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(Sen. Joseph C. O'Mahoney 1950 - back when Anti-Trust laws meant something)

I've been reading a lot lately about the recent call-for-boycott of The Whole Foods supermarket chain - how disclosures have been coming to light of predatory practices with reference to killing off small business seen as competition in the marketplace.

I came across a broadcast, part of the American Forum series from January 22, 1950, featuring a debate between Senator Joseph C. O'Mahoney (D-Wyoming) and Carl Beyer, a Public Relations Consultant for the A&P Supermarket chain over a series of court cases regarding A&P and their labor and business practices.

In 1950, A&P was probably the largest single supermarket chain in the U.S. But not only that, they were also one of the larger conglomerates in the food industry, owning several related subsidiary companies, pretty much like large corporations are now.

But in 1950 there were a series of strong Anti-Trust laws in place that prevented corporations from gaining a monopoly in the marketplace. And A&P were at the center of such a controversy, one that went all the way to the Supreme Court.

I lieu of our recent "Companies too big to fail" dilemma, one would imagine our anti-trust laws have been gutted and abandoned in recent years, tossed out in favor of predator-monopolies. The whole change in landscape of our media, our entertainment, our banking have come about as a direct result of tossing Anti-trust out the window.

This lively debate certainly nails some fundamental problems we're facing today.

Ones that need to be taken seriously (for a change) again.

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This is kind of ironic, isn't it? Politicians are worried about losing the support of big business, because big business gives big campaign contributions. And why do they need big contributions? To win campaigns. And what do you need to win campaigns? Votes.

Wouldn't you think they'd see how easy it would be to cut out the middleman and simply make the voters happy? I mean, what could be more of a crowd-pleaser than taking on the cable companies and their high-priced monopolies?

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top antitrust official and some senior Democratic lawmakers are preparing to rein in a host of major industries, including airline and railroad giants, moving so aggressively that they are finding some resistance from officials within the administration.

The official, Christine A. Varney, the antitrust chief at the Justice Department, has begun examining complaints by the phone companies Verizon and AT&T that their rivals — major cable operators like Cablevision and Cox Communications — improperly prevent them from buying sports shows and other programs that the cable companies produce, industry lawyers said.

At the request of some lawmakers, notably Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, Ms. Varney is examining whether small agricultural operations are being hampered unfairly by large food processors, particularly in the milk industry, congressional aides said.

Ms. Varney has also challenged agreements that the Federal Trade Commission and consumer groups say discourage pharmaceutical companies from marketing more generic drugs. And she is examining a settlement between Google and book publishers and authors to make more books available online.

The more aggressive antitrust policy was described in interviews with officials at the White House, the Justice Department, other agencies and Congress. It is a major policy reversal from the Bush administration, which did not prosecute cases in which some dominant companies engaged in potentially anticompetitive behavior, often because those officials maintained such behavior was not harmful to consumers.

Democrats have spent years trying to gain the support of businesses, and the policy changes under way may have long-term political implications for their party. Some companies would like to see more aggressive antitrust enforcement against their rivals, while others could be hurt by it.

In some cases, though, the new approach is being opposed by administration officials. Some fear that the crackdown is coming at a bad time, as corporate America reels from the recession. Other officials embrace the Bush administration’s view that larger companies and industry alliances can provide consumer benefits by making their businesses more efficient.

One clash played out recently when the Transportation Department, rejecting many of Ms. Varney’s recommendations, approved an antitrust immunity request involving a global alliance of nine airlines; Continental Airlines wanted to join the alliance to share routes, marketing and revenue.

The antitrust division argued the immunity was unnecessary for approving the newly reconstituted alliance and that it could lead to rates rising from 6 to 15 percent for many routes, according to public filings. The Transportation Department rejected that analysis for most of the routes and instead endorsed a policy popular during the Bush administration that favored such industry agreements out of a desire for efficiency.

Here's some good news for a Monday:

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s top antitrust official this week plans to restore an aggressive enforcement policy against corporations that use their market dominance to elbow out competitors or to keep them from gaining market share.

The new enforcement policy would reverse the Bush administration’s approach, which strongly favored defendants against antitrust claims. It would restore a policy that led to the landmark antitrust lawsuits against Microsoft and Intel in the 1990s.

The head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, Christine A. Varney, is to announce the policy reversal in a speech she will give on Monday before the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy research organization. She will deliver the same speech on Tuesday to the United States Chamber of Commerce.

The speeches were described by people who have consulted with her about the policy shift. The administration is hoping to encourage smaller companies in an array of industries to bring their complaints to the Justice Department about potentially improper business practices by their larger rivals. Some of the biggest antitrust cases were initiated by complaints taken to the Justice Department.

Ms. Varney is expected to say that the administration rejects the impulse to go easy on antitrust enforcement during weak economic times.

She will assert instead that severe recessions can provide dangerous incentives for large and dominating companies to engage in predatory behavior that harms consumers and weakens competition. The announcement is aimed at making sure that no court or party to a lawsuit can cite the Bush administration policy as the government’s official view in any pending cases.

In the speeches, Ms. Varney is expected to explicitly warn judges and litigants in antitrust lawsuits not involving the government to ignore the Bush administration’s policies, which were formally outlined in a report by the Justice Department last year. The report applied legal standards that made it difficult to bring new cases involving monopoly and predatory practices.

As a result of the Bush administration’s interpretation of antitrust laws, the enforcement pipeline for major monopoly cases — which can take years for prosecutors to develop — is thin. During the Bush administration, the Justice Department did not file a single case against a dominant firm for violating the antimonopoly law.

Hmm. I think that newspaper preservation does not mean what he thinks it means:

WASHINGTON, March 18 (Reuters) - U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Wednesday preserving a healthy newspaper industry was important and he was open to adjusting antitrust policy if it could help.

"I'd like to think 20, 30, 40 years from now people will still be reading the newspaper," Holder told reporters.

He was responding to a call by House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, urging the Justice Department to give newspapers more leeway to merge or combine operations.

The industry is reeling from declining circulation, economic recession and a shift in advertising and reader attention to online media. Venerable newspapers have closed or -- such as the Hearst Corp.'s Seattle Post-Intelligencer this week -- gone to Internet-only editions with reduced staff.

"I think it's important for this nation to maintain a healthy newspaper industry. So to the extent that we have to look at our enforcement policies and conform them to the realities that that industry faces, that's something that I'm going to be willing to do," Holder said.

Some struggling newspapers in multiple-newspaper cities have limited antitrust immunity under the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act, allowing them to combine business activities while maintaining separate news operations.

Well, here's the thing. That 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act (passed under Nixon, who I can assure you, was not interested in "preserving" newspapers) was the first major step in the media consolidation that brought us here today. The act allowed newspapers in the same town to be owned by the same corporation, and that led to what in many cases was only superficial editorial independence.

Instead of preserving editorial voices, it preserved profits. That was the real purpose. It led to price-fixing, and the consolidated business operations took full advantage by jacking up the advertising rates. After all, where else could advertisers go? (Those high rates - which sustained hefty profit margins for years - ultimately made Craigslist an immediate and smashing success.)

The joint operating agreements (JOAs) under this Act allowed parent companies to adopt financial policies that did actually affect each paper's resources - and thus, their ability to cover the news. Trust me, this did not serve the cause of democracy.

So while this may sound like a good thing, the solution to dying newspapers is not to allow ownership to be concentrated even further. Remember, most of these "failing" newspapers are still turning a profit - they're just not making the same obscene profits Wall St. has demanded in the past.