Thread by @doctorow

You know the joke.

Office manager: "$75 just to kick the photocopier?"

Photocopier technician: "No, it's $5 to kick the photocopier and $70 to know where to kick it." 1/

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

pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/adm… 2/

The trustbusters in the Biden administration know *precisely* where to kick the photocopier, and they're kicking the shit out of it. You *love* to see it. 3/

Last July, the Biden admin published an Executive Order enumerating 72 actions that administrative agencies could take without any further action from Congress - dormant powers that the administration *already* had, but wasn't using:

thenation.com/article/econom… 4/

This memo was full of deep cuts, like the Competition in Contracting Act of 1984, Northern Pac. Ry Co v US (1958), the Bank Merger Act and the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, and the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921:

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… 5/

The memo opened with the kind of soaring rhetoric that I absolutely dote on, a declaration of the end of Reagonomics and its embrace of monopoly:

eff.org/deeplinks/2021… 6/

But the memo didn't just offer red meat for activist cranks like me: it set out 72 technical actions that would make profound, material improvements to the lives of every person in America, and the administration executed every one of those actions:

davispolk.com/insights/clien… 7/

They knew where to kick the photocopier and boy did they kick it - *hard*.

The White House action has @superwuster's fingerprints all over it. He's the brilliant, driven law professor who's gone to work as Biden's tech antitrust czar. 8/

But Wu isn't alone: he's part of a trio of appointees who are all expert photocopier kickers. There's Jonathan Kanter at the DoJ and @linakhanFTC at the @FTC. 9/

Khan is a model of administrative competence and ideological coherence. Her tenure has included lots of soaring rhetoric to buoy the spirits of people like me:

pluralistic.net/2022/05/09/res… 10/

But it's also included lots of extremely skillful ju-jitsu against the system, using long-neglected leverage points to Get Shit Done, rather than just grandstanding or demanding that Congress take action. 11/

Here's the FTC's latest expert kick at the photocopier: action on #RightToRepair that exercises existing authority:

vice.com/en/article/k7b… 12/

The Right to Repair fight is a glaring example of democratic dysfunction. Americans broadly and strongly support the right to fix their own stuff, or to take their stuff to the repair depot of their choice. How broadly? 13/

Well, both times that the question has been on the Massachusetts ballot, there was massive participation and the measures passed with ~80% majorities:

pluralistic.net/2021/05/26/nix… 14/

But despite this, state attempts to pass #R2R bills have been almost entirely crushed by a monopolists coalition, led by Apple, including John Deere, GM, Wahl Shavers, Microsoft, Google, and other giant corporations. 15/

They want the power to tell you your property is beyond repair and must be condemned to an e-waste dump:

doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-… 16/

Right to Repair is a case study for the proposition that "ordinary citizens… get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence."

scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/… 17/

Enter the photocopier kickers, wearing boots. The same month that the White House dropped is massive antitrust executive order, it also published an executive order on Right to Repair, including electronics repair:

pluralistic.net/2021/07/10/unn… 18/

The EO built on the evidence compiled through the FTC's #NixingTheFix report:

ftc.gov/system/files/d…

But it also identified that the FTC already had the power to do Right to Repair, in its existing Congressional authorization:

whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… 19/

The Biden antitrust strategy is powerful because it recognizes that *every* agency has powers that can be brought to bear to slow the anticompetitive flywheel that has allowed giant corporations to extract monopoly profits and then launder them into pro-monopoly policies. 20/

Which brings me to today's news: the FTC's review of the Energy Labeling Rule (you know, the rule that produces those Energystar stickers on appliances) concluding that it can also force companies to publish repair manuals under this rule:

ftc.gov/news-events/ne… 21/

As @uspirg's @nProctor told @motherboard's @mgault, "When Congress passed energy conservation policies decades ago, it included the ability to require Right to Repair...that provision has gone unnoticed for too long..."

vice.com/en/article/k7b… 22/

The FTC is now planning to exercise that long dormant authority in a game-changing way - to kick the photocopier really, really well. 23/

It is seeking public comment on "whether lack of access to repair instructions…is an existing problem for consumers; whether providing such information would assist consumers in purchasing decisions or product use…"

ftc.gov/system/files/f… 24/

The Trump years were brutal. Every time we turned around, some Trumpy archvillain was twirling his mustache and announcing an evil plot. 25/

Yet so many of these turned out to be nothingburgers - not because they were sincere in their intentions, but because they lacked administrative competence. 26/

Trump embodied administrative incompetence. He was very good at commanding the news cycle, and very good at riling up his base, but he had no idea where to kick the photocopier. 27/

Every expert photocopier kicker that Trump hired got immediately fired, because they would insist that Getting Shit Done required patience and precision, not a deluge of chaotic governance-by-tweeting. 28/

To the extent that Trumpland Got Shit Done - packing the courts, handing out trillions in tax gifts to the ultra-rich - it was in spite of Trump and his trumpies, and because of the administratively competent wing of the party: McConnell, Romney, et al. 29/

In the GOP, "establishment" is a slur meaning "competent."

This isn't to say that Trump wasn't dangerous - he absolutely was. But it does militate for an understanding of politics that pays close attention to competence as well as virtue or wickedness. 30/

It's one of the things that was very exciting about the @SenWarren campaign - those long-ass policy documents she dropped were eye-wateringly detailed photocopier-kicking manuals for the US government. 31/

Biden himself isn't much of a photocopier kicker. He's good at gladhanding, but the photocopier kickers in his administration represent a triumph of the party's progressive wing. 32/

And therein lies a key difference between the parties: in the GOP, the competent are the establishment; in the Democrats, the establishment are the ones who can't or won't act, and the progressives have got their boots on and are ready to kick. 33/

Image:
Temple University Libraries (modified)
flickr.com/photos/tulpics…

CC BY 2.0:
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.… 34/