Is the DOJ actually going to start enforcing some aspects of anti-trust laws?

Submitted by Dhyerwolf on Mon, 11/20/2017 - 6:17pm

Short and sweet: The DOJ apparently announced today that they are going to sue to stop the ATT-Time Warner merger. This comes as a complete shock to me.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/20/att-says-justice-department-is-suing-to-...

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Mon, 11/20/2017 - 6:36pm

This article has insider claims that states this is coming from

Trump and his fight with CNN. Who knows what's true anymore?

THIS IS POLITICAL”: CNN SEES TRUMP’S HAND IN JUSTICE DEPARTMENT’S ME…

On Monday, November 6, AT&T C.E.O. Randall Stephenson was in Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Makan Delrahim, the Justice Department’s new anti-trust chief, who was confirmed by the Senate in late September. They were there to discuss AT&T’s long-awaited purchase of Time Warner, which has been in the final stages of a protracted regulatory review. According to three people briefed on the conversation, Delrahim told Stephenson that if AT&T wanted the D.O.J. to green-light the $85 billion mega merger, he would have to either sell Turner Broadcasting, the parent entity of CNN, which AT&T would acquire as part of the deal, or sell DirecTV, the satellite provider AT&T acquired in 2015.

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There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.

Submitted by lizzyh7 on Mon, 11/20/2017 - 8:02pm

Thanks for that link.

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg Interesting. I do tend to think it really is about CNN. We have a petulant child in the White Hut who's all about himself. I do badly want to add more...

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Submitted by k9disc on Mon, 11/20/2017 - 10:31pm

VF is Owned by Condé Nast, Who is Owned By Advance

Publications who has a @snoopydawg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance_Publications

As of October 2014, it was ranked as the 44th largest privately held company in the United States according to Forbes.[3] Crain's ranked Advance Publications the 4th largest private company in the New York area in 2012. In addition to holding publishing and communication assets, Advance serves as the holding company for the family's 31% stake in cable entertainment company Discovery Communications.[4] Advance also owns a 13% stake in Charter Communications, which it received when Bright House Networks merged with Charter.

Take a look at their properties. They own my local news rags, completely (MI), and also a ton of Jersey local rags. Might have some kind of axe to grind with ATT or friendly with Drumpf.

Yup, friendly with Drumpf:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-02/without-newhouse-ther...

“Newhouse’s fondness for Trump, the link with Roy Cohn and the way in which the Newhouse publications promoted Trump over the last 20 years really helped make him a nationally known figure and is one of the great unknown stories of the Trump rise to power,” Maier said.

Man, corporate media is so fucking incestuous and intertwined. Kind of scary when you start digging. Take a look at this:
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20101121/FREE/311219987/advance-pub...

If Advance still has a cash cow, it would be Bright HouseNetworks, which grew out of a joint venture between an Advance unit and a division of what later became Time Warner Cable. Along with the newspapers, the company falls under Donald Newhouse's purview.
Spun off in 2002, and now wholly owned by Advance, Bright House still relies on Time Warner to negotiate programming deals and help with technology.

Brighthouse is what delivered the stake in Charter.

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Submitted by dkmich on Mon, 11/20/2017 - 8:15pm

Retaliation. Abuse of power

Sinclair got waivers to own it all. Trump is pissed at CNN

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

Submitted by k9disc on Mon, 11/20/2017 - 10:48pm

Hate to Say It, But I'm with Drumpf On This One.

If it takes petty spite to stop media consolidation, I'm all for it.

Besides, petty spite is not a Republicans-only problem, I'm sure there are many solid public policy moves made to spite some asshole or institution.

Even a petulant, narcissistic dotard can do right sometimes.

@dkmich

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Submitted by Wink on Tue, 11/21/2017 - 12:25am

yep. n/t

@k9disc

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Submitted by Dr. John Carpenter on Tue, 11/21/2017 - 7:09am

Right thing for the wrong reason.

@k9disc @k9disc It’s tough to say because, like everything these days, the parties involved are all various levels of despicable. It seems there’s always a price to be paid when the right thing is done for the wrong reason. Maybe someone else has seen this through, but when the choices are finally seeing some rules put to the mega-corporations vs. the threat of “the slippery slope”, I think I’ll take the former. Every time we have to make these decisions, we end up getting the damn slope anyway.

(And I’m going to just assume that because Trump is a’ginn it, the ol’ TOP is a’fer it. Because TRUMP!)

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Submitted by Pluto's Republic on Tue, 11/21/2017 - 3:44am

Speaking of monopolies

...Word has it that the FCC is going to sneak a vote on Wednesday before Thanksgiving to end Net Neutrality. AT&T is pushing it hard, among others. With communications and media monopolies collusion nationwide, censoring topics and speech, that's pretty much it. Now that the Federal Government is corporate owned and largely privatized, we have entered the state defined as Fascism.

Here's what that will likely look:

Comcast, alone, has spent half a billion dollars to lobby against net neutrality. That's means that they think they can extract at least another half billion dollars out of citizens, once those annoying regulations about about serving your customer what they requested are removed. That, or they are sure they can murder off enough of their competition (or divvy up territories for competition-free monopoly rule) to justify the cost of buying off so many congressmen.

Meanwhile, to get cover, the GOP and FCC admit they are flooded with pro net neutrality email, but insist that most of it is coming from Russian trolls, creating fake news and pretending to be Americans. They even use Cyrillic characters, they say, so they throw them away.

The National Legal and Policy Center as well as the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) independently allege that more than 1.3 million comments made in support of net neutrality between July 3rd and the July 12 “Day of Action” protests came from foreign countries. In a claim that echoes investigations from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the NLPC says more than 325,000 "fake comments" were submitted from one Russian IP address and an additional 325,076 "fake comments" came from Pornhub.com and Hurra.de addresses in Germany and other parts of Europe.

That's what Americans get for buying into the Russia, Russia, Russia bullshit. It will dog them for the rest of their days.

Perhaps ending net neutrality will look something like this, depending on which monopoly you happened to be assigned to.

The best source I've seen that covers "the end of the Internet" story is TechDirt:

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/

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IMAGINE if you woke up the day after a US Presidential Election and headlines around the the world blared, "The Majority of Americans Refused to Vote in US Presidential Election! What Does this Mean?"

Submitted by snoopydawg on Tue, 11/21/2017 - 7:58pm

This Russian crap is going to keep snowballing

@Pluto's Republic

The FCC just blew us off and blamed it on Russian bots. Now any time we petition congress, they too can hide behind this bullshit.

Next thing is going to be Russian bots dressed up as pussy rioters and.....

Gawd, I'm so disgusted with the Creature and the democrats for starting this. This goes for everyone who has been spreading this, such as the kosbots. They are still defending Frankenstein and others that have assaulted women. Why? Because of some of the pictures they were in and they belong to people on the right. Just unbelievable! This after calling us sexists and misogynists for two years, but now that Her didn't win, that goes away.

...Word has it that the FCC is going to sneak a vote on Wednesday before Thanksgiving to end Net Neutrality. AT&T is pushing it hard, among others. With communications and media monopolies collusion nationwide, censoring topics and speech, that's pretty much it. Now that the Federal Government is corporate owned and largely privatized, we have entered the state defined as Fascism. Here's what that will likely look: Comcast, alone, has spent half a billion dollars to lobby against net neutrality. That's means that they think they can extract at least another half billion dollars out of citizens, once those annoying regulations about about serving your customer what they requested are removed. That, or they are sure they can murder off enough of their competition (or divvy up territories for competition-free monopoly rule) to justify the cost of buying off so many congressmen. Meanwhile, to get cover, the GOP and FCC admit they are flooded with pro net neutrality email, but insist that most of it is coming from Russian trolls, creating fake news and pretending to be Americans. They even use Cyrillic characters, they say, so they throw them away. The National Legal and Policy Center as well as the Tucker Carlson-founded Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) independently allege that more than 1.3 million comments made in support of net neutrality between July 3rd and the July 12 “Day of Action” protests came from foreign countries. In a claim that echoes investigations from the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the NLPC says more than 325,000 "fake comments" were submitted from one Russian IP address and an additional 325,076 "fake comments" came from Pornhub.com and Hurra.de addresses in Germany and other parts of Europe. That's what Americans get for buying into the Russia, Russia, Russia bullshit. It will dog them for the rest of their days. Perhaps ending net neutrality will look something like this, depending on which monopoly you happened to be assigned to. The best source I've seen that covers "the end of the Internet" story is TechDirt: https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/

—

There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?

Harris is unburdened of speaking going forward.