This article from today’s NYT will surprise no one here, I am sure:
President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.
But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.
Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.
These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.
The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.
The Times does good work here. Their Beltway coverage is catastrophically bad, but they have some solid reporters on staff. Too bad no one slogged through those boring old financial records in early 2016, but better late than never.
As we’ve discussed in comments in connection with the Manafort trial and the many other Trump-adjacent scandals, the Trump administration is a clinic on white collar crime. Some Democrats are shouting that from the rooftops, including Warren and Pelosi. I hope they keep it up.
PS: Did y’all even know Trump had a living brother named Robert? I didn’t until I read the pained statement denying the tax cheating in response to the linked article. I knew Trump has a sister who’s a judge and probably ashamed of brother Donald, and I knew he had a brother Fred, but Fred is dead. Are there any others? I don’t really care. It’s just weird how reporters chased down President Obama’s third cousins in Kenya but have nary a word to say about Trump’s siblings.
The Moar You Know
The rich get richer.
Roger Moore
In completely unrelated news, the Republicans have been gutting the IRS’s enforcement arm.
ArchTeryx
@The Moar You Know: Leona Helmsley had it right, albeit in the most self serving of ways – taxes are for the little people.
wv blondie
I’m really hoping that Mueller adds a RICO indictment to his list! (Of course, I think that could be applied to the entire GOP power structure.)
TenguPhule
There is no statute of limitations on intentional tax fraud with the IRS.
Of course, the trick is proving its intentional.
C Stars
I don’t know one rich white dude who didn’t cheat on his taxes.
Not one.
different-church-lady
Here’s the mood I’m in right now: the only thought I have left for this is, “Being a moral person is for suckers.”
It’s like we’ve gotta build Wonko The Sane’s asylum for the world.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
To be fair, they’ve been hacking away at the rest of the agency for decades. Enforcement is but one small part of the whole butchering process.
different-church-lady
@C Stars: I’m sensing an opportunity here…
Kay
I disagree. No one was better positioned to report on Donald Trump than NY media. They’ve been covering him for 50 years and he conducted his entire career in their backyard. It’s malpractice that they didn’t investigate this until 2 years after he was elected. I actually said it during the campaign- I was sure they would do it. I said “wait until there’s real reporting on his finances”. It just never came.
Sometimes it’s too late. Ideally, one would want the due diligence done sometime PRIOR to the election. It just doesn’t matter now.
TenguPhule
@different-church-lady:
Welcome to my world.
Mary G
Elizabelle
NY Times reporters are
None of their crack (whore) DC press corpse types.
Mary G
@Kay: Yes, this. There is no freaking excuse for not taking a page from Fahrenthold’s book and doing this in 2015 when it would have had some effect. Now all the Republicans will admire him more for getting away with it.
Hoodie
Remember all the pearl clutching about how debt was going to make us into Greece, when a huge part of Greece’s fiscal problem (aside from being handcuffed by the euro) was widespread noncompliance with tax laws?
Kay
We got an investigation into Donald Trump’s foundation. A teeny, tiny portion of his financial picture.
And people were grateful for that! We turned that reporter into a folk hero. 1/1000th of the Trump picture and we were thrilled we were given even that.
We should have gotten more information and we should have gotten it when it mattered. Political reporting is a BILLION dollar industry. They couldn’t look at Donald Trump’s finances sooner that two years after the election? All these fucking highly paid national stars couldn’t provide even basic financial information? Why not? What happened?
We would have been better off with a competent accountant with a rental car, an internet connection and an expense account. We could have planted him somewhere and had him review public records beginning the moment Trump announced.
Mary G
@Mary G: And the master speaks:
different-church-lady
@Elizabelle: Maggie H will soon be telling us all the pertinent and important details of Trump’s mood in response to this development. Because… because who the fuck knows why anymore?
rp
Trump fail taxes? That’s unpossible.
TenguPhule
Warning, FTFNYT link. F.B.I. to Complete Inquiry Wednesday With Vote Coming This Week
Somehow a week of investigation became 4 days. The FBI director obviously had words with the agents in charge of the investigation and contrary to Comey’s honeyed words, the FBI is full of shitty agents who go along to get along.
Or Mitch McConnell pulled a fast one over the FTFNYT DC press pool.
Either possibility is valid.
Elizabelle
@Hoodie:
Thank you. I assume a lot of rightwing whack jobs might not actually know that fact, because it never comes up. And it is quite common sense.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Butter emails.
TenguPhule
@Hoodie:
We are all Greeks now.
burnbesq
Estate tax valuation cases are notoriously difficult to try, says the guy who tried one back in the 1990s. The estate planners have a big arsenal of entirely legal things they can do to artificially depress the value of commercial real estate and shares of private companies. As long as they don’t get too egregiously greedy …
If you want more revenue out of the estate tax, increase the rate and decrease the exempt amount. Broadening the base ain’t happening.
germy
I wonder why that is? I’m not being sarcastic here, I really wonder why that is.
The Moar You Know
@ArchTeryx: At least she left her fortune to her dog and to be used for animal rights causes (sadly, overturned by a judge who decided he knew better than her what her money should be used for).
Fred Trump just left his money to some lumps of dogshit.
ruemara
It’s amazing how stories from alternative universe NYT from 2015-6 keep slipping into our current hellscape. Also, re last thread, some of you really need to understand a rhetorical question.
Dorothy A. Winsor
If there’s one thing the NYT should do well, it’s financial reporting, given their proximity to the banks and Wall Street.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
See, this is why Baud should remember to chip in and get me an expense account. Or else. //
germy
1) Report on HRC’s emailz while ignoring her opponent’s multiple scandals
2) ?
3) He won! Investigate the barn door while the horse gallops away. PROFIT!
Kay
@Mary G:
“Timely” is key. That’s the value. I don’t know- you have to point that out to “news people”? That ON TIME would be the vital thing here?
They got it done in time for the re-election? Is that it?
You know, there will be a Democratic opponent to Donald Trump. We will know more about that person’s finances 2 weeks after they announce than we will EVER know about the Presidents.
Everything you own and everything you owe. That’s what they had to find out and they had to find it out PRIOR to the election. Now it’s useless. It’s commentary. An observation on a condition.
TenguPhule
@germy:
IOKIYAR. SATSQ.
Elizabelle
From a subsidiary article in the FTF NY Times: 11 Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Trump’s Wealth
Those are strong words.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Agree with you, Kay. The FTF NYTimes was complicit.
And this gives Trump something to whine about rather than Brett Kavanaugh. For good or bad.
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I wish some excellent reporting team could investigate the NY Times. Something is way off with them, on a lot of fronts. Editorial. Publisher’s suite?
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
They’re giving us the due diligence after we already put the whole wad down on the investment. And I do mean “the whole wad”.
It’s hysterical in a way. Thank God they didn’t turn up a murder, right? Thank God it’s just rampant unchecked white collar crime.
scott (the other one)
@Elizabelle: Could not agree more. Laziness, love of insider access, and both-sideserism simply don’t explain it all.
MazeDancer
@TenguPhule:
Like the Kavanaugh fight has turned into a referendum on Making it OK to be a Manly Man. Barfights! Teen-age Hijinks! Let Boys be Boys!
Heartsick. All the time. Fighting hard to bring down Trump. But still, the pain is big.
And, no, had no idea Trump had a living brother. Wiki said he ran Trump Org real estate outside Manhattan. Now retired. Sits on the board of ZeniMax Media, a video game company.
Elizabelle
From the NY Times website front page:
Do we know where they obtained the confidential financial records? Have not had time to read the whole thing yet.
And re this lead sentence:
I wish some good reporters could investigate the hell out of whether Trump actually won. I think there’s a good chance that was fake too.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
Unfortunately, the bar for intentional tax fraud is set rather high by design. If the IRS was adequately funded and staffed, they might take a crack at collecting all those ill gotten gains.
In the worst timeline we’re stuck in? Gonna have to pry it from Trump’s cold dead hands.
Jeffro
@wv blondie: it’s in the works, I’m 110% positive
Roger Moore
@The Moar You Know:
I remember hearing something similar about what happened to Conrad Hilton. He tried to give away most of his fortune in his will because he didn’t want it going to his wastrel descendants, but his son Barron successfully contested it. Now, IIRC, Barron has realized his dad was probably right about wastrel descendants but has learned from his own example and is trying to give away his money while he’s still alive.
Full disclosure: Conrad Hilton was the named donor for the building where I work.
germy
#45 is very sly. Claims China is interfering with elections. This way, if we enjoy a blue wave he can say “China helped the democrats!”
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Yet. As you’ve said, they’ve not done their due diligence here.
Elizabelle
Self-made man. Donald J. Trump had a six-figure income when he was a toddler.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kay: I’m old enough to remember Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election who release tax returns going back almost 40 years, but EMALS.
Mike in NC
Trump was the Birther-in-Chief. The media didn’t care. Trump mused aloud about using nuclear weapons. The media yawned. Trump lied about American Muslims dancing in the streets after 9/11. The media didn’t care. Trump boasts and lies several times a day and the media just goes along for the ride.
TenguPhule
@MazeDancer: The rules and norms are now operating as Calvinball. If Kav gets that seat, federal law will follow.
germy
First comment over at LGM:
TenguPhule
@Mike in NC:
But a black president excluding FOX from the press room was the second coming of Stalin.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle: Donald Trump was born with a silver cock in his mouth and he’s never remove it.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That’s the reason they don’t report on them. That’s a large portion of their audience, or at least a wealthy portion.
Elizabelle
@Elizabelle: Here’s the link re Donald receiving 200K a year annually when he was two years old.
4 WAYS FRED TRUMP
MADE DONALD TRUMP
AND HIS SIBLINGS RICH
It’s an interactive feature.
The Trump fortune and Citizens United and the massive tax giveaways to the wealthy.
We get to live a present that wiser heads tried to warn us about. Because greed and magical thinking.
TenguPhule
@Elizabelle:
The problem is that Republicans thought they were instruction manuals.
NotMax
Dolt 45 is a stable genius taxpayer. Had a relative at M.I.T. who paid taxes.
:)
Elizabelle
This is the hereditary aristocracy the founders worried about.
And this family of jerks doesn’t even bother with noblesse oblige.
Platonailedit
@Mike in NC:
Yup. Fuck nyt and their meaningless ‘exposes’.
Omnes Omnibus
@TenguPhule: I know a lot of you were independents.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Obama’s family is proud, I suspect Trump’s isn’t. It’s not like “I am Donald Trump’s brother” is going to win you friends in NYC.
Keith P.
There’s the vestigial twin brother who resides in Trump’s belly, but he only comes out when prophecies need to be revealed.
clay
@germy:
It’s not unique to Trump/Obama. We heard a lot about Roger Clinton and Billy Carter, but how much did we hear about George W’s siblings (other than JEB!)?
Mary G
germy
https://www.thecut.com/2018/10/rachel-mitchells-former-colleague-slams-her-kavanaugh-memo.html
Seanly
/snark
Well, everybody knows how tight all African Americans are with any & all cousins. The reporters have to turn over every stone! Meanwhile, it’s not fair to expect that rich white folk have any relationship with their siblings. Plus, the bedraggled reporters can’t get past the front gate of the country club to pester said siblings (surprisingly, neither can any African Americans get past the gates).
/end snark
Brachiator
Ah, yes. The sham of a mockery of a sham. Incorporated.
Wonder why this was. This happened over a number of years. Does the article indicate why the IRS didn’t look at this more closely?
Who else used these strategies? Maybe the owners of the Times or other wealthy New Yorkers? It’s common for the wealthy set to share the secrets of their success.
@TenguPhule:
The media ain’t your momma and daddy. What were they supposed to do, spank Trump’s bottom or declare him persona non grata?
Martin
@C Stars: I’m marginally rich, and I don’t cheat on my taxes. We’re around the 95% based on wealth. That said, it’s stupidly easy to reduce your tax bill to next to nothing if you’re willing to hire a tax attorney and accountant. Trusts are a given. LLCs for people richer than me. Lots of instruments to work with, and because you have money, you have the flexibility with how to use them. Steer all your earnings into some instrument and pay your bills out of some other, shit like that.
The difference is that I never sought out being rich. I wanted to take care of my family, made some atypically good decisions, and ended up here. Wife and I are extremely conservative with money. We live well below our means, and reserve our investments for our kids health and wellbeing. That includes paying taxes and other things. We take some measures to manage our tax burden, but nothing that I consider to be inconvenient. I’ll hold back on some investment decisions to avoid hitting the AMT trigger, stuff like that, but we won’t fail to report, hide assets, any of that crap. I take the view that taxes don’t make me poorer, and since that the only thing I’m trying to avoid then taxes aren’t a problem.
Basically we got in this spot because my wife and had just enough going for us that we could make some decisions earlier than our peers. We bought a house earlier than them, and we had a little bit ($5K) we could afford to invest. Both of those paid off massively for us. That $5K turned into $2M. If we didn’t have that little bit of headroom, that never would have happened. Same with the house – we could buy in at the bottom of the market. Our peers had to save a bit longer, and were chasing housing prices upward. Our $100K condo laddered up to a $215K 2BR house, to a $430K 3BR house which is now worth about $1M. Some of them missed that entirely. Others just got in a bit later and didn’t benefit as much.
To me, it comes down to having just enough extra early in the game that you can make choices. They won’t always pay off as well as ours did, but there’s a certain dignity in being able to make those decisions and invest in your own future. This is why generational wealth matters and why the GOP pushes so hard to preserve wealth on their team and so hard to prevent others from accumulating it. Why a little bit extra can make a huge difference. For us, we had an extra $10K in our downpayment fund and an extra $5K to put into the stock market. That was it. It wasn’t a massive amount, but we had it when we were 25 – early, when it could do a lot.
germy
@clay:
Corporate media loves presidential siblings who are problematic.
In Trump’s case, he’s the problematic sibling.
NotMax
@Elizabelle
Most of that eaten up treating bone spurs. //
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Big front page headlines for weeks on end. You know, like they did for Emailz.
Amir Khalid
@TenguPhule:
Just remember, The Turtle hath been promising a vote “this week” for weeks.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
Those were transplanted in. No self-respecting bone spur would have chosen to originate in Donald.
Theron Ware
I heard Dotard got $8,000,000.00 at age 8. That must have been a hell of a paper route!!
TenguPhule
@Amir Khalid:
This time he’s hedging by not saying which vote it is.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: Assign a WH correspondent who acts like a mouthpiece of the administration.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
IRS audits maybe 1% of the rich people at the best of times. Unless red flags are triggered, its random selection. And the IRS was very very busy at that time with numerous tax schemes. And this was also around when their budget started getting cut by the GOP.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@clay: There was Neil of Silverado S&L fame.
Martin
Everyone remember when Fred Trump tried to transfer money to his kid by purchasing chips at his casino and then not cashing them back in.
$3.5M in, $30K out. That’s less than 1%. Good luck anyone here getting a loan rate that low, let alone one that allows you to not have to repay the balance.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m gonna sit down and read this later. Can’t wait. I wonder if David Cay Johnston is just screaming at his computer somewhere right now: “I told you all this years ago!”
Ms Cracker: Are there any others?
Robert and his now ex-wife Blair were minor tabloid celebrities in the 80s or 90. I’ve read conflicting stories that his sister, Judge Maryann Berry, is still hearing cases and he wanted to put her on the SC, and stories that she’s got dementia. I never heard of a sister Elizabeth.
NotMax
@Theron Ware
Good tippers.
;)
Jack the Second
@germy: Once you’ve dealt with one Trump, it kind of puts you off looking for more. No one ever meets Eric or Donald or Donny Jr and says “That was such a pleasant encounter! I wonder if there are other people of similar temperament I can seek out to spend more time around?”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mary G: Another glorious infrastructure week, yes the winning continues.
germy
@Brachiator:
With each other and with their offspring. Not with the rest of us.
I’ve always suspected that these high flyers, if they wanted to (they don’t and never would) could sit down with me for about twenty minutes, take a look at my savings, and give some advice on where to move my money, and I’d be a multi-millionaire in about one year. I understand I’m veering into “One Weird Trick” territory here, but that’s always been my suspicion.
All sorts of insider trading going on.
Even a fucking monkey like Michael Cohen could have sat down with me (before the recent shitstorm) and told me “do this, this and this” and I would have been rich. Although if I’d listened to him I might be in jail right now.
Cacti
Hmmm…seems to me this information might have been useful, I dunno, about TWO YEARS AGO!!!!!!!!!
Brachiator
@germy:
Trump’s siblings aren’t “exotic.” And I have this image of a veteran East Coast reporter searching hard:
Scene. A dark, wood paneled bar in mid Mahhattan. A big, beefy man, obviously drunk, is gently nuzzling his fifth cocktail. His companion, a reporter’s notebook in his back pocket, sits across from him, also with a drink in hand. He gets a call on his smartphone. After talking for a bit, he disconnects and turns to the beefy guy.
Reporter: “Hey, Trumppy. Trumppy! My editor says I have to… (hic)… hunt you down. The wily Trump relation. Have I found you, yet?”
Trumppy: “I don’t know. Let’s have another drink, and then we’ll both go looking for me.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: People on TV and in the Paper said in 2012 that (IIRC) under maximum allowable gifts and optimal returns, the Mittlets’ $100 million trust fund should have been worth about $20 million, but that never generated the interest, or outrage, it should have, considering the whole of Romney’s platform was pretty much “People like me are being crushed by taxes”
C Stars
@Martin: Martin, I’m sorry, I was making a flip comment that may have sounded like an accusation. My comment was referring to the conservative commenter who tweeted this:
I guess it comes down to my own biases that I threw in “rich white dude,” and also because that seemed like a baseline description of Trump Senior and his juniors.
But I wasn’t accusing you of cheating, and I congratulate you on your good fortune.
Ruckus
@Martin:
To get to the next level, all you have to do is hire that tax guy. I once asked my accountant how to lower my corp tax bill and he said it was easy. But. And that’s a big but. I would get audited and he would win every point. The but was that it would cost me more than my current tax bill, paying him. His next words? Pay your fucking taxes. He was, as usual, right.
germy
@Brachiator:
“There are no strangers in the aristocracy of success.”
– S.J. Perelman
HeleninEire
Oh hey girls and boys. Trump took advantage of the automatic extension of the tax filing date to October 15 for his 2017 taxes. Surely he is going to release them because they are not under audit, right?
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hey, it takes some serious scratch to go out for dinner at Maxim’s and then proselytizing at the Folies Bergère nightly.
;)
Fair Economist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Sadly, those stories are not necessarily conflicting. Scalia got kind of loopy towards the end, and I’m sure he’s far from the only one in a job with lifetime tenure and a serious case backlog.
She’d be on the Court in a trice if he nominated her. She was a consensus judge, nominated by Clinton to get approved by a Republican Senate.
different-church-lady
@Mike in NC:
No, it’s far worse: the media LOVED it. Trump’s birtherism was clickbait they didn’t have to expend a single calorie to generate.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@HeleninEire: I’m sure they’ll still be under audit.
janesays
He has an older sister named Elizabeth Trump Grau. Cheetolini is actually the second youngest sibling in his family – Fred Jr., Maryanne, and Elizabeth are all older and Robert is younger.
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
But Elliot Spitzer was boinking some hooker, so reasons. Not that Spitzer was set up or anything. [Yes, I know he still should have kept it in his pants.]
Brachiator
@TenguPhule:
There’s the Criminal investigation division. And some stuff stands out. I have not had a chance to read the article or do much web surfing (just finished a not-to-useful meeting), so again I wonder if the story had anything to say about the IRS. From glancing over this stuff, I get the impression that this stuff was done over a number of years by Trump and his family.
Still doesn’t explain everything. Apparent indifference could be read as deliberately looking the other way.
Also, Trump claims that he is being audited all the time. Is he lying? If not, no one noticed any of these irregularities.
Also, I work in the tax biz, and the ways of the IRS are not entirely unknown. Here in California, the Franchise Tax Board can be more relentless than the IRS. And they love to publish the names of tax cheats. State authorities never looked at Trump’s taxes? He’s high profile. And yet always managed to fly under the radar. Lucky guy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Fair Economist: Someone, I think Rick Wilson, said the reason trump hasn’t been more aggressive in promoting her is that she’s known as a bedrock supporter of choice.
HeleninEire
@?BillinGlendaleCA: yeah but not the day he files them.
SFAW
@TenguPhule:
He was just trying to give Flake and Collins an extra couple of days to come up with some bullshit excuse which they think will snow the rubes. And that is why Flake will do whatever the fuck Traitor Turtle wants.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: I recall reading that Trump had problems with some of his real estate taxes on his golf course in PV.
JPL
@Elizabelle: His sister is a judge.. hmm
?BillinGlendaleCA
@HeleninEire: True, but that’s not what Trump says. He says his taxes are always audited.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
Were his lips moving, or his tiny fingers typing? If so, then “Yes.”
janesays
Maryanne Trump Barry is an inactive Senior United States Circuit Judge. I know the “senior” designation applies to any federal judge over 65 years of age with at least 15 years on the bench. By inactive, I assume it means she’s no longer hearing cases, though still technically holds the seat.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
And their caseload is backlogged gods only knows how many years back. The Sovereign citizen assholes alone must have doubled their workload.
Brachiator
@SFAW:
This one is too easy. Spitzer prosecuted people for banging hookers while he himself was banging hookers. And he was using the same “high class” escorts as the people he was throwing in jail.
This is a small world. The pimps and madams keep books. They can be discreet, or whisper names to the right people to cover their own asses. So, Spitzer was like a corrupt cop who has sex with a street hooker and then arrests her after he’s done. The rank hypocrisy bit him in the ass. Fuck him and all the morons like him.
frosty fred
@Fair Economist: I may have mentioned this before, but my late father was able to keep up a public facade after his dementia was evident in private. This included continuing to fill in as a judge after his retirement.
Redshift
Nah, she’s corrupt, too.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Probably. IRS is bound by rules not to confirm or deny who is under audit. But typically long running audits don’t happen unless some seriously unusual items are present or the agents in question are severely backlogged. So possible, but don’t trust without actual verification.
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Problem is, he also has money for lawyers. States don’t have the IRS resources when it comes to legal battles. They prefer easy money.
germy
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2018/10/donald-trump-earned-money-old-fashioned-way
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule: It should be also noted that President Nixon released his tax returns that were being audited at the time. At the conclusion of the audit Nixon ended up owing money.
Redshift
@Brachiator:
Yes. SATSQ. He also said at the same time that he couldn’t release his taxes while he was being audited, which was an obvious lie.
JPL
@germy: THIS!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@TenguPhule:
California does.
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That too. The taxpayer is always free to announce their own information to the public.
But apparently taxes are not sexy enough for our Press Corpse.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
He was focusing a lot more on financial crimes than on hooker-banging. But, hey, whatever.
NotMax
@TenguPhule
Hungadunga, Hungadunga, Hungadunga and Covfefe.
:)
TenguPhule
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Not even California. The money is always spent on something else that’s “voter appealing.”
The 2018-2019 state budget report has a reported backlog of tax appeal cases at 2,200. And numerous vacancies at the Office of Tax Appeals.
TenguPhule
@NotMax:
Even no good, horrible, utterly incompetent lawyers cost time and money to fight against.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I recall an LA Times story noting that Trump’s “magic touch” didn’t quite work in California. Can’t find that story, but there is this one about how nasty Trump was in trying to get some property in Palos Verdes, Insults, Lawsuits And Broken Rules: How Trump Built A California Golf CourseIt’s crazy, but typical how after all the pain, Trump was fixated on ego gratification.
Tump has gotta be Trump.
@TenguPhule:
I don’t know that this would have tied up CID. Yutsano might have more to say on this.
TenguPhule
@TenguPhule: linked
TenguPhule
@Brachiator:
Sovereign citizen assholes are the very definition of criminal tax fraud offenders. They literally do not believe that the Federal government has the right to tax them.
ruemara
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: NO. Jesus. Obama is black and they were fucking looking for some scandal to bring back. Because being black is a shame. I can’t understand why some of you are still sitting there scratching your bleeding heads. A corrupt mobster runs for office and all the media does is yawp about how presidential he is the few times he doesn’t shit himself in public. A stellar human being with a very clear track record of excellence & ethics runs for office and the media poses the serious question of whether the government was completely bamboozled with a fake birth certificate and whether everything he does is somehow a scandal for him right down to the color of his summer suit. This isn’t hard and you can’t complain about conservatives when the obvious answer is right in your face.
germy
Elizabelle
@SFAW: Truth. Hearing that a lot of Wall Street rogues were applauding Spitzer’s downfall?
It was not all about the hookers.
But how stupid, stupid, stupid of Spitzer to make himself so vulnerable and engage in criminal behavior … The delusion of some in power … (and then AG Schneiderman more recently …)
Brachiator
@SFAW:
From the Daily News.
But hey, whatever.
tobie
@TenguPhule:
The funny thing is that private servers and email management are not sexy topics either but that didn’t stop the press or the public from obsessing over them for months on end.
Cheap jim
@NotMax: You left out a Hungadunga.
Mary G
Dr. Blasey Ford’s lawyer just released a letter to Christopher Wray asking why Dr. Ford hasn’t been questioned, why named witnesses haven’t been contacted by the FBI, and why won’t they even say who the SAC on the case is?
SFAW
@Brachiator:
Wow, an article.
You certainly showed me. Or not.
Thanks for playing.
TenguPhule
And Jennifer Rubin falls back into line as a Republican rooted in reality.
joel hanes
@ruemara:
This isn’t hard
thank you for this comment.
TenguPhule
@tobie:
Everyone knows there’s sex to be found on the intertubes! //
germy
@Cheap jim:
The most important one, too.
TenguPhule
@TenguPhule: Why we can’t have nice things.
Platonailedit
@Brachiator:
You are bringing in the spitzer strawman into traitorous thug’s tax dodges? Jeez.
les
@Mary G:
I’m afraid the effect would not be positive–just like he cold shoot somebody on 5th avenue. His deplorables would think cheating them by cheating the IRS is just wonderful.
Brachiator
@germy:
There are very good accountants and attorneys who can advise you on how to save on your taxes, and how to pay the least amount.
The accountants and attorneys who promise to make you rich are dishonest liars. They might be able to set up something to keep you a couple of steps ahead of the law, but it will cost you dearly. This bunch includes supposedly respectable firms, like some of the firms that advised Enron. And some of these people work for Trump and his buddies.
Immanentize
@C Stars: I was a bartender in the late 70’s and early 80’s. And I went out to rough clubs a lot. But I was never in a bar fight. Hmmm. I must not be a man
tobie
@TenguPhule: And not in taxes?
@Mary G: Even Politico suggested yesterday that Chris Wray and Rosenstein would demur to the White House’s wishes in this case, since Wray, Rosenstein, and Kavanaugh are friends, and Wray, like K, is a long-standing member of the Federalist Society. Money quote:
cope
To quote Mr. Pierce: “And Robert Mueller, no expression on his face, reaches across his desk for another document.”
clay
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s my point: W had a brother who committed fraud, but we barely heard about that during the 2000 campaign. It was “old news”.
SFAW
@Platonailedit:
Actually, I first brought up Spitzer’s name. Of course, Brachiator’s wonderfully well-researched indictment (so to speak) of Spitzer’s extreme hypocrisy (or whatever) re: hooker-banging — since apparently catching some guys for hooker-banging was all that Spitzer did before he became Governor — has caused me to re-examine all my beliefs, because Benghazi, or her e-mails, or veeblefetzer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT:
if I text back, “Show us your tax returns, you cowardly shit-gibbon”, will the Secret Service come knocking on my door?
Brachiator
@Platonailedit:
No, just responding to a commenter who brought up Spitzer. Otherwise, there ain’t no comparison to Trump’s bullshit.
John Fremont
@germy: Remember that Al Gore was helped by the Chinese at the Buddhist temple. I wonder if the Repubs will revive this in the next few months.
different-church-lady
@Cheap jim: The most important one, too.
Barry
@Dorothy A. Winsor: “If there’s one thing the NYT should do well, it’s financial reporting, given their proximity to the banks and Wall Street.”
Or the opposite, again given their (financial) proximity to the same……
C Stars
@Immanentize: Right? I’ve witnessed four or five barfights, and it’s always just been a big sweaty squall of stupid-drunk (and plain stupid!), sexually frustrated jocks attempting to distract themselves from their own crushing feelings of inadequacy. Which was obvious to everyone who wasn’t involved.
Being a frequent barfighter is just not something I’d ever think a person (who wishes to be taken seriously) would boast about. But I’m sure you’re feeling that irony even more than I am right now, given your past profession.
ruemara
@joel hanes: I just can’t with smart people having an intellect shortage at the obvious right now.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@John Fremont: I’ve been meaning to head over to that Buddhist temple to take some pics, I hear the food is pretty good too.
Maybe also stop at the Temple/Workman place while I’m in that neck of the woods.
Brachiator
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the CBS story got the time wrong. The FEMA news release indicates 11:18 am Pacific time. I guess that’s when I will shut my phone off.
This test is going to make Trump so excited. Bigly. You know he is just aching to be able to send everyone one of his special messages.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@germy: @TenguPhule: @germy: @TenguPhule: Completely serious, if ignorant and naive question (I generally avoid the FTFNYT):
Were the same individual reporters who brought us endless bullshit email/bothsides reporting also involved in reporting, then or now, on the Trump family’s tax schemes?
nasruddin
@Elizabelle: Strong words? Baiting him to sue?
eemom
@Elizabelle:
Exactly. Can’t folks agree that he was an arrogant, hubristic asshole to do that without getting into a stupid pissing contest over it?
Same with WJC and John Edwards and all the rest of them. Saying their sex life is nobody’s business is missing the fucking point — which is that by acting irresponsibly, they fucked us all over.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Brachiator: You could always turn DND on.
burnspbesq
@TenguPhule:
Wrong again. If you can convince a judge that you sincerely believe the outlandish bullshit that you claim to believe, you stand a pretty good chance of skating, because your behavior won’t have been willful. There is a Supreme Court case called Cheek that stands for that proposition. And in some cases courts will conclude that a taxpayer was either to dumb or too ignorant to have understood that what he or she was doing was wrong. I had a Tax Court judge do that to me in a case called Para Technologies Trust.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
That may well be true. The thing is, though, that the accounting bill goes up a lot slower than the tax bill does. That kind of questionable accounting starts to look very reasonable long before you get to Trump-level wealth.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
Bqhatevwr.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: No longer a Badass Jackal?
SFAW
@Elizabelle:
Yeah, I know. As eemom said: hubris.
Greek tragedies have been written about that shit.
Calouste
@Immanentize: I’ve been involved in a couple of small barfights. As a bouncer. My involvement tended to be short and to the point.
WaterGirl
I saw in the Wall Street Journal that the FBI report may be issued as soon as this afternoon. And Christine Blasey Ford’s attorneys have said she has not been interviewed.
That’s crazy. Are they really going to ram this through with a sham investigation?
JPL
@Immanentize: Either that or you are not an asshole. just sayin
Brachiator
@Immanentize:
A co-worker’s brother was an okay, kinda quiet guy. But he would always go out to bars, get drunk and start fights. And usually lose. It was a weird, self-destructive thing, and a need to draw attention to himself, even if it were negative.
A guy one my commute would tell these outrageous stories about getting into drunken fights. But like my coworker’s brother, it was more about how much abuse he could take, not about how much ass he kicked. Either way, this shit was sad and strange. And reminded me to never go out drinking with either one of them.
WaterGirl
@Calouste: I tended bar for a year and only saw one bar right. It wasn’t a frat bar, however.
JPL
@WaterGirl: Well they can’t interview Kavanaugh because he lies under oath all the time. They can’t risk having him on record.
TenguPhule
@WaterGirl:
Does Kav like beer?
JPL
@Brachiator: Are they applying for the highest court in the land? It might be time to poll the supreme court and see who among them got in bar fights.
The Dangerman
Grandpappy ran a whore house.
Daddy a tax cheat.
Shit, if a truck breaks down, we have a country song.
Mary G
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: I don’t think so, none of them are names I recognize for being snotty on twitter, and one person said he had been wondering where one of them went to – evidently she disappeared from view in early 2017 – and now he knows.
Elizabelle
@JPL:
Don’t put the notorious RBG on the spot like that!
WRT the FBI report: might that also be that the GOP just wants to get this thing over? I don’t think they have the votes, or are going to get them.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@ruemara: You want to chill out. Let me be more verbose
“What ever the reporters intentions, Obama’s Kenyan relatives are proud of him, more open to talk about him to a reporter as opposed to Donald Trump’s relatives, were publicly bringing up the point you are one of those Trumps is likely going to get you ostracized in NYC high society and make it impossible to dine out in NYC ever again (see White House staffer’s Washington DC dinning options).”
Does that make sense? While they are conservative racists a-holes, they do live in a very blue community.
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
Can we respond with insult and invective?
khead
LLC’s and S-corps are the some of the biggest tax scams* around. If I ruled the world, the IRS would drop the hammer on them. That said, see also Martin’s post about shielding wealth with trusts and real estate purchases. I’m a lot cooler with those.
* – Not all LLC’s and S-corps
Barbara
I worked in a bar as a summer job in the fraternity capital of the world and never saw a bar fight. The Mineshaft in Charlottesville. They even had a shoot out in the parking lot – local drug deal gone wrong.
debbie
@eemom:
Gary Hart’s the one to thank. “Go ahead, follow me.”
khead
@khead:
Should have said “small business LLC’s and S-corps”.
Raven
@Barbara: The University of Illinois has more frats than any school in the nation.
SiubhanDuinne
@The Dangerman:
Maybe his dog could run away … Oh. Wait.
(Okay, maybe his wife could visit some shithole countries in Africa. That’d work, yes?)
debbie
@Martin:
Also, you’re a better human being. You didn’t go around screwing other people to get their money. Your success hasn’t been based on destroying others’ situations. Christ, conservatives have made even success a predatory pursuit.
Barbara
As a percentage of the student body?
SiubhanDuinne
@Raven:
How’d it go today at the doc?
Barbara
@Barbara: At any rate that was a rhetorical flourish not a declaration of truth.
A Ghost To Most
@burnspbesq:
Dang. Doesn’t that fly in the face of “ignorance of the law is no defense”?
Raven
@Barbara: “The university boasts one of the largest Greek systems in the country, and almost a quarter of the student body is involved.”
Martin
@C Stars:
I know you weren’t. I didn’t realize you were playing off the bar fight thing, though. In that context, I would probably say the same thing ;)
Baud
@burnspbesq:
Did the judge find you to be too dumb or too ignorant?
WaterGirl
@JPL: A sham investigation. Just shoot me now. The Senate doesn’t care about sexual assault or integrity — for themselves or these important institutions. This is just making me sick.
tobie
@khead: @khead: I’ve noticed, too, among the small business owners I’ve met that they treat a lot of personal expenses as business expenses and have quite a bit of unreported income. I’ve had a bee in my bonnet about this issue for some time.
Elizabelle
Jonathan Chait in the NY Mag: The New York Times Proves President Trump Is a Crook
No. It didn’t. Not covering Trump’s finances was a choice made by the FTF NY Times and other newspapers. That is bullshit, JChait.
We have to make sure he does not get away with it.
How fun it would be if tomorrow is the Robert Mueller one-two punch.
Raven
@SiubhanDuinne: Good, the neuro was very concerned about my double vision so she ordered up an MRI. She was looking for stroke, tumor or never and found nothing. She’s calling it idiopathic and basically said to drive on.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
I sense inconsistency from the GOP. Bill’s consensual blow job is still a quel horreur, yet Kavanaugh’s forcible and physically violent assaults are to be set aside and forgotten. I need a new rule book.
debbie
@Raven:
Good. Keep drinking water.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne:
And ask for the asylum while there. Yeah. Like that’s gonna happen …
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies:
Ha! That would probably crash the Internets.
And it would be worth it.
Even though I guess this test is good and worthwhile, I hate that Trump is part of it in any way.
Ruckus
@ruemara:
It isn’t hard in the least. All that is required is to open your eyes and look. Oh and not make excuses about why your eyes are closed.
A Ghost To Most
@Raven:
You sure she said idiopathic?
Mary G
Somebody’s come out from behind No Labels: Michael Bloomberg jolts Senate battle with $20 million for Democrats
(WaPo):
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know but if millions did…….
khead
@tobie:
My lunch with a friend or family member who is an LLC or S-corp is not a fucking tax deduction.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
I thought that was true only of claims for why your particular tax avoidance scheme was within the law. The kind of stuff the sovereign citizens claim- the 16th Amendment was never properly ratified, income taxes are strictly voluntary, etc.- was explicitly ruled as not a good faith belief that what you’re doing is legal. From the abstract for the case:
Elizabelle
Benjamin Wittes in The Atlantic:
ruemara
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: No. No, I don’t need to chill out. I’m right and you’re heading into self made pretzel territory to avoid it. The Trumps never hid their names in NYC. Ivanka et al benefited from the Trump name. Even though he was a buffoon, it wasn’t an obstacle since they were not seen as buffoons. Money covers a lot of things and the rarified old money wasn’t going to get too cozy with the coarse new money, but they weren’t going to ostracize them much since they were getting richer and the money was aging in quite nicely. There was no real embargo against the Trumps. Disdain, but look at all the ways they’ve avoided scrutiny. Gah.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Speaking or which, a recent news item:
Kay
I want a nationwide crack down on white collar crime. Dragnets. Huge busts. A public tip line, so we can call in clues.
They’ll have to set up night courts to process the arraignments. Their lawyers should have to add staff it’ll be so busy what with defending them. It’ll be mostly looking at documents and they’ll be working in the best neighborhoods. Law enforcement will be begging to be reassigned to this task force after so many years of exclusively prosecuting poor people.
Martin
Regarding why there isn’t more enforcement, my guess is that the deliberate complexity and obfuscation of the tax code makes it difficult to differentiate between what is and isn’t legal. Consider the one claim in the case against Trump – reporting property values that are lower for tax purposes.
The problem here is that the way we value things here in the US is by market value – basically, what would it be worth if you sold it. And there’s pretty much only one way to do that which is to put it up for sale. Notably, this was a contributing factor to the financial meltdown. Banks appeared more overleveraged than they were when their mortgages were unsellable. An unsellable mortgage is therefore valueless, even though the homeowner may still be making their payments. That doesn’t really make sense. You could value the property as you would an annuity – it’s going to pay out $x per month for y months at a given interest rate. It’s worth at least $z. It may be worth more or less, but it’s at least not zero.
Since it’s hard to set a market rate for a property not for sale, someone else needs to do it. In other countries that would often fall to a government official. In the US, we just ask the asset holder to spitball it. Same for corporations. It’s a huge problem that should have gotten fixed after 2008 and wasn’t. I mean, we learned that S&P wasn’t worth shit, but nothing more than that.
But I read the article about Trump and every single claim is ‘qualified’ illegal. In other words, nobody clearly knows if it’s legal or not, probably not even the IRS. That’s a huge problem to me.
HeleninEire
Gosh I miss this time of night at BJ. 6:30 NY time. Just getting home opening the bottle of wine and chilling.
Here it’s 11:30 and I need to go to sleep (or at least try) cuz I gotta get up in 7 hours.
debbie
@ruemara:
As I recall, Trump courted his image as a buffoon because it got him attention. Liz Smith and Page Six would have sunk decades earlier without Trump’s assists.
Raven
@A Ghost To Most: Easy
debbie
@Kay:
For the luvvagod, let the crack down begin!
Elizabelle
@Kay: I want that too.
The money recovered goes to more enforcement, public financing of campaigns, and infrastructure spending to give the rest of us a safer and more competitive environment.
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle: Fuck Ben Wittes. Fuck him up his stupid ass.
khead
@Martin:
So let’s give the IRS that hammer as I suggested earlier. The right – and those small business owners tobie and I are complaining about will squeal and complain about government overreach, etc – but I suspect tax revenues would increase. Plus, there’s a lot of underemployed lawyers out there. See LG&M. Also, I liked your earlier post about shielding wealth with trusts and real estate. I’m pretty cool with going that route.
I know I am dreaming though because everyone hates the IRS.
@Kay:
This too.
JPL
@HeleninEire: Sleep tight. After all what can happen in the next seven or eight hours.
ah shit never mind.
Chris T.
@Brachiator:
They’re not really secret. (See any number of books and exposés.) The basic problem with them is that they only work if you have a lot of money to start with, that you can let sit for a while.
Consider a simplified example. Suppose setting up a tax cheat offshore company costs $100k. This will save you 20% per year on the taxes on the returns from the money that you use to do this. You have $10M to invest for 10 years, at 5% per year without compounding, producing $500k/yr. The taxes you’ll save are $100k/yr. You essentially break even the first year, and then for the remaining 9 years, you boost your returns by $100k/yr.
But if you have $10k to invest, your returns (at 5%) are not $500k/yr but rather $500/yr. You’ll save $100/yr on your taxes. To achieve this you must fork over $100k.
The law, in its equal majesty, has provided you, as well as the rich, the opportunity to let your money shelter for $100k….
(Note: some of these tax dodges are legal, and some are not. The fundamental principle, that you have to have a lot of money you can let sit for a while to make them work out, applies.)
Roger Moore
@tobie:
I have long suspected a lot of small businesses are only profitable because they cheat seven ways from Sunday: don’t report income, claim illegitimate expenses, cheat their employees, etc.
Mary G
@Elizabelle: @Corner Stone: Remember when he did the “I know Kavanaugh, he’s a friend and great carpool dad” thing on Twitter, got mercilessly roasted over it, and quit Twitter in a huff? He doesn’t mention all that.
Elizabelle
Come back, Ruckus.
sab mentioned him on the previous thread, and reminds me that I do miss him. Come back, come back.
Can any California meetup pal get in touch with him? And do tell him: the pie filter works. If he needs to limit the scope of what he sees here to remain sane, use that pie filter.
Elizabelle
@Mary G: You don’t say!
Elizabelle
@Mary G: BK as car pool dad, and all the young girls now have cattle prods and mace.
Omnes Omnibus
@Elizabelle: What did I miss?
Roger Moore
@debbie:
The Republican rule book:
1) IOKIYAR
2) See Rule 1
Mary G
FTFNYT finds a Kavanaugh smoking gun in a note about Beach Week signed “Bart:”
Includes bonus “FFFFF”
gene108
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Trump’s family is not proud of him. Look at how many of his first cousins in Scotland paid him a visit, when he went there as President.
Kenya, as a nation, was proud of Obama, because his father was from there. Scotland doesn’t care that Mary Trump was born and raised there and they loathe her son something fierce.
Vor
@Raven: couple years ago my son and I paid a prospective student visit to a school which shall remain nameless. I was surprised to see that the students working the event, specifically for Admitted Students, were wearing fraternity logo shirts and not school logo shirts. Almost all of the student workers had Greek outfits. Then we toured the dorms and it all made sense. The dorms at this school were bad, really bad. My theory was everyone was joining frats just to find decent housing.
Brachiator
@Chris T.:
I meant “secret” sarcastically. That is, the wealthy set talk among themselves, and don’t share it with those not in their little club. But their tricks are not particularly arcane or complicated or particularly sophisticated in some instances.
However, the way that the Walton family has used grantor retained annuity trusts (GRAT) to shelter income is a thing of beauty, and, as one business reporter noted, “makes a mockery out of the tax code.”
Corner Stone
@Elizabelle: Ruckus has been all over the site the last few days, including discussing whatever is going on with that asshole in Athens.
Raven
@Vor: I dunno, Georgia has a ton of fancy new dorms and lot’s of frat rats too.
Litlebritdifrnt
Fell into a youtube wormhole and found this Cass Elliot talking about how college kids need to register to vote in 1972!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKdknYaSHgE&list=RDnNpx7CWLbCk&index=3
Corner Stone
@Mary G: This Atlantic article is not exactly making inroads on that bit of stupidity. Ben Wittes is dumb. No one should listen to him about anything.
Jeffro
Well lookee here (deserves its own post, btw): some folks y’all will recognize have gotten a jump start on the post-Trumpov era.
it ain’t a Truth & Reconcilation Committee, but this’ll look good for 2020 (and oh hey be great policy besides)
And this is just the low-hanging fruit. Imagine if we actually require an up-or-down vote on presidents’ SCOTUS nominees within 90 days of their nomination, regardless of when the next election is or which party is in power…or just fucking abolishing the Senate
Mary G
FTFNYT comes up with more dirt, this time on Mark Judge:
Speaking about Dr. Blasey Ford’s prep school “home of the most worthless excuses for human females.”
TenguPhule
@burnspbesq:
Sorry, you’re wrong here. Sovereign citizens have recycled the same old tired disproven conspiracy theories that the tax courts have ruled that even presenting them as a defense can be considered an abuse of the court’s time and subject to sanction.
Ruviana
@cope: This is one of my most favorite things ever! It’s at least part of why I read Charlie every day, to see if that comes up.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
Sadly this is true. And they make it a royal pain in the ass to find that money.
debbie
Can we text mean responses without consequences?
Mary G
@Mary G: Went and read the article incognito: Mark Judge called girls from Blasey Ford’s school “Holton Hosebags.”
khead
@Roger Moore:
Imagine if you will a world where everything you do is tax deductible.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
As I’ve said each time this canard is brought up, First you have to fix the fucking laws to make prosecuting white collar crime easier. Make the penalties harsher. And fund the investigators. Its not for want of desire but lack of resources and legal standards that the rich have one law while the rest have another.
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: Hey, I saw a Niro in th wild today. Nice looking car.
Origuy
@Raven: When I was at UIUC, joining a Greek house was one of the few ways you could get out of the dorms before you were a junior.
gene108
@Martin:
You have this backwards. Assets are recorded at historical value, i.e. what you paid for it. The issue, with the financial crisis in proposing things like real mortgage relief is it would have forced banks to write down the value of their mortgage backed securities to market value, thus causing the banks to report a loss in their income statement, and reduce the value of assets banks carried on their books, which would limit the amount they could lend.
The issue with asset valuation for tax purposes is the tax code and GAAP are not in sync, with regards to how to report or calculate things like depreciation. This leads to differences in the book value versus tax value of assets, which can lead to tax benefits, if done correctly.
How far Trump and family pushed the envelope on this is yet to be determined, but given their unethical nature, I bet they pushed a lot.
TenguPhule
@khead:
Or save your imagination and simply look at Kansas.
Elizabelle
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe not all that much. I just remember Ruckus mentioning he might take a break from us a while back, and I am not around enough to see if he’s here or not.
Shana
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Dunno. Let us know.
Elizabelle
@Corner Stone: Marvelous. Thanks.
Jeffro
Other disclosures coming out tonight: Brennan/McConnell shouting match over Russian election interference…that’s new.
Hey Mitch, you SURE you want to go to the mat for this guy Kavanaugh?
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: Link? Wow!
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
TWO enter.
Nobody leaves.
Shana
@Raven: That’s where I thought that comment was going too. God knows I went to bars a lot when I was in Champaign-Urbana but I don’t remember any bar fights. But then again I wasn’t in a sorority and wouldn’t have gone to a greek bar if I could help it. Now that I think about it, I probably spent more time at Mabel’s watching the Vertebrats and anyone else who came through town than anywhere else.
Jeffro
Reporting/excerpts from The Apprentice, out today!
Would be devastating, if Americans actually read anything anymore…
Brachiator
@Jeffro: There’s no video?
Jeffro
@Brachiator: I think there was something on Snapchat…oh wait, there it goes…
smedley the uncertain
@Brachiator: Another fvkng robo-call…
Amir Khalid
@gene108:
If anything, people in Scotland loathe him all the more because his mother was Scottish.
Waynski
@Immanentize: I was a bouncer and a bartender in college and then in NYC in the 90s. I had to break up fights almost on a nightly basis. Depends on the clientele (and whether or not you have a pool table – almost everyone of the fights was about a game of stick that was being wagered on… darts… not so much).
KithKanan
@Waynski: So you’re telling us that Harold Hill was right?
Roger Moore
@Vor:
Is the school in question the employer of one of our Front Pagers? Because I remember going to a prospective student thing at a school that employs one of our front pagers, being put up at a frat rather than a dorm, being shocked at how bad the housing was, and being told the dorms were worse. FWIW, this played a substantial role in my choosing a different school.
Kay
Instead of Elizabeth Warren’s ” a cop on the beat” we could have real cops on the beat. A special force. No weapons, because this is white collar crime force.
These scofflaws will continue to run rampant in our streets unless they’re stopped.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
Actually you’d want weapons, because these people think they can get away with anything. Up to and including murder.
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Actually, it is just the reverse. The FTFNYT dares not report accurately on banking and investment firms, because that would cause the Sultzbergers to no longer be invited to the swellest cocktail parties. It would also decrease the value of their investments as actual reporting might cause actual law enforcement, which would never do, would it?
VOR
@Roger Moore: No, the school in question has no connection. My son and I toured a whole bunch (>10) of schools and this place had the worst dorms, no contest. Old, run-down, dirty, overcrowded. But the school had a shiny new performance hall so you could see where their investments had gone.
burnspbesq
@A Ghost To Most:
Yup, it does. But when willfulness is defined as intentionally disregarding a known legal duty, the door is opened for what one of my professors called the “pure heart, empty head” defense.
Put another way, ignorance of the law is no excuse, except when it is.
Aleta
I’d like to see white collar crime moved out of the Business section, and crimes by politicians moved out of the Politics section. Put them together with coverage of hostages, arson, kidnapping, murders. (I know, these days, those stories are often put in Local or City coverage. There is no Crime section. It rankles me though to see the blurring in the stories about business crime and political crime.)
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
Thank you.
Probably a dead thread but I did post on this thread at #201.
I’ve been reading but posting a lot less, I’m one of those that has just about limited out on all the bullshit, and I have enough things going on IRL that something had to give a bit. And the stuff IRL can’t really be turned off, if it could it wouldn’t be as much of an issue.Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Elizabelle
@Ruckus: Good to see you, Ruckus. Lurking is good.
J R in WV
@Elizabelle:
They have nearly a century of history of supporting fascists all over the world! Just look at their archives, they openly supported Mr. Joseph Stalin, Mr. Adolph Hitler, and the American-German Bund, aka American Nazi Party, until December 7th, that day which shall live in Infamy! I’m not sure about Generalissimo Francisco Franco in Spain, but if I had to place a bet without research, I know which way I would bet right now!!! Nazis Rule!!!
And that’s what is wrong with the NY Times — the owners support fascists every time!!!
SFAW
@Jeffro:
I’m hoping for Truth and Retribution hearings, myself.
I wonder how well a Turtle would do in the wilds of Sibirsk. Along with a former JAG-OFFicer. And a tub of orange-colored lard. And a blue-eyed, yellow-bellied Policy Wonk. And a CalifIowa dairy “farmer.” Among others.
J R in WV
@Immanentize:
I used to drive a lot all around rural areas in mining country. I would stop at a random Hill Top Inn or Dew Drop Inn for lunch or dinner and a beer. Many were sparsely populated, some were crowded. Some had pool and a jukebox or a TV, others were quiet with conversation. There were always people from mildly drunk to monumentally drunk.
I never had a bar fight. I never had a fight, ever. I didn’t get drunk myself, I needed to get on down the road after lunch and drive a long way back to home town base.