6 ms·

Google Donated To A Senator Who Voted Against Gay Conversion Therapy Ban

43 points by sna1l 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
idlewords 7y ago
I've been doing Twitter threads of Google's political giving for a while; they donate to a large number of terrible people. I try to single out politicians with records that are antithetical to basic values Google employees share, or that the company advertises (like its ostentatious committment to #pride), not just things I politically disagree with. To head off some comments that always come up: 1. Like most corporate PACs, Google gives fairly evenly to politicians in both parties. I don't think donations to Democrats "cancel out" donations to indefensible figures like Scalise, or Nunes, any more than giving money to the NAACP cancels out a donation to the KKK. 2. Google's giving is not indiscriminate, but tactical and highly targeted. In particular, they don't just give to everyone across the board like the sugar lobby. 3. The dollar figures are small because they are capped by statute. At most, Google can give one politician $10,000 in an election cycle. This is absolutely dwarfed in size by Google's D.C. lobbying operation, which can't contribute directly to campaigns but finds many ways to be influential. 4. This money is donated by employees who opt in, but is allocated by the company. Googlers have no input into the targeting and timing of these donations; it's decided by the office of public policy. 5. An American corporation can do fine without a PAC. Apple and IBM don't have one. Microsoft won a giant Pentagon cloud computing contract while its political giving was suspended. With that said, some further threads: November 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1197253535735267328 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1197253535735267328 August 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164031478897901573 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164031478897901573 June 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314 April 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1119751992597835776 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1119751992597835776
- supercanuck 7y ago
  Tl;dr Google will donate to whatever terrible person will further their interest and we only care because they pretended to not be evil a decade a go.
  - blfr 7y ago
    Google's "don't be evil" clearly meant "don't become Microsoft." It was never a call for general moral betterment.
    - serf 7y ago
      >Google's "don't be evil" clearly meant "don't become Microsoft." yeah, and look and what a good job they're doing -- user-agent discrimination like the good old IE days, and talk of ongoing anti-trust probes.
      - blfr 7y ago
        They are doing pretty well imho. They offer the world a massively popular open source mobile operating system, a massively popular open source browser, they seriously pushed user security with influence over practices, software, and Project Zero, and all their services work well with on my Linux systems. Yes, the monopoly and censorship stuff is very worrisome but on the tech side they are undeniably better than Microsoft.
      - A_Parr 7y ago
        If they do the same thing Microsoft did, but get away with it, they've clearly not become Microsoft.
    - supercanuck 7y ago
      It was about being trustworthy with people’s information.
- blfr 7y ago
  This money is donated by employees who opt in Why do they opt in? If they wanted to donate to a politician, they always can. Why this setup?
SomaticPirate 7y ago
$2,500 hardly seems a large donation from a behemoth like Google. It’s fairly common practice in the Fortune 50s to donate to any politician who might even have a glance at any potential legislation that could affect them. This would be more impactful if Google was one of the only large companies that donated.
- eli 7y ago
  This common practice is bad. I agree that it is sad how cheaply influence can be bought. Why else would it be so common?
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Yes, it's more a demonstration of principles than anything else.
- idlewords 7y ago
  The donations are capped by law at $10K, so they are all "small" in that sense.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > $2,500 hardly seems a large donation from a behemoth like Google. It's half the legal maximum from a PAC (this was from a Google PAC; Google per se can't legally donate anything).
derp_dee_derp 7y ago
Who cares? Google and every other large corporation donate to all the candidates covering the entire spectrum of politics. It's a hedge bet strategy focused in risk management: the hope is to have influence over whoever so happens to be politically popular at any given time.
- idlewords 7y ago
  You're wrong twice within the first twenty words. Google doesn't donate to all candidates, and there are U.S. corporations of its size that don't make political contributions at all.
  - twojacobtwo 7y ago
    Could you name one or two of those that are Google's (Alphabet's) size don't contribute? That seems highly unlikely in the US.
    - mjg59 7y ago
      Apple? IBM?
    - laurencerowe 7y ago
      Apple and IBM.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      > Could you name one or two of those that are Google's (Alphabet's) size don't contribute? All of them, including Google, because they are legally prohibited from it. Google's PAC donates, but not with Google funds, because corporate PAC donations can't come from corporate treasury funds. There are some large companies that lobby but don't operate PACs (IBM and Apple for instance.) It's debatable whether this is better or not, but it's certainly a different shape of political engagement.
  - kick 7y ago
    'idlewords has actually done a great job of getting tech workers to pressure their employers into ceasing the political donations. It's inspiring to see someone manage to make a dent like he has. A quick brush on his twitter will verify what he's saying, here.
bestnameever 7y ago
What else does this senator stand for? Does it even matter? Honestly, I'm not really sure if Google should be basing their donations on just one issue.
bobbytran 7y ago
The ex-Mozilla CEO was shit-canned for much less. I'm surprised so many here on HN support this.
- sundarurfriend 7y ago
  Yeah, I wonder if the political sentiment has turned so much in the last decade in the US, or just HN doing its usual thing of being contrarian towards the headline news. How was the Brandon Eich issue received here, what was the overall sentiment?
- ddxxdd 7y ago
  Try to look at the forest instead of any individual tree. The ex-Mozilla CEO donated to an anti-gay marriage SuperPAC; the entire existence of that SuperPAC was 100% dedicated to opposition to gay marriage. Google donated to a candidate that has voted on hundreds of different bills; less than 1% of his votes are under scrutiny in this Twitter thread.
  - bobbytran 7y ago
    Do you have proof that the SuperPACs only purpose was to oppose gay marriage? He donated a very small amount of personal money as opposed to an entire company making donations.
    - BrendanEich 7y ago
      See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Super_PACs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Sup... and https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colbert-gets-a-super-pac-so-what-are-they/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colbert-gets-a-super-pac-so-wha.... Citizens United (2010) after SpeechNow (2009) created Super-PACs. Prop 8 was on the CA ballot in 2008. So the comment above is technically wrong to use "Super-PAC", which was coined in 2010, but it sounds scarier than PAC. The double standard and special pleading for Google stink.
leftyted 7y ago
Google is not a group of people who decided to associate based on their shared values. That was always bullshit, and I'm unsure why anyone took it seriously. If you fell for it, that's on you. Google should never have talked about "pride" or "our shared values". It's very clear that they inherited that stuff from universities, where garbled nonsense about "safety," "this is our home," and "no place for hate" have become institutionalized. Mature companies led by adults know to avoid this minefield. All of that aside, the attitude evinced by this post is counterproductive. Politics is about persuasion. If you want to persuade (and not just preach to the converted), you have to understand the other perspective. If all you can do is dismiss people as "indefensible," you don't understand them, and you won't convince them. You'll come off as nasty, entitled, arrogant, and ideological. You know, the kind of person who commits code to push their political agenda, spies on their coworkers, or spams some lawyer they disapprove of with emails.
- dom2 7y ago
  I assume to tell the gay people in your life that you would rather they didn't exist? When you support money flowing to politicians who support policies like conversion camps, the message you are sending is clear. If Google or others want to convince politicians who support backwards policies to change their ways, they can still engage with them, but there is absolutely no need to financially support then.
  - imustbeevil 7y ago
    > I assume to tell the gay people in your life that you would rather they didn't exist? That's a weird assumption to make. What I would assume is that the Senator has any other position that Google finds more profitable than an alternative Senator. It would be kind of crazy to think Google is directly supporting conversion therapy, or that anyone on this forum would.
    - dom2 7y ago
      These political donations have externalities beyond the single policy that a person, Google, or any company may be donating for. If Google absolutely had to donate to one of several politicians and this was the lesser evil, that would be understandable. This is not the case. Companies don't need to donate to have political influence: Apple doesn't and they do fine. Supporting a politician financially who also happens to support conversion camps in the end is still supporting all those policies, whether or not that was the initial intent.
methodiosmel 7y ago
Get over it people! Sheesh!

43 points by sna1l 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

I've been doing Twitter threads of Google's political giving for a while; they donate to a large number of terrible people. I try to single out politicians with records that are antithetical to basic values Google employees share, or that the company advertises (like its ostentatious committment to #pride), not just things I politically disagree with. To head off some comments that always come up: 1. Like most corporate PACs, Google gives fairly evenly to politicians in both parties. I don't think donations to Democrats "cancel out" donations to indefensible figures like Scalise, or Nunes, any more than giving money to the NAACP cancels out a donation to the KKK. 2. Google's giving is not indiscriminate, but tactical and highly targeted. In particular, they don't just give to everyone across the board like the sugar lobby. 3. The dollar figures are small because they are capped by statute. At most, Google can give one politician $10,000 in an election cycle. This is absolutely dwarfed in size by Google's D.C. lobbying operation, which can't contribute directly to campaigns but finds many ways to be influential. 4. This money is donated by employees who opt in, but is allocated by the company. Googlers have no input into the targeting and timing of these donations; it's decided by the office of public policy. 5. An American corporation can do fine without a PAC. Apple and IBM don't have one. Microsoft won a giant Pentagon cloud computing contract while its political giving was suspended. With that said, some further threads: November 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1197253535735267328 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1197253535735267328 August 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164031478897901573 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1164031478897901573 June 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314 April 2019: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1119751992597835776 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1119751992597835776

supercanuck 7y ago
Tl;dr Google will donate to whatever terrible person will further their interest and we only care because they pretended to not be evil a decade a go.
- blfr 7y ago
  Google's "don't be evil" clearly meant "don't become Microsoft." It was never a call for general moral betterment.
  - serf 7y ago
    >Google's "don't be evil" clearly meant "don't become Microsoft." yeah, and look and what a good job they're doing -- user-agent discrimination like the good old IE days, and talk of ongoing anti-trust probes.
    - blfr 7y ago
      They are doing pretty well imho. They offer the world a massively popular open source mobile operating system, a massively popular open source browser, they seriously pushed user security with influence over practices, software, and Project Zero, and all their services work well with on my Linux systems. Yes, the monopoly and censorship stuff is very worrisome but on the tech side they are undeniably better than Microsoft.
    - A_Parr 7y ago
      If they do the same thing Microsoft did, but get away with it, they've clearly not become Microsoft.
  - supercanuck 7y ago
    It was about being trustworthy with people’s information.
blfr 7y ago
This money is donated by employees who opt in Why do they opt in? If they wanted to donate to a politician, they always can. Why this setup?

SomaticPirate 7y ago

$2,500 hardly seems a large donation from a behemoth like Google. It’s fairly common practice in the Fortune 50s to donate to any politician who might even have a glance at any potential legislation that could affect them. This would be more impactful if Google was one of the only large companies that donated.

eli 7y ago
This common practice is bad. I agree that it is sad how cheaply influence can be bought. Why else would it be so common?
maxerickson 7y ago
Yes, it's more a demonstration of principles than anything else.
idlewords 7y ago
The donations are capped by law at $10K, so they are all "small" in that sense.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> $2,500 hardly seems a large donation from a behemoth like Google. It's half the legal maximum from a PAC (this was from a Google PAC; Google per se can't legally donate anything).

derp_dee_derp 7y ago

Who cares? Google and every other large corporation donate to all the candidates covering the entire spectrum of politics. It's a hedge bet strategy focused in risk management: the hope is to have influence over whoever so happens to be politically popular at any given time.

idlewords 7y ago
You're wrong twice within the first twenty words. Google doesn't donate to all candidates, and there are U.S. corporations of its size that don't make political contributions at all.
- twojacobtwo 7y ago
  Could you name one or two of those that are Google's (Alphabet's) size don't contribute? That seems highly unlikely in the US.
  - mjg59 7y ago
    Apple? IBM?
  - laurencerowe 7y ago
    Apple and IBM.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > Could you name one or two of those that are Google's (Alphabet's) size don't contribute? All of them, including Google, because they are legally prohibited from it. Google's PAC donates, but not with Google funds, because corporate PAC donations can't come from corporate treasury funds. There are some large companies that lobby but don't operate PACs (IBM and Apple for instance.) It's debatable whether this is better or not, but it's certainly a different shape of political engagement.
- kick 7y ago
  'idlewords has actually done a great job of getting tech workers to pressure their employers into ceasing the political donations. It's inspiring to see someone manage to make a dent like he has. A quick brush on his twitter will verify what he's saying, here.

bestnameever 7y ago

What else does this senator stand for? Does it even matter? Honestly, I'm not really sure if Google should be basing their donations on just one issue.

bobbytran 7y ago

The ex-Mozilla CEO was shit-canned for much less. I'm surprised so many here on HN support this.

sundarurfriend 7y ago
Yeah, I wonder if the political sentiment has turned so much in the last decade in the US, or just HN doing its usual thing of being contrarian towards the headline news. How was the Brandon Eich issue received here, what was the overall sentiment?
ddxxdd 7y ago
Try to look at the forest instead of any individual tree. The ex-Mozilla CEO donated to an anti-gay marriage SuperPAC; the entire existence of that SuperPAC was 100% dedicated to opposition to gay marriage. Google donated to a candidate that has voted on hundreds of different bills; less than 1% of his votes are under scrutiny in this Twitter thread.
- bobbytran 7y ago
  Do you have proof that the SuperPACs only purpose was to oppose gay marriage? He donated a very small amount of personal money as opposed to an entire company making donations.
  - BrendanEich 7y ago
    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Super_PACs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee#Sup... and https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colbert-gets-a-super-pac-so-what-are-they/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/colbert-gets-a-super-pac-so-wha.... Citizens United (2010) after SpeechNow (2009) created Super-PACs. Prop 8 was on the CA ballot in 2008. So the comment above is technically wrong to use "Super-PAC", which was coined in 2010, but it sounds scarier than PAC. The double standard and special pleading for Google stink.

leftyted 7y ago

Google is not a group of people who decided to associate based on their shared values. That was always bullshit, and I'm unsure why anyone took it seriously. If you fell for it, that's on you. Google should never have talked about "pride" or "our shared values". It's very clear that they inherited that stuff from universities, where garbled nonsense about "safety," "this is our home," and "no place for hate" have become institutionalized. Mature companies led by adults know to avoid this minefield. All of that aside, the attitude evinced by this post is counterproductive. Politics is about persuasion. If you want to persuade (and not just preach to the converted), you have to understand the other perspective. If all you can do is dismiss people as "indefensible," you don't understand them, and you won't convince them. You'll come off as nasty, entitled, arrogant, and ideological. You know, the kind of person who commits code to push their political agenda, spies on their coworkers, or spams some lawyer they disapprove of with emails.

dom2 7y ago
I assume to tell the gay people in your life that you would rather they didn't exist? When you support money flowing to politicians who support policies like conversion camps, the message you are sending is clear. If Google or others want to convince politicians who support backwards policies to change their ways, they can still engage with them, but there is absolutely no need to financially support then.
- imustbeevil 7y ago
  > I assume to tell the gay people in your life that you would rather they didn't exist? That's a weird assumption to make. What I would assume is that the Senator has any other position that Google finds more profitable than an alternative Senator. It would be kind of crazy to think Google is directly supporting conversion therapy, or that anyone on this forum would.
  - dom2 7y ago
    These political donations have externalities beyond the single policy that a person, Google, or any company may be donating for. If Google absolutely had to donate to one of several politicians and this was the lesser evil, that would be understandable. This is not the case. Companies don't need to donate to have political influence: Apple doesn't and they do fine. Supporting a politician financially who also happens to support conversion camps in the end is still supporting all those policies, whether or not that was the initial intent.

methodiosmel 7y ago

Get over it people! Sheesh!