Elephant in the room: economic consolidation

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DOJ whistleblower

https://prospect.org/power/2025-08-1...st-corruption/

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“In my opinion based on regular meetings with him, Chad Mizelle accepts party meetings and makes key decisions depending on whether the request or information comes from a MAGA friend,” Alford claims. That’s a significant charge of corruption. And it leads other companies to learn how the game is played and hire their own lawyers and lobbyists with the home-team MAGA imprimatur to get what they want. From an economic standpoint, anyone seen as a “MAGA friend” can boost their asking price to deliver results for corporations. And Alford notes that ethical lawyers cannot compete with unethical ones, sending them out the door and poisoning the entire system.

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Amazon price fixing

In another unsealed deposition, Terry Esbenshade, a Pennsylvania garden store supplier, testified in October 2024 that whenever his products lost Amazon’s Buy Box because of lower prices elsewhere on the internet, his sales on Amazon would plummet by about 80%. This financial reality forced him to try to raise his products’ prices with other retailers elsewhere, he said.


In one instance, Esbenshade testified, he discovered that one of his company’s better-selling patio tables had “become suppressed” on Amazon.


Esbenshade wasn’t sure why, he recalled, until someone at Amazon suggested he look at Wayfair, another online retailer that happened to be selling his patio table below Amazon’s price.
The businessman went online and set up a new minimum advertised price for the table on Wayfair to ensure it was higher than Amazon’s.
“So that raised the price up, and, voila, my product came back” on Amazon, he said, thanks to the reinstatement of the Buy Box.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...fornia-lawsuit

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DOJ settled its case, but 22 states didn't

Live Nation has been ruled to have been operating an anticompe ive and harmful monopoly

A jury found Wednesday that entertainment giant Live Nation, which hosts tens of thousands of concerts a year, and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had a harmful monopoly over big venues.


The ruling, in a lawsuit brought by dozens of states, won’t immediately bring relief for concertgoers who have long complained about high ticket prices. But it could cost Live Nation hundreds of millions of dollars and perhaps force the company to sell some of its concert venues when the judge hands out penalties later.
Among other things, the jury found Ticketmaster’s anticompe ive practices led to people in 22 states paying an extra $1.72 per ticket, which the judge could order the companies to pay back

https://apnews.com/article/live-nati...bb9d97134b826f

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A federal judge halted the $6.2 billion merger of television station giants Nexstar Media Group and Tegna after eight states and satellite broadcaster DirecTV sued to block the deal on an rust grounds.


In a preliminary injunction issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Troy Nunley of California said the combination of the two companies is likely to violate the Clayton Act, which prohibits anticompe ive mergers. The states that sued to block the merger said the deal would result in too much concentration of local stations and harm compe ion.

ttps://www.wsj.com/business/media/judge-halts-nexstar-tegna-tv-station-merger-f3b81b74

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Amazon price fixing

Caught with hands in the cookie jar

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releas...e-amazon-price

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this is correct and proper in a democracy

the people decide, land doesn't get a vote

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Trump tried to save Ticketmaster but it may not work

A jury subsequently found Ticketmaster was operating an illegal monopoly

New reporting by the Wall Street Journal sheds light on the extent of Trump’s personal involvement in the Live Nation-Ticketmaster case, as well as the company’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering to end the lawsuit by currying favor with the president. In January 2026, Live Nation informed the Justice Department that it was bringing in new lawyers from Sullivan & Cromwell, a BigLaw firm with closeties to the president. At settlement talks, Live Nation was represented by James McDonald, a then-partner at S&C who didn’t have much in the way of an rust experience, but did represent Trump in his attempt to overturn his criminal hush money conviction in New York. (Last month, Trump named McDonald the new U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.) The WSJ also reports that Live Nation “reminded” DOJ officials that the federal case against it was commenced by the Biden administration, and Trump “likes to make deals.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump met with Rapino on Friday, February 27, to discuss ticket sales at the Kennedy Center, which plunged after Trump took it over. True to his nature, Trump asked Rapino if they had a deal yet in the an rust case. Rapino said no, and that the trial was scheduled to begin on Monday, March 3. Trump then told a “senior DOJ official” to settle. Attorney General Pam Bondi started bullying the attorneys general of states that had joined the lawsuit, urging them to settle, too. Bondi warned state Republican officials that the deal was “personal” to Trump.

The DOJ managed to peel off six states, but most of them rebuffed the administration’s pressure and continued the trial as scheduled, without the Justice Department. Thankfully for fans of live music, the states’ perseverance paid off: In April 2026, a federal jury found the company liable for operating as an illegal monopoly. The states have since proposed a range of possible remedies, including a court order that would require Live Nation to divest Ticketmaster after all.

https://ballsandstrikes.org/law-poli...he-pulse-baby/