{"id":37565,"date":"2024-11-10T13:10:22","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T21:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=37565"},"modified":"2024-11-10T13:10:23","modified_gmt":"2024-11-10T21:10:23","slug":"democracy-dies-in-their-wallets-heres-what-happens-when-oligarchs-buy-the-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/11\/10\/democracy-dies-in-their-wallets-heres-what-happens-when-oligarchs-buy-the-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Democracy dies in their wallets: Here’s what happens when oligarchs buy the news"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thom Hartmann<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 29, 2024 (RawStory.com)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Democracy<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Amazon chief executive and new Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, pictured on Sept. 6, 2013. [AFP]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.<\/em>\u2014Yale historian Timothy Snyder, <\/a>On Tyranny<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I cancelled my Washington Post subscription Friday evening. Jeff Bezos, Mister \u201cDemocracy Dies In Darkness\u201d (the Post\u2019s slogan on their masthead), by blocking his editorial staff from endorsing Harris chose darkness over his nation\u2019s future, and I can\u2019t support that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big mistake John D. Rockefeller made back in the day \u2014 that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk appear committed to not repeating \u2014 was not buying a media outlet like a newspaper. Had John D. had that sort of a vehicle to mold public opinion, American history may be very different.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1880, Rockefeller\u2019s Ohio-based company controlled over 90 percent of the nation\u2019s oil, owned 4000 miles of pipelines, and employed over 100,000 people. As Rockefeller\u2019s oil empire got larger and larger, eating alive hundreds of smaller operations, ruthlessly driving up prices, destroying his competitors, and throwing workers out of a job, public outrage grew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALSO READ: <\/strong>Trump’s Civil War comments are as ignorant as letting the states decide<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1887, Ohio sued him, arguing that he was operating in ways that were detrimental to the state and its citizens and businesses; in 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court<\/a> ordered his company dissolved. As I lay out in detail in Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became \u201cPeople<\/a>,\u201d <\/em>this led Rockefeller to move Standard Oil to New Jersey after that state changed its corporation laws to allow for his monopolistic behavior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which brought in the federal government; in 1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and saw passed into law the <\/strong>Sherman Anti-Trust Act<\/strong><\/em> which provided not just fines but jail sentences against people like Rockefeller who were committed to destroying competition and owning entire markets. The law was flawed with a few loopholes and ambiguities, so it was amended in 1914 with the <\/strong>Clayton Anti-Trust Act.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, in 1906 progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt\u2019s administration filed an antitrust action against Rockefeller that went to the Supreme Court in 1911 during the administration of progressive Republican President William Howard Taft. The behemoth was broken up into 34 separate companies, an action that, like the breakup of AT&T by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, led to an explosion of competition in the marketplace and a dramatic increase in shareholder value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But back to Jeff Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The Washington Post.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against Rockefeller and his fellow monopolists. Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to competition and the de-throning of that age\u2019s oligarchs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation\u2019s wealth (a situation we\u2019re at again<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was constant strife, strikes, and the murder of labor leaders; entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with labor conflict. The \u201cproblem of labor\u201dwas the number one issue of the day. As President Grover Cleveland \u2014 the only Democrat elected during that period \u2014 proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cAs we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people\u2019s masters.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

There was a broad consensus across American society that those \u201cRobber Barons\u201d were feathering their own nests at the expense of the American public, hurting both working class people and small businesses. The Supreme Court endorsed breaking up Standard Oil in 1911, and even broke up the Associated Press in 1944.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law was so rigorously enforced \u2014 so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the \u201cbig boys\u201d \u2014 that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown<\/a> shoe companies because the new combined company would control a mere 5 percent of the shoe market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the \u201960s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses; there might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town, but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation\u2019s shoe market. It\u2019s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels\u2026and on and on. In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies<\/a> control 80 percent or more of the market.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation\u2019s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T, going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries. It\u2019s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission\u2019s head, Lina Kahn, be fired<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition. The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job; a Trump<\/a> administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump because of the Post\u2019s coverage of the orange oligarch\u2019s lies and crimes; Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract<\/a> for cloud computing to Microsoft, shocking<\/a> analysts across the industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts<\/a>. He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred<\/a> other companies.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/a>, is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies (which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla<\/a> in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions<\/a> into SpaceX):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues, with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.
\u2014 SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.
\u2014 The SEC is investigating Musk\u2019s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his \u201cfunding secured\u201d tweets about taking Tesla private.
\u2014 The FTC is investigating X\u2019s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.
\u2014 The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX\u2019s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.
\u2014 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.
\u2014 The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.
\u2014 The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.
\u2014 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla\u2019s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.
\u2014 SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To avoid the Rockefeller mistake, Musk \u2014 with the apparent help of two Russian oligarchs<\/a> and the leader of Saudi Arabia<\/a> \u2014 purchased Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation\u2019s largest newspaper.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And he\u2019s now using it to try to get Trump and Republicans into office, presumably so they can gut the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulator that might take him on to protect workers, the public, and the national interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We took on the superrich with success during the First Gilded Age, and our enforcement of antitrust laws lasted all the way to 1983, when Reagan blocked them, leading to the \u201cmerger mania\u201d of the 1980s and bringing us today\u2019s oligarchic business empires across multiple industries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that we\u2019re in America\u2019s Second Gilded Age \u2014 with today\u2019s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller\u2019s wildest dreams \u2014 we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is it okay, for example, for billionaires to own media properties they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies to amplify their other business interests? Or that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that our morbidly rich plutocrats can own judges and politicians? Most Americans would probably say \u201cNo\u201d to both.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem. And the sooner the better, if we don\u2019t want darkness to entirely subsume our democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ALSO READ: <\/strong>Not all former Trump ‘spiritual advisors’ appear in public to support his 2024 campaign<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thom Hartmann October 29, 2024 (RawStory.com) Amazon chief executive and new Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, pictured on Sept. 6, 2013. [AFP] Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a repressive government will want,… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37565"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37566,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37565\/revisions\/37566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}