US Politics: A Sinematic view on voting rights and the filibuster

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Eh, I could spend a bit discussing the difference between “fairness” (To whom? Off of what baseline? Who decides? What is fair?) and “good policy” (which has two parts, macro and micro; the macro being the underlying policy objectives themselves (for taxes that could be anything from raise revenue, to redistribute income, to redistribute wealth, to encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors) and the micro being an examination of whether the rule is reasonably designed in order to obtain the desired outcome)).  

When wearing certain hat of mine (I volunteer for a bar group that the government asks for white papers etc.), I spend A LOT of time thinking about especially the second point (IDGAF about “fair”).  I have very firm and fixed views on the latter.  Many of which I have described before and aren’t worth repeating here.

And also, I have to work and y’all don’t really care anyhow!

[Kalbear]

Fairness is one of the universal feelings across every single culture and is common in most social animal groups. If you don't factor fairness - or at least some perception of it - into your decision makings you are very likely to make a whole lot of people very, very angry. It is definitely not just a playground viewpoint; it is the impetus for why people will harm themselves in order to harm you. 

You should absolutely give a very large fuck about fairness, because not understanding that will mean you don't understand why people oppose your policies or viewpoints and you will not get anywhere. Or you'll implement policies which will massively bite you on the ass later.

 

[Fragile Bird]

There has been a lot of discussion about how the tax information ProPublica got was obtained, with some speculation that a country like China may have hacked the IRS and sent it to ProPublica in order to cause anger and create even more division between the 1% and the rest of the country. The information arrived anonymously, they say.

Maybe I should have some sympathy for the people who have had their tax information revealed, but I have to admit that my sympathy is very minute for Thiel. He, of course, funded the lawsuit that took down media publisher Gawker, in revenge for the fact they outed him as a gay man in 2011. That's something else I'd normally have a great deal of sympathy about, my sexuality is none of your business. However, as I said, this man was the first investor in Facebook, a platform that has been used to do incredible harm to all kinds of people, and years before the lawsuit he had already been a founder of Palantir, which spies on all of us for the US government, among other things. He has made billions off of AI that spies on us, so there is karma at work here, I think.

I believe ProPublica did further investigation into Thiel, I saw a story that said there was information in public filings created when Thiel applied to move to New Zealand, another reason to dislike the man. Like other billionaires and millionaires he wanted to create a bolt hole to escape to if and when things get bad in the US, for environmental or political or whatever reasons. Quite the amazing phenomena, that, not a super train circling the earth but a hobbit hole.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Mmmm...I'm not sure that the system is unfair per se as having some bad policy features.  Fairness is a playground argument.  

I saw your other comment (and I do care, ) so I won't belabor this point (and it's a topic that probably deserves a separate thread), but fairness is a social construct and it does come into play here. Fairness doesn't have to be equality, or anything close to parity, but a profound sense of lack of fairness is what can cause violence, which I believe you previously said you sought to avoid as a means to change a system.

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And, as to your second point, that is literally my job description.  I mean, I don't recommend positions that I don't think are at least more likely than not to be sustained (that is, we don't peddle shelters), but it is literally my job to understand the rules and advise people how to optimize their after tax position within them.  Please don't be surprised that I think this is just fine.

I know that's your job, but within the field one can separate what is legal from what is ethical. I understand a wealthy businesswoman wanting to reduce her taxes to a certain extent, especially if it involves a business she owns, but there's a point in which a line has to be drawn. I'm aware that you don't like terminology like "tax cheat," but it is a cultural term and the overwhelming majority of tax payers feel it's deeply unfair that they have to pay taxes while the super rich can avoid most, if not all of their tax obligations and then use said savings to pay to keep that practice in place in perpetuity via legal fees and political donations. 

[Kalbear]

41 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I saw your other comment (and I do care, ) so I won't belabor this point (and it's a topic that probably deserves a separate thread), but fairness is a social construct and it does come into play here. Fairness doesn't have to be equality, or anything close to parity, but a profound sense of lack of fairness is what can cause violence, which I believe you previously said you sought to avoid as a means to change a system.

Again, fairness is emphatically not a social construct. It is a genetic part of the human animal at its core. What might be considered fair may be more subjective, but if you are not considering fairness in your policies or plans or goals you are going to have a very hard time with humans. 

 

[Fury Resurrected]

2 hours ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I’m honestly kind of surprised that you don’t think concepts of fairness factor in to this discussion. It’s been ridiculously well-documented that these same billionaires (or their predecessors) had a huge hand in writing those very tax laws from which they are now deriving an outsized benefit.

They’re then turning around and using those gains they’ve given themselves to apply even more pressure to create even more favorable breaks for themselves in the tax code. None of this has happened in a vacuum and every step of the way has been specifically designed to create the reality we’re currently experiencing.

Re: your 2nd point - I really do understand that you are just calling balls and strikes for your audience. I work in the due diligence field for commercial real estate. 
 

I’ve definitely had to tell more than one client “Well, you can probably get self-storage use approved there if you ask the City Council real nice, but your placement is going to cause increased ROW wear-and-tear that will affect nearby properties in the near-to-mid term.”
 

But there’s a difference between that and them telling me that they want to do the same thing on every street corner in the city. Yes, if they greased enough palms and twisted enough arms, I could technically tell them the same answer in every individual case. But if they do that, I’m sure as shit that there are going to be catastrophic transportation issues in the near future because of snowball effect.

 I’m definitely not trying to assign any blame to you, because you obviously didn’t write any of those laws. I just happen to disagree that these leaks were only published for sensationalism’s sake to generate clicks and revenue.

These leaks are in the same category as government intelligence leaks, I believe. There are absolutely valid* reasons that both intelligence and tax returns shouldn’t be public record. However, there are absolutely extraordinary cases where there is a compelling public interest in the release of that information, even if the actions being investigated are legal.

Every one of the billionaires mentioned in that article have a significant amount of influence over every one of our lives. I’d say that’s a compelling public interest.

*Okay, actually I lied - I’m an anarchist, so I don’t believe governments should ever keep secrets from the people because I don’t think there should be any governments to keep secrets. However, IF I did believe in governments, I could understand why there would be legitimate reasons to protect secrets. Cheers! 

Zabz is a lawyer. She is REQUIRED to advise in the interest of her client. That’s her job. Just like a defense lawyer must, whether their client is guilty or innocent. If she advised otherwise based on her own moral ideas to something that was not her client’s best interest as she understood it- she could be in trouble. She absolutely has to look at this in a different way.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

35 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I saw your other comment (and I do care, ) so I won't belabor this point (and it's a topic that probably deserves a separate thread), but fairness is a social construct and it does come into play here. Fairness doesn't have to be equality, or anything close to parity, but a profound sense of lack of fairness is what can cause violence, which I believe you previously said you sought to avoid as a means to change a system.

I know that's your job, but within the field one can separate what is legal from what is ethical. I understand a wealthy businesswoman wanting to reduce her taxes to a certain extent, especially if it involves a business she owns, but there's a point in which a line has to be drawn. I'm aware that you don't like terminology like "tax cheat," but it is a cultural term and the overwhelming majority of tax payers feel it's deeply unfair that they have to pay taxes while the super rich can avoid most, if not all of their tax obligations and then use said savings to pay to keep that practice in place in perpetuity via legal fees and political donations. 

Yeah, probably its own thread.  “Fair” is squishy.  I think that the wealth gap could cause violence (but probably won’t), which is a bit different than “fair” IMO.  

And again, I think we have different views of what is “ethical.”  It is actual malpractice and unethical (from a legal ethics) for me to structure something incorrectly.  Let’s say my client wants to start a business.  They could form a C corp (almost always the wrong answer), an LLC (probably the right answer) or an S corp (could be the right answer).  I am not going to advise my client to form a C corporation, even though they would pay more tax, which you might view as more ethical, and in fact it would be UNethical for me to do otherwise. If you want to have the broader policy debate about whether all entities should be subject to entity level taxation (maybe?) that is a debate we can have (and honestly it could happen because it’s a very attractive system from a compliance and reporting perspective).  

Also I am totally ok with terms like “tax cheat.”  I know what that looks like.  They usually have awesome names for their shelters like “son of BOSS”, “son of Mirrors” (lots of sons), FTC Generators, etc.  

And there are a lot of “structured products” out there with really fun names (some old ones are PHONES and Feline PRIDES) that are maybe more grey, but most of them get killed by ruling.  I personally put SPACs in that bucket.  Let me loose in Treasury and I could write the notice shutting them down tomorrow.

Finally, there are a lot of structures that I am guessing you probably wouldn’t “like”  if you really got into them, but are just totally out there and in the Code or -blessed by case law: spin-offs, “reverse Morris trust” transactions, “granite trust” transactions, Bruno’s transactions, UP-C, publicly traded partnerships, REITs, RICs, etc.  But again none of them are unethical. You may not like the policies that let them occur, but they aren’t aggressive.  

Where taxing authorities globally are focusing their corporate audit energy is on “transfer pricing”.  They are doing that because that is where the money is.  And that goes to an even bigger issue.  If you were focused on “fairness” (and I’m not) you would also have to look at “who should have the right to tax a global dollar of profit”.   I personally believe SOMEONE should tax that dollar, and I will say that under current systems, a lot of companies pay DOUBLE or TRIPLE tax on that dollar of profit (because cross crediting doesn’t work perfectly or different jurisdictions take different views as to which jurisdiction should tax that dollar - there is a process called competent authority to resolve but that’s its own novel).  Anyhow, back to the ole grindstone.

[Fury Resurrected]

And, I disagree with beloved Zabz 100% on fiscal policy. I am absolutely wholeheartedly for wealth redistribution and beheading people like Jeff Bezos. I was raised by a socialist and my native culture is communist. Those are deeply held personal values. But- she totally knows more than me about it. I can disagree and respect her opinion and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever about her moral quality. The only part of the law that deals with fairness is that it is equally applied and the rules are the same for everyone in the same situations. That she is good at her job and views it that way isn’t a reason to imply she’s wrong or unfair. Fairness is a very subjective term. This topic is her turf and she will absolutely slaughter us on any discussion of it and you’re really not hearing her when she’s saying she can only speak to what the law IS and not what it SHOULD BE. Those are entirely separate concepts.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

10 minutes ago, Fury Resurrected said:

And, I disagree with beloved Zabz 100% on fiscal policy. I am absolutely wholeheartedly for wealth redistribution and beheading people like Jeff Bezos. I was raised by a socialist and my native culture is communist. Those are deeply held personal values. But- she totally knows more than me about it. I can disagree and respect her opinion and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever about her moral quality. The only part of the law that deals with fairness is that it is equally applied and the rules are the same for everyone in the same situations. That she is good at her job and views it that way isn’t a reason to imply she’s wrong or unfair. Fairness is a very subjective term. This topic is her turf and she will absolutely slaughter us on any discussion of it and you’re really not hearing her when she’s saying she can only speak to what the law IS and not what it SHOULD BE. Those are entirely separate concepts.

And for a little love fest here, I totally respect your views, which are usually well-thought-through and have a solid and consistent logical grounding. (And sometimes we DO agree - SEE, my views on capital gains preference, estate tax.  I’d go with we disagree more like on 75%?  Could be lower, could be higher, but it isn’t 100 :))

[Larry of the Lawn]

7 hours ago, TrackerNeil said:

Yeah, I was just reading about this on the Post.

Although I imagine the secret goal is to get the deplorables all fired up, I don't even know what the open goal is. Sure, DeSantis is making noise about funding, but what does that mean? If insufficient numbers of college students profess conservative opinions, Florida will...what? Withhold money until the surveys reflect more conservatism? I can hear FIRE writing letters, even now.

 

I think it's definitely just about firing up the deplorables, with a little feel good racism and sticking it to the academics on the side.  That dude Rufo pretty much created all this out of nothing just to boost morale.

6 hours ago, Fez said:

The thing about autocracies though is that the vast majority of them did have at least the tacit approval of a majority of their subjects. And they worked to maintain that approval since if they lost it the odds started going up that they'd end up dead; either from revolution a rival killing them off. Even Hitler backed down, partially, after the only time he booed by a crowd.*

Point being, autocracies are more violent, and individual rights don't really exist, but they generally try to stay responsive to the demands of the population just like democracies do.

 

.

I'm not so confident individual rights in the US mean that much any more (and probably never have for everyone), on a de facto basis.  If you go by incarceration we are the least free country in the world.

If we look at the results the US is incredibly authoritarian when it comes actually locking people away.  

  

[ThinkerX]

yes, there is freedom of speech.  still, though, this seems just a tad...extreme.  Enough to make me wonder what happens should Trump be indicted by grand juries on one or more charges, or (gasp) be convicted in court of a felony or three.  Some sort of bizarre repeat of 1/6?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-congressman-warns-more-people-will-die-over-false-claims-of-2020-election-fraud-after-call-for-executions-airs-on-pro-trump-media-outlet/ar-AALphi7?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR0a9s_GJbtqBS1KrR71degPN-hI-nfMUoZPGgqNgzhxG0qpObMkm7A4PQ0

Earlier in the week, the far-right One America News Network aired a segment in which a host erroneously claimed there were people involved in a conspiracy related to the 2020 election. "What happens to them? Well, in the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: executions."

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

yes, there is freedom of speech.  still, though, this seems just a tad...extreme.  Enough to make me wonder what happens should Trump be indicted by grand juries on one or more charges, or (gasp) be convicted in court of a felony or three.  Some sort of bizarre repeat of 1/6?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-congressman-warns-more-people-will-die-over-false-claims-of-2020-election-fraud-after-call-for-executions-airs-on-pro-trump-media-outlet/ar-AALphi7?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR0a9s_GJbtqBS1KrR71degPN-hI-nfMUoZPGgqNgzhxG0qpObMkm7A4PQ0

 

 

The thing about freedom of speech though is that you can do it from jail.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Kal Corp said:

Again, fairness is emphatically not a social construct. It is a genetic part of the human animal at its core. What might be considered fair may be more subjective, but if you are not considering fairness in your policies or plans or goals you are going to have a very hard time with humans. 

 

Has this been established, or is it still theoretical? It wouldn't surprise me if anthropologists could highlight societies where fairness wasn't a fully formed or understood concept. If so that would indeed make it a social construct, and fairness in particular can be tricky because MZ said, it can mean different things to different people.

2 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

And again, I think we have different views of what is “ethical.”  It is actual malpractice and unethical (from a legal ethics) for me to structure something incorrectly.  Let’s say my client wants to start a business.  They could form a C corp (almost always the wrong answer), an LLC (probably the right answer) or an S corp (could be the right answer).  I am not going to advise my client to form a C corporation, even though they would pay more tax, which you might view as more ethical, and in fact it would be UNethical for me to do otherwise. If you want to have the broader policy debate about whether all entities should be subject to entity level taxation (maybe?) that is a debate we can have (and honestly it could happen because it’s a very attractive system from a compliance and reporting perspective).  

Sorry for the snip job, but I wanted to isolate two things. First, I don't disagree with the above at all. It is absolutely your job in this scenario to advise your client on how to structure their business in their best interest. I could argue that the entire structure of this may need reform, but that's not really the topic at hand. However, this is not exactly what my complaint was about, though it's possible I've conflated your specific job with tax law in general. Instead I'd like to use this as an example of what I'm complaining about:

Quote

President Donald Trump is able to pay tens of thousands of dollars less in property taxes on his New Jersey golf courses because of a goat herd, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Citing public records, The Journal reported in 2016 that Trump had been able to save thousands of dollars in property taxes on his two properties in Bedminster — where he is this week for a "working vacation" — and Colts Neck. Because the properties have a goat herd, as well as hay farming and woodcutting, New Jersey law permits them to receive a farmland tax break.

Therefore, Trump pays reduced property taxes on the parts of his golf courses dedicated to farming, the report says.

Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster maintains 113 acres of hay farming and eight goats, and the property in Colts Neck has 40 acres of hay production and trees, The Journal reported, citing tax-break applications reviewed in 2016 during the presidential campaign.

https://www.businessinsider.com/goats-helping-trump-pay-less-taxes-new-jersey-2018-8

This is more directly what I'm discussing when debating the ethics vs legality of gaming tax laws. A golf course is not a farm, cut and dried, but through a loophole this was allowed to happen. I would hope even Scalia, using the example you previously mentioned, could see that this is neither in compliance with the merit or spirit of the law.

Quote

Also I am totally ok with terms like “tax cheat.”  I know what that looks like.  They usually have awesome names for their shelters like “son of BOSS”, “son of Mirrors” (lots of sons), FTC Generators, etc.  

Or they could just be prominent charities. I'm about 100 pages into Jane Mayer's Dark Money after finishing Kurt Anderson's Evil Geniuses and the way these awful aristocrats used charities as tax shelters is offensive, avoiding taxation on their wealth while funneling the interest from them to charities they owned and using those resources to influence tax policies to further entrench their wealth. 

[DMC]

15 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Ron DeSantis is mandating surveys as to the beliefs of Florida College Students.  If one of the answers isn’t “none of your damn business” I suspect things will get ugly:

It's not just students, it's faculty too.  My reaction to the students part was good luck getting them to complete surveys.  As for faculty, when I worked there I had to sign a loyalty oath and get it notarized.  Thought that was bad.  OTOH, if I had to fill out any such survey, be really fucking easy to just tell them what they want to hear.

12 hours ago, Kal Corp said:

In theory the UK doesn't have a fully two-party system either, at least not to the degree that the US does (though it clearly isn't as multiparty as it could be). 

The UK is widely considered a two-party system, as are other states with viable third parties - as long as two others remain dominant.

[mormont]

8 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

yes, there is freedom of speech.  still, though, this seems just a tad...extreme.  Enough to make me wonder what happens should Trump be indicted by grand juries on one or more charges, or (gasp) be convicted in court of a felony or three.  Some sort of bizarre repeat of 1/6?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republican-congressman-warns-more-people-will-die-over-false-claims-of-2020-election-fraud-after-call-for-executions-airs-on-pro-trump-media-outlet/ar-AALphi7?ocid=ob-fb-enus-580&fbclid=IwAR0a9s_GJbtqBS1KrR71degPN-hI-nfMUoZPGgqNgzhxG0qpObMkm7A4PQ0

 

I'd say calling for the execution of innocent people, based on provably false allegations, is not 'free speech'. Incitement is the word.

[Fez]

Supreme Court continues to clear it's docket, though it's not done for the term yet. Three more decisions, and all three have weird line-ups.

In a 5-4 vote, with Thomas joining the liberals in dissent, the court limited the number of people who can sue TransUnion over credit reporting procedures. Basically, only people who's data was provided to a third party business can sue. This marks another case where the outcome is the opposite of what it'd be in Ginsburg was alive, or had been replace by an Obama nominee.  https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-297_4g25.pdf

In a 6-3 vote, the court allows small oil refineries additional hardship extensions to renewable fuel requirements. It's not the 6-3 line-up you'd expect though, Breyer joined the conservatives and Barrett joined Kagan and Sotomayor in dissent. This is much a technical case about what the word "extend" means though, rather than a more ideological climate change case. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-472_0pm1.pdf

And lastly, in another 6-3 vote, the court rules that Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) count as "tribal governments" for the purposes of Federal CARES Act funding, even though they are not federally recognized tribes. Because of this, the ANCs will receive about $450 million in additional funding. The three dissenting votes were Gorsuch, Thomas, and Kagan; which is a really strange split. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/20-543_3e04.pdf

 

[IheartIheartTesla]

We only call it weird because its what we have come to expect in these hyper-partisan times. Maybe the justices are slowly pulling themselves back from the abyss Scalia dragged them towards, and judging cases on their merits (as they see it)? After all, that is what the ideal of the SC is supposed to be.

[Fragile Bird]

What do people think about the condo collapse in Florida? So far they have found 4 dead, with an estimate of 159 people missing.

If this happened elsewhere in the world we’d be talking about shoddy construction, bribed inspectors and poor quality building materials, wouldn’t we?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

What do people think about the condo collapse in Florida? So far they have found 4 dead, with an estimate of 159 people missing.

If this happened elsewhere in the world we’d be talking about shoddy construction, bribed inspectors and poor quality building materials, wouldn’t we?

Welcome to Miami!

 

I saw a building moments after it collapsed while living in Buenos Aires. It’s a pretty shocking sight to see.

[Zorral]

39 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

If this happened elsewhere in the world we’d be talking about shoddy construction, bribed inspectors and poor quality building materials, wouldn’t we?

All of these possible: the condo was erected in the mid-1980's. 

But the specific cause seems to be eroding beach-coastal fronts on which was built, eroded from below, despite, doubtless the beach itself being re-filled in over the years with sands purloined from beaches in the South Pacific and Asia and elsewheres.  A sinkhole, if you will.  Probably inevitable on a beach front, and in Florida also, where of course any mention of rising waters or climate change is illegal.

Beyond that, right around here, the close-up photos available of the destruction this AM, were rather triggering, for people who saw 9/11 up close. Not the same causes, but the same utter destruction, making what had been unrecognizable.