This piece in the New York Times today skewers this proprietary software company that doubled its income after getting a fat Obama infusion.
And so predictably this will have something for everybody -- Libertarians who hate Obama and pork legislation, and lefty geeks who insist on open source uber alles.
I only had one of my responses published (so far) and now I've lost my longer comment, but it went something like this:
o what's the big deal, income of only a $1.4 billion doubled from last year? Microsoft, Google, Apple all make tons of billions more, and you don't flinch
o so Obama had a slush fund to help his friends on a topic for recovery, health records ($19 billion). Is this the worst you got?
o even so, good, New York Times, critical of the Obama Administration! This wasn't the best place to start, but it's a start!
o when are we going to hear FROM YOU that you have not had a direct, unscripted interview with Obama in YEARS! In fact, you should have a box on the front page with a countdown "Days Since We Asked President Obama for an Interview".
It's disgraceful that he never gives them to the print media (which is online too) and has social media funfests that are guaranteed to have softball comments and not hard questions from seasoned journalists.
But more to the point, I do remember when this fandango was rolled out. There were some open source nerds who were so furious at this program, and that it was going to go to proprietary companies that bid for it, that they said it was better not to give any money at all, not to modernize health records (!) than give it to proprietary companies.
If I'm not mistaken, it was that same guy who scripted the Howard Dean web presence and became a big Internet deal for the blue states after that -- I will look this up.
There is a lot of interesting stuff in these comments -- from coders, doctors, thoughtful people. My conclusion is still that we need CHOICE and it can't be all or nothing, but that open source cultists can never concede this, and that this story is feeding into their narrative.
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