02.06.09
The Lesser-covered Side of the Big Stories
“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
IT’S too easy to stumble upon new articles and blog posts that viciously criticise Microsoft for its crimes. This example from last week put it rather bluntly because it exclaimed that “Microsoft must be destroyed!”
The explanation goes like this:
Ah, you say, but Microsoft was charged as being a monopoly by the Justice Department, and has been monitored by the courts ever since. Well, yes, Microsoft was charged and found guilty. Due to their philosophical beliefs the George W. Bush Administration instructed the Justice Department to back off on enforcement when the Administration came into office in early 2001. Since then, the Justice Department has seemed more like cheerleaders for the company, a convicted monopolist, than a probation officer. In fact the Justice Department has even written to the European Commissioner for Competition, Nellie Kroes, asking the the EU not take action against the company, when an EU court had reached the same conclusion as a US court, that Microsoft is a monopoly, and has used it’s position as a monopoly to prevent competition in the market.
As we stated a week ago, Microsoft employees like to believe that Microsoft is being ‘picked on’ because “it’s a big company.” But this ignores the reality that Microsoft is committing crimes, not just ethical crimes. The lack of law enforcement does not make these any less of a crime.
Over the past fortnight we happen to have also mentioned what some would characterise as treason [1, 2, 3], namely the betrayal and abandonment of American workers, not to mention tax evasion. But whereas it’s no crime to move a workforce abroad, the means of achieving this were fraudulent. They involved Microsoft, Bill Gates’ father, and Jack Abramoff who is now serving time in prison. Here are some newer articles about the very latest debacle which relates to “Abramoff visas”:
1. Microsoft faces more heat over foreign workers and layoff plans
In many ways, this is no surprise. Microsoft has lobbied for years to relax the restrictions on the program, letting more foreign workers participate. But the timing in relation to the layoffs is raising eyebrows among some of its critics.
2. Microsoft Layoff Sparks H-1B Debate
Layoff announcements by IT vendors came fast and furious over the past two weeks. But it was Microsoft Corp.’s that drew the attention of a U.S. senator, who said it was “imperative” that the company give job priority to U.S. citizens over foreigners with H-1B visas.
A lot of this traces back to Bill Gates and his dad, who happens to participate in another joint scam. The selfishness, vanity and dishonesty are endemic, but the public remains unsuspecting even when the man responsible is unleashing mosquitoes into an audience that may be allergic to them.
Ending malaria is a particular passion of Gates’s, whose Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has spent millions fighting the disease. But he apparently didn’t feel like TED attendees were taking the threat seriously. “Not only poor people should experience this,” Gates said as he let the bugs loose on his audience, according to Facebook manager Dave Morin. (eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and Twitter CEO Ev Williams confirm the report.)
What was he thinking? The articles covering this incident neglect to mention how Bill Gates and his wife generate profit from disease because they invest in the cure. Self-serving charities are very much a reality and it’s naive to ignore this. █
