BC ECONOMY
Saved by @jacobhtml

1. Ok, so most people have a vague sense of frustration that the last Dem administration didn't do enough on the economy. But it's still just a vague sense. So my org wrote a report showing in detail, industry sector-by-sector, what policymakers did wrong.

 2. We also wrote one pager descriptions of every sector. For instance, in media and telecommunications, there were multiple massive mergers (Comcast-NBC, Disney's roll-up, Charter-Time Warner). https://t.co/es3jzAGVKL
3. Consequences were bad. The median weekly compensation of writer-producers on television and online series declined 23 percent between 2014 and 2016 despite record profits in the industry and peak demand for programming. https://t.co/es3jzAGVKL
4. Health care, consolidation was bad. "From 2010 to 2015, Sanofi, Novo Nordisk, and Eli Lilly raised their insulin prices by 168 percent, 169 percent, and 325 percent, respectively; the three are essentially the only manufacturers of insulin in the U.S."
https://t.co/u4YqvTg06a
5. Newspapers, same story. Since 2005, America has lost 2,100 newspapers, one fourth of its total, leaving 1,800 communities without any local news coverage whatsoever. https://t.co/ULmsqCVFRt
6. Defense and aerospace - same story of the ill-effects of consolidation. "From 2008 to 2018, the average cost of a Pentagon weapons system jumped by 13 percent, without accounting for inflation."
https://t.co/tXLRSjGY5M
7. Airlines, same thing. Obama admin fostered three big mergers, United-Continental (2010), Southwest-AirTran (2010), and American-U.S. Airways (2013), and allowed consolidation among online travel agencies. Prices, bag fees, complaints up, wages down.
https://t.co/oAya4BUtSm
8. Agriculture, same thing. Collapse in dairy farming, control of chicken contract growers, massive power of meatpackers, etc. https://t.co/lHVWu02Pgb
9. Big tech, Google and Facebook both grew to utter dominance in online ads, social networking, search, maps, and video from 2009-2017, largely because of the dozens of significant mergers. Obama WH didn't block a single merger. https://t.co/F9lFaaToaQ
10. Same thing for Amazon. Using predatory tactics, it grew from a retailer to a core infrastructure provider across multiple markets, including e-commerce, retailing, logistics, cloud computing, voice assistants, security, and government contracting. https://t.co/PcW84Zydql
11. Finally there's labor and monopoly. Just a disaster. The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission challenged zero mergers or acquisitions based solely on the mergers’ effects on workers. https://t.co/dQrCe8MkYB
12. In 2016, a bipartisan FTC unanimously opposed the city of Seattle’s attempt to allow Uber and Lyft drivers to bargain collectively.
https://t.co/dQrCe8MkYB
13. After DOJ settled charges against Silicon Valley companies for colluding not to recruit each other’s workers, a class action lawsuit won $415 million for the workers, though the suit estimated the damages at $3 billion. https://t.co/dQrCe8uJA1
14. People have a vague sense things got worse because they *did* get worse. Wages down, prices up, quality down. These changes just happen by themselves. Each happened because of a discrete *choice* by a policymaker. https://t.co/I1fUawW87f
15. People distrust the government because our policymakers showed themselves worthy of distrusting. Joe Biden can win this trust back. And he is running a very different administration than either Obama or Trump did. And we are all learning.
https://t.co/I1fUawW87f
16. @noamscheiber has an important piece on how Joe Biden thinks about the world. Biden wants an 'industrial policy' to finance the growth of domestic production. That's excellent, but he has to recognize the problem of corporate power as a complement. https://t.co/aWmjAImjbU

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This is premature, but I want to walk you though why some of the charges coming through are incredible significant. This is one of the recently unsealed complaints.


1512(b) is a very, very strong crime. Section 1512 is about obstruction of the administration of justice. The statute is supposedly about disrupting court proceedings, but it's broader. The way it's written, Congressional Proceedings count.

The statutory maximum for a single violation of 1512(b) is 20 years in prison. That's a lot. Most related federal crimes—231 civil disorder, 2101 riots—are only 5 years on the top end.

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@AwBlessYerHeart @Gus_802 Keynesian/demand side economics is what made the Middle Class better off but it was applied at a time when it wasn’t always equitable toward PoC or women. We need to bring back Keynesian policies but that means having Dem Mandates in Congress & WH for more than two short years.

@Gus_802 Ultimately we need to stop having arguments about “capitalism vs socialism” because they are both loaded words and imprecise descriptors of how our economy functions. Capitalism and socialism describe systems which, in their purist forms, don’t exist anywhere in the world

@Gus_802 The developed world and even most of the developing world have mixed economies where elements of what is regarded as socialism and capitalism exist. But the real ISM the drives our economy is consumerism as 2/3 of all economic activity is based on consumer/demand side spending

@Gus_802 When we couch these forces as “socialism” or “capitalism”, we automatically created a conflict and a polarizing zero sum argument which often derails honest discussions about our economic system which stifles discussions on ways to improve it

@Gus_802 We should instead call these forces “public funding” and “private funding” as they are more precise and less heated descriptors. We then make the cogent argument that, to support a consumer based economy, we need both public and private funding to do so effectively
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Wait … so … how much worse could the pandemic response and unprecedented death rate get?

How much farther shall our economy crater?

I wonder what it will feel like to get better.

I wonder what it will be like for things to get better after being arguably as bad as they have ever been.

Wait … sooo … were things this bad in 2016?

Wait … things were good? After eight years under a democratic administration?

Huh.

I wonder how all those falsehoods will play after things start to get better.

I wonder how many full fledged COVID deniers will finally encounter this deadly pandemic.

I wonder if red states will continue to suffer needlessly under Trumpian COVID policies.

I wonder what the recovering blue states will look like from those red states.

I wonder how much aid these red states will require from said blue states.

And I wonder what it will feel like to those red state constituents when the aid forced upon them makes things a bit better?
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Kani means wetland and Pakam means flow of water into wetland.
Kanipakam Vinayaka is swayambhu (self-manifested). The murti is in a well which is always full of water.


Once, there were three brothers. Each one had a handicap- Dumb, Deaf and Blind. They had a small piece of land for livelihood. For their field, they drew water from a well. One day, they found that the well had dried up so one of them started digging in the well.


His tool hit something and blood oozed out. They found a swayambhu murti of Ganesha here.
Villagers started offering coconut water which overflew into a channel. Hence the name Kanipakam.


The murti is still growing in size. At present, we see the knees and the abdomen only. The Kavacham (Armour) offered to Vinayaka 50 years ago doesn’t fit today.
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THREAD: Meditations on marriage metaphors in Ruth

The book of Ruth is, of course, a story about a beautiful marriage. But even before the courtship and the wedding and the important genealogy at the end, we find interesting language that is strikingly reminiscent of Genesis 2:24


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'Therefore a man shall leave [יַֽעֲזָב] his father and his mother and hold fast [וְדָבַ֣ק] to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.'

The verb עזב can be quite strong in force. For example, Joseph leaves behind [וַיַּעֲזֹ֤ב] his garment as he flees from Pharaoh's wife's sexual advances. Countless times, Israel is depicted abandoning the LORD, for example in Judg 2:12 [וַיַּעַזְב֞וּ], and going after other gods.

Likewise, the verb דבק is rather striking. Lot is mortified of disaster overtaking him [תִּדְבָּקַ֥נִי] as he flees from Sodom. Israel is commanded in Deut 10:20 to cling fast [תִדְבָּ֔ק] to the LORD and serve him and swear by his name.

Together they illustrate how radical God designed marriage to be. Marriage is a real severing of family relations in order to form a new, permanent bond with another human being.

Something very similar to this takes places in Ruth's life.
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The Eye of Horus. 1/*


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\uc2e0\ub150\uc758\uc0ac\ub098\uc774
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What does Gold- Backed mean?
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Maybe this is why one of the conditions to use their gold for the QFS is the demise and full disclosure of the Central Bank banking system before the RV can take place./3

The Elders have caves of hidden gold and are now using it to gold-back the currencies in the QFS for every country in the world. It is important to understand that the QFS and the money it is about to release is all brand-new currency./4

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