Bonum Certa Men Certa

Is Steve Ballmer Blackmailing Obama?

Press conference



Summary: Ballmer tells the US government that he will move his workforce to "cheaper" places unless he receives excessive, illegitimate tax relief

WHEN Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie Snyder passed a bribe to the Obama administration (in the form of "sponsorship") it became pretty evident that whichever party gets elected, it will remain most open... to business. Just watch what the MPAA and RIAA are up to with Obama and Biden. Microsoft is a similar story [1, 2, 3].



Here is a recent summary of articles about Microsoft debt and tax evasion. The short story is that Microsoft is not doing so well financially and it continues to cheat tax systems around the world in order to leave it for others pay tax. Bill Gates hardly pays any tax, either. He and Warren Buffett get exemptions for "charity". It looks decent to the outside world and also works better for accounting.

But these important issues left aside, it all brings us to today's big story. As the Los Angeles Times puts it, "Ballmer threatens Obama" now.

[T]he software giant’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, made it clear that the company’s charitable views don’t extend to paying what it considers unfair U.S. tax rates: Ballmer threatened to move more jobs overseas if President Obama prevails with his proposal to end tax breaks on foreign earnings.


As we showed 2 weeks ago, Microsoft already favours jobs overseas. There is a lot more in Bloomberg.

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.


One of our contributors summarised this report as follows: "Steven Ballmer threatens Obama saying he will move employees offshore if Congress enacts Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits."

“Wages in the Unites States have been stagnant for about as long as the currency was not tied to gold.”To Microsoft, it's never about Americans or about employees. It's about profit, shareholders, and power.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying (in Bloomberg). As MinceR puts it, if "War is Peace" (Orwell, 1984), then "Wealth is Expensive". Another, righter way for Ballmer to put it would be: "It raises wages for American people" or "it helps the US economy recover by helping families through higher wages."

Wages in the Unites States have been stagnant for about as long as the currency was not tied to gold. And companies continued to rob employees, taking a portion of their deserved wages and then selling it back to them via financial institutes, as loans with extortionate interest rates, which means even more money for the wealthy.

Needless to say, none of this whole routine is particularly new. Learning about Abramoff visas might help.

There is more coverage of this in:



One reader, DaemonFC, has suggested that we share the following video, from which we produced an Ogg version too.

Ogg Theora







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