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Wealth Taxes are Direct Taxes that are Subject to the Rule of Apportionment
The last two sentences indicate why it would be such a popular and appealing tax to government:
“There is an appealing element of voluntariness in indirect taxes, which is that one can always avoid the tax by not engaging in the taxed transaction. Such voluntariness is absent when direct taxes are imposed.”
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Same link, Trump now 51, Biden 49. I imagine it will fluctuate a lot more over the coming months.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2024-election-forecast/
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BTW, supposedly safe and tested California cannabis…isn’t.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-dirty-secret-of-california-s-legal-weed/ar-BB1odAR3
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You all know how I feel about Gov. Whitmer. I thought she was a low watt bulb when I had to work with her. I have to hand it to her, she won her first election promising to fix roads and schools and didn’t fix either, and still got re-elected. And Michigan roads and schools are unbelievably awful.
I worked at the Detroit law firm when we established a cannabis practice and cannabis was no longer prosecuted. It was a very strange situation…we had a very large municipal and state financing practice and it was communicated to us that if we wanted to keep that large practice, we couldn’t publicize our cannabis practice within Michigan. So we publicized it like crazy in the other dozen states in which we operated…just not in our home state of Michigan, even though we had a substantial and profitable cannabis practice.
About two months in, a reporter calls me at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon to comment on a rumor that we were going to defend a doctor who was prescribing cannabis…definitely untrue. First, it would have been a radioactive decision and we would have lost millions in the aforementioned state/muni-related work. Second (ahem) there would be little to no fees involved in defending the doctor, so…no. I found out later that one of our competitors floated that rumor. Competitor rumor mongering happened with some regularity in Michigan, not in any of the money market (large cities) in which I operated with other firms.
Last comment. If Biden steps down, or otherwise can’t run, the Dems have limited options. VP Kamala Harris is unelectable. Brittle, low watt bulb, appeals to no broad political group and is a native Californian. Gov. Newsom has presided over the administrative catastrophe that is California…and none of the other 49 states want to see a Californian president in any event, sort of like the Catholics hating the idea of a Jesuit pope. Buttigieg is barely hanging on to his current job and has no popular appeal. President Whitmer? The gorge rises…
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The Economist gives Trump a 66 / 34 edge in November:
A first look at our election-forecast model | Latest US politics news from The Economist
Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ) and The Hill predicts Trump wins the general election with a 58% edge:
2024 Presidential Election Forecast | The Hill and DDHQ
Trump, GOP are early favorites for White House, Congress (thehill.com)
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Great article. Couple of thoughts:
- Illegal immigration concerns are swamping the American zeitgeist. Case in point: In Trump’s last year, ICE apprehended 342 military age men from China. And you don’t get out of China unless they let you. Last year, they arrested 22,000 and this year so far we’ve already arrested 27,000…and we still have seven months to go.
- Third party candidates are cropping up on the voter slate of the swing states; Cornel West, RFK JR., Jill Stein.
- At the end of the day, Biden was electable from the vast slate of Democrats in 2020 because he was the only one who could beat Trump. All the rest, to one degree or another, alarmed typical American voters. Socialist Bernie? No thanks. He needs basic math skills. Native American Elizabeth Warren? Lord, no. Kamala? Donald Trump had ten times as many write-in votes in the Dem primary as Harris had in NH when she finished 14th. with 129 votes and Trump had 1,217 write in votes.
People thought Trump would be the moderate. In the four years since, he’s pursued Progressive policies almost exclusively.
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Newsom needs to cut budgets across the board, keeping in mind that millions of undocumented immigrants continue to stream into California, most of whom either do not pay or underpay both Federal and CA taxes and/or will require state funding. So…yeah. Something’s got to suffer. And it won’t be immigrants or funding for state employee retirement.
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More interesting commentary from former Federal prosecutor Jim Trusty (interviewed by Paul Gigot). Items I hadn’t realized before:
- SDNY initially rejected the case.
- Politicized prosecutor whose predecessor rejected it.
- Judge was hand-selected, not through lottery process.
- Favorable jury instructions to a favorably-selected jury.
Trusty’s opinion: defense strategy was correct, focus on Cohen’s credibility. Government bailed out the defense with a 5.5 hour closing argument. Thought they over-dignified Stormy Daniels. Govt successfully equated “sordid” with “criminal.”
Trusty said judge behaved in a way that helped the prosecution; (1) should have recused himself not because of his small donations, but because of his daughter’s commitment to the Democrat machine (raising millions for Dems), and (2) the trial proceeded without the theory of crime until the jury instructions happened. When the judge used pretzel logic to turn misdemeanors into felonies, the judge gave three vague options, two of which were Federal (in a state court).
Trusty thinks there was a due process violation; no clarity on the specific charges until the end of the trial, both baseline and underlying. Government didn’t give felony theory until the unethical press conference by Alvin Bragg…he skirted the ethical prohibitions. Vague indictment, judge didn’t particularize on how misdemeanors became felonies. Judge allowed lots of “sexy areas for appeal” per Trusty.
Sentencing on 7/11: Trusty thinks these Class C felonies (right on misdemeanor line) should be probation.
WSJ Opinion: The Law and Donald Trump | Watch (msn.com)
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Agreed that Biden might pull out if it’s a debate disaster. Who takes his place, though? Newsom’s radioactive with all of California’s problems. Kamala Harris is a non-starter.
I understand why they wanted Hillary Clinton originally. The idea was you “get Bill Clinton, most popular President” and Hillary was along for the ride. But Hillary screwed up and crossed up the party by insisting on distancing herself from the Pervert-in-Chief.
Which raises the question: do they draft Michelle Obama?
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Does anyone at all worry about the dangerous precedent that this sets? Trump is found guilty of a conjured-up crime before a Democrat judge who donated to Biden, whose daughter raises funds for Democrats, with a fully Democrat jury in a very Democrat city.
Wouldn’t happen anywhere else in the world. HRC gets a free pass for her crimes. Biden doesn’t get indicted for similar crimes; e.g., retaining Top Secret files.
Trump and MAGA allies are learning, and listening very closely. They’re threatening similar behavior.
The G.O.P. Push for Post-Verdict Payback: ‘Fight Fire With Fire’
Former Harvard Law prof and registered lifelong Democrat Alan Dershowitz calls it the weaponization of the legal system. He says that no lawyer would privately consider Trump’s “offense” a legitimate legal violation.
Do we really want to go down this path?
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Whole Foods, which shuttered its Civic Center store in May, 2023 is opening a new store on Geary between Broderick and Baker, about three blocks from a Trader Joe’s, 10 blocks north of the Panhandle:
Whole Foods set to open ninth location in San Francisco
There is a bill that will require markets to give six months’ notice before closing:
San Francisco Bill Would Let People Sue Grocery Stores for Closing Too Quickly
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Democratic strategist David Axelrod thinks Biden’s defiant stance on the economy will backfire. So do I. I don’t understand or agree with the inflation figures as publicized by the government.
Matt Taibbi and Brian Kilmeade thinks Biden literally doesn’t understand inflation or why it happens, and they’re out of touch with ordinary people:
Matt Taibbi: It’s ‘entirely possible’ Biden doesn’t understand impact of inflation | Watch
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And while I’m piling on the Hypocrite-In-Chief, Gavin Newsom has pressed for $20/hour for fast food workers while at the same time (a) making an exception for his billionaire buddy and campaign donor who owns Panera: https://nypost.com/2024/02/28/business/panera-bread-exempt-from-california-wage-law-after-newsom-donation/#:~:text=California%20Gov.%20Gavin%20Newsom%20signed%20a%20law%20that,donated%20to%20his%20campaign%2C%20according%20to%20a%20report. and (b) only pays his own restaurant workers $16/hour: Gavin Newsom’s Restaurant Offers $16 Hourly Wage to Employee (msn.com) Why does he do that? Well…why does a dog lick himself? Because he can.
Newsom’s $20/hour fast food minimum hourly wage resulted in a loss of 10,000 jobs. Quelle surprise
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So you’re saying that a Democratic prosecutor with a Democratic judge facing 12 Democrats in the jury in a Democratic state shouldn’t be allowed to invent a crime that’s fundamentally the equivalent of the $850k that Clinton paid Paula Jones?
Yes, I think I’d have to agree.
If you have a chance, check out the opinion of Harvard Law School professor and Democrat Alan Dershowitz. The case was flimsy at best, but the courts didn’t account for anti-candidate bias:
Dershowitz also thinks it won’t be overturned on appeal:
No Judge Will Overturn Donald Trump’s Conviction—Alan Dershowitz (msn.com)
But likely that it would be overturned at the Supreme Court level:
Trump’s appeal of hush money verdict to focus on Stormy Daniels testimony (msn.com)
One of the things that Dershowitz railed against is that it won’t happen in time for the election. That’s the nature of American jurisprudence. When Enron went down, Andersen was fingered to take the blame. They appealed all the way up to the United States Supreme Court, which found that the judge’s instructions were flawed…in a 9-0 verdict. But Andersen was forced out of business years prior to that.
Supreme Court overturns Arthur Andersen’s Enron conviction (chron.com)
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I think this might be the original “Broken Windows” article. There’s a section in it where Philip Zimbardo of Stanford attempted to replicate the study’s results:
Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments testing the broken-window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by “vandals” within ten minutes of its “abandonment.” The first to arrive were a family — father, mother, and young son — who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began — windows were
smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult “vandals” were well dressed, apparently clean-cut whites. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for
more than a week. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the ‘vandals”appeared to be primarily respectable whites.Harvard researchers tried a variation of the experiment in Lowell, Mass., essentially proving the theory correct:
And this is exactly what Brenda Bond of Suffolk University and Anthony Braga of Harvard Kennedy’s School of Government found. Cleaning up the physical environment was revealed to be very effective, misdemeanor arrests were less so, and increasing social services had no impact.
There were similar results in Japan and the Netherlands:
Branas and MacDonald thinks the problem begins earlier, that the “broken windows” are a symptom, not the disease, and that the disease is early abandonment and neglect of property. When I lived in Detroit, that was their fundamental take as their population declined from 2.1 million to less than 700k. There were more than 100,000 unoccupied residences. Detroit’s leaders tried to get people to move to occupied blocks and bulldozed abandoned buildings and turned them into parks or urban gardens. Seemed to work.
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