Welcome to BIG, a newsletter on the politics of monopoly power. If you’d like to sign up to receive issues over email, you can do so here.
Phone2Action, a private equity backed roll-up backed by Frontier Capital, is buying up the advocacy space. Here’s one of their latest press releases.
Phone2Action, the world’s leading provider of grassroots advocacy software, contributing nearly 25% of all advocacy messages to Congress, will now become a category-defining solution where public affairs and government relations professionals can collaborate on projects, gain insight into key bills and policies, galvanize people to act and influence public policy.
I’ve been told reliably that this company uses Eastern European developers, which is a common theme for private equity-owned software firms. Imagine the possibility of hacking by foreign governments, who will now have access to a large swath of what constituents are telling their members of Congress.
But on the bright side, at least a private equity executive will get to buy another boat.
New to your work here, and it's amazing, this monopoly stuff is so crazy deep and interesting to see just how bamboozled the all of us are. You wanted topic suggestions, I have one, even though it's kinda cliche these days to get into COVID crap we're tired of, but... There is growing talk about the effectiveness of Ivermectin, a 40-yr old medicine originally patented by Merck that never got enough play, and they let the patent expire in the 90s. It's an anti-parasitic, it's great for malaria, dengue fever, you can even take it pre-emptively as a preventative, it's commonly prescribed in the tropics in South America, Africa, and India as a prophylactic. Well guess what: Turns out it's GREAT at fighting COVID. And about $3-12 a Rx. So why are we leaping into all these vaccines, and why does Remdesivir cost $3000/bottle? Hope I just blew the lid off a monopoly story for you, check out some of Bret Weinstein's Dark Horse stuff, particularly "How To Save The World In Three Easy Steps" before YouTube bans it!
I'm constantly looking for "knock-out punch" information that can be used when attempting to get people to use facts and logic in hot topic discussions that frequently percolate up as political issues. I'm anxious to get your perspective on BIG and direct readers to your SUBSTACK letter.
I have info on topics from critical race theory to the revisionist history of the 1619 Project to the Jan 6 demonstrations. www.mypoliticalsource.com
Great job!