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"Bridge To Microsoft" Gets Federal Stimulus Funds
theodp writes "Among the first to benefit from the investment in roads and bridges from Obama's stimulus plan is Microsoft, which has $20B in the bank. Local planners have allotted $11M to help pay for a highway overpass to connect one part of Microsoft's wooded campus with another. Microsoft will contribute almost half of the $36.5M cost; other federal and local money will pay the rest. 'Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates could finance this out of pocket change,' griped Steve Ellis of the Taxpayers for Common Sense. 'Subsidizing an overpass to one of the richest companies in the country certainly isn't going to be the best use of our precious dollars.' Ellis called the project 'a bridge to Microsoft,' alluding to Alaska's infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere.'" A White House spokesman said this bridge project is still under review.
Connecting two parts of the company campus? The company should pay for it.
If I understood correctly, it connects two parts of the city. It so happens that each has one part of MS campus in it, so MS will benefit greatly, but they're not the only one to do so (and of course, as TFA says, they do pay for it, just not for all of it).
>>>Microsoft probably brings in a teeny tiny bit of revenue for that community
The amount of money MS gives the community is far less than 11 million dollars. This is the equivalent of spending ten dollars to get a 1 dollar coupon mailed to yourself. The money spent exceeds the money earned. It's foolish.
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