Press release issued 12.8.12
Washington, D.C. – Today, Representative Derek Kilmer (WA-06) voted to support the conference report on H.R.6395, the William M. Thornberry National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 (NDAA). The bipartisan, bicameral compromise report authorizes funding for national defense for Fiscal Year 2021. The conference report passed the House 335 to 78.
“If you serve this country, Congress should have your back. This bipartisan legislation makes vital investments in service members and their families, including a number of measures that I championed,” said Rep. Kilmer. “In addition, in our region, we also have talented civilians doing critical work to keep our country safe, so I’m glad that we were able to include measures that benefit those workers and our region’s economy.”
Supports Servicemembers and Federal Workers
The conference agreement retained several key measures championed by Rep. Kilmer in the House passed bill to improve benefits for American service members and their families, including a 3% pay increase for all service members as well as provisions to improve the oversight and management of housing for military personnel and their families and to address the shortage in military child care.
The bipartisan agreement also includes numerous provisions to support federal workers. Of importance to Kitsap County, the bill includes a five-year extension of the rate of overtime pay authority for Department of Navy employees performing work aboard or dockside in support of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier forward deployed in Japan.
Kilmer said, “When our region’s shipyard workers work overtime, they should get paid overtime – including when they’re overseas. It shouldn’t take an act of Congress to make that the case – and for the next five years, it won’t.”
This year’s NDAA conference report also includes a measure championed by Rep. Kilmer to allows federal workers to carry over excess leave accrued during the COVID-19 pandemic, which prevented employees from taking time off work. Based on the legislation introduced by Rep. Kilmer in early October, the provision in the NDAA conference report will allow federal employees to carry over an additional 25% of their annual leave into 2021.
“Federal workers at Naval Base Kitsap have been working tirelessly throughout this pandemic to maintain the Navy’s readiness to respond to national security threats and have avoided unnecessary travel to minimize health risks that could threaten this important work,” said Rep. Kilmer. “They shouldn’t have to sacrifice the paid leave benefits they’ve earned because they chose to prioritize national service. That’s why I’m proud that this provision was included to ensure that federal workers at the shipyard, and across federal agencies, can keep the unused paid time off that they have earned.”
The NDAA conference report also includes the Elijah Cummings Federal Employee Anti-Discrimination Act, passed by the House in January 2019, which strengthens equal employment opportunity protections for federal employees and strengthens prohibitions against discrimination and retaliation against whistleblowers.
In addition, this year’s NDAA ensures paid parental leave is extended to all federal employees.
The bipartisan conference report also authorizes increased funding to clean up of drinking water on military bases contaminated by PFAS chemicals, strengthen sexual assault prevention and response programs, and promote and enhance diversity and inclusion programs in our military. In addition, the NDAA conference report provides new benefits to Vietnam-era veterans exposed to Agent Orange.
Invests in Defense Communities
The legislation also included an amendment championed by Rep. Kilmer to expand eligibility for the Office of Economic Adjustment’s Defense Communities Infrastructure Program (DCIP), which helps communities near defense installations - like those around Naval Base Kitsap and Joint Base Lewis McChord - plan for and implement future infrastructure projects that improve the quality of life for people, including civilians and members of the armed services and their families, living in the surrounding areas.
Kilmer said, “With the challenges we’ve seen at Gorst and coming into the Shipyard, providing more funding for this program could yield some direct benefits to Kitsap County.”
Reducing Jet Noise
Over the past several years, Rep. Kilmer has pushed the Department of Defense to fund efforts to reduce the noise of the Navy’s EA-18G Growler through his work on the Appropriations Committee. Rep. Kilmer fought to ensure this agreement provides additional funds for the Secretary of the Navy to continue developing advanced noise reduction technology that can be retrofitted to existing Growler engines to further reduce noise impacts in the region. In addition, the conference agreement authorizes a 5-year pilot test program under which the commander of a military installation may provide funds for the purpose of installing noise insulation on covered property impacted by military aviation noise from aircraft utilizing the installation.
Ensures the Military is a Responsible Climate Partner
The conference agreement retains key measures Rep. Kilmer championed in the House-passed bill to ensure that the military makes progress toward being a responsible partner in fighting climate change. This includes the establishment of a new “Climate Security Roundtable” within the National Academy of Science to establish best practices for identifying and disseminating climate indicators and warnings across all Department of Defense agencies to ensure that environmental security is included in operational planning and intelligence analysis. The legislation also requires the Department of Homeland Security to report on the climate risks and vulnerabilities facing Coast Guard installations over the next 20 years, including rising sea tides, flooding, and wildfires. It is expected that such reports will provide a roadmap for Congress to address these national security threats through a comprehensive climate adaptation strategy.
AG FERGUSON FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST FACEBOOK FOR CREATING AN UNLAWFUL MONOPOLY.
Press release issued 12.9.20
Bipartisan, multistate coalition of 48 attorneys general assert Facebook weakened, bought up potential competitors
OLYMPIA — Attorney General Bob Ferguson today filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook asserting the company formed an illegal monopoly in the personal social networking market. The company formed this monopoly by buying or constraining potential competitors, usually mobile apps, in their infancy — including rivals Instagram and WhatsApp.
These actions helped Facebook dominate its market. Roughly 70 percent of the U.S. population, including more than 5 million Washingtonians, use Facebook every day. More than 2.25 billion people worldwide use Facebook daily.
Ferguson, in a bipartisan group of 48 state attorneys general, filed the lawsuit today in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The states’ lawsuit asserts Facebook’s anticompetitive practices violate federal antitrust laws that have existed in the United States for over a century.
Reduced competition from monopolies drives up prices, inhibits innovation and reduces the quality of products and services. When Facebook created its monopoly, it reduced choices for consumers, increased the number of ads shown to its users and weakened its privacy protections in order to maximize profit from selling its users’ data.
“Facebook has become a mainstay in many people’s lives,” Ferguson said. “The company has done everything it can to keep it that way, from unlawfully swallowing up its potential competitors to walking back its privacy protection promises. Facebook has built a fortress around its power in the market that not even an international data privacy scandal could break. No single company should have that much power.”
Facebook’s business model
Facebook makes money off its users in two ways: collecting and selling its users’ personal data, and selling ad space on its users’ newsfeeds. The more time users spend on Facebook, the more profitable this model becomes. Facebook collects personal user data such as demographic information, interests, buying habits and location. Advertisers use this data to predict which users are most likely to purchase an advertised product or service, then place ads on those users’ Facebook newsfeeds — an advertising strategy known as targeting.
This model is lucrative for Facebook. The company’s businesses earned $70 billion last year, a 27 percent increase from the year before.
How Facebook formed its monopoly
Facebook has dominated the personal social networking market since 2008, after it surpassed the previously ubiquitous platform MySpace in number of users. A personal social networking platform allows users to connect with their network of personal connections, typically friends, family and other people they know in offline life.
For nearly a decade, Facebook has mounted an aggressive “buy or bury” campaign to nip in the bud any new companies seen as potential competitors. Facebook focused its efforts on mobile-based platforms, knowing people were increasingly using their smartphones to communicate and access their social networks.
The company made three major acquisitions that helped Facebook eliminate its competition:
In 2012, Facebook acquired Instagram, the popular photo and video sharing mobile app and one of Facebook’s most viable competitors.
In 2013, Facebook acquired Onovo, a data analytics company, to help it identify new social networking mobile apps most likely to be successful, and eliminate or weaken these new competitors in their infancy.
In 2014, Facebook acquired the messaging service WhatsApp.
Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp is a key example of Facebook’s anticompetitive strategy. Before Facebook bought the company, WhatsApp’s ad-free model stood out among other messaging apps. WhatsApp, in order to avoid selling user data, charged a $1 download fee and a $1 annual subscription — a nominal fee, yet still enough to keep the company operating profitably.
WhatsApp grew quickly, and Facebook took notice. WhatsApp’s ad-free, privacy-focused model was popular with its users. When it sought approval from regulators to purchase WhatsApp, Facebook promised to retain this ad-free model and promised not to use WhatsApp user data for its ad-targeting business. Facebook broke both of those promises. Just a few years later, Facebook eliminated WhatsApp’s monthly subscription model and sold its user data to advertisers.
Facebook wielded its power and control in the personal social networking market to weaken competitors. Facebook’s market power gives it the ability to bury a competitor at practically the flip of a switch. For example, when photo sharing company Phhoto entered the scene, Facebook initially allowed its users to share Phhoto content on their Facebook newsfeeds. Over time, Facebook intentionally restricted this ability and blocked all Phhoto content on public newsfeeds. Blocked from the world’s largest social media platform, Phhoto went out of business in 2017.
How Facebook’s monopoly harms consumers
After pushing out or purchasing its viable competitors, Facebook now has little in its way to expose user data for profit, and little incentive to improve its users’ experience on the platform.
In 2011, Google launched its own version of a personal social network, Google+. Facebook had planned to roll back its privacy protections in 2011 in order to increase profits from selling user data. Facebook put these plans on hold in an attempt to keep its users from switching to Google+.
The competitive pressure from Google+ forced Facebook to develop new products and fix problems it ignored and allowed its users to live with for years. These problems included photos that wouldn’t upload, incessant spam friend requests and the inability to filter through and categorize friends.
By the time Google+ launched, Facebook had made enough improvements and developed enough new products to convince consumers that Google+ had nothing more to offer than Facebook was already providing. Google+ folded in 2018.
Emboldened by Google’s failure to gain a meaningful foothold in the personal social network market, Facebook revived its plan to roll back privacy protections — a “bait-and-switch” that eliminated the features that kept Facebook users from migrating to Google+. For example, Facebook changed its terms of service so it can track a user’s online activity on any device a user is logged in to, even if the user is not actively using Facebook. This means that if a user is logged on to Facebook on both a phone and a laptop, Facebook can track which websites the user visits on both those devices and sell that information to advertisers.
Facebook also ramped up its ad-targeting business, trading a larger slice of users’ newsfeeds and user data for more revenue from advertisers. In 2015, 8.2 percent of the posts users saw on their Facebook feeds were advertisements. By 2017, that ad ratio grew to more than 20 percent for some users. In addition, Facebook increased the number of ads shown to Instagram users by 50 percent in 2018. These increases translated to more profit for Facebook and a worse experience for consumers, for whom more advertising means fewer posts from the real-life connections that brought them to Facebook in the first place.
An increasing amount of people rely on Facebook products daily to communicate with the people in their lives, consume news and run or support small businesses. Now that Facebook has bought up or pushed out nearly every viable competitor, many users cannot leave Facebook even if they wanted to. In fact, Facebook’s user base continues to increase, even after major data leaks and privacy violations — including the company’s biggest scandal, which involved data-collecting company Cambridge Analytica.
Cambridge Analytica exposed millions of Facebook users’ data, sparking global outrage and intense public scrutiny on Facebook’s data sharing policies. The hashtag #DeleteFacebook began trending on social media. In response, users stopped posting on Facebook as often — but there was no mass exodus from the platform and the number of Facebook users has increased ever since because they have nowhere else to go.
Legal claims
The states’ lawsuit asserts Facebook’s anticompetitive practices violate longstanding federal antitrust laws: the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which prevents companies from monopolizing or attempting to monopolize a market, and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914, which prohibits companies from acquiring other companies in order to substantially reduce competition.
The lawsuit asks the court to order Facebook to sell its stock in Instagram and WhatsApp and stop all its anticompetitive practices, including future anticompetitive acquisitions and mergers.
Assistant Attorney General Amy Hanson is leading the case for Washington.
Holding Facebook accountable
Today’s lawsuit is the latest of several actions Ferguson has taken against Facebook.
In 2018, an Attorney General’s Office investigation led to nationwide changes to Facebook’s advertising platform that prohibit advertisers from excluding ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals and other protected groups from seeing their ads.
Ferguson has twice taken legal action against Facebook for violations of Washington’s laws on political advertising. In April 2020, Ferguson sued Facebook for selling Washington state political ads without maintaining information for the public as required by Washington state campaign finance law. Ferguson filed a similar lawsuit in June 2018, which resulted in Facebook paying $238,000 — a $200,000 penalty and an additional $38,000 to reimburse the state’s legal costs and fees.
In other state headline news
Inslee issues COVID-19 public transportation safety guidance
https://www.governor.wa.gov/news-media/inslee-issues-covid-19-public-transportation-safety-guidance
Inslee extends, modifies proclamation on pharmacy storage for COVID-19 vaccine
Initial unemployment insurance claims for week of November 29 - December 5, 2020.
OLYMPIA – During the week of November 29 – December 5, there were 24,587 initial regular unemployment claims (up 10.1 percent from the prior week) and 492,533 total claims for all unemployment benefit categories (up 7.1 percent from the prior week) filed by Washingtonians, according to the Employment Security Department (ESD).
Commission’s Fish Committee to hold meeting to discuss coastal steelhead conservation and fishing regulations. --WDFW
IN OTHER HEADLINE NEWS
WORLD NEWS HEADLINES:
$1.44 billion plan to respond to Venezuela refugee and migrant needs.--UN NEWS CENTER
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1079782
WFP chief uses Nobel speech as call for action to avert ‘hunger pandemic’--UN NEWS CENTER
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1079742
Human rights must be ‘front and centre’ of COVID-19 response: Secretary-General
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has called for human rights to be put “front and centre” of COVID-19 response and recovery globally in order to achieve a better future for people everywhere.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1079632
UN makes progress on 'greening the blue'
In 2019, the UN system continued to make steady progress towards reducing its environmental footprint, recording decreases in emissions and implementing advanced environment management systems.
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/12/1079732
NATIONAL HEADLINE NEWS:
Executive Order on Providing an Order of Succession within the Department of Defense--WH
Study Calls for Building Navy Force Structure to Counter Great Power Competitors--DOD
Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against the State of Alabama for Unconstitutional Conditions in State's Prisons for Men
Today, the Justice Department filed suit against the State of Alabama and the Alabama Department of Corrections. The complaint alleges that the conditions at Alabama’s prisons for men violate the Constitution because Alabama fails to provide adequate protection from prisoner-on-prisoner violence and prisoner-on-prisoner sexual abuse, fails to provide safe and sanitary conditions, and subjects prisoners to excessive force at the hands of prison staff. --DOJ
HUD ANNOUNCES MILLIONS IN RENTAL AND HOUSING ASSISTANCE FOR VETERANS IN NEED
HUD-VASH vouchers to help veterans at-risk of homelessness--HUD
https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_20_202
BUSINESS & FINANCE:
Treasury Sanctions Serious Human Rights Abusers on International Human Rights Day--US TREASURY DEPT.
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm1208
IRS has begun sending letters to taxpayers that may need to take action related to Qualified Opportunity Funds.
WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service has started sending letters to taxpayers that may need to take additional actions related to Qualified Opportunity Funds (QOF).
Payment Processor and its Former CEO Pay $1.5 Million to Settle FTC Charges They Facilitated Fraud.
Innovative Finance for National Forests Grant Program Fosters New Ideas, Partnerships-USDA Blog
IN OTHER NEWS
SHOCKER: Hunter Biden Is Under Investigation
To no one's surprise, Joe Biden's money-grubbing son is being investigated by a federal grand jury.--The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/76370-shocker-hunter-biden-is-under-investigation-2020-12-10
States Respond to Texas Bid to Overturn Election at Supreme Court--NEWSMAX
https://www.newsmax.com/us/response-court-fraud/2020/12/10/id/1000952/
Media slammed for dismissing Hunter Biden story prior to election
Legacy media outlets are facing fierce backlash for initially dismissing Hunter Biden's controversial foreign business dealings and characterizing them as Russian disinformation before the 2020 election.--Washington Examiner
BIBLE VERSE
Deuteronomy 18:15 (New King James Version)
“The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear,
https://www.biblegateway.com/
