Good morning everyone! Keep your hands clean and your eyes peeled: it’s news time.
The Senate voted to continue allowing the government to keep tracks of what you do online: without a warrant, to boot. While many senators wanted to end the practice, the amendment that would have done so failed to pass—by just one vote.
Biden and Sanders are working together on six unity task forces: which will be aimed at exploring “possible policy initiatives,” ranging from climate change to the economy.
Bill Gates is exploring ways to encourage other rich people to use their money for good: which sure sounds nice but leaves us wondering: why not just tax them more?
No quips today: we’re hitting the news highway. Let’s take a look.
CONGRESS
The Senate Allows Government to Continue Looking at What You Do Online
The Patriot Act. Since its inception, it’s been a controversial piece of legislation that has seemingly bent the rules in what kind of surveillance the government is allowed to engage in. There is currently no provision in the act—meaning, there’s nothing stopping the government from doing it—that prevents them from collecting internet browsing history from a secret court. The Senate just voted on an amendment that would have expressly prohibited that, but it failed to pass by just one vote.
Enhanced Government Powers
The Patriot Act was a response to 9/11 and has been around since 2001. The act was a vehicle for huge expansions in government surveillance, many of the practices it allowed for became newly infamous in 2013, when NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the extent of what was going on to the world.
Part of this allows the government to get an order from a secret court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to look at someone’s internet history or phone records, which has little oversight and has been a system subject to abuse.
The USA Freedom Act was created in 2015 and was meant to reform some of these issues. In March, the bill hit the House, which passed the bill with some reforms including forbidding the warrantless collection of phone records.
An amendment was proposed in the Senate which would have also prevented warrantless collection of internet browsing and search history.
59 Senators voted in favor of this amendment, meaning it failed by one vote. Nine Democrats sided with Mitch McConnell in killing this reform. What’s even more infuriating: Bernie Sanders was a no-show and did not vote.
Government Spying is Bad News
Aside from being a risk to everyday Americans, it’s also subject to being a political tool. Mitch McConnell is a big fan of this for a reason, as he knows it allows Bill Barr and the Department of Justice to secretly investigate Donald Trump’s enemies.
It’s also just kinda messed up. Warrants exist for a reason. Creating a system to bypass that, which is largely abused and not used for its original purpose, is wrong.
Bottom line: privacy is important to us and we’re sure it is to you, too. What Snowden did was brave and whistleblowing like that is sometimes the only way to keep the government accountable. Unfortunately, it’s for nothing if we can’t get our representatives to alter the systems that were being abused in the first place.
ELECTION 2020
Bernie and Biden Create Task Forces to Push Policy
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. They seem to represent the two sides of ideologies that are battling it out within the Democratic party right now, and with Biden on track to possibly take the presidency, a lot of progressives are looking for their voices to be heard. Now, the two have created six task forces to help define policy positions for a potential upcoming Democratic administration.
What’s it Look Like?
There are six task forces aimed at six initiatives, focusing on climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, education, healthcare, and immigration policy.
Admittedly, there are some big progressive heavy hitters here: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Walker, Sara Nelson, Stephanie Kelton, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Pramila Jayapal, and many more.
There are also a ton of Biden picks and one criticism already levied is that when each task force has eight members and five of them are in favor of Biden, how much compromise is really going to go down?
Whether you’re feeling optimistic or not about whether this is a true concession or just an empty promise, it’s clear that the Biden campaign is trying to appeal to progressives.
Bottom line: if we had a wishlist for this kind of initiative, some of these names would certainly be on there. There are also many names missing and of course, it’s unclear just how effective this will even be.
BILLIONAIRES
Bill Gates Wants Billionaires to Do More. We Wanna Tax Him.
photo credit: Greg Rubenstein
Bill Gates. He’s rich as hell and has done some pretty notably good things during this whole pandemic, including building factories for future vaccines and pushing to expand testing worldwide. He’s also quietly trying to push fellow billionaires to put more of their money to use right now. We say: thanks, Bill, but how about we just tax you instead?
The Giving Pledge
The Giving Pledge was created over a decade ago by Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, then signed by some of the richest people in the world, promising to give away at least half of their wealth to charity. The results: 209 billionaires who are estimated to donate at least $500 billion to charity.
It may seem like an inherently good thing, but the Giving Pledge has no mechanism for enforcement, many may not do so until towards the end of their lifetimes or even in their wills, and the evidence that it has boosted giving is pretty weak.
Billionaire philanthropy is never going to get us Medicare for All. It’s never going to result in adequate public transit or the decommodification of housing. As nice of an idea as it is, that the goodwill of the incredibly wealthy will lead to them guiding society in positive ways, many of them are simply out of touch with the needs and desires of regular folks. We need systemic change, not a handout from our capitalist overlords.
Bottom line: sometimes it feels like this kinda shtick boils down to a “please consider not eating the rich” campaign. Gates may not be an awful person (we’ll leave that designation to Jeff Bezos), but c’mon man, you still have too much money.
END OF THE LINE...
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The Bread Line
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