Tacia

Why should Congressional Democrats investigate corporate America if their mandate is to deliver real economic change? Because investigations are a key catalyst for securing reform and legislation. For much of the last century, Congress used to be the main institutional player working to secure an economy that serves working people. A key tool was oversight. Lawmakers routinely investigated complex markets and major corporations, identifying problems and exposing wrongdoing. A major goal of these investigations was to learn what was driving certain problems and figure out how to fix them. After Democrats took back the House during the first Trump administration in 2019, I joined the House Judiciary Committee as a staffer on the Antitrust Subcommittee. Under the terrific leadership of @RepJerryNadler and then-Rep @davidcicilline, we pursued an 18-month investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, securing key evidence of how their business practices were undermining competition and harming people, setting the basis for both lawsuits and proposed legislation. A few lessons from that experience: 1. The quality of legislative oversight depends on the staff and the support of top members to confront power. Committee and Subcommittee Chairs that are focused on getting answers and unafraid to take on powerful corporate interests will make the difference between oversight that doesn’t surrender to their evasion tactics and oversight that aims low or flames out. Even a relatively small number of dogged, talented lawyers ready to dive in can make a big impact. In the 1930s a single congressional lawyer, Ferdinand Pecora, helped reshape our entire banking system by subpoenaing records and interrogating top financiers, including J.P Morgan. The investigation exposed self-dealing, market manipulation, and tax avoidance, and laid the groundwork for foundational New Deal legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act and the Securities Exchange Act. 2. Eliminating bottlenecks to moving investigations forward is key. For example, the House should make sure that Subcommittee Chairs can issue subpoenas rather than needing the sign-off of the full Committee or its Chair. A credible threat of sending subpoenas is critical for credible oversight. 3. Ensuring that members can develop the muscle to effectively interrogate CEOs requires investing in real preparation. In the lead up to the hearing with Bezos, Pichai, Cook, and Zuckerberg, the Antitrust Subcommittee spent months reviewing millions of documents collected from the firms, interviewing affected parties, briefing members on key evidence, and conducting practice hearings. Members came into the hearing deeply informed and able to rebut and call out CEO dissembling. The result was some of the most effective member questioning of executives we’ve seen in decades. @TheProspect wrote up a great overview: prospect.org/2020/07/30/triu… 4. For decades, institutional capacity in Congress has been extremely weak. Much of this traces back to the Gingrich Revolution, which was effectively the 1995 DOGE-ing of Congress. Republican leadership fired over 600 professional staffers, eliminated the Office of Technology Assessment, and gutted research capacity. None of that capacity was ever meaningfully restored. As a result, members have way fewer resources to develop serious expertise or go deep on a new topic. Members should start rebuilding that capacity so the institution can fully play its Article I role, where Congress can again do serious policy development and legislating and serve as a real check on the executive and judicial branches. 5. AI markets should be high on the list of investigations. The business decisions of the major AI firms have huge public ramifications, yet the public is at a severe informational disadvantage when it comes to how these markets work and the choices these firms are making. A congressional investigation will help ensure future legislative action is based on a more complete view of what is going on rather than selective and partial corporate disclosures.

“The death penalty carries a risk no system can remedy: executing an innocent person. Neither post-mortem evidence nor formal apology can repair such a catastrophic error.” - Christina Swarns, Innocence Project Executive Director Today, Governor Gavin Newsom commuted the death sentences of all 548 people on California’s death row. No one in California will be executed for a crime they didn’t commit. Since 1989, six people condemned to death in California have been exonerated. Nationwide, more than 200 people have been exonerated from death row. The governor’s decision saves lives and brings us closer to a legal system that is fair, compassionate, and equitable for everyone. Read the full statement from Innocence Project Executive Director Christina Swarns: bit.ly/3Um7PFD

Hakeem Jeffries on Morning Joe: The American people don't want us to get even. They want us to get things done on their behalf because life is way too expensive. We ran on affordability, we won on affordability, and now it's our job to govern on affordability.

🚨BREAKING🚨 Democrat Eileen Laubacher has defeated Incumbent Republican Lauren Boebert in the CO-04 U.S. House Election. This is a flip from 🔴 to 🔵.

Tennesseeans of Twitter: Why are your @TBInvestigation agents reimbursed for expenses incurred while housing witnesses they turn into defendants through a state witness fund—distinguished from payment for investigative work ?? Why is anyone housed with TBI agents at all ??

I’ve seen enough: generational wipeout.

I have been holding my tongue about something that happened during the Ohio gubernatorial race. I refused to speak while the election was underway because I did not want my words mistaken for an attempt to influence anyone’s vote. But now that the election is over, I have something to say. For nearly twenty years, my ministry has taken me among the homeless, the abused, the exploited, and the forgotten. I have sat with victims of sexual violence and witnessed the lifelong wounds of childhood trauma. What Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign did to Amy Acton was among the most morally repulsive things I have witnessed in American politics. They took a woman whose stepfather was indicted for raping her when she was twelve years old and featured her mother, from whom she had been estranged for nearly fifty years, in a political advertisement attacking her credibility. The advertisement challenged Acton’s account of her childhood without mentioning the sexual abuse allegations or the circumstances of that estrangement. When people expressed their horror, the campaign defended it. Imagine examining another person’s childhood suffering and fractured family relationships, then deciding those wounds might help win an election. Anyone who has worked with survivors of childhood sexual abuse understands the painful realities of denial, betrayal, shame, and estrangement. A child growing into a successful adult does not erase what happened. Nor does a parent’s denial make that suffering disappear. I find it equally disturbing that an elderly mother, whom Acton herself described as unwell, was brought into this spectacle. Whatever her own struggles or responsibility for the past, exploiting that fractured relationship was grotesque. To everyone who defended this, consider the message you sent to survivors. To the young woman whose family refuses to believe her. To the man who has carried the shame of childhood abuse for forty years. To the frightened child who has yet to tell anyone. What did you teach them about the value of their suffering? I am a priest. I believe in repentance, forgiveness, and redemption. But none of those things requires me to pretend that deliberate cruelty is anything less than a grave moral failure. Your political allegiance does not absolve you of moral responsibility. You do not get to set aside your conscience during an election and retrieve it afterward. If your loyalty requires you to defend the exploitation of a childhood sexual abuse survivor, your loyalty has become an idol. And if your conscience cannot recognize the wrong here, examine what political tribalism has done to it. This is not about Republicans or Democrats. We have a choice as a people: continue excusing cruelty from our preferred political camp, or summon the courage to condemn it wherever it appears. Amy Acton deserved better. Every survivor who watched this unfold deserved better. And God help us if we have reached the point where winning an election matters more than protecting the dignity of a wounded human being.

The Russian agent is finally out of Congress. Good riddance