ETennessee Democrat Phil Bredesen, a Harvard University-educated man worth up to $358 million and the owner of five homes, has diagnosed his party with an “elitist” problem.
Bredesen earned his fortune in the pharmaceutical and health care sectors before entering politics. He is now running for U.S. Senate. He told NPR he hopes his run could offer a blueprint for Democrats on how to recover from becoming “too elitist and too distant from the concerns of the very down to Earth people that have always been the base of the party.”
With reported assets between $88.9 million and $358 million, Bredesen, if elected, would become one of the richest members of Congress. Public records show he is the owner of five homes—twohomes in Nashville, two lakefront properties in upstate New York, and a five-bedroom home in Jackson, Wyoming.
Bredesen is also one of the registered owners of an Embraer Phenom 300 private jet, according to Federal Aviation Association records. The Embraer Phenom 300 goes for $10 million, according to CNBC.
Bredesen has utilized private air travel as he campaigns across Tennessee to show people just how “down to Earth” he can be. He disclosed $16,874 worth of travel on Netjets in February and $16,797on Aura Jets in May and June, according to Federal Election Commission records. – READ MORE
[divider][/divider]Reason.com reported: A leaked memo circulating among Senate Democrats contains a host of bonkers authoritarian proposals for regulating digital platforms, purportedly as a way to get tough on Russian bots and fake news. To save American trust in “our institutions, democracy, free press, and markets,” it suggests, we need unprecedented and undemocratic government intervention into online press and markets, including “comprehensive (GDPR-like) data protection legislation” of the sort enacted in the E.U.
Titled “Potential Policy Proposals for Regulation of Social Media and Technology Firms,” the draft policy paper—penned by Sen. Mark Warner and leaked by an unknown source to Axios—the paper starts out by noting that Russians have long spread disinformation, including when “the Soviets tried to spread ‘fake news’ denigrating Martin Luther King” (here he fails to mention that the Americans in charge at the time did the same). But NOW IT’S DIFFERENT, because technology.
“Today’s tools seem almost built for Russian disinformation techniques,” Warner opines. And the ones to come, he assures us, will be even worse.
Here’s how Warner is suggesting we deal:
Mandatory location verification. The paper suggests forcing social media platforms to authenticate and disclose the geographic origin of all user accounts or posts.
Mandatory identity verification: The paper suggests forcing social media and tech platforms to authenticate user identities and only allow “authentic” accounts (“inauthentic accounts not only pose threats to our democratic process…but undermine the integrity of digital markets”), with “failure to appropriately address inauthentic account activity” punishable as “a violation of both SEC disclosure rules and/or Section 5 of the [Federal Trade Commission] Act.”
Bot labeling: Warner’s paper suggests forcing companies to somehow label bots or be penalized (no word from Warner on how this is remotely feasible)
Define popular tech as “essential facilities.” These would be subject to all sorts of heightened rules and controls, says the paper, offering Google Maps as an example of the kinds of apps or platforms that might count. “The law would not mandate that a dominant provider offer the serve for free,” writes Warner. “Rather, it would be required to offer it on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms” provided by the government.
Other proposals include more disclosure requirements for online political speech, more spending to counter supposed cybersecurity threats, more funding for the Federal Trade Commission, a requirement that companies’ algorithms can be audited by the feds (and this data shared with universities and others), and a requirement of “interoperability between dominant platforms.”
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