House To Investigate Whether DOJ's AT&T Antitrust Lawsuit Was Political
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
When the Trump DOJ sued to stop AT&T's $89 billion merger with Time Warner last year, more than a few eyebrows were raised. After all, the DOJ's antitrust suit, allegedly a bid to protect consumers, came as other arms of the Trump administration were busy utterly dismantling a wide variety of popular consumer protections (like net neutrality) at the direct request of industry. It raised the question: why suddenly care about consumer protection and antitrust power when you've shown absolutely no general concern for those concepts previously?
As a result, there's always been a lingering question as to whether Trump's obvious disdain for Time Warner owned CNN was driving a petty bid for vengeance. Others wondered if the DOJ's lawsuit was a personal favor to Trump ally Rupert Murdoch, who had tried unsuccessfully to buy CNN from AT&T at least twice, and had spent much of 2017 lobbying Trump to scuttle the deal as a competitive favor to his Fox empire.
With a shakeup in the House, those questions could soon again be making headlines. Incoming House intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff told Axios last weekend that one of the numerous things the new House leadership will investigate is whether the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit against AT&T was political:
"Schiff said Congress also needs to examine whether Trump attempted to block AT&T’s merger with Time Warner as payback to CNN.
"We don't know, for example, whether the effort to hold up the merger of the parent of CNN was a concern over antitrust or whether this was an effort merely to punish CNN," Schiff said.
To be clear, AT&T's monopoly power is clearly a problem and, regardless of the motivation, it's a good thing the DOJ tried to stop it.
AT&T's domination of both fixed broadband, wireless broadband, and its monopoly over the backhaul connections feeding everything from cellular towers to ATMs was already causing headaches. The company's expanded ownership of "must have" media properties only made things worse by causing new anti-competitive problems for competitors like Dish. Combine these with the death of net neutrality, AT&T's past behaviors, and the FCC's fresh inability to hold AT&T accountable for any of it -- and the over-arching market issues should be pretty clear.
Ultimately the DOJ lost its case for several reasons. Antitrust laws weakened after decades of lobbying left the DOJ arguing obvious outcomes (like AT&T raising rates on competitors and consumers) within narrow confines of economic theory. And because the DOJ didn't want to highlight the fact the Trump admin was harming these same consumers with its other hand (net neutrality), it simply avoided mentioning the idea at all. That's an obvious issue since AT&T's domination of both the media and its broadband monopoly will work synergistically to harm competitors and consumers alike.
Regardless, the Trump DOJ suddenly and exclusively caring about AT&T's monopoly power was always curious. And while many will be sure to suggest that any investigation of the motivation is itself political, it's a question that would be nice to have answered all the same -- since using "instruments of state power" like the DOJ to settle petty grievances with media outlets you don't like is kind of a fucking problem.
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Filed Under: adam schiff, antitrust, congress, doj, mergers, politics
Companies: at&t, time warner
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state power abuses
so the core/summary issue presented here is not really AT&T or Trump -- it's general abuse of government power.
Odd to see the libertarian view as a primary post here.
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Alternative view is that malfeasance is inherent in the fundamental structure of government, as some people are granted discretionary power to command other people. Power Corrupts.
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Re: state power abuses
The last time I got a speeding ticket, I did not go to court and claim that it is the fault of the vehicle manufacturer for allowing such behavior ... because that would be crazy.
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I wasn't aware that "the government should prevent massive corporate mergers, just not to settle petty personal grudges" was the Libertarian view. Maybe there's just not enough paint in my diet.
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Kedi maması ve köpek maması
https://patinibesle.com
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kind of a fucking problem.
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Re: kind of a fucking problem.
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like gerrymandering
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Not sure how we'd handle the House without districts. Elect every House seat on an at-large basis?
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I'm in Arizona. We've got 15 counties with wildly disparate populations and politics. Dividing our representation up by county would be at least as bad as gerrymandering it, and considerably worse than the independent redistricting system we have now. And that's before we even get into solving disparities like, say, having almost 1/3 of the population of Florida but less than 1/4 as many counties.
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Hell, skip the counties and just have n representatives per state based on population.
Also, fwiw, I'm on the west coast. Not that I think that matters.
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And no more fixing boundaries that don't accurately represent demographics, just as if they were gerrymandered.
So...on an at-large basis, then, like I said in the first place?
Then you should have a better understanding of how large and demographically-diverse a county can be.
I live in a state where most of the population is in a single county, and that county skews conservative but has several population centers within it that are very liberal. You're suggesting that my liberal district should not exist and our representatives should be picked at the county level. This would significantly change my representation, and skew it in a political direction that does not adequately represent the diverse political views within the county.
You do not seem to have thought this through.
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A poor look especially for Schiff, whose top contributor in 2017-2018 was AT&T ($27k).
https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00009585
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