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walkitouthttps://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/12/silicon-valley-billionaire-donors-presidential-candidates/
This is kind of an amazing article in a variety of ways, but I’m posting so I don’t forget this quote and its context:
““There’s such a massive disconnect right now between caucus-goers and primary voters and the people who write the big super PAC checks,” said a political adviser to major Silicon Valley donors on the right. “We don’t care about [transgender] kids going to bathrooms. We care about dismantling the regulatory state.””
It’s not weird for there to be a money and votes disconnect. On the D side, there was a really long, bad disconnect between labor unions (money) and identity related groups (votes). It was especially bad from Reagan on, because so many union members were voting R while the union money was going to D and that is no way to win elections.
But in this case, the unnamed “political adviser” is describing “major Silicon Valley donors on the right” as being the impetus to “dismantling the regulatory state”. They are _really_ _really_ close to accomplishing this goal via SCOTUS, and it continues to be nearly invisible to most citizens. If they get rulings at SCOTUS to go the way they want, we’ll all be dealing with the aftermath and honestly, that aftermath will be Dobbsian, in that it wreaks all kinds of horrifying havoc while creating an political climate for the R side of aisle that is not at all what they are currently imagining.
I had honestly been wondering where the push to “dismantle the regulatory state” was coming from. It absolutely sounds like a Sequoia / Thiel / etc. initiative. So the next time you’re thinking someone is too smart to do something that stupid, remember this moment.
Later in the article, there is a mention of “The Boyd Institute”, which right now is a substack shell with a list of initiatives and nothing else (the initiatives are hilarious: AUKUS, asteroid mining and cleaning up space debris, along with something about “natural resources intelligence”, which I’m a little unsure what that means). Meanwhile, there are other groups with Boyd as part of their name that are very much Not The Boyd Institute. The WaPo piece ends by mentioning this thing and quotes the founder:
““Right now, the GOP is all clickbait,” Giesea said. “On one level, these guys are anti-woke. But there’s a recognition starting that you can choke on anti-woke — that it’s a distraction from solving real problems.””
I sincerely doubt that Giesea thinks that the “real problems” are space debris and asteroid mining. Or even AUKUS (can’t speak to the “natural resources intelligence”). I’ll probably be searching my blog years from now because I half remember something mentioned in a dark money scandal involving a “non-partisan” thinktank.
This is kind of an amazing article in a variety of ways, but I’m posting so I don’t forget this quote and its context:
““There’s such a massive disconnect right now between caucus-goers and primary voters and the people who write the big super PAC checks,” said a political adviser to major Silicon Valley donors on the right. “We don’t care about [transgender] kids going to bathrooms. We care about dismantling the regulatory state.””
It’s not weird for there to be a money and votes disconnect. On the D side, there was a really long, bad disconnect between labor unions (money) and identity related groups (votes). It was especially bad from Reagan on, because so many union members were voting R while the union money was going to D and that is no way to win elections.
But in this case, the unnamed “political adviser” is describing “major Silicon Valley donors on the right” as being the impetus to “dismantling the regulatory state”. They are _really_ _really_ close to accomplishing this goal via SCOTUS, and it continues to be nearly invisible to most citizens. If they get rulings at SCOTUS to go the way they want, we’ll all be dealing with the aftermath and honestly, that aftermath will be Dobbsian, in that it wreaks all kinds of horrifying havoc while creating an political climate for the R side of aisle that is not at all what they are currently imagining.
I had honestly been wondering where the push to “dismantle the regulatory state” was coming from. It absolutely sounds like a Sequoia / Thiel / etc. initiative. So the next time you’re thinking someone is too smart to do something that stupid, remember this moment.
Later in the article, there is a mention of “The Boyd Institute”, which right now is a substack shell with a list of initiatives and nothing else (the initiatives are hilarious: AUKUS, asteroid mining and cleaning up space debris, along with something about “natural resources intelligence”, which I’m a little unsure what that means). Meanwhile, there are other groups with Boyd as part of their name that are very much Not The Boyd Institute. The WaPo piece ends by mentioning this thing and quotes the founder:
““Right now, the GOP is all clickbait,” Giesea said. “On one level, these guys are anti-woke. But there’s a recognition starting that you can choke on anti-woke — that it’s a distraction from solving real problems.””
I sincerely doubt that Giesea thinks that the “real problems” are space debris and asteroid mining. Or even AUKUS (can’t speak to the “natural resources intelligence”). I’ll probably be searching my blog years from now because I half remember something mentioned in a dark money scandal involving a “non-partisan” thinktank.