Bezos Washington Post will boost Silicon Valley tech lobby

The Jeff Bezos Washington Post is great news for Silicon Valley and its Washington lobbyists. Amazon has been greatly increasing its spend on lobbying and it has many goals in common with Silicon Valley companies on several important policy issues:

- Internet sales tax can be delayed, or at least, it can be made to be into a single rate rather than a hodgepodge of state and county taxes.

- Corporate tax rates and repatriating overseas money without incurring a big tax bill.

- Reforming immigration laws to make it easier to hire foreign engineers.

- Bezos will also be able to represent future tech policy issues because politicians will give him more attention. They are older and they understand the power of the press, and that influence is best distributed by barrels of ink — digital and literal. 

- The Bezos/Amazon connection effectively removes the Washington Post's voice from key issues because of the perceived conflict of interest. Bezos doesn't need to directly command the news desk, it happens automatically.

Silicon Valley benefits tremendously from the Bezos Washington Post. However, as $AMZN moves into ever more digital markets it could cause problems as Bezos could try to influence government policy against competitors, or block anything that benefits a competitor.