Thread by @pleasesaveour

washingtonpost.com/business/econo…

There is a battle going on for the future of American business. And what you need to know is that under President Trump, the Justice Department is routinely weighing in on the side of the corporate giants.

Last month, the Justice Department asked a federal court in New York to terminate a set of 70-year-old decrees that prevented the major Hollywood studios from owning and operating movie theaters.

The department’s approval of megamergers such as Aetna and CVS in health care,

T-Mobile and Sprint in mobile phone service and movie giants Disney and Fox, which in some years account for half of all box office sales.

By moving to lift the old decrees, the Justice Department has given the studios a green light to push ahead with all this consolidation and

re-create the old Hollywood cartel and studio system on which it was based.

Guess who has a big stake in Hollywood? STEVE MNUCHIN

This is precisely the kind of oligopoly that the antitrust laws were meant to prevent. That’s why, when the Justice Department announced it was

considering lifting the old decrees, assoc rep the theater owners, screenwriters and directors urged that the prohibitions be left in place. Of the 82 public comments filed with the DOJ, 81 opposed lifting the decrees, and the deptt dismissed them all with a potpourri of

legalistic sophistry, a spirited defense of inflated ticket prices (how else to pay for those cushy reclining seats?) and a hollow promise to punish any future anti-competitive behavior.

Yea right🤬

The Trump DOJ has jumped to the defense of Big Hollywood in other ways.

Currently, the Hollywood screenwriters guild is locked in a legal battle with the 3 dom talent agencies. The guild accuses the agencies of conspiring to maintain indust practices that are rife with conflicts of interest and have increased agent incomes at the expense of their

writer-clients. Unable to resolve their dispute through negotiation, the guild this spring ordered its members to fire agents at firms that refuse to sign a new code of conduct. The standoff has continued as the two sides duel in federal court.

Last month, however, the Justice Department filed a motion asking to intervene in the case on the side of the agencies.

screendaily.com/news/us-depart…

In other words, in the struggle between millionaire performers and billionaire owners over how to divide the spoils of their monopolies, the Trump administration intends to use the antitrust law to weigh in on behalf of the billionaires.

Surprise!!

DOJ is not the only gov agency charged with enforcing competition law. The other is the FTC. Earlier this year the DOJ took the unusual step of siding with Qualcomm against the FTC, asking the federal appeals court in CA to overturn a lower court decision that the company had

engaged in practices that raised prices and reduced competition.

In exchange for having its tech adopted as the industry standard, Qualcomm agreed to license that tech to any company at reasonable rates.

What happened instead was that Qualcomm threatened to withhold its must-

have chips from any handset manufacturer that didn’t also agree to pay an exorbitant licensing fee for its must-have technology.

law360.com/articles/11964…

In their brief filed with the federal appeals court, the DOJ sounded more like corporate defense attorneys than crusading trustbusters

They argued that monopoly pricing and profits were a good thing in the technology sector

What happened to the people's government?

The dept also told the court that because Qualcomm was the US national champion in the global race to develop 5G technology, any antitrust concerns must take a back seat to national security concerns.

Until a few years ago, the monopolist was an important client of Delrahim, the

man who now heads the antitrust division.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makan_Del…

Delrahim is said to have recused himself in matters relating to the FTC and Qualcomm. He even went so far as to tear up a 2013 agreement with the Patent Office setting out guidelines for standard setting

organization, asserting (without proof) that such arrangements foster collusion among licensees to hold out for lower royalties and deny patent holders the rightful fruits of their innovation.

What is becoming clear from these and other actions is that, as with so many other

federal agencies in the Trump era, the foxes are now in charge of the antitrust henhouse. #SWAMP

Long-standing precedents and protocols are being discarded without justification. Unions are being threatened with loss of their antitrust exemption.

Based on the positions the dept has taken relating to Qualcomm, Hollywood and the telecom mergers, there is a good chance that the gov will wind up giving its blessing to the tech giants’ anti-competitive behavior, rather than moving aggressively to restrain it.

Another reason to get these billionaires out of government. These people with ulterior motives. These people with major conflicts of interests.

New laws need to be written once sane people have control of government.

End.
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