Democrats Propose New Competition Laws That Would 'Break Up Big Companies If They're Hurting Consumers' (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Senate and House Democratic leaders today proposed new antitrust laws that could prevent many of the biggest mergers and break up monopolies in broadband and other industries. "Right now our antitrust laws are designed to allow huge corporations to merge, padding the pockets of investors but sending costs skyrocketing for everything from cable bills and airline tickets to food and health care," US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. "We are going to fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they're hurting consumers and to make it harder for companies to merge if it reduces competition." The "Better Deal" unveiled by Schumer and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was described in several documents that can be found in an Axios story. The plan for "cracking down on corporate monopolies" lists five industries that Democrats say are in particular need of change, specifically airlines, cable and telecom, the beer industry, food, and eyeglasses. The Democrats' plan for lowering the cost of prescription drugs is detailed in a separate document. The Democrats didn't single out any internet providers that they want broken up, but they did say they want to stop AT&T's proposed $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner: "Consolidation in the telecommunications is not just between cable or phone providers; increasingly, large firms are trying to buy up content providers. Currently, AT&T is trying to buy Time Warner. If AT&T succeeds in this deal, it will have more power to restrict the content access of its 135 million wireless and 25.5 million pay-TV subscribers. This will only enable the resulting behemoths to promote their own programming, unfairly discriminate against other distributors and their ability to offer highly desired content, and further restrict small businesses from successfully competing in the market."

Comments

Re:The Dems know this

[s.petry]

the party is stacked with "Corporate Dems" like Chuck Schumer & the Clintons who are really just Republicans that think pot should be legal, immigration is fine and maybe we should leave the gays alone (but don't let 'em marry, that's icky).

Sorry, but that is backwards. "Progressives" are Democrats almost exclusively, and they have infiltrated the Republican party starting right around the Reagan era. You know, that guy with a R in front of his name? or maybe Eisenhower? We could go back further but I'd hate to embarrass you by showing you all of the "Progressives" who were Democrats. (It would also bring out all of the racists, segregationists, and Jim Crowe supporters. You don't want to go there.)

The Bernie Democrats (a wing of which is calling themselves "Justice Democrats") is trying to kick 'em out of the party. If you want to see the country move to the left you need to join 'em and get voting in your primary.

Yes please! The far Leftists has done such a great job for us Constitutional Conservatives over the last couple years I can't wait! I didn't want Trump, but you guys made that possible. I'd much rather have sober politicians in the Republican party who actually believe in the Constitution, instead of the mass we have now that hides their "D" with an "R" sticker.