Senate Confirms Bedoya To FTC, Establishing Democratic Majority (theverge.com) 55
The Senate has voted to confirm privacy expert Alvaro Bedoya to the Federal Trade Commission. The confirmation secures a Democratic voting majority at the agency tasked by the Biden administration with investigating big tech companies like Facebook and Google over potential data privacy and competition violations. The Verge adds: Vice President Kamala Harris voted to break a 50-50 tie on the Senate floor to finalize Bedoya's confirmation. Bedoya will replace former Commissioner Rohit Chopra who left the FTC last year to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Before his confirmation, Bedoya was a Georgetown law professor with a focus on privacy law, founding the university's Center on Privacy and Technology in 2014. In his academic career, Bedoya explored the disproportionate effects of surveillance on minority groups, particularly regarding facial recognition technology.
Re:Yay, more Bidenista stranglehold (Score:4, Informative)
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Biden is not senile. He is brain-damaged. Literally. He had two operations for brain aneurysms. He's not running on all cylinders.
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The only good thing about Biden, and the only reason he was elected, is that he isn't Donald Trump.
Re: Yay, more Bidenista stranglehold (Score:4, Insightful)
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Moderates? That would be people like (scroll down halfway) Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Mike Gravel, Elizabeth Warren, Bill de Blasio, and maybe also Paul Ryan and Marianne Williamson [politicalcompass.org]. Certainly not Biden, he's far-right, at least according to the rest of the world.
This is a trick the American right wing (Score:1, Troll)
And don't forget when it comes to a miscarriage doctors can't tell the difference and prosecutors don't care.
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The political scale in the US is completely screwed up. By European standards Biden is a conservative. He's actually a bit further right than many European conservative politicians. Sanders and AOC are a little left of centre in some areas, but considered centrists at most because they still tend to frame everything within the existing conservative framework.
I don't mean to be insulting, but most of you guys have no idea what the left is. The left side of the scale is basically a single point, that encompas
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No. Actually I have a decent idea of what constitutes Left and Right in Europe.
At one point, the differentiation was a lot closer than it used to be.
But in the last 20 years or so, the American Left has run right off the deep end.
So badly so, you'd swear that people who were politically moderate just 10 years ago were "Far Right".
Again, 20 years ago, Bernie was Far Left. If you look at the sliding scale now, you'd think he was a Near Right centrist.
Worse, we now have a strain of "at any cost" types who si
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Dear fucking piece of shit: as I said in a post above, Bernie's not far to the left of LBJ. Meanwhile, the GOP would find themselves perfectly at home with the Democrats of 1856 (yes, pre-Civil War).
Winner-take-all first past the post (Score:1)
Your best bet for real change is to vote in primary elections. Especially in mid-term primary elections where voter turnout is so low that your vote has a lot more power. This is especially important if you're a city voter in America because our system gives an outsized amount of power to rural voters.
All that said, the Republican party is talkin
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his is especially important if you're a city voter in America because our system gives an outsized amount of power to rural voters.
I only want to mention that this sounds nefarious, or conspiratorial, as stated. It's done to protect the minority from the majority. It mitigates a legitimate problem. I do, however, agree with your point.
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You have that without the Electoral College, it's called the Senate. One of them needs reform, the EC makes a lot more sense, it only affects the President. All the other Congresspeople and Senators are elected via state popular vote, why not the one Federal position we appoint?
Not exactly (Score:2)
Also, how much sense does it make that a minority gets to tell the majority what to do?
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>"complaint is with winner-take-all first pass to post voting. That inevitably creates a two-party system."
Correct.
>"Your best bet for real change is to vote in primary elections."
That HELPS, but real change will only come when we stop using the "winner-take-all first past the post system". And it is possible.
https://fairvote.org/ [fairvote.org]
>"All that said, the Republican party is talking about banning condoms and making women who seek birth control and abortions face homicide charges. "
Um no. A very, very
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>This is especially important if you're a city voter in America because our system gives an outsized amount of power to rural voters.
You seem to have misspelled "because our system doesn't allow the entire country to be ruled by 5 cities". There was an entire book and movie series about why having a whole continent ruled by a corrupt, wealthy, urban elite was a bad thing. It was called The Hunger Games. Maybe you've heard of it.
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"Moderates"? Who are those? You mean people to the right of St. Ronnie of Raygun? Bernie isn't much more to the left than LBJ.
But you've been so friggin' brainwashed you think that fascism is "conservative". Hint: the Canadian conservatives are to the left of at least half of the Dems.
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“Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor
and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good
genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton
School of Finance, very good, very smart —you know, if
you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if,
like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m
one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s
true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they
try—oh, do they d
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oh, have the sanctions stopped the war in Ukraine? Who is most hurt by the sanctions? (hint: dozens of countries, Russia produces fuel, food and minerals the world wants, and they'll just sell to the East and elsewhere if Europe and USA don't buy)
Figures a low watt bulb like you would imagine Joe is accomplishing anything.
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No different than four years ago when you parroted "Orange Man Bad" mindlessly. And you know you did. For that matter, most of your sort still do.
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It's sort of different, and people still complain about him now as even new more crazy stuff comes out about him:
https://www.vanityfair.com/new... [vanityfair.com] His great idea to bomb Mexico and blame someone else
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com] Taking secret documents to his holiday house
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0... [nytimes.com] Attempting to overturn an election he lost
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0... [nytimes.com] Maybe you can ask Kevin McCarthy or Mitch McConnell what they really thought of Trump
But I'm sure all criticism against him i
Re: Yay, more Bidenista stranglehold (Score:3)
He was bad, what else were we to say? Saying orange racist misogynistic homophobe bad does not flow. Had to call a spade a spade even at the risk of being told we are calling a spade a spade.
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Apparently, "Orange Man Bad" wasn't simple enough for you to understand the fact of the message. Most people saying that are NOT parroting; it is so incredible to think that most the world are sheep because of broad agreement on a no-brainer judgement call.
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This from the group that bought up all the horse de-wormer.
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My God, You are an F-ing idiot. Just look at Biden. He is 110% senile.
And yes "We do have an adult in the White House. The one in adult diapers!"
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Yeah, I'm going to listen to an old white man's posting who does not grasp % or does not understand senility and who thinks it is funny to point out that adult diapers have something to do with mental competence.
That after Dementia Don fails a basic mental health test by not comprehending it's purpose. 1000s of psychologists risk professional sanctions to go on record on the unfit state of mind of the loser and I've not heard any take a similar risk on a Biden diagnosis.
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Racist
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The American system is stupid and antiquated, but that is a pretty fundamental principle in every democracy.
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Better than trumptards that would continue to loot the country.
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Your trolling is weak, but you raise a wrong point some might miss.
> Say goodbye to the free Internet
This was an appointment to the FTC.
The appointment to the FCC, which is more apropos of the Internet, is Gigi Sohn. And that is being slow-walked by pretty much all parties involved. Not to mention being lied about by a bunch of telecom proxy groups. (Look up Gigi Sohn on Techdirt for more details.)
> now that the Democrats can push whatever regulations they want through.
Would that be like how
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Disney exercises their freedom of speech and the party of limited government changes the laws to punitively punish them. I hope all the property owners in the area enjoy paying off the $1 billion debt they now own.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/2... [cnbc.com]
Gotta pwn those libs even if it bankrupts you.
Net neutrality (Score:4, Interesting)
From a practical standpoint this means that while the Democrats are in charge we get net neutrality regulations and while the Republicans are in charge those regulations are removed and we have to count on the free market and competition among internet service providers to protect our access to information on the internet.
So the question you need to ask yourself is how many different internet service providers are in your neighborhood and how much do they compete with each other?
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>"So the question you need to ask yourself is how many different internet service providers are in your neighborhood and how much do they compete with each other?"
In my super-blue city? One. And that is a function of government cronyism; it is not a partisan issue. If you don't believe me, then all you have to do is look at the party area of the locality affected and you will quickly discover that there are ISP monopolies or near monopolies in just about every area. The big cable companies come in an
How secure is he this position? (Score:2)
Bureaucratic appointments can't all be reversed easily by the next president. DeJoy, for example, the Postmaster General, can only be replaced by the USPS Board of Governors, which requires changing the board of governors first. This requires senate confirmation, a painfully slow process which is crawling along - Biden's two nominees to that postal governors board appeared before a Senate committee last month. I wonder if this FTC appointment will be as difficult for the next Republican president to undo.
Democrat != Democratic (Score:1)
Totally makes sense (Score:2)
"agency tasked by the Biden administration with investigating big tech companies like Facebook and Google over potential data privacy and competition violations." Totally makes sense.
"Bedoya explored the disproportionate effects of surveillance on minority groups, particularly regarding facial recognition technology." Excellent work.
In a Tuesday floor speech, McConnell said, “He is an essentially foolish choice.” Couldn't say what was foolish about it?
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He had the audacity to not be picked by a Republican.
FTC, ESG, M-O-N-E-Y (Score:2)
Look for the FTC to now harass companies about hallucinated effects on climate change, or inadequate women or transes on boards.