Comcast, the nation’s largest provider of cable and internet service, as well as the world’s largest media company, made clear their intention today to purchase Time Warner Cable, the second-largest cable company in the United States. Assuming the $44 billion deal is allowed to move forward by the Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department, which is all too likely, given the tens of millions of dollars Comcast spends each year on lobbying, and the fact that they’re known to hire the sons, daughters and spouses of those individuals who have the power to make such decisions, this would mean that as many as two-thirds of all U.S. households would likely become customers of the communications behemoth.

I know what you’re thinking… “It’s true that, year after year, Comcast is ranked as one of the least liked entities in America, often even beating the IRS, but maybe it’s competition that’s been holding them back. Maybe, if they didn’t have to worry about Time Warner nibbling away at their market share, they could focus on those things that really matter, like customer service. And, maybe, once they have two-thirds of all Americans as customers, they’ll achieve an economy of scale that would them to drop their rates a bit, so they’re no longer among the most expensive in the entire world.” And, yes, that all makes perfect sense. But, what if, despite the rhetoric, they don’t really have the best interests of the American public in mind? I know it’s unthinkable, but what if they’re only interested in maximizing shareholder value? What if, when CEO Brian Roberts said that this newly proposed move was “pro-consumer, pro-competitive, and strongly in the public interest,” he was lying? If that were the case, wouldn’t this be incredibly bad for all of us? Without competition, wouldn’t they in fact be less inclined to invest more in customer service, or pass savings along to their customers? If they’re not doing it now, it is really safe to assume that things will change absent competition?

Here, with more on this nightmare scenario, is a clip from today’s New Yorker.

…(Y)ou have to give its C.E.O., Brian Roberts, some marks for chutzpah. In announcing Comcast’s intention to swallow up Time Warner Cable, the second-biggest cable company in the country, he brushed aside concerns that the regulators and anti-trust authorities might veto the deal, describing it as “pro-consumer, pro-competitive, and strongly in the public interest.”

As you digest these words, it is well to set them in a broader perspective. As residents of the country that came up with Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the Internet, we like to think that we lead the world in communications and entertainment. And we’re certainly ahead in one way: we pay far more for broadband Internet access, cable television, and home phone lines than people in many other advanced countries, even though the services we get aren’t any better. All too often, they are worse.

Take the “triple-play” packages—cable, phone, and high-speed Internet access—that tens of millions of Americans buy from companies like Comcast and Time Warner Cable. In France, a country often portrayed as an economic and technological laggard, the monthly cost of these packages is roughly forty dollars a month—about a quarter of what we Americans pay. And, unlike in the United States, France’s triple-play packages include free telephone calls to anywhere in the world. Moreover, the French get faster Internet service: ten times faster for downloading information, and twenty times faster for uploading it…

Why are things so different, and so expensive, in the United States? There are various answers, but by far the most important ones are competition and competition policy. In countries like the U.K., regulators forced incumbent cable and telephone operators to lease their networks to competitors at cost, which enabled new providers to enter the market and brought down prices dramatically. The incumbents—the local versions of Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, and AT&T—didn’t like this policy at all, but the regulators held firm and forced them to accept genuine competition. “The prices were too high,” one of the regulators explained to the media writer Rick Karr. “There were huge barriers to entry.”

That quote accurately describes the situation in the United States today, where vigorous competition is almost non-existent. In some big cities, broadband consumers have a choice between a cable operator, such as Comcast, and a telephone provider, such as Verizon. But that’s practically no choice at all. Although the cable and telephone companies spend huge sums of money on advertising trying to lure each others customers, they rarely compete on price. To use the economic jargon, they act as a cozy “duopoly,” keeping prices well above their costs…

What we need is a new competition policy that puts the interests of consumers first, seeks to replicate what other countries have done, and treats with extreme skepticism the arguments of monopoly incumbents such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable. But will we get it? Under President Obama, the anti-trust division of the Justice Department has nodded through a number of dubious mergers, the most recent of which was the takeover of US Airways by American Airlines. The new head of the Federal Communications Commission, Tom Wheeler, is a former lobbyist for two sets of vested interests: the cell-phone operators and, you guessed it, the cable companies…

I think you get the picture… We’re about to be force-fed a mega-turd.

Putting aside all of the obvious stuff, about how we’re getting fucked, and how insulting it is for the CEO of Comcast to pitch this a pro-competition, when it’s actually the exact opposite of that, this is bad for American business, and I have to imagine that people on the right know that. What tech companies would want to be in America when they could be any number of other places, where internet connections are not only lightening fast, but affordable. Comcast has a stranglehold on America and its tightening its grip. Not only should we not allow this merger to happen, but we should take this opportunity to have an open debate on the future of our country, and whether its responsible to allow one corporation to have so much power over what information we consume, and how we consume it. My hope is that Comcast just opened a can of worms that proves to be their undoing.

[note: The title of this piece was inspired by a comment left on Reddit by someone using the handle YSCapital. He said “smash,” though. And I prefer “smash.”]

[note: For more on media consolidation, and the threat it poses to the future of our democracy, see Freepress.net.]