antitrust


Busted Books

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A hodge podge of topical things.

The shitty contract forced onto rail workers by Congress and the President that contains zero (0) paid sick days is going to cause a lot of problems. Either immediately to the supply chain if a wildcat strike happens, or electorally when unions abandon Democrats for abandoning them.

“B-b-but it was Republicans who voted against it!” some might say. And that’s what Democrats planned on by decoupling sick leave from the rest of the bill. I typed a version of this on Mastodon, where I’ve been dabbling since my Musk-induced departure from Twitter. Hive Social is phone only, and not very secure, so I’m not doing much there besides parking my name.

Decoupling sick days from the rest of the rail bill was done by the Democratic House, so they could blame Senate Republicans while pleasing rail barons.

The antitrust thing could be about Ticketmaster flubbing Taylor Swift tickets, Amazon, cable companies, or almost literally anything else that sucks in this country.

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Jeff Bezos’ Monopoly Spree

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Not only should Amazon be broken up, Jeff Bezos’ fortune AND his acutal physical form should be as well. This monster amassed even greater fortunes during the pandemic, while subjecting his employees to grinding in miserable conditions.

Eventually he and Elon Musk will monopolize enough of the world, that they’ll be the only two businessmen I have to know how to draw.

(panel 1 – Title above Jeff Bezos pushing a shopping cart containing Earth.)
Jeff Bezos’ Monopoly Spree
(panel 2 – Jeff Bezos with the MGM logo, with the lion replaced with Scabby the Rat.)
Bezos, “After acquiring MGM, I’m replacing their iconic lion with a union-busting scab.”
(panel 3 – Jeff Bezos dressed as James Bond, showing of a license to kill.)
Bezos, “Then casting myself as the next 007, with a license to kill small businesses.”
(panel 4 – Jeff Bezos with the Toxic Avenger.)
Bezos, “I’m also buying Troma Entertainment, and rebranding the Toxic Avenger as a champion of employee abuse.”
(panel 5 – Jeff Bezos at a storage unit with VHS tapes, film reels, and other old media.)
Bezos, “I even bought your home movie library, so you now have to subscribe to Prime to watch your precious memories!”
(panel 6 – Jeff Bezos blowing dust of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.)
Bezos, “My latest purchase is the United States’ antitrust laws. They weren’t using them anyway.”

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Comcast’s Spending Spree

While the world’s justifiably preoccupied, the largest media, tech and telecom companies are merging into giant monopolies that make Robocop’s OmniCorp look like a mom and pop operation.

It was hard to come up with a comic this week. Details of ICE’s reign of terror are what I’m most outraged about, but I’ve done several ICE cartoons recently and had nothing to say besides, “Abolish ICE. Then prosecute its agents at the Hague.”

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The Amazon Economy

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Jeff Bezos is buying Whole Foods and now Amazon’s one step closer to becoming the kind of monopolistic mega-corporation previously only seen in the Robocop franchise.

The days of antitrust laws are long gone, but maybe one day there will be the political will to break up Bezos’ empire like Ma Bell and Standard Oil.

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