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Yep. Lotsa options.
We all hope one of ours wins. Think i have all three. Then there is always the chance of an outside bolter.
Salad rocket is more my style. Know it well ..
What You Should Know About Arugula
A cruciferous salad green, arugula offers a distinct flavor and may have cancer-fighting properties.
https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/arugula .
Att: hap0206/B402, flashback Day 1, Kirschner knows - Trump’s attorneys fail MISERABLY in court on first official trial date
"Att: Zorax - How Alvin Bragg Resurrected the Case Against Donald Trump"
The ego's so big they gotta talk about it. Dumb.
B402, Possibly the biggest fraud to ever appear on this board.
Noted you don't give a shit about the democratic process either.
LOLs!
Gawd. Steel trap mind, much... Trump Aide's On-Air Coup Confession Played At His Own Contempt Hearing
B402, No it shows how Dems care about the U.S.A being seen as a law and order country. Quite to the contrary to your
"That shows how desperate you dems are..."
you posing as an independent on this board shows how desperate you are. And what a liar you are.
Yesirree, that's exactly why i called it to your attention. You jumped a bit too quickly. Emotion can do that to any of us. And you have just again given us one reason why you are appreciated on this board. You, like all others here except our trolls, are solid enough to admit your mistakes in public.
"Yeah. I really freaked about that guy after he picked it up and did nothing. Resulting in two lead investigators to quit. Strange. At first...with garland seemingly wimping out at the same time. Frustrating."
Unlike hap0206 and B402, to name just two, you deserve to sleep well.
Naw, you won't. Trump would love to see a supremely intelligent and credible critic of his go down the tube as a drinking failure. He would love to see you crash. And the last thing you would want to do is give Trump that pleasure. Naw. You wouldn't.
hap0206, You too. See - B402, Actually it puts the Dems in a very good light. Bragg, too. Why?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174410891
B402, Actually it puts the Dems in a very good light. Bragg, too. Why?
"Lets see,,,,,SDNY wouldn't indict, Cyrus Vance wouldn't indict, The FEC wouldn't pursue it, Bragg himself wasn't going to......
Now that the trial is on those facts are presented on all media channels,,,,,Also how NDA are common and legal,,,,,Misfiling is a misdemeanor......
Win, lose or hung jury this historic salacious case doesn't seem to be hurting the defendant, more like dems just wanted a case.......Doesn't paint dems in a good light"
Because it shows how careful they all were not to frivolously charge Trump with the crimes he committed in
connection with this case. Falsifying company records with the intent of committing election fraud is a crime.
The indictment centers on allegations that Trump falsified internal business records at his private company while trying to cover up an effort to illegally influence the 2016 election by arranging payments that silenced claims potentially harmful to his candidacy.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-arraignment-hush-money-81225510ef7638494852816878f612f0
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174277063
And now you play your, hap0206, card by saying win, lose or hung. You are a fucking joke. Who cares about the crimes he committed, eh.
And to think you failed in the fraud you attempted to perpetrate on this board too. You are about as independent as Ted Cruz ever was.
LOL He grows on you, eh. And i came to yours after reading all your 'with janice' chats backwards, that was fun too.
Popcorn is always cool. Shame to spoil it with all that sugar. More than i would have in a year.
You guys would know it would have killed more than Ted Bundy, Jack, Jeffrey...and the rest..
. https://www.britannica.com/list/7-of-historys-most-notorious-serial-killers .
Att: Zorax - How Alvin Bragg Resurrected the Case Against Donald Trump
"Fox News sink preemptively to new lows --
Alvin Bragg 'Counting On' Michael Cohen Lying During Trump Trial—Attorney"
Related: Trump Is Guilty of ‘Numerous’ Felonies, Prosecutor Who Resigned Says
March, 2022 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=168352179
.. which is linked into ..
Donald Trump Revelations Put Alvin Bragg in 'Untenable Position'—Lawyers
June, 2022 - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=169149864
A year ago, the investigation into the former president appeared from the outside to be over. But a series of crucial turning points led to this week’s indictment.
Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, leaves his office after a grand jury indicted former President Donald J. Trump over a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Dave Sanders for The New York Times
By Jonah E. Bromwich, Ben Protess and William K. Rashbaum
Published March 31, 2023 Updated April 4, 2023
One year ago this week, the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into Donald J. Trump appeared to be dead in the water.
The two leaders of the investigation had recently resigned after the new district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, decided not to charge Mr. Trump at that point. Amid a fierce backlash to his decision — and a brutal start to his tenure .. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/nyregion/trump-investigation-alvin-bragg.html — Mr. Bragg insisted that the investigation was not over. But a disbelieving media questioned why, if the effort was still moving forward, there were so few signs of it.
“Unless y’all are great poker players,” Mr. Bragg told The New York Times in an early April 2022 interview, “you don’t know what we’re doing.”
What they were doing, new interviews show, was going back to square one, poring over the reams of evidence that had already been collected by his predecessor.
For a time, their efforts were haphazard as they examined a wide range of Mr. Trump’s business practices, including whether he had lied about his net worth, which was the focus of the investigation when Mr. Bragg had declined to seek an indictment. But by July, Mr. Bragg had decided to assign several additional prosecutors to pursue one particular strand that struck him as promising: a hush-money payment made on Mr. Trump’s behalf to a porn star during the final days of the 2016 presidential campaign.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump was indicted on that strand. He is expected to surrender to the authorities in Manhattan on Tuesday and face arraignment on more than two dozen charges, which will be unveiled at that time.
Members of the media gather outside Manhattan Criminal Court on Friday, a day after a grand jury indicted former President Donald J.
Trump over a $130,000 hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Dave Sanders for The New York Times
This account of Mr. Bragg’s decision to revive the investigation and point it toward the hush-money arrangement, based on interviews with about a dozen people familiar with the matter, reveals the circuitous and sometimes uncertain road that led to the first criminal charges against a former American president.
Along the way, a key internal skeptic of the investigation became one of its champions; Mr. Bragg shook up the Trump team and hired an experienced lawyer away from the Justice Department to help lead it; and he ultimately found new promise in a key witness he had once disregarded as unreliable. The district attorney was also emboldened late last year when his prosecutors won a conviction of Mr. Trump’s company in an unrelated tax case.
[Insert: Trump Organization found guilty on all charges in tax fraud trial in New York
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=170661474]
Last April, Mr. Bragg, a Democrat, had a chance to move on from the ex-president and turn his tenure toward his initial motivation in running for office: reshaping the criminal justice system in Manhattan. Now, his willingness to wager his political future on the case against Mr. Trump will be tested like never before — his success, or failure, is inextricably tied to the former president.
Winning an indictment is one thing. Winning a conviction of Mr. Trump will be far more difficult.
The decision to revisit the case despite his earlier reservations has opened Mr. Bragg to criticism from the former president’s supporters that he is blindly pursuing Mr. Trump.
The case has also exposed the district attorney to a wave of hostile and racist rhetoric from the former president and his supporters. Mr. Bragg, a career prosecutor, has received vivid death threats, including one that was mailed to the office last week.
In a statement on Thursday, after the indictment was reported, Mr. Trump called the case a “political persecution and election interference at the highest level in history,” adding that Mr. Bragg was “a disgrace” and calling himself “a completely innocent person.”
Going Through the Binders
Shortly after Mr. Bragg took office in January 2022, he received a warning.
At the time, he was grappling with the potential case centered on Mr. Trump’s net worth, which two senior prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey Dunne, were presenting to a grand jury.
The warning came in the form of memos about that investigation, one of which was delivered to Mr. Bragg’s aides by a career prosecutor, Chris Conroy. The memos highlighted potential gaps in the evidence, and darkened the new district attorney’s view of the case he had just inherited.
Mr. Bragg also developed concerns about relying on Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer, questioning whether he had enough knowledge about the intricacies of Mr. Trump’s financial records to be a pivotal witness.
In a series of meetings early last year .. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/nyregion/trump-investigation-manhattan-da-alvin-bragg.html , Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne tried to persuade Mr. Bragg that the case, which had been developed under Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., was solid. Mr. Bragg and his aides remained unconvinced, and soon after the district attorney decided to halt the grand jury presentation, Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne resigned.
Mr. Cohen, who had met extensively with Mr. Pomerantz, was furious, and demanded that prosecutors return documents that he had provided. (They did.)
Mark Pomerantz William B. Plowman/NBC, via Getty Images
Carey Dunne Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
It seemed as if Mr. Bragg’s decision could carry historic consequences: a brand-new district attorney had just given up a chance to charge Mr. Trump criminally. The political backlash was heated — Mr. Trump is widely loathed in Manhattan — and it was only compounded when a copy of Mr. Pomerantz’s resignation letter was published in The Times: He declared that Mr. Trump had committed multiple felonies.
Mr. Bragg said the investigation was continuing, but the team was running low on prosecutors. Shortly before he took over the office, three prosecutors who were concerned about the inquiry’s pace had taken on other assignments, leaving the team threadbare. And four months into Mr. Bragg’s tenure, Solomon Shinerock, who had been the lead assistant district attorney on the case for years, stepped back from the investigation into Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bragg and two of his office’s leaders — the head of investigations, Susan Hoffinger, and another top aide, Peter Pope — began to steep themselves in the details of the inquiry. But the team was not yet clear on a game plan. They issued a smattering of subpoenas and questioned some witnesses but did not appear to gain much traction.
They were also digging into binders that contained the numerous files gathered over the years, files that Mr. Bragg had not yet had time to review in depth.
The research laid the groundwork for a more robust investigation. The remaining members of the team split up into small groups to focus on different topics, including the financial statements and the eye-catching payoff that was the original impetus for Mr. Vance to open an investigation into Mr. Trump in 2018: the hush-money deal.
A New Team
Building a case around the sordid episode involving the porn star, Stormy Daniels, was hardly a new idea. Mr. Vance’s prosecutors had considered the hush-money payment for so long that some of them began to call it the “zombie case,” because it kept coming back to life. Although Mr. Vance had pivoted to focusing on the former president’s net worth, he never closed the hush-money inquiry.
There was a key difference between Mr. Bragg’s briefings on the net worth case and digging into the hush-money: time. The new district attorney had only weeks to consider the net worth case before it would have been time to seek a vote from the grand jury, whose term was scheduled to expire in late April 2022.
Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney in Cook County, Ill., who is friendly with Mr. Bragg, said that prosecutors running for office are at a natural disadvantage when it comes to the cases they inherit.
“You don’t have the facts, you don’t have the months or years worth of investigation that are there,” she said.
Prosecutor Susan Hoffinger, surrounded by security personnel on Thursday evening, just before news of the indictment of former President Donald J. Trump by a Manhattan grand jury broke. Anna Watts for The New York Times
But going through evidence, Mr. Bragg warmed to the idea of charging Mr. Trump for his role in the hush-money payment. Unlike the net worth case, Mr. Cohen was directly involved: He had made the $130,000 payment to Ms. Daniels, for which Mr. Trump reimbursed him. If the sequence of events that led to the payment were to be illustrated, the former fixer would be the line connecting all the dots.
Ms. Hoffinger contacted Mr. Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, to reassure him that the investigation into Mr. Trump was very much alive. Mr. Cohen, she suggested, might still become a valuable witness.
In July, Mr. Bragg built up the Trump team, a sign of his growing confidence. Catherine McCaw, who had garnered attention for her role in the prosecution of Anna Sorokin, the con woman better known as Anna Delvey .. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/10/nyregion/anna-delvey-sorokin.html , joined. So did Rebecca Mangold and Katherine Ellis, prosecutors in the office’s Major Economic Crimes Bureau.
At the time, prosecutors in the district attorney’s office were preparing for another Trump-related trial: Before Mr. Vance left office, he had charged the former president’s company and a senior executive, Allen H. Weisselberg, with orchestrating a yearslong tax fraud scheme. In August 2022, Mr. Weisselberg pleaded guilty, but the Trump Organization refused a plea, setting the stage for the highest-profile trial of the district attorney’s tenure.
Mr. Bragg later said he began to think of the two matters as chapters in a book: First would come the Trump Organization’s trial. Then the investigation into Mr. Trump could progress.
For the trial, which began on Halloween, Ms. Hoffinger teamed up with Joshua Steinglass, an experienced trial lawyer who specializes in homicide cases. It was part of the district attorney’s philosophy: pairing lawyers with different skills on a single team.
While Ms. Hoffinger and Mr. Steinglass were focused on the trial, Mr. Conroy and Mr. Pope continued to examine the legal theories underpinning the hush-money case. A chief skeptic of the previous Trump investigation, Mr. Conroy was pushing the hush-money one forward.
Joshua Steinglass, a prosecutor in the case against the Trump Organization, on the first day of jury selection in October 2022.
Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
During that period, Mr. Bragg and his deputies indicated to associates and outside supporters that he was newly optimistic about building a case against Mr. Trump, The Times reported .. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/nyregion/trump-bragg-stormy-daniels.html .. in November. Shortly before the jurors in the Trump Organization trial began to deliberate, the office announced that it had hired Matthew Colangelo .. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/05/nyregion/alvin-bragg-trump-investigation.html , a former senior Justice Department official who had experience building a civil case against Mr. Trump and who came to be one of the leaders of the Manhattan investigation.
The day after Mr. Colangelo’s hiring was announced, the jury returned its verdict: Mr. Trump’s company was guilty, and Mr. Bragg had won a significant victory.
In interviews after the win, Mr. Bragg took his “chapter” analogy public. And when asked about the case against Mr. Trump himself, he told reporters that he had “been cautioning people not to read ahead in the book.”
The Grand Jury
For Mr. Bragg, the new year began by impaneling a grand jury to hear evidence in the hush-money case. For some of his prosecutors, it began with a peace summit with Mr. Cohen.
At a meeting in their office in Lower Manhattan — the same building where the new grand jury would soon start to meet — the prosecutors told him they wanted to start fresh, and Mr. Cohen was amenable.
“I went in to 80 Centre St. skeptical and guarded,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview with The Times, referring to the building where the Major Economic Crimes Bureau is. “After a three-hour initial meeting, I left reassured and confident in the team. They were knowledgeable, articulate and professional in a way that made me as comfortable as I was with the previous Pomerantz and Dunne team.”
Michael Cohen (right) and his lawyer, Lanny Davis, arrive at 80 Centre St. on March 7, for an interview by the district attorney’s office.
Jefferson Siegel for The New York Times
It was the first of at least seven visits Mr. Cohen made to the office this year. In the ensuing meetings, prosecutors grilled him about granular aspects of the hush-money episode. He provided them with documents and his phone.
While evaluating Mr. Cohen’s evidence, the prosecutors began presenting evidence to the grand jury. The first witness was David Pecker, the former publisher of The National Enquirer, the tabloid that helped broker Mr. Cohen’s payout to Ms. Daniels. Mr. Pecker was followed by Ms. Daniels’s lawyer and some of Mr. Trump’s employees and campaign aides, most prominently Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks. The process culminated in Mr. Cohen testifying before the panel for more than two days in March.
By then, the parade of witnesses had begun to draw a media crowd outside 80 Centre. The fervor grew when The Times reported that Mr. Bragg had signaled to Mr. Trump’s legal team .. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/nyregion/trump-potential-criminal-charges-bragg.html .. that he was poised to seek an indictment. And when Mr. Trump prematurely predicted his own arrest two weeks ago, the blocks near the courthouse took on a circuslike atmosphere.
At one point, as court officials were preparing to escort a witness into the grand jury, there was a traffic accident outside the courthouse involving a truck that was packing up from filming a scene of the sequel to the film “Joker” .. https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/joker-sequel-starring-lady-gaga-filming-outside-trump-grand-jury-courthouse/4181067/ .. nearby.
All week, no indictment had emerged. But on Thursday afternoon, Chris Conroy, the formerly skeptical prosecutor, walked into 80 Centre Street. In his arms was a copy of the New York State penal law, marked up with sticky notes, to instruct the grand jurors on the law before they took the vote that indicted the former president.
Prosecutor Chris Conroy outside of Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday.Credit...Hilary Swift for The New York Times
Three hours later, Mr. Conroy, Ms. McCaw and the warden of the grand jury left 80 Centre and crossed the street to the building where indictments are filed.Reaching the clerk’s office through a back entrance, they submitted the paperwork two minutes before the office closed for the day.
Nate Schweber, Sean Piccoli and Kate Christobek contributed reporting.
Jonah E. Bromwich covers criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney's office, state criminal courts in Manhattan and New York City's jails. More about Jonah E. Bromwich
Ben Protess is an investigative reporter covering the federal government, law enforcement and various criminal investigations into former President Trump and his allies. More about Ben Protess
William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and law enforcement. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News. More about William K. Rashbaum
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/nyregion/alvin-bragg-trump-investigation.html
Back outside.
hap0206, I, for one, know the Times did not invent Trump's likely tax fraud. 100% You have decided your 'don't know, who knows' is your escape hatch when the crap you ooze l isn't bought here. It's no wonder your hero has said he would do away with the Education Dept. .. https://www.yahoo.com/news/crowd-cheers-trump-calls-abolition-093209367.html .
The honest IRS people would start to gain their expertise there.
Considered that then decided the protection in Fantasy would be too good, so abandoned the idea.
WOW! YET YUMMY! Guess i'll have to put more serious seriousity (yeah a red line under that one, ) into it. Trouble is too often i bomb when i do and shine when i don't, so that itself presents real conflict. Still, am so far behind you sharpshooters something has to change. 🫥
"Wait 'til the last segment---you won't be able to sleep smile
2 majors @750 each
2 Signatures @700 each
3 Fedex @2000 each"
That really is useful information, and really is much appreciated. 😍 Seven, hmm. Am thinking on it already.
LOL i think Elno fits better. Elno clashes with his saying yes to hate speech and liars like Trump on twitter, still his stance is consistent with the Supremes stance on that so .. shrug. Oh, and thanks to your Elno (didn't have a clue what it was about on first seeing it, even thought it might be a Black character. Lol, a whisper of a thought) i chanced on one i wonder if you've seen. Jack Dorsey's take on Elno's Twitter moves. Actually i'm seeing Mush's (that feels comfortable for him too) efforts there in a more understanding light after reading Dorsey's:
Jack Dorsey defends Musk's Twitter leadership, saying the billionaire slashed the 'critical sin' of its business model
Matthew Loh
May 10, 2024, 2:26 PM AEST
Jack Dorsey, who's now defending Elon Musk. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
All links
* In a new interview, Jack Dorsey explained Elon Musk's seemingly chaotic decisions at X.
* Dorsey said the layoffs, advertiser exodus, and blue-check revamp fitted into a push for free speech.
* They were all part of ditching Twitter's "core, critical sin" of advertiser control, he said.
Elon Musk's handling of Twitter has been panned as erratic. But the platform's cofounder Jack Dorsey is defending his fellow billionaire's approach, saying Musk's sweeping job cuts and ditching of advertisers made sense for a shift toward free speech.
Dorsey spoke with Mike Solana, who's the head of marketing for the venture-capital firm Founders Fund and the editor of the digital media brand Pirate Wires, in an interview published Thursday. Dorsey said that he shared Musk's goal of creating an internet bastion for free speech and that Twitter had been weighed down by its revenue model.
Twitter chose brand advertising as its main source of income, Dorsey said, a "core, critical sin" that exposed the platform's moderation to the whims of corporations effectively financing the social-media platform.
"And when you're entirely dependent on that, if a brand like P&G or Unilever doesn't like what's happening on the platform, and they threaten to pull the budget, which accounts for like 20% of your revenue? You have no choice," Dorsey told Solana.
Musk, who rebranded Twitter to X, triggered an advertiser exodus late last year when he appeared to endorse an antisemitic post — the tipping point for many organizations after months of Musk's controversial and confusing remarks.
The Tesla and SpaceX owner appeared nonchalant when big players such as Disney, IBM, and Apple left his platform, publicly telling advertisers to "go fuck yourself" and calling them the "greatest oppressors of your right to free speech."
Pundits were shocked. But Dorsey said Musk made the right choice to stick by his vision for a censorship-free "digital town square .. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-bought-twitter-over-free-speech-concerns-media-groupthink-2022-12 " and reduce the emphasis on advertisers.
Related stories
Jack Dorsey says he plotted exit from Twitter due to activist investor
https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-plotted-exit-twitter-due-activist-investor-2024-5
Jack Dorsey explains why he left Bluesky
https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-bluesky-twiiter-nostr-interview-2024-5
Meet Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk acolyte
https://www.businessinsider.com/meet-jack-dorsey-elon-musk-acolyte-2024-5
"You have to build up a lot more than advertising to make that model work. You have to build subscriptions, which Elon is doing. You have to build commerce," Dorsey said.
That addresses another sore point for fans of old Twitter. Shortly after taking over, Musk revamped its subscription service by giving blue-check verification to paid users and aggressively promoting monthly memberships.
Building a different business model
To many, Musk seemed to be axing Twitter's entire business model. But Dorsey said the bleeding was part of decoupling from big advertisers' control and finding new revenue streams.
"Twitter was a $5 billion a year business," Dorsey said. "I don't know what it is now, but it's obviously nowhere near that, right? These are choices that can be made, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be the same level of business for quite some time, until you figure out a completely different model around it."
The mass layoffs at Twitter, in which Musk slashed its global head count by 80%, also made sense to Dorsey, who said the majority of employees were in sales.
[Insert: By memory most articles i read focused on layoffs of those watching
for hate speech etc. and don't recall seeing the point Dorsey made there before.]
Dorsey's comments came as he quit Bluesky, a platform he helped build after leaving Twitter, and told users to use Musk's X instead.
He then scrapped his entire Twitter follow list except for Musk, Edward Snowden, and the wife of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The Twitter cofounder has generally spoken approvingly of Musk, though he's previously said he felt Musk lacked finesse in handling big changes at X, such as the messy, abrupt layoffs that led to lawsuits from former employees.
"It all looked fairly reckless," Dorsey said in June about Musk's moves.
Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, taking the company private. Less than six months later — after imposing wide-scale changes — he was reported to have said it was worth less than half of what he bought it for.
https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-explains-elon-musk-twitter-layoffs-free-speech-advertisers-2024-5
Finally a day without rain so gotta get into the back.
I'm interested to see if all you guys who snagged a McIlroy win in the Fargo had two of him left. LOL i went with him too early obviously then saved him for the PGA. Now am looking for him to really star by doing a back-to-back like i snagged on Scheffler. And hoping against - i reckon - hope that not to many others still have one of him. More probably am guessing you pros had two left so five or six of us will have him again. Just i'll be there this time too. LOL
hap0206, Uh, i thought it was the IRS that invented the tax event?
"Shady, not — self dealing is so foolishly illegal any transaction reported as such would have been rejected upon being filed — not litagated for 12 years — only a stupid Trump basher like the NYT would invent such a rediculas tax event "
I thought the NYT was more reporting it than inventing it. Please correct me if that's wrong.
LOL LEWIS B .. the best. Keeps Carlin magic flowing. And hehe thanks, i reckon your "Elno" must refer to Mush.
Twitter insiders are calling Elon Musk by a new nickname, Elmo. It's spreading on the platform.
Kali Hays
Nov 16, 2022, 11:44 AM AEDT
https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-insiders-users-calling-elon-musk-by-the-nickname-elmo-2022-11
Actually i think your Elno fits better.
Yes, zab, you are still here, and America is the better for it. Well doing, sir.
The manifestly dishonest culture war rages on. Since a majority now see through conservatives anti-tax on the wealthy for needed welfare for the more needy stance, their fight against legislation to protect the environment, and their fight against workers' and women's rights, they have little left but their dishonest and manipulative creation known as the culture war.
Related: Absolutely brilliant. And i was reminded something about the Rude Pundit which must have been read before: "But what do I know. I've only been a professor for roughly 30 years at public universities. Or maybe I might have more fucking insight than a greedy, attention-hungry dilettante with delusions of intellect."
I couldn't escape from the name Jordan Peterson
[...]
Florida Gov. DeSantis signs bill to limit discussion of race
[...]
“It’s just illustrating Gov. DeSantis’ pattern of Black attack policies led by Republican legislators. He has taken a culture war to a classic Republican battleground, which is the public schools. It’s going to hurt our children’s futures,”' said Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon, who is Black. “CRT is not taught in K-12 education here in our public schools.”
[Insert: conix, Political correctness. "Woke". Critical Race Theory. Now Kendi.
[...]How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory
Thanks. You saved me chasing those videos. I never heard of that Rufo dude before, yet
seems he's a key - even the KEY - player in the present political outrage around CRT.
P - To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon.
[...]
...Rufo summarized his findings in an article for the Web site of City Journal, the magazine of the center-right Manhattan Institute: “Under the banner of ‘antiracism,’ Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights is now explicitly endorsing principles of segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism—ugly concepts that should have been left behind a century ago.”
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=166080529]
DeSantis’ focus on culture war issues involving race, gender and the coronavirus have made him one of the most popular Republican politicians in the country and a likely 2024 presidential candidate.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172746247
That article of yours is a beauty. In the reading and struggling to decide
what to say i was relieved to see Judd Legum did it best at the end.
The real cancel culture
Judd Legum
[...]
Ironically, as Weiss cashes in on her critique of "cancel culture," The Free Press has become a central part of a sophisticated right-wing ecosystem that seeks to tear down anything and anyone who diverges too far from their ideology.
The latest effort began on April 9, 2024, when NPR editor Uri Berliner wrote in The Free Press that his employer had "lost America's trust." Using a formula that is typical for The Free Press, Berliner describes himself as fitting the liberal mold — admitting that he was "raised by a lesbian peace activist mother" and "eagerly voted against Trump twice." But Berliner says that NPR has gone too far. NPR, according to Berliner, has abandoned its "open-minded spirit" and is too focused on catering to the left.
One of the core pieces of evidence Berliner cited was NPR's coverage of allegations that the "Trump campaign colluded with Russia." Berliner said NPR "hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff." He complained that Schiff was interviewed 25 times and, during those interviews, "alluded to purported evidence of collusion." But an NPR spokesperson told Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple that between January 2017 and December 2019, NPR conducted 900 interviews with congressional lawmakers, including stalwart conservatives like Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Paul Ryan (R-WI). In other words, Schiff did not dominate the coverage. Overall, Wemple describes Berliner's critique of NPR's Russia coverage as a "lazy… feelings-based critique of the sort that passes for media reporting these days."
[...]
That is when the effort to punish NPR and Maher intensified. Chris Rufo, a right-wing operative, has been featured in The Free Press as a contributor and a podcast guest. Rufo began examining Maher's 29,400 tweets and highlighting examples that "exposed" her as liberal. (He later summarized his findings in a piece published by City Journal.) Rufo objects to tweets in which Maher discusses "structural privilege," "non-binary people," and "toxic masculinity." He also highlights that Maher's daily routine included "yoga, iced coffee, back-to-back meetings, and Zoom-based psychotherapy." In another tweet, Maher calls Trump — who rose to political prominence by falsely claiming that the nation's first Black president was illegitimate because he was born in Africa — a "deranged racist psychopath." For Rufo, Maher is but one example of a growing problem: a "rising cohort of affluent, left-wing, female managers."
[...]
Rufo also suggests that NDI is really an arm of U.S. intelligence, citing "national security analyst J. Michael Waller." According to Waller, NDI is an "instrument of… the global revolution elements of the Obama team." Waller works for the Center for Security Policy, a far-right organization founded by Frank Gaffney. In 2009, Gaffney famously claimed that there is "mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."
Waller also has a checkered history with the facts. He played a key role in promoting the false claim that left-wing agitators, not Trump supporters, were responsible for the violence on January 6, 2021. Waller based this claim based on his own personal observations of the crowd. "A few young men wearing Trump or MAGA hats backwards and who did not fit in with the rest of the crowd in terms of their actions and demeanor, whom I presumed to be Antifa or other leftist agitators," Waller wrote. According to Waller, these "agents-provocateurs placed hundreds of unsuspecting supporters of the president in physical danger."
Later in the lengthy piece, Rufo admits there "is no way to discern whether Maher was an agent, asset, or otherwise connected with the CIA." But Rufo claims this is irrelevant because Maher "was undoubtedly advancing the agenda of the national security apparatus."
Having acknowledged that his core claim about Maher's connections to U.S. intelligence is pure speculation, Rufo then turns his attention to unsubstantiated gossip about Maher's personal life. In her 30s, Rufo writes, Maher "had her sights on powerful men in the tech sector." But Maher "considered finding someone lesser as she approached 40." This, according to Rufo, somehow helps prove that Maher is "a vessel for power, with few original thoughts."
The incoherence of the argument underscores the reality of the political moment. There is a relentless right-wing operation seeking to inflict pain on their ideological adversaries. Some, like Rufo, are the political equivalent of street brawlers, willing to say or do anything to achieve their objective. Others, like Weiss and The Free Press, give the movement a more journalistic and professional sheen. But no one involved is a supporter of free expression or an opponent of cancel culture. Rather, they are the cultural force aggressively pursuing cancellation.
Thanks. Your - https://popular.info/p/the-real-cancel-culture?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1664&post_id=144565034&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6zfhm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Ouch, Someone was badly burned there. Yours brought a wonder what the situation re vacant
office space might be, was surprised to learn office vacancy rate wasn't much higher here ..
Office supply pushes vacancy rate upwards, but high-quality office space proves popular
The flight to quality office space has continued across the country, with new data showing vacancy rates for prime office space remain lower than those of older office stock in our cities.
The January 2024 edition of the Office Market Report, which is released twice a year, showed overall CBD vacancy increased from 12.8 to 13.5 per cent nationally. Non-CBD areas saw an increase from 17.3 to 17.9 per cent.
https://www.propertycouncil.com.au/media-releases/office-supply-pushes-vacancy-rate-upwards-but-high-quality-office-space-proves-popular .
Hmm, ok, it's roughly similar in your place ..
Q1 2024 Office Sales Dip to $5.4 Billion, 17% Below Last Year’s Figure
Evelyn Jozsa / April 22, 2024 / Market Reports, Office
Key Takeaways:
The average U.S. office listing rate stood at $37.74 in March, falling 1.3% year-over-year
Up 120 basis points year-over-year, the national office vacancy rate rested at 18.2%
Under-construction office space totaled 87.9 million square feet at the end of the month, of which only 2.8 million broke ground this year
Office sales stood at $5.4 billion in the first three months of 2024, with assets trading at $171 per square foot
San Francisco reached the second-highest vacancy rate nationwide, with 24.2%
Leading office markets in the Midwest logged a total of $355 million in office sales through March
Washington, D.C., led the U.S. in sales, with transactions totaling $999 million through the first three months of the year
Boston’s under-construction pipeline accounted for more than 15% of the national stock currently underway
https://www.commercialedge.com/blog/national-office-report/
Guess though that doesn't reflect leases held with empty desks due to people working from home.
Good Fargo win, SR.
Hey, that was a good read. Yet another case of Trump thumbing his nose at laws of the land. Not surprised they found
"...“significant discrepancy” between the flow data recorded by the building’s automated system and the DMR data Trump Tower reported to the IEPA, prompting the Attorney General’s office, as well as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Chicago River, to file amended lawsuits. Attorney General Raoul’s lawsuit continues to seek to prevent further violations of state environmental laws, as well as civil penalties."
Would there be a Trump effort anywhere that didn't screw the locals some way or other. Probably not.
Thanks for the new .. https://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/news/story/attorney-general-raoul-files-amended-lawsuit-against-trump-tower-for-continued-failure-to-follow-environmental-laws-and-protect-chicago-river .. news for me.
Ah, Just after 8 and the day is done! Enjoy,
hap0206, Not sorry at all to throw cold water on your misrepresentation of my post. To any objective observer there was no exuberance there, just cool, clear facts, is all the article was.
"So sorry to throw cold water on your exuberance -- but it is a NYT hit piece on Trump -- otherwise known as fake news -- Reality and the NYT knows this -- tax returns, except for the few brave "do it yourselves" are prepared by tax professionals -- the returns containing numbers in the millions are prepared by heavy hitter professionals with -- guess what -- "professional liability insurance" certifying they, the pros, know what they are doing --
and these returns are in that category -- Trump not worried at all -- his pros are right and no taxes due and the IRS pays the attorney fees -- or tthe IRS wins and the insurance company pays the assessments, penalties and interest
P - so sorry -- another whiff"
It clearly was not a hit piece, strike two for you. Not fake news, that's three. Reality itself is incapable of opinion so can't know, strike four. NYT knows it's not, so strike five. Damn, they are building up faster than even i thought they might. Yes, we all know tax professionals did Trump's tax returns, the article makes that clear. It actually offered opinions of other tax professionals that Trump's tax professionals had pushed the boundaries of tax avoidance too far. Make that strikes six and seven for you. Yes, all with ""professional liability insurance"", that's strike eight, for you thinking anyone here doesn't understand that. For your "they know what they are doing" yeah, we know they do. Strike nine. I'm running out of fingers so gonna stop counting.
I was even wondering if there was the faintest chance that you could have been one of Trump's professionals who go him into the mess he is in. But guess that's stretching your credibility too far, eh. LOL
Mine didn't, but that was cool as i didn't either. I and a friend who didn't care to dress in a gown or
take part in the ceremony either went to the local uni pub instead. LOL, that afternoon was a blast.
I agree if the child goes the parents if at all possible should too.
hap0206, Good for the IRS, eh. Trump May Owe $100 Million From Double-Dip Tax Breaks, Audit Shows
"Maybe they just throw up their hands and say "good job, IRS"
=========
Chairman requested the federal income tax returns for the prior six years of the following
[...] 3-DJT Holdings LLC , " [.. my emphasis (see below too) ..]
H/T newmedman .. [...] There was a story out today about how he scammed the IRS out of 100 million dollars on his Chicago tower. I know a couple contractors who would gladly be lining up to get their piece of that back.
If it's true, do you think he'll get the Hunter Biden treatment? I highly doubt it. That prick skates on everything.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174400861
A previously unknown focus of an I.R.S. audit is a dubious accounting maneuver that effectively meant taking the same write-offs twice on a Chicago skyscraper.
The I.R.S. believes that former President Donald J. Trump violated a law meant to prevent double-dipping on tax-reducing losses. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
By Russ Buettner and Paul Kiel
This article was published in partnership with ProPublica. Russ Buettner of The New York Times has spent years
reporting on the former president’s finances, including decades of his tax returns. Paul Kiel of ProPublica
has reported on the I.R.S. and the ways the ultrawealthy avoid taxes since 2018.
May 11, 2024
Former President Donald J. Trump used a dubious accounting maneuver to claim improper tax breaks from his troubled Chicago tower, according to an Internal Revenue Service inquiry uncovered by The New York Times and ProPublica. Losing a yearslong audit battle over the claim could mean a tax bill of more than $100 million.
The 92-story, glass-sheathed skyscraper along the Chicago River is the tallest and, at least for now, the last major construction project by Mr. Trump. Through a combination of cost overruns and the bad luck of opening in the teeth of the Great Recession, it was also a vast money loser.
But when Mr. Trump sought to reap tax benefits from his losses, the I.R.S. has argued, he went too far and in effect wrote off the same losses twice.
The first write-off came on Mr. Trump’s tax return for 2008. With sales lagging far behind projections, he claimed that his investment in the condo-hotel tower met the tax code definition of “worthless,” because his debt on the project meant he would never see a profit. That move resulted in Mr. Trump reporting losses as high as $651 million for the year, The Times and ProPublica found.
There is no indication the I.R.S. challenged that initial claim, though that lack of scrutiny surprised tax experts consulted for this article. But in 2010, Mr. Trump and his tax advisers sought to extract further benefits from the Chicago project, executing a maneuver that would draw years of inquiry from the I.R.S. First, he shifted the company that owned the tower into a new partnership. Because he controlled both companies, it was like moving coins from one pocket to another. Then he used the shift as justification to declare $168 million in additional losses over the next decade.
The issues around Mr. Trump’s case were novel enough that, during his presidency, the I.R.S. undertook a high-level legal review before pursuing it. The Times and ProPublica, in consultation with tax experts, calculated that the revision sought by the I.R.S. would create a new tax bill of more than $100 million, plus interest and potential penalties.
Mr. Trump’s tax records have been a matter of intense speculation since the 2016 presidential campaign, when he defied decades of precedent and refused to release his returns, citing a long-running audit. A first, partial revelation of the substance of the audit came in 2020, when The Times reported that the I.R.S. was disputing a $72.9 million tax refund that Mr. Trump had claimed starting in 2010. That refund, which appeared to be based on Mr. Trump’s reporting of vast losses from his long-failing casinos, equaled every dollar of federal income tax he had paid during his first flush of television riches, from 2005 through 2008, plus interest.
Mr. Trump at the tower in 2008, with his three eldest children. The project kept falling short of its predicted success, with condo units unsold
and retail space sitting empty. Amanda Rivkin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The reporting by The Times and ProPublica about the Chicago tower reveals a second component of Mr. Trump’s quarrel with the I.R.S. This account was pieced together from a collection of public documents, including filings from the New York attorney general’s suit against Mr. Trump in 2022, a passing reference to the audit in a congressional report that same year and an obscure 2019 I.R.S. memorandum that explored the legitimacy of the accounting maneuver. The memorandum did not identify Mr. Trump, but the documents, along with tax records previously obtained by The Times and additional reporting, indicated that the former president was the focus of the inquiry.
It is unclear how the audit battle has progressed since December 2022, when it was mentioned in the congressional report. Audits often drag on for years, and taxpayers have a right to appeal the I.R.S.’s conclusions. The case would typically become public only if Mr. Trump chose to challenge a ruling in court.
In response to questions for this article, Mr. Trump’s son Eric, executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said: “This matter was settled years ago, only to be brought back to life once my father ran for office. We are confident in our position, which is supported by opinion letters from various tax experts, including the former general counsel of the I.R.S.”
An I.R.S. spokesman said federal law prohibited the agency from discussing private taxpayer information.
The outcome of Mr. Trump’s dispute could set a precedent for wealthy people seeking tax benefits from the laws governing partnerships. Those laws are notoriously complex, riddled with uncertainty and under constant assault by lawyers pushing boundaries for their clients. The I.R.S. has inadvertently further invited aggressive positions by rarely auditing partnership tax returns.
The audit represents yet another potential financial threat — albeit a more distant one — for Mr. Trump, the Republicans’ presumptive 2024 presidential nominee. In recent months, he has been ordered to pay $83.3 million in a defamation case .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/26/nyregion/trump-defamation-trial-carroll-verdict.html .. and another $454 million in a civil fraud case .. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/01/nyregion/trump-bond-deal.html .. brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James. Mr. Trump has appealed both judgments. (He is also in the midst of a criminal trial .. https://www.nytimes.com/news-event/trump-ny-hush-money-case .. in Manhattan, where he is accused of covering up a hush-money payment to a porn star in the weeks before the 2016 election.)
Beyond the two episodes under audit, reporting by The Times in recent years has found that, across his business career, Mr. Trump has often used what experts described as highly aggressive — and at times, legally suspect — accounting maneuvers to avoid paying taxes. To the six tax experts consulted for this article, Mr. Trump’s Chicago accounting maneuvers appeared to be questionable and unlikely to withstand scrutiny.
“I think he ripped off the tax system,” said Walter Schwidetzky .. https://law.ubalt.edu/faculty/profiles/schwidetzky.cfm , a law professor at the University of Baltimore and an expert on partnership taxation.
The old Chicago Sun-Times building, which would be replaced by Mr. Trump’s 92-story, glass-sheathed skyscraper. Tim Boyle/Getty Images
From ‘$1.2 Billion’ to ‘Worthless’
Mr. Trump struck a deal in 2001 to acquire land and a building that was then home to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. Two years later, after publicly toying with the idea of constructing the world’s tallest building there, he unveiled plans for a more modest tower, with 486 residences and 339 “hotel condominiums” that buyers could use for short stays and allow Mr. Trump’s company to rent out. He initially estimated that construction would last until 2007 and cost $650 million.
Mr. Trump placed the project at the center of the first season of “The Apprentice” in 2004, offering the winner a top job there under his tutelage. “It’ll be a mind-boggling job to manage,” Mr. Trump said during the season finale. “When it’s finished in 2007, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, Chicago, could have a value of $1.2 billion and will raise the standards of architectural excellence throughout the world.”
As his cost estimates increased, Mr. Trump arranged to borrow as much as $770 million for the project — $640 million from Deutsche Bank and $130 million from Fortress Investment Group, a hedge fund and private equity company. He personally guaranteed $40 million of the Deutsche loan. Both Deutsche and Fortress then sold off pieces of the loans to other institutions, spreading the risk and potential gain.
Mr. Trump planned to sell enough of the 825 units to pay off his loans when they came due in May 2008. But when that date came, he had sold only 133. At that point, he projected that construction would not be completed until mid-2009, at a revised cost of $859 million.
He asked his lenders for a six-month extension. A briefing document prepared for the lenders, obtained by The Times and ProPublica, said Mr. Trump would contribute $89 million of his own money, $25 million more than his initial plan. The lenders agreed.
But sales did not pick up that summer, with the nation plunged into the financial crisis that would become the Great Recession. When Mr. Trump asked for another extension in September, his lenders refused.
Two months later, Mr. Trump defaulted on his loans and sued his lenders, characterizing the financial crisis as the kind of catastrophe, like a flood or hurricane, covered by the “force majeure” clause of his loan agreement with Deutsche Bank. That, he said, entitled him to an indefinite delay in repaying his loans. Mr. Trump went so far as to blame the bank and its peers for “creating the current financial crisis.” He demanded $3 billion in damages.
At the time, Mr. Trump had paid down his loans with $99 million in sales but still needed more money to complete construction. At some point that year, he concluded that his investment in the tower was worthless, at least as the term is defined in partnership tax law.
Mr. Trump’s worthlessness claim meant only that his stake in 401 Mezz Venture, the L.L.C. that held the tower, was without value because he expected that sales would never produce enough cash to pay off the mortgages, let alone turn a profit.
When he filed his 2008 tax return, he declared business losses of $697 million. Tax records do not fully show which businesses generated that figure. But working with tax experts, The Times and ProPublica calculated that the Chicago worthlessness deduction could have been as high as $651 million, the value of Mr. Trump’s stake in the partnership — about $94 million he had invested and the $557 million loan balance reported on his tax returns that year.
When business owners report losses greater than their income in any given year, they can retain the leftover negative amount as a credit to reduce their taxable income in future years. As it turned out, that tax-reducing power would be of increasing value to Mr. Trump. While many of his businesses continued to lose money, income from “The Apprentice” and licensing and endorsement agreements poured in: $33.3 million in 2009, $44.6 million in 2010 and $51.3 million in 2011.
Mr. Trump’s advisers girded for a potential audit of the worthlessness deduction from the moment they claimed it, according to the filings from the New York attorney general’s lawsuit. Starting in 2009 Mr. Trump’s team excluded the Chicago tower from the frothy annual “statements of financial condition” that Mr. Trump used to boast of his wealth, out of concern that assigning value to the building would conflict with its declared worthlessness, according to the attorney general’s filing. (Those omissions came even as Mr. Trump fraudulently inflated his net worth to qualify for low-interest loans, according to the ruling in the attorney general’s lawsuit.)
Mr. Trump had good reason to fear an audit of the deduction, according to the tax experts consulted for this article. They believe that Mr. Trump’s tax advisers pushed beyond what was defensible.
Insert: Of course there would be other tax people who would argue that Trump was just doing
what so many other's do. And all perfectly legal. Other tax people like, hap0206, i mean.
The worthlessness deduction serves as a way for a taxpayer to benefit from an expected total loss on an investment long before the final results are known. It occupies a fuzzy and counterintuitive slice of tax law. Three decades ago, a federal appeals court ruled that the judgment of a company’s worthlessness could be based in part on the opinion of its owner. After taking the deduction, the owner can keep the “worthless” company and its assets. Subsequent court decisions have only partly clarified the rules. Absent prescribed parameters, tax lawyers have been left to handicap the chances that a worthlessness deduction will withstand an I.R.S. challenge.
[Seems to me that once the owner has claimed the benefit by deeming the property as worthless to him,
then the state should own the property as being bought by the public money tax write-off. The
public money tax write-off buys the worthless property. Off-the-top that sounds fair to me.]
There are several categories, with a declining likelihood of success, of money taxpayers can claim to have lost.
The tax experts consulted for this article universally assigned the highest level of certainty to cash spent to acquire an asset. The roughly $94 million that Mr. Trump’s tax returns show he invested in Chicago fell into this category.
Some gave a lower, though still probable, chance of a taxpayer prevailing in declaring a loss based on loans that a lender agreed to forgive. That’s because forgiven debt generally must be declared as income, which can offset that portion of the worthlessness deduction in the same year. A large portion of Mr. Trump’s worthlessness deduction fell in this category, though he did not begin reporting forgiven debt income until two years later, a delay that would have further reduced his chances of prevailing in an audit.
The tax experts gave the weakest chance of surviving a challenge for a worthlessness deduction based on borrowed money for which the outcome was not clear. It reflects a doubly irrational claim — that the taxpayer deserves a tax benefit for losing someone else’s money even before the money has been lost, and that those anticipated future losses can be used to offset real income from other sources. Most of the debt included in Mr. Trump’s worthlessness deduction was based on that risky position.
Including that debt in the deduction was “just not right,” said Monte Jackel .. https://jackeltaxlaw.com/ , a veteran of the I.R.S. and major accounting firms who often publishes analyses of partnership tax issues.
After declaring the tower “worthless,” Mr. Trump claimed as much as $651 million in losses on the project. He later claimed $168 million more. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times
A Second Bite at the Apple
Mr. Trump continued to sell units at the Chicago Tower, but still below his costs. Had he done nothing, his 2008 worthlessness deduction would have prevented him from claiming that shortfall as losses again. But in 2010, his lawyers attempted an end-run by merging the entity through which he owned the Chicago tower into another partnership, DJT Holdings L.L.C. In the following years, they piled other businesses, including several of his golf courses, into DJT Holdings.
Those changes had no apparent business purpose. But Mr. Trump’s tax advisers took the position that pooling the Chicago tower’s finances with other businesses entitled him to declare even more tax-reducing losses from his Chicago investment.
His financial problems there continued. More than 100 of the hotel condominiums never sold. Sales of all units totaled only $727 million, far below Mr. Trump’s budgeted costs of $859 million. And some 70,000 square feet of retail space remained vacant because it had been designed without access to foot or vehicle traffic.
[WHA?? .. must mean mean retail space only accessed by elevator??]
From 2011 through 2020, Mr. Trump reported $168 million in additional losses from the project.
Those additional write-offs helped Mr. Trump avoid tax liability for his continuing entertainment riches, as well as his unpaid debt from the tower. Starting in 2010, his lenders agreed to forgive about $270 million of those debts. But he was able to delay declaring most of that income until 2014 and spread it out over five years of tax returns, thanks to a provision in the Obama administration’s stimulus bill responding to the Great Recession. In 2018, Mr. Trump reported positive income for the first time in 11 years. But his income tax bill still amounted to only $1.9 million, even as he reported a $25 million gain from the sale of his late father's assets.
It’s unclear when the I.R.S. began to question the 2010 merger transaction, but the conflict escalated during Mr. Trump’s presidency.
The I.R.S. explained its position in a Technical Advice Memorandum .. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-wd/201929019.pdf , released in 2019, that identified Mr. Trump only as “A.” Such memos, reserved for cases where the law is unclear, are rare and involve extensive review by senior I.R.S. lawyers. The agency produced only two other such memos that year.
The memos are required to be publicly released with the taxpayer’s information removed, and this one was more heavily redacted than usual. Some partnership specialists wrote papers exploring its meaning and importance to other taxpayers, but none identified taxpayer “A” as the then-sitting president of the United States. The Times and ProPublica matched the facts of the memo to information from Mr. Trump’s tax returns and elsewhere.
The 20-page document is dense with footnotes, calculations and references to various statutes, but the core of the I.R.S.’s position is that Mr. Trump’s 2010 merger violated a law meant to prevent double dipping on tax-reducing losses. If done properly, the merger would have accounted for the fact that Mr. Trump had already written off the full cost of the tower’s construction with his worthlessness deduction.
In the I.R.S. memo, Mr. Trump’s lawyers vigorously disagreed with the agency’s conclusions, saying he had followed the law.
If the I.R.S. prevails, Mr. Trump’s tax returns would look very different, especially those from 2011 to 2017. During those years, he reported $184 million in income from “The Apprentice” and agreements to license his name, along with $219 million from canceled debts. But he paid only $643,431 in income taxes thanks to huge losses on his businesses, including the Chicago tower. The revisions sought by the I.R.S. would require amending his tax returns to remove $146 million in losses and add as much as $218 million in income from condominium sales. That shift of up to $364 million could swing those years out of the red and well into positive territory, creating a tax bill that could easily exceed $100 million.
The only public sign of the Chicago audit came in December 2022, when a congressional Joint Committee on Taxation report on I.R.S. efforts to audit Mr. Trump made an unexplained reference to the section of tax law at issue in the Chicago case. It confirmed that the audit was still underway and could affect Mr. Trump’s tax returns from several years.
That the I.R.S. did not initiate an audit of the 2008 worthlessness deduction puzzled the experts in partnership taxation. Many assumed the understaffed I.R.S. simply had not realized what Mr. Trump had done until the deadline to investigate it had passed.
“I think the government recognized that they screwed up,” and then audited the merger transaction to make up for it, Mr. Jackel said.
The agency’s difficulty in keeping up with Mr. Trump’s maneuvers, experts said, showed that this gray area of tax law was too easy to exploit.
“Congress needs to radically change the rules for the worthlessness deduction,” Professor Schwidetzky said.
Susanne Craig contributed reporting.
Read by Eric Jason Martin
Narration produced by Anna Diamond and Krish Seenivasan
Engineered by Steven Szczesniak
Russ Buettner is an investigative reporter. Since 2016, his reporting has focused on the finances of Donald. J. Trump, including articles that revealed tax avoidance schemes evidenced on several decades of his tax returns. In 2019, he shared a Pulitzer Prize for work that revealed the vast inheritance Mr. Trump had received from his father. More about Russ Buettner
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/11/us/trump-taxes-audit-chicago.html
100%
All the Palestinians coming home, of course, is one of the Zionists greatest no-nos.
" Yea, I would like to see all of these Palestinians move into Israel and start displacing the people who live there. "
As Peres told them so many decades ago:
That is, Peres thinks that the Likud Party and its partners are living in a fool’s paradise if they believe they can annex the whole of Palestinian territory without getting the Palestinians as Israeli citizens eventually. And then, Peres says, no more Israel as a Jewish state.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174298978
[...]
Reminder: Related: Ehud Barak: the military mastermind Israel loves to hate
[...]Israel's yearning for experienced military leaders brought him back to political life after the 2006 Lebanon war and he became minister of defence. He seems to have a feel for what motivates his enemies and was widely quoted as saying: "If I were a Palestinian I would have joined a terrorist organisation." Barak also stated during a US television interview last year that he would "probably" strive for nuclear weapons if he were in Iran's position.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=173530549
With more -- https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174402440
We'll leave Barak's words there just to keep them together.
We used to skate on a creek in Burnaby, BC, which then connected to Burnaby Lake ..
https://www.burnaby.ca/explore-outdoors/parks/burnaby-lake-regional-nature-park .
None of the park infrastructure was there in the early '50s. Some distance from the lake there was a bridge over the creek and of course the ice was thinner under the bridge. It was great fun getting up speed, then coasting under the bridge, to the crackling sound you created. You didn't skate under the bridge at those times unless you wanted to boost the risk of a cold bath.
Global warming of course denies today's children of that winter joy.
"That prick skates on everything."
Until time and the IRS catches up to you. Sometimes ice cracks. Heh, am gonna post that Times article.
Excellent. Trump crowd disappearing act. The all the evidence Trump supporter. Sissy the
abandoned dog husband brought home. The ballerina and the photographer. All good.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=174402457
If ever you see anything which strikes as unfair or materially wrong, please say so.
Guess you mean "hurt" in the sense of you realizing the lungs are suffering a bit, and not in the pain sense. My being asthmatic since childhood smoking whatever was always an extreme folly for me, but gee whiz golly it was sooo much fun at times. And at my height i never had to worry much about drug tests. Also, never got into into anywhere near the extent you have become so expert. Just what i or others grew is all.
LOL, it's a bit weird that like so many things again i'm feeling against the tide. I do indulge maybe once a month when it fits with the company. And a tiny bit off and on, just to get rid of the junk leaf hanging in a closet. Can't throw it out.
Thanks heaps for all your input.
Ease the anti-LIV energy in which he did so much good and worthwhile work, back to golf. Super GOOD to see!!
PS: hmm, ok so there was a 3-time winner factor i missed too, eh.
Is super great to see Rory come good again. Congrats to all who had two of Rory saved. Or, lol, who
used their last Rory here because Scottie wasn't playing. I gambled on him just a bit too early. grr, lol,
brooklyn13, No it is not a start to anything. It is simply a continuation of the objective and relatively unemotional manner in which i have always looked at the Israel situation here. You can stuff your subjective assertions to what myself or others here may be looking forward to. To answer your latest
"Well, that’s a start, I’m sure everyone here is looking forward to the time when you pronounce various screeds as “anti-Zionist b.s”. Unless I’ve missed it already.
P - In other pop culture news, the Israeli contestant in the just completed Eurovision competition won the popular vote in 14 countries, including Australia. As I’m sure you know, there was a move to have her banned from the competition.
P - So maybe the idea of worldwide revulsion at all things Israel has been a tad overstated? If you’ve been fooled about this by social media, it’s understandable, with the emphasis on “you’ve been fooled”"
there, i don't expect it would ever happen as i don't expect i would ever see "anti-Zionist b.s." posted here.
No, i didn't know about the Eurovision situation, though it doesn't surprise me there would have been a move to ban them. Just as i'm not surprised to read of the rejection of Russia's appeal against the Olympic ban .. https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-olympic-committee-banned-violating-olympic-charter-paris-2024/ .. they are under.
And no, i don't believe "So maybe the idea of worldwide revulsion at all things Israel has been a tad overstated? If you’ve been fooled about this by social media, it’s understandable, with the emphasis on “you’ve been fooled”" has ever been overstated.
In fact i've never seen it stated at all in the sense you mean it. There is worldwide revulsion at Israel's massive overreaction to the Hamas atrocity of October 7. There is much more of that worldwide than there is "revulsion of all things Israel". As there should be. You yourself, and others, have commented on the fact that relations between some Arab countries and Israel have seemingly had Israeli massacres of Palestinians exorcised from them. Relatively anyway. Obviously, in that, "revulsion of all things Israel" is not paramount, even in Arab countries where many would more expect it more to be.
In the sense you mean it, there never has been worldwide revulsion of all things Israel.
Am sure there are individuals worldwide. Even big and small groups worldwide, who are antisemitic just because they
hate Jews. Course there would be individuals and or groups worldwide who hate Americans too. Wouldn't there be.
Your constant victimhood position is a fail.