$5bn+ Big Tech mergers in cross-hairs of draft US laws

A pair of law bills before the US House and Senate would give watchdogs stronger powers to block big mergers, and allow regulators to reach back into the past to dismantle previous M&As deemed to be harmful.  Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and House Representative Mondaire Jones (D-NY) each sponsored a version of the …

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately

You are correct that the bills are DOA.

Republicans in the US are currently the party of big business - the bigger the better. They have adopted the credo of 'see no evil, hear no evil'.

In the Senate, in general, bills like this require the support of 60 out of the 100 senators which requires some Republicans who are willing to cross the aisle.

[Anonymous Coward]

The megacorps have bigger legal teams than you do.

You lose.

[chuckufarley]

This seems like a turn in the right direction...

...so it's a turn that we will not take. The USA is just as much of an Oligarchy as our recently rediscovered Arch Nemesis and time isn't on our side when it comes to correcting the problem. I hate to be a doomsayer but I see no path forward that doesn't involve a lot of financial and physical pain if things are going to get better before the end of this decade. If things don't improve before then it will be a very long row to hoe before the weeds stop choking our Democracy.

[runt row raggy]

Re: This seems like a turn in the right direction...

equivocating between the us and Russia because you are mad at big business is a perverse flip of the moral compass

[chuckufarley]

Re: This seems like a turn in the right direction...

Oh, there is a reply! My apologies!

I have to say that your optimism is heart warming but I feel it is misplaced. If you dig deeper into our history you will find that the oligarchs of the USA have been waiting a long time to re-emerge. They make a cicada look like text book case of ADHD.

[Anonymous Coward]

"in addition to stripping merger litigation from the Supreme Court's jurisdiction."...at least until the Supreme Court rules that to be un-Constitutional.

This bill sounds bad, and tries to make it too easy for TLAs to do bad things on a large scale with little or no oversight, and for the hipster-est of reasons. I'm no fan of the overbearing monopolistic Corpos we have in the IT world and their stupid fucking Cortana search/telemetry services that can't be turned off easily, but I'm even less of a fan of legislation that gives government agencies freer rein to do whatever the mini-Napoleons running them want to do, especially when that legislation actively seeks to subvert the authority and oversight of other branches of the government.