Demand Progress has already begun circulating a petition to block the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger, and the deal has not even been submitted for government inspection.
"[T]his deal has just been announced so it’s up to us to stop this merger dead in its tracks before regulators even start looking into approving it," said the group in an email to supporters late Wednesday, calling it "the current mega-version of Comcast that we all know and hate..."
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It called an AT&T-TW "a communications and media behemoth that would be another dangerous concentration of economic and political power," like the aforementioned Comcast.
Demand Progress pulled out all the stops and the talking points, saying that when AT&T wasn't "busy spying on its own customers for profit" and fighting net neutrality, it was trying to stop local communities from building their own broadband nets.
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It added a swipe at Jeff Bewkes, though only identified as Time Warner's CEO, for "a $100 million payout" if the deal goes through.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was leveling similar charges Wednesday in calling for the deal to be blocked.
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Demand Progress saved its ammunition for big telecoms, as opposed to the big edge providers.
"This $85 billion merger follows a trend of big telecoms acquiring big media companies to compete with content creators like Netflix, Facebook, and Google," it said.
