The new ATT agreed to pay $67 billion to buy BellSouth. This will make ATT a huge colossus, with $120 billion in sales, about 317,000 workers worldwide and 71 million local phone customers in 22 states. The new AT&T will provide services to virtually every country and territory in the world. It would not be merely an American colossus but a global colossus.
We hear that permission to merge is almost a sure thing. How can that be? Twenty two years ago, the old ATT was nowhere near as potent as the merged ATT would be. Evidently, the anti-trust rules have changed. The changes has been so great that very few mergers are stopped.
The merger protagonists are all over the media telling us that there is a new business environment and that there will be plenty of competition. Where? Yes, there are all kinds of new telecom services on the market. But why should the consumer - that's us - be forced to go through one or even 2 powerful corporations to get these services?
I know this is a lost cause. Bush administration officials parrot the Big Business line:
If it's good for Big Business it's good for America.
Huge mergers like this one are NOT good for America. Not only do these mergers hurt us as consumers, they hurt each and every one of us as citizens. A huge corporation with $120 billion in sales, and soon to become even more monstrously big - maybe doubled - is too powerful. The more power ATT gathers the less power the rest of us citizens have. Such a huge corporation can buy many lobbyists to make laws to suit it. It can buy legislators. It can buy all the political power it needs to have its way.
And even if ATT is the epitome of honesty, if such a corporation gets to be close to bankruptcy, the word would get out that "ATT is too big to fail." We - that means us citizens - must bail it out.
Allowing this merger to go through will demonstrate how much we the people have yielded our political power to Big Business in 22 years. Not only will we have a new monopoly, but an UNREGULATED monopoly.
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