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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months

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At long last, a meaningful step to protect Americans' privacy

This Saturday (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks

Privacy raises some thorny, subtle and complex issues. It also raises some stupid-simple ones. The American surveillance industry's shell-game is founded on the deliberate confusion of the two, so that the most modest and sensible actions are posed as reductive, simplistic and unworkable.

Two pillars of the American surveillance industry are credit reporting bureaux and data brokers. Both are unbelievably sleazy, reckless and dangerous, and neither faces any real accountability, let alone regulation.

Remember Equifax, the company that doxed every adult in America and was given a mere wrist-slap, and now continues to assemble nonconsensual dossiers on every one of us, without any material oversight improvements?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/20/equifax-settles-with-ftc-cfpb-states-and-consumer-class-actions-for-700m/

Equifax's competitors are no better. Experian doxed the nation again, in 2021:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/30/dox-the-world/#experian

It's hard to overstate how fucking scummy the credit reporting world is. Equifax invented the business in 1899, when, as the Retail Credit Company, it used private spies to track queers, political dissidents and "race mixers" so that banks and merchants could discriminate against them:

https://jacobin.com/2017/09/equifax-retail-credit-company-discrimination-loans

As awful as credit reporting is, the data broker industry makes it look like a paragon of virtue. If you want to target an ad to "Rural and Barely Making It" consumers, the brokers have you covered:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#axciom

More than 650,000 of these categories exist, allowing advertisers to target substance abusers, depressed teens, and people on the brink of bankruptcy:

https://themarkup.org/privacy/2023/06/08/from-heavy-purchasers-of-pregnancy-tests-to-the-depression-prone-we-found-650000-ways-advertisers-label-you

These companies follow you everywhere, including to abortion clinics, and sell the data to just about anyone:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/07/safegraph-spies-and-lies/#theres-no-i-in-uterus

There are zillions of these data brokers, operating in an unregulated wild west industry. Many of them have been rolled up into tech giants (Oracle owns more than 80 brokers), while others merely do business with ad-tech giants like Google and Meta, who are some of their best customers.

As bad as these two sectors are, they're even worse in combination – the harms data brokers (sloppy, invasive) inflict on us when they supply credit bureaux (consequential, secretive, intransigent) are far worse than the sum of the harms of each.

And now for some good news. The Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, under the leadership of Rohit Chopra, has declared war on this alliance:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/16/cfpb-looks-to-restrict-the-sleazy-link-between-credit-reporting-agencies-and-data-brokers/

They've proposed new rules limiting the trade between brokers and bureaux, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, putting strict restrictions on the transfer of information between the two:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/15/tech/privacy-rules-data-brokers/index.html

As Karl Bode writes for Techdirt, this is long overdue and meaningful. Remember all the handwringing and chest-thumping about Tiktok stealing Americans' data to the Chinese military? China doesn't need Tiktok to get that data – it can buy it from data-brokers. For peanuts.

The CFPB action is part of a muscular style of governance that is characteristic of the best Biden appointees, who are some of the most principled and competent in living memory. These regulators have scoured the legislation that gives them the power to act on behalf of the American people and discovered an arsenal of action they can take:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Alas, not all the Biden appointees have the will or the skill to pull this trick off. The corporate Dems' darlings are mired in #LearnedHelplessness, convinced that they can't – or shouldn't – use their prodigious powers to step in to curb corporate power:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

And it's true that privacy regulation faces stiff headwinds. Surveillance is a public-private partnership from hell. Cops and spies love to raid the surveillance industries' dossiers, treating them as an off-the-books, warrantless source of unconstitutional personal data on their targets:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/16/ring-ring-lapd-calling/#ring

These powerful state actors reliably intervene to hamstring attempts at privacy law, defending the massive profits raked in by data brokers and credit bureaux. These profits, meanwhile, can be mobilized as lobbying dollars that work lawmakers and regulators from the private sector side. Caught in the squeeze between powerful government actors (the true "Deep State") and a cartel of filthy rich private spies, lawmakers and regulators are frozen in place.

Or, at least, they were. The CFPB's discovery that it had the power all along to curb commercial surveillance follows on from the FTC's similar realization last summer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/12/regulatory-uncapture/#conscious-uncoupling

I don't want to pretend that all privacy questions can be resolved with simple, bright-line rules. It's not clear who "owns" many classes of private data – does your mother own the fact that she gave birth to you, or do you? What if you disagree about such a disclosure – say, if you want to identify your mother as an abusive parent and she objects?

But there are so many stupid-simple privacy questions. Credit bureaux and data-brokers don't inhabit any kind of grey area. They simply should not exist. Getting rid of them is a project of years, but it starts with hacking away at their sources of profits, stripping them of defenses so we can finally annihilate them.

I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/16/the-second-best-time-is-now/#the-point-of-a-system-is-what-it-does

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 months

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youtube

The Biden administration announced a rule Tuesday to cap all credit card late fees, the latest effort in the White House push to end what it has called junk fees and a move that regulators say will save Americans up to $10 billion a year.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new regulations will set a ceiling of $8 for most credit card late fees or require banks to show why they should charge more than $8 for such a fee.

The rule would bring the average credit card late fee down from $32. The bureau estimates banks brought in roughly $14 billion in credit card late fees a year.

“In credit cards, like so many corners of the economy today, consumers are beset by junk fees and forced to navigate a market dominated by relatively few, powerful players who control the market,” said Rohit Chopra, director of the bureau, in a statement.

President Joe Biden planned to highlight the proposal along with other efforts to reduce costs to Americans at a meeting of his competition council on Tuesday. The Democratic president is forming a new strike force to crack down on illegal and unfair pricing on things like groceries, prescription drugs, health care, housing and financial services.

The strike force will be led by the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, according to a White House statement.

The Biden administration has portrayed the White House Competition Council as a way to save people money and promote greater competition within the U.S. economy.

The White House Council of Economic Advisers produced an analysis indicating that the Biden administration’s efforts overall will eliminate $20 billion in annual junk fees. The analysis found that consumers pay about $90 billion a year in junk fees, including for concerts, apartment rentals and auto dealers.

The effort appears to have done little to help Biden politically ahead of this year’s presidential election. Just 34 percent of U.S. adults approve of Biden’s economic leadership, according to a new survey by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-South Carolina, criticized the CFPB cap on credit card late fees, saying that consumers would ultimately face greater costs through higher interest rates and less access to credit.

“It will decrease the availability of credit card products for those who need it most, raise rates for many borrowers who carry a balance but pay on time, and increase the likelihood of late payments across the board,” Scott said.

Americans held more than $1.05 trillion on their credit cards in the third quarter of 2023, a record, and a figure certain to grow once the fourth-quarter data is released by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. next month. Those balances are now carrying interest on them, which is the highest it has been since the Federal Reserve started tracking the data back in the mid-1990s.

Further, more Americans are falling behind on their credit card debts as well. Delinquency rates at the major credit card issuers such as American Express, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Capital One and Discover have been trending upward for several quarters. Some analysts have become concerned Americans, particularly poorer households hurt by inflation, might be taking on too much debt.

“Overall, the consumer is credit healthy. However, the reality is that there are starting to be some significant signs of stress,” said Silvio Tavares, president and CEO of VantageScore, one of the country’s two major credit scoring systems, in an interview last month.

The growth of the credit card industry is partly why Capital One announced it would buy Discover Financial last month for $35 billion. The two companies, which are two of the largest credit card issuers, are also two companies whose customers regularly carry a balance on their accounts.

This is not the first time policymakers have weighed in on credit card fees. Congress in 2010 passed the CARD Act, which banned credit card companies from charging excessive penalty fees and established clearer disclosures and consumer protections.

The Federal Reserve issued a rule in 2010 that capped the first credit card late fee at $25, and $35 for subsequent late payments, and tied that fee to inflation. The CFPB, which took over the regulation of the credit card industry from the Fed after it was established, is proposing going further than the Fed.

The bureau’s proposal is similar in structure to what the bureau announced in January when it proposed capping overdraft fees to as little as $3. In that proposed regulation, banks would be required to either accept the bureau’s benchmark or show regulators why they should charge more, a method that few bank industry executives expect to use.

Biden has made the elimination of junk fees one of the cornerstones of his administration’s economic agenda heading into the 2024 election. Fees that banks charge customers have been at the center of that campaign, and the White House directed government regulators last year to do whatever is in their power to further curtail the practice.

In another move being highlighted by the White House, the Agriculture Department said it has finalized a rule to stop what it deems to be deceptive contracts by meat processors and to ban retaliation against small farmers and ranchers that work together in associations.

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tomorrowusa · 2 months

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The Biden administration is trying to limit junk fees. The president made reference to this during the State of the Union speech on Thursday. Of course Republicans think junk fees and screwing the consumer are great.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday unveiled a heavily anticipated rule cutting the late fees that credit card issuers can charge, delivering on an objective that President Joe Biden touted in his State of the Union address last year. The regulation caps fees for a missed payment at $8, down from the current level of up to $41. The rule has already sparked intense pushback from banks and congressional Republicans pledging to fight its implementation. The Chamber of Commerce is vowing to sue.

Republicans are serving predatory banks which give them big campaign contributions. Excessive fees enable the banks to get fat off of poor people. Most likely the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be abolished or neutered by a second Trump administration.

The rule will “stop some credit card companies from ripping you off with late fees,” Biden said at a meeting of the White House Competition Council Tuesday afternoon. “This action will collectively save families $10 billion in credit card late fees every year.” The rule is part of the Biden administration’s broader campaign against so-called junk fees that has targeted industries from car dealers to cable operators. It’s a central focus of Biden’s reelection campaign and one that he’ll likely highlight in Thursday’s State of the Union speech. “Late fees have gotten out of control,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said on a call with reporters Monday. “Today the credit card industry hauls in more than $14 billion in late fee revenue, which our research shows is more than five times that of the companies’ associated costs.”

Banks would still make insanely large profits even with reduced junk fees. But greed makes them want to squeeze every cent they can out of American consumers.

Yeah, rightwingers already find themselves on the wrong side of the abortion and IVF issues. Now they are also trying vigorously to position themselves as defenders of price gouging, junk fees, and shrinkflation.

Tens of millions of Americans are inundated by credit card junk fees — and now right-wing media are rallying to defend this price gouging

#price gouging #late fees #junk fees #cfpb #consumer financial protection bureau #rohit chopra #biden administration #joe biden #state of the union #why do republicans love junk fees?#shrinkflation #predatory banks #corporate greed #consumer protection #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

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kp777 · 2 years

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By Helaine Olen

The Washington Post -- Opinion

July 1, 2022

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not happy with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and it wants you to know it. On Tuesday, the Chamber launched what it describes as “an extensive campaign to expose and defeat” the agenda of the agency tasked with protecting Americans from the predations of the financial services sector. It accuses agency director Rohit Chopra of being a “radical” with an “ideologically driven agenda,” responsible for “several unlawful actions including Chopra’s intentions to change rules without accountability, injecting great uncertainty into the market.”

One can see why the Chamber is nervous. In the nine months since the Senate approved the nomination of Chopra, a protege of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) who previously served on the Federal Trade Commission, he has initiated a wide-ranging investigation into “junk fees,” the money banks and credit card companies charge consumers for everything from late payments on credit cards to checking account overdrafts. The CFPB has also put financial companies on notice that it will not allow AI-based credit decisions to replicate preexisting racial inequities. It’s looking into the burgeoning “buy now, pay later” apps, and how the tech giants are collecting and using information on consumer-payment behavior. Chopra has also made it clear that the days of slap-on-the-wrist fines are over, and that repeat offenders will face serious financial consequences.

But radical? Please. The only “radical” action Chopra has taken is using existing federal law to start to restore the balance of power between American consumers and the banks, credit card companies and financial technology companies that are supposed to be serving them, and doing so in a way that shows he means business.

I sat down with him via Zoom last week, before the Chamber went public with its campaign, but after many complaints from the financial services sector that he was an out-of-control Washington “bureaucrat” (as the Wall Street Journal recently called him) steamrolling over Beltway mores in service to his anti-industry vendetta.

“I think the largest firms are much more accustomed to having a relationship with their regulators that is more akin to friendship than to a traditional relationship between a regulator and a regulated entity,” Chopra told me.

Chopra is already getting results — even before the CFPB takes regulatory action. After a CFPB report revealed that banks earned $15 billion annually when customers overdrew their accounts, a number of banks, including Capital One, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America quickly moved to either eliminate or reduce their overdraft fees.

Similarly, in March, the CFPB announced it would review how the credit reporting industry handles the $88 billion in medical debt listed on the credit reports of individual Americans, including how and when errors are addressed, so that people do not feel pressured to pay money they might not even owe. In response, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, the three largest credit bureaus, quickly announced they would remove medical debt from individual reports as soon as it is paid off, and no longer list amounts in arrears under $500.

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businessbigwigs · 9 months

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Deceptive Practices Get Small Fines

Deceptive practices by Bank of America against hundreds of thousands of customers have resulted in over $250 million in penalties. On Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) issued a statement about their findings against the second-largest bank in the nation. According to them, the bank has a history of charging multiple overdraft fees, $35 a pop, for the same failed…

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#Bank of America #Banks #bill halldin #Consumer Financial Protection Bureau #overdraft fees #rohit chopra #Wells Fargo

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nationallawreview · 2 years

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CFPB Plans to Increase Regulation over “Buy Now, Pay Later” Lenders

The Consumer Financial Protect Bureau (CFPB) issued a release on September 15, 2022, announcing its intent to issue additional interpretive guidance or rules to ensure “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) lenders comply with the same or similar regulations already established for credit cards following a study on the industry. In its press release, the CFPB Director Rohit Chopra noted the rapidly growing…

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#BNPL #business #buy now pay later #CFPB #consumer finance #Consumer Financial Protection Bureau #credit cards #Finance #legal #loans #rohit chopra

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chillyarticles94 · 2 years

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Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul, Virat Kohli will have to perform well for India to lift T20 World Cup trophy: Anjum Chopra | CricketNews

NEW DELHI: Former Indian women’s team skipper Anjum Chopra is optimistic that Team India will do well in the upcoming ICC T20 World Cup in Australia, however, she added that its star players like Rohit Sharma, K. L. RahulVirat Kohli will have to be in their best form and also get adequate support from likes of all-rounder Hardik Pandya as the shortest format of the game is pretty unpredictable.…

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#Anjum Chopra #hardik pandya #Jasprit Bumrah #kl rahul #Rohit Sharma #suryakumar yadav #virat kohli

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gossipchachi-blog · 2 months

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#bigg boss 17 #kkk14 #bigg boss 17 celebrities #munawarfaruqui #mannara chopra #rohit shetty

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akultalkies · 9 months

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Sunny Deol, Ameesha Patel, Utkarsh Sharma, Rohit Choudhary, Manish Wadhwa, Mir Sarwar, Simrat Kaur, Gaurav Chopra, Pradum Jaykar, Anil George, Luv Sinha, Ramandeep Yadav, Shaan Kakkar, Aamir Naik, Amir Ali

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bihar-jharkhand-news-live · 2 years

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आकाश चोपड़ा ने की रोहित शर्मा की आलोचना, बोले- मैं उनकी इस अप्रोच से नाखुश हूं, क्योंकि...

आकाश चोपड़ा ने की रोहित शर्मा की आलोचना, बोले- मैं उनकी इस अप्रोच से नाखुश हूं, क्योंकि... https://www.biharjharkhandnewslive.com/

टीम इंडिया के पूर्व ओपनर आकाश चोपड़ा ने रोहित शर्मा की बल्लेबाजी की आलोचना की है। उन्होंने कहा है कि मैं रोहित की अल्टा अटैकिंग अप्रोच से नाखुश हूं, क्योंकि वे आसानी से बड़ा स्कोर बना सकते हैं। भारत के पूर्व क्रिकेटर आकाश चोपड़ा ने रोहित शर्मा के बल्ले से अल्ट्रा अटैकिंग अप्रोच रखने की आलोचना की है, क्योंकि इस अप्रोच ने अब तक उनके लिए अच्छा काम नहीं किया है। भारत का T20 वर्ल्ड कप 2021 का अभियान…

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#Aakash Chopra #Cricket News #Rohit Sharma #Team India

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mostlysignssomeportents · 11 months

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Conservatives are fringe outliers - and leftists could learn from them

The Republican Party, a coalition between Big Business farmers and turkeys who’ll vote for Christmas (Red Scare obsessed cowards, apocalyptic white nationalists, religious fanatics, etc) has fallen to its bizarre, violent, noisy radical wing, who are obsessed with policies that are completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans.

As Oliver Willis writes, the views of the radical right — which are also the policies of the GOP — are wildly out of step with the US political view:

https://www.oliverexplains.com/p/conservatives-arent-like-normal-americans

The press likes to frame American politics as “narrowly divided,” but the reality is that Republicans’ electoral victories are due to voter suppression and antimajoritarian institutions (the Senate and Electoral College, etc), not popularity. Democrats consistently outperform the GOP in national races. Dems won majorities in 1992/6, and beat the GOP in 2000, 2008, 2012, 2016 and 2020. The only presidential race the GOP won on popular votes since 1988 was 2004, when GW Bush eked out a plurality (not a majority).

But, as Willis says, Dems “act like it is 1984 and that they are outliers in a nation of Reagan voters,” echoing a stilted media narrative. The GOP’s platform just isn’t popular. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.

Every one of the GOP’s tentpole issues is wildly unpopular: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, etc. This is true all the way up to the GOP’s coalescing support for Trump as their 2024 candidate. Trump has lost every popular vote he’s ever stood for, and owes his term in the Oval Office to the antimajoritarian Electoral College system, gerrymandering, and massive voter suppression.

Willis correctly points out that Dem leaders are basically “normal” center-right politicians, not radicals. And, unlike their GOP counterparts, politicians like Clinton, Obama and Biden don’t hide their disdain for the radical wing of their party. Even never-Trumper Republicans are afraid of their base. Romney declared himself “severely conservative” and McCain “put scare quotes around ‘health of the mother’ provisions for abortion rights.”

The GOP fringe imposes incredible discipline on their leaders. Take all the nonsense about “woke capitalism”: on the one hand, it’s absurd to call union-busting, tax-dodging, worker-screwing companies “woke” (even if they sell Pride flags for a couple of weeks every year).

But on the other hand? The GOP leadership have actually declared war on the biggest corporations in America, to the point that the WSJ says that “Republicans and Big Business broke up”:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/republicans-corporations-donations-pacs-9b5b202b

But America is a two-party system and there are plenty of people who’ll pull the lever for any Republican. This means that when the GOP comes under the control of its swivel-eyed loon wing, the swivel-eyed loons wield power far beyond the number of people who agree with them.

There’s an important lesson there for Dems, whose establishment is volubly proud of its independence from its voters. The Biden administration is a weirdly perfect illustration of this “independence.” The Biden admin is a kind of referee, doling out policies and appointments to its competing wings, without any coherence or consistency.

That’s how you get incredible appointments like Lina Khan at the FTC and Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ Antitrust Division and Rohit Chopra at the Consumer Finance Protection Bureat — the progressive wing of the party bargained for these key appointments and then played their cards very well, getting incredible, hard-charging, hyper-competent fighters in those roles.

Likewise, Jared Bernstein, finally confirmed as Council of Economic Advisers chair after an interminable wrangle:

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-06-16-team-biden/

And Julie Su, acting labor secretary, who just delivered a six-year contract to west coast dockworkers with 8–10% raises in the first year, paid retroactively for the year they worked without a contract:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/06/14/statement-from-president-biden-on-labor-agreement-at-west-coast-ports/

But the Biden admin’s unwillingness to side with one wing of the party also produces catastrophic failures, like the martyrdom of Gigi Sohn, who was subjected to years of vicious personal attacks while awaiting confirmation to the FCC, undefended by the Biden admin, left to twist in the wind until she gave it up as a bad job:

https://doctorow.medium.com/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband-4ce1ffb16dc5

It’s how we get key roles filled by do-nothing seatwarmers like Pete Buttigieg, who has the same sweeping powers that Lina Khan is wielding so deftly at the FTC, but who lacks either the will or the skill to wield those same powers at the Department of Transport:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/11/dinah-wont-you-blow/#ecp

By refusing to stand for anything except a fair division of powers among different Democratic Party blocs, the Biden admin ends up undercutting itself. Take right to repair, a centerpiece of the administration’s agenda, subject of a historic executive order and FTC regulation:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

Right to Repair fights have been carried out at the state level for years, with the biggest victory coming in Massachusetts, where an automotive R2R ballot initiative won overwhelming support in 2020:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

But despite the massive support for automotive right to repair in the Bay State, Big Car has managed to delay the implementation of the new law for years, tying up the state in expensive, time-consuming litigation:

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

But eventually, even the most expensive delaying tactic fails. Car manufacturers were set to come under the state right to repair rule this month, but they got a last minute reprieve, from Biden’s own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, who sent urgent letters to every major car manufacturer, telling them to ignore the Massachusetts repair law:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7bbkv/biden-administration-tells-car-companies-to-ignore-right-to-repair-law-people-overwhelmingly-voted-for

The NHTSA repeats the car lobby’s own scare stories about “cybersecurity” that they blitzed to Massachusetts voters in the runup to the ballot initiative:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

The idea that cybersecurity is best maintained by letting powerful corporations gouge you on service and parts is belied by independent experts, like SecuRepairs, who do important work countering the FUD thrown off by the industry (and parroted by Biden’s NHTSA):

https://securepairs.org/

Independent security experts are clear that letting owners of high-tech devices decide who fixes them, what software they run, etc, makes us safer:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2022/01/letter-to-the-us-senate-judiciary-committee-on-app-stores.html

But here we are: the Biden admin is sabotaging the Biden admin, because the Biden admin isn’t an administration, it’s a system for ensuring proportional representation of different parts of the Democratic Party coalition.

This isn’t just bad for policy, it’s bad politics, too. It presumes that if some Democratic voters want pizza, and others want hamburgers, that you can please everyone by serving up pizzaburgers. No one wants a pizzaburger:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/23/narrative-warfare/#giridharadas

The failure to deliver a coherent, muscular vision for a climate-ready, anti-Gilded Age America has left the Democrats vulnerable. Because while the radical proposals of the GOP fringe may not enjoy much support, there are large majorities of Americans who have lost faith in the status quo and are totally uninterested in the Pizzaburger Party.

Nowhere is this better explained than in Naomi Klein’s superb long-form article on RFK Jr’s presidential bid in The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option

Don’t get me wrong, RFK Jr is a Very Bad Politician, for all the reasons that Klein lays out. He’s an anti-vaxxer, a conspiracist, and his support for ending American military aggression, defending human rights, and addressing the climate emergency is laughably thin.

But as Klein points out, RFK Jr is not peddling pizzaburgers. He is tapping into a legitimate rage:

a great many voters are hurting and rightfully angry: about powerful corporations controlling their democracy and profiting off disease and poverty. About endless wars draining national coffers and maiming their kids. About stagnating wages and soaring costs. This is the world — inflamed on every level — that the two-party duopoly has knowingly created.

RFK Jr is campaigning against “the corrupt merger between state and corporate power,” against drug monopolies setting our national health agenda, and polluters capturing environmental regulators.

As Klein says, despite RFK Jr’s willing to say the unsayable, and tap into the yearning among the majority of American voters for something different, he’s not running a campaign rooted in finally telling the American public “the truth.” Rather, “public discourse filled with unsayable and unspeakable subjects is fertile territory for all manner of hucksters positioning themselves as uniquely courageous truth tellers.”

We’ve been here before. Remember Trump campaigning against a “rigged system” and promising to “make America great again?” Remember Clinton’s rejoinder that “America was already great?” It’s hard to imagine a worse response to legitimate outrage — over corporate capture, declining wages and living conditions; and spiraling health, education and shelter costs.

Sure, it was obvious that Trump was a beneficiary of the rigged system, and that he would rig it further, but at least he admitted it was rigged, not “already great.”

The Democratic Party is not in thrall to labor unions, or racial equality activists, or people who care about gender justice or the climate emergency. Unlike the GOP, the Dem establishment has figured out how to keep a grip on power within their own party — at the expense of exercising power in America, even when they hold office.

But unlike culture war nonsense, shared prosperity, fairness, care, and sound environmental policies are very popular in America. Some people have been poisoned against politics altogether and sunk into nihilism, while others have been duped into thinking that America can’t afford to look after its people.

In this regard, winning the American electorate is a macrocosm for the way labor activists win union majorities in the workplaces they organize. In her memoir A Collective Bargain, Jane McAlevey describes how union organizers contend with everything that progressive politicians must overcome. A union drive takes place in the teeth of unfair laws, on a tilted playing field that allows bosses to gerrymander some workers’ votes and suppress others’ altogether. These bosses have far more resources than the workers, and they spend millions on disinformation campaigns, forcing workers to attend long propaganda sessions on pain of dismissal.

https://doctorow.medium.com/a-collective-bargain-a48925f944fe

But despite all this, labor organizers win union elections and strike votes, and they do so with stupendous majorities — 95% or higher. This is how the most important labor victories of our day were won: the 2019 LA teachers’ strike won everything. Not just higher wages, but consellors in schools, mandatory greenspace for every school in LA, an end to ICE shakedowns of immigrant parents at the school-gate, and immigration law help for students and their families. What’s more, the teachers used their unity, their connection to the community, and their numbers to get out the vote in the next election, winning the marginal seats that delivered 2020’s Democratic Congressional majority.

As I wrote in my review of MacAlevey’s book:

For McAlevey, saving America is just a scaled up version of the union organizer’s day-job. First, we fix the corrupt union, firing its sellout leaders and replacing them with fighters. Then, we organize supermajorities, person-to-person, in a methodical, organized fashion. Then we win votes, using those supermajorities to overpower the dirty tricks that rig the elections against us. Then we stay activated, because winning the vote is just the start of the fight.

It’s a far cry from the Democratic Party consultant’s “data-driven” microtargeting strategy based on eking out tiny, fragile majorities with Facebook ads. That’s a strategy that fails in the face of even a small and disorganized voter-suppression campaign — it it’s doomed in today’s all-out assault on fair elections.

What’s more, the consultants’ microtargeting strategy treats people as if the only thing they have to contribute is casting a ballot every couple years. A sleeping electorate will never win the fights that matter — the fight to save our planet, and to abolish billionaires.

If only the Democratic Party was as scared of its base as the Republicans are of their own.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

[Image ID: The title page of Richard Hofstadter's 'Paranoid Style in American Politics' from the November, 1964 issue of Harper's Magazine. A John Birch Society pin reading 'This is REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY: let's keep it that way' sits atop the page, obscuring the introductory paragraph.]

#pluralistic #tgop #politics #centrism #centrism kills #qgop #democrats in disarray #trumpism #conservatives #robert f kennedy #Massachusetts #climate emergency #naomi klein #oliver willis #right to repair #pizzaburgers

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rudrjobdesk · 2 years

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ENG vs IND : रोहित शर्मा के साथ कौन करेगा ओपनिंग, जानिए आकाश चोपड़ा ने क्या कहा

Image Source : AAKASH CHOPRA TWITTER aakash Chopra Highlights इंग्लैंड के खिलाफ टी20 सीरीज में ईशान किशन और रुतुराज गायकवाड़ में से एक को मिलेगा मौका रोहित शर्मा की वापसी के कारण रुतुराज गायकवाड़ और ईशान किशन में से एक को जाना होगा बाहर पूर्व सलामी बल्लेबाज आकाश चोपड़ा ने लगाया ईशान किशन पर दांव, बोले. गायकवाड़ को मौका मिलना मुश्किल ENG vs IND Playing XI : भारत और इंग्लैंड के बीच तीन टी20…

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tsupertsundere · 6 months

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HELLOO. i see you reblog a lot of hindi cinema!! i would love to watch more of it, what are your top 10 favorites?

🤩😍🤩😍🤩😍🤩😍🤩😍🤩😍🤩😍🤩😍🤩😍

this might be my favorite thing I've received in my inbox.

wh I well I wh how could I possibly refuse hee hee hee hee

limiting this to hindi cinema helps!! or so I thought, before I went through several rounds of intense interrogation and several scribbled pages of notes and realized this just outs me as a baby shah rukh khan stan, which I am. I resisted every impulse to try to make the list broad and varied and kept only repeating 'what are your FAVORITES, what are your FAVORITES' and even then narrowing everything down was really painful... I feel like I've watched very many but then not very many at all.

There are another half-dozen more I had to cut with great anguish (Paheli, Ram-Jaane, the Don films) OMG EDITED TO FINISH MY FRIGGIN SENTENCE: BUT I PRESENT TO YOU AND TO ALL: VI TSUPERTSUNDERE'S TOP TEN:

Mohabbatein ("Love Stories", dir Aditya Chopra, 2000)

A young men's college ruled by a headmaster who disdains love--can one music teacher help three love stories grow, and let love tower above all? ✫ My first hindi film. Still can't think of a better introduction. Truly has it all. My favorite ghost story also!! ✧ Standout number: the three ingenues have an incredible dance sequence - it's the emotional climax of the film for me.

Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai ("Say You Love Me", dir Rakesh Roshan, 2000)

When Rohit, an aspiring musician, meets Saxena, a rich bussinessman's daughter, his dreams of stardom glimmer right within his reach. Life has other plans. ✩ Hrithik Roshan's debut - and what a debut! My first introduction to a beloved facet of hindi cinema - double roles!! ✫ Standout number: The number that takes place in Cafe Indiana, Ek Pal Ka Jeena, accurately conveys how it felt like to go to a Rainforest Cafe when I was very young. Truly thrilling!

Muhjse Dosti Karoge! ("Will You Be My Friend!", dir Kunal Kohli, 2002)

Childhood friends Raj, Tina, and Pooja are caught in a classic love triangle - Pooja loves Raj, but he only has eyes for Tina. When he moves away, Pooja poses as Tina as they email back and forth and their friendship blossoms long-distance. A decision made in childhood brings problems to Pooja's doorstep - as they all graduate high school and become adults, Raj returns home... ✧ Rani Mukherjee and Kareena Kapoor are the real MVPs here - shining stars in every movie they're in. ✩ Standout Sequence: The medley, seen above, brought me to my fucking feet when we first watched it. The characters diagetically are singing these popular songs for each other at a wedding celebrations - each song's lyrics weave in and apply on multiple levels, depending on who knows what and what they mean, up to and including Hrithik Roshan reprising Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai! Genuinely one of my favorite sequences I've seen period on film, if I could ever put together anything half as layered I'd be patting myself on the back forever.

Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham... ("Through Smiles and Through Tears", dir Karan Johar, 2001)

The wealthy Raichand family splits in half when elder son Rahul falls in love with a lower-caste girl and marries her - younger son Rohit watches his beloved brother disappear to England and the light in his home wither away. When he becomes an adult, he's determined to find his brother and unite them all again. ✫ These three fuckers as a dad and two sons just make a fascinating family together, let alone the kind of heavy hitting talent you get from Jaya Bachchan (indeed married to Amitji) and of course Kajol my beloved Kajol most of all. 'It's All About Loving Your Parents' is a much much much... much harder sell than I'm prepared to give - at the very least, it's all the drama I can watch in. ✫ Standout Sequence: Bole Chudiyan above is so much fun, of course, but Say Shava Shava is also a really great 'here's how fun things are when things are GOOD' establishing song. When Amitji says 'EVERYBODY' he is not asking!!

Those four films are a truncated highlight reel of the 8 or so films I like watching around the holidays!! They work really well together and I associate them with each other a lot.

Darr ("Fear", dir Yash Chopra, 1993)

Kiran Awasthi has a freshly minted college degree, a bus ticket home, a beloved boyfriend in the Navy... and a stalker. A young woman is slowly driven mad by a ruthless specter who will stop at nothing to be by her side. As she and her boyfriend escalate... so does he. ✧ Truly breathtaking. A breakout role for SRK, another hit cementing Juhi Chawla my fucking beloved Juhi Chawla as the OG expression queen. My favorite horror film. Rahul Mehra deserves to be in Dead By Daylight so he can fight Leon in a twink off. Simply the bloodiest there is. My Halloween costume next year. ✩ Standout sequence: Any time Juhi Chawla is on screen and I'm not kidding.

Chaahat ("Desire", dir Mahesh Bhatt, 1996)

When the father of a father-and-son comedy duo gets sick, his son, Roop, would do anything to secure the money he needs to restore his father's health. So when he catches the eye of a wealthy club owner's sister, he can't say no, no matter how much her desire consumes... ✫ Diametric opposite of Darr, now Shah Rukh Khan is the target!! As a carnivore girl lover I can't not adore it. ✧ Standout sequence: Chaahat Na Hoti, pictured above. This was the frame that made me sit up and go 'oh I have to... I gotta watch this movie right now. Right now.' And I was so right.

Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani ("Yet, I Have the Heart of an Indian", dir Aziz Mirza, 2000)

Ajay Bakshi is a hotheaded, loudmouthed reporter - a rival media network hires his counterpart and superior, Ria Bannerjee, to try to take him down. ✫ A gag-a-minute comedy with more gumflaps than brains, just like our lead. Juhi is heaven in this. I can only describe this as 'I think this is what the guy from American Psycho THOUGHT was going on.' Was a flop - came out right after Kaho Na... Pyaar Hai and couldn't compete - but it hits the zany button like nothing else. ✧ Standout sequence: The inventiveness of the sets in pretty much every song is my favorite. CONTENT WARNING: There is an awful anti-Chinese gag sequence at about the middle of the film. The two leads pose as Chinese reporters to get into somewhere, and it's just wall to wall racial caricatures. I hit that ff button through it myself, a truly unpleasant marring in an otherwise goofy-ass romp.

Chak de! India ("Let's go! India", dir Shimit Amin, 2007)

Can a disgraced former field hockey star turn 16 proud, contentious players from all over the country into one unified team as their coach? Can each young woman play her all on the field - for herself and for her team? ✩ A sports anime fit into one film, I wish it were several seasons long. Each girl is spectacular and is a joy to watch!! ✫ Standout Sequence: The character work is where this one shines. Bindiya Naik is my personal favorite (and not just because the instant I saw her performance I went 'omg, she's playing my OC almost exactly. I'd cast her in a heartbeat!)

Fan (dir Maneesh Sharma, 2016)

Aryan Khanna is the King of Bollywood. Gaurav Chandna is almost him, but not quite - knows everything about him by heart, uses him as the light in his life, and Gaurav even looks just enough like him to boot. All Gaurav wants is five minutes of his time. Just five minutes... ✩ Eminem's 'Stan' as a feature length thriller that literally no one else could make. I can only quote this letterboxd review, because it's right: "even if there was another celebrity who could pull off tearing himself open to splash his own imposter syndrome onscreen, they wouldn't dare try...happy birthday to the only actor good enough to make his fans sympathize with his own stalker". I was SO upset to learn that this flopped. ✫ Standout Sequences: the practical and special effects used to differentiate SRK's two roles bar none some of the best I've experienced - uncanny valley is real here, and half of the horror is the ALMOST. but not quite.

✫✧✩✫✧✩✫✫✧✩✫✧✩✫

While I followed a loose, non-ranking order for the preceding nine entries, I had to save the only possible film for number one:

Om Shanti Om (dir Farah Khan, 2007)

"30 years ago," irrepressible junior artist Om Prakash Makhija has only one dream grander than making it big in the film industry - to get a chance to act alongside his greatest inspiration, superstar Shanti. His wish comes true, but, well... some dreams, one lifetime is not enough... ✫ THE BEST MOVIE THAT EXISTS. THE BEST MOVIE THAT DOESN'T EXISTS. Don't believe me? Let these ladies convince you - when I learned that somehow The Coolest And Most Sparkling theater troupe on the face of the planet staged a production of this I literally got so lightheaded I couldn't see for a second. This movie came out when I was thirteen - if I had seen it then I think it would have made a huge difference. As it was, I saw it at the second most perfect time: when I was/am also a 30 year old irrepressible junior goofball, just like Om. Farah Khan is one of my favorite directors for certain. A film about the hindi film industry, I place it last also because the more faces you recognize, songs you can pick out, movie references you can catch, the better - and it's incredible even still. ✧ Standout sequence: I can't say the whole movie (... minus Deewangi Deewangi it's the Yakuza 4 of this movie) can I??? Let me just say - long story short, Farah Khan got the idea for this film when Andrew Lloyd Weber had her to choreography for his stage show, Bollywood Dreams. She thought the plot, a poor junior artist becoming a big Bollywood star, was eye-rollingly unrealistic. She could do better, she thought... and that idea eventually became Om Shanti Om. The climax is her proving she could do Phantom of the Opera better than him, too!!

✫✧✩✫✧✩✫✫✧✩✫✧✩✫

And, if you'll indulge me... in thanks for giving me a really fun thing to do today, I have one more film: one that I think you would like, based off of the vibes of the journal entries I got to read!

Veer-Zaara (dir Yash Chopra, 2004)

An Indian pilot and the daughter of a Pakistani politician fall in love, but are wrenched apart when the pilot is imprisoned on false charges. He languishes 22 years in prison, never saying a word, until a young Pakistani lawyer is assigned his case and she is determined to see him freed... ✧ Certified Mom Movie and is an absolute banger. When I thought 'who would be a character who I could see Estelle looking forward to meeting for lunch', Rani Mukherjee's lawyer was right at the top of the list. ✫ Standout Sequence: My personal favorite, Main Yahaan Hoon, is the song linked above. It drives me Insane absolutely Insane - this depicts 'they're not in the room but they're the only thing on your mind' in a way seldom more effective!

✫✧✩✫✧✩✫✫✧✩✫✧✩✫

omg NOW I'm done for eel. This was a terrific exercise in tilling the soil in my brain - I'm really inspired by the all visual direction, the colors and depths, the sensibilities in general exemplified by the movies here, and hope to one day reflect it in my own work! I have to make the Yash Raj reshade shaders I want to see in the world.

Please don't hesitate to drop me a line about anything you find interesting here, other movies you've seen, or anything else! Genuinely truly always love getting to see your work. Thank you for reading!

#thank you again again again again SO so much so so much. I literally let myself have so much fun with this. I had a ball!!#oh my GOD it was so hard to pick good representative screenshots for each film. except oso chaaha and k3g - those shots have been in my min #since I first saw them #the rest are shots I'm just finding really evocative... and really inspiring!! I hope to help you see why they're my favorites.#paper star jar #postbox

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kenyatta · 1 year

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One of the great tropes in war movies is the lag time between the launch of a slow-moving torpedo and its explosion. In the movie Pearl Harbor, seamen on scaffolding attached to their ship watch with a confused look as a torpedo slowly moves into the side of their boat. It’s an awful moment, where they have time to realize they are going to die, but cannot do anything about it. Then comes the explosion.

[...]

Changes in bureaucratic procedure, though obviously not dramatic, have a similar lag time. The policy fight happens, then there is the lag time as the bureaucracies move around seating charts and guidelines, and finally, there’s an impact. The process can take a long time, especially when it comes to filing cases, because of the need to investigate, draft complaints, and move the whole process through the court system. It can take even longer if it’s a new or unused area of law, which requires policy formulation and information-gathering before the process of bringing cases can start. And of course this must all be preceded by the White House and Congress setting up the agencies in the first place with nominations.

Right now, we’re in that lag time, the period after the launch of a torpedo, but before it has struck. Let’s start with the policy shift, aka the launch. That started when the White House appointed enforcers with a dedicated mandate. And that took awhile.

The Department of Justice Antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter came into office in November of 2021, which was over a year after Biden was elected. His counterpart at the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, was seated in June of 2021, four months earlier. Unlike the DOJ, the FTC is a commission and requires a majority vote to do anything. For about 100 days, Khan had a working majority, but then one of the commissioners Rohit Chopra left to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For seven months, she did not have a full majority, which gave her Republican colleagues a veto. Last month, Alvaro Bedoya joined the commission, giving Khan a majority.

Since being seated, Kanter and Khan, along with allies like Tim Wu at the White House, have launched an array of initiatives that will bear fruit. These are structural changes to how we police markets, the tectonic plates of economic ordering. As such, they are not what most political people notice when the initiatives are launched. But they will be noticed when the explosions start.

Torpedoes In the Water - BIG by Matt Stoller

#maybe consider this a follow up to the link on covid vaccine pricing shared yesterday

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beardedmrbean · 7 months

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Oct. 11 (UPI) -- The Biden administration on Wednesday announced new measures in its ongoing effort to eliminate so-called "junk fees."

President Joe Biden was expected to join FTC Chair Lina Khan and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra at 11:45 a.m. EDT at the White House Wednesday to announce the latest initiative aimed at prohibiting surprise fees that continue to burden consumers.

The Federal Trade Commission proposed new rules Wednesday that would ban hidden fees on goods and services that continue to nickel and dime American consumers with unexpected costs.

If enacted, the new rules would prohibit junk fees and deceptive charges for airline tickets, hotel and resort bookings, live events, apartment rentals, and utility bill payments -- potentially saving taxpayers tens of billions of dollars each year.

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also issued fresh guidance Wednesday to the nation's big banks, saying they were still subject to the 2010 Consumer Financial Protection Act, which prohibits large financial institutions and credit unions from charging junk fees for basic customer service.

"While small relationship banks pride themselves on customer service, many large banks erect obstacle courses and impose junk fees to answer basic questions," Chopra said in the statement from the agency. "While the biggest banks have abandoned the relationship banking model, federal law still requires them to answer certain customer inquiries completely, accurately, and in a timely manner."

Since taking office in 2021, Biden has called for increased limits on bank fees for bounced checks and account overdrafts, which would save consumers more than $5 billion a year.

Under the FTC rule changes, businesses would have to disclose all mandatory fees up front, which would make it easier for consumers to comparison shop for the lowest price, the agency said.

Airlines would also be required to disclose all fees up front, and eliminate family seating fees, while hidden fees for concert and sports tickets would also be prohibited, the White House said previously.

The proposed rules seek to end bait-and-switch practices across the wider economy and prevent businesses from running up the tab with hidden fees, ensuring customers know exactly how much they are paying and what they are getting from the deal.

The changes would have the effect of sparking more competition in the market, leading to lower prices for consumers, the administration said.

The time savings alone equates to about $10 billion, or 50 million hours, that consumers currently spend each year searching for cheap tickets and hotel stays, according to government estimates.

The Biden administration requested public comments on bogus fees a year ago, with more than 12,000 consumers attesting to the ongoing impact of hidden charges.

"All too often, Americans are plagued with unexpected and unnecessary fees they can't escape," FTC Chair Khan wrote in a press release announcing the next phase of public commentary on the issue. "These junk fees now cost Americans tens of billions of dollars per year -- money that corporations are extracting from working families just because they can."

Khan said the hidden fees take advantage of consumer-protection loopholes while serving as a drag on the American economy.

During the first public comment phase, a majority of consumers said merchants often don't reveal the total cost of a product until the transaction is completed, and the receipt printed with the fees included.

Many also said that sellers often misrepresent the purpose of certain fees, leaving consumers wondering what they are paying for or if they are getting anything at all for the fee charged, the agency said.

"By hiding the total price, these junk fees make it harder for consumers to shop for the best product or service and punish businesses who are honest upfront," Khan wrote. "The FTC's proposed rule to ban junk fees will save people money and time, and make our markets more fair and competitive."

Should the provisions become law, the FTC vowed to enforce the rules by seeking federal damages against companies that do not comply and give those awards back to consumers.

The FTC voted 3-0 to approve the public notice of the proposed rules, which will now go into the Federal Register for 60 days for public comment.

#nunyas news #this is gonna hit food service too #hopefully

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