"Elizabeth Warren wants to break up big tech. Its workers don’t want to break up with her" by Jess Bidgood Globe Staff, July 27, 2019
WASHINGTON — Twenty years ago, Jeff Few joined Amazon when it was still an upstart, aiming to break the grip of behemoths such as Barnes & Noble and Blockbuster in the market for books and movies.
“I saw it as this force that would finally enable something closer to a direct democracy,” Few recalled.
Now, Amazon is a titan of e-commerce, and Few, who lives in Seattle and went on to work for Apple and Adobe, has embraced, and donated $300 to, a Democratic presidential candidate who has fiercely criticized his industry and called for the breakup of its biggest players — Senator Elizabeth Warren.
He is far from alone among tech employees. Although Warren has painted tech giants such as Google and Facebook as modern-day villains in her scathing picture of the American economy, she is emerging as a top choice for donations from tech workers, according to an analysis of campaign contributions by The Boston Globe.
With her denunciations of big tech and corporate greed, Warren has tapped into simmering discontent within the industry itself about the size, power, and ethics of its companies. So, while tech executives have often resisted calls from Washington to regulate the industry, employees are contributing to Warren and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the candidates with the most aggressive positions on corporate oversight.
“I agree tech companies are becoming increasingly powerful,” said Vicki Tardif, who works on search products at Google and helped organize a major protest there last fall. She says she has contributed to Warren. “I’m a citizen first — I’m a Google employee second.”
Looking at just the big four tech companies that she wants to break apart — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google — and some of their affiliates, Warren received some $144,000 in itemized donations from their employees over the first six months of the year.
She was second only to Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., who raised nearly $149,000 from those employees, in part by holding the kind of private Silicon Valley fund-raisers that Warren eschews. Sanders and California Senator Kamala Harris also raised more than $100,000 from employees of these companies.
The actual amount of donations from people in the tech industry is certainly higher, but campaign filings list information only about donors who give more than $200; moreover, the names of donors’ employers are not always reported consistently.
Her second-quarter finance report also showed Warren’s appeal more broadly across the tech sector, raising at least $142,000 from employees of the big four and seven other US tech giants, including Microsoft and Intel. Buttigieg was tops at $176,000, while Sanders was third, at $95,000.
She is burning through the cash quickly, too.
Warren has been a particularly vocal critic of big tech in recent months. In March, she detailed a plan that would require the biggest companies — those with annual revenue of $25 billion — to separate their technology platforms from their e-commerce activities. So Google’s massive ad-sales operation would split off from its ubiquitous search engine; Amazon could not have both an e-commerce platform and a sales business on it.
The DoJ just opened an investigation into their market power, so Warren was out front on this one.
She also called for the undoing of “anticompetitive” mergers, naming Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp as an example.
The technology blog Recode greeted the plan with the headline, “Elizabeth Warren just lost the Silicon Valley vote,” and Warren herself promptly appeared at the technology conference South by Southwest to face her critics.
“Monopolists will make fewer monopoly profits,” she said then. “Boo-hoo.”
Warren looks to be setting the tone in a Democratic field that is generally taking a harder line toward the industry. Former vice president Joe Biden and Harris have said it is worth taking a look at her plan, but stopped short of a full-throated endorsement. Buttigieg has said he “potentially” agrees with it, but, during a town hall in March, raised questions about other aspects of big tech: “It’s not how big they are, it’s how they act.” In May, Sanders said he agreed Facebook should be broken up.
Warren and other candidates have also called for big corporations such as Amazon to pay significantly more in taxes, but she, in particular, has drawn the ire of conservative tech mogul and Trump ally Peter Thiel, who called her the Democratic candidate he is most scared of.
Is that ire? Looks more like respect and fear to me.
For the record, he supported Ron Paul and now lives in New Zealand.
In some ways, well-to-do tech employees backing populists such as Warren and Sanders are acting against their own interests. Both candidates are antitrust hawks who want to limit the reach of big corporations; both have supported job actions by low-wage workers at Amazon and drivers for Uber and Lyft.
Warren’s and Sanders’ success with tech workers is partially due to the industry’s liberal leanings, and many employees interviewed for this story emphasized her overall candidacy in describing her appeal, not her specific positions on big tech.
“She’s a wonk,” said Alex Whitworth, a data scientist at Facebook who kicked $250 toward her campaign. “That’s strongly appealing to me, as a wonk.”
For other tech donors, their willingness to back candidates critical of their industry may also be due in part to tensions with their bosses. The tech industry has been roiled by walkouts and protests over contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other government agencies and the military. There is also lingering anger over the role social media networks played in the disinformation campaign Russians used in the 2016 elections.
“We have this tech-lash phenomenon that’s been building over the past few years,” said Ben Tarnoff, editor of Logic magazine, which covers technology. “There’s a large and vocal constituency in the tech sector that is making the case these companies have a responsibility for the tech they’re building.”
Interviews with tech employees who support Warren and Sanders reveal a well of reservations about the increasing power of big corporations and enthusiasm for candidates who are addressing it head-on.
“I like working at Amazon. It’s been the best job of my career,” said Michael Sokolov, a senior software development engineer who donated $250 to Warren. “However, I don’t like the fact that our economy is dominated by gigantic super-corporations.”
Many Democratic candidates have criticized the tech industry while mingling with its luminaries at fund-raisers. Warren’s success among its employees could undermine her image as a fierce critic, although her campaign pointed out it has a policy of not holding private fund-raisers or reaching out directly to members of any industry, and some of Warren’s tech-industry supporters acknowledged being wary about the specifics of her plans to break up their employers.
Sanders’ appeal among tech workers is not new. In 2016, he drew more donations from workers at Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, than from any other employer, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign finance, and his class-based analysis of the nation’s economic ills still appeals to tech employees concerned about low-paid workers in their companies’ warehouses, and the insecurity that comes with working as an independent contractor in the gig economy, and some of Sanders’ tech supporters want him to drill down even further.
Well, the gig is up.
“I think we expect to see more — maybe see some politics about collective data regulation,” said Will Luckman, who is part of a tech-focused working group within the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports Sanders. “We’d like to see some stuff about gig workers, and how they might be able to reclassify themselves and get collective bargaining rights.”
Some of Sanders’ 2016 supporters from the tech industry have switched to Warren.
“What I have seen from Sanders is mostly calls for a movement without a lot of detail,” said Annabelle Backman, a software engineer at Amazon who was a state delegate for Sanders in the 2016 primary but has contributed $2,700 to Warren in this cycle, and some of Warren’s long-held positions align directly with demands of tech workers scrutinizing their own industry. Last fall, thousands of Google employees walked out in protest of the company’s policy requiring workers to settle disputes in forced arbitration, instead of through lawsuits, which workers said has allowed Google to keep accusations of serious problems such as sexual assault secret. Warren has been a vocal opponent of forced arbitration for years and proposed prohibiting companies that use the practice from getting federal contracts.
“We’ve been advocating for an end to forced arbitration. We had to push our company for that,” said Tanuja Gupta, another organizer of the Google walkouts, who has donated $333.82 to Warren’s campaign. “I find it incredibly appealing that there’s a political candidate who’s willing to do that for all workers and end forced arbitration.”
Several donors expressed reservations about Warren’s plan to break up tech companies, including whether it would do enough to address the industry’s problems.
“There’s a lot of attention on social media companies failing to rein in fake posts and fake stories and bots and whatnot,” Backman said. “Breaking up the social networks is not going to do anything to help that,” but others, wistful for the days when the industry had fewer dominant players and thus more latitude for workers, said Warren’s plan was worth a shot.
“There’s a lot of people in this industry who are amenable to some sort of breakup of big tech,” Few said. “It’s the penance we must pay for allowing this to get out of control.”
--more--"
She also made the front page of the B-section:
"Elizabeth Warren’s pitch: pragmatism from the heart" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent, July 27, 2019
BOW, N.H. — Gathered in a bucolic backyard with about 300 voters on Saturday, US Senator Elizabeth Warren retold a deeply personal story she has shared with crowds around the country.
Warren was a girl in middle school, living in Oklahoma City with her parents, when her father — the family breadwinner — had a sudden heart attack that left him unable to work.
The Democratic presidential aspirant recalled finding her mother, a 50-year-old homemaker who’d never held a paying job, pacing her bedroom floor in her slip and stockings, telling herself, “We will not lose this house.”
That day, Warren said in a voice cracking with emotion, her mother put on her best dress and interviewed for a position answering phones at a Sears department store.
“That minimum-wage job saved our house, and more importantly, it saved our family,” Warren told the rapt crowd, as some wiped away tears.
That story, Warren suggested to the standing-room-only crowd at the house party in her honor, isn’t just a tale of personal sacrifice and family cohesion. In her telling, it’s a reminder of a government that made her family’s American dream possible by ensuring “a minimum wage job would cover a mortgage, the utilities, and put groceries on the table.”
“Today a minimum-wage job in America, full time, will not keep a mama and a baby out of poverty. That is wrong, and that is why I am in this fight,” Warren continued, to robust applause.
Much of the Cambridge Democrat’s stump speech continued in that vein of economic populism, balancing detailed proposals with a personal, emotional plea for a fairer country, as the liberal firebrand focused on themes, if not always policies, that were largely bipartisan.
She pledged to attack government corruption, restructure the nation’s economy to provide more opportunities for working-class and middle-income Americans, and to protect democratic institutions from interference, both foreign and domestic.
Warren also bridged the personal and political when asked by an Epsom, N.H., resident how she’d reach out to Republican voters, citing two of her three older brothers as Republicans with whom she’s able to find common ground, and listing issues on which there is broad agreement.
“The idea that our kids should be . . . burdened with student loan debt — that makes no sense to anybody, Democrat or Republican,” she said. “These are places that we can start with. The access to child care. The idea that prescription drugs, the prices have gone through the roof. This outrages my brothers.”
She said President Trump had appealed to voters in 2016 — and plans to again in 2020 — by telling them, “Blame people who don’t look like you. Blame people who aren’t the same color as you. Blame people who weren’t born where you were born. Blame people who don’t worship like you. Blame people who don’t have the same sexual orientation as you.”
All that finger-pointing, she said, distracts citizens and allows “the rich and the powerful who are picking everybody’s pockets [to] get a free walk.”
I can do without the identity politics, but she is on to something there and doesn't have to reach too far for this registered Independent that leans Republican.
Kim Gillis, 55, who had asked the question, said she was satisfied with Warren’s answer.
“I think she’s ready to take that on,” Gillis said. “I really trust that when she hears people’s concerns, she is thinking, ‘How does that relate to the policy and what I’m doing as a politician in the world? And how can I try to meet that need?’ ”
Gillis said she had become a supporter after attending a Women for Warren event last weekend.
“She’s such a pragmatist and problem-solver,” she said. “That piece hadn’t come through as much to me in what I had seen online.”
Nancy Heffernan, 82, of Hanover, N.H., said she’d heard Warren’s stump speech before but felt the impact more deeply in person.
“I can’t say she said anything I disagree with,” she said, adding later that she especially appreciated the focus on corruption.
Her husband, Jim Heffernan, 80, said Warren had “a terrific personal story” and he is “strongly leaning” toward her as his preferred candidate in the crowded Democratic field.
Just don't bring up the DNA test.
“I’d sum her up by calling her a fiery pragmatist: head in the clouds, feet on the ground,” he said. “She wants to ignite a tremendous revolution, fighting corruption and so on, and so forth. But she has a set of specific ideas about how to do it. . . . Taking on corruption is like taking on the history of American politics, but if anybody could do it, I think she could.”
She very well may be the Democrat's choice and strongest candidate they have.
--more--"
What's odd was there was no mention of Mueller in either article despite the massive audience this week, and as usual, the Globe turned a blind eye to foreign policy.
Of course, here is what happens when a lady runs the house:
"‘Give the house back to the ladies’: Protesters fight for building owned by Catholic order" by Alison Kuznitz Globe Correspondent, July 27, 2019
A group of nearly 50 activists, wearing yellow shirts emblazoned with a rallying cry of “fight the power,” marched in the Fenway Saturday morning, chanting in unison: “Fight the evictions, fight the evictions.”
As they veered into the Symphony Community Park, the protest became increasingly animated and vocal about racial and economic injustice.
“Say no, fight back, what do we do when the nuns attack?” they cried, following by a round of: “Give the house back to the ladies!”
The early morning demonstration was the first of several rallies Saturday in Boston and in New Britain, Conn., as activists attempt to preserve the status quo of Our Lady’s Guild House, a single-room occupancy building in Kenmore Square historically intended for elderly, low-income women. It’s owned by an order of Catholic nuns, the Daughters of Mary of the Immaculate Conception, in New Britain.
At around 10 a.m., the protesters boarded a coach bus for the roughly 130-mile trip to New Britain, where they staged another rally and speaking program Saturday afternoon.
What was the carbon footprint on that trip?
They had hoped to deliver a petition with more than 1,300 signatures to the head nun, Mother General Mary Jennifer Carroll, but weren’t allowed to enter the Osgood Avenue property, said Colleen Fitzpatrick, an organizer with the Fenway Community Development Corporation.
“We had to basically line up on this skinny sidewalk across the street and do a little chanting,” Fitzpatrick said in a phone interview Saturday afternoon, during the bus’s return trip to Boston. “We would have appreciated the chance to see her and give her a petition.”
In recent years, dozens of residents – some in their 60s, others in their 70s and 80s – have faced eviction notices, with the religious order seeking younger women, typically college-aged, who can afford to pay market rent values and sign yearly leases.
“Our demand is we want long-term, permanent affordable housing at this site,” said Helen “Homefries” Matthews, the communications coordinator for City Life/Vida Urbana, a grass-roots community organization, during an interview Saturday after the morning rally in Boston. “It’s an essential resource for people in the heart of the city.”
Dozens of protesters sat on benches in the park Saturday morning before boarding the bus, clutching handmade signs that decried what they called misuse of a charitable status and age discrimination by the nuns — a claim that Attorney General Maura Healey’s office said in March that it was investigating. Eviction proceedings have stalled under the investigation, with findings expected in the fall.
A spokesman for Our Lady’s Guild House said that the protesters’ claims were false and that the nuns were trying “to work collaboratively with the tenants.”
“OLGH is and always has been a home for women who are seeking transitional housing. It is important that the mission continues and that the building remains one where women can take advantage of the affordable rent and convenience of living in the heart of Downtown Boston as they look for long-term housing,” said Don Martelli in a statement.
The mission of the house, Martelli said in the statement, “is and always has been to provide short term residential housing to single women.”
Healey’s office could not be reached for comment.
The protesters, many of whom said they have experienced eviction attempts themselves, returned to the Fenway late afternoon.
Siobhan O’Connor , 57, who’s lived in Our Lady’s Guild House for about 15 years, said she did not think the head of the New Britain order would be swayed.
“She basically thinks she’s the female pope,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor, who wore a gold cross necklace, described herself as a devout Catholic who regularly attends Mass at the House. She said the nuns have forsaken their charitable mission by focusing on profits – instead of helping to find alternative living options for residents with nowhere else to turn.
The problem is they are not undocumented migrants, they are just old ladies.
Some of the single rooms are listed on Airbnb, and previous advertisements explicitly targeted women “between the ages of 18 and 50 years old.”
Marcy Wells, who’s lived in the House for 2½ years, said she has seen older women crying in the hallways, uncertain of their fate as the case remains entangled in housing court disputes.
“I’m a strong Catholic and that’s what breaks my heart,” Wells said. “My faith says it’s not right – being a Christian says this is not right. You cannot mistreat the elderly and think you’ll be blessed.”
Maybe you should excommunicate yourself like I did.
David Mynott, a City Life volunteer, said the morning protest in Boston forged an empowering and inspiring display of solidarity.
“It reminds us that we’re all together — if one of us is suffering, we all are,” he said. “Housing is a basic human right.”
Not if you are Palestinian.
--more--"
Looks like some people in Lowell will be needing a place to stay.
Related:
Flirting With Impeachment
Jess Bidgood of the Globe has a Q & A with Katherine Clark on the issue.
"Trump assails congressional critic, calling his majority-black district a ‘disgusting,’ rat-infested ‘mess’" by Peter Baker New York Times, July 27, 2019
WASHINGTON — President Trump lashed out at a leading African-American congressman Saturday, calling him “a brutal bully” who represents a Baltimore-based district that has become a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”
Trump’s attack on Representative Elijah E. Cummings, a Maryland Democrat and a leading critic of the president, parroted a segment that aired earlier in the morning on “Fox & Friends.” The president suggested that the congressman was a hypocrite for criticizing conditions in migrant detention centers at the southwestern border when his own district is blighted. Trump also made a vague and unsubstantiated insinuation of corruption.
“Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous,” Trump wrote. “His district is considered the Worst in the USA.” He went on: “Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place.”
Cummings responded on Twitter shortly afterward, saying that he was a vigorous advocate for his district. “Mr. President, I go home to my district daily,” he wrote. “Each morning, I wake up, and I go and fight for my neighbors. It is my constitutional duty to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch, but, it is my moral duty to fight for my constituents.”
The congressman pointed to a hearing he held Friday on his effort to legislate lower drug prices, which would help his Baltimore constituents. “You told me then that you supported the legislation and that you would work with me to make it happen,” Cummings said, still addressing the president. “I took you at your word.”
Trump’s blasts could revive the criticism that followed his attacks on four first-term Democratic congresswomen of color, who he angrily declared should “go back” to their home countries, even though three of them were born in the United States and the fourth is also an American citizen. The president’s use of racist tropes generated enormous anger on the part of Democrats and some Republicans, leading the House to pass a resolution, largely along party lines, condemning his remarks.
I've already seen this movie.
The Twitter assault came shortly after “Fox & Friends” aired a segment Saturday morning assailing Cummings for focusing on migrants more than his own urban constituents. As video footage showed boarded-up houses and trash-strewn areas of Baltimore, the Fox television host said that “living conditions at the border are better than most areas in his district.”
Cummings’s district is 53 percent African-American, according to the census, and includes much of Baltimore as well as vast suburban stretches. Baltimore has struggled with crime in recent years, recording more murders in 2017 than any other city of at least 500,000 residents — more even than New York, a vastly larger city.
Cumming's blames the mayor, and things could be worse. They could be Puerto Rico.
Trump has denied charges that he is racist, citing in his defense the low unemployment rates for Hispanics and African-Americans on his watch, among other things. In recent days, he has also made a point of pressuring Sweden to release rapper ASAP Rocky, who was charged with assault there, saying, “Sweden has let our African American Community down in the United States.”
Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, has been one of the president’s most persistent critics in Congress. Only two days ago, he was authorized by his committee to subpoena work-related text and e-mails sent on personal accounts by White House officials, including Trump’s daughter and son-in-law.
They are finally getting around to reading those, huh?
I would be surprised if that investigation goes anywhere.
The Maryland congressman has also assailed the administration’s handling of the border. At a recent hearing, Cummings confronted Kevin McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, about conditions for detained migrants, sharply criticizing the secretary’s contention that his department was doing its “level best” to manage the situation.
“What does that mean?” Cummings demanded. “What does that mean when a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower? Come on, man. What is that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings.”
In his Twitter storm Saturday, the president said Cummings was distorting the reality, saying, “the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded.”
Trump did not explain one of his most explosive charges, that federal taxpayer money was somehow being stolen, nor did he detail what involvement he was suggesting on Cummings’s part.
“Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States,” the president wrote. “No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!”
White House officials did not immediately respond to requests for clarification. A spokesman for Cummings had no comment and referred to the congressman’s Twitter posts.
--more--"
He's doing his best to “fight back Jim Crow and Jane Crow Jr,” and hopefully there will be a settlement soon as to who qualifies as a person of color.
Turns out that Trump is the most consequential president of our time as he is focused on the fundamental challenges of the post-industrial, post-civil rights era, and he will probably save the world.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Legislature considers action on local marijuana contracts" by Dan Adams Globe Staff, July 24, 2019
Massachusetts lawmakers are set to consider new limits on the ability of municipalities to demand fees from marijuana companies, following widespread complaints by businesses, activists, and state regulators that many local officials are unfairly shaking down the firms.
At a hearing Monday, the state Legislature’s joint committee on cannabis policy will take up a number of proposed bills that would tighten the rules around so-called “host community agreements,” the contracts every recreational pot operation must sign with the city or town in which it hopes to open before applying for a state license.
Current state law caps the value of those deals at 3 percent of a company’s annual revenue, for a maximum of five years, and says any payments must be “reasonably related” to the actual costs imposed by the marijuana facility, but many cities and towns have side-stepped those limits, asking for additional payments while arguing the law doesn’t explicitly prohibit them from requiring separate fees or mandatory “donations” to local nonprofits in exchange for local approval.
Critics — including legislators who helped draft the current rules — say such municipal rent-seeking is a key reason that small businesses are struggling to enter the state’s marijuana industry, while larger players who can afford to sweeten the municipal pot are moving ahead. They lauded the cannabis committee’s decision to take up several bills that would ban extra fees, standardize the deals, and impose state oversight of the contracts.
“In a word: finally,” said David O’Brien, the executive director of the Massachusetts Cannabis Business Association. “Three percent means 3 percent, and voluntary contributions should be offered, not asked for.”
It is somewhat of an extortion racket, but it's far from a unique situation.
Few operators have dared to challenge municipal demands, fearful of souring relations with the local officials from whom they must obtain permits., but advocates fret that smaller operators, especially participants in state programs meant to encourage the licensure of people from communities disproportionately affected by the war on drugs, are simply walking away.
Just say no.
Laury Lucien, an attorney and entrepreneur whose marijuana company has signed host community agreements in Attleboro and Worcester, said the variability of municipal expectations — and demands for up-front payments of $100,000 or more — drastically prolonged the process of finding a home for her business.
“It creates a barrier to moving quickly unless you have a lot of resources,” Lucien said. “I know a lot of people would have gotten discouraged by what we went through.”
That was the whole point. Maybe then you will give up.
--more--"
That should put you on the road to recovery, and UMass just got a $10M grant to treat overdoses.
Sure makes the public art in Boston look pretty, though, and a red state is plastering ‘In God We Trust’ on the walls as they touch the face of heaven (there is a rea$on to keep the myth going).
Also see:
Why sharks don’t seem to stop in Rhode Island on their way to Cape Cod
They are just scooting past Taylor Swift's house on their way to Hawaii.
How much you want to bet they make it?
