A bashful little bribe
What on earth is Google doing giving money to Devin Nunes’s campaign?
I ask not because he’s a Republican but because he’s a lying Trump-enabler.
In November, Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) was in the spotlight — the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, which was leading the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. He used his star turn to push “fantastical conspiracy theories” about Democrats. Nunes falsely accused Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) of trying to obtain nude photos of Trump. He promoted the discredited notion, advanced by Trump but rejected by the intelligence community, that Ukraine took significant steps to meddle in the 2016 election. The debunked contention is part of a broader Russian propaganda effort to absolve itself from hacking the DNC servers by pinning the blame on Ukraine.
…
Nunes’ antics during the impeachment hearings capped a year when he filed six defamation lawsuits, seeking hundreds of millions in damages from Twitter, a GOP political operative, media companies, a retired farmer, and a fictional cow. The suits were all filed by an attorney, Steven Biss, whose law license was suspended twice by the state of Virginia.
In response, Google quietly rewarded Nunes’ behavior with a check for $5000 to help him get reelected. The donation was revealed in a little-noticed FEC report that was filed on December 20.
The short answer to my question is “so that Nunes will treat Google well.”
It’s all for sale.
Worth a read in this connection, IMHO.
‘We’ve spent the decade letting our tech define us. It’s out of control.’
Douglas Rushkoff
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/decade-technology-privacy-tech-backlash
Sure. Google is worried about the increasing pressure for large tech firms to be split up, for more targeted regulation to be put in place and for forced interoperability between platforms. These are all anti-competitivity measures as well as attempts to increase social capital (including privacy) at the expense of dominance of platforms.
All the big platforms got that way through disruption and now they’re working as hard as they possibly can to prevent other upstart companies from similarly disrupting them.