Sanders said that the recent, brazen push by billionaires to influence Vice President Kamala Harris to dump Khan from her hypothetical presidential cabinet is yet another show of the corrupting influence of money in politics.
“Here’s why we have to overturn Citizens United & end Big Money in politics: Billionaire Reid Hoffman donated $7 million to the Harris campaign. Now, he wants her, as president, to fire an outstanding members [sic] of the Biden Administration, FTC Chair Lina Khan,” Sanders said in a post on social media on Thursday. “Not acceptable.”
In recent days, billionaires and large Democratic donors have been speaking out against Khan, who represents a threat to corporate interests.
LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman — a venture capitalist deeply enmeshed with corporate interests — came out publicly against Khan in an interview with CNN this week, likening Khan’s efforts to rein in corporate abuses as a “war” on corporate power. Hoffman, who campaign filings show has donated $7 million to Harris’s campaign, outright said he “would hope that Vice President Harris would replace her.”
[…]
Another billionaire, Barry Diller, chairman of holding company IAC, also brazenly announced that he would mount a lobbying effort against Khan for her crackdowns in an interview with CNBC. Diller has pledged to donate the maximum amount to Harris’s campaign, called Khan a “dope” and said that he would lobby Harris to dump Khan.
[…]
Many other similar missives from donors have come anonymously, with one donor telling The New York Times that Harris is open to the idea. The Harris campaign has said that it has not had discussions about Khan’s future so far — though Wall Street donors have been pushing Democrats to drop Khan for months.
[…]
The replacement of Khan on the cabinet would be a major loss for backers of the antitrust movement; her appointment by Biden as FTC chair was lauded as a significant step forward for the administration’s purported efforts to take on increasing corporate power.
Under Khan, the FTC has taken on some of the largest corporations in America, including tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft and Meta, pharmaceutical giants like Amgen, and other giants like Kroger. It also created a new rule banning employers from including noncompete clauses in worker contracts, a move that the agency said would raise worker wages by $300 billion annually.
For those wondering about a list of what all IAC Holdings holds:
Crazy history of buys/sells on the full wiki article including CollegeHumor, Ticketmaster, SyFy, Expedia, and more.
So it’s one of the companies contributing to the dying diversity online. Almost all of these websites and services have become awful without adblock or require a paid account.
Largely so. I’m not aware of any holding company that really goes for quality and diversity over the get more for less approach, but it could be possible.
If you haven’t looked at the linked wiki, I encourage you to do so. I’m not sure if they’re just pretty good at picking winners or they just have deep enough pockets to only buy decent brands, but there are definitely some still solid names in the portfolio.
Allrecipes in the one in the list I’m not ready to give up on, but others like Investopedia, and to an extent The Spruce have been ok places, but I’ve got better alternatives to.
From a pure business sense, I hate this guy a little less than I was expecting to, and I’m sure he’s trashed more things on sites I’ve enjoyed than he’s improved, but he at least seems halfway intelligent.
That said, if a guy like him hates Khan, then I’m behind her even more , if that’s possible. She hasn’t had the greatest success so far, but I love her philosophy and spirit, and if she can stay around, she could grow into something amazing in trust busting. The world desperately needs more people like her.