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Judge Rules AT&T Can Acquire Time Warner (wsj.com)
A federal judge said Tuesday that AT&T's $85.4 billion purchase of Time Warner is legal, clearing the path for a deal that gives the pay-TV provider ownership of cable channels such as HBO and CNN as well as film studio Warner Bros. From a report: U.S. District Judge Richard Leon announced his decision in a packed courtroom, ruling that antitrust enforcers at the Justice Department had not proven their case against the merger. The decision, in one of the biggest antitrust cases in decades, is a milestone victory for AT&T as it looks to reposition itself in a rapidly evolving media landscape. Its deal for Time Warner, valued at roughly $80 billion, has been pending since October 2016. The acquisition means AT&T will be the nation's top pay-TV distributor, through its ownership of DirecTV, as well as the owner of some of the country's most sought-after channels: Time Warner's Turner networks -- including CNN, TBS and TNT -- as well as HBO, the most popular U.S. premium network.
Now, our business has the choice of exactly *one* shitty ISP. Fucking wonderful.
It's really difficult to run a business in the US due to our shocking lack of regulations.
I don't respond to AC's.
Monopolies are like candy to a culture of protectionism.
Yay! I get free HBO!
... I don't farm?
"But you're essentially a sharecropper now!"
Just have AT&T divest its wireless and broadband services as a condition of the merger.
Have gnu, will travel.
now fox will be sold to Comcast or Disney
This calls for the more complete form of my sig:
#1 Freedom = (Meaningful + Truthful - Coerced) Choice{~5} != (Beer^4 | Speech | Trade)
You have hit on the key term "~5" in your brief comment. Zero or one choice is not a meaningful choice. Two is the starting point of freedom, but most of us actually max out around 5 choices at a time. By the time you get up to 20 or 30 choices, you're helpless and the advertisers or slick salespeople are going to pull your strings, driven by the same kind of insane profit maximization that ATT is worshiping with this EVIL merger.
Short summary: Capitalism is deader than Communism. Socialism is sick and Libertarianism is a sick fantasy. The most successful governments now appear to be Putin's style of Kleptocracy or Xi's style of slightly benevolent Dictatorship. #PresidentTweety wants to combine the worst of those two, though he also likes Kim Jong-un's style. We are so phucked. Corporate cancerism RULZ.
In religious terms: There is no gawd but profit, and ATT wants to be a YUGER prophet!
Solution? Don't hold your breath, but how about a progressive tax on corporate profits linked to market share. In your [DogDude's] situation, now that ATT is the monopolist in your market, they would have to pay the highest tax rate on all of the profits they earn there. The goal would be to encourage them to reproduce by fission, but if they don't, then the taxes will pay for (1) extensive monitoring by honest [LOL] and unbribed [ROFLMAO] government regulators (to make sure they aren't abusing their customers too badly) and for (2) research into ways to break the monopoly. (LTE is actually such a technology, though it is actually being used by the cancers that own it to prevent breaking their monopolies.)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Americans are so willing to give up everything for convenience that they have completely forgotten who they used to be. Only 3 major players even control the news media in the US anymore. What do you expect? Most of our money goes to military endeavors anymore. Everything you type or say is recorded somewhere. Our "government" is nothing but people put into power by large corporations. Do you really think anyone is representing you anymore? We all (almost all) have failed to see what is coming. I cringe now everyone tells me that America is the most free country. I cringe when anyone suggests that America is a beacon of freedom. Every fucking thing you do or say is now being monitored by the corporations that have put their minions in control of every aspect of our governments. This was all predicted. Our forefathers may not have envisioned the technology, but they did know the evil that exists within the human desire for power. Do you really think that these federal positions are there to protect you? They are not. They are fulfilled by corporations that want to meet expectations from their shareholders. There is no one evil person to point at. If anyone should really be blamed in full, you will have to look in a mirror. You allowed this to happen. It isn't just this one thing. Every fucking day, we read of more corporate takeovers. I'm all for legitimate business, but why can't everyone see that these big corporations (not individuals within) are going to be the end of freedom? Why? Do you really love your spy gadgets that much? It isn't this headline that evoked this. Just getting tired of reading these types of headlines.
This is the free market's outcome right now. Unregulated, ie: free for businesses, only has monopolistic outcomes. Oh, and that same unregulated situation also leads to slavery.
Americans, and people in general honestly don't give a shit any more They feel they are entitled to what they have, and who wants to stand up and fight for anything?
Oh I'm no communist. I'm too wealthy for that. Its not revisionist nonsense. The us installed the Taliban. The us installed Sadam Hussein. And many more evil dictators. The list of US war crimes and human rights attrocities outweighs what the Soviet union ever did. Maybe try step back from the propaganda for a moment.
elections have consequences. You're the first person I've heard make the point that it's hard to run a business due to a _lack_ of regulations. I'm not saying you're wrong (you're dead on actually). But I've just had the narrative of regulations making business harder pounded into my skull so long it's hard to imagine the opposite, even when I logically what you're saying.
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none whatsoever. The judge is letting it proceed as is. You have more conditions buying a candy bar from 7-11 than they're getting buying a competitor.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
folks. And then at your mid-terms. If you want change you need to start voting these bums out. Don't forget most judges are appointed. The party that appointed this judge didn't. That's why this merger sailed through with zero conditions. And it's why you'll be paying $200/mo for high speed internet in a few years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No, we need electrical utilities deregulated like our ISPs are.
Why?
I don't respond to AC's.
Any merger worth over x billion must inherently be anti-competitive.
The case for their de-facto nationalization, based on the mythical "natural monopoly" concept [mises.org], back then was completely bogus [wordpress.com].
Something tells me a federal judge is going to be buying a new Tesla this week!
In 1978 when the Islamists began attacking the republic of afghanistan because the government was introducing reforms aimed at improving the life of women, increasing education and ironically, removing usury, the Soviet union intervened to protect what most western people would think are better morals.
No comrade, that's not what happened. USSR invaded Afghanistan because they wanted to turn it into yet another soviet state as they had already been doing since WWII ended. The Afghanis didn't take kindly to that, and killed your fellow comrades, which actually made a decent contribution to what ultimately became end stage communism. You know that camo jacket and AK47 Osama was always sporting in his videos? He took them from a dead Russian general.
weak and fearful so they began arming the Mujahideen and provided them with support
Actually we didn't. This is the biggest myth among democrats, communists, and others that never seems to die. Osama bankrolled it himself with his oil money, refusing to have anybody assist other than muslims, referring to the ones sworn to him as mujaheddin (specifically referring to them as "his" mujahedin) whom he never would have allowed to accept support form the US. He did the same thing later to Kuwait when Iraq invaded, saying to them that only muslims should be allowed into what he called arab land (even though his "arab" land belonged to many more than just his race, like Persians, Kurds, Pashtun, Armenians, Azhjerbani, and many more.) Kuwait refused outright and opted for support from the US, which pissed him off, and nobody cared. In the USSR invasion of Afghanistan, the US armed and trained the northern alliance who hated both Osama and his fundamentalist crap alike, the same northern alliance that the US is working with in the modern Afghani war. And yes, the same US that has already lasted a lot longer in Afghanistan than the USSR did.
Anyways, I'm sorry we helped kill your communist paradise the USSR, I'm sure you loved and now miss the one and only vacation spot that existed in the entire soviet bloc with as much landmass the soviet bloc had that nobody ever wanted to visit, and the community grocery stores that were always out of food...those were your most cherished times...But it couldn't be helped. Gorbachev realized that it was simply impossible to prop up communism any longer, and the iron curtan was rusted and falling apart, so the wall wasn't going to last much longer. He made a bold move by establishing democracy, which the Russians didn't seem to care too much for given they keep electing a former member of the agency that used to terrorize them and now specializes in taking away their rights. Fortunately he, like virtually every other Russian of his time, understands just how shitty communism was, and how things improved for them once it ended, so while he's eroding your freedoms, at least he's not going to lead Russia in to that shitty existence again.
And since the "free" market has failed to ever produce one fair market, us liberals are right.
It's ok. You can say it.
I never said "you" (including myself, being a pretty mainstream left-of-center/Social Democrat) weren't.
What was the motivation of the judge? Why did he feel there was no antitrust violation? Is this a failure of the judiciary or a failure of the DoJ to build a decent case?
``OK, so ten out of ten for style, but minus several million for good thinking, yeah?''
Because the nationalization made us less free — someone seeking to pursue happiness by creating an electricity-generation plant, is effectively barred from doing it by these fascist regulations. That should be a good enough reason for anyone with principles.
For those, whose principles aren't so solid, the words: "The case for their de-facto nationalization, based on the mythical "natural monopoly" concept, back then was completely bogus," — provide additional explanation.
We've surrendered a liberty (of running and profiting from this kind of business) in exchange of safety (against a non-existent threat), and, as foretold, ended up with neither.
(Given your propensity for name-calling, I'm unlikely to continue this conversation.)
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's an argument for nationalizing everything: food-production, house-cleaning, television and other media, automobiles...
So, you subscribe to the principle of: "The common interest before self-interest"?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
att used to block facetime on some plans so isp that also have tv can try to block some services unless you say buy an entertainment service can comes with tv or you buy say $100/mo+ internet plan. Say internet $70 + $50 unlimited (need to unlock entertainment service when you don't take an TV plan)
Hell Comcast can do that in some markets it's only comcast or slow dsl as your internet choices.
You are yet to identify the criteria — everything you said about nationalizing the Internet-service provision also applies to everything else.
Plus, I would still like a clarification on whether you still subscribe to the principle of "The common interest before self-interest". You certainly did subscribe to it 2 hours ago — has that changed?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There is no single criteria. A society of billions is very complicated. A simple "freedom is good" mantra simply doesn't work. If you're looking for some ideological argument, I have no interest in that, because it's futile, and ultimately, stupid. Yes, I think that utilities, including electrical service, and Internet service, are better as government regulated entities. If you want to tilt at windmills, you can do it without me.
I don't respond to AC's.
Ok, so there is a multitude of criteria. And yet, for some reason, you wouldn't give even one example... Your argument was:
I can replace the words "electrical service" with just about anything: "clothing", "kitchen appliances", "automobiles", "news-media" — and the statement will still be true. So, if you don't want to nationalize TV-stations, you must offer some criteria. Why is it Ok, in your opinion, to trample the rights of owners of Consolidated Edison, but not those of Ford or CNBC?
You also continue to ignore my question regarding the primate of Collective over the Individual. Your earlier statement: "your feelings aren't as important as the rest of society's needs," — is just a poor paraphrasing of the (in)famous collectivist slogan: "The common interest before self-interest".
Do you still share the above sentiment?
Oh, yes, you do. It is just that you realized, you lost the argument — that you either have to take back the collectivist nonsense, or endorse the mass-murder and/or economic devastation that inevitably follow from adopting it in earnest.
If you can't — and we've already established that you cannot — identify what puts some service-providers into this class, but not all of them, then your "thinking" on this matter is irrational and undisciplined, and thus unworthy of mention.
Just a few posts earlier you condescended to advise me to "read" and to "think" — you even took a stab at my (presumed) reading list — and yet, are yourself unable to substantiate your own convictions nor explain the glaring self-inconsistency in your point of view...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You're a nutter. It's impossible to have multiple companies competing for providing electrical service. We'd have lines and trenches everywhere. It is a physical impossibility. Also, electrical service is too important to modern society to have to rely on for-profit businesses operating in their own interests.
I don't respond to AC's.
Oh, wow, name-calling... An admission of an argument lost...
This is bullshit, of course, but I'm not arguing with you any more.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm not arguing with you any more.
You never started to.
I don't respond to AC's.
It seems. An illogical moron might render that judgement.
Go kiss your one-button mouse, you anachronism. You're not a dog nor a cow. Just a tedious monochrome icon.