1. I know everything is supposed to be totally awful in politics, but allow me to interrupt constant doom and gloom with... good news. On the monopoly front, corporate power is, ever so slightly, ebbing. Here are eight examples from the last week. mattstoller.substack.com/p/hope-on-the-…
2. Government antitrust cases are progressing. The Federal Trade Commission won an important procedural victory against Facebook this week. marketplace.org/shows/marketpl…
3. Meanwhile, state attorneys general, whose antitrust case was dismissed last year, appealed the dismissal. Normally they would have given up, but increasing heat on Facebook gave confidence to state level enforcers.
https://twitter.com/joshua_sisco/status/1482097451628597249?s=21
4. A judge unsealed documents in the Texas antitrust case against Google, showing that Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally signed off on dividing the online ad market. That's a big price-fixing problem at the top. Ruh-roh. politico.com/news/2022/01/1…
5. In a separate case, judge found 'pharma bro' Martin Shkreli personally liable for monopolization. He's banned from the industry for life and had to pay $64M. The case was against him *personally,* not the firm.
https://twitter.com/econliberties/status/1482079916460023810
6. Personal liability for a monopolization claim is rare, and an important precedent.
https://twitter.com/Caffar3Cristina/status/1482168394128445444
7. New York state began moving @SenGianaris's groundbreaking antitrust bill through the state Senate. mattstoller.substack.com/p/new-york-sta…
8. The biggest of big business names came out against the bill. A notable opponent is Timothy G. McEvoy, He's not a very important name, except McEvoy works for William Hochul, the husband of… New York Governor Hochul. @RossBarkan pfnyc.org/news/over-50-n…
9. The most conservative faction in Congress - the House Freedom Caucus - endorsed stronger antitrust laws. 56 Rs came out publicly, getting crosswise with conservative leader @Jim_Jordan.
https://twitter.com/freedomcaucus/status/1481298451455479808?s=20
10. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the state will begin production of its own insulin to break the insulin cartel.
https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1480635314389487618
11. Mega-mergers are slowing. And Thoma Bravo, the private equity firm behind the awful SolarWinds hack, failed in its attempt to buy Memecast, due to antitrust concerns. mattstoller.substack.com/p/hope-on-the-… 
12. The Biden administration smacked down the most useless middlemen in health care, pharmacy benefit managers. CMS proposed a rule to stop PBMs from unfairly clawing back money from pharmacists and overcharging Medicare recipients. ncpa.org/newsroom/news-…
13. And private antitrust cases are moving forward. John Deere just got hit with a right to repair claim. vice.com/en/article/xgd…
14. There's a class action suit against LinkedIn, WWE is now facing a monopolization suit from a wrestling league competitor, the Varsity cheerleading case is moving, and Hartford Healthcare is now going to court for antitrust violations. sportico.com/law/news/2022/…
15. “Despotism, be it financial or political, is vulnerable, unless it is believed to rest upon a moral sanction. The longing for freedom is ineradicable. It will express itself in protest against servitude and inaction unless the striving for freedom be made to seem immoral.”
16. That was Louis Brandeis in 1914. All it takes to change our society is to recognize that the elites who tell us our longing for freedom is immoral are... wrong. And as we're seeing, that change in attitude is happening.
17. At any rate, if you're interested in the inner details of how corporate power works in politics, sign up for my newsletter BIG, where I focus on the problem of monopolies. mattstoller.substack.com/subscribe
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