Mark writes:

Progressive journalists must believe that, despite the fact that Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, paid $250 million of his own money for it in 2013, has lost tens of millions of dollars operating the place over the years, and pays every last employee’s salary, he doesn’t get to actually decide what happens in the company he owns.

Right. That’s exactly what they believe. And it’s not just the Washington Post. This is also how progressives see the federal bureaucracy, public schools, public universities, and more — not as entities that exist to fulfill a specific goal and should be judged by how well they achieve it, but as distant check-writing institutions that have been placed into the hands of the American Left by divine design and must never be touched or questioned by those who are paying the bills.

How else to understand the progressive conception of the administrative state as a fourth branch of government that ought not to be “interfered” with by elected officials; or of public schools as places where experts ought to shape your children without the intervention of school boards or state legislatures; or of public universities (and federally subsidized private universities) as independent castles that ought never to suffer the indignity of being asked to account for themselves before Congress. Today, it’s the Washington Post. Yesterday, it was the Department of Justice. Last year, it was public schools in Florida. The details change, but the attitude is always the same: Give us your money, and then go away, lest you impede the advancement of our agenda.