Commentary
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was established with massive bipartisan support in 1914 to fight monopolies. But under the Biden administration, this powerful government agency has become something like a police force favoring the most dangerous form of monopoly: that which prevents competition in free expression.
Although there were differences on whether to regulate or force the break-up of large corporations, opposition to monopolies was a position shared by the nominees for president in 1912. Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic Party platform wanted “to make it impossible for a private monopoly to exist in the United States.” William Howard Taft’s Republican platform declared that “no part of the field of business opportunity may be restricted by monopoly”; and the new Progressive Party of former president Theodore Roosevelt, who came in second to Wilson and ahead of Taft that November, backed “the establishment of a strong federal administrative commission of high standing, which shall maintain permanent active supervision over industrial corporations engaged in interstate commerce.” Indeed, the initial idea for the FTC came from a Republican, Rep. Dick Thompson Morgan of Oklahoma, early that presidential election year….