President Obama Wants A ‘Cool’ Phone

 

There’s a good chance that your office or home is more tricked out, tech-wise, than the Oval Office. President Obama complained yesterday, in what the AP calls “off-the-cuff remarks,” that what the Oval Office lacks is a “really cool phone.” Can someone get the president a Droid or something?
We’ve known from some time now that Obama is a bit of a BlackBerry addict, but apparently his technological nous doesn’t transfer to the Oval Office. He expressed remorse at the lack of “fancy buttons and stuff.”
It’s like, come on! I’m the president here!

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Obama: I Want People To Feel The Same About The Next Internet Breakthrough As They Did About The Moonwalk

Obama spent a considerable amount of time preaching to the choir at today’s Facebook Town Hall event, first bringing up Intel founder and Hungarian immigrant Andy Grove as an example of the kind of immigrant the US should be focused on retaining, in a response to a question about Immigration Reform and the Dream Act Education.

“We’ve got ambitious people from all around the world, that come here because they have a new idea … If we’ve got smart people who want to come here and start businesses, who’ve got PhDs in math and science and computer science. Why wouldn’t we want them to stay? … These are job generators,” the President said.

Then in response to a later question about Education reform, Obama said he was inspired by how many smart people were here in Silicon Valley and referred to the ongoing Silicon Valley talent crunch as reason for cultivating the technological talent we’ve got at home, “I always hear stories about how we can’t find engineers, and that’s why we’re emphasizing Math and Science … We want to start making Science cool. I want people to feel about the next big energy breakthrough and the next big Internet breakthrough the same way they felt about the moonwalk.”

Sitting here at Facebook Headquarters watching the President of the United States address constituents via Facebook, and have those constituents provide commentary via Twitter, the utter sanity of this statement struck me. Why aren’t Internet achievements treated as miraculously as Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong’s lunar footsteps on July 20, 1969?

“That’s one small tweet for a man, one giant status update for mankind …”

Well how do we start? The president emphasized that Education reform, which he is pursuing in one way through the Zuckerberg-approved  “Race to the Top” initiative, needs to emphasize STEM fundamentals, or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics for females and minorities. “There’s got to be a shift in American culture when we realize this stuff is important,” he said.

He continued, “We’ve got to lift our game up when it comes to science, math and technology. That’s hopefully greatest legacy I can have as President of the United States.”

The president peppered his talks with zingers about how wealthier people like Zuckerberg should have to pay more taxes, but as Semil Shah points out, at a $70B valuation, Zuck’s approximately 24% Facebook stake puts him at less $16.8 billion, making roughly 9,880 times more than the $1.7 million the Obamas raked in last year.

In a time of rampant unemployment and $14 trillion in National Debt, if that’s not a big argument for teaching kids how to code, I don’t know what is.

Image: @SuePolinsky

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After A Full Afternoon At Facebook, Obama Collects Largesse From Tech Elite

My mother flew from San Francisco to Seattle today, and was annoyed to be kept sitting on the runway for two hours while President Obama flew into town. “How rude,” she said. Obama probably shouldn’t count on her vote when he’s up for reelection.

But I’m guessing the trip was worth it anyway. Besides pissing off my mother, he entertained the rapturous digerati at a Facebook town hall meeting today. Afterwards, though, it was back to the business of raising money.

And the tech elite did not disappoint.

Seventy or so CEO and finance types congregated at the San Francisco home of Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff, paying $35,000 each for a steak dinner with the president, plus a photo opp. Yes, I did the math, too. That’s $2.5 million. Not bad for a day’s work, even when you factor in disappointing my mom. It probably almost made a dent in the government’s security and other expenses in sending him out here.

Among the techy attendees: Drew Houston (Dropbox), Jeremy Stoppelman (Yelp), Marissa Mayer, Craig Newmark, Jonathan Kaplan (presumably still lamenting the end of Flip), Ron Conway, Frank Quattrone and others. Will.i.am was also there, as was Stevie Wonder (who sang for the president).

What’s fascinating to me is how eagerly all these fabulously wealthy men and women look forward to another term for Obama. He’s going to tax these people until they cry, and then tax them some more.

And then I realize, these people aren’t really getting taxed. That’s because they’ve already made their money, and it sits safe and untaxed in whatever investments they’ve chosen. That’s because there’s no wealth tax in the U.S. like some European countries have implemented. All that gets taxed is the income and the capital gain. The big wealth sits untouched.

I wonder how eager they’d all be if Obama suggested a tax on accumulated wealth. Say 1% to start things off. And like any progressive tax, the people in that room would pay far more. Maybe 5% for a billionaire. That’s just $50 million a year. And they can more than afford it, right? Enough with Silicon Valley coasting along, riding on the backs of those hard working people in Washington. It’s time to pay up, Silicon Valley. Our leaders just said so.

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