Kalli posted:

But they already moderate content, otherwise all those sites would look like pornhub, which also moderates content.

quote:

Algorithmic display carve-outs. Algorithmic display has become a target for many lawmakers eager to take a run at Section 230. But as with every other proposed reform, changing Section 230 so that it no longer applies to platforms using algorithmic display would end up obliterating the statute for just about everyone. And it’s not quite clear that lawmakers proposing these sorts of changes quite realize this inevitable impact.

And part of the problem seems to be that they don’t really understand what an algorithm is, or how commonly they are used. They seem to regard it as something nefarious, but there’s nothing about an algorithm that inherently is. The reality is that nearly every platform uses software in some way to handle the display of user-provided content, and algorithms are just the programming logic coded into the software giving it the instructions for how to display that content. Moreover, these instructions can even be as simple as telling the software to display the content chronologically, alphabetically, or some other relevant way the platform has decided to render content, which the First Amendment protects. After all, a bookstore can decide to shelve books however it wants, including in whatever order or with whatever prominence it wants. What these algorithms do is implement these sorts of shelving decisions, just as applied to the online content a platform displays.

If algorithms were to end up banned by making the Section 230 protection platforms need to host user-generated content contingent on not using them, it would make it impossible for platforms to actually render any of that content. They either couldn’t do it technically, if they were to abide by this rule withholding their Section 230 protection, or legally if that protection were to be withheld because they used this display. Such a rule would also represent a fairly significant change to Section 230 itself by gutting the protection for moderation decisions, since those decisions are often implemented by an algorithm. In any case, conditioning Section 230 on not using algorithms is not a small change but one that would radically upend the statutory protection and all the online services it enables.

FlamingLiberal posted:

There are also efforts underway by anti-abortion states and groups to water down Section 230 so that say, you can sue Google for hosting websites that provide information on how to access abortions or get at-home abortifacients if you are in a place like Missouri.

haveblue posted:

Why is it stupid? Youtube is not a fully autonomous strong AI, every decision the algorithm makes was the result of human input into its priorities. It surfaces and buries videos based on what Youtube's human operators believe optimizes their business, and not based on social good or anything like that because that's how the humans configured it. It may have evolved into a black box that no one person fully understands, and it may have grown far too large to transition to direct human oversight of all content, but that doesn't necessarily protect them from liability or responsibility to fix it

VitalSigns posted:

How is that any different from a newspaper letting people submit editorials and then deliberately promoting extremist ones to sell more papers.

VitalSigns posted:

They could just, you know, NOT recommend violent content on purpose to get people hooked. They don't even have to take it down they just have to stop trying on purpose to get people to watch it!

Paracaidas posted:

Justice has made a motion to expedite their Cannon appeal

The initial schedule was

• 10/19: Government brief due
  
• 11/18: Trump reply due
  
• 12/9: Government response due
  

Justice proposes:

• 10/14: Government brief due
  
• 11/4: Trump reply due
  
• 11/11: Government response due
  

They note throughout their document that the stay was narrowly tailored for the most essential relief but they believe the same reasoning used to grant the stay is applicable to essentially everything else.

cgeq posted:

I don't think those two are indistinguishable. There's a difference between a terrorist video being uploaded on to a server and then sitting there until someone searches for it by name, versus pushing the terrorist video in front of users because the algorithm detects it's getting great engagement.

quote:

"you lose all liability protection for user content if you do any curation, moderation, or serve content in anything but a purely random way"

cgeq posted:

I think there may be a vast middle ground between "purely random" or no content delivery and "getting sued for any and all user content."

cgeq posted:

Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, etc are making a ton of money and just straight up ignoring a lot of problems because that problematic content generates engagement. They can survive being forced to sacrifice some of that engagement by being more strict and/or better moderating the content some randos and huge webs of shell companies fire hose onto their platforms.

cgeq posted:

Oof, I dunno. I think proper moderation is the easiest solution, but I'm ignoring that because the companies don't want it and no one's going to make them do it. All parties seem like they would rather just burn it all to the ground rather than put any effort into a workable solution.

So accepting that handicap, what options do the platforms have besides serving content randomly or getting sued?
I just think back to early internet days. Maybe it's just simple sorting and filters. Add to that some sort of tagging system to help connect people deliberately searching for something to that content.

cgeq posted:

I'm not saying any of this is good but it should get the platform off the hook for "editorializing" and it would still provide users with a (horribly lovely... or maybe just old-fashioned) way to access content. It would completely change the entire ecosystem and the business model of the platform and content creators. The internet ad market would lose a huge revenue channel. But it's an option that achieves the goals and probably still leaves society better off.

Robviously posted:

My guess is he just figured out something that's going to end up coming out in discovery of the lawsuit that he wants to get around.

evilweasel posted:

yeah, I would also say that "this poorly thought out product design causes measurable harm" is the essence of products liability, and there's not really a good reason it shouldn't apply to the recommendation algorithms.

evilweasel posted:

Jaxyon posted:

like it's great that he's claiming that but he's not the executive so he can't actually do that, right?

quote:

A Call for Fairness, a Rule for Efficiency
The President nominated me to this position roughly a year ago. I spent a good bit of that time reading antitrust treatises cover to cover.

Doing that, I quickly read that the purpose of antitrust is to maximize efficiency. I read that the Supreme Court declared it “axiomatic” that the antitrust laws were passed to protect competition, not competitors, which is a way of saying that antitrust laws are not intended to protect the small and allegedly inefficient.

But I also used that time to read a lot of history, which told a very different story. I learned that small farmers pressed Iowa to pass the nation’s first antitrust law in 1888. I learned that when Congress convened in 1890 to debate the Sherman Act, they did not talk about efficiency. No, the most common complaint in the Sherman Act debates was that a cartel of meatpackers was cheating cattlemen out of a fair price for their livestock. In 1936, Congress spent months debating a bill to protect small-town grocers being driven out of business by powerful chain stores who got secret payoffs from their suppliers.

“What are we trying to get away from these chains?” asked one of the bill’s supporters. “What we are trying to take away from them is secret discounts, secret rebates, and secret advertising allowances. We are trying to take away from them those practices that are unfair.”

It wasn’t just 1890 or 1936. Five times in 60 years, Congress passed antitrust laws that in letter or spirit demanded fairness for small business, often rural small business. Yet today, it is “axiomatic” that antitrust does not protect small business. And that the lodestar of antitrust is not fairness, but efficiency.

How did this happen? What has this focus on efficiency meant for rural America? And what would it look like to return to fairness?

A Child in West Virginia
In many parts of rural America, independent pharmacies are the one place where you can fill your prescriptions, get your shots, and get answers to medical questions. Here’s a story I read on the website of the West Virginia state insurance commissioner about something that happened at one of those pharmacies.

A family walks into a pharmacy. Their child has cancer. The pharmacist has the child’s medicine behind the counter, ready to dispense. But when that pharmacist calls the pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM, for the family’s insurance company, they are denied authorization to give the family that medicine. Instead, they are told that the medicine can only be dispensed by the PBM’s own mail order specialty pharmacy. The family was to go home and wait up to two weeks to receive the medicine for their child in the mail.

How did this happen?

Picture a set of 39 companies. Some pharmacies, some PBMs, some insurers. Twenty years ago, these were all separate. Today, those 39 companies have merged into just three vertically integrated entities. And so today, when most people fill a prescription, just one of three entities mediates what medicine they get, what they pay for it, and how they will get it—and that corporate entity makes money by making sure that prescription is filled by its own pharmacy. Even, apparently, when it is cancer medicine. And even, apparently, when doing that will force a child to wait for two weeks.

How did this happen? This change from 39 companies to just three?

Merging companies usually predict that the merger is going to save them money by merging. They then predict that they will pass those predicted savings on to consumers via lower prices. For many years, however, it was not a mainstream idea that those predicted price reductions could offset the harm of a merger that increases market power.

That started to change in the 1970s and ’80s. The idea took hold within enforcement agencies that mergers, particularly vertical ones, were presumptively good for the economy and good for consumers. This idea was given the greatest weight for vertical mergers, the kind of mergers that help make it so that a pharmacy middleman has an interest in steering a patient to their own pharmacy.

There are certainly many factors in merger analysis. But it is inescapable that this presumption of efficiency significantly contributed to making 39 separate companies into the three vertically integrated firms that exist today.

Today, rural independent pharmacies are closing one after another after another. In Minnesota, from 2003 to 2018, 30 rural zip codes lost their only pharmacy.

Cattlemen in Iowa
I was in Des Moines for a conference; I asked our team to set up a listening session with some cattlemen and corn growers. It was about nine or ten people. Every one was in crisis.

The prices of seeds, feed, fertilizer, and farm equipment were going up. The prices of their products were going down. Farmers used to make 40 cents on every dollar spent at the grocery; they make 16 now. They are going out of business by the thousands. “We have a noose around our necks and we’re standing on an ice cube,” said one. “It’s like being picked apart by a chicken,” said another.

The group talked about a lot of factors behind these changes, but they kept returning to consolidation. Fertilizer, seeds, grain buying, meatpacking: There used to be dozens of firms, sometimes over a hundred, in each of these sectors. Now each is dominated by just four; depending on the region, there may now be just one supplier of a key input, or just one meatpacking plant.

What is it like to be down to just one place to sell your livestock? We’ve known since 1890 that it can depress farmers’ prices. But it’s more than that. One of the cattlemen described through tears how he had to gas a warehouse full of cattle when the one processing plant accessible to him was shut down because of COVID.

Another described animal abuse on the lot that he said was unheard of in competitive markets. A cow that he raised was bolted in the head, killed, dragged out of a trailer with a log chain, and dumped in the garbage because she had slipped in the trailer on the drive to the processing plant. The producer pleaded with the lot worker to take the cow home instead so she would have time to recover and heal, but the worker informed the producer that no livestock leaves the premises. The cow was given a couple of minutes to try and get up and was then shot.

But maybe the most shocking thing was how scared they were that something they said would somehow get back to their suppliers or their purchasers and that they would pay for it.

How did this happen?

The merger wave began in the 1980s. Tellingly, when farmers have raised alarms about the consolidation of input and product markets, economists have answered that the consolidation “unquestionably enhance[s] efficiency.”

When antitrust was guided by fairness, these farmers’ families were part of a thriving middle class across rural America. After the shift to efficiency, their livelihoods began to disappear.

A Grocer in South Dakota
That shift didn’t just affect farmers. It also affected the communities that depend on them and their products.

Like independent pharmacies, independent groceries serve places that bigger companies do not. The lower the income, the lower the population, the more likely it is to be served by an independent.

I recently watched video testimony of an independent grocer named R.F. Buche, who owns 21 stores in South Dakota Indian country. Mr. Buche’s family has been serving Indian country for 117 years. Many of his stores are the only place where locals can easily get fresh milk and produce. Many of them are over an hour’s drive from the nearest big box store.

Yet Mr. Buche faces challenges that those big box stores do not. Manufacturers sell products to the big box stores in sizes and packages that they don’t offer to him. When he is offered the same products, he cannot get the same prices for them. And that’s not because of quantity.

Like most independent grocers, Mr. Buche works with a wholesaler. By bundling the orders of multiple independent grocers, that wholesaler can often meet the order sizes of the big box stores. But even then, his wholesaler is not given the same price. That price is kept secret.

When the pandemic hit, manufacturers cut supplies to Mr. Buche and his wholesaler. “Picture this, please,” he told Congress. “Pine Ridge, one of the poorest counties in the nation, not having WIC items like formula for babies on their grocery store shelf.” Note that this was months before the baby formula shortages caused by the Sturgis plant in Michigan.

The only way Mr. Buche could keep products like baby formula, ground beef, or Pedialyte on his shelves was by driving over a thousand miles each week to move essential products between his low-volume and high-volume stores. Yet when Mr. Buche would walk into a big box store 50 or 100 miles from his own, those shelves would be full of those products.

What is happening to Mr. Buche is happening to independent groceries around the country. They are closing, by the thousand, creating food deserts across rural America.

How did this happen?

Efficiency happened. In 1936, Congress passed the Robinson-Patman Act, the law I talked about earlier that bans “unfair practices” like “secret discounts” and “secret rebates,” available only to the large and powerful. When it passed that law, Congress went out of its way to “keep open the door of opportunity for the small-business man as well as large.” For decades, Robinson-Patman was a mainstay of FTC enforcement. It arguably prohibits many of the practices Mr. Buche is experiencing.

Then, as efficiency gained ground in the mid-1980s, a view took hold among enforcers and then courts: First, that Robinson-Patman was an outlier among antitrust statutes because the Congress that passed it focused on harms to supposedly inefficient small businesses. Second, that the law raised consumer prices. Enforcement slowed to a trickle, and then stopped completely.

Those claims are unproven or incorrect. To my knowledge, some 86 years after its passage, there is not one empirical analysis showing that Robinson-Patman actually raised consumer prices. And none other than Professor Herbert Hovenkamp has explained that Robinson-Patman was not an outlier. According to him, the congressional debates around each of the other major antitrust laws were also “fairly dominated … by a strong desire to protect small business.”

A Return to Fairness
We need to step back and question the role of efficiency in antitrust enforcement.

If efficiency is so important in antitrust, then why doesn’t that word, “efficiency,” appear anywhere in the antitrust statutes that Congress actually wrote and passed?

If efficiency is the goal of antitrust, then why am I charged by statute with stopping unfair methods of competition, and not “inefficient” ones?

We cannot let a principle that Congress never wrote into law trump a principle that Congress made a core feature of that law. I think it is time to return to fairness.

People may not know what is efficient—but they know what’s fair. It may be efficient to send a child home to wait two weeks for their cancer medicine. We all know it isn’t fair. It may be efficient to force cattlemen to sell their livestock to just one meatpacker. It may be efficient for Pine Ridge to go without baby formula. We all know that that’s not what fair markets look like.

That visceral understanding of fairness has often been dismissed as ambiguous and “impressionistic.” I disagree. Because Congress and the courts have told us, directly and repeatedly, how to implement protections against unfairness.

Certain laws that were clearly passed under what you could call a fairness mandate—laws like Robinson-Patman—directly spell out specific legal prohibitions. Congress’s intent in those laws is clear. We should enforce them.

But Congress did more than that. As FTC Chair Lina Khan has explained, Congress deliberately charged the FTC to go beyond the limits of the Sherman Act. And then, the Supreme Court came in and repeatedly reaffirmed the idea that our Section 5 authority goes beyond Sherman. So I support Chair Khan’s goal to reactivate enforcement under our unfairness authority, and to issue a policy statement setting out the scope of that authority.

My own focus is on people living paycheck to paycheck. For me, that’s what antitrust is about : your groceries, your prescriptions, your paycheck. I want to make sure the Commission is helping the people who need it the most. And I want to make sure we don’t leave behind rural America.

Clarste posted:

Why the gently caress is anyone defending the recommendation algorithm anyway?

evilweasel posted:

youtube wants you to think there is no option between forcing them to pre-approve each and every video uploaded to the site (in practice, largely ending the product) or allowing their algorithm to keep trying to find which flavor of extremist videos will get you hooked.

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

there have been a lot of conspiracy theories about malevolent outside forces being responsible for Bernie Sanders, but blaming Youtube's a new one

Staluigi posted:

Virtually every time a candidate is accused of being a russian asset it's incredibly dumb but people like gabbard make you have to stop and think about it first even though the connections to modi/rss hindu hypernationalism make more sense

her positions are truly that mystifyingly bad

quote:

“To try to act as if there is a difference between ‘civil unions’ and same-sex marriage is dishonest, cowardly and extremely disrespectful to the people of Hawaii who have already made overwhelmingly clear our position on this issue… As Democrats we should be representing the views of the people, not a small number of homosexual extremists.”

quote:

The contrast between our society and those in the Middle East made me realize that the difference—the reason those societies are so oppressive—is that they are essentially theocracies where the government and government leaders wield the power to both define and then enforce "morality."

My experiences in the Middle East eventually led me to reevaluate my view regarding government’s role in our personal lives and decisions. Slowly, I began to realize that the positions I had held previously regarding the issues of choice and gay marriage were rooted in the same premise held by those in power in the oppressive Middle East regimes I saw—that it is government’s role to define and enforce our personal morality.

quote:

“[Gabbard] has taken a very courageous stand in a party that just refuses to face reality,”

GreyjoyBastard posted:

There seems to be some confusion - as far as I can tell she was not a dnc member in 2022, although it's actually pretty feasible to crowbar someone in if they have support from the state level party. Strictly speaking all you need is a majority (or plurality) vote in the state convention, and in many cases not even that, in TX there are a bunch of caucus specific dnc slots. She was a vice chair in *2016* before it was nationally obvious how awful she was.

quote:

Despite accomplishing almost nothing by filing this suit against EOIR, Plaintiffs seek to have the taxpayer finance it.

Charliegrs posted:

DOJ has successfully appealed the appointment of the special master in the classified files investigation:
Justice Department formally appeals appointment of special master in Mar-a-Lago documents case

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/14/politics/mar-a-lago-department-of-justice-appeal/index.html

I guess this means they can go forward with their investigation unimpeded?

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Ben Sasse's first few days on the job resulted in a ton of protests around his office.

Now, the U of FL is just banning indoor protests and telling all news organizations who want a comment to see their statement announcing his hire.

quote:

Not long after the magazine debuted, two of its cofounders were drafted into high-profile roles in the Clinton administration: Starr helped formulate Clinton’s ill-fated healthcare proposal, while Reich was appointed secretary of labor and became one of Clinton’s closest advisers. In later years the Prospect ran a group blog, Tapped, which was an important node in the progressive blogosphere of the aughts and launched the careers of Ezra Klein, Matthew Yglesias, Dana Goldstein, Adam Serwer, and Jamelle Bouie, among others.

quote:

Dayen told me that he took the Prospect job because it offered an opportunity to do something that other progressive magazines weren’t
[...]
By contrast, Dayen envisioned the Prospect as a publication that “talks about power in Washington, that talks about power in the corporate boardroom, and that gets to the bottom of it for our readers, so they can understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, who’s doing it, and how that power can be brought back to the people.”
[...]
More to the point, he said, he thinks of himself as a journalist who believes “we need government mechanisms to remedy the unsustainable inequality in this country that threatens social unrest.” He acknowledged that there will always be something irreducibly ideological about the Prospect, but said “it’s not like, on a scale of one to ten on the left spectrum, we are an eight-point-six.” What interests him far more is figuring out, concretely, which forces, people, and policies are keeping the government and the economy from functioning the way he believes they should. He is particularly insistent that the implementation of policies—the unglamorous bureaucratic wrangling that happens after bills are signed into law—deserves as much attention as the legislative drama that leads to enactment.“A lot of what we do is about just sort of making things work better,

Silly Burrito posted:

God willing, one of DOJ/NY/GA has Trump in jail for 2024.

Automata 10 Pack posted:

Heads up: Biden’s rhetoric has changed after the midterms to be “We need to look forwards, not backwards. We need to heal the country.”

davecrazy posted:

If the freedom caucus nutjobs take over de-facto (or actual) control of the house leadership won't that just allow for defections for R's in swing districts or Rs in D+ districts?

Herstory Begins Now posted:

The big difference is that for the first time in as long as I can remember there's a meaningful push for Rs to move towards the center (or at least not openly wage war on women and democracy). The brinksmanship calculus was different when the question was just 'right or even more right?'

Automata 10 Pack posted:

https://youtu.be/eSdukteb9k8

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

which is why the republican investigation is all about all the sad weird sex stuff, because anyone who thinks the Republican Party is going to go to war with the failson-industrial complex has another thing coming. the do-nothing job for family members is practically the only benefit you get for having an elected office these days, and if the Democrats are willing to launch an impeachment over someone over trying to mess with it imagine the response Republicans would have.

quote:

Rep. James Comer, incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said there are "troubling questions" of the utmost importance about Hunter Biden's business dealings and one of the president's brothers, James Biden, that require deeper investigation

quote:

Jordan, who was one of President Trump’s staunchest defenders during the House impeachment hearings, requested unredacted documents from the State Department on Thursday regarding former Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden’s role in Burisma Holdings, a “notoriously corrupt” Ukrainian state-run oil company.

“During the House Democrats’ partisan impeachment inquiry in late 2019, several State Department officials described how they raised concerns during the Obama-Biden Administration about Hunter Biden’s role with Burisma,” Jordan wrote in a letter addressed to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

quote:

In a press conference on Thursday, Comer accused the Biden family of defrauding the United States, tax evasion, violating several laws and money laundering, among other accusations.

"The president's participation in enriching his family is, in a word, abuse of the highest order," Comer said. "I want to be clear: This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that's where our focus will be next Congress."

Without providing evidence, promising it will come Thursday, Comer said the president was looped in on actions by Hunter that he called "influence peddling" and described it as lobbying foreign governments without registering, as required by law. He told NPR the panel believes "that there's ample evidence to prove that Joe Biden knew about Hunter's shady business dealings" and said "we believe he may have been involved financially in some of those business dealings, but at the very least, we believe we need to investigate to see if these shady business deals have compromised this White House."

quote:

"The vice president's son gets paid $50,000 a month and gets hired by a company in an industry he has no experience in and oh that's fine?" Jordan says, referring to Hunter Biden serving on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company. "Try taking that message to the American people ... When they see the vice president's son getting paid $50,000 a month in a field, in an industry he has no experience in ... And then when the company that's paying that money is under investigation, guess what? Daddy comes running to the rescue. The vice president of the United States comes running in and says, 'Fire that prosecutor.' "

quote:

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee, told Wray in a two-page letter that Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin had “released an explosive report detailing misconduct and potential criminal activity during the Obama-Biden Administration” and asked “what investigative steps — if any — the Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken in response to the information in this report.” The congressman contended that the report “shows that the FBI has been aware of some alleged misconduct for years” and “detailed widespread concern within the Obama-Biden Administration about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Burisma Holdings.”

The Senate Republicans’ controversial report on Joe and Hunter Biden, titled Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns, was released on Wednesday, detailing allegations of problematic foreign business dealings by Biden’s son as the former vice president helped lead the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

quote:

More consequentially, Emmer was the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm for House Republicans, this year. The NRCC’s associated super PAC, the Congressional Leadership Fund, received $2.75 million from FTX in the 2022 cycle; $2 million from Salame in late September, and $750,000 from the company’s political action committee.

That money helped House Republicans win the majority in 2022. Though FTX has been portrayed as a Democratic firm, thanks to the high profile of former co-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the company sprinkled around campaign donations fairly evenly, with a shade over 50 percent going to Republicans and a shade under 50 percent to Democrats this cycle.

In an email, the SEC declined to comment. Six of the eight congressmembers have yet to respond to the Prospect’s inquiries.

quote:

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) said through a spokesperson that the congressman was not attempting to influence ongoing investigations at the SEC, and did not exchange any communications with FTX. He was merely concerned with the SEC’s procedure and guidance with crypto firms, which some have described as “regulation by enforcement.” Donalds was not one of the members who received donations from FTX.

Matt Corridoni, a spokesperson for Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA), another of the signatories, told the Prospect, “The congressman has been clear from day one that crypto needs strong and clear laws from Congress. The SEC will need to explain to Congress why, despite claiming that it didn’t need new laws for exchanges, it failed to foresee this meltdown.” He added that FTX never directly lobbied Rep. Auchincloss’s office to join the letter

quote:

We have questions regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (the Commission) utilization of Division of Enforcement and Division of Examination authorities to obtain information related to cryptocurrency and blockchain firms. Those authorities are better suited to the SEC’s divisions charged with seeking public commentary as part of the rulemaking process.

The SEC’s regulatory functions, while broad, are limited to the extent of its statutorily mandated jurisdiction. Enforcement powers, while conceptually broader with respect to non-SEC regulated entities, are still circumscribed by statute, federal judicial review, congressional oversight and the Commission’s own policies and procedures for initiating and conducting inquiries and investigations. It appears there has been a recent trend towards employing the Enforcement Division’s investigative functions to gather information from unregulated cryptocurrency and blockchain industry participants in a manner inconsistent with the Commission’s standards for initiating investigations.

We have reason to believe these requests might be at odds with the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). The Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Enforcement: Enforcement Manual from 2017 states that during an inquiry or investigation, SEC staff may utilize Form 1662 to request voluntary production of documents, the voluntary creation of documents, and voluntary interviews and testimonies from regulated entities. The Commission’s Division of Examination may utilize Form 2866 for voluntary document production as well. We understand that the fruits of these requests will help the staff assess the merits of an investigation at its earliest stage; however, pursuant to the PRA, in seeking information from the American public, federal agencies must be good stewards of the public’s time, and not overwhelm them with unnecessary or duplicative requests for information.

quote:

Emmer made clear in his March Twitter thread that the letter was based on complaints from crypto firms, and that his intent was to stop the SEC from making these inquiries. “Crypto startups must not be weighed down by extra-jurisdictional and burdensome reporting requirements,” Emmer wrote. “We will ensure our regulators do not kill American innovation and opportunities.”

On the flip side, Emmer was quick to laud Bankman-Fried for his integrity and compliance with the law. In December 2021, Bankman-Fried testified before Congress, and Emmer told him, “Sounds like you’re doing a lot to make sure there is no fraud or other manipulation.”

quote:

THE UNORTHODOX LETTER IS ANALOGOUS to the 1987 “Keating Five” scandal. Then, five senators (including a young Arizona Republican named John McCain) pressured the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) into shutting down an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan and its chair Charles Keating Jr. Keating was a donor to all five senators, giving $1.3 million over the years.

The FHLBB did close its investigation into Keating and Lincoln Savings and Loan, right before it failed, costing the federal government $3.4 billion as part of the $125 billion S&L bailout. Keating was convicted of fraud and served jail time. The Senate Ethics Committee found that three members improperly interfered with a federal investigation; McCain was cleared while being found to exercise “poor judgment.”

The aftermath of the letter has also mirrored the Keating Five situation. While the SEC did conduct its informal inquiry, it did not uncover the potentially fraudulent activity at FTX. It’s at least possible that the pressure from members of Congress deterred the SEC from probing further. Then, like Lincoln Savings, FTX imploded, leaving depositors high and dry.

quote:

But the catastrophe at FTX hasn’t stopped Emmer from continuing to boost crypto. At an event with the crypto trade group the Blockchain Association just last week, Emmer told the assembled crypto honchos, “You are here to stay,” and that nobody should “rush in and put a huge wet blanket of regulation atop this industry just because something didn’t go right.”

quote:

In March, the Blockchain Association applauded the bipartisan letter, saying that “champions” like Emmer were making America “a crypto innovation leader.” The Blockchain Association’s director of government affairs, Ron Hammond, was previously the financial services policy lead for Rep. Davidson, one of the letter’s signatories.

In the wake of the collapse, Emmer has intimated that the SEC’s Gensler and FTX were “work[ing] on legal loopholes to obtain a regulatory monopoly.” With such comments, Emmer is playing into conspiracy theories that Gensler had ties to the firm and was operating in its interest.

Other Blockchain Eight Republicans have also criticized Gensler. “At this point, it’s hard to believe that @SECgov hasn’t engaged in selective enforcement,” Rep. Davidson wrote on Twitter last week.

Given that FTX was under investigation by the SEC in March, when Davidson and Emmer actively worked in public to shut that investigation down, claiming that it was illegal for the SEC to investigate crypto firms in that manner, their subsequent claims that the SEC wasn’t doing its job are certainly interesting. The SEC was told not to investigate, and is now being told that it investigated selectively.

quote:

The House Financial Services Committee has announced hearings during the lame-duck session into the FTX collapse. Emmer, Torres, Gottheimer, Auchincloss, Davidson, and Budd are all members of that committee. Unfortunately, they won’t be the ones forced to answer the questions.

Rigel posted:

Edge cases like the Dems actually playing kingmaker with a compromise candidate are fun to talk about for political nerds like us even though it is hilariously unlikely.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

DNC just announced that they will vote on the new primary schedule this weekend.

Unclear what the first 5 states will be (plus, it probably won't matter this year anyway and will likely be different states in 2028), but the first vote is on whether to kick Iowa out and make Michigan the new first primary for 2024 and it is expected to pass.

https://twitter.com/jmart/status/1598409086088912908

Oracle posted:

Do you think a party that can't even carry their own state should be first to decide the candidate for the majority of the country? Its not even a swing state.

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

Do you think South Carolina dems are the ones voting for republicans in the general?

Epic High Five posted:

With all 3 happening at once I think the takeaway is more that nothing will be as important as Iowa used to be and that's fine by me.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

The 2024 changes they approved:
- Make 5 early states instead of 4.
- SC goes first
- NH and NV go second on the same day
- Georgia goes 3rd
- Michigan goes 4th.

Epic High Five posted:

Oh I read that wrong, I thought the 2nd and 3rd took place at the same time on the same day, but later. My bad. I reinstate my belief that it's bad because the first one should be one that they'll ever win and isn't, for example, the most conservative state in the country, but I don't live in much fear of Dem state parties.

funkymonks posted:

I’m a NH resident and I think it’s a good idea to adjust some of this stuff to have less white states go sooner but then I saw the DNC handed the first 2024 primary to SC instead of a more progressive state so gently caress them. California, NY, and NJ have more diverse populations than SC but no we gotta have the state that saved Biden go first.

To me this looks more like a show of appealing to fairness while trying to ensure they can put their thumb on the scale for more centrist candidates.

quote:

There were also serious operational mistakes: In South Carolina, the campaign effectively deputized a former Ohio state senator and loyal surrogate, Nina Turner, to direct strategy, rather than empowering a political strategist to run the pivotal early state.

In January, efforts by Ms. Turner and others to direct some campaign resources into Super Tuesday states fizzled against opposition from Mr. Shakir and others. Mr. Shakir was adamant that Mr. Sanders’s path to the nomination ran principally through Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and the California primary on Super Tuesday.

quote:

The pollster, Ben Tulchin, in a meeting with campaign aides, recommended a new offensive to influence older black voters, according to three people briefed on his presentation. The data showed two clear vulnerabilities for Mr. Biden: his past support for overhauling Social Security, and his authorship of a punitive criminal justice law in the 1990s.

But the suggestion met with resistance. Some senior advisers argued that it wasn’t worth diverting resources from Iowa and New Hampshire, people familiar with the campaign’s deliberations said. Others pressed Mr. Tulchin on what kind of message, exactly, would make voters rethink their support for the most loyal ally of the first black president.

Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:

Is the SC Democratic primary electorate actually more centrist than a different equivalent state? It's more that they are more favorable to candidates popular with black voters (which are usually not the same as the candidates popular with the white liberal activist base, so it can lead to more centrist results), but not necessarily more centrist ideologically.

Jesse Jackson, Obama, and John Edwards all won South Carolina.

galenanorth posted:

https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/primaries-caucuses/entrance-and-exit-polls
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/state/south-carolina/party-affiliation/

Aside from having an open primary, 50% of South Carolina Democrats self-describe as moderate or conservative, 15% higher than in other states. I tried spending some time compiling statistics on its Dems' beliefs compared to other states by issue, but there's another graph that breaks it down the opposite way -- what percentage with certain beliefs are Dems -- and got confused. Anyway, you can see for abortion and same-sex marriage, 53% of Dems think it should be legal, lower than almost any other state except Alabama, e.g. 69% in Minnesota, I'd say 16% gap is about right, feels like I should be referencing a national average for that. For "is helping the poor good?", it's better than others: 77% vs. 78% in Minnesota, 70% in Michigan, 68% in Georgia, 67% in Nevada, 71% in California, 74% in Alabama. For environmental regulation, same states as before, 67% vs. 80%, 69%, 72%, 69%, 74%, 61%.

edit: It feels like this should all be on a map or something, I don't know why it's not on an interactive map. Also, this is 2014 data, so at least there's that. Also, I would've liked to have known South Carolina Democrat positions on issues like policing and racial discrimination issues compared to other states

edit2: Michigan is 66% and 71% on same-sex marriage and abortion. Georgia is 56% and 62% on same-sex marriage and abortion. Nevada is 67% and 77% on same-sex marriage and abortion. California is 74% and 69% on abortion. Alabama is 50% and 52% on same-sex marriage and abortion. Tennessee is 47% on same-sex marriage and 56% on abortion.