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-Great Cultural Revolution

The Lawyers Who Ate California: Part II

2022-05-15

By Matt Taibbi

[TaibbiSubstack] The Activision Case, and the beginning of Tesla. Taking a strategy imported from the Department of Labor, the DFEH launches a series of media-centric cases

The failure of the federal case against Oracle had wide-ranging repercussions. For one thing, the firm moved its headquarters out of Redwood City to Austin, Texas within months of the judge’s decision. Oracle announced a move in the same week as Tesla, which was destined to be targeted by some of the same lawyers who’d worked the Oracle case. CEO Elon Musk told the Wall Street Journal that California regulators had begun behaving like a “monopoly that cannot go bankrupt,” preaching a religion that “regulations are immortal,” while adding the following acid commentary:

If a team has been winning for too long, they do tend to get a little complacent, a little entitled and then they don’t win the championship anymore. California has been winning for too long.

State officials responded to the departures of Oracle, Tesla, and other companies like Hewlett-Packard by claiming that a combination of irrational resistance to the state’s strict COVID-19 laws and a reluctance by coddled white male executives to diversify was causing the exodus.

Eric Mellon, a spokesman for Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, told The Washington Post that California’s success was “not despite our progressive policies, but because of them… These are California’s fundamental values, and we’ll continue creating more jobs than any other state.”

Newsom then nervously insisted there was nothing to worry about. He pointed to a new law offering restaurants and other small businesses more flexibility in expanding outdoor dining — “eat your heart out, Paris,” he quipped — and reassured citizens the Silicon Valley departures were no big deal. “Our best days are in front of us,” the governor said.

“The ironic thing is, he was about six months from becoming a target of all this himself,” laughs one lawyer, referring to a state case that would soon far eclipse Oracle for sheer bile and bitterness.

“There’s ugly,” he added, “and then there’s Activision ugly.”

Way back on February 18th, 2018, Fortune magazine released its annual list of “100 Best Companies to Work For.” Game giant Activision Blizzard made the list for the fourth straight year, with a Fortune survey claiming 95 percent of its employees said it was a “fun place to work.” The firm’s PR department giddily noted it also made the “Most Admired” and “Most Innovative” lists the year before. Coupled with $7 billion in revenues, the news sent their share price skyrocketing to an all-time high of $78.25, as executives appeared to have reached gamer nirvana.
Read the rest at the link

Posted by:badanov

#1 Matt Taibbi is rapidly joining Salena Zito in the "must read the whole article" club. Very good reporting and analysis.

Posted by: Tom 2022-05-15 15:41

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