While I generally agree with your foundation of the political switch, I just want to point out that elections in the 1970's through 1990's were still very regional. Southern candidates tended to do well in the South against candidates from California or the North, despite policy differences that would seem to strike the other way. The JFK/Nixon election was much more of an urbanization/rural divide as both candidates were from away.
Carter being a Georgia peanut farmer made a huge difference in GA, AL, and SC voting in the 1976 and 1980 elections. You have to remember, he was the first deep south president since the civil war - white voters especially really cared about that. He was just also a disaster of a president, which is a big reason he lost anyway.
I'm not saying current political conservatives are the cause, Bork was hugely influential beyond traditional conservative circles, particularly in antitrust law.
If you read Bork's work, especially The Antitrust Paradox, and if you study the caselaw prior to and post 1970's, you'll see a stark difference.
It was really a conservative idea at that point but I'd say it's more neoliberal, which has a strong backing in the democratic party and has for decades, beginning with Carter.
The per se analysis and application, particularly, is just massively different from the pre-Bork era. He's the single largest reason that the three main elements of cost, quality, and quantity as a standard for antitrust analysis has eventually boiled down almost entirely to cost, partially because it's so much easier to measure but also because he advocated for it as a mechanism to measure business efficiency.
One of the big problems of this is the change in fundamentals since Bork was writing in the 70's, particularly with union membership declining so heavily. He was countering a very strong and powerful union system and factored that into his analysis, and we just don't have that in the private sector any longer.
I've been working on a paper for a while about theoretically adding in wage and labor market analysis into the mix, particularly with monopoly and monopsony situations, but it's kinda stalled since I've been clerking.
Honestly, read the guy's book and read some cases if you're interested. You'll see it fairly quickly.
Basically it should be illegal per se but since the 70's the Court has really limited how they apply that and so courts generally prefer to do a competitive analysis/quick look first. In this case, the argument might be that since the cost to consumer doesn't increase, it isn't a naked price fix so it's not per se illegal.
As I learned it, since BMI & ASCAP v. CBS, in 1979, it's essentially been that the per se rule is applied when the courts have enough experience with an accused restraint to know that it is so plainly anticompetitive, and so often lacks any redeeming virtue, that further inquiry in any given case is almost certainly wasted effort
Bork and his acolytes really screwed us, basically, turning a half-baked understanding of economics into a justification to ignore legislation and 60+ years of jurisprudence, and that's carried the day since.
In 2019, San Francisco housing grew in total by 4,850 units, which was an increase of 81%! over 2018.
By comparison, Austin permitted 8600 multi-family units in 2018 alone. That doesn't include single family detached, which averages another 2800 a year.
Does a tech speaker have the ability to influence legislation or rule in a hearing about the company that is paying them to speak?
If so, and if they don't recuse themselves, there would indeed be a problem. Fortunately, tech speakers don't have anywhere near that kind of direct power.
If company y pays the manager in charge of purchasing at company x $600,000 to speak, then they bid on contracts with company x, there would also be a problem.
Perfect example - Newt Gingrich got a 4.5 million dollar book deal from Murdoch right before Congress was to hear about allowing Murdoch to purchase the Fox network.
Kick's usage is correct except within the business world and especially financial and executive populations, which, while admittedly narrow, are what we were discussing. When you say that an executive's pay is tied to the company's performance, within these communities it's generally understood that this is a contractual relationship.
ex. "John's salary is tied to performance - if the company is valued at over 100 billion, he'll get another 5% stock" etc.
or "bonuses are tied to performance milestones"
If you are simply observing that an executives pay rises while performance falls, associated is a clearer term.
I think you probably should have used 'associated with' instead of 'tied to' as when discussing remuneration contractual ties is not a minority usage of the idiom.
I don't know about that; I've used PACER a fair amount, despite also using Westlaw.