Let them eat veggies: Obama has dinner with Steve
cringely.com
cringely.com
That certainly seems to be the case. I know some successful business people locally who didn't have to pivot, or face many of the problems tech/web startups do.
I'm not a lawyer, but hasn't he just effectively torpedoed his legal case for accusing the White House of anything to do with brand hijacking?
They could still sue me, couldn't they?
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The Atlantic had a great article with a break-down of the motorcade: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/the-pres....
I'll just wait for that sink in for those who consider cutting costs to Secret Service. :)
That's their job, and they're damned good at it. But like everything else, there has to be a bit of balance. They just keep pushing and pushing. No matter what concessions your give to the SS, next week they'll be back asking for more. Many DC residents already feel the situation is out of whack -- try sitting dead still in a traffic jam for an hour while the president goes to get a hot dog or something mundane like that. Or find you cell phone and cell modem suddenly stops working because of jammers. Or -- and this was fun -- find that when you are driving in the only bright yellow pickup truck around that DoHS are stalking you in a Blackhawk for target practice.
I haven't been up there working in the last four years or so, but from what I hear it just keeps getting worse.
We should do everything reasonable to protect the president, but, in my opinion, we should also realize that the Office of President is supposed to be filled by somebody just like us, not somebody who for all intents and purposes is treated like an emperor and lives in an armed security bubble that extends for miles. If we want that -- and its fine with me if we do -- perhaps we should find some place with a lot of open unused land to house him in away from the millions of people whose lives keep constantly getting disturbed.
This has nothing to do with "treating the President like an emperor". How the President feels has nothing to do with the catastrophic cost of a successful attack. It seems reasonable to me that we should deal with inconvenience here.
I.e., be a little bit polite with that 5 mile wide security bubble.
(Besides, I think his personal chef can handle making him a hot dog - as I recall, she and Bobby Flay beat Mario Batali and Emeril Lagasse on Iron Chef.)
And to be honest, stepping outside for a hot dog isn't a trivial thing when you're overworked and the most stressed human being on the planet: http://i.imgur.com/PpJek.jpg. If going to grab a hot dog helps the President feel a little more human and helps him do his job better, people just need to put up with the inconvenience.
Let's also put sitting in traffic for one hour into perspective. You're already paying 1/3 of your income in taxes, you can be called for jury duty any time, you could be drafted, etc... the utility you lose from that hour is trivial compared to the other costs of being a citizen. People who complain about sitting in traffic for an hour for the President just aren't thinking rationally.
During the assassination attempt at Blair House, Truman actually opened the second story window and peered out to see what all the gunfire downstairs was about. (If I remember my McCullough correctly, he walked back to the White House just a few hours later with essentially no security.)
But, on the topic, here are some interesting photos from JFK’s presidency. I especially like the second photo with Kennedy campaigning: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/11/the_presidency_of_j...
Dude, seriously, The Queen of England doesn't cause as much disruption to London as Obama causes wherever he goes, and she actually is royalty.
I'm completely confident that there is a tangible threat to the life of POTUS, but I don't how much at risk the Queen is. Quanti- and qualitatively.
This is a problem between the office of president and the Secret Service. Obama is just the current occupant of that office.
And it's not even the president. DC has become an armed camp. Dick Cheney used to go into the White House early every morning between 5 and 6. How do I know that? Because of the screaming sirens and large motorcade it took just to get him across town. Five O'Clock in the morning, and they need sirens to clear the streets. Guys I knew who had military experience were getting carry licenses and working part-time as armed security for 2nd and 3rd tier government and foreign government officials. It wouldn't be unusual to have a dozen or more different police forces all operating over top of each other in any one spot -- and then you had all the private security guys on top of that.
It was crazy back in 05, and each year they just keep adding a little more. It's so bad that I think the best thing if they want to keep it up like this is to just get rid of all housing, ground transportation, and local government in DC entirely. Make it some kind of National Urban Park or something.
In my opinion, the ongoing damage to the local economies caused by these security bubble monstrosities far outweighs the impact of an attack. But to each his own.
So I'll simply ask the obvious question: how much is too much? You seem to be saying that anything the secret service wants they should get. How about closing off huge hunks of DC to ground traffic? Shutting off all wireless availability for a dozen or so miles around wherever the president is? Because the changes requested will just keep getting more drastic. That's the nature of the problem I'm describing. So now that we know that I think it's too much already and you don't, where do you draw the line?
However, it is simply not my job to make this determination. I don't have all of the facts, and neither do you.
If you want to say that there is no limit at all to the amount of funds and inconvenience your would incur for the safety of the president, that's a perfectly fine position. Just come out and say it. I think you know, however, that it's untenable, hence all the hemming and hawing over your opinion of DC, or your ignorance of the actual facts, or of our ability for you or I to make such complex decisions.
So you're not going to answer. That's fine. Been nice chatting with you. :)
A lot of it is just wanting to be seen to roll with the biggest entourage. Nothing wrong with that per se; diplomacy has been about impressing your counterpart with ostentation since time began. But it is what it is.
Do any of you Americans even realize there are other world leaders...?
I'm sure there are other advantages to having transport doubles.
It was true for HP, the original Silicon Valley startup, but not for all of them (e.g. Apple, Adobe).
Interesting, fits with a focus on the company, not the tech. I personally prefer the tech-based approach.
* I can't afford health care for my first employees.
* Stop making it so difficult to visit the US.
* Let me help my employees abroad emigrate to the US.
* Fix the patent system.
In fact taxes are probably too favorable for VCs. They have a completely unnecessary and unfair loophole that should be closed.
Immigration is the biggest government policy issue impeding startups, and that's something Obama could help fix.
Betfair should be a Silicon Valley (or NY) company with billions in revenue. Instead, it's a UK company with $350M in revenue, available only to the UK market. See also Intrade, Hollywood Stock Exchange, etc. All due to regulatory issues.
How about automated medical diagnostics? Many prototypes have been built which outperform human doctors, but the entire industry is dead due to fear of litigation/FDA.
Leverage the internet to disruptively innovate in education? Good luck, with the massive subsidies given to the traditional system.
See also the regulatory issues that Ubercab, AirBnB and others are running into.
This isn't taxes, but it sure doesn't count as "stay out of our way".
- Attempts to keep all investment activity well-regulated and conformant to some definition of legitimate. Thus minimizing the risk that my money manager is going to lose my money on an illegitimate, thinly disguised gambling platform like the Hollywood Stock Exchange.
There's no reason why something like that shouldn't be tightly regulated -- HSX is not the same thing as the NYSE and shouldn't be allowed to take real money in exchange for fake value. The NYSE returns my investment when companies I've selected do well: actual value. The HSX returns my money when random celebrities have an on camera nipple slip: no value.
- Make sure that there are tight restrictions on what counts as a medical device, or as medicine. If there's something approved to go into my body for medical reasons, I want associated risks to be minimized. This is not where I want the boomtown to be -- I don't want to undergo the therapeutic equivalent of WebVan or Twitter.
- I also don't want just any jackass to be able to print a textbook off of Blurb and start selling it to my kid's teachers. Qualified jackasses only, thank you :) No seriously, the way education is decided in this country is currently suboptimal, but the goal is to have all children on the same page. I don't want to find out that my kid has been on some experimental curriculum that turned out to be a pointless waste of time.
But you're also wrong about this. It is possible to start an alternate education system, so long as you conform to guidelines about what you teach. I've never heard anyone complain that they couldn't get their education startup going because of "massive subsidies given to the traditional system." There are a number of folks trying to crack this one from different angles, from textbooks to actual brick-and-mortar institutions.
Or perhaps your goal is not to protect your money, but to prevent me from harmlessly entertaining myself in activities you dislike?
The same thing applies to manual medical diagnostics - you are free to pay extra for a human to give you a less accurate diagnosis if you want. Although I'm not sure why you think human doctors do such a great job - diagnostic procedures and surgery are not regulated by the FDA at all. Only devices are. So an automated medical diagnostic tool would actually be more regulated than the system we have now.
I don't want to find out that my kid has been on some experimental curriculum that turned out to be a pointless waste of time.
This already happens under the current system. Ever hear of "whole language"?
As opposed to losing it on a regulated, totally-not-gambling company like Enron, or in a regulated, totally-not-gambling market like sub-prime mortgage derivatives? Similar arguments could be made against the other two items as well, under the general framework of "regulatory capture". Your arguments presume that government regulation agencies always act in the best interest of the general public.
On the "Stay out of our way" I do think the feeling is pretty broad across the board.
Oh really - how much extra do they pay?
What - they mean that other people's taxes are too low?
Do they actually mean "taxes are too low" or is that a proxy for "not enough govt services"?
I ask because the US govt collects about as much per person as Western European govts (and more than Canada). Yet, those countries do provide more services, but it's not because they collect more money. (The US has lower rates but has a higher gdp.)
That's a silly argument. There's nothing inconsistent about believing that it would be better off for the country as a whole if tax rates are higher, but not volunteering to personally pay higher than the current actual rate.
You play the game by the current rules, not the rules you are advocating the game change to.
If the country would be better off with $100B additional tax revenue, it would be better off with $5B additional tax revenue.
Interesting that you equate spending with services.
The deficit is spending - revenues. The latter are only slightly connected to rates, especially the top marginal rate.[1]
Are they looking to get more revenues from the 50% of the population that isn't paying much of anything or the 1-2% which is paying 40% of revenues?
Which reminds me - while the top marginal rate has jumped around a lot, the "tax revenue as a fraction of GDP" hasn't managed to top 21% for very long and tends to stick around 18%.
We're currently spending around 25% of gdp. Why will we be able to hit that with tax revenue?
[1] The estate tax has never been, and never will be, a significant revenue source. The very rich don't die often enough and they engage in significant estate planning. The estates of the rich folks who died in 2010 weren't going to pay much in taxes because they did estate planning in previous years.
edit: I mean, isn't the best startup guy to talk to the kind who made himself a billionaire?
The point is that there are a lot of people who are currently running startups, most of whom are not much like Jobs or Zuckerberg (these are the "average" people). There are also many people who have not started a company, but who might decide to do so if circumstances changed slightly (the marginal people) [1].
In aggregate, both of these groups have just as big an impact on the economy as the few outlier successes.
[1] One might also consider startups which failed, but only barely, as marginal.
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You've done a great job presenting a compelling case against talking to successful people about how to breed more success with your comment. I am now convinced!
I had a roommate in college who slept all the time, let's make a point of getting him into the Oval asap. He's going to know way more about job creation than these ass clowns who have created billion dollar companies. </zealoftheconverted>
Facebook employs less than 3000 people. Apple less than 50k. The underemployment rate in the US is over 15%. That's millions and millions of people without work. Is John Doerr single handedly going to put all these people to work?
How about Obama talk to a group of executives from mid-cap or small-cap private and publicly traded companies run by not-any-less real business people who employ MILLIONS of people on a daily basis?
This billionaire hero worship is just so over the top and short sighted. The real economy of everyday goods and services is SO much bigger and just as important than consumer devices and social networking.
Sorry, mom. I will be super, duper serious from now on. As we all know, the internet is serious business and there is never to be any humor, ever.
> This billionaire hero worship is just so over the top and short sighted. The real economy of everyday goods and services is SO much bigger and just as important than consumer devices and social networking.
I think you're kind of missing the point about what you're going to learn from someone like Zuckerberg or Jobs.
Why do you think they have billion dollar businesses? What got them there? What chain of events transpired leading to the creation of that wealth?
In both of those cases, you have guys who figured out concrete ways where new technology could benefit people every day. They saw a future just over the horizon that could be better for everyone, then built companies to create that future. And in each case, their companies gave birth to lucrative cottage industries that let individuals and businesses make some great money.
In a country clearly destined to transition to a very different day-to-day existence than we knew in the 90's, Obama is absolutely better served to go and talk to people with visions of the future than he is talking to the guys who run the Octopus carwash chain or Panera Bread.
But don't listen to me – I'm not serious enough to be taken seriously.
You weren't funny at all, just obnoxious.
But the company that builds Apple's stuff employs 1 million people...in China.
- How to get 2% corporate taxes paid down to 1%
- How to get more printed dollars into SV, nevermind skyrocketing gas/food prices
- Best way to offshore jobs
- Toast to code monkeys
What was Y! CEO Carol Bartz doing there? Another Obama party crasher?