So I’m watching the Daily Show, and it’s my only cite for this, but they said that Microsoft stopped it’s support for a Washington Gay Rights bill due to the idea that MS supports gay rights in Washington?
What is Microsoft afraid of?
In my estimation anyone who would boycott them for this, AND actually uses a computers is:
Not gonna switch to a Mac, because they’re even more lefty than MS
Incapable of comprehending Unix
Most likely still using Windows 95
So why exactly is Microsoft allowing that to be even an issue? I think they’ve got both apathy and ignorance on their side in this one.
I agree with Microsoft’s decision. Although I personally fully support equal gay rights including marriage, I don’t think that it’s a corporation’s place to lobby for changes in society like this. Microsoft continues to be a strongly pro-gay employer and extends same-sex benefits to its employees. Additionally, Bill Gates and Steve Balmer are both continuing to publically support gay rights.
I’m sure that the vast majority of corporate boards and CEO’s have political views that disagree with your own. Do you really want GE or Shell Oil’s CEO’s deciding to spend millions of dollars of corporate money on getting Bush elected or having “family values” advanced? It’s better to keep a clear separation of personal and corporate political views.
And that’s why Bush is in office. We all know at this point that the world system is Corporate Feudalism, and it’s the companies willing to prosecute their agenda through legislation that win out.
Populism is a myth. The only thing that helps build tolerance in America is apathy. By the time the generation that were the adults in the 50s are dead, most of these issues won’t even be on the radar.
I don’t really care whether or not M$ wants to support this bill. I just wanted to bitch about the absurdity of the whole thing.
No, wait, come to think of it, I looked into moving from Boulder to Longmont this summer and the CEO of GM came into my room and struck me over the head with a broadsword and told me that if I moved he would, “send forth knights from his realm to smite me.”
Also, the GF and I were thinking about getting married, but ultimately she said, “I don’t want to fuck the CEO of Citibank, so I might actually just go join a nunnery.”
Let’s see you go into the park in the middle of town and excercise your right to assemble with 1000 of your closest friends. Do it at Noon tomorrow. Find some agenda, any agenda to chant about. Protest Halliburton and their no bid contracts. Watch as the police watch you admiringly from up close with a baton in their hand. No, no one is protecting Halliburton’s interests, certainly not the government!
You’re right the CEO of GM would never do that, since GM isn’t out excercising their power over you, I think you should run out and use that wonderful rail system we’ve had for the past 200 years. You know the one GM DIDN’T rip out because “What’s good for GM is good for America.” Let me know what it’s like to ride that trolley to work every day. Or if you don’t want to ride the trolley, I think you should head over the dealership and pick yourself up a nice biodiesel car being that they are so plentiful and GM wouldn’t do ANYTHING to stop you from living exactly the life you want to. So go ahead do it, and make sure to wave to all the people on the trolley while you’re at it.
The CEO of Citibank doesn’t need to fuck your girlfriend, there are plenty of women to buy out there in the world, he can import them from anywhere. After all having your money under his watchful care gives him NO power over you right? You’re gonna go out there face the world and “live richly” aren’t you?
Hey, at least we can live knowing that the Presidency isn’t passed down from generation to generation right?
Just so you can understand the difference between medieval feudalism and corporate feudalism I will spell it out for you. The first one refers to what gives power in medieval feudalism: Land and Title. Now I’ll give you the one in corporate feudalism: Shares and Title.
Big difference, I’m glad you’ll be able to find a “whatever it is you do” job exactly like the one you have wherever else you move.
Corporations don’t determine legislation, get your head out of your ass. They always have. Or do you actually believe that the Civil War was about freeing the slaves? No it was about pursuing corporate interests that knew it was just as cheap to pay blacks the same dirt wage they were giving the Irish and the Italians as it was to keep them locked up. Not only that, but you could get the Micks fresh off the boat to fight the war for you with Lincoln’s fresh new CONSCRIPTION YAAAY!!! No muss no fuss, it’s not like anyone’s gonna miss those dirty papists anyway.
I’m so glad the corporations don’t excercise their power in the political arena. God bless America.
You’re the CEO of Citibank? Far out. Can I have some money?
I quite take your point about corporate mucking about in politics. But we’re way deep already, the tightie righties got whole Mammonite Church behind them, all we got’s George Soros. EVen if you could write a law that would nuetralize the pernicious effect of corporate donations, they wouldn’t pass it, sucking corporate dick is how a lot of them got there.
Getting corporate money out of our politics is going to be a long struggle.
Getting corporate money out of politics is called “not realistic”, because it requires too narrow a definition of politics, too narrow a definition of corporate and too narrow a definition of money.
And I’m sure she also missed how Dobson and Focus on the Family carved out a part of Colorado for themselves and then use it as a base of operations to strong arm politicians to their will.
Well, I’ve been boycotting Coors for about thirty years now, perfectly willing to keep up the pressure there. As well, still refusing to buy cocaine, SUVs, or ambergris based perfumes.
Not sure I can boycott MicroSoft. I can certainly determine to give them as little money as possible, but thats pretty much my policy in general, nothing very specific about that.
Well Hollywood helps define the political views of the next generation. However, I reserve judgement on whether or not we have Hollywood until after I see Kingdom of Heaven. I saw some quote from a Muslim professor saying that the arab characters were all mindless machines screaming allah u ackbar based upon a working script that he got to read.
Corporations do exercise political power, but I’m all for keeping that within the lines of how it directly relates to their business rather than separate social issues. If Bill Gates wants to use some of his sizeable personal finances to advance gay-rights, I’m all for it. I hope that he does so now that Microsoft is picking up less of the slack. Also, before you go too much further off the deep end regarding historical revisionism, I might like to remind you that the South, ya’ know, tried to break away and what not. I’m sure that it was all a corporate plot…
threemae: Well I’m not gonna go off and make it seem like we are more opposed than we actually are. I don’t disagree with the idea that Bill Gates should personally support it. It’s funny, I am in one thread where Microsoft bows out of a social agenda. And one where Steve Jobs uses Apple to massage his own ego. I find that symmetry amusing.
I’m not revising history in any way shape or form. I don’t think the seperation of the South was a corporate plot. I think the corporate plot was to keep them from doing so when we should have let them do it. That was the destruction of the American Revolutionary idealism IMHO.
I believe this country should be ten different countries at least.
Autonomous NYC
The Northeast
The South
The Midwest
Texas
The Southwest
California
The Northeast
Alaska
Hawaii
This is of course how I would divide it today, not at the time of the Civil War. I’m basing this on globalization and cultural divisions in the country.
However, I don’t have a whole lot of respect for Lincoln and what he did. I also don’t think that the American revolutionaries were anything but untitled aristocrats who made up a system that made nobility irrelevant. George Washington wanted to be King of America.
Hell this country was founded by people indentured to corporate interests.
