Today's Random Wilde

Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Americans deserve a comprehensive FBI background investigation — but what they got was a sham. Now Senate Republicans are rushing towards a vote. Keep up the pressure to #StopKavanaugh. https://t.co/EEdWnHAWzS

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) October 4, 2018

Barbara Lee Gives Me Hope...

Exciting news from this year’s #NationalVoterRegistrationDay! People across the country are fired up and ready to vote this November. https://t.co/V6f6xEJqLa

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) October 2, 2018

Today's Random Wilde

Men become old, they never become good.

Barabara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

In the Trump economy, workers are getting squeezed for every penny they have. Families don’t have enough to cover the basics – groceries, prescriptions, rent. This administration is consolidating profits with the wealthy and corporations – they’re not working #ForThePeople. https://t.co/a8Pq5mdtW2

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) October 1, 2018

Sunday Walk

I always say the same thing, a Sunday visit to our favorite diner on Piedmont Avenue then a stroll to one of our favorite places, this time one of our hikes through the back side of Mountain View cemetery, then scooped up some new kitten toys for Penny on the way back home. Tech neutrality gives way to cyberlibertarianism in my digital anti-democratization course, Critical Theory is all about Freud, psychoanalysis, and fetishism (some of his grossest most cisheteronormative stuff), then in Tuesday's grad seminar we turn from greenwashing design thinking to faux-democratizing design thinking via code. We're covering some of the same ground my digi class does so I'm hoping less prep may be necessary. Midterm grad reviews for my thesis students and grading papers is about to be larded on top of what has seemed a pretty demanding teaching term already. October is going to be a slog, possibly a good distraction from the crazymaking high stakes of the November elections looming ever closer from week to week...

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

4 out of 5 Americans have less than one year’s income saved in retirement accounts.

Congress needs to do more to ensure all Americans can retire with security and dignity. #ForThePeople.https://t.co/V2LZZKXNRv

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) September 30, 2018

Emoluments Santa Claus?

via electoral-vote.com:

One wonders if Donald Trump is enjoying a few days where the microscope is trained on someone other than him. Certainly, it's allowed a few somewhat embarrassing stories to largely fly under the radar. One of these is a ruling that U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan issued on Friday, which says that a lawsuit that 200 Democratic senators and representatives filed against Trump, charging him with violating the Constitution's emoluments clause, can move forward. This day was bound to arrive sooner or later, once Trump decided not to divest himself of his business holdings. Given how vague the emoluments clause is... it is not clear that Trump has violated the Constitution. But it is also not clear that he hasn't. [He clearly has, ask Jimmy Carter --d] That makes it a matter for the courts; the only issue was finding someone who has standing to sue. Now, we've got that someone (and there's also a case filed by the Attorneys General of Maryland and D.C. that is likely to be allowed to proceed). So, we are going to find out exactly what the limits of the emoluments clause are (and, as a byproduct, Donald Trump's tax returns are likely to become a matter of public record). [bolded passages bolded by me --d]

Kavanoff

Grounds for impeachment, the fix is in, Republicans, right until the jig is up.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), the leading Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told ABC News that if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, “the House will have to investigate” allegations of sexual assault and perjury if the Senate doesn’t “properly” do so through this week’s limited FBI probe. Said Nadler: “We can’t have a justice on the court who has been credibly accused of sexual assault, who’s been accused of other things, including perjury.”

Today's Random Wilde

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

While Senate Republicans were advancing a #SCOTUS nominee accused of sexual assault, their @HouseGOP colleagues passed a new #TaxScam to benefit billionaires and wealthy corporations at the expense of working families.

One thing is clear: they are not working #ForThePeople. pic.twitter.com/Yz2kF1ZEHz

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) September 29, 2018

Roosevelt Institute On Reviving Antitrust

Roosevelt Institute and Great Democracy Initiative Release Legislative Blueprint for Combating the Second Gilded Age (follow the link to explore the various papers described here, especially that last piece about regulating tech platform monopolies):

As concentrated corporate power threatens jobs and wages and worsens inequality, the Roosevelt Institute and the Great Democracy Initiative (GDI) today released two new papers outlining a progressive framework to reform America’s failing antitrust system. Addressing key elements of the growing monopoly problem, the first report argues for taking antitrust policymaking out of the courts and empowering antitrust enforcers, while the second offers an alternative to the outdated consumer welfare standard, along with policy solutions to increase competition and protect workers and consumers. Together, the papers provide a progressive blueprint for a robust 21st century antitrust regime that can begin to address the United States’ market power crisis.

In Taking Antitrust Away From the Courts: A Structural Approach to Reversing the Second Age of Monopoly Power, Ganesh Sitaraman, Director of Policy and Co-Founder of the Great Democracy Initiative, explains the problems with court-established antitrust policy and outlines a set of institutional reforms to the Federal Trade Commission in order to reinvigorate antitrust policymaking. In shifting the policymaking role from judges, who have eroded existing regulations, to agency experts, Sitaraman recommends a series of bold policy reforms, including a newly empowered anti-monopoly agency, new standards and practices for merger evaluation, and expanded third party enforcement.

“Antitrust laws are only as good as their implementation and enforcement,” said Ganesh Sitaraman, Director of Policy and Co-Founder of the Great Democracy Initiative, and a Professor of Law at Vanderbilt Law School. “As our growing market power problem demonstrates, leaving antitrust policymaking to the courts does not work. We need a strong antitrust agency with the authority to take action that promotes competition and addresses market concentration.”

A second paper, The Effective Competition Standard: A New Standard for Antitrust, tackles the dangerous implications of the ambiguous and inadequate consumer welfare standard. Authored by Roosevelt Institute economist Marshall Steinbaum and Maurice E. Stucke, a Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, the report argues in favor of a new effective competition standard. If adopted, this framework would protect competition in the economy, including in the labor market and throughout supply chains, by meeting several essential goals:

1) to protect individuals, purchasers, consumers, and producers;

2) to preserve opportunities for competitors;

3) to promote individual autonomy and well-being; and

4) to disperse and de-concentrate private power.

“The current antitrust standard is not working. Market power and monopsony have been growing in our economy for decades and are a major factor driving wage stagnation and decreasing worker protections,” said Marshall Steinbaum, Fellow and Research Director at the Roosevelt Institute. “Antitrust enforcers need tools to hold corporate power accountable and to better prioritize the interests of consumers and workers.”

The Roosevelt Institute has been a leading voice on antitrust policy and the need for bold policies to tackle market power. Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz recently called for a new standard for antitrust during his keynote address at the ongoing FTC competition hearings. In 2018, the Roosevelt Institute released Powerless: How Lax Antitrust and Concentrated Market Power Rig the Economy Against American Workers, Consumers, and Communities, which outlines the 40-year assault on antitrust and competition policy. In 2018, Steinbaum also authored an issue brief titled A Missing Link: The Role of Antitrust Law in Rectifying Employer Power in Our High-Profit, Low-Wage Economy, which chronicled the ways the market power crisis is limiting worker power, depressing wages, and harming the economy. The Great Democracy Initiative has also championed progressive solutions to today’s skewed economy. In 2018, GDI released Regulating Tech Platforms: A Blueprint for Reform, which identified ways to break up and regulate technology platforms.

Working Not Working

Spent yesterday putting together teaching requests for next academic year (a nicely bolstering conceit, the thought of me teaching theory to students from around the world in an art school over a century old in San Francisco overlooking the Bay, next year, in a school, a City, a country, a world still managing to exist with all of us still on it...) and prepping my Freud lecture for next Monday (ditto). Today, I meant to read work from my thesis students today and start prepping discussion of texts assigned in cyberlibertarian ideology for my digital anti-democratization course... but I find myself drifting, disgusted, demoralized, dreading what comes next. The Kavanaugh hearing is unbearable, the brazenness of the power-grab, the baldness of the hypocrisy, the spectacle they are making of their eagerness for revenge, their salivation at the prospect of dismantling rights and protections is truly terrifying (and no, I am not "surprised," this isn't an expression of surprise, this is, as I said, an expression of disgust at the disgusting, one in a long line like everybody else's long line, this is why I don't really blog anymore...). Anyway, feeling grossed out and scared for the millionth time these last few years. When I was younger, these feelings would have activated me, made me sharp and loud and ferocious, but now I just feel exhausted and anxious and so sad. I truly fear the upcoming mid-terms are the last comparatively easy chance we have of turning the tide or beginning to turn the tide within our living generation in the ongoing cold civil war of deadly extractive white supremacist cisheteronormative corporate-militarism against the rising sustainable equitable democratic multiculture to a hot war of the utterly disenfranchised majority against fascists and their collaborators. The last chance before that was the election of the flawed, dreary, historically encumbered but conspicuously preferable HRC over the obviously bigoted, incompetent, authoritarian criminal Trump and we failed that one, so I'm not nearly as confident as some seem to be that we will pass the test of the mid-terms any better than the last one (especially given that unprecedented levels of disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, and foreign interference will mean privileged white voters, a majority of whom obviously cannot be trusted to vote for decency and sense, will have a disproportionate say in the outcome as usual).

Today's Random Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Let’s be clear: Republicans are rushing this nomination through in an effort to derail any serious investigation of these allegations.

Advancing the nomination of an accused predator is irresponsible, insulting and dangerous. #DelayTheVote https://t.co/80JapuOCEz

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) September 28, 2018

Today's Random Wilde

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Dr. Blasey Ford has shown tremendous courage by coming forward and speaking out. If you’re a survivor, I know today will be extremely hard. Please call 800-656-HOPE if you need support. https://t.co/rwxKLlq7lq

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) September 27, 2018

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

“Real, sustainable peace does not come about by chance. It is hard and sometimes expensive work to support countries on their path from conflict to stability, but it is a lot cheaper than war in every sense.”
Thank you @AntonioGuterres for this must read↓https://t.co/zX0Ejb86sx

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) September 25, 2018

Today's Random Wilde

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one's hearers.

Zing Ding Ding

when a service "predicts" what "you" want, it is actually reshaping you into what makes it profitable

— Rob Horning (@robhorning) September 26, 2018

Bonus: Barbara Lee Speaks For Me On Voter Registration Day

It’s National #VoterRegistrationDay! Here are some important dates you need to know from our Secretary of State, @AlexPadilla4CA. pic.twitter.com/RtN7Axa2Ye

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) September 25, 2018

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

How is the Trump Administration paying to imprison thousands of children? By stealing from cancer research, public health services, and HIV/AIDS programs.

This government would rather commit child abuse than work #ForThePeople. Despicable.https://t.co/y1eI8AzKy5

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) September 24, 2018

Long Teaching Day

Off to the City soon, to teach my two undergraduate lectures back to back for six hours. Marxism and racist and/or market fundamentalist fantasies of "tech neutrality" will be the topics. Already tired, though my opinions on these subjects are passionate. Politics is a flabbergasting shitshow, I'm still not recovered from Dad's death and the familial chaos it has engendered, and in general I am still not in the world's best shape, forever battling at the edge of sleep deprivation, pervasive anxiety, and irritable depression. Clawing my way to modest pleasures, walks with Eric, watching Dr. Who and detective shows and cooking competitions, reading and talking theory with engaged students... even when the world is bleak and day to day challenges are painfully intense, life is well worth living and love a miracle to cherish.

Sunday Walk

Another long beautiful walk with Eric this Sunday, beginning with brunch at our favorite diner, the Piedmont Street Cafe and Bakery, then a long stroll through St. Mary's cemetery -- the rather shaggier neighbor to the posh Mountainview Cemetery next door -- where in over a mile's exploration we encountered just a single car and one other couple the whole time, walking their beagle. Still amazed by the sublime outdoor spaces bathing in sunlight and bristling with blooms that are ignored by throngs within walking distance here in my wonderful beloved City of Oakland. Can't say exactly why but so far I am not too nervous about upcoming teaching -- tomorrow I'm introducing my critical theory survey course to Marx(isms) and then my digital anti-democratization class is going to talk about "net neutrality," so-called, and read some Zeynep Tufekci and Frank Pasquale to go with last week's Safiya Noble. I get the feeling that the digi-demos wants less lecture and more hands-on workshopping, so I'm crafting in-class exercises for them -- these don't always cover quite as much ground, but the energy they generate often seems to help students retain more of what we do manage to cover. In my grad design thinking critique seminar we're weaving environmental justice and eco-socialist critiques of "bright" greens and "natural capitalists" (so-called) and this will lead us into a discussion of geo-engineering discourse. All topics I've gone on about a million times before, in class after class (not to mention a million old blog posts here).

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

It’s an unfair reality that African Americans in America are not safe from police brutality. Every day in this country, they fear for their safety, must fight against prejudice, and suffer from racial profiling. When will it end?https://t.co/5EhROySN3Y

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) September 23, 2018

Today's Random Wilde

Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Social Security, food stamps, housing subsidies and other lifelines kept 44 MILLION Americans out of poverty last year.

Anti-poverty programs work. You know what doesn’t? Trickle-down economics that allow billionaires to hoard wealth and pay their workers poverty wages. https://t.co/w9trHdkQOn

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) September 21, 2018

Strategies to Rebuild Worker Power for the Global Economy

In Seven Strategies to Rebuild Worker Power for the 21st Century Global Economy, Roosevelt [Institute] Fellow Todd N. Tucker uses historical lessons to lay out a framework for how to rebuild worker power and fight inequality, starting with a global labor agreement—what Tucker calls the Worker Power Agreement—modeled on the Paris Climate Accords. The report argues for governments to take on explicit targets to increase union density, as well as complementary policies that our trading partners make use of, including:

    Privileging firms that cooperate well with unions;
    Making labor law enforcement more favorable toward labor;
    Extending union contracts to non-union workers;
    Structurally incorporating unions into the policymaking process;
    Allowing unions to manage public benefits; and
    Making union membership the default status for workers.

Recent Supreme Court decisions like Janus v. AFSCME reveal that the state (of which courts are a part) can and does put its thumb on the scale against labor. Thus, policy could instead actively tilt the other way. This paper proposes a fundamental re-visioning of the role of government in rebuilding worker power, which has a stronger foothold when it benefits from more than just one base of support. Instead of defeatist resignation, modest legal changes, or waiting for unions to save themselves, Tucker recommends ambitious and linked strategies at the international and domestic level to strengthen labor institutions across the globe.

Today's Random Wilde

No man is rich enough to buy back his past.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

Donald Trump lied. The #GOPTaxScam was never going to help American families, it was written to benefit corporations and billionaires.

Americans deserve a government that works #ForThePeople, not for the wealthiest 1%.https://t.co/sJWM4AeFVv

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) September 20, 2018

Today's Random Wilde

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

Barbara Lee Speaks For Me Daily

One year later, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are still recovering from Hurricane Maria. They deserved a government that would help them after disaster struck — and the Trump Administration failed them. https://t.co/UrUhUGNqUg

— Barbara Lee (@BLeeForCongress) September 20, 2018