California to smash prison e-profiteers

The Public Utility Commission to the rescue!

On Weds (May 10), I’m in Vancouver for a keynote at the Open Source Summit and a book event for Red Team Blues at Heritage Hall and Thu (May 11), I’m in Calgary for Wordfest.

It’s a double-whammy that defines 21st century American life: a corporation gets caught doing something terrible, exploitative or even murderous, and a government agency steps in — only to discover that there’s nothing it can do, because Reagan/Trump/Clinton/Bush I/Bush II deregulated that industry and stripped the agency of enforcement powers.

Man, that feels awful. The idea that extremists gutted our democratically accountable institutions so that there’s nothing they can do, no matter how egregious a corporation’s conduct is so demoralizing. Makes me feel like giving up.

But the law is a complex and mysterious thing. Regulators aren’t actually helpless. There are authorities, powers and systems that the corporate wreckers passed over, failed to notice, or failed to neuter. Take Section 5 of the FTC Act, which gives the Commission broad powers to prevent “unfair and deceptive” practices. Since the 1970s, the FTC just acted like this didn’t exist, even though it was right there all along, between Section 4 and Section 6.