Was Mark Zuckerberg the kiss of death for Eric Cantor?

Salon ^ | June 11, 2014 | Andrew Leonard

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The new anti-tech populism. Associating with Silicon Valley CEOs doesn't play well with the Tea Party

Two weeks before House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost his primary election, his challenger Dave Brat launched a campaign ad featuring Cantor with his arm around the shoulders of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The text of the ad read as follows:

“There are 20 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job. But Eric Cantor wants to give corporations another 20 million foreign workers to hire instead.”

The purpose of the ad was to link Cantor to immigration reform, a cause that Zuckerberg (and much of Silicon Valley) considers a number one political priority. And while we can’t say for sure whether the issue of immigration reform was the knife in Cantor’s back, the subtext of the ad is intriguing: The Tea Party sees Silicon Valley as toxic. Mark Zuckerberg is an enemy of the people!

Last November, The Hill reported that Zuckerberg had named immigration reform “one of the biggest civil rights issues of our time.” One has only to look at the comments appended to that article when it was copy-and-pasted to www.teaparty.org to see why Brat’s campaign team figured associating Zuckerberg with Cantor was a knockout punch.

The comments are a typical putrid brew of racism, xenophobia, illiteracy and anti-Semitism — but there’s also a strain of good old American populism, a strong sense of anger at the fact that America’s corporate executives care more about the bottom line than they do the welfare of the American people.

Zuckerberg is a phony sell out who only wants cheap labor.

The kind of money these people have can negate millions of your votes and buy Washington. This is no longer a democracy-its a money game, and these people know it.

Zuckerberg is an idiot and a betrayer to all us LEGAL BORN AND LEGAL IMMIGRANTS!

And so on. It should go without saying that suspicion of Silicon Valley civic-mindedness is not limited to the Tea Party right. But Cantor’s defeat may mark the most prominent political deployment of the tech-mogul-as-villain trope to date. And it bears watching. Because Cantor is hardly alone in Republican leadership circles in cozying up to Silicon Valley. As Breitbart reported on May 30, the full photograph from which the Zuckerberg/Cantor clinch was sliced also included GOP whip Kevin McCarthy and House Budget Committee Chairman (and likely presidential hopeful) Paul Ryan (as well as Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who is also a big supporter of immigration reform.)

The photo was taken in 2011, several years before the creation of Zuckerberg’s lobbying group FWD.us. The Republicans spent their time attacking government regulations on business and do not appear to have mentioned immigration, but that may be a distinction without a difference. American populists on both the left and the right distrust close linkages between politicians and big business. Dave Brat’s victory is a signal that that that distrust is electorally meaningful. Silicon Valley thinks of itself as the epitome of progress, but that opinion is not shared in Virginia’s seventh Congressional district. How this plays out in the midterm elections and the Republican presidential primaries will be quite illuminating.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

“There are 20 million Americans who can’t find a full-time job. But Eric Cantor wants to give corporations another 20 million foreign workers to hire instead.”

That had to leave a mark.

[Cowboy Bob]

The purpose of the ad was to link Cantor to immigration reform, a cause that Zuckerberg (and much of Silicon Valley) considers a number one political priority.

Why can't Facebook and all those high-tech companies just open an office in New Delhi? It would sure save a lot of money.

[forgotten man]

Brat knows how to explain economics succinctly like Reagan did. Both Brat and Reagan had degrees in economics. The average working stiff understands that flooding the labor market with cheap immigrant labor will drive down wages. It is the elites who do not grasp this concept, or worse, they want to drive down wages.

[DManA]

Andy is having a nice little tantrum there.

[kcvl]

Andrew Leonard, who has lived in Berkeley for 25 years, is a staff writer at Salon.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

I swear these guys are walking stereotypes.

[kcvl]

Andrew Leonard of Salon’s “How the World Works” taking on a Wall Street Journal editorial on global warming:

“I am something of a glutton for exposing myself to absurdist displays of right-wing idiocy”

I’d like to say, “You can’t makes this stuff up,” but apparently you can!

******

That’s not a debunking. It didn’t address the WSJ article at all. Not a single word.

weird.

[kcvl]

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Ludwig von Mises as a Racist

Oh boy, Salon’s Andrew Leonard is at it again.

I can see it coming. Racist charges against Ludwig von Mises and anyone who acknowledges reading him.

Last time I commented on Leonard, he was shooting at Richard Ebeling with a water gun. Now, he has moved on from Ebeling to take a shot a Mises. In an attack piece on Michelle Bachmann for her comment to the Wall Street Journal that she reads Mises at the beach, he provides this Mises quote:

It must be emphasized that the destiny of modern civilization as developed by the white peoples in the last two hundred years is inseparably linked with the fate of economic science.

So you know the racist charges are coming. Just to clue in his Regressive readers in case they miss the point of the quote, he begins his comment on the quote this way:

Never mind the puzzling injection of skin color into the argument.

http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2011/06/ludwig-von-mises-as-racist.html

[The_Victor]

First off, Facebook is hardly “high tech.” Second, the Tea Party isn't anti-technology, just anti-amnesty.

[kcvl]

“I swear these guys are walking stereotypes.”

roflol! Exactly!

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

(title):" Was Mark Zuckerberg the kiss of death for Eric Cantor?

ANSWER : NO !
It was the on going "Kiddie Crusade" of illegals from the Southern border that shows that there is NO LAW THAT OBaDINGA WILL NOT VIOLATE !
Don't impeach - that will go NO WHERE !
PROSECUTE FOR PURSUEING, ENCOURAGING, and FINANCING AN INVASION !

[Jonty30]

The CEO’s don’t want to travel twice a year into poorer countries. They’d rather have the slaves local.

[Rosie405]

Is anyone persuing the idea that some of our border patrol people - in conjunction with higher ups - are possibly hustlers for the child sex slavery trade? How convenient that we are now importing thousands of homeless children. What are these kids going to do to feed themselves? They are totally dependent upon the people who are running and staffing these makeshift shelters, and the motives of those who have these positions of power over these kids has to be questioned.