Corporate America is overconsolidated, and there are too many mergers

Too many mergers are damaging the economy.  This is happening in a number of ways that I'll hopefully get into, but the biggest effect it is having is on the free market.  The free market, and the concept of supply and demand, depend on a high amount of consumer choice.  When consumers have many choices, it forces businesses to achieve a high level of service for a lower price.  The less players there are in a market, the lower amount of choice consumers have.

This is playing out in a number of industries right now.  According to the New York Times, "consolidated businesses can raise prices more easily without worrying about losing customers" which dents the amount of total products and services the average costumer can obtain. This is especially hard on small businesses.  Think about it:  if your cell phone bill is going up because you're down to only a few choices, it lessens the amount of money you have left to eat at your local restaurants.

This also hurts investors and the financial sector, as JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon notes in the Bloomberg article below (even though he omits how he helped this happen).  Less possible investments to make means less financial advisors are needed, less analysts because there are less companies to analyze, and this is before we factor in the scourge of short-term dividend-chasing activist investors (stay tuned for a post about them in due time). 

We need to return to the time I think our idiot president t.rump is talking about when he says "make America Great Again", namely the late 1940s through the early 1990s.  This was a time when large outfits like AT&T and the International Boxing Federation, to name only a few, were broken up to foster more market competition.  Many people know this, but we often gloss over just how much harder it was to even merge to be that big in the first place.  We need to get back to this before corporate monopolies complete their cornering of markets and eventual takeover of governments, because especially when driven by activist investors this will only entrench a rigidly unequal class system and those people don't seem to have any compassion for people who were not born as fortunate as they were.

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-04-05/jamie-dimon-forgot-to-mention-mergers-are-part-of-the-problem
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/opinion/sunday/how-mergers-damage-the-economy.html

Housing Segregation, or, how to explain White Privilege to suburbanites

So basically in one very significant group of ways, it works like this: you have two people.  Let's say everything about them is the same.  Both middle aged men with a wife and 2.3 kids and a house in the suburbs.  In fact, about that house... literally it's the same house.  It's a common design home-builders used in the early 90's when both houses were built.  Same size plot of land and everything.  Both of these men own small businesses too.  Let's say they're both bakeries.  Both in similar areas.  Both need continuing rounds of investment in order to keep current equipment and grow the business.

Here's where the skin kicks in.  A very common and encouraged thing to do is take out a home loan.  It is the key to success for most people, because banks want you to have something to lose to keep you wanting to rather pay them then eat if it came down to that choice.  So racism works like this: the same house is worth more when it is owned by a white man in a white neighborhood.  That is a complete and absolute fact.

So you know where this is going.  Both men refinance, but the white man's home is worth more so he gets more out of his home equity loan.  Because of this, he can invest more in his business and reap more return on said investment than the black man could.  Eventually, if they're competing for business, the greater investment in the white man's bakery will give him a leg up against the black man's bakery.  Eventually the black man's bakery will close if that keeps up.  Then the black man will have to take another job that will almost certainly pay less.  Because school taxes are a percentage, this will lower his contribution to his son's school, causing his son to have a comparatively lower education than the white man's son.  This will in turn lower the value of the black man's house even further, and that's how poverty entrenches itself across generations of black people.

I'm white though, and I have the privilege of not being subject to this vicious cycle.  All white people do.  It's time all white people recognized this, then we can work on how to stop the cycle.

Paris, or, I should not be held responsible for my actions.

So of course it is well known by now that we've pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.  One thing that actually struck me is the amount on misinformation on the agreement, and how well Republicans have used that to their advantage.

The agreement never sets limits for us, or anyone else.  What it does is establish carbon markets, a program to assist poorer nations to develop renewable energy infrastructures by providing funding as an incentive against fossil fuel usage even when fossil fuels cost less, and a fining system for those who violate parts of the agreement.

This has been a big sticking point with some Americans.  "Why should we have to give them anything?" Because we in the United States extracted the largest material gain, by far, from two centuries of unchecked fossil fuel consumption and polluting. This is ill-gotten wealth we have obtained, and now we're going to act like we don't owe anyone anything?

We are more responsible for human-related carbon emissions throughout history than all other nations, both historical and present, combined.  By, like, a lot too.  We used to be a nation that took responsibility for our actions, and made things right when we did wrong.  But now we have Lying Traitor trump is I guess whatever.

Good Riddance to the Filibuster

Strom Thurmond's 24-hour filibuster of the Civil Rights Act of 1957

The Republican majority in the senate recently confirmed Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch after the majority changed the rules to do away with the filibuster of Supreme Court justices. The move to end the filibuster will continue until an important enough piece of legislation is passed by the Republicans and filibustered by the Democrats; then the filibuster will finally be gone for good. I for one, am happy about this. I'm not happy about Gorsuch or the wave of terrible legislation that will eventually become law, but the filibuster itself is one of the more reprehensible legislative tricks allowed in our government.

The filibuster is a procedural technique allowing a single senator or senators to ramble on endlessly to prevent a vote on legislation that has been passed by the majority. The filibuster was first used in 1837 and in 1917 a rule called cloture was introduced. Cloture was the ability for a larger majority to end a filibuster and it originally required a vote of two-thirds and then three-fifths in 1975. The existence of the filibuster and the rules of our senate get even more bizarre: Cloture can be eliminated by a simple majority vote, but as I just said, cloture can only be invoked with 60 votes or a "supermajority" but the rules can be changed with merely a majority vote. Does anyone else find this whole process a little odd?

The filibuster itself is mentioned nowhere is the Constitution and while the Constitution states that the senate can set its own rules, it also says in the Ninth Amendment "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people". Now in fairness, the Ninth Amendment could be interpreted to make a great number of things unconstitutional, but since the Constitution lays out a few very specific scenarios in which more than a majority vote is needed and passing routine legislation and making appointments isn't one of them, I think it's certainly fair to question the constitutionality of the filibuster.

Constitutionality aside, how is any of this remotely democratic?* Shouldn't a majority be able to rule as a majority? I think so. 

Ultimately, elections have consequences and the majority that wins out should be able to rule with constraints, but those constraints shouldn't include simply finding an angry minority to blather on about something as to prevent legislation or an appointment favored by the elected majority. With a majority in congress, the presidency, the elimination of the filibuster, and a majority on the Supreme Court, the Republicans own everything that happens. That's the way it should be.

*Some of you may correctly point out that the senate isn't democratic. This is true of course, but that's another post.

We're All Criminals

A common rhetorical dodge used by people who want crackdowns on immigration is that they're only opposed to "illegal" immigration.  I have to wonder if these people have ever received a speeding ticket because that is roughly the same level of crime we're talking about.  We're all criminals in one form or another.  I have yet to meet someone who has never driven their car too fast, drank underage, used illegal drugs, downloaded music or movies illegally, or stolen office supplies.  The entire American southwest was stolen from Mexico in the Mexican-American War to expand slavery; a practice which is now illegal.  You could say that collectively, all of us who descended from immigrants posses stolen property.  Legality has nothing to do with justice or morality, it merely expresses power.  It's hard for me to get worked up about people who cross some arbitrary line in the sand or overstay their visa usually for the purposes of working.

With Trump's latest executive action, any undocumented immigrant suspected of any crime or deemed by any law enforcement officer as a threat to public safety will be subject to deportation. Furthermore, I've always been unclear about what counts as probable cause for arrest for an immigration violation.  Is being brown and speaking with an accent probable cause?  If you don't have ID on you, are you subject to detention?  On the books already, is the constitutionally dubious ability of customs to set up checkpoints 100 miles from the border.  The new and existing practices of ICE, along with the rushed hiring of more ICE officers, and lack of immigration judges, leaves a system that is ripe for abuse and is a nearly vertical slope toward authoritarianism.

The immigration policies of the Trump Administration will cause fear among our immigrant community, documented and undocumented alike.  Immigrants will be reluctant to report serious crimes due to fear of being deported, racists will feel emboldened, employers will continue to exploit their workers, and ICE will be so overwhelmed with cases that truly dangerous criminals will inevitably slip through the cracks.  Deporting millions of immigrants will do nothing to make us safer or to improve working conditions; it will do the opposite.

I sincerely doubt any ICE officers are reading this, but if there are, then you need to quit.  What you're doing is immoral and runs contrary to the idea that is America.  If what you wanted when you took a job in law enforcement was to be a hero, then do something heroic and resign.      

The Muslim Ban is the Policy of the Republican Party

Ronald Reagan pictured here with notable racist/traitor Richard Nixon and notable criminal Spiro Agnew in 1971.  Reagan kicked off his 1980 Presidential campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Mississippi, with a speech emphasizing "states rights" just a couple miles from where civil rights workers had been the victims of state-sanctioned murder.

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are the leaders of the Republican Party and they endorse Trump's executive order on immigration and refugees.  The order is the policy of the mainstream Republican Party.  This is important to emphasize because many people including the Clinton campaign, have engaged in the habit of going after Trump personally, but at the same time letting Republicans off the hook.

Trump and the Republican Party are one in the same.  Trump is the perfect expression of the Republican id:  Racist, nationalistic, greedy, anti-intellectual, fear mongering, and worshipers of the prosperity gospel.  This white nationalism did not begin with Trump, nor will it end with him.  Watch the primary debates again, if you can stomach it; they all endorsed some iteration of the Muslim ban. Watch how many Republicans vote for Jeff Sessions.  This is why it is important to go after the whole party.

Trump is crazier than a generic Republican candidate is, but all the policies are the same.  The party will own everything Trump does until they decide to impeach him.

Get Ready

If the schedule of the confirmation hearings is any judge, expect a lot of bad legislation to come out of congress in coming days and weeks.  This legislation needs to be fought at every turn.  If the ACA's replacement (for example) is anything less than Medicare for all...oppose it.

Oppose all of Trump's cabinet appointments, but particularly Sessions, DeVos, Pruitt, Carson, and Price.  I may be missing some, the lightening speed of the hearings has my brain going in all directions (this is a deliberate effect), but the point is:  Universal opposition can work. 

Get ready to protest, boycott, and be disobedient.  Get ready to call your elected officials more often. 

The left is going to lose far more battles than it will win.  There is no preventing this, but we have to try.  Ultimately if we can tie the Republicans to Trump and vice-versa, and get people to show up to the polls, we will win.