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)."

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/ [jeffreifman.com] , 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: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: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 [google.com] trend. Can you spot any change where Elop joined?

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.

M$ caused Nokia to tank

[SgtChaireBourne]

M$ did cause Nokia to tank [seekingalpha.com]. That was done via Elop. The topic of Elop comes up often [blogs.com] 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 [blogs.com]. 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.