{"id":1754743,"date":"2022-11-29T10:19:15","date_gmt":"2022-11-29T15:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1754743"},"modified":"2022-11-29T10:19:22","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T15:19:22","slug":"wait-hear-me-out-here-aoc-is-exactly-right-this-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wait-hear-me-out-here-aoc-is-exactly-right-this-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Wait, Hear Me Out Here: AOC Is Exactly Right This Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwait-hear-me-out-here-aoc-is-exactly-right-this-time%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1754743&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In politics nowadays, there\u2019s this general feeling that anybody from the party you don\u2019t support is wrong, wrong, wrong.<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s silly, right? Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut. And nobody is wrong 100% of the time.<\/p>\n<p>Take Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic socialist from New York. She\u2019s wrong about a lot \u2014 but not everything.<\/p>\n<p>The young and hip AOC weighed in over the weekend on the Ticketmaster brouhaha. To refresh your memory, the concert ticket monopoly burst into the news last week during the sale of Taylor Swift tix, leaving thousands of fans frustrated and prompting scalpers to jack their prices into the tens of thousands.<\/p>\n<p>Buying tickets for sports and music events has long been a joke. Even for the largest venues, tickets sell out online in minutes. Then they reappear on sites like SeatGeek and StubHub, but now that $35 ticket costs $300. And then there are the fees \u2014 the service fee, facility charge, order processing fee, and the ever-popular convenience fee.<\/p>\n<p>AOC\u2019s got it just right \u2014 and she correctly calls the company a \u201cmonopoly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was watching what was going on with the pre-release of Taylor Swift\u2019s tickets,\u201d she told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/aoc-ticketmaster-live-nation-monopoly-interview-1234634599\/\">Rolling Stone<\/a>. \u201cIt came up on a more personal level; I actually have quite a few staff who were trying to get tickets that day. Between seeing their experience and seeing all the people online talking about it, I think it really showed how widespread the problem is and reflects the degree of market consolidation in this industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s spot on. Ticketmaster and Live Nation merged in 2010, and it\u2019s been a mess ever since. Ticketmaster controls the tickets and Live Nation often owns the venue, which means they\u2019re 100% in control. Don\u2019t like it, tough, don\u2019t go to the show.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the things we\u2019ve been increasingly seeing,\u201d AOC said, \u201cis that these price increases because of inflation and abuse of market power are due to market consolidation. It\u2019s gotten so bad that we\u2019re really seeing it affect our everyday lives, from how much we\u2019re paying at grocery stores, to not being able to see our favorite artists without paying an arm and a leg.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Swift mess prompted the Department of Justice to announce it is opening a probe into the monopoly.<\/p>\n<p>But Democratic Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts wrote a letter to the attorney general saying that\u2019s not enough, noting \u201can investigation alone does nothing for the stakeholders already harmed by Live Nation\u2019s market dominance and seemingly ongoing anticompetitive behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>They said the company, which controls about 60% of the market \u2014 including many of the biggest venues \u2014 \u201chas continued to abuse its dominant market position,\u201d adding, \u201cwe urge the Department to consider unwinding the Ticketmaster-Live Nation merger and breaking up the company.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>AOC once again nailed the exact problem. \u201cIt\u2019s getting to a point where if you want to see one of these large acts, there\u2019s so little protection for everyday people that if you go into a secondary market, we are no longer in this realm of someone even charging double of what a ticket was. Tickets are going as high [as tens of thousands of dollars] after what was supposed to be a presale operation designed for people who are actually going to be using the tickets that they purchase.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And she was right again here.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOther industries have oligopolies; Live Nation is a true monopoly. And it\u2019s affecting our culture if regular people can\u2019t even see a live show for a major act in person anymore, and this just becomes a domain for the wealthy. I think that that\u2019s also something to consider, because If you can\u2019t even see your favorite artists without paying [the equivalent of] a down payment on a house or a car, it\u2019s so antithetical to what music really is,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p>One hundred percent right, congresswoman!<\/p>\n<p><em>The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to josephcurl@dailywire.com and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.<\/p>\n<p><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In politics nowadays, there\u2019s this general feeling that anybody from the party you don\u2019t support is wrong, wrong, wrong. But that\u2019s silly, right? Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut. And nobody is wrong 100% of the time. Take Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic socialist from &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":1754746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1754743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1754743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1754743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1754746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1754743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1754743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1754743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}