#wright patman

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Walmart didn't just happen. The rise of Walmart – and Amazon, its online successor – was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. Walmart may have been founded by Sam Walton, but its success (and the demise of the American Main Street) are down to Reaganomics.

The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers (farmers, packaged goods makers, meat producers, etc). The idea here is straightforward. A company like Walmart is a powerful buyer (a "monopsonist" – compare with "monopolist," a powerful seller). That means that they can demand deep discounts from suppliers. Smaller stores – the mom and pop store on your Main Street – don't have the clout to demand those discounts. Worse, because those buyers are weak, the sellers – packaged goods companies, agribusiness cartels, Big Meat – can actually charge them more to make up for the losses they're taking in selling below cost to Walmart.

Reagan ordered his antitrust cops to stop enforcing Robinson-Patman, which was a huge giveaway to big business. Of course, that's not how Reagan framed it: He called Robinson-Patman a declaration of "war on low prices," because it prevented big companies from using their buying power to squeeze huge discounts. Reagan's court sorcerers/economists asserted that if Walmart could get goods at lower prices, they would sell goods at lower prices.

Which was true…up to a point. Because preferential discounting (offering better discounts to bigger customers) creates a structural advantage over smaller businesses, it meant that big box stores would eventually eliminate virtually all of their smaller competitors. That's exactly what happened: downtowns withered, suburban big boxes grew. Spending that would have formerly stayed in the community was whisked away to corporate headquarters. These corporate HQs were inevitably located in "onshore-offshore" tax haven states, meaning they were barely taxed at the state level. That left plenty of money in these big companies' coffers to spend on funny accountants who'd help them avoid federal taxes, too. That's another structural advantage the big box stores had over the mom-and-pops: not only did they get their inventory at below-cost discounts, they didn't have to pay tax on the profits, either.

MBA programs actually teach this as a strategy to pursue: they usually refer to Amazon's "flywheel" where lower prices bring in more customers which allows them to demand even lower prices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaSwWYemLek

You might have heard about rural and inner-city "food deserts," where all the independent grocery stores have shuttered, leaving behind nothing but dollar stores? These are the direct product of the decision not to enforce Robinson-Patman. Dollar stores target working class neighborhoods with functional, beloved local grocers. They open multiple dollar stores nearby (nearly all the dollar stores you see are owned by one of two conglomerates, no matter what the sign over the door says). They price goods below cost and pay for high levels of staffing, draining business off the community grocery store until it collapses. Then, all the dollar stores except one close and the remaining store fires most of its staff (working at a dollar store is incredibly dangerous, thanks to low staffing levels that make them easy targets for armed robbers). Then, they jack up prices, selling goods in "cheater" sizes that are smaller than the normal retail packaging, and which are only made available to large dollar store conglomerates:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

Writing in The American Prospect, Max M Miller and Bryce Tuttle1 – a current and a former staffer for FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya – write about the long shadow cast by Reagan's decision to put Robinson-Patman in mothballs:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-08-13-stopping-excessive-market-power-monopoly/

They tell the story of Robinson-Patman's origins in 1936, when A&P was using preferential discounts to destroy the independent grocery sector and endanger the American food system. A&P didn't just demand preferential discounts from its suppliers; it also charged them a fortune to be displayed on its shelves, an early version of Amazon's $38b/year payola system:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

They point out that Robinson-Patman didn't really need to be enacted; America already had an antitrust law that banned this conduct: section 2 of the the Clayton Act, which was passed in 1914. But for decades, the US courts refused to interpret the Clayton Act according to its plain meaning, with judges tying themselves in knots to insist that the law couldn't possibly mean what it said. Robinson-Patman was one of a series of antitrust laws that Congress passed in a bid to explain in words so small even federal judges could understand them that the purpose of American antitrust law was to keep corporations weak:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Both the Clayton Act and Robinson-Patman reject the argument that it's OK to let monopolies form and come to dominate critical sectors of the American economy based on the theoretical possibility that this will lead to lower prices. They reject this idea first as a legal matter. We don't let giant corporations victimize small businesses and their suppliers just because that might help someone else.

Beyond this, there's the realpolitik of monopoly. Yes, companies could pass lower costs on to customers, but will they? Look at Amazon: the company takes $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar that its sellers earn, and requires them to offer their lowest price on Amazon. No one has a 45-51% margin, so every seller jacks up their prices on Amazon, but you don't notice it, because Amazon forces them to jack up prices everywhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

The Robinson-Patman Act did important work, and its absence led to many of the horribles we're living through today. This week on his Peoples & Things podcast, Lee Vinsel talked with Benjamin Waterhouse about his new book, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America:

https://athenaeum.vt.domains/peoplesandthings/2024/08/12/78-benjamin-c-waterhouse-on-one-day-ill-work-for-myself-the-dream-and-delusion-that-conquered-america/

Towards the end of the discussion, Vinsel and Waterhouse turn to Robinson-Patman, its author, Wright Patman, and the politics of small business in America. They point out – correctly – that Wright Patman was something of a creep, a "Dixiecrat" (southern Democrat) who was either an ideological segregationist or someone who didn't mind supporting segregation irrespective of his beliefs.

That's a valid critique of Wright Patman, but it's got little bearing on the substance and history of the law that bears his name, the Robinson-Patman Act. Vinsel and Waterhouse get into that as well, and while they made some good points that I wholeheartedly agreed with, I fiercely disagree with the conclusion they drew from these points.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out (again, correctly) that small businesses have a long history of supporting reactionary causes and attacking workers' rights – associations of small businesses, small women-owned business, and small minority-owned businesses were all in on opposition to minimum wages and other key labor causes.

But while this is all true, that doesn't make Robinson-Patman a reactionary law, or bad for workers. The point of protecting small businesses from the predatory practices of large firms is to maintain an American economy where business can't trump workers or government. Large companies are literally ungovernable: they have gigantic war-chests they can spend lobbying governments and corrupting the political process, and concentrated sectors find it comparatively easy to come together to decide on a single lobbying position and then make it reality.

As Vinsel and Waterhouse discuss, US big business has traditionally hated small business. They recount a notorious and telling anaecdote about the editor of the Chamber of Commerce magazine asking his boss if he could include coverage of small businesses, given the many small business owners who belonged to the Chamber, only to be told, "Over my dead body." Why did – why does – big business hate small business so much? Because small businesses wreck the game. If they are included in hearings, notices of inquiry, or just given a vote on what the Chamber of Commerce will lobby for with their membership dollars, they will ask for things that break with the big business lobbying consensus.

That's why we should like small business. Not because small business owners are incapable of being petty tyrants, but because whatever else, they will be petty. They won't be able to hire million-dollar-a-month union-busting law-firms, they won't be able to bribe Congress to pass favorable laws, they can't capture their regulators with juicy offers of sweet jobs after their government service ends.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out that many large firms emerged during the era in which Robinson-Patman was in force, but that misunderstands the purpose of Robinson-Patman: it wasn't designed to prevent any large businesses from emerging. There are some capital-intensive sectors (say, chip fabrication) where the minimum size for doing anything is pretty damned big.

As Miller and Tuttle write:

The goal of RPA was not to create a permanent Jeffersonian agrarian republic of exclusively small businesses. It was to preserve a diverse economy of big and small businesses. Congress recognized that the needs of communities and people—whether in their role as consumers, business owners, or workers—are varied and diverse. A handful of large chains would never be able to meet all those needs in every community, especially if they are granted pricing power.

The fight against monopoly is only secondarily a fight between small businesses and giant ones. It's foundationally a fight about whether corporations should have so much power that they are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities

[mariacallous]

A famous parable revolves around the troubled relationship between a scorpion and a frog. A scorpion needs to cross a river. Unable to swim, the scorpion asks a frog to carry him on his back. Listening to the request, the frog responds that he is hesitant because he fears that the scorpion will sting and kill him. After the scorpion assures his new friend that he would never do that, the frog agrees. Halfway through the journey, the scorpion stings the frog. Slowly dying, the frog asks, “Why did you do this?” The scorpion responds, “I’m sorry, but it’s in my nature.”

The story is a classic lesson about how dangerous people don’t usually change. Even when promising that they will act differently, the likelihood is that they won’t. It is also a tale about taking warning signs seriously. The frog understood the risks that he faced, yet he chose to ignore them.

U.S. presidential elections frequently involve warnings signs. Over the course of a campaign, voters learn a great deal about the candidates running and the potential costs of putting someone in office. Sometimes, a majority of voters decide to heed those warnings, yet there are other times in U.S. history when voters end up the frog.

In 2024, there are more warnings signs than usual about one of the major candidates: the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump. There are big red flags from both his first term in office and his post-presidential years waving over and over about what Trump 2.0 would bring. Another one came on Wednesday, when the Washington, D.C., district judge handling the federal election conspiracy case against Trump unsealed a 165-page document with the fullest picture of what special counsel Jack Smith had found.

To understand how voters have the capacity to cover their ears to avoid hearing alarm bells, look back to 1972, when President Richard Nixon won reelection in a landslide victory against Democratic Sen. George McGovern. Too often, the story of Nixon’s reelection in 1972 and Watergate are treated separately. The thing is, there were, in fact, many people warning of who Nixon was as a politician and what he would likely do when freed from the restraints imposed by having to worry about reelection.

The familiar narrative on the 1972 election is that, riding high on diplomatic breakthroughs with the Soviet Union and China, Nixon defeated McGovern in a stunning victory that rivaled President Franklin Roosevelt’s coalition-building reelection win in 1936. There were many Americans who didn’t like Nixon or his policies, but it wasn’t until investigations in 1973 that his severe abuses of presidential power were revealed. Had the country only known more, so the story goes, the electorate could have averted the disaster they collectively faced on Aug. 9, 1974, when Nixon stepped onto a helicopter, leaving the White House in the middle of his second term.

In fact, numerous representatives and senators had been trying to expose Nixon’s nature even before that election. After Nixon announced on April 30, 1970, that he had secretly deployed troops to Cambodia and conducted a massive bombing campaign, there was a fierce outcry from Democrats about how he had lied and threatened the balance of power to accelerate a disastrous war. Idaho Sen. Frank Church and Kentucky Sen. John Sherman Cooper began drafting a bill to prohibit the president from using congressional funds for operations in Cambodia. Congressional critics railed against Nixon’s turn to impounding funds that they had appropriated and which he failed to veto. Soon after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in June 1972, Democratic Rep. Wright Patman, a Texas populist, attempted to launch an investigation into the connections he suspected between the burglars and Nixon’s reelection campaign. The effort, covered by the press, was undercut by Nixon and his allies on Capitol Hill.

Journalists and public intellectuals were on Nixon’s case long before most voters cast their ballot. In 1971, the administration’s efforts to prevent the press from publishing the Pentagon Papers, a secret Defense Department study exposing the lies told to justify the war in Vietnam, required the Supreme Court to intervene, culminating in the 6-3 decision in New York Times Company v. United States, which allowed publication. The media praised the decision as a blow to a president who was intent on stifling the press. In March 1972, Life published a story based on a nine-month investigation that accused the Nixon administration of having “seriously tampered with justice” to insulate supporters in San Diego from criminal prosecutions involving illegal campaign contributions. “The administration has in several instances taken steps to neutralize and frustrate its own law enforcement officials,” the magazine noted.

By mid-October 1972, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and Time were publishing stories about an FBI investigation into whether Nixon’s reelection team was involved in sabotage operations, including the break-in at the Watergate building, against the Democratic campaign. On Oct. 16, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein published a blockbuster story about how Nixon’s personal lawyer, Herbert Kalmbach, revealed that he “was one of five persons authorized to approve payments from the Nixon campaign’s secret intelligence gathering and espionage fund.” Nixon campaign manager Clark McGregor was so frustrated with reporters that he accused the press of acting politically, stating, “the Post has maliciously sought to give the appearance of a direct connection between the White House and the Watergate, a charge the Post knows—and a half dozen investigations have found—to be false.”

And then there was McGovern, who made Nixon’s corruption a major theme in his final months on the campaign trail. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention, McGovern said, “From secrecy and corruption in high places, come home, America.” In late September, during visits to three states on the East Coast, McGovern called Nixon “scandal-ridden” and “corrupt.” Speaking to labor leaders in Atlantic City, he warned that “If we let this Nixon-Agnew administration have another four years, I think they’ll make Warren G. Harding look like a Sunday school teacher.” McGovern called the Nixon administration the “trickiest, most deceitful” in U.S. history. On Oct. 17, he told a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, that Nixon was attempting to “escape responsibility” for the break-in and, in the process, “polluting the faith of the American people in government itself.”

McGovern’s emphasis on corruption intensified in the final weeks of his campaign. “As the net of truth closes tighter and tighter around the president himself,” he said, “they try to persuade us that the spying, and lying, and burglary, and sabotage will not affect the election because people expect these things of politicians.” If voters chose Nixon, he said, they would be selecting four years of “Watergate corruption.”

The problem was that McGovern was running against the wind. In mid-October, Gallup found that a minute percentage of Americans ranked corruption as a top issue; only 52 percent had even heard of the Watergate affair. The public concluded that both parties were equally corrupt, so it didn’t matter who was in office.

Nixon defeated McGovern by winning 49 states, including a sweep of the South, and 60.7 percent of the vote.

Today, the warning signs about Trump are all in broad daylight.

The first threat is Trump’s embrace of election denialism. The former president demonstrated that he is willing to destabilize the democratic system when election results don’t go his way. Multiple investigations have unpacked the systematic campaign by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, which culminated in the violence of Jan. 6, 2020. Since the insurrection, Trump has continued to deny the outcome—as did Sen. J.D. Vance during his debate against Gov. Tim Walz, when he refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won. Moreover, the Trump campaign has made several strategic moves, such as supporting a change of rules by Trump-allied members of the Georgia State Election Board that will make it easier for local officials to question and delay the counting of ballots; this could easily create a certification crisis.

During his time in office, Trump refused to accept that there were limitations on what a president could do. Surrounded by advisors who believed in the unitary executive theory, Trump did what he wanted to do until someone was able to stop him. Formal or informal guardrails were not his thing. Trump’s expansive, and dangerous, views of presidential power were clear during the first impeachment trial when the United States learned how he had threatened congressionally appropriated aid to Ukraine if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did not agree to help dig up dirt on Biden and his son. Trump and his supporters were very clear that he will flex even more of that muscle should he be given another chance to do so. He has often spoken in public about collapsing the firewall that has separated the president from the Justice Department since Nixon’s downfall, and he has threatened to use that prosecutorial power to go after his opponents. In one Truth Social post about Smith’s investigation, Trump said that there would be “repercussions far greater than anything that Biden or his Thugs could understand.” Written by many high-level officials in Trump’s operation, including Stephen Miller, Project 2025 is a 900-page road map to a massive expansion of executive power.

Finally, Trump poses a serious risk to human rights. Between 2017 and 2021, undocumented immigrants were subject to intense and inhumane punitive measures, such as the separation of families, in an effort to disincentivize border crossings. In response to #BlackLivesMatter, Trump asked former Defense Secretary Mark Esper about shooting civil rights protesters in 2020. He famously had peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park cleared out with tear gas all so that he could get a photo-op. Finally, he was the instrumental force behind the creation of the 6-3 majority on the Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The United States paid a high price for its decision in 1972. Nixon’s second term was consumed by the Watergate scandal, which rocked U.S. politics, traumatized and divided the nation, and resulted in decades of deep distrust of government. In 2024, will voters heed the warning signs?

[living400lbs]

Ever hear about the WWI veterans that marched to DC for their promised bonus pay?

In 1924, Congress had voted (over Coolidge’s veto) for the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, which was meant to make up the difference between a soldier’s pay during wartime and what he would have made in civilian life. The maximum a veteran could hope to receive was $625. The catch, however, was that this bonus was not scheduled to be paid until 1945. For men hunkered down in the trenches of the Great Depression, that seemed a long time to wait; $600 could make a huge difference to the life of a hungry and jobless veteran. Some Democratic politicians agreed.

Since 1929, Congressman Wright Patman of Texas had campaigned for a bill to amend the Compensation Act to pay out the bonuses immediately. By early 1932, it looked like the bill might finally come up for a vote, against the strenuous opposition of the president, almost all Republicans, and even many Democrats (including Governor Roosevelt). Portland’s veterans’ association asked all its members to sign petitions and write to politicians to help secure the vote. Walter Waters was a little more canny about the ways of Washington: “Our only hope was in following the successful tactics of Big Business; when its representatives wanted something from Congress, they went to it personally and said so.” He stood up in veterans’ meetings and suggested that Portland veterans send a delegation to Washington to directly lobby senators and congressmen. Initially, the men were unconvinced and trusted their government to do the right thing. But in Washington, politicians from both parties saw the bonus bill as a license to print money without the backing of gold or bond issues. On May 6, 1932, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to permanently shelve the bonus bill. Four days later, Portland’s veterans agreed to send a delegation of 250 men under strict military discipline to the nation’s capital. That same day, they headed down to the rail yards to embark on their journey across the United States. ...

Meanwhile, in Texas, Florida, Maine, Michigan, California, and dozens of other states, thousands of veterans suffering through hard times had read about the Oregon marchers, and they, too, hit the road for the nation’s capital. By May 29, when Walter Waters and his men finally made it to Washington, more contingents were on their way, some as large as 1,500 men, with a few wives and children in tow as well.

From A Square Meal by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe

[gregraven]

Fiat forever

These statements were made during hearings of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941. Members of the Federal Reserve Board call themselves “Governors.” Governor Marriner Eccles was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at the time of these hearings.

Congressman Wright Patman: “How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars worth of Government securities in 1933?”

Governor Marriner Stoddard Eccles: “Out of the right to issue credit money.”

Congressman Wright Patman: “And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our Government’s credit?”

Governor Marriner Stoddard Eccles: “That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

Congressman Duncan Upshaw Fletcher: “Chairman Eccles, when do you think there is a possibility of returning to a free and open market, instead of this pegged and artificially controlled financial market we now have?”

Governor Marriner Stoddard Eccles: “Never, not in your lifetime or mine.”

[mike-jacque-c-the-world]

10/19/21 - Atlanta State Park, TX - We’re enjoying our stay in the woods by the lake. We’ve had great weather and as you can see, gorgeous sunsets as well. It’s also been a great location for hiking and cycling. All we need now is a pickle ball court and there would be no reason to leave.

[agentnico]

The Batman (2022) Review

For those of you doubting Robert Pattinson being cast as Batman, may I remind you that he has played a vampire before. Is it not therefore natural for a vampire to turn into a bat? I rest my case.

Plot: When the Riddler, a sadistic serial killer, begins murdering key political figures in Gotham, Batman is forced to investigate the city's hidden corruption and question his family's involvement.

Right, time to do some maths! So the current DC Extended Universe Batman is Ben Affleck (though rumoured to be leaving after The Flash), Michael Keaton is confirmed to be donning the suit once again for multiple DC films, Robert Pattinson is now flying in as Patman, the lovely charitable Keanu Reeves is voicing Batman is DC League of Super-Pets and I’m certain Will Arnett’s Lego Batman (he still counts!) is still out and about. So that’s what, 5 current Batmen? I don’t know what this means but what I do know is that this shows that Hollywood is out of original ideas. Regardless, Robert Pattinson is now Batman, and this one is promised to be even darker and more brooding than the previous versions. Eventually with every iteration trying to be darker in a couple of years we’ll be watching a Batman movie that is literally just a plain black image that stays on for 2-3 hours. Speaking of the runtime, The Batman is way too long. I don’t want to jump straight to a negative, but gosh is this movie too long. Running at 3 hours, and with most of the imagery being dark and plain one naturally gets bored. Yes, I said it, I got bored watching The Batman. Not through all of it, there are some genuinely good scenes and some of the cast performances are stellar, however for a lot of it I did notice myself checking my non-existent watch. Yes, I don’t have a watch, sue me! Who even has a watch these days? Ever heard of a phone? Tap the screen and you’ve got the time! Easy. That being said you shouldn’t be on your phone in the cinema as I don’t condone such behaviour. So what I’m saying is, I was bored and I couldn’t even check the time! Disastrous, I know. 

The Batman’s story is one that strips the superhero character to the basics. Yes, there is action, but at its heart the movie is a detective mystery, where Batman alongside Jeffrey Wright’s James Gordon follow Riddler’s clues to find him as well as discover secrets behind the corruption of Gotham. That is all well and okay, however the mystery and its solution are quite predictable. The reveals can all be seen from a mile away, so seeing Batman and Gordon take their sweet 3 hour time trying to work it out themselves is tedious and also proves that they both are terrible detectives and should reconsider their career choices. That being said, Bruce Wayne here really seems to love riddles, as whenever Riddler leaves him with yet another riddle, Bruce is like “yes, I know!! I know the answer to that!”. Alright mate, calm down, no one likes a show off. Then again, he must get bored walking around at night dressed as a bat. Guess solving riddles and puzzles adds some flair to his otherwise depressing life. I don’t know why I’m judging Bats so much, he’s actually one of the highlights of this film.

That’s right, Robert Pattinson makes for a good Batman. He’s reserved yet you can feel the anger behind the mask. He also does the voice well. But also Pattinson makes for a solid Bruce Wayne. You can feel Bruce’s tortured self reflect in his eyes, and you can really tell that this guy has missed a good few therapy sessions. Paul Dano as The Riddler is obviously great. Anyone who has seen the film Prisoners already knows that Dano can play creepy criminals well. He’s got that innocent everyday-guy face, however he can easily transform into a deranged maniac and do so successfully. He turns The Riddler into a truly scary presence, adapting the character more into a terrorist rather than a green suited gent with question marks on his outfits. Paul Dano is a stand out here and I love seeing him take these roles. Jeffrey Wright as Gordon was okay. Nothing against the guy, but his entire shtick here was to say every line with huge intensity as if he’s constantly constipated. Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman did Catwoman things, and Andy Serkis appears as Alfred and doesn’t do much. Kinda feels like he was only on set for a couple of days. Colin Farrell is unrecognisable as the Penguin, having received a similar face transformation to that of Jared Leto in House of Gucci and Gary Oldman in The Darkest Hour. Usually I see Farrell as a cast stand out, however in The Batman he’s, as Iron Man would say to Spider-Man “if you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”. For I feel outside of the Penguin fat-suit Colin Farrell doesn’t do anything special here. And lastly I wanted to mention John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, who feels like he walked straight out of The Godfather set, as he played the mob boss with eloquent charm, and I kept waiting for him to say “I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse”. He never did though. He never did. Shame.

Overall The Batman I think should be titled as A Batman. Not terrible, and has its moments, but overall I don’t think it adds much new to the Batman formula, and again, I must say, its too long. I kind of feel if it was shorter the negatives wouldn’t stand out so much to me, but 3 hours for this was too long. Also, the ending of the film is flat out silly. Following the serious realistic tone of the first two hours, the movie ends on a catastrophic event that in a nutshell doesn’t make sense. There’s this big thing that happens, and then in the next scene characters just act like nothing happened and that what occurred was an easy fix. Felt a tad stupid, however I cannot say more without spoilers. Anyway, enjoyable but forgettable. And here be lies my verdict.

Overall score: 6/10

[antoine-roquentin]

In 2009, when the world was falling apart, a lot of people were asking new President Barack Obama to turn to Paul Volcker, the tall and prestigious former central banker whose reputation was of near God-like stature.  Obama did, asking Volcker for advice. But Larry Summers, key advisor to Obama, sabotaged the relationship. Volcker encouraged Obama to stop banks from gambling with internal hedge funds, but Summers wanted banks to keep gambling with internal hedge funds. Summers won the bureaucratic fight.

Volcker’s titanic reputation was by then decades old. But so too was Volcker pursuing honesty in finance, and getting pushed out because of it. In 1986, Ronald Reagan essentially fired Volcker from his position as the head of the Federal Reserve because Paul Volcker was trying to crack down on the junk-bond fueled mergers craze that was clearly corrupting America’s savings and loan banks. Felix Rohatyn, a Democratic fixer and Lazard investment banker, pleaded with the Republicans, “if we sacrifice Paul Volcker for the junk-bond mania, we will clearly show the world that we’ve lost any sense of financial responsibility.”

Here’s a story from 1986, at the height of the frenzy.

Volcker lost the battle at the Fed, and ultimately Alan Greenspan, who was on the payroll of one of the largest corrupt savings and loan banks, took over. Volcker, in pursuing financial rectitude, had no allies except the ‘respect’ of the financial world, which, as it turns out, isn’t worth much at all. And the reason, ironically, is because Volcker killed his greatest would-be allies.

I first ran into Volcker’s career while researching Penn Central, the train system that went bankrupt in 1970 in the greatest then-collapse in American history. It was like the Enron of its time. The Nixon administration tasked the conservative Volcker with overseeing the fiasco, and he was a fairly honest broker. He tried, not very hard, to get a bailout, but when Congressman Wright Patman said no, that was that.

In 1979 Jimmy Carter nominated Volcker to be the head of the Fed. Carter's advisor warned him that Volcker was the "candidate of Wall Street." In an era of red-hot inflation, Volcker's goal was to cut the growth of prices, with the ultimate end of keeping the dollar strong globally. He had popular backing, Americans saw inflation as the most pressing economic problem. Volcker went straight at the auto sector, the unionized pace setting industry which set the informal wage growth patterns of the entire country since the 1950s.

His goal was to crush wages, straight out. To give you a sense of how strongly he felt about this goal, consider that during this period, from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Volcker walked around with a card of union wages in his pocket to remind himself that his goal was to crush the middle class. Volcker even angered Reagan officials by keeping interest rates too high for too long. When they complained, he would pull “out his card on union wages” and note that inflation would not come down permanently until labor “got the message and surrendered.” Volcker said that the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s was a "hall of mirrors" and that the "standard of living of the average American must decline."

Volcker was a deeply conservative, but not corrupt, official. I think the speech that best exemplifies how he thought was one he gave in 1981 before the Economic Club of New York, lauding the bankruptcy and turnaround of the city.

Five years ago, when I last addressed the Economic Club, the preoccupation of the day was the acute financial distress of this great City and State.  That big black headline in the Daily News—"Ford to New York: Drop Dead"—was not quite accurate.  But in its bold and brazen way, it did carry an essential message.  Any lasting solution to our economic problems would have to begin, and end at home.

A month or so ago, I was struck by another headline, this time in a Wall Street Journal editorial:  "The Supply Side Saves New York."  Somehow, in five years, New York had become an example for the rest of the country to follow.”

Volcker, in other words, was an ardent fan of austerity. And in his speech, he explicitly noted that New York City had no printing press to get out of the fiscal jam it had been in. That was, as Volcker put it, “fortunate.” Instead, the city had to slash expenditures, particularly on the poor. Volcker hoped that the America would take this lesson to heart nationally, and since he ran the printing press, that’s what he made sure happened. He also believed strongly in slashing taxes, government spending, and in deregulation, as he said to businessmen in Kansas City that year.

Volcker raised interest rates radically, crushing small businesses, farms, banks, and credit unions. To many of his fans, and even his opponents, this was simply what had to be done to get inflation out of the system. But there was a brief experiment, if forgotten, experiment in trying a different path, In the spring of 1980, Jimmy Carter encouraged Volcker not to raise interest rates, but to place “credit controls” onto consumer borrowing. Credit controls are direct public rules on specific lending institutions that make it more or less expensive to lend or borrow, and were a major mechanism to keep inflation out of the system during World War Two and the Korean War. And the Fed had the authority to make it more expensive for banks and financial institutions to issue credit cards and lend money to consumers.

Volcker used these tools incredibly poor, clumsily even, with some suspecting he was intending to sabotage the use of regulatory tools he didn’t like. Inflation collapsed, as did interest rates and the economy slid rapidly. Within a few months, Volcker and the bankers got rid of credit controls. Inflation and interest rates jumped right back up, and Volcker was able to discredit credit controls. He then inflicted massive pain on the middle class instead of the banking system by using interest rates and monetary policy, instead of explicitly telling big banks to stop lending.

At the same time as Volcker was destroying unions, small banks, small farms, and small businesses, he was structuring the Too Big to Fail model of finance. In 1980, Nelson and Bunker Hunt, two oil billionaire heirs, tried to corner the silver market in league with Arab interests. Volcker organized a bailout. By 1980, Wall Street had gotten the message. Economist Albert Wojnilower explained, “It is now everywhere taken for granted that no monetary authority will allow any key financial actor to fail."

In the middle of the 1980s, Volcker’s strategy looked like a success. Inflation was gone, the economy was growing, technology seemed to be restructuring society, and the workforce had largely been de-unionized. But there was a something of a mirage, as a bubble in financial leverage through savings and loan banks and junk bonds emerged. Volcker tried to crack down on this bubble, to block the use of junk bonds for certain kinds of seedy transactions. He knew a scumbag when he saw one, and the junk bond peddlers and M&A artists were scum. But by then, his allies against financial corruption, notably the small banks, small business, and unions, were dead or dying. So it was Paul Volcker and all his vaunted respect, versus an army on Wall Street.

There was no contest. The predatory bankers won, as they did again in 2009.

Towards the end of his life, Volcker railed against the corruption he saw everywhere. But he never connected the dots between his own actions destroying public institutions and the inability to constrain the financial corruption he despised. Many people in finance have fond memories of an incorruptible Paul Volcker standing up against financial corruption and reigning in inflation. Which is true. But Volcker really wasn't on the side of democracy, and that's why he oversaw nothing but decline.

I ran into Paul Volcker a few years ago at a conference when I was a Democratic Congressional staffer. He harangued me and said 'why are you Democrats so weak?' I wish I had responded, 'because you killed the unions.'

And that is the tragedy of Paul Volcker.

[etxtraveler]

Y'all, does Texas know how to do sunsets or what!?? Pictured is Lake Wright Patman in Domino, Texas which is in Cass County. Did you know? Cass County has nurtured a generous share of celebrities. Bessie Coleman, the famous first African-American pilot to earn her international flying license, was born in Atlanta. Jazz and Ragtime greats T-Bone Walker and Scott Joplin have roots in Linden, a town that has managed to consistently spawn nationally known musicians and lyricists throughout the years. Among them is Don Henley -- singer, songwriter, and committed environmentalist, who made his early reputation as founder and creative force behind The Eagles. 📸 Jo Duncan

[the-funtime-autocrat]

Can you give me any reason why you should not be in the penitentiary?

Wright Patman (1893-1976), Democratic Congressman from Texas (1929-1976), questioning then-Federal Reserve Chairman Arthur Burns (1970-78) in 1971 as Chair of the House Banking Committee.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Trump’s Tiktok two-step is a lesson for future presidents

I'm about to leave for a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me on Feb 14 in BOSTON for FREE at BOSKONE , and on Feb 15 for a virtual event with YANIS VAROUFAKIS. More tour dates here.

Remember the Tiktok ban? I know, it was ten million years ago (in Musk years, anyway), so it may have slipped your mind, but let me remind you: Congress passed a law saying Tiktok was banned. Trump said he wouldn't enforce the law. The end.

No, really. I mean, sure, there's a bunch of bullshit about whether Trump will pick up the ban again after Tiktok's grace period ends, depending on whether they sell themselves to his creepy wax museum pal Larry Ellison. Maybe he will. Maybe Tiktok'll buy so many trumpcoins that he forgets about. Whatevs.

The important thing here is: Congress passed a (stupid) law and Trump said, "I've decided not to enforce that law" and then that was it:

https://prospect.org/justice/2025-01-31-trump-administration-test-supreme-court-tiktok/

Sure, there's some big rule of law/checks and balances/separation of powers problems here, and there are plenty of laws I'm mad about Trump not enforcing (like the law that says corporations can't bribe foreign governments, say). But this one? Sure, it's fine. The problem with Tiktok is that it invades our privacy in creepy ways, not that it is owned by a Chinese company. I don't want Zuck or Musk or (especially) Trump invading my privacy.

Congress hasn't passed a consumer privacy law since 1988, when they banned video store clerks from telling newspapers about your VHS viewing habits. That's why Tiktok is a problem. Pass that law, and if any president decides not to enforce it, I'll be mad as hell and I'll be right there in the streets next to you, in head-to-toe CV dazzle, with all my distraction rectangles in Faraday pouches, shlepping a placard bearing the Social Security Numbers of every Cabinet member in giant writing.

But the point is, the president defied Congress, which is a thing that Very Serious Grownups told us radicals Joe Biden mustn't do under any circumstances, lest the resulting constitutional crisis tear the country apart, or, at the very least, alienate so many voters that Donald Trump would become the next president.

We let Very Serious Grownups call the shots, and Donald Trump is president. Maybe we should stop listening to Very Serious Grownups?

Look, presidents ignore Congress's laws all the time. The Comstock Act (which effectively bans transporting pornography and contraception) is almost entirely ignored, and has been for generations (though Trump's creepy Heritage Foundation puppetmasters have promised to bring it back). The Robinson-Patman Act hasn't been enforced since the Reagan years, which is a damned shame, because Robinson-Patman would put Walmart, Amazon, Dollartree and Dollar General out of business (Biden started to enforce Robinson-Patman again during his last year in office):

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities

I'm not trying to say that enforcing (or ignoring) the Comstock Act is the same as ignoring (or enforcing) the Robinson-Patman Act. The Comstock Act is bad, and the Robinson-Patman Act is good. I am capable of making that moral judgment, and I would like to have a president who does the same.

The fear about Trump ignoring the laws and procedures is justified, but not because of the damage he's doing to laws and procedures – it's because of the damage he's doing to the people of this country and the world.

Take the records that Trump has destroyed – vital data about public health and other subjects (thankfully, most of this was saved from destruction by the Internet Archive). The most important fact about that act of destruction is the harm that will result from it, not the failure to follow procedure.

There are plenty of times in which I am OK with people ignoring the law and destroying records. In 1943, Dutch guerrillas bombed the civil registry building in Amsterdam, to keep the records of where Jews and other disfavored minorities lived out of the hands of occupying Nazis. The firefighters on the scene kept their hoses running until any paper that hadn't been burned was reduced to slurry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_office_bombing

I'm fine with destroying records that wicked, vicious authoritarians would use to harm my neighbors.

Remember when Biden tried to cancel student debt? He could have started off by destroying the records of who owed what, so when the courts overturned his administrative action, it would have been hard or impossible to collect on the debts that were still held on federal books, or whose records the feds had (no, I'm not suggesting that Nazi death camp deportations are equivalent to unjust student debt collections, but if you agree that sometimes it's OK to illegally destroy records, then all we're left with is haggling over the specifics).

Sure, this would have been a constitutional crisis, but, as Ryan Grim says, "It is apparently unconstitutional for the president to instruct the Department of Education to restructure and forgive some student loan debt but it is ok for DOGE chair Elon Musk to just get rid of the whole department. Anywho."

https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1888973174819164663?t=Cd8fl4FWjY5zsOlQWZGv4g

Canceling debt isn't forgiving debt. Student borrowers have been preyed upon by colleges and lenders. People who borrowed $79.000 and paid back $190,000 can somehow still owe $236,000 do not need to be forgiven, because (unlike Trump) they haven't sinned. Rather, their debts need to be canceled (like Trump):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

Trump's shown us what a president should do when the courts get in their way: fight back. Worst case scenario is the court prevails, and a bunch of Fedsoc judges (up to and including the Supreme Court) set binding precedent that reduces the power of the president, which would be, you know, great. Best case scenario: Americans are freed from these crippling, fraudulent debts and, you know, vote for Democrats and against Trump, instead of staying home because they don't feel like the Democrats have their back.

Defying unjust court decisions isn't Trumpian – it's Rooseveltian. Roosevelt (following in Lincoln's footsteps) spent years discrediting and weakening the Supreme Court's power, using his bully pulpit to rob them of authority and build the political will to pack the court, which he was on the brink of doing when the Supreme Court surrendered:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/20/judicial-equilibria/#pack-the-court

Democrats developed an online organizing playbook, and it worked, so Republicans took it, improved on it, and won elections. Republicans have developed a devastatingly effective constitutional hardball playbook. Democrats should steal that playbook and run with it:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/18/states-rights/#cold-civil-war

I rang doorbells, made phone calls, and shelled out money for Democrats in the last cycle because I wanted them to do stuff that helps Americans, not because I wanted them to follow procedures. The fact that Trump is building offshore concentration camps and has deported our neighbors to them (to name just one of many cheap dystopian fanfics that Trump is LARPing) should be the kind of five-alarm fire that sent South Korean lawmakers scaling the barricades last month.

This is the kind of crisis where I'd expect Democrats on the Hill, at a minimum, to be refusing to give Trump and the GOP anything. Call quorum on every vote. Debate every amendment. Raise every objection. Vote against everyting. Do not confirm a single appointee. And any elected Dem that refuses to play along? Kick 'em out of the caucus. Oh, we can't afford to do that because we can't afford to lose a single lawmaker? How did that work out with Kirsten Synema and Joe Manchin? Shoulda kicked them out after the first vote, shoulda raised money for any real Dem willing to primary them. Should have shunned them in the hallways and refused to invite them to the Christmas parties. We should do that to Fetterman. Party unity got us nothing under Biden. Party unity got us Trump. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome isn't actually the formal definition of insanity, but it is nevertheless very, very stupid.

For the past four years, Very Serious Grownups in the Democratic machine kept telling us that we couldn't expect the president to do anything, or Congress to do anything, or the Senate to do anything, because the Republicans would stop them. Or the courts would stop them. Why fight when you know you're gonna lose? Because sometimes, you'll win. And even if you lose, you'll go down fighting.

Better yet, if you lose in just the right way, you'll force Trump's judges to take away powers from the President and the administrative agencies – take away the powers Trump is now wielding like a sledgehammer.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/11/you-and-what-army/#student-debt

[fishing-exposed]

@KevinRogersFish: 16.04 has me in 38th..... Wright Patman is showing off (have to put them in the boat tomorrow)! . . . #tnpfl #texas #texasbassfishing #fishing #thebasstank #aftcofreshwater https://t.co/YjoRNGx68y

[gregraven]

“The dollar represents a one dollar debt to the Federal Reserve System. The Federal Reserve Banks create money out of thin air to buy Government Bonds from the U.S. Treasury … and has created out of nothing a … debt which the American people are obliged to pay with interest.”

[etxtraveler]

Just living the good life at Lake Wright Patman just outside Atlanta & Texarkana, Texas. 📸Karen Rogers (karenrogersphotos).

[itunesbooks]

The Study of The Federal Reserve and Its Secrets - Eustace Clarence Mullins

The Study of The Federal Reserve and Its Secrets Eustace Clarence Mullins Genre: Law Price: $1.99 Publish Date: April 24, 2013 Publisher: Start Publishing LLC Seller: SIMON AND SCHUSTER DIGITAL SALES INC In the fall of 1949 I went to the Library of Congress to get material for a newspaper article about the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. What I expected to be a week's labor turned into a lengthy research job of nineteen months, for I discovered, in my initial inquiry, that there existed not one narrative account of the origins and activities of this powerful organization. The standard works on the Federal Reserve System, almost entirely abstruse and technical works on economics, I found of little practical value. Even in the matter of acceptances, the usual textbooks contained no information upon such an important item in America's economic history as the changeover from the open-book system of credit to the acceptance system, which has wrought such vast changes in our practice of commerce, and for this information I found only one source, a few pamphlets published by the American Acceptance Council from 1915 to 1928. It is, then, little wonder that the student with a Master's Degree in Economics from one of the better universities will see here for the first time material which should have been before him in his elementary courses." Eustace Clarence Mullins, Jr was a populist American political writer and biographer. His most famous and influential work is The Secrets of The Federal Reserve, described by congressman Wright Patman as 'a very fine book [which] has been very useful to me'. He is generally regarded as one of the most influential authors in the genre of conspiracism. http://bit.ly/2EZezj9