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COMMENT: In the ongoing series about L’Affaire Snowden, we have discussed the fact that the collection of metadata is routine by Internet and cellphone companies, as well as retail outlets that offer discount cards. (The harvesting of metadata is the focal point of what the NSA does and what lies at the center of the “controversy.”)
A recent post by PR Watch notes that Grover Norquist has been among the recipients of Google money.
Having opined that he wanted to “drown” government in the “bathtub,” Norquist is a lynchpin of the “Shutdown GOP” and the founder of the Islamic Free Market Institute. A synthesis of the GOP and the Muslim Brotherhood, the Institute is inextricably linked with the Operation Green Quest investigation into terrorist financing.
Against the background of Google’s financing of Norquist’s crusades and other right-wing causes, one can but wonder what Google may be doing with the vast amounts of metadata they harvest.
EXCERPT: Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.
Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference), and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action . . . .
. . . . More than any other group working to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Heritage Action pushed for a sustained government shutdown in the fall of 2013, taking the country to the brink of a potentially catastrophic debt default.
Laying the ground for that strategy, Heritage Action held a nine-city “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour” in August 2013, providing a platform for Texas Senator Ted Cruz to address crowds of cheering tea party supporters.
For Cruz, increasingly spoken of as a 2016 Presidential candidate, the government shutdown helped raise his profile and build his supporter — and donor — base.
Notably, Heritage Action received $500,000 from the Koch-funded and Koch-operative staffed Freedom Partners in 2012. It is not yet known how much Heritage Action received in 2013 from sources other than Google.
Perhaps surprisingly, Google has a history of supporting Cruz. Via its Political Action Committee – Google Inc. Net PAC – the PAC provided the “Ted Cruz for Senate” campaign with a $10,000 contribution in 2012. Additionally, despite being five years out from the freshman Senator’s next election, Google’s PAC has already made a $2,500 contribution to the Cruz reelection campaign for 2018, the largest amount that the PAC has given so far to any Senate candidate running that election year according to disclosures made by Google.
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), the anti-government group run by Republican operative Grover Norquist, was another new recipient of funding from Google in 2013. ATR is best known for its “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” and for its fundamentalist attacks on any Republican who might dare to vote for any increase in taxes. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, ATR received 85% of its funding in 2012 ($26.4 million) from the ultra-partisan Karl Rove-run Crossroads GPS, another dark money group.
ATR President Grover Norquist infamously said that he wants to shrink government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” Google’s position on the relative size of government versus bathtubs is not known, but according to a Bloomberg analysis of Google’s U.S. corporate filings, it avoids approximately $2 billion dollars globally in tax payments each year through the use of creative tax shelters. . . .
Here’s a look at one of the initiatives Google is promoting with their support of the American Legislative Exchange Committee (Alec): Over the next year Alec is planning a campaign for reducing the incentives for homeowners to install solar panels. This is going to include lobbying for a reduction in the amounts paid to homeowners for the electricity fed back into the grid, and it might even include charging solar panel owners for the electricity they pay into the grid. This, claims Alec, will get rid of the ‘freerider’ problem of people giving electricity to the grid without paying for the cost of maintaining that grid. “As it stands now, those direct generation customers are essentially freeriders on the system. They are not paying for the infrastructure they are using. In effect, all the other non direct generation customers are being penalised”. Yes, that’s actually want the Alec representative said about the people installing solar panels and selling that electricity back to the grid. And that’s just one of the many anti-clean energy initiative Alec has in mind.
If Google’s products relied on electricity, as opposed to the free-market magical fairy dust that currently powers the internet, Google’s executives might actually have a reason to feel like horrible people for supporting a group like this:
Maybe Dave Eggers book “The Circle” isn’t so far off after all! Now even Scientology is starting to not look so bad next to these corporate cults.
Larry Page recently gave an interview where he discussed his faith that business is the best way to build his version of a better future. It’s a faith in the power of business to implement the changes he wants to see. It’s also a faith that has driven him to ponder leaving his billions to Elon Musk instead of a philanthropic organization because Musk is determined to start a Mars colony and Page thinks that giving humanity a “backup plan” is a top priority. The idea of billionaires gifting their fortunes to each other out of a fear that the wealth will be wasted on non-corporate philanthropic deeds might seem like a violation of Google’s “don’t be evil” credo, but keep in mind that Larry’s vision for a better tomorrow seems to revolve around jettisoning all our billionaires to Mars. Is that a bad thing?
Well, at least it’s pretty obvious that Larry sees the many very serious threats to our civilization and the real need for a “back up” plan. Hopefully, someday, making serious investments in the kinds of businesses that will prevent the need for that doomsday “back up” plan will also be part of the plan.
Well isn’t this interesting: The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is known for pushing “model legislation” with remarkable success, happens to be a tax-exempt organization. It turns out that ALEC doesn’t do any lobbying at all. Yep, that’s actually what ALEC argues and it works:
That tax-exempt non-lobbying sure is effective.
Google as a new army. Of balloons. Once the technology is perfected the balloon army can then circle the globe provided free WiFi to rural areas. It’s not as scary a balloon army as it could be, but since the balloons are intended to offer free WiFi, and since this is Google we’re talking about, it’s still a little scary:
Look out Grover, you have competition in the ‘no tax’ pledge department and your new competition, Americans for Prosperity, isn’t just asking for a ‘no tax’ pledge. They’re asking for a ‘cut taxes’ pledge, along with a bunch of other stuff that should do wonders for your plans on drowning the government in the bathtub. Sorry Grover, your no tax pledge is losing its crazy edge:
Ok, this inspired super pledge is only for New Hampshire, so it looks like Grover doesn’t need to worry about a nation-wide competition with the Kochs for loyalty pledges. For now.
Good question:
Note that internet safety and how to improve it is one of the very first issues Reyes focused on after taking office. Perhaps that also had something to do with the surprising donation. Or maybe Facebook just likes Reyes’s overall political outlook. Who knows.
eBay shrugged, and just kept shrugging:
It might seem unlikely that eBay’s continued alliance with ALEC will prompt people to start accusing the company of clubbing baby seals, but that’s mostly due to the fact that there isn’t a big market for baby seal meat. That said, ALEC’s backers aren’t exactly friends of baby seals.
Here’s an article that should thrill those concerned about Google and Amazon not knowing enough of their personal information: Google and Amazon are battling for the future of personal genome storage:
Keep in mind that, while potentially scary, the kind of super databases Google and Amazon are envisioning could be of incredible value to researchers and could accelerate the rate of new discoveries.
Also keep in mind that the attractiveness of such private services for researchers wouldn’t be nearly as attractive if the US government wasn’t perpetually cutting public research funds.
And, of course, don’t forget that, while potentially valuable, the kind of super databases Google and Amazon are envisioning could also be incredibly scary. Yikes.
Remember kids: don’t piss off the Siris of the future. Your own future might depend on it:
“Although Google has its own privacy policy, the company, whose Google Apps for Education software is used in schools nationwide, has not joined the industry initiative.”
Also, kids: Don’t piss off Google.
And try to make the most of your education.
Here’s a reminder that a growing robot army isn’t necessarily the scariest item on Google’s wish list:
That’s right, Google is financing the same folks that brought us the “CO2 is life!” ad from 2006 and are now working to eliminate healthcare for millions.
The robot army doesn’t seem so deadly now, does it? At least, relatively speaking.
While folks like Michael Greve, former longtime chairman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and a leader of the group pushing the King vs Burwell lawsuit (with the CEI’s help and funding), may have failed in their attempts to deprive healthcare to millions of low-income Americans after the Supreme Court’s ruling this week, it’s worth noting that Greve’s CEI is going to have plenty of resources to continue in its quest to comfort the comfortable and crap on the poor, thanks, in part, to companies like Google:
Yes, the same group that brought us the “They call CO2 pollution. We call it life!” ad campaign is the same group that was trying to effectively kill the poor for political purposes. And Google funds it.
“Even if we still give Google and Facebook the benefit of the doubt, and allow that their investments in the CATO Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute weren’t directly motivated by killing Obamacare and throwing millions of struggling Americans back into the ranks of the uninsured and prematurely dying — nevertheless, they are accessories, and very consciously so. Big Tech’s larger political goals are in alignment with the old extraction industry’s: Undermining the countervailing power of government and public politics to weaken its ability to impede their growing dominance over their portions of the economy, and to tax their obscene stores of cash.”