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







Direct link



Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Promoting Microsoft Windows With LLM Slop
What is the policy at BetaNews regarding LLM slop?
Alex Oliva, the Potential 'Successor' of RMS, Has a New Web Site
More freedom for Alex Oliva
 
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 16, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 16, 2025
Links 16/02/2025: Nostalgia for Physical Media and the US Government Actively Promotes Pro-Kremlin Politicians in the EU
Links for the day
Gemini Links 16/02/2025:Life, Cynicism, and languages
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: Oligarchs "Collect Your Data and Control Your World", Global Temperatures Shoot Up
Links for the day
Links 16/02/2025: "Microsoft Is Laying Off Employees" and Internal Dissent Brewing at Facebook Over Regime Complicity
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 15, 2025
Links 15/02/2025: Harms to Health, Public Domain, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: On Autistic People, AuraGem Over HTTPS
Links for the day
The Cyber Show (C|S) Speaks of the "Rise of the Nerd Reich."
This 'Valentine Episode' is quite good
Azure is Turning 17 This Year, Still Losing Money and Staff
Hallmark of pyramid schemes, deriving "value" out of things that do not really exist?
Strong Momentum for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Winter Approaches Its End in Boston or in the Northern Hemisphere
FSF's founder, Richard Stallman, gives another talk in Italy in 9 days from now
The 'Drunken Plagiarists' Are Harming Journalism About GNU/Linux
They lessen the incentive to do real journalism abut GNU/Linux
Female Nazis and racist Swiss women
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman on RISC-V and Free Hardware
Invidious is under attack by Google
Links 15/02/2025: Erasing of American Science and Tesla SLAPPing Critics
Links for the day
IDG 'Reviews' of GNU/Linux Now Contain LLM Slop
It's typically ads or commercials... or sometimes spin disguised as news
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: Spectacles and "Before Sunset", Moving Domains Out of the US
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Only $17,482 Million Left, "Cash on Hand" Sank 40 Billion Dollars in 2 Years
Microsoft runs low on money in the bank
YouTube Layoffs Mean That YouTube is Still Losing a Lot of Money (Net Income or Profit Almost Definitely Negative)
In more recent years Google defunded many vloggers
In Gopher and Gemini Protocol People Abandon Services Based in the United States
There's no resistance whatsoever
Python and Microsoft: Pandas Should Have Known OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Excel Are Different and Competing Things
now we're meant to think that in order to open ODF files we need some functions with "Excel" in their name
Not Only Windows, Surface, and "Hey Hi" PCs; Microsoft's Hardware Ventures Are a Dumpster Fire; HoloLens Mixed Reality Hardware Now Axed Altogether and Staff is Miserable
Microsoft is in a terrible state
Certificate Authority (CA) Let's Encrypt Now Down to TEN (0.3% of the Whole) in Geminispace
The number of capsules that use Let's Encrypt is, according to Lupa, about to fall to single-digit figures
Links 15/02/2025: University Price Hikes and Copyright Action Against Slop Companies
Links for the day
Slopwatch: All Those New 'Articles' Are Fake and Crafted by Chatbots (LLM Slop)
Google News is promoting these as "Linux" news; they're not even made by humans
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 14, 2025