Matt Stoller's been telling us that judges don't get antitrust law right anymore, and he describes a perfect example, a Third Circuit panel's 2017 ruling in Valspar Corp. v. E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co. Confronted with a fairly obvious case of corporate collusion on price-fixing, the panel voted 2-1 to dismiss the case before it even went to a jury, all because economists created "models" showing that "in a concentrated industry," corporations can "raise prices in concert due to a conspiracy...or just because it was easy for them to tacitly collude by watching each other change pricing and announce things publicly." And the Ninth Circuit protected chip-makers (remember them?) from a similar lawsuit in a similar manner this week. The good news? Lax judging has prompted big corporate executives to be even more open about their price-fixing, and sooner or later one of them's going to run into a federal judge who's had enough of this shit.
When I hear that President Biden just doesn't "get" Kyrsten Sinema, my first impulse is to say maybe there's nothing there to get! The short answer to "why does she say/do the things she says/does?" is "power." The longer answer is "she's sabotaging everything she can now so Democrats lose Congress and cling to her more desperately when she's up again in 2024." I know this because I saw George W. Bush employ this stratagem for eight years, which fact, admittedly, doesn't explain why Joe Biden doesn't get it. In any case, Sen. Sinema has no galaxy brain scheme to somehow lower drug prices without letting Medicare negotiate for lower drug prices; she has a "plan" to make herself "indispensable," though her planning is actually still rooted in the late 2000s. Meanwhile, here in 2022, even our "liberal" media don't rub the belly of "bipartisanship" like they did back then.
Herschel Walker, currently the front-runner for the Georgia Senate nomination, questions the explanatory power of evolution: "At one time, science said man came from apes. Did it not?" THEN WHY DO I STILL SEEZ TEH APEZ HA HA HA! We can answer his question simply: no, science did not say that! It said chimpanzees and humans have a common ancestor. I watched Herschel Walker a lot toward the end of his playing career, and I never saw a football player work harder -- I still tell people the story of how he helped a Giants teammate return a kickoff for a TD in 1995 by throwing two crushing blocks 80 yards apart. Needless to say, he's pissing away all that good will now. (Oh, and by the way, after this ad from primary rival Gary Black, he may not be the front-runner anymore. If Mr. Black trims a minute and a half from that ad, he'll have weapons-grade PR.)
Again our "liberal" media think that Donald Trump is "staring at resounding rejection in GOP primaries" this spring! Or, since he's not stupid, he's fomenting this endorsement drama, because he knows that endorsement matters most after the primary anyway, just like it did in Virginia. Why, he's contemplating pulling his endorsement of Rep. Mo Brooks in the Alabama Senate race, not because Mr. Brooks has "changed," as he says, but because Mr. Brooks might not even make a runoff! Now, could it be that since Mr. Trump has already endorsed in five high-profile races in May and June, that he'll look bad if they all lose? Not to his votaries he won't! They'll just accept whatever swill he peddles next -- Pat McCrory and Nancy Mace may be his enemies today, but for Donald Trump, tomorrow is always another country.
Speaking of Republican primaries, current Ohio Senate front-runner (really?) Mike Gibbons has said a bunch of stupid racist crap about Asians, even going so far as to cite The Bell Curve, the Bible of late 20th century "scientific" racism! And yet I'm not sure this will be a problem for Mr. Gibbons, either in the primary or the general. I mean, I'd prefer that it was, and if it weren't, it would be quite the reversal from the 2016 Senate race, when Democratic Senate candidate Ted Strickland distributed fortune cookies saying something about Rob Portman being China's best Senator, and then Mr. Portman buried him by over 20 points. Something else happened that day, a thing that made obnoxious racism acceptable again; I wish I could remember what it was.
Finally, Sen. Joe "the Penguin" Manchin (D?-WV) says electric cars would be a bad idea, because, and I quote, "I’m old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 trying to buy gas...I don’t want to have to be standing in line waiting for a battery for my vehicle, because we’re now dependent on a foreign supply chain, mostly China." Those of us who do not routinely wait in line for a car battery may not be able to relate, and I almost skipped over the fact that he uses an anecdote about waiting in line to fill a car with fossil fuels as if that's a reason to favor filling a car with fossil fuels. And while I have long argued against "free" trade, I do get sick of hearing "China" brandished as a scare word. Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph forget it, it's Joe Manchin.
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