After news broke that Peter Thiel and Mark Zuckerberg had consumed a secret White House dinner with Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren characterised it as part of Facebook's "charm offensive with Republican lawmakers" in response to her call to use antitrust law to break up Facebook, calling the move "corruption, plain and simple...how the government keeps working for giant corporations and the wealthy and well-connected." Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren has released a characteristically detailed campaign plan to counter white nationalist violence in the USA, whose multi-pronged approach includes directing the DoJ to be more vigorous in pursuing white nationalist groups (and to lay off the Cointelpro-style surveillance of groups that advocate for protections for racialized people); centralized data collection on white nationalist violence; FBI assistance in local investigations of white nationalist groups; global collaboration to disrupt international white terrorist organizations; purges of Nazis in the US military; using background checks to deny firearms to members and supporters of violent white nationalist groups; reforming school curriculum to head off white nationalist trends; creating an interagency task-force to combat white nationalism; and to "combat violent extremist content on the Internet in a manner consistent with freedom of expression" (a neat trick if she can manage it). Read the rest

If you leave a senior US government position, Elizabeth Warren wants you to wait at least four years before taking a job at a "market dominant" company -- any company with a $150b (or larger) market cap, or that controls "the product or labor supply in their industry." Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren fumbled at the latest Democratic leadership debate when she was pressed on the question of whether Medicare for All would raise taxes, and she refused to answer, creating a soundbite that made her look like a sneaky, evasive politician, to the delight of right wingers who've struggled with her image as a straight-shooting, super-competent, quick-witted daughter of the soil. Read the rest

49% of Bernie Sanders supporters are white; compare with Biden (56%) and Warren (71%). Sanders also leads in support from women under 45. Last quarter, Sanders outraised every other candidate, and he did it with small money donations averaging $18.07. Read the rest

This morning, we were out on our lawn, putting up our Halloween decorations, when this fellow jogged past and said something to me. I had my headphones in and so I just waved and smiled, but then he doubled back and so I took my headphones out and said, "Hi," whereupon he began to swear and shout: "How fucking dare you have a Warren sign on your lawn?" Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren has already proposed strict limits on lobbyists' activities, but in her latest policy proposal, she offers a way of hitting the most aggressive lobbyists in their pocketbooks, and using the revenue to strengthen Congress and the administrative agencies' independence from corporate influence while empowering members of the public to be heard by their government and its agencies. Read the rest

In July, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg held two hour-long internal employee meetings to discuss the business's future; The Verge obtained the recordings of those meetings, which reveal, among other things, that Zuckerberg dreads the possible election of Elizabeth Warren (Warren has pledged to break up Facebook and its Big Tech competitors if she becomes President in 2020). Read the rest

For years, the Harvard Business School fellow William Lazonick has been writing about the rise of the "shareholder value" doctrine in capital markets, and how that has driven financial engineering tactics like stock buybacks, which allow shareholders (including top executives) to prosper at the expense of the companies they have invested in, siphoning value out of profitable businesses until they collapse. Read the rest

Democrats wresting control of the US Senate from the Republicans will be immensely important in the coming election. Senator Elizabeth Warren's campaign for President is investing resources to help defeat Susan Collins of Maine, most recently famous for her support of putting an accused sexual abuser on the Supreme Court.

Daily Beast:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) presidential campaign is putting resources into Maine, where it hopes to help unseat Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) in one of the most high-profile Senate races of this cycle.

A new memo sent to supporters on Tuesday from Warren’s campaign manager Roger Lau details a series of investments on state directors and organizers for states that vote and caucus in March. The campaign, Lau writes, is devoting these resources not just to boost Warren ahead of primary voting but to assist Democrats in marquee Senate, House, and state legislative contests in 2020. Among the target list Lau offered was Maine, where Collins is facing a number of potential Democratic challengers including Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon.

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Heirs' property is a relic of post-Reconstruction law, which allows white developers to exploit the diffuse ownership of Black family homes to steal them and kick out the people who live there. Read the rest

Even by Elizabeth Warren's high standards, her plan for "honoring and empowering tribal nations and indigenous peoples is detailed, ambitious, and important. Read the rest

Yesterday, I published a brief analysis of Elizabeth Warren's plan to close the loopholes that allows private equity to defraud investors, creditors and workers to make billions while destroying the real economy. Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren's bid for the Democratic 2020 presidential nomination has been dominated by a series of bold, detailed policy proposals that are designed to enact deep, structural changes in American law and policy to reverse 40 years of post-Reagan corruption and wealth accumulation by the richest 1%. Read the rest

In a Fox & Friends newsbrief, Thiel spurred President Trump to promise to look into baseless claim that Google committed treason.

Propublica's 2020 Presidential Candidate Summaries breaks down the 2020 candidates' fundraising, Trump's massive war-chest and Bernie's pack-leading raise and his continued success with small-money donations. Read the rest

Public companies are legally required to disclose their risks to investors, but it's a rare company that incorporates climate change into those mandatory disclosures; under a new presidential campaign platform proposal from Elizabeth Warren (disclosure: I am a donor to both Warren and Sanders's campaigns), the SEC would require public companies to incorporate two kinds of climate risk in their warnings: first, the risks of an out-of-control climate (fires, floods, etc); and second, the risks from the a transition to clean energy (collapsing fossil fuel prices). The idea is to accelerate divestiture from climate-destroying industries like oil and fracking, and to spur investors to favor companies with a plan to mitigate the effects of climate chaos on their operations. Read the rest