Shocker: Politicians Play Politics With Antitrust Law
from the everybody-pony-up dept
Declan McCullagh has a great post pointing out Congressional Republicans' recent flip-flop on antitrust scrutiny of big corporate mergers. During the telecom consolidations of the last few years, powerful Republicans like Joe Barton and Fred Upton pressed regulatory agencies to approve the mergers quickly with minimal scrutiny. But now that Google wants to buy DoubleClick, House Republicans have gotten the antitrust religion. A letter signed by 12 Republican Congressmen, including former House Speaker Denny Hastert, demands that the House commence hearings on the Google-DoubleClick proposal because "the privacy implications of such a merger are enormous." As Declan astutely observers, the telecom companies that Republicans waved through last year gave generously to Republican legislators, whereas Google's board and senior executives have tended to give to Democrats. It seems like there might be a connection there.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: anti-trust, politics
Companies: doubleclick, google
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At the same time, were democrats working to slow down the mergers? It seems like a 2 way street.
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hardly a process. try, a grab-bag of corruption.
"but the way the grab-bag of corruption currently works gives politicians and bureaucrats the opportunity to single out companies for special treatment."
looks better too.
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Glad to see the politicians are concerned about our privacy....
So hows that retroactive immunity for telco's domestic, warrant-less wiretapping coming along?
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Must learn how to "deal" with Washington
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Selective Enforcement
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Selective Enforcement
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What?!?!
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