Barry Diller Lbo

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an 8 24 hightower

We've recently learned about Project 2025, the GOP's scheme to let corporate agents take over our government. But what about the less visible effort to make Democrats install corporate-subservient officials who'll expand their monopoly power?

High-finance finaglers of Wall Street and Silicon Valley are quietly demanding that Kamala Harris commit to appointing their designated toadies to oversee America's so-called free-enterprise structure. Their primary target is the Federal Trade Commission, a little-known agency meant to protect and extend economic competition.

The FTC is now headed by Lina Khan, a tenacious opponent of anti-consumer, anti-worker mergers and takeovers. She rightly recognizes that the "free" in free enterprise is not an adjective but a verb requiring aggressive public action to free up the enterprise of people who are now routinely shut out of the market by monopolistic giants. So, says Khan, if we really want free markets, let's free them.

Oh, how the money vultures screeched! "She's a dope," raged takeover bully Barry Diller in a dopey fury. And, since many of the monopolistic titans who are offended by Khan's otherwise very popular progressive populism are from the Democratic Party's high-dollar donor class, they have undue clout. Thus, they are bluntly demanding her head as their price for financially backing Harris' presidential run. Commissioner Khan, they exclaim, simply does not understand "the way the Washington game is played."

Oh, yes, she does -- and she's flat out rejecting it! She's the first real anti-trust champion America has had in years -- but will the party's higher-ups have the guts and integrity to defend her? Or will the business-as-usual powers be ushered back in? The answer to that will be an early measure of Harris' commitment to economic democracy.