I know, for many people, learning that Andrew Cuomo was deliberately lying about nursing home death numbers while he was comforting them with power points is just too much cognitive dissonance, and they want to resolve it by making the problem go away, fingers in the ears.
But its not a one time thing and not the past.
Right now, its a central choice facing NY: do we stand with lawmakers who want to open up government, to legislate *with* the public, or do we give carte blanche keys back to the driver who crashed the car.
Think of the human cost of shutting down the Moreland Commission, the Buffalo Billions money lost to cronies, of the extreme micromanaging of who gets vaccines, ... and think of the thousands of families whose loved ones were treated as numbers to be shuffled away. It must stop.
IMHO we should focus on (1) a thorough independent investigation, and (2) immediately and publicly supporting lawmakers who want to rebalance power in Albany. Stop with the emergency powers. Stop with three people in a room.
The only person who comes off looking good in this article is @JameelJaffer, who refused to get paid 6 figures to cover for Facebook in their elaborate and pompous cover for self-regulation.
Forced arbitration= a system that allows employers to condition employment on workers signing away their constitutional rights to a jury, open court, a public judge, and appeal.
Monopolies got rid of worker protection laws w/o Congress by taking away the right to enforce them.
Peak contractarianism leads to untold damage (and when I say untold, because of forced arbitration, workers don't bring claims and those that are brought we never hear).
The fantasy that workers are going to turn down an Amazon job and go get another job because of the Forced Arbitration clause is an insult.
Are there any open positions as critical as AAG of Antitrust, OIRA, and FTC Commissioners that I'm missing?
I hope its because Biden world is taking seriously the vast potential of these three offices to take down monopolistic abuses and help people in transformative ways, and are moving towards getting the very best, enforcers at FTC and AAG with a new vision.
Also, is it possible that Block would be the permanent OIRA head?
I have some thoughts about the Facebook oversight board.
1) the Facebook oversight board is paid by Facebook. (yeah, through a trust, no diff) 2) the Facebook oversight board is wholly unaccountable in any democratic sense 3) its an insane way to think about how to govern speech
if Exxon hired a bunch of academics and thought leaders and paid them through a trust to occasionally tell them where not to drill, i would not say we'd figured out a mechanism for dealing with fossil fuel
I have so little respect for the Facebook Oversight Board that I don't even want to debate it, it is, as they say, outside the compass of serious political debate.
what is inside the compass is: ban algorithmic targeting. antitrust.
Amazon effectively forces sellers to use its warehousing service by prioritizing sellers who use it in search results. Want “Christmas lights?” The seller who uses Amazons Warehousing and delivery (FBA) gets their product placed higher.
Two direst impacts:
1) Amazon warehousing grows massively, increasing Bezos power to dictate working conditions 2) Sellers pay more because they can’t choose other services, a wealth transfer to Amazon.
Sellers have long suspected this but Bezos admitted it under questioning by the House Antitrust Subcommittee.