City-owned broadband providers outperform their big ISP competitors on internet speeds, a new study finds.

1. It's great to see @warren.senate.gov pressing Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on the shady tactics Amazon is using to overcharge schools and cities for everyday supplies — including sham contracts with algorithmic-driven dynamic pricing.

Want to help your city and local schools stop buying from Amazon? Watch our recent webinar featuring people who successfully pushed their local governments to buy from local suppliers instead — plus practical tips for how to do it in your town. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIS3...

1. Tim Muris, who held top roles at the FTC in the 1970s-80s and 2000s, has teamed up with the Competitive Enterprise Institute on a new effort to discredit and bury the Robinson-Patman Act. Muris has a record of inventing history to support his agenda. Here are a few examples.

TODAY at 1:00 ET — join us to hear from leading thinkers on how powerful corporations are using pricing algorithms to fleece shoppers, and what cities, states, and the federal gov't can do about it.

It took New Mexico Democrats all of 25 days to cobble together a law that makes broadband affordable for poor people

Great event on March 3: How powerful corporations — including Amazon, Instacart, and major landlords — are using pricing algorithms to inflate prices and undermine competition. With Doha Mekki, Katie Wells, Ted Tatos, and moderator Geoffrey Fowler. Register here: ilsr.org/article/inde...

"Every time teachers post a classroom wish list on Amazon, they’re essentially voting against their next pay raise." Terrific — and very actionable — post from my colleague @kennedysmith.bsky.social

Today! At noon Eastern. Great speakers: Arizona State Senator Lauren Kuby (@senatorlaurenkuby.bsky.social), Gayle Shanks of Changing Hands Bookstore, Thomas Barr of Local First Arizona, and Kennedy Smith of @ilsr.bsky.social

One key reason to support local businesses? They'll have your back in a community crisis when large corporations stay silent. Some lessons from Minnesota from several of my very smart colleagues: vist.ly/4rdhr @ronmknox.bsky.social @stacyfmitchell.bsky.social

Tomorrow!

Walmart is using its power over suppliers to push grocery prices up. This terrific explainer draws on newly unsealed details from an antitrust case—filed by Lina Khan and dropped by Trump—to show how. I’m proud that @ilsr.bsky.social helped get the case unsealed. And thrilled to help tell the story.

Nearly every city and school district is pouring public dollars into Amazon — even though local suppliers are often cheaper and faster. A few cities have said no to Amazon’s sketchy contracts. This Friday: Learn how they broke free — and how your city can too. Register here:

4. As the Walton family — which owns 50% of Walmart stock — cheers its obscene wealth of over $500 billion, remember that all that loot was stolen from small businesses, workers, and you. You are paying for this monopoly in inflated grocery prices, lower wages, food deserts, and dead main streets.

1. A reminder: Walmart's $1 trillion valuation is the product of decades of unchecked anticompetitive behavior. It's no coincidence that Walmart began its insane growth spurt after the 1980s decision to stop enforcing key antitrust laws. More than others, Walmart recognized what this meant.

Big news out of California. After years of study, the CA Law Revision Commission recommended a major rewrite of state antitrust law — explicitly instructing judges to break with weak federal standards & restore meaningful limits on monopoly power. The legislature often follows the CLRC's guidance.

Localized, community-rooted, small-scale economic power matters. For decades, we've pretended like it doesn't — and even used policy to aggressively eradicate it.

1. We have a new tool for exploring how corporate concentration has hollowed out grocery access in your region: an interactive map that shows food deserts along with the location of every grocery store in the US by type — independent, small chain, large chain, or megachain like Walmart or Kroger.

1. Cities and states should outlaw Amazon’s latest assault on small businesses — an AI tool that scrapes their websites and creates listings of their products within the Amazon app without their consent. It’s causing huge, costly problems. This can and should be banned.

Join us for a great, practical workshop! Learn how to find out whether your city or school district is buying from Amazon — and how to shift that spending to local suppliers instead. You’ll get step-by-step tools and hear inspiring stories from cities that have made the change.

Thinking of all my friends and colleagues in Minnesota as thousands gather in Minneapolis. This is a state that has a long and deep history of organizing for justice.

Important study. Essentially it finds a straight line between the pro-corporate concentration policies of Reagan/Clinton/Thatcher/Blair and the decline of democracy. Interestingly, the mechanism is not income inequality but the raw power the biggest corps wield over government.

The question isn’t "why does Signal use AWS?" It’s to look at the infrastructural requirements of any global, real-time, mass comms platform and ask how it is that we got to a place where there’s no realistic alternative to AWS and the other hyperscalers. 3/

In 1952, there were 104 grocery stores in Dubuque (!). Today there are 12. Walmart & Hy-Vee split the market. The Telegraph Herald has an in-depth look at the state of local grocery stores across Iowa & how the demise of Robinson-Patman enforcement fueled consolidation & food deserts.

There’s a debate about whether to focus on lowering prices or saving democracy. But both crises flow from the extreme concentration of economic power. The solution is to shift that power back into people’s hands — through strong public institutions, worker rights, and thriving small businesses.

There’s a lot to consider here for all American cities.

Wishing everyone peace and joy. See you in 2026.

New York’s affordability crisis flows from a deeper problem: essential systems — groceries, energy, Internet, banking, healthcare — have consolidated in the hands of distant corporations. Today, ILSR sent the Mamdani team a memo laying out policies to reclaim local control. ilsr.org/articles/mem...

Amazon is hoodwinking public schools to grab their cash. I love this piece from @naomibethune.bsky.social, which shows how cash-strapped districts are sold on the “ease” of buying from Amazon — only to deepen their financial squeeze. Appreciate the deep dive into our new report!

Thinking about which good-gov't orgs to support financially is a little overwhelming rn. Environmental, human rights, arts, democracy itself are all under siege. But the corporate takeover of our economy seems like the hub to this wheel, which is why the work of @ilsr.bsky.social is so vital.

1. New York’s affordability crisis flows from a deeper problem: essential systems — groceries, energy, Internet, banking, healthcare — have consolidated in the hands of distant corporations. Today, ILSR sent the Mamdani team a memo laying out policies to reclaim local control.

Here's a great, quick explainer on how Pepsi schemed with Walmart to raise grocery prices, from @ronmknox.bsky.social and @dannycaine.com www.tiktok.com/@ilsr_org/vi...

You can find the full investigation — plus our guide to how to tell if your local government is being hoodwinked by Amazon, and what to do about it — here:

Back in the late 90s I lived with a guy who worked for Nestle and he told me that WalMart routinely got huge deals by just... not paying invoices on time, and unlike their competitors Nestle wouldn't charge them late fees because they were the 900lb gorilla.

Trump's FTC leaders bad-mouthed Lina Khan when they dropped this lawsuit, claiming that they were cleaning up her mess. Now that it's been unsealed, we can see that was a total lie. This was a coverup to protect Pepsi and Walmart.

Thread. "Inflation" is not a natural economic phenomenon, it's the product of choices--choices made for and not by consumers, choices made in back rooms and hidden meetings.

1. For at least 10 years, Pepsi has conspired with Walmart to force up grocery prices. That’s the shocking evidence made public today in an unsealed FTC lawsuit. The suit was abandoned in May by the Trump FTC just before it was to be un-redacted. We went to court to get it unsealed & won.

1. People are freeing themselves from the myth that only big corporations can make and do things. Here's a story about 19 small towns that built their own high-speed fiber networks. They pay less than most Americans & can get a service rep on the phone no problem. ilsr.org/article/comm...

Growing backlash — It turns out a lot of people are not happy with their local school district and city spending millions with Amazon under sham contracts that specify dynamic pricing and shutout competing local suppliers.

1. Hard to believe, but Amazon has persuaded schools and cities across the country to abandon competitive bidding and fixed price contracts. Instead, they're signing contracts with Amazon that specify dynamic pricing. The result: Paying $37 for 12 pens or $74 for 36 markers.

UPDATE: We went to court to get the antitrust complaint against Pepsi, implicating Walmart, unsealed. (The Trump FTC dropped the case just before it was to be made public.) The judge just ruled in our favor. Pending a potential appeal, we should get a look at the details of the scheme next week.

"School districts....appear to be overpaying for basic supplies because of Amazon contracts that bind them to dynamic pricing... A school district in Denver would have saved about $1m in 2023 had it been able to... lock in the lowest of the platform’s ... changing prices."

1. Amazon has become a major force in how cities, counties & schools buy basic supplies. Our new report finds Amazon is using opaque pricing algorithms to drive up costs and eliminate transparency—while harming competition by pushing out better-performing independent suppliers.

Why believe in the rule of law if government officials for years on end fail to stop Dollar General from routinely violating laws that bar companies from charging higher prices at the register? Stopping a predatory strategy to rip off poor people is basic Democracy 101.

Tricking customers with higher prices at the register is a core strategy of Dollar General & Family Dollar. "Dollar General stores have failed more than 4,300 government price-accuracy inspections in 23 states since January 2022." Terrific reporting from @barryyeoman.com @theguardian.com

The @mnfarmersunion.bsky.social is doing incredible work to rekindle the alliance of farmers, small businesses, and working people that built the New Deal and beat back monopoly power. It was an honor to speak at their annual convention last week.

All around you corporations are figuring out how to train AI on your personal data to "optimiz[e] every interaction for maximum value” — i.e., charge you higher prices. Many damning details & good insights, plus a look at the prospects for legislation in this piece [email protected]

Instagram used to be great. Then Meta bought it to eliminate the competition, remaking it into the same shitty experience as Facebook. And TikTok is in no sense whatsoever an alternative. This decision has zero relationship to what Meta did to users — or the harm it caused.

The FTC has lost 30% of the economics staff who support antitrust investigations and litigation. (This doesn't seem to have been covered anywhere outside of small paywalled outlets — in contrast to the intense personnel management scrutiny that Lina Khan got.)