Female politicians have been bad for Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley sex discrimination is in the news, with the Ellen Pao lawsuit. But this is an area that has tried the experiment of female politicians, and it has been a disaster:

San Jose was once the female capital of the world for political power. Janet Gray Hayes was the first woman mayor of a major city. She had a council consisting mostly of women. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors also had a majority of women. Gender parity was coming into vogue.

But times have changed and fewer women are now in local public office. The Board of Supervisors has just one woman, Cindy Chavez, and previous to her special election victory the board was all male. ...

Only in Congress, where Mike Honda joins Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo and Jackie Speier, is there an actual majority of women representing Silicon Valley. ...

We also have Boxer and Feinstein in the US Senate. All elected many years ago, and we are sick of them.

The feminist press complains of double standards:

Nobody cares when Bill Clinton changes his hairstyle, unless he holds up airport traffic getting it cut. Nobody comments on Dick Blum’s fashion choices when he stands next to his wife, Sen. Dianne Feinstein. They don’t refer to him as Mr. Feinstein. Nobody questions Mitt Romney’s commitment to his numerous grandchildren when he ran for president, but for some reason it is a story for Hillary.

To many in the good old boy establishment, much of this is dismissed as political correctness or women being overly sensitive to criticism — an insulting charge. The simple truth is that there is a new generation of women who will not play by the outdated codes and double standards that continue to persist. They see rules that need rewriting and want to change perceptions.

What women wear, whom they date, what they look like and what name they choose to be called is not relevant to the content of their character. It is not news and it will be challenged.

Are you kidding me? Hillary Clinton has decided herself to play up the grandmother role for her presidential run. She also is the one to emphasize her maiden name, as if she was never happy to take Bill's name.

One of my readers points out an incisive comment:

Like the child allowed to grow-up undisciplined and unruly by an inept single mom, San Jose has never found the maturity necessary to pay as it goes, address its responsibilities, or plan for the future... Take a walk along San Jose’s borders and you will find, in almost every direction, that to step across the line is to step into higher home valuation, better schools, smoother pavement, faster fire service, cleaner parks, better police coverage, and enhanced residential services.

The Dilbert site got taken down with a DDOS attack apparently because of this comment:

Locally, one hears stories all the time about some guy who did something special with a start-up, or he’s a superstar coder, or a product genius, or whatever. How many times have I heard similar stories about superstar female entrepreneurs with technology skills? Maybe…never? At least none in the past year. ...

Here’s the part that ends my career: On average, men and women are equally capable for academic and technical pursuits. But men tend to have the most freaks on the high end and low end of the IQ spectrum. One study says there are about twice as many men as women in the top 2%.

The Germans have joined other European countries in passing laws requiring women to be on corporate boards of directors.

Silicon Valley is a meritocracy, so they should have wised up about women politicians by now. They have been stupid enuf to elect women in the past, and to decide we needed a black President. Will they think we need a woman President? I hope they look at the track records of Democrat candidates a little better.

Update: Silicon Valley startups have always been against regulation, especially of the internet, but not that Obama has enacted regulations to protect Google and Facebook, the local papers are telling a different story. From today's paper:

The FCC's vote essentially puts the Internet under the same regulatory umbrella as telephones. The aim is to keep Internet service providers from slowing or blocking certain web activity -- or creating paid "fast lanes."

Silicon Valley's House Democrats -- Mike Honda, Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo and Jackie Speier -- all lauded the FCC's action. But among Republicans, the only split now seems to be between those who want to use their new majority in both houses of Congress to ram through a resolution decrying the FCC in the hopes of overriding the decision, and those who would prefer to enlist some Democrats to impose different, weaker rules.

Even House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, a frequent visitor to Silicon Valley and arguably the GOP's point man for the region, blasted the FCC vote.

"The FCC has just taken the Internet -- arguably the most dynamic contributor to a growing economy and higher quality of life in the world -- back in time to the era of landlines," he said in a statement after the vote. "The Internet is too important to the everyday lives of Americans for such government overreach."

If G.W. Bush had done this, we would be hearing a lot more complaints. What a lot of people don't realize is that big companies like regulation, because their lobbying can control it, and it keeps small competitors out.

Update: Hillary Clinton's email account, while Sec. of State, was hdr22@clintonemail.com. Those are the initials of her maiden name. She just wants to use the Clinton name when it advances her political agenda.