Slashdot Mirror
New Tech Super PACs Could Tap Into Google Riches
An anonymous reader writes "A for-profit university bankrolled by prominent tech firms and co-founded by futurist Ray Kurzweil is behind four separate super PACs formed this week, according to interviews and documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. Randi Willis, an official at Singularity University, confirmed to the Center for Public Integrity that leaders at her institution will later this year begin determining how to best use these new political committees, which could tap into the wealth of tech industry titans."
They'll decide that they know how we should all live our lives. Then they'll lobby government to force us to live that way. Futurists and tech "geniuses" are neither wise nor humble.
Steve Jobs was obviously a narcissist. Fortunately not all billionaires are that problematic.
"We buy law. We have money."
More like we try to buy results but can't get any... like the 100 Million that Zuckerberg burned trying to improve urban education in New Jersey. The sad fact is that the billions earned by the 1% won't be any more effective than the trillions the fed prints on behalf of the 100%; in other words money is having an unpredictable, diminishing effect on improving the shortcomings of human politics, society, and institutions .
....but the money can't hurt....even if it won't help it sure seems like it should. We're addicted to the fantasy that it buys everything.
No matter how much we want money to be the silver bullet for all of our ills, you just can't buy solutions off the shelf.
I think we've already established that moving money in greater and greater heaps is not really changing the reality. We have gradually dug ourselves into the current reality, a bunch of green paper can't really be expected to be the only requirement for swift and enduring solutions to our consequent failures of coexistence.
We can fix sociological problems with a focus on people and our behavior, The Golden Rule may actually carry a great deal more weight than the Gold. What a wonderful exercise in irony for the wealthiest philanthropists in the "richest" nation. Perhaps we'll be richer if we place more value on human beings that don't have a lot of cash, but have a lot of value to offer society.
Really? Just because he believes doing good things should not be a publicity contest now means he is a narcissist?!
Leaving money to charity upon one's death is a matter of public record in many jurisdictions. If it had happened, we would have heard about it.
Great... another group of rich assholes deciding what we should think and do and say and running our government.
Would be much better if we had an actual democracy where the government did what the majority of people wanted rather than just what the rich bastards wanted.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
He might have done good things, but how do we know?
History is going to be hard on him because, as far as anyone knows, he did nothing concrete and provable for anybody but himself. Even small things like the talk about him taking handicapped parking spots are not going to give him a good place in the textbooks in 5-10 years.
My big fear is that Jobs is just the start of what the "modern" tech CEO is about... with echos of "let them eat cake" royalty.
I do keep hope though... Google has done a lot of good, and is the -only- hope we have for getting around the ISP monopolies in the US with the ever tightening vise grip they have.
Kurzweil's big into life extension. It's a fair bet that one or more of the PACS will lobby for more research into the mechanisms of aging and improved health care techniques for it.
Another would be prosthetics and human augmentation (I want my brain interface VR, dammit! Screw the flying car.).
He might actually do some good in those areas.
If it's just the usual corporate type lobbying I can't really see that as much of a plus.
For those clueless like me, PAC stands for Politicial Action Committee
I can forgive the headline and summary for not defining the acronym, but when the article itself also doesn't say, it's getting ridiculous.
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous...
Your faith in the lord Steve Jobs will be rewarded. The rest of us know he was a dick.
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
How do you think the president became the president? By lobbying and spending millions of dollars. He affects how you live and is still influenced by outside corporations. That's constitutionally fair, right? So another group are operating in the same way. It's part of American life. If th And to those who are going to reply with "but he was elected", well not by me or millions of other people he wasn't. But he still affects us all.
It's becoming clear they have no idea what to do with their billions.
No idea? That's what I thought, until they made this investment, which has the highest ROI of any venture. "Millions" is obviously petty cash to an outfit like Google, but it can be worth billions in getting laws and regs that benefit them. It's worked for other companies and industries.
It's one thing for the president and congress to be whores, but it's downright insulting to the American people that they're such cheap whores. I'd feel better if they held out for $10B before turning on the corruption spigot. The United States of America deserves better than $20 street corner crack whores.
This is why we need a 28th Amendment to get money out of politics forever.
wolf-pac.com
Hear, hear! I'm going to send them some money - the only political contribution I've ever made.
If the Supremes make absurd and crooked decisions, the only way around them is an amendment.
The Supreme Court thinks that money = speech. It's amazing that amongst nine judges and their research staff nobody could find a dictionary or a thesaurus. I'll send them nine sets and see if it does any good.
Just put the greenbacks into the ballot boxes ...
The problem is that we still have a secret ballot, so they won't know where the money cam from.
Here's an alternative: Since the Supremes have ruled that money = speech, and we have Constitutionally protected Freedom of Speech in this country, they can't stop you from delivering a suitcase full of money to your favorite politician(s).
"THANK YOU!" said every single politician in the US. "It's about time. What the hell do you think these antitrust lawsuits hassling you were for?"
Alsmost every country you go into politics so you can get in the way so you can get paid to get back out of the way. It's just that in the US the "useful idiot" touting the surface meme of regulatory utility exists as a strange blindered creature.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The best way to use these committees would be to have them shut down the stupid situation that allows them to exist in the first place.
Like Lessig is doing with Mayday PAC.