Former Microsoft Managers Now In Charge of Washington State's Budget 126
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 $4 billion in cuts to K-12 and higher education since 2008. The state has resorted to using Yelp to tax dancing to try to make up the shortfall (for real)."
Ob (Score:1, Insightful)
Just hope they aren't using excel to do the budget.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23448-how-to-stop-excel-errors-driving-austerity-economics.html [newscientist.com]
Also, frist poot.
First it was Nokia, now Washington state (Score:5, Insightful)
When the M$ mole infested Nokia, Nokia tanked
Sales tanked, share price tanked, everything tanked
Will Washington state be next ?
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Yes, but it's not MS that caused Nokia to tank and it's not MS that is causing USA to tank either. Pretty bad timing though, I would not have taken that job unless I was given a green light to cut all government spending close to 0.
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They didn't exactly help, though.
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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 (incalcula
Re:First it was Nokia, now Washington state (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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So you are one of those tools that think the only purpose of gov't is to make sure people don't interfere with corporations...
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Yes, but it's not MS that caused Nokia to tank and it's not MS that is causing USA to tank either. Pretty bad timing though, I would not have taken that job unless I was given a green light to cut all government spending close to 0.
If Microsoft isn't paying its fair share of taxes, how is this not causing Washington state and the US as a whole not to tank? If they're playing the money shuffle game to keep from paying billions, and lawyering the government to death to keep from paying fines, how is this not affecting everyone through loss of revenue and wasted government spending in failed attempts to collect fines levied against them by the courts?
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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
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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 (Score:1)
And California would claim prior art and win spectacularly
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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?
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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
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Actually a WA judge is ordering the state legislature to come up with the money for schools because, per the state constitution:
SECTION 1 PREAMBLE. It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.
SECTION 2 PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. The legislature shall provide for a general and uniform system of public schools. The public school system shall include common scho
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I calculated the position in excel and it said 1!
Re:Ob (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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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:Ob (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Excel will pop an error if you throw that into a mathematical formula. The dependent cell will show #NUM, which indicates a problem exactly like the one you describe, and it's plainly obvious too because that message cascades.
If nothing was dependent upon the cell that you made the error in, then the reader will simply see whatever the person typed, and it isn't excel's job to second guess that unless you tell it otherwise (namely by using the data validation options) otherwise you'd have to deal with a maj
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Maybe it's version dependent, but I've had that kind of error with data that's been copy-pasted or exported from other systems, and even using the functions to clean it ( trim()? ... it was a while ago) didn't work.
Or take a look at item 67 here. http://www.eusprig.org/stories.htm [eusprig.org]
Microsoft (Score:1)
I fully expect the budget of Washington State to BSOD.
Goldman Sacks (Score:1)
Proprietary (Score:2, Insightful)
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I understand I'm never going to win this argument (Score:1)
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?
I realize Microsoft is a powerful corp, etc, etc, and that they can handle losing more more money to the State. That's not the point. I'm concerned about the relationship between the shareholders of Microsoft and the State. Who serves whom?
Re:I understand I'm never going to win this argume (Score:5, Insightful)
You have that exactly backwards.
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And what do these corporations extract from the state? I'm sure they benefit from some services, but an examination of government budgets shows that the bulk of money now spent by governments amounts to forced charity or transfers of money.
The typical things we think of like police, courts, etc, make up a very small portion of money spent by the State.
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And what do these corporations extract from the state?
Their existence is entirely state derived. If limited liability isn't worth paying whatever price the state demands for it then the owners can always do without it.
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Well, if Microsoft doesn't like the taxes it has to pay there, it can easily go elsewhere. I don't see the big difference to a land owner demanding rent from anyone using the land.
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They did: they opened an office in Nevada and are selling the software from there. How is (not) paying taxes in Nevada any more arbitrary than paying taxes in Washington? The majority of Microsoft's employees aren't located in Washington State.
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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.
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I don't think you understand what limited liability means.
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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.
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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?
I'm thinking it's the other way around. Microsoft and most if not all corporations try to hide as much taxable income as they can. Microsoft is famous for this. So where does this 'extraction' by the State happen?
First ever to request files instead of paper? (Score:1)
And you guys are somehow making this into a bad thing. It's laughable that apparently they've been using paper before.
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as long as they still keep a paper trail ... since we all know that state electronic communications are always properly backed up and will remain accessible for hundreds of years (well, that and excel really shines at history tracking and debugging someone else's spreadsheet errors) /s
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The bad thing isn't that they demand files. The bad thing is that they demand Excel files.
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Exactly. All government finances should be required to be run through Google Docs!
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Actually, they should. And they should be publicly viewable with no option to restrict sharing.
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So they need an open document format. Luckily, one exists: ODF [oasis-open.org].
In the EU, the right-wing ex-commissioner for Competition, now commissioner for Digital Agenda,Neelie Kroes [wikipedia.org], understands this, as she said:
(http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPE
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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: csv [wikipedia.org] .
FTFY.
Anything more complex than that, and someone is doing something wrong.
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Other spreadsheets are looked on as toys
...which is quite funny in the light of the fact that it is in fact Excel that is the toy.
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Charity begins at home (Score:4, Insightful)
first lobbying, then direct corruption. (Score:4)
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 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]
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what's the male version of mistress?
"Giggolo" or "Cabana Boy." Of course, "Employee" and "Taxpayer" work if you need gender neutral.
Here's a real link to the "dance tax" article (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Obligatory.. (Score:2)
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So it looks like you're trying to do a budget....
Well, that's a bit ambiguous. Which did you mean:
i) "... and it'd be a shame if anything happened to it."
ii) Clippy.
So, does this mean ... (Score:2)
"Nevada tax dodge"? (Score:3)
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.
They should come to Illinois then (Score:2)
Big tech companies are almost unheard of in the Midwest. Boeing already made the move, MS should be follow their footsteps.
Is this a joke? (Score:2)
"Senator Andy Hill is 'the first Senate budget chair ever to request Excel files instead of paper spreadsheets.'"
Please tell me this is a joke. Sure, bash Microsoft and Excel all you want.... But how the hell did they plan the budget before this?
It is official. (Score:2)
We are now letting companies directly write laws instead of simply bribing elected officials.
Of course the Washington state senators know that the Microsoft guys will only be looking to protect their own interests. But Microsoft officially owns Washington state, they can simply threaten to move billions of dollars of taxpayers out of state if they do not bend over and do whatever Microsoft says.
One word for Washingtonians..... (Score:2)
FSM help you all (Score:3)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Typical right wing response. Every time the rich evade lots of taxes everybody else has a "spending problem", as if that excuses the behavior.
Issues of spending may be legitimate, but are separate from the subject of tax cheats.
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Typical left wing response. It is a FACT that spending increased twice as fast as inflation and population growth. You cannot explain that away.
Re: Microsoft is nt responsible for the state defi (Score:1)
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are you denying the tax breaks happened or not? I'm confused. giving tax breaks is as good as spending in the situation too though, so the special interest group of MS would count.
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thats good ol' american fascism (Score:2)
Microsoft.gov? (Score:2)
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Well, government has a monopoly.
You legalized weed, now start selling it. (Score:2)
We legalized weed in Washington State. Now we need more money? Start selling it.
Granted I have a great dealer and I'd probably never buy any weed from you, but I'm pretty sure there is a ton of people who would. Get selling bitches!
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Well, that's a false dichotomy. You assume the two are mutually exclusive.
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I would suggest it's roman_mir, but it's too well written and coherent.