NEW: @realdonaldtrump has spent $400M+ in his own cash on property since ‘06, defying normal real-estate practices. https://t.co/4ulKSCB5zV
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) May 5, 2018
Be kinda nice if this scheduled post is outdated by the time it appears, but…
This may turn out to be the most important piece about Trump in a long time. Where he found hundreds of millions in cash, and why he’d take the risk of committing it in a decade of near-zero interest bank loans, are questions he will not want investigators to explore. https://t.co/HmehPy3zFj
— Barton Gellman (@bartongellman) May 6, 2018
… Trump’s vast outlay of cash, tracked through public records and totaled publicly here for the first time, provides a new window into the president’s private company, which discloses few details about its finances.
It shows that Trump had access to far more cash than previously known, despite his string of commercial bankruptcies and the Great Recession’s hammering of the real estate industry.
Why did the “King of Debt,” as he has called himself in interviews, turn away from that strategy, defying the real estate wisdom that it’s unwise to risk so much of one’s own money in a few projects?
And how did Trump — who had money tied up in golf courses and buildings — raise enough liquid assets to go on this cash buying spree?…
To total up Trump’s cash payments in real estate transactions, The Washington Post examined land records and corporate reports from six U.S. states, Ireland and the United Kingdom. These records show purchase prices for Trump’s properties, details about any mortgages and — in the United Kingdom and Ireland — the amount of cash Trump plowed into his clubs after he bought them. The Post provided the figures it used to the Trump Organization, which did not dispute them…
During the 2016 campaign, Trump continued to brag about how he’d mastered the art of spending other people’s cash.
“I do that all the time in business: It’s called other people’s money. There’s nothing like doing things with other people’s money because it takes the risk,” Trump told a campaign-trail audience in North Carolina in September 2016. “You get a good chunk of it, and it takes the risk.”
Trumpworld laundering Russian/Ukrainian money through US real estate contributes to unaffordable housing. Boom, there's your campaign ad for any Democrats still worried about how to message Russiagate to pocketbook voters.
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 6, 2018
Did he have a choice? Who would loan him money? https://t.co/Ig0TJbR0ct
— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) May 5, 2018
Good Q. @erictrump says that the family *chose* the cash route, even tho banks were willing to lend. And they did still have @DeutscheBank. https://t.co/RpG7OXZBNc
— David Fahrenthold (@Fahrenthold) May 5, 2018
The most obvious question: there's a big mismatch here between Trump's net assets/net income versus the scale of his all-cash outlays. Does Trump have undeclared silent business partners in his post-2006 acquisitions? If so … who? https://t.co/I02FDD7TiA
— David Frum (@davidfrum) May 5, 2018
2006 matches when Cohen came into his orbit. And a book released next week says Cohen was hired as a favor to his father-in-law Fima Shusterman, who appears to have been a silent partner in Trump's businesses. Cohen entered Trump world as a conduit for many from Russia/Ukraine. https://t.co/G2CPBH6vtd
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 6, 2018
It's honestly gobsmacking to think he ever had this sort of liquidity. And oh look, right around the time he hired a new lawyer with deep family ties to organized crime on two continents. https://t.co/R9wMmGCsQR
— zeddy (@Zeddary) May 6, 2018
A couple years ago, I theorized that Trump’s self-reported low utilization rate for debt was due to the ridiculously overinflated valuations he’d put on his assets. An overlapping or independent explanation may be widespread money laundering. https://t.co/JGj31xRIxI
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) May 5, 2018
2/ There is a reason Trump has so many shell LLC's for each business entity.
One manages the day to day biz, the others can be used to hide the real investors. If there are no loans, there need be no disclosure what partners or debts exist.https://t.co/SqXJRCU441— (((STOP))) tRumpnado (@Trumpnado2016) May 5, 2018
It is very interesting to see all of this reporting on Trump's cash heavy business making very shady real estate purchase while the reporters try to use every phrase in the book except "money laundering"
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) May 6, 2018
Elizabelle
Thank you for highlighting this one, Anne. Have meant to read it. Look forward to jackals’ comments.
geg6
Farenthold deserves all the Pulitzer’s. He’s a national treasure.
Platonailedit
What were IRS, FBI, SEC and the other so called financial watchdogs doing in all those years of blatant money laundering by twitler & co? Farenthold is doing their jobs now.
JPL
Yup he’s the puppet.
stan
Pretty obvious this is money laundering for all the reason already stated.
The only *legit* alternative explanation would be that after years of investing, trump’s businesses suddenly started throwing off so much cash (profit) that he was able to have a pile of liquidity to invest in new projects. But again, for all the reason already given, that is unlikely as hell. And even if it were true, when money is almost free you don’t stop borrowing it.
Gee, I bet a look at his personal and business tax documents would reveal all this.
efgoldman
No wonder he wouldn’t release his tax returns. Not that it matters to the mouth breathers.
randy khan
I doubt Trump’s disdain for the media (other than Fox) is sufficiently fine-grained for this, but if he has an enemies list, Farenthold has to be pretty high on it.
A little bit of me asks why this kind of reporting wasn’t done during the campaign. The answer, I’m afraid is kind of boring – at first, nobody took Trump seriously, so the resources were directed at Jeb!, Walker, and Ted
BundyCruz*, then once he became a serious prospect there was so much low-hanging fruit that this kind of thing, which requires a fair amount of shoe leather (virtual, in this case) fell by the wayside.*Okay, technically the wrong serial killer, but you get the idea.
germy
Okay, now you’ve crossed the Red Line.
Roger Moore
I’m going to go with overlapping. One of the purposes of the absurdly high valuations is to make money laundering easier, since it lets you launder more money with each transaction. This kind of thing does make you wonder how much of the high-end real estate market is about buying homes and how much is about laundering money and parking assets.
satby
And this should have all been known before the election. Before he even ran. If the NYT ever had a real journalist on staff it might have been reported at some point in the 10 FUCKING YEARS before the election.
But I’m not bitter. Much.
oatler.
Look at at Trump. He’s already burning in his own damnation.
jonas
@Platonailedit: Probably the same thing they were doing while Madoff was running his scam — letting themselves be distracted/bought off/dazzled by NY celebrity wealth. The fact that he wouldn’t release his tax returns should have told everyone right there that he was a crook.
Chyron HR
@geg6:
Yeah but he said that voting for Neoliberal Shillary was preferable to letting literal nazi plutocrats destroy the country, so he is the devil. – Rose Twitter, probably
LAO
Chait’s take on the story is, I think, pretty accurate, LINK.
It will certainly be interesting to see how this all plays out.
jonas
@satby: Do you know how many resources it takes to cover a private email server? It’s only a single newspaper! Have some sympathy!
germy
Why did they wait for the asshole to win the election?
Roger Moore
@Platonailedit:
The IRS is being systematically starved so they can’t go after rich tax frauds. The FBI mostly focuses on kidnappers and bank robbers rather than financial crime, and there’s some reason to think the New York branch has been officially discouraged from looking into Trump’s affairs. The SEC has also been handcuffed. Basically, our justice system has been told to focus on small-time criminals and mostly let white collar crime go. That’s what happens when the white collar criminals get enough money to buy our politicians.
SFAW
I realize I’m being a picky SOB, but can we please spell Fahrenthold’s last name correctly?
Normally I would not give a shit, but I don’t want him mistaken for noted scumbag Blake Farenthold. [Yes, I realize anyone with two brain cells to rub together would not make that mistake, but still …]
rikyrah
Following the money was ALWAYS the story.
rikyrah
In moderation, please help.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
The Mercers owe SEVEN BILLION IN TAXES….
I know Wesley Snipes reads the story about that and goes – ‘they locked my Black Behind up for 3 Million!’
rikyrah
Woman turns $18 bet on Kentucky Derby into $1.2 million https://t.co/OqFeW2cFoT pic.twitter.com/UMwjbTJmMt
— KSDK News (@ksdknews) May 7, 2018
jonas
I’ve always been skeptical about whether Mueller will actually produce a smoking collusion gun around the stolen DMC emails and the Russian social media shenanigans. He might, but I think the much bigger, more substantial case being built is that Trump has been, essentially, a Russian asset in the Oval Office by virtue of being compromised by his, ahem, “business” contacts across the former Soviet Union. I think Mueller came in and essentially said “let’s start following the money.” Everyone and everything in the Trump campaign seemed to have these weird Russian connections. Trump knew his exposure to Russian cash was a vulnerability, so the only people he could bring on board were those who were also compromised by, or indifferent, to Russian corruption — people like Flynn, Manafort, Cohen, etc. Cohen may have been too close for comfort, though. Trump kept him at arm’s length, apparently with instructions to cover the paying-off-mistresses business.
rikyrah
Josh Marshall has been on it!
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
Unless they can use their influence over the government to convince somebody to let it go. Is it any wonder they think it’s worth it to invest hundreds of millions into buying influence?
The Moar You Know
My wife and I were both laughing during our last refi: it was the bottom of the rate swing. Free money, really. So why would you spend cash on real estate at all?
The reason is obvious: dirty money needs a cleaning!
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
I would be very curious to see what percentage of residential property in So Cal is owned by non-citizens. We already have a lot of places being bought up by Chinese oligarchs, and probably Russian and Armenian ones as well in this area. It’s not the only thing driving our prices, but it sure doesn’t help.
oatler.
Like St George (Carlin) sez, let’s go after the rich white bankers who launder the money.
Another Scott
It seems blatantly obvious where the money came from and why when one looks at Trump’s Timeline in 2005-2006:
Etc., etc.
Cheers,
Scott.
MattF
And, btw, one can assume that Mueller knew all this no later than about a week after getting the job of special counsel. And presumably before that– he was the FBI director for twelve years, after all.
We all thought, ‘Oh,it’s money laundering’, but now we’re seeing the gory details.
Shalimar
@SFAW: Everyone familiar with Texas political history is trying to forget Ducky Farenthold and remember the name for the honor Sissy Farenthold gave it.
rikyrah
@LAO:
Why Mueller Has to Expose Trump’s Crooked Business Empire
By Jonathan Chait
MattF
@Roger Moore: Yeah. One reason that mid-town Manhattan and high-end London are so much less alive than they once were is that they’ve been depopulated.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
He’s why I subscribed to WaPo, and I haven’t regretted it. For politics they are miles ahead of NYT.
Waldo
So let’s say the Dems retake the House and Senate (a long shot, I know) in November. Could they make it a law that presidential candidates must disclose tax returns for the past 15 years? Spanky would veto it, of course, but that would be the point — make him own it.
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
Russian oligarchs are a huge driver in the high end New York and London real estate markets – they buy really expensive apartments and don’t use them, or only use them a couple of times a year. They pay cash, probably even at a disadvantageous exchange rate, just to get their money into stable countries where Vlad can’t take it away on a whim.
It’s sort of good news/bad news for the cities. They get a lot of real estate tax revenue from people who use no services to speak of (as it’s not like they take the subway or put their kids in New York public schools), but outside of real estate, they don’t actually contribute much to the local economy, and their presence drives up prices for everyone else. And, in practice, real estate developers don’t ask any questions if they’re getting paid.
Jamey
@geg6: His brother, Blake, must be so proud!
Kay
@SFAW:
I’m happy for him, so glad to spell his name right. I felt like the Trump Foundation stuff was itself Trumpian bullshit so exposing it was not a big enough job for someone so talented. Trump’s “charities” are as phony as Ivanka.
This is the real money. This is what people needed to know prior to the election, but better late than never.
randy khan
@Waldo:
Even if the Dems get the Senate, it would have to get past a Republican filibuster, but I like the idea anyway. Make the Republicans either vote for it or own their unwillingness to require transparency.
MattF
@Waldo: Lots of unhatched chickens there. I do like the prospect of forcing Trump et. al. to lie about their finances. It reinforces the basic narrative of lying about everything all the time.
MattF
@SFAW: Yeah, gulity. I’ll do better. Promise.
Kay
But that’s never been the standard. No one thinks “reporters” are federal prosecutors or a judge and jury. I hope. Since they’re not. It’s never been the standard that the allegation has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in the legal system.
Why a special Trump standard? Because they aren’t really much use as “reporters” if all they feel they can contribute is a link to an indictment or a conviction. The idea here is we would know BEFORE we hired the criminal.
I can read a complaint or a indictment or a plea deal or a judicial determination – I don’t need them for that. I already pay thousands of public employees to write those.
They didn’t have any problem covering Whitewater or Benghazi or the email “crimes” without the criminal standard of proof.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
I would want to look at non-residents rather than non-citizens. There are a fair number of green card holders and other non-citizens living here who own property. That said, it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of outside money to disrupt the whole market. Real estate tends to take its cues from the high end, so a few percent of rich outsiders using property as a financial instrument rather than a home could distort the whole market.
patrick II
Here’s a choice: don’t buy golf courses if you can only do so using dirty money. I never have, and, although I miss owning a golf course, I am otherwise o.k.
Kay
Trump himself set this standard- he announced that the only thing he could be investigated for was “collusion” and then he announced it couldn’t be discussed without a conviction.
That’s bullshit. That standard applies to no other pol and never has.
sdhays
Back in the before times, I remember many (somewhat) knowledgeable people voicing skepticism that Spanky even had the liquidity to finance his campaign. I really wonder now if some of that money was laundered directly as well (at this point it’s all dirty, but did he specifically get cash infusions to prop up his nascent campaign?).
JPL
@Kay: Trump also stated that his business affairs were off limits. We’ll see how that goes.
Please someone flip.
Anonymous At Work
Democrats in Congress, if they retake either Chamber, need to make a big show of hiring a lot of English-to-Russian translators for when they question each and every Trump appointee. “Have you now or have you ever met with a person of Russian descent who had a job connected to the Russian government or mafia?” Even the judges.
Shell
On the morning news it said that the White House ‘has a new communication strategy’ Translation: “Guiliani, will you please STOP TALKING!”
Roger Moore
@randy khan:
We have a similar issue with Chinese oligarchs here in Southern California. The next city over from mine (Arcadia) has started using the term “mansionization” to describe the process of replacing older, quite large houses with full-on mansions.
The neighborhood I’m most familiar with was built in the 1950s with large (3000-4000 sq ft), ranch-style houses on 1/2 acre+ lots. They were built for rich people, but rich people in the 50s were nothing like rich people today. As the current owners die or sell out, developers are tearing down those old ranch houses and building 8,000-12,000 sq ft palaces. I think they’re often used for a month or two a year when the owner is visiting the area on a business trip- who wants to stay in a hotel when you can stay in your own home- and a fair number of families send their children here so they can go to the excellent Arcadia schools and have a better chance of getting into UC. The whole process is completely throwing off the regional housing market.
Kay
@JPL:
“Trump” didn’t actually say it. Two NYTimes reporters said it and then asked him to endorse their “red line” phrase. Which he did.
I’m not familiar with this new rule, that white collar crimes committed by the President are somehow off-limits. I’m not familiar with it because they invented this standard. Someone should alert the Clinton’s that land deals are off-limits. This standard was invented in January of 2017.
This just gets dirtier and dirtier. If it’s competently investigated I think we end up with a lot of fancy people implicated. Trump didn’t do this alone. He had powerful friends. Maybe all those “burn it down” folks were right. Maybe it is time to “drain the swamp” – we can start with the biggest swamp rat of them all- the President.
What if we find out there was massive money laundering? Why wasn’t he ever prosecuted? Who protected all these people?
LAO
@Kay: I don’t think Trump’s self-imposed limit on what criminal conduct can be investigate will hold up in the end. Its shameful that the Republican Party is enabling his delusional behavior. (I’m not speaking about impeachment, which will always be a political act but about interfering with the DOJ.)
Chyron HR
@Waldo:
No, because
the junior Senator from Vermontmessiah would call a fatwah on anyone who tried.Kay
You really get a sense of how unusually squeaky clean the Obama’s were looking at this crew. Lordy.
50 years Trump et al have been running a white collar white crime ring and NO ONE was prosecuted.
glory b
@Mnemosyne: As an aficionada of real estate pron, I have been a fan of “Million Dollar Listing”( but not so much that I can remember the channel it’s on).
I was only mildly curious at the time, but A LOT of the buyers were Chinese, Russian and Eastern European. In many cases, they bought them through agents who would snap a few pictures of the unit (they were always in New York, LA and Miami), send the pictures to the buyer, who was always “too busy” to come to the US to see what they were buying, and then quote a price.
They were ALWAYS all cash deals.
I’m looking back on this with different eyes.
rikyrah
@satby:
Phuck that.
I.AM.BITTER.
prostratedragon
@Roger Moore: This NYT series from several years ago might give some hints. (I haven’t reread it lately.):
LAO
@patrick II: Wait, do I understand Podhoretz correctly? Trump is a terrible businessman, banks wouldn’t loan to him, so “laundering” dirty money was the only option left to Trump? What the MF has happened to the Right?
Kay
@LAO:
I don’t know if it will or not. I don’t think one can reasonably assume this is all “Trump” at this point. Other people will be implicated. They either actively assisted or looked the other way. These transactions should have drawn attention. They’re huge.
Platonailedit
@Kay: Exactly. Laws are only for little people?
Yarrow
This is an excellent article. Thanks for highlighting it.
rikyrah
@randy khan:
ICAM
Make them all own it.
Another Scott
@JPL: Just about every public utterance by Trump gives away the game. In addition to the usual Projection affliction that (almost) all Republicans have, he lies so transparently badly. One of his many tells is “believe me!”.
“Hillary has no stamina!!”
“I’m the healthiest man to ever serve as president!!”
“I want to release my taxes, but I’m under audit!!”
“I give millions to charity!!”
“I have no business deals in Russia!!”
“It’s a witch hunt!!”
Yada, yada, yada.
Cheers,
Scott.
LAO
@Kay: I’m going to disagree with one (minor) point — I think in the world of big money real estate, these transactions aren’t that large standing alone. For example, one deal was for $12.5 million. But I definitely agree that others have engaged in similar behavior.
rikyrah
AL,
Good post. Thanks for the article and tweets.
Jeffro
@patrick II:
SERIOUSLY!
Also, if John Podhoretz really wants to ask “who would loan him money?”, perhaps he could explore the many reasons why the answer is “no one”. It’s not ‘poor Donald, no one will loan him money’; it’s ‘Donald the fraud can’t get a loan – too fucking bad’
Kay
@LAO:
I mean, would you have fall of your chair with shock if we find out someone like Cuomo has some ties here? I wouldn’t. It’s real estate. Tangible. Records. Titles. Transfers. They weren’t running a car wash in New Mexico. They need powerful people on the inside.
rikyrah
@Kay:
IF it looks like a duck…
And sounds like a duck..
And, everyone else who displays the same behavior is a duck…
THEN, IT’S A MUTHAPHUCKIN’ DUCK!!
M-O-N-E-Y-L-A-U-N-D-E-R-I-N-G!
LAO
@Kay: I find myself in the uncomfortable position of defending law enforcement/DOJ — I should not have gotten out of bed this am — local federal law enforcement is not a “big picture” operation, by what I mean it tends to examine “the trees” and miss “the forest.” Had law enforcement successfully broken the Russian Mafia (it is my observation that they haven’t yet) then the money laundering would have hit the feds radar. FWIW, it’s a tremendous flaw in the system.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Stories about this all the time. Lots of caveats, and estimates. A couple of tidbits from a recent article.
The story also notes that Vancouver slapped a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers, which seemed to have at least a short term affect on the housing market there.
Getting the lowdown on a weasel like Trump takes a lot of time-consuming digging. Good on WaPo for taking the task on.
LAO
@Kay: I would be surprised for the reason I outlined in comment #69.
ETA: The sue of shell corporations, which has become standard in real estate transactions, does add a layers of secrecy as to the true/actual owners. I’m not surprised that it wasn’t independently investigated. And just because I’m not surprised doesn’t mean that I’m not disappointed.
Kay
@LAO:
Bur real estate creates records. It has to. There’s an entire, elaborate recording scheme for that sector. They weren’t whiting out a car title – there’s a chain. Probate judges LOVE when dishonest family members purchase real estate with ill-gotten gains stolen from elderly relatives because there’s a tangible asset and a record. It’s the only way they ever get the money back. It’s like “yay! they were dumb enough to buy something we can TRACK”
Yarrow
@LAO: The choice was buy the property with the dirty laundered Russian money or they’d release the kompromat they have on him. Those were his choices.
Aleta
OT
West of the Rockies
I will assume that if we’re just now finding out about this, that means Bobby Three Sticks has been rooting around in the particulars for weeks or months.
I sense a great disturbance in the Trump…
MattF
@West of the Rockies: … billions of immaculately laundered dollars turning towards Washington…
Kay
@LAO:
You probably know more about it than I do but I came into this with some real questions about the FBI and their ability to catch criminals, quite frankly. I don’t have as much faith in them as perhaps other people do. There’s a lot of unsolved crimes washing around. It occurred to me when they couldn’t catch the abortion bomber and it’s just been a slow erosion of faith ever since. They’ll have to explain to me how they miss massive money laundering around real estate. There’s records. There’s a 200 year old system for recording transactions and it’s pretty damn elaborate.
Shalimar
@LAO: The tweet Podhoretz responded to stated Trump used $400 million of his own cash. So no, Podhoretz isn’t admitting the obvious money laundering or responding to it. Just pretending that Trump had that much cash of his own.
geg6
@LAO:
Not to defend J-Pod much (because he doesn’t deserve it), but I don’t think he meant that as a justification for Dolt 45. He meant it as a slam against him. J-Pod is an anti-Trumper.
LAO
@Kay: I hear you and share your frustration.
geg6
@Shalimar:
I think you are all misunderstanding Podhoretz here. From everything I’ve seen from him the last few months, he’s not standing up for Trump in any way. He is not a Trumper.
No Drought No More
When Trump the Transparent pointed to the finish line and called it a red line that could not be crossed by Mueller Inc., it was like John Dillinger phoning Melvin Purvis to tell him what night he planned to see the new Clark Gable movie with his hot girlfriend who liked to dress in red.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
Rolling Stone had a very detailed article about Michael Cohen and his family’s Russian Mob connections last month:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michael-cohens-ties-to-russia-crime-and-trump-w518941
“Regardless of what he did or didn’t know Cohen was able to purchase a $1 million condo at Trump World Tower in 2001, persuading his parents, his Ukrainian in-laws and Garber to do the same in other Trump buildings. Cohen’s in-laws Fima and Ania Shusterman bought three units in Trump World Tower worth a combined $7.66 million “
boatboy_srq
@Platonailedit: IRS and SEC hwve been fighting two decades’ worth of “austerity” budgeting; the Reichwing can’t consistently admit that those two agencies are necessary and keeps trying to defund them. FBI was too busy with emails-eleventy-one to bother with a two-bit gilt-clad slumlord who would never amount to anything.
MCA1
@randy khan: If I’m not mistaken, he hasn’t twit-stormed about Fahrenthold a single time yet. Could be wrong, though.
Someone smarter than me out there noticed a while back that the one individual in the media whose name he never seems to use is Rachel Maddow. Perhaps because she’s been the one person accurately, in great detail, laying out the entire structure of his criminal enterprises for everyone to see, and he doesn’t want her getting any more attention by showing up in his rantings. I mean, she was all over Russian money into his real estate way before everyone else, she broke the Wilbur Ross/Bank of Cyprus connections, etc. Maybe it’s the same thing with Fahrenthold. The actual substance of his reporting, both before and after the election, is devastating, really.
Ruckus
@LAO:
Nothing has happened to them, that’s why they keep doing what they want to fuck people. That has been their goal for ever. And it’s always been about money. They can never have enough because they think they should have it all. And they can’t earn it all, so they have to use, what’s the term, extra legal methodology. First they buy politicians, a number of whom are easily for sale, next the buy the media, next they steal what they can’t buy but because they already own a lot they have to steal as much as possible from each of the lessor people or at least work to make everything the lessor people own worth less, so in comparison they look like they have more. And it isn’t just the American way, this is the conservative way. The order may be changed depending on the country and how much political power they decide to steal.
This is human nature for some percentage of humans. In this country they have convinced nearly half of the population to not only go along but to actively work toward screwing themselves.
Yarrow
Trump Towers Sunny Isle condos have (or had) a Russian lead sales agent and were sold largely to Russians. It’s open, obvious money laundering. We’ve known about this issue for a long time but no one wanted to do anything about it.
Amir Khalid
@Chyron HR:
This use of the term “fatwah” offends me. As used by Muslims it means “guidance”, in matters of faith or practice. I don’t care to see it used to mean an order or incitement to kill a person. Religious leaders who use it that way are themselves murderers.
Ruckus
@Kay:
This is of course a problem with offshore money, how do you track it? Is it legit or is it not? Add in several layers of LLC and the job gets even tougher. It’s not impossible but it takes time and money to do and that money has been cut back considerably, by the people who purchased politicians.
Gravenstone
@Another Scott: I hate my life that I can actually hear each of those statements in his fucking obnoxious voice! For that alone I want to punch the fucker square in the larynx, just so he can never utter another word.
cain
whelp.. sorry to threadjack – but since we are talking about assholes and compaies anyways, I just got laid off again, after 6 months, and moving to Denver. I’m wondering when this ride ends and I can find stable employment? Sigh.
Elizabelle
@Kay: The FTF Vichy Times did a big series a few years ago on how difficult it is to ascertain ownership of high dollar real estate in NYC. Shell corporation upon shell corporation masking the actual owners. Privacy for the wealthy, yes, but also easier perhaps to launder dirty money and kleptocrat holdings?
Kind of a shame that that team did not turn its attention to Trump once he announced. They all took him for a buffoon (which he is, pretty much); assumed the heartland would see it too.
Uh, no.
Looking for the NY Times series now.
rikyrah
@MCA1:
After LarryO told him to go ahead and sue him, he’s kept LarryO’s name out his twitter feed too.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Here it is. Vichy Times seemed more focused on foreign ownership of real estate (Malaysians, etc.).
Lots of articles here. If you don’t want to use your clicks (paywall, etc.); let me know: I’ll pull them down for you.
NY Times: Towers of Secrecy: Piercing the Shell Companies
From Manhattan condominiums to California mansions to gentrifying neighborhoods in Brooklyn, shell companies are increasingly pervasive in the world of real estate. These articles explore the people behind the opaque deals.
Appears to be the first of a five-part series: Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate
Shell companies are used to shield the identities of buyers in the competition to secure condos at the Time Warner Center and other high-end buildings. This is the first installment in a five-part series.
February 7, 2015
By LOUISE STORY and STEPHANIE SAUL
rikyrah
@cain:
Sorry to hear the bad news. Sending positive thoughts
MattF
@Elizabelle: Reasonable expectation, since the subject has come up. However, the NYT Magazine has pages and pages and pages of glossy ads from real estate companies, so… maybe not.
Elizabelle
@cain: My sympathies. Do you want to stay in Denver?
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
Everything you need to know about the 2018 midterm elections
What the fuck, NBC? Doesn’t this fucking alarm them? That an unpopular party in control of all branches of the government could still retain power despite history saying they shouldn’t? I realise this was written in December but come on.
Oh. Things can and will change. What an insightful statement! Doesn’t matter how they change or what those changes will result in, such as the destruction of American democracy. Silly me! What was I worrying about anyway?
Yarrow
@cain: That’s a bummer. I remember you moved to Denver and were excited about the job.
rikyrah
Oh Bernie and Jane….
David Cay Johnston asked good questions….still haven’t been answered…
2016- David Cay Johnston
Tax Transparency: Jane Sanders Claims Returns Released In ‘Every Election’
Richard Tarrant, a successful medical software entrepreneur who ran against Sanders in 2006, told me that had he ever seen either the form 1040 or the complete tax return of Bernie and Jane Sanders, he would have reviewed the document carefully to learn all he could about their finances — and whether the tax return showed any political vulnerabilities in that race. Tarrant, who had a big interest in seeking the Sanders’ returns, said he never saw one.
Michael Briggs, chief press spokesperson for the Sanders campaign, did not respond to questions I submitted in writing.
The silence from Briggs is itself troubling, since his employer is campaigning as Mr. Transparency.
Now there may well be nothing of consequence in the Sanders tax returns. But that is not the issue. Sanders is giving aid to those politicians who want to end the practice of disclosing tax returns, while marketing himself as a politician untainted by big donations and lobbyists.
He needs to walk his talk.
And meanwhile if anyone out there has an old Sanders tax return, please send it to me: [email protected]
http://www.nationalmemo.com/tax-transparency-jane-sanders-claims-returns-released-in-every-election/
gvg
The rich hate the IRS and have been trying to austerity them to death since at least the 80’s. Different rich have different reasons/guilty secrets to cover up so by underfunding the IRS and the SEC they have created a situation where lots of OTHER crooks are getting away with financial crimes. I think most of them are doing more ordinary crooked stuff like just lying on income taxes. Probably they always tried this but I noticed it especially after communism fell and the cold war ended. Right after is when all the tax cuts seemed to accelerate. They called it the peace dividend and any fool who could talk big about how huge prosperity was easy, just cut rich/business taxes could get elected. Politicians who talked caution and real fiscal care, not to mention public interest, didn’t get reelected. Back then it wasn’t just democrats losing elections, it was older style Republicans who were actually cautious and tried to be logical. That is when I thought the GOP lost it’s moderate centerists and the Democrats got wiped out many places. That’s also when we reacted by going into a defensive crouch and Clinton triangulating was actually better than losing completely. It’s also when the nuts starting gaining in the GOP.the greedheads who only wanted power and wealth let a lot of fools in because they were loyal votes until nothing was left but extremists who were also fools.
Regular audits are good business practice and good government but they cost money and prevent full self indulgence. I don’t see how to make “more IRS agents and taxes” into a winning strategy but IMO that’s what is needed for lots more reason than just Trump.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@gvg:
Say that many rich right wingers are buying up GOP pols so they can destroy democracy as we know it and steal from ordinary people. In those exact words.
Yarrow
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: OMG, that fucking Ebola scare. It absolutely vanished in the media the day after the election. No one talked about it at all. They created the distraction (distraction being the overblown media coverage complete with scare graphics) and quit talking about it right on schedule, just as their masters instructed them to.
charluckles
Why weren’t we exploring these issues during the campaign? Forget the details, no one in major media outlets noticed the shocking change in investment strategy? Trump’s only supposed accomplishment was his business, journalists should have picked it over with a fine tooth comb and demanded answers from the Trump campaign.
eclare
@cain: Oh how awful….
zhena gogolia
@No Drought No More:
Manhattan Melodrama!
jonas
@Kay:
If you can claim you don’t know, or have any way of knowing, what the source of someone’s money is, particularly a foreigner, who’s to say you can’t sell them a condo? Without some sort of ridiculously obvious paper trail with re: lines like: “Plan to Stash Looted Funds!! Secret!!” written on them, that’s probably pretty hard to prosecute. I think where Trump is more vulnerable is on the tax front. If his business has been running on foreign cash the past 10-15 years, there’s opportunity for all kinds of tax skulduggery there. And finally, there’s the compromise/compromat. If Trump’s businesses rely on these Russians, what can they — and, ultimately, the capo di tutti capi, Putin himself — hold over the POTUS and his family?
zhena gogolia
@cain:
Oh, I’m sorry. That really sucks.
Yarrow
@charluckles: The bar was so low that David Fahrenthold won a Pulitzer essentially for picking up the phone and calling organizations that Trump said he had donated to and asking them if the donations had actually occurred. That’s good journalism on his part, but it’s not exactly groundbreaking stuff. It’s basic investigative legwork. Call and ask. That won the Pulitzer. Little wonder they didn’t dig into his property purchasing tactics.
trnc
@Roger Moore: Or become them.
MattF
@Yarrow: I think there was an additional thread in that award: the Pulitzer committee was saying “Hey, lookee here! This is actual journalism!” Which, under the circumstances, was worth pointing out.
Tokyokie
@? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: The problem for the party engaging in the practice of gerrymandering is that in creating several districts that are “safe” for its candidates, say 5-6 point margin, while creating a handful of districts in which the opposition party has 50+-point margins, that when a wave election occurs, it magnifies the gerrymandering party’s losses. To which I say, “Tough shit, assholes.” They’re going to have to depend on voter-suppression measures now to protect their majorities.
BruceFromOhio
@The Moar You Know: Heh, same. Pulled a 15-yr down under 3%, knocking almost a percent off what we were paying, and getting a pile of cash to boot for a long-awaited remodel.
Only if you have the right number of flunkies ready for blame allocation and plausible deniability. Otherwise, RICO in the house.
Lulymay
@Roger Moore: You only have to look at Vancouver, BC to see the exact same thing has happened here. There are all sorts of properties sitting vacant (owned by foreign money) and therefore unavailable accommodation. And PLEASE, do not overlook the fact that there are many politicians who have been looking the other way and/or benefit from these transactions.
Tokyokie
@cain: Sorry to hear that. Nearly six years after being laid off from the industry in which I’d basically spent all my working life, I have yet to regain employment at a similar pay level as what I enjoyed previously, despite going back to school for training in a new field. I know it’s tough, but you have to hang in there and keep trying. The alternatives are all worse, and self-pity is a dead-end.
TenguPhule
@Platonailedit:
Trump used a shitload of shell corporations to make it hard to tell who owns who.
Immanentize
@Amir Khalid: I hear you, Amir, but I am certain the term “fatwa” was on almost no one’s radar in the United State’s until some religious person (Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini) decided to
orderguide people to occasion the death of Salman Rushdie. I agree with your position, but that horse left the world barn in 1989.TenguPhule
@rikyrah:
And paid the best team of lawyers to fight the IRS.
burnspbesq
@LAO:
Trump should thank his lucky stars that neither Preet nor Mary Jo is running SDNY any more. They would kill his ass.
Xenos
400 million? That is all?
A reasonably competent and professional real estate fund should be able to raise, invest, and manage 10x that in ten years. Aside from asset management team you would need what, 50 people in you hq to run that business?
Immanentize
@jonas: There are actual “red flags” in money laundering prosecutions (funny, I was just looking at a list of them for my class). Two big ones that would apply here are — 1) Cash payments for extremely expensive items that are normally financed and 2) payments over market value. Red flags are not sufficient proof for conviction, but they are supposed to trigger closer scrutiny by regulators and law enforcement.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
White Collar crime is hard to prosecute. I have to keep reminding normal people about this.
Getting a murder conviction is a goddamn cakewalk for comparison.
Jeffro
@BruceFromOhio: I have a feeling that we’ll be reading a good explanation of how the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act works in either the Post or Times before the week is out.
Peale
@Kay: The carved out space for private banking, asset management and “alternative investments” where they receive lower levels of regulatory scrutiny because they shelter rich people’s money is the issue. The idea that they can go on pretending to use shell companies so that “no one knows who owns what” in real estate is also very suspicious. Eventually, no one will know who owns what and then what? Is there some kind of exemption at the local clerk’s office where middle class people have to prove title and wealthy people don’t?
Immanentize
@TenguPhule:
I’ve always said that murder is just like every other violent street crime but with one fewer witness.
Immanentize
@Jeffro: More likely the Money Laundering and the Montetary Transaction Acts.
trnc
@Roger Moore:
No kidding. We were all supposed to be impressed with corporations like Exxon that gave most of their 73,000 employees a one-time $1000 to $2000 bonus for a total of about $150 million. The tax break gave Exxon $5.9 billion with a B for one quarter.
Ruckus
@Tokyokie:
I’m back in the industry that I started in, over half a century ago. Just pure luck I got the job. When I got this it had been 7 yrs and a major recession since I had a study paycheck. And I don’t make now what I was then. I quit that job 12 yrs ago because it turned into a dead end with a drunk for a boss but 2 yrs later the job was gone anyway, business sold out beneath the employees.
I’m hoping better for cain. Because as you said, the alternatives are worse and self pity gets you nothing.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
And they do, of the shell corp. Which in turn has no real records to track any further. And are located outside of the region of the property, often outside of the nation of the real property. Which makes further trackback difficult to impossible unless you’ve got time and resources to burn.
burnspbesq
@Roger Moore:
Your description of Arcadia also fits Walnut and a big chunk of Irvine.
TenguPhule
@Kay:
1. Its a hard to prosecute crime that takes an enormous amount of time and resources, often across multiple states/countries. The people who do this are inventive AF when it comes to making it hard to track them back as original owners.
2. Its not a sexy urgent crime like murder or child pron.
3. CIA & NSA don’t work well with the FBI, and those would be the ones actually seeing the people making the money moves first.
LAO
@Immanentize: Man, I say that too.
@burnspbesq: I am amazed that a could so dislike an individual professionally and yet, now, so appreciate him on twitter and podcasts.
cain
@rikyrah:
Thank you! It was so abrupt. Wierd thing was that it was almost done in the same way I got laid off last time. I really hate companies right now.
TenguPhule
@gvg:
Abandon democracy for an enlightened tyrant.
Baud 2020: Get Richie.
Tokyokie
@Ruckus: Well, I used to work as a newspaper copy editor, but the newspaper industry is dead, and nobody thinks he/she needs copy editors any longer, so I harbor no illusions of ever again finding well paying employment in that field of endeavor. But I wish cain all the best. I can’t remember from whence he moved, but I’m under the impression that the Denver job market is pretty good.
TenguPhule
@Tokyokie:
Novel publishing will always need editors.
Jeffro
@Immanentize: Por que no los dos? LOL
jonas
@Immanentize: Right — such behavior would certainly lead you to scrutinize the people buying said property. But what jeopardy does that put a seller or realtor in? If selling high-end real estate to shady foreign investors stashing ill-gotten gains were easy to convict for, there would be a *lot* more people like Trump in jail. The fact that there isn’t leads me to believe it’s in fact a really hard thing to nail people for.
Tokyokie
@TenguPhule: My invariable experience has been that writers who need editing the most think they need it the least, and vice versa. And I doubt that decades’ experience in short-form editing will be seen as much of a qualification for long-form editing. I edited stories to correct errors in spelling, fact, punctuation, grammar, and style, but by the time the copy desk got a story, it was too late and time-consuming to drastically restructure it. My guess is that long-form editing requires more of the sort or structural rearranging that I’ve rarely performed, and never performed on works of 50,000 words or more.
Heidi Mom
@Immanentize: The horse may have left the barn, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t exert ourselves to lead it back to the barn whenever the occasion arises. And the same with “jihad.”
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
UH HUH
UH HUH
Amir Khalid
@Immanentize:
That’s the best answer I could have expected, but I’m still pouting.
Amir Khalid
@Heidi Mom:
Absolutely right.
schrodingers_cat
@Amir Khalid: I feel you. Incorrect usage of karma is my pet peeve, although that’s not the only incorrectly used and/or appropriated word stripped of its original meaning.
Amir Khalid
@Tokyokie:
As a reporter, I both recognised the need for copy editors and resented the hell out of every little tweak they made to my work.
Yutsano
@gvg:
It takes anywhere from 1-3 hours to get an IRS agent on the phone. The number of operators alone has decreased while the population of the country keeps going up. It’s a simple matter of do you want your tax agency to respond to you when you need them?
Also: for every dollar invested in the IRS it yields $4 in revenue for the government. Not investing in that is a criminal neglect on the part of Congress.
And if you think tax cheating is bad now, wait until 2019. There are so many loopholes and gaps in enforcement of the tax law that cheating will almost be the norm.
Patricia Kayden
@satby: Would it have made a difference to his White Supremacist supporters? Or the Bernie Bros? Or those who couldn’t tell the difference between Trump and Secretary Clinton because reasons?
Doubt it. We’ll see in November if Trump’s corruption makes any difference.
Hitless
@Kay: How much investigation was done on the Clinton emails as compared to the possibility that Trump laundered money for the Russian mob? Its enough to make you believe in a media conspiracy.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Patricia Kayden:
It already has.
TenguPhule
@Yutsano:
Worse. Congress Republicans took away so many deductions and exemptions that people like teachers are going to face a choice between correctly reporting their taxes and being able to keep their homes and be able to afford food.
Lack of tax agents, loopholes for the rich and punishing tax increases on the poor is leading to a perfect storm of tax anarchy. And I do not use that word lightly.
Jeffro
OMG Rick Wilson cracks me up…here’s his latest series of tweets directed at Trumpov enablers…
1/6:You know, I wonder if there is even a glimmer of self-awareness in the minds of my Republican friends that the Cohen story is only at about in the beginning of its first act.
2/6: You know after Stormy, it’ll be a long chain of other women, and you’ll be stuck defending every…single…story. None of you have the balls to go to him and tell him to confess and get it all out there.
3/6: You’d rather rub his ho-stank all over your political careers, reveling in service to his Majesty, King Don the Mad.
4/6: Get your comms folks write up the talking points now to save time later. “These new revelations of a payoff to model/escort/actress/reality tv aspirant/adult-film actress change nothing. My loyalty to King Donald is absolute.”
5/6: “I ran on a platform of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and family values, and President Trump has never disappointed me, even as a skeezy train of his pathetic affairs followed by payoffs and NDAs has become a constant drumbeat.
6/6: “In related news, I am unconcerned by polls showing me 8 back in my R+10 district. Nothing to see here. Move along. MAGA.”
BWAH-HA-HAH!
Hey, let ’em find out the hard way, Rick!
Jack the Second
@Another Scott: Believe Me, I’m a Liar
TenguPhule
FTFNYT
Yet Another Constitutional Crisis. YACC.
Yutsano
@TenguPhule: Unfortunately there is a very good system to squeeze the little guy in place. But if one wanted to cheat on taxes 2018 would be the year to start figuring it out. I can already foresee a lot of people are going to have either greatly reduced refunds or small balances from the new tax law. And the Democrats will have to fix that and fast.
moops
@Hitless: investigation by the media? pretty much no actual investigation was done into emails. The media were just gossip mongers and stenographers and generic Hillary-bashers of various flavors.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Regarding #3, in all fairness to the ladies involved…Shit Midas’ own personal ho-stank is a host unto itself. That alone should’ve caused any sane candidates/party to run away from him at the first whiff…
Brachiator
@cain: Sorry to hear about your troubles. Hang in there.
Yutsano
@cain: Ugh. Sorry my man. Maybe we can do another jobs thread to get you (and anyone else who needs it) back into employed status?
TenguPhule
@Yutsano:
Which we can’t. 2021 is the earliest chance we’ll get to do it legally. One of my biggest fears is that we’re going to find ourselves back in power right before all the doggy doo that the GOP has been bagstuffing into the government breaks open and we get the blame for their shit. Again.
Jack the Second
@TenguPhule: God, I wish Amazon would hire some copy editors for Kindle.
Some of the scanned in text is atrocious, a literal atrocity. Words that are uncommon in a standard corpus but common in the book get auto-corrected to the *wrong word* and no one notices. “merc” -> “mere” nearly drove me to violence in one series. And the formatting problems—
Roger Moore
@Lulymay:
It’s not just the politicians. Local citizens benefit when their “neighbors” pay a huge property tax bill and then don’t use public services. And here in California, Prop 13 makes increasing home values a big win for homeowners with no downside. When nearby homes double in value, my home also increases in value, but Prop 13 protects me from having to pay the increased property tax that would go along with the price increase. And once you get a neighborhood with enough absentee owners, you start to lose even the normal resistance to that kind of thing you might expect from neighbors upset about the empty house next door.
Elizabelle
WaPost:
Because arming the contras went so well.
Fuck. We are living through the 1980s again, fer sure, as farce. (Kay brought up the 1980s quality of Trump and his circle of the compromised and senile.)
Doug
This is the kind of reporting that gets people killed in Putin’s Russia. I sure hope that Bezos and the Post are taking good care of David F.
chris
@cain: Sorry for your troubles. I had hopes that Linux would get a boost from all the privacy concerns but I guess there aren’t enough paranoids like me ;-)
Can you set up as a Linux guru for hire? “Have GNU, will travel.”
Elizabelle
The WaPost; sounds like NRA prez is kinda ceremonial because, really, had any of you ever heard of Pete Brownell? (Charlton Heston, sure, but for other reasons too …)
SO: the real power in the NRA is the EVP/CEO — the execrable Mr. LaPierre (French for stone, FWIW).
And Ollie is leaving Fox News. That might kinda be a two-fer for him.
Roger Moore
@TenguPhule:
It’s even harder when you don’t try.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
Kinda hard to try when political appointees demand quick prosecutions and these investigations can take years to pursue with no guarantee of an actual conviction.
Its that old problem of long term investing vs quarterly profit taking.
Roger Moore
@gvg:
You’re selling it wrong. The argument isn’t “more IRS agents and taxes”; it’s “make rich people pay their fair share”. Rich people have been cheating on their taxes, and they’ve gutted the IRS to make it easy. We’re just proposing to enforce existing tax laws and make the cheaters pony up.
Elizabelle
@Roger Moore: Agreed. Unless you’re a moron (in which case, you’re already in Camp Trump), you can understand that message.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Good old (and he is getting up there) Ollie North.Yet another example of always failing up.
Joyce H
@Xenos:
Competent and professional? You mean, the opposite of the Trump Org. Trump likes to think of himself as an industry titan bestriding the globe, but the Trump Org is actually just a small, family owned and operated business, similar to a family owned chain of dry cleaners. We should all start talking about it that way, too, because it would make him crazier than he already is. The news media should also adopt the formula – “The Trump Organization, a boutique, family-owned and operated business…” with other references to ‘not publicly traded, so its exact valuation will always be uncertain’, and ‘opaque book-keeping’.
Roger Moore
@Hitless:
Very little actual investigation was done on either. There was a lot of reporting on Hillary’s emails, both on her server and the DNC and Podesta hacks, but that was because the story was handed to the media nearly written for them. They never bothered to investigate seriously into questions like why Hillary would want to use her own server instead of the State Department email, or who was responsible for the hacks and what their motivations were. If the media were more interested in serious investigation and less interested in regurgitating predigested pap, the election might have turned out very different.
No Drought No More
America has come a long way since Dick Tuck had a group of Asian American school children hold up a sign in Chinese welcoming Richard Nixon that read, “What about the Hughes Loan?” (as in Howard Hughes).
Cheryl from Maryland
@Tokyokie: If you still want to edit, think about museums. Museum professionals aren’t as hung up on it being “their” writing. It’s also short form — exhibit didactics need lots of editing because they are so short. Also, museums are now used to working via internet only.
Ruckus
@Yutsano:
Another point.
Rich assholes hire accountants and tax lawyers to help hide the things they can and to minimize the tax costs they can’t. Normal people can’t afford that. I have a friend who taught tax law at a major socal university and he told me once, when working on my corp taxes that he could eliminate all my federal taxes but the IRS would contend every single issue. He guarantied that everything he did would not cost me a dime to the government and be fully legal but the cost to pay him to fight for every thing we did would more than wipe out the tax bill. At some point in the taxing curve that easily reverses and it’s worth every penny to the wealthy. So they mostly aren’t even paying their fair share of the tax rates now, while a lot of the rest of us pay a higher percentage of our income. That doesn’t even include the scams that people are discussing above, the cash payment for an expensive home as an investment to park questionable funds in.
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
And when they can, they get the politicians to write tax laws in ways that favor them, like having a lower tax rate for capital gains than earned income, or the carried interest loophole.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
It’s why they buy politicians ITFP.
It’s always the money.
The rich know far better than anyone else the meaning of follow the money. It’s why they work so hard to block the trail. Look where the LLC started in the first place, WY. What the hell did they need a limited liability corp for in the first place? A regular corp not good enough? Or not hidden enough? In CA the minimum tax liability is the same for either type of corp so that’s not it. Yes I understand they are somewhat different but the ease of setting up an LLC makes setting up a chain of them a lot easier and probably less traceable.
Tokyokie
@Cheryl from Maryland: Thanks for the tip, but I’m moving into health information management (I just finished the last assignment for the last course in a junior college HIM program) and away from editing. Now I have to decide whether to pursue a BSN or a master’s in HIM, but that’ll depend on where I find employment. I won’t be taking any courses this summer for the first time in a while as I prepare for a couple of certification exams, and come fall, at most I’ll be taking an intro statistics class I haven’t ever gotten around to taking.
MCA1
@Ruckus: Let’s redirect this just a touch. I get and share the concern about tax and other economic/business/fiscal being shaped by the richest. But LLC’s, which comprise about 2/3 of all the companies in America, are not in and of themselves a dodgy concept or inherently corrupt. Pass-through tax treatment still yields tax revenues, and the lack of personal liability to equityholders allows for the local restaurateur and your painter and my landscaper and your wife who’s branching out into interior decorating to start businesses without fear that if someone sues them we’ll lose everything. Limited liability companies (not corporations) were started because the s-corp. was the only thing that offered those two features of pass-through (meaning, not double) taxation and limited individual equityholder liability, and the s-corp. heavily limits the amount of shareholders. The idea is perfectly legit, and allows for a lot of flexibility in operating documentation. That’s not to deny it’s abused in some scenarios and state laws, in a race to bottom, have made the ability to create opaque ownership structures to hide individual interests too easy.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
There is a considerable amount of cheating across every income level, and this hurts every honest hard working taxpayer. But more to your point, the rich assholes have got Congress to write new tax laws which are so favorable to them that they don’t have to hide nearly as much shit as they used to. And Trump was able to get stupid voters to buy into this by throwing them crumbs of tax cuts.
And as Yutsano and others have noted, Congress has stupidly gone to war against the IRS, making it tougher for them to do their jobs and to actually serve the public. Worse of all, reining in the IRS has made it easier for unscrupulous employers to prey on lower income people, especially undocumented workers. And this will get much worse in 2019.
And of course, it will be harder for the IRS to investigate scams and the tax side of real estate money laundering schemes.
MisterForkbeard
@cain: I’m late on this, but what’s your field? I’m potentially hiring people in Denver, as are a few of my friends.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
Aspiring author here. There’s actually a pretty big market for freelance copyeditors because self-publishing is now a viable option for non-cranks thanks to e-publishing. Your best bet would be to team up with someone who does developmental editing to start with because developmental editing (working on story structure) is totally different than copy editing. A lot of developmental editors are not strong copyeditors and hire freelancers to do that.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Sorry, but I’m going to have to come down on the “evil” side of the “evil or stupid” question when it comes to gutting the IRS. The politicians who are doing it know exactly what the effect will be, and that’s exactly what they’re after.
Mnemosyne
@Tokyokie:
Oops, saw this after the edit window closed. Still, if you were interested in keeping a hand in with copyediting on a freelance basis, that’s an available route. I managed to maneuver myself into doing copyediting at my current job even though it’s not actually one of my job functions.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
OK. How ’bout we split the difference?
Here’s the fun thing with the new tax law. Congress did their best to help the rich. Evil. But they wrote the law so poorly that they ending up creating new problems. They cut the IRS budget to in part to prevent them from going after bad rich assholes. But now the IRS is collapsing under the burden of having to write all the new regulations and instructions created by the new tax law. This makes it harder to help anyone, including the rich assholes. Stupid. The wheel goes round and round.
And of course, these same idiots who want to hand out billions in tax cuts to the rich and make it tougher to police money laundering schemes also want to spend billions and more billions on defense, but don’t want the IRS to collect tax revenue.
oatler.
@trollhattan: Remember the good old days when Lee Purcell was the NRA prez? Nobody complained, we just went hubba hubba!
“that’s how they get ya”
Kathleen
Deleted.
Dev Null
@chris: “Have GNU, will travel.”
I am totes stealing this. (And if it’s not original with you, no need to ‘fess up.)
Dev Null
@Roger Moore:
I was going to agree with you on this point, but a quick online search suggests that something else was going on. Google “State Department email hack”, and there’s reporting by CNN, WaPost, Reuters, Politico, FP, The Hill, Ars Technica, and that’s just the first page of hits… with dates from 2014 thru 2017. From the 2015 CNN hit:
OK, the 2017 stories are post-election, but the headline for the 2017 WaPoop story reads “New details emerge about 2014 Russian hack of the State Dept”, implying reportage in 2014 or 2015.
Rumors about multiple hacks of the State email system were circulating as early as 2011 or 2012, but I saw not one single news report on the hacks. Hmm, well, no … I remember reading a report that State’s email system had temporarily been shut down for cleanup.
Possible that the reporters writing “Russians hacked State” stories were disjoint from the reporters writing “HRC private email server ZOMG” stories. Possible that the latter didn’t know about the hacks, or didn’t care, or didn’t understand the significance, I s’pose… but still … that’s just weird.