Lina Khan Is Just Getting Started (She Hopes)

[Passages]

Biden’s FTC chair has toughened merger oversight, taken on noncompetes and made the donor class crazy. She hints that there’s a lot more to come, if she’s given the chance.


By Josh Eidelson and Max Chafkin
October 9, 2024 at 5:00 PM EDT

A few days after Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July, Reid Hoffman appeared on CNN and voiced his support for Kamala Harris, with an asterisk. Hoffman, a Democratic megadonor and venture capitalist best known for co-founding LinkedIn, made his case for Harris as the candidate of business. He said that as a former senator from California, she understood the value of his industry. He said that in contrast to Donald Trump, she represented stability, unity, the rule of law. But there was at least one person he hoped she wouldn’t keep around: Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission. Khan, he said, was overstepping her bounds, “waging war” on business and “not helping America.”

Soon after, media mogul Barry Diller, chairman of IAC Inc., echoed the call for Khan’s ouster, telling CNBC she was a “dope.” He and Hoffman joined the bipartisan club of tech figures who’ve singled her out for criticism, including venture capitalists Vinod Khosla, Chamath Palihapitiya, Joe Lonsdale and Peter Thiel. What neither Hoffman nor Diller mentioned was that their interest wasn’t exactly dispassionate. At the time both billionaires called for Khan’s firing, she was investigating their businesses.

In August the FTC announced an $8.5 million settlement with an IAC subsidiary it accused of deceiving workers. The company didn’t admit wrongdoing. Diller retracted his use of the word “dope” but not his call for Khan’s removal. He declined to comment for this story.

SNIP
During a morning sit-down in her Washington office in September, Khan says she’s gotten used to flak. “It’s no surprise to me personally that monopolists, and executives associated with monopolies, would prefer that the anti-monopoly cops just go away,” she says, flashing a smile before snapping back into cop mode. “But that’s not the job that we’ve been given.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-09/lina-khan-on-a-second-ftc-term-ai-price-gouging-data-privacy?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTcyODUwNzczNywiZXhwIjoxNzI5MTEyNTM3LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTTDNYMFVEV1gyUFMwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDQThGQ0Y4NkY1QjY0ODlCODA4ODkwNTFBNjMxRERBRCJ9.jezqDL4Ds-z2V0eCqXlY8F4CwCUVmG415jWK0SKE764

Despite rumors/speculations, I believe Khan is a shoo-in with Harris.

[Fiendish Thingy]

1. Harris has been getting tremendous pressure from CEO's and tech billionaires to fire Khan

I sure hope she doesn’t cave, and keeps her on.

[Passages]

5. I hope so too.

Is she awesome or what?

Link to tweet

1. Today @FTC
finalized updates to the form that firms must fill out when proposing a reportable merger or acquisition.

The new form marks a generational upgrade that will let enforcers more effectively and efficiently prevent illegal deals.

[Stargazer99]

2. The rich and well to do are scared silly by Khan which tells you the rich and well to do are the problem

[jfz9580m]

3. This excellent blog by Matt Stoller

Covers news on monopolies:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/monopoly-round-up-lina-khan-pharma

Lina Khan is a Rockstar .

[Passages]

4. Love it.

[jfz9580m]

6. The sheer hubris of our predatory and parasitic billionaire class

Last edited Mon Nov 25, 2024, 12:51 AM - Edit history (4)

Is at its zenith. When I look at our society as it is with shocking inequality/poverty, extreme ecological degradation and shocking brutality in animal agriculture…and this misery coexists with a vapidly greedy, rapaciously consumeristic and rule-breaking wealthy class..this is a sick society not a healthy one. And it is not like it is that out of sight. With the net you have to be wilfully blind and fill yourselves with judgemental or self-serving platitudes to not see it.

This attack on Lina Khan-a key source of hope for progressives-shows the sheer hubris of our wealthy. These people are really at the height of their “have you no shame?” era and they baulk at any checks on their predatory and parasitic ways.

How clueless can these people be?
Stoller mentions it in his latest piece “The Rage of Google”:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-rage-of-google

What’s striking about most of these remedies is that, with the exception of divestments, most of them have broad consensus. At this point, even pro-Google voices are saying “well sure regulation and sharing of data is fine and get rid of the contract with Apple.” Ultimately, though, this consensus is moot, since the remedy is less about the specific bad conduct and more about forcing a monopolist to stop engaging in coercive behavior. And there’s bitter resistance to that idea, because most of today’s winners in the economy won using coercion.

So again, what happens when an antitrust case becomes real? Well, in Google’s case, their leadership seems quite angry at being told they have any legal limits whatsoever. In a remarkable blog post that no doubt went through levels of edits from many lawyers, the company responded to the proposal by alleging that government enforcers are “radical,” a threat to “privacy and security,” that they will break your phone and browser, destroy the free press, hurt business at large, undermine investment, and destroy America by “hobbling” U.S. “technological leadership.”

Who are they kidding? And any sort of regulation at all apparently means an immediate collapse of business and the economy? Give me a fucking break..Seriously who the fuck are these douchebags kidding. They might as well just say “We will consolidate our grasp on power& wealth. Fuck you if you disagree. Oh and here is my shitty tax shelter “philanthropy” (with strings attached) or joke of a pretence at“voluntary self-regulation”.”

This attack on Khan is as undemocratic as it gets.
Even Wired which is far from a left wing polemicist gets it:
https://www.wired.com/story/ftc-chair-lina-khans-democrats-donors-harris/

Roughly 80 percent of Democrats feel that the government should be doing more to take on corporate monopolies, compared to only 3 percent who say it should be doing less, according to new polling. Nearly 90 percent of Democrats, meanwhile, feel that lobbyists and corporate executives hold too much power over the government.

The same poll, commissioned by the Tech Oversight Project, found that more than three-fourths of Democrats feel Big Tech wields monopoly power in ways that harm consumers and small businesses. Only 7 percent said the companies should face no repercussions, since they have continued to innovate

It is so angering..seriously. This is a fucked up society. Khan is a correction and these billionaires cannot stand it.

If she were an actual “loony leftist” they wouldn’t be attacking her this much. Calling her a “dope” etc., because god forbid anything regulate these guys. The reality is that Khan is the exact type of progressive they should fear the most. Someone who cannot be represented as an irrational, emotional, senseless person.

They are finally reduced to having no real arguments except “get rid of her”.

[Passages]

7. Thank you for this excellent contribution to this OP.

I could not agree more.

[jfz9580m]

8. Thanks for the OP

Last edited Fri Oct 11, 2024, 10:18 AM - Edit history (3)

It was off my radar and I really enjoyed it as a diehard Lina Khan fan.
Sorry about the profanity etc. in my post, but our lovely billionaire class gets me going
;-/. Especially when they pull shit like this..

[elleng]

9. * What neither Hoffman nor Diller mentioned was that their interest wasn't exactly dispassionate.

At the time both billionaires called for Khan’s firing, she was investigating their businesses.

In August the FTC announced an $8.5 million settlement with an IAC subsidiary it accused of deceiving workers. The company didn’t admit wrongdoing. Diller retracted his use of the word “dope” but not his call for Khan’s removal. He declined to comment for this story.

SNIP
During a morning sit-down in her Washington office in September, Khan says she’s gotten used to flak. “It’s no surprise to me personally that monopolists, and executives associated with monopolies, would prefer that the anti-monopoly cops just go away,” she says, flashing a smile before snapping back into cop mode. “But that’s not the job that we’ve been given.”'