Texas tech mogul who failed to report $3BILLION in income to IRS has perfect defense: “I forgot”.

 

Robert Brockman, the software executive charged in the largest-ever tax case against a U.S. individual, is facing progressive dementia that will render him unable to help in his defense, according to a legal filing citing his doctors.

Brockman, 79, was indicted on tax evasion and money laundering charges that accused him of using a complex trust structure in the Caribbean to hide $2 billion in income over two decades. His lawyers want his case moved from San Francisco, where he was indicted on Oct. 1, to Houston, where he lives and his doctors treat him.

If you don’t remember doing it, is it still a crime? 

Unrealized capital gains tax, its not just for the rich or for stocks

 

If Democrats get their way the taxman cometh, for 40% of the growth on your retirement savings every year in excess of $3M, on 40% of the gain of the equity in your home with a FMV in excess of $2M every year and 40% annual tax on the unrealized gain on every tradable or nontradable asset you own if you have a net worth of $10M or more.

If you think that math will never apply to you, think again.

What do you think a $3M retirement fund will get you if you plan to retire in 2040 or later? A lot less than you think. 

What do you think average home values in your area are going to be in 10 or 15 or 20 years?

Educate yourselves on this plan to destroy all hope of real wealth accumulation, now that this folly is back under serious consideration.

RELATED: https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2021/01/25/beware_of_a_biden_tax_on_unrealized_capital_gains_657597.amp.html 

2021 Golden Globes the worst award show ever?

 In answer to my own question, yes. 

Bad jokes, bad format, and how many black actors who speak incoherent English do we need to hear from in one award show anyway? Many, apparently. 

The Price of Prevention vs. The Cost of Cure

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, or so they say.  I've found this especially true in the legal field.  Too often business partners opt to use Legal Zoom to organize an LLC or incorporate with the goal of "saving money on lawyers."  It's true that Legal Zoom is cheaper but it won't point out the wisdom of a shareholder's agreement or operating agreement which spell out things like what happens when a member/shareholder dies, gets divorced, or simply wants out or what happens when there's not enough money to keep the lights on.

I estimate that, over my career, I've personally billed over $1,000,000 to help resolve shareholder/member disputes that could have easily been prevented by spending a few thousand dollars up-front on an appropriate shareholder/operating agreement.  While I'm sure there are plenty of businesses which incorporate/organize without legal assistance and don't have financially-crippling meltdowns, I don't see those as a litigator.  I only see the broken ones and, cynically, those are a good source of revenue.

Yesterday, I ran into a new example of an ounce of prevention being worth a pound (or, in this case, several million GBP) of cure.  This one stung.  Eccentric rich guy has long time female companion.  They never marry but are in business together.  Eccentric guy has the skills but no business sense, so he relies on the companion to actually run the business.  They drift apart, but he needs her to stay afloat, so they continue to reside together.

Beginning in or around 2002, rich guy falls in love with another woman.  She's younger but not that much younger and is far from a trophy wife.  Their connection is based on shared eccentricities.  I'm convinced the connection was authentic.  Rich guy, who had no prior estate plan, has his business attorney draft him a pour-over will and a trust which leaves the business, a residence, and miscellaneous property to the companion and slightly more to the new love.  

Over the next ten years or so until his death, rich guy decides he wants to increase the gifts to the new love on a couple different occasions.  However, instead of going back to an attorney, he asks new love to retype the existing estate plan and make changes.  She does exactly what she's told but, because she never married the rich guy (despite being intimate for 17 years) and because rich guy continued to sleep at the residence he shared with female companion, some quirks in the law created a presumption that all gifts to new love in the trusts she retyped were the product of undue influence.

You can see where this went after the rich guy's death.  It was not pretty and I'm convinced the rich guy would not have wanted to leave such a shitbomb after his passing.  Had he spent a collective $5,000 on attorneys (and his estate was worth 8 figures), all of this would have been avoided.

This was, by far, the most expensive, unfortunate prevention v. cure botched analysis I've seen.  What about you all?

Mystal now synonymous with "left-wing idiot"

 

 

The left-wing magazine The Nation took it from there, calling on the Democrat-controlled House to impeach Kavanaugh. Even if impeachment were constitutionally possible for pre-confirmation actions, Republican control of the Senate would make it a pointless but potentially disastrous gesture.

                                                   

But the author of the article, Elie Mystal, was undeterred: “I know some Democrats will say that bringing charges against Brett Kavanaugh—impeaching him—is pointless. Some "Democrats insist on living in a country where nothing is ‘worth it’ unless Republicans are likely to agree. I refuse to live in that world. If I waited for Republican approval before I tried something, I’d be shining shoes at Grand Central, as would befit my station.”

— Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway 

Georgia bar goes after Lin Wood's license

 The Georgia bar is less than amused with Lin Wood's post-election litigation and related press statements.

It is not only looking into Wood's continued mental competency to practice law but the implications of Wood filing serial, meritless lawsuits in multiple states to overturn the 2020 election, The Hill newspaper reports.

Georgia bar officials are also examining a few of Wood's more inflammatory statements:

The complaint also cites Wood’s numerous inflammatory comments, including calling then-Vice President Pence a “TRAITOR, a Communist Sympathizer & a Child Molester” and that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts conspired to assassinate the late Justice Antonin Scalia. It also references his promotion of conspiracy theories that no one died in the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, which he claimed without evidence was carried out by “Antifa dressed as Trump people.”

The insanity angle seems plausible at this point. 

Google now gives racists a way to avoid black owned businesses

 Search results based on race? Really?

At least he wasn't Toobin'

 https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpmgp/i-am-not-a-cat-lawyer-using-zoom-cat-filter-tells-judge

 

If you can't eat your plant-based meat substitute, you can't have any gluten free pudding.

I rarely have much interest for anything the New Yorker publishes these days, but this Q&A with San Francisco's School Board president, Gabriela Lopez, is fascinating, to say the least. As you may have heard, the board recently voted to rename a number of its schools due to their allegedly problematic namesakes, such as Paul Revere, Abraham Lincoln, and even good old Diane Feinstein.

Whether you think the name changes are warranted (and whether you think it's even an appropriate subject to which to devote time and resources, in light of ongoing school closures), Ms. Lopez's comments are remarkable not so much for their substantive content, if any, but for their vapid expression. Her answers are a bizarre melange of bureaucratic platitudes about "processes," New Agey happy-talk about "experiences" and "conversations," and authoritarian defensiveness over whether being factually accurate is tantamount to "discrediting" the hard work done by the committee responsible for the renaming. It's all topped with a thick layer of Millennial rhetorical nerfing, e.g., lots of for-mes and I-understand-buts. I have not done sufficient research to determine whether Ms. Lopez, 30, is herself a product of an American public school system in the 21st Century. But I know the New Yorker does not often publish interviews with news-makers in question-and-answer format, unless the exact words are worth parsing for one reason or another.

I've pasted a sample here, but the whole interview must be read to fully appreciate the absurdism. Though I cannot confirm that Ms. Lopez speaks with the famous San Francisco "uptalk," it helps if you imagine her every sentence ending with a question mark.

[Q:] So none of the errors that I read to you about previous entries made you worried that maybe this was done in a slightly haphazard way?

[A:] No, because I’ve already shared with you that the people who have contributed to this process are also part of a community that is taking it as seriously as we would want them to. And they’re contributing through diverse perspectives and experiences that are often not included, and that we need to acknowledge.

[Q:] I’m not quite sure what that means when we are talking about things that did or didn’t happen.

[A:] I think what you’re pointing to and what I keep hearing is you’re trying to undermine the work that has been done through this process. And I’m moving away from the idea that it was haphazard.

 

 

Quote of the day from Trump’s lawyers, Bruce Castor and David Schoen

 

“Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th president’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false,” Castor and Schoen wrote, adding that Trump “denies” it is false to say he won the election “in a landslide.”

Link