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Microsoft has embedded itself deeply into the democratic party through huge PAC donations over decades. If anyone has sway with the democratic appointed FTC, i

Microsoft has embedded itself deeply into the democratic party through huge PAC donations over decades. If anyone has sway with the democratic appointed FTC, it would be them. Acquiring AWS would absolutely be the kind of emergency/pull out every stop to make it happen event worth tapping every connection (and then some) to make happen. Overnight they would go from scrappy second place to the dominant provider of all cloud computing on the planet. Far more dumb mergers were greenlit in the past like AOL/Time Warner.

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mikeyouse 4y ago
Aside from a general lack of understanding of PAC funding, I take it you're unfamiliar with the work of Lina Khan who's the chair of this FTC? https://siliconangle.com/2021/12/23/report-ftc-chair-lina-khan-advancing-investigation-aws/ https://siliconangle.com/2021/12/23/report-ftc-chair-lina-kh... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/technology/lina-khan-ftc-microsoft-activision.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/technology/lina-khan-ftc-...
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?toprecipcycle=2020&contribcycle=2022&lobcycle=2022&outspendcycle=2022&id=d000000115&topnumcycle=2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?topr... In the 2020 presidential election year Microsoft donated over 21 million dollars, almost all to democrats and the Biden campaign. They were the 26th largest donor, period. Biden appointed Lina Khan, she owes her job to him (and he can choose not to appoint her again!). Biden owes a substantial amount of his presidential campaign funding to Microsoft... not hard to connect the dots here. Go back decades--Hillary Clinton, Obama, Gore, etc. and Microsoft was always been donating enormous amounts of money to democratic candidates.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Again, you should really read up on what a PAC is before you form your conspiracy theories. Those are donations from Microsoft employees - not from the company, hence the big bold warning label: "NOTE: Organizations themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees."
  - rnk 4y ago
    Wow, the 26th largest donor, that sounds like a threat to democracy. Microsoft also gives money to republicans. How about an actual threat, the Koch family (one of the infamous brothers died), who by themselves have a budget about the same size as the entire us republican party, and have taken it upon themselves to select the next republican presidential candidate - and they will back that up with enormous spending. Regardless of your views on the political parties specific choices, it's a bad idea for a private group to control (or credibly attempt to control) who can run for president - this is fundamentally different than microsoft's donations (even if I don't like that corporations are putting money into politics). Koch have had a lot of success in setting the previous few decade's political framework about how the us looked at international trade, along with influencing the libertarian party (David Koch was the Libertarian VP candidate in 1980, but had enormous impact on that movement over time).

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mikeyouse 4y ago

Aside from a general lack of understanding of PAC funding, I take it you're unfamiliar with the work of Lina Khan who's the chair of this FTC? https://siliconangle.com/2021/12/23/report-ftc-chair-lina-khan-advancing-investigation-aws/ https://siliconangle.com/2021/12/23/report-ftc-chair-lina-kh... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/technology/lina-khan-ftc-microsoft-activision.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/technology/lina-khan-ftc-...

qbasic_forever 4y ago
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?toprecipcycle=2020&contribcycle=2022&lobcycle=2022&outspendcycle=2022&id=d000000115&topnumcycle=2020 https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/microsoft-corp/summary?topr... In the 2020 presidential election year Microsoft donated over 21 million dollars, almost all to democrats and the Biden campaign. They were the 26th largest donor, period. Biden appointed Lina Khan, she owes her job to him (and he can choose not to appoint her again!). Biden owes a substantial amount of his presidential campaign funding to Microsoft... not hard to connect the dots here. Go back decades--Hillary Clinton, Obama, Gore, etc. and Microsoft was always been donating enormous amounts of money to democratic candidates.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Again, you should really read up on what a PAC is before you form your conspiracy theories. Those are donations from Microsoft employees - not from the company, hence the big bold warning label: "NOTE: Organizations themselves cannot contribute to candidates and party committees."
- rnk 4y ago
  Wow, the 26th largest donor, that sounds like a threat to democracy. Microsoft also gives money to republicans. How about an actual threat, the Koch family (one of the infamous brothers died), who by themselves have a budget about the same size as the entire us republican party, and have taken it upon themselves to select the next republican presidential candidate - and they will back that up with enormous spending. Regardless of your views on the political parties specific choices, it's a bad idea for a private group to control (or credibly attempt to control) who can run for president - this is fundamentally different than microsoft's donations (even if I don't like that corporations are putting money into politics). Koch have had a lot of success in setting the previous few decade's political framework about how the us looked at international trade, along with influencing the libertarian party (David Koch was the Libertarian VP candidate in 1980, but had enormous impact on that movement over time).