Death to private equity!

The article I'm quoting from is just one in an issue of Mother Jones largely devoted to explicating p. equity's foulness.

If you were to sit down with a focus group and a whiteboard, you would have a hard time coming up with a policy with less populist appeal than the nearly three-decades-old loophole that cuts private equity billionaires’ tax rate almost in half.

The carried-interest loophole, Barack Obama said, upset “the balance between work and wealth.” Donald Trump claimed the fund managers who availed themselves of this tax break were “getting away with murder.” Joe Biden, like both of his predecessors, ran for president on a pledge to end it.

“People get this really easily—we’re giving a whole lot of rich people more money for no reason other than them being rich,” says Mandla Deskins, advo­cacy manager at Take on Wall Street, an organization pressuring members of Congress to jettison this tax break.

On paper, it’s an idea that almost nobody says they want. Polls show the public is overwhelmingly against it. Mitt Romney lost his bid for the presidency in part because of it. Tax experts think it’s unfair. Carried interest has no real constituency outside certain corners of Nantucket. But for a decade and a half, private equity’s favorite tax break, which delivers hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the guys in blue button-downs and matching fleeces who bought your company and laid you off, has been the most unkillable bad idea in a town with no shortage of them, a testament to the unstoppable combination of money and inertia.

Well, money mostly. - Mother Jones

Of course Big Tech wants to exploit social-emotional learning

And that's exactly what it's doing.

The connections between the Along platform and corporate technology giant Facebook are a good example of how these companies can operate in schools while maintaining their right to use personal information of children for their own business purposes.

Given concerns that arose in a congressional hearing in December 2021 about Meta’s Instagram Kids application, as reported by NPR, there is reason to believe these companies will continue to skirt key questions about how they play fast and loose with children’s data and substitute a “trust us” doctrine for meaningful protections.

As schools ramp up these SEL digital tools, parents and students are increasingly concerned about how school-related data can be exploited. According to a recent survey by the Center for Democracy and Technology, 69 percent of parents are concerned about their children’s privacy and security protection, and large majorities of students want more knowledge and control of how their data is used.

Schools are commonly understood to be places where children can make mistakes and express their emotions without their actions and expressions being used for profit, and school leaders are customarily charged with the responsibility to protect children from any kind of exploitation. Digital SEL products, including Along, may be changing those expectations. - Nation of Change

What should be done about Big Meat

Trenchant.

President Joe Biden has declared war on Big Meat. Yup, Biden’s war. The president pinky swears new rules and a billion dollars in new funding will somehow end decades of what amounts to a meat monopoly in the beef, pork and chicken industries.

In announcing the plan, Biden noted, “Capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation. That’s what we’re seeing in meat and poultry industries now.”

...Biden acknowledges that Big Meat has for years put its collective thumb on the meat scale to cheat ranchers, farmers and yes, all of us, at our local grocery store meat counter. And the president believes it's high time to do something about it...

But like presidents that have gone before (most recently Barack Obama anybody?) Biden's plan as introduced in January falls short. Way, way, WAY, WAY short.

Because Biden's plan at the moment would not break up Big Meat. - Investigate Midwest