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From Apple To Xbox, Tech Companies Lean Left
Velcroman1 writes "Only a week to election time! How does tech feel about politics? If you guessed liberal, you're right: Big Tech leans left. 'They're dominated by coastal people who tend to be more liberal,' says Jim Taylor, a management consultant who writes about the business of psychology. 'Also, those in Big Tech tend to be educated in the better schools, which lean left. Big Tech skews younger and hipper [and favors] social and environmental issues. Their political values trump financial concerns at the organizational culture level and the missions of many firms, especially those that are new media.' For example, Marissa Mayer, known as 'the face of Google,' gave $30,400 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2009. In fact, of the top 10 contributions made by Google in 2009, only one — by CEO Eric Schmidt — was to the Republican National Committee. Facebook has donated almost exclusively to Democratic candidates, according to Transparency Data, including $1,000 to California Sen. Barbara Boxer a year ago, and more recently, almost $5,000 to Richard Blumenthal, who is running for senator in Connecticut."
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that energy companies leans to the right.
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They tend to hire youth, and they are often based out of California. Youth tend to lean liberal, and Calfornia is often seen as the most liberal state. This is a shocking correlation!
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The vast majority in tech I know lean more towards the libertarian side of things. These kind of tests, due to their flaws of being linear, usually fail to capture that. ("Left" comes up more commonly than "right" for many libertarians because of how self-extreming "right" has become lately.)
Seriously -in the US we have two parties. The far right party, and the psychopathic kill-and-censor-everyone-in-the-name-of-patriotism party.
In practical terms, we have no left. This article is BS.
Come on editors, i know you desperately want to talk about american politics, but isn't that what the poll to the right is for?
Who needs a big stupid flamewar? No one but Ralph Nader leans LEFT in the usa ANYWAYS!
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
Note I said "liberal", not "progressive", not "Democratic Party", not either libertarian or "Libertarian".
The problem is that too many people confuse "fiscal responsibility" with "conservatism". Fiscal policy is separate from "liberal" and "conservative". I am *EXTREMELY* fiscally 'conservative'. But I'm also *EXTREMELY* liberal.
In fact, one could even argue that fiscal responsibility is, itself, liberal by definition.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
Big Corp wants nothing to do with capitalism or free markets.
Big Corp wants Big Government around to regulate their competitors out of existence and bail them out when they get into trouble.
A few months of actual free market capitalism would destroy most of the big corporations.
Note that, rhetoric to the contrary, neither major party has done anything to shrink the government in at least the last quarter century.
This article has little to offer other than to highlight the most prevalent problem with our electoral system. Leaning left, leaning right, either way, a country whose leaders are funded by wealthy corporate donors tars the very notion of democracy.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Bill Gates never used to give anything to candidates. He figured, rather naively, that there was no reason to do that.
Then, a little company called Sun that gave a lot of money to the Democrats made a few phone calls and got some anti-trust action going.
So yeah. Pay up or else!
So far in 2010, the oil and gas industries have contributed $12.8 million to all candidates, with 71% of that money going to Republicans. During the 2008 election cycle, 77% of the industry's $35.6 million in contributions went to Republicans, and in the 2008 presidential contest, Republican candidate Sen. John McCain received more than twice as much money from the oil and gas industries as Obama: McCain collected $2.4 million; Obama, $898,000.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_05/023945.php
Sure, you can single out Exxon and Obama in 2008, because that's the exception to the rule you're pretending doesn't exist.
People complain that our universities, urban elite, etc. 'lean left'. Now let's see, the smarter and better educated you are, the more liberal you are. What does that suggest to you?
It suggests to me that we have too many ignoramuses, who lack the education and experience to learn to deal with different kinds of people, to understand how progress is made, and to be informed or to deal with complicated policy issues like global warming. And those ignoramuses are called "conservatives".
Our "leftists" could not even manage a public option for insurance coverage so that takes your first point right out, and our right-wingers support jailing people for victimless crimes so there goes the other.
Want to get money and influence peddling out of the hands of feds?
Yeah - and put it right back into the hands of corrupt state and local business owners where it belongs. If I were going to waste my time on Constitutional Amendments that wouldn't pass, I think I'd either go with requirements for proportional voting or public financing of campaigns. Both would have a better impact on elections.
That is all.
I didn't vote for a third party candidate because not voting is just as effective.
And the Republicans and Democrats both thank you for continuing to prevent any competition.
I'm always amazed at people who believe the "voting for a 3rd party is like throwing your vote away". Are you really saying that because your particular candidate didn't win, that you wasted your vote?
I had a conversation with a co-worker about our recent vote. I said that I had voted Libertarian (Bob Barr) for president. He laughed and claimed that I wasted my vote. I then asked him who HE had voted for. He then stopped laughing and quietly mumbled, "John McCain". I then proceeded to laugh, as we live in California, and Barr and McCain had roughly the same chances of winning the state (about 0% chance). Was his vote for McCain a "wasted vote", simply because McCain didn't win? Or was his vote OK, since it fell into your acceptable category of being a (R) or a (D)?
This "psychologist" can't see that people at these companies are more liberal than average simply because they're smart. Not just any kind of smart, but the kind of smart that knows how to communicate with lots of other people, even if just in the abstract, technologically, not just with their hillbilly brother-cousins. Which is why they leave those hillbilly hollows to go places where companies like Apple and Microsoft can function. Back in hillbillyland they'd be burned as witches, or worse as homosexuals.
"Reality has a well-known liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert
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make install -not war
I think Americans need *no* political party. They should legislate and govern on a per issue bases. It's the fact that we have "big politco's" that I think is the problem.
You see, I've come to believe that many Americans simply pick a party based on one or two beliefs they hold most strongly and then vote for that party, regardless of all the other beliefs they may or may not agree with.
An example: An LGBT person probably supports LGBT rights. This might, in fact, be the one issue they really care about. Because of this they might vote Democratic because they're known for supporting popular LGBT "gay" rights like marriage. This can be in spite of the fact that they might not support any other issues the party supports.
I'd rather see the whole system stripped down to "the issues"(tm) and not "the party". Of course, there's also the fact that Representatives simply don't Represent anymore. Instead, they get elected and then vote THEIR beliefs (which often include their belief to keep their job by voting how the party wants them to vote so they can fund their next re-election campaign with all the bull-shit and spin that includes). That leads to simply trying to vote for someone who's "most likely to vote how I would vote" and that's too bad.
And this isn't to excuse the voters either. Very few people actually speak up and call/write their Reps. Though, that's not to say if they do, they'll listen. There's been some cases where it's been clear that Reps. are Rep-ing and we'll see them with a new job in a few weeks. (I won't say they'll be unemployed because ex-congress-people end up becoming consultants / lobbyists for special interests because they know how things work and who to talk to, so they'll still be making boat loads of money).
Of course, the whole thing is far more complex than just that, but that's just my recent thoughts.
Things have just gotten too "sporty" in terms of politics. It's like you have to support your "team" no matter what, and you can't agree the other team has some good ideas, simply because it's the other team. This shit isn't suppose to be a fucking competition. We're all suppose to be on the same team here.
100% correct. The labels tossed on people nowadays and I've done it too are incorrect.
The controlling Democrats are not the Democrats of 50 years ago, they are Progressive x 10. And Progressives, my friends, are not freedom lovers, they are control freaks. "We know better than you because we're elite & smarter." You want to talk about a "Class" system, Progressivism is it!
The Republicans are shills for whomever will vote for them. Very FEW actually live up to what they promise....
-------- Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most. --Ozzy
Why do Europeans get to set the standard on who's right and who's left? Because from here, it seems all Europeans are just ultra-liberal. How is our viewpoint more wrong than theirs? Seems rather chauvinist.
To be fair, if you voted Obama you pretty much wasted your vote too.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
All you've pointed out here is that there are different yardsticks for measuring the size of government.
One could just as easily define the size of government as the number of volumes in the Library of Congress, or the total mass of all elected officials.
Number of people who get a paycheck directly from the US Treasury is as decent a measure as any other. Which means military cuts indeed reduce the size of the government.
If you'd prefer another yardstick, feel free to propose one.
If Google is earning that money from investments overseas and spending it overseas, then there really is no problem.
The problem is companies that pretend to do that, but are really expatriating domestic profits, or failing to repatriate revenues on domestic products.
Change the rule to allow taxation on foreign investment, and you will simply kill multinational corporations in America. They'll all split into subsidiaries of a foreign holding company. There will be a Google America and a Google Everywhere Else.
I know the feeling, my GF is half Indian (Navajo to be exact) and when we are out the locals will sometime just start speaking Spanish to her thinking she is Mexican. She just blushes and says no habla but I just love how her brother handles it "Me no Mexican, me Indian. Me scalp your kind!" . Maybe it's different here (north AR) surrounded by the military bases, but we always laughed our asses off at the idiot racists like the klan, who last I heard are hiding out on a hill in Boone county, because the thought that anyone here was "white" was about as stupid as saying my dog was anything other than a mutt. Here every race has mingled with every race (or as I like to call it "Forget fighting, let's just screw") so much there isn't a pure ANYTHING anymore. I look white but am actually Irish, English, German, Two kinds of Indian (Comanche and Creek) and Cajun, which of course is pretty much any race that ever stepped through Louisiana. My girl looks Mexican but is just as much a mix as me, so the thought that anyone still judges based on "race" is kinda just silly to me.
As for TFA, it is nice to see that some put their money where they believe, and not just on the bottom line. We have had pretty much constant tax breaks for the top 3% for the past 30 years, and are worse off than ever before. I can drive through entire towns nearby that are nothing but empty factories and boarded up homes, The level of unemployment is frankly just insane, and if it wasn't for the dems extending unemployment benefits I know quite a few that would be living in their cars, not because they don't want to work, but simply because there isn't any work to be had while they push for more and more education while at the same time expect us to be able to compete with someone who paid $5k for their degree compared to our $70k, it is just nuts. It is just simple math folks, you can't have these ever growing huge masses of unemployed without it blowing up in your face. Just look at what happened to Germany in the 30s, the fascists basically came to power by offering "bread and jobs" and the people went along. Right now you have huge masses that simply don't believe in the American Dream anymore, and they grow more numerous every day. Things simply have to change, period.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
“Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill
Note, I'm "Right Wing" by international standards, the USA's main two parties are Right, and Ultra Right, why can you not simply have Centre Left and Centre Right like the rest of the world? And also colour them correctly, Red is for "left wing", Blue for "right wing"! You know, like, "The Reds are invading..."?
Things America needs to change reason #42 the Metric System....
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I understand you're just being a dick here (what leftwingers do best)
GP is engaging in parody, which is part of the arsenal of weapons available with free speech, something that rightwingers always say is important when defending murderous racism, sexism and homophobia, but get pissy about when used against them.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
it is nice to see that some put their money where they believe, and not just on the bottom line
That depends on what factors influence the bottom line. Under Republican policies, which I've been assured many times are extremely "business friendly," we deregulated banks and finance companies and allowed the lines between them to blur (some of this was supported by President Clinton). Under President Bush we also depopulated the SEC, which was charged with the oversight of these businesses. In other words, we did exactly what banks and financial institutions were asking us to do. And it turns out that doing exactly what these businesses wanted was not as "business friendly" as we'd imagined, as the crash of 2008 demonstrates. It turns out that if we'd kept post-Depression era policies in place, all of the companies that lobbied for deregulation in the 1990s and 2000s would have been much better off, millions of jobless Americans wouldn't be jobless, and a lot of the tech companies that TFA mentions would be selling more cloud services and shiny devices than they currently are. The bottom line suffered tremendously for our "business friendly" policies. So these people are putting their money not just behind what they believe, but also on the bottom line.