Anybody here want to weigh in on “charitable remainder unitrusts“?
From Dave Weigel, at Slate, news that (if I understand this correctly?) Romney cheats his church as much as every other entity he’s ever touched:
Bloomberg obtains new information about Mitt Romney’s taxes and… well, the story comes out when everyone is distracted by imminent disaster. It’s too bad, because this is as thorny and irritating a tale of tax law chicanery as you’re likely to read.
Romney used the tax-exempt status of a charity — the Mormon Church, according to a 2007 filing — to defer taxes for more than 15 years. At the same time he is benefitting, the trust will probably leave the church with less than what current law requires, according to tax returns obtained by Bloomberg this month through a Freedom of Information Act request.
__
In general, charities don’t owe capital gains taxes when they sell assets for a profit. Trusts like Romney’s permit funders to benefit from that tax-free treatment.…
From what I can understand, the loophole Romney took advantage of is legal, just sleazy even by tax-lawyer standards, because he’s essentially getting a payment every year from the ‘trust’ that gradually reduces the church’s principal to zero.
I know there have been persistent rumors that members of the Mormon hierarchy who’ve actually had to deal with Willard aren’t his biggest fans, so maybe this kind of financial three-card-monte hasn’t helped his popularity within the Covenant?
SFAW
Nice of Bloomberg to wait until November.
On the other hand, it’s not as if we didn’t know that Mitt was depraved in extremis. It would be nice if his supporters had a collective IQ higher than room temperature, though. Might have made a difference.
Yutsano
Weigel is a slimy weasel. He has to know no one is paying attention to dick right now. So he proves his both sides bona fides when no one is watching. Fucker.
I wish this would revive the issue of Willard’s taxes. Unfortunately this ain’t gonna cut it.
Tokyokie
Well, when a church advocates a form of prosperity gospel, it shouldn’t be surprised when one of its followers grifts them. After all, it’s merely a sign of the extraordinary favor the grifter enjoys in the eye of the Almighty.
Maude
OT
I heard Governor Christie for the full hour on the radio. The host was the station’s news director. Christie kept saying that it was up to the state AG about the Atlantic City mayor.
He also kept saying that he talked to President Obama and Obama gave him numbers to call directly if NJ needed anything.
He also talked about federal and state working together.
He’s voting for Romney? So if he calls Romney he will be told to call Citigroup for help.
The crane dangling off a building in NYC is a prime example of free market handling of an upcoming weather event.
In local news, our building swayed three times with the wind gusts. There were blue green light flashes a couple of blocks from here. Public Works is on the job for the past couple of hours.
It seems that the wind gusts have died down a bit.
Taxes are for little people.
Huntly
This is what I have always thought Romney’s tax issue was about. He cheated the church! If that ever got legs he would be toast in the western states.
Mark S.
So I guess if there’s a chance that some miniscule percentage of money might some day go to charity, then it’s okay to exempt the whole fucking thing from taxes. Fortunately, Congress stepped in:
10% It’s tithing in reverse.
Corner Stone
What about sleazy tax lawyer standards?
Burnsie? Anything to add here?
Scott
That this unprincipled cipher of a man could get within spitting distance of the presidency does not speak well for our country. I suppose Silvio Berlosconi was otherwise occupied.
James E. Powell
Should be a last week scream fest demanding that Romney either release his tax returns or suffer for it. I know all about the IOKIYAR rule, but the fact that he refused to release the returns, that the corporate press/media totally let the story die, and that he has paid no political price for it will amaze me till the day that I die.
amk
There are no more ‘surprises’ when it comes to mitttbot’s
taxesconstant cheating. The guy is breaking the scummy candidates for president records.Petorado
Shorter Romneys: “We’ve given all you deities and church-folk need to know and understand about our financial situation and how we live our life.”
Petorado
@Mark S.: Thanks. That’s the first time I’ve found I’d be happy to hear that a number would instead be 27%.
lamh35
Saw on Lawerence O’Donnell’s show that Romney and co are going back on the campaign trail tomorrow.
Romney will be in OH and will hae a “relief fund” event or some bullshit along with that NASCAR Petty dude and some country singer. And Miss Ann will be in WI for 2 “relief fund” event and a “victory rally”.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/10/29/14783736-romney-scrapping-events-asks-supporters-to-support-hurricane-relief#comments
? Martin
So the peak storm surge in Manhattan hit just 24 minutes after the peak high tide. Absolute worst case scenario.
HelpThe99ers
If Bloomberg’s reporting is true, does that 15-year tax deferral corroborate what Harry Reid’s source told him, about Romney not paying taxes for 10 years?
arguingwithsignposts
Yeah, he got away with the tax return thing. Fucking press let him.
cyntax
Totally off topic but check out this wind map of the U.S. (found at Sam Wang’s site).
JoyfulA
That sounds like a standard annuity structure via a charity, which isn’t rare. Except that a skunk has set it up so that the charity makes nothing.
General Stuck
BOOM!
Hob
@Yutsano: I don’t care for Weigel but I don’t understand your complaint in this case. What was he supposed to do, make Bloomberg break the story sooner? Or are you worried that Weigel’s reputation will be unjustly burnished by… posting a single-paragraph comment about a news story?
lamh35
@lamh35: Romney’s also said to be considering doing a “NJ Damage Tour”…Ugh can’t stand this guy!
joes527
With a week to go, if it isn’t a dead girl or a live boy, then it isn’t news.
GOTV. It is all that matters at this point.
suzanne
@Huntly:
I’ve been saying that for months, too. He doesn’t care about losing our votes. He cares about losing the Mormon and evangelical vote, though, and possibly damaging his image among the LDS.
Hill Dweller
@lamh35: Let Willard keep campaigning. He can call his political event whatever he wants, but the optics are going to be awful.
Spaghetti Lee
@suzanne:
I don’t think this will really make a dent, honestly. There’s nothing that Romney could do that would quell their hate for Obama and their desire to kick him out.
General Stuck
The link to the ConEd explosion didn’t mention the following.
I just hope they were blocked from explosion and are okay.
amk
@General Stuck: Looks like a transformer blast.
The Dangerman
@lamh35:
Don’t see him visiting New Jersey. One, Christie is a wild card that seems to want to run in 2016. Two, it’s a blue state. Three, Springsteen has been active for Obama.
Maude
@lamh35:
I wonder if Romney will try to do a NJ tour before Obama?
I have come to despise Romney for the FEMA remark.
General Stuck
@amk:
Yes. And not a mild blast from the video.
Edo
@suzanne: The Mormon vote, maybe. Nothing could lose him the evangelical vote. They’ve compromised themselves too much to back down.
pseudonymous in nc
ConEd said that report is untrue.
Maude
@efgoldman:
That too.
He is not only stupid, bur evil.
PurpleGirl
@Huntly: Ah, but the people who really agree with his ideas would congratulate him on being able to cheat his church. After all he kept his money.
Jay in Oregon
@suzanne:
Agreed. When he joked about crying when he wrote the proverbial check to the Mormon Church, I figured that he had to be skimming off of the money he gave them as well.
That miserly fucker never met a dime that he didn’t want to let go off. He could give Ebenezer Scrooge a lesson in greed.
TexasMango
I’ve always wondered if Willard was hiding cheating the Mormon Church. However, this will not matter to the base. Nothing matters to the base aside from the fact that Mitt is white. The fact that he is an unapologetic asshole is actually a plus for GOP voters because they are assholes too. It’s all about tribalism and whether or not our tribe is bigger than theirs on November 6, 2012.
It’s our tribe vs. their tribe. No more, no less.
NotMax
Was legal, at the time. Such sleight-of-hand has since been made illegal (very shortly after Romney set up his tax avoidance cash cow), but extant set-ups were grandfathered in and allowed to continue.
TexasMango
@efgoldman: That’s the thing about the GOP. It is a bottomless pit of awful. Just when you think you have seen the worst of what it has to offer, it offers something worse. It’s just unbelievable.
jenn
@Maude: So I didn’t see details of what Christie was condemning the AC mayor about, since I read the mayor ordering an evacuation. What did I miss?
suzanne
@Edo:
I think it’s more likely to cause unrest in the LDS Church itsel if it came out that the Romneys haven’t been tithing. People who aren’t the Romneys have been excommunicated for less. For Mitt, I think he’s probably more concerned with protecting his image within that community than he is with becoming President.
Corner Stone
@suzanne:
Shit. Mitt’s worth probably north of a half billion dollars. He does not give one fuck what the LDS peeps think of him. He wants to be President more than anything else, ever.
scav
Very odd to think after seeing that Sam Wang linked map that the wind I’m hearing outside in Chicago is linked to what’s happening in NYC and the general east coast. Brain keeps whipping between seeing the world as small (we’re linked by wind) and the world as large (that is one freaking big storm). The problem is getting both ideas to coexist happily.
Tokyokie
@suzanne: Win or lose, Romney and his brood will return to the arms of the LDS church once his political career is over, and he’d prefer those arms be welcoming rather than shotguns.
SatanicPanic
@suzanne: What does he need those people for anyway? If he loses this round, it’s not like he’s going to run for office again, and he certainly has enough money. He’ll fit that whole damn church under the bus if it suits him.
NotMax
Asking once again (and am not alone in asking):
It has been over 2 years since 538 changed its URL.
Could the link to 538 here PLEASE be updated to the correct address?
Frankensteinbeck
@efgoldman:
And THAT comes back to racism. Mitt’s lies are accepted because he is a wax figure with an R pinned to him. The Republican Party has gone from ‘assholes’ to ‘frothing insanity’. Their positions have changed day by day to be whatever they think is anti-Obama – and it’s specifically anti-OBAMA, not anti-Democrat in general. Because of that, Mitt’s positions are immaterial, only making some difference in voting enthusiasm. Notice that only when they thought he’d slapped Obama in the face (while betraying publicly everything they believe in) did Republican voter enthusiasm pick up. Who or what Mitt is or believes doesn’t matter, because the people voting for him have gone absolutely bugfuck crazy thanks to their hatred of Obama. The only viable explanation for that is racism. It didn’t happen to Clinton, much as they were assholes to Clinton.
askew
@Maude:
That would be so tacky and really create horrible optics. Romney can’t do anything for people in NJ right now. It would just be a photoshoot for him.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
G hates musicals, but he loves Sondheim, so we ended up enjoying that movie.
I must have heard “Comedy Tonight” performed a million times before I actually saw it in context.
Spaghetti Lee
@Tokyokie:
Do you honestly think someone’s going to murder someone as famous as Mitt Romney over tithing? I think the repercussions for Mitt within the church will be private and personal, if anyone.
The Mormon church strikes me as (at the risk of offending someone) a slicker operation that cares a lot about advertising and public image more than your average far-right Evangelicals. What would be in it for them to publicly rebuke their most famous adherent?
James E. Powell
@NotMax:
Do you mean to say that you haven’t bookmarked it? What kind of a political geek are you?
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Yup, and the church will tolerate any and all of his shenanigans for that access to power. You think $ciento1ogy ever puts the hammer on Cruise or Travolta?
Corner Stone
@Tokyokie:
This is silly. Mitt hates the Mormon church. He hates everyone around him.
When he loses this race he will disappear to his Scrooge McDuck money vault and spend the rest of his days diving into his piles of money.
SatanicPanic
@Corner Stone: What does it say about the LDSers that the most famous member is a serial liar- either he doesn’t give a shit about what he professes to believe or the whole church doesn’t. No matter how you look at it, I can’t see him quaking in his boots about getting thrown out.
suzanne
@SatanicPanic:
I think he actually wants their approval. Maybe it’s the White Horse thing, Maybe it’s to one-up his dad. Maybe he just really fucking believes. But I think he very much wants to be a member of that community. It certainly would have been more expedient politically to bail long ago.
FelixMoronia
What’s in it for Mitt? Maybe after being President he wants
to be the Prophet in SLC. That would be the biggest thing for
Mitt.
Higgs Boson's Mate
The LDS church elders must know about Romney’s tithing shenanigans. They are most likely overlooking them, or even condoning them, because he’s currently their great hope. Then there’s always the thought that grifters may extend professional courtesy.
Redshift
@askew: Well, he’s already tried photo-op “relief” by asking supporters to donate supplies that his campaign buses will take to
the little peoplehard-hit areas. Without, of course, checking with the Red Cross and finding out that they don’t take donations of random crap, because it’s less effective to pay people to sort through it than to take donations to buy standardized supplies.Jim, Foolish Literalist
@askew: He’d also be in the fucking way. Sounds like this is gonna be a long, hard clean up.
SatanicPanic
@askew: Are you forgetting about the photoshoot that Paul Ryan and his wife did, showing up totally uninvited and pretending to clean pots at a homeless shelter? Ill advised and bad optics is pretty much the Romney MO. I think you just predicted the next Romney campaign move.
suzanne
One thing I know from years of experience: for many LDS, “Mormon” is a much an ethno-cultural identity as a religious one. And it’s one that is rooted in what they perceive to be a history of persecution, and the identity of God’s chosen. I think both of those things vey much appeal to Mitt. He gets to feel picked on yet special at the same time.
Over Again
@NotMax: Still is legal, with a slight rule change as to the minimum percentage that must ultimately go to the charity. Before, there was no minimum, now it’s 10% of the initial endowment. Bloomberg says that Romney’s trust, grandfathered in, in projected to ultimately have an 8% remainder.
askew
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I would hope Christie would tell him to keep the fuck out of NJ if his being there is going to cause problems.
SatanicPanic
@suzanne: The church did get him the Olympics gig, which really got his name out there. But who knows, I can’t see inside his (apparently nonexistent) soul.
GregB
Romney is sending a bus full of tax cuts and copies of Atlas Shrugged to hard hit areas.
The people will be so grateful that he thought of them.
askew
@SatanicPanic:
Excellent point. The R/R campaign does love staged photo ops.
Tokyokie
@Spaghetti Lee: I was speaking metaphorically. But the LDS church will excommunicate even high-ranking members at the drop of a hat. Mitt’s candidacy is a source of pride for the church and its followers, but if his financial hanky-panky becomes a source of embarrassment instead (especially if he loses the election), he’ll suddenly be excluded from the only organization whose authority he respects. Everything Mitt Romney is flows from the LDS church and its authoritarian structure. And for a guy who’s dreamed most of his life of moving from president of the United States to president of his religion, being tossed from the church is the very worst thing that could happen to him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@efgoldman: “It’s gotten to be so you have to apologize for being white!”
Letterman doing his show to an empty theatre.
Mike
CNN reporting that Romney’s been talking to FEMA. Why is this nobody calling FEMA, and why are they talking back to him? He’s got no role in government. This is infuriating!
Tokyokie
@Corner Stone:
@SatanicPanic: I’m guessing neither of you have spent much time in Utah. I lived there for two years. Trust me on this. Becoming president of the church is more important to Mitt than becoming president of the U.S.
MikeJ
@GregB:
I heard he’s sending them, bootstraps.
Hill Dweller
@Mike:
It’s probably his stupid campaign leaking this nonsense.
amk
@Mike: He is probably telling fema how immoral they are.
Corner Stone
@Tokyokie: Bullshit. Who is the leader of LDS? Who was the last one? Who was the last one before that or before that or before that or before that or before that or…
Bull shit.
TooManyJens
@askew:
I feel that Chris Christie would be more than happy to tell Mitt to keep the fuck out of NJ at any and all times.
Jay in Oregon
@SatanicPanic:
Tithing is one of the cornerstones of being a Mormon. As I understand it, a lot of your standing in the Mormon church depends on whether or not you are paid up on your tithes.
Mormon Curtain (an ex-Mormon website) has a section on tithing:
http://mormoncurtain.com/topic_tithing_section1.html
I’m sure it is possible that, in the highest-income brackets in the church, tithing isn’t taken as seriously or monitored as closely as it is for lower-income Mormons; but if that is the case, that is something that the church would not want to become public knowledge.
Corner Stone
God dammit. Don’t waste my motherfucking time trying to tell me an almost 70 year old man worth +$250M gives one fuck of a shit about the god damn LDS church.
He’s a lying POS who hates everyone around him who has less money than he does.
Tokyokie
@Corner Stone: Just because something doesn’t make sense to you doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make sense to somebody from a different culture. I can’t tell you the name of a single player with Manchester United, but that doesn’t mean that the names of their midfielders aren’t important to millions of football fans.
suzanne
@Corner Stone: Thomas Monson, Gordon B. Hinckley, Howard Hunter, Ezra Taft Benson, Spencer W. Kimball.
Corner Stone
@suzanne: Oh. I apologize.
opie jeanne
@Corner Stone: I can name two off the top of my head, and I’m not LDS (not by a longshot): Hinckley and Bensen. Don’t know who it is right now, but the two I named were in the news enough that I remember them.
opie jeanne
@suzanne: Kimball. I forgot that MoFo.
suzanne
@opie jeanne: Worth forgetting, from what I understand.
trollhattan
@Jay in Oregon:
Holy crap, they’re far more venal than I’d imagined.
opie jeanne
@suzanne: Yes, those three were especially evil in my opinion.
Which reminds me, I need to warn my nearest Mormon cousin that if she has my dad baptized by proxy I will never forgive her. I love her but there have been too many of these ceremonies, and worse, they had total strangers stand in for my grandparents. I now know that’s SOP and when I found out I was really angry.
The rosy idea I had that she had stood in for them had softened my annoyance with the whole nonsense, as did the idea of my sainted grandmother laughing herself silly (if there is an afterlife), as well as my somewhat crusty grandfather who never went to church but led a blameless life nonetheless, but to have some unknown person stand in for family members is just absolutely beyond the pale for me. It underlines the stark business that masquerades as a church.
Baptizing Dad would be the final straw in our weakened relationship. He died on Sept 18 so the wound is still open.
opie jeanne
@trollhattan: People are too fat anyway.
I’ve heard this for quite a while, but I’ve also heard that whether that same family gets any assistance from the church, their local stake, like food, is entirely dependent on their bishop.
I have had to educate quite a few people that “Mormon bishop” does not mean what it means in any other church; he’s more like what a Presbyterian would refer to as an elder, I think. The Methodists would let him be on a committee, like The Methodist Men, which is pretty much open to any adult male, or we’d let him teach Sunday School. Well, not Mitt, because he wouldn’t be qualified to do that much.
suzanne
@opie jeanne: Hugs. I hope you’re finding some peace.
I have some Mormon relatives, too….my mother’s cousin and her family. I hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it, I’m sure they baptized my grandfather and grandmother. My grandfather was a deeply spiritual and undemonstrative person, and he was not a fan of Mormons, to put it kindly. My grandmother went to church to save social face, but really thought it was all bullshit. The idea of baptizing either of them is ludicrous to me. But ludicrous is what Mormons do best.
Another Halocene Human
@opie jeanne: those 3 were the names I recognized also. The Profits.
NotMax
@James E. Powell
Asking again because (a) others may find it useful, and (b) it is common netiquette to update URLs on a blogroll when they change.
opie jeanne
@Another Halocene Human: Profits. Nicely put.
I dated a Mormon boy very briefly in HS. It was about then that I realized that I was grateful to my parents for dragging me to Sunday School at the Methodist church from the time I was very little. his family invited me to dinner one Sunday evening and the missionaries were waiting for me in the living room, for the First Talk. I alternated between amusement and outrage at the arrogance of trying to convert me, a kid, but tried to hide both. They were so simplistic, they must meet a lot of people who are really dumb.
They asked me if I knew what a prophet is. I was snotty (I was 15) so I told them yes, it’s like a guy with a hotline to God. Then I just smiled and nodded and got the heck out of the room. I think I excused myself to the bathroom, then circled back through the rear hallway to the kitchen, avoiding the living room entirely.
Another Halocene Human
@NotMax: John is engaged in a one blog protest to try to convince Poblano to abandon the Darkside AKA the NYT and its Villager editorial staff and its Paywall of Doom. He will do this by giving the defunct blog higher PageRank than the current one. Muwahahaha! And to think–stolidi ridebant!
burnspbesq
@Corner Stone:
I’ll add a hearty “stick a chainsaw up your ass and pull the cord.”
TenguPhule
No, getting a sharp iron spike rammed up his ass and leaving him stuck on to impale himself to death over several days might be the worst thing that could happen to him, behind being fed alive to South American Army ants or being stabbed with old nails through his hands and feet and then dying from gangrene while being mocked by his former victims.
Getting Booted out of the Mooch and Loot Church would be at best a minor dip in the road for Mitt Romney. Let’s not kid ourselves here.
TenguPhule
Pans. It was clean *pans*. This has been another edition of Nitpicking against that inevitable Politico Factcheck.
hoodie
I doubt the LDS higher ups give a shit about the remainder trust only giving 8%, because the point is putting something over on loser non-LDS taxpayers. Hell, they were probably in on planning it. From what I’ve seen, the Mormon hierarchy (not the rank and file) is like a criminal conspiracy, i.e., Mormons were Scientologists long before L. Ron Hubbard put out his first shitty paperback. I am still shocked that evangelicals are voting for this weasel but, then again, their leaders are just as corrupt. Shows that racism is thicker than sectarianism, I guess.
rikyrah
I’m with hoodie.
Tom
Exactly!
graves007
For a country with a shitload of religious dolts, you sure do screw each other over…legally of course.