WaPo and Bezos: The Hope and the Reality

The hope:

The best political news in years: Jeff Bezos, w/libertarian tendencies, buys the Washington Post. Some hope. Fingers crossed!
— Nassim N. Taleb (@nntaleb) August 5, 2013

The reality:

Amazon to buy Washington Post fresh after $800M deal to host CIA servers http://t.co/7fBJIaniJX
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) August 5, 2013

From Gizmodo:

The CIA has reportedly signed a massive cloud computing deal with Amazon, worth up to $600 million over the next 10 years.

FCW reports that its sources have told it Amazon will build a private cloud infrastructure for the CIA, to help it "keep up with emerging technologies like big data in a cost-effective manner not possible under the CIA's previous cloud efforts"

From WaPo:

 Bezos, who ranks 11th on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest individuals in the United States, with a net worth of $23.2 billion, has given little indication of his ideological leanings over the years. He has not been a heavy contributor to political campaigns, although he and his wife have regularly donated to the campaign of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash). In years past, they had given modest contributions to a handful of Republican and Democratic senators.

Bezos’s political profile rose suddenly and sharply when he and his wife agreed last year to donate $2.5 million to help pass a referendum measure that would legalize same-sex marriage in Washington state, catapulting them to the top ranks of financial backers of gay rights in the country. The donation doubled the money available to the initiative, which was approved in November and made Washington among the first states to pass same-sex marriage by popular vote.

Perhaps the single biggest item on Amazon’s legislative agenda is a bill that would empower all states to collect sales tax from online retailers.
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