This is your regularly scheduled midweek OTM podcast. I'm Bob Garfield.

The U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the era of self-regulation is over for Silicon Valley.

Democrats have warned Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google that the antitrust investigation is coming.

The giant tech companies right now are eating up little tiny businesses,

startups, and competing unfairly.

There's a tremendous amount of concern about the largeness of these technology platforms.

This is an opportunity to really, in a very...

That was Congressman David Cicillini of Rhode Island on CNN talking about the House's

Antitrust Committee probe into mainly unchecked power of tech giants like Google,

Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.

The investigation could include public hearings and subpoenas toward eventual antitrust intervention into the

businesses of Silicon Valley Leviathans. The news came on the same day that the Wall Street

Journal reported that the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are expanding their

oversight into alleged anti-competitive practices of Facebook and Google.

Last November, Brooke spoke with Stacey Mitchell, co-director of the Institute for Local

Self-Reliance on the subject of Amazon's domination over industry after industry and where

we stand today in the arc of antitrust regulation.

In 2018, Mitchell wrote an article for The Nation called,

Amazon doesn't just want to dominate the market, it wants to become the market.

She begins America's relationship with monopolies with the rise of the railroads

and how the industrialists that owned the tracks, the cars,

the wheels of commerce, extorted money from small businesses and farmers and blocked competitors

...