Bonum Certa Men Certa

What Microsoft Wants Gregoire Gives

Christine Gregoire



Summary: Microsoft celebrates the latest tax breaks from Governor Gregoire, who is surrounded by a crowd of lobbyists like Bill Gates Sr. and even former Microsoft staff

Governor Christine Gregoire is being spineless; rather than work towards paying back the huge debt, she is giving corporations -- Microsoft included -- massive tax breaks that put all the burden on the local population (some of which already lives in tents). Coverage about this is abundant, especially in Washington which it obviously affects the most:

Gregoire signed a bill giving technology companies a sales tax break on some equipment if they obtain a building permit during the next year. The city and Port of Quincy also are working to build a recycled water project to provide treated water from the area's food production facilities for use by the data centers for cooling.


Another news headline says that "Data center bill passage celebrated" [...by corporations] (also here)

The state’s data center tax incentive means Washington state has the ability to emerge into the most progressive field of 21st-century jobs.

[...]

Kevin Timmons, Microsoft’s general manager of data centers, said the bill’s passage means the company can continue to invest and bring jobs to its home state of Washington.


Microsoft will not pay tax because it doesn't feel like it and it has been lobbying hard. This is a serious issue that was covered extensively in the Seattle press, except of course the Seattle Times, which has literally been having dinners with Microsoft (we showed an admission last week) and helping glorify Microsoft, Bill Gates, and other such interests. The Seattle Times continues to cover up Microsoft's misconduct and a a former Microsoft employee rants about it again. He also mentions former Microsoft staff which helps subvert Christine Gregoire's agenda from inside the system.

With Washington State facing insolvency and a record $2.8 billion deficit, The Seattle Times never told its readers about Microsoft's tax dodge despite its considerable impact on the deficit and Rep. Hunter's efforts and potential conflicts of interest. Senior Microsoft executives like Hunter often leave with tens of millions of dollars of company stock. (Hunter is pictured below-right)

[...]

Frankly, I'm amazed at the quantity and breadth of online coverage this blog generated for Microsoft's misdeeds this year, but extensive online coverage is not yet a replacement for local ink. Few people in Washington State seem to know about Microsoft's Nevada tax dodge and how it relates to their own increased taxes this year.

s for why the Department of Revenue ignores legal precedents that seem to indicate Microsoft's past tax practices were illegal, we still don't know.


"Wash. governor seeks reforms, budget overhauls," says another headline. Watch the opening line from AP (The Associated Press):

Ready for the Microsoft Highway? How about the Boeing Bridge?


The Associated Press occasionally starts with such off-putting remarks (like calling Bill Gates the minister of education) and "CNN drops Associated Press," says RawStory. In any event, there is truth to these statements from AP, but the rest of the coverage is superficial and not sufficiently inquisitive. AP is also a copyright bully -- probably the worst of its kind.

When it comes to issues that relate to Bill Gates, the AP never conducts a proper investigation. Here is a new example of Gates Foundation praise from the Seattle Times (it should be called Microsoft Times), which also mirrors this new article from AP. It's part of the coverage around health and the Gates Foundation, but it never says anything about stake holders in the respective patents on vaccination/drugs that now involve animals too. There is also this report about rabies which helps show the overlap with the WHO (the complex relationship was explained before).

Boyd Cerro, DOH-8 regional sentinel nurse told reporters that his office has recently received the initial tranche of P2.1 million for the anti-rabies campaign donated by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the World Health Organization. He added that the amount from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is more than P10 million spread over 5 years which is also the time frame of the campaign for anti-rabies in the region.


This post is intended to remain focused on the tax issue though; later on we'll return to the subject of profit Gates makes from drug companies he is promoting. It cannot be explained and shown too concisely.

It is worth adding that Bill Gates' father is one of the main lobbyists (definitely the most prominent lobbyist this year) for tax exemptions [1, 2, 3, 4] (in the sense that the Gates Foundation remains tax-exempt and the super-rich continue to pay almost nothing in tax).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopfarms Slopping Away at "Linux" and Spreading Microsoft Misinformation
Slopfarms don't comprehend this as they lack actual comprehension, they're just parrots
GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
To Microsoft, what's left of GitHub after dismantling/folding it is some "training set" (people's code, without permission to "train" i.e. misuse under the guise of "GenAI" plagiarism)
Linux Foundation Says "Housekeeping", "Hung", "Normal", "Native Feature/Support" and "Girl/Girls" Are Offensive Words
Bombing people is OK, just use the right "terms"
It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
GitHub is just losing loads of money
 
Richard Stallman Will Not Miss Microsoft GitHub, It Was Only Good at Harvesting a Lot of Code for Plagiarism-as-a-Service
investors are apparently willing to lose money for buzzwords
Links 12/08/2025: Science, Hardware, and Ukraine Excluded From Negotiations About Its Future
Links for the day
Gemini Links 12/08/2025: Meditation, OpenStreetMap, Smolweb, and More
Links for the day
Google News is Dying: Most of Its Top Stories Now Are LLM Slop With Slop Images (i.e. 100% Fake 'Content')
Google News has been drowning in this sort of stuff for quite some time
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 11, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, August 11, 2025
Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
GitHub always lost money
Links 11/08/2025: Meritless Twitter Suspensions and Disney Scraps Deepfake Dwayne Johnson
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Upgrading Debian Bookworm and Better Quality PDFs From Gemini Pages
Links for the day
Currys PCWorld Lied a Decade Ago, 10 Years Later It Still Effectively Voids Your Warranty for Installing GNU/Linux Despite It Being Increasingly Mainstream
Microsoft gatekeepers
Team GNOME Has Libeled Me for Nearly 20 Years
we are not dealing with sane people
Experience With Airlines in 'Web Sites' and in 'Apps'
In a lot of ways, Stallman Was Right about what JavaScript would turn out to be
Open Does Not Mean Free
wiser to ask if some program is freedom-respecting
The Register MS Takes Money From Companies Banned by the Biden and Trump Administrations (National Security Risk)
today's sponsor
Sabotaging GNU/Linux PCs (and Users) is Not a 'Joke'
maybe cruelty is the very objective
How We Process Screenshots of Slop to Suitably Tag Them as Slop
everything is a single command
Links 11/08/2025: Data Breaches, Politics, and Climate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 10, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, August 10, 2025
Gemini Links 11/08/2025: Tea Caffeine Hot and Super ZZ Zero
Links for the day
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, Brian Fagioli, and Other Serial Sloppers
Maybe Microsoft wants to dub this "Web5"
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Residents Management Company, Automation, and Politics
Links for the day
Links 10/08/2025: AOL Ending Dial-up
Links for the day
Seductive Mirage or Allure of Complex, Proprietary Coffee Machines (or Similar White Elephants)
Software is a lot like those things
Links 10/08/2025: Webrings, “AI Sunglasses” and “AI Eyeglasses”, US Administration Intensifies Attacks on Science and Research
Links for the day
Sometimes Newer is Worse
We generally need to reject this dumb notion that "old" means bad
The Code Used to Make Techrights Fits on a Seventh of a Floppy Disk (or 100KB When Compressed)
For the sake of comparison I've just downloaded the latest version of WordPress. The ZIP file is 27.2MB in size, or ~27,200KB.
What They Tell Young Programmers
Coding in 2025
Simpler is Better When Simple is Enough
Over-complicating things to "sell" new versions is so 1990s
Links 10/08/2025: From Social Control Media to Prison, New Examples of Windows TCO
Links for the day
Sloppy Reporting About Slop, or How The Register MS Lowers Its Standards
Maybe the management isn't even aware of this
IBM's Strategy: Cull 'Expensive' Workers, Replace Them With Cheaper Ones
So far we saw not even one rebuttal or challenge to the claim of Red Hat layoffs scheduled for tomorrow
If You Attack Somebody Too Much You Legitimise and Strengthen That Somebody
at the end those attacks add up to a "martyr" status
The Man Who Helped Microsoft Kill Linux is Trying to Delay Our Lawsuits Against Him
By conservative estimates, and based on court documents submitted by them, they're prepared to spend over a million dollars on lawyers, fighting against me and my wife
Gemini Links 10/08/2025: Gen Con 2025 and Framework Laptop
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 09, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, August 09, 2025