No Surprise: Obama Opposes Markets, Civil Liberties
This should dispel, once and for all, the notions that Barack Obama's administration believes in the "rule of law" or simple economic literacy:
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 Varney, is to announce the policy reversal in speeches today and Tuesday, her first public appearances since she took office last month.
The speeches were described by people who have consulted with her about the policy shift. The administration hopes 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.
Varney is expected to say that the administration rejects the impulse to go easy on antitrust enforcement during weak economic times. Rather, she will assert 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 could cite the Bush administration policy as the government's official view in any pending cases.
Aside from the false statement that the Bush administration -- which committed hundreds of thousands of antitrust crimes -- was somehow "soft" on antitrust, this report does a good job exposing antitrust's true nature. It's not law; it can be changed at the whim of any government official at any time. Varney isn't just a proponent of more antitrust; she's an opponent of any due process for antitrust defendants, which is why she's going out of her way to "limit" any Bush-era policies that might allow a company to defend its property rights against government incursion. Antitrust is also not grounded in economics; telling businesses, large and small, to divert more capital away from production and towards lobbying the DOJ and paying expensive lawyers is not a recipe for increasing competition and consumer choice.
Comments (15)
Enjoy Every Sandwich
As usual, the government has a weird dictionary that's different from the normal dictionary. Their definition of "competition" does not include actually trying to win. What sort of "competition" is that?
Published: May 11, 2009 7:25 AM
Marco
Jacking up tax collection on companies abroad. The ever impending fear of getting sliced and diced by antitrust.
That'll stimulate the economy. For sure.
Published: May 11, 2009 7:34 AM
kmeisthax
These government people need to look in a mirror sometime, and then they'll find their monopoly.
Published: May 11, 2009 8:10 AM
Bogart
The best part is that the more anti-trust enforcement we get the more dominant companies we will see.
The reason is simple, instead of competing, Companies will waste precious resources in courts instead of providing consumer products. Of course the companies with the most able legal support are normally the largets.
Published: May 11, 2009 8:45 AM
Spideynw
The sad thing is that if Obama Opposes Markets, Civil Liberties, which he does, then apparently so does 67% of the population that supports his policies! It is a sad day in America and the world that so many oppose freedom.
Published: May 11, 2009 8:56 AM
redshirt
Government regulation favors the bigger companies and makes it hard for the small guy to get started. Now gov wants to punish the big guys for having the advantage gov gave them. So stupid.
Try making it less expensive for the little guy to run a business first-- take away the most costly regulations. Then see where the chips fall.
Published: May 11, 2009 9:17 AM
Michael A. Clem
Leftist just don't get the more government = more power to corps and special interests formula. At least, most of them don't. They're feeding the very anti-competitive process that they claim they want to eliminate. "But we can't take away power from the government," they'll say, "because then we won't be able to stop the corps!" Epic cognitive dissonance.
Published: May 11, 2009 10:01 AM
Enjoy Every Sandwich
The first sentence in the Washington Post's story on this (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051101189.html?hpid=topnews) is:
"The Obama administration today said it would reverse rules made during the Bush administration that made it difficult to enforce anticompetitive business behavior."
Hmmm...."made it difficult to enforce anticompetitive business behavior"...now, I'm not Grammar Boy but is that what they meant to say? Or is this perhaps the truth accidently sneaking out?
Published: May 11, 2009 10:10 AM
Ohhh Henry
Just think of it as corporate Affirmative Action.
Published: May 11, 2009 10:45 AM
C. Evans
" 'But we can't take away power from the government,' they'll say, 'because then we won't be able to stop the corps!' Epic cognitive dissonance."
I think Lew Rockwell addressed this point a while back when he stated that leftists hate the free market so much that they are willing to endure an oppressive State. I noticed this fear of corporations in the comment section of the Michael Shermer post to which Tim Swanson linked. I cannot at all understand why someone would fear an entity which must receive its income through voluntary exchange and not an entity which receives its income through theft. I cannot understand how someone can hate freedom that much. Perhaps Mencken was right:
The fact is that the average man’s love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice, and, truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage, and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty- and is usually an outlaw in democratic societies. It is, indeed, only the exceptional man who can even stand it. The average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. . . .
Published: May 11, 2009 11:31 AM
Justin
Only to be consistent, she should start with the most top-heavy industry in the US: the banking industry. Break up the money trust!
Published: May 11, 2009 1:49 PM
CorkyAgain
Antitrust, like the bailouts, is yet another way for government to gain control of large corporations. Leftists don't really hate big corporations, you see, they only hate the fact that the corporations are operating outside government control.
Only one hand can wield the One Ring...
Published: May 11, 2009 1:57 PM
2nd Amendement
What do you mean by rule of law ?
Lawmakers make the law, are above the law because they make them and we are all RULED by those laws.
If by "rule of law" you mean being ruled by the laws made by our lawmakers, then Barack Obama really believed in the rule of law.
If by "rule of law" you mean laws that don't change in time and principle. Therefore if by "rule of law" you really mean "rule of constitution" then Obama Is an outlaw.
I hate the rule of law because laws change from time to time reflecting social values and political fashion.
Laws should be scientific and should withstand the test of time. Criminalizing marijuana is an injustice to people, but decriminalizing marijuana is an injustice to all those who served time for having smoked pot.
Such flip-flopping of the law creates moral hazards and creates contempt and disdain for the law. I for one no longer have any respect for the "law".
What we really need is the RULE OF CONSTITUTION. A supreme law that can never be changed nor altered, a law which everybody is submitted to, especially politicians.
There should be no lawmakers. Everybody should uphold the constitution.
Published: May 11, 2009 2:00 PM
Brutus
Rule of law is a myth.
Published: May 11, 2009 2:39 PM
Brad
It's simply the finalization of the corporo-fascistic model. Those who play ball won't come to any harm, those who don't will be eliminated, and the apparatus will be complete. All that will be left are the mega-corporations who have acquiesced once and for all.
Published: May 11, 2009 3:41 PM