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I’m so impressed with the FTC lately, here is an excellent interview Jon Stewart did with the FTC chair Lina Khan: https://youtu.be/oaDTiWaYfcM https://youtu.be

I’m so impressed with the FTC lately, here is an excellent interview Jon Stewart did with the FTC chair Lina Khan: https://youtu.be/oaDTiWaYfcM https://youtu.be/oaDTiWaYfcM I did joke I’m really surprised the vested interests selected someone competent who wants to hold these companies accountable to the public.

germinalphrase 2y ago
There was a lot of chatter early in her tenure that she would be too young and inexperienced to be at all effective.
- cogman10 2y ago
  Which is a little silly given her credentials. Her antitrust research has been groundbreaking. She's almost single-handedly revitalized that area of law.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  Sometimes, the old timers get too comfortable with the status quo and you need someone who is too young to challenge it.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    Let's try that at the top of the chart instead of a couple steps down.
roughly 2y ago
There's a lot of talk about "both sides being the same", but the FTC alone has been a night & day difference from previous administrations.
- knowaveragejoe 2y ago
  Nobody suggesting that "both sides are the same" has a shred of intellectual honesty.
  - wddkcs 2y ago
    Declarative moral statements like this are so vacuous. Of course there are intellectually honest people who believe both parties are the same. They may be evaluating or prioritizing the evidence differently, but that doesn't make one side or the other 'dishonest'. Casually impuning the morality of an entire swath of people is rhetoric that drives division and strife, not progress. For example, yes Bidens FTC is a standout actor, but 'both sides' just voted to perpetuate overseas wars with more American tax dollars. In terms of the American war machine, it's 100% accurate to say both sides are the same.
    - roughly 2y ago
      Then I suppose the appropriate way to phrase this would be "people suggesting both sides are the same need to qualify their statements."
      - pessimizer 2y ago
        You're making the assumption that they haven't, at length, until people got uncomfortable and wanted to leave.
        afavour 2y ago
        The scenario you’re proposing sounds like one person lecturing another and not listening to any counter points… wanting to leave feels like a natural reaction.
    - jjeaff 2y ago
      Sounds like you are making the case that "both sides are aligned in some rare cases". not that "they are the same".
      - wddkcs 2y ago
        No, and that reading is the exact dogmatic dipolism I'm talking about avoiding. Both sides are human, both sides are American, both sides of political spectrum are represented by the wealth elite. There are millions of common denominators between both sides, and a relatively miniscule number of differences. Most of the differences themselves are exaggerated by the political class, to show division and strengthen in-group ties. Believing one side or the other is morally superior is meaningless- the other side is always going to believe the same thing about you, with just as much supporting evidence.
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  I would like to point out the administration's accomplishments in the last two weeks (shamelessly copied from Matt Stoller's recent piece "This Is What Governing Looks Like") * Banned non-compete agreements for 40 million workers * Raised overtime wages for 4 million salaried workers * Forced airlines to automatically offer refunds for canceled flights and poorly handled baggage * Banned illegal junk fees in mortgage lending * Forced divestment of TikTok from Chinese ownership * Blocked corporate merger in insulation * Filed to block a corporate merger in fashion * Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers * Announced an end to the duty free period on Chinese solar panels to encourage U.S. manufacturing. * Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia
  - adventured 2y ago
    Most of it needs backed up by Congress or it'll just go away given a few administrations. > Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers The Trump Admin went after China far more than Biden has so far, the Democrats were overwhelmingly silent about how that qualified as impressive governing. He needs to do a lot more to bolster US labor and US manufacturing, it's not even a good start yet.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 2y ago
      Mostly people don’t give praise because Trump’s protectionism was largely ineffective and a large tax increase on working Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs
  - dylan604 2y ago
    > * Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia At the risk of sounding dismissive, I'd much rather they banned the selling of sensitive information. Full stop. China and Russia have much less reach into my day-to-day than any of the other buyers much closer to home like a local gov't bodies let alone private corps.
- bogwog 2y ago
  You can tell she's doing a good job by the number of hit pieces in the WSJ. Just search "Lina Khan WSJ" and have fun scrolling through the headlines.
  - roughly 2y ago
    I can't find it right now, but there's a quote about being able to tell someone's character by whether they've made the right enemies.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I've made" - Franklin D. Roosevelt
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    To be fair, her first two years were bunk. She had management and morale issues, a series of court losses (including one glaringly incompetent one with Facebook) and then a retrenchment that looked like submission. It wasn’t. She was re-working her game. It looks like it worked and I’ve gone from critic to fan. But the FTC was mockably awful 2020 - 2022, and a non-entity early 2023.
    - dylan604 2y ago
      There will always be carry over from one administration to the next at the bureaucratic level within the various agencies. It takes time to figure out how to get them aligned to make progress with the new administration's agenda.
      - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
        > takes time to figure out how to get them aligned From what I understand, Khan was learning to manage a large team. She failed at it. Noticed. Corrected. And seems to have figured it out. The early FTC was highly centralised. In its new iteration, staffers appear to be trusted to pursue probes on their own. This not only broadens their firepower, but brings to the table staffers’ decades of experience around what wins in court.
- jtriangle 2y ago
  Both sides are the same in the way that, they generally work in tandem to erode the common individual in favor of the wealthy. That doesn't mean the totality of what they do is to that end, it doesn't mean that they aren't at odds with eachother as to how to reach that collective goal at times, just that, pragmatically, it doesn't matter anywhere but on very short, ultimately inconsequential time scales. These things get planned and implemented far outside of the normal 2/4/6 year election cycle, so it's easy to hide what's actually happening. Fact is, red tie, blue tie, they're all drinking and merrymaking together, they attend the same parties, they bang the same hookers, and they're in the same corporation's pockets. You have some outliers here and there, but, aside from the occasional filibuster, they do little more than create a spectacle. None of this is unusual, it's simply how systems of government have been exploited and subverted since humans had the idea the government should exist. That being a somewhat esoteric idea only serves to further the degeneration of a system, much in the same way doing nothing, which is likely what some find so offensive about the idea that "both sides are the same", furthers the degeneration of a system.
  - blackhawkC17 2y ago
    This frankly sounds like cynical rubbish.
  - kstrauser 2y ago
    In the last week I've read stories here and elsewhere about the current administration: - Ending non-competes - Ending salaries being used to avoid paying overtime - Un-banning marijuana - Restoring net neutrality - Fining carriers for sharing location data - And now, challenging dumb patents Despite your cynical take, that looks like a lot of stuff that's good for me as an individual person.
    - stufffer 2y ago
      They also passed a FISA bill that expanded government spying on its citizen. I'd trade all those items you listed to have illegal spying killed.
- pavon 2y ago
  Do they? I'm not well immersed in the socials, but I thought "both side are the same" peaked around 2000, and now the pendulum has swung to "the other side is wrong in every way".
  - roughly 2y ago
    I’m definitely seeing more of this on the left than warranted by reality.
- School-Cotton 2y ago
  I think for stuff controlled by the president, “both sides are the same” is indeed clearly false. But there’s a decent argument to be made that it doesn’t really matter who you vote for for Congress, since the system is structured to require both parties to agree on almost any controversial legislation.
- JeremyNT 2y ago
  And of course, the conservative Supreme Court is likely to strip the FTC of its power and render many of its decisions invalid, giving conservatives the last laugh on this and many other issues.
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    As they chortle over the rubble of this once hopeful progressing nation.
  - nojvek 2y ago
    The Supreme Court is a joke nowadays. We really need terms at every level of major governing position. Judge for life is a terrible precedent. Not that far from kings. Especially the republican judges who take lavish trips funded by billionaires. Clear conflict of interest in open.
madeofpalk 2y ago
Challenging things like this is a great first step, but they’ve got to actually win.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  The threat of litigation is often enough to change behaviors radically. For example, many companies that had taken advantage of putting devices into the Hatch-Waxman Orange Book being an unchecked unmonitored way to lay claim took their devices off once they saw the FTC starting to get interested. Adopting a narrow view of success is detrimental. Yes, it's hard as heck to figure out how to appreciate & be happy for "number of mergers never proposed because the FTChas actually started taking anti-trust seriously again". We will never have hard data. But for sure for sure for sure, companies are being more cautious, are thinking twice before trying to acquire their competitors or buying a company to land horizontal market control. Even losing is a detriment. The FTC had done nothing under Borkism. It was free reign. Even winning to the FTC isn't fun. It's expensive as heck, and there's a ton of discovery that happens & sheds light in a lot of dark dark places in your corporation. And other people see, hey, the FTC is out there, they're doing things, and maybe we won't get as lucky. Last, people act like, oh, the FTC lost, they must be incompetent & unable to build cases, but there's a ton of random chance & whim that goes into each case; replay a case in another courtroom or with different judges or juries and who knows what would have happenen.

germinalphrase 2y ago

There was a lot of chatter early in her tenure that she would be too young and inexperienced to be at all effective.

cogman10 2y ago
Which is a little silly given her credentials. Her antitrust research has been groundbreaking. She's almost single-handedly revitalized that area of law.
darth_avocado 2y ago
Sometimes, the old timers get too comfortable with the status quo and you need someone who is too young to challenge it.
- dylan604 2y ago
  Let's try that at the top of the chart instead of a couple steps down.

roughly 2y ago

There's a lot of talk about "both sides being the same", but the FTC alone has been a night & day difference from previous administrations.

knowaveragejoe 2y ago
Nobody suggesting that "both sides are the same" has a shred of intellectual honesty.
- wddkcs 2y ago
  Declarative moral statements like this are so vacuous. Of course there are intellectually honest people who believe both parties are the same. They may be evaluating or prioritizing the evidence differently, but that doesn't make one side or the other 'dishonest'. Casually impuning the morality of an entire swath of people is rhetoric that drives division and strife, not progress. For example, yes Bidens FTC is a standout actor, but 'both sides' just voted to perpetuate overseas wars with more American tax dollars. In terms of the American war machine, it's 100% accurate to say both sides are the same.
  - roughly 2y ago
    Then I suppose the appropriate way to phrase this would be "people suggesting both sides are the same need to qualify their statements."
    - pessimizer 2y ago
      You're making the assumption that they haven't, at length, until people got uncomfortable and wanted to leave.
      - afavour 2y ago
        The scenario you’re proposing sounds like one person lecturing another and not listening to any counter points… wanting to leave feels like a natural reaction.
  - jjeaff 2y ago
    Sounds like you are making the case that "both sides are aligned in some rare cases". not that "they are the same".
    - wddkcs 2y ago
      No, and that reading is the exact dogmatic dipolism I'm talking about avoiding. Both sides are human, both sides are American, both sides of political spectrum are represented by the wealth elite. There are millions of common denominators between both sides, and a relatively miniscule number of differences. Most of the differences themselves are exaggerated by the political class, to show division and strengthen in-group ties. Believing one side or the other is morally superior is meaningless- the other side is always going to believe the same thing about you, with just as much supporting evidence.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
I would like to point out the administration's accomplishments in the last two weeks (shamelessly copied from Matt Stoller's recent piece "This Is What Governing Looks Like") * Banned non-compete agreements for 40 million workers * Raised overtime wages for 4 million salaried workers * Forced airlines to automatically offer refunds for canceled flights and poorly handled baggage * Banned illegal junk fees in mortgage lending * Forced divestment of TikTok from Chinese ownership * Blocked corporate merger in insulation * Filed to block a corporate merger in fashion * Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers * Announced an end to the duty free period on Chinese solar panels to encourage U.S. manufacturing. * Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia
- adventured 2y ago
  Most of it needs backed up by Congress or it'll just go away given a few administrations. > Announced tariff increases on steel to protect domestic producers The Trump Admin went after China far more than Biden has so far, the Democrats were overwhelmingly silent about how that qualified as impressive governing. He needs to do a lot more to bolster US labor and US manufacturing, it's not even a good start yet.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 2y ago
    Mostly people don’t give praise because Trump’s protectionism was largely ineffective and a large tax increase on working Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_tariffs
- dylan604 2y ago
  > * Passed the first Federal privacy law to stop data brokers from selling sensitive information to China and Russia At the risk of sounding dismissive, I'd much rather they banned the selling of sensitive information. Full stop. China and Russia have much less reach into my day-to-day than any of the other buyers much closer to home like a local gov't bodies let alone private corps.
bogwog 2y ago
You can tell she's doing a good job by the number of hit pieces in the WSJ. Just search "Lina Khan WSJ" and have fun scrolling through the headlines.
- roughly 2y ago
  I can't find it right now, but there's a quote about being able to tell someone's character by whether they've made the right enemies.
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I've made" - Franklin D. Roosevelt
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  To be fair, her first two years were bunk. She had management and morale issues, a series of court losses (including one glaringly incompetent one with Facebook) and then a retrenchment that looked like submission. It wasn’t. She was re-working her game. It looks like it worked and I’ve gone from critic to fan. But the FTC was mockably awful 2020 - 2022, and a non-entity early 2023.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    There will always be carry over from one administration to the next at the bureaucratic level within the various agencies. It takes time to figure out how to get them aligned to make progress with the new administration's agenda.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > takes time to figure out how to get them aligned From what I understand, Khan was learning to manage a large team. She failed at it. Noticed. Corrected. And seems to have figured it out. The early FTC was highly centralised. In its new iteration, staffers appear to be trusted to pursue probes on their own. This not only broadens their firepower, but brings to the table staffers’ decades of experience around what wins in court.
jtriangle 2y ago
Both sides are the same in the way that, they generally work in tandem to erode the common individual in favor of the wealthy. That doesn't mean the totality of what they do is to that end, it doesn't mean that they aren't at odds with eachother as to how to reach that collective goal at times, just that, pragmatically, it doesn't matter anywhere but on very short, ultimately inconsequential time scales. These things get planned and implemented far outside of the normal 2/4/6 year election cycle, so it's easy to hide what's actually happening. Fact is, red tie, blue tie, they're all drinking and merrymaking together, they attend the same parties, they bang the same hookers, and they're in the same corporation's pockets. You have some outliers here and there, but, aside from the occasional filibuster, they do little more than create a spectacle. None of this is unusual, it's simply how systems of government have been exploited and subverted since humans had the idea the government should exist. That being a somewhat esoteric idea only serves to further the degeneration of a system, much in the same way doing nothing, which is likely what some find so offensive about the idea that "both sides are the same", furthers the degeneration of a system.
- blackhawkC17 2y ago
  This frankly sounds like cynical rubbish.
- kstrauser 2y ago
  In the last week I've read stories here and elsewhere about the current administration: - Ending non-competes - Ending salaries being used to avoid paying overtime - Un-banning marijuana - Restoring net neutrality - Fining carriers for sharing location data - And now, challenging dumb patents Despite your cynical take, that looks like a lot of stuff that's good for me as an individual person.
  - stufffer 2y ago
    They also passed a FISA bill that expanded government spying on its citizen. I'd trade all those items you listed to have illegal spying killed.
pavon 2y ago
Do they? I'm not well immersed in the socials, but I thought "both side are the same" peaked around 2000, and now the pendulum has swung to "the other side is wrong in every way".
- roughly 2y ago
  I’m definitely seeing more of this on the left than warranted by reality.
School-Cotton 2y ago
I think for stuff controlled by the president, “both sides are the same” is indeed clearly false. But there’s a decent argument to be made that it doesn’t really matter who you vote for for Congress, since the system is structured to require both parties to agree on almost any controversial legislation.
JeremyNT 2y ago
And of course, the conservative Supreme Court is likely to strip the FTC of its power and render many of its decisions invalid, giving conservatives the last laugh on this and many other issues.
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  As they chortle over the rubble of this once hopeful progressing nation.
- nojvek 2y ago
  The Supreme Court is a joke nowadays. We really need terms at every level of major governing position. Judge for life is a terrible precedent. Not that far from kings. Especially the republican judges who take lavish trips funded by billionaires. Clear conflict of interest in open.

madeofpalk 2y ago

Challenging things like this is a great first step, but they’ve got to actually win.

jauntywundrkind 2y ago
The threat of litigation is often enough to change behaviors radically. For example, many companies that had taken advantage of putting devices into the Hatch-Waxman Orange Book being an unchecked unmonitored way to lay claim took their devices off once they saw the FTC starting to get interested. Adopting a narrow view of success is detrimental. Yes, it's hard as heck to figure out how to appreciate & be happy for "number of mergers never proposed because the FTChas actually started taking anti-trust seriously again". We will never have hard data. But for sure for sure for sure, companies are being more cautious, are thinking twice before trying to acquire their competitors or buying a company to land horizontal market control. Even losing is a detriment. The FTC had done nothing under Borkism. It was free reign. Even winning to the FTC isn't fun. It's expensive as heck, and there's a ton of discovery that happens & sheds light in a lot of dark dark places in your corporation. And other people see, hey, the FTC is out there, they're doing things, and maybe we won't get as lucky. Last, people act like, oh, the FTC lost, they must be incompetent & unable to build cases, but there's a ton of random chance & whim that goes into each case; replay a case in another courtroom or with different judges or juries and who knows what would have happenen.