AROUND NEW HAMPSHIRE
1. Substance Abuse & Medicaid Expansion
Substance abuse crisis could shape Medicaid expansion debate
by Kathleen Ronayne, Associated Press, concordmonitor.com, September 23, 2015
As lawmakers prepare for next year’s political battle over Medicaid expansion, supporters said the state’s ability to tackle a growing drug abuse problem will be dramatically reduced if the program comes to an end.
“Medicaid expansion kind of allowed substance misuse providers to go from 0 to 60 from a service standpoint,” said Abby Shockley, executive director of the New Hampshire Alcohol and Other Drug Service Providers Association.
Unlike traditional Medicaid, the expansion program covers a variety of substance abuse treatment and recovery programs. Providers say the Medicaid money now coming in is helping them respond to a growing need for services. But the program is set to expire at the end of next year if lawmakers don’t vote to continue it. With more than 320 drug deaths in the state last year, Medicaid expansion’s effect on treatment and recovery programs is likely to become a central part of the debate.
“Expanding treatment is an urgent need,” Gov. Maggie Hassan said Monday at the ground-breaking ceremony for a new treatment facility in Franklin. “We have providers who tell us they are ready to expand if they knew Medicaid expansion was happening and was going to be fully authorized and permanent.”
Expansion took months of negotiations between Republicans and Democrats throughout 2013 and into 2014. A bipartisan group of six senators, including the Republican Senate president and majority leader, crafted a deal that requires lawmakers to reauthorize the program when federal funding starts to dip below 100 percent. More than 40,000 people are now insured under the program, and it’s estimated to cost the state about $12 million for the first half of 2017.
Senate Majority Leader Jeb Bradley said he’d like to continue the plan if lawmakers can show it is working and if it can be paid for without state tax dollars. He said the increased focus on the heroin crisis will be part of the discussions.
“This year, it’s reached the public consciousness and as a result I think it’s front and center in everybody’s mind,” he said.
In the past, providers who helped low-income residents received aid through federal block grants at a rate of about $130 per patient per day. Medicaid expansion ups that to roughly $160 per day for in-patient residential treatment programs. New Hampshire’s Medicaid expansion plan covers screenings, counseling and a number of other treatment and recovery programs. Between September 2014 and March 2015, roughly 1,800 people insured by Medicaid expansion accessed substance abuse services.
The extra money matters, providers said.
“It makes a difference (when) making decisions about providing services long-term (and) being able to afford to do that,” said Karen Van Der Beken, chief development officer for care provider Easter Seals.
There are 228 licensed treatment beds in the state and more than 100 are in the licensing process, according to Hassan’s office.
To bill Medicaid, providers of in-patient residential treatment must meet a litany of building code requirements and three major providers are struggling to do so. Other providers may need to retrain staff, hire more workers or make other adjustments to meet Medicaid requirements, Shockley said. If the increased money from Medicaid expansion goes away, providers who make these changes could be left with costs they can’t afford.
“I have nightmares about this,” Shockley said. “I just honestly don’t know how the system wouldn’t completely collapse.”
2. Lagging on Real ID
N.H. Lawmakers Look for Ways To Comply With Federal ID Laws
by Paige Sutherland. nhpr.org, September 23, 2015
New Hampshire lawmakers plan to reopen the debate on whether the state should comply with federal personal identification laws. This comes after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security signaled it plans to strongly enforce compliance starting in 2016.
Currently, New Hampshire is one of four states -- including New York, Minnesota and Louisiana -- that do not abide by the federal Real ID program.
In 2007, New Hampshire enacted a law prohibiting state participation in Real ID due to privacy concerns. Real ID requires that states share personal identification information with the federal government for national security purposes.
A new bill, filed by Rep. Sherman Packard of Londonderry, would make compliance optional. But those who do not apply for a Real ID license by 2020 will have to undergo extra screenings at airports or get a passport.
“Instead of having to make a family of four go out and spend $600 on passports, they can get a Real ID compliant license," Packard said. "If they don’t want to, they don’t have to."
Packard said representatives from Homeland Security have promised that if the state passes compliant legislation by 2016, residents looking to get a Real ID will have a grace period until their driver’s license expires.
Gov. Maggie Hassan supported legislation aiming to abide by Real ID laws earlier this year, and said in a statement this week that she continues "to urge the Legislature and our federal delegation to find a common-sense solution that will not require Granite Staters to obtain a federal passport in order to enter secure facilities or to travel on airplanes."
3. The Body Cam Bill
Subcommittee calls body camera legislation a “balancing act”
by Jeremy blackman, concordmonitor.com, September 23, 2015
The trio, part of a House subcommittee, began meeting this month to examine two body camera bills that were tabled last winter amid concerns about cost, privacy and data management. The legislation originally required state troopers to wear the cameras, but exempted their recordings from the right-to-know law.
The subcommittee is now looking at several changes, including one that limits which officers wear the cameras, and one that makes some recordings, such as those depicting the use of force, subject to public disclosure. Footage of police encounters that are challenged by an involved party would also be subject to release.
The challenge for the group will be finding language that appeals to advocates on all sides. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire, for example, has proposed the current disclosure amendments, but media outlets are pushing for broader accessibility.
“The bill as introduced had a blanket exception, and we would share the concerns on that,” said Devon Chaffee, executive director at the Civil Liberties Union. However, she said, they also “have some privacy concerns with opening it up entirely.”
Those concerns have been front and center in a case out of Merrimack County Superior Court involving a man who was shot to death by two Haverhill officers while rushing them with a knife. A judge has ordered the release of all but the most graphic portions of the officers’ body camera videos, despite objections from the victim’s ex-wife, who claims the release will cause emotional trauma to his surviving children, and from media outlets, which argue that all the footage should be released.
William Chapman, a First Amendment lawyer who is involved in the case, said he worried that subjecting only specific encounters to release won’t capture unforeseeable scenarios in which the public should, but would not, have access. He gave the example of a case years ago in which a police officer shot himself in the leg and later lied that someone else had done it.
“It’s very difficult to contemplate the range of circumstances that could happen, where you would want to be able to have access to video,” Chapman said, suggesting instead that the videos be classified broadly and subjected to the same federal disclosure law that prevents the release of documents that can, say, “reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”
Rep. John Tholl – a Whitefield Republican – part-time police chief and member of the subcommittee, said he would prefer to categorize the footage rather than list scenarios in which it would be publicly accessible.
“Putting a laundry list of anything in a bill is very difficult,” he said.
Rep. Neal Kurk, a Weare Republican, warned against releasing too much, saying, “We need to be mindful of the fact that many of these videos are going to form the basis for reality TV shows.”
“So I think the committee has to be cognizant of the economic realities of this, as well as the privacy and constitutional issues,” Kurk said.
“It’s a balancing act,” Tholl noted. “And I’m hopeful that we can make it so that it can be adequate for everyone.”
While state police have yet to begin using the cameras, at least a dozen local departments have. Chiefs from three of those, including Weare, are set to testify before the subcommittee next Tuesday.
4. NH Dems' Next-Gen
N.H. Democratic convention offers glimpse of future candidates for state office
by Casey McDermott, concordmonitor.com, September 23, 2015
Hillary Clinton left the podium at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s convention to cheers.
Moments later, the next speakers – Portsmouth City Councilor Stefany Shaheen and Somersworth Mayor Dana Hilliard – danced onto the stage and took a selfie, in an effort to regain the crowd’s attention before delivering their remarks.
While attendees at the convention got a taste for the party’s big-name presidential contenders, they also got a glimpse of New Hampshire’s next generation of Democratic candidates who are poised to play a big role in state elections.
Those potential future leaders included a mix of officials already serving in local- or state-level positions and others not currently serving in government.
Executive Councilor Colin Van Ostern, who’s been discussed as a potential gubernatorial candidate if Gov. Maggie Hassan forgoes re-election, spoke just before the governor. In his remarks, Van Ostern encouraged Democrats to focus their efforts on fighting for the residents outside the convention hall – nodding to the experiences of struggling veterans, those recovering from addiction and students dealing with the cost of college, among others.
Fellow Executive Councilor Chris Pappas took the stage a few slots later, quoting Victor Hugo – “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come” – as he called for continued work on a number of issues, from health care access to climate change to the expansion of passenger rail. A “Draft Chris” movement surfaced briefly earlier this year to encourage Pappas to run for Congress. That push for a 2016 bid, however, has quieted considerably after Carol Shea-Porter began signaling an interest in running against Rep. Frank Guinta again – but others within the party have said Pappas could be a plausible congressional candidate in future cycles.
After Shaheen and Hilliard – co-chairs of the state’s branch of the Democratic Municipal Officials organization – showed off some of their dance moves, the pair delivered a set of shout-outs to other municipal-level Democrats. Shaheen, the daughter of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, told Seacoast Media Group she is considering a gubernatorial run if Hassan does not seek re-election.
Another potential gubernatorial candidate, Mark Connolly – the former deputy secretary of state and director of the state Bureau of Securities Regulation – also addressed the convention. Connolly, who also told Seacoast Media Group he is considering a run for governor, made a point in his address to emphasize his role in reining in corruption as the head of the securities bureau and lamented the extent to which “big money interests” have concentrated their power in New Hampshire and on a national level.
Hassan has not yet signaled whether she plans to seek re-election or challenge Sen. Kelly Ayotte for a U.S. Senate seat in 2016. She did not address these plans in her speech to the convention, as some had speculated she might.
If Hassan doesn’t run, it’s expected that the Democrats are in for a primary race with multiple candidates – including, perhaps, a few who did not speak at this weekend’s convention. Former state party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan acknowledged that some candidates discussed as plausible Democratic gubernatorial hopefuls come from outside of the Legislature, but she “would not totally rule out someone with a legislative background,” as well.
“I anticipate there will be a primary, and I’m sure we’ll have a healthy group of people,” Sullivan said. “Open gubernatorial seats don’t come around all that often.”
Engaging the next generation
Making sure there’s strength within the party’s bench of up-and-coming leaders is critical, Sullivan said.
“We all know that without that, the party just withers,” said Sullivan, who currently serves as a Democratic National Committeewoman for New Hampshire.
“I think it was a good opportunity for people to see that new generation of leadership,” Sullivan said of the speakers at Saturday’s convention. “As somebody who’s getting older, it’s really nice to know we’ve got some coming along.”
Jay Surdukowski, a New Hampshire native who got involved in Democratic politics at an early age, said he’s noticed a considerable effort on the part of the state party to engage up-and-coming leaders.
“The Democratic party has, as long as I’ve been involved – now going back to the early ’90s – has very consistently sought to bring in the voices of the younger generation,” Surdukowski said.
“And now we’re seeing the fruits of that,” he added – pointing to staffers like Mike Vlacich, who is running Clinton’s campaign in New Hampshire, and politicians like Van Ostern, state Sen. Dan Feltes and Pappas.
The party’s most recent delegate selection plan for its national convention includes a stated goal of including five “youth” delegates in 2016. (“Youth,” in this case, is defined as people who are 36 or younger, according to the plan.)
While not the only means of political recruitment, the New Hampshire Young Democrats do serve as one pipeline for party leaders and an asset in terms of lending their support to others who speak to issues affecting young adults. NHYD President Lucas Meyer said the organization will be looking to pay close attention to candidates who take strong stands on the expansion of passenger rail, college affordability and higher education funding.
“New Hampshire is facing a problem where kids like me who grew up in the state and went to college somewhere else or even in-state aren’t staying or coming back,” Meyer said, and it’s important for politicians to address housing, economic opportunities, transportation and other factors that are contributing to that pattern.
While the presidential race is attracting much of the spotlight right now, Meyer said those high-profile elections can be a powerful tool to get young people involved and interested in politics on a local level, too.
“Hillary Clinton is talking about college affordability. Bernie Sanders is talking about voting rights,” Meyer said. “These are all things that are going on at the state level that you can boil down to any candidate.”
5. Shea-Porter: Interview, and a New Endorsement
Shea-Porter says Boehner’s ‘non-answer’ on Guinta among reasons for run for US House
In interview, former congresswoman explains decision to seek a fourth term in 2016
by John DiStaso, wmur.com, September 23, 2015
MANCHESTER, N.H. —When former U.S. Rep Carol Shea-Porter initially said in May that she would try to regain the 1st District seat she held for three terms, she limited her announcement to a special election that would have been held if Republican U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta stepped down.
But Guinta has resisted calls by high ranking Republicans – and Democrats -- to resign after he signed a conciliation agreement with the Federal Election Commission over campaign finance violations.
The FEC staff found he received contributions far in excess of the legal limit from accounts in his parents’ names and loaned the money to his 2010 campaign. He was fined $15,000 and ordered to repay $355,000 in loans.
Guinta claimed all along the money was his to use.
Guinta, undeterred by the resignation calls, has said, in fact, that he plans to run for re-election next year.
As a result, Shea-Porter adjusted her political plans. After filing a statement of candidacy for 2016 with the FEC in August, she made it official on Saturday, announcing at the state Democratic Party’s convention that she will run for the seat in 2016 without regard to Guinta or any other announced or potential candidates.
“I thought it was a good time frame and a good event to let people know that I’m definitely in,” Shea-Porter told WMUR.com in an interview Tuesday. While most of the attention at the convention was focused on the five presidential candidates who spoke, Shea-Porter’s announcement was greeted warmly by those in attendance.
Shea-Porter said she had hoped that U.S. House Speaker John Boehner would have “taken action” on Guinta by now.
In May, two weeks after Guinta’s settlement with the FEC was made public, Boehner said he had not reviewed the details of the case but would do so soon. He said only that all House members should be held to high ethical standards. He has said nothing about Guinta since.
A Boehner spokesman did not immediately respond to WMUR.com’s request for an update on the Guinta case on Tuesday.
“Well, the speaker has had an entire summer to consider it, and his non-answer really is an answer,” Shea-Porter said. “Apparently, it did not concern him.”
Meanwhile, she said, “People were asking me about running, and I thought it was a fair time to say, ‘OK, I’m in.’ If (Guinta) is not going to be forced out, then I’ll run against him or whoever the (Republican) candidate is in 2015.”
Shea-Porter will first have a Democratic primary. Bedford businessman and political newcomer Shawn O’Connor announced his candidacy for the seat in February, and has self-funded his campaign to the tune of at least $500,000.
Shea-Porter has never been a huge fundraiser. Although she has held her own on the fundraising front, she has relied heavily on grassroots activism in her successful runs in 2006, 2008 and 2012.
As for her ideology and approach, she said, “You can still look at my 2006 campaign literature, I haven’t changed. There are still so many things that need to be done. I am still talking about the economy. There is anxiety on the part of the middle class.”
She said she continues to be frustrated by gridlock on Capitol Hill.
She said she continues to be frustrated by gridlock on Capitol Hill.
“We need to work with each other,” Shea-Porter said. “The Republicans in the House especially, are really at war with themselves. Some Republicans want Boehner out as speaker, but no matter who the speaker is, we really have to work together to make things move forward.”
Shea-Porter cited a stalemate on prescription drugs as a “classic example” of Washington gridlock.
She has long supported allowing the federal government to negotiate prices for prescription drugs with manufacturers.
“But we weren’t able to get that done, and now, the cost of drugs is skyrocketing,” she said.
“It is really about reconnecting with the people,” she said. “The people of the district do know me and know I’ve been an advocate. So I don’t have to re-introduce myself, but what I do need to do and will do is work as hard as I can and take nothing for granted.”
With a Democratic presidential primary underway, Shea-Porter has not yet made an endorsement. In 2008, she endorsed then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama over then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton.
She also said that while she believes six debates among the Democratic presidential candidates is a “fair number,” she said she wished the Democratic National Committee had not scheduled the New Hampshire debate on Dec. 19, during the holiday season. She also said she hopes the DNC will schedule a second New Hampshire debate after the holidays.
“I don’t know what the reason for that date was,” she said. “I think that’s a tough date and I hope they reconsider that.”
Executive Councilor Chris Pappas won’t run for US House, backs Carol Shea-Porter
Restaurant owner expected to seek third term on council
by John DiStaso, wmur.com, September 22, 2015
MANCHESTER, N.H. —Executive Councilor Chris Pappas told WMUR.com Tuesday night he will not run for the 1st District U.S. House seat next year and is instead backing former U.S. Rep. Carol Shea-Porter.
Shea-Porter announced her bid for a fourth term on Saturday at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s state convention and elaborated on her decision in an interview earlier Tuesday with WMUR.com.
Pappas had been strongly considering running for the House but made it clear to fellow Democrats he would not challenge Shea-Porter in a primary. He said in August she “deserves a shot” at regaining the seat she lost to Republican U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta in 2014.
Pappas made his support for Shea-Porter official in an email to WMUR.com Tuesday night:
"I am excited to see that Carol is throwing her hat in the ring, and I look forward to welcoming her to (Executive Council) District 4 as she hits the campaign trail. Carol's leadership and integrity are certainly missed in Congress, and I know she will always be a steady voice for middle class families."
He also wrote:
"I am humbled by the encouragement many people gave me to consider this (congressional) race, but my focus remains squarely on our important work at the State House and my business responsibilities. I'm sure I'll be talking with Carol soon about how I can be helpful to her effort."
Pappas, owner of the Puritan Backroom Restaurant in Manchester, did not disclose his political plans for 2016, but, according to Democratic sources, he is expected to seek a third term on the council.
6. Debtors' Prison?
Investigation Finds That New Hampshire Commonly, and Unconstitutionally, Jails People for Inability to Pay Fines
by American Civil Liberty Union of New Hampshire, aclu-nh.org, September 23, 2015
CONCORD – The U.S. Constitution and New Hampshire state law prohibit courts from jailing people for being too poor to pay their legal fines, but local courts throughout New Hampshire are doing it anyway. The ACLU of New Hampshire (“ACLU-NH”) today released Debtors’ Prisons in New Hampshire, a report that chronicles a year-long investigation into New Hampshire’s debtors’ prison practices.
This investigation was initiated after the ACLU-NH handled three cases in 2014 where two Superior Court Judges and the New Hampshire Supreme Court granted relief to three indigent individuals—Alejandra Corro, Richard Vaughan, and Dennis Suprenant—who were (or were going to be) illegally jailed by circuit courts due to their inability to pay fines. These cases, which are described in the “Personal Stories” section of the report, show that debtors’ prison practices can counterproductively lead to termination of an individual’s new employment, impede ongoing efforts of that individual to gain employment, and prevent struggling parents from caring for their infant children.
“Being poor is not a crime in this country,” said Devon Chaffee, Executive Director of the ACLU-NH. “Incarcerating people who cannot afford to pay fines is both unconstitutional and cruel. It takes a tremendous toll on precisely those families already struggling the most.”
The law requires that courts hold hearings to determine defendants’ financial status before jailing them for failure to pay fines, and defendants must be provided with lawyers for these hearings. If a defendant cannot pay, the court must explore options other than jail.
“Supreme Court precedent and New Hampshire law make clear that local courts and jails should not function as debtors’ prisons,” said Albert E. Scherr, a Professor of Law at the University of New Hampshire School of Law and Chairman of the ACLU-NH Board of Directors. “Yet circuit courts in New Hampshire routinely jail people without making any attempt whatsoever to determine whether they can afford to pay their fines.”
Beyond its clear illegality, debtors’ prison practices make no financial sense since the government spends more to jail defendants than it ever recovers in fines. As the report explains, it costs New Hampshire’s county jails approximately $110 per day to house an individual, yet an individual serves off a fine at a rate of $50 per day. This $50 per day amount will never be paid back to the government once that time is served. Based on the data received and this $110 per day cost, the report concludes that the total costs of these practices to taxpayers statewide can be reasonably approximated to $166,870 in 2013 to address an estimated $75,850 in unpaid fines that were ultimately never collected.
“Not only are these courts violating the law, they are actually causing the government to lose money doing it,” said Gilles Bissonnette, Legal Director of the ACLU-NH. “As the report demonstrates, in jailing people who are unable to pay fines, the government is spending more money than the individual owed in the first place.”
“These practices are legally prohibited, morally questionable, and financially unsound. Nevertheless, they appear to be alive and well in New Hampshire,” added Bissonnette.
[To read the full report, click on the following link:
AND NATIONALLY
7. New Oligopolies
Big Tech Has Become Way Too Powerful
by Robert Reich, nytimes.com, September 18, 2015
Berkeley, Calif. — CONSERVATIVES and liberals interminably debate the merits of “the free market” versus “the government.” Which one you trust more delineates the main ideological divide in America.
In reality, they aren’t two separate things. There can’t be a market without government. Legislators, agency heads and judges decide the rules of the game. And, over time, they change the rules. The important question, too rarely discussed, is who has the most influence over these decisions and in that way wins the game.
Two centuries ago slaves were among the nation’s most valuable assets, and after the Civil War, perhaps land was. Then factories, machines, railroads and oil transformed America. By the 1920s most working Americans were employees, and the most contested property issue was their freedom to organize into unions.
Now information and ideas are the most valuable forms of property. Most of the cost of producing it goes into discovering it or making the first copy. After that, the additional production cost is often zero. Such “intellectual property” is the key building block of the new economy. Without government decisions over what it is, and who can own it and on what terms, the new economy could not exist.
But as has happened before with other forms of property, the most politically influential owners of the new property are doing their utmost to increase their profits by creating monopolies that must eventually be broken up.
The most valuable intellectual properties are platforms so widely used that everyone elsehas to use them, too. Think of standard operating systems like Microsoft’s Windows or Google’s Android; Google’s search engine; Amazon’s shopping system; and Facebook’s communication network. Google runs two-thirds of all searches in the United States. Amazon sells more than 40 percent of new books. Facebook has nearly 1.5 billion active monthly users worldwide. This is where the money is.
Despite an explosion in the number of websites over the last decade, page views are becoming more concentrated. While in 2001, the top 10 websites accounted for 31 percent of all page views in America, by 2010 the top 10 accounted for 75 percent. Google and Facebook are now the first stops for many Americans seeking news — while Internet traffic to much of the nation’s newspapers, network television and other news gathering agencies has fallen well below 50 percent of all traffic. Meanwhile, Amazon is now the first stop for almost a third of all American consumers seeking to buyanything. Talk about power.
Whenever markets become concentrated, consumers end up paying more than they otherwise would, and innovations are squelched. Sure, big platforms let creators showcase and introduce new apps, songs, books, videos and other content. But almost all of the profits go to the platforms’ owners, who have all of the bargaining power.
Contrary to the conventional view of an American economy bubbling with innovative small companies, the reality is quite different. The rate at which new businesses have formed in the United States has slowed markedly since the late 1970s. Big Tech’s sweeping patents, standard platforms, fleets of lawyers to litigate against potential rivals and armies of lobbyists have created formidable barriers to new entrants.
The patent system is crucial to innovation. The law gives 20 years of patent protection to inventions that are “new and useful,” as decided by the Patent and Trademark Office. But the winners are big enough to game the system. They make small improvements warranting new patents, effectively making their intellectual property semipermanent. They also lay claim to whole terrains of potential innovation including ideas barely on drawing boards and flood the system with so many applications that lone inventors have to wait years. The White House intellectual property adviser Colleen V. Chien noted in 2012 that Google and Apple were spending more money acquiring patents (not to mention litigating them) than on doing research and development.
Antitrust laws used to fight this sort of market power. In the 1990s, the federal government accused Microsoft of illegally bundling its popular Windows operating system with its Internet Explorer browser to create an industry standard that stifled competition. Microsoft settled the case by agreeing to share its programming interfaces with other companies. But since then Big Tech has been almost immune to serious antitrust scrutiny, even though the largest tech companies have more market power than ever. Maybe that’s because they’ve accumulated so much political power.
In 2012, the staff of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition submitted to the commissioners a 160-page analysis of Google’s dominance in the search and related advertising markets, and recommended suing Google for conduct that “has resulted — and will result — in real harm to consumers and to innovation.” But the commissioners chose not to pursue a case. Investigators also found evidence that Google was pushing its products ahead of competitors’ on search results, though no legal action was recommended on this point.
It’s unusual for commissioners not to accept staff recommendations, and they didn’t give a full explanation. The F.T.C. noted a competing internal report that recommended against legal action, but another plausible reason has to do with Google’s political clout. Google is now among the largest corporate lobbyists in the United States. Around the time of the investigation the company poured money into influencing both the commissioners and the commission’s congressional overseers.
GOOGLE is heading into a major fight with antitrust officials in the European Union for some of the same reasons the F.T.C. staff went after it. Not incidentally, Europe is also investigating Amazon for allegedly stifling competition in e-books, and Apple for doing the same in music. While many on this side of the Atlantic believe Europe is taking on these tech giants because they’re American, another possible explanation is that Google, Amazon and Apple lack as much political clout in Europe as they have here.
Economic and political power can’t be separated because dominant corporations gain political influence over how markets are maintained and enforced, which enlarges their economic power further. One of the original goals of antitrust law was to prevent this.
“The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economical conquests only, but for political power,” warned Edward G. Ryan, the chief justice of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, in 1873. Antitrust law was viewed as a means of breaking this link. “If we will not endure a king as a political power,” Senator John Sherman of Ohio thundered, “we should not endure a king over the production, transportation and sale” of what the nation produced.
Sherman’s Antitrust Act easily passed Congress and was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison on July 2, 1890. Twelve years later, President Teddy Roosevelt used it against the Northern Securities Company, which dominated rail transportation in the Northwest. In 1911, President William Howard Taft broke up the Standard Oil empire.
The underlying issue has little to do with whether one prefers the “free market” or government. The real question is how government organizes the market, and who has the most influence over its decisions. We are now in a new gilded age similar to the first Gilded Age, when the nation’s antitrust laws were enacted. As then, those with great power and resources are making the “free market” function on their behalf. Big Tech — along with the drug, insurance, agriculture and financial giants — dominates both our economy and our politics.
Yet as long as we remain obsessed by the debate over the relative merits of the “free market” and “government,” we have little hope of seeing what’s occurring and taking the action that’s needed to make our economy work for the many, not the few.
8. In the Circus
Congress Is a Confederacy of Dunces
by Michael Winship, huffingtonpost.com, September 17, 2015
Already we're deep into September and Congress has reconvened in Washington, prompting many commentators to compare its return after summer's recess to that of fresh-faced students coming back to school, sharpening their pencils, ready to learn, be cooperative and prepared for something new.
This, of course, is where the analogy crumbles.
For this particular Congress to cooperate and do something new would require a miracle on the order of loaves and fishes -- perhaps Pope Francis can do something about that when he's on the Hill next week. His Holiness may be the only hope.
What's happening is just the latest virulent iteration of the strategy with which the Republicans have infected Congress from the night Barack Obama became president. Make governing impossible (as the old P.J. O'Rourke saying goes, "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."). Shut down democracy, if that's what it takes. Keep from happening anything that helps and protects the 99 percent or threatens the plutocracy.
No wonder J. David Cox, union president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the publication Government Executive, "I'd like for them to stay out of town for the rest of the year. That would make my life more complete."
The House and Senate sprinted off to vacation a few weeks ago with much undone, and thus have returned to a series of difficult deadlines that need to be addressed before the end of the month. Once they've put the Iran nuclear deal to bed, kicking and screaming all the way, there are a dozen spending bills that require resolution. But because of right wing GOP threats insisting on tying the defunding of Planned Parenthood to these appropriations measures, there's the real possibility -- some say as high as 70 percent -- of deadlock and yet another government shutdown. With that would come the delights of forced federal furloughs, delayed paychecks, closed national parks and monuments and all the other attendant joys with which we became too familiar just a couple of years ago.
The probable outcome of all this sturm und drang is passage of a yet another continuing resolution (CR) that would keep government running at its current funding levels until a solution is hammered out. Mike DeBonis and Kelsey Snell reported in The Washington Post, "Congressional Democrats ... [have] already named a price for backing a short-term funding extension: no unrelated policy riders or attempts to undo Obama policy initiatives in the stopgap measure, with long-term negotiations over increases in domestic spending to follow."
What a tangled web of malarkey and obfuscation members of this legislative body doth weave. Even the CR may run up against the anti-Planned Parenthood crowd, although Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell patiently told Kentucky constituents a couple of weeks ago, "We just don't have the votes to get the outcome that we'd like... The president's made it very clear he's not going to sign any bill that includes defunding of Planned Parenthood so that's another issue that awaits a new president hopefully with a different point of view."
Picking up the school analogy again, maybe they should hold parent-teacher conferences to get the unruly kids in line. Instead, McConnell, House Speaker Boehner and others in the leadership are offering "listening sessions" and calling on their colleagues to rely on stand-alone anti-abortion bills (symbolic, as they won't get past a Senate filibuster or the president's veto pen), as well as investigations of Planned Parenthood and hearings. But so far this hasn't been enough to corral the more vociferous lawmakers, including the members of the so-called "House Freedom Caucus" and that cowboy quartet of senators with visions of the Oval Office square-dancing in their heads. Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul grapple for any foothold in the fight to out-Trump Trump, even if it means dissembling and clambering roughshod over women's reproductive rights. Not to mention that it's a great way to roil the ire of the right and haul in more campaign cash.
Democrats would like to see this resolved sooner rather than later, although they not-so-secretly delight in the other side's mess (also relishing the potential for Democratic leverage) and could raise some serious campaign coin on their own just by selling tickets to this whole sorry spectacle.
Down the road, with any luck, what this Congress should be up to is debating income inequality and tax reform, restarting the Export-Import Bank, reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Act, the Social Security disability trust, and a new long-term extension of the Highway Trust Fund - some cockeyed optimists even dream of funding it for as long as five or six years instead of what would be the 36th short-term extension. And then there's raising the $18.1 trillion borrowing cap, a lifting of the debt ceiling that's due soon. It may or may not be tied to a budget deal before Christmas.
Given recent experience, easing that last one through is what's called wishful thinking, because the same confederacy of dunces, especially the candidates among them, will cry murder once again as year's end approaches. "They will join the chorus," as legislative expert Norm Ornstein wrote in The Atlantic last month, "raising bloody hell as the primaries and caucuses begin about the perfidy of their own establishment leaders, getting even more distance from a Washington where Congress is run by Republicans."
A recent editorial in the Houston Chronicle said it well: "A truly impressive presidential candidate would actually get the gears of government turning and help usher through a new federal budget that reduces long-term debt while fully funding government services. But so far, nobody seems up to it."
If it's back to school, this Republican Congress should be made to go sit in the corner.
9. Wall Street Wants
Biggest lesson from financial crisis: Wall Street gets what it wants
by Dean Baker, fortune.com, September 16, 2015
As the nation approaches the 7-year anniversary of the global financial crisis, it’s clear who the winners and losers are.
Seven years ago this week, the world’s financial system was teetering on the brink of collapse. The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers had completely shaken confidence in the banking industry. First, no one could trust the banks books; no one knew how much bad debt banks were concealing. Second, the too big to fail insurance seemed not to exist. After all, if Lehman was not too big to fail, who was?
At that point, policy could have gone two directions. One direction would have been to take advantage of this moment and let the market work its magic. The bloated financial structure that had developed over the last three decades was collapsing from its own excesses. The industry would have paid the price for the issuing and packaging of hundreds of billions of dollars of fraudulent loans, as they finally ran out of suckers to buy the junk.
The other route was to have the government rush to the rescue and keep Wall Street largely intact. This would involve an enormous amount of below market interest rate loans from the Fed and Treasury and an even larger amount of loan guarantees.
As we all know, we went the route of the Wall Street bailout. When the House of Representatives responded to an outcry from constituents across the political spectrum and voted down the original bailout, the Wall Street gang doubled down.
They endlessly pushed the line that we would face another Great Depression if Congress didn’t rescue Wall Street. Leading news outlets like the New York Times, National Public Radio, and the PBS News Hour were filled with stories about how we would be condemned to a decade of double digit unemployment if the government didn’t bailout Citigroup C -2.94% and Goldman Sachs GS -3.12%
The implication was that we somehow had forgotten how to do fiscal policy – the government would not know how to spend money – if the Wall Street banks went under. Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke, along with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and Timothy Geithner, who was then head of the New York Fed, led the charge. Bernanke apparently had no problem warning of a second Great Depression even though just a few years earlier he had mocked people who questioned the government’s ability to generate demand by pointing out that the government “… has a technology, called a printing press….”
There is no doubt that the initial downturn would have been worse if the banks were allowed to fail. But it is difficult to envision the force that would prevent us from rebooting the economy and getting it back up to its capacity without the albatross of a bloated financial sector. Would the ghost of Citigroup prevent members of Congress from supporting stimulus, something even Republicans had done in large numbers in February of 2008?
The story of the decade of double-digit unemployment from which we were supposedly spared by the bailout depends on Congress sitting on its hands and doing nothing through the worst slump in 70 years. This is a political prediction, not an issue of economics. And it is a political prediction that has absolutely zero basis in modern history.
Seven years after the Lehman collapse, the country is still far from recovering. We are still down between 3 million to 4 million jobs from the trend growth path. For most workers, real wages still have not recovered to their pre-recession level. And millions of families have lost their homes due to either or both the bad timing of having bought at bubble-inflated prices or having taken out a high-risk loan.
Meanwhile, Wall Street is doing just fine. The big banks are bigger than ever. And the folks who lead the bailout, like Timothy Geithner, who as President Obama’s Treasury Secretary made “no more Lehmans” his motto, are making multi-million dollar salaries.
And of course no Wall Street types were prosecuted for issuing or passing on fraudulent mortgages. In short, Wall Street gets what it wants, the people who help along the way get their rewards, and the rest of the country … well, life is tough.
FINALLY
No comments:
Post a Comment