Bonum Certa Men Certa

Gates/Microsoft Tax Dodge and Agriculture Monopoly Revisited

"My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. […] However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the same. […] The only difference is that the accumulation of wealth by these two will be much more massive because they will no longer have to pay any taxes."

The Gates and Buffet Foundation Shell Game



Summary: Microsoft's lesser-known and more evil sides receive unwanted limelight time

A FORMER Microsoft employee has asked the company to finally pay the tax it was dodging. We wrote about this in:



Progress has been made as more people are speaking about the problem and ask Microsoft to pay up. There are older issues that were never truly resolved [1, 2, 3].

Amanda Congdon's Sometimesdaily Internet Justice: Bill Gates Owes A Bill-ion!



[...]

It's now been ten days since we asked Microsoft's Steve Ballmer to honor his commitment to transparent business practices and open up Microsoft's Washington state tax records...we're still waiting. For now Steve, we'll take that as a non-denial confession.

This week, Internet video reporter Amanda Congdon interviewed me for Sometimesdaily's latest installment... Internet Justice: Bill Gates Owes A Bill-ion! It's a fun look at a subject that we take very seriously here in Washington State.


As another noteworthy new post, consider the following critique of the Gates Foundation, which has also been accused of evading tax on behalf of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

The Gates Foundation’s agriculture program: experimenting or floundering?



Here’s what we know about the Gates Foundation’s agriculture program:

* Gates believes it’s suggestive that “Apart from a few states and small, oil-rich countries, no country has managed a rapid rise from poverty without increasing agricultural productivity. In the poorest countries, agriculture employs a majority of the people.” * This isn’t a new argument or an undisputed one. See Peter Timmer on Green Revolution “optimists” vs. “pessimists”. * Gates’s approach is “comprehensive,” targets “no single, simple solution”, and includes farmer training/support, irrigation initiatives, market access initiatives, and funding of agricultural research with a focus on gender empowerment. * This isn’t a new approach or a historically successful one. The World Bank has focused on essentially the same set of interventions recently, with unclear results, and the previous “holistic” approach of “Integrated Rural Development” is widely considered to have failed. Details at our overview of agriculture aid.

In other words, the Gates Foundation approach – as described – appears to be neither a continuation of things that have worked before nor a fundamentally new approach to the problem. So what might be different this time around?


This is not the first such criticism. It is about making Africa dependent on patents that Gates and Rockefeller are investing in (references below for the uninitiated).

On Gates and Monsanto:

Recent Techrights' Posts

IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 06, 2023
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 06, 2023
A Googlebombing Campaign Targeting "Gemini" Takes on E-mail, Too
Google can do Googlebombing too (the term is even named after it)
[Video] Microsoft Without a So-called 'Common Carrier' (Windows Monoculture)
Windows Has Fallen
[Video] To Combat Efforts to Cancel or Kill the Career (and Reputation) of the People Who Made GNU/Linux We Must Rally the Community
nobody speaks better for projects and for licences than their own founders
Rumour: Major Finance Layoffs at Microsoft Next Week
If the rumour is true, we'll be hearing barely anything from the mainstream media next week
Links 07/12/2023: More EPO Patents Squashed, More Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine "Glitches" Found
Links for the day
Still Not 'Canceled'
Ted Ts'o, Jan Kara, Linus Torvalds last month
Google is Googlebombing the Term "Gemini"
Could Google not pick a name that's already "taken"?
Links 06/12/2023: Bitcoin Rebound, China Downgraded by American Firm, Yahoo! Layoffs Again
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Shooting the Messenger Using Bribes and Secrecy Bonds
We seem to live in a world where accountability for the rich and well-connected barely exists anymore
The Myth of an Aging (or Dying) GNU/Linux Leadership
Self-fulfilling prophecies as a tactic?
Links 06/12/2023: Many More December Layoffs
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, December 05, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, December 05, 2023
PipeWire 1.0: Linux audio comes of age
Once upon a time, serious audio users like musicians and audio engineers had real trouble with Linux
This is How 'Linux' Foundation Presents Linux to the World
Right now it even picks Windows over Linux in some cases
Links 05/12/2023: Microsoft's Chatbot as Health Hazard
Links for the day
There's Nothing "Funny" About Attacking Free Speech and Software Freedom
persistent focus on the principal issues is very important
Professor Eben Moglen Explained How Software Patent Threats Had Changed Around 2014 (Alice Case) and What Would Happen Till 2025
clip aged reasonably well
GNU/Linux Adoption in Africa, a Passageway Towards Freedom From Neo-Colonialism
Digi(tal)-Colonialism and/or Techolonialism are a thing. Can Africa flee the trap?
CNN Contributes to Demolition of the Open Web
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Eben Moglen on Encryption and Anonymity
The alternate net we need, and how we can build it ourselves
Yet More Microsofters Inside the Board of Mozilla (Which Has Just Outsourced Firefox Development to Microsoft's Proprietary Prison)
Do you want a browser controlled (and spied on) by such a company?
IRC Proceedings: Monday, December 04, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, December 04, 2023
GNU/Linux Now Exceeds 3.6% Market Share on Desktops/Laptops, According to statCounter
things have changed for Windows in China
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 05/12/2023: Debt Brake in Germany and Layoffs at Condé Nast (Reddit, Wired, Ars Technica and More)
Links for the day