During Attorney General Pam Bondi’s confirmation hearings, pearl-clutching Democrat Senators ascribed the sins of the departed Biden administration onto the entering Trump administration: specifically, the weaponization of the Department of Justice against one’s political opponents.
Blissfully inured to their mendacity and hypocrisy, these Democrat Senators were urging that the Golden Rule not be applied by AG Bondi. For over the past four years and more, these same august partisans were gleefully cheering ex-AG Merrick Garland as he stomped his left boot on the once sacrosanct scales of impartial justice to persecute their party’s opponents.
The Biden DOJ’s targets for persecution included President Trump, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, parents; pro-life activists; Catholics; DEI dissenters in police and fire departments; MAGA supporters, in particular; and the public, in general. Little wonder nearly three-quarters of the public has lost faith in the DOJ.
Yet amid the Democrat Senators’ din, it is imperative to realize what they are not calling for: namely, the restoration of apolitical, equal justice under the law. For while the Democrats understandably do not want AG Bondi doing unto them what was done unto Republicans, they do also not want the nakedly partisan Biden DOJ reformed and its weaponization ended. They merely want a pause, leaving in place Mr. Biden’s zombie DOJ—the “norm-breaking” politicized precedents and its hyper-partisan personnel—so the next Democrat administration can pick up where the last one left off.
Nowhere is this more evident in an often overlooked area of anti-trust law.
In many ways, the Biden administration turned the Justice Department into a pulp fiction publisher, more intent on crafting and promoting political narratives than enforcing the laws of the United States without fear or favor.
For example, when inflation soared and housing prices went through the roof, a politically desperate President Biden summoned his DOJ narrators and demanded a noir whodunnit. This time the culprit wasn’t the butler. No, this time his DOJ brought suit against a company providing rental pricing software that helps landlords set rents based on existing market conditions. Since this makes as much sense as blaming a cash register for the cost of groceries, the question arises as to why.
Simply put, when Democrats have a problem, they need to blame someone other than themselves. Enter their hoary old narratives of “corporate greed” and “class warfare.” One might consider such economic ideology arrant and antiquated. If so, one would not be a Democrat. Their party has long sought to control the citizenry by controlling the economy; consequently, firmly in the crosshairs of the partisanly weaponized Biden DOJ was the anti-trust principle of “consumer welfare.” And though AG Garland is gone, the assault grinds on in the Biden DOJ’s suit against Visa.
In its casting its villains, the narrative engineers at the Biden DOJ were consistent: politically unaligned or right of center; perceived to be unpopular with the press and public; and, if possible, the bigger the better (both in terms of scale and/or scope). Ponder how Biden’s DOJ viewed President Trump. He was decidedly right-of-center; he was assumed to be unpopular with the public; and, if he could be broken, so could his movement. Oops.
Nonetheless, in selecting Visa as a target, the Biden DOJ was aiming to bolster its “corporate greed” narrative for inflation by targeting and aiming to break a corporate entity with the economic wherewithal to potentially withstand an assault fueled by fathomless government resources. While, perhaps, a smaller credit entity would have sufficed with less downside for Democrats, what is at stake is more than merely a thinly veiled attempt to push a tendentious narrative.
The ongoing Biden Justice Department anti-trust suit against Visa is aimed at ending the objective “consumer welfare standard” and exponentially increasing the Administrative State and its cronies’ arbitrary and capricious power to regulate the American economy.
In the executive summary of his American Action Forum article, “Why the Consumer Welfare Standard Is the Backbone of Antitrust Policy,” Fred Ashton puts it succinctly:
“The consumer welfare standard has been the backbone of antitrust policy for over 40 years and provides a consistent basis for the enforcement of antitrust law.
“The consumer welfare standard is measurable using economic analysis and empirical evidence, facilitating a reliable and objective application of antitrust law.
“Commandeering antitrust policy as a tool to solve other societal ills including depressed employee wages and harm to competitors risks creating uncertainty, stifling innovation, and slowing economic growth.”
Absent the concrete showing of consumer harm required under the existing legal standard, whatever “theory” the Biden DOJ espoused is in sum an argument to arbitrarily decimate an economic entity not because of its injurious actions but merely because of its “scale.”
As Truth on the Market’s John M. Yun noted in his article assessing the merits of the case, Visa holds about 60% of the credit market and earns approximately 14 cents from a $60 debit card transaction. Nonetheless, 40% of the market is steadily and fairly competing with Visa for consumers’ business, and there is no evidence of Visa doing anything other than reciprocally competing.
Granted, the concept of “too big to fail” is an affront to the foundational principles of our constitutional republic. But so is replacing it with the concept of “too big to live.” For it then erodes the fundamental principles of an equitable justice system. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a far sounder legal principle than “Innocent until proven immense.”
Given the Biden DOJ’s choice of villains to promote its risible “corporate greed” narrative, it bears stating the obvious: a major credit provider who is the leader in market share is a publicly unattractive defendant in an anti-trust (or, honestly, any) federal suit. But popularity is decidedly impermissible for the DOJ and the courts to consider in equally applying the law. What they are expected to consider is the anti-trust consumer welfare standard.
But such objective standards are anathema to Democrats and their Administrative State cohorts. It prevents their gaining control of our economy and, indeed, every facet of Americans’ lives. After all, in the eyes of the paternalistic elitists of the Administrative State, bureaucrats know best, regardless of the consequences to consumers.
What could go wrong if the party of weaponized government and political justice that has pushed cancel culture as a de facto social credit system (ala communist China) can now determine what is diverse, inclusive, and equitable within what they believe is the unjust, exploitative economy of a systemically racist, imperialist nation?
Thankfully, current Attorney General Bondi and her antitrust chief, Gail Slater, know this is a rhetorical question and, hopefully, will act accordingly.
Wouldn’t that be a wonderful plot twist to end Mr. Biden’s final DOJ “whodunnit” narrative?
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012, He served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee and as a member of the Financial Services, Joint Economic, Budget, Small Business, and International Relations Committees. Not a lobbyist, he is also a contributor to Chronicles; a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a co-host of “John Batchelor: Eye on the World” on CBS radio, among sundry media appearances.