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Utah Set To Exempt NSA Datacenter From Power Tax, After All
Nerval's Lobster writes "They may not all support what the NSA will do with its giant new datacenter in Bluffdale, but Utah officials do seem to agree on the value of having a world-class, $1.5 billion datacenter built in their territory. In general, they're for it, and are proving that by changing a law that would have added about $2.4 million in taxes to the datacenter's power bill—an addition that was an unpleasant surprise to NSA officials when they heard about it in May. A bill signed into law April 1 imposed a tax of up to 6 percent on electricity from Rocky Mountain Power, a requirement the NSA protested in an email to Utah Gov. Gary Herbert April 26. State tax agencies swear they informed the NSA about the impact of the law when it was still under debate; NSA officials denied knowing anything about it and complained that it would make Utah a less attractive site for the datacenter, which was only three to four months from completion at the time."
Ladies and gentlemen, here are the guys whose job is information processing for the security of your nation...
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
Just to be fair the NSA is denying knowing a lot these days.
Well there's one we haven't heard before.
Even the federal government is looking at tax rates and making location decisions based around them. I suppose this makes a little sense to those who understand business and how they operate, but I bet it blows the mind of those who think it is a crime to subsidies business or that government can just print money and pay out the nose for their crap.
If only the NSA had been doing a better job spying on the Utah legislature that would have found out about this in advance.
They may be protesting, but don't be fooled into thinking they were going to move the billion dollar facility because of a $3 million tax. Utah should keep the tax money.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Dont know much how the taxes are calculated. But, does avoid having to pay taxes also help remove the power consumption data from being public ?
The problem is, the state officials talked about it publicly. If they had just whispered it to each other in private cell phone conversations, the NSA might have paid attention.
Yea. we didn't know about it. We were too busy reading everyone's emails. Ignorance of the law is our excuse. Give us a tax break, which simply means that the average citizens pay more than the people who spy on them. The irony here is that they were only 3-4 months from completion, "AT THE TIME" and are less now. So it wasn't like they were going to leave the state, walk away from all of the money already spent, and let the citizens go without someone to spy on them. They would have paid the tax, they just didn't like it. Glad to know that everyone else there must like it. I guess the Utah state constitution doesn't have any sort of equal protection clause that would prevent giving this unfair treatment to some but not to others (mine does, but it is ignored when inconvenient).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
What is it going to accomplish? Are ye Daft?
It accomplishes exactly what any tax does. You were expecting the Feds to pick up and move their data center?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Have gnu, will travel.
It generates government revenue, paid for by government revenue plus overhead. So . . .
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
Sigh.....
The State of Utah would get far more in tax revenue from the feds if it could tax the power this site is going to use.
Some of that tax money would be paid by Utah citizens via their Federal Income tax, but the overwhelmingly vast majority of it would come from the rest of the US tax payers in other states.
As it stands now, Utah tax payers are going to have to pick up the slack for the free-loading federal government.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It is, of course, tempting to dismiss his extreme claims as some sort of mental aberration -- perhaps resulting from his having hit the jackpot with the sale of his company for, by some accounts, between $3B and $4B to one of the most prominent credit rating agencies in the world.
On the other hand, he did sell his company for between $3B and $B to one of the most prominent credit rating agencies in the world.
Moreover, if we give the initial statement in Clark's Laws any credence: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right.", RHN's age and the fact that he is commenting on his specialization should be given some weight.
With this in mind, I would ask you to review the linked presentation -- which I located at Sandia's website (and of which I recommend you commit to memory lest it disappear down the memory hole) -- made by RHN at Sandia in 2006. Note he proposes an "Extraction System Organization" with a budget rising to $300B/year by 2015.
In particular, I found this item interesting:
CAUTION: Some obviously psychotic individuals claim there to be a deep relationship between credit card companies and the surveillance state. They should be locked up for their own safety.
Seastead this.
Letting us know exactly how much it is costing the rest of us to subsidize this thing?
I know, I know...for people high enough up the financial food chain, money is just an abstract symbol to be manipulated. But for those who are left in bondage as indentured servants to make good on those bad promises, it is quite real.
I am John Hurt.
Unless it was their other shenanigans which they did do privately.that the NSA did listen to which made them change their minds.
So what if they didn't know about it? I have to pay taxes all the time that are introduced and that I hitherto didn't know about, and might have made lots of different investment decisions had I known they were going to happen. But I've got to live with it. Boo hoo to the NSA cry babies.