Manic, Chill

Tech companies and their venture capital backers, angered by a bipartisan push for Internet anti-piracy legislation known as SOPA, are key beneficiaries of the JOBS Act — a fact not lost on Democratic leaders. Rapid-fire public stock offerings and free-wheeling funding are the lifeblood of the Silicon Valley landscape, and the JOBS Act promises to make it easier for financiers and their clients in the technology industry to raise money for their companies’ operations.

“What happened coming out of the SOPA fight is, people in Washington and Congress really sat up and took notice and said, ‘There is actually work to be done here. This is not just kids in T-shirts running around Palo Alto on skateboards. This really is a community looking to create the next wave of businesses that will jumpstart the American economy,’” says Michael McGeary, a strategist with the venture capital firm Hattery, based in San Francisco. “And Congress is very opportunistic this way. They saw there was this community that was very engaged … And we would like to say thank you to them.”

The JOBS Act, say McGreary and other venture capitalists who work regularly with Silicon Valley, goes a long way toward sweetening the bitterness brewed by the SOPA scuffle.

But in deciding to back the JOBS Act, Democrats were forced to choose between two allies — labor and the tech industry. Democrats stuck with Silicon Valley, secure in the belief that union loyalty isn’t going anywhere. It’s yet another political battle pitting nominal allies against one another because large sums of money are at stake.

Undermining the credibility of black public figures who’ve served the community for decades (i.e. Jeremiah Wright) might not be the best way to defend a man who will be out of office by the year 2016. We must learn how to love President Obama while simultaneously supporting advocates for our community, and honestly realize that one is not a substitute for the other. It is possible to take advantage of the present without mortgaging the future. Integration into the White House is not the same as building an independently prosperous community that doesn’t need white American validation in order to be strong.

My point is not to say that the Obama presidency should not be respected or supported. Instead, it is to say that the divides in black leadership that have been caused by the Obama presidency must heal quickly in order for us to move forward as a collective. Also, no group of politicians should be allowed to play black public figures against one another by rewarding some for their loyalty and blocking others from having access to the negotiating table. Divide and conquer is a common political tactic, and it ultimately leads us to waste our votes by providing political support without having a clear agenda. The bottom line is that Obama is not going to be president forever, and we’ve got to have a Plan B.

Something odd happened Monday. An Obama administration official delivered a major speech outlining the president’s position on a national topic that has been the subject of intense debate. Yet the Republican field was largely silent.

Why? Because when it comes to allowing a group of government officials to decide to target accused terrorists with lethal stikes — a death panel, if you will — President Barack Obama and Republican candidates are largely on the same page.

As Attorney General Eric Holder laid out in a speech in Chicago, the Obama administration believes that U.S. citizens can be targeted for killing under certain circumstances and that an executive branch review of the evidence against a subject of targeted killing counts as due process under the Constitution.

While most of the Republican candidates haven’t gone into great detail about the legal reasoning behind their views on executive power, two Republican presidential candidates still in the race — Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich — are on the record in support of targeted killing. Ron Paul is a definite “no,” while Rick Santorum didn’t answer the New York Times survey.