For better enforcement of anti-trust laws in the U.S.

This petition calls on the antitrust division of the U.S. Dept. of  Justice and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to better focus on and enforce antitrust laws as they pertain to U.S. business, particuliarly in banking, investing, real estate, media, automobile production and sales as well as pharmaceutical and computer/computer software production.

The United States economy is now in a state of severe recession partially, many would say, because of the lack of will by the U.S. governmnet to properly and effectively enforce antitrust law in the U.S.

As a result much of our media, auto industry, banking, retail, agriculture, computer/software production etc. has been allowed to merge into enormous monopoly like organizations which prevent the free flow of ideas, information and diversity of opinions that promote justice, fairness and information concerning issues which large conglomerates or monopolies fear will interfere with their profit margins such as reporting on environmental issues, issues concerning the poor and/or issues concerning wasteful profiteering in areas like defense spending.

Large corporations who have crossover interests in the media may purposefully or through unspoken coercion create a censoring effect in the media companies they own, which prevents reporting on issues which may conflict with the interests and ideologies of a large monopoly which may pollute, exploit the poor or invest in military interests.

Of course this effect is magnified if the government administration in power has an ideology which promotes favoritism towards big business and the wealthy and refuses to enforce antitrust laws designed to break up such monolithic organizations.

This has the effect of increasing pollution, preventing people/citizens from getting complete and clear, non-confusing information about business or billing practices, labelling on food and other products which tells the consumer the way in which the product was produced.....did it damage the environment (cause deforestation), abuse animals (factory farming).....if the product is a drug will the drug cause negative reactions if taken with other drugs? and on and on.

Another effect of large monopolies, is making a product which is of poor quality and does not heed the concerns of the government or the people.....who are the government, in a democracy.

The U.S. auto industry, which is comprised of 3 enormous companies, has been a prime example of what can go wrong.....over the last 20 years these 3 companies ignored quality warnings, warnings about the price of gas, warnings about  environmental pollution/global warming, warnings about global competition and now further warnings about worldwide oil supplies peaking and beginning to run out (decline) in around 10-15 years which will most likely cause the price of oil to skyrocket because the demand for oil worldwide is going to continue to go up not down.
 
Despite all these warnings these 3 companies did relatively little to produce high quality autos/trucks which were fuel efficient.....most likely because of the lack of legitimate competition historically had made them reckless and lethargic.....confident that they were so big that the U.S. government/taxpayers would have to bail them out if they failed...also confident that global warming and environmental destruction were issues that the general public would never come to care about or understand.

If we had enforced monopoly laws in the U.S. concerning the auto industry we may have had 10 or 20 U.S. auto/truck manufacturers now, all manufacturing products to fit different global niches, creating a diversity of ideas, quality levels and consumer input/feedback-quality control methods to improve their vehicles and increase mileage standards.

This same concept also applies to many other industries in the U.S. which border on monopoly like such as computers and software, media, investing, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, military and on and on. These industries....if antitrust laws are not properly enforced by our government, may cause similiar failures such as the ones we now see in banking and the auto industry, and when and if these failures happen there will most likely, be no more bailout money.....there is in fact very little or no money available now based on the United States present levels of debt.

This is a problem which at this present time is very easy to solve by simply enforcing antitrust laws that already exist to create diversity in our economy and preventing companies from becoming so big, that if they fail, they bring down the U.S. government, or if they are already that big to break them up with the laws we already have.....or if these laws are not adequate, debate and legislate new and/or more effective laws.

Contrary to popular opinion.....bigger is not always better and this seems to particuliarly apply to competitiveness in business. Monopoly-like size in business is most surely a dangerous things for governments, people, fair competition and freedom.

Also seperating industries from one another when possible seems to be a pretty good idea.....such as seperating banks, investment companies, military defense companies and companies that produce large amounts of pollution from controlling large swaths of media which prevents accurate reporting on foreign affairs and environmental issues or issues concerning stock values etc.
 
Media intersests owned by a company or companies that pollutes, deforests or runs shady investment/billing/interest schemes or builds/supplies the military may bias reporting on warfare or conflicts worldwide when their companies continuing profitability may depend on the continuation or intensifying of warfare/conflict. 

 We the undersigned agree with the sentiments of this author and request that the U.S. government better enforces antitrust laws before more U.S. companies become so big that their failure can bring down the entire U.S. economy which forces the U.S. taxpayers/government to have to bail them out. Also for the U.S government to breakup the industries/companies who are now too big to fail or are potentially going in that direction from lack of competition.