Lobenthal.com

It’s one-hand-washes-the-other time–and no concern for the country or our democracy.

Mary Trump writes:

“On the same day the Post announced its decision, Donald met with executives, including CEO David Limp, of Blue Origin—the space technologies company owned by Bezos that has a $3.4 billion contract with NASA. I’m sure Bezos’ decision and Donald’s meeting have nothing to do with the fact that in 2019, when Amazon was the frontrunner to receive a $10 billion cloud computing defense contract, the Trump administration awarded it to Microsoft instead, which was generally seen as a retaliatory move because, in Donald’s view, the Post’s coverage of him was too negative.”

That is the long and short of it, and managements can spin and spin but it will be to no avail. They will be held accountable by readers.

He really thinks that Trump will lay off him if he gets in? 

The more you try to propitiate a golem like Trump, the more pleasure he takes in trying to destroy you.

The oligarchs have got to get out of our news media. They don’t have the acumen or the moral fiber necessary.

According to the Times, Bezos is saying he wants the Post to feature even more “conservative” [right wing] columnists than it already does. 

Bezos is neutering the Post’s editorial leadership, such as it is. As Froomkin says, the only way the Post can retain any reputation is for Bezos to turn it over to a non-profit. Forthwith.

He has gone from bad to worse during his as-yet brief tenure at the Washington Post. 

In typical Murdochian fashion, Lewis degrades by pandering, telling the Post’s readership that his renouncement of journalism was a “statement in support of our readers’ ability to make up their own minds.”

Then why are they going to keep on making endorsements in other races?

It is time to start boycotting Amazon for what  Bezos has done to the Post.

The oligarchs never seem to do anything out of magnanimity, or even, I have to say, patriotism in most cases. Barry Diller recognizes that Trump will incinerate this country and Diller’s own business empire as well. So he’s  giving mightily to Harris. Fine. Not fine is Diller’s stated inention to lobby her to dump Lina Kahn, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, who is putting speed bumps in the way of Diller and his fellow oligarchs’s determination to further centralize corporate power in the United States.

Monopolization and mergers have been disastrous for America, eliminating choice, competition, diversity.  Neither Democratic nor Repulican administrations have pursued anti-trust action in more than 40 yars. Biden’s administration is the first.  First Diller called Kahn “a dope,” having apparently decided that juvenile and idiotic Trumpian epithet is the new coin of the realm. Then he said he wasn’t a dope, but she is anti-business. Ludicrous.

If any attempt to made to protect the public interest from moguls’ insatiable hunger to consume everything in sight, oligarchs like Diller start to howl that they’re being victmized, that business itself is in the rifle sights. Bullshit. Oligarchal consolidation is. 

Harris is reportedly keeping a distance from Kahn, thus  dampening progressive enthusiasm. It’s the same mistake that almost every Democrat has been making for forty years. Candidates need voters more than they need moguls.

Lina Kahn is a genuine advocate for the intersts of Americans, particularly non-wealthy ones. She must not be sacrificed to the greed and myopia of Diller and his ilk.

Moguls are not the saviors of news organizations: they are their undoing.

Billionaire  Patrick Soon-Shiong, whose billions come from profits made from America’s extortionate health care industry, scuttled the Los Angeles Times’ Editorial Board’s decision to endorse Harris for president.

Murdoch hack, far right wing publisher and Tory operative Will Lewis has been installed by Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to drive the paper to the right and chill any reporting that could injure Bezos’ business interests under a possible Trump re-up. 

Bezos and/or Lewis decided that, for the first time in decades, the Post will not make a presidential endorsement.Lewis is currently under investigation in London for his role in destroying evidence that was likely to have indicted Rupert Murdoch in his 2011 phone hacking scandal. He’s someone who shouldn’t even be allowed to work in this country. Any number of Americans could do a better, more ethical job than Lewis. And yet, once again, accommodations have been made.

As a result of Lewis’s journalistic malpractice, subscribers are cancelling in droves. I love reading the Post, but I’m not going to renew my subscription. Moguls are disabling our great newspapers. The New York Times is its own cautionary tale.

At NPR,  David Folkenflik examines the collapse that is taking place. “’For the past decade, Donald Trump has been running a campaign against the media straight out of the playbook that authoritarians have used around the world, which is to threaten retaliation against news organizations if they don’t provide him with favorable enough coverage,’ says Ian Bassin, an attorney and founder of the not-for-profit advocacy group Protect Democracy. ‘We are seeing now the seeds of that campaign bearing fruit.’”

The Washington Post Guild has condemned the Post’s craven, sleazy abdication of journalistic duty. Dan Froomkin writes at Salon: “Just as these oligarchs are a plague on society, they are a plague on the news business. They have now ruined – possibly for good – two of our most treasured news organizations.”

As Froomkin points out, the LA Times and the Washington Post have now signaled to Trump that they are all in with a future fascistic United States. They will fall in line, have no fear, that’s what they are telling Herr Trump and the Republican Fascist Party.

Earlier this week, the New York City Council held what is likely its only hearing on the Mayor’s “City of Yes” development scam, which they will, in all likelihood,  rubber stamp the way they do everything that paves the way for even greater over-development in NYC. “City of Yes” also severely limits even further the role of public review of the monstrously over-scaled development City Hall and the developers are unleashing.

This was a calculated move on their parts to give Trump cover by deflecting to Biden’s mild cognitive decline, despite which he has continued to function more productively than Trump ever has in his entire life.

so of course his protege J.D. Vance is on the stump advocating firing IRS agents.

On the Murodchs’ Fox Propaganda, Brian Kilmeade defends Trump’s reverance for Hitler, while the Murdochs’ Wall Street Journal’s editorial board ridicules the Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum for recognizing Trump’s blazingly explicit fascist rhetoric.