GOLIATH Has Arrived

Yesterday I opened a package that arrived at my doorstep and found an old friend's new book, Goliath-- The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power And Democracy. This is the book that Thomas Frank called "the secret history of economic democracy in America. 'Secret' because it's still a story that will trouble everyone: conservatives, liberals, Silicon Valley and Big Oil." Yep... that's Matt Stoller... who has worked on Capitol Hill both with Alan Grayson in the House and with Bernie in the Senate. One book reviewer wrote that Goliath is a "startling look at how concentrated financial power and consumerism transformed American politics, resulting in the emergence of populism and authoritarianism, the fall of the Democratic Party-- while also providing the steps needed to create a new democracy."

Americans once had a coherent and clear understanding of political tyranny, one crafted by Thomas Jefferson and updated for the industrial age by Louis Brandeis. A concentration of power, whether in the hands of a military dictator or a JP Morgan, was understood as autocratic and dangerous to individual liberty and democracy. This idea stretched back to the country’s founding. In the 1930s, people observed that the Great Depression was caused by financial concentration in the hands of a few whose misuse of their power induced a financial collapse. They drew on this tradition to craft the New Deal.

In Goliath, Matt Stoller explains how authoritarianism and populism have returned to American politics for the first time in eighty years, as the outcome of the 2016 election shook our faith in democratic institutions. It has brought to the fore dangerous forces that many modern Americans never even knew existed. Today’s bitter recriminations and panic represent more than just fear of the future, they reflect a basic confusion about what is happening and the historical backstory that brought us to this moment.

The true effects of populism, a shrinking middle class, and concentrated financial wealth are only just beginning to manifest themselves under the current administrations. The lessons of Stoller’s study will only grow more relevant as time passes. Building upon his viral article in The Atlantic, “How the Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul,” Stoller illustrates in rich detail how we arrived at this tenuous moment, and the steps we must take to create a new democracy.

At the same time the book arrived, the Wall Street Journal published a think piece by Matt that is based on the themes he developed in Goliath, Why U.S. Businesses Want Trustbusting, with a perspective on class war that I hadn't considered much nor felt much sympathy for. "The loudest complaints against today’s monopolies," he wrote, "come not from Occupy Wall Street types but from leaders of firms seeking freedom of commerce."

Trustbusting is back, and it’s a bipartisan effort. Last month, 50 state attorneys general, led by the conservative Republican Ken Paxton of Texas, announced an investigation of Google for anticompetitive conduct. Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri has been a fierce critic of big tech, as has the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which is probing the sector. Several Democratic presidential candidates have pledged to address the problem of concentrated power not just in tech but in agriculture, defense and media too.

It might seem like both parties and the American public are turning against business creators and investors who put their hard-earned capital to work. But there’s a more optimistic way to see this dynamic. If you listen to the complaints against these large companies, they aren’t coming from Occupy Wall Street-style protesters. They are coming from business leaders who, in most cases, are just seeking the liberty to trade with whomever they wish and feel that they are being blocked.

Take complaints about Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which is such an important marketing platform that it is essentially the home page for every company. Google’s searches once primarily sent people to independent web pages, but the internet has increasingly become Google’s own walled garden. A recent study by the data analytics firm Jumpshot shows that more than half of Google searches now end with snippets from web pages displayed on the search page itself instead of visits to those pages, or else by sending users to Google apps or to sites that paid Google for ads-- instead of to pages outside Google’s sphere. Meanwhile, Google has packed so many ads onto its results page that companies are finding that they have to buy ads even to reach people who search for their product by name.

This would not be such a problem except that Google is essentially a search monopoly, with roughly 90% of the web search market and a dominant share in other segments of the internet, like mapping. (Google counters by defining the market more broadly to include any online service that helps consumers to find something, such as Amazon or Expedia.) One small-business owner told the Wall Street Journal, in an article earlier this year about fake listings in Google maps, that he fears Google far more than the government. “The government will hit me with a fine,” he said. “But if Google suspends my listings, I’m out of a job. Google could make me homeless.”

Facebook has similar power over the advertising market for social networking, which is also critical for anyone with products or services to sell. Facebook can, in essence, impose its own tax on all businesses that have to connect with customers. “In a lot of ways, Facebook is more like a government than a traditional company,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a 2009 interview. Now Mr. Zuckerberg is putting together his own Facebook “Supreme Court,” as he describes it, for content moderation, and attempting to create his own currency with Libra.

Nor are monopolies just appearing in technology. Across the economy, dominant market power is more the norm than the exception. There are concentrated markets in industries as diverse as coffins, syringes, baby formula, mobile-home manufacturing and bank management software. Rabbis recently had to beg the giant Mexican bakery chain Bimbo, which together with Flowers Foods controls roughly three-fifths of branded bread sales in the U.S., to continue baking kosher bread. Fully 97% of missiles and munitions produced for the Pentagon are controlled by just two companies, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.

Dominant firms not only concentrate power but become the single sources for vital products. In 1997, Boeing and McDonnell Douglass merged, combining nearly all domestic civilian aerospace capacity in one company. While Boeing (as the new entity continued to be called) still faced some competition from Airbus, its market power largely insulated it from the consequences of poor management. The deadly crashes over the past year of two Boeing 737 Max passenger airlines have now begun to reveal the extent of the company’s failings. Because Boeing is the entire U.S. industry, its problems are rippling broadly across it suppliers and the airlines. To take just one example, the scandal has cost General Electric, which sells engines, up to $750 million in cash flow.

The U.S. has been here before. In the early 20th century, Standard Oil, among other industrial trusts, strode across the land as a corporate goliath. Though massively profitable, the company had misallocated capital and centralized the oil industry inefficiently. When the Indiana branch of Standard Oil wanted to invest in the then-crazy notion that oil could be refined into gasoline, the New York headquarters kept saying that the company should stick to kerosene. In 1911, after the company was broken up, the Indiana subsidiary developed the technology behind the gasoline industry. John D. Rockefeller became far richer after the breakup thanks to the stock appreciation of the subsidiaries. ( Teddy Roosevelt later joked, “No wonder that Wall Street’s prayer now is: ‘Oh Merciful Providence, give us another dissolution.’”)

Standard Oil helped to establish the traditional American response to corporate monopolies: Break them up so that other businesses can compete and innovate and investors can profit. During the New Deal, the government broke up giant banks, Hollywood studios, electric utilities, airline and aerospace companies and radio networks. In many cases, as with electric utilities, shareholders, bondholders and ratepayers all profited. Government took an energetic hand in promoting liberty in business, and it worked.

After World War II, Rep. Emanuel Celler, a Democrat from New York, took the lead in investigating domestic monopolies. He noted the pervasive climate of fear in industries where dominant firms could at any point destroy their competitors. “Under our ancient common law, your neighbor must not point a gun at you, even though he has never shot anyone,” Celler wrote in 1950. “Similarly, our antitrust laws were intended to protect businessmen not only from violence but from fear of violence.” That year, Congress passed the Celler-Kefauver Act to bar anticompetitive mergers.

In the 1950s, antitrust was a priority for Republicans too. The Eisenhower administration forced RCA, AT&T and IBM to license their patents to small companies. One of those patents was the electronic transistor, soon manufactured by Texas Instruments and Motorola. Antitrust thus freed American business and led to the creation of Silicon Valley.

Similarly, when the Reagan administration broke up AT&T in 1984, it allowed more businesses to innovate rather than to fight the dominant market player. Stockholders in AT&T and its spinoffs did much better than those who kept IBM shares, a giant that the Reagan administration left alone. One of the results of the AT&T breakup was that customers could easily plug modems into the phone network, which gave rise to the online service provider industry.

Even when the government has stopped short of breaking up a company, as with Microsoft, the results have often been beneficial. In the early 2000s, Microsoft, due in part to fear of antitrust action, refrained from using its power over browsers to keep a scrappy upstart called Google from reaching users. Antitrust oxygenated the market; a lack of antitrust has now allowed Google to turn into the monopolist of today.

It often seems like centralization and concentration in the hands of the best and brightest in business and finance is the American way. But liberty is our true birthright. Louis Brandeis, the patron saint of the antimonopoly tradition, once expressed a fear that America, once a nation of tradespeople, was becoming a nation of clerks. He was right to fear that transformation in his day, just as businesspeople and investors should fear it in ours. Fortunately, we are seeing the resurgence of an old, business-friendly trend: trustbusting. And it couldn’t come soon enough.

Congress Has A Lot More To Do Than Just Investigate Trump

David Cicilline (D-RI) is now the chair of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law. There's not doubt we can count on him doing a much better-- and very different-- job than the one former chair Tom Marino was doing. In fact, with nightmare Republican extremist like Matt Gaetz (FL), Ken Buck (CO), Darrell Issa (CA), John Ratcliffe (TX) and Doug Collins (GA), nothing worthwhile has come out of that subcommittee for a long longtime. Welcome to a new day. This week, Barry Lynn, head of the Open Markets Institute wrote that "over the last year, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons has been strongly criticized for his failure to enforce the agency's 2011 consent decree on Facebook but has largely skirted scrutiny of his unwillingness to address the ongoing merger frenzy in any meaningful way. Department of Justice Antitrust Division chief Makan Delrahim, meanwhile, has largely escaped the public spotlight, with the notable exception of his agency’s poorly thought-out case to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner. The new Democratic majority in Congress means this is now likely to change." 

The new Chairman of the House Antitrust Subcommittee is likely to be Congressman David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Democrat and member of the Democratic House leadership. Cicilline is an aggressive anti-monopolist and has a track record of skepticism towards tech platforms. He has written legislation allowing newspapers to bargain collectively over advertising revenues with large online ad companies and has pledged to author new legislation expanding antitrust authority against dominant platforms.

Cicilline is also willing to act. Last month, he questioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the search giant’s plans to launch a Chinese product. He said Facebook executives “will always put their massive profits ahead of the interests of their customers” and noted that “it is long past time for us to take action.” In 2017, ;Cicilline ;called for hearings on the Amazon-Whole Foods merger. With his new authority, Cicilline can now bring pressure on both agencies to actually do the jobs they were hired to do. Delrahim’s failure to take on corporate concentration has been especially striking. Early on, Delrahim pledged to be a strong enforcer, portraying himself as a traditional pro-competition conservative. Delrahim attacked the idea f complex deals designed to let mergers go in exchange for conditions that require the agency to monitor a corporation’s post-deal behavior. Instead, ;he advocated preventing mergers outright, and took an especially strong stance against vertical integration, like in the tie-up between AT&T and Time Warner. Delrahim even called for jail time for employers engaging in wage-fixing against employees.

But in recent months, the Antitrust Division seems to have closed up shop even before the government shutdown took effect. Delrahim’s team conditionally cleared the drug store giant CVS to acquire insurancance company Aetna, despite innumerable conflicts of interest such a vertical deal creates, incurring the wrath of a generally pro-monopoly Judge Richard Leon. The DOJ also intervened in favor of Apple in the Supreme Court case Apple v. Pepper, which asks whether iPhone users can sue Apple for abusing its monopoly over the sale of apps. Delrahim has also not followed through on pledges to file criminal charges against wage-fixers. Perhaps most disturbingly, the DOJ has moved to restrict the rights of state enforcers and private plaintiffs to bring cases against instances of monopolization.

The libertarian anti-enforcement bent of the DOJ’s political team was made clear in recent comments by Deputy Assistant Attorney General Andrew Finch, who argued in a December speech at a Capitol Forum conference that “consumers often benefit from concentration” and that antitrust laws “are concerned with competition, not concentration.” He called suggestions to break up or regulate tech platforms “drastic” and warned that any such actions would reduce entrepreneurial activity.

Simons and Delrahim came into their offices with strong words for would-be monopolists. In 2019, Simons and Delrahim can expect at least one congressional committee chairman to demand answers on why this has not happened.

And it isn't just Cicilline's subcommittee where this kind of important work is going to be done. There are high expectations now that Maxine Waters has replaced Jeb Hensarling as head of the House Financial Services Committee. The committee that is charged with congressional oversight of, among other things, Wall Street has been captured by Wall Street. Every Republican and all the New Dems and Blue Dogs on the committee are there specifically to set themselves up as bribe-taking machines. Wall Street pumps immense amounts of money into the members of one of Congress' most popular committees and have gotten to write their own legislation in return. Nice deal. Of the members still on the committee, these are the criminal who have taken $2 million or more from the Finance Sector:

• Carolyn Maloney (D-NY)- $6,327,421
• Jim Himes (New Dem-CT)- $6,279,357
• Steve Stivers (R-OH)- $5,598,776
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC)- $5,586,542
• Ed Perlmutter (New Dem-CO)- $4,111,253
• Brad Sherman (D-CA)- $3,823,403
• Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO)- $3,772,203
• ean Duffy (R-WI)- $3,679,647
• Gregory Meeks (New Dem-NY)- $3,661,288
• Andy Barr (R-KY)- $3,568,176
• David Scott (Blue Dog-GA)- $3,260,344
• Charlie Crist (Blue Dog-FL)- $3,165,972
• Peter King (R-NY)- $3,092,721
• Ann Wagner (R-MO)- $3,041,599
• Josh Gottheimer (Blue Dog-NJ)- $2,967,427
• Bill Huizenga (R-MI)- $2,801,450
• Bill Foster (New Dem-IL)- $2,780,919
• Frank Lucas (R-OK)- $2,483,427
• Roger Williams (R-TX)- $2,408,711
• French Hill (R-AR)- $2,386,049
• Nydia Velázquez (D-NY)- $2,380,936
• Gwen Moore (D-WI)- $2,184,850
• Lee Zeldin (R-NY)- $2,152,130
• Stephen Lynch (D-MA)- $2,084,356

Yesterday in a post about committees at The Intercept by David Dayen, Ryan Grim and Aida Chávez, an assertion was made that "Democrats have struggled to find many members to serve on Financial Services, leading to speculation that the party would actually shrink the size of the committee. Alternatively, that quandary could result in progressives being added as a last resort." That would be a drastic change over past years, when members would practically murder each other to get onto the biggest honeypot committee in Congress.

Dayen and his team further reported that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Katie Porter (D-CA) are being assigned to the committee, and that Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) may be as well. "The imminent Financial Services Committee announcement," they wrote, "would take some sting out of several disappointments for the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s high-profile rising stars, who on Wednesday were largely shut out of new assignments to three critical committees where they sought expanded representation."

The Progressive Caucus had cut a deal with Pelosi for increased representation on the so-called money committees that handle most domestic legislation. They sought membership on the Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce, Appropriations, and Financial Services committees equal to their roughly 40 percent membership in the Democratic caucus.

...The Progressive Caucus’s demand for 40 percent representation was stymied by the composition of the caucus itself. There are no real barriers to membership and the caucus rarely whips its members for votes, meaning that members who want to wear a progressive badge without altering their legislative record can do so. Some members of the Progressive Caucus are even also affiliated with its centrist counterpoint, the New Democrat Coalition

Pelosi and House leadership made skillful use of those progressive/New Dem hybrids in making the committee assignments, which may be cynical from a leadership perspective, but was only possible as a result of the Progressive Caucus’s less-than-stringent membership rules-- rules that are within their own control.

And adding CPC members who are not genuine progressives to positions of power on committees could actually be a net loss, argued some operatives. Indeed, it sets up a dynamic in which weak legislation could earn the imprimatur of an influential CPC member, which makes it more difficult for the CPC itself to oppose.

...Instead of pushing for proportional representation for a disorganized, amorphous caucus, the CPC should have first organized itself, then pursued power, argued Waleed Shahid, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which backed Ocasio-Cortez and other freshmen whose bids for the committees were rebuffed. “Numbers won’t mean much if being progressive means nothing. If everyone has their own definition and now has increased personal power through a seat on an executive committee, accountability to the progressive movement will be more difficult,” Shahid told The Intercept.

The move by Pelosi, to tap CPC members who are also in the New Dems, should have been anticipated, he argued. “Pelosi played by the CPC’s rules and appointed some of the least committed progressives to executive committees, including five CPC members who are also members of the centrist, corporate-friendly New Democratic caucus. Nearly all of the CPC members appointed to executive committees still receive corporate PAC donations,” he said.

“Instead of racing for numbers, the CPC should consider demanding stricter membership criteria-- such as rejecting corporate PAC money, co-sponsoring priority legislation, and willingness to engage in bloc voting-- otherwise progressive ideas risk being significantly watered down,” he said.

Zachery Warmbrodt also mentioned Ocasio-Cortez's likely assignment to House Financial Services and also referred to it as "a victory for progressives fighting to curb Wall Street's clout in Washington and inside the Democratic Party itself." I'm, a little wary that Pelosi is going to put that kind of power into the hands of genuine-- rather than Pocan-manufactured-- progressives. Something doesn't smell right here. Warmbrodt wrote that the assignment "would pit the 29-year-old New Yorker not only against banks that make up a major local industry but also potentially against business-friendly [outside the Beltway, that means stinking of corruption and in need of a long prison sentence, but "business-friendly" sounds more genteel] Democrats who have backed financial deregulation. Some moderate [again-- corrupt conservatives are described as "moderate" in Politico] Democrats have privately raised concerns that they’ll be targeted by the former bartender-turned-progressive icon, whose willingness to challenge her party’s establishment propelled her to Congress and the national spotlight... Ocasio-Cortez, who identifies as a democratic socialist, has criticized Democrats for supporting deregulation. She has also shunned corporate campaign donations-- traditionally a big draw for lawmakers to join the Financial Services Committee. 'This is why I am running for Congress," Ocasio-Cortez said after the House passed a sweeping set of banking rollbacks in June 2017. 'Because we cannot stand idly as big banks gut every last protection working families have left.'" The corrupt sack of runny shit who she defeated, Joe Crowley, was a big-time bankster-buddy who served on the House Ways and Means Committee and was happy to be the proud recipient of $7,446,114 in bribes from the Finance Sector, $1,276,890 last year alone.

With a single tweet, Ocasio-Cortez could frustrate efforts by moderate Democrats to cut deregulatory deals with Republicans, said Jeff Hauser, who tracks corporate influence as executive director of the Revolving Door Project.

"When industry lobbyists or their shills in Congress throw shade at a new member, it probably reflects a genuine fear that the newcomers will become a force for fixing a broken system," said Porter McConnell, campaign director of the Take On Wall Street coalition.

Lobbyists privately expressed mixed views on the prospect of her joining the committee. Some see her as a potential threat when it comes to Democrats working out legislation with Republicans. But others say she will be one among dozens on the committee and that it will be difficult for a low-ranking member to make noise.

For Waters, who is touting a committee agenda focused on consumer protection and housing, having an outspoken Democrat to her left could be a new kind of test, in addition to the tensions she has faced with more centrist members who have been more willing to work with Republicans. ["Centrist" at Politico means right-of-center but not fascist.]

But Waters has praised the fighting spirit of incoming lawmakers, and her own agenda could be bolstered by recruiting like-minded members. In addition to Ocasio-Cortez, the committee is expected to take on other new progressive members including possibly Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), a protégé of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA).

"You're going to see a new kind of approach in the hearings that we have," Waters said in a recent MSNBC interview. "They're going to come right out with it. They won't be ashamed. They won't be afraid. They really believe in what they're doing. I think that's good for the institution."

..."Who knows," said [Rep. Lacy Clay, a real sleaze bag on the committee]. "She may deal with some issues over this first term and her supporters may start referring to her as a sellout."

Apparently he thinks everyone is just like he is. AOC isn't-- and neither is Katie Porter.

Hot Rumor: The Federal Trade Commission May Be Coming Back To Life

This week, the Open Markets Institute reported some good news, namely that the Federal Trade Commission may be about to "waken from it's anti-trust slumber." Hard to imagine.

For the last few years, the Federal Trade Commission all but vanished as a major player in anti-monopoly enforcement. In part, this was due to a lack of staff. For much of the last year, the FTC had only two sitting commissioners. Mainly, however, it was due to ideology.

Two of the most influential recent commissioners-- Maureen Ohlhausen and Josh Wright-- were strong proponents of libertarian competition philosophy, with its strong pro-monopoly bent. Further, even many recent Democratic appointments tended to take a highly permissive approach to economic power.

But a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on February 14 provided strong signals that the FTC may soon be back in the business of promoting competition in the United States. All five FTC commissioners are being replaced more or less at the same time, which means the character of the agency has the potential to change dramatically. And among both senators and nominees, the libertarian thinking that has long held sway in the Commission appeared to be decidedly out of fashion.

• Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), a former director of policy planning at the FTC, has in the past largely opposed government regulations, including net neutrality. But at the hearing last week, Sen. Cruz expressed deep concern about the immense power wielded by Google and Facebook, citing a cover story in Esquire that calls for the break-up of big tech. Sen. Cruz appeared especially concerned about the anti-competitive implications of Facebook and Google's dominance, saying that their "market power, size, and control of public discourse is unprecedented."

• Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) urged the nominees to use the "new populism…sweeping the country" as a mandate to invigorate enforcement and advocacy. "Going beyond the FTC being a resource, I'd also like you to be a champion," he said. "You have the bully pulpit. You can bring zeal and passion to consumer issues that no one else will do at the federal level." Sen. Blumenthal also submitted a statement from the Congressional Antitrust Committee into the hearing record.

• Joe Simons, nominated by President Trump to chair the agency, said he wants to scrutinize dominant firms that wield market power and review the Commission's enforcement record. “At a high level, I don’t believe that big is necessarily bad,” he said. But he added, “Companies that are already big and influential can sometimes use inappropriate means, anti-competitive means, to get big or to stay big.” In particular, Simons said he was "very concerned" about drug pricing and would explore convening a drug pricing monitoring task force to track anti-competitive price spikes and enable prompt investigations and enforcement actions.

• In discussing extreme consolidation in agriculture with Sen. John Tester (D-MT), Simons further explained that even when bad mergers cannot be easily unscrambled, the agency can investigate dominant industry players for anti-competitive conduct and target their power through injunctions. Coupled with his written comments, Simons’ remarks suggest he intends to target abusive actions by dominant companies.

• The only Democratic nominee at the hearing, Rohit Chopra, expressed interest in reviewing barriers to entry in monopolized markets. In particular, he noted that consolidated control over data creates hazards both for consumers and independent businesses. He said, "Data breaches impose great deals of costs on small enterprises. The Equifax data breach led to significant losses for community banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions."

• A fifth slot on the Commission, reserved for a Democrat, still lacks an official nominee. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has recommended to the White House that it nominate his chief counsel, Rebecca Slaughter, for the position.

The founding members of the House AntiTrust Caucus are some of the House's most progressive members: Ro Khanna (CA), Mark Pocan (WI), Rick Nolan (MN), David Cicciline (RI), Keith Ellison (MN) and Pramila Jayapal (WA).

Austin Frerick has made fighting monopolies a key part of his platform, so it was no surprise when he told us that the Antitrust Caucus will be the "first caucus I will join. Also as an Iowa congressman, I plan to make antitrust a central requirement for my endorsement in the 2020 caucuses."

Derrick Crowe, the progressive running for the open seat in the Austin/San Antonio corridor told us he "would absolutely join the Congressional Anti-Trust Caucus. The rise of monopoly power threatens our bank accounts, worsens inequality, and undermines our political liberties. Busting trusts is defending democracy."

Lisa Brown, the economist who served as Chancellor of Washington State University, Spokane and is currently busy campaigning to replace Paul Ryan lieutenant Cathy McMorris Rodgers that us "it’s a basic tenet of Econ-101 that concentrated economic power in a market, in which only a few producers  dominate, has adverse outcomes for consumers. Higher prices and less consumer satisfaction generally result from oligopoly and monopoly power. Effective federal regulation can counter these results. It’s encouraging that some members of Congress are getting  more active in this arena and I would welcome the opportunity to join them."

And we'll leave the last word for Lillian Salerno, former Obama deputy secretary of Agriculture, who is running a vigorous campaign in north Dallas that takes on monopolization head on: "Concentrated corporate power is out of control," she often says, "and it's time for Congress to step up with a renewed focus on anti-monopoly rules and investigations. That's what I'll do when I get there."

Battle Ground Dallas-- Texas And Its People Are So Much Better Than Their Politicians

Redistricting takes place at the beginning of every decade, after the census. But in 2002 Republicans won control of the Texas legislature for the first time in 130 years. They immediately set about redrawing the state's congressional districts-- absurdly in many cases-- to send more Republicans and fewer Democrats to Congress. AT the time, Democrats held 17 seats to the Republicans 15. Tom DeLay, then House Majority Whip, oversaw the legislative takeover and then the gerrymandering. After the 2004 election, the Republicans he'd 21 seats and the Democrats 11. One of DeLay's tactics was to carve up Democratic areas-- Austin being the most obvious-- to dilute Democratic votes. Among DeLay's Democratic targets were Max Sandlin (who he replaced with Louie Gohmert) Charlie Stenholm (defeated by Randy Neugebauer), and Martin Frost (one of the top Democratic House leaders and DCCC chair). A Jewish conservative, Frost was a top Democratic rainmaker and was considered a possible future Speaker. He was probably DeLay's #1 target. His district included parts of Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington. DeLay redrew it by taking out Democratic-friendly areas of Fort Worth and Arlington and putting in rich, white Republican suburbs around Dallas. While Al Gore won the old district in 2000, the new boundaries would have given George W. Bush a huge 68% landslide. The new district was specifically redrawn for right-wing state Rep Kenny Marchant, who still occupies it today. Frost's home in Arlington was shifted into a heavily Republican district, represented by 10-term incumbent Joe "oily Joe" Barton. Frost decided to seek re-election in the newly redrawn 32nd District, which included some of the district he represented from 1979 'til 1993. It didn't work; he lost by 10 points to Republican Pete Sessions, who still holds the seat.

The Republicans have had to gerrymander the district again to exclude an exploding Latino population around Irving and Grand Prairie. DeLay and then Republicans in the legislature  ten years later didn't take the rapid changes in demographics seriously enough. In 2016 Hillary, who had no expectations of winning in Texas, took TX-32 by 2 points, 48.5% to 46.6%. Sessions, who didn't even have a Democratic opponent in 2016, is suddenly a top Democratic target. This morning Gloria Steinem announced her endorsement of Lillian Salerno. "Lillian," she wrote, "is the perfect woman to bring real life to Washington. She worked her way through college and law school, made a life's work out of finding people jobs, and knows what it is to be the single mother of three. It’s so important to elect a leader like Lillian to Congress-- we need more women’s voices speaking up for paid family leave, equal pay for equal work, and policies to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. Texas only sends 3 women, out of a delegation of 38, to Washington right now. This is shameful! Texas women deserve true representation in government. The current representative for Lillian's district, Pete Sessions, voted against the Affordable Care Act, voted to cut Planned Parenthood funding, and even voted against the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Women need someone in Congress fighting for them and their families, not actively working against them.

Today there are 7 Democrats vying for the party nomination, including 3 who have raised over 6-figures: Clinton centrist Ed Meier, Obama centrist Colin Allred and independent-minded progressive Lillian Salerno. Blue America has endorsed Lillian and with that primary coming up so quickly-- 2 weeks from tomorrow-- I want to reintroduce her and make another appeal, asking you to help her fund her get-out-the-vote efforts. (You can do that by tapping on the Blue America Turning Texas Blue Again thermometer just above on the right. Meanwhile please take a look at a guest post Lillian wrote:

Defying The Alarming Trend Of Growing Corporate Power
by Lillian Salerno

In 1994, at the height of the AIDS crisis, in which I lost several friends and a beloved employee to the disease, I started a manufacturing company in Little Elm, about 35 miles north of Dallas, to produce the first-ever automatically retracting syringe to eliminate the risk of nurses contracting HIV through accidental needle sticks. The syringe received rave reviews from nurses, hospital executives and public health officials, a major grant from the National Institutes of Health and robust private investment. But when my partners and I tried to sell it to hospitals, we were told time and time again that even though it was a better product-- a lifesaving product-- they weren’t able to purchase it. The primary supplier of syringes, which controlled 80 percent of the market, structured an arrangement with a vast network of hospitals that essentially closed our industry to new firms for good, and the entire rural community of Little Elm suffered as a result.

I thought my story was a unique, that I picked a rotten industry to enter and had to fight hard as a small business just to stay alive. I was so caught up in my own fight for so long, I didn’t see the bigger picture until some years later. Like many, I was inspired by candidate Barack Obama’s rhetoric to restore power to the people, and I entered his administration aiming to fight for small business, to give those farmers and entrepreneurs the government support that the FTC and DoJ wouldn’t to give to me.

When I began to meet with America’s family farmers and entrepreneurs, a painful familiarity began to set in. Suddenly, I began to realize that the medical device industry wasn’t especially rotten, but rather that monopoly had become standard in the American marketplace. Early on, I remember in the drive back after a disheartening meeting with a small business owner, I asked a friend, “what is the government doing about this?” she looked at me and laughed. I realized that I was the government, and while I could help with some auxiliary issues, I didn’t have the power to tackle the structural issue of monopoly. Truth be told, I learned that there wasn’t much of an appetite to take on monopolies in the Obama administration. The candidate who I believed would defy the alarming trend of growing corporate power fell in line.

The consequences of growing corporate concentration are wide-ranging and dramatic. New research shows (Declining Labor and Capital Shares by Simcha Barkai) that around the average worker would be making around 14,000 dollars a year more if the economy was as concentrated as it was 30 years ago. But nowhere are the effects more visible than in America’s family farms and small-towns. Corporations dominate local economies to such an extent that people are unable to start their own businesses or sell into markets. These mega-corporations impede on worker’s freedom to take their labor elsewhere for better pay, they impede on the family farmer’s right to fair pay and access to market. Small town’s no longer have the power to shape their own economic destinies, which were once vigorously protected by federal antimonopoly laws.

Evidence on monopolies impact on small towns can be seen from data on economic recovery. From 2010 to 2014, 60 percent of counties nationwide saw more businesses close than open, compared with just 17 percent during the four years following the 1990s slowdown. During the 1990s recovery, smaller communities-- counties with less than half a million people-- generated 71 percent of all net new businesses, with counties under 100,000 people accounting for a full third. During the 2010 to 2014 recovery, however, the figure for counties with fewer than half a million people was 19 percent. For counties with less than 100,000 people, it was zero.

How did we get here? After the Great Depression, the government used antimonopoly laws to keep markets open and fair for smaller, independent businesses-- in other words, to keep mom-and-pop shops open and Main Street buzzing. These were businesses run by people who cared about and understood their communities, that kept wealth circulating locally, that created the vast majority of new jobs and that were often the source of game-changing innovation.

But in the 1980s, folks in power decided bigger was better, and conventional political wisdom followed suit. For the federal officials charged with protecting competition, that meant that cheap consumer prices trumped all other values, including the preservation of American jobs, open and competitive markets where innovation could flourish, and maintaining level playing fields for start-ups and small businesses. To this day, when government officials evaluate mergers, it’s considered a good thing when they result in job losses-- because that means, in the twisted reasoning we still use, gains in economic efficiency. The hard-working Americans turned out on the street corner to look for new jobs are the human sacrifices to the insatiable beast of corporate concentration.

It is a myth that the economic challenges that family farmers and small-town America face are caused by forces largely outside our control, like globalization or improvements in technology. We have the ability to help restore competition and economic vibrancy in rural America and beyond. The government has the authority to ensure markets are once again open and competitive so that communities have a chance to shape their own economic destinies.

Small town’s aren’t defined by the major corporations that sell in franchised retailers. Small town’s aren't corporate mega-farms. Small towns are the mom and pop stores and the local restaurants, the family farmers and small manufacturers willing to employ someone in the community who’s fallen on hard times. Small towns are unique ecosystems of small businesses and family farmers and if monopoly power keeps growing unchecked, small towns will lose their identity.

Up To Bat In March-- Progressives In Texas And Illinois

The first two states with 2018 primaries are Texas-- March 6-- and Illinois-- March 20. The thing is about the Texas primaries is that they're going to, in most cases, lead to primary runoffs on May 22. So we're going to be waiting for another couple of months before we know who the candidates we have going up against Republicans for blue-trending seats in Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Dallas, all of which are likely to deny any candidates 50% on March 6. It's a wide open race in west Houston, where award-winning cancer researcher and doctor, Jason Westin, has a bunch of establishment candidates he's competing with, as well as another progressive. He can use some help. Our candidate in Austin/San Antonio, Derrick Crowe, one of the best candidates anywhere in America, is likely to be forced into a runoff with a multimillionaire Republican, Joseph Kopser, pretending-- although not well-- to be a Democrat. Same in Dallas, where our candidate, Lillian Salerno, Obama's deputy undersecretary of rural development for the Department of Agriculture, is facing off against two pretty garden variety establishment big money careerists.

And speaking of Lillian Salerno, tough primary, it's important to remember this is a woman with cutting edge ideas up against careerist hacks whose vision basically sees themselves as seat-holders. Lillian sees sees the ability of government to shake things top-- in a good way. "We need a wholesale, comprehensive, sustainable antitrust policy," she wrote. "We need efforts to protect and preserve the marketplace in all industries across all sectors. We also need to enforce the existing laws on the books."

When it comes to animals, we protect those on the brink or likely to be on the brink of extinction. We do this because history has taught us that regulations must be enforced and immediately kick into place to protect species whose survival is threatened. Habitat is preserved, illegal activities like poaching are prosecuted, and the public rallies for the survival of the species. Just look at the American Bald Eagle: in the 1960’s there were less than 500 nesting bald eagles. Today, there are over 14,000 breeding pairs. It all started when the government banned DDT in the 1970’s. We allowed and demanded the regulators do their job and the bald eagle was saved. That’s why we need a strong antitrust policy-- to save small businesses, family farmers, and independent manufacturers-- to bring them back from the brink of extinction.

I knew first hand as a small business owner and manufacturer that I was an endangered species. After speaking to literally hundreds of rural small businesses in my role as the lead small business official at USDA, I also knew that these folks were an endangered species. You might say, "Lillian, come on, there’s hundreds of thousands of small businesses every day. There’s hundreds of thousands of small farms too." Yet, it’s all about the numbers. You can name almost any sector of the economy and there are almost grotesque concentrations of market power. Here’s a few statistics just in the Agriculture sector:

• 2 Companies control almost the entire market for milk;
• One company dominates the sale of corn and soy seeds and pesticides;
• 90 percent of all farms are classified as small. Yet, 3 percent of the farms-- the largest farms-- account for almost half of all food production.

When it comes to selling their products; Family farms, small businesses, and independent manufacturers face obstacles every step of the way to market. The massive corporate monopolists have set up an unforgiving obstacle course filled of anticompetitive contracting practices, illegal distribution schemes, and market manipulation.

What is so strange is that we all know this exists. At USDA we tried to help. We encouraged the growth of the small, local family farm. We invested in farmer’s markets and food hubs. We tried to grow the marketplace, preserve the habitat, and ward off the poachers. USDA might be seen as a friend of big agriculture, but the last eight years also saw the rise of the local food movement-- and I am proud to say that we at USDA played a small part in the movement to create more opportunities for the small farmer. But it is not enough.

We need a wholesale, comprehensive, sustainable antitrust policy. As great as the growth of the local food movement has been, it’s really like throwing sand in the wind. We need efforts to protect and preserve the marketplace in all industries across all sectors. We also need to enforce the existing laws on the books. We can’t take much more.

As a business person and as a USDA official anticompetitive contracting practices, illegal distribution schemes, and market manipulation all of these things diminish our potential and cause real hurt and real pain for Americans.

The Illinois primaries later in the month have a more crucial sense of permanence. The candidate with the most votes will face off against the Republican. The race that's gotten the most attention is in IL-03, the Chicagoland district that starts in the southwest part of the city around Bridgeport and the Stockyards, snakes down through though Marquette Manor to Midway, through Palos Hills and to Orland Park, Homer Glen and Lockport just north of Joliet. It's one of those rare races where an excruciatingly bad entrenched incumbent, Blue Dog Dan Lipinski, is being held accountable for the first time. Progressives in the district, in the state and across America have backed Marie Newman, who would make a much-needed and excellent addition to the Illinois congressional delegation.

The Republican in the race, Arthur Jones, an admitted anti-Semite is the former leader of the American Nazi Party. No, not every Republican is a Nazi... but it's funny how they always find a home with the GOP isn't it? Remember Boehner's Nazi buddy in Ohio, Rich Iott? Anyway, whoever wins the March 20 primary-- the Blue Dog Lipinski or progressive Marie Newman-- will be sworn in next January because IL-03 isn't about to elect a Nazi to Congress. The district didn't even vote for Trump. He couldn't even muster 40% against Hillary, who had been defeated in the district primary by Bernie. Polling shows an extremely tight race and it's going to be Marie's field operation that wins this one and sends the DCCC and the Democratic old guard a message that voters are watching what they do and holding the, accountable.

The only other candidate endorsed by Blue America in Illinois is Dr. David Gill in IL-13, a sprawling central Illinois district that meanders southwest from Champaign, Normal and Bloomington down through Decatur and Springfield to suburbs north and east of St. Louis. This was Bernie-country in 2016 and he beat Hillary in the district. And Gill is the candidate who has been working on Bernie issues for as long as Bernie has. He has three big-money establishment primary opponents who will probably split the establishment vote and allow Gill to face off against Davis in November. He definitely needs financial help for his field operation that will be in full swing in the next couple of weeks. Remember, the last time Gill faced off against Republican Rodney Davis, Davis won by just a handful of votes-- 136,596 to 135,309, and that was because left-wing spoiler John Hartman, took 21,319 votes, throwing the election to a crackpot conservative.

"My campaign team and I," David told us, "have worked hard to position myself to succeed in the primary on March 20. Voters here have been very excited about my message of single-payer healthcare, a $15/hour minimum wage, and tuition-free access to public higher education and trade schools

"We view the November general election as a golden opportunity to move toward real change; given my past performance against the Republican incumbent, we have no doubt that I can defeat him this year. And when I get to Washington, I intend to be a game-changer, using my background as an emergency medicine physician to counter the myths advanced by those who oppose single-payer, and to help lead the charge to the type of health care system that FDR envisioned for us 75 years ago.

"But first, of course, I have to survive on March 20. And this primary is really a battle for the soul of the Democratic party. I'm taking on establishment-backed candidates who refuse to stand up for single-payer, the Fight for 15, or tuition freedom. I'll be out-spent, but not out-worked: my staff and I, and our passionate volunteers, have knocked on thousands of doors and talked with thousands of voters. And those Democratic voters are done with half-measures, they're done with Republican Lite. They are demanding a shift toward a government focused on ordinary people, and as a lifelong progressive populist, I look forward to being a part of such a seismic shift."

This week, we want to ask you to consider helping our Texas and Illinois candidates and leave the others for another time-- just this week. Let's make sure the progressives get into the Texas runoffs and into the Illinois general election.

Are Monopolies Making It Easier For Putin To Hack U.S. Voting Machines?

I'm sure Señor Trumpanzee's only responses to this ominous NBC News headline: Russians penetrated U.S. voter systems, top U.S. official says, will be "fake news" and "no collusion, everyone agrees there was no collusion." Oh, yeah... and "quick, look over there at my military parade." Drug addicts and morons elected a treasonous con-man to the White House. George W. Bush still gets high level security briefings. Yesterday he was at an economic summit in Abu Dhabi where he said there's "pretty clear evidence that the Russians meddled" in the 2016 election. He didn't talk about Trump's collusion but said that "It’s problematic that a foreign nation is involved in our election system. Our democracy is only as good as people trust the results." And he had some harsh words for one close Trump ally, Putin: "He’s got a chip on his shoulder. The reason he does is because of the demise of the Soviet Union troubles him. Therefore, much of his moves (are) to regain Soviet hegemony... That’s why NATO is very important... "He can’t think, ‘How can we both win?’ He only thinks, 'How do I win, you lose?'" And all this from inside the Trumpist Regime is pretty damning:

The U.S. official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several U.S. states prior to the 2016 presidential election.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated."

Jeh Johnson, who was DHS secretary during the Russian intrusions, said, "2016 was a wake-up call and now it's incumbent upon states and the Feds to do something about it before our democracy is attacked again."

"We were able to determine that the scanning and probing of voter registration databases was coming from the Russian government."

NBC News reported in Sept. 2016 that more than 20 states had been targeted by the Russians.

There is no evidence that any of the registration rolls were altered in any fashion, according to U.S. officials.

No evidence? But they hacked the registration rolls for some other reason? Fun? Gimme a break. Can any rational American not worry that Trump and his detestable, treasonous family are working with the Kremlin to steal the midterms in November, especially in states where there is no way to check what happened at the outdated screens that Trump adamantly refuses to update?

This week, the anti-trust publication, The Corner from the Open Markets Institute asked a straight-forward question every American ought to be wondering about, Does A Voting Machine Oligopoly Open The Door To Mass Hacking? "Lots of people are worried about the security of our voting machines in the upcoming 2018 congressional election—and with good reason. According to the Department of Homeland Security, Russians attempted to hack election systems in 21 states in 2016." They're not just looking towards the Kremlin though.

Yet one of the biggest threats to the integrity of our electoral system has been widely overlooked: the concentration of the voting machine industry into the hands of three corporations. Fewer and bigger electronic voting systems, which are used in all fifty states and many democracies around the world, make it easier for hackers to disrupt more votes. They also simultaneously reduce the competitive pressure on these corporations to invest in hardening their systems.

Since 2002, mergers have cut the number of players from eight to three. The remaining firms-- Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Dominion Voting Systems, and Hart Intercivic-- control roughly 92% of voting machines across the United States, according to a report from the Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative.

This concentrated market structure threatens the integrity of our elections in three ways. First, the companies can exert their market power to lock-in clients. As the financial research firm PrivCo has written, the company with the largest market share, ES&S, is “economically incentivized to offer closed-system solutions.” This arrangement makes it difficult for county or state officials to switch to the newer or more secure system of a rival, especially after a breach.

Second, the industry’s high degree of concentration reduces investment in making voting machines more secure. The three incumbent companies can easily cooperate in carving up the existing market. And little outside competition, according to the authors of the report, means “limited incentives for innovation.” Indeed, a 2017 economics paper published by New York University Professors Germán Gutiérrez and Thomas Philippon validates this point, noting, “industries with less competition and more concentration (traditional or due to common ownership) invest less.”

As the 2018 congressional elections approach, election officials, vendors, and advocates are looking to address this issue. One idea comes from a growing chorus of politicians calling for greater enforcement of antitrust laws. If applied to the voting machine industry, that would begin to solve the problem and help de-concentrate the voting machine industry.

Another comes from Greg Miller of Open Source Election Technology (OSET). OSET is working with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Election Assistance Commission to create standards for electoral machinery, build open-source software, and help states certify secure equipment. The hope is that improved standards would reduce lock-in effects used by companies like ES&S and create a more competitive voting machine market.

Unfortunately, neither of these fixes will solve the problem quickly. State and county officials often enter into ten-year contracts with election vendors, and many of those existing contracts run through the 2020 election.

Austin Frerick is running for a House seat in southwest Iowa after his work at the Treasury Department. This is right up his alley-- so I asked him. "Trump," he told me, "is not the cause, but rather the result of the concentration in our economy. Another Trump will come along until we tackle this root cause. Concentration in our economy is everywhere, but it's not obvious at first. I didn't realize it until I was an Economist at Treasury."

Meanwhile, Democrats keep winning more and more special elections in the heart of Trump country-- like the shocking Missouri House race on Tuesday-- and even the most old school and conservative Beltway pundits like Dave Wasserman, who never goes out on a limb, are predicting a GOP collapse in "safe" red districts. His most recent congressional map updates all have something in common-- 21 Republican-held Trump districts moved a little bluer-- even in places like Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina and-- hold on-- Staten Island!

Is A Battle To The Death Shaping Up Between Monopoly And Democracy?

Last summer, the Washington Monthly ran a piece by Martin Longman, The Anti-Monopoly Message Finally Breaks Through about issues related to monopolies, corporate consolidation, and antitrust enforcement. It’s almost half a year since Longman’s piece was published and the anti-monopoly message is about to get its first test as a campaign issue. Progressives congressional candidates like Austin Frerick (IA-03), Kaniela Ing (HI-01), Lillian Salerno (TX-32), Jess King (PA-16) and Derrick Crowe (TX-21) are talking with voters in their districts about it and testing the salience of something that could be explosive in the 2018 midterms and the 2020 presidential cycle.

Ro Khanna (D-CA), one of the founding members of the House Anti-Trust caucus— along with Keith Ellison (D-MN), David Cicilline (D-RI), Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Rick Nolan (D-MN)— explained yesterday that "Antitrust is about giving small communities across America the freedom to define their own economic destiny. It’s about standing up for an individuals right to earn a living as a small business owner and a citizens voice against large institutions. It’s about standing up for the little guy against the big machine. So it’s about time that Democrats stand up against the concentration of power and talk about the values that helped define American democracy."

Mark Pocan is co-chair of the House Anti-Trust Caucus. Yesterday he pointed out something that every American should be able to understand quite viscerally: "As the U.S. enters a second Gilded Age, Americans are once again suffering under the weight of monopolies and corporations. Earlier this year, we watched as an airline dragged a man off a plane, yet Americans still booked tickets with that airline because of a lack of competition and a lack choice. From rolling back executive orders that protect consumers and workers, to enacting a billionaires’ first tax plan, President Trump has abandoned his promise to fight for the hardworking men and women of this country. Corporations have consolidated far too much power and under the Trump Administration, it’s only getting worse. We need to do more to ensure that the economy is working for employees and consumers, not just executives and shareholders."

Even the party establishment has taken notice on some level. Pelosi and Schumer used the issues part of their largely ignored Better Deal rollout promising to “fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they’re hurting consumers and to make it harder for companies to merge if it reduces competition,” and emphasized that they intend to start “cracking down on the monopolies and big corporate mergers that harm consumers, workers and competition.” They’re calling for “a 21st century ‘Trust Buster’ to stop abusive corporate conduct and the exploitation of market power where it already exists.” For people forever claiming there are “no differences” between the 2 parties, Pelosi and especially Schumer seem like odd ducks to be carrying a message that hurts the bottom line of the corporations that are underwritten, and continue to underwrite, their rise to power within the Democratic Party… but at least they’re not discouraging the anti-trust reforms from pushing the boundaries.

The general public has become increasingly aware of the harm the telecomm industry is doing consumers as the pace of paid off Republican administrations. Journalists and activists, wrote Longman, “showed how strong antitrust enforcement beginning in the latter New Deal years set the stage for four decades of strong economic growth. They explained how monopolized markets threaten unions; how growing monopoly power has warped the airline and hospital sectors; and how U.S. entrepreneurship, once thought to be America’s great competitive advantage, has in fact been in decline due to consolidation [and] demonstrated how consolidation is driving the growing regional inequality of America, with half a dozen big metro areas, mostly on the coasts, gobbling up all the income growth and corporate headquarters while  smaller metro areas sink into relative decline despite their best efforts to compete.”

Trump’s shocking strength in rural and small-town America won him an Electoral College victory, indicating a level of stress in those communities not sufficiently recognized by the Democratic party leadership. And new post-election polling came out that validates what we’ve been saying, which is not only that these issues are of concern to the American people and that they understand them better than they are often given credit for, but that there is real political potential here. In a memo from Geoff Garin of Hart Associates Polling, some of these numbers were spelled out:

As Senate and House Democrats begin to roll out their new Better Deal Economic Agenda, a review of recent public opinion polling shows that the central themes and frames that are at the heart of this agenda match closely with the experiences, values, and priorities of American voters today. Moreover, the Democratic policies related to curbing excessive corporate power that are being highlighted in the first day of the rollout have real resonance with voters and are strongly supported by a significant majority of Americans.

For example, fully 79% of voters in Senate battleground states agree that, “the rules of the economy today are rigged against average Americans, and America’s working families need a better deal.” Eighty-five percent (85%) of those who voted for Hillary Clinton agree with this statement, but so do 74% of those who voted for Donald Trump (43% of whom strongly agree). Indeed, more voters in the battleground states agree with this critique of the economy than a critique that says “the problem with the economy today is a big government that spends too much, taxes too much, and puts too many burdens on businesses.”

What’s remarkable about these numbers is that the Republicans have been hammering on excessive government spending, regulation and taxation for decades and yet the American people largely reject that in favor of a rigged system explanation for their economic problems that neither party has been hitting with any consistency or sustained broad focus. To be sure, we’ve heard some rhetoric from candidates like John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders emphasized the rigged nature of the economy while focusing more on banks and billionaires than antitrust and antimonopoly policies. The message Sanders sent is possibly still fresh, but you can see that it has resonance:

Similarly, a large majority of battleground state voters respond favorably to a statement of the premise and direction that define the Better Deal Economic Agenda, transcending partisanship even when the statement is explicitly described as coming from Democrats:

”Too many families in America today feel that the rules of the economy are rigged against them. Special interests have a strangle-hold on Washington—from the super-rich spending unlimited amounts of secret money to influence our elections, to the huge loopholes in our tax code that help corporations avoid paying taxes. The basic bargain that hard-working men and women can keep a good job, make a decent living, and provide for their families is no longer attainable for too many people. But it does not have to be this way. If the government goes back to putting working families first, ahead of special interests, we can achieve a better deal for the American people that will raise their pay, lower their expenses, and prepare them for the future.”

In the red states of Indiana, Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, and West Virginia, 73% express a favorable reaction to this statement of Democratic economic thinking, as do a similar proportion of voters in the purple states of Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Support for this Democratic approach withstands Republican criticisms that it would lead to bigger government, higher taxes, and more interference with free enterprise—a contention that only three in 10 voters find to be convincing.

On the specific issue of too much corporate consolidation, you may be surprised to see how strongly it polls:

National polling also shows the breadth of concern about excessive corporate power and its impacts. By two to one (67% to 33%), for example, Americans believe it is a bigger problem that “huge corporations and billionaires are using their political power to reduce competition, keep wages low, and get special tax breaks” than that “government is imposing too many job-killing regulations on businesses and taxing people too much.” Indeed, 86% of voters agree that, “our economy is increasingly dominated by a small number of very large corporations,” and most voters believe this leads to consequences that often affect them personally. Fifty-seven percent (57%) say it is true that President Trump and Republicans, “are driving up prices for consumers by allowing a few huge corporations to dominate our government and economy.”

We often get pushback from liberal-minded people that Trump voters are out of reach, motivated more by fear and hatred than economic self-interest, and too unsophisticated to respond to wonkish talk about antitrust enforcement. But these polling results indicate that they understand and that they figured out the problem with corporate dominance of the marketplace long before Pelosi and Schumer did.

Whether the strength of our arguments finally broke through or the polling numbers were too clear to be ignored, the Democratic leadership has finally gotten our message. And that is vindication enough for us, at least for now.

The power of monopolies have utterly perverted the function of government and bought off Congress. Trump’s Tax Scam is the most perfect example across the board. And how about this report from the Financial Times— a maker of a treatment for a certain kind of blindness is considering becoming the first drug company to charge $1 million for its medicine. If they succeed, there will be no reasons for others in the pharmaceutical sector to follow. In this particular case, the message is simply be in debt forever or go blind. Unless Ryan and Trump succeed in destroying Medicare, the government had a powerful interest in preventing this from happening.

When Spark Therapeutics secured regulatory approval for the first gene therapy this week, it put the company on track to break a second record— as the maker of the most expensive medicine in the US. Spark will not formally announce the price of Luxturna, a gene therapy for a rare type of inherited blindness, until January, but the company has signalled it thinks the one-off treatment is worth more than $1m per patient.

“When we do the health economic modelling, we believe the value of a therapy like this is in excess of $1 million,” says Jeff Marrazzo, Spark chief executive.

If Spark does attempt to launch Luxturna at $1 million or more in the US, it will do so against a difficult political backdrop, where high drug prices have come under repeated attack from politicians and campaigners. Most of the opprobrium has been directed at companies that impose steep price increases on older drugs— a tactic made infamous by disgraced biotech entrepreneur Martin Shkreli.

But companies making innovative products have also been targeted. Gilead Sciences, for instance, was attacked for its hepatitis C cure, which initially cost roughly $1,000 a pill. The biotech group has also been censured for charging $373,000 per patient for another of its products, a recently launched personalised cell therapy for blood cancer.