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Nice reporting Paul Kiel.
Couldn’t they even take a boat load of orphans out for a harbor cruise once a year?
Every single thing gets stacked in favor of the millionaire class. They have enough lawyers, accountants, and lobbyists to make it so. And even after all that, they get complete deference from all regulators. Worst case scenario, they fight it and fight it in court and pay pennies on the dollar in fines, eventually. All for dollar amounts that would mean seizure of everything I owned.
Eat the rich.
“. . . a profit-seeking business . . .”
But it was a profit-seeking business Blanche, it was!
We’ll need more fava beans.
Buy influence, write it off on your taxes, rinse, repeat, continue to live a privileged, corrupt, selfish life. The formula is proudly exploited by many. No news here.
And a fine chianti…
We should be shocked by how EASY it was for Harlan Crow to purchase Clarence.
And as for financial disclosure, the old way of doing things is no longer enough. The Supreme Court members need to release their (and their spouse’s) sources of income. And if their personal travel is paid for by someone else, that needs to be disclosed as well.
My takeaway from this article is that Crow should be audited every time he files a 1040. Sadly, the ultra wealthy can afford the finest legal/financial assistance available.
Maybe it’s not just case by case self-interest. Maybe there is a bigger picture to this.
For years republicans had a problem that their nominees to the Supreme Court shifted moderate, even liberal, over time (e.g. Justices Blackman, Stevens, and Souter). More recently, however, republican appointed justices have seemed impervious to change.
Might these cases of conservative justices receiving lavish gifts from big monied interests be evidence of a strategy of the right to keep conservative justices from straying from the desired ideology?
You can be ridiculously wealthy, but go ahead, scheme and cheat for just a little bit more.
How to apportion the costs for Crow and his guests is debatable
No problem, just use the IRS standard per diem rates. I’m sure the accommodations and the food and beverage service on Crow’s yacht are no better than your average two star hotel and restaurant.
Did Crow treat Thomas as a business asset that had to be capitalized and depreciated over its useful life, or did he expense the initial cost and then charge his expenses as maintenance to generate a deductible loss (see Michaela Rose, supra)?
Slappy T laughs all the way to his Swiss Bank Account knowing that he can get away with anything because he will do whatever Leonard Leo wants.
Yes, the problem was that the constitution was written by liberals - it is a liberal document. Thus the need for ideologists.
it’s a dilemma: democrats are appalled by the excesses of the rich; republicans aspire to them. but democrats also know that if the rich start to perceive that democrats are really serious about going after them, the flood of millionaire and billionaire money to republican campaigns will become a tsunami. So democratic leadership knows they need to keep bernie and aoc and warren on the margins, welcome to spread their message and win votes, but far from the levers of actual power. and if i were democratic leadership i’d probably do the same.
Hard to believe a Harlan Crow has a modicum for respect for black and brown-skinned people.
Clarence might be seen only as maybe a mess mate on his yacht but for his being a useful idiot.
“Boy, now get below and wash the dishes. Stay off the main deck”.
Also, try to imagine Crow’s white guests from TX pretending to be social with Thomas et ux.
“Now what is it you do? And how do you know Harlan?”
Exhibit A:
As explained in a recent paper by two law professors and a private practitioner, everyone agrees that giving $500,000 to a friend would necessitate filing a gift tax return for that amount. Using that $500,000 to buy an all-expense-paid yacht cruise for friends would be treated no differently. But if someone owns a luxury yacht and takes their friends on a cruise, the situation gets muddy. Crow’s attorney even argues there was no gift at all.
Exhibit B:
For Crow’s personal use of the Michaela Rose, including trips when the Thomases were guests, “charter rates … were paid to the Crow family entities” that owned the yacht, Bopp wrote in a letter to Wyden.
emphasis mine
According to Crow’s lawyer, his yacht is a commercial enterprise which he paid “charter rates” for guests. That’s a gift and should have been reported.
Let’s hope an IRS investigation is in the future for Mr. Tax Evasion.
Time for the 87,000 new employees of the IRS to get to work and change the way this graft is reported. Clearly, this is all a known way to dodge taxes that all of these tax attorney’s are skilled at. Who taught them and where?
There’s a reason the right wingers do everything they can to starve the IRS…