It seems the head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division is finding her seat a little hotter than expected because she actually intends to enforce the antitrust laws of this country. The surprise is that the heat is coming from within the Obama administration, itself.
President Obama’s top antitrust official and some senior Democratic lawmakers are preparing to rein in a host of major industries, including airline and railroad giants, moving so aggressively that they are finding some resistance from officials within the administration.
The official, Christine A. Varney, the antitrust chief at the Justice Department, has begun examining complaints by the phone companies Verizon and AT&T that their rivals — major cable operators like Cablevision and Cox Communications — improperly prevent them from buying sports shows and other programs that the cable companies produce, industry lawyers said. […]
Ms. Varney has also challenged agreements that the Federal Trade Commission and consumer groups say discourage pharmaceutical companies from marketing more generic drugs. And she is examining a settlement between Google and book publishers and authors to make more books available online.
The more aggressive antitrust policy was described in interviews with officials at the White House, the Justice Department, other agencies and Congress. It is a major policy reversal from the Bush administration, which did not prosecute cases in which some dominant companies engaged in potentially anticompetitive behavior, often because those officials maintained such behavior was not harmful to consumers.
In some cases, though, the new approach is being opposed by administration officials. Some fear that the crackdown is coming at a bad time, as corporate America reels from the recession. Other officials embrace the Bush administration’s view that larger companies and industry alliances can provide consumer benefits by making their businesses more efficient.
My I call horse manure? What the hell did we elect Obama for? Change, you say? Well than what the hell is anyone in his administration doing claiming that the Bush administration’s policies should be kept in place on anything, but especially the see no evil, hear no evil approach Bush took to antitrust enforcement? This frankly has the odor of intense multinational corporate lobbying efforts wafting up from the corrupt carcass of DLC Democrats embedded in the Obama administration.
“The struggles between the expert agencies and the Justice Department get to the heart and soul of exactly what the competition policy of the Obama administration will be,” said Mark Cooper, an antitrust expert and director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, an advocacy group.
He added: “Now you have an antitrust division that cares about competition, and it is running up against the expert agencies that haven’t changed their attitudes yet.”
That’s what happens when some of the most prominent members of a President’s economic team are firmly in the pockets of Wall Street and big business.
Read between the lines. There’s a turf war going on.
More than just a turf war. A war over which policy prevails: a policy that favors anti-competitive corporate consolidation into ever larger and larger “too big to fail” corporations or over enforcing the letter and the spirit of the antitrust laws.
Well they could be buurowers from the previous administration.
.
Microsoft previously responded to the EU Competition Commission‘s probe by saying it would remove IE from Windows 7 in Europe, releasing a Windows 7E version. But in a statement, the EU said that option would not suffice.
“Microsoft’s intention to separate Internet Explorer from Windows, without measures such as a ballot screen, would not necessarily have achieved greater consumer choice in practice and would not have been an effective remedy,” it said.
The EU confirmed Microsoft’s proposal for a ballot screen, and said, “The Commission welcomes this proposal, and will now investigate its practical effectiveness in terms of ensuring genuine consumer choice.”
EU imposes on Microsoft a penalty payment of €899 million [$1.26bn] for non-compliance
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."sooner, rather than later, all the laissez-fairies and free-marketeers left over from the 8 yrs of BushCo’s™ maladministration are going to have to be purged from the doj.
failure to do so is just going to exacerbate the internal problems and delay much needed reforms.
not to mention all the bauerites who’d like to sweep all the war crimes/torture accusations under the rug. so chalk this one up next to the continuing resistance surrounding holder’s dilemma, vis-à-vis the question of a special prosecutor.
It’s important to remember that they are ALL administration officials. What matters is whether Obama lets Varney do her job. Wait and see.
The “Bush administration’s policies” are being kept in place anywhere you care to look.
Obama is Bush III.
Either he never wanted the “change” he advertised or he found himself lacking the balls to execute it once he had the power.
I don’t think he wanted universal health care, either. It was just something he had to say to get elected, like supporting EFCA.
He’s failed at almost everything else, so why should this be any different?
That’s quite a statement.
Too bad it’s true. The banks are untouched. The foreign wars will never end. The stimulus package was too small and overloaded with useless tax cuts. THe climate change bill is too weak, is voluntary, and won’t do a thing. No accountability for Bush war crimes. No movement on gay rights issues. Blocking detainee photos from being released. The DOD budget is still too large. The drug war continues without any change. Preventative detention. Active resistance to accommodating the release of innocent prisoners from Gitmo, Bagram detainees have no rights. Continuing to insist the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons. Ham-handed efforts in Honduras. Mountaintop removal mining continues. Health care reform was botched and has no clear direction. Appeasement of the bankrupt Republican establishment disguised as “bipartisanship”. No sanctions for Israel after being ignored on settlements.
The only two things I can say were good is no new nukes and staying out of the Iranian elections. Otherwise, what else has he done right?
Let me put it another way, this time from a former Republican.
John Cole, at his Balloon Juice blog, wrote this in the comments one day and I was struck so much by it that I had to save it. He delineates exactly why I say Obama is on track for becoming the worst President ever:
Almost all the things he mentions require liberal solutions, not the Republican lite stuff that Obama’s doing. I have great admiration for Obama on a personal level, but he’s a giant failure in my book.
Well said. I knew better than to expect a revolution from Barack Obama, but I’m stunned at how aggressively he’s maintaining the status quo. He seems to be a pre-Reagan Republican to an even greater extent than Bill Clinton was.
Elections have consequences? Well, yes, the alternative consisted of a senile nutcase and a dimwit, and I’m glad we avoided that. That said, I’m running out of excuses not to emigrate to one of the thirty or so countries that rank ahead of the US in every significant measure.
New Zealand is looking better and better to me all the time. I prefer this country because I think the southern hemisphere will last a few months longer when the inevitable nuclear war comes from a deranged and dying American Empire. You know how the US just hates to lose. When the dollar crumbles, so goes the world.
In no particular order, I’m thinking of Denmark, Germany, and Japan. You’re probably right about the southern hemisphere being a better long-term bet, but there’s a certain level of catastrophe I don’t bother planning for, and that includes nuclear war and asteroid impacts. 😉
Um, yeah? That was pretty much patently obvious from the get-go as far as I can tell. The Democratic primary was between two pre-Reagan Republicans (Obama and Clinton) vying to see who could be the better salesperson and better administrator.
The pre-Reagan Republicans are Democrats now, for reasons that are painfully clear to anyone who looks at the Republican party. But that should come as no surprise because the Democratic Party is now almost the Eisenhower-era Republican Party in all but name – a coalition of liberals and conservatives who look out for business interests and occasionally worry about non-business interests. They’re more inclusive and far less racist than the Eisenhower-era GOP (and for that matter than the Eisenhower-ear Democrats), but ideologically on the economic side of things they’re a good fit.
The trick is that the Republicans have become the Know-Nothing Party ca 1845. Not a good mixture for a two-party system to have.
I think some of the anti-competitive behavior is getting out of hand. Like Apple changing the I-tunes software so it will not synch up to a Palm-Pre.
http://www.wiredprnews.com/2009/07/25/itunes-connection-again-enabled-on-palm-pre_200907254798.html
What are they trying to do, be microsoft themselves?
Yes. The natural state for any corporation is to try to be a monopoly. It’s the most profitable state for a corporation to be in, and corporations are built to maximize profits.
That’s why it’s actually good for a capitalist society that values “free markets” to have a robust system of checks on corporations. If you think market competition is a net good, you need to build elements to protect markets from monopolies. In segments where monopolies are inevitable because of market realities, you regulate them in ways to keep them from hurting other companies and expanding their reach into other market segments.
This is basic Econ 101 & 102 stuff, actually – the fact that so many economists are willing to shill for “no government interference in markets” is one of the reasons why I don’t have much respect for economics as a field – they really do seem incapable of policing their own.
I cannot see how this can be good for the music industry royalties from I-tunes. As their (loathing) interest is to have as many sales as possible. Not just as many sales as possible; on the I-Phone.