Silicon Valley’s Useful Idiots

City Journal ^ | 9/20/2019 | Joel Kotkin

[RightGeek]

The term “useful idiot,” often credited to Vladimir Lenin, applies to people supporting a cause or movement injurious to their own self-interest. Nowhere is this more relevant these days than in Silicon Valley ...seem to have the social and political acuity of middle schoolers, as evidenced by their strong support for progressive Democrats poised to destroy the underpinnings of their businesses.

California governor Gavin Newsom is expected to sign the recently passed Assembly Bill 5, which will effectively turn many contractors into employees. AB5 codifies the California Supreme Court’s unanimous May 2018 ruling in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles that many contractors should be treated as employees. The legislation’s prime backers are the state’s unions, which see it as an ideal way to organize now out-of-reach workers.

...

In the 1980s and 1990s, Silicon Valley, like many industries, placed its bets on both political parties. Moderate Republicans like Pete McCloskey, Ed Zschau, and Tom Campbell routinely won congressional elections, as did similarly minded members of the state legislature. But over the past few decades, the Valley has become politically monochromatic, with virtually no elected Republicans. ...

Just a few years ago, these investments seemed to be paying off. The Obama administration was deferential to tech firms, steering away from any hint of antitrust action. Google representatives met in the White House weekly, and more than 250 people shuttled between working for Obama and Google during his presidency. Now, this power is being challenged. ... the tech moguls are losing ground there, too, to better-organized and more politically savvy public-employee and service unions.

The new legislature’s makeup reveals how much power has shifted to the unions. Beyond protecting gig workers, organized labor has broken with tech on education reform...

[RightGeek]

This was hard to excerpt - please read the whole thing.

[Hostage]

This has to do with California’s tax officials and minimum wage socialists against businesses that struggle to survive under California’s excessive tax burdens.

The actions of California’s courts and government will hit Uber, Lyft, and any person using their apps and registering with their services, in other words independent drivers who are now told they are not independent, they are employees.

As employees, such drivers will face crushing new payroll taxes and less business as riders opt for other modes of less expensive transportation.

California’s courts and government care only about government and the tax revenue accruing to that government. It’s been that way for so long that any act that is beneficial to independent businesses is considered radical, taboo.

The only businesses that receive government assistance and promotion are businesses that donate heavily to the party in power. Businesses such as Planned Parenthood will receive every but of help that persons of the party serving in government can steer their way. All others are subject to harassment and destabilization.

The way out of this is for companies such as Uber and Lyft to leave California and put their apps on the internet for sale or lease with no further interaction with drivers. Their apps can be modified to ‘see’ market rates for driving trips and then set their own fares.

So there are workarounds to this unfriendly action.

Reforming and exterminating the governmental culture of California will require removal of the four governing families that hold the reins of power/ Here is a short 6-minute background video of who they are:

RENEGADE STATE
https://www.youtube.com/embed/9Z-J0I01QP8

[BubbaBasher]

You can include feminists and white people supporting diversity as useful idiots too.