Yup. I said what I said.
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In July 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to promote competition in the economy. Since the 1980s, he said, when right-wing legal theorist Robert Bork masterminded a pro-corporate legal revolution against antitrust laws, the government had stopped enforcing laws to prevent giant corporations from concentrating their power. The result had been less growth, weakened investment, fewer small businesses, less bargaining power for workers, and higher prices for consumers.
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“[T]he experiment failed,” he said.
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Biden vowed to change the direction of the government’s role in the economy, bringing back competition for small businesses, workers, and consumers. Very deliberately, he reclaimed the country’s long tradition of opposing economic consolidation. Calling out both presidents Roosevelt—Republican Theodore, who oversaw part of the Progressive Era, and Democrat Franklin, who oversaw the New Deal—Biden celebrated their attempt to rein in the power of big business, first by focusing on the abuses of those businesses and then by championing competition.
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The administration put together a whole-of-government approach to restore competition based on the 72 separate actions outlined in Biden’s executive order. A terrific piece today by David Dayen in The American Prospect suggests that the effort has worked. Overall, Dayen concludes, the executive order of July 9, 2021, was “one of the most sweeping changes to domestic policy since FDR.”
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While administrations since Reagan have judged whether consolidation is harmful solely by its effect on consumer prices, the Biden approach also factors in the welfare of workers, including their ability to negotiate higher wages. It has also taken on the sharing of medical patents that have raised costs of drugs and equipment like hearing aids by preventing others from entering the market. It has taken on large businesses’ strangling of start-up competitors simply by buying them out before they take off. And, crucially, it has claimed the ability to review previous mergers that it now deems in violation of antitrust laws, citing the 1911 breakup of Standard Oil.
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Dayen notes that one of the causes for a sharp drop in mergers and acquisitions in the second half of 2022 is that government agencies are willing to enforce antitrust laws. “Just about everything on competition has been hard-fought,” he writes, “[b]ut there’s plenty of evidence of real movement.”
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Not only government agencies, but also the Democratic Congress—along with some Republicans—passed a number of laws that have shifted the economic policy of the nation. Biden is fond of saying that he doesn’t believe in trickle-down economics and that he intends to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. New numbers suggest the policies of the past two years are doing just that.
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The December jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that job growth continues strong. The country added 223,000 jobs in December, and the unemployment rate went down slightly to 3.5 percent. The last two years of job growth are the strongest on record, and the country has recovered all the jobs lost during the pandemic. According to the White House, 10.7 million jobs were created and a record 10.5 million small businesses’ applications were filed in the past two years.
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On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that median weekly earnings rose 7.4% last year, slightly faster than inflation. For Black Americans employed full time, the median rise was 11.3% over 2021. A median Hispanic or Latino worker’s income saw a 4.8% raise, to $837 a week. Young workers, between 16 and 24, saw their weekly income rise more than 10%. Also seeing close to a 10% weekly rise were those in the bottom tenth of wage earners, those making about $570 a week. The day after the Wall Street Journal’s roundup, Walmart, which employs 1.7 million people in the U.S., announced it would raise its minimum wage to $14 an hour, up from $12.
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Democrats promised that the CHIPS and Science Act would bring “good paying” jobs to those without college degrees by investing in high-tech manufacturing. A study by the Brookings Institution out yesterday notes that the act has already attracted multibillion-dollar private investments in New York, Indiana, and Ohio and that two thirds of the jobs they will produce are accessible to those without college degrees. Those jobs do, in fact, pay better than most of those available for those without college degrees, although Brookings urged better investment in training programs to make workers ready for those jobs.
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The Inflation Reduction Act gave Medicare the power to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies and capped the cost of insulin for those on Medicare at $35 a month (Republicans blocked an attempt to make that cap available for those not on Medicare). It made hearing aids available over the counter, making them dramatically cheaper, and it also expanded subsidies for the Affordable Care Act. Today the Department of Health and Human Services announced that a record number of Americans enrolled in the ACA in the last open enrollment period: 16.3 million people.
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Greg Sargent of the Washington Post notes that much of the investment from these laws is going to Republican-dominated states even though their Republican lawmakers opposed the laws and voted against them. The clean energy investments of the Inflation Reduction Act are going largely to those states, bringing with them additional private investment. A solar panel factory is expanding into Greene’s own district despite her vocal opposition both to alternative energy and to the Inflation Reduction Act.
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For 40 years the Republican Party offered a vision of America as a land of hyperindividualism, in which any government intervention in the economy was seen hampering the accumulation of wealth and thus as an attack on individual liberty. The government stopped working for ordinary Americans, and perhaps not surprisingly, many of them have stopped supporting it. Biden refused to engage with the Republicans on the terms of their cultural wars and has instead reclaimed the idea that government can actually work for the good of all by keeping the economic playing field level for everyone.
Some more on those clean energy jobs:
and more on the Biden economic plan
and more
and to the haters?
from October:
And Biden has a real plan to end hunger:
Biden wants to end hunger in the U.S. in eight years
President Joe Biden will headline the White House conference on hunger, nutrition and health on Sept. 28, unveiling his plan to make good on a pledge to end hunger and diet-related diseases by 2030.
The conference, planned for the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, will feature panels and working group sessions involving hundreds of advocates, educators, health care professionals, lawmakers, cabinet officials and everyday Americans.
Doug Emhoff – the husband of Vice President Harris –will also speak at the conference, the White House says. Other featured speakers include Chef Jose Andres, known for his work feeding people after disasters, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
It will be the first conference on hunger, nutrition and health since 1969. That Nixon-era conference led to the creation of the big programs underpinning U.S. hunger response, like food stamps and child nutrition assistance.
Food, hunger and nutrition advocates are closely watching for the release of the new White House strategy, which many hope will be as transformational for food and health as the first conference's plan.
and that is just part of what Biden has done:
Biden announces $1.5B in funding to battle opioid overdoses, support recovery
President Biden on Friday announced that his administration would distribute $1.5 billion to states and territories, including tribal lands, to fund responses to opioid overdoses and support recovery.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will disseminate the funding through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) State Opioid Response and Tribal Opioid Response grant programs as part of National Recovery Month.
Biden signs bill eliminating civil statute of limitations for child sex abuse victims
President Biden on Friday signed a bill that will eliminate the statute of limitations for people who were sexually abused as minors to file civil claims.
The Eliminating Limits to Justice for Child Sex Abuse Victims Act was passed by the House by voice vote on Tuesday after passing the Senate by unanimous consent in March.
Biden is trying to transform student loans
You might not have noticed, but President Biden is trying to overhaul the student loan system. Even as his controversial student debt forgiveness scheme heads to the Supreme Court, the Education Department is advancing another audacious plan to reshape how higher-education loans work — and not just for existing borrowers, but future ones, too. This means it could soon redefine the nation’s higher-education loan system, which some 70 percent of college students use to finance their degrees.
The new plan is better than many of the ideas Democrats have proposed to help students finance higher education because it is tailored to help low-income graduates, particularly those who attended community college.
To impose this big new policy without going through Congress, the administration proposed taking an existing student loan program and making its terms so generous that it would essentially become a grant program.
In a new analysis, the Urban Institute estimates that a typical community college student who takes out $12,000 in debt could expect to repay only $1,000. Many would pay nothing. Some 49 percent of borrowers in bachelor’s degree programs would pay back less than half of what they owe, and 78 percent would get some degree of forgiveness.
This would represent a shift in philosophy on debt forgiveness, from viewing it as a safety net for those who fall into financial distress to an entitlement for most undergraduate borrowers.
Why just this week: Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Protections for Tongass National Forest
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today finalized protections for the Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest. USDA’s final rule, announced today, repeals the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule and restores longstanding roadless protections to 9.37 million acres of roadless areas that support the ecological, economic and cultural values of Southeastern Alaska.
On his first day in office, President Biden committed to reviewing rules – such as the 2020 Alaska Roadless Rule – that may conflict with important national objectives including protecting the environment. This action is among a series of steps the Biden-Harris Administration has taken to conserve and restore some of America’s most cherished lands and waters, many of which are sacred to Tribal Nations.
The Biden national cyber strategy is unlike any before it
For the first time, regulation is on the menu of a national cybersecurity strategy
The Biden administration is nearing publication of a national cybersecurity blueprint that for the first time embraces a major role for regulation.
The Biden administration has issued or is in the process of issuing a number of cybersecurity regulations using preexisting executive branch powers, such as requirements for key pipeline operators to develop detailed plans for responding to cybersecurity incidents. Congress, too, passed legislation requiring critical infrastructure owners and operators to disclose to the federal government within 72 hours when they suffer a major cyberattack.
The forthcoming strategy, led by National Cyber Director Chris Inglis’s office in the White House, builds on that approach, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the document is not yet public.
James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said: “It’s a break from the previous strategies, which focused on information sharing and public-private partnership as the solution. … This goes well beyond that. It says things that others have been afraid to say.”
Biden’s Ukraine policy may not win an election. But it matters anyway.
Ukraine’s remarkable territorial gains and the Russian military’s disorderly retreat are most important as a rebuke to a dictator’s unprovoked aggression. But they are also heartening news for the world’s democracies, which stood together, at considerable risk to their own economies, to say no to Vladimir Putin.
And it is a victory for President Biden’s approach to foreign policy.
He promised that his presidency would undo the damage Donald Trump did to the United States’ standing in the world. Check.
In June, the Pew Research Center found that after record lows in positive feelings toward the United States recorded in 2020, the median favorability rating of the United States across the 17 countries it surveyed stood at 61 percent this year.
Biden also argued that ending the post-9/11 forever wars by withdrawing from Afghanistan would allow Washington to focus on its vital interests. In Ukraine, the United States did just that, providing not only direct military aid but also crucial intelligence that made the recent breakthroughs possible.
Biden chose humanity over geopolitics with Griner release
Swapping an American jailed for a minor drugs offense in Russia for one of the world’s most notorious arms traffickers known as “The Merchant of Death” might seem like a lopsided deal that could fuel dangerous national security precedents.
But President Joe Biden’s decision to exchange WNBA star Brittney Griner for Viktor Bout goes beyond the exchange’s bottom line. It represented a humane resolution to a painful dilemma that came after tortuous talks with a Russian regime that treats people as geopolitical pawns every day. In that sense, the Biden administration demonstrated the gulf between its moral grounding and that of Russian President Vladimir Putin who is currently demonstrating his inhumanity on another front, with a fearsome assault on Ukrainian civilians.
Whelan’s family reacted with great dignity in welcoming Griner’s release, despite their devastation that their brother did not come home. Elizabeth Whelan, Paul’s sister, called for political unity over the fate of hostages abroad, saying that hostile foreign countries are trying to use such cases to stir dissent in the US.
Whelan also urged people to understand the human angle of Biden’s dilemma despite the grave geopolitical issues at stake.
“It’s an amazing thing to be able to get Brittney back. It’s a win for us,” she said.
“We tend to always look at what is Russia getting out of this? … We are getting a wrongfully detained American back home. It’s something to celebrate.”
Those are just some recent highlights.
What else has Biden done?
Well……..Returned the US to the UN human rights council. Is currently overseeing an historic expansion of wind farms to change our future. Negotiated an international deal that ended tax havens for rich people who won't pay their fair share. Made the largest investment in railroads since Amtrak was created. Protected Americans from foreclosure and eviction during the pandemic. Extended the US Russia nuclear deal. Strengthened protection for dreamers. Cracked down on big tech monopolies. Strengthened unions. Saved the pensions of over 1 million unionized workers. Invested more in Black farmers than any other government act in history. Improved gun control through executive action, saving lives. Reduced the number of hungry Americans. Created new alliances with Australia and other countries to check Chinese power. Ended the forever war. Brought diversity to the executive branch. Added legal defense for immigrant kids. Made historic investments in busses and other public transportation. Fully funded and begun the process of replacing all lead water pipes in America. Prevented over 1 million COVID deaths. Protected over 3 million acres of national park land ensuring national parks for our kids’ futures. Slashed child hunger. Brought clean water to Flint (and other cities). Oversaw one of the largest investments in semiconductor manufacturing in US history. Got schools back in person. Expanded Obamacare so that many families could get more healthcare for less money. Rejoined the WHO. Rejoined the Paris Climate Accord. Ended the Muslim travel ban. Gave us more tools even for fighting COVID. Created more jobs in his first year than any president in American history. Passed a historic infrastructure bill that past presidents have tried (and failed) to do. Strengthened NATO. Made broadband more affordable and accessible. Nominated more qualified judges (and got them confirmed) in his first year than any other president. Invested in cybersecurity. Made historic investment in the fight against domestic terrorism. United children separated from families during Trump administration. Passed one of the largest industrial bills in US history to make sure US stays competitive with China. Provided a surge in funds to groups helping victims of domestic abuse. Made the largest investment ever in Native communities bringing basic healthcare, education, and infrastructure to impoverished communities. Put in new rules to protect endangered species, preserving important habitats. Made the largest contribution to saving trees (stopping deforestation) of any president in our history. Signed into law bipartisan gun measure that will save live. Signed nine different bipartisan laws that will vastly improve veterans’ healthcare. Made clean energy a national security issue as a smart (and accurate) way of increasing our ability to build heat pumps and solar panels. Brilliantly united the free world to fight Russian aggression. Is currently boosting green jobs and curbing emissions by plugging old oil and gas wells. Nominated the first Black woman to the Supreme Court. Signed into law the first ever bill to make lynching a federal hate crime. Dedicated $585 million to the Violence Against Women Act. Increased financial aid for college. For example, he increased Pell grants from $400 to $6,895 — the biggest expansion ever. Made new “Buy American” rules that strengthen manufacturing in the US. These are the biggest changes to these rules in 70 years. Initiated the most significant restoration and cleanup of the Great Lakes in its history. Signed landmark #MeToo Bill which ends forced arbitrations used to cover up abuse. Initiated economic policies that led to a 30% increase in new businesses. Made sexual harassment in the military a crime, for the first time ever. Brought kindness, decency, and honesty back to the White House.
So… just a few things ;-)
Love him!
Now onto the good news:
Democrats are doing great things
Inside the Democratic ‘SWAT Team’ Combating the GOP’s Biden Probes
When Barack Obama faced a group of House Republicans dead-set on digging up dirt about him and his administration, he didn’t have a whole lot of backup.
The task of defending his administration on a daily basis against GOP investigations—from Benghazi to Fast and Furious—was largely left to a few Democratic lawmakers and a handful of White House staffers.
Determined to prevent a rerun of the Obama years, top Democrats are standing up a pair of outside groups—the Congressional Integrity Project and Facts First USA—and building them for the sole purpose of running aggressive interference for Biden on the barrage of GOP probes from Capitol Hill.
Staffed by the Democratic Party’s masters of the dark arts of opposition research and spin, the groups are promising to apply bare-knuckled tactics in dealing with Republicans. Their ethos might be best encapsulated by the old sports cliché: the best defense is a good offense.
First created as an effort to counter Biden-related investigations from Senate Republicans in 2020, the Congressional Integrity Project has retooled ahead of the GOP’s House takeover. The group has deep ties to the White House: insiders say its rebrand as the “leading war room” for GOP pushback was the brainchild of Anita Dunn, who is perhaps Biden’s closest political adviser.
Voter Fraud Unit in Arizona Will Shift Focus to Voter Rights
Kris Mayes, the state’s new Democratic attorney general, is shifting gears on election issues in an office her Republican predecessor created.
Arizona’s new Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, is redirecting an election integrity unit her Republican predecessor created, focusing its work instead on addressing voter suppression. The shift by Ms. Mayes is one of her first acts since she took office this month.
Bad News for Bad Dudes
Backlash grows against DeSantis decision to block AP African American studies class
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is facing mounting backlash regarding his administration’s decision to prohibit an Advanced Placement high school course on African American studies, with Black leaders rallying in the capital, a prominent civil rights lawyer threatening to sue and state lawmakers urging him to reverse the decision.
Germany and US announce plans to send tanks to Ukraine in major sign of support for Kyiv
The leaders of the United States and Germany each announced Wednesday they will send contingents of tanks to Ukraine, reversing their longstanding trepidation at providing Kyiv with offensive armored vehicles and unleashing powerful new tools in Ukraine’s efforts to retake territory seized by Russia.
he dual announcements made for a landmark moment that followed weeks of intense pressure on Berlin from some of its NATO allies. The decisions were the result of prolonged diplomacy between Germany, the United States and other European allies, and come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky prepares for a new Russian offensive this spring.
Swarm of Tanks Is Just the Start of Putin’s New Nightmare
Western-built tanks are finally on the table for Ukraine—just as the country is preparing to defend against a new Russian offensive expected this year.
a clear trend is emerging in this conflict: Ukraine’s military is getting newer and better equipment, while Russia falls back on weapons built in the 1960s. If things keep moving in that direction, it becomes more and more feasible for Ukraine to blunt Putin’s attacks—and start eyeing up territory it hasn’t controlled since the first Russian invasion in 2014.
How Rupert Murdoch’s Final Grasp for Power Failed So Spectacularly
Murdoch, the man who until now always got what he wanted, has been told firmly he can’t have what he wanted. And buckled.
What he wanted—very badly—was to make whole again the global empire that he had built up over sixty years and that he was forced to break up a decade ago. But he failed to persuade the major investors and stockholders in the two halves of the business, Fox Corp and News Corp, to bend to his will and approve a merger.
The announcement Tuesday that he had capitulated is a highly significant reversal. As I reported when the deal was proposed, it was hard to find anyone who thought the merger made sense.
That was because it was basically a vanity exercise, not a rational business plan. At the age of 91, Murdoch wanted it so that he could consolidate all the family businesses under him and then hand them over to his chosen successor, his son Lachlan Murdoch.
One analyst told me when the deal was proposed, “Rupert doesn’t give a fuck about the stockholders. He just wants to have all the power back.”
LOL LOL to the fox news stockholders who thought Murdoch cared about them! I am starting to think that Murdoch might not be such a good guy! /s 😂😂
The Obscure New York Law That Could Dismantle Trump’s Empire
Trump's legal team has delayed actually arguing the facts. But now his family company is under threat of being dissolved, and he could have to pay up big.
Former President Donald Trump, faced with a New York attorney general who won’t back down, is finally being forced to come up with a defense to explain why he lied relentlessly about his real estate portfolio. Her gargantuan lawsuit could bankrupt his company—and pave the way for a future criminal prosecution.
His riches are being threatened by a powerful law enforcement tool that AG Letitia James is wielding like a sledgehammer. Her civil lawsuit against him and his family—which accuses them of rampant bank and tax fraud—relies on the state’s Executive Law 63 (12). Its potential to deal serious damage is evident by how desperately the former president has tried to avoid fighting it head-on.
Are we seeing the beginning of the end of Putinism?
Wartime leaders change generals when they’re losing, not winning. On Jan. 11, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff, was to replace Sergei Surovikin, who was appointed just a few months earlier in October, as his new overall commander of Russian military forces in Ukraine. The only reasonable conclusion: Putin understands that Russia is losing in Ukraine.
This shake-up at the top of the military is not the only sign of Putin’s recognition of failure. He canceled his annual end-of-year news conference, evidently reluctant to take questions even from a mostly loyal and controlled press corps. His solitary and subdued appearance at the Cathedral of the Annunciation in the Kremlin on Orthodox Christmas communicated little confidence.
His propagandists sound depressed. Strikingly, one of them, Sergei Markov, summed up the previous year by stating bluntly, “The USA was the main winner of 2022. Especially Biden.” Newspaper reporter Maksim Yusin recently said on a talk show that Russia’s “special military operation” had achieved none of its original goals. Former Putin adviser Sergei Glazyev lamented in public that Russia does not have a clear end objective, a sound ideology or the resources to win the war against the collective West.
Other Good News
One Woman Is Holding Politicians Accountable for Nasty Speech. It’s Changing Politics.
In early October, Tami Pyfer, a former Special Ed teacher, high-level Republican appointee and member of the Tabernacle Choir, logged onto Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and posted a carefully crafted announcement.
“Are you frustrated by the hate and negativity in our country’s political and public discourse?” the post asked. “You’re not alone.” A new tool called the Dignity Index was now on the case. It was designed to score politicians’ rhetoric on an eight-point scale based on how dignified or contemptuous it was. Voters would find the scores on the Dignity Index’s website, or, more likely, through media coverage, much like they might come across candidates’ NRA or Planned Parenthood scorecards.
This fall, Pyfer and her colleagues at Unite, a national nonprofit organization focused on healing America’s divides, tested the Dignity Index for the first time in Utah — a state known for its relative decency. The goal of Pyfer and Unite’s small team of Democrats and Republicans was to find a way to score the meanness or grace of politicians’ words in hopes of nudging them towards decency and away from vitriol. Despite everything.
Unite’s theory is that you start by naming the problem and articulating its cost — and then, eventually, the public will start to demand something different. “The odds are against us,” Shriver admits. “But people are starving for a break from the hatred in our country. It’s hurting us deeply. It’s hurting our relationships and our families.” The Dignity Index, he says, is meant to wake us up. To help us notice contempt, which has become so routine it can pass for reasonable. And to help us search for dignity, which has become rare and passé.
If more voters or funders start caring about dignity, the theory goes, then politicians will follow.
“Politicians are very responsive to what voters want and what they won’t tolerate,” says Rosshirt, the former speechwriter and the lead author of the Dignity Index. “If suddenly there’s pushback and you think this will get you fewer dollars and fewer viewers, then people recalibrate. So that’s what we’re looking to do. We think that by popularizing a conversation about the cost of contempt, it’s gonna make contempt backfire.”
This year’s weird, bad cold-and-flu-and-Covid season might have peaked.
The triple threat of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (or RSV), and Covid-19 has been another stress test for a battered US health care system this winter. But after a succession of waves, it seems that it’s letting up
After a notable increase in hospitalizations began in late November, this winter’s Covid-19 wave appears to have peaked earlier this month, with hospitalizations and deaths now down 25 percent and 1 percent respectively over the past two weeks. (The US is also reporting fewer cases, down from an average of about 65,000 new cases every day to about 46,000 daily cases now, but case data has become less reliable with the prevalence of at-home testing.)
Influenza activity nationwide has also been steadily declining for several weeks, based on positive test results reported to the CDC. The hospitalization rate for the flu has been dropping since cresting in December, shortly after the initial surge in activity.
On the lighter side
I am so lucky and so proud to be in this with all of you. 💖💚💛✊🏽✊🏻✊🏽💛💚💖