Deborah Platt Majoras came to the FTC as a corporate lawyer who had represented Chevron Texaco while at the Jones Day law firm. Under her watch, the FTC failed to make any real advances protecting consumer privacy, ensure an open Internet (network neutrality), and promote competition and diversity in the key online marketing sector (Google/DoubleClick, for example).
The FTC should have a chairman and commissioners whose background indicates a strong commitment to consumer protection. They have to be willing to take on the powerful special interests, much of which will be from the big business sector. We need to stop business as usual, where yesterday you were a top corporate lawyer–then you are at the FTC–and soon, back in a well-compensated corporate boardroom. In Deborah Platt Majoras’s case, she is to be a top counsel for the Procter and Gamble company, according to press reports (her former law firm Jones Day has represented P&G, btw). The next administration must appoint officials to the FTC–and the FCC–who are in the orbit of the special interests. The cozy K Street golden revolving door should be sealed shut. If the country is to tackle the problems facing it, it requires consumer champions and business visionaries who understand what is at stake.
I would be remiss if I also didn’t remind readers that my group and the Electronic Privacy Information Center asked Chairman Majoras to recuse herself on the Google/DoubleClick merger, once we discovered that her husband’s law firm Jones Day represented one of the parties. She refused, and groups have asked the FTC to turn over documents related to the case. We intend to pursue this, of course, despite her departure. But the real point is that we need officials at the FTC who have demonstrated through their previous work and intellectual perspectives that they represent the concerns of average Americans—not multi-billion dollar law firms, Fortune 1000 corporations, or well-connected trade associations. In the 21st Century, anti-trust and consumer protection plays a crucial role in the operation of the digital marketplace. That alone is reason enough to make who becomes a FTC commissioner an important public policy issue for those who care about serious reform.
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