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FEC’s Spineless ‘Compromise’ Proposal Leaves U.S. Elections Vulnerable
This week, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) released a draft of a proposed ‘interpretive rule’ in response to Public Citizen’s petition for rulemaking on artificial intelligence and campaign ads.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:
“With deepfakes impacting elections around the world and increasingly popping up in the U.S. election cycle, the FEC should be working actively to deter deceptive political deepfakes. Instead, the FEC is prepared to punt on a simple request to issue a rule clarifying that existing law prohibits the use of fraudulent deepfakes.
“The FEC’s “fraudulent misrepresentation” authority applies exactly to deepfakes that show candidates doing or saying things they did not, as Public Citizen explained in detail in comments to the FEC. By falsely putting words into another candidate’s mouth, or showing the candidate taking action they did not, the deceptive deepfaker fraudulently speaks or act “for” that candidate in a way deliberately intended to damage him or her. This is precisely what the statute aims to proscribe.
“Equipped with this authority, the FEC should issue a rule to send a clear message to all candidates and campaigns that deceptive and fraudulent deepfakes violate the law.
“But the anemic FEC seems to have forgotten its purpose and mission, or perhaps its spine. The FEC’s new proposed “interpretive rule” simply says that fraudulent misrepresentation law applies no matter what technology is used. That’s a resolution of a question that was never in doubt.
“All that said, political deepfakes distributed by candidates and campaigns do violate the statutory prohibition on fraudulent misrepresentation. And the compromise proposal from the FEC at least leaves the question open. When appropriate examples manifest, Public Citizen will ask the FEC to do what it already should have done, which is to find them in violation of the law.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Kroger Posts Massive Profits Amid Price Gouging Outcry and Merger Push
Kroger executives have "proven they'll take advantage of their customers to bolster their profits," said watchdog Accountable.US.
Sep 12, 2024
Grocery giant Kroger's practice of price gouging in order to pass on its "inflation to consumers," as one executive recently said, has paid off for the $37 billion company, according to its quarterly earnings posted on Thursday.
The company, which is facing a legal challenge from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over its proposed acquisition of rival store Albertsons, reported that it earned $466 million in the second quarter of 2024, with year-to-date earnings of $1.4 billion—nearly double the amount it earned last year.
The government watchdog Accountable.US accused Kroger of profiting off "rising costs" for families across the United States—ones that are caused not by inflation but by "greedflation": the practice of purposely keeping prices high to increase profits, even though higher labor costs and supply chain woes from the coronavirus pandemic era have subsided.
"Should consumers pay the price for corporate greed?" said the group.
The Biden administration is working to block Kroger's proposed merger with Albertsons, which the FTC says would result in "a straight-up monopoly" in some communities where Albertsons stores would likely close.
The FTC has raised concerns both about how the merger would raise prices at stores whose owners already engage in price gouging and would no longer have to compete with Albertsons, and about likely job losses for many employees. In two counties in Southern California, for example, 115 out of 159 Albertsons stores are located within two miles of a Kroger, raising concerns among unionized workers that their stores could be seen as "redundant" after the potential merger.
"Corporate price gouging has cost consumers enough, yet Kroger wants to make matters worse by cornering the market to maximize profits."
Accountable.US said Thursday that the merger could cost $334 million in wages for nearly 1 million grocery workers.
"The Biden-Harris administration is putting American families first by challenging the ill-advised merger between Kroger and Albertsons," said Liz Zelick, director of the group's Economic Security and Corporate Power Program. "Corporate price gouging has cost consumers enough, yet Kroger wants to make matters worse by cornering the market to maximize profits. Make no mistake: If the merger goes through, it will leave many families worse off with higher prices and fewer store locations."
Late last month, Kroger's senior director of pricing, Andy Groff, told an FTC attorney during questioning that the grocery chain had raised the prices of milk and eggs above the rate of inflation.
The company has also used "dynamic pricing" in some of its stores for years—changing prices throughout the day—and has partnered with an artificial intelligence company to develop software that could tailor the cost of products to individual shoppers by collecting their personal data.
While reporting a massive financial windfall, said Accountable, Kroger executives have "proven they'll take advantage of their customers to bolster their profits."
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As Steward CEO Defies Subpoena, Nurses Testify to Horrors of Private Equity Hospitals
The "courage" of healthcare workers, said Sen. Ed Markey, was "matched only by Dr. de la Torre's cowardice."
Sep 12, 2024
The obscenely rich CEO of Steward Health Care, a for-profit network formed with private equity backing, violated a subpoena on Thursday by declining to testify at a Senate hearing on how mismanagement of the now-bankrupt hospital system harmed patient care.
But in Ralph de la Torre's absence, members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee did hear from nurses who witnessed firsthand how Steward's prioritization of shareholder payouts and lavish executive compensation left its hospitals in dire straights, with badly insufficient staffing and resources.
Ellen MacInnis, a longtime nurse at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston, said in response to a question from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) that hospital conditions are "noticeably different" under private equity ownership.
"After Steward took over," said MacInnis, the hospital began "violating agreements" it made with nurses and "laid off all the nursing assistants on our maternity floors."
When Murphy said that "the purpose" of hospitals under Steward's ownership was apparently to "make the owners filthy rich," MacInnis responded, "Yes, absolutely."
Earlier in her testimony, MacInnis offered what she described as an "egregious and appalling example" of the incompetence and cruelty of Steward's management: "The failure of Steward to ensure a supply of bereavement boxes, which are the cases used to carry the remains of deceased newborns to the morgue."
"Instead, staff were expected to transport these remains in banker's and shipping boxes," said MacInnis. "To compensate for this indignity it was left to our own nurses to go online and purchase appropriate containers on Amazon."
The "most tragic example," MacInnis said, was the death of a 39-year-old mother "simply because the embolism coil that would have saved her life had been repossessed by another unpaid vender."
Watch the full hearing:
Steward has faced close scrutiny from lawmakers since it filed for bankruptcy in May after de la Torre and his private equity partners raked in massive sums of cash—making the for-profit network a stark example of private equity's parasitic impact on the U.S. healthcare system.
The Senate HELP Committee, led by progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), voted to subpoena de la Torre in late July after he refused to voluntarily appear before lawmakers.
The Steward CEO's defiance of the panel's subpoena led Sanders to announce Thursday that he "will be asking the committee to report a resolution to authorize civil enforcement and criminal contempt proceedings against Dr. de la Torre requiring compliance with the subpoena."
A hearing on the proposed contempt resolution is scheduled for next week.
"There's no incentive for a for-profit company that's looking to get every dime out of the hospital and all the services to add more nurses."
As The American Prospect's Maureen Tkacik noted last week, Steward "entered bankruptcy with $8 billion in debt while its CEO siphoned out more than a quarter-billion dollars and blew most of it on an epic midlife crisis, featuring a new wife 29 years his junior, a 500-acre ranch for her prizewinning racehorses, a $77,000-a-month detail for her security while traveling between the couple’s far-flung mansions, an Amalfi Coast wedding choreographed by Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton’s wedding planner, and not one but two yachts."
Just ahead of Thursday's hearing, The Wall Street Journalreported that Steward paid out $790 million in dividends to shareholders years before filing for bankruptcy. Much of the $790 million went to the private equity giant Cerberus, which owned Steward between 2010 and 2020.
Nurses' testimony at Thursday's hearing made clear that such avarice came at the expense of healthcare workers and patients.
"There's no incentive for a for-profit company that's looking to get every dime out of the hospital and all the services to add more nurses," Audra Sprague, a former nurse at the newly shuttered Nashoba Valley Medical Center, told the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee during Thursday's hearing.
"They don't care how your day is," Sprague continued. "They're not there to actually help patients, they're there to make money."
After the hearing adjourned, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) held a press conference alongside nurses and other advocates in front of the U.S. Capitol Building.
I’m live in front of the US Capitol after Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre failed to testify at this morning’s Senate HELP Committee. He violated a legal order to appear and must be made accountable. Join us: https://t.co/GThvXuYfFv
— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) September 12, 2024
Markey, a vocal critic of Steward, applauded the bravery of healthcare workers fighting for their patients in the face of private equity greed.
"Their courage," said the Massachusetts senator, "is matched only by Dr. de la Torre's cowardice."
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Biden Urged to 'Follow the Facts' as Study Shows LNG Emissions 33% Worse Than Coal
"The science is clearer than ever: LNG exports and natural gas-sourced hydrogen pose grave risks to our planet and will undermine President Biden's own climate goals," said one campaigner.
Sep 12, 2024
More than 125 climate, environmental, and health scientists and researchers on Thursday implored the Biden administration to "follow legitimate science and reject the expansion of fossil fuel programs," pointing to a new study showing liquefied natural gas has a 33% greater greenhouse gas footprint than coal.
"As U.S. scientists and researchers we are closely following efforts by the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Treasury to develop greenhouse gas analyses of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and hydrogen, and implore you to use the best available science when conducting this analysis," the scientists wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
"The stakes could not be higher," the letter asserts. "The choices that you make relating to modeling assumptions for the heat-trapping potential of natural gas will determine if the federal government will make decisions based on climate science or wishful thinking."
The scientists continued:
The main constituent in natural gas is methane, a powerful climate-disrupting pollutant that traps more than 80 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide over 20 years, the relevant timeframe in which we must act. We agree with President [Joe] Biden's declaration to world leaders that this is the decisive decade. As the climate crisis becomes more urgent, we are rapidly approaching planetary thresholds that, once breached, cannot be reversed.
The fossil fuel industry wants you to distort the scientific evidence and asserts, falsely, that decisions to expand natural gas production and consumption are consistent with U.S. and global climate goals. They are advocating for flawed modeling assumptions that would hide the true climate impact of gas. It is imperative that the Departments of Energy and Treasury reject these efforts.
The letter's signers cite a study published this month by Cornell University climate scientist Robert Howarth which—when properly accounting for LNG's full life cycle, including extraction, liquefaction, transportation, and end-source combustion—found that the fracked gas has a 33% greater greenhouse emissions impact than coal.
"An abundance of scientific evidence now shows that natural gas is at least as damaging to the climate as coal and may be worse due to inevitable leaks and disproves the claim that natural gas can serve as a 'bridge fuel' while renewable energy sources ramp up," the scientists wrote.
Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch, said in a statement that "the science is clearer than ever: LNG exports and natural gas-sourced hydrogen pose grave risks to our planet and will undermine President Biden's own climate goals."
"This administration must ignore industry propaganda, follow legitimate science, and reject the expansion of fossil fuel programs like LNG exports and gas-sourced hydrogen," Walsh added.
Noting that "over 20 years, methane is a far more powerful climate villain than ever previously appreciated," Science & Environmental Health Network senior scientist Sandra Steingraber said that "methane is the Houdini of greenhouse gasses, escaping into the atmosphere from all parts of the natural gas system at a pace that far exceeds earlier estimates."
"Taken together, these findings mean that the stakes for the modeling assumptions chosen for estimating the climate impacts of LNG and hydrogen fuels could not be higher," Steingraber stressed. "It's imperative that our Departments of Energy and Treasury base their climate modeling assumptions on the abundance of scientific evidence and not the distorted claims and wishful thinking of the fossil fuel industry."
Despite campaign pledges to center climate action—including by banning new fossil fuel drilling on public lands—Biden oversaw the approval of more new permits for drilling on public land during his first two years in office than former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee, did in 2017 and 2018.
The Biden administration has also held fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and has approved the highly controversial Willow project and Mountain Valley Pipeline. Biden also increased liquefied natural gas production and export before pausing LNG exports earlier this year.
Despite the pause—which activists are calling on the Biden administration to make permanent—the president has also overseen what climate defenders have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects that, if all completed, would make U.S. exported LNG emissions higher than the European Union's combined greenhouse gas footprint.
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