

#i know us tumblrinas are not that legally involved but. c'mon #he is legit named ROBERT. BORK. THE. THIRD. #shockingly. i don't trust the descendant of a right-wing freak or his takes on the personality cult of trump #yeah yeah u can't help who ur related to but this bitch boy doesn't even hide it.

[vtm-world]

The Shadow World of America's Transformation

The Shadow World of America’s Transformation   It can be argued that in our present day all-pervasive social, entertainment, and news media (24/7) across a few hundred channels, that it would be unreasonable to expect the public to keep up with many of the events that can affect their lives. Therefore, those many decry as “low information” voters, may actually be rational in their uniformed…

View On WordPress

#"The Shadow World" #Judge Bork #Marxism/Socialism #Robert Chandler #Shadow World of America&039;s Transformation #The Culture Wars #V. Thomas Mawhinney Ph.D. #VTM

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Being good at your job is praxis

You know the joke.

Office manager: "$75 just to kick the photocopier?"

Photocopier technician: "No, it's $5 to kick the photocopier and $70 to know where to kick it."

The trustbusters in the Biden administration know precisely where to kick the photocopier, and they're kicking the shit out of it. You love to see it.

Last July, the Biden admin published an Executive Order enumerating 72 actions that administrative agencies could take without any further action from Congress - dormant powers that the administration already had, but wasn't using:

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/biden-monopoly-executive-order/

This memo was full of deep cuts, like the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, Northern Pac. Ry Co v US (1958), the Bank Merger Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, and the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/07/09/executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/

The memo opened with the kind of soaring rhetoric that I absolutely dote on, a declaration of the end of Reagonomics and its embrace of monopoly:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

But the memo didn't just offer red meat to tube-feeding activist cranks like me: it also set out 72 specific, technical activities that would make profound, material changes in the economy and improvements to the lives of every person in America, and then the administration executed every one of those actions:

https://www.davispolk.com/insights/client-update/president-bidens-executive-order-competition-one-year-later

They knew where to kick the photocopier and boy did they kick it - hard.

The White House action has Tim Wu's fingerprints all over it. He's the brilliant, driven law professor who's gone to work as Biden's tech antitrust czar. But Wu isn't alone: he's part of a trio of appointees who are all expert photocopier kickers. There's Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ and Lina Khan at the FTC.

Khan is a model of administrative competence and ideological coherence. Her tenure has included lots of soaring rhetoric to buoy the spirits of people like me:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/rest-in-piss-robert-bork/#harmful-dominance

But it's also included lots of extremely skillful ju-jitsu against the system, using long-neglected leverage points to Get Shit Done, rather than just grandstanding or demanding that Congress take action. Here's the FTC's latest expert kick at the photocopier: action on Right to Repair that exercises existing authority:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bxaa/ftc-energy-rules-right-to-repair

The Right to Repair fight is a glaring example of democratic dysfunction. Americans broadly and strongly support the right to fix their own stuff, or to take their stuff to the repair depot of their choice. How broadly? Well, both times that the question has been on the Massachusetts ballot, there was massive participation and the measures passed with ~80% majorities:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nixing-the-fix/#r2r

But despite this, state-level attempts to pass R2R bills have been almost entirely crushed by a coalition of monopolists, led by Apple, including John Deere, GM, Wahl Shavers, Microsoft, Google, and many other giant corporations who want the power to tell you your property is beyond repair and must be condemned to an e-waste dump:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

Right to Repair is a case study for the proposition that "ordinary citizens… get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence."

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Enter the photocopier kickers, wearing boots. The same month that the White House dropped is massive antitrust executive order, it also published an executive order on Right to Repair, including electronics repair:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/10/unnixing-the-fix/#r2r-plus-plus

The EO built on the evidence compiled through the FTC's "Nixing the Fix" report:

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/reports/nixing-fix-ftc-report-congress-repair-restrictions/nixing_the_fix_report_final_5521_630pm-508_002.pdf

But it also identified that the FTC already had the power to do Right to Repair, in its existing Congressional authorization:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/07/09/fact-sheet-executive-order-on-promoting-competition-in-the-american-economy/

The Biden antitrust strategy is powerful because it recognizes that every administrative agency has powers that can be brought to bear to slow down the anticompetitive flywheel that has allowed giant corporations to extract monopoly profits and then launder them into pro-monopoly policies.

Which brings me to today's news: the FTC has carefully reviewed the powers it has under its existing Energy Labeling Rule (you know, the rule that produces those Energystar stickers on appliances) and concluded that it can also force companies to publish repair manuals under this rule:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/10/federal-trade-commission-seeks-public-comment-initiative-reduce-energy-costs-strengthen-right-repair

As USPIRG's Nathan Proctor told Motherboard’s Matthew Gault, "When Congress passed energy conservation policies decades ago, it included the ability to require Right to Repair access. While that provision has gone unnoticed for too long, it’s not surprising it was written that way."

https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bxaa/ftc-energy-rules-right-to-repair

The FTC is now planning to exercise that long dormant authority in a game-changing way - to kick the photocopier really, really well. It is seeking public comment on "whether lack of access to repair instructions for covered products is an existing problem for consumers; whether providing such information would assist consumers in their purchasing decisions or product use; whether providing such information would be unduly burdensome to manufacturers; and any other relevant issues"

https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/R611004EnergyLabelingANPR.pdf

The Trump years were brutal. Every time we turned around, some Trumpy archvillain was twirling his mustache and announcing an evil plot. Yet so many of these turned out to be nothingburgers - not because they were sincere in their intentions, but because they lacked administrative competence.

Trump embodied administrative incompetence. He was very good at commanding the news cycle, and very good at riling up his base, but he had no idea where to kick the photocopier, and every expert photocopier kicker that Trump hired got immediately fired, because they would insist that Getting Shit Done required patience and precision, not a deluge of chaotic governance-by-tweeting.

To the extent that Trumpland Got Shit Done - packing the courts, handing out trillions in tax gifts to the ultra-rich - it was in spite of Trump and his trumpies, and because of the administratively competent wing of the party: McConnell, Romney, et al. In the GOP, "establishment" is a slur meaning "competent."

This isn't to say that Trump wasn't dangerous - he absolutely was. But it does militate for an understanding of politics that pays close attention to competence as well as virtue or wickedness.

It's one of the things that was very exciting about the Elizabeth Warren campaign - those long-ass policy documents she dropped were eye-wateringly detailed photocopier-kicking manuals for the US government.

Biden himself isn't much of a photocopier kicker. He's good at gladhanding, but the photocopier kickers in his administration represent a triumph of the party's progressive wing. And therein lies a key difference between the parties: in the GOP, the competent are the establishment; in the Democrats, the establishment are the ones who can't or won't act, and the progressives have got their boots on and are ready to kick.

Image: Temple University Libraries (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/tulpics/4882641645/

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[Image ID: A photocopier in an office copy room; a silhouetted figure is dealing a flying kick to it.]

#pluralistic

[qqueenofhades]

Don't act like this isn't the Democrats fault. They didn't codify Roe when they had the chance, and now they're paying the price.

Hooweeeee. Normally, I just block these kinds of asks out of hand and go on with my day, but you've caught me at the end of two solid days of Rage, and unfortunately for you, I'm not gonna do that. Instead, just to start, I would like to politely ask the following question:

Hello! Have you ever considered the possibility that you may be A Total Fucking Idiot?

Since there are many of us, present company regretfully included, who struggle with history, let's start out with a quick lesson. Roe was handed down in 1973. It took a while to really get evangelicals hot under the collar, but by 1987, in Ronald Reagan's second term, it had definitely happened. To further the Republicans' cherished goal of overturning it, Reagan nominated far-right whackjob Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. The Democrats, led by then-Senator Joe Biden, fought back on a massive scale and defeated the nomination, leading to Anthony Kennedy joining the SC instead of Bork.

In 1992, another abortion-related case reached the Supreme Court: Planned Parenthood v. Casey, wherein Roe was pretty much reaffirmed in its entirety. By 1992, George H.W. Bush had finished one term, generally underwhelmed the public, and was voted out, thus to be replaced by Bill Clinton. In 1994, in Clinton's first midterm election, the Newt Gingrich Republicans took the House and the Strom Thurmond and Bob Dole Republicans took the Senate. This GOP control of at least one branch of Congress remained the case until 2001, when George W. Bush became president. (Also, the GOP Clinton-era Republicans had other things to do, such as the Lewinsky scandal in 1998, back when they still pretended to have moral values and impeached Clinton accordingly). Considering the fact that any attempt to pass a national law to codify Roe was obviously doomed with Dubya in the White House, since he would have vetoed it, and that the Democrats didn't fully control the House, Senate, and Presidency again until 2009, one might feel that formalizing a twice-affirmed decision by the Supreme Court maybe wasn't the top priority. Abortion rights were and are popular (in fact, that's why the three Trumpists on the SC had to lie to the Judiciary Committee about their plans to repeal it), and Obama had other things on his plate. Like, you know, saving the national and global economy from total meltdown after the crisis of 2008, and trying to jam through the Affordable Care Act in the short time he had before 2010, and once more losing the House to the Tea Party. The loss of the Senate followed in 2014. Once again, we didn't get it back until 2021, when the three wingnut justices were already seated on the Court and Trump had run his reign of terror.

Considering those empirical circumstances, the fact that the Democrats have only had control of all three branches of the federal government for two-year periods at MOST and were busy fixing all the other most pressing messes, and that the Republicans have said for decades that this is exactly what they want to do, I am truly gobsmacked (if not surprised) at the sheer number of morons who want to make this, yet again, the Democrats' fault. Apparently the Republicans are just a force of nature who can't really be blamed or actually considered to have agency; it's only ever on the Democrats for Not Doing Enough To Stop Them. Instead, we now have hordes of told-you-so-ers swarming out of the woodwork and acting like this was a five-alarm fire that the Democrats willfully ignored and/or fanned on. That is incredibly moronic on multiple levels, but hey, that kind of seems to be your Brand. That is, when you're not labeling smug inactivity and self-professed moral superiority as the most pure and correct course of action, but again, we all have our talents.

There was no way for the Republicans to overturn Roe without the exact kind of judicial skulduggery, right-wing extremism, and scads of dark money that finally came together in the perfect storm. (Ever hear of Citizens United in 2010, and the way in which hard-right interest groups have been funding this planned takeover of the judiciary for years? Or does that conflict with your predetermined hypothesis?) Apparently Democrats should have Done More to stop Trump from choosing Supreme Court justices (a Very Smart White Man on twitter made the argument that it was actually Senate Democrats' fault for not stopping McConnell on procedural grounds, or.... something). This was after actual Democrats begged the Holier Than Thous to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, explicitly because we pointed out that the Supreme Court was in a precarious position with elderly justices and open seats, and the next president would be poised to reshape it for the next generation. You all laughed at us, more or less openly called us a bunch of bootlicking neoliberal traitors, and told us that the Supreme Court didn't matter and we were all delusional. Then you didn't vote. Then Trump won the election by squeaking out wins in a handful of key states. Then.... well, we all know what happened next.

So tell me, Oh Wise Internet Sage. Where, in what Congress, and according to what actual rules of reality, procedure, and priority, should the Democrats have passed a law to codify a popular twice-affirmed Supreme Court decision that was not under serious threat precisely until this confluence of circumstances took place under the Trump presidency? Be specific, and point out exactly how it would have happened. Otherwise, your argument is bad and you should feel bad.

Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, Warren, Obama, and all the other prominent Democratic leadership and/or congresspeople have already made strong statements within hours of the draft opinion being leaked. Republicans are screaming in unison that whoever leaked it is the actual story, not the content or impact of the decision (literally what McConnell said today on CNN). The DEMOCRATS DO SOMETHING!!! crowd need to, uh, actually say what they're fucking supposed to do now. Instead you blame RBG, you blame HRC, you blame the Democrats, and absolutely everyone and anyone except the actual people responsible for doing this. You may think it's an enlightened and complex stance that reflects the Realities of the World, or whatever. You may think that Joe Manchin doesn't exist (believe me, I wish he fucking didn't) and that Biden can wave a magic wand and overturn SCOTUS. Do they need to do more? YES! MANY OF THEM HAVE EXPLICITLY SAID THEY WILL BE EXPLORING ALL OPTIONS! BUT WE STILL LIVE (FOR THE NEXT FEW MONTHS) IN A DEMOCRACY AND THAT REQUIRES US DOING OUR JOB AND VOTING IN NEW AND BETTER PEOPLE TO HELP THEM!

I'm sick and fucking tired of this pissbaby whining from the exact same people who make us beg and plead for their vote every single election, feel morally justified in withholding it, and have done literally nothing to advance any of the causes they claim to care about. "Hindsight is 20/20" some of you like to point out, but with the expected irony, you miss it completely when it comes to reviewing any of your own (non) actions and any hint of genuine acknowledgment that your apathy and nihilism helped this happen. So. Suck on that, then go step on a rake. If this should knock some sense into you, we can then talk again.

#anonymous #ask #politics for ts #rant #i'm not gonna take it right now #fair warning

[tanadrin]

the consumer protection angle on antitrust law is surprisingly recent--it goes back only to about Robert Bork (who in general was an ultra-conservative legal theorist whose readings of the law rested on fairly dubious premises) and his contemporaries, and has nothing to do with how antitrust law was really formulated in prior eras. and the policy outcome of this reasoning which is pretty plainly the reason it was invented in the first place, is to drastically weaken the force of antitrust law, often in outright defiance of the intent of the law’s original drafters.

[kaelio]

(This is in reference to Robert Bork, who Biden did in fact prevent from joining the Supreme Court through extreme effort. Republicans are still furious about this.)

[azspot]

It’s understandable that people with a American view of antitrust based on recent history might not get this. The focus in US antitrust since the early 1980s has been on prices, thanks to the noxious influence of Robert Bork. In Borkian antitrust, all that mattered was prices, and, in his weird head, monopolies led to lower prices for consumers. That this went against pretty much every economic theory since (and including) Adam Smith didn’t matter.

Antitrust, Meta, Apple and more

#antitrust #apple

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 13, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 14, 2024

There are really two major Republican political stories dominating the news these days. The more obvious of the two is the attempt by former president Donald Trump and his followers to destroy American democracy. The other story is older, the one that led to Trump but that stands at least a bit apart from him. It is the story of a national shift away from the supply-side ideology of Reagan Republicans toward an embrace of the idea that the government should hold the playing field among all Americans level.

While these two stories are related, they are not the same.

For forty years, between 1981, when Republican Ronald Reagan took office, and 2021, when Democrat Joe Biden did, the Republicans operated under the theory that the best way to run the country was for the government to stay out of the way of market forces. The idea was that if individuals could accumulate as much money as possible, they would invest more efficiently in the economy than they could if the government regulated business or levied taxes to invest in public infrastructure and public education. The growing economy would result in higher tax revenues, enabling Americans to have both low taxes and government services, and prosperity would spread to everyone. 

But the system never worked as promised. Instead, during that 40-year period, Republicans passed massive tax cuts under Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump, and slashed regulations. A new interpretation of antitrust laws articulated by Robert Bork in the 1980s permitted dramatic consolidation of corporations, while membership in labor unions declined. The result was that as much as $50 trillion moved upward from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. 

To keep voters on board the program that was hollowing out the middle class, Republicans emphasized culture wars, hitting hard on racism and sexism by claiming that taxes were designed by Democrats to give undeserving minorities and women government handouts and promising their evangelical voters they would overturn the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision recognizing the constitutional right to abortion. Those looking for tax cuts and business deregulation depended on culture warriors and white evangelicals to provide the votes to keep them in power.

But the election of Democrat Barack Obama in 2008 proved that Republican arguments were no longer effective enough to elect Republican presidents. So in 2010, with the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission decision, the Supreme Court freed corporations to pour unlimited money into U.S. elections. That year, under Operation REDMAP, Republicans worked to dominate state legislatures so they could control redistricting under the 2010 census, yielding extreme partisan gerrymanders that gave Republicans disproportionate control. In 2013 the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v. Holder decision greenlighted the voter suppression Republicans had been working on since 1986.  

Even so, by 2016 it was not at all clear that the cultural threats, gerrymandering, and voter suppression would be enough to elect a Republican president. People forget it now because of all that has come since, but in 2016, Trump offered not only the racism and sexism Republicans had served up for decades, but also a more moderate economic program than any other Republican running that year. He called for closing the loopholes that permitted wealthy Americans to evade taxes, cheaper and better healthcare than the Democrats had provided with the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., and addressing the long backlog of necessary repairs to our roads and bridges through an infrastructure bill. 

But once in office, Trump threw economic populism overboard and resurrected the Republican emphasis on tax cuts and deregulation. His signature law was the 2017 tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy at a cost of at least $1.9 trillion over ten years. At the same time, Trump continued to feed his base with racism and sexism, and after the Unite the Right rally at Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, he increasingly turned to his white nationalist base to shore up his power. On January 6, 2021, he used that base to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

Republican senators then declined to convict Trump of that attempt in his second impeachment trial, apparently hoping he would go away. Instead, their acquiescence in his behavior has enabled him to continue to push the Big Lie that he won the 2020 election. But to return to power, Trump has increasingly turned away from establishment Republicans and has instead turned the party over to its culture war and Christian nationalist foot soldiers. Now Trump has taken over the Republican National Committee itself, and his supporters threaten to turn the nation over to the culture warriors who care far more about their ideology than they do about tax cuts or deregulation.

The extremism of Trump’s base is hugely unpopular among general voters. Most significantly, Trump catered to his white evangelical base by appointing Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and in 2022, when the court did so, the dog caught the car. Americans overwhelmingly support reproductive freedoms, and Republicans are getting hammered over the extreme abortion bans now operative in Republican-dominated states. Now Trump and a number of Republicans have tried to back away from their antiabortion positions, infuriating antiabortion activists. 

It is hard to see how the Republican Party can appeal to both Trump’s base and general voters at the same time. 

That split dramatically weakens Trump politically while he is in an increasingly precarious position personally. He will, of course, go on trial on Monday, April 15, for alleged crimes committed as he interfered in the 2016 election. At the same time, the $175 million appeals bond he posted to cover the judgment in his business fraud trial has been questioned and must be justified by April 14. The court has scheduled a hearing on the bond for April 22. And his performance at rallies and private events has been unstable. 

He seems a shaky reed on which to hang a political party, especially as his MAGA Republicans have proven unable to manage the House of Representatives and are increasingly being called out as Russian puppets for their attacks on Ukraine aid.  

Regardless of Trump’s future, though, the Reagan Era is over. 

President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have quite deliberately rejected the economic ideology that concentrated wealth among the 1%. On their watch, the federal government has worked to put money into the hands of ordinary Americans rather than the very wealthy. With Democrats and on occasion a few Republicans, they have passed legislation to support families, dedicate resources to making sure people with student debt are receiving the correct terms of their loans (thus relieving significant numbers of Americans), and invested in manufacturing, infrastructure, and addressing climate change. They have also supported unions and returned to an older definition of antitrust law, suing Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple and allowing the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices.

Their system has worked. Under Biden and Harris the U.S. has had unemployment rates under 4% for 26 months, the longest streak since the 1960s. Wages for the bottom 80% of Americans have risen faster than inflation, chipping away at the huge disparity between the rich and the poor that the policies of the past 40 years have produced. 

Today, in an interview with Jamie Kitman of The Guardian, United Auto Workers president Shawn Fain, who negotiated landmark new union contracts with the country’s Big Three automakers, explained that the world has changed: “Workers have realized they’ve been getting screwed for decades, and they’re fed up.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#GOP #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #UAW #the economy #history #income inequality #culture wars #trickle down #supply side #deregulation #white nationalism #tax cuts

[odinsblog]

THE LOCHNER ERA is a period in American legal history from 1897 to 1937 in which the Supreme Court of the United States is said to have made it a common practice "to strike down economic regulations adopted by a State based on the Court's own notions of the most appropriate means for the State to implement its considered policies” The court did this by using its interpretation of substantive due process to strike down laws held to be infringing on economic liberty or private contract rights.

The era takes its name from a 1905 case, Lochner v. New York. The beginning of the era is usually marked earlier, with the Court's decision in Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897), and its end marked forty years later in the case of West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), which overturned an earlier Lochner-era decision.

The Supreme Court during the Lochner era has been described as "playing a judicially activist but politically conservative role." The Court sometimes invalidated state and federal legislation that inhibited business or otherwise limited the free market, including minimum wage laws, federal (but not state) child labor laws, regulations of banking, insurance and transportation industries. The Lochner era ended when the Court's tendency to invalidate labor and market regulations came into direct conflict with Congress's regulatory efforts in the New Deal.

Since the 1930s, Lochner has been widely discredited as a product of a "bygone era" in legal history. Robert Bork called Lochner "the symbol, indeed the quintessence, of judicial usurpation of power".

In his confirmation hearings to become Chief Justice, John Roberts said: "You go to a case like the Lochner case, you can read that opinion today and it's quite clear that they're not interpreting the law, they're making the law."

He added that the Lochner court substituted its own judgment for the legislature's findings. (source)

The Roberts Court is illegitimate and deeply corrupt.

#politics #scotus #lochner era #john roberts #republicans #democracy for sale #roberts court

[literallymechanical]

Hi. Please write the solarpunk dystopia book. I’d read that in a heartbeat. However, if you don’t have the time, could I bother you for some book recommendations?? I’ve been on a sci-fi space semi-body horror alien kick (children of time, children of ruin, to sleep in a sea of stars) and I’m needing a new one to sink my teeth into. I think I’d like to move a little closer to the horror genera without reading an actual horror book, but anything dystopian, sci-fi, and plant/space/alien related would be cool! Any thoughts?

Space horror isn't my usual genre, nor is horror in general, but here are a few that come close. It can be hard to judge where the line sits between "horror" and "horror-adjacent," so I'm going to err on the side of just recommending a few horrifying things I've enjoyed:

Roadside Picnic, by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, 1972. Old-school soviet scifi alien horror, and the inspiration for an entire genre of fiction – "people go and explore a Weird Zone where reality is borked and bad things happen." Stalker is a direct homage, the Southern Reach trilogy, etc. I read a translation by Antonia Bouis.

The Laundry Files, by Charles Stross, 2004 – present. This one is a longer series, the first book is the Atrocity Archives. A very modern twist on Lovecraft — bureaucratic horror. The "Laundry" is the unofficial name for the British secret service that handles the occult. Necromancy is a field of theoretical computer science pioneered by Alan Turing, and you can summon Nyarlathotep with a well-crafted raytracing algorithm. The protagonist is the department IT guy, Bob Oliver Francis Howard. If you get the pun in the name you're older than me. Later books deal with the occult implications of Brexit.

There Is No Antimemetics Division, by qntm, 2020. Originally published as a serial on the SCP Wiki, later re-edited and compiled it into a standalone novel. Requires no prior knowledge of the SCP Foundation to enjoy. This is the cosmic horror that Lovecraft wishes he could have written. Can be read for free on the SCP Wiki, but I recommend buying a copy to support the author. Bonkers amazing, pedal-to-the-metal, goes from "quirky high-concept scifi" to "oh god what are they going to do to him with that chisel" real fast.

American Elsewhere, by Robert Jackson Bennet, 2013. It's a bit obscure and might be harder to find, but it's one of the best books I've read in years. Scifi horror-thriller that gets both splashily cosmic and laser-tight. Our protagonist comes to a small town in New Mexico that doesn't appear on any maps to find closure after her abusive father's death, and gets tangled up in horrifying secrets. Nasty, achingly heartbreaking, grand, and takes its time in the most delicious way. The author writes mediocre YA fantasy now, and that's a damn shame.

John Dies At The End (and its sequels), by David Wong, 2007 – 2022. Comedy-horror about shitty paranormal investigators. The comedy is genuinely hilarious and the horror is genuinely horrifying – closer to the cosmic- than body-horror, though it does get up-close and personal. One of the few comedy-horror stories I've read that convincingly pulls off both.

Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, by Christopher Moore, 1995. A raunchy vampire story, set against the sobering backdrop of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. I have no idea if this actually counts as horror but I think more people should read Christopher Moore. The tonal whiplash between goofy vampire sex, night-shift convenience store workers bowling with frozen turkeys in the aisles, and the trauma of young men dying from love and dirty needles, is expertly crafted.

I could keep going but this list is already getting a bit long. Hey followers et al., you should add more recommendations, especially ones that are actual space horror!

#fiction

[arctic-hands]

Rough transcript from parts of the video (for some reason tumblr wouldn't let me post this when it was all indented for clarity):

Norman decided to strike back, using the tools that he knew best... He started with a series of TV commercials, urging people not to be so easily manipulated by charismatic religious leaders.

"So maybe there's something wrong when people, even preachers, suggest that people are either good Christians or bad Christians, depending on their political views."

Next, he produced a special called "I Love Liberty", celebrating the values he thought were most urgent to defend: equality, diversity, making sure the law protects and serves everyone, especially the most vulnerable...

...After that, Norman could see there was a lot more work to do, so using the attention from the ads and the special as a jumping off point, he founded a new organization to counter the forces of bigotry. He called it People For The American Way, and he made it his full-time focus, stepping away from the industry he helped shape, so he could devote himself to the cause...

...The timing was perfect, since Ronald Reagan had just been elected president, thanks in part to televangelists who ordered their followers to vote for him, and throughout the Eighties Republicans pushed hard to enshrine religious bigotry into law. For example, at one point Reagan nominated Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Bork was a former Nixon sidekick who openly said that he wanted to roll back civil rights protections for minorities. In response, People For The American Way leapt into action, and they launched a campaign to oppose the nomination...

...Norman and People For The American Way mobilized across the country to contact their legislatures, and, sure enough, Congress rejected Bork's nomination, one of the few times that's happened...

...People For The American Way also led campaigns to stop groups from forcing schools to buy religious textbooks. When conservatives tried to ban library books with inclusive content, People For The American Way successfully filed lawsuits to stop them. They helped pass non-discrimination ordinances across the country, and in response to a rise of right-wing extremism, they created Right Wing Watch to expose hateful speakers, a tool that many people came to rely on...

...But for all the progress that's been made over the last few years, more recently, Norman has been seeing an alarming new trend.

"I'm not sure in my ninety-eight years I've seen another moment as worrisome as this."

In interviews today, Norman has described a level of intolerance that he hasn't seen in a long time. Now, he sees bigotry more emboldened than ever, with brazen displays of pro-Nazi sentiment. For all the times Norman says he's seen that ideology before, he has never seen it expressed so openly.

"...but I don't recall people in the streets and, uh, marching and, and showing hateful signs. You know, antisemitism, that, that worries me considerably now."

And you don't have to look hard to find conservatives targeting minorities, labeling them Enemies Of The Country, and calling for violence against them...

...But if there's any good news, it's that folks like Norman have first-hand experience dealing with times like these, and he has some ideas about how to respond. For one thing, he's revisited his most classic episodes about tackling bigotry, broadcasting them with all-new performers...

Now, obviously sitcoms alone can't single-handedly solve all the world's problems. But if there's anything that the decades of Norman's work makes clear, it's the power of laughter to help people see the world in a new way.

"Comedy can be an intravenous, you know, in one's arm. You're laughing and absorbing at the same time."

To introduce new ideas...

And to give people a vision of how to live together...

"...flying across the country at night, but I remember looking down for the first time thinking, 'Hey, it's just possible wherever I see a light, I've helped to make somebody laugh.'"

...It's had an immeasurable impact on the world: breaking down barriers that kept certain people from appearing on TV, exposing bigots for how ridiculous they truly are, and showing viewers what it looked like to confront prejudice head-on. So now he's starting his second century of making the world a better place, for everyone.

End transcript.

The video is about forty-four minutes long and that's a truncated transcript of the last ten minutes or so, but I encourage everyone to watch the full video. It is technically captioned, but with auto-captions, which aren't ideal but, lack of punctuation aside, seemed to be pretty accurate as I looked at them to type out the above

#Norman Lear #Matt Baume #United States #television #history #please tumblr post this time thank god I decided to back it up in a document first #Youtube

[lboogie1906]

The Congress of Racial Equality founded March 1942 pioneered direct nonviolent action in the 1940s before playing a major part in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Founded by an interracial group of pacifists at the University of Chicago, CORE used nonviolent tactics to challenge segregation in Northern cities during the 1940s. Members staged sit-ins at Chicago area restaurants and challenged restrictive housing covenants. Expansion beyond the University of Chicago brought students from across the Midwest into the organization, and whites made up a majority of the membership into the early 1960s.

Civil rights activists from other organizations used CORE’s nonviolent tactics during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, CORE did not establish a presence in the South until 1957. CORE orchestrated or participated in some of the civil rights movement’s most iconic struggles. CORE’s national director, James Farmer, Jr., organized the Freedom Rides to test a recent SCOTUS decision integrating interstate buses and stations. Seven black and six white volunteers met staggering violence as they rode buses through the Deep South.

CORE cosponsored the March on Washington. CORE volunteers participated in Freedom Summer, a project that brought white Northerners to Mississippi to register Black voters. With the help of local police, Ku Klux Klansmen in Philadelphia, Mississippi killed three CORE volunteers at the beginning of the summer. Two of the victims were white, and the incident gained national attention and led to an increased federal presence in Mississippi. Violence continued, and tensions ran high between white and Black volunteers.

In 1966 CORE chose a new, more militant leader in Floyd McKissick. The group initiated short-lived programs to fight poverty. CORE barred whites from membership and chose Roy Innis as its national director. He advocated Black entrepreneurship. He moved CORE out of the mainstream of civil rights organizations, opposing busing and supporting welfare reform. He supported judicial nominees that mainstream civil rights groups opposed, including Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[caesarsaladinn]

Robert Bork got a lot of shit for saying he wanted to be on the Supreme Court because it would be “an intellectual feast,” implying that he wasn’t interested in good governance, but I kind of wish that ethos were more common in government. a lot of people in congress don’t seem terribly interested in policy for its own sake