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

[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.

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: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: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.

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

[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.

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.

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.