Monday, October 24, 2016

No One Wants AT&T Acquisition

Washington Monthly | The Left and the Right Agree: Stop the AT&T / Time Warner Merger:

...One heartening example of this bipartisan populism is the response to the proposed acquisition of Time Warner by AT&T. The deal would be a huge boost to AT&T in consolidating power not only over mobile devices but the content played on them...
In The Godfather novel Mario Puzo made the point several times that Vito Corleone really liked monopolies because they are obviously more efficient than competition. True-- if you own the monopoly. But AT&T wouldn't act like the Godfather, right? Right? 

2 comments:

anonymous said...

One thing I'm pretty sure a Clinton administration will do, especially with Elizabeth Warren as an ally, is reverse the normalization of violations of monopoly law that took place over the last decade and a half. Bill Clinton's going after Microsoft was the last major effort I recall.

If (fingers and toes crossed) NC ousts McCrory and puts in Cooper, that would put a check on one of the worst offenders, Duke, all by its lonesome, but I would so love to see Enron 2.0 broken up with a parting kick from the White House.

Bob Harrison said...

Enron 2.0-- I love that. And it is perfect for Duke. I'm going steal it. I loved how my 65 per month bill under NP&L jumped to 150 within two years. I threw fits about allowing Duke to buy us (and sell for $20 million property stolen from locals to use for a power plant that never got built) because I knew we were gonna get screwed. And we did. The only positive from Duke has been they're better at keep the right of way cleared off so we don't have as many blackouts from falling trees.