When any large corporation wields this degree of political influence it drowns out the voices of the rest of us, including small businesses. The danger is greater when such power is wielded by media giants because they can potentially control the marketplace of ideas on which a democracy is based.
When two such media giants merge, the threat is extreme. If film-makers, television producers, directors, and news organizations have to rely on Comcast to get their content to the public, Comcast is able to exercise a stranglehold on what Americans see and hear.
Remember, this is occurring in America's new gilded age -- similar to the first one in which a young Teddy Roosevelt castigated the "malefactors of great wealth, who were "equally careless of the working men, whom they oppress, and of the State, whose existence they imperil."
It's that same equal carelessness toward average Americans and toward our democracy that ought to be of primary concern to us now. Big money that engulfs government makes government incapable of protecting the rest of us against the further depredations of big money.
After becoming President in 1901, Roosevelt used the Sherman Act against 45 giant companies, including the giant Northern Securities Company that threatened to dominate transportation in the Northwest. William Howard Taft continued to use it, busting up the Standard Oil Trust in 1911.
In this new gilded age, we should remind ourselves of a central guiding purpose of America's original antitrust law, and use it no less boldly.
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