Slashdot Mirror
AT&T's $85B US Bid For Time Warner Sparks Antitrust Fears in Washington (www.cbc.ca)
An anonymous reader writes: The two top members of the Senate's antitrust subcommittee said Sunday that they plan to probe a colossal deal between AT&T and Time Warner. In a statement, Mike Lee, R-Utah., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. -- chairman and ranking Democrat, respectively, of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights -- said AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner "would potentially raise significant antitrust issues" that the panel would "carefully examine." AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson announced the $85 billion deal Saturday as "a great fit" that will combine the "world's best premium content with the networks to deliver it to every screen." Among those new properties are HBO, Turner Broadcasting System and Warner Bros., which would give them ownership of Cinemax, CNN and DC Comics, to name a few. Last year, AT&T completed the purchase of DirecTV, the country's largest satellite television provider. In an interview with NBC News, Klobuchar pointed to past mega-media acquisitions -- including the purchase of NBCUniversal by Comcast in 2011 and of Time Warner Cable by Charter Communications -- and said the "sheer volume" of the deal should give regulators pause.Presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that he would not approve of this deal if elected as the President. In the meanwhile, Bernie Sanders have also asked Obama administration to kill this agreement. The Vermont Senator said, "The deal would mean higher prices and fewer choices for the American people,"
AT&T's $85B US Bid For Time Warner Sparks Antitrust Fears in Washington
An antitrust suit? In 2016? Where have these guys been?
We don't do antitrust in America any more. If we encumbered our industrialist plutocrats by forcing them to follow laws and stuff, we'd get eaten alive by the Soviet Union, I mean Mexico, I mean Japan, I mean China, I mean the Martians.
Congress needs to shut up and start doing its job, which is to completely fail to learn from history, and convince the electorate to do the same, by inciting them to focus on largely irrelevant cultural distinctions.
At this point we should be smashing media and internet companies apart not letting them get bigger.
Where's our bribe money?
You know. Trump never solidly supported the Iraq War. On Howard Stern's show, he was asked and simply said, "I guess so." He then made it clear he didn't support it in 2002. The fact that: a) he wasn't a politician at the time, means his off-the-cuff luke warm support meant nothing; 2) that the media and Democrats are accusing him of lying about his support is nothing more than a political ploy. Hillary Clinton voted for the war; that's a bit more serious.
We do antitrust routinely, we just don't do a lot of it. We do much more deal-blocking than we do company-busting, which hasn't really been done much in a long time. With populist sentiments rising on both sides of the aisle, the environment might almost reward politicians who favor a return to more robust antitrust activity.
Now, Congress is talking about it because of the election. It is the downside of announcing a major merger two weeks before an election. On the other hand, AT&T donates a lot...
Real lawyers write in C++
Correction: a free market without the FCC is nothing BUT monopoly.
'cause if the FCC ain't there to police things, the big companies are going to cheat.
Buy all the shit up, shut out competition.
Why? 'cause if one don't cheat, another one will, so that in the end, there can be only one.
Fair competition? Feh. Playing fair, if you don't HAVE to play fair, is for suckers.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
I think there's more than chance at work.
I think Trump's populism and Sanders' populism differ by the solutions they advocate, not by the problems they diagnose.
In many ways, Trump seems to have the kind of everyman "common sense" mindset shared by ordinary people who don't really know and/or care about high-level ideological alignment and coherence. I think this is what frustrates a lot of people when it comes to politics and why so many Americans identify as "independent" -- in their minds, solutions should be practical and effective first. They're not bothered by the fact that $solution_1 and $solution_2 are ideologically inconsistent.
More than many Democrats, Sanders seemed to be more pragmatic focused, or at least he seemed that way by focusing closely on more everyday economic concerns.
The more "political" a politician or voter is, the more they seem to demand ideological consistency, purity and cohesion.
Trump never solidly supported the Iraq War.
Trump never solidly supports any position. He changes his mind more often than a teenage girl changes moods. I don't actually mind someone changing their mind about a topic when they learn new information or even if they give a matter serious consideration. Trump never gives anything serious consideration. His policy positions are the very definition of fickle and certainly aren't based out of any ideology or even pragmatism but instead out of whatever whim strikes him at the time. He basically plays to whatever crowd he is facing and lies almost all the time.
Hillary Clinton voted for the war; that's a bit more serious.
So did most of congress at the time and they did so largely based on bad data from our intelligence agencies and the Bush administration. A mistake I think but not one that makes me think Trump would be a better choice as commander in chief.