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Bill Gates Worried About Public Pensions?
Robert Guth and Michael Corkery of the WSJ report, Gates Says High Pension Costs Hurt Education:
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates will step into the national debate over state budgets Thursday with a call for states to rethink their public-employee benefits systems, which he says stifle funding for the nation's public schools.
Mr. Gates in an interview said he will use a high-profile conference Thursday in Long Beach, Calif., to urge that more attention be paid to how states calculate their employee-pension funding and health-care obligations. "These budgets are way out of whack," Mr. Gates said. "They've used accounting gimmicks and lot things that are truly extreme."
The comments come after Mr. Gates spent more than a year studying the issue and enlisting the advice of leading academics and others.
The talk will be at a meeting of leading thinkers called the TED conference. Mr. Gates will outline how, as he sees it, rising state health-care costs and flawed pension accounting hamper the ability of states to pay for education. He said he'd use California as an example to illustrate his point.
"I'm just very worried about the investments we make for kids' education and what that means for the future," he said. "It's going to take voters to really look at that." Without that, he said, "The default course—where the health care costs are squeezing out education — is quite bleak."
Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, which has 3.2 million members, said U.S teachers have been trying to make up funding shortfalls by raising their contributions to their pension plans. He added that pensions are one of the reasons schools can attract quality teachers.
"People within public services know they are not going to make a high salary but they know that you have some semblance of retirement security," Mr. Van Roekel said in an interview.
As co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, Mr. Gates focuses most of his efforts on three areas: global health; overseas development; and U.S. education.
Yet he occasionally uses his stature in the service of other causes, and when he does, it's very deliberate. Two years ago, Mr. Gates used the same TED conference to outline his views on energy. That talk was the start of an increasingly higher profile by Mr. Gates in national discussion on the state of government investment into energy-related research and nuclear power. His involvement has stirred debate on streamlining the licensing process for U.S. nuclear-power facilities.
He said he is concerned that states' public employee-benefit costs could now stand in the way of broader changes. These include programs Mr. Gates's foundation backs that aspire to use technology (including cameras that monitor classrooms) and strengthened teacher evaluations to improve K-12 education.
"Those goals will never be met with the kinds of cuts that we're seeing right now" in education, he said.
One focus of Mr. Gates is public pension funds' use of a relatively high discount rate to calculate obligations. The discount rate is an assumed rate of return used to calculate the current value of a future liability.
The higher the rate, the smaller a fund's obligations appear—and the less that states need to contribute to their pension funds. Critics blame this accounting approach for contributing to state pension shortfalls, estimated nationwide to total more than $1 trillion.Pension funds say their discount rates are prudent when considering investing returns over several decades.
Mr. Gates downplayed any suggestion that his view on pensions will court controversy. "The only position I'm taking you could call a political position is that I wish education spending can go up," he said.
Over two days last September, Mr. Gates hosted experts in state pensions and health care at his office near Seattle. Several of the participants continue to advise Mr. Gates.
Among the participants in the meetings were Jeremy Gold, an independent actuary, who argues that state and local government accounting methods understate the true size of pension liabilities; Robert Clark, a North Carolina State University professor who has written a book on the history of public pension funds in the U.S.; and Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, whose research has focused lately on the cost of state and local pension plans.
Along with his comments Thursday, Mr. Gates will unveil a new set of tools to his personal Web site, "The Gates Notes." The tools allow visitors to click through U.S. maps that show state-by-state the funding status for pension obligations and retiree health-care benefits.
There is also a feature on Mr. Gates's site that ranks how much each state spends on programs such as higher education and prisons, as a percent of its total budget. "A lot of society's resources go into state budgets and yet it has been made complicated enough and the accounting is bad enough that people haven't had a sense of what's going on," Mr. Gates says in a video on the Web site.
I applaud Bill Gates for bringing this
issue out in the open and giving it the publicity it deserves. He's
absolutely right that US public pension funds need to use a more
realistic discount rate to gauge future pension obligations. It's silly
to use a discount rate based on rosy investment projections (typically
8%) when interests rates are at historic lows. But the assumed discount
rate isn't the only driver of pension shortfalls (see discussion below).
You should all go back and read the study released last February by The Pew Center on the States, The Trillion Dollar Gap.
On page 23 there is a discussion on "the roots of the problem" where
Pew examined four of the most significant: (1) the volatility of pension
plan investments; (2) states falling behind in their payments; (3)
ill-considered benefit increases; and (4) other structural issues. The study estimated $3 trillion in unfunded legacy liabilities from state-sponsored pension plans.
Another study ,“The
Crisis in Local Government Pensions in the United States,” by Joshua
Rauh of the Kellogg School and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of
Rochester, estimated an additional $574 billion in unfunded liabilities from pension plans at the city and county levels:
“This
new paper calculates the present value of local government employee
pension liabilities for about two-thirds of total local government
employees, and estimates the unfunded obligation for the remaining
one-third of workers covered by municipal plans not in our sample,”
said Rauh, associate professor of finance at the Kellogg School. “In
total, we estimate that municipal plans in the U.S. are carrying $574
billion in off-balance-sheet debt in the form of unfunded pension
obligations.”In many cities, these unfunded promises will be a
long-standing and substantial burden for municipal revenues. For
example, even if all other spending was shut down, the city of Chicago
would need to allocate about eight years of dedicated tax revenues to
cover pension promises it has already made.Six
major cities have current pension assets that can only pay for
promised benefits through 2020: Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago,
Cincinnati, Jacksonville and St. Paul. An additional 18 cities and
counties, including New York City, Detroit, Cook County in Illinois and
Orange County in California would be solvent through 2020 but not past
2025.“Philadelphia has the most immediate cause for
concern, as the city can pay existing promises with existing assets
only through 2015 — less than five years from now,” Rauh said.Rauh
and Novy-Marx estimate that each household already owes an average of
$14,165 to current and former municipal public employees in the 50
cities and counties they studied, only including the unfunded portion
of benefits that have already been promised based on work performed. In
New York City, San Francisco, and Boston, the total is more than
$30,000 per household. In Chicago, the total is more than $40,000 per
household.“The
situation is especially dire for taxpayers in these areas,” Rauh said.
“In addition to being exposed to the prospect of severe local
government tax increases and spending cuts, they also will be called
upon to pay for their share of the $3 trillion unfunded liabilities at
the state level.”According to
Rauh, it is clear that state and local governments in the U.S. are not
far from the point where these pension promises will impact their
ability to operate. Once the funds themselves are liquidated, the
extent to which promised pension payments are competing with other
local resources will skyrocket, eroding a large portion of many
municipal budgets.“The fact that there is such a large
burden of public employee pensions concentrated in urban metropolitan
areas threatens the long-run economic viability of these cities, as
residents can potentially move elsewhere to escape the situation,” he
explained.“What is yet to be seen is how this burden will be
distributed between state and local governments, and whether the
federal government will be called upon for bailouts. If these issues
are left unresolved, fiscal crises on the state and local levels may
translate into significant losses for municipal bondholders,” he
concluded.
Professor Rauh recently testified
before members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on the role of
public employee pensions and the risk of state bankruptcy from these
underfunded liabilities.“This
hidden debt will eventually force states and localities to choose among
the unpalatable options of cutting services, raising taxes, attempting
to reduce benefits owed to public employees, defaulting on other
obligations, or seeking a federal bailout,” Rauh testified.
But not everyone agrees with the findings of these studies. In early February, Kaitlin Meehan reported, Pension experts disagree on how states should calculate unfunded pension liabilities:
Some
experts peg the size of states’ unfunded pension liability at $3
trillion, while others value it at a much lower $700 billion. The
discrepancy is due to different opinions on the appropriate rate of
return on investments that states use to calculate their pension
contributions.One thing nearly everyone agrees on: There are dangerous policy implications for getting this figure wrong.
To
calculate how much to contribute to the pension funds of public
employees, states must assume a rate of return on their investments.
Most states currently use a so-called “discount rate” of between 8
percent and 8.5 percent. Some experts say that’s too optimistic. They
argue that states should be using a “riskless rate” that is a more
conservative 4 percent to 5 percent.The
$3 trillion figure is calculated using the lower rate of return.
Prominent advocates for the conservative approach include Joshua Rauh
of Northwestern University and Robert Novy-Marx of the University of
Rochester.Novy-Marx said the discount rate is so named
because states use the expected return on pension investments to lower
the amount they pay in contributions to the fund. In other words,
states calculate the amount they need to invest in pension funds based
on an assumed 8 percent rate of return. This is irresponsible
accounting, he argues.“The way states do the accounting is that
they think if they take a dollar out of the bank account and put it
into the stock market, they somehow owe a dollar less,” Novy-Marx said.
“That doesn’t make sense. Their debt is their debt.”The
riskless rate is so named because it eliminates the risk assumed by
investing in a diversified market basket and uses a rate comparable to
that on U.S. Treasury bonds. The rate of return on a 30-year Treasury
bond was 4.6 percent as of Feb. 2.Treasury bonds are considered
safe investments because they are guaranteed by “the full faith and
credit of the United States.” Likewise state pensions are usually
guaranteed to retirees by a state’s constitution. The Illinois
constitution, for example, calls its pension plans “an enforceable
contractual relationship.”“I’ve talked to lots and lots of
people and the only people who think discounting liabilities by the
expected return on assets is the right thing to do are pension
actuaries,” Novy-Marx said. “No one in business would let you do this.
No one in finance or economic academics would let you do this.”However,
others argue that overstated pension obligations could cause
unnecessary policy changes to state budgets at a time when they are
under extreme scrutiny.Elizabeth
McNichol, a state budget researcher with the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities, thinks the $3 trillion liability figure for the
states is too high. According to her calculation, which uses an 8
percent return rate, the states’ pension liability is closer to $700
billion. Because public
pension managers invest in more risky vehicles than Treasury bonds, they
can reasonably expect a higher rate of return than 4 percent, McNichol
said.For example, the Teachers’ Retirement System, one
of Illinois’ five public pension programs, currently has an 8.5
percent target rate of return. In 2010, the fund had a 12.8 percent
rate of return after all fees had been subtracted, according to a TRS
spokesman.“I don’t think it makes sense to assume a rate that
you’re not likely to get,” McNichol said. “This means states would
think they have to put aside more money than they need to in order to
have enough money to fund their pension commitments.”The
downside of overstating pension obligations is that states may be
forced to cut spending to meet their actuarially required
contributions.In a Jan. 20 report that McNichol
co-authored, she said excess payments into state pension funds take
away money that would otherwise “support public services, resupply
reserve funds, invest in infrastructure or return to taxpayers in the
form of tax cuts.”Bukola Bello,
director of the Illinois Retirement Securities Initiative in Chicago,
said she thinks the discount rate is a safe assumption for the
Teachers' Retirement System, for example.“The
retirement systems are filled with experts and chief financial officers
and trustees who take their fiduciary responsibility very seriously,”
Bello said. “If they are comfortable with the rate of 8.5 percent, then
we really need to trust those numbers.”Novy-Marx
said it is not a matter of meeting or missing return expectations, but
a matter of the states being allowed to hide the actual size of their
pension debt.“This accounting is essentially letting
states take on a lot of off-balance sheet debt,” he said. “States want
to be able to do what the federal government does, which is run big
deficits and the way they’re doing that is by borrowing from their
pensioners.”Illinois currently
has $63.4 billion in unfunded pension liabilities, according to a
Reuters report. Experts agree that it is not the rate at which public
pension liabilities are calculated that has led to the Illinois’ major
shortfall, but the fact that the state has underfunded its pension
plans in recent years and had to borrow money meet its actuarial
requirements. In fact, the state has plans to sell $3.7 billion of
eight-year general obligation bonds this month to make contributions to
its pension funds for the 2011 fiscal year.“I think
the general assembly really needs to concentrate on No. 1, making sure
we meet our pension obligations again,” Bello said.
Illinois pension
plans are severely underfunded and it concerns me that they decided to
sell "general obligation bonds" to make contributions to pension funds
for FY2011. Pension bonds are not a long-term fix for chronically
underfunded state pension plans. Only meaningful pension reforms can
address this issue which include changing the whole governance structure
at state pension plans. Importantly, state pensions need more
accountability, transparency and they need to properly compensate
pension fund managers for delivering risk-adjusted returns.
As for Mr. Gates and the TED conference,
I look forward to hearing the discussion. I got my own ideas on how the
US and other developed nations should be addressing the pension crisis,
but Mr. Gates is right to be concerned about how public pension costs
will impact public education. No matter what discount rate you assume, the
pension tsunami is coming and it will impact the prosperity of the
United States and other countries for many years.
»
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I guess you were junked by someone who's unionized...or maybe works for Msoft.
I knew he had at least one redeeming quality.
How I wish this would get anything done. But the political tentacles of the NEA run extremely wide and deep.
Attention parents: the system is hopelessly broken. Take your kids out or, if they're small, never put them in. Homeschool. Network. Hire a tutor for what you don't know. Enlist the grandparents or retired neighbors. Brush up with the SAT Prep Book.
You can do a much better job getting your kid ready to pass a college entrance exam than the twisted NEA village full of non-academic agendas, dubious credentials, predators that slip through without background checks, and crushing pension debt. Here's news... a diploma, GPA or transcript is NOT required for college entrance.
You have a choice. Decline the government's offer of 12 years of "free" daycare -- because your kid will pay dearly. For the sake of that precious kid, and your sanity, bypass the broken system and take responsibility for the development of your kid's skills. Your family's economic future depends on it.
(Before you junk me... this is NOT a hit on good teachers. My mom was a public school teacher for nearly 30 years. She was my eyes into the system.)
I'm not junking you, I think today's teachers are in it for the protection of the union goons who have congress by the balls, the 9-month working year, the lifetime pensions of up to (so far) 20% more than they'll ever earn annually. Another protected class, compliments of congress during the Carter years.
Taxpayers are shackled to every single teacher, county, municipal, court, and etc. worker, for those workers' lifetimes, though most taxpayers either funded their own pensions 100% and have to live on inflated and diminishing returns, or have no pension and no hope of any.
So we'll pay for decades beyond the retirements of people who paid little or nothing into their own pensions. And each new generation of unionized workers recreates the same problem. It's just not gonna work, folks.
You assume that schools are for education. What they first and foremost are is a place to park he kids while the parents go off and do things that are more fun and less boring than staying at home with them. Particklelerly among the poorer segments of society, the main use of the school system is baby sitting, as you point out.
Secondly, for the kids it's a place to get the hell away from their parents so that they can do more cooler things than be at home. Like gossip, out-peer each other, get laid, taunt the teachers, and buy drugs.
Third, it is a way for teachers to get out of teaching by getting a cushy job in administration with great perks, decent money, terrific retirement pay, and very little actual work.
Your post is an explanation why US jobs are moving off-shore. You should post this wherever off-shoring is discussed and dissed... but I suppose those dissing are those you're describing so probably it's a useless exercise.
I take issue with your second point. Kids do not have the option of foregoing school. Until highschool, they even have to get dropped off by mommy and daddy or the bus. When kids do drugs at school, have sex, gossip, sext, etc., it is in spite of their parents' wishes... but they certainly do not go to school to do these things... they go because the police will literally arrest them and bring them before the juvenile court (along with their parents) to answer for truancy.
The rest is spot on... nothing more than a babysitter. The first year of college proves this fact in large part given it's designed around remedial courses (aka teaching the students basic math, english, and science matters so that they might have a chance at later course work).
Bravo.
My wife is (was) a teacher here in the Southeast. She hates the union. She hates the bureaucrats. She hates everything that stops her from doing her job ... WHICH IS TO TEACH KIDS THE THREE R's. But the NEA, the administrators with their B.S. curriculum, etc. kept getting in the way ... so she quit to be a SAHM. I fully support her.
I'll teach my kids math, science, history, and government. My wife will take the other subjects ...
Screw the NEA. Screw public education ("socialized" daycare ... TINSTAAFL ... we all pay for our and other people's kids through our property taxes).
"Public" "education" is oxymoronic and a sham. It's taxpayer-supported babysitting, with propaganda added. Teachers who want to really teach, aren't allowed. Taxpayers are being criminally swindled by a government agency...again.
Every parent is or can be qualified to teach their own kids, and home schoolers aren't working in a vacuum but cooperate in groups to make sure subjects are covered and taught properly. Home-schooled kids also socialize together at home or at multi-family functions. Yes, their achievements may vary but so do those of public-schooled kids.
My friend's son, 6, only goes to public school "for the social life", she told me. She, a high-school math teacher, and her husband, who earned an MBA and runs his own company, teach him.
Free online school:
http://khanacademy.org/
MIT's curriculum online:
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm
BINGO ! there you go ! you got the answer ! ........... extricate yourselves from the system, it's the only answer. those who played the game, made their contributions for 20 years, actually believing that the money that was deducted from their paychecks would be there 20 years later for their retirement ought to be just livid. They could have saved that money themselves, put it away in silver or gold or just a savings account & they would have been a hell of a lot better off ! .......... but, then, had WALL ST. not offloaded worthless mortgage back securities to pension funds, well, this story would have had a better ending............ THE DAMN PENSION FUNDS WERE LOOTED, PEOPLE ! WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE? WHY AREN'T THE CRIMINALS IN CUFFS !
Evidently you're a product of a public education ...
For the states where the pensions are in trouble ... the teachers didn't contribute anything or they contributed 5-10% of their salary for a guaranteed benefit, compounded return of 8-15%+ YOY ... in 99% of the cases, the Pension Funds weren't looted ... people were sold Dutch Tulips, believe in Skittle-crapping Unicorns, were swindled in a giant Ponzi, etc.
This is why we're phucked. Even some of the people who come to Zerohedge are hopelessly bought into the system, failed basic math classes, never had an economics class, and love Big Brother (buying the propaganda ... tasty blue pill) ...
Get the bankers! Get the rich! Get the <other guy ... insert your favorite class, race, station, etc>!
And no I'm not a banker ... no, I'm not rich. But I'm also not as ignorant of how the system works as half the commenters on Zerohedge these days ...
I don't want that to seem like a personal attack. I just have been noticing many posters saying all sorts of hateful things and then taking the time to disguise a word. Its a bit crazy to be concerned with a word when just bashing others.
I just happened to see yours. No disrespect meant.
None taken. Now where were we ... oh yeah ...
Get the <bankers, jews, crackers, rich, espanola illegals ... ad infinitum>!
Why do people insist on spelling curse words incorrectly? We are all adults here. If you want to say fuck, say it, don't say phuck. If you're worried...don't be. You have all types of people spewing hate (about jews, blacks, pension, poor, whatever) and you're worried about a little old word.
I like "f u k k" better.
Why do people insist on spelling curse words incorrectly?
Thatz bekuz he waz hom skuled.
Actually no ... I got a fucking public education.
But I learned more at the library and at home than I ever learned in class (high school, college, or graduate school).
damn beat me to it.
Get the bankers! Get the uber rich! Get the media!
Who the hell gets to retire after 20 years? Everyone would get to retire at 42 and live another 40 years on pension except there will not be enough workers to feed the eaters.
Mr Gates is puppet master extraordinaire.
His timing is perfect.
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates
correction: Billionaire eugenicist Bill Gates
that $75billion stolen by HANK PAULSEN sure could shore up those pension obligations fast !! Can you even imagine how safe & secure pensioners could be with that kind of money !! Pensions get looted, yet GOLDMAN lives to suck the life blood (& money) another day while pensioners are told that they must take less......... just doesn't seem right.
Strange how congress does nothing when with a little finagling of the laws (like they did to make this shit sandwich appear) they could fix it.
Am I the only one who notices?
I am amazed that I continued to be amazed at the seemingly limitless depth of idiocy on financial issues from smart people who really ought to fuckin' know better. Funding public pension plans? Talk about ignoring the elephant stampede in the room.
why doesn't he just vaccinate all public employees with some of his vaccines or turn some of his laboratory nanobot mosquitoes loose on them...
I know in the private sector there are strict rules concerning fully funding of pensions, which is one reason nobody offers them anymore. Obviously they can not pass a law and hold a gun to peoples heads to cough up more cash (taxes) in order to fund them.
Are there not similar laws guiding the funding of public sector pensions? It appears not since all the chickens seem to be coming home to roost with them. Do they just rely on being able to raise taxes during the next guys term to cover it, or what?
Public-sector unions: bastion and "bank" of org. crime.
Need anyone explain further?
Yes, but we've got the gutlock collective bargaining issue to deal with. I think if you have a large/strong enough voting block, you can actually raise taxes at will. The question of course is whether this causes any increase in tax revenue (diminishing returns).
PS, they only see about as far as their noses. Remember, at a fundamental level, all public employees are playing with someone else's money.
" Illinois pension plans are severely underfunded " ...... then, ask WALL ST. to cut their management fees from 15 % down to 8% & those pension funds will be doing better. Wall St. looted the pension funds, dumping worthless paper with the pension funds ..... WALL ST. wins / pension funds lose ! so, what else is new .
" he says stifle funding for the nation's public schools. " ........ what happened to the LOTTERY money ? Years ago it was said that the LOTTERY would benefit schools !
lynnybee
on Wed, 03/02/2011 - 23:05
Is this irony? I assume you must be in IL so know the whole nasty truth.
SUPERMOB, Gus Russo
THE OUTFIT, Gus Russo
Since the pension fund managers let the looting happen, aren't they responsible to sue (or whatever it takes) the looters and get that money back?
Been wondering when this will happen.
Not holding my breath but why should pensioners take it in the nose when the money is out there in the pockets of the looters?
Go after it, for God's sake. Class action suit(s).
lynnybee, don't forget the many billions in registration fees that Wall Street evaded as part of their fraudulant MBS scheme via MERS (in addition to the other frauds perpetrated directly upon the pension funds themselves, as well as the states and municipalities.)
lynnybee - I hear you.
It's like a toll road.
They charge for ten years to "pay off" the road; then jack the toll up 10% a year for 10 years to pay for "maintenance".
As long as they can levy tolls and taxes the costs will NEVER go down and the efficiencies will NEVER go up.
Wall Street knows this, they are simply phase two of the milking program, whereby children and old folks are starved while the fat asses of the mammon worshippers in Washington, Wall Street, and the State Capitols waddle off to a lunch paid instead of what should be a LYNCHING.
If the Illinois pension fund is allowing itself to be charged 15% management fees, then the state is run by criminals elected by idiots. Sounds like a bunch of corrupt Illinois politicians is a real problem, not Wall Street.
Sounds like America.
Hmmm, the state being run my criminals? Hadn't thought of that.
And please don't mistaken the criminals on Wall Street, and the criminals in politics, to be two separate animals.
It's funny. These pensions are paid for by the employee. *otherwise their pay before, now, and later would have be higher. They are part of their wages. If the gov't didn't fund it...it means they STOLE from them. If they choose to cut it now, it's basically trying to make a legal way to cover up a crime of theft. Get a way out of paying for someone's already worked for wages. Oh yes, and if they steal THEIR wages, they're going to steal YOURS. Not only this, but to take away your bargaining rights.
Now the person who got rich by buying (and basically repackaging) two different IBM inventions....must be why he can never get them to work right....ha ha ha....is telling you, bigger class sizes, and yeah...buy more computers. Teach the test, get sterilized...err vaccinated, live like tree people and hold your breath. Bill Gates is a fascist, monetarist whore. History will not be kind to dork-o.
Nazi Economist Mobilize Against LaRouche On Budget Cuts
http://www.larouchepac.com/node/17638
Bill Gates will rot in hell.
Congresses past could have mandated that all pensions, public as well as private, be 100% funded every year, but they didn't. Everyone on management side kind of got a pass. Now workers expecting pensions are stuck and taxpayers are expected to pony up. So what else is new? It's a crime; where's the Injustice Department?
If you contribute money to a fund that invests in trash, then your money will become trash...
If you are referring to an outright taking or reduction in pension benefits, then I suspect any principal and verifiable interest should be available to those who paid in. However, this has to be mitigated by my first sentence... If there's nothing there to take, then there's nothing left to take.
PS, this is another example of why meaningful change is impossible given the reflation of the perception of wealth associated with market gains... i.e. I am not going to take to the street when my retirement plan is increasing in value (nominal).
The Big Picture sure looks familiar, don't it?
Larger class sizes--what a fucking moron! Sounds like he needs a couple months of subbing in a good sampling of schools. Of course, going into classrooms as the Rock Star of Wealth and Genius where the school administrations have carefully prepared the kids and closely monitor his classes would hardly give him a taste of what real teachers have to work with. What a clueless dumb fuck. But then I guess Windoze speaks for itself.
Every time God closes a door (to opportunity), he opens a Windows.
I think you meant to use the verb "crashes" instead of open.
Every time God closes a door, he crashes him some windows.
Bill Gates, whatever happened to those hilarious commercial he did with seinfeld?
Gates is one of the criminally complicit.
"...Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates.."
Er, shouldn't that read, billionaire global software monopolist Bill Gates, one of the most God-awful monopolies that consigned the world to work with a piece of crumby coded, bug infested, virus attracting sack of shit for decades
While the thought absolutely terrifies me, I wonder if this isn't Mr. Gates' inaugural effort to get into politics....
++ or Windoze as we call it while waiting for it to do shit