You know what the problem is with the movie industry these days? It’s hamstrung by obsolete anti-monopoly legislation.
DoJ Moves to End Antitrust Rules Regulating How Movie Studios Distribute Films to Theaters
The US Justice Department signaled Monday that it plans to end a 71-year-old antitrust enforcement program on movie distribution, saying it is no longer needed to protect consumers.
Epstein didn’t kill himself and another government watchdog took a bribe!
Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim announced that the Department of Justice would move this week to terminate the Paramount Consent Decrees, which went into force in 1948.
NOT ANOTHER JEW! I swear I don’t look for them!
Forget physiognomy, let’s do background per Wikipedia. Delrahim is an Iranian Jew who immigrated to Los Angeles, got his citizenship while in law school and went almost straight into senior Federal office, working for the Senate Judiciary Committee under Senator Orrin Hatch.
1991 Graduated University of California, Los Angeles with a Bachelor of Science in kinesiology. He also received a Specialization in Business/Economics.
Not a promising background for where he ended up.
1995 Graduated George Washington University Law School with a Juris Doctor with high honors.
One wonders if he was just screwing around with his undergrad work. Attending GWU means Delrahim is connected with the Jesuits.
While in law school, Delrahim worked at the Office of Technology Transfer at the National Institutes of Health, and on intellectual property issues at the Office of the United States Trade Representative, Executive Office of the President.
This kind of thing makes me want to spit. As a LAW STUDENT, Delrahim was already connected at high levels of government. Looks like all those nepotism and diversity regulations don’t apply to Jews.
After law school, Delrahim joined the Washington, D.C. law firm Patton Boggs.
In 1998, Delrahim became a counsel to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, working under the chairman, Senator Orrin G. Hatch. Delrahim worked on intellectual property and antitrust issues, including patent reform and the investigation into Microsoft.
That was a shitshow that I’m still angry about. Microsoft was, and is, a blatantly obvious and powerful monopoly dominating roughly 85-90% of the operating system market. The antitrust investigation found them guilty… the guilt was undeniable… but Microsoft’s punishment was a TEMPORARY OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE.
That is not how you break up a monopoly. It was so bad, in fact, that nine state governments including California refused to accept it.
I knew there had been a Faustian backroom deal, that somebody high in government had decided to plant its hooks into GatesCorp instead of doing his job of breaking it up as the original judge had decided, but of course the details never emerged.
It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Makan Delrahim.
Delrahim later became the Chief of Staff and Chief Counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, until his appointment at the Department of Justice in 2003. Jon Leibowitz, President Obama’s Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, who was previously a Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee aide and worked with Delrahim, remembered him as being creative and a pragmatist.
Pragmatist? You need an idealist for an anti-monopoly czar… that rare kind of crazy that can refuse a ten-million-dollar bribe with enthusiasm.
Delrahim became U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Chief of Staff 3-8 years out of law school. Must be nice having (((friends))).
From 2003 through 2005, Delrahim served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division in the administration of President George W. Bush. While there, he oversaw the Division’s International, Appellate and Policy sections and was the Chairman of the Merger Working Group of the International Competition Network.
Delrahim also served as a commissioner on the bi-partisan blue ribbon Antitrust Modernization Commission, serving with former Chiefs of the Antitrust Division, Sanford Litvack and John Shenefield, and ABA Antitrust Section Chair, Jon Jacobson.
After leaving the Department of Justice, Delrahim joined the law firm of Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, in Los Angeles, California, where he focused his work on antitrust, intellectual property and appellate matters. His clients included Google, Apple, Anthem Inc., Qualcomm, and Zuffa.
Like I said, an antitrust czar must be a headstrong idealist. Delrahim worked for GloboCorp BEFORE BEING APPOINTED TO THE ANTITRUST POSITION. How the hell did Trump miss that multi-trillion-dollar conflict of interest?
After Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Delrahim was active in Trump’s presidential transition. After the inauguration of Donald Trump, Delrahim became Deputy White House Counsel and assisted in shepherding United States Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch through the United States Senate confirmation process.
Answer, it never hurts to suck up to the boss, I guess. You know what, I don’t even care. Christ will die a second time before a single one of my “leaders” appoints somebody who didn’t attend Harvard. The only happy answer to the question “why did you pick such an obviously corrupt bureaucrat?” is “the microchips in my prefrontal cortex” because in that case, stupidity could be cured by sticking Mister Politician’s head in the breakroom microwave for three seconds.
Maybe it would work anyway at thirty seconds. Hmm.
In March 2017, Trump announced his nomination of Delrahim as Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division. This role, which required U.S. Senate confirmation, entails overseeing criminal cartel enforcement as well as corporate mergers and acquisitions.
Why, Trump? Why did you let the mice bell the cat? You’re a better businessman than this!
In September 2017, he was approved 73–21 by the U.S. Senate. When he arrived on the job he was reportedly gifted a hat with “Make Antitrust Great Again” written upon it, by the staff of the Justice Department.
When interviewed, Delrahim emphasized that under U.S. law, a monopoly is legal as long as it does not abuse its monopoly power.
That’s just Delrahim’s history. What is Mister Monopoly Watchdog doing today?
The decrees — which smaller movie chains and drive-in theaters still champion — barred major film studios from owning movie theaters, a system that had existed in the early part of the twentieth century and largely blocked independent venues from being able to show hot films.
The decrees also restricted studios from certain distribution practices, such as requiring cinemas to accept a group of films as a condition of getting a much-sought blockbuster, a practice known as “block booking.”
It’s generally considered monopolistic practice to control both production and distribution like that. This will be the death knell for independent movie theaters. Yes, theaters are already the bitches to Hollyweird’s pimps but even so, they have standards. Movies that are hot, Woke garbage… excuse me, movies that inexplicably underperform… still get discarded in favor of movies that people actually want to see, because you can’t turn a profit off an empty theater.
Smaller theaters will not be able to afford to screen unprofitable movies in order to be allowed to show profitable movies. Disney-owned (or at least -friendly) theaters will soon have 100% of market share, even if the devilmouse doesn’t move on to other monopolistic strategies such as price gouging while they have an Amenable Authority guarding the henhouse.
Said authority explains why we don’t need to defend society from media monopolies in Current Year:
Delrahim said a review concluded that the decrees “no longer service the public interest” because the horizontal conspiracy of studios owning theaters no longer exists.
Since the decrees were enacted, the movie industry has become more competitive, with major metropolitan areas served by multiple theaters and video streaming services dramatically altering the landscape for consumers, Delrahim said in a speech at a Washington legal conference.
“These changes illustrate that markets can evolve, and no one can predict with certainty from where and in what form innovation will appear,” he said.
He’s conflating mergers intended to create monopolies with “innovation”.
“Once innovation has occurred, however, it would be a mistake for antitrust enforcers to limit the potential for consumer-enhancing innovation.”
Nothing would innovate the devilmouse like cutting off his competitors’ media distribution outlets!
The shift is likely to upset small and medium-sized theater chains and drive-ins, which balked at a potential change when the DOJ launched a review of the decrees in 2018.
The National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) argued in October 2018 public comments that the restriction on block booking remained essential to protect smaller theaters, which may otherwise be forced to accept films that won’t play well in their communities.
As I described above.
“Exhibitors require a variety of content in order to appeal to the varied tastes of their of their consumers. The prohibition on block booking has allowed exhibitors to use their screens to program both major studio content and other, more targeted fare,” NATO said in the 2018 comments.
“If distributors are permitted to block book, they could demand exhibitors book an entire slate on multiple screens, leaving little room for the independent and smaller distributors to finance and distribute films that consumers demand.”
A spokesman for the theater group said the organization stood by the October 2018 comments and would await formal DOJ legal filings before commenting further.
Star Whores may be going down in flames like a woman-driven Death Star, but if the moviegoer can be forced to pay for it anyway then it’ll be a ‘success’. They’re mostly doing this with subscription services already.
Services such as… Disney Plus… which debuted in November at the same time Delrahim made this announcement.
Aha! This isn’t just about brick-and-mortar theaters. Delrahim is dropping the law so Disney can make like Netflix. Goodbye, Netflix! Monopolies are like Highlanders, there can be only one… and now there’s two of you in the room.
Let’s learn more about this traitor to America.
https://money.cnn.com/2017/11/09/media/antitrust-trump-makan-delrahim/index.html
Makan Delrahim, 48, is an Iranian immigrant who moved to the United States when he was about 10 years old. He is a self-described conservative. …
Delrahim was involved in one of the most contentious antitrust fights in the media industry. Public filings show that in 2009 and 2010 he lobbied on behalf of Comcast, which was acquiring NBC Universal.
Reminder, he became the FTC’s anti-monopoly czar in 2017.
Critics were wary of allowing a distribution company (Comcast) to control a content and programming company (NBC). Among their fears was that Comcast (CCV) would thwart competition among online streaming services by refusing to offer NBC content to other online platforms, such as Hulu or Netflix (NFLX).
The Federal Communications Commission and the DOJ ultimately approved the deal — with stipulations.
Delrahim also worked as a lobbyist on behalf of Anthem (ANTX) during its takeover bid for Cigna (CI), Pfizer (PFE) during its acquisition of Allegra, and T-Mobile (TMUS) during its MetroPCS merger.
Excellent, blatantly obvious reasons to not trust this man as a corporate watchdog for his second career.
Delrahim’s October 2016 interview about the AT&T deal — in which he said “I don’t see this as a major antitrust problem” — was with the Canadian network BNN.
During the conversation, he even suggested he did not think the AT&T-Time Warner deal should be more troublesome than the Comcast deal he fought for.
“It doesn’t raise the same challenges as some of those other transactions.,” he said.
Politico and the FT, citing anonymous sources, have reported that Delrahim has changed his view since taking office. Critics have said it raises the prospect of White House influence.
Funny, I was just thinking the influence was running the other way.
“Maybe he has had a legitimate change of heart about the arrangement since inspecting the deal more closely from his perch at the Justice Department. But his new boss has left him with some troubling appearances,” New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg wrote in Thursday’s Times.
Delrahim promised at his Senate confirmation hearing in May that “politics will have no role” in deal reviews under his leadership.
“The independence of the decision — in prosecuting and reviewing mergers as well as other conduct — is a serious one that should be free from any political influence,” he said.
Translation, he reassured his fellow, Democrat Jews that he wasn’t a race traitor. In fact, there’s now a formal movement of Jews jumping ship from the Democrat Party to the Republican Party, now that the Dems are full of their ancestral enemies and China isn’t opening its doors. Look up the term “Jexodus” for more… I may do a post on it, also, but I don’t want a reputation as yet another (((obsessed))) blogger. I really do just go where the headlines and curiosity take me.
During a meeting earlier this year, Delrahim promised Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal that he would alert him “any time the White House initiates an inappropriate communication with you or anybody in the Antitrust Division,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
That is open treachery against his boss… and he still has a job? For all his business and negotiating smarts, Trump can’t pick a political adviser to save his life.
Sources also reportedly told the Journal that Delrahim assured Blumenthal that the White House had not attempted to influence his view of the AT&T-Time Warner deal.
A long time colleague of Delrahim’s who says he is a liberal told CNNMoney that he can’t imagine that Delrahim “would engage in any type of vigilante justice to help the president in the deal…That’s just unfathomable to me.”
The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, added that Delrahim likely changed his mind after more closely inspecting the AT&T-Time Warner deal.
Anonymous, yet the smart money is the source is Jewish, liberal, a Harvard Law graduate and showing Trump Derangement Syndrome… nope, that’s still half the State Department.
The source explained that the conservative approach to antitrust enforcement prefers requiring companies to spinoff certain chunks of their businesses, rather than putting in place “behavior requirements” that the government would have to police indefinitely.
That’s actually sensible, although the phrase ‘insider trading’ is bouncing around in my head like an ad jingle.
Delrahim is cut from the same cloth as Ajit Pai. I wonder if you could find any department head who wasn’t utterly corrupt and/or incompetent? I doubt it.