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    US senators introduce ‘fans first’ live-event ticketing reform bill

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    Six US senators have introduced a new “Fans First Act” to address flaws in the live event ticketing system by increasing transparency in ticket sales, protecting consumers from fake or overpriced tickets, and building accountability measures for bad actors.The bipartisan bill, brought to Congress by three Republicans (John Cornyn of Texas, Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, Roger Wicker of Mississippi) and three Democrats (Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Peter Welch of Vermont and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico), is the latest effort by Congress to combat high and exploitative ticket pricing for concerts and other live events.The heated situation with online ticket sellers – predominantly by Ticketmaster, by far the largest of retailers – reached a boiling point in 2022, when demand for tickets to see Taylor Swift’s and Bruce Springsteen’s tours, respectively, crashed the site and sent prices soaring.Several Swift fans went on to sue Ticketmaster for “fraud, price-fixing and antitrust violations”, alleging that “intentional deception” allowed scalpers to buy the majority of tickets, to be resold at a mark-up; within hours of the Eras tour sale, tickets were being resold on secondary seller sites for as much as $22,000 (£18,000).“Because no other venue can hold half as many people as the stadiums and venues working through Ticketmaster, Taylor Swift and other popular musicians have no choice but to work through Ticketmaster,” the suit alleged. The controversy led to congressional hearings with Ticketmaster executives. Though started before the Swift debacle, the US justice department launched an antitrust investigation into Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, over whether it abused its power in the multibillion-dollar live entertainment industry.According to an announcement signed by the six senators, the Fans First Act seeks to improve pricing transparency by requiring all live event ticket sellers and resellers to disclose the total cost of the ticket, including fees, when the fan initially selects a ticket for purchase; a breakdown of the ticket cost; clear terms and conditions of purchase; which seat or section they are selling in order to avoid ticket misrepresentation; and whether or not they are the original seller.The act would also strengthen the Better Online Ticket Sales (Bots) Act, signed into law in 2016, to further prohibit the use of bots to purchase tickets online, and would impose civil penalties on resellers engaging in illegal ticket sale practices. The bill would create a reporting website for fans to file complaints, to be enforced and monitored by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys general. And it seeks to stop bad actors by prohibiting the sale of “spec” tickets which resellers do not yet possess, prevents the use of deceptive websites and bad actors masquerading as legitimate sellers, and requires reporting of Bots Act violations from ticketing companies to the FTC.“The current ticketing system is riddled with problems and doesn’t serve the needs of fans, teams, artists or venues,” said Cornyn in the announcement. “This legislation would rebuild trust in the ticketing system by cracking down on bots and others who take advantage of consumers through price gouging and other predatory practices and increase price transparency for ticket purchasers.”Live Nation, the owner of Ticketmaster, applauded the new bill: “We support the Fans First Act and welcome legislation that brings positive reform to live event ticketing. We believe it’s critical Congress acts to protect fans and artists from predatory resale practices, and have long supported a federal all-in pricing mandate, banning speculative ticketing and deceptive websites, as well as other measures. We look forward to our continued work with policymakers to advocate for even stronger reforms and enforcement.” More

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      DC media makes meal of supposed Sotomayor restaurant sighting

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      DC media makes meal of supposed Sotomayor restaurant sightingNewsletter reports supreme court justice dined with Democrats after incorrectly identifying Chuck Schumer’s wife as the justice

      Ted Cruz seeks to move on from Tucker Carlson mauling
      The most Washington website of all was forced to issue a diplomatic correction on Saturday, in a second recent iteration of perhaps the most Washington story of all: mistaken reporting about diners at Le Diplomate, a restaurant popular with DC politicos.‘When QAnon and the Tea Party have a baby’: Ron Johnson will run again for US SenateRead moreThe website in question was Politico, the capital and Capitol-covering tipsheet which with characteristic capitals informed readers of its Playbook email: “SPOTTED: Speaker NANCY PELOSI, Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Sen[ators] AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-Minn) and DICK DURBIN (D-Ill) and Justice SONIA SOTOMAYOR dining together at Le Diplomate on Friday night.”The email also offered readers a “pic from our intrepid tipster”.Alas, it did not show Sotomayor.The “pic” showed French café tables, waiters, diners and a woman turning from her dessert to talk to Klobuchar, who was maskless and sitting opposite a masked-up Durbin. Schumer’s distinctive hairline could be seen next to Durbin and Pelosi could be seen, also maskless, to the right of a dark-haired woman with her back turned: supposedly the supreme court justice.Politico might have paused before pressing send. Not only could the supposed Sotomayor’s face not be seen but only last month another supposed scandal at “Le Dip” proved to be a “le flop”.Then, a former Republican aide tweeted that Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, and his husband, Chasten Buttigieg, had been turned away.In fact, they were being seated outside. Politico covered the slip, reporting: “Within minutes we at Playbook were looped into this seemingly momentous news and were pretty excited ourselves to write about it today. Alas, our enthusiasm was dashed when we heard back from a Buttigieg spox who said there was nothing to it.”On Friday, a Sotomayor sighting would have been news. One of three liberal justices on the supreme court, she had not appeared in person for oral arguments earlier, over Joe Biden’s Covid vaccine mandate for private employers.Furthermore, in that hearing she had made an inaccurate claim about the Omicron-fuelled Covid-19 surge, saying: “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition and many on ventilators.”As the Washington Post fact-checker put it, that was “wildly incorrect”, as “according to HHS data, as of 8 January there are about 5,000 children hospitalised … either with suspected Covid or a confirmed laboratory test”.The Politico photo also came amid continuing speculation about when or if another liberal, Stephen Breyer, might retire, thereby giving Joe Biden a pick for the court before possible loss of the Senate. Schumer would shepherd any nominee into place.Alas for Politico, it soon became clear its tipster was wrong. The woman in the picture was Iris Weinshall, the chief operating officer of the New York Public Library, who is married to Schumer. A correction ensued but to make matters worse, Weinshall was initially identified only by her husband’s name. To make matters worse still, Schumer’s office told other outlets that unlike in le grande affaire de Buttigieg, Politico had not called to check on the tip from “Le Dip”.Politico acknowledged the slip and said standards had not been met.“We deeply regret the error,” it said.TopicsWashington DCUS politicsSonia SotomayorUS supreme courtChuck SchumerNancy PelosiAmy KlobucharnewsReuse this content More

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      Congress considers awarding Prince with congressional gold medal

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      PrinceCongress considers awarding Prince with congressional gold medalIlhan Omar, a co-sponsor of the resolution to honor the musician who died in 2016, said he ‘changed the arc of music history’ Maya Yang and agenciesMon 25 Oct 2021 13.54 EDTLast modified on Mon 25 Oct 2021 14.01 EDTA resolution introduced on Capitol Hill on Monday seeks to award the congressional gold medal to Prince, in recognition of the late pop star’s “indelible mark on Minnesota and American culture”.Past recipients of the highest civilian honor bestowed by Congress include George Washington, the Wright Brothers, Rosa Parks, Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama.Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a refugee from Somalia, one of the first Muslim women to enter Congress and a co-sponsor of the resolution to honor Prince, said he showed her “it was OK to be a short, Black kid from Minneapolis and still change the world”.Born Prince Rogers Nelson, in the 1970s Prince pioneered the Minneapolis sound, a subgenre of funk rock that incorporates elements of synth-pop and new wave.In a prolific career that spanned nearly four decades and made his flamboyant and androgynous persona world famous, Prince released 39 studio albums and sold more than 150m records, making him among the bestselling musicians of all time. His hits include Purple Rain, Kiss, When Doves Cry and Let’s Go Crazy, all of which made Billboard’s Hot 100 charts.Prince died on 21 April 2016 at the age of 57 of an accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota.Introducing the resolution to honor him, the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, a former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said: “The world is a whole lot cooler because Prince was in it – he touched our hearts, opened our minds, and made us want to dance.“With this legislation, we honor his memory and contributions as a composer, performer, and music innovator. Purple reigns in Minnesota today and every day because of him.”The resolution noted that Prince was “widely regarded as one of the greatest musicians of his generation”, having won seven Grammy awards, six American Music Awards, an Oscar for the score to the movie Purple Rain and a Golden Globe.“I remember when I first came to America being captivated by Prince’s music and impact on the culture,” said Omar. “He not only changed the arc of music history; he put Minneapolis on the map.”Under congressional rules, the resolution will require the support of at least two-thirds of the Senate and the House before it can be signed into law by Joe Biden.If the medal is approved, the bill asks that it be given to the Smithsonian Institution and be made available for display, especially at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.In July, a Prince album recorded in 2010, Welcome 2 America, was posthumously released through NPG Records.TopicsPrinceUS politicsIlhan OmarAmy KlobucharnewsReuse this content More

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      Antitrust: Hawley and Klobuchar on the big tech battles to come

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      Antitrust is hot. In February, the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar introduced the Competition and Antitrust Law Enforcement Reform Act of 2021. Weeks later, the Missouri senator Josh Hawley proposed the Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act. Both bills are pending before the Senate judiciary committee.Hawley and Klobuchar have both published books. Hawley offers The Tyranny of Big Tech, and Klobuchar Antitrust. There is plenty of overlap but the substantive and stylistic differences are glaring.Hawley takes pride in owning the libs. Klobuchar criticizes the Trump administration’s lack of antitrust enforcement. His book is barbed. Hers methodical.On 6 January, Hawley gave a clench-fisted salute to pro-Trump militants and voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election. On the page, he doubles down.Two weeks after the Capitol attack, Klobuchar told the presidential inauguration: “This is the day our democracy picks itself up, brushes off the dust and does what America always does.” She remains angry with Hawley and “Flyin’” Ted Cruz for the insurrection and its aftermath.Playing to type, Hawley has also provided the sole vote against a bill to crack down on anti-Asian hate crime and opposed renaming military bases named for Confederate generals. Roy Blunt, Missouri’s senior senator and the No 4 member of GOP Senate leadership, parted ways with Hawley on both. In the civil war, Missouri was a border state. A century and a half later, it looks like Hawley has picked the losing side.In his book, he upbraids corporate America, “woke capitalism”, Amazon, Google and Facebook. He demands that Google “be forced to give up YouTube and its control of the digital advertising market”.He would also have Facebook “lose” Instagram and WhatsApp, and accuses Amazon of destroying Parler, the conservative alternative to Twitter funded by Rebekah Mercer, a Hawley donor along with her father, Robert Mercer and other Trump acolytes.Hawley’s embrace of antipathy toward big business – even that in which he invests – is not exactly new.In 2008 he published a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, subtitled Preacher of Righteousness and approving of the 26th president’s relentless support for the little guy.Almost a decade later, as Missouri attorney general, Hawley launched an antitrust investigation of Google. Shortly after that, as a Senate candidate, he told Bloomberg News: “We need to have a conversation in Missouri, and as a country, about the concentration of economic power.”But Hawley is buffeted by contradictions. He has for example feted Robert Bork as a conservative martyr, even as Bork’s legal writings have served as intellectual jet fuel for those developments in the marketplace Hawley professes to abhor.The Tyranny of Big Tech makes no mention of the professor who wrote an influential anti-antitrust book, The Antitrust Paradox, in 1978, nine years before he was blocked from the supreme court.Klobuchar, by contrast, gives Bork plenty of face time.“For Bork,” she writes, “the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few is not a relevant consideration for antitrust law.”Bork had issues with civil rights too. In 1963, when Jim Crow was still in full force, he branded what would become the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “legislation by which the morals of the majority are self-righteously imposed upon a minority”.In The Tyranny of Big Tech, Hawley also blasts corporate abuse of personal data and data mining – all while he looks to Peter Thiel of Palantir for donor dollars.Left unstated is that Palantir was embroiled in the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Cambridge Analytica was owned by the Mercer family and Thiel was an early funder and board member of Facebook. The circle is complete.Hawley’s book can be viewed as plutocrat-populism in print. Tucker Carlson’s praise is blurbed on the jacket. Inside, Hawley defends Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News from purported predations by Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook. Both Murdoch and Zuckerberg are billionaires many times over.Hawley is on stronger ground when he revisits the nexus between the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and Google. Eric Schmidt, then head of the company, was Obama’s chief corporate ally. On election night 2016, Schmidt, wore a Clinton staff badge, having spent months advising her campaign.In her book, Klobuchar furnishes an overview of the evolution of US anti-monopoly law and a call for rebalancing the relationship between capital and labor. She condemns corporate consolidation and wealth concentration, and views lax antitrust enforcement as antithetical to democracy.In a footnote, she commends Hawley for addressing the “turf wars” between the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, and their negative impact on antitrust enforcement. Unlike Hawley, however, Klobuchar vehemently disapproves of the supreme court’s Citizens United decision and characterizes it as opening “the floodgates to dark money in our politics”.In 2016, Dave Bossie, president of Citizens United, wrote an op-ed titled: “Josh Hawley for [Missouri] Attorney General”. In his maiden Senate race, Hawley’s campaign received $10,000 from the Citizens United Political Victory Fund.Unfortunately, Klobuchar goes the extra mile and calls for a constitutional amendment to overturn that decision. Her would-be cure is worse than the disease – an attack on free speech itself.The proposed amendment would expressly confer upon “Congress and the states” broad power to curtail campaign fundraising and spending. It also provides that “nothing in this article shall be construed to grant Congress or the states the power to abridge the freedom of the press”.Not so curiously, it is silent about “abridging the freedom of speech”, an existing constitutional protection. Media barons rejoice – all others start sweating.In 2020, Klobuchar came up way short in her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. Now, she chairs the Senate’s antitrust subcommittee, where Hawley is a member.Both senators were law review editors: she at the University of Chicago, he at Yale. If Hawley has written a sort of campaign manifesto for the Republican presidential primary in 2024, Klobuchar’s book reads at times like an application for supreme court justice. It contains hundreds of pages of footnotes and pays repeated tribute to the late justice Louis Brandeis.Klobuchar also heaps praise on Stephen Breyer, a member of the court appointed by Bill Clinton and a former Harvard Law professor who in 1982 authored Regulation and Its Reform, a counter to Bork and the “Chicago School”.Klobuchar extends an array of “thank yous”. There is one for Jake Sullivan, her former counsel, now Joe Biden’s national security adviser; another for Matt Stoller, a former staffer to Bernie Sanders on the Senate budget committee and a sometime Guardian contributor; and another for Paul Krugman of the New York Times. All three come with definite viewpoints and are strategically placed.Increased antitrust enforcement by the DoJ, the FTC and the states appears to be more likely than wholesale legislative change. A government antitrust case against Google proceeds. Furthermore, Biden has already appointed two critics of big tech to key slots at the White House and the FTC. Who will lead DoJ’s antitrust division is an open question. Finding a suitable non-conflicted pick appears difficult.Klobuchar and Hawley will be heard from. Their books matter. More

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      New Amy Klobuchar book attacks Trump for ‘a whole lot of bluster’ on antitrust

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      In a new book, the senator and former presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar condemns Donald Trump for “a whole lot of bluster with limited results” on her chosen subject, antitrust.Klobuchar cites his appointment of the conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court as proof Trump never had any intention of reining in giant companies for pursuing anti-competitive practices, whatever he told the little guy out on the campaign trail.Antitrust matters will come into focus on Capitol Hill this week, with a confirmation hearing on Wednesday for Lina Khan, a 32-year-old Columbia law professor and “tech antitrust icon” nominated by Joe Biden for a seat on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).The Minnesota Democrat’s book, Antitrust, will be published next week, beating the Missouri Republican Josh Hawley’s similarly themed The Tyranny of Big Tech to US shelves by a week.The two senators are ideologically poles apart – Hawley lost a publisher over his support for Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat – but both have introduced antitrust legislation.The Guardian obtained a copy of Klobuchar’s book. Noting Trump’s campaign rhetoric against big companies, the former candidate for the Democratic nomination writes that he failed to deliver in office.“Trump’s business career had one major thing in common with his ultimate antitrust impact,” Klobuchar writes, recounting Trump’s famous antitrust lawsuit against the NFL in 1986. “A whole lot of bluster with limited results.”Klobuchar also criticises Trump for demanding investigations of companies or mergers for political reasons, notably when inveighing against a merger between Time Warner, owner of CNN, and AT&T.“The president’s comments and, at times, actual actions and involvement,” she writes, “repeatedly raised serious questions about the integrity of his administration’s antitrust work, no matter how hard the [Department of Justice] and FTC antitrust staff worked.”She also says Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, two of three rightwingers Trump appointed to the supreme court, have “extremely conservative views on antitrust”.This, she writes, makes them likely to rule in favor of big companies in an era of mega-mergers and shrinking consumer choice, as major antitrust cases involving tech giants Google and Facebook move through the US court system.At confirmation hearings, Klobuchar writes, Gorsuch dodged her questions on antitrust. Of Kavanaugh – with whom Klobuchar had a famously testy exchange about the judge’s liking for beer – she writes that she “was not impressed by what I saw”.Kavanaugh, Klobuchar writes, seemed a disciple of Robert Bork, the author of The Antitrust Paradox and a conservative whose bitter confirmation hearings in 1987 ended with his withdrawal.Groups including the American Antitrust Institute opposed Kavanaugh but amid allegations of sexual assault, which he strenuously denied, he made it on to the court. With the addition of Amy Coney Barrett in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the panel is now tilted 6-3 to conservatives.On antitrust, though, there was a small sting in the tail. In May 2019, Kavanaugh joined the court’s liberals in a 5-4 ruling which said consumers could sue Apple for monopolising the market for iPhone apps. More

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      Trump 14 points behind Biden a month before election, new poll shows

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      Donald Trump’s beleaguered campaign team woke up to another setback on Sunday as the president began his second full day in hospital: a new national poll showing their candidate 14 points behind his challenger Joe Biden with less than a month until the election day.The NBC/Wall Street Journal survey indicating a 53-39% advantage for the Democratic party’s nominee injected urgency for Trump’s advisers already scrambling to find a strategy for the final weeks of the campaign until 3 November.It was becoming clear that Vice-President Mike Pence, who has tested negative for coronavirus, and members of Trump’s family, once they emerge from quarantine, will assume leading roles at virtual, then in-person rallies until or unless Trump himself recovers in time to resume campaigning.“It’s important that our campaign vigorously proceeds,” Trump campaign senior adviser Steve Cortes said on Fox News Sunday.“The Maga [Make America Great Again) movement is bigger than just President Trump. He’s instrumental of course but he is not the only key element. The other people, including of course the vice-president, campaign people, millions of regular Americans need to step up and to some degree fill the void that is left because our champion, our main instrument, is not able at this moment to vigorously campaign.”Pence has public campaign events planned in Arizona, Nevada and Washington DC, and will travel to Salt Lake City for Wednesday’s vice-presidential debate with Kamala Harris, Biden’s running mate, at which the Trump team is looking for a strong performance.The NBC poll showing Biden widening his lead over Trump was taken immediately after last Tuesday’s tumultuous first presidential debate in Cleveland, at which an argumentative president constantly interrupted both his rival and the moderator Chris Wallace.Jason Miller, another senior adviser to the Trump campaign, said he had “no concerns” about Pence travelling and campaigning.“We’re in a campaign, we have a month to go, we see Joe Biden and Kamala Harris out there campaigning,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press.“He’s going to have a full aggressive schedule, as will the first family, Don, Eric, Ivanka. We have a number of our supporters, our coalition, Black Voices for Trump, Latinos for Trump, the whole operation Maga will be deploying everywhere.“We can’t hide from this virus forever, we have to take it head on [and] as soon as we’re able to get back out there in person we’ll do so,” he added.Meanwhile, Biden’s campaigning since Trump’s hospitalisation on Friday night has been low key. On Sunday, pool reporters covering the former vice-president at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, were informed of a “lid” – the formal announcement of the end of any public appearances or statements for the day – at 9.16am.The Biden campaign announced on Friday that it was suspending negative messages attacking the president while he was in hospital, although Amy Klobuchar, Democratic senator for Minnesota, said on Sunday that did not mean Trump’s handling of the pandemic, or his economic record, were off limits.“Not discussions about Covid, when you have 7 million people who have had this virus,” Klobuchar said on Fox News Sunday when Wallace asked her what subjects Biden would not discuss.“[Biden] has said, ‘Look, I want the president to be back,’ he wants to debate him more, he wants him to have a speedy recovery. It isn’t about politics or partisanship, but certainly the pandemic, the effect it has had on people’s lives, how they have miscalculated in this administration, of course that’s on the table.”Despite Sunday’s early cessation of campaign activity, Biden’s team has said it has no plans to scale back events as long as the candidate and those around him continue to test negative for Covid-19.“Joe Biden will be at that debate,” senior campaign adviser Symone Sanders said of the second presidential debate scheduled for 15 October in Miami. “We are hoping that President Trump can participate.”Some political analysts believe Trump’s hospital stay will be further damaging on his campaign following the damage wrought by a poor debate performance.“I’ve had conversations with Republicans working in swing states around the country and they are alarmed,” Steve Hayes, founder and chief executive of the Dispatch, told Fox News Sunday.“It’s not just affecting President Trump. People look at the debate performance negatively but it’s also starting to affect Republicans down ballot. If this current trajectory continues through November the third, we’re going to be talking about a lot more Republican senators at risk than we’re talking about right now.” More

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      Amy Klobuchar rules herself out as possible Biden running mate

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      Amy Klobuchar has withdrawn from consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate, urging the presumptive Democratic nominee to choose a woman of color instead. The Minnesota senator’s prospects of running as vice president alongside Biden faded after the police killing of George Floyd in the state she represents sparked a nationwide reckoning over police brutality […] More

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      Veep impact: battle to be Joe Biden's running mate plays out in public

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      The presumptive Democratic nominee has said his No2 will be a woman and Warren, Abrams, Harris, Whitmer and Klobuchar lead the contenders Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris feature high on the list of Joe Biden’s potential running mates, along with Stacey Abrams, Amy Klobuchar and Gretchen Whitmer. Composite: The Guardian/THE GUARDIAN Traditionally, American presidential candidates […] More