Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech business and politics.

I'm Dan Premack. On today's show, Apple's Big Unvail and what the Mueller report release made us forget about in D.C.

But first, the colorless Green New Deal. This week, the Senate is set to hold a procedural vote to begin debating the Green New Deal,

a very ambitious proposal to reverse both climate change and wealth inequality.

The vote, however, isn't really on the substance.

It's Republicans trying to highlight and exacerbate divisions within the Democratic caucus,

which plans to simply vote present in a show of unity.

What's particularly problematic about such partisan bickering here

is that it has totally obscured any real debate over the Green New Deal's goals.

And to be honest, prevented legislators from creating more substance,

as the initial proposal from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

and Senator Ed Markey is really a skeleton in need of meat.

Remember, all we have so far is a 14-page non-binding resolution.

I know people complain sometimes about the length of major legislation, but you do not

completely overhaul U.S. energy, environmental, and economic policy in just 14 pages,

particularly 14 double-spaced pages.

The bill sponsors say that more specific piecemeal bills will be forthcoming, but so far they've

simply dumped this thing, this non-binding thing, into the rhetorical gladiator pit, where

Republicans have been bashing it without any substantive counterproposals of their own.

The bottom line here is that

both sides are missing a big opportunity to deal with major issues, if only maybe on income and

wealth inequality, since there's no partisan disagreement on that occurring, like there

...