Thread

1. Cipater · 1790861369 · focus · HN ↗

   They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.

   And if the FTC chair is not agreeable, they will be threatened by said lobbyists and eventually be fired.

   If this sounds far-fetched, it is exactly what happened to Gail Slater, then-head of the DOJ's antitrust division and her deputies in 2025 over HPE’s bid to acquire Juniper.

   Wall Street Journal archive link: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;IMer9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;IMer9

   1. AndrewKemendo · 1790865910 · focus · HN ↗

      This is just how business is done with the government nothing new here or even hidden really.

      Should this be the way it happens? No

      Is it? Yes

      The main thing I’ve seen recently is people learning how the world works then being shocked when it’s nothing like what is sold publicly

      1. CookieCrisp · 1790867054 · focus · HN ↗

         I was incredibly more naive and idealistic 2 years ago. Seeing the world more accurately than I did before has been quite the shock

         1. AndrewKemendo · 1790867789 · focus · HN ↗

            That’s awesome!

            I am legit curious though: what changed specifically in your information gathering process that revealed these things?

            For example pretty much everything happening now has been well described by Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn specifically about American politics since the 1960s. I mean similarly for the entire black community and don’t forget Martin Luther King was killed because he was trying to organize sanitation workers.

            Chris Hedges has been reporting about the state of things daily for two decades now. Similarly for Jacobin magazine.

            Ron Paul (whatever you think of him) was talking explicitly about this corruption in the context of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the bail out of the banking market in 2008.

            Ross Perot famously described how Nafta was a big sellout to the multinational corporations and would devastate US industry - on stage at the 1992(?) presidential debate and everybody just made fun of him because he was short and had slightly larger ears because he was an older guy.

            1. forshaper · 1790884073 · focus · HN ↗

               Well a lot of this is simply published. Like, from reading a bill, agency rules, memos, whatever. Most of it is not hidden, except by...boredom? Like you had to be interested for whatever reason to go looking for it. Or embedded somehow in one of the institutions where you can see what the people at the bottom of the institution can see, without wanting to make a career out of it. Since if you decide that, then there&#x27;s no incentive to notice.

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