#lots of charities are basically tax write offs for the rich (like him)

[maid-of-the-golden-deer]

i know most ppl on tumblr wouldnt think this the amount of ppl who qualify any mister beast crit with "but the good hes done isnt undone by this!"

honey u think hes doing anything actually good?

[helluva-dump]

You know despite doing things with Adam and Lucy… I’ve grown to really enjoy writing stuff with another broken relationship.😂

Because I’ve been invested with the Bible folklore (mainly angelnology and demonology), I read more things about Ariel as well as Mammon that gave me an idea. Since Ariel not only is the Angel of nature but she’s also an Angel of prosperity where Mammon is the sin of Greed… and I thought “oooo what if she was his ex gf”

That Ariel and Mammon used to be lovers at one point when God first created the angels. Now in my headcanon, not all of the Helluva boss sins are arch angels… I think some were just regular angels like Mammon. Though in the vibe folklore it varies, but I had this thought he was just a regular Angel that went through struggles.

And when Ariel met him, she really felt so bad and offered some of her prosperity to help him get basic needs, like food, clothes, and shelter. The two of them start to hit it off and developed romantic feelings for each other.

Though God didn’t approve their relationship since he could sense something off with Mammon… Mainly anytime he is around the riches of gold they offer to help others… Mammon consumed more and more where it started to slowly corrupt him… he would always guilt trip Ariel and pressure her to grant him more of her wealth for “self love and comfort” because he’s depressed.

At one point, when she granted some wealth to poor angels and those that are struggling, Mammon WAS SO FURIOUS. He was so angry that she gave most of the wealth to those below them that he just BADLY wanted it all to himself. And they got into heated arguments over it to the point where Ariel banished him from the holy treasure, due to how it corrupted him.

And of course he got so angry and bitter that to prove he wants a selfish greedy sinner… He used that gold to make her a beautiful treasure as his offer in marriage… the only thing she had to do was join his rebellion with Lucifer to rebel against God and grant him more riches.

And we all know how that worked out at the end 😂 Ariel was too kind and compassionate to ever even stoop his low of hoarding money he didn’t need. And this lead to a massive fallout with them both, but it lead to consequences of the future of churches and Christians.

You know how sadly some preachers end up being greedy and use charity money for yatches and other things? Or why there’s so many republicans in Christianity? Let’s say because Ariel has romance with Mammon, the greed badly tainted her prosperity. Which lead to the downfall of humans being trained with greed, even in Christian spaces.

Like Azreal, Ariel too made a mistake. And she had to pay the price for this mistake she caused. God was stern with her and wasn’t happy about her affair, but she did promise him to face consequences for her actions. And that is paying a lot of of taxes for working angels and giving wealth to those charities. And somehow it did help her heal, she even went to confession and did things to help her heal from that tainted relationship.

Where Mammon on the other hand, still whines and bitches about Ariel to this day. He made up a false narrative how she BANNED him from Heaven and threw him under the bus. And how she “screw him over” all because she rejected his proposal, offer, and no longer wanted to grant him riches.

Since the show shows how misogynistic Mammon is, I headcanon he thinks less of women all because of Ariel. Especially after Ariel felt comfortable being trans, she used to make jokes before while taking a jab at greedy people and Mammon took it as a personal attack. (Much like how Contrapoints would make funny skits to de radicalize alt righters, that’s what I imagine Ariel doing with some male angels )

They sometimes counter each other over big events such as nature protests, or if they need Ariel to purge sinners that caused damage to environments for greed.

So what Lilith was to Adam, Ariel is to Mammon.

[jonathanalumbaugh]

Weekly Digest

Dec 23, 2017, 4th issue.

A roundup of stuff I consumed this week. Published weekly. All reading is excerpted from the main article unless otherwise noted.

Read

When women are discussed on the main economics discussion forum, the conversation moves from the professional to the personal...

Even with generous subsidies, low-income people are still unlikely to buy health insurance...

Managers are biased negatively against minority workers, and this, in turn, makes the minority workers perform worse...

Living standards may be growing faster than GDP growth...

The World Bank’s $1-a-day poverty line inadequately deals with local context, and a better measure can be derived through more complicated math...

Decriminalizing sex work makes it safer and more common...

Poor kids who grow up in rich neighborhoods do a lot better than poor kids who grow up in poor ones...

Better trained doctors mean fewer opioid related deaths...

After a bad outcome, female surgeon’s referrals went down much more than male surgeons...

The average worker does not value an Uber-like ability to set their own schedule...

Foreign finance has led to more inequality...

Preschool programs targeted at the poor don’t work nearly as well as universal pre-school programs...

Shocks to the economy in certain sectors can have larger effects on the entire economy than previously thought...

— 13 economists on the research that shaped our world in 2017

Comments section: Pilote345 - NO WONDER: Recently, the pilots' pay was less than it was in the 1980's. They might be trying to improve, but for example, I just now found Allegiant Air found pays MD-80 1st Officers $34,440.00, not much more than the $15/hour crowd wants for starting burger flippers.

— Airlines battle growing pilot shortage that could reach crisis levels in a few years

— APOLLO 10 0N BOARD V0ICE TRANSCRIPTION

Under Schmidt’s leadership, Google notched its fair share of not-quite-not-evil missteps. After getting everyone hooked on Gmail and Search, the company started to erode some of its original privacy promises.

— Be Kind of Evil

“People want to cast it as a choice between policy or technology as a solution but those should exist hand-in-hand. We would have never gotten renewable energy prices where they are today without really ambitious public policy. It shows the importance of bold goals,” Brown says.

— California Poised To Hit 50% Renewable Target A Full Decade Ahead Of Schedule

“Keep your phone away from your body,” the state health department writes. “Although the science is still evolving, some laboratory experiments and human health studies have suggested the possibility” that typical long-term cell phone use could be linked to “brain cancer and tumors of the acoustic nerve,” “lower sperm counts,” and “effects on learning and memory.”

— California says the only safe way to talk on your cell phone is to text

Developer infatuation with Chrome is not good — because competition between browsers is good.

— Chrome is Not the Standard

The initial physical deployment of 5G networks alone could pack a major economic punch. A 2017 Accenture report forecasts the cellular communications industry will invest $275 billion in new networks, which will create up to 3 million jobs and add some $500 billion to the United States’ gross domestic product. Longer term, researchers expect the new 5G networks to help stimulate productivity growth to rates not seen since the 1950s.

— The Coming 5G Revolution

In early tests, the company claims the feature helped to reduce ghosting behavior on its service by 25 percent.

— Dating app Hinge rolls out a new feature to reduce ‘ghosting’

Liberated from the diamond and pointing calmly eastward, perhaps a designer’s pure intent is revealed—direction for an otherwise aimless walk in the woods.

— Decoding the Mysterious Markers on the Appalachian Trail

Trade the ginkgo biloba for a bag of spinach during your next stop at the store: Leafy greens may be your best resource for boosting memory... The study involved 960 people, all between 58 and 99 and without dementia. Everyone enrolled in the study was part of the Memory and Aging Project, which has been ongoing since 1979 at the Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at Washington University.

— EATING SALAD EVERY DAY KEEPS BRAINS 11 YEARS YOUNGER AND PREVENTS DEMENTIA, STUDY SHOWS

— Edward Snowden on Twitter

Commander Persera swam out into intergalactic space last week, she says in a forum post, piloting a ship called the Jack of Flames. The reason for the trip is simply to go further from Sol than anyone else (a previous record was set by one Commander Deluvian, who travelled 65,652 lightyears from Sol along a similar route). But also, she says, to bring a canister of mugs from the infamous Hutton Orbital space station into the void and leave them there. Just because.

— Elite Dangerous pilots are scrambling to rescue an explorer stranded in the void between galaxies

[Eminem says] that he's not making his music for other artists who aren't fans to begin with.

— Eminem Responds to Vince Staples’ Criticism of Him

Reports so far claim the spec will offer support for low, mid, and high-band spectrum from below 1 GHz (like 600 and 700 MHz) all the way up to around 50 GHz while including the 3.5 GHz band. It’s been said that the first 5G networks for consumers will begin rolling out in 2019 and this will continue throughout 2020.

— First 5G Specification has been Declared Complete by the 3GPP

As Brian and his wife wandered off toward the No. 2 train afterward, it crossed my mind that he was the kind of guy who might have ended up a groomsman at my wedding if we had met in college. That was four years ago. We’ve seen each other four times since. We are “friends,” but not quite friends. We keep trying to get over the hump, but life gets in the way.

— Friends of a Certain Age

Comment section: Blaming Amazon for this is wrong. The people make a choice to work for them. This is an indictment on our society that forces these people to have to work. Amazon isn’t a charity that should have to take care of people. But it’s all of us who are to blame.

— A Glimpse Inside CamperForce, Amazon's Disposable Retiree Laborers

Effective filmmakers, no matter their genre or taste, put their fingers in the air, feel for a current, and then make art that either complements or pushes against it. They distill the world they live in, which is why there’s no such thing as an apolitical film.

— How Big Screen Sci-Fi and Horror Captured 2016’s Political Paranoia

The Legislative Analyst’s Office predicts California will eventually make more than $1 billion annually from taxing recreational marijuana.

— HOW RECREATIONAL MARIJUANA IN CALIFORNIA LEFT CHEMISTS IN THE DARK

What makes for an effective office environment? Random encounters with your coworkers. And food. Lots and lots of food.

— How to Build a Collaborative Office Space Like Pixar and Google

Fidelity suggests having your yearly income saved at 30, three times your income at 40, seven times your income at 55, and 10 times your income at 67.

— How Much Should You Have Saved at Every Age?

HCI (human-computer interaction) is the study of how people interact with computers and to what extent computers are or are not developed for successful interaction with human beings.

— Human-computer interaction, from University of Birmingham

The company says it is now focused on “on developing and investing in globally scalable blockchain technology solutions,” but, as reported by Bloomberg, it has exactly zero partnerships in the works with crypto firms

— Iced Tea Maker's Stock Price Triples After Adding 'Blockchain' to Name”

9 “Should you invite someone who assaulted you to your wedding.” No.

— It Came From The Search Terms: “I Can See The Sun In Late December”

The best way to cook a steak is medium rare. Plenty of people will disagree with this statement, for different reasons.

— Medium Rare: The Best Way to Cook a Steak

It sounds like it was made by an algorithm. It checks off so many boxes it could land in anyone’s “Because you watched” recommendations.

— Netflix’s first big movie “Bright” feels like a blockbuster built by an algorithm

State law that is rarely invoked requires tied elections to be settled by “lot.”

— Oyster shucking? A duel? No, Virginia will pull a name from a film canister to settle tied election

— Parents give teacher wine with son's face on label

— Reggie Watts: Fuck Shit Stack

— Reggie Watts: Humor in music

Self-efficacy is defined as a personal judgement of "how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations".

— Self-efficacy (Wikipedia)

The problem Haven aims to address is known as an “evil maid” attack. Basically, many of the precautions you might take to protect your cybersecurity can go out the window if someone gains physical access to your device.

— Snowden's New App Turns Your Spare Android Phone into a Pocket-Sized Security System

After doing a lot of online research and making a terrible mess, I thought I could make a tutorial for humble people like me. If I can do it, you can do it too.

— The Ultimate Guide to DIY Screw Post Book Binding

The robot obediently appeared in the distance, floating next to Miller. Miller then walked into the same space as the robot and promptly disappeared. Well, mostly disappeared, I could still see his legs jutting out from the bottom of the robot. My first reaction was, “Of course that’s what happens.” But then I realized I was seeing a fictional thing created by Magic Leap technology completely obscure a real-world human being. My eyes were seeing two things existing in the same place and had decided that the creation, not the engineer, was the real thing and simply ignored Miller, at least that’s how Abovitz later explained it to me.

— We Need to Talk About Magic Leap's Freaking Goggles

What’s this mistake so many make? It’s using your current job title as your headline.

— What Your LinkedIn Headline Reveals About Your Self-Confidence At Work

With the Dec. 14 repeal, Comcast and others will be able to charge content companies exorbitant fees without, technically, blocking. This fundamentally changes how the internet works, argues Ryan Singel, a fellow at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

— What will happen now that net neutrality is gone? We asked the experts

The story [Cat Person] stuck with me because I, too, have felt like the story’s main character, Margot. I have belittled myself to make a man in a vulnerable situation feel more comfortable. I have allowed myself to spend time with boys who I did not like that much but who I felt I owed my time to because they really liked me. And I have also taken part in the practice of ghosting- ignoring somebody who is texting me, instead of outright rejecting them. With time, I have gotten much better at being straightforward when someone is interested in me and the feeling is not reciprocated, but I still do the dance many women do: We exert energy into finding the most polite, passive way to get ourselves out of uncomfortable situations with men.

— Why Women Are Ghosting You

[theconservativebrief]

On Tuesday, the New York Times published a bombshell investigation that claims President Donald Trump — who repeatedly bragged on the campaign trail about being a “self-made” billionaire — actually inherited his wealth largely through creative, and possibly illegal, accounting done alongside his father, real estate mogul Fred Trump.

Though Trump has repeatedly boasted about using his business acumen to transform a “small loan” of $1 million from his father into billions, the Times found something quite different. When the younger Trump was just a toddler, the report says, Fred Trump began giving him part-ownership of several properties. Doing so allowed the elder Trump to funnel money directly into his son’s accounts, thus letting him sidestep the 55 percent gifts and inheritance tax. Fred Trump also gave his son at least $60.7 million in loans, many of which were interest-free and not tethered to a repayment schedule.

Some key takeaways from the report:

In 1990, Fred Trump sent a man named Howard Snyder to Donald Trump’s Atlantic City casino with a $3.35 million check, which Snyder used to buy casino chips. He left the casino without even hitting the craps table. That money was, in effect, an untaxed gift from father to son.

Beginning in 1992, Fred Trump’s real estate business began purchasing boilers, refrigerators, cleaning supplies, and other equipment from a company called All County Building Supply & Maintenance instead of a wholesaler. All County, which was owned by Donald Trump and his siblings and charged much higher rates than other suppliers, seems to have been a shell company that existed only to siphon Fred Trump’s money to his children under the guise of business transactions.

In 1995, Fred Trump began transferring ownership of his properties to his children through grantor-related annuity trusts (GRATs), a mechanism through which wealthy families can pass on property to their children without paying gift or inheritance taxes.

As the Times notes in its investigation, there’s a fine line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion. Some of Fred and Donald Trump’s actions, such as the casino debacle, are clearly illegal. Other things that sound illegal — like avoiding inheritance taxes through a network of trusts — may not be. I talked to Lee-Ford Tritt, a tax law professor at the University of Florida whom the Times consulted for its report, to help me try to make sense of it all. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Gaby Del Valle

So one thing [the Trump family] did was funnel money from Fred to Donald by giving him part-ownership of buildings. And then they set up shell companies to disguise gifts as business transactions?

Lee-Ford Tritt

The shell company that they’re talking about had two major issues. One, they could inflate the cost of capital improvement on their rent-stabilized apartments. If you put in capital improvements, they could increase those rents. So [Fred Trump] faked capital improvements. Some of that would’ve cost them, say, $20,000, and he was charging, say, $60,000. And by charging himself $60,000, marking up his own boilers and things like that, he was also reducing money out of his estate and passing it on to his children, who owned this shell company.

Gaby Del Valle

So that’s why by the time that Fred Trump died, he was worth a lot less than he was just a few years before?

Lee-Ford Tritt

All estate-planning attorneys want their very wealthy clients to die bankrupt, because they don’t want any estate and gift tax.

Gaby Del Valle

And how much of this is illegal? How do you determine what here is illegal and what isn’t?

Lee-Ford Tritt

It depends on what conclusions you take from the documents they were looking at.

A lot of this, a lot of the wealthy clients do. I think Americans don’t know what they do, and they’re shocked. I think the New York Times reporters were shocked by some of this, and I was like, “No, that’s not illegal.” Probably all uber-rich Americans do this. It’s in the statutes, the courts have approved it, they just do it.

Pushing it to an extreme, you can get into some trouble. So, for instance, when [the Trumps] were valuing their properties, there was this one property they wanted to get a charitable deduction for, and [the appraiser] valued it amazingly high, and that was good for them because they were going to give it to charity and they get to write off charitable deductions from the income tax. Then a very similar property, they transferred it [from parent to child] and they valued it very low to get out of the estate and gift tax. That would be illegal if they knowingly submitted false valuation reports to the IRS.

I think the president’s lawyer would say, “Experts handled all of this.” Well, one, that’s never an excuse for breaking the law. And two, the Trumps, this is their business. They’re not one-time players; they’re constantly involved in the valuation and understanding of the real estate market. They would understand if these were real values or not, and that would be illegal.

Gaby Del Valle

Could they say that valuation is subjective and that’s why there could be a big difference between what one appraiser says versus another?

Lee-Ford Tritt

No two properties are exactly alike, so even though the New York Times was [comparing Trump properties to similar ones in order to determine their value], there would be differences in the properties that would have the valuations. But to have that extreme of fluctuation in valuations, especially with such a short period of time with very similar properties, is rare.

Two, [the appraisal] has to be a good-faith base, and so that’s the difference. Were these [appraisals] presented [fraudulently]? Do they have the objective, the mens rea to submit false reports, or do they actually truly believe it? Would it pass the laugh test? So they might say, “No, no, no, we truly believe this.”

It’s just the circumstantial evidence that makes it suspect. Yeah, they could always have a response, but if they were submitted falsely, that’s illegal. When the New York Times talks about the grantor-retained annuity trust, I think every estate planner will tell you all wealthy planners use GRATs. And I would say yes, they do that, and they reduce [clients’] taxes, but falsifying the valuation of the property that you’re putting into that trust, that’s illegal. That’s where they pushed it too far. They supercharged it.

Gaby Del Valle

Could you briefly talk about the different legal mechanisms for tax avoidance that the uber-wealthy use?

Lee-Ford Tritt

Giving away property for charitable donations reduces your income tax liability. For estate and gift [taxes], you could do it as well.

This would take a long time to explain, all the products that estate planners use to reduce taxes. So few people are subjected to the estate tax, and then we give those people legally a lot of loopholes. We allow people to devalue their property. So, for instance, if I owned a piece of property worth $1 million, and I gave you a 40 percent interest in it, [that stake] wouldn’t be worth $400,000. I wouldn’t be taxed for a $400,000 gift, because I’m the controlling interest of the property and you weren’t there to make any decisions on it.

We would devalue that. We would say, “That $400,000 gift is worth only $200,000.” And then I could give you another $400,000, [devalue that money], and that would still be a minority interest. And eventually, I could give you everything and never pay the full price on the gift. And then GRATs are another mechanism where we play with the value of money and the interest rates. There’s lots of things that the rich will do to avoid taxes legally.

“All my friends who are estate planners are calling me up and going, ‘What’s the big deal? We do this for all our clients.’”

Gaby Del Valle

The Times piece notes that a lot of this — even if it was illegal, it’s not like it can be prosecuted now.

Lee-Ford Tritt

There’s a statute of limitations on the estate of Fred Trump, and that would have been three years. But if [Fred Trump’s children] knowingly gave false information, that could be opened. Now, if the estate doesn’t have any money — it’s been distributed — the IRS could go after the children, the beneficiaries, to get the money back.

I don’t know what the children reported on their income taxes, because I don’t know if these transfers were sales to the children or gifts. They seem to be very complicated. So the children might be liable for what they reported on their own income taxes, and that could still be opened up, although there are statutes of limitations on some of them — if they were done with fraud, [the IRS] could open it up.

Gaby Del Valle

The Trump administration is basically saying there’s nothing here. Is there any veracity to that?

Lee-Ford Tritt

I would say 80 percent of this, 85 percent of this, would be a yawn for the uber-wealthy estate planners. Like, all my friends who are estate planners are calling me up and going, “What’s the big deal? We do this for all our clients.” And once again, that’s a different story — that’s, “Should we allow this or not? Look at what the uber-wealthy are doing.”

But if [the Trumps] falsified valuations or played really aggressively with them, that’s different. If they used these shell corporations to rig the rate increases in the rent-stabilized apartments, that’s something different. There’s smoke there — there could be serious issues there. Now, the president might say, “This is my father. If there was fraud, this was him, not me.” Except the Times has done a good job of showing that he was integrally involved in all of this.

Gaby Del Valle

Are these loopholes in the tax code, or is it just the way things are? And can the government do anything about it?

Lee-Ford Tritt

It’s funny because people talk about them being loopholes, but they’re technically not. These are literally the statutes and what the courts have said are fine. GRATS are so commonly used by the uber-wealthy, and they’re so effective. They can wipe out gifts and estate taxes, hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Obama administration tried to shut them down, but it wasn’t passed by Congress. These devaluation issues I was trying to describe to you, the Obama administration tried to shut them down, saying you can only do them for legitimate business purposes, you can’t do them to avoid estate and gift taxes. Congress didn’t pass that law either.

Gaby Del Valle

One thing that I’m pretty confused about is, at least in terms of the rent-stabilized apartments, [the Trumps] boosted the value of the apartments with inflated costs [through a shell company], but then when these buildings were appraised, they were shown as being really low in value. This just doesn’t make sense.

Lee-Ford Tritt

These are all just strange valuation issues. This is the story I got from the New York Times, when I looked at it and they said, “What was your big takeaway?” I was like, “Wow, they were the masters of valuation manipulation.”

Every one of these things — every issue that the New York Times brings up, the GRATs, these rent-stabilized apartments, every property, everything, there’s a valuation issue involved in there. They’re so blatant and brazen about it. They’re using one valuation for one purpose and they’re changing it for another purpose. And so, you know, what’s so interesting is some of the [formerly rent-stabilized] apartments, they turned into condos, and then they reappraised them for a totally different value. I understand why you don’t understand it; it’s very strange.

One of those apartments, it was in the red — it was worth negative money [on paper]. They were making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month off it.

Gaby Del Valle

So it’s designed to be convoluted?

Lee-Ford Tritt

I think so. And the IRS is so strapped for time, it’s strapped for money and employees in the estate and gift tax divisions, they just can’t catch all of this stuff. And when they do, [the property owners] usually compromise and say, “Okay, I’ll pay 10 percent more,” and the IRS is happy. But really, you were scared about paying 60 percent more, so you just won.

Gaby Del Valle

Is the IRS in a better or worse position to go after this kind of thing than they were 20 years ago?

Lee-Ford Tritt

They’re in a worse position. So few people pay estate and gift taxes. A husband and wife have to have over $20 million to be subjected to the estate and gift tax.

It doesn’t bring in a lot of revenue, plus so few people do it, and there are so many ways to get around them and reduce your estate tax burden that they just don’t have the manpower. Something really has to catch [the IRS’s] attention for them to go off of something like that.

These GRATs that they were talking about, what Fred and his wife did, those GRATs are designed to create zero gift and estate taxes. They [the IRS’s estate and gift tax division] don’t really even have an incentive [to investigate], because they’re not thinking about how the valuation was rigged.

Gaby Del Valle

Bloomberg reported that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is going to try to go after the unpaid taxes. Can he do that?

Lee-Ford Tritt

Yes, and so could the IRS. Even though the statute of limitations has run out and [Fred Trump’s] estate is closed, if things were done fraudulently, if they purposely misled, [the IRS] could reopen [investigations] or go after the money. The problem is the estate is closed and the money has been distributed, but there are rules within the IRS that say they can go after the recipients of the money.

This isn’t a criminal action; this is just, you know, trying to get restitution.

Original Source -> Did the Trump family’s tax practices break the law? An expert explains.

via The Conservative Brief