Silicon Valley's Love-Hate Relationship With President Obama 131
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."
Nerd Rage . . . Page Views (Score:0, Insightful)
1. Post an article with the word "Obama" in it
2. Nerd rage
3. Page views
4. Profit! There is no "???" step.
Tech money is the the best fundraising money (Score:4, Insightful)
They're a pack of nouveau riche kids that are still young enough to be swayed by a skilled orator. They can't articulate what they want beyond general grunting about infinite copyright and more H-1Bs, and they're too dumb to realize they're being played. It's a geyser of money to get while the getting is good.
codependent (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, Obama shows up in the valley to collect money and then departs to fuck the valley to the benefit of the RIAA et al and the so-called security apparatus.
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. I am not sure any tea party or high party official could even find silicon valley on a map.
So Obama ends up by default with the bucks on a combination of lesser-of-two-evils and star-struck-close-to-greatness bases.
Re:codependent (Score:4, Insightful)
Learn how parentheses work. He clarified his position. Republicans are anti-small-business and anti-entrepreneur, they're pro-oligarch.
Re:codependent (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, Republicans used to pro-business. Consider they're pissed pissed that the big three got bailed out after Wall Street sank the economy.
They're all about rent collection. They hate real business, technology (too disruptive), education (ditto), etc etc.
Re:The Field Fox (Score:2, Insightful)
Big problem right now for Small Businesses and the ACA is that it prevent small businesses from using the exchanges until next year. This is so the the insurance companies could stick the fork in small shops offering insurance. ($$$). My company offers insurance, it's gone up 30% per year for the last three years. Next year that will drop back to what our insurance cost three years ago.
So now who do you suppose was instrumental in getting that put into the law? Obama, Reid and Pelosi had to throw every bone they could to get the thing passed. If the Republicans were willing to participate at all, we could have had a seriously better law passed. But they didn't. You know why the democrats wanted the law passed because anything to contain the rising share of the economy consumed by the health care industry. They had to do it or we were going to get totally hosed.
tl;dr You got no standing to complain, eat your moldy rat turds like everyone else.
Re:codependent (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't it love-hate for most liberals? (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought that most liberal-leaning people have a love-hate relationship with Obama.
He was supposed to be their progressive knight in shining armor, but keeps doing all the usual political sell-outs to big business, big media, the security apparatus. No Wall Street guys did time, he kept fighting in Afghanistan, no real mea culpa on NSA monitoring. The only big liberal achievement was ACA, but even that seems a little compromised in many ways and I think hard-core progressives don't find it went far enough.
Of course Silicon Valley is also myopic on the subject of its own pet issues and I'm sure a lot of the love-hate is just self-centered -- he's not doing enough for my business/industry.
Re:The Field Fox (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you kidding? I help run a small business and I am starting one myself. I am an independent, but it is recent policy changes from the current administration that has been strangling us. We have had to lay-off employees in preparation for the ACA changes. This admin has done more to strengthen big business and make life harder for entrepreneurs than I have ever seen. I have voted for both liberals and conservatives, but I will be very hard-pressed to vote for a liberal again after so many lies and broken promises.
And how would you have gotten insurance as an entrepreneur before the ACA's Exchange?
The answer is pretty simple. There are two possibilities:
1) You're young, with no kids, no expensive females in the household, and can convince the agent you have no pre-existing medical conditions. You will get insurance.
2) You wouldn't have insurance.
I'm very skeptical of anyone who says they "had to lay off" employees due to the ACA. IRL I've seen companies blame the ACA because they fired people and they thought they could make Obama look like a bad guy, and I've seen them hire more part-timers so they could get their 33-hour guys down to 29. I have never seen a company that actually fired people. The Act simply does not increase your per-employee cost that way.
Re:codependent (Score:4, Insightful)
Both parties are anti-business, it just depends on the business. Anyone that claims otherwise is just a partisan or willfully blind.
You took the words right out of my hands. Each party celebrates the corporations which pay its bills, and part of that is attacking their respective competition.