It's hard to convey how lazy Dem reps are, but I will try.
"House Democrats who have been in hot pursuit of Mr. Trump’s tax returns most likely have no idea that at least some of the records are sitting in a congressional office building." nytimes.com/interactive/20…
"George Yin, a former chief of staff for the joint committee, said that any identifying information about taxpayers under review was tightly held among a handful of staff lawyers and was rarely shared with politicians assigned to the committee."
Glad we elected staff lawyers.
When you work in Congress, everyone with a problem wants to talk to you. It is so easy to investigate and break stories related to public policy if you want to do that.
That is how Dems used to govern. That's how the Antitrust Subcommittee operates actually.
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In her oversight hearing today, Attorney General Pam Bondi got a surprising number of questions about corruption at the Antitrust Division. Here's @amyklobuchar.
Here's Senator Mazie Hirono asking about corruption in the Hewlett-Juniper merger case, Bondi responds by saying that Hirono was out protesting with Antifa.
And here's Senator Cory Booker asks about Bondi's chief Chad Mizelle, asks if she'd come before the antitrust subcommittee to talk about the topic. Bondi dances around, basically says no. "I will let Gail Slater handle all antitrust" matters.
Either there are restrictions on supply in Dallas driving up housing prices, or there aren't. Thompson wants to have it both ways.
@DKThomp I'd also note that he mischaracterized the argument, which is about financing and not antitrust. And he didn't address most of the evidence, or the purchase of housing by investors. He also misrepresented at least one of the people he interviewed.
1. The discussion over 'AI taking all the jobs' has been bothering me for awhile. In 2013, Jeff Bezos was asked about bookselling. "Amazon isn't happening to book selling, the future is happening to book selling." Blaming abstract forces is what monopolists ALWAYS do.
2. Anthropic's CEO says that AI may 'cure cancer' but also eliminate entry-level jobs. Policymakers need to get a hold of that, he says. Weird he doesn't want to talk about how his firm's models are trained on massively pirated content. thebignewsletter.com/p/why-are-we-p…
3. The Economist writes, "AI is killing the web." But that's not true! Google forces publishers to let it train on their content or they don't show in search results. It's a legal problem! thebignewsletter.com/p/why-are-we-p…
1. Ok so let's talk about socialism, aka the state taking over from private industry. Here are some examples you haven't heard of - Kentucky and Ohio - replacing their pharma pricing middlemen with state agencies.
2. In 2018, the Columbus Dispatch revealed that pharma middlemen CVS Caremark and UnitedHealth Group's OptumRx were ripping off the state Medicaid program, destroying pharmacies, and hurting patients. So Ohio... fired them. And built its own state PBM. thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-rou…
3. It launched in 2022, run by Ohio's Department of Medicaid. It did pharma pricing for Medicaid, rebates for pharmacies, ran call centers, managed a drug list, a network of pharmacies et al. No more conflicts of interest. Caremark predicted DOOM FROM FULL COMMUNISM....
Obama was a malevolent leader and as a person is a mean spirited greedy narcissist. The authoritarian turn we are experiencing now is directly his doing, though not solely his doing.
So is our gruesomely dishonest conversation on race and identity.
I worked on the financial crisis and I remember hearing from people in the White House mockery of the ‘deadbeats’ who couldn’t pay their mortgages. It’s hard to convey the meanness of the Obama insiders.
Obama used his black identity - an important and positive symbol - to oversee the biggest loss of black wealth in our lifetime, with the support of black voters and leaders. He took the moral currency of the Civil Rights movement and spent it on Wall Street. Now it’s gone.
1. Since Yglesias won't address the argument @musharbash_b made about housing, I will. His argument is that Texas, which Abundance authors @DKThomp and @ezraklein point to as a model, has the same housing cost inflation they ascribe to blue areas. Why? thebignewsletter.com/p/messing-with…x.com/mattyglesias/s…
2. It's corporate power among homebuilders. Don't just take @musharbash_b word for it, it's a well-known story. Here's a shockingly good CNBC report on how big homebuilders withhold housing supply.
3. This graph from @NewsLambert really tells the story nation-wide. Since 2008, when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt because of zoning policy, 65% of homebuilders have disappeared. And they never returned. Now only the big builders - with huge profit margins - are left.