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A comment on Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate Lobbyists. Parent comment

Re:Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate L... by ocdtrekkie on Friday September 27, 2019 @10:38AM (#21092470)
Barack Obama was so closely associated with Google, it isn't even remotely funny. The amount of interaction between Google and his administration is unprecedented; he could've been considered an employee.

Suffice to say, he wasn't going to introduce a way to give the government objective understanding of issues around Google's monopoly.

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Re:Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate L... by dekhn on Friday September 27, 2019 @10:44AM (#21092536)
I really had to chuckle when a coworker of mine called him "Barry" and then it turned out she had worked for him and that's what he asked his closest workers and friends to call him.

Then I had to chuckle when several of my coworkers took leaves (fully supported by the leadership) to help out running the Obama infrastructure under Eric Schmidt. At times they got to fly between Chicago and SF on Eric's personal plane. Eventually several of those people ended up working for him (it's always weird when your ex-manager ends up leading a government department).

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Re:Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate L... by creaghpatr on Friday September 27, 2019 @10:40AM (#21092487)
True, he hired his CTO straight out of Google. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megan_Smith
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Re:Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate L... by Operyl on Friday September 27, 2019 @10:44AM (#21092535)
At first I thought you had a typo, but I'll be damned, I didn't even realize that was a position in the Executive branch.. I have now found my afternoon research project for the day.
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Re:Strengthening Congressional Independence from Corporate L... by toxican on Friday September 27, 2019 @10:52AM (#21092638)
My kneejerk reaction is that the Google of 2008, even 2012, isn't the same Google of 2019. Maybe that's political bias talking.

All the same, not crazy about politicians and corporations being so cozy, regardless of affiliation.

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