OPINION | Merrick Garland’s Fight With Apple: More of That, Please
AG should probably be suing a large corporation each week on behalf of consumers
Attorney General Merrick Garland made headlines this week by taking on Apple in federal court over the monopolistic tactics it employs in the smartphone market selling its iPhones which have made up a majority of the company’s revenue for more than a decade.
In announcing the suit, which the Justice Department is bringing with 15 states and the District of Columbia, Garland noted that Apple’s net income exceeds the individual Gross Domestic Product of more than 100 countries.
So clearly this antitrust suit is a very big deal, or BFD, as the attorney general’s boss might want to say.
But why stop — or even start — with Apple?
Our Gilded Age of corporate greed should be providing Garland a target-rich environment for any number of antitrust and other consumer-protection actions.
There’s really no reason why Garland isn’t at the podium on a weekly basis, announcing some new fight on behalf of American consumers.
Decades of inaction and apathy on the part of Republican administrations honestly demands action to remedy.
And certainly, with Amazon, Google, Meta and the like, there’s much to be done in the tech sector.
But the need is not limited to technology.
From live-event ticketing, to your grocery store cereal aisle, consumers are getting ripped off.
The social media channels belonging to Robert Reich, the progressive influencer and one-time labor secretary in the Clinton administration, are an absolute font of insight on how Americans are constantly getting the shaft from Corporate America.
Reich, alone, could power what ought to be an even more muscular consumer-protection stance by the Biden administration.
Sure, President Biden’s Super Bowl Sunday admonition against “shrinkflation” was a good idea.
Even better would be seeing Biden’s Justice Department and other agencies very publicly investigating — and taking on — shrinkflation and other anti-consumer practices.
Not only would this be the right thing to do, but it would make for very smart politics during this election year.
Today Joe Lieberman is known as the warmongering, neo-con-loving creep who was once a US senator and vice presidential running mate.
But decades ago, he actually — believe it or not — rose to popularity in Connecticut as a progressive state attorney general known for aggressive consumer protection initiatives.
The result?
Lieberman won more votes than any other Democrat on the statewide ticket, in the 1986 election, including the sitting governor at the time.
It’s success Biden and his team ought to be replicating.
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