Silicon Valley's Love-Hate Relationship With President Obama

theodp writes: "Covering President Obama's visit to Silicon Valley, the AP reports that the relationship between the White House, Silicon Valley and its money is complicated. Less than a year after David Kirkpatrick asked, "Did Obama Just Destroy the U.S. Internet Industry?", and just two months after Mark Zuckerberg gave the President a call complaining about NSA spying, Silicon Valley execs hosted two high-stakes Democratic Party fundraisers for the President. The White House declined to identify the 20 high-rollers who paid $32,400 per head to sit at the Tech Roundtable. The President also attended an event hosted by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and Y Combinator president Sam Altman, where the 250 or so guests paid $1,000 to $32,400 a head for bar service that featured wine, beer and cognac. The following day, Obama celebrated solar power at a Mountain View Walmart before jetting out of NASA's Moffett Field."

Re:codependent

[Chas]

But clearly the Republicans would be worse, as they are the anti-business (or at least anti-entrepreneur), anti-education, anti-ACA (a very pro entrepreneurism law) and pro-big business, pro-rentier party

*Spittake*

Republicans are anti-business?

Sorry, even with your qualifications, you don't have a frickin clue what you're talking about.

Re:Did you know

[NicBenjamin]

I can kinda understand why somebody who only reads a couple articles a year would think ACTA is illegal, but it's not. Here''s why:

Any treaty is legally binding on the US in the term of the guy who signed. However that doesn't mean much. It just means that, to the extent the President has the ability to order things, his orders complying with the Treaty are fine. So if Obama signed a treaty that said "Justin Bieber shall be fed to the badgers, and the Ambassador Bridge international crossing will be closed every May," the Treaty would be legally valid for Obama's term. Since Obama can't order people to be fed to badgers Bieber would be fine. Since he can order his border patrol to not let anyone you ain't using the Ambassador Bridge in May. If he wanted to close the Bridge in 2017 he'd have to get the Treaty ratified by the Senate, or convince his successor to sign the treaty, or just convince his successor to write an Executive Order. Since the government doesn't have the Constitutional authority to feed people to badger's, the Bieber bit of the treaty would never be valid no matter how often the Senate voted on it.

If the Treaty involves some change to US Law it's valid in the sense that it's binding on the US when the Senate ratifies it. It's not valid in the sense that you have to obey the damn thing until Congress passes a law complying with the Treaty. So if some treaty insisted we ban cigarettes you could still smoke until the House and Senate pass a bill banning cigarettes. In a lot of ways ratification is actually be a waste of time, because you'd need 67 Senators, whereas passing the statute only requires 50 (assuming the VP agrees with the Treaty). If the President signs the treaty on Monday, 35 Senators say "fuck you, we smoke" on Tuesday, and 50 Senators, the VP, and the House ban by statute the damn things on Wednesday, then cigarettes still get banned.

The enforcement mechanism in most treaties is other countries bitching when they're not complied with. Obama knows he's gonna comply with ACTA because our laws already comply with ACTA. He can sign it, which makes it binding on the US, but he doesn't need to have it ratified.