So instead of running for us, Al's chosen to run with the VCs.
The more I thought about it, the worse I felt. I was stunned to read only two diaries here on Kos, and relatively few comments, about the fact that, instead of taking us up on our pleas to bring the U.S. back to the nation we could respect and love, to lead our nation into the future as an example of truth, justice, the American way, and green energy, Al Gore has decided that the best thing he could do with his time, energy, and effort is to join a group of venture capitalists. Not as an advisor, but as a full partner.
Oh, yeah, sure, they're high-class venture capitalists, very successful and well-connected venture capitalists, probably the number one venture capitalists in the history of entrepreneurship, but excuse me, this is going to be better for Al than for the rest of us.
Enjoy the perks of being a high-class VC, Al. The rest of us will just struggle along.
This is not a big deal for Kosians?
Is anyone else seeing more and more evidence that corporatism, whether Bush style or Clinton (and now Gore) style, is a major problem for both parties?
More below the fold.
If the news was all over DKos, and discussed ad infinitum, I missed it. I saw two diaries
Diary 1
Diary 2
and a total of about 100 comments on the two of them together. Maybe some of us are just so disappointed we couldn't actually acknowledge it. But it was covered in Fortune, as cited in the diaries I saw here, and in the Washington Post:
Gore Joins Major Venture Capital Firm
Gore to Advise Firm on Green Investing
And Kleiner Perkins announced it.
KPCB Initiatives Greentech
Don't you dare troll rate me for this. I'm a union-label-diaper baby. I've been stewing about this, especially in the context of Bill's push for NAFTA, then Hillary's perplexing journey (from universal-single-payer health-care crusader to health-insurance-company protector with amazingly declared love for lobbyists), and combined with DiFi's get-out-of-jail-free card for ATT and Verizon and her continuing and eternal inability to cross the defense establishment in any way shape or form.
Kleiner Perkins has made more money than God, by investing early and nurturing some of the best-known high-tech entrepreneurial start-ups for the last few decades. The amounts of money they pull in when their investments go public are enormous. They are very well-respected and well-connected. They even invited Colin Powell to join them as a strategic partner not too long ago. Joining them would have to be an attractive opportunity for anyone, unless you were someone who was actually once for a brief and shining moment President-elect, and you were worried about the influence of corporatism on democracy and our nation's future.
Did you note in the WPost article that laugh from Gore about not being in the public sector any more? Did it bother you? It sure bothered me. It was a side to this that Fortune didn't play up, that's for sure.
More corporatism. More money. More power concentrated in a few, very very rich hands. all of which hands shake each others'.
That's how Al Gore chooses to use his time. He donates his salary, but the salary is not where the money is anyway, it's in stock options. all good corporatists know that. He's going to get rich while doing good, I guess is his thinking. If the worst is coming, best to be well-provisioned?
Pardon me for wishing he'd thought otherwise.
The Clintons, Dianne Feinstein, now Gore, all securely in the corporate orbit. Brave new world, and the corporations will rule no matter who is in office. Used to be it was the Republicans who cozied up to corporations and the corporate world. Democrats stood for workers, the downtrodden, those with no voice.
Kleiner Perkins didn't need Al to have a voice. And while Al has public visibility in the green world, he's not by any means an academic or scientific expert. Kleiner Perkins could have gotten those by the trainload if what they wanted was expert advice. No, what they got with Gore was additional entree to the world-wide corridors of power.
I can't be the only one who sees this big picture being drawn in more detail every day. You could call these maneuvers pragmatism, but that is a cop out. How do you fight corporatism when even the heroes go over to the other side? And why can't I enter the word "corporatism" as a key word for a tag (it disappears every time I try)?