Steve jobs told Obama he would be a one termer for over-regulating business.

[dameocrat67]

I have always thought kossack admiration for jobs and for apple products was misplaced.

Jobs' Meeting With Obama

Jobs, who was known for his prickly, stubborn personality, almost missed meeting President Obama in the fall of 2010 because he insisted that the president personally ask him for a meeting. Though his wife told him that Obama "was really psyched to meet with you," Jobs insisted on the personal invitation, and the standoff lasted for five days. When he finally relented and they met at the Westin San Francisco Airport, Jobs was characteristically blunt. He seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.

"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.

Jobs also criticized America's education system, saying it was "crippled by union work rules," noted Isaacson. "Until the teachers' unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform." Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.

Aiding Obama's Reelection Campaign Jobs suggested that Obama meet six or seven other CEOs who could express the needs of innovative businesses -- but when White House aides added more names to the list, Jobs insisted that it was growing too big and that "he had no intention of coming." In preparation for the dinner, Jobs exhibited his notorious attention to detail, telling venture capitalist John Doerr that the menu of shrimp, cod and lentil salad was "far too fancy" and objecting to a chocolate truffle dessert. But he was overruled by the White House, which cited the president's fondness for crea........http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/20/steve-jobs-biography-obama_n_1022786.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003

Seems like most of the dems that expected deference to him were antilabor wealthy centrists anyway, but more than a few regular progressive display deference as well. Look at all the apple products at #ows. He treated the foxconn workers abysmally, so badly that many committed suicide. What do you want to bet those regulations that keep him from treating American workers that way are the ones he objected to. http://is.gd/vsHqZz I am guessing he also objected to the sort of air quality regulation that keep us from being China too. http://is.gd/jHC0h1 The kind the keep pollution from getting so bad that you clothes turn black from all the smog. I wonder if his cancer was caused by hanging out at the foxconn factory.

[dkf]

1. Lol. He went all type A on the Prez? Funny.

[roguevalley]

17. well, obviously his !BRILLIANCE! and !OMNIPOTENCE! was

a myth. Sort of like his !IMMORTALITY!.

[entropic]

2. meh

Apple's products are nice. Jobs was bright and talented. Maybe he turned conservative. Maybe he was just grumpy because he was dying.

Don't care much. I'll continue to buy his company's products.

[dameocrat67]

3. I will use linux on my pc, spend alot less money

and have a clearer conscience. I wish the teachers unions would start promoting linux in the school system. Silicon valley is universally hostile to them and wants to replace them with computers. It would save taxpayers far more money that paying corrupt ceos to takeover the schools.

[entropic]

18. my conscience is always clear.

I use Linux when I want to tinker. Mac or PC when I want something that actually has a decent software base.

[dameocrat67]

19. says somone that does not care about workers or the truth.

n/t

[entropic]

21. Who's "Somone"?

lol

[glinda]

4. Welcome to DU! I have seen sick people do that. Turn conservative.

[entropic]

20. dying ain't fun.

If I have to weigh an entire life against some nasty shit said in the fading years of this guy's life, I know what side I'll weight more heavily.

But if it helps people to feel all pure and whatnot to give Jobs over to their three minute hate, more power to them. Doesn't effect me, or Apple for that matter, at all.

[dameocrat67]

23. he did not have brain cancer and there is no evidence he was liberal

all life. he authorized this biography. i would think dying would make you more liberal since god knows you dont need more money but i guess he wanted to insure his kids would have lots of foxconn slaves to order around.

[dkf]

31. He was a Buddhist.

[dameocrat67]

33. so he will experience karma instead of judgment.

that would make me a little kinder too.

[Vicar In A Tutu]

87. Almost all of his campaign donations were D and he wanted to work on both Obama's campaigns

I don't know exactly what regulations he wanted loosened, but I do know that if he believed so vehemently in NONE that he wouldn't be wanting to help Obama get re-elected given the deregulation fetish of the GOP / Kochs.

[wiredshut]

50. It's not a matter of "hate", rather perspecitive...

Nothing wrong with getting a grip on what this man did - and didn't - do. While many have jumped to glorify Jobs, this is directly proportional, and improperly aligned with his vast wealth. With such wealth, one MUST be a "genius", eh? He was in the right place at the right time, with the right resources. And for starters, Steve Wozniak was the real wizard. Woz was putting computers together, using kits, when Jobs came along. Jobs genuinely liked it, so it seems. And combined with Woz, he was probably more of the energetic business driver to mass produce their creations.

My total lack of respect for Jobs was his failure to create (ahem) jobs...in the U.S. Sure, Apple has 50k employees. It should be 150k. Instead he sold out to Wall St. and the sleazy way of doing business today, improving the bottom line - by increasing employment in China. If he was deserving of a true, American legacy, he would have developed manufacturing in the U.S. So your profits drop. There is something to life besides money (i.e. materialism). Short of recognizing this, it would be no surprise if he lacked peace of mind.

[Wind Dancer]

73. Well said!

Welcome to DU! :hi:

[Mojorabbit]

25. I have seen the opposite

When I worked as a nurse most people looked back on their lives and had a huge change of heart toward human kindness and compassion, not the other way around. It seems like a weird story to me but maybe he was all about the money and screw who he crushed to get there and all about squeezing out the profit at the end. I have no idea.

[zalinda]

40. I would think that he was angry

mainly at himself, for not getting medical help before it was too late. Anger, whether at yourself or others, can come out in twisted ways. I don't know whether he was progressive or conservative, but I tend to forgive those who lash out before their inevitable death.

zalinda

[dameocrat67]

41. The outsourcing started before he was dying

and if he was in such bad shape he should have retired.

[Mojorabbit]

44. I understand lashing out also

but this doesn't seem to fit that definiation. This was business and it isn't something I saw a lot of in my patients that were on their way out. They were more concerned with relationship issues and spiritual issues and not business regulations but then again none were a head of a huge corporation either.

[tblue]

5. The body ain't even cold.

Most geniuses are odd birds. I worked at Apple directly because of Steve Jobs, but I owe him no particular allegiance. I admire his accomplishments and I love Apple products. Jobs never claimed he was a saint, but he was very progressive in other ways. He was bullheaded when it came to business and made choices I would never make. But I don't worship idols, or Jobs, or Obama, and I'd rather wait a few weeks before I'd even consider trashing someone who just passed away.

[dameocrat67]

6. It was a sympathetic biography

the writer supports Jobss view that businesses are over-regulated.

[Fumesucker]

8. Poor BP, my heart bleeds for them..

Forced to do a half assed cleanup of the mess they made in the GOM due to their greed and carelessness.

:cry:

[slay]

46. Well... I Can't Wait

fuck him - capitalist threatening asshole scumbag willing to do anything for profit. i will never own an apple product - and i recommend jailbreaking the shit out of um if you have um. all the money in the world couldn't buy him a longer life - wonder if he looked back during those final days and thought about how many people he fucked over. i doubt it.

[leftstreet]

7. 'crippled by union work rules' Why do these rich fucks always start messing with the working classes

Fuck him

[dameocrat67]

10. I dont know. It is really depressing

They simply lose the ability to empathize with anyone. It is definately silicon valleys hostility to the teachers unions that is the reason Obama justifies the continued attacks. Ironically he probably will be a one-termer because I suspect the anger of the mistreated teachers is the reason so many liberals dont give a crap whether he wins or loses. It isnt just Jobs either. It is also Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and the heads of google that are funding these attacks on the teachers unions. I am guessing Silicon Valley are the ones pushing outsourcing as well.

[leftstreet]

13. Yep. All of them. Their arrogance and sense of entitlement is puke worthy

And their zeal for destroying public education seems pathological

They need to leave working class people alone

[slay]

47. +1

indeed

[Donnachaidh]

9. all the Jobs worship is misguided, evidently

He sounds as if he was as much of a fascist as the Koch Brothers. :shrug:

He certainly sells expensive toys to lemmings. :rofl:

[Fumesucker]

11. Yeah, I think it's pretty funny..

I suspect this is going to cause a little existential conflict in some folks around here.

:rofl:

[dameocrat67]

12. Well if the foxconn suicides didnt do it, I am not sure much will

However, he never spelled out his antiunion views in public and i suspect that many latte centrists rationalized that he did not know what was happending at his Chinese sweat shops.

For those who think this book was an attack on Jobs, I would point out that Jobs specifically requested this biography be made of him. He was not embarrassed of these views.

[eShirl]

51. +1

[Donnachaidh]

57. that's what makes this even more ironic, and embarrassing to all his *followers*

The guy was an obvious tool. And with his known *control* issues, no one with functioning brain cells can actually believe that he did NOT know of the conditions in the warehouses, and that he didn't know from the very first suicide what was happening. And did NOTHING.

But like any other money-grubbing shark he ignored the problem, didn't acknowledge it publicly - and the toy lemmings fall all over themselves making excuses for a guy they want to canonize for supplying their electronic fixes.

Steve's on a spit in hell, if there is such a place. On a slow roll.... :shrug:

[dameocrat67]

78. i believe in purgatory

noone deserves hell, but I am really sick of ceo worship and I think it is very destructive because it seems like they all turn destructively right wing.

[Vicar In A Tutu]

86. Foxconn has a suicide rate lower than the Chinese average

Which in turn is lower than the French average. Clearly I wouldn't want to work there,but that is a tired, lazy stick with which to beat Apple. Not to mention the fact that dozens of other companies use the facilities. You very likely have something assembled there to some extent.

[joshcryer]

14. Jobs wanted to bring Chinese factories here? Who would've thought.

[MrSlayer]

15. When I said this on the day he died, I was called a "jealous hater".

Fuck that guy, seriously. Jobs was a fucking creep just like most of the 1%ers. All about the money, fuck the people.

[JVS]

16. Steve Jobs was an asshole. I don't see why this is so hard for people to grasp.

[HughBeaumont]

56. It's probably for the same reason conservatives don't want to believe Bewsh and Reagan sucked.

But, there it is.

Anyone who fires someone on the way down an elevator can't be all that great a person, yet his fans will apologize for it still, stating "well, everyone has their quirks, and he was a perfectionist with high standards, and Apple was bloated, and he didn't like to waste anything, and, and, and, etc"

Bunch o horseshit. A corporatist shitbag in a black turtleneck and jeans is still a corporatist shitbag.

[OHdem10]

22. So how many other Transnationals have learned to love paying

slave wages, having no "EPA, out of control"--Polution
so thick, people must wear masks, No unions setting
standards for labor practices (Workers in China work
long hours in substandard working environment

Listen carefully and count how many times the Republicans
repeat over and over, we must be competitive(with China).

[ellisonz]

24. You misquoted Jobs...

Something like - Steve Jobs told Obama he would be a one termer because of failing economy

would be way more accurate than:

Steve jobs told Obama he would be a one termer for over-regulating business.

[dameocrat67]

27. since the article says nothing about a failing economy

and mentions businesses having to put up with regulations they dont have to put up with in China, I would say pot meet kettle.

[ellisonz]

28. Not really...

"Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them."

The vast majority of "regulations and unnecessary costs" predated the Obama presidency.

[Mosby]

80. Uncessesary costs?

like minimum wages, payroll taxes and osha laws.

Jobs is just another super rich fuck who only cared aout where his next billion came from.

fuck him.

[Selatius]

34. Then Obama fails regardless the way the coin falls.

Because if it isn't corporations including Apple outsourcing manufacturing capacity to China because they insist they're being over-regulated instead of the notion that they're practicing global labor arbitrage, it's the fact that George W. Bush left a steaming pile of shit on the US economy by deregulating so much of it and shifting the tax burden down the income ladder that it made it next to impossible for Obama to fix. If it's one or the other, then there's no good outcome. Either way, Apple wasn't exactly on the list of corporations helping to bring about a better outcome for America.

[ellisonz]

38. Agreed.

I just like accuracy.

[wiredshut]

45. Another angle...

Obama might be a one termer if he can not fill the giant hole of economic disaster created by Republicants. And the UN-PATRIOTIC Republicants are doing everything to block progress.

[ellisonz]

48. Thank you!

Welcome to DU!

:donut:

[Awsi Dooger]

26. Only a supreme idiot overreacts to the last item on the plate

Jobs supported Obama but by all accounts Obama was exactly the type of person who Jobs abhorred at Apple or in business dealings, someone who focused on all the reasons that something could not be done.

I'm hardly surprised Jobs -- knowing he had little time -- tried shock therapy, telling Obama face to face he would be a one termer. Most likely he'll be proven correct once again. We hardly know the exact context of the remark.

We can define Jobs by this article/book or everything else in his 56 years, including Apple's blue slant compared to virtually every major corporation. Notice that Jobs wanted to craft Obama's ad campaign in both 2008 and 2012. As a gambler I'd love to bet it would have been superior to whatever desperate negative version we're sure to see.

And BTW, the "overpriced hardware, blah, blah, blah" theme is pure simpleton. I remember laughing at posters here who used that angle 8 or 9 years ago, particularly in the Lounge. I repeatedly told them they could continue to abuse that empty slant, or buy Apple stock, as I did beginning in the late '90s, certain that Steve Jobs would out think and out maneuver the PC clods. :rofl:

[FarCenter]

55. Jobs was direct, abrasive and not deferential in his intereactions with others

So whatever he told Obama was his assessment of the situation as it existed at the time.

I don't thing Apple led in the outsourcing of manufacture of personal computers to the Far East. That started in the '90s at the latest. And the manufacture of most consumer electronics had shifted overseas before that.

[ThoughtCriminal]

29. Or maybe he was mad because Obama used a Blackberry

:shrug:

[tex-wyo-dem]

30. The paradox with most rich fucks is that...

They L-O-V-E their idealistic outdoors in their country clubs, private islands and sailing in the pristine waters off of Martha's Vineyard and the Florida Keys...

...But when it comes to making money, the rest of the world's ecology is just something else to exploit. Pollution? Just a necessary inconvenience to making a profit.

On edit: a few years ago I had the "pleasure" of visiting the Foxconn factory on business...the air in Shenzen was incredibly bad, most of the workers at the factory were 16-18 year old girls and the whole environment reeked of an attitude of humans being basically disposable.

[avaistheone1]

32. Unfortunatey true.

[MattSh]

35. Foxconn does NOT mean Apple only! How many times must this be said?

Foxconn makes consumer electronics for a number of well-known companies, including:

Acer Inc. (Taiwan)
Amazon.com (United States)<16>
Apple Inc. (United States)<17>
ASRock (Taiwan)
Intel (United States)
Cisco (United States)
Hewlett-Packard (United States)<18>
Dell (United States)
Nintendo (Japan)
Nokia (Finland)<17>
Microsoft (United States)
MSI (Taiwan)
Motorola (United States)
Sony Ericsson (Japan/Sweden)<19>
Vizio (United States)

And this isn't even the complete list!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foxconn

Unrecced for the Apple is Foxconn reference.

[dameocrat67]

36. yeah they are shitty too, which is why I wish Obama would

quit sucking up to Silicon Valley executives, but Jobs is always promoted by liberals and he is the subject of the article.

[Donnachaidh]

61. so Jobs gets a pass because everyone else is doing it?

Really? :eyes:

[WCGreen]

37. Well, since he shifted the production of most of his products overseas...

I would say, fuck 'em...

[Firebrand Gary]

39. What I love about this story.

A few weeks back I saw an interview with Rahm Emmanuel, where Emmanuel exclaimed that he fought the President to tackle the short term issues which were politically beneficial. Rahm admitted that he tried to push the President to do what was politically convenient, meeting only resistance from the President.

This story from Steve Jobs really does place the exclamation point on Emmanuel's story.

[msongs]

42. Jobs died angry that Windows took over the schools and kicked out his Apple products because......

using Apples was not a real world experience and training kids to use a product with only 5% market share didn't help kids going into a workforce using a product with 95% market share lol

[dameocrat67]

43. Gates is attacking the unions too

n/t

[slay]

49. Yes he is

i never liked either one of those assholes. open source could change the world - but these pricks still insist on proprietary bullshit and massive profits. gates and jobs were always the assholes - which is why they rose to the top in our heartless predatory capitalist system.

[MisterP]

85. Gates and Jobs show strong techno-utopianism

hence Gates's insistence on tossing GMO crops at Africa and having technocrats run the schools; Apple postured itself as delivering technology to the masses that would bring creativity and end oppression
Linus, on the other hand, is Doctor Steel without the beard...

[Donnachaidh]

59. so that makes it okay that Jobs did it?

:eyes:

[Donnachaidh]

58. Apple was busily trying to push their products into my kid's school a few years back

I'm quite certain there was bribes involved. It became a sticky mess because the plan was to give all the students Apple laptops, despite the fact that they had huge amount of Dell Computers available in the schools.

A shitstorm followed, and then it suddenly got quiet (I fully expect the school board covered up all sorts of shenanigans) and the Apple order suddenly disappeared.

[sendero]

52. I'm no big fan of Obama.

... but what is all this new regulation so many folks keep yammering about? Has he REALLY increase regulation on anything other than banks, where the new regs fall woefully short of actually accomplishing anything?

And as for Jobs, well, he is a perfect example of the kind of person who rises to the top of the corporate world. Did he have some great successes? Certainly. Did he hang the moon? I don't think so but I'm pretty sure he does.

[dameocrat67]

53. Good question

he sounds like he is just taking the koch line that all regulation is bad.

[Starry Messenger]

54. Capitalism rewards this.

Of course they are all anti-union. Higher worker salaries cuts into their profits.

[Downtown Hound]

60. What regulation?

Just what is this oppressive regulation has Obama put on businesses? I've been asking this question for years, and no one can give me an answer.

Or maybe Jobs was just upset that he might not be able to use sweatshop labor in China to make his Ipods anymore?

Steve Jobs: every bit as big of an asshole as Bill Gates. Just not quite as successful.

I gave up Macs four years ago, by the way, after being a die hard supporter of them for many years. Linux and open source are the way to go.

[Southerner]

62. Here's the Link to View New Regulations

http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eoHistoricReport

On the lower line, select "All" and then select 2009, 2010, and 2011 in turn.

Depending on which conservative newspaper or blog you look at (the only places this is talked about), they say the number of business unfriendly regulations put out by the current administration per year has gone up 20 to 40% over the Bush years. They also say the economic impact is many tens of billions of dollars but nobody seems to agree on exactly how much.

In the link above, I could not find in the reports where the economic impact of the new regulations was calculated by the government so the blogosphere seems to be doing it for them.

[Downtown Hound]

64. Please

If business is so overregulated, then why are the CEO's raking in record profits?

[Southerner]

66. I don't know.

By sending the jobs overseas to avoid the regulations?

[Downtown Hound]

67. You mean regulations like having to pay their employees more than 10 cents an hour?

Oh, woe is business.

[ecstatic]

63. He definitely was NOT for the 99 percent

RIP, but I don't get the Jobs worship around here.

[WinkyDink]

65. Too bad Jobs also thought he was insightful about his own medical treatment.

[Harmony Blue]

68. I don't understand

why Jobs is revered so much.

[Downtown Hound]

69. Well, as a recovering addict from the Cult of Mac

It has to do a lot with the fact that in the late 90's and early 2000's, Macs actually were much better and more stable than PC's. Bill Gates was really on his Monopoly trip back then, driving out his competitors through a lot of underhanded tactics like bankrupting them with frivolous lawsuits and tying them up in court because Microsoft could afford to do this while many of its competitors could not.

So here you had Gates, a royal asshole and little twerp always prancing around in a suit and producing crappy operating systems, and then you had Jobs, an ex-hippie that wore plain clothes and smoked pot and had ads with slogans like, "Think Different." It was easy to see Jobs and Apple as the good guys and Bill Gates and Microsoft as the bad guys.

And then there was the fact that Apple is and always has been quite innovative. The ipod, the iphone, the imac, all of those things made Apple and Jobs look cool and fresh while Gates looked crusty and boring.

But then Apple got big. Really big. Their computers started to have all the problems that PC's used to have. It was revealed that a lot of Apple's products were made in sweatshops. The iphone was glitchy as hell and had all these restrictions on who you could use as a service provider, and, well, the image of Apple started to change for many.

It's really a lesson that corporations are the same all over. There really are no good guys, there's just the desire for power and profit.

[Marr]

72. Boy, I never saw that.

I used Macs and PCs in the early nineties, and I quickly gravitated to PC. They don't do it all for you, but if you did basic maintenance to your PC, it was every bit as stable as Mac (more so, in my experience), and faster.

The differences are largely gone now, of course, but I've stuck to being primarily PC just because of the price. I can build a new rig that runs as well as any Mac machine, for a fraction of the cost.

[Downtown Hound]

75. Every PC I used in the 90's was a nightmare

They crashed, they froze, they performed illegal operations and would have to be shut down. By contrast I never had those problems with Mac's. But you're right, the differences are gone now. Whether or not you think Mac's or PC's are better isn't the issue, the issue is that many people saw it that way, and that is why Jobs is as revered as much as he is.

[dameocrat67]

76. very true

n/t

[Harmony Blue]

77. It happens

Electronic Arts used to produce top notch gaming, but when they became a powerhouse they shifted to quantity rather quality. Blizzard took the mantle of quality gaming, but Blizzard/Activision is now all about sales through quantity of churning out products and Bioware has taken Blizzard's mantle now.

[Romulox]

82. I dunno. Some people would argue that Bioware peaked in the year 2000.

:freak:

[Marr]

70. He may be a one-termer, but it certainly won't be because he was too *tough* on big business.

Just the opposite.

[LanternWaste]

71. Six of one, half a dozen of other

"I have always thought kossack admiration for jobs and for apple products was misplaced..."

As is pissing on a newly dug grave misplaced also. :shrug: Six of one, half a dozen of other.

(however, I'm fairly confident you will rationalize your own vulgarity while yet condemning the admiration of Jobs held by others..)

[taught_me_patience]

74. Lying sack of shit

So aaple would manufacture their IPODs here in america if it weren't for "regulations"... it had nothing to do with paying workers $1/hr? Lying sack of shit.

[WCGreen]

79. What over regulation is he talking about....

Minimum Wage laws? EPA standards, OSHA work safety...

[Harmony Blue]

84. It is a RW talking point spewed

without going into details.

[JoeyT]

81. Yep, the disconnect between

thinking #ows is a good thing because people like the Kochs have taken over and that Steve Jobs was a god among men is hilarious.

[Sanity Claws]

83. Jobs was a IT innovator but certainly not Nostradamus