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:

Everybody needs to see this blatant price collusion, and how there’s been no accountability for it. I hope the other retailers bring suit.

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.)

Smart piece by @bharatramamurti.bsky.social on how political leaders can solve the Affordability Conundrum — address immediate voter pain through price controls and increase supply in the long-term through anti-monopoly and industrial policies.

“All the datasets are pointing the same way as far as lower momentum and small businesses doing more with less.”

Thanks to Nate Hagens and The Great Simplification podcast for the great discussion about how breaking up monopolies and decentralizing the economy is crucial to building the resilience and community agency needed to tackle the big challenges ahead.

Good rundown from @ddayen.bsky.social on what all the Ballroom donors—Amazon, Google, Hewlett Packard, Coinbase, Union Pacific, etc.—are buying with their donations. Get-out-of-jail-free cards & big policy favors. (Union Pacific? They want merger approval to dominate rail.)

This is insane — a NY economic dev agency is set to hand Amazon an $80M subsidy for a warehouse. Fortunately, lots of public outcry. Now a state senator is urging a monitor to veto the giveaway.

Kroger is closing a Fred Meyer in Seattle, creating a new food desert. Great to see the city moving to ban covenants, which Kroger has used to block competitors from opening on its old sites. State lawmakers should follow by mandating suppliers give local grocers fair pricing.

Municipal grocery stores work when cities own the building and lease it to a nimble local operator. But they could be transformative if cities also used their authority to secure fair supplier pricing for independent grocers. Great piece from @TheProspect.

Rich people feel pretty good right now. But those making less than $100k and especially those under $50k have nosedived since January. Chart by @tracyalloway.bsky.social

USDA will stop publishing a report on food insecurity that anti-hunger groups say is key to assessing hunger nationwide, making it "difficult to track the impact of tariffs and cuts to food assistance."

A $58M traffic project being billed as economic development is essentially “...prop[ping] up $40.8 million of gas stations, strip malls, and big-box stores," says @clmarohn. "If we’re serious about commerce, let’s invest where the returns are real.”

Republicans in Congress are dealing big blows to small businesses right now. One looming one is the dramatic increase in health insurance costs for those who buy through the ACA marketplaces. Half— half! — of people under 65 using the marketplaces are small business owners and employees.

1. The Trump Administration has disqualified thousands of rural communities from receiving expected funding to build broadband networks. "There’s going to be a lot of frustration with these changes and the way it walked back from what was going to be a very promising outcome.”

Under Biden, dominant corporations used supply chain issues as a cover story to increase profits, driving inflation. Now tariffs seem to be providing the new cover story as wholesale prices soar. Of course, the underlying problem is insufficient competition in too many markets.

Boeing, Redwood & Mercedes-Benz have received $1.5 billion in subsidies to build in South Carolina—and they're not even meeting their job targets. What if those dollars went to local businesses instead? Nice op-ed by Charleston resident Brady Quirk-Garvan: www.postandcourier.com/opinion/comm...

The head of antitrust at DOJ, Gail Slater, may be serious about enforcement, but monopolists like Real Page, Live Nation, and AmEx are just going over her head and lobbying Bondi and Trump to sidestep the law. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

With monopoly electric utilities price-gouging & blocking renewables, there's growing interest in converting them to publicly owned utilities. ILSR has a new guide for how to do that. Check out the Handbook for Public Power Campaigns. ilsr.org/articles/pub...

Last night, my hometown of Portland, Maine stood up to Live Nation. Amid strong grassroots opposition, the city council voted 6-3 for a moratorium — a key step in stopping this monopolist from building a large venue and taking control of live music in our city. www.pressherald.com/2025/08/11/p...

1. Today, ILSR filed a motion in federal court to unseal the FTC’s antitrust complaint against PepsiCo. The case bears directly on high grocery prices and food deserts — and would've marked a crucial revival of the long-neglected Robinson-Patman Act. But the public may never get to see it.

For Prime Day: My thoughts on the need to break up with Amazon and BREAK UP Amazon. mailchi.mp/smallbusines...

"It’s easy to think of food deserts as a natural consequence of poverty. But...the real reason food deserts emerged...is because of a major shift in one federal policy." The 99% Percent Invisible podcast has a great new episode on the hidden history of the Robinson-Patman Act.

Complaining about process is a way to sidestep having to take a stand and use your position to fight for a simple, obvious, and popular rule that would help Americans save money and avoid being taken advantage of.

Shoppers have fewer options for groceries after waves of supermarket mergers, and, writes Ron Knox, they get nickled and dimed at the stores that remain. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

I have no problem with public grocery stores. But we should be clear-eyed about why food deserts exist. It's not poverty or lack of demand. In fact, food deserts only emerged in the late 1980s. They’re the result of a specific policy choice — one we need to reverse.

Local grocers have to pay much higher prices for their products than Dollar General & Walmart. Last month the FTC quietly killed a case to level the playing field. It's huge blow to small businesses & will further devastate rural America. @ronmknox.bsky.social has a terrific explainer:

What ever you think of @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social's plan to create city-run markets with fresh foods in food deserts at reasonable prices, one cannot deny that Public policy affects how well many people eat.

The decision to drop a price discrimination lawsuit against Pepsi may signal Trump’s embrace of corporate bullies. From @ronmknox.bsky.social‬: washingtonmonthly.com/2025/06/25/h...