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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Well, I'm expressing my opinion rather than arguing a case in court, so the only evidence is purely circumstantial. A bit more solid that the evidence you find so persuasive, but circumstantial none the less. We know that Bezo and his family have donated quite a bit to politicians. We now know that the DOJ seem to have derived their case from a white paper given them by Amazon.
White paper is a technical term. It does have special meaning. The point there is that Amazon didn't file a complaint against the publishers and Apple, which is the normal way of getting the DOJ to investigate. Instead they give what was apparently a secret briefing. It seems fairly likely that they choose this method to avoid getting bad press ("Dominate company charges new entry into ebook market with anti-trust violation". Yea, that would fly well).
When a company gives money to politicians, and then get favorable treatment from the government, then that is the definition of crony capitalism. If Bezos and company hadn't been given money to the right politicians, then I would yield your point, but they were. That's what makes it crony capitalism.
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When dealing with areas of white collar crime and complex areas including competition law, it is actually quite common for a complaint to be made by way of submissions from the complainant's lawyers. I would be very surprised if what Amazon did was particularly unusual.
Since most companies and many individuals make political donations, and some to more than one candidate or party, then crony capitalism must play its role in most favourable decisions. What your definition is missing is the causal link between the donation and the favourable decision concerned. I would suggest to you that when large corporations like Amazon, Apple and the BWM are involved, there is also a huge degree of influence and no doubt significant donations and relationships with all sorts of politicians and probably both of your major political parties and perhaps some minor ones. I seriously doubt Amazon's influence trumped that of Apple alane, let alone Apple and the BWM.