Former Microsoft Managers Now In Charge of Washington State's Budget

reifman writes "The Seattle Times reports, 'For the first time in state history, the Washington state budget is being written by Microsofties,' Representative Ross Hunter has 'tamed his Microsoft-style head-butting with a politician's trust-building.' Senator Andy Hill is 'the first Senate budget chair ever to request Excel files instead of paper spreadsheets.' 'The two must find $1 billion in new money for the state's K-12 system.' Unfortunately, The Times neglects to mention that Hunter and Microsoft are among those behind the deficit and cutbacks in the first place. Hunter helped pass the amnesty bill for Microsoft's $1.5 billion Nevada tax dodge ($4.37 billion if you include impacts from its lobbying to reduce tax rates) that contributed to $4 billion in cuts to K-12 and higher education since 2008. The state has resorted to using Yelp to tax dancing to try to make up the shortfall (for real)."

Comments

First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[Taco Cowboy]

When the M$ mole infested Nokia, Nokia tanked

Sales tanked, share price tanked, everything tanked

Will Washington state be next ?

Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[bill_mcgonigle]

Microsoft killed Nokia because it wanted to kill Nokia. That was obvious as it was happening.

I'm not a fan of their technology at all, but they do know how to make money quite well and there's no reason to believe that their financial managers are incompetent or irresponsible with their own interests.

Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[Anonymous Coward]

When the M$ mole infested Nokia, Nokia tanked

Sales tanked, share price tanked, everything tanked

Will Washington state be next ?

This is Nokia's 5-year share price trend. Can you spot any change where Elop joined?

Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[AlphaWolf_HK]

This article is making a serious mistake though. I guarantee you that the $1 billion they claim was lost due to lost tax revenue wouldn't have been dumped into the education system. Maybe some of it would have, but for the most part the other government agencies would be sticking their hands out, and many of them would probably have first dibs (namely stupid-yet-loved items like paying sports franchises to keep teams there - not that this is what is happening in Washington, but these kinds of things tend to take priority over education, I shit you not.)

Blaming that billion dollar education deficit on microsoft is just plain stupid. The politicians would love you to believe that though, because then if you blame microsoft, they'll still get your vote even if it was their fuckup. I can almost promise you that it is more of a result of pork than anything else.

Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[fascismforthepeople]

I would not have taken that job unless I was given a green light to cut all government spending close to 0.

By which, of course, you mean the salaries of all the employees other than yourself. You would cut (most || all) of the government employees, and in the process your salary would (grow a lot || grow ridiculously) while you would force people to do (all || more than all) of the work that the fired people were doing for free. Meanwhile you would be doing (less work than before || no work at all) while celebrating your achievements.

And of course, in the process your power would have increased (incalculably || beyond your wildest dreams || beyond everyone else's nightmares) while you strip away all the rights of everyone else that allows society to exist and people to live. But this is just how your strategy works, you bring power for the wealthy and fascism for the people.

Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[Tough Love]

it's not MS that caused Nokia to tank

That is self serving Microsoft bullshit. On the day Elop released his stupid memo Nokia lost 20% and it was all downhill from there. Fact.

Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[rtb61]

Total fantasy. Allowing capital to pool, simply allows that capital to buy up all the means of production, driving others out of business and further concentrating profits. The deluded thinking that you invest in 'new' means of profit generation belongs alongside money trees, you alter existing, shutting down current business, buy out all access to resource forcing out small business and of course use size to brutalise the labour market and corrupt government.

You might as well be singing "tip to through the tulips" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_PLWqnfFgU your capitalist nonsense is of about the same quality. You should come up with your own teenage selfishness and greed anthem.

Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state

[jamstar7]

I'm saying by evading their fair share of taxes, they deprive Washington State of revenue for services such as police, education, roads, and so forth. This is not trivial shit. By evading taxes on the federal level, they deprive the federal government of revenue for services such as defense, infrastructure rebuilding/repair, and so forth.

Proprietary

[puddingebola]

The budget will be proprietary, only render correctly in Internet Explorer, and include Microsft Bob to help explain the loss of state revenue.

Charity begins at home

[seven of five]

Open up that checkbook, Bill.

first lobbying, then direct corruption.

[girlinatrainingbra]

First, they learn about lobbying. Then, what they learn in lobbying is that greasing the wheel requires either a - hiring some politico's kid, niece, girlfriend, cousin, dad, mistress (what's the male version of mistress?), or such
b - hiring some politico's flunky as soon as they leave office to teach you how to reach the politico or to give you special access to former coworkers
c - hiring some politico when they leave office

Then, they figure out that instead of hiring at the end of the cycle, why not embed somebody in directly at the beginning of the cycle? Have current or recently current employees run for office, and also looking out for the best interests of their employer / former employer.
.
Next, they figure out how to do all of this at a lower cost. Easy ways to lower cost:

- decrease tax liability
- - decrease taxes
- - increase credits for employment, etc
- increase profits
- - require your software to be purchased
- - make your software a de facto requirement for even transacting business with the government
- - make tax rules in your favor

Why pay for the hamsters to run on the wheel when you can own the hamsters yourself? [can you tell that ihashhasst? : i have a seventies hippy history and social-sciences teacher]

Re:first lobbying, then direct corruption.

[tqk]

what's the male version of mistress?

"Giggolo" or "Cabana Boy." Of course, "Employee" and "Taxpayer" work if you need gender neutral.

Re:I understand I'm never going to win this argume

[PopeRatzo]

But isn't there something just a little wrong with the idea that there are morally no limits to what the State can extract from a for-profit corporation?

You have that exactly backwards.

Here's a real link to the "dance tax" article

[girlinatrainingbra]

The real article about the "dance tax" in Washington is at http://jeffreifman.com/2013/04/12/seattle-dance-clubs-fundraise-to-pay-microsofts-tax-bill/ , whereas this /. article only links to the boingboing article which then links to the dance tax article. The short version: washington caves to ms and allows them to bail on 1.5 billion (BILLION!!!!) dollars in tax liability, then it goes on a crusade to nickel-and-dime other businesses for obscure tiny laws like providing the "opportunity to dance", proven by yelp postings that "people like to dance here" or by obituaries that mention that XYZ "liked to dance at $geoloc".

In other words, the rich get to write the laws (or fund the writing of laws, wink, wink) that allow them to avoid taxes whilst the poor (or relatively poor-er) get told to pay higher taxes. Sounds like the republican platform has taken over all of washington state to me.

Re:Here's a real link to the "dance tax" article

[ISoldat53]

So nothing has changed. Before MS it was Boeing. Before them it was Weyerhaeuser. Before them it was the railroads. No different than any other state.

Re:First ever to request files instead of paper?

[maxwell demon]

The bad thing isn't that they demand files. The bad thing is that they demand Excel files.

Re:I understand I'm never going to win this argume

[Anonymous Coward]

Limited liability corporations are an artificial creation of the state. The shareholders have been granted a massive privilege: the opportunity to make money with no liability for wrongdoing, however egregious. There is absolutely no problem with the state taxing the recipients of that massive privilege. If they don't like it, they can put aside the liability protections and work as, for example, a partnership.

Obligatory..

[ImperialSardaukar]

So it looks like you're trying to do a budget....

Re:Ob

[AlphaWolf_HK]

The problem was somebody made some serious mistakes when they were inputting the data.

That wasn't an excel error. Excel did it's job exactly as it was supposed to (not joking, it really did.) Excel can't tell you when your data is wrong, rather only what your data amounts to as per your parameters. Garbage in, garbage out.

Both TFA and TFS in that case made mistakes of their own when they blamed Excel, and TFE (The Fucking Editor) didn't catch it.

Re:Ob

[Hognoxious]

One of the most common mistakes is entering something that looks like a number, but isn't. Say there's a space between the digits, or before them.

While that's the user's fault, when you do a calculation with it excel could at least say something, rather than just fucking pretending there's zero in the cell.

Re:public schools are theft

[Hognoxious]

I would suggest it's roman_mir, but it's too well written and coherent.

"Nevada tax dodge"?

[stenvar]

Why should Washington State get 1.5% of royalties from Microsoft? What costs do royalties impose on the state? What is the state providing in return that contributes to those royalties?

Why not some other state? Tons of people around the world have contributed to Microsoft's products and royalties; why shouldn't the places they live get a cut? And if it's as arbitrary as it is, what's wrong if Microsoft arbitrarily moves its location to Nevada or anywhere else?

Remember that that money is going to be used either as a business expense, or it is going to be taxed as capital gains or salaries anyway.

Re:I understand I'm never going to win this argume

[Hognoxious]

The shareholders have been granted a massive privilege: the opportunity to make money with no liability for wrongdoing

I don't think you understand what limited liability means.

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

No that is not the user's fault. When there is an error state and the program doesn't indicate that there is an error state, that is bad design.

Re:First ever to request files instead of paper?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they should. And they should be publicly viewable with no option to restrict sharing.

Re:First ever to request files instead of paper?

[fritsd]

Businesses need documents. They then need to communicate with those document files to all and sundry other businesses, government institutions, consumers etc.

So they need an open document format. Luckily, one exists: ODF.

In the EU, the right-wing ex-commissioner for Competition, now commissioner for Digital Agenda,Neelie Kroes, understands this, as she said:

"In other words, as I said on that occasion: choosing open standards is a very smart business decision."

(http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-10-300_en.htm) in 2010.

M$ caused Nokia to tank

[SgtChaireBourne]

M$ did cause Nokia to tank. That was done via Elop. The topic of Elop comes up often at Tomi Ahonen's blog. He is the most accurate mobile forcaster around and has on multiple occasions enumerated the damage being caused by Microsoft's Elop at Nokia. Nokia was at the top of it's game when Elop killed it. The Linux phone that he stopped was getting better reviews than the iPhone. But at this point there's nothing viable left and he's even brought in more people from M$ than just himself to ensure that the damage is permanent. Most of the talent has been fired or left on their own. If you want to look for progress, you'll have to turn away from Nokia and towards Jolla. That's just a sample of what the state of Washington can expect with microsofter in charge.

FSM help you all

[bytesex]

I had the pleasure of working with Windows 7 a week ago, on the rare occasion I had to set up a demonstration on a netbook. Hadn't seriously touched windows since.. I don't know. Probably NT. And it *still* is a toy-OS.

Microsoft is nt responsible for the state deficit

[mschuyler]

It's ludicrous to claim that because of Microsoft "tax breaks" the state of Washington faces cuts. Washington does not have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem. From 1999 to 2009 the state budget increased 80%. Inflation and population growth combined was 39%. I don't know anyone who can even point to an increase in services provided by the state today compared to 1999. If they had been prudent in their spending they could have accounted for inflation and population growth with half the increase they did.

How did this happen? Lots of special interests, of course, but the basic fuel was sales taxes, which people don't really notice. When people were buying new cars the money rolled in and the state spent it. When the recession hit people cut back spending and suddenly the gravy train of sales taxes slowed to a trickle.

Now the state wants to tax everything because it's "for the children." They're looking for scapegoats and Microsoft is a nice big one to blame. It already has one of the highest sales taxes and gas taxes in the nation. It's a liberal tax and spend state.

But hey. If you want to move where the welfare payments are pretty good, move to Washington, a place where "undocumented aliens" get in-state tuition and help. With policies like Washington it won't be long before this place looks like Detroit.

Re:I understand I'm never going to win this argume

[jamstar7]

The shareholders have been granted a massive privilege: the opportunity to make money with no liability for wrongdoing

I don't think you understand what limited liability means.

Actually, I think he does. When you incorporate as an LLC and something catastrophic happens, the LLC is nailed and likely killed while the owners remain relatively untouched.