If you’ve ever wondered what it tastes like to lick Brad Smith’s asshole, just ask the editors at the Seattle Times:
THE state’s two biggest companies took a gamble on Washington a few years back, and at long last the state has finally paid off.
Back in 2011, Boeing and Microsoft pledged $25 million apiece for the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship program. The program, run by the College Success Foundation, defrays costs for low- and middle-income students when they major in science, technology, engineering, math and health at Washington colleges. Each student is eligible for as much as $17,000.
So Boeing and Microsoft save hundreds of millions of dollars a year in state tax breaks and tax loopholes—denying the state the funds necessary to adequately fund higher education and other crucial investments—and yet we should cheer them as civic heroes for spending a mere $25 million each (0.03 percent of their $164 billion in combined 2013 revenue) to subsidize educating their own workforce?
Hooray for capitalism!
The “gamble” Boeing and Microsoft took was that this feeble gesture would provide political cover for their roles in perpetuating the structural revenue deficit that undermines Washington’s K-12 and higher education systems as a whole. And it was a gamble that has paid off handsomely under the credulous watch of our state’s editorial boards.