“‘The reality is that government, for a long period of time, has for whatever set of reasons become less functional and isn’t working at the speed that it once was. And so it does fall, I think, not just on business but on all other areas of society to step up,'” Andrew Ross Sorkin reports for The New York Times. “That was Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, across the table from me over breakfast here in downtown Austin late last week at the end of a mini-tour across the country during which he focused on topics usually reserved for politicians: manufacturing, jobs and education.”
“As Mr. Cook’s breakfast arrived — two scrambled egg whites, crispy bacon (they didn’t have his preferred turkey bacon), sugar-free cereal with unsweetened almond milk — he described his week, punctuated by a visit the night before to the L.B.J. Presidential Library, the museum of President Lyndon B. Johnson,” Sorkin reports. “‘One of the things that hits you,’ he said, is ‘all of the major acts, legislation, that happened during just his presidency.’ His eyes widened as he listed some: ‘You have the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Act, you have Medicare, you have Medicaid, you have several national parks, you have Head Start, you have housing discrimination, you have jury discrimination… Regardless of your politics,’ he continued, ‘you look at it and say, ‘My gosh.””
“Mr. Cook’s comments weren’t a dig at President Trump so much as they were a critique of Washington’s seemingly perpetual state of gridlock,” Sorkin reports. “As we finished up breakfast… I mentioned a question that some in Silicon Valley and elsewhere have asked: Is his focus on jobs and speeches in front of American flags a hint at something bigger? After all, Mark Zuckerberg’s name is now regularly bandied about in discussions of potential presidential candidates. ‘I have a full-time job,’ Mr. Cook said. ‘I appreciate the compliment,’ he added with a wry look, ‘if it is a compliment.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: There are far worse things than gridlock.
Gridlock is what our system is designed for. — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, October 6, 2011
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? — James Madison, Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788
SEE ALSO:
Apple, J.P. Morgan under fire for donations to notorious Southern Poverty Law Center – August 28, 2017
Tim Cook on whether he’s running for the U.S. presidency: ‘You’ve got to be kidding’ – August 25, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook plummets 45 spots in employee ratings – June 22, 2017
Apple CEO Cook on President Trump, Steve Jobs’ legacy, and more – June 15, 2017
Apple CEO Cook To MIT grads: You must have hacked President Trump’s Twitter account – June 9, 2017
Apple CEO Cook slams President Trump’s decision to withdraw from climate deal; says it’s ‘wrong for our planet’ – June 1, 2017
Apple CEO Cook calls President Trump as Elon Musk threatens to quit White House advisory councils over Paris decision – May 31, 2017
Apple CEO Cook chides President Trump Counselor Kellyanne Conway over ‘alternative facts’ – April 19, 2017
Apple CEO Cook speaks out publicly against President Trump’s executive order, ‘Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States’ – February 9, 2017
Tim Cook: Apple does not support President Trump’s executive order, ‘Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States’ – January 30, 2017
Apple CEO Tim Cook dines with Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Trump – January 27, 2017
Tim Cook explains to Apple employees why he met with President-elect Trump – December 20, 2016
President-elect Trump meets privately with Apple CEO Cook, tells tech leaders: ‘I’m here to help you folks do well’ – December 14, 2016
Apple CEO Cook emails employees, calls for unity after Donald Trump presidential win – November 10, 2016
Apple CEO Tim Cook and the rest of Silicon Valley throw big money at Clinton and pretty much bupkis at Trump – August 23, 2016
Apple CEO Tim Cook attends secret meeting with tech CEOs , top Republicans in plot to stop Trump – March 8, 2016
Tim Cook has let his personal politics affect Apple; Board may have to rein him in – June 25, 2015
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
How ’bout, in your so-called “full time job,” making a new Mac Pro more frequently than every four years?
Amen to that. One of the most egregious and negligent of poor Apple Mac management areas in recent times. Really how long does it take in a busy morning to simply peruse every one of your product lines and review their status, problems and progress? And then address problems long before they then before they become problems for their customers and an embarrassment for you?
By the looks of it, it takes about 3+ years to notice that of one your company’s most valuable product line has gone to shit when you’re distracted by your self-created fantasy job as the world’s Chief Virtue Signaller.
You’re so full of shit, your eyes are brown. Fuck you, fascist supporter.
Another disrespectful black hooded Berkeley snowflake. Grow up …
Tim Cook is such a bad manager that he has only increased Apple’s market value by a third of a TRILLION dollars since he became CEO less than ten years ago.
Today is indeed different for you deflecting from your usual meme. Specifically, now defending liberals instead of tediously knocking conservatives. Yeah, I guess change is good.
So are you saying Steve’s iPhone and Apple Watch products had absolutely nothing to do with Tim’s performance?!!
“that he has only increased Apple’s market value by a third of a TRILLION dollars …”
All by himself, awesome. Get real. He is riding the iPhone gravy train brainless. Not a visionary, not a programmer, not a software/products guy and as Firsty first posted — he allowed the MacTruck, the founder tech spine of Apple — to slip into neglect and third world class status under his rein.
On another note, in general you applaud all the money Apple has made and no problem with it because it is such a hallmark of corporate success.
But I have to wonder if Apple was run by a conservative, instead of a liberal, and raking in world record amounts of shells how you would feel …
Seriously, hey Tim, just STFU and stop the SJW crap. Run Apple and make successful products that sell and benefit investors. You know, that whole Capitalism thing. NOT the insipid redistributionist socialist crap that so in vogue. This is getting annoying. You weren’t hired to make the world happy. You were hired to produce stuff. Get off your smug soapbox and get to work.
I am truly at a loss here. I mean, I totally get armchair quarterbacks, every single one of which could presumably run Apple so much better that it would eventually become the largest market-cap company in the world, generating highest profit and revenue.
Well, apparently, while armchair quarterbacks are, well, quarterbacking, Cook has managed to do exactly that.
I can’t possibly imagine how much more successful a company could possibly be. Any company.
A cliche post with no enlightenment and grasping for understanding. I feel your pain …
sigh.
Seriously MDN: don’t you think you’re being a little pompous and radical by quoting James Madison? Wasn’t he a racist white man?
Right to the heart! Well done …
So Coca cola should of stayed quiet before the civil rights act?
Re: First 2014, Then 2016
Agreed (that does not happen very much)
To quote the late His Steveness:
Artists Ship
I and others have repeatedly posted exactly the same for years now.
Do the job you were promoted to do and eliminate the distraction of partisan politics poisoning your company.
Let me guess if I worked at Apple. The gay employees are out of the closet, long time coming and as it should be.
That said, I wonder who is in the closet these days at Apple given Tim taking the company far left.
Food for thought …
“It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.”… Madison, Madison, Madison… If you and the Founding Father’s felt it necessary to control the ‘abuses of government’, which is populated by humans, ergo, human nature, then why, oh why pray tell did you not institute term limitations for all branches in the first place? What, did you honestly believe that human nature gets elected with the idea of service to the people as their representative and then go back to the real world and their real job all on their own? Good grief man, what were you guys on?!? Seriously!
Yes, you, Mr. Random Anonymous Commentor, know better than the creators of the greatest, most successsful governmental system ever devised.
Yes, you too, Mr. RAC II, must also know they were also human beings and could not possibly anticipate everything hundreds of years in the future.
hence, Madison’s concept of Amendments to the Constitution.
It’s consistent with recent developments. We all have a moral responsibility – to ourselves and to others. Since corporations are now considered as individuals, they enjoy the rights and privileges of individuals, and now must accept the same responsibilities.
Good point. So if Apple donates to causes, they have that right.
Corporations are individuals? How so and when did the change take place?
guess you conveniently missed citizens united. corporations are people and have the right to free speech. Free speech is money, money is free speech. Just like you.
“There are far worse things than gridlock.”
MDN, this is one of the dumbest things you’ve ever said.
There may in fact be a few worse things than gridlock, like what’s happening in Houston, but gridlock in Washington is a national shame unless you prefer anarchy to functioning governance.
LOL! You obviously do not understand what MDN means by “there are far worse things than gridlock.”
Far worse things than Gridlock, indeed.
:large
The gridlock you think is so bad results from features the founding fathers built into our U.S. system to make change difficult to achieve without consensus.
The founding fathers feared the power of vocal factions and sought to check this threat to the union by dividing the federal government into co-equal branches.
Those who whine about gridlock are typically Dem/Lib/Progs who favor huge, growing government and who can’t lose by compromising (if Democrats want $500 billion in new spending or taxes and Republicans don’t, splitting the difference still results in $250 billion in new spending).
For those of us who espouse limited government, there are far worse things than gridlock. We’d rather not play a game in which a “tie” (compromise) is still a loss – half as bad at it could have been.
Dem/Lib/Progs always clamor for conservatives to “come to the table in the ‘spirit of bipartisanship'” and blame them for and bemoan “gridlock” because they know if they get “compromise” they’ll be able to expand the bureaucracy by at least 50% of what they originally wanted (and they’ll come back for the rest at a later date).
“The government is best which governs least.”
Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience.”
Funny how 17 enumerated powers became unlimited power of the Federal Government. The civil war was about far more than slavery and we feel the weight of those other issues every time the federal government creeps further and further into our lives.
Government was created to perform tasks not well suited to individuals or private business. It also is the rule maker and everything has rules from the Playground to High Finance.
In general, I agree government should be somewhat smallish, but it needs to be big and powerful enough to do it’s job- which includes regulations to protect individuals against predation by corporations.
The problem is not government, but inept and corrupt government. Inept and corrupt governments exist because the citizens allow it. Citizens created government, fund government, choose who runs the government and has the power to vote out people unsuited to the job.
America has a messed up government because a significant number of people who can vote are too effing lazy to educate themselves on the issues, pay attention to how their elected representatives vote and hold them accountable on election day. It is a citizens responsibility to keep up with government and governance and to actively participate to hold all level of government accountable.
We get the government we elect- like it or not. For all the bitching about Trump, more Americans that wanted Trump went to vote in the number of states necessary to get the electoral votes needed. There is no need to add up a mythical popular vote as we have never elected a President by popular vote.
Well said …
Gridlock on the federal, state, and local level was a major contributor to the “natural” disaster in Houston. Everybody could see it coming but nobody did anything. Among the factors: land subsidence from overpumping groundwater, excessive runoff from the replacement of vegetation in central and eastern Texas by impervious cover, the elimination of natural buffers along waterways and the coast, overbuilding in floodprone areas, and the failure to upgrade flood management systems designed before World War II. Nearly 7 million people over an area the size of New Jersey are suffering the entirely foreseeable consequences. (Non-skeptics might mention higher sea levels and atmospheric moisture content, but that was just icing on the cake.) Sometimes, gridlock is bad.
you are a natural disaster.
You don’t understand “gridlock,” either.
“Democrat Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner refused to issue evacuation orders for the city’s 2.3 million residents, even after Governor Greg Abbott and the NOAA had advised Texans to do so.”
there’s your “gridlock” you lying piece of shit.
You’d have to ask the dead of Hurricane Harvey, except they are unavailable for comment.
When a POS democrat mayor tells his constituents to “stand down” when a Category 3 hurricane is aimed at his city, I consider that quite “relevant,” moron.
There is no “argument,” the mayor’s comments, directives and actions are a matter of public record.
I have made no contradiction of the sort regarding my vehement criticism of the mayor of Houston.
botvirnnik is just a turd troll – no need to listen to his crap
Mmmm, we are reading here …
I’m guessing that very few of the readers here have spent a few days in an Emergency Management Center during a hurricane emergency. I have.
The folks on the spot are best prepared to make decisions for local people based on local conditions. Hindsight is 20/20, but even with hindsight Harris County Emergency Management would still probably have made the decision not to issue a mandatory evacuation of the 6.7 million people in the Houston Metropolitan Area.
Most of the people in America who drown during flooding are in vehicles that are swamped or washed off the road. I’m guessing that most of the deaths from this storm will either fall into that category, or be people who ignored the evacuation orders that were issued. Only a small minority will be people who chose to stay in place because they were not warned to leave.
Did you not see the pictures of the loop around Houston, I-610, with water lapping over fourteen-foot overpasses? The other major routes out of Houston would have been as bad, and the surface streets even worse. If there had been millions of cars on those highways, traffic would have come to a halt long before the roads flooded. Thousands of people could have drowned.
There’s your “gridlock,” botvinnik, and that’s the truth.
just shut up, you have zero credibility.
thanks,
The Entire Universe
PS: Both Texas Governor Abbott and the NOAA told Mayor Dickhead to evacuate over 24 hours BEFORE the rain even began…so there was no goddamned water for “people in America who drown during flooding are in vehicles that are swamped or washed off the road.”
POS idiot liar.
The best-case estimate for evacuating Houston is 60 hours. During Rita, which was only a limited evacuation on mostly dry roads, traffic was moving at no better than 5 mph. Over 100 people died in road accidents, far more than died directly from the weather. A friend of mine lost both parents. There is absolutely no way to empty Houston in the 24 hours the Governor suggested.
oh shut up with the phony “muh friend lost both parents” horseshit.
ZERO CREDIBILITY
130 people died during the Rita evacuation, half of them before the rain started falling. Only the 1900 Galveston storm killed more Texans. Very few of those victims would have even been injured if they had not been on the road. A mandatory evacuation of Houston Metro for Harvey would have generated three times the traffic and probably three times the casualties even without mass drownings.
At least I’m not a ghoul trying to make partisan points from a public disaster. The Harris County Judge is a Republican and was already very conservative when I met him as a college student almost fifty years ago. Judge Emmett was even more emphatic than Mayor Turner that most of Metro Houston should shelter in place.
The standard advice in a flood emergency is “Turn around, don’t drown.”
ZERO CREDIBILITY.
What part of “Ed Emmett is a conservative Republican who urged people to stay off the roads” lacks credibility?
Stop making sense.
Gridlock, or personal enrichment?
Mark Zuckerberg? I laughed and laughed and laughed!
“government, for a long period of time, has for whatever set of reasons become less functional” — The reason is complexity
http://www.necsi.edu/research/overview/socialcomplexity.html
I’m amazed that someone of that country is finally waking up and making a statement on how morally bereft that now fifth rate nation is. He isn’t the only one of course.
Good luck fixing that void Tim, being ethically and morally bereft is now part of your country’s patriotic DNA (Destructive Nuclear Arsenal).
It might be a touch too little too late, but you never know. Fortunately there are other alternatives.
where’s that NATO money you deadbeats owe?
And this has what to do with the topic at hand? Oh wait distracting from the main issue is one of your tactics.
Like the war mongering patriot that you are you seek to divide and conquer with your call of the whine. You know the WHAAAH your baby bully nation does on the world stage so often.
-WHAAAH Saddam was involved in 9-11, WHAAAH.
-WHAAAH Iraq has a weapons of mass destruction program, WHAAAH.
-WHAAAH We don’t care about a democratic vote, we want to invade, WHAAAH.
So now you’ve been using NATO payments as a way to distract from issue being talked about because you simply don’t have what it takes to discuss and issue like a civilized person and you’d rather just be insulting, and do a poor job about it. It’s a shame that you are missing all this opportunity to piss and moan and puke and WHAAAH all over Luxembourg, Spain, Hungary, Belgium, Canada (some more), Slovenia, Slovak Repubic, Latvia, Italy, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Netherlands, German, Denmark, Bulgaria, Albania, Romania, Portugal, Croatia, Norway, Turkey, and France.
Of course you won’t make a comment on the great job Estonia, U.K., Poland and Greece being at their target spending, someone from your nation actually praising another country would be preposterous.
All that whining in a feeble attempt to hide the white elephant of the topic, that war mongering nation that spends nearly twice what it’s supposed to. I doubt your nation will get in line and keep to near the 2% of GDP.
The members are supposed to meet their obligations by 2024, that’s 7 years away and no doubt you’ll whine all the way there like the baby bully botvinnik that you are, it’s part and parcel of what your nation has become. So much whining.
Let Jens Stoltenberg take care of the issue, if he needs your help, I’m sure he’ll contact you.
Canada joined NATO in 1949, you deadbeat.
So what? There were twelve founding members of NATO, you forgot to insult the others. You are losing your touch.
You post has absolutely nothing to do with Tim Cook’s statement, and really irrelevant to the distracting issue you brought up. Of course you are not interested in discussing the issues, insulting others, that’s your main goal. It’s all you can do, insult, distract and never deal with the issue at hand.
So much moral irresponsibility. you are a true patriot baby botvinnik. So much whining.
cough it up, puke, American taxpayers are sick of paying for your defense.
Last I looked your nation was not running NATO, you are just a member like everyone else. Take your whining to Jens Stoltenberg or better yet, if you don’t like it leave. It’s a whine whine situation for you.
Now about your comment on Tim Cook’s barnstorming. Oh wait you didn’t make one, that’s right it’s take a real man to do so, not a baby botvinnik.
cough it up, puke.
Or what, you going to invade? That’s your solution for everything war monger. That and whining.
Whine some more botvinnik, who knows sooner or later someone might change your diaper.
Whatever you do, don’t make a relevant comment about what Tim Cook said, that would be treason for you.
Well, since you have no military to speak of because you’ve been sucking off of ours, that would be an easy task, huh, deadbeat?
Bring it on botty, actions speak louder than words. You tried it once before, how did that work out for you?
Just remember you no longer have the moral high ground, and that keeps the peace a lot better than any technological weapons you may have.
Bring it on botty, bring it on.
I do agree Americans are tired of paying the lion share of NATO while the deadbeat nation you live in, and others, shirks lesser fiscal responsibility …
Hey, feel free to stop anytime nitwit. We are more than happy to share the world’s largest supply of fresh water to other countries.
And the US is happy to share the Great Lakes with even deadbeat countries like yours.
Luckily our PM was brilliant in that he established a Great Lakes Commission that blocks the US from siphoning off the water from these lakes thus damaging the ecosystem. You cannot do that without our permission…. so yes, that body of water we will share…and protect.
uh, your Post Menstrual Trudy INVITED illegal invaders into your country….fuck it, nevermind, you’re too stupid to live.
We don’t pay for their defense bottwipe. Sheesh.
You are as ignorant as tRump.
youtu.be
gosh darn it.
He’s a one-trick pony
One trick is all that horse can do
Sometimes he can be lucid but for the most part you are right. Certainly an insecure person from an insecure country. I wonder what it will take for them to get their act together.
Never will. The world is changing right under their feet which has always been happening. The thing is, the “others” are flexing their power. Fire hoses and barking dogs won’t stem the tides of change.
At least they stopped soiling the comments with praise for tRump. I guess that troll contract expired.
Botty insecure?!!
It took me a few minutes to get off the floor I was laughing so loud and in stitches ..,
Tim Cook trying to talk moral responsibility. perhaps he needs to look in the mirror first..
If Tim really wants to make change somewhere, spend his own money to do it and stop trying to expand government in some fashion, Plus he should really be focusing on running Apple and stop being some SJW, that’s not his job
Government has always been ridiculously inefficient and has only gotten worse, the more gridlock the better.. The longer it takes many of these buffoons in Washington to do something, the more money and freedom we the people maintain.
“…The more gridlock the better.. The longer it takes many of these buffoons in Washington to do something, the more money and freedom we the people maintain.”
AMEN!
In extolling the “virtues” of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Pipeline failed to mention the 55,000 American lives lost for nothing in Vietnam.
In extolling the “virtues” of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Pipeline failed to mention the LBJ-led Southern Democrats defeat of Ike’s “Civil Rights Act of 1957.”
“My gosh.”
fucking POS
You sure have a potty mouth. Does it really impress the girls that much????
I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for 200 years. – Lyndon B. Johnson
…and thus, The Plantation Party was born.
Always nice to take a popular internet quote and perpetuate the myth. Never cared for LBJ but it disingenuous to slander him (yes I know it is popular with people like Trump, Botvinnik and F2T2).
Check out Snopes. It was a person who did not like JBL and yet somehow ‘overheard’ him saying this to two unidentified governors.
Lazy, vindictive, partisan crap.
As Oranghead would say on Twitter….SAD!!!
Snopes: Your one-stop source for revisionist history.™
“slander” that, Buster.
:::crickets:::
I have yet to meet one libtard that has even a nominal scholarship of history.
Once again you prove yourself to be denser than a black hole. Stop embarrassing yourself in front of everyone. You have NO PROOF that LBJ said the 200 years quote. You come back with other comments but not the SPECIFIC one we are talking about.
You tire me (and according to the negative votes everyone gives you) the rest of the world as well. I egg you on just because it is so easy to put your stupidity on display for all others to laugh at.
So simple……
And you have just validated once again my above assertion: “I have yet to meet one libtard that has even a nominal scholarship of history.”
Is it painful to be that dumb? Where does one hear the original 200 years quote? Oh wait, deaf and dumb….more emphasis on the latter.
You make a good case for Eugenics……
what part of “nigger” and “poll tax” and “literacy test” and Lyndon Johnson saying it do you not grasp?
As I said earlier, stop obfuscating the argument with smoke and mirrors so you can avoid the central tenet of the argument.
Anyway my lunch hour is over, the fun is over and I am going back to work. Not all of us are on welfare you know.
Well, tell everyone at the Canada Ministry of Truth I said “hey.”
Obvious you are incapable of debate and refuse to comment on RACIST WORDS from a Democrat President.
But I understand. The programmed hard disk above your eyebrows explodes — this does not compute!
Deflect and Denigrate. That all you got?
Tim,
Get your ass back to Cupertino and build me a proper Mac Pro. Then you can go out and play politics.
Here’s another of many cases (see: Obamacare) where gridlock would have been preferred:
In his January 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson proclaimed, “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”
In the 50 years since that time, U.S. taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs. Adjusted for inflation, this spending (which does not include Social Security or Medicare) is three times the cost of all U.S. military wars since the American Revolution.
Yet progress against poverty, as measured by the U.S. Census Bureau, has been minimal, and in terms of President Johnson’s main goal of reducing the “causes” rather than the mere “consequences” of poverty, the War on Poverty has failed completely. In fact, a significant portion of the population is now less capable of self-sufficiency than it was when the War on Poverty began.
Give. Me. A. Break.
Our moronic president be damned, the KKK wears white and covers their faces, and advocates violence against others to achieve their means. Antifa etc. wear black and cover their faces, and advocate violence against others to achieve their means. They are identical, equal opposite extremes. I cannot take this man seriously. If this is the extent of his capacity for insight, he definitely needs to find something else to do. I have seldom read such a steaming pile of thoughtless, partisan (how the eff did we ever get to the point where that is even a consideration when discussing a technology company that makes consumer devices?) bullshit from a supposed ‘leader’ in my life. Enough, already.
the christian message
Wow MDN. You really quoted that POS Scalia?
Your despicable SLUR of a respected Supreme Justice aside — are you saying MDN take is wrong and government is more functional?
Drive-by hate noted, but you need to get real …
sheesh