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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 $36.5M cost; other federal and local money will pay the rest. 'Steve Ballmer or Bill Gates could finance this out of pocket change,' griped Steve Ellis of the Taxpayers for Common Sense. 'Subsidizing an overpass to one of the richest companies in the country certainly isn't going to be the best use of our precious dollars.' Ellis called the project 'a bridge to Microsoft,' alluding to Alaska's infamous 'Bridge to Nowhere.'" A White House spokesman said this bridge project is still under review.
Unless it is a toll road which Microsoft owns completely, there is nothing wrong with using public money to build the road.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Public works projects as a way of recovering from a recession has never worked. It didn't work for the Japanese in the 90's, they spent 10 years building roads and bridges and wondering why nothing was happening. It didn't work for us in the 30's. And it will never work.
We need to stop listening to Keynesian and socialist economists who don't have the first clue what they're talking about and are trying to give solutions based on theory instead of what's been shown to work.
You want to turn this economy around? Cut taxes to 20%, max. Reduce regulations on small businesses \ cut the red tape.
The government cannot create jobs except government jobs, and government jobs do not build an economy. All government can do is get out of the way, and keep the playing field fair for the players.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
It's Micro$oft!!!!11eleven!
Do you know how many american babies they will have to sacrifice per square inch of that road? /sarcasm
I didn't think so!
Hey... how about the view-point that Microsoft is actually paying for half of that road - which WILL NOT BE MICROSOFT PROPERTY ONCE BUILT.
Or... the fact that it appears that the community actually needs that overpass.
Easing Congestion
The city of Redmond says the overpass will relieve congestion on other streets and support a big employer in the region, though one cutting jobs lately.
Microsoft said in January that it's eliminating as many as 5,000 jobs, including some from its Seattle-area workforce of 41,480.
"This project is a mobility improvement for the area as a whole," said Lou Gellos, a spokesman for Microsoft.
An existing bridge a few blocks away is congested and a nightmare for pedestrians and bicycle riders, he said.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
How much does Microsoft pay in local property taxes? I would hope they have paid in a lot more than the cost of this project. Local governments are almost always willing to make concessions to businesses that make up a large part of their tax base by contributing to property taxes, state income taxes (by providing jobs), and sales taxes (which Microsoft pays very little of, not being a retail business). I would expect them to do similar improvements for a shopping mall, why not a tech firm? If the local government is giving them a free ride on property taxes AND subsidizing this improvement, then yes, local taxpayers have a right to be pissed off. But since a good number of people in Redmond owe their livelihood to M$ either directly or indirectly, I'd expect most of the taxpayers to keep their mouths shut. Plus, doesn't this overpass benefit everybody by keeping some cars off of the main highway?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Were this any lesser company, 100% of the cost would be paid for by tax dollars. That Microsoft is contributing half is either a sginficant act of generosity on their part, or a major triumph of democracy over corporate greed and corruption. Either way, it's a victory for taxpayers.
It was a similar situation when Disneyland wanted their own exit on the I-5 in Anaheim. There were significant reasons from the taxpayers point of view to do this - it greatly improved traffic in that section of the freeway, and throughout that part of Anaheim - but Disney still ended up paying for a significant portion of the cost. (In their case, it was a damned good investment in their wholly owned subsidiary, the city of Anaheim.)
You obviously don't live in the area or drive on the 40th street overpass. I do. I don't work for Microsoft, and I would use that road several times per month just in the course of travelling to various entertainment venues. What we have here is a non-story about a project that is useful, estimated to cost between 15-36M, and which Microsoft has already dropped $11M on. Show me how many Seattle businesses are willing to put extra cash of their own (in addition to tax base they already supply) on the line to dig their fancy tunnel. Oh yeah, the only people in Seattle that regularly write checks for public works are retired Microsoft employees...weird.
Real FOSS nerds would just build a catapult, a flying car, or teleporter to get across. Green engineers would have demanded that 2 UNDER-passes be built, one for humans to bicycle across, and another for critters that live in the woods to have corridors connecting their shrinking landscape. Apple or Google would plan on building light rails or trams that will eventually connect all their campuses and stores. IBM would just hire only illegal Mexican workers skilled at running across highways. Obviously Seattle isn't the most innovative regional planners they purport to be. Wimps.
How is it MS needs to lay-off employees but can throw 36.5 million on this?
The state should not give tax payer money to a monopolistic company damaging the local economy by laying off people when clearly they didn't financially need to.
That's a lot of jobs. When you realize that some cities would fork over hundreds of millions in annual tax abatements just to get that many jobs, pitching in on a bridge is not a bad deal.
This is my sig.
Okay, twitter:
1) Microsoft still pays huge amounts of taxes to the locale so it is certainly not a burden. You can bicker about whether it's as much a boon as it should be but there's no question it's a boon to the city.
2) Why don't more MS employees live in Redmond? Are you serious? Where do you live where everybody works within 3 miles of where they live.
3) This "bridge" is not on private property. It's on public property. It's not only to serve Microsoft. It connects two points in Redmond that happen both to have Microsoft offices. It also benefits, for example, Nintendo and Boeing. And everybody in Redmond.
4) The 40000 people of Redmond should fund the basic public infrastructure of their city because that's the role of the government of Redmond.
Then the Ireland thing comes completely out of nowhere.
If you lived in Redmond, WA, you'd know why the article's author is full of shit. Try commuting from main campus, and with a company that has had significant expansion over the last few years, commutes are painful, streets are crowded, and traffic is always challenged either with going to or coming from work. There are traffic studies done ALL THE TIME in Redmond, and if you only felt the pain of the congestion in this small town, you'd know that MS didn't have to offer to pay for anything for this bridge, but they are.