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Back in the ’60s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses;

There might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town,
but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.

But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act,
-- which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market.

It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and on and on.

In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies control 80 percent or more of the market.

⭐️The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation’s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T,
going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries.

⚠️It’s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission’s head, Lina Kahn, be fired.

Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition.

The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job;

🆘A Trump administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same.

Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump
because of the Post’s coverage of the orange oligarch’s lies and crimes;

Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing to Microsoft rather than Bezos' Amazon Web Services, shocking analysts across the industry.

Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company
to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts.

He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred other companies.

❌Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?

Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk,
in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin,
is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies
(which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions into SpaceX):

— Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues,
with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.
— SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.

— The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.

— The FTC is investigating X’s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.

— The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.

— The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.

— The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.

— The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.

— The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.

— SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.

#Musk #X #Bezos #WashingtonPost