Your Job is Political: Tech Money in Politics

[Newsjock]

By Kelsey Gilmore-Innis
December 2014

Tech companies have made a lot of people very rich. ... When we work at tech companies, our labor is going to grow the investment these people have made. When those investments do pay off, more & more of these obscenely rich people have been spending their money on political campaigns and races. I gave a talk at JSFest Oakland exploring some of the issues they're spending it on and what we might see in the future; this is the cleaned-up text version of that talk, with sources.

... There's a LOT of money coming from tech (and elsewhere, especially hedge funds and the Walton family) to fund charter schools, despite the frequent marketing of a grassroots charter movement. It's everywhere once you look.

... What has this money been spent on? Increasingly large sums of it has gone into political campaigns. Lately, charter school advocates have turned their focus from state to local governments, pouring absolutely unprecedented money into local school board elections across the country via political action committee (PAC). In Oakland (where this talk was originally delivered) charter school PACs, funded by a mixture of umbrella organizations like the CCSA and direct donations from wealthy investors including Arthur Rock, spent $150,000 on school board races this year after dropping $185,000 in 2012. Anna Song in Santa Clara County, whose opponent wasn't even pro-charter, faced $250,000 worth of PAC mailings attacking her after she voted against a Rocketship charter application. West Contra Costa County saw $350,000 in pro-charter PAC money spent in its school board race this year. This is a 10-20 fold increase over spending in previous school board races, and it's happening all over the country.

... It may well be true that this kind of thing goes on in every industry, but I don't believe the utter denial and lack of cynicism about the graft enriching our field is normal or acceptable. I see a tendency among engineer types to consider politics too "messy" or beneath their intelligence to consider. This is silly--I thought we were good at big systems, guys--but also incredibly naive. When you are determinedly apolitical while your bosses spend the money you generate on political change, you're not impartial; you're being played for a sucker.

Read more: http://nerd.kelseyinnis.com/blog/2014/12/19/your-job-is-political-tech-money-in-politics/

[bemildred]

1. Marketing is expensive.

And when innovation fails to produce the truly innovative, marketing is what fills the gap.