cbbass1 said:
bearister said:
Don't kid yourself. As we write Team Thomas is trying to put lipstick on a turd because he knows the media will dig up what he intended to hide.
I agree, mostly. I think they're sh--ting bricks.
But I don't think "the media" -- as in "mainstream / corporate media" is going to do much digging. IF they had ANY inclination to do that, they would've been reporting on all this activity for years. The reason that all of this stuff is coming out now is that ProPublica, an independent, subscriber-funded media group, is finally doing the work of looking up public records, and interviewing employees & private jet pilots, and disclosing to the American People what these corrupt SCOTUS Justices SHOULD have disclosed to us a long time ago -- that they're bough and paid for by corporations & oligarchs. The "opposition" party should have been uncovering the corruption, but they're horribly corrupt, too.
IF we actually had a Free Press, all of this would've come out many years ago. The problem is that our Corporate Media is ALSO bought & paid for by many of the same corporate donors (Pharma, health insurers, defense contractors, Wall St) & oligarchs who bribe the SCOTUS Justices. They've known about all of this corruption from day one, but the LAST thing they want is to shine a light on it like ProPublica did.
You have to also understand that corporate media HAS to report on ProPublica's findings now, because the cat's out of the bag, and they can't afford to let ProPublica get all the clicks & hits & ratings from it.
Corporate media is losing viewers, and it's dying. Nearly all consistent watchers of Fox, CNN, & MSNBC are 55+ years old, mostly watching through cable TV, because they haven't (or don't know how to) "cut the cord." They have very few viewers in the 18-55 "target demographic" that sponsors value.
Younger people despise Fox, CNN, & MSNBC because of their constant gaslighting, dishonesty, and their refusal to "follow the money" on the seemingly-opposed corporate narratives that are meant to keep us divided. The majority of <55 news viewers get their news & analysis thru streaming, and they've dumped corporate/legacy media.
ProPublica did -- and is doing -- what LeverNews did with the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, showing regulatory capture and corruption from three consecutive administrations that led to the disaster.
Independent, non-corporate, subscriber-based news is a threat to corporate media, AND corporate narratives.
I'm thinking that Clarence & Ginni have a whole team of law students who are trying to figure out which trips, gatherings, gifts, real estate purchases, etc., the team at ProPublica knows about -- but haven't disclosed -- and which ones they don't know about.
I sincerely hope that Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski, of ProPublica.org, didn't show all their cards. Imagine the further embarrassment if Thomas & Alito finally do their late financial disclosures -- and remember, folks -- the form says that you have to list everything, under penalty of perjury -- and they didn't disclose something that ProPublica already knows about!!
Finally, here's some of Thom Hartmann's usual great insight. He doesn't think that the SCOTUS bribery is a quid pro quo; he believes (and the data backs him up) that the right-wing Justices are influenced by something more powerful than money: friendship.
Have Billionaires Outfitted Justices with Golden Handcuffs to Stop "Liberal Drift"?
Time for me to channel my inner Chapman is Gone. What a load. I can't believe the thread is going on, after the nothing burger Senate hearing where all nine Justices (including the 3 liberals) pulled a Logan Roy and told Dickless Durbin to go "f___- off." But wait, young people are taking over the media viewership on subscriber based hip internet media and will follow Pro-public's lead, to report the failure of SCOTUS justices to disclose based on their own what pro-pubic thinks the criteria should be, rather than the actual existing rules. Hey let's just get the SCOTUS scared by ignoring big evil corporate media, and scare those quivering Justices from going on another junket or commencement speech, or selling something again, by our massive following of Vox or whatever we think is cool.
Meanwhile BuzzFeed the only hip site formerly in the top 25 (all the others actually are corporate media that now have corporate internet news sites ) is adios, Vice is going bankrupt, Vox is laying off huge numbers. Salon basically lost its market valuation. This could go on for awhile. So where are all the young people? Maybe they are going to solo Thom and his huge un-corporate following. All 100 of them. Even PBS has stopped following because no one cares. The latest Alito reported junket got one line about Pro-public saying he didn't report a trip somewhere and Alioto getting essentially one word, where he was quoted as calling Pro-pubic as "misleading."
Politico, which can't be cool and must be corporate since I read it, was bought and ordered to adhere to the buyer's principles, including support for a united Europe, Israel's right to exist and a free-market economy, and that staff who disagreed with the principles "should not work at Politico." So a couple of those Politico guys started Axios, After some embarrassments and circulation problems, Axios got sold to good old corporate Cox and then fired it's led writer for describing a DeSantis event as "exposing the diversity equity and inclusion scam in higher education" as "propaganda" - how about that as corporate media you young whippersnappers? So what's next, Sotomayor gets impeached by the House?
Why are the liberal justices quiet on the Supreme Court ...https://thehill.com opinion judiciary 3992710-w...
No, even cool, hip internet sites visited by young righties gets ignore. So keep the echo chamber going.
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