Matt StollerVerified account

13. Massive roll-up in farm country. Monsanto bought DeKalb Genetics, Delta & Pine Land. Cargill bought Azko Salt and pieces of Continental Grain Inc. ConAgra bought Knott’s Berry Farm Foods, Gilroy Foods, Hester Industries, and Signature Foods. Catastrophe for farmers.

14. Clinton's antitrust chief, Joel Klein, didn't bother to show up at a field hearing in Montana about ag consolidation. When Obama walked around Iowa badmouthing Clinton to farmers, it worked for a reason. Not because he was compelling, but because the Clinton's were hated.

15. Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which he touted as "truly revolutionary legislation," Clear Channel grew from 40 radio stations to 1,240. The bill included Section 230, which set the stage for Big Tech.

16. Larry Summers, smug and proud, in 1998, loved American monopolies. "Whether it is AIG in insurance, McDonald's in fast-food, Walmart in retailing, Microsoft in software, Harvard University in education, CNN in television news—the leading enterprises are American."

17. Dems embraced, "big is good." From the White House CEA: "Large size is not the same as monopoly power. For example, an ice cream vendor at the beach on a hot day probably has more market power than many multi-billion-dollar companies in competitive industries."

18. Clinton was worse than Reagan. The guardrails came off. "During the 12 years of the Reagan and Bush administrations, there were 85,064 mergers valued at $3.5 trillion. Under just seven years of Clinton, there were 166,310 deals valued at $9.8 trillion."

19. Corruption... "In 1996, Thomson Corporation bought West Publishing, creating a monopoly in digital access to court opinions and legal publishing; the owner of West had given a half a million dollars to the Democratic Party and personally lobbied Clinton to allow the deal."

20. All of this was a result of intellectual confusion, a collapse of the anti-monopoly philosophy. Nader didn't mean to unleash this, many Dems were well-meaning. But they had stopped seeing power, and then corruption became normalized. That's why old Dems are out of touch.