Probably the most important thing the Biden Administration is doing

You can often tell whether something is good or bad based on if the media hates it. For instance, the media hates Biden's withdraw from Afghanistan, while supporting Trump when he bombed Syria.
Essentially if the media hates something then it's probably good, and visa versa.

In a similar vein, you can tell whether something is important or not based on if the media talks about it. If the media ignores something then it's often important. For example, the media's refusal to talk about the link between capitalism and the destruction of the environment.
However, the topic I want to talk about is the Biden Administration's antitrust policy.

I’ve covered lots of administrations, focusing on the regulation of capitalism. And I’ve never seen anything remotely like this.

Start with the resurrection of antitrust, left for dead after Robert Bork got through with it in the Reagan era. The incomparable Lina Khan heads the FTC, and another stalwart, Jonathan Kanter, will be assistant attorney general for antitrust.

Khan, while still in her 20s, wrote the authoritative law journal article on how antitrust could be applied to the big platform monopolies. And Kanter is the lawyer you retain when your company is being savaged by one the monopolies Khan describes. It doesn’t get any better.

Meanwhile, Tim Wu, one of the smartest big-picture competition policy people in the world, coordinates this stuff at the White House, while Bharat Ramamurti, former chief economic adviser to Elizabeth Warren, handles it at the National Economic Council. There has been nothing like this since the Roosevelt era.

The news is equally good on the financial regulation front, where one top job after another has gone to progressives. The latest two such posts about to be filled are Graham Steele to be assistant secretary of the treasury for financial institutions, and Saule Omarova to be comptroller of the currency, the key regulator of national banks.

This Treasury job, even under Democrats, usually goes to people congenial to Wall Street. Steele is different. He has been chief banking counsel to Sen. Sherrod Brown, and currently heads the Corporations and Society Initiative at Stanford Law School. He once worked for Public Citizen (yes, that Public Citizen.) He is a major proponent of tougher regulation under existing Dodd-Frank provisions, including greater attention to the risks in bank investments in carbon related industries.

That may sound like too good to be true, and normally you would be correct to be very skeptical.
But this isn't one of those times. You can tell by the response from the financial media.

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The federal government stopped enforcing antitrust laws back in the Reagan Administration, and no administration since then, neither Democratic or Republican, has been incline to change that.
Until now. Republicans wouldn't have a problem with this, except that the monopolies in the tech sector tend to lean Democratic. This opens the bipartisan window to fighting the monopolies that afflict every sector of our economy. This has led to the FTC officially calling Facebook a monopoly and seeking to break them up.
Breaking up the monopolies are essential, not just for our economy, but for our political system as well.

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Because it's never bad to support a pointless, unwinnable war.

The chairs of the Senate’s leading foreign policy committees are calling for an investigation into President Biden’s handling of the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan amid the Taliban’s swift (and largely expected) takeover of Kabul last weekend, and the grisly scenes of Afghans trying to flee in its wake.

Sens. Jack Reed (Armed Services), Mark Warner (Intelligence), and Robert Menendez (Foreign Affairs) are piling on the frenzy in Washington where interest in America’s longest war waned long ago, a dynamic that is seemingly playing a significant role in the collective shock at the events unfolding in Afghanistan throughout the past week.

And nowhere is that dichotomy more apparent than in these same senators’ reactions to the Washington Post’s investigation in December 2019 — dubbed the “Afghanistan Papers” — which found “that senior U.S. officials failed to tell the truth about the war in Afghanistan throughout the 18-year campaign, making rosy pronouncements they knew to be false and hiding unmistakable evidence the war had become unwinnable.”

Reed, Warner, and Menendez said very little about the Post’s findings. Only Reed suggested (to a reporter) that there should be some kind of congressional investigation, but none of them made a proactive push for a hearing.* There is no record of any statement about the Afghanistan Papers on their senate websites.

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Shahryar's picture

in a sane world he'd never have come to power but if he had, then he'd be locked up now.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-58295384

"The US withdrawal from Afghanistan was wrong and based on an "imbecilic" slogan, former PM Tony Blair has said."

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Raggedy Ann's picture

@Shahryar . Easy to mouth off when your neck is not on the chopping block. I don't care for Biden, but I care that we are out of ONE of the many wars we think we need to wage.

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

The media hate - not "the media hates".

Of course, that has gotten less and less true over the past 30 years, BUT HERE'S HOPING we're actually seeing a formidable silver lining here!

You're right; it does seem too good to be true - of course, maybe the fact that it IS Team-Sirrus clamoring for breaking up Achenar-loyalist corporations that is our ace-in-the-hole.

So much for the black-and-white of the '000s...?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Which means she's dead on.

(Warning:truth bomb incoming)

https://youtu.be/16_YskdLFzQ

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is not anything I know about.

But I can add this: Tim Wu was Zephyr Teachout's running mate when she tried to topple Cuomo in 2014. Very cool that he is advising Biden.

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NYCVG

We essentially forced our way in and created a civil war in Afghanistan. Our enemies and friends looked alike. Tribes were on both sides, spies were on both sides. While everyone is lamenting how our Afghan allies wouldn't fight, they had been losing about 10,000 fighters in skirmishes a year. A lot of the equipment we "gave" them was useless because we never let them know how to fix or run it, leaving that to US subcontractors under contract to the Pentagon.

Add in the built in corruption capitalism we practice. With Afghan troops not getting paid, clothed or fed while watching the leadership flee with all the gold does not give anyone a reason to die.

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