The FTC's Top Consumer Protection Official Can't Go After Facebook -- or 100 Other Companies (theverge.com)

The Federal Trade Commission's top consumer protection official is prohibited from handling the cases involving 120 different companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Uber, according to financial disclosure documents published by Public Citizen this week. From a report: Andrew Smith, who heads the FTCs Consumer Protection Bureau, would be in charge of handling investigations into some of the country's largest companies and any consumer protection violations that may occur. But due to his conflicts of interest, Smith is barred from participating in any investigations involving the companies he previously provided legal services for. "It's a big world out there, and the FTC has very broad jurisdictions," Smith said to The Verge. "There are plenty of investigations that I'm involved in." Smith was approved by a 3-2 Republican majority in May.

Comments

Anothe reason why "independence" is bad

[MikeRT]

The FTC, FCC, etc. would function a lot better if they were normal executive branch agencies and this post were a political appointee. No president would want to waste their time on a guy who would get such an obvious "lol, gtfo" from the Senate upon submission and it coming out that 20% of the fortune 500 cannot be investigated by him.

Forget 2 cars in every garage

[schklerg]

It's a fox in every hen house for the US.

tentacles

[PopeRatzo]

Whether or not the chair of the Consumer Protection Bureau is personally able to head investigations is less important to me than the question of why you would want to appoint a CPB chair who has all these previous financial ties to the biggest companies his agency is supposed to be protecting consumers from?

It's like appointing Mr Fox to be the head of the Henhouse Security Agency and thinking it's OK because he's not personally responsible for protecting the henhouse. I mean, what the fuck else is his job, then and why would you think he's going to delegate that responsibility to someone who has the hens' best interests in mind?