How elitists in Hollywood and Silicon Valley are destroying California’s middle class and business climate:
Progressives and many Occupy protesters mourned the death of high-tech innovator and multibillionaire Steve Jobs. They also tend to view social-networking firms like Facebook more as allies than as class enemies. This embrace of Silicon Valley is nearly as strange as the Occupy movement’s decision to target the ports of Los Angeles and Oakland—large employers of well-paid blue-collar workers. Activists portrayed the attempted port shutdowns as attempts to “disrupt the profits of the 1 percent,” but union workers largely saw them as impositions on their livelihood. As former San Francisco mayor and state assembly speaker Willie Brown wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle: “If the Occupy people really want to make a point about the 1 percent, then lay off Oakland and go for the real money down in Silicon Valley. The folks who work on the docks in Oakland or drive the trucks in and out of the port are all part of the 99 percent.”
The explanation for the progressives’ hypocritical friendliness to Silicon Valley is simple: money and politics. Venture capitalists and highly profitable, oligopolistic firms like Google (with its fleet of eight private jets) invest heavily in green companies; they were also among the primary bankrollers of the successful opposition to a 2010 ballot initiative aimed at reversing AB 32. The digital elite has become more and more involved in local politics, with executives from Facebook, Twitter, and gaming website Zynga contributing heavily to the recent campaign of San Francisco mayor Ed Lee, for example. Lee has, in turn, been extremely kind to the digerati, extending a payroll-tax break to Twitter and a stock-option break to Zynga and other firms that may soon go public.
Hollywood manages to outdo even Silicon Valley in its class hypocrisy. Former actor Schwarzenegger doesn’t let his green zealotry stop him from owning oversize houses and driving fuel-gorging cars. Canadian-born director James Cameron, who contents himself with a six-bedroom, $3.5 million, 8,300-square-foot Malibu mansion, talks about the need to “stop industrial growth” and applauds the idea of a permanent recession. “It’s so heretical to everybody trying to recover from a recession economy—‘we have to stimulate growth!’ ” says Cameron. “Well, yeah. Except that’s what’s gonna kill this planet.”
Insanity. And it continues.
As Jeff Greason says, you can have the regulations, or you can have the jobs, but you have to choose.
[Update a few minutes later]
Unfortunately, it’s not just California. Behold, the new reactionaries:
On matters of energy, Obama has regressed to the Earth Day mindset of the 1970s, when we were reaching “peak” oil, and untried wind and solar were soon to be the new-age remedy for soon-to-be-exhausted fossil fuels. Add up the anti-empirical quotes from Obama himself, Energy Secretary Chu, and Interior Secretary Salazar (inflate your tires, “tune up” your car, look to U.S. algae reserves, let energy prices “skyrocket,” hope gas rises to European levels, don’t open federal lands even if gas reaches $10 a gallon, etc.) and, in reactionary fashion, we are time-machined back to the campus quad of the 1970s. In this la la world of Van Jones, evil oil companies supposedly connived to stifle green energy and hook us on fossil fuels, inferior energies that have nothing to recommend them. It is as if the revolutions in horizontal drilling, fracking, and discoveries of vast new reserves never occurred, as if Exxon and Chevron dodge taxes in a manner that Google and Amazon never would, as if efficient smaller gas engines, clean gas blends, and pollution devices have not made the American car both clean-burning and economical beyond our imagination forty years ago. The Obamians, frozen in amber, really believe oil is about to run out, “tuned up” internal combustion engines powering underinflated tires pollute as they did in the 1920s, and Teapot Dome U.S. oil companies need to be “crucified”—as regional EPA director and Obama appointee Al Armendariz, in fact, boasted. So we borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to subsidize money-losing solar and wind plants, while putting federal lands rich in oil and gas off-limits to companies eager to pay royalties, hire thousands, and supply the U.S. with its own energy—and all for a regressive ideology. Few see that Solyndra really is the new Teapot Dome.
Let’s hope that enough do in November.
I think it’s a natural mode of the system linked to generational turnover. The Occupy types are the children of the late-sixties, early to mid-seventies. As the children of the 80’s move into positions of power and responsibility, we will see the pendulum swing back.
A lot of my friends who grew up in the 80’s are full on OWS. Whether their kids will pick it up is yet to be determined.
Not sure if we are speaking of the same cohort. I meant to refer to the children of those who came of age in the 80’s, i.e., those who were getting their degrees and venturing out into the real world, not those who actually were children in the 80’s.
Oh, you mean old people. I wouldn’t know anything about them.
I resemble that remark.
No need to tar an entire generation from the stupidity of a few, particularly when there are still more than a few crazy baby boomers still in power.
I am a child of the late sixties and have been a proponent of free enterprise, small government, and nuclear power since junior high. I have some memories of the craziness that was the 70s, but more from the explosive recovery of the 80s. When I was in high school in the early-mid 80s we couldn’t imagine the Cold War ending without a nuclear war. What a wonderful surprise it was when the Soviet Union evaporated in 1991 with barely a whimper!
We currently seem to be replaying the silliness of the Carter years in HD. Fortunately, just as Reagan followed Carter so too will someone else replace Obama. I believe that most of my generation (Gen-X) is quite anxious for the next Reagan-like administration.
The thing that my generation learned as kids (I hope) is that while things may look bad right now, they can change very much for the better with some patience and hard work. In some ways that is the same thing our grandparents learned through the Great Depression and WWII.
Clothing styles and movie remakes back this up. With all of the movies from the 80’s about to make a resurgence, maybe the economy will to.
Clothing styles and movie remakes back this up. With all of the movies from the 80’s about to make a resurgence, maybe the economy will to.
Wodun,
BOOO!
…just tryin’ to help with those hiccups there pard.
I blame opera mobile and/or android. =(
Is there something wrong with properly maintained tyres and a properly maintained engine, then?
As everything is ECM-controlled, what are you supposed to do as a “tune up” on a car apart from replace the spark plugs at 100K and make the repairs when the Service Engine Soon (SES) light comes on?
Are there any breaker points? Dwell or ignition advance that can be set without reprogramming an EPROM? Is there a distributor cap to replace? Does any car out there even have a carburetor any more, and if it did, is there anything adjustable on it anymore?
Apart from fluid and filter changes, is there any scheduled maintenance that you are supposed to do or are even able to do anymore? So, what is this tune-up the President was talking about, and what realistic effect can it have on gas mileage?
Nothing wrong with properly inflated tyres but the reason this is continuously brought up is because Obama gave a speech where he said we wouldn’t need to drill for more oil if people only inflated their tyres. A rather daft statement if ever there was one.
There is something wrong with thinking it would make a significant dent in our energy demand.
My favorite quote from the first article:
If you guys were in Texas, you’d all be rich.
Spoken by a consultant to the residents of an impoverished California town sitting on top of a giant, untapped shale oil formation.
The new Teapot Dome?!
How many of the college students / post college educated / Grad Students would know that term or event in history? Given some of the geniuses and geniuettes (I want to be gender equal here) I’ve seen as the talking heads on the news, regardless of the outlet, not many will know that reference.
I understand differing political opinions, I understand that for every John Bircher there’s a guy with a Che’ poster and a Viet Cong flag. I even understand that those two sides would rather throw gasoline than pee to put each other out in the name of humanity.
I’ll never understand nonsensical or half-@$$ed political ideas, ideals or actions. The OWS people don’t make any sense. They obviously can’t count, or hear, if they think 99% of the country or world stands with OWS, or feels like they are ‘downtrodden’ or put upon. Most of the people I know who feel put out aren’t blaming Wall Street, they’re blaming Congress and some dude at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And I’m talking blaming BOTH sides of the aisle, not just one side.
But, God help and forgive me, I agree with Willy Brown. If the OWS people want to go after the 1%, why do it via the dock workers? Go stand in front of some Silicon Valley Start-up and keep THOSE workers from going to work. If truth and history tell us anything, a loading dock guy or truck driver at a Silicon Valley start up has a better chance of joining the 1% than a guy unloading bananas or new Toyotas in Oakland or L.A.
I saw one guy on some online news link, I think he was from the UNC Enclave of OWS, saying that he was going to the NATO Meeting in Chicago because OWS wants NATO to disband, and all the countries to close down their respective military groups. And if they don’t get their way, they will riot and burn and pillage and all that radical OWS ‘action’ kind of stuff.
My very first thought was, “…he wants the military to disappear and he’s willing to create so much hate, fire and general destruction that the Governor of Illinois has to call out the National Guard, to prove he’s that serious about dismantling the military…”
My second thought was, “…I’ve not heard any other OWS person say that…is this kid delusional, or is he trying to start a group inside the larger group?” I came to the conclusion that they’re all delusional.
I hope I see this guy again, right after the IL National Guard pushes them into Lake Michigan, and I hope he’s drowning and some fellow 99%er and all around Good Samaritan is throwing him a glass of water. Then he can die happy!
(if I found out one of my kids was an OWS type, I’d tie his black hoodie sleeves behind his back and get him some help I’m pretty sure I can have a family member locked up for a 72 hour observation, for talking incoherently or in circles endlessly)
Canadian-born director James Cameron, who contents himself with a six-bedroom, $3.5 million, 8,300-square-foot Malibu mansion, talks about the need to “stop industrial growth” and applauds the idea of a permanent recession.
I routinely tell people I will start caring about green issues once I have my mansions and private jet. Until then, the global warming people can shove their green issues up their ass.
The USSR was in a permanent recession from its founding through collapse. It was also an environmental disaster. People care about the environment when they can afford to. General prosperity comes first.