Corporate Consolidations, Monopolies and Anti-Trust should be campaign issues

My answer is yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

That is the 800-Pound Gorilla...The Elephant in the Room....Whatever corny metaphor you choose.

The economy has been congealing into a handful of powerful monopolies since around 1980 (actually before, but that was when it went into hyper-drive). In almost any sector or industry you choose, the number of competing companies went from thousands or hundreds down to a mere handful today.

It is occurring as we speak. The FCC is about to hand Big Media yet another opportunity to further reduce competition, by allowing newspaper companies to get a bigger hand in broadcasting. This week! And are the Democratic candidates raising a ruckus about it?

This has been a geometric process. If Company A swallows up 5 companies and Company B swallows up 5 companies and is then acquired by Company A, the combined total is reduced by 10 companies.... Then when Company C (which also swallowed up 10 former competitors) aquires Company A, it is gaining a combined total of 10 companies -- thus narrowing down what had been 20 companies into 1 Huge Company....And the next series of mergers ultimately will have swallowed up what had been 40 compenies into 1 Massive Company.

One of the gravest mistakes that the Democratic Party made was to be silent and to acquiensent during the 30 years this monstrous monopolistic morphing of the economy was taking place. Instead of tackling it when it was more managable and controllable, the Democrats sat back and allowed it to happen. (And even supported it.)

Other than a few brave souls, the politicians of BOTH political parties were enablers of this Massive Con Job.

What is even more distressing is that today, the Democratic Party is STILL Silent on this. It is not a major campaign issue.

Even John Edwards, who is running as a populist, doesn't really address this core problem.

I believe that this massive restructuring ought to be a central issue for the Democratic Party in this election cycle.

What do you think?

Dodd made the point (in a debate I think) that one goal in health care reform ought to be addressing through anti-trust the continuing consolidation of the health-insurance industry.

he and otehr candidates should be brining that aspect of it out more. In recent years that has continued to accelerate, reducing the competition while increasing the size of the survivors.

When you consider this as a percentage of Dodd's funds raised, it's really bothersome to me.

I believe in his heart, Dodd is a liberal who does the best he can.

But he, like Biden, got caught in an era when Democrats bought into the idea that they could not be real fighters for basic progressive liberal economic policies. So they compromised within that system.

Also, if you're from Connecticut, you don;t get very far without the support of insurance companies.

he is the last one that Wall Street and the Corporists want in the White House.

Kucinich as well but Edwards is just more out front with more money and further ahead in the race.

Edwards is addressing the whole issue of corporate power. However one aspect I haven;t heard him talk about much is the need for a return to anti-monopolist regulation and anti-trust actions to stop -- and hopefully reverse -- the continuing consolidation of industries.

power and greed. As if he has addressed specificly anti-trust, anti-monopolist regulation, stopping the consolidation of industries, not sure. I thought he had in the past talked about these things. How much, not certain, will have to look back and see, maybe he has something on his websites but I don't think he has put them specifically out in the forefront of the campaign, more generalized.

and pressure on the FCC.

Check out this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2476486&mesg_id=2476486

The media obviously doesn't want to talk about this. That's one reason all of the candidates ought to be mentioning this in their stump speeches.

and start shouting RIGHT AWAY. Kerry and Obama can't do it by themselves since the media can successfully ignore them the next few days.

HELL YEA! Why should the public subsidize these corporations who are providing mediocre service and the few products they do manufacture?

I think the public sees what Media concentration has done.

IMO people instinctively realize the damage that this has done and is doing. But they've been subjected to a lot of misleading messages over the years, including such Orwellian logic as "Our company needs to eliminate our competition to preserve competition."

If the Democrats would start to help support what people intuitive common sense tells them, it would do a lot to begin to reverse this problem.

The American Antitrust Institute sent letters to all presidential primary candidates asking for their position on antitrust. They got replies from two:

Edwards:
http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/archives/files/aai-%20Presidential%20campaign%20-%20Edwards%2010-1-07_100220071538.pdf

Obama:
http://www.antitrustinstitute.org/archives/files/aai-%20Presidential%20campaign%20-%20Obama%209-07_092720071759.pdf

And on your original question: oh yes, Armstead, antitrust issues should definitely be a campaign issue.

The current antitrust enforcement regime is very pro-big-business, anti-regulation; they call it the Chicago School because their "free market" rhetoric comes out of the University of Chicago which John D. Rockefeller started after Standard Oil got busted on antitrust charges.

To my mind, you either (1) use Antitrust to limit the power of big business or (2) Campaign Finance Reform to limit the power of big donors. Better to do both. Right now we're doing neither -- a sure prescription for economic inequality.

To my mind it is not merely a matter of Big Corps abusing their power.

What's ultimately most important of all is to prevent corporations from acquiring such power, and to roll back some of the excessive monopolization that has taken place.

Just sayin'...

The fact that politicians seem so enslaved to the MSM is exactly why they ought to be fighting.

Ultimately, the people and politicians can have the upper hand, and force the media to become more accountable, but only if they stop kowtowing to the Big Media Corps.

This will only be solved when people kill their TVs, IMO

But at least the Tee Vees might be less destructive if the politicians stand up and force some honest coverage of the campaigns by their actions.

I realize this isn;t about Obama's old recreational pastimes, or Hillary's personality, but it's worth hearing what people think