Antitrust?

I was recently reading a bit of American history and have become more convinced that American politics is cyclical. We are over-do for a shift in the political landscape. As Bob Dylan sang. "The times they are 'a chang'in."

Periods such as today remind one of the robber-barons era of the late 1800s. Back in the day, Teddy Roosevelt carried his famous "big stick" and busted up the trusts. Later, with the government acting as an honest broker, organized labor helped to raise the standard of livings of millions of workers.

It has been demonstrated time and again that periods of ever increasing concentrations of wealth and the political control of the many by the few lead to widespread disenchantment with the status quo. Often, this disenchantment leads to political action to break up the massive conglomerates that are choking the American dream.

Thankfully, antitrust laws still exist. Today, enforcement of antitrust, worker protection, and whistleblower laws is minimal. In addition,Bush's tax cuts for the richest and massive mergers and acquisitions in the financial, defense/homeland security, energy, and communications industries all point to a dangerous concentration of power in a very few hands.

Bush's FCC has been especially lax in providing oversight of the communications industry. The Bush FCC has encouraged massive mergers and acquisitions, and basically rubber-stamped all deals. Texas based AT&T is just one very large example.

The recent WoldCom and Enron demises points to a need for greater government oversight over industry, not less. Instead, we get massive corporations in strategic industries. This is not a capitalistic free market. It is an oligarchy/monopolistically structured economy. The corporate control of the economy does much to stifle true competition and discourage entrepreneurship.

Hopefully, enough Americans are searching for a better way. If so, I trust we are about to witness a concerted attempt to bring some measure of accountability and transparency back to Washington DC. Will the 21st Century Teddy Roosevelt please stand up?

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