Month: July 2019

Mayor Pete Wants To Destroy the Gig Economy in Order To Save It

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, wants to destroy the gig economy in order to save it. That’s the takeaway from the Indiana mayor’s new proposal, “A New Rising Tide: Empowering Workers in a Changing Economy.”

“It’s time to help our nation’s workforce become more resilient, inclusive, and flexible, and more easily adapt to our dynamic, ever-changing economy,” reads the plan, but its focus is to force more regulations on employers and increase unionization among workers, neither of which is likely to make it easier for the economy to grow or the workplace to “more easily adapt” to the needs of suppliers, workers, or consumers.

As CNBC summarizes things:

The plan aims squarely at major tech platforms like Alphabet’s Google and the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft.

Buttigieg also called out fast-food giant McDonald’s, which he holds up as an example of a company that keeps “wages low by refusing to bargain with workers who technically work for small local McDonald’s franchises.”

The plan is “aimed at doubling unionization, restoring workers’ rights that have been eroded by decades of anti-worker policies by government and corporations alike15, and expanding labor rights to workers who have been left out.” Part of this analysis is based on the idea that drivers for ride-sharing services such as Lyft and Uber have been “misclassified as independent contractors.” The most-recent determinations by the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board and rulings by federal courts have consistently found the opposite. Earlier this year, Uber settled a lawsuit launched by drivers that would have changed their status from contractors to employees without altering their status. Legislation that would do exactly that is working its way through the California legislature too, despite two 2018 federal court decisions that said drivers for Uber and Grub Hub, a delivery service, were contractors and not employees.

The thinking behind Buttigieg’s new plan is based on two notions, each of which is mistaken. First, that the average American has been left out of the income gains made over the past several decades. “We got the rising tide–GDP went up, productivity went up–but our paychecks didn’t show it,” the plan states. “Working class wages have stagnated since 1980.” The second fundamental notion is that unionization is essential for widespread prosperity in the future. Neither of these is accurate and each leads to policies that are likely to make the economy less dynamic.

Begin with the notion that middle-class and working-class workers haven’t seen an increase in compensation. A big part of that narrative is flatly untrue. “Average inflation-adjusted household incomes for the middle fifth of Americans (by income) rose from $56,400 in 2000 to $64,700 in 2015. That’s a 15 percent gain,” writes The Washington Post‘s Robert J. Samuelson, who further notes that when “the effect of taxes and many transfers were included [in a study last year by Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman]…the median income jumped 33 percent from 1979 to 2014.” Other work by economists such as Russ Roberts shows that income growth and mobility are alive and well. When you study actual individuals, rather than group averages, an encouraging picture begins to emerge. Roberts cites a study that

looks at people who were 35–40 in 1987 and then looks at how they were doing 20 years later, when they are 55–60. The median income of the people in the top 20% in 1987 ended up 5% lower twenty years later. The people in the middle 20% ended up with median income that was 27% higher. And if you started in the bottom 20%, your income doubled. If you were in the top 1% in 1987, 20 years later, median income was 29% lower.

This comports with other analyses that find shrinkage in the middle class is more than offest by greater reductions in the number of lower-income households and increases in upper-income ones. None of this is to say the economy is fine and dandy and that workers should just shut up. Far from it—workers should always be pushing for higher wages and compensation. But the broad narrative that wages, compensation, and living standards have somehow stagnated is simply false.

Without wading into a long discussion of the effects of unions on general wages in the past, this much seems to be true: Outside of the public sector, unions are unlikely to be resuscitated anytime soon. About 6 percent of private-sector workers are in unions, down from 17 percent in 1983 and a peak of 37 percent in 1960. Contra Mayor Pete, the main reason for that decline isn’t an increase in Pinkertons threatening union organizers or even the proliferation of right-to-work laws at the state level, but the changing nature of work. The further jobs get away from assembly lines, in which employees function as interchangeable laborers, the harder it is to standardize pay and wages. The growth and decline of private-sector unionization follows the growth and decline of the industrial sector in the United States. As important, the same pattern is seen in other advanced economies, as work becomes standardized and inflexible.

This is especially true of gig-economy jobs such as driving for Uber, where the whole appeal is the flexibility of a decent-paying side-hustle (and where one 2017 study found the median hourly pay of Uber drivers to be $38). As retired newspaperman Bill Steigerwald wrote in 2016:

This is the best part-time job I’ve had in a career of them. I have no bosses, I have no schedule, and I work when, where, and how long I choose. It’s the perfect gig for an ex-newspaperman who’s writing a book and whose income streams also include Social Security, a pension, and freelance writing. Every time I go to work, I know I’ll pick up about 25 random, mostly under-30 people from Pittsburgh and around the globe who, sober or drunk, are happy to see me and, when asked, invariably express unconditional love for Uber.

Uber, like a lot of part-time or low-skilled jobs, isn’t something people can or should expect to pay all their bills or become their only source of income. Trying to transform these sorts of new-model jobs into old-model ones will accomplish nothing but the slow (or fast) bleeding of a new industry and, not insignificantly, the end of a service that really helps a lot of lower-income consumers.

If past is prologue, union representation won’t actually help drivers as much as it will help the central offices of unions. In a 2000 story about the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Reason Contributing Editor Michael McMenamin wrote:

Unionization doesn’t stop turnover in low-wage, low-prestige jobs. But the new employees who take those jobs after their predecessors move on to better things find themselves saddled with a union they didn’t choose because the labor laws presume that the new employees support the union in the same proportion as the old employees did.

I like a lot about Pete Buttigieg, who at his best represents a new generation in American politics and a principled unwillingness to go along with the most free-spending plans of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination (he’s against “free college for all,” for example). But as he starts to unveil more and more plans—to pack the Supreme Court, say, and to call for national service—he becomes less appealing from a libertarian perspective. That’s also true for the central propositions of his latest policy prospectus, which seeks to regiment 21st-century workers under backward-looking regulations.

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Mayor Pete Wants To Destroy the Gig Economy in Order To Save It

South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, wants to destroy the gig economy in order to save it. That’s the takeaway from the Indiana mayor’s new proposal, “A New Rising Tide: Empowering Workers in a Changing Economy.”

“It’s time to help our nation’s workforce become more resilient, inclusive, and flexible, and more easily adapt to our dynamic, ever-changing economy,” reads the plan, but its focus is to force more regulations on employers and increase unionization among workers, neither of which is likely to make it easier for the economy to grow or the workplace to “more easily adapt” to the needs of suppliers, workers, or consumers.

As CNBC summarizes things:

The plan aims squarely at major tech platforms like Alphabet’s Google and the ride-hailing companies Uber and Lyft.

Buttigieg also called out fast-food giant McDonald’s, which he holds up as an example of a company that keeps “wages low by refusing to bargain with workers who technically work for small local McDonald’s franchises.”

The plan is “aimed at doubling unionization, restoring workers’ rights that have been eroded by decades of anti-worker policies by government and corporations alike15, and expanding labor rights to workers who have been left out.” Part of this analysis is based on the idea that drivers for ride-sharing services such as Lyft and Uber have been “misclassified as independent contractors.” The most-recent determinations by the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board and rulings by federal courts have consistently found the opposite. Earlier this year, Uber settled a lawsuit launched by drivers that would have changed their status from contractors to employees without altering their status. Legislation that would do exactly that is working its way through the California legislature too, despite two 2018 federal court decisions that said drivers for Uber and Grub Hub, a delivery service, were contractors and not employees.

The thinking behind Buttigieg’s new plan is based on two notions, each of which is mistaken. First, that the average American has been left out of the income gains made over the past several decades. “We got the rising tide–GDP went up, productivity went up–but our paychecks didn’t show it,” the plan states. “Working class wages have stagnated since 1980.” The second fundamental notion is that unionization is essential for widespread prosperity in the future. Neither of these is accurate and each leads to policies that are likely to make the economy less dynamic.

Begin with the notion that middle-class and working-class workers haven’t seen an increase in compensation. A big part of that narrative is flatly untrue. “Average inflation-adjusted household incomes for the middle fifth of Americans (by income) rose from $56,400 in 2000 to $64,700 in 2015. That’s a 15 percent gain,” writes The Washington Post‘s Robert J. Samuelson, who further notes that when “the effect of taxes and many transfers were included [in a study last year by Emmanuel Saez, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman]…the median income jumped 33 percent from 1979 to 2014.” Other work by economists such as Russ Roberts shows that income growth and mobility are alive and well. When you study actual individuals, rather than group averages, an encouraging picture begins to emerge. Roberts cites a study that

looks at people who were 35–40 in 1987 and then looks at how they were doing 20 years later, when they are 55–60. The median income of the people in the top 20% in 1987 ended up 5% lower twenty years later. The people in the middle 20% ended up with median income that was 27% higher. And if you started in the bottom 20%, your income doubled. If you were in the top 1% in 1987, 20 years later, median income was 29% lower.

This comports with other analyses that find shrinkage in the middle class is more than offest by greater reductions in the number of lower-income households and increases in upper-income ones. None of this is to say the economy is fine and dandy and that workers should just shut up. Far from it—workers should always be pushing for higher wages and compensation. But the broad narrative that wages, compensation, and living standards have somehow stagnated is simply false.

Without wading into a long discussion of the effects of unions on general wages in the past, this much seems to be true: Outside of the public sector, unions are unlikely to be resuscitated anytime soon. About 6 percent of private-sector workers are in unions, down from 17 percent in 1983 and a peak of 37 percent in 1960. Contra Mayor Pete, the main reason for that decline isn’t an increase in Pinkertons threatening union organizers or even the proliferation of right-to-work laws at the state level, but the changing nature of work. The further jobs get away from assembly lines, in which employees function as interchangeable laborers, the harder it is to standardize pay and wages. The growth and decline of private-sector unionization follows the growth and decline of the industrial sector in the United States. As important, the same pattern is seen in other advanced economies, as work becomes standardized and inflexible.

This is especially true of gig-economy jobs such as driving for Uber, where the whole appeal is the flexibility of a decent-paying side-hustle (and where one 2017 study found the median hourly pay of Uber drivers to be $38). As retired newspaperman Bill Steigerwald wrote in 2016:

This is the best part-time job I’ve had in a career of them. I have no bosses, I have no schedule, and I work when, where, and how long I choose. It’s the perfect gig for an ex-newspaperman who’s writing a book and whose income streams also include Social Security, a pension, and freelance writing. Every time I go to work, I know I’ll pick up about 25 random, mostly under-30 people from Pittsburgh and around the globe who, sober or drunk, are happy to see me and, when asked, invariably express unconditional love for Uber.

Uber, like a lot of part-time or low-skilled jobs, isn’t something people can or should expect to pay all their bills or become their only source of income. Trying to transform these sorts of new-model jobs into old-model ones will accomplish nothing but the slow (or fast) bleeding of a new industry and, not insignificantly, the end of a service that really helps a lot of lower-income consumers.

If past is prologue, union representation won’t actually help drivers as much as it will help the central offices of unions. In a 2000 story about the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Reason Contributing Editor Michael McMenamin wrote:

Unionization doesn’t stop turnover in low-wage, low-prestige jobs. But the new employees who take those jobs after their predecessors move on to better things find themselves saddled with a union they didn’t choose because the labor laws presume that the new employees support the union in the same proportion as the old employees did.

I like a lot about Pete Buttigieg, who at his best represents a new generation in American politics and a principled unwillingness to go along with the most free-spending plans of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination (he’s against “free college for all,” for example). But as he starts to unveil more and more plans—to pack the Supreme Court, say, and to call for national service—he becomes less appealing from a libertarian perspective. That’s also true for the central propositions of his latest policy prospectus, which seeks to regiment 21st-century workers under backward-looking regulations.

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Once “Prosperity” Falters, The Legitimacy Of The Status Quo Evaporates

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

All we’re doing is waiting for the fake “prosperity” to crumble, and the resulting loss of credibility and legitimacy will follow like night follows day.

The citizenry of corrupt regimes ruled by self-serving elites tolerate this oppressive misrule for one reason and only one reason: increasing prosperity,which we can define as continual improvement in material well-being and financial security.

The legitimacy of every corrupt regime ruled by self-serving elites hangs on this single thread: once prosperity fades, the legitimacy of the regime evaporates, as the citizenry have no reason to tolerate their rapacious, predatory overlords.

A broken, unfair system will be tolerated as long as every participant feels they’re getting a few shreds of improvement. This is why there is such an enormous push of propaganda touting “growth”; if the citizenry can be conned into believing that their deteriorating well-being and security are actually “prosperity,” then they will continue to grant the status quo some measure of credibility and legitimacy.

When the gap between the propaganda and reality widens to the breaking point, the regime loses its credibility and legitimacy. This manifests in a number of ways:

1. Nobody believes anything the state or its agencies reports as “fact”: since it misreported economic well-being and security to benefit the few at the expense of the many, why believe anything official?

2. Increased lawlessness: since the Ruling Elites get away with virtually everything, why we should we obey the laws?

3. Opting out: rather than become a target for the state’s oppressive organs of security, the safer path is to opt out: quit supporting a parasitic and predatory Status Quo of corporations and the state with your labor, slip into the shadows of the economy, avoid debt like the plague, get by on a fraction of your former income.

4. Breakdown of Status Quo political parties: since all parties are bands of self-serving thieves, what’s the point of even nominal membership?

5. Increasing reliance on anti-depression and anti-anxiety medications, more self-medication/drug use, and other manifestations of social stress and breakdown.

6. Those who can move away from crumbling high-tax cities, essentially giving up civic hope for fair, affordable solutions to rising inequality and social disorder.

7. Increasing defaults and bankruptcies as households and enterprises no longer see any other way out.

8. Increasing mockery of financial/corporate media parroting the propaganda that “prosperity” is real and rising– S&P 500 hits 3,000, we’re all getting better in every way, every day, etc.

Truth is the most essential form of capital, and once it has been squandered to serve insiders, vested interests and Ruling Elites, the nation is morally, spiritually, politically and financially bankrupt. All we’re doing is waiting for the fake “prosperity” to crumble, and the resulting loss of credibility and legitimacy will follow like night follows day.

*  *  *

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format. My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF). My book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format. If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. New benefit for subscribers/patrons: a monthly Q&A where I respond to your questions/topics.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ycTVYJ Tyler Durden

Barr’s Russiagate Origin Probe Pivots To ‘Smoking Gun’ Tapes With Exculpatory Evidence

A DOJ internal review of the Russia investigation is now focusing on transcripts of (not-so) covertly recorded conversations between former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and ‘at least one government source’ during an overseas conversation in 2016. 

In particular, DOJ investigators are focusing on why certain exculpatory (or exonerating) evidence from the transcripts was not included in subsequent FBI surveillance warrant applications, according to Fox News, citing two sources familiar with the review. 

“A source told Fox News that the “exculpatory evidence” included in the transcripts is Papadopoulos denying having any contact with the Russians to obtain the supposed “dirt” on Clinton,” according to the report. 

And while Fox doesn’t name the ‘government source,’ it’s undoubtedly Australian diplomat and Clinton ally Alexander Downer, who was “idiotic enough” to spy on Papadopoulos with his phone, according to the former Trump aide. 

But Papadopoulos did not only meet with Mifsud and Downer while overseas. He met with Cambridge professor and longtime FBI informant Stefan Halper and his female associate, who went under the alias Azra Turk. Papadopoulos told Fox News that he saw Turk three times in London: once over drinks, once over dinner and once with Halper. He also told Fox News back in May that he always suspected he was being recorded. Further, he tweeted during the Mueller testimony about “recordings” of his meeting with Downer. –Fox News

“These recordings have exculpatory evidence,” one source told Fox, adding “It is standard tradecraft to record conversations with someone like Papadopoulos—especially when they are overseas and there are no restrictions.“

The recordings in question pertain to conversations between government sources and Papadopoulos, which were memorialized in transcripts. One source told Fox News that Barr and Durham are reviewing why the material was left out of applications to surveil another former Trump campaign aide, Carter Page.

“I think it’s the smoking gun,” the source said. –Fox News

Also under review  by AG Barr and US Attorney John Durham of Connecticut is the actual start date of the original FBI investigation into the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the US election. 

Former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) first revealed the existence of transcripts documenting the secretly recorded conversations earlier this year. 

“If the bureau’s going to send in an informant, the informant’s going to be wired, and if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there’s going to be a transcript of that,” Gowdy said on Fox News in May. 

“Some of us have been fortunate enough to know whether or not those transcripts exist. But they haven’t been made public, and I think one, in particular … has the potential to actually persuade people,” he continued, adding “Very little in this Russia probe I’m afraid is going to persuade people who hate Trump or love Trump. But there is some information in these transcripts that has the potential to be a game-changer if it’s ever made public.“

According to the report, the transcripts are currently classified – however President Trump’s May order to approve declassification at AG Barr’s discretion means they may see the light of day. And even if not, the declassification allowed Barr to barge in on DNI Director Dan Coats’ office and demand the files. 

A source told Fox News that without the declassification order signed by Trump, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was not going to give anyone access to the files—over concerns for protecting sources and methods. But another source told Fox News in May that Coats, along with CIA Director Gina Haspel and FBI Director Chris Wray, are all working “collaboratively” with Barr and Durham on the review.

Barr and Durham are also trying to pinpoint the actual “start date” of the investigation, according to a source. –Fox News

As eloquently laid out by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) during this week’s Mueller testimony, the FBI officially opened the Russia investigation after Papadopoulos told Downer about a rumor (told to him by Clinton Foundation member Joseph Mifsud) that Russia had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton. 

That said, some have suggested that the FBI probe began long before Downer’s report to intelligence agencies. 

On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Devin Nunes, R-Calif., challenged former Special Counsel Mueller over when the investigation started.

“The FBI claims the counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began on July 31, 2016, but in fact, it began before that,” Nunes said. “In June 2016, before the investigation was officially opened, Trump campaign associates Carter Page and Stephen Miller were invited to attend a symposium at Cambridge University in July 2016. Your office, however, did not investigate who was responsible for inviting these Trump associates to the symposium.” –Fox News

“Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started,” said Jordan on Wednesday, adding “Here’s the good news—that’s exactly what Bill Barr is doing and thank goodness for that.” 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MdWXEh Tyler Durden

Tulsi Gabbard’s $50 Million Lawsuit Against Google Is Another Attack on Online Free Speech

Tulsi Gabbard took a cue from conservative conspiracists Thursday, when the Hawaii congresswoman and Democratic presidential hopeful filed a $50 million lawsuit against Google for allegedly violating her right to free speech. The suit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, argues that Google infringed on her First Amendment rights when it suspended her campaign advertising site for six hours, briefly impeding her ability to raise money right after a well-received debate performance.

Many people on the right have made social media companies Public Enemy No. 1 recently, claiming that they discriminate against conservative points of view. Ironically, Gabbard’s suit throws some cold water on the accusations coming from her Republican counterparts, casting doubt on the idea that Google and its subsidiaries are systematically ostracizing Wrongthink along party lines.

“Google’s discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values,” Gabbard said in a statement. “This is a threat to free speech, fair elections, and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans.”

Similar contentions were most recently placed under the spotlight during a Senate hearing last week on Google censorship. Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host and the hearing’s star witness, lamented YouTube’s decision to restrict about 20 percent of his videos, meaning they are invisible to the 1.5 percent of viewers who opt not to see mature content. Prager claimed that YouTube—a Google subsidiary—had targeted his video-making nonprofit PragerU because of a corporate bias against conservatives, notwithstanding the fact that the tech giant restricts much larger portions of content from various liberal organizations.

“I promise you, one day you will say, first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing,” said Prager, referencing Martin Niemöller’s famous poem. “And then they came after me—and there was no one left to speak up for me.” It’s a puzzling claim, considering that the remaining 98.5 percent of YouTube’s 1.3 billion users can still engage with all of his videos.

Although Gabbard and Prager’s recent gripes center on Google, the social media sphere in general has been a rife target for censorship claims. In a similar hearing in April, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.) said that social media was the new “town square”—one that requires a sheriff (see: the federal government) for proper policing. She cited Twitter’s brief removal of her Senate campaign announcement video in 2017; although it was reinstated soon after, she chalked the debacle up to anti-conservative bias in big tech.

In another sign that this isn’t a Republican-specific phenomenon, a near-identical scenario struck Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) on Facebook. The platform recently removed an ad for Warren’s presidential campaign for violating its terms of service.

While conservatives seem to be somewhat unified in their skepticism of social media, Democrats as a whole will likely be harder to convince, as many have spent ample amounts of time refuting such claims from the right. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D–Hawaii), for one, said in last week’s tech hearing that the bias bickering is “baseless.”

Many of these companies have been obnoxiously opaque about their business practices, leaving users to play guessing games about why certain bits of content have been removed. That lack of transparency, and their sometimes over-aggressive content regulation, has opened a wide gate for complainers to make assumptions about what’s going on. Hence the charges of politically motivated bias.

Gabbard likely stands no chance in court. But, if anything, her lawsuit provides an excellent example of the perpetual misunderstanding surrounding what constitutes protected speech, and what does not. While the First Amendment certainly shields Gabbard, Prager, and everyone else from government censorship or retaliation based on words alone, it does not mean Google, Facebook, or Twitter cannot remove content. They are private companies, and, as such, can choose not to publish something if it doesn’t align with their values—an argument that, until recently, resonated with conservatives.

Google denies any such bias. “In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter,” Jose Castanada tells The New York Times, explaining that an automated system works to prevent potential fraud by flagging accounts with large spending changes. “We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”

If her suit is any proof, that answer did not satisfy Gabbard, who has now joined hands with her conservative colleagues in decrying tech “censorship.” Who said bipartisanship was dead?

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Tulsi Gabbard’s $50 Million Lawsuit Against Google Is Another Attack on Online Free Speech

Tulsi Gabbard took a cue from conservative conspiracists Thursday, when the Hawaii congresswoman and Democratic presidential hopeful filed a $50 million lawsuit against Google for allegedly violating her right to free speech. The suit, filed in a federal court in Los Angeles, argues that Google infringed on her First Amendment rights when it suspended her campaign advertising site for six hours, briefly impeding her ability to raise money right after a well-received debate performance.

Many people on the right have made social media companies Public Enemy No. 1 recently, claiming that they discriminate against conservative points of view. Ironically, Gabbard’s suit throws some cold water on the accusations coming from her Republican counterparts, casting doubt on the idea that Google and its subsidiaries are systematically ostracizing Wrongthink along party lines.

“Google’s discriminatory actions against my campaign are reflective of how dangerous their complete dominance over internet search is, and how the increasing dominance of big tech companies over our public discourse threatens our core American values,” Gabbard said in a statement. “This is a threat to free speech, fair elections, and to our democracy, and I intend to fight back on behalf of all Americans.”

Similar contentions were most recently placed under the spotlight during a Senate hearing last week on Google censorship. Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host and the hearing’s star witness, lamented YouTube’s decision to restrict about 20 percent of his videos, meaning they are invisible to the 1.5 percent of viewers who opt not to see mature content. Prager claimed that YouTube—a Google subsidiary—had targeted his video-making nonprofit PragerU because of a corporate bias against conservatives, notwithstanding the fact that the tech giant restricts much larger portions of content from various liberal organizations.

“I promise you, one day you will say, first they came after conservatives, and I said nothing,” said Prager, referencing Martin Niemöller’s famous poem. “And then they came after me—and there was no one left to speak up for me.” It’s a puzzling claim, considering that the remaining 98.5 percent of YouTube’s 1.3 billion users can still engage with all of his videos.

Although Gabbard and Prager’s recent gripes center on Google, the social media sphere in general has been a rife target for censorship claims. In a similar hearing in April, Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R–Tenn.) said that social media was the new “town square”—one that requires a sheriff (see: the federal government) for proper policing. She cited Twitter’s brief removal of her Senate campaign announcement video in 2017; although it was reinstated soon after, she chalked the debacle up to anti-conservative bias in big tech.

In another sign that this isn’t a Republican-specific phenomenon, a near-identical scenario struck Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) on Facebook. The platform recently removed an ad for Warren’s presidential campaign for violating its terms of service.

While conservatives seem to be somewhat unified in their skepticism of social media, Democrats as a whole will likely be harder to convince, as many have spent ample amounts of time refuting such claims from the right. Sen. Mazie Hirono (D–Hawaii), for one, said in last week’s tech hearing that the bias bickering is “baseless.”

Many of these companies have been obnoxiously opaque about their business practices, leaving users to play guessing games about why certain bits of content have been removed. That lack of transparency, and their sometimes over-aggressive content regulation, has opened a wide gate for complainers to make assumptions about what’s going on. Hence the charges of politically motivated bias.

Gabbard likely stands no chance in court. But, if anything, her lawsuit provides an excellent example of the perpetual misunderstanding surrounding what constitutes protected speech, and what does not. While the First Amendment certainly shields Gabbard, Prager, and everyone else from government censorship or retaliation based on words alone, it does not mean Google, Facebook, or Twitter cannot remove content. They are private companies, and, as such, can choose not to publish something if it doesn’t align with their values—an argument that, until recently, resonated with conservatives.

Google denies any such bias. “In this case, our system triggered a suspension and the account was reinstated shortly thereafter,” Jose Castanada tells The New York Times, explaining that an automated system works to prevent potential fraud by flagging accounts with large spending changes. “We are proud to offer ad products that help campaigns connect directly with voters, and we do so without bias toward any party or political ideology.”

If her suit is any proof, that answer did not satisfy Gabbard, who has now joined hands with her conservative colleagues in decrying tech “censorship.” Who said bipartisanship was dead?

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Trump May Slap Tariffs On French Wine, Hints At No Trade Deal Until After Election

Speaking to reporters on Friday afternoon at the White House, President Trump said he “might” impose tariffs on wine from  France as a “substantial reciprocal action” after France imposed a new digital tax that affects U.S. technology companies.

“It might be on wine, it might be on something else,” Trump, clearly in his element, told the press corps.

On Thursday, French President Emmanuel Macron signed into law a 3% tax on the revenue of technology giants like Facebook and Amazon; the tax, which is retroactive to January, affects companies with at least 750 million euros in global revenue and digital sales of 25 million euros in France. About 30 businesses would be affected; while most are American, the list also includes Chinese, German, British and even French firms.

“We tax our companies, they don’t tax our companies,” Trump said; France’s tax, and Trump’s response, threaten to further strain trans-Atlantic ties as the U.S. and European Union prepare to negotiate a limited trade agreement on industrial goods.

Last month Trump promised to do “something” about French wine that he said is allowed into the U.S. virtually tariff-free while France imposes duties on U.S. wine, calling the arrangement unfair. In reality, Bloomberg reports that the US charges a tariff of 5 cents per 750 milliliter bottle of imported still wine and 14 cents for sparkling wine, according to the Wine Institute, an advocacy group for California winemakers. European Union tariffs for imported wine range from 11 cents to 29 cents per bottle, according to the group.

For now, France hasn’t indicated it will back off from its planned digital tax even after the U.S. suggested it may use trade tools against the levy.

Also on Friday, the U.S. said it will examine whether the tax would hurt its tech firms, using the so-called 301 investigation, the same tool Trump deployed to impose tariffs on Chinese goods because of the country’s alleged theft of intellectual property. Trump’s tweet was followed by a White House statement saying the U.S. is “extremely disappointed” by the tax. In addition to the 301 probe, the Trump administration is “looking closely at all other policy tools,” said spokesman Judd Deere.

“The Trump administration has consistently stated that it will not sit idly by and tolerate discrimination against U.S.-based firms,” Deere said.

France – which argues that the structure of the global economy has shifted to one based on data, rendering 20th-century tax systems archaic – became the first country in the EU to impose such a tax with other nations, including the U.K. and Germany, contemplating similar taxes. France had pushed for a EU-wide digital levy that was scrapped when four countries – Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Ireland – declined to sign off on it.

* * *

Separately, Trump also touched on the ongoing US-China trade conflict, strongly hinting that a trade deal may not be reached until November 2020, if then.

Trump said that China may wait until after the 2020 U.S. presidential election to sign a trade agreement because Beijing would prefer to reach a deal with a Democrat.

“I think that China will probably say, ‘let’s wait,’” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday. “When I win, like almost immediately, they’re all going to sign deals.” Which, of course is wonderful news for stocks which will rally for almost a year and a half on hopes of an “imminent” trade deal, much as they have rallied for the past year.

U.S. Trade Rep Robert Lighthizer and Steven Mnuchin are set to travel to China (Shanghai, not Beijing) Monday for the first high-level, face-to-face trade negotiations between the world’s two biggest economies since talks broke down in May. It will be the first encounter between officials from the two nations since Trump and Xi Jinping met at the G-20 summit in Japan last month and declared a tentative truce in their year-long trade war.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Mg5Qgs Tyler Durden

D.C. Metro Spent $500,000 Maintaining a Self-Cleaning Toilet That Hasn’t Flushed Since 2017

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority—Metro for short—can barely run its train system. You’d think keeping its toilets operational would be an easier task.

You’d be wrong, according to a new semi-annual report from Metro’s Office of Inspector General, which found that between 2003 and 2017, Metro spent $416,789.32 maintaining a toilet that hasn’t flushed since 2017. The report notes that the $416,789 figure is likely an underestimate, as Metro staff were unable to provide investigators with maintenance invoices for 2007, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

“Based on spending from the previous years, it is probable that [Metro] spent over $500,000 on the self-cleaning toilet that has been out of service since the fall of 2017,” reads the report.

This was not the only instance of waste listed in the report. Metro also spent $35,755 on two special silt-filtering pumps for use in its drainage pumping stations. The hope was that these new pumps would reduce the need to hire outside contractors to remove silt from the stations. However, after one of the pumps failed an initial test, a supervisor “had the pumps stored at two different underground locations.” The reports says that Metro “personnel did not consult the manufacturer to troubleshoot or repair them. Both pumps have remained in storage for the past four years—one still in its original packaging.”

The report also says that, during the solicitation process for a $44 million contract, a Metro employee was using a personal Gmail account to provide a vendor seeking that contract with “sensitive and confidential” information. The OIG’s investigation into the matter is ongoing.

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“Unprecedented, Wasteful & Obscene”: House Approves $1.48 Trillion Pentagon Budget

Authored by Jake Johnson via Common Dreams

In a bipartisan deal that one anti-war critic said demonstrates how thoroughly “broken and captured Washington is by the Pentagon,” 219 House Democrats and 65 Republicans on Thursday voted to approve a budget agreement that includes $1.48 trillion in military spending over the next two years.

Just 16 Democrats — including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) — voted against the two-year, $2.7 trillion budget agreement. Largely due to expressed concerns about the deficit, 132 Republicans and Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) also voted no. The final vote was 284-149. (See the full roll call.)

The House passage of the budget deal, which President Donald Trump quickly applauded on Twitter as a victory for the military, comes after the Congressional Progressive Caucus threatened in April to tank the measure in opposition to its out-of-control Pentagon outlays. But most of the Progressive Caucus voted for the agreement on Thursday, pointing to increases in domestic spending.

President Donald Trump arrives to speak after touring the Lima Army Tank Plant at Joint Systems Manufacturing in Lima, Ohio, March 20, 2019. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

“It’s not a perfect deal by any means,” Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, said in a statement ahead of the vote. “This deal does not address the bloated Pentagon budget, but it does begin to close the gap in funding for families, by allocating more new non-defense spending than defense spending for the first time in many years.”

Stephen Miles, executive director of Win Without War, took issue with the latter claim in a series of tweets Thursday.

“You’re no doubt hearing a lot of crowing from Democrats about how the deal they struck with Trump gives more money to ‘non-defense’ spending than to ‘defense,'” Miles wrote. “Let’s be clear that by every measure, save the one they’re using, that’s simply not true.”

“Under this deal, the Pentagon and its affiliated programs will get $1.48 trillion over the next two years. The entire rest of gov’t, including the VA btw, will get $1.30 trillion. That’s $178.6 billion more for the Pentagon than the whole rest of gov’t,” Miles wrote. “So, for the love of god, can we all stop pretending like this is somehow anything other than a continued orgy of unprecedented, wasteful, and obscene spending at the Pentagon.”

William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, wrote for Forbes this week that the budget deal “vastly overpays for the Pentagon.”

“At $738 billion for Fiscal Year 2020 and $740 billion for Fiscal Year 2021,” wrote Hartung, “the agreement sets the table for two of the highest budgets for the Pentagon and related work on nuclear warheads at the Department of Energy since World War II.”

“The proposed figures are higher than spending at the height of the Vietnam and Korean Wars, and substantially more than the high point of the Reagan buildup of the 1980s,” Hartung added. “And the Fiscal Year 2020 and Fiscal Year 2021 numbers are only slightly less than spending in 2010, when the United States had 180,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, roughly nine times the number currently deployed.”

The sweeping 2020 budget agreement is expected to pass the Senate next week, and Trump has signaled he will sign the measure.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined the president in celebrating the increase in military spending, which is significantly more than the Pentagon requested. The deal, McConnell said, “achieves the No. 1 goal of the Republican side of the aisle, providing for the common defense.”

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) came under fire from progressives for striking the budget agreement with Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Specifically, critics highlighted the deal to suspend the debt ceiling until 2021, a move that could give Republicans power to cripple the next president’s agenda.

“If you really listen,” wrote Splinter‘s Paul Blest, “you can almost hear [Texas Sen.] Ted Cruz yelling on the floor of the Senate that Congress shouldn’t raise the debt limit by one more dollar unless President Bernie Sanders promises to drop his demand for Medicare for All.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Ynsu91 Tyler Durden

D.C. Metro Spent $500,000 Maintaining a Self-Cleaning Toilet That Hasn’t Flushed Since 2017

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority—Metro for short—can barely run its train system. You’d think keeping its toilets operational would be an easier task.

You’d be wrong, according to a new semi-annual report from Metro’s Office of Inspector General, which found that between 2003 and 2017, Metro spent $416,789.32 maintaining a toilet that hasn’t flushed since 2017. The report notes that the $416,789 figure is likely an underestimate, as Metro staff were unable to provide investigators with maintenance invoices for 2007, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

“Based on spending from the previous years, it is probable that [Metro] spent over $500,000 on the self-cleaning toilet that has been out of service since the fall of 2017,” reads the report.

This was not the only instance of waste listed in the report. Metro also spent $35,755 on two special silt-filtering pumps for use in its drainage pumping stations. The hope was that these new pumps would reduce the need to hire outside contractors to remove silt from the stations. However, after one of the pumps failed an initial test, a supervisor “had the pumps stored at two different underground locations.” The reports says that Metro “personnel did not consult the manufacturer to troubleshoot or repair them. Both pumps have remained in storage for the past four years—one still in its original packaging.”

The report also says that, during the solicitation process for a $44 million contract, a Metro employee was using a personal Gmail account to provide a vendor seeking that contract with “sensitive and confidential” information. The OIG’s investigation into the matter is ongoing.

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