"A meaningful remedy" that restores competition "is going to harm the monopolist: It has to." "Otherwise remedies are sound and fury, nothing more." - Bill Baer at The Capitol Forum on Google antitrust cases

Today the The Wall Street Journal ed board put out a bogus defense of RealPage including the bald lie that "landlords are still independently deciding rents." In reality, RealPage goes to great lengths to enforce its pricing, including assigning "pricing advisors" to landlords who seek to deviate.

Also today Albertsons COO Susan Morris testified. A key player in this deal because post-merger she'd run C&S retail. Max Moran was there live. On direct, she emphasized previous involvement in acquisitions…

NEW: Live Nation is destroying concerts. Ticketmaster is driving up ticketing fees and making live music unaffordable. But venues are getting squeezed too. Live Nation controls everything — and indie venue owners tell us they can barely survive.

Are airlines actually giving you what they promise when you sign up for their reward programs? Or are they devaluing your points and adding junk fees? Well, thanks to @DOT we’re finally going to find out. This is great news.

1. When businesses retroactively devalue rewards points or add new hurdles to using them, customers can lose out. Today Secretary Pete Buttigieg launched an inquiry into airlines’ rewards practices to ensure travelers are getting a fair shake. transportation.gov/briefing-room/…

We've heard a lot about Costco in Kroger/Albertsons merger hearing. We know what K/A & FTC think about whether Costco is part of same market, and how intense any competition with Costco is. But what does Costco itself think? Today, Max Moran watched live as Costco SVP… 🧵

Indiana has a serious health care monopoly problem -- one of the worst in the country -- so it's great to see Lina Khan joining the fight to prevent further consolidation. indystar.com/story/opinion/…

"The transparency of the ground rules has evaporated behind an opaque screen, so the value of miles and points is harder than ever to discern." ICYMI: William J. McGee applauds the U.S. Department of Transportation's new inquiry into increasingly unfair airline rewards programs.👇 usatoday.com/story/travel/a…

Great to see Elizabeth Warren point to "the insatiable hunger of gargantuan Big Tech companies for Nvidia chips, along with the company's opaque and preferential allocation of them," in starving startup companies of infrastructure in the AI space👇 businessinsider.com/elizabeth-warr…

The latest statement from journalists condemning Google’s proposed California journalism deal, this time from our allies at Freelance Solidarity Project National Writers Union. There still isn’t a single organization representing California journalists that supports this framework. nwu.org/statement-bigt…

The $25B Kroger-Albertsons merger would be the largest grocery store merger in US history — and could mean higher costs for consumers and lower wages for workers. That’s why I’m leading efforts in Congress to support the FTC’s work to stop this merger and fight corporate greed.

The Eastern District of Virginia, site of the Google Ad Tech trial starting Monday, is the original “rocket docket,” so ordained bc the Court’s namesake, Judge Albert Bryan, was frustrated with the slow dispensation of justice. Detail of the courtroom entryway in Alexandria, VA:

A new book on monopolies in Canada is coming soon from Denise Hearn and Vass Bednar sutherlandhousebooks.com/product/the-bi…

American Economic Liberties Project Laurel This might explain why Sankaran "forgot" to stop having texts deleted after being instructed to preserve those records.

Google just published a blog post on the eve of the Justice Department's antitrust trial against their alleged ad tech monopoly. It's clearly aimed at press who aren't paying close attention to this trial, and is all easily refuted. Short 🧵... blog.google/outreach-initi…

And the line has begun outside Eastern District of Virginia courthouse for U.S. v Google 2 (adtech) which risks to be Google’s third - and most deadly - antitrust lawsuit defeat in under a year. Cameras also set up to capture entry into the “no-electronic devices” courthouse. /1

And so it begins. Large media and lawyer presence in front of the courthouse. #USvGoogle