If you lived here in the 80's you would know that Bill is a terrible, terrible person.

RUSH LIMBAUGH cited Gates' comments on his raydiode program as proof that Trump is all that. He said something like, and Gates didn't compare him to Hitler or Mussolini, Gates compared him to JFK." As far as new leaders, who do you have in mind?

@1 lived around here my whole life, Gates is a typical "Great American Capitalist", like, say Henry Ford, ruthless and driven, driven, driven to build The Empire, then driven by guilt(?) to do "Great Works," see also, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Sydney for Editor in Chief. Hell, Sydney for President!

But who gives you the right to say who should and should not be "trusted" to fight climate change given your opposition to Initiative 732?

What the fuck did you want Gates to do instead other than use his rich person persona to try and sway this asshole? Why aren't you saying the same thing about Al Gore when he met with Ivanka Trump, or Obama for that matter? Are they also endorsing this shitty administration by speaking with the Trumps?

Remember, this is the same author who ignored a published paper on the medical testing of a male contraceptive and instead took the word of a non-scientist working for Buzzfeed.

@5 maybe because Albert (I couldn't even win my home state) Gore tain't from around these parts, and this Stranger portal is, as well,,,

I find it hard to trust a man whose mind isn't clear enough to speak in well formed sentences. Anyone who flits from idea to idea to idea like that in the course of fifteen words doesn't have the mental discipline needed to engage large concepts.

@3, Yes Gates certainly is the ruthless "Great American Capitalist" who does Good Works through the B & M Gates foundation?---Backing the back door privatization of charter schools? Funding research into Third World disease; and no "charity begins at home" Like maybe funding a Manhattan Project to teach poor kids and adults in the Puget Sound how to code?

As long as a critical mass of IT people make serious bank working for Microsoft, Gates walks on water with the regional and city power structures and with many common folk.

And who holds a mic like that? Ya dick. @7 I agree with your first sentence. Maybe it was proximation to Trump that turned Gates' speaking ability to mush. Or maybe he's just not that sharp . . . anymore. Dementia is clearly a possibility. Money-dumb is another.

@6 That doesn't make any fucking sense given my post.

@7 You're saying Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, lacks "mental discipline" to "engage large projects."? Interesting. Also, I would think that flitting (what a fun word) from one idea to another is indeed a strength to many artists...

Gates has done a good job of making you forget that he's still a fuckin' weirdo that nobody likes with all of his malaria/mosquito charity work. It's like he quit Microsoft and threw Ballmer in front of everyone and instantly he went back to being Bill the Billionaire. Look at *any* of his characterizations in movies or TV – they're always jerks.

Bill is just as greedy as the rest of them. Remember his own father endorsed the state income tax when it was last on the ballot – but he didn't. He does a good job of making enough of a show out of his charity so you think he's charitable enough for redemption, but he still has that ridiculous house in Medina.

Well, this is sad. And I am a lifelong Washington state resident.

I guess I only saw Bill the Philanthropist and not as much Bill the Techno-Billionaire.

Who decided that Bill Gates had any moral gravitas to begin with? He's a trillionaire, not a philosopher.

from Paul Allen's book "idea man....." during a period when Allen was going through cancer treatments:

"One evening in late December 1982, I heard Bill and Steve speaking heatedly in Bill’s office and paused outside to listen in. It was easy to get the gist of the conversation. They were bemoaning my recent lack of production and discussing how they might dilute my Microsoft equity by issuing options to themselves and other shareholders. It was clear that they’d been thinking about this for some time. [...] I helped start the company and was still an active member of management, though limited by my illness, and now my partner and my colleague were scheming to rip me off. It was mercenary opportunism, plain and simple."

I'm with @1.

You're still kinda new here, Sydney. Not to talk down to you, but those of us born and raised in the larger Seattle area, and who have had the privilege of seeing (in some cases up close) Gates' accession to power and fame from the beginning the the present, know that he never has been, nor will he ever be, a "moral leader".

Billionaires are, as a rule, a net negative to society at large. Exceptions like Elon Musk prove the rule (and I suppose you could even argue that Musk is a net neutral, all things considered). The concentration of wealth and power into the hands of unelected and largely undeserving individuals is a recipe for societal neglect at best. At worst, it is a recipe for Donald fucking Trump. Billionaires will not save us. They never intented to, either: they intend to save themselves and maybe also their families. Anyone else who gets a helping hand along the way is either a serendipity or Good For Business.

Fuck billionaires.

Why would you ever have thought that a billionaire could possess (or even conceive of) moral authority? The rich are without exception amoral; it's the only way they could become so.

Sorry, @15, missed your comment.

What @17 said as well. That sort of thinking is what leads liberals to demonstrate the immorality of, e.g., North Carolina's discriminatory "bathroom" law by pointing to how much corporate revenue the state has lost.

What @5 said. There's no reasonable argument against having conversations.

Not to justify Bill's endorsement if there ever was one, don't forget that a Clinton administration DOJ started the monopoly suit against Microsoft which eventually led to his resignation.

"Bill is just as greedy as the rest of them. Remember his own father endorsed the state income tax when it was last on the ballot – but he didn't"

Along with 67% of the good people in the state of Washington who also rejected an income tax.

I remember what Bill Gates and Microsoft did to the contractor's and temp workers at Microsoft, paying them low wages and denying them benefits in order to enrich the company, which led to a large law suit. Lets not forget the many companies he put out of business to ensure that Microsoft retained it's monopoly. Howabout his sexist hiring practices. His worst act was creating the large population of douchebaggery on the Microsoft Campus, self absorbed elitists who are driven around in their own little white buses, so they don't have to commute with the unwashed peasantry.

Bill Gate's mother - God rest her soul - would be appalled.

Nothing more bitter than a long term MSFT contractor holding out for full time and never getting it.

It's both amazing and disgusting how the parade of people gaining the attention of Trump in his Tower Valhalla come feeling that they must report to us what the god said. And they all seem to be excited about being noticed by the paparazzi in the golden lobby. Gates, Gore, Romney, every frickin' general still half-alive...

It's so funny, but a little bit sad too, how some Microsoft Employees buy into the Microsoft Culture and admire Bill Gates like he is a God. It demonstrates a real lack of insight, and a certain blind disregard for the truth. It's not a surprise that Bill Gates would meet with Donald Trump, one of the most disgusting men to ever gain notional prominence. After all, they were both born with silver spoons in their mouths, educated in private schools, and given part of the family fortune to start their businesses. And both of them are known for an inability to demonstrate empathy and compassion.

Bill Jr. has never cared about the Earth, he only cares about making more money, and having power to remake the world into his image. Issaquah used to have over a hundred wetlands, after Gate's Microsoft built their soulless beige giant housing developments, there were fewer than TEN wetlands left. They destroyed almost 100 wetlands to build giant McMansions for their execs and workers, whom barely used those homes because they were always working. I have friends who went to work for Microsoft who had to leave their kids to be raised by their parents, because they had to work such long hours!

The way Amazon, Starbucks, Uber and other ruthless corporations treat their employees now - the wage theft, the huge CEO salaries, the anti-union antics, the unreliable schedules and hours, the extensive use of temps and contractors, the belief that employees are dispensable tools - that started with Microsoft and Nordstrom.

Umm, really? I read here that Bill is destroying wetlands, unions, unnamed companies (one owned by Homer Simpson) and then successfully fighting malaria and funding charter schools of all things. Not to mention that he's only giving away 90% of his wealth.

Plus if you've met him you might realize that he's functionally autistic and a good guy under the veneer. I love the Stranger, but I want to push most of folks back to BARK where admittedly I came from :) Love and smiles.

@30 I HAVE met him. Many times.

Yah, just what we need, a billionaire who went to private schools forcing our public school system to put in ineffective charter schools by pouring his money into the political system. Like any entitled rich creep, he thinks he can force his agenda on the poor and middle class.

@5: Word.

@15, 18 - Yep.

@5 - "Are they also endorsing this shitty administration by speaking with the Trumps? "
It's not about simply meeting with Drumpf, it's talking in glowing terms about him after meeting him that is the clear and present problem. I never really trusted Gates, now I hate him. That sycophant.

so wait a second - he goes to talk about importance of climate change, health research and addressing the needs of the world's poorest and he can't be trusted?? Sydney - what is the f'ing alternative???

Yeah, what a creep. He's donated nearly 40 billion dollars to global health over the past 10 years, much of it in fighting diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa, a place pretty nobody gives a shit about, saving over 6 million lives. I can see why Sidney would be upset about a heartless asshole like that. Keep up the great reporting!

Stop looking to seemingly beneficent billionaires for moral guidance and solutions, would be my first response.

My second would be that Trump is president-elect, will be president, and people are going to have to work with him, which includes talking with him. What is your alternative? Pouting in the corner for the next four years?

Wealth flowing to the 1% will accelerate, in exchange national debt flowing to the rest of us will accelerate too......

I cant speak to Mr. Gates character because, well, frankly, Ive never met the man. He seems an up-and-up kind of guy to me. Barring his pandering TV face time from time-to-time, I doubt few, if anyone really knows of him or has even met him. I also find it difficult that any of the mall-shopping-addicted, sweatshop-clothes-made-wearing, packaged-food eating, consumeristic hypocrites of Seattle critical of a man who has spent his vast fortune to help those in need globally have any indication of seeing the forest from the trees. For the last eight years this town and political America promoted Kum-by-ya-hand-holding globalism under the guise multiculturalism (which hilariously Mr. Trump and Crazy Kanye West of all people, are now promoting with nothing said by either them or the media) while minorities were coddled as their own little subcultures that should be bowed to incessantly because of their woes. Now the populist movements, not only nationally, but globally have reared its ugly head in retaliation with an "enough is enough" mantra and we realize that politics alone doesnt pay the tab, but its businesses and the working class that do, and everyone starts the slandering. People forget that Bill Gates and Microsoft built this town and he wasn't selfish about it like some of the "New Money" in this town. He hired local workers and promted local businesses and helped those locally that needed it. It certainly wasnt Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love like so many believe in their own minds did. Ive worked with organizations affiliated with the Gates foundation and they are doing facinating work, not only helping people in other countries whose main source of healthcare is a small outbuilding in the middle of "sub-saharan nowhere" where most of the obnoxious pitiful in the country couldn't survive a day, let alone a lifetime, but helping them to help themselves. The down right arrogance of people in this country who are really "all-talk-no action" beyond their little United Way donation or their twice a year $5.00 donation in the church giving plate is astounding and borders on gross. So the next time you slip on those running or work shoes, pants and logoed shirts and dresses made in countries and by people who will never have your opportunities or any opportunity for that matter, remember, that it isnt you helping them, its the philanthropic campaigns of Bill and Melinda Gates, Apple and even ExxonMobil as well as a great many others. Pandering Politicians, Bullhorns and traffic clogging marches dont get anything done, its businessmen with the resources at their disposal that get things done that make things happen. https://doublethedonation.com/corporate-…

@ 39: Before you lecture anybody else about "arrogance," take a look at what you just wrote. Or, on second thought, don't take a look at it at all. Just shove it up your ass.

Bill Gates is just one more rich piece of shit who groveling asshole toadies like you love to suck up to. Oh, and one more thing. Boeing built this town. Now go fuck yourself.

Seattlebcc dear, paragraphs are your friend. Use them. It will make your self-righteous bloviations much easier to read, if anyone wants to read them.

@37 "Stop looking to seemingly beneficent billionaires for moral guidance and solutions"

As if the problem was people looking for something from a billionaire rather than a billionaire using his billions to shove his guidance and solutions down our throats.

"people are going to have to work with him"

on the basis of his cabinet make up, talking with him is not going to accomplish anything other than give extremists credibility they don't have.

@39 International conglomerates, big oil, big Pharma and big banking/investment have done so much to make the world a better place for all.

@42: So pouting in the corner for four years then? To each their own.

Bill Gates is an oblivious megalomaniac dickhead. He thinks he can have a teachable moment with Donald Trump. I am looking forward to him vomiting up a new Ted talk.

@who talked about pouting? Progressives have 2 years to give voters reasons to go vote for the midterms. There is no time to lose in building the grass root movement necessary to do it and Warren/Sanders progressives are ready given adequate leadership.

Say what you will about him, but Bill built an empire. Read today's politico story on the arrogance and incompetence of Hillary's campaign organization and wonder what someone with Bill's skills could've done.

@46 And yet when we had an actual vote on a way to combat climate change, "leaders" like Syndey Brownstone decided to fight those efforts instead.

Nothing more than an ill-informed hypocrite.

A smart move, but likely not the reality of the conversation.

Public Statement: Bill ingratiates himself to Don and frames the discussion in a way that makes Bill and Don look good for thinking about or doing good things.

Reality?: Bill feeling out Trump for anti trust, H1B tech worker (in sourcing?), netsecurity, etc. policy and making sure he doesn't get on Don's shit list like Jeff already is.

Here is a link to the excellent Politico story mentioned by #47:

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/mi…

The arrogance of the Clinton campaign is truly astounding to behold.

But hey, they achieved one of their goals: drumming up turnout in states they were already going to easily win in order to ensure a large popular vote win. So what if they had to sacrifice actually winning the election to do so?

They really thought she would just win by default, from the very beginning.

Bill Gates is backing a company that truly does offer the potential to halt climate change. Clean, abundant, zero-emission energy from a nuclear technology that generate no waste (yes, no waste). Ms Brownstones story has no integrity; I've seen better journalism from high school students. Brownstone has no business writing inflammatory fertilizer and then publishing it as fact. Shame on theStranger for their lack of adequate editorial oversight. For some factual information, go the the TerraPower web site.

Hairy dear, I would certainly love to see a waste-free nuclear reactor. I'm kind of digging the whole molten salt thing too. I didn't know they were involved in that.

Comparing President Twitter Troll--a liar, agressively ignorant, fascist, greedy, racist, sexist, xenophobic bully--to JFK, one of our country's greatest Democratic leaders, is truly despicable.

Shame on Bill Gates and everyone else who is contemptuously ingratiating themselves to Trump and against the rest of us, who will be harmed in the incoming kleptocracy.

@54: Picture it.

You're in a car (America) in the passenger seat (Bill) with an intoxicated driver (Donald) and you help steer the car to avoid collisions.

Got it?

@28 - Worked there for a few years in the 90s (as a contractor and then as an employee) and it wasn't hard to find coworkers that were SHOCKED I didn't share their esprit de corps for the culture. At my exit interview, a manager berated me like a former lover who couldn't get their head around whatever it is I didn't like about them. I don't think that's unique to Microsoft, but in my experience, their corporate culture was replete with blind idol worship (and near-annual, nonsensical reorgs, FWiW).

Gates's company has always treated the open source software world that I have lived and worked in for 20 years like shit (it has been a seriously abusive relationship), so I always took B&M Gates Foundation with a huge grain of salt.

Then the super cynical side of me wants to say: how many millions of people in Africa are they locking into the Microsoft software ecosystem by giving them everything for free? You know that "everything" is 100% Microsoft branded. All those schools he setup for "free"? They probably have powerpoints showing how much revenue they will bring in 30 years later.

@58: Windows is not open source, neither is Apple OS X/iOS. Why are you complaining about that?

Didn't Trump back off from his statement that climate change is a hoax? I try not to listen to him much, but I thought I'd read that long ago.

Chump will do whatever the military and corporate leaders tell him, and most of them - with the exception of the energy companies - have actually come around on the issue of climate change because it's starting to affect their assets.

Speaking of that, they had an interview on NPR yesterday from some idiot who owns a coal company. He has lung disease because of his mining years, and he's eager for Chump to "bring back coal", eliminate the DOE, etc.

Hopefully the lord will take him soon.

So is this the Stranger's plan for the next 4-8 years? To just childishly insult anyone who meets with the president?

Ms Brownstone you need to GROW THE HELL UP!

@60 fact is that climate change deniers will be running the show so whatever Trump says/said matters very little.

Seattle has a blind spot for bill gates. People forget what a ruthless monopolizing shitball he was before he retired and started flinging his billions at questionable causes. If we're depending on the Bill Gateses to save the world, we're fucked.

Man, the gates (no pun intended) of Idelogical Purity are getting narrower and narrower. Before we know it even a camel won't be able to fit through it. Sydney, do you think Bill Gates should be purged, or merely reeducated?

" flinging his billions at questionable causes."

Yes, like polio and malaria.

@65 Mean atmospheric physics, also known as climate, know nothing about purity or purges for that matter

I think that we need to recognize that we are now facing an unprecedented Constitutional crisis with the Nation plunged into a State of Emergency, divided as deeply as during the Revolutionary and Civil War eras and facing unprecedented threats from both without and -- with the elevation of the loathsome beast Donald Trump -- from within.

With every passing day, Trump demonstrates his unworthiness, unfitness and untrustworthiness again and again. His picks are guaranteed to divide the Nation more deeply and his team's relationship(s) with Russia and disdain for our institutions and the free press are the Clear and Present Danger that cannot be "given a chance" in any respect.

We are standing on the threshold of open rebellion....

@66 and the preservation of motherhood and apple pie, no doubt.

Charter schools? What?

I think that we need to recognize that we are now facing an unprecedented Constitutional crisis with the Nation plunged into a State of Emergency, divided as deeply as during the Revolutionary and Civil War eras and facing unprecedented threats from both without and -- with the elevation of the loathsome beast Donald Trump -- from within.

With every passing day, Trump demonstrates his unworthiness, unfitness and untrustworthiness again and again. His picks are guaranteed to divide the Nation more deeply and his team's relationship(s) with Russia and disdain for our institutions and the free press are the Clear and Present Danger that cannot be "given a chance" in any respect.

We are standing on the threshold of open rebellion....

You thought a capitalist would save the environment?