THE INDEPENDENCE AND IMPARTIALITY OF THE JUDICIARY IS IMPORTANT IN ANY SYSTEM OF SELF-GOVERNMENT8/29/2019 Where, or how, does he find this stuff? Lowering the Bar found a story about a judge who, while presiding over a criminal trial, was caught driving the defendant’s Porsche, which the same judge had ordered to be seized before the trial. You can’t make this stuff up.
I should be quick to point out that this did not happen in the United States. The judge claimed that he took possession of the car not because he wanted to use it, but because the police didn’t have a safe place to keep it. A higher court didn’t buy that explanation and suspended the judge.
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Actually, the general subject of my August Estate Planning Law Report is something you should deal with, so that your loved ones don’t have to: instructions on funeral and burial. The situation that I hope you don’t have to confront is what happens if there is a disagreement about this often sensitive subject. If you deal with it, then there shouldn’t be any disagreement. Does that make sense?
In the Report I also provide information that I hope will be useful to you on the always timely topic of telephone scams. Regular readers know that’s a topic that I keep up with, because the scammers aren’t going to go away. Read all about it in my Estate Planning Law Report for August, now posted in the publications section at deconcinimcdonald.com. As Professor Bainbridge points out once again, the law is not what the CEOs say, or think it should be. Shareholder wealth maximization is the law. CEOs who act otherwise are endangering their own employment and the survival of their companies.
I readily concede that corporate social responsibility has its place, but only when it is consistent with the corporation’s duty to maximize the return on its shareholders’ investment. Business corporations exist to create value for their owners by delivering goods and services. Period. I don’t care what some group of CEOs says to the contrary.
If those CEOs direct their corporations to serve the interests of parties other than the shareholders of their corporations, the market will respond negatively, and those CEOs will deserve to lose their jobs. It’s no surprise that the idea of calling income tax exclusions and deductions “tax expenditures” came from a federal bureaucrat, is it? The idea is based on the notion, as explained in an article linked at the TaxProf Blog, that all income, with only certain theoretically defined exceptions, is the tax base.
THE UNSOLICITED CALLS IN WHICH THE CALLER CLAIMS THEY ARE FROM THE GOVERNMENT ARE SCAMS, EVERY TIME8/12/2019 Those ever-ingenious telephone scammers are back at it, posing, not as the IRS, but as the Social Security Administration.
If you assume that anyone who calls you on the telephone and says they are from the government is trying to scam you, you will probably never be wrong. It has huge emojis painted on it! What a great idea. I’m surprised that I haven’t heard of that particular form of expression being painted on a house before. The neighbors are angry, but based on the many similar situations I have written about, I think the emoji house owner is likely to win the argument over whether or not the city can tell her, no emojis on your house, just as she would if the city told the owner that she can’t paint her house purple.
I would have linked directly to the newspaper article, but the link in the blog where I saw this story didn’t work, so I’m just giving you the link to that blog. The question is, what happens to a one-foot wide strip of property that remained in the ownership of the builder after construction of two attached houses on two lots on either side of the one-foot wide strip?
Pro tip: don’t buy the one-foot wide strip at the tax lien sale. Buyer beware. Lowering the Bar spotted this example of government trying to control what citizens can do on private property. I think I have heard of “no gardens in the front yard because they are unsightly” rules before, but as long as there are busybodies in a position to make rules, there will be rules that say you can’t [fill in the blank], no matter how innocuous [fill in the blank] is, on you own property.
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AuthorThe contents of this blog, this web site, and any writings by me that are linked here, are all my personal commentary. None of it is intended to be legal advice for your situation. Archives
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