Wednesday, November 29, 2023

News bits: The quadrillion dollar lawsuit; Law concepts; How close we came on 1/6

The Hill writes about a tax law case now pending before the USSC. This is another case that could gut the entire federal government if corrupt plutocrats win and get to protect their wealth from taxation. 
Supreme Court to consider ‘quadrillion-dollar question’ in major tax case
  
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in early December on a case that has the potential to broadly reshape the U.S. tax code and cost the government hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue.

At issue in Moore v. United States is the question of whether the federal government can tax certain types of “unrealized” gains, which are property like stocks or bonds that people own but from which they haven’t directly recouped the value, so they don’t have direct access to the money that the property is worth.

Large portions of the U.S. tax code require that income be “realized” before it can be taxed, but critics say it’s an inherently wishy-washy concept that courts have just been ignoring for years due to administrative impracticalities.

Even if the court limits the scope of its decision to the specific tax referenced in the case, known as the mandatory repatriation tax, a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could cost $340 billion over the next decade, according to the Justice Department.

For comparison, that would cancel out all the extra revenue generated by the $80 billion IRS funding boost and then add $140 billion to the national deficit, which now stands between $26 and $33 trillion, according to various measurements.  “It’s the million-dollar question, just with a few more zeros: the quadrillion-dollar question,” Harvard University tax law professor Thomas Brennan told The Hill.

“On one extreme, if the Supreme Court decides that a realization requirement is present in the 16th Amendment … then there are a number of code sections that arguably would be invalid or have to be reworked,” he said.

These sections could involve partnership tax rules, rules on the taxation of debt and commodities, taxes on futures contracts and the international tax rules that string these areas together between countries.

“On the other extreme, even if the Supreme Court finds in favor of the taxpayers, they could do so in a narrow way that’s limited to the particular situation at hand, or in a way that … forecloses the possibility of Congress enacting wealth taxes but that doesn’t disturb much of existing tax law,” Brennan said.
This is another major front attack in America's authoritarian radical right war on government, taxes and regulations. If the plutocrats win big, a lot of power will flow from government and the people to rapacious elite brass knuckles capitalists and soulless corporations.
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

A pre-trial filing by DJT in the government’s criminal insurrection case against him asks the court for leave to file subpoenas for more documents and information related to the 1/6 Committee. DJT calls the documents and information “Missing Materials.” In this case, the documents and information were never missing, but they were just not asked for by DJT in discovery. This appears to be a set-up for another issue for consideration on appeal in case DJT is found guilty. At this point, it seems he probably will be found guilty of something in this particular lawsuit.

This filing is under a rule called Pretrial Rule 17(c). The filing party asks for subpoena power to get more information, but not for the purpose of discovery and introduction at trial. The judge described it like this: 

“not intended to provide a means of discovery for criminal cases,” but rather “to expedite the trial by providing a time and place before trial for the inspection of subpoenaed materials.” Accordingly, Rule 17(c) subpoenas are not appropriate where the moving party seeks materials “procurable reasonably in advance of trial by exercise of due diligence,” or operate “as a general ‘fishing expedition.’ .... Courts must be careful that rule 17(c) is not turned into a broad discovery device, thereby undercutting the strict limitation of discovery in criminal cases found in Fed. R. Crim. P. 16.”

The party asking for subpoena power under 17(c) has to show three things about the requested information, (1) relevance, (2) admissibility, and (3) specificity. Here's how those three concepts are defined for this lawsuit.

Relevance: “The first prong of this test— relevance—requires the Court to assess whether the documents sought have ‘any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.’”

Admissibility: If relevant, then the court looks to the rules of evidence to see if the information is admissible in court. There are many rules, often with multiple exceptions making this a fact-intensive analysis.

Specificity: This prevents fishing expeditions in hopes of finding something useful when there is no particular reason to think something useful might be there. While it may sometimes be impossible to “describe fully” the materials being sought, “courts will not approve a subpoena for documents based upon requests for disclosure from broad categories of documents.”

Anyway, the judge rejected DJT’s request for subpoena power. Actually, the filing was a farce. Some of the requested information was already disclosed to DJT during discovery, while some of it did not even exist. For other information, the court could not analyze relevance because the requested information was a broad swath of material and the subpoena request did not bother to state what relevant information it was looking for, the court writing: “The relevance prong is not satisfied merely because a defendant can articulate what they hope to find in the subpoenaed evidence.” 

Finally, the judge rejected the rest of DJT’s Rule 17(c) filing like this: The broad scope of the records that Defendant seeks, and his vague description of their potential relevance, resemble less “a good faith effort to obtain identified evidence” than they do “a general ‘fishing expedition’ that attempts to use the [Rule 17(c) subpoena] as a discovery device.”
_________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________

Apparently new information being reported about DJT’s 1/6 coup attempt raises an issue I was unaware of (or forgot about), namely the possibility that Mike Pence would recuse himself from the counting of electoral votes in Congress. Without Pence, the count would have been stymied. Dog only knows what chaos that might have led to. 

Worse yet, the evidence indicates that Pence actually considered recusal, in part because it would be “too hurtful to my friend” for him to seal DJT’s loss of the 2020 election. This is stunning. Pence actually believed that DJT was his friend. What a self-deluded fool.  

Just as bad, Pence considered the feelings of his imaginary friend as a reason to back away from his constitutional duty. That’s beyond insane. Clearly, Pence as the VP of the US had no idea of what it actually meant to take the oath of office. Literally no idea. He thought that personal friendship, real or imagined, had some role to play. The arrogant self-centeredness and blind, stupid loyalty of these people to a proven monster is jaw dropping and terrifying. How gullible can these people be?
 
Finally, what got Pence to change his addled mind was a talk with his son, a Marine. In that family chat, Pence’s son had to remind his befuddled, clueless dad that he took an oath that imposed duties the office of the VP that had to be performed. For crying out loud! What if Pence’s son had been like the evil bone spurs himself or his morally rotted spawn Don Jr., Eric or Ivanka? Pence would have recused himself and let the 1/6 horror play itself out.

And despite all of this, there are still tens of millions of gullible Americans who will vote for DJT, thinking he is on their side, cares about them and will vindicate their grievances. The WaPo published this yesterday: 
ABC News reported Tuesday that on Christmas Eve 2020, Pence had momentarily decided against presiding, in part because it would be “too hurtful to my friend.” ABC also reported that Pence has testified that Trump personally suggested that he recuse. (The Washington Post has not independently confirmed the reporting.)

“Not feeling like I should attend electoral count,” Pence wrote in notes obtained by special counsel Jack Smith, according to ABC. “Too many questions, too many doubts, too hurtful to my friend. Therefore I’m not going to participate in certification of election.”  
Pence testified that he reversed course after a conversation with his son, who cited the vice president’s constitutional duty, according to ABC. The date of that conversation is not clear, but it came at some point during a trip that Pence took to Colorado, which records indicate lasted from Dec. 23 to Jan. 1.
So finally, Pence actually believed there were “too many questions, too many doubts,” which led him to want to recuse. What questions? What doubts? Stolen election? What a fucking gullible idiot Pence was and still is. Pence is the con man’s dream mark, gullible and dim-witted. This reporting indicates that he actually believed there was merit to the blatant stolen election lies the DJT dark free speech Leviathan was poisoning America with.

Our democracy and civil liberties hang by a thread.

No comments:

Post a Comment