David Dayen
David Dayen is the executive editor of The American Prospect. His work has appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His first book, Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud, winner of the Studs and Ida Terkel Prize, was released by The New Press in 2016. His email is ddayen@prospect.org.
Recent Articles
When Big Business Won’t Let the Troops Repair Their Equipment
Defense contractors are denying the military the right to repair its equipment. Unless the FTC rules otherwise, the contractors do it themselves—for a fee.
Sep 19, 2019
Aileen Devlin/Daily Press/Associated Press The Joint Light Tactical Vehicle was developed as a successor to the Humvee but proved difficult to maintain without contractor support. Military contractors’ terms of sale have prevented troops from repairing or even troubleshooting equipment in the field, leading to delays and excessive costs to the government. For years, activists with the “ right to repair ” movement have fought corporate America’s efforts to prevent consumers from fixing and reusing technology found in electronics and heavy machinery. Many companies restrict access to embedded software and diagnostics, or to component parts and tools, without which the products cannot be repaired or modified. The reason why is simple—the companies would prefer that their own authorized agents and manufacturing facilities get paid to repair the products. The front lines of this fight have typically been manned by hobbyists wanting to unlock phones,...
A Closer Look at Nancy Pelosi’s Plan for Lower Drug Prices
The bill, H.R. 3, has gotten considerably stronger from its initial concept, but questions remain.
Sep 18, 2019
All year, Congress-watchers have expected a bipartisan drug-pricing bill to reach the president’s desk. Democrats and Republicans both have an interest in passing something, given constituent anger over the cost of their prescriptions and an election-year need to tout meaningful accomplishments. But the usual Washington bloodsport always resisted an easy path to legislative success. Because Trump has floated some pretty interventionist ideas on drug prices out of desperation to cash in on campaign promises before 2020, Democrats could have strategically pushed a plan to deliver real relief to patients, catching conservatives between their corporate lobbyist base and their ideologically malleable leader. That was not the initial impulse from Nancy Pelosi and her key health policy aide Wendell Primus . Representative Lloyd Doggett’s plan to have Medicare directly negotiate with drug companies, under threat of having their patents pulled and distributed to generic competitors...
Official Secrets: A Conversation With Director Gavin Hood
The story of Katharine Gun, a whistle-blower who exposed NSA spying in the lead-up to the Iraq War, gets the Hollywood treatment.
Sep 13, 2019
Evan Vucci/AP Photo President Bush visits the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, January 25, 2006. Y ou may not know the name Katharine Gun unless you live in the United Kingdom, but she was a pivotal figure in the run-up to the Iraq War. Or at least, she could have been. Gun, a translator with the British intelligence service known as Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), received a document just before the war from an NSA manager, seeking British intelligence support in spying on members of the UN Security Council, to effectively blackmail them into voting for a second resolution that would make legal the invasion of Iraq. Gun made the choice to leak the document, which Martin Bright of The Observer in Britain published in a story on March 2, 2003. As a result, there never was any second UN resolution. But the Bush administration went to war anyway, using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. What happened to Gun afterwards forms the basis of the film...
Warren Plan Would Close Tax Loophole Joe Biden Uses
Biden makes use of the “Gingrich-Edwards” loophole to avoid payroll taxes.
Sep 12, 2019
Earlier today I reported on Elizabeth Warren’s plan to expand Social Security benefits by the widest margin in a half-century. There’s a tiny provision in the plan that could loom large in the presidential primary and the campaign of the Democratic front-runner, Joe Biden. Warren vows to close the so-called “Gingrich-Edwards” loophole , a way for the rich to avoid Social Security and Medicare contributions. Self-employed individuals can set up S corporations to pass through earned income from consulting, book advances, speaking fees, or whatever else. The Trump administration just made S corporations more lucrative by adding large deductions for pass-through income. If the individual classifies money taken out of the S corporation as an investor distribution rather than a salary, that money avoids payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. It gets taxed as a corporate profit (at a lower overall rate) rather than income. Newt Gingrich and John Edwards , the...
Warren Proposes the Biggest Expansion of Social Security in 50 Years
The plan, with an immediate $200 per month benefit increase, sets the left edge of the possible on a bedrock Democratic program.
Sep 12, 2019
In November 2013, less than a year into Elizabeth Warren’s first Senate term, she gave a floor speech rejecting a persistent push, including from her own party’s president , to cut Social Security benefits. Her outspokenness came out of studying the economy and noting the precarious finances of an aging population. “We don’t build a future for our children by cutting basic retirement benefits for their grandparents,” she argued. “With some modest adjustments, we can keep the system solvent for many more years, and could even increase benefits.” At the time, a few other liberals—Senators Tom Harkin, Sherrod Brown, and Bernie Sanders—had endorsed expanding Social Security, an important protection for a working class struggling to retire with dignity. By joining the fight, Warren helped stave off the march to cuts. What was once the province of a few has become the dominant philosophy in the party. Earlier this year, a Social Security...
