July 29, 2020 | Lawmakers Pretend to Grill Tech Mafia Dons
Corleone, Barzini, Tattaglia, Cuneo, Stracci. They were all on Capitol Hill Wednesday, feigning respect toward a Congressional panel that seems unlikely ever to earn anyone’s respect. Tech’s dons will return this weekend to their Left Coast aeries, secure in the knowledge their inquisitors will never figure out how Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook and AAPL make money, let alone how to bring these omnipotent corporate dirtballs to heel. All act with increasing impunity, most recently by brazenly muffling conservative voices ahead of the presidential election.
Bezos, zillionaire owner of the Washington Post, does it the old-fashioned way, with news stories and editorials that would have done Goebbels proud. The others claim to have no political bias. “It’s just algorithms,” they are wont to reply, lying through their teeth each time they are summoned to Washington. With only a few rare exceptions, even the Republicans are odiously obeisant. We long to hear just one of them tee up Zuckerberg and let fly: “Tattaglia’s a pimp. He never could’ve out-fought Santino. But I didn’t know until this day that it was Barzini all along.” Yeah, sure. What a shocker it would be if someone on the Hill actually called a spade a spade. Let’s not hold our breath waiting for the people’s Representatives to score a point.
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Rick Ackerman July 29th, 2020
Posted In: Rick's Picks
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