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The Trump charges look small potatoes, and the Republican base will shrug | Lloyd Green
OpinionDonald TrumpThe Trump charges look small potatoes, and the Republican base will shrugLloyd GreenBy the metrics of scandal, the alleged crime seems decidedly underwhelming. For now at least, the former president can exhale Fri 2 Jul 2021 11.41 EDTLast modified on Fri 2 Jul 2021 12.09 EDTOn Thursday, Manhattan prosecutors charged the Trump Organization, its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, and the Trump Payroll Corp with engaging in a scheme to defraud federal, state and local tax authorities. According to the indictment, Weisselberg failed to pay taxes on $1.7m in income and benefits. The scheme purportedly dated back to 2005.Trump legal troubles escalate after company charged with tax crimes – liveRead moreOn the other hand, Donald Trump, Weisselberg’s boss, appears to have skated. He is not named as a defendant even though he makes a cameo in the body of the indictment. Allegedly, “personal checks drawn on the account of and signed by Donald J Trump, and later drawn on the account of the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust dated April 7, 2014” went for tuition payments of Weisselberg’s family.Other alleged undeclared benefits received by Weisselberg included lease payments on his Mercedes, housing and cash. For the moment anyway, Cyrus Vance, the district attorney for Manhattan, appears to lack the goods to nail the former president. Relatively speaking, an elephant gave birth to a mouse.Beyond that, Vance’s office did not bring racketeering charges against Trump’s eponymous company. Arguably if the district attorney had the goods he would have brought the most serious charges on the first go around. Significantly, the indictment did not trigger a default under Deutsche Bank’s loan documents. Trump and his lenders can exhale, a little. Right now, the prospects of forfeiture and foreclosure and the necessity of refinancing Trump’s loan packages are not staring back at them.By the metrics of scandal, the alleged crime is decidedly underwhelming. Wrongfully taken over tax deductions are quintessentially human, let alone Trumpian. In case anyone forgot, Trump is still undergoing a years-long IRS audit over claimed deductions. The Republican base will shrug.Likewise, giving sweetheart deals to key employees and favored others is textbook New York, a textbook that Trump himself helped write.Back in the day, the day being 2003, a younger Trump reportedly assisted Marjorie Harris – a close personal friend of the Rev Al Sharpton – to obtain a luxury sublease in a Trump building without undergoing a standard credit check. Harris’s financials were not necessarily robust, but at the time Trump was focused on keeping Sharpton happy.In a hyper-transactional world, tuition and cheap housing for the Weisselberg clan were rewards for years of service and loyalty. There’s a reason Weisselberg is known as Trump’s soldier. He is no Michael Cohen. Rather, Weisselberg is a limelight-avoiding accountant who has so far refused to cooperate with prosecutors.Yet with Weisselberg taking one for the team, the spirit of Roger Stone and Paul Manafort lives on. And we know how that worked out – both men received presidential pardons.But this time Trump is out of office and the charges stem from purported violations of New York’s penal law, not the US code. Weisselberg was released on his own recognizance. The guy is no menace to society.As for the midterms, the indictment won’t hurt the Republican party’s chances. Team Trump and his party will be able to claim “witch-hunt” with a modicum of credibility. All those subpoenas and document productions have yielded little. Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, may even want to put his presidential ambitions on hold until 2028.A year ago, the US supreme court rejected Trump’s contention that he was immune from investigation simply because he lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Writing for a seven-person majority, Chief Justice John Roberts opined: “No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding.”Justice Kavanaugh, a Trump appointee, put things more succinctly in a concurrence joined by Justice Gorsuch, another Trump appointee: “In our system of government, as this court has often stated, no one is above the law. That principle applies, of course, to a president.”In hindsight, it all sounds a tad overblown. The only member of the Trump Organization facing criminal charges is Weisselberg. Looking back, Weisselberg must be asking: was it worth it? After he was led into the courtroom in handcuffs, we can only guess his answer. Still, don’t bet on him flipping. And as trials go, this one is looking mesmerizingly dull.
Lloyd Green was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
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Trump Organization and financial chief charged in a tax-related investigation
The Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, have been charged in a tax-related investigation, marking the first criminal charges against the former president’s company since prosecutors began investigating it three years ago, two people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press.Multiple news outlets including the New York Times and the Washington Post reported the indictment on Wednesday evening, citing sources familiar with the matter.The move marks the latest stage of an escalating battle between New York prosecutors and the former president. The charges against the Trump Organization and Weisselberg remained sealed Wednesday night, but were expected to involve alleged tax violations related to benefits the company gave to top executives, possibly including use of apartments, cars and school tuition, people familiar with the case said.While no charges are expected to be brought against Trump personally the charges mark an extraordinary turning point for the former president and more are likely to follow. New York prosecutors are still investigating allegations of “hush money” paid to women who say they had sexual relations with Trump, and claims of real-estate price manipulation.The charges are a severe blow to the Trump Organization, which may now find it more difficult to raise money as the case continues. They also pose a challenge to Trump’s apparent political ambitions. The former president has begun a series of campaign style rallies and is positioning himself for another run at the presidency in 2024.Prosecutors have been pressing Weisselberg, 73, to cooperate with their investigations but with little success so far.No one other than Trump has such a thorough knowledge of the Trump Organization. “They are like Batman and Robin,” Jennifer Weisselberg, ex-wife of Allen Weisselberg’s son Barry told the New York Times. Jennifer Weisselberg has aided Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance investigation into Trump’s business after a contentious divorce, supplying hundreds of pages of tax documents.Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, testified before Congress in 2019 that Weisselberg helped orchestrate a cover-up to reimburse him for a $130,000 payment made to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels, who has claimed she had sex with Trump.Cohen also testified that he and Weisselberg concocted phoney valuations of Trump’s real estate holdings to devalue assets for tax purposes while inflating them for loan agreements.Vance and the New York state attorney general, Letitia James, are investigating both those allegations.A grand jury was recently empaneled to weigh evidence, and James said she was assigning two of her lawyers to work with Vance on the criminal inquiry while she continues a civil investigation of Trump.The Manhattan district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.Trump had blasted the investigation in a statement Monday, deriding Vance’s office as “rude, nasty, and totally biased”.Trump Organization lawyers met virtually with Manhattan prosecutors last week in a last-ditch attempt to dissuade them from charging the company. Prosecutors gave the lawyers a Monday deadline to make the case that criminal charges shouldn’t be filed.Ron Fischetti, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, told the AP this week that there was no indication Trump himself was included in the first batch of charges.“There is no indictment coming down this week against the former president,” Fischetti said. “I can’t say he’s out of the woods yet completely.”Weisselberg, a loyal lieutenant to Trump and his real estate-developer father, Fred, came under scrutiny, in part, because of questions about his son’s use of a Trump apartment at little or no cost.Prosecutors investigating untaxed benefits to Trump executives have also been looking at Matthew Calamari, a former Trump bodyguard turned chief operating officer, and his son, the company’s corporate director of security. However, a lawyer for the Calamaris said Wednesday that he didn’t expect them to be charged.“Although the DA’s investigation obviously is ongoing, I do not expect charges to be filed against either of my clients at this time,” said the lawyer, Nicholas Gravante.The company and Weisselberg were expected to make their first court appearance Thursday. More
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Youngstown’s hopes for reinvention fade as electric truck firm sputters
It’s less than a year since Lordstown Motors was touted as the future for the Youngstown, Ohio, the once thriving steel and manufacturing city that has struggled to reinvent itself in the post-industrial age.The company and its Endurance all-electric pickup truck were seen as saviors for Youngstown after General Motors pulled the plug on its nearby Lordstown plant. “It’s booming now. It’s absolutely booming,” said Donald Trump in September, during an unveiling of the Endurance truck at the White House.Now those hopes are fading as Lordstown Motors faces financial difficulties that have locals worried, once again, about the region’s financial future.“It’s a very sad moment in the history of Youngstown. It seems every five years that hope is just over the horizon and somebody just closes it up and it disappears,” said Bob Hagan, who represented the Youngstown area for nearly three decades in the Ohio state legislature as an assembly representative and state senator.General Motors announced plans to shut down five factories in North America in November 2018, including its plant in Lordstown, which employed 1,600 workers and had operated for 52 years. The number of employees had steeply declined since the early 1990s, when more than 10,000 workers were employed at the plant.In March 2019, the last Chevy Cruze rolled off the assembly line as the plant ceased operations, leaving hundreds of workers forced to retire, transfer to a different GM plant elsewhere in the US, or find other work.The closure was devastating for residents in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, as the area has steadily declined from outsourcing and plant closures over the past few decades in the automotive, manufacturing, and steel industries.General Motors sold the plant to Lordstown Motors for $20m in 2019, and loaned the company $40m.But hope for a bright electric future soon faded. Since its purchase of the plant, Lordstown Motors has experienced financial and developmental difficulties. The company recently gave a tour of the facility to reporters, analysts and other visitors amid a turmoil of conflicting statements on its outlook, the resignations of its CEO and CFO, and a statement to securities regulators that the company did not have enough funds to start production.Hagan said these travails are just the latest setback for an area that has taken many hard knocks. Over the past several decades, steel mills and manufacturing plants have shuttered amid broken promises. He fears Lordstown Motors may prove another corporation that came into the area with high hopes and lofty promises – only to let the community down.“They’re rearranging the chairs on the Titanic,” he said.The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has opened an inquiry into Lordstown Motors over statements it has made about orders in the wake of a report from short-seller Hindenburg Research that accused Lordstown Motors of misrepresenting orders to raise capital. Five Lordstown Motors executives sold more than $8m in stocks in February 2021, ahead of the company’s financial reporting results and before the company’s financial problems were publicly disclosed.“If you talk to the vast majority of us, we are not surprised by all the issues with Lordstown Motors,” said Timothy O’Hara, former president of United Auto Workers local 1112, the union which represented GM Lordstown employees. He worked at the plant for 41 years before retiring.“Lordstown Motors has been a shaky situation from the beginning. For the economy of the Mahoning Valley I hope it succeeds – but I’m not holding my breath.”The Lordstown Motors plant currently has about 600 employees, and production is projected to begin at the end of September. But it faces some huge hurdles. In a statement filed with the SEC, the company said its success hinges on “its ability to complete the development of its electric vehicles, obtain regulatory approval, begin commercial scale production and launch the sale of such vehicles” – all as it seeks additional financing before it’s projected to run out of funds by May next year.Elected officials have bet heavily on the success of Lordstown Motors in the area. In December, the Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved a state tax credit for the company estimated to save $20m in payroll taxes, based on its promise to create 1,570 full-time jobs. Ohio’s private economic development agency, JobsOhio, has pledged $4.5m in grants to Lordstown Motors. In April last year, the company received more than $1m through a federal pandemic loan to retain 42 jobs.But Hagan believes the money may not be enough and, once again, it will be the people of Youngstown who pay the price.“Tax dollars are being used to lure people into our community. We have to have elected officials be more vigilant on how organizations are taking money and make sure they deliver,” he said. More
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Relax post-Brexit immigration rules to address staff shortages, CBI urges government
The UK’s post-Brexit immigration system is a “barrier” to hiring overseas workers and should be relaxed in order to tackle wide-scale staff shortages reported across the country, Britain’s biggest business group has said.Lord Bilimoria, president of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), warned Brexit and Covid had triggered a “perfect storm” with firms struggling to recruit in many sectors of the economy.The CBI called on the government to “immediately update the shortage occupations lists” for roles including butchers, bricklayers and welders.The list identifies occupations for which there are not enough UK workers with the correct skills. If an occupation is on the list, employers can fill vacancies by recruiting staff from abroad more easily. For occupations that are not on the list, employers must show that they have gone through procedures to prove that UK nationals and resident workers have been given enough opportunity to apply before the job is offered to overseas candidates. Visa fees are also higher.Many businesses – including those in hospitality and retail – have reported a shortage of workers blamed in part on workers leaving the UK during the pandemic.But the end to freedom of movement after Brexit has also severed the flow of new European workers who often took low-paid roles, which businesses are now struggling to fill. NHS leaders have previously warned that the government’s post-Brexit points-based immigration system risks creating an “alarming” shortfall in social care workers in the coming years.In a speech to the Recruitment and Employment Confederation’s (REC) annual conference, Lord Bilimoria – founder of Cobra Beer – said: “We’ve got a perfect storm of factors coalescing. During the pandemic, many workers from overseas left the UK to return home – hitting the UK’s hospitality, logistics, and food processing industries particularly hard.“The UK’s immigration system is also a barrier to hiring people from overseas to replace those who may have left.”He added: “We need government to immediately update the ‘Shortage Occupation List’.“Last year – in September 2020 – the Migration Advisory Committee recommended that we add certain roles to that list. Butchers, bricklayers, and welders for example. “Today, almost a year on, we worry those are exactly the same sectors facing shortages now. “Businesses would also welcome a commitment to review the list annually, to keep it responsive to the ebb and flow of skill demands across the whole of the UK’s economy“Where there are clear, evidenced labour shortages, businesses should be able to hire from overseas. An evolving Shortage Occupations List could help.”A report by jobs site Indeed earlier this month suggested the number of EU citizens searching for work in the UK had slumped by 36 per cent since Brexit, with interest in low-paid roles in hospitality and retail falling the most, by 41 per cent from 2019 levels.In total, 1.3 million non-UK workers have left the country since late 2019. More
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How the Small Business Administration’s new chief plans to make the agency known
Isabella Guzman is the new administrator of the Small Business Administration (SBA). And she’s got a long-term problem.No, it’s not about pandemic loans or the bottleneck in disbursing grants under other stimulus initiatives. It’s not even about catching fraudsters or approving applications. She has these problems of course. But that’s not the long-term problem.Guzman’s long-term problem has to do with awareness.“The SBA has always been the best kept secret in government, and we don’t want to be that,” she told me in a recent podcast interview. “We want to be known.”Right now most small business owners I know are only aware of the SBA because of the media attention received – both positive and negative – by being the middleman for various stimulus programs. But those programs are going to end this year. So what happens after that? What’s next for the SBA?For years, the department has struggled to get the word out about its services. And there’s no question that the SBA has many services to offer small businesses well and beyond dolling out loans and grants.“We know that government can be hard to navigate, and we’re trying to simplify our processes,” Guzman says. “Our customers are small businesses owners who have to wear so many hats and have so many responsibilities and need a team behind them.”What kind of team? There are the Small Business Development Centers, a network of free consulting agencies generally tied to colleges and universities which use professors and grad students as resources to help small businesses create business plans, do market research and evaluate technology. Or there’s Score, a long time, SBA-linked association of “retired” small business experts and owners who provide wisdom and advice at no charge. The SBA also has a myriad of educational programs and customer assistance resources that can help small businesses get government contracts or just better manage cash flow.Then there are the many guaranteed loan programs the agency offers through its lender network that can provide millions of dollars of working capital and other financing opportunities to buy property and equipment for small businesses who otherwise would not be able to fulfill normal banking requirements.And yet, when I ask my clients – who are mostly established firms – about the SBA I usually get blank stares. These clients aren’t aware of these options. They don’t realize they can get free consulting from university professors and retired CEOs or bank loans from lenders that wouldn’t ordinarily lend to them. Even the business owners I know operating in low- to moderate-income areas aren’t aware of the special services and funding available specifically for them. Or the more than a hundred women’s business centers throughout the country specifically devoted to the needs of female entrepreneurs.Why not? It’s awareness. The SBA has an opportunity to leverage the enormous PR it received during the pandemic and use it to make more businesses aware of all that it does. So how does administrator Guzman plan to do this?“We’re going to be looking at all of our programs completely and trying to apply a customer-first and technology forward approach as well as an equitable approach,” she says. “We intend to make sure that we’re meeting businesses where they’re at in their current situations and providing products and services that can best help them grow.”Specifically, that means hiring better and brighter people for her organization (“like Nasa” she says), increasing their partnering outreach to government departments, local organizations and chambers of commerce, and focusing on issues that are top of mind for many business owners, such as exit strategies.“Our small business development centers in particular are training up on ESOPs (Employee Stock Ownership Plans) and other types of alternatives for exit strategies,” Guzman says. “We know that it’s a big challenge to sell or hand down a business and we don’t want those businesses to disappear.”Finally, Guzman plans a greater reach out to communities of color and other areas where discrimination and lack of education is holding back on their opportunities. Her goal is to prevent “barriers from limiting entrepreneurship” and “to make sure that every type of entrepreneur from all backgrounds have the opportunity to pursue their dream of small business ownership”.Will the SBA be able to leverage its notoriety from the pandemic into a message that enables more small business owners to take advantage of all the resources it provides? Other administrators have tried this in the past, with mediocre outcomes. But Guzman has a chance right now to increase capitalize on what her agency has done in the past and make more business owners aware of the services it can provide in the future. Let’s hope she succeeds. More
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‘When is this going to end?’: US factory town devastated by jobs moving overseas
“Disbelief. Distraught and traumatized.”Just some of the words United Steelworkers Local 8-957 president Joe Gouzd used to describe how he and hundreds of other workers felt after their 56-year-old pharmaceutical plant in West Virginia was shut down, sending between 1,500 to 2,000 jobs to India and Australia.The Viatris plant at Chestnut Ridge, just outside Morgantown, has been in operation since 1965, providing well paid jobs in one of America’s poorer states. And the timing of the closure has workers furious.“This is the last generic pharmaceutical manufacturing giant in the US, and executives are offshoring our jobs to India for more profits. What is this going to do to us if we have another pandemic?” said Gouzd.It is also causing a political row, with Congress accused of inaction and workers denouncing profits before people.“When is this going to end, losing American jobs? Every politician you hear, part of their political platform is: jobs, domestic jobs, domestic manufacturing, bringing jobs and manufacturing back to America,” said Gouzd.The offshoring of jobs has taken on new political weight since Donald Trump was elected. But his record in office was just as poor as his predecessors’.While the US does not track all jobs lost to offshoring, the labor department does count the number of workers who petition for help under a federal law designed to aid those harmed by trade.According to Reuters, during the four years of Trump, those petitions covered 202,151 workers whose jobs moved overseas, only slightly less than the 209,735 workers covered under Obama.Biden has proposed taxing companies that offshore jobs, but it remains to be seen whether he will be successful. Viatris may prove his first big test.The union is fighting to prevent the plant closure, asking elected officials to repurpose the plant via the Defense Production Act of 1950. It also criticized elected officials in Congress from ignoring their pleas for assistance “for no other reason than stakeholder return on investment dollars,” said Gouzd, who has also worked at the plant for 22 years.The local union branch represents about 900 workers. “Families are going to be forced to relocate, probably sell their homes, and relocate from West Virginia. Here we’re going to rid ourselves of 2,000 high-paying jobs in north central West Virginia, taking out $150m to $200m out of the local economy from lost income.”Less than a month after Mylan merged with Pfizer’s Upjohn to form Viatris, the company informed the union of its plans to shut down the plant and send the work abroad, as part of a $1bn cost-cutting restructuring plan. Mylan reported $3.9bn in profits in 2019, and over $1bn in quarterly profits before the merger. The plant is scheduled to end manufacturing on 31 July when the majority of the workforce will be laid off, with closure operations planned to end by 31 March next year.Carla Shultz, 60, worked at the plant for 13 years and is worried about not being ready to retire, but too old to return to college or be able to find another job with comparable wages and benefits.Through her job, Shultz was able to receive chemotherapy tablets for her mother; the same medicine would have cost her family $7,000 a month without benefits for her job. During the pandemic, her mother caught coronavirus and is currently hospitalized, on oxygen, and requiring round-the-clock care.“It added a lot more stress to our already stressful situation caring for family. I also take care of my three grandchildren, two of whom are school-age. But they’ve been home a lot while schools were closed because of Covid,” said Shultz.“My sister and I take turns caring for my mom. I help in the daytime after I get off work catching a nap when I can and then keeping my midnight shift schedule. It’s not easy keeping up, but we do what we have to do for our families.”Chad McCormick, recording secretary of USW Local 8-957, has worked at the plant since 2001, but now expects to be forced to find a much lower paying job to remain in the area, where his family has lived for decades.“I’ve been here for over 20 years. I’ve since gotten married, had three children, and built a house,” said McCormick. “It’s just devastating, and a lot more people than I expected are now looking into relocating.”The West Virginia legislature passed a bill calling on governor Jim Justice and Joe Biden to save the jobs. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Marco Rubio introduced the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain Review Act to conduct a study on the American over-reliance on foreign countries in pharmaceutical industry, but neither West Virginia senator has sponsored the bill.According to Gouzd, Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito has ignored pleas to work with Biden officials to save the plant, and Democrat Joe Manchin, whose daughter served as Mylan’s chief executive until she retired in 2020, has also ignored their requests to get involved and help.Viatris cited the plant closure as part of a global restructuring initiative, and said it is exploring alternatives outside the company network.“The phasing out of manufacturing operations in Morgantown was a decision the company did not take lightly and in no way reflects upon our genuine appreciation for the commitment and work ethic of the employees at Chestnut Ridge,” it said. More
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Is Biden’s appointment of a pioneering young lawyer bad news for big tech? | John Naughton
A flashback: it’s Wednesday 29 July 2020. I’m sitting glued to the US TV network C-Span, which is relaying – live – a hearing of the House of Representatives subcommittee on antitrust, commercial and administrative law. The hearing is being held following the publication of a sprawling report of a year-long investigation into the market dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google.Arrayed on big screens before the members of the subcommittee are the four bosses of the aforementioned tech giants: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, then midway through his Star Trek makeover; Tim Cook of Apple, looking like the clean-living lad who never understood the locker-room jokes; Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, wearing his trademark glued-on hairdo; and the Google boss, Sundar Pichai, every inch the scholarship boy who can’t understand why he’s been arrested by the Feds. And on the vast mahogany bench towering above these screened moguls sits David Cicilline, subcommittee chairman and the politician who has overseen the investigation.To be honest, I was watching out of duty and with low expectations. All the previous congressional interrogations of Zuckerberg and co had alternated between political grandstanding and farce. I expected much the same from this encounter. And then I noticed a young woman wearing a black mask standing behind Cicilline. She looked vaguely familiar, but it took me a few moments before I twigged that she was Lina Khan. At which point I sat up and started taking notes.I had been following her for years, ever since a paper she had published as a graduate student in the Yale Law Journal in January 2017. The title of the paper – Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox – signalled that there was something radical coming up, because since the mid-1970s US antitrust philosophy had been shaped by a landmark book by another lawyer, Robert Bork. Its title was The Antitrust Paradox and it argued that the prime focus of action against monopolies should not be corporate power, per se, but consumer harm as measured by unreasonably high prices. And since many of the products and services offered by the tech giants were “free” to their users they could hardly be accused of this; their wielding of monopoly power should not therefore be penalised by the state, for doing so would be tantamount to “penalising excellence”. Thus was shaped the legal doctrine that allowed a small number of tech companies to acquire immense power without being unduly troubled by legislators.This was the doctrine that Khan set out to demolish in her paper. She argued that Amazon was a dangerous monopoly that charged unsustainably low prices because the company knew that its shareholders would allow it to lose money for longer than its competitors. And it was also able to operate a “marketplace” that competed with the businesses that relied on it to reach customers, while amassing data on them that further entrenched its advantages. In other words, it wielded significant power for which there was no real redress.Khan’s paper lit a fuse that’s been fizzing ever since. It informed the Cicilline investigation and the subsequent report. And it’s what underpinned four of the five new bills that were unveiled last week, each one co-sponsored by Republican as well as Democratic politicians and each one targeted at monopolistic abuses identified in the report. The “Cicilline Salvo” is how the incomparable tech analyst Ben Thompson summarises them. The American innovation and choice online bill forbids platforms from giving advantages to their own products and services on marketplaces that they operate. The platform competition and opportunity bill outlaws pre-emptive acquisitions by tech giants of startups that might threaten their dominance (such as Facebook acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp, for instance). The ending platform monopolies bill bans platforms from owning any product or service that rests on top of its platform and competes with third parties in any way. And the augmenting compatibility and competition by enabling service switching bill requires tech platforms to make it easy for users to switch platforms (and take their data and social graph with them); in other words, it imposes on platforms what many jurisdictions now enforce on mobile phone operators, energy companies and other businesses.Of course, there’s many a slip ’twixt drafting and the statute book, but these are very significant pieces of legislation that go some way towards bringing tech companies under democratic control. And, to cap it all, last week also saw the announcement that Khan was to become chair of the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that, along with the US Department of Justice, has the legal muscle to enforce compliance with whatever these new laws stipulate.Which leaves us with two reflections. One is, as David Runciman pointed out in The Confidence Trap, his landmark study of the recent history of democracy, that while democracies can take a long time to awaken from their slumbers, once aroused they can be very effective. The other is a confirmation of the power of ideas, even those of a young graduate student, to change history.What I’ve been readingSituation vacant On Algorithmic Communism is a long, thoughtful review by Ian Lorrie in the LA Review of Books of Nick Srnicek’s and Alex Williams’s book, Inventing the Future, about a world without work.What’s in a phrase?There Is Nothing so Deep as the Gleaming Surface of the Aphorism is a nice – aphoristic – essay by Noreen Masud.Net costsThe Cost of Cloud: A Trillion-Dollar Paradox is a perceptive piece by Sarah Wang and Martin Casado on the expensive technology on which our networked world now depends. More
