Best of 2021
Our small but scrappy team wrote, published, and achieved a lot in 2021. Here are some of our favorite accomplishments:
A MONUMENTAL CONFERENCE
We hosted a major journalism conference featuring top lawmakers, law enforcers, journalists, and policy analysts — including Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. David Cicilline, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison — in conversation about how to strengthen journalism while keeping democracy robust.
CRITICAL MOMENTS ON THE HILL
Alexis Goldstein, our financial policy director, was chosen as 1 of 4 guests to testify before the U.S. Congress’s Joint Economic Committee at a hearing on “Demystifying Crypto: Digital Assets and the Role of Government.” She skillfully underscored the regulatory gaps in ensuring consumer and investor protection in the cryptocurrency space.
Our chief economist, Brian Callaci, gave powerful testimony at a House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing on “21st Century Antitrust Reforms and the American Worker.” He made the case that Congress should act to make it harder for corporations to merge and abuse dominance, ban coercive contracts like noncompetes, expand the antitrust labor exemption to independent contractors, and close the loopholes allowing corporations to avoid labor and employment obligations by substituting restrictive contracts for employment relationships. His testimony was mentioned in Politico.
Our policy director, Phillip Longman, spoke before the House Veterans' Affairs Committee at a hearing on “Investing in a Better VA: Examining the Role of Infrastructure in Veterans’ Access to Care and Benefits” and urged the Committee to resist efforts to further downsize and privatize the VA hospital system, noting its superior quality of care, importance in providing competition to private health care monopolies, and how it serves the general public during health care emergencies.
CUTTING-EDGE WRITING AND REPORTING
PIVOTAL PAPERS
In 2020, Daniel Hanley co-wrote a groundbreaking report on Amazon’s predatory worker surveillance. In 2021, he updated that report with new data on Amazon’s attempts to amplify and widen its ability to spy on workers. He also published a report sequel on Amazon’s surveillance of competitors and consumers. The report series captivated readers across the country and garnered high-level attention.
Sandeep Vaheesan published a paper in William & Mary Law Review Online expertly describing how the Federal Trade Commission can, and should, use its expansive “unfair methods of competition” authority to codify and strengthen existing norms of fair competition under the Sherman Act.
Phillip Longman, wrote an in-depth analysis in The Washington Monthly proving that President Joe Biden’s big bet on rail infrastructure will be wasted unless he takes on the financiers who control the industry.
We submitted a landmark comment to the USDA detailing how to improve regulation of agriculture markets to ensure fair competition and to counterbalance predatory corporate consolidation
NOTABLE INTERVIEWS AND APPEARANCES
Claire Kelloway gave masterful commentary for “The Checkout” podcast about antitrust, California’s Proposition 22 ballot initiative, and how the gig economy impacts workers.
Alexis Goldstein was featured on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” discussing the inequities of the U.S. tax system.
Sally Hubbard, our director of enforcement strategy, appeared on C-SPAN’s “The Communicators” to discuss competition in digital technology markets, potential regulatory actions, and consumer rights.
Barry Lynn joined Zephyr Teachout, a law professor and well-known anti-corruption advocate, to discuss how to stop monopolies at a webinar hosted by St. Martin’s Press.
COALITION WORK
We brought together an influential group of labor, justice and anti-monopoly organizations to send a joint letter to the Financial Stability Oversight Council asking them to designate Amazon Web Services as a “Systemically Important Financial Market Utility,” which would bring AWS under the supervision of the Federal Reserve.
Led by Food & Water Watch, we joined a diverse set of environmental, family farm, farm policy and rural community organizations to send a letter to the White House urging the Biden administration to issue an executive order that would enact a moratorium on mergers and acquisitions in the food and agricultural industries.
In the face of a massive merger between major publishers Bertelsmann and Simon & Schuster, we connected with the Authors Guild, and six other writers associations representing thousands of book authors to send a letter to the Justice Department calling on it to block the merger. Later, the Justice Department filed a civil antitrust lawsuit to block the merger.
Together with the Strategic Organizing Center, Color of Change, National Employment Law Project, Towards Justice, and three economics and law scholars, we filed an amici curiae brief in support of current and former college basketball and football players in their antitrust lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association.
We joined with more than 70 public interest, environmental, and racial justice organizations to call on Congress to take steps to mitigate cryptocurrency’s climate destruction when developing legislative and regulatory action for the industry.
We signed a letter sent to the House of Representatives along with 32 consumer, labor, and privacy organizations representing millions of Americans, in strong support of the Consumer Protection and Recovery Act, H.R. 2668. The act would clarify the Federal Trade Commission’s long-standing ability to pursue restitution and money refunds and to seek court orders requiring bad actors to repay ill-gotten gains.
And last, but not least, we signed an Athena Coalition-led letter with 47 other groups to the FTC asking them to stop corporate smart surveillance once and for all.