Summary: The regulatory process regarding CPTN in Germany is hindered by a Microsoft manoeuvre which avoids contact with the German Federal Cartel Office
SOME SEEMINGLY-conflicting reports either confirm or refute the claims we covered the other day. It seems to be a bit of both and while AttachMSFT [sic] looks for a loan with which to buy Novell, it seems likely that Microsoft (MSFT) will get Novell’s patents after all.
Sources close to Novell told me that was indeed the case. The CPTN group will be re-filing to obtain the patents. Their plans haven’t changed a bit. A Microsoft representative confirmed that CPTN was still planning on buying the patents. The PR rep said, “This is a purely procedural step necessary to provide time to allow for review of the proposed transaction.”
Now, this is not to say that the Novell deal is sure to happen. I find it more than a little odd that Attachmate was still looking for just over a billion dollars to close the deal in late December. Microsoft is already helping Attachmate buy Novell and Attachmate was already getting a steal of a deal on Novell.
As a consequence, if the sale of Novell’s patents to CPTN is allowed to go ahead, this will significantly increase the legal threat level for Free Software.
This is why FSFE is extremely concerned about the sale of Novell’s patents to CPTN. We have shared our concerns with the German competition authorities on December 22, 2010.
CPTN apparently withdrew its filing with the German authorities on December 30. This could mean that the companies behind CPTN are changing their strategy, or that they’re merely reformulating their application. It definitely doesn’t mean that the danger is over.
The competition authorities should only allow this deal if there are effective measures in place to prevent the patents in question from being used against Free Software in an attempt to restrict competition. As an effective measure, CPTN Holdings should be required to make the patents in question available under conditions which allow their use in Free Software, including in programs distributed under GNU General Public License (GPL) and other copyleft licenses.
But IT World has pointed out that this relates only to Germany and that CPTN continues to exist as a US limited liability company registered with the Secretary of State for Delaware (see here).
Further, Microsoft has told TechFlash that the withdrawal from Germany is a “purely procedural step necessary to provide time to allow for review of the proposed transaction.”
“Procedural” indeed.
Such is the concern over the deal that in December, the OSI lodged an official complaint with the Federal Cartel Office, asking regulators to investigate the sale of the patents.
OSI president Michael Tiemann announced the OSI’s request to German regulators in a blog post on December 29, the day before CPTN quietly wrapped up operations.
Going back a month or so, we have this analysis which discusses Microsoft’s partners/allies too:
Novell’s Patents Bought By Microsoft, Apple, EMC, & Oracle (From ZDNet) This news raises even more questions about the Novell acquisition. Is VMware really out of the picture? Is Apple getting into the enterprise space? Will Microsoft even get the lion’s share of the IP?
Android will be a potential target of CPTN, as a former Novell employee (Zonker) helps explain in a new column. Google also seems concerned about Nortel patents, thus showing everything that is wrong about the patent system especially once companies implode. To quote this recent report about it:
Apple, Nokia and Google are all expected to bid for Nortel’s huge patents hoard. The winner could help decide the licensing structures for LTE.
LTE deployments and trials may be stacking up, but one significant aspect remains fraught with uncertainty – the patent position.
In previous generations of mobile technology, individual IPR holders might argue bitterly over rights and royalties, but the process was well understood – and took place strictly behind closed doors, with bilateral agreements.
In other news, there is another investigation which seeks to block the Novell deal [1, 2] and it is covered in a press release that says in the beginning:
Novell Inc. announced on November 22, 2010 that it had agreed to sell the company to Attachment Corporation for $6.10 per share for a total transaction value of $2.2 billion. Attachmate is owned by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo. In conjunction with the sale, Novell announced that it has agreed to sell certain intellectual property to CPTN Holdings LLC for $450 million in cash.
Levi & Korsinsky LLP is going to challenge this deal, so maybe it’s premature to say that Novell is sold. It is also possible that Microsoft won’t get Novell’s patents at the end. █
Summary: Admission of problems inside the Gates Foundation, from none other than the lavish Bill himself
THE POWER games of the Gates Foundation are not amusing. They are hurtful to a lot of US teachers for example. People’s expertise and reputation are being ignored as a plutocrat takes over fields that he simply does not grasp and cannot understand. Economics would be one example because Obama takes advice from Gates rather than from Economics professors.
To Gates’ credit, he recently admitted that his misguided PR+investment scheme was “naïve”. To quote The New York Times:
In an interview, Mr. Gates sounded somewhat chastened, saying several times, “We were naïve when we began.”
Here is an informercial interview with Melinda, one of the cochairs of the Gates Foundation. One ‘reader’ asked about the Gates Foundation view of countries in conflict and Melinda just didn’t answer the question! She is extremely practiced, or well briefed, on not answering difficult questions during interviews.
Interestingly enough, Tom Paulson has really decided to explore the Gates Foundation. Being the experienced journalist which he is (but not yet bribed by Gates), his recent output is worth following:
Bill & Melinda Gates: The world is, in fact, getting better
Bill and Melinda Gates want people to stop being such gripes and start paying attention to success.
Yeah, yeah, it’s easy to poke fun at that kind of talk – especially from the super-rich.
But some things, in fact, are getting better. And unlike most of the world’s super-rich, the Gateses are actually “investing” in making the world a better place. They also want to convince skeptics why this is actually a good investment for all of us.
That was the point of their “Living Proof” event, webcast live today from London.
The event was done in collaboration with the ONE campaign, an organization co-founded by Bono which advocates on matters of global health and poverty — and which, apparently, doesn’t like to answer questions from the media regarding its finances, but that’s another story.
(Oops, there I go again being a typical journalist and focusing on the negative.)
That is a bit of sarcasm of course. As for Bono’s scandalous organisation, we wrote about it at the time.
One of the best analysts of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on the blogging scene is Tom Paulson on his Humanosphere. In this article he appears to be happy about the good news, which turns out not to be new at all, that Bill and Melinda are giving out on air. The world is getting better we all agree. But Bill and Melinda have set out to show that ‘aid’ is contributing to it. This they have failed to do.
Child mortality rates are not necessarily dropping because of aid. Bill offers no graphs to show greater declines in countries with more aid. Or any proof that aid had anything to do with declines in child mortality.
Melinda is particularly insistent that smaller families are caused by lower child mortality. She keeps repeating this simplistic argument. Smaller families in countries undergoing demographic transitions are not simply caused by declines in child mortality. Aid has not been very successful in bringing down child mortality but has been enormously successful in bringing family planning methods to poorer countries.
The decline in polio is partly caused by aid. Its continued persistence may also be caused by aid that funds ineffective campaigns or facilitates movement of people.
Keep up the good work, Tom. And please don’t be fooled when Bill and Melinda feed you a bunch of well-packaged crap.
In a later post we will show that Paulson too is concerned about the Gates Foundation’s hijack of the media which covers topic of interest to it. █
Summary: Articles that cover microfinance in the context of robber barons help show that microfinance to money is like Microsoft to life
MICROFINANCE or micro-lending is a subject we covered in the context of the Gates Foundation [1, 2, 3] and the Grameen Foundation, which has roots in Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] and is connected directly to the Gates Foundation through collaboration. But what exactly is it that they do? Welcome to the world of micro-lending — a world where even the world’s poorest people get exploited for whatever they have left, be it hard labour (being forced to endlessly produce to meet quotas, in order to pay back unwanted loans), prostitution, and whatnot. In order to explain this predatory segment of the financial industry we can firstly recommend the following video:
For a more direct explanation about micro-lending, use the links at the top (e.g. [1, 2]). This is a subject that we covered many times before and this time we cover it using news from the past 2 months. The short story is that the Gates Foundation is pushing loans. A fashionable way to do so as of late is to offer mobile phones in some very poor countries. While this can be painted as donation of means of communication, this is actually a Trojan horse for predatory banks from the West (remember that Bill Gates is investing in Goldman Sachs, which is controversial because Goldman Sachs monetises famine). What Gates does here is akin to giving poor people the ‘gift’ of debt, i.e. greater dependence on amoral or immoral corporations from the West. What does that lead to? Let’s look at some news.
One of our favourite journalists as of late explains quite nicely why the Gates Foundation is preying on the most vulnerable, who need to borrow money just to eat:
Christen says the philanthropy has found in its exploration of financial services that when you go into a poor community they get 5-to-10 requests for savings services for every request for a microloan.
“In a visit to Tanzania,” Melinda Gates said. “I was just blown away to see people standing in a line at the bank for three hours.”
The poor want to save, she said, and the Gates Foundation hopes to launch a revolution in this area of financial services for the poor.
Here’s the foundation’s statement on its new push into micro-savings and a list of the first round of grants.
This is also a business opportunity for the likes of Monsanto, which the Gates Foundation invests in. The philanthrocapitalism.net Web site has this to say: “The mere thought that the Grameen Bank might be taken over by the government of Bangladesh and that Muhammad Yunus, its Nobel Peace Prize-winning founder, might be forcibly retired, is shocking. But senior people inside the world’s best-known microfinance institution fear that this may happen, perhaps quite soon. Already, senior Grameen staff have had to phone each of the bank’s branches to refute press reports that Mr Yunus had resigned, reports that had threatened to panic savers into withdrawing their money and borrowers to stop repaying loans.”
“This is also a business opportunity for the likes of Monsanto, which the Gates Foundation invests in.”Pay careful attention to this Web site, philanthrocapitalism.net, which shows Clinton’s continued support for Gates’ agenda and Microsoft’s agenda too (they know they would be wise to hang out where the money is [1, 2] and their daughter recently married a Goldman Sachs investment banker).
Our reader Toby had more to say about this subject of microfinance: “get them participating in the usury system… billionaires have EVERY RIGHT to skim from the world’s poorest… meanwhile, credit card companies are offering 30% interest to Americans (and canadians iirc)…”
Toby linked to this new Bloomberg article from which he quoted: “Andhra Pradesh, where three-quarters of the 76 million people live in rural areas, suffered a total of 14,364 suicide cases in the first nine months of 2010 [...] “Selling debt is like selling drugs,” says Harper, 75, the author of more than 20 books on microfinance and other topics. “Selling debt to illiterate women in Andhra Pradesh, you’ve got to be a lot more responsible.””
Quoting further from this article of strong content:
More than 70 people committed suicide in the state from March 1 to Nov. 19 to escape payments or end the agonies their debt had triggered, according to the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty, a government agency that compiled the data on the microfinance-related deaths from police and press reports.
[...]
She says she ran away from home after collectors began harassing her. She took out multiple loans beginning in 2005, and she names Spandana as one of the lenders.
Some of the money paid for the funeral of her eldest son. When she fell behind on payments, she says loan officers threatened to humiliate her in front of neighbors and pressed her to sell her small grandchildren into prostitution.
In establishment political discussions no one is supposed to consider that some of the powerful people being discussed really are making decisions based on goals they want which are nasty and immoral.
But instead of being able to bring motive into analysis, we robotically repeat things like:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”
Which is not an argument at all, but a command in the form of an aphorism, designed to cut off, and not further, rational analysis of what goes on around us.
Due to this muting by aphorism, we’re supposed to assume that, yeah, the people around us, yeah *they* may have selfish or harmful motives at times (or certain people more so), but, no, no, we mustn’t speak that way abut the powerful.
No matter what the subject is, we aren’t supposed to question the Honorable Intentions of our leaders. Not even when they’re lying to force the nation into a murderous invasion and occupation for reasons clearly against any sane conception of the ‘national interest’ (i.e., the interests of us inhabitants of the nation) but which did clearly benefit the ideological convictions, political fortunes, and economic connections of the government which did so.
So, while pundits and establishment discussants may wish us to avoid any analysis of political decisions which is allowed to consider malice as a reasonable aspect of intent, I don’t think sane people should similarly refuse.
Talk radio certainly doesn’t refrain from ascribing nefarious motives to every Democrat and liberal, and in no way is it somehow dignified or noble to decide that in response, we’ll cut off that part of our rationality which has to consider why humans in positions of power might want to do what they do.
On January 10th, Dr. Glyn Moody had drawn some more attention to the problem at hand. “More World Bank fail, in Uzbekistan,” he called it, quoting: “Most disturbing was the Bank’s underreporting and minimizing of child labor, says Ezgulik.” It’s the same problem Bloomberg noted in relation to microfinance.
An Uzbek human rights group concerned about the World Bank’s failure to concede state control of agriculture and the extent of child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry has received an acknowledgement from the Bank about its concerns.
[...]
Ezgulik evaluates a World Bank review of a $67.9 million loan to Uzbekistan for rural enterprise support, granted in 2008 for the period of 2010-2015, to extend a previous project from 2001-2008. The report makes certain assumptions that Ezgulik vigorously challenges: that farm reforms are underway; that collective farms were abolished; and that private farms were established in their place. Instead, Ezgulik explains, farmers are heavily restricted, are still forced to sell quotas to the state at fixed prices, and are dependent on local administrators for loans and supplies. This situation provides an incentive for bribery so that farmers can get better resources and avoid penalties for failure to meet their quotas.
In India it has become commonplace for farmers to commit suicide by consuming Monsanto pesticides. The combination of GMO (patented seeds) and loans is an harmonious-and-nonetheless-lethal one, yet Gates supports it while sponsoring the press that covers the subject because it helps silence opposition. █
Footage from the Gates deposition (quotes for humour’s purpose only)
Summary: Unscheduled visit from Gates and his sidekick allows this couple to guide government policies
THE WORK of the Gates Foundation is a subject we’ve been catching up with in January, having left it aside in November and December. It seems reasonable to say (and Gates too recently said something to this effect) that Microsoft is collapsing, however the sociopaths who created this company — be it Gates or Allen who is now a notorious patent troll — continue to spread damage while pretending to be philanthropists. They have this thing called “the Giving Pledge”, which does not exactly work the way people are led to believe.
Here is a portion of the piece “Why We Should Dial Down Our Enthusiasm for the Giving Pledge”. It comes from Aaron Dorfman, the Executive Director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy. This ought to help people understand what Gates in his followers are doing. To quote a portion:
Assuming I’m correct that most of the money will be put into endowments with 5 percent payouts, we’re looking at $0.75 billion in new money for social purposes the first year, $1.5 billion the second year, $2.25 billion the third year, etc. It won’t be until the 20th year that we’ll hit even $15 billion annually in new money actually reaching nonprofits doing the important work that needs to be done. Clearly, the Giving Pledge will not be a major factor in sparking a much hoped-for rebound from the drop in giving that has decimated many nonprofits these last two years.
Gates Keeperscommends this “one brave man [who] develops an analysis of the giving pledge that the cochair of the Gates Foundation spends his time promoting”:
Lots of people are underwhelmed by the Giving Pledge but you won’t read their opinions in the newspaper. Who wants their name to be seen as criticising the promises of billionaires?
One of our readers drew our attention to this short post a couple of weeks ago. It says:
# Roger Simon wrote an incredibly stupid column today about how much everyone hates rich people, because they’re jealous.
# Speaking of! Warren Buffett and Bill Gates went to the White House to hang out with Barack Obama today.
In two articles/pages titled “Can Warren Buffett and Bill Gates save the world?” [1, 2] this issue gets debated. These two people are not saviours like their PR agents try to convince us; they are a symptom of what’s problematic in the world. This whole worship of Buffett in the context of Microsoft shares should impress nobody. In fact, “a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary” (Buffett’s company) is said to be adopting “Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 OS for Company and Customer Communications”. One might say that Buffett does a favour to Bill here, having used an hypePod for a while (which worried Gates, as Comes vs Microsoft exhibits revealed).
This is not the first such meeting in the Oval Office. Gates, the infamous lobbyist, is regularly going to the White House to push his agenda (or the agenda of his clients whom he invests in) and also to lobby regarding education, which he is trying to own and control. The oval room/office was named here before, but sometimes Gates arranges meetings elsewhere in the House [1, 2]. And given how much time he spends on these activities, maybe it’s Obama who’s the guest there.
Here is an article from the middle of December. The author is disagreeing with Buffett/Gates for their self-serving approach and as Gates Keepersput it (specifically regarding this report): “Melinda was also included, though the Giving Pledge has nothing to do with the economy. Nor does the Foundation.”
“They have all the time and power in the world… and they try to call Assange “most dangerous man”. Guess to who?” –TobyIt is curious to see that someone who made a career breaking the law is now considered “fifth-most admired man”. It’s all PR. It works when one gets to literally pay all the right journalists/editors. Even relatives of Warren Buffett are being advertised in all sorts of ways. It’s a family package, which results in unelected power that cannot be ousted and if we are to learn anything from oligarchy (which spreads within dynasties), it is that such concentration of power is a huge risk. It happens to silence opposition too, in all sorts of subtle ways that we occasionally cover. “Yes,” writes Toby, “It’s already started, as I predicted. They have all the time and power in the world… and they try to call Assange “most dangerous man”. Guess to who?”
Not so long ago even Pelosi joined Gates’ and Microsoft’s agenda [1, 2], which she promoted in quite a controversial way (it is not her role to do this). This lends to our contention that Gates is at the very least #3 in the chain of command (and he never leaves office, which permits even greater accumulation of power over time). These oligarchs can carry on lobbying for their agenda and using PR to keep people uninformed about it. Using PR campaigns and re-announcing the same “pledge” infinitely (without ever taking real action, only increasing their status and wealth in the mean time) is not the sort of philanthropy Groklaw mentioned on Christmas Day:
On the same channel, I also saw an author, Ted Gup, talk about his book, A Secret Gift, the subtitle being How One Man’s Kindness–and a Trove of Letters–Revealed the Hidden History of the Great Depression, which is about his grandfather, who gave away money during the Depression, in the most pure way, anonymously. Not even his wife knew he had done it.
“Buffett and Gates grab Obama’s ear”, summarisesPolitico, noting quite interestingly that this was not even a scheduled meeting:
President Obama met with Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates in the Oval Office on Tuesday to talk about philanthropy and the stuttering economy, an event that wasn’t on Obama’s official schedule.
Well, OK, so they just sort of ‘dropped by’. When the wealth of the nation runs the nation quite so crudely, it’s time for people to lead a mental struggle because their elected officials no longer serve “the people”, they just serve a small group of people. █
“One strategy that Microsoft has employed in the past is paying for the silence of people and companies. Charles Pancerzewski, formerly Microsoft’s chief auditor, became aware of Microsoft’s practice of carrying earnings from one accounting period into another, known as “managing earnings”. This practice smoothes reported revenue streams, increases share value, and misleads employees and shareholders. In addition to being unethical, it’s also illegal under U.S. Securities Law and violates Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (Fink).
–2002 story about Charles Pancerzewski, Microsoft
Summary: The pace of high-level departures at Microsoft speaks volumes and helps confirm that something is very rotten inside
THE SYMPTOMS are sometimes more indicative of a disease than an optimist’s diagnosis/prognosis can ever be. Bias is simply built into the system and nobody dares to deviate towards the controversial. Microsoft is close to many financial firms, so the continued illusion of Microsoft as an unprecedented cash generator falls under too little outside scrutiny. For example, we are asked to accept that Microsoft is rich while its numbers turn out to be fake and it actually has some debt to repay. People in the news pessimistically wondered what’s next for Microsoft around the time it was downgraded by FBR and another analysts firm [1, 2, 3]. It was also around the same time that BlackRock cut its stakes in Microsoft, as we noted at the time.
Earlier this months we ran through some Microsoft news to see if there is something that we missed. Well, while there is a degree of overlap (wrt older posts), there is a lot that needs to be added in order for our record to be complete.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer fell 65 spots down a list of the top 338 chief-executive wealth creators and destroyers, ranking 73rd in 2010 after boasting the No. 8 spot in 2009.
But the big drop came at Microsoft. Steve Ballmer’s ranking plummeted a whopping 65 spots as the CEO of the software giant finished in 73rd place. That was enough for the company and Ballmer to earn an “F” in terms of economic margin change. [Update: As a reader pointed out, Microsoft did receive an "A" rating in three of the categories, including management quality score]. Only Campbell Soup, and its CEO Douglas Conant, saw a bigger drop among the top 100 companies.
These reports are as Microsoft-sympathetic as they can get because the writers are both serving Microsoft’s agenda in unofficial-yet-dedicated Microsoft blogs. Here is a corporate ‘news’ article whose headline says that “Ballmer’s CEO ranking plummets, Steve Jobs’ climbs” (storyline added there for increase in page hits).
We know that Microsoft is struggling in the consumer and Smartphone markets and that their share of the browser market is on the skids, but does CEO Steve Ballmer know something that we don’t know?
Exactly.
The behaviour among Microsoft presidents has been rather consistent because many of them left and as we’ve shown over the past year or so, many of them also sold their Microsoft shares. Only 2 months ago it was the company’s COO, Kevin Turner (GNU/Linux-hostile guy [1, 2, 3]), who dumped Microsoft shares:
COO of Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Brian Kevin Turner sells 48,956 shares of MSFT on 11/01/2010 at an average price of $27 a share.
This reference was made in relation to Muglia’s exit [1, 2] and in his departure note (published by Mary Jo Foley) Muglia named his competitive threats and “Linux” was the first. “Microsoft Exec Exodus Continues” is a noteworthy report about it. It’s looking pretty grim.
Microsoft Corp. announced on Monday that Bob Muglia, who led the company’s server and tools division, will leave the company this summer at the behest of Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer.
Muglia, who has worked for the Redmond, Washington-based company for 23 years, will continue to actively run the $15 billion Server and Tools business (STB) while Microsoft searches for his replacement, said Ballmer in an e-mail sent to employees on Monday.
My co-host Tim opines that Ballmer will have been fired (or left) by July this year. Microsoft is spiraling down the tube at this stage. As more products get axed, in more areas will Microsoft technically qualify as a patent troll. █
“I’d be glad to help tilt lotus into into the death spiral. I could do it Friday afternoon but not Saturday. I could do it pretty much any time the following week.”
Summary: AttachMSFT [sic] does not have enough money to complete an acquisition of Novell, so it is reaching out for a loan
IN THE coming days we shall cover the AttachMSFT acquisition of Novell and the barriers which remain, including the important fall of the CPTN deal and the many lawsuits from investors. One of the lesser-discussed barriers is actually financial and according to this report from Bloomberg:
Attachmate Corp., the connectivity solutions provider owned by private-equity firms, is seeking $1.09 billion in loans to finance its acquisition of Novell Inc.
Attachmate is seeking an $825 million first-lien term loan, a $40 million first-lien revolving line of credit and a $225 million second-lien facility, Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell said today in a regulatory filing.
6. Novell, the Waltham open-source software developer that once called Utah home, finally found a mate in Attachmate last month, following an eight-month strategic review. The Seattle firm shelled out $2.2 billion for Novell.
There is a lot more to be said about this planned takeover, but that is a subject for future posts. We still have a backlog of about 20 posts. █
Summary: An opinion about Microsoft’s real situation which is largely concealed from the public
WE ALREADY know that Microsoft's SEC filings and financial numbers are distorted in at least one way (“once a liar, always a liar,” they say), thanks to investigative journalism. We also know that Microsoft borrows money, for reasons that are hard to justify if indeed it is sitting on a pile of cash as it loves to claim. Wayne Borean has worked on this long post which in part uses research we gathered in Techrights. Wayne opines that Microsoft’s recent moves hint at a future collapse, which may also help explain the sheer aggression with software patents not just from Microsoft but also Paul and Nathan, Bill Gates’ buddies (they are both extorting Android right now). Someone pointed out recently that Bill Gates said something on the air, insinuating that Microsoft won’t exist in the near future (we can’t find it now, unfortunately). To quote a part of Wayne’s long analysis:
Microsoft Actions To Avoid Bankruptcy
So why do I say that Microsoft is heading towards bankruptcy?
For several reasons. Please remember that my prediction is based on the assumption that all of Microsoft’s staff is dumber than a fence post, and won’t attempt to do anything to stop the oncoming disaster.
We all know that Microsoft’s staff isn’t that stupid. Jokes about flying chairs aside, there are some damned smart people working at Microsoft. Even Steve Ballmer, who I think has been a disaster as a leader, is far from stupid.
We also know that Microsoft is aware of the problem, and is fighting to stay alive. Microsoft has not, and will never publicly admit there is a problem. To do so would be to destroy the value of the company’s stock. They cannot however totally hid their actions. Rules in the United States require companies to make certain disclosures, so prospective and current shareholders can make a reasoned judgement on the share value.
Microsoft can, and does, like every other company, attempt to limit the negative information it gives out. A common trick is to make announcements late on Friday, before a long weekend, when analysts may not notice the move.
Pelosi’s director of intergovernmental affairs, Cheryl Parker Rose left on Oct. 1 for a job as deputy director of government affairs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said Parker Rose’s departure has nothing to do with the pending election. Rose started the job on Oct. 18, a Gates Foundation spokeswoman said.
The global software giant, Microsoft in partnership with Smithsonain Institution and TakingITGlobal have launched Shout initiative , a capacity building program designed to encourage teachers to use technology to help students explore, connect and act to address some of the world’s most pressing environmental issues, while gaining important skills including collaboration, critical thinking and social responsibility.
“Microsoft in partnership with Smithsonain Institution” pushing for changes in the schools, eh? Well, Gates’ effect on schools is a subject we’ll address in a separate post, based on some of the very latest news. Here is the schools agenda being promoted by the Washington Post, where Melinda Gates was on the board until very recently (more on that later):
Gates Foundation donates $50 million to Smithsonian
[...]
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is giving $50 million to the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum announced late Wednesday.
[...]
Gates is giving $30 million of the gift to “reach underserved students” in the United States.
As Gates Keepers put it, “Former Gates staffer’s museum gets a grant from the Foundation” and to be more specific: “Patty [...] is the former CEO of the Gates Foundation. She is now Chair of the Board of the Smithsonian. And the Smithsonian is now the proud recipient of a grant from the Gates Foundation. It is nice to have friends who remember you. Melinda Gates is on the Board of the Washington Post but the Post writer does not point out the connection.”
Hello, cronyism? We predicted this years ago when Stonesifer entered the Smithsonian.
This leads us to another new example where Bill Gates is exploiting government connections. The establishment gives Gates tax exemptions, but why? The “Gates Foundation posts 2009 taxes” according to the news and people have begun looking for clues inside it, especially in particular Web sites which are critical of this foundation’s activities.
It oughtn’t be news that Gates is exploiting governments all around the world to give franchises or taxpayers’ money to certain companies which he lobbies for. We gave many examples before. The foundation itself consists of many people from the companies whose patents they advance/seed in the market using a so-called ‘charity’. Here is a new example of the “revolving doors” effect:
Medical equipment maker Stryker Corp. said Friday that it has hired Allan C. Golston, who heads the U.S. arm of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as a director.
Misdeeds: Pretend to be friends while engaged in a vicious competition to see who ends up with the most expensive coffin. Flew together to inspect the Alberta Tar Sands and ponder investments, looking to add to Buffet’s $34 billion Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal-hauling railroad purchase and the Gates Foundation Nigerian oil portfolio. Gates is dumping cash into geo-engineering as a way to “hack” the climate, instead of getting off oil and coal. The duo insist that the government should be responsible for clean energy development, but that we need to tax our citizens to pay for it. They can’t be bothered, since they’re too busy banking on sure things like fossil fuels.
Corporate Teat: They’re the tits, not the pups. Microsoft and Berkshire Hathaway, much of it tax sheltered by the Gates Foundation.
Most Egregious Lie: “We need an energy miracle.” Gates’ time frame for converting to clean energy is 40 years, giving him and Buffet plenty of years of income from their dirty investments.
For those who do not know or remember, Gates invests in BP [1, 2, 3] and in Exxon [1, 2]. Some charity, eh?
There are also many private investments which are tax-exempt, including one in JJB Sports (a shop that I personally hate). “JJB taps Bill Gates, others, to stay afloat” says this new report
Struggling British sportswear retailer JJB Sports (JJB.L) said investors including Bill Gates, the United States’ richest man, have backed a 31.5 million pounds ($48.57 million) fundraising to keep the firm alive.
There is more coverage about this elsewhere [1, 2] and it makes one wonder if Gates runs a charity at all. As the previous article from Alternet stated, these people are investing without the inconveniences associated with tax. Here for example is an article from one month ago about investment in Waste Management (covered in this site before): “As it happens, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates — through Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), Cascade Investment, an asset management firmed own by Gates, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — are major holders in Republic. The Gates Foundation owns Waste Management shares too. It’s not hard to discern why Buffett and Gates like the trash business: It has significant barriers to entry because new landfills are hard to site and expensive. And despite the buzz about zero waste, Americans generate lots of trash — an average of 4.5 pounds a person per day, the EPA says.”
Moving on to the last topic of relevance, a lot of people still fail to understand how showing generosity can actually be a ploy for tax avoidance. it’s a loophole. To quote a recent post we were told about a few days ago by MikeC:
[I]t helps to explain the first part, all these billionaires willing to donate to charity. For such family foundations allow the cash to be put into them tax free. And then the cash can be invested attracting no tax on any returns to it over the generations. Subject only to paying out 5% of assets (I think I’ve got that right) each year in charitable works. Such 5% can be made up of paying family members to administer the trust…..
Which is why Joe Kennedy left his money to a series of family trusts, the Hewletts, Packards, Fords, Rockefellers and so on.
Leaving the money to a “charity” is in fact the American way of making sure that a) no tax is paid on it and b) that the heirs cannot piss away the capital.
So, given that the traditional Amercian manner of making sure you keep the money in the family is to give it to a charity the news that 40 billionaires have been presuaded to leave their money to charity really isn’t all that surprising. Nor is it really something that might have taken a great deal of persuasion to bring about.
The same old disinformation which relies on people not knowing about these tax exemptions gets spread by many sites/blogs, which is sad. Truthfully, we gave many examples of this disinformation before and it’s troubling that they won’t stop making the false claims about Gates’ (senior and junior) lobbying on tax issues. Although it mostly goes a couple of months back, here are some examples of bad coverage [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12] which portrays Gates, who does not pay tax, as someone who wants rich people (those without exemptions) to be taxed more. So while Gates’ lobbying staff is enjoying luxury homes and no burden of tax, ‘mere mortals’ continue to suffer more and more. Whose country is it and who really controls government officials? Answers to this question will be given in the coming days when we cover Gates’ latest private sessions with President Obama. We have a massive backlog of postings. █
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