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350 lbs requires power assistance huh? I guess UPS has never seen a guy on a bike in India deliver a package the size of a school bus on his own power.

Hi, I live in the Seattle area and I spend a lot of time riding bikes.

Seattle is hilly. The downtown core where the packages most likely need delivery is... also hilly.

If any packages need delivery to Queen Anne Hill, that's so steep I wouldn't want to ride that even with 10 pounds of packages. If any packages need delivery to the hospitals, we literally call that area "Pill Hill", as in there is a big hill with the hospitals on it.

Wikipedia has a list of hills in Seattle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_hills_of_Seattle

And here's an article about how the hilly streets are challenging to folks with mobility issues: https://crosscut.com/2017/02/seattles-hills-are-the-worst-heres-a-way-to-cope

The hills are sufficiently bad that there is an official city program of rights-of-way that go through skyscrapers downtown. Instead of walking up a hill you cut through a skyscraper and use their escalators. I say again this is an official thing... I spent some time working in one of the skyscrapers on one of the routes. (I haven't found anything about this online with Google searches, but I remember reading a plaque in the skyscraper where I worked listing the guaranteed hours that the escalators were open to the public as part of this program.) Of course, UPS tricycles can't use escalators and wouldn't be allowed to even if it were possible.

It is entirely appropriate to have a motor assist if we are talking about 350 pounds of packages.

Actually it wouldn't surprise me if UPS wanted to have a motor assist even in flat places (Kansas maybe?), because it won't add that much to the expense of a special delivery tricycle and the motor will provide more speed. More speed is more packages delivered and thus more money.

So your comment is +1 snarky but -2 clueless.

I am also curious about the money the government never sees: Ballmer was tax dodger in chief Microsoft as it kept $120 billion off shore. http://www.seattletimes.com/bu... and https://crosscut.com/2014/08/w... I posted this story with more context about his tax dodging and Slashdot declined it.

They probably have a similar infrastructure problem as Redmond (Microsoft home base); the huge employer they want to keep also costs them a boat-load in infrastructure.

cf http://crosscut.com/2008/02/mi...

It probably isn't. The article does kinda sorta make that claim, but has no evidence whatsoever to back up the link. It actually appears to be saying that someone is using the ATF's cameras to conduct a grease dumping investigation, not that the ATF is itself conducting the investigation.

The facts seem to be:

- The ATF, FBI, and other Federal agencies have set up the cameras.
- Someone (TFA says ATF, but that's not believable and they offer nothing to back that up) is conducting a grease dumping investigation. They have access to these cameras set up by the FBI and ATF.
- The ATF themselves say the cameras they've put up were originally for a single investigation. They have been linked to a gun violence program in Seattle, so it is more than likely their investigation is linked to that.
- The ATF has emphatically not claimed its doing a grease investigation anywhere, which makes no sense.

It's a confusing article, but it doesn't really make the claim the headline does.

Thank you for your support of teachers. I've already reported and weighed in a few times about this subject, and I'd like to just expand on a few of your points.

Unfortunately, money speaks, and superintendents listen. When someone walks into a sup's office and says, "I'd like to donate $50,000 to the district to buy more technology," who would say no? And, on a national scale, if Zuck & Gates walk into the president's office to say, "We'd like to donate $1,000,000 to get more school districts to code," do you think Obama would be any different?

I do wish that we would just let labor markets let supply and demand naturally encourage or discourage people from entering and leaving the profession, as it happened a decade ago. While Microsoft claims that we aren't supplying enough computer programmers to meet demand, the BLS begs to differ. Salaries have grown at 1.5% annually between 2004-2012, barely keeping up with inflation. All the while, we continue to bring in more H1B visa applicants. If these companies -really- want more programmers, all they need to do is raise salaries. It sounds like they have plenty to spare. Not to mention repatriating all that money would go a long ways in increasing tax revenues to help states pay for their K-12 institutions.

Read this article linked to from the article in the summary:
http://crosscut.com/2014/08/wh...

It indicates that Microsoft's dodge very likely was illegal. State law at the time indicated that royalty taxes should be paid where your operations reside - not where you book the income. This was never pursued by the state department of revenue. Why? The author notes that the WA dept of revenue was run by a former Microsoft exec. Whether that's really the reason we don't really know, but it certainly is enough to arouse suspicions (and make me want to request some emails from the State gov).

The law was then changed so that the dodge would be explicitly legal (by another former Microsoft exec in the state legislature). Also written into the law was an amnesty provisions for any corporations who likely owed back taxes under the old version of the law. I wonder why the amnesty portion was so important? What corporations could have been flaunting the old version of the law?

such as requiring municipalities to grant franchise rights to new last-mile ISP entrants, for instance

BTW, That's been law since the 1992 Cable Act. Raise your hand if you have the billion dollars or so required to wire up a metropolis from scratch! Oh! I see Google has their hand up, anyone else? Anyone? Uh, Tucows, is that you? You do know that Charlottesville is more of a town right?

Last-mile ISP entrants aren't being held back by the government (except in Seattle which has "Unique" rules) . Last mile ISP entrants are held back by the fact it costs a fuckton to lay connection material, and the incumbents have already demonstrated against Google that they will cut their prices and increase service (or just pretend to, see ATT "giga" "power") to compete, so investors are wisely hesitant to throw that billion dollars to an unproven company that will probably be driven out of business then bought out by the incumbents who will dig the fiber back up and stick it on pikes to serve as a warning to the next idiot who thinks that offering a better service at a cheaper price will be able to compete.

for reference: http://crosscut.com/2014/12/29...

Seattle was a candidate to be the first city to get Google fiber. The culture of bureaucracy there made it unattractive for Google. For example, in Seattle, and nowhere else in the country, they have to get permission from every homeowner within a certain distance before they can install a fiber cabinet. Just contacting every homeowner and getting them to fill out the form to "yes" or "no" would be a giant pain in the ass that slows things down.

http://crosscut.com/2014/03/04...

We had to sue Seattle Police Department to get them to provide dashboard camera video. Until recently, they refused to provide it to uninvolved parties until the statutes of limitation on civil and criminal lawsuits ran out. That's three years. They also had a policy of purging video after three years.

See this report, published yesterday:

An important precedent for public access to police video was set in June, when the state Supreme Court ruled that the Seattle Police Department had wrongly withheld dashboard camera footage from a KOMO-TV news reporter. The reporter filed a request in 2010 for "any and all" in-car footage the department had tagged to keep since 2007.

I wrote this one for you: http://crosscut.com/2014/06/04...

how they avoid paying taxes to the state of Washington. http://crosscut.com/2008/02/02/microsoft/11167/Microsoft-s-$528-million-Washington-tax-break/ They probably have tactics for avoiding federal taxes as well. I think all large companies do.

If you read statements she has made (in The Seattle Times, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Stranger, Crosscut, etc.), Sen. Prentice comes across as a moron (IQ below 69).

I don't think the guy who writes this article really understands tax law. Neither do I really, but atleast I'll admit it. It seems to me that I remember Tax Avoidance being perfectly legal and accepted. I really think he misunderstands the idea that there's some existing tax law to be enforced that applies to Microsoft's actions. The software is licensed out of NV, hence, NV law applies. There are major jurisdictional issues inherent in taxation law and so far as I can tell as a layman, there's nothing afoul of any regulation going on here.

If there were, you can be sure Washington State would have their hands in Microsoft's pockets already.

That's kind of why most corporations are incorporated in Delaware, too. There's jurisdictional issues being blatantly ignored by this person in order to make a point and that is not justified.

That all said, I did some more reading and it looks like this guy has barked up this tree before.
http://crosscut.com/2008/02/02/microsoft/11167/
which was posted to Slashdot back then
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/04/1520219
and a followup with his anti-arguments to the posts from Slashdot back then.
http://www.idealog.us/2008/02/top-reader-excu.html

Oh and 2004 too:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/01/2137228&tid=109

You'll notice, a year ago, he supposedly already addressed all the issues everyone here could possibly present. Unfortunately, he's also completely ignored the one about the constitutionality of taxation and jurisdiction and focuses more on wishy washy sort of justification arguments made that appeal more to a sense of right or wrong, rather than the case law regarding jurisdictional tax issues.

Career campaigner on this issue, hey Jeff? Too bad you've wasted 5 YEARS on this subject and you're never going to get anywhere because Microsoft is DOING NOTHING WRONG.

As someone who once worked at MS (and now at a Linux company, so sad that I feel I need to qualify that)

You should qualify that further. Some people consider Novell a "Linux company" but it's poison.

The city of Redmond is 47,000 people. There are 40,000 employees of Microsoft in Redmond every day.

Most people would consider a company that works hard to avoid local taxes to be a significant burden instead of the economic contributor people expect. Why is it that more M$ employees don't live in Redmond? Why is it that the 40,000 people of Redmond should shoulder the cost of a bridge on private property? Why should Federal funds be used for such a project? [Hint: they avoid Federal and International taxes with their Irish shell company.]

those patent threatening disloyal corporate scumbags don't deserve a penny of public funds in campus infrastructure projects

MS is just as shitty a company as enron or worldcom or any of those new york so called investment banks. Over priced garbage for products they pushed using monopoly and cartel strong arm tactics over the years and using every sleazy trick in the book to get out of paying something back to the community on top of that. What has been collectively LOST to businesses and individuals all over the planet due to their insecure code? It has to be in the tens of billions so far. Why the hell they should be rewarded for shipping botnet bait products is beyond me.

I'm fine with that...if you can prove Microsoft never received any tax breaks, corporate subsidies, or any other sort of incentives for staying in the US, and Washington specifically.

Or that they don't doesn't dodge taxes either:
http://crosscut.com/2008/02/02/microsoft/11167/

There is nothing "simple" about it because how one person acts affects those around them. Well, I suppose that part is simple...which makes it all the weirder that so many libertarians just don't get it.

Since 1997, Microsoft has dodged some $528 million in taxes. Tell me again how you are not mandated to fund closed-source development. And look me in the eye when you do it.

My only hope is that Palin doesn't change in 4 years. That way she America will find out what she's all about. From what I read from people who grew up with her, they like her well enough but don't think she should be elected for higher office. That and her interviews, she strikes me as not someone just from a small town, but someone who is small-minded.

Actually, Sen. Ted 'Tubes' Stevens deserves plenty of credit, but it's not like they turned on him until he turned into a political liability (he's under indictment right now).

They were all for it when times were good, but turned against him later.

Oh yes. I'm sure someone will mention that she did turn on one other to get her 'reformer' credentials. But that guy pissed her off personally. It wasn't some high-minded stance against corruption, or she'd have outed Stevens.

She's quite the witch if you read that email everyone is talking about. People should show that to anyone who saw her speech and didn't realize how mean she can be.

She hired a lobbyist to get earmarks for a tiny town (reports list it anywhere from 5 to 9 thousand people). You want to blame Ted Stevens for all the earmarks, but she ran his PAC. He endorsed her.

I think she's "libertarian" in marketing only.

I don't think that government jobs should be "for life" but how did you get that out of that story? She was using a political test on people, rather than hiring people according to competence.

Isn't that how we got "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie!" from Bush to the guy who helped screw up the Hurricane Katrina response? And how we got all these government "scientists" who aren't?

Please read that email I keep linking to if you haven't yet. It's balanced on the whole and it was written by someone who knows Palin very well.

I can see a few things to like about her, but overall, I see a woman who is a very good politician in terms of getting people to see her the way she wants them to.

I think you'll end up opposing a department for volunteers (who might take over for paid government in running community projects) and end up with a vastly expanded Department of Homeland Security and more increases in the federal government. I believe Bush increased the government more than anyone for the past 50 years or more.

And 8 years ago, I might have agreed with you. In fact, I probably would have. But McCain is my senator, and I've lost all respect for him in the past 3 years seeing him become a phony who is now against whatever he once stood for, though I had always supported him until now. Palin is no help, either; she runs the Ultimate Welfare State up in Alaska, which takes more of our tax money to spend on giveaway programs in Alaska than any other.

Instead of listening to random blogs, listen to someone who actually lives there.

I don't know what book list is right or not. I don't even care. Maybe she stopped orders (which happen before the book is released), maybe that list floating around is wrong. Either way, it's pretty clear that she did want to ban books until it became clear that she would suffer for it politically. I'd personally be willing to lessen the charge from "book banning" to "attempted book banning", but that won't give me a reason to vote for her.

I think the evidence indicates that she's a skilled politician in terms of avoiding responsibility for her actions, who is very nice in public, but who has daggers waiting for the backs of anyone who crosses her.

Read this if you want to understand her management style. I would never work for a boss like her.

And if you have read any of the many books about problems in the Bush administration, you'll know that this paranoia over loyalty is one of the things that has made Bush such a terrible president. Bush hires cronies instead of people who know what they're doing, which is how we got to "Heck of a job, Brownie!"

At least there, you can make a stark contrast with Obama. His campaign has had the least internal drama of anyone and all the reports about how he manages people say that he does exceptionally well, as you can read here.

I don't know about anyone else, but I want a leader who doesn't think serving the community doesn't count as experience, but telling people "it's my way or the highway" does.

> Selling the government jet on eBay, is my idea of libertarianism.

She didn't sell it on eBay (that deal fell through). She had to sell it privately.

> Able to hold an opinion but not use the state to force those opinions on others, is my idea of libertarianism.

She'll fire anyone who disagrees with her, though. The bad cop probably deserved it (though I'm not sure she should use her office like that). The police chief might have deserved it if he had a history of protecting bad cops. But did the librarian deserve it? Did all the other people she stabbed in the back deserve it?

We get focused on the cases that grab headlines, but she has a history of being nasty when there are no cameras around.

> I am curious how you make out Obama to be the stronger libertarian candidate, or frankly even Barr.

I'm not the other guy, but I just want to make it clear that I'm not going to argue that Obama is libertarian. He isn't. I do think that there's some hope of him lessening executive power. He was a constitutional scholar; he has to have some appreciation for it. He also indicated that he might prosecute Bush administration officials who acted unconstitutionally.

There's no way in hell McCain could do that, even if he wanted to.

> I just cannot support his level of fiscal irresponsibility and government extension.

Then you might want to look into what Palin did in Alaska. She spent freely, taxed regressively, and took as much money as she could get from the federal government (i.e. everyone NOT in Alaska). That's why they loved her, after all. They got an extra $500/person, because they didn't have to spend their own money. Though she had sense enough to pretend that she hadn't when it became a political issue, that just proves she's politically crafty. Nobody denies that she's good at politics.

> I can see where you'd be confused because Bush himself has been rather expansionist with government. What I am talking about supporting here is candidates that are opposite of Bush in that way.

She's not. She's just like Bush in that way. She's just better at pretending not to be. She calls herself "libertarian" but that's just to get people who don't know her to vote for her. Once you get past the fluff, you'll find that she's been highly irresponsible.

A true libertarian should be writing in Ron Paul in this election.

I vote for McCain this fall as a libertarian, hoping that Palin will be at the top of the ticket in four years.

Then you've been duped by a woman you don't even know.

She supported the Bridge to Nowhere, coming out against it only after Alaska was asked to pay for more of it.

She got a tiny town with no debt $20 million into the hole, during a time of record surplus! And this after taking $27 million in federal earmarks for that tiny town (before becoming Governor and getting even more). John McCain called earmarks sought by her "pork" back before he tried to claim she was a "reformer."

The librarian and the police chief are the least of it. She's the kind of person to fire anyone she doesn't like. And when she's done with someone, she's done. She's even nastier than shown in that speech.

She presides over the Ultimate Welfare State. Alaska has a fund that it distributes to residents. They love Palin because it went up by about $500 under her. Never mind that it takes in $1.87 for every dollar it's taxed. So Alaska is spending everyone else's money.

She ran Sen. Ted "The Internet is not a big truck" Stevens' PAC. She hired a lobbyist to get those earmarks.

She's a skilled politician and if you think she's some kind of "libertarian" you've been duped. She's another borrow & spend Republican, just like Bush.

Since 1997, Microsoft has used a front office in Reno, Nevada to avoid paying Washington State over $528 million in software sales taxes.

The Redmond company makes products here but records software sales to PC makers and high-volume customers through an operation in Nevada, where there is no corporate tax. So Washington is missing out on revenue it could use for badly needed infrastructure needs -- like replacement of the 520 bridge.