Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, January 22, 2022
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49 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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‘Nuff said.
I didn’t comment in James’ Rittenhouse Rifle thread but it begs the question of why does he want it back? With the money that has been raised on his behalf and the bucks I suspect he is now raking in as the newest hero of the far right, he can buy a dozen others. The answer is pretty simple.
It’s a collectors item now. The AR-15 that “Kyle Rittenhouse used to defend the American Way ™ and kill two enemies of our country” must be worth hundreds of thousands $ now. Maybe a million.
I suspect somebody else also thought of this angle but I’m too lazy to go look.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Rittenhouse claims he wants it back in order to destroy it.
Good News Everyone!
Catching COVID on purpose so you can get it over with is now something you can do again and again.
@Kathy:
“Catching COVID on purpose so you can get it over with is now something you can do again and again.”
And it’s fun for all the family!!!
Is this the year for a bottle bill in New Hampshire?
I was in college when the first attempts at a ‘bottle bill’ were filed and carried around a petition in support. That was the early 70’s, when advocates of publicly sponsored recycling were considered dangerous radicals. But a lot has changed in 50 years.
Most of the communities near me operate single stream recycling programs, that have been, until recently, a profit center* for the town, that subsidies trash collection and disposal. It’s the paper, cardboard, glass and especially aluminum cans that recreate the value. If there were a redemption value on the bottles and cans, those would be pulled from the recycling programs making the program a cost center rather than break even/profit center.
I’d need to be convinced in order to support this.
* In the past couple of years market changes have raised the cost of single stream programs, while the revenue has also shrunk.
@CSK: I’ll bet.
@CSK: No edit function this time, I should have used ’em when I had ’em.
Wanted to add that if his goal is to have it destroyed, he can just leave it with the police as that is what they do with confiscated firearms that are no longer needed as evidence. Even tho he probably has a right to it’s return, I’m pretty sure the *Kenosha PD* won’t mind destroying it for him along with all the other weapons.
**I suspect it is either the county or the state that actually performs that task. The KPD would just turn it over to them for disposal.
Reason #n to the infinity why govt functions should stay within govt.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It may vary from state to state, but a confiscated firearm that’s no longer needed as evidence can be destroyed or returned to its lawful owner.
ETA: I have an edit function, at least on this thread. For now.
@CSK: That’s what I said.
@OzarkHillbilly:
I hadn’t had my coffee at that point.
Time will tell.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Doesn’t the existence of fraud imply criminal intent?
@CSK:
Unless there has been a recent change at the Fed level, some PD’s auction of firearms that have been used in a crime.
@CSK: Yes, but there a number of questions that have to be answered. For starters, people make mistakes, some people make the same mistake over and over. The larger the organization, the more likely mistakes will be made, sometimes even multiplied. Sometimes negated.
I find it hard to believe that all the mistakes would consistently help the trump org and their business model without there being intent behind it but proving intent is not so easy (so say the lawyers). Minus a signed memo saying “Do this so we can steal $X,000,000 amount of dollars from the bank.” one needs direct testimony, preferably from multiple sources.
The 2nd question is, fraud by whom? Business people sign all kinds of stuff they don’t fully understand, that’s what lawyers and accountants are for. So again, minus a signed memo saying “Do this so we can steal $X,000,000 amount of dollars from the bank.” one needs direct testimony, preferably from multiple sources.
Pretty sure a competent lawyer can come up with at least a half dozen other questions that need to be answered.
@Sleeping Dog:
They could probably make a bundle on Rittenhouse’s weapon of choice. Some idiot would pay a fortune for it.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Indeed. I’m assuming that anyone who would work for the Trump enterprises would be a crook, and in some cases, not a very competent crook.
@OzarkHillbilly: I was reading a little bit about the Seven Springs stuff yesterday, here’s the link that explains the level of fraud and probable “criminal intent” amongst the parties involved.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/01/20/drive-for-show-putt-for-dough-cheat-for-tax-deductions/
@CSK:
Right. “Oopsie, my hand slipped and I added a zero.”?
Trying to be a pragmatist, and definitely not Calvinist, this whole business of criminal intent seems to me insane. My attitude is if you did the crime, you get convicted of the crime. If you’re intent was somehow not malign, or you weren’t compos mentis, take that into account in sentencing.
@gVOR08:
“Oopsie, my hand slipped and I added a zero.”
You’d have to be a really, really crapola accountant to do that accidentally and repeatedly. Now if you were a crooked accountant…and what other kind would work for Trump?
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is an interesting point, because the Trump Org is big in so far as it has a lot of holdings and is a tangled snake’s pit of overlapping LLCs, but it’s small in the number of employees it has, IIRC, it’s fewer than 500.
@Jen: WIKI says 22,000. But that number presumably came from the Trump Org. and is perhaps subject to some skepticism. I have to wonder if, as has been alleged about his wealth, whether that includes everything with the Trump name somewhere, whether actually owned and managed by Trump or not.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Let me tell you of three mistakes I was a part of.
1) I typed 6.33 instead of 63.30 as the price of grapes one year. Somehow the manager checking the prices missed this.
2) A customer asked for sugar in 50 kilo sacks, but set the unit price per kilo. we priced it at 50 kilos, and went well over the other bidders. Again, the manager checking prices missed it.
3) In one proposal the total seemed too high to me. Checking every item, I noticed they’d ordered 260,000 cans of jalapeños, which is an insane amount. We can’t correct the ordered amounts, but at least this was the same for all participants. the customer eventually made the correction after the proposals came in.
None of these mistakes benefited us.
@Jen: Yeah, and how many of those have contact with this stuff. To me, it seems like it should be open and shut. But I keep reading how hard it is to prosecute white collar crimes.
For some reason or other I feel like that’s because of the way those laws are written. Convenient that, eh?
@Kathy: That’s because your Freudian slips of the fingers hate you.
And really guys, you’re preaching to the choir. The problem is, “what can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law” is not the same as “what people on a blog feel is absolute bullshit.”
We can say prejudicial shit all the time. In a CoL, a lawyer can’t. We can look at all the “evidence” whether it is pertinent or not. In a CoL, after listening to arguments from both sides, a judge decides what evidence is pertinent or not. etc etc etc.
@Kathy:
Those are mistakes. Inflating the value of something from 7.5 million to 80 million isn’t.
The teenager and I are putting a cabinet together today. We’re about halfway through and the instruction booklet has a little picture of a frosty beer mug and it says “Now might be a good time to refresh your drink!”
So I guess I’m day-drinking today. I mean, it’s part of the instructions! 😛
@Jax: Thanx, interesting and I always appreciate Marcy’s pov. She makes one assumption I have to take exception to tho:
No, he didn’t have to know. He certainly should have, he’s this big time real estate developer, right? But you’d be surprised how many people buy property w/o deeded easements, assuming that road/dirt track they saw was theirs, especially people who aren’t used to rural ways. I know of several horror stories of legal battles that never should have been.
Either way when he “went to court to get his way,” it was just typical, bullying trump.
When it comes to this:
Marcy is being a bit obtuse here. The IRS (and maybe to a lesser extent the NY state revenue dept too) is being starved for funds. Sure, they’d probably love to send somebody out to inspect properties and investigate conservation easements, but the GOP has gutted the IRS to such an extent that they barely have enough people to process tax returns. As far as audits, such as they are, they’ve been dropping for years.
How Many 2016 Returns Were Audited Through 2020
Notice that people earning less than $25,ooo have a higher audit rate than everybody except for those earning more than $500,000. That’s because it’s easier to catch people not eligible/misusing the Earned Income Tax Credit. (I suspect those making 0$ have such a high audit rate because they have adjusted their gross income to $0 thru creative accounting and tax law interpretation)
Doing a full audit, as *Marcy is saying they should have*? is probably as rare as hen’s teeth.
**as would I and probably a whole lot of folks at the IRS
In December 2020, someone in the Trump administration drafted an executive order for Trump to instruct the Pentagon to seize the voting machines in a number of states. Trump never signed it.
Michael Flynn and Sidney Powell pushed this idea at a meeting that month, and also the idea of declaring martial law. Flynn wanted as well to declare a state of emergency so federal agents could seize the voting machines.
I wonder why Trump didn’t sign the order. Hannity told him it would be a bad move?
@OzarkHillbilly: As I noted yesterday, it wouldn’t particularly surprise me to hear that the gun “disappeared” from the KPD property room. There’s undoubtedly a “Good Guys with Guns” shrine or some collector somewhere who wants it. Maybe the NRA national headquarters.
@CSK: Maybe not, given that one of the conclusions in the Mueller report was that it was possible that FG was so ignorant and unaware that it was possible that he didn’t realize people were asking him to enter into conspiracies, IIRC.
@CSK: “Those are mistakes. Inflating the value of something from 7.5 million to 80 million isn’t.”
And even if it is, then dropping it back to three million on your taxes and then raising it again to 435 million on your next loan application definitely isn’t!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Yes, but you’d think he’d be very open to doing something like this. I’m sure they explained it to him in terms he could understand.
@wr:
I know. All of this was deliberate. But any Trumpkin will tell you that all smart, honest businessmen do this.
@CSK:
Why didn’t he sign it? Probably because he consults his real lawyers before he does things that place his ass on the line, and in a lifetime of walking along the edge of the law he acquired a nose for real trouble. He has his FOX News legal team for PR, but those aren’t the ones he deploys in real courts.
He doesn’t have the stones for the real thing, real coups and real revolutions. He’s a just a con man looking to fill his pockets.
@dazedandconfused:
I don’t know if he’s smart enough to avoid real trouble, certainly the kind he may be in now. Most of his extra-legal shenanigans prior to becoming president involved stealing from people who didn’t have the resources to fight back successfully. And given his obsession with remaining president, I’d think he’d agree to almost anything that might keep him in office. Even an insurrection.
And…does he have any real lawyers left on his team? Setting aside the whole matter of him routinely stiffing people, what halfway competent people would work for him now? Sidney Powell? Lin Wood?
@CSK:
He was smart enough, or well advised enough, to know that it’s a lot safer to run scams on the marginally rich and poor than it is to run them on wealthy people. That was Bernie Madoff’s bone-headed mistake.
His real legal team consists of lawyers who avoid making public statements so the press largely avoids them. To the press of today such people are viewed as a waste of time so they are seldom mentioned. In the most recent one, it was Jesse Binnall and Justin Clark. It’s a safe bet these are lawyers whom Trump does not stiff on their fees.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/30/jan-6-riot-probe-lawsuit-judges-grill-trump-lawyers-over-privilege-claims.html
@dazedandconfused:
I think he picked up the technique of fleecing the poor from his father.
I know what you’re saying, but with Trump, I think his desperate need to be worshiped overcomes whatever native intelligence he might have.
@CSK: I assume it is because even the lowest lawyer in the trump admin was aware of the Posse Comitatus Act.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: Nor I.
That depends. Are the same accountants who put the loan application papers together the ones who did the tax filings?
I’m just a dumb ass carpenter and it took me about 5 seconds to come up with that dodge.
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’d think Flynn would know about it. I wouldn’t expect Trump to.
@CSK: No, but the lawyers who might bring it to him for his signature would. And yes, somebody not a lawyer might want to bring it to him but I imagine the lawyers standing in line saying, “You really don’t want to do that.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Probably. The lawyers must have been on duty 24/7.
@CSK: I doubt it. How often does trump get up before 11 am?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sure he does. He wakes up, anyway. He just doesn’t get out of bed.
@OzarkHillbilly: “I’m just a dumb ass carpenter and it took me about 5 seconds to come up with that dodge.”
Yes, but it only works if it lands before a thoroughly corrupt, Trump-appointed judge. Anyone else would laugh it out of court.
No disrespect to the five seconds you spent on the plan!
@CSK:
I see it as natural for a high-rise, big project developer. It’s an odd game.
It’s the banks who really pull the trigger on such things. However, for some reason, traditionally the only bankers for whom getting their name in the press is a good thing are the CEOs. For everyone under them it’s bad. They use middlemen for the fronting of such things. Trump is, or was, in certain ways ideal, he not only kept all the attention in himself, he demanded it. He kept his part of the bargain too, at none of the money losing projects did he ever blame his bankers, or even mention them.
So he has set himself up with one set of “lawyers” who deal with the public. He uses FOX News personalities, who, like he did, are not only willing to be in the news but demand it. The real lawyers are silent and thereby not bothered.
This is unfortunately an effective tactic. A google search of “Trumps lawyers” turns up largely nothing but the fake ones. I doubt he has even has them on retainers, but to most of press they are his lawyers.