What Happened To Obama's Open Source Adviser? 296
gov_coder writes "Back in January of 2009, various news articles announced that former Sun CEO Scott McNealy was to become the Obama administration's Open Source Technology adviser. Currently, however, a search for Scott on the whitehouse.gov website yields zero results. Searching a bit more, I found that Scott is currently working on CurriWiki, a kind of Wikipedia for school curriculum. So my question is, what happened? Did some lobbyist block the appointment? Did Scott decide his other activities were more important? Scott, if you are out there — please tell us what happened. There are many people working in government IT, such as myself, who were really excited about the possibilities of an expanded role for open source software in government, and are now wondering what went wrong."
Maybe it was all for show? (Score:2, Interesting)
Confirmation hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Confirmation hell? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a Republican and I agree, it has gotten stupid.
It was stupid when the liberals were going after Bush following his reelection, but this is extra stupid.
Re:Sun's "open" play was never convincing for me (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Let's check the timeline (Score:2, Interesting)
Bill and Melinda Gates
(2003-07 GIVEN OR PLEDGED (MILLIONS)) - 3,519
(ESTIMATED LIFETIME GIVING* (MILLIONS)) - 28,144
Net Worth 59 Billion
Percentage 48%
What is the "Estimated Lifetime giving" ? All the other Philanthropists have a much smaller difference between estimated and given. The article says that the estimated is "*Based on public records and interviews with donors"
So what I get from this is that there is a record of 3.5 billion given but when asked in a interview Bill said he has given away 28 billion. Yeah, sure Billy, and I gave 2 trillion to orphans last year.
Also is that money from them personally or money they have raised thru the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation?
I hate to be petty but it bugs me when a rich guy gets a bunch of kudos for giving away money that he could not possibly spend in his lifetime yet poor slobs who proportionally give a lot more aren't even recognized.
Re:Confirmation hell? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are you suggesting that Democrats didn't go nuts with Bush hate, or that Republicans didn't go nuts with Clinton hate?
To this level? No. Have a look at the Senate voting history [senate.gov]. Go to 2010 and click on a few, scroll down to the senators list. Republicans are always, without fail, either the exact opposite of the majority of Democrats (usually Nay) or Not Voting. Now go back and click on 2005. Pick any issue you want, and either some Democrats voted with Republicans or vice versa. It's not just people's imagination, the country really is more polarized than ever.
And the worst part about it is that the rest of your post is correct.
Re:Confirmation hell? (Score:4, Interesting)
Go to 2010 and click on a few, scroll down to the senators list. Republicans are always, without fail, either the exact opposite of the majority of Democrats (usually Nay) or Not Voting.
I hate to bring it up, but correlation != causation ;) No, what I mean is this: it could be that the agenda for 2010 by Democrats happen to be things Republicans particularly oppose, thus they will be the "exact opposite." Back in 2005, perhaps the agenda on the floor was not quite so divisive.
In other words, you can't just expect two parties to ALWAYS be bipartisan on EVERY issue or set of issues. I would not call Democrats "partisan" because a Republican-controlled senate and house happened to start bringing up bills that Democrats really, really, really dislike. I don't expect them to ignore their conscience (do politicians have those? ;) ) simply in the name of "bipartisanship."
And frankly, it would appear that the ignore-what-you-really-think-and-just-vote-with-us kind of bipartisanship is the only kind of bipartisanship that is acceptable to Democrats at the moment. Could be the only kind Republicans like, too, but Republicans aren't the one that are in the majority and thus are able to force the issue, bipartisan or not... thus I am more critical of Democrats right now, because they are the ones in the majority :)
Re:Confirmation hell? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not a lobbyist (Score:5, Interesting)
+1, the EFF is a lobby.
Re:Confirmation hell? (Score:3, Interesting)
If you look at the statistics for voting and filibusters, you will see that you are completely wrong.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/opinion/2010/01/25/how-the-filibuster-changed-and-brought-tyranny-of-the-minority.html [usnews.com]
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/index.ssf/2010/02/filibuster_abuse_founding_fath.html [pennlive.com]
and a good graph showing just how wrong you are, here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_(United_States_Senate) [wikipedia.org]
You are drawing a false equivalency when you claim that both parties do it, perhaps in a misguided attempt to appear balanced. Both sides have NOT been doing the same thing for decades. This is new, unprecedented, and totally destructive to good governance. The Republicans appear to want to destroy the country in order to save it.
Re:And the answer is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If only Obama knew.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Not a lobbyist (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a good reason why there was meant to be a representative for every 30,000 people. I realize that is over 11,500 representatives today if we still followed the original constitution, but look at the staff of the average representative. How many representatives do you think have over 27 staff members? Why can't we just elect all of them? Make the districts smaller and maybe I won't be waiting around with nearly 2 million other people waiting to be heard by MY representative.
Lobbyists aside, only 3% of congress is elected... hmmm... basically leaving the Federal government completely unregulated, unaccountable, and hidden from public watch. Hell, there is a good argument there that lobbyists are far better regulated than our congress.