Xtaxguy

FOX FLASH NEWS this morning reported the indictment of a former military and later civilian employee for leaking top secret documents, complete with security markings, directly to a lefty on-line "news blog" using direct and encrypted online two way communications repeated over more than two years. They contained detailed information on then current and planned operations in the mid east anti-terror campaign against targeted leadership. The FOX report is at: https://www.foxnews.com/us/ex-government-intelligence-analyst-leaked-classified-al-qaeda-documents-to-reporter-indictmentT [Sorry, I couldn't find a way to make the above address an active link; you'll have to copy it to your search bar] The reader replies immediately focused on the lack of an indictment of the reporter, and a few pointed out that SCOTUS seemed to protect news media reporting no matter what citing the NY Times Viet Nam era Ellsburg case, which sort of exempted media unless that paid for the information in some manner. At first blush the facts of this case seem to be very distinguishable from that case. Here we have two people, one a government agent with a clearly inappropriate top secret code word access job, and a like minded an anti-American ideologue well known for his willingness to expose secret materials [charges have previously been brought against several of his leak sources]. Leaking classified materials, or aiding in that activity are felonies. Conspiracy to commit one or more felonies with others is itself a felony, usually with harsher penalties than the underlying felony itself. Given their ongoing communications as reported by FOX, the existence of a criminal conspiracy seems to me to be as clear as day. The question is: whether the media discloser of the information is exempt from prosecution by virtue of the 1st Amendment. I would argue not. Yes, the "media" here did not pay cash or whatever to the leaker, but, the achievement of their mutual goal to actively harm American interests by treasonous leaks, was clearly itself a reward to both. The blogger no doubt benefited financially from increased site hits and ad revenue if SCOTUS remains interested in the factor of economic benefit. I hope that Barr goes after the blogger on the basis that such disclosures can be straight treason conspiracy by all parties acting in concert, and/or that our changing world of bartering sensational ideological and political "news" for all sorts of diverse benefits (almost inevitably resulting in economic gain to all parties) moots the issue of clear, one-way financial compensation. I think the current SCOTUS a bit more likely than not to adopt this view, but that one or two more appointments by Trump before the case gets to them would insure a big time "clarification" of 1st Amendment rights. Consider, what would we have done if the NY times printed the OVERLORD plans in late May, 1944, without cash payment to the undercover Nazi in the Pentagon. I have no doubt that that leaker and a bunch of NY Times a-holes would have simply disappeared that night. This is different only in the magnitude of the underlying events. The magnitude of an evil does not alter its existence, but ony, perhaps, the harshness of the penalties that the criminals should suffer. HAND!

re One2One's Q: When you convey away an asset your gain or loss is computed by subtracting your cost basis for that asset from the value of what you received in exchange for that asset. It's up to you to demonstrate your cost basis. If you can't, it's considered to be zero, and your gain therefore equals your entire value of your proceeds. To everyone else's squirming efforts: reread the first paragraph of my 4:11 pm Wednesday post. Think of it this way: all transactions are just barter trades. What you're getting on the deal is your sale proceeds, and your cost for what you are giving is your cost basis. Proceeds minus cost equals gain or loss. If your barter deal does not involve US CURRENCY you might have a problem in assigning a US dollar equivalent to either or both sides of the trade. e.g., you swap a piece of furniture you inherited 10 years ago for a used motorcycle. Your cost basis is the fair market value of the furniture on the date of death of the person who left it to you, but the current US dollar value of that furniture and the used motorcycle are rather subjective. Best evidence of value of either of the bartered items defines the value of both. Now substitute IQDs for the used furniture. If a transaction is reportable for US tax purposes and either side of the transaction consists solely of US dollars, the face amount of that US currency absolutely defines the reporting value of the transaction. ANYTHING other than US dollars makes valuation of the deal less absolute, best evidence prevails, but the nature and taxation of the transaction for US tax reporting purposes DO NOT CHANGE. CURRENCY OTHER THAN US DOLLARS is simply NOT currency for US tax return purposes. It's just another vanilla paper asset to which a US Dollar value has to be designated by the best available evidence in order to compute the gain or loss on the deal for US tax reporting purposes.

If you give your IQDs (or any other asset) to anyone, anywhere, in exchange for anything, and you are a citizen or permanent resident of the US, you have a taxable event reportable on your US tax return. Everything else is just details about how the amount of the tax burden or benefit (in the case of losses on such transactions) is calculated. If what you get in the exchange is of lesser value than the then current value of what you are giving, the difference is likely to be a gift, which might be a tax deductible charitable contribution, or a reportable taxable gift to someone you wish to benefit. In short, ALL transactions are taxable events to those involved, it's just that on most of them one or more of the parties involved may be exempt from reporting it or, if reportable, may have no practical tax impacts. For example, when you buy a beer to drink, that's almost always a non-reportable personal expense, but not to the entity that poured it. The new federal tax law makes no changes in fundamental concepts that I know of, and what I described in the above paragraph is as fundamental as it gets. The new law is just another big hodge podge of tweeks in the computational details designed to benefit some and penalize others. Overall, a significant tax cut on identical facts will occur, but total federal revenue very likely will go up significantly because the burden shifting has stimulated businesses (changed facts) which will likely pay more total dollars of taxes despite lower tax rates because their income is going up. Total dollars collected from individuals will go up much more despite lower tax rates primarily because millions of people have gone back to work (more changed facts) and most again will be paying some income and social security taxes. Those who have been employed all along will pay at lower rates, but in most cases on increased income levels as wages rise everywhere. This phenomena was previously best illustrated by the huge tax cuts Jack Kennedy got passed early in his administration and lit up the economy like never before. This is horribly embarrassing to the loonie left who invariably try to ignore or deny it. But, for the top 3 to 5% of earners, federal taxes will take a significant jump if they live in very high tax rate States (e.g., NY, NJ, Mass., Conn., Penn., Ill., Calif., etc.) because their State and local tax (SALT) deductions on their federal tax returns will be limited to $10,000 despite their actual SALT payments often being much higher. Much teeth gnashing to come soon from the bluest States!

Look up my posts on this topic several years back. I was a big 8 tax partner with numerous international clients and a tax manager at the HQ of a Fortune 100 company where one of my duties was to calculate the unrealized currency conversion gains and losses on periodic financial statements including the unrealized (i.e., deferred) tax effects related to those gains or losses. Basically, they are ordinary if related to the active conduct of a trade or business, unless they are derived from the disposal of an asset held for investment. Businesses that routinely have such gains and losses can get a safe haven by giving the IRS notice that a foreign currency denominated asset has been acquired for investment purposes. The code subsection with the $200 rule relates only to de minimus personal gains, and is not relevant to investment nor ordinary trade or business gains/losses. It's easier to understand if you think of any foreign currency as widgets or gizmos instead of money. If you buy and/or sell gizmos overseas as an active business, gains/losses will be ordinary. And if you decide to keep some particularly nice gizmos because you think some day theiy may become valuable collector items, they're investments that will generate capital gain or loss. Conceptually, stop thinking of IQDs as money. I you are an American and paying taxes, IQDs are an asset (e.g., gizmo) that you can buy or sell for US dollars or barter for any other asset. ALL such transactions are taxable and the normal rules for determining the flavor of the taxable income or loss (i.e., ordinary trade or business, ordinary investment with or without the surtax, ordinary rental, short or long term capital gain/loss (with or without depreciation, amortization, or other "recaptures"), etc. Yeah, it's really messy, and no longer even remotely sane, logical, or knowable given the hundreds of pages or regs not yet written and thousands of court cases not yet litigated. If your tax preparer says "ordinary," get a new tax preparer. Repeat until you have a return reporting capital gain or loss. If the IRS decides to litigate, you can defer payment or additional taxes (IF the IRS bills you) while a test case is litigated. If it's heard outside the 9th CCA, the test taxpayer will win and so will you. If not, the Supreme Court will reverse the 9th as it almost always does provided the actually here the case, and there is a risk they will not because like every one else they hate to try to figure out any tax issue. If that happens, you might owe some tax plus some interest, but no penalties because you relied on a pro and the Courts treated it as a real issue. But not to worry, we'll all be dead before that day comes.

Buying put options rather than short selling is usually less risky, and your downside is limited to the known cost of the option contract.

Why is this POS even allowed into the US? He is a psychotic sociopath who funds effin terrorist groups. Declare him any enemy alien and confiscate all his US connected property as we did in 1942.

Once again, no doubt at the urging of our cynical and gutless State Department, our American political leaders have betrayed our most loyal and effective ally in a battle nearly won, but not yet over. This time it's the Kurds getting the mooky end of the stick as the Hmong, Montanards, Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs before them. So Trump kisses the asses of the neo-radical wanna be Islamic terrorists now running Turkey into the ground who are so unreliable that they're being frozen out of some (should be ALL) NATO intel. The Kurds got hosed neary 100 years ago when a couple of drunk worthless "amateur gentlemen diplomats" redrew the map of the Middle East one day over lunch after Woodrow Wilson bailed on the Versailles Treaty negotiations. Read all about it in "Lawrence IN Arabia" NOT "Lawrence OF Arabia." It's hard to believe that there is any country left in the world that would trust us with out idiot drive-by politicians, constant cynical disloyalty to our allies, and our willingness to put up with the worst sociopathic nihilists to maintain "stability." If our post-WWII foreign policy wonks had been around in 1940, we'd be speaking German or Japanese now. Better brush up on your Arabic and other languages of the Islamic psychopaths.

There must be several thousand videos on line from phones and body cams. Fire spread in every way possible through excess fuel in unbuilt areas and mainly topping fires and wind blown burning debris in densely occupied areas. No conspiracies or secret weapons, just more bad policies due to left wing corruption and incompetence. The Redding FD stopped the Carr fire at our next door neighbor's fence minutes after we evacuated. Still had over $20K of smoke and power outage damage. My third fire storm, and by far the worst. Until the Camp fire that is. Worst ever in US since San Francisco fire following '06 earthquake, and probably Atlanta during the march to the sea. The air get super heated and tightly closed things - like some trees and houses - just explode. Air drawn into the flames creates whirlwinds that will take the roof right off of a house, but not necessarily burn it. Happened to two houses in our neighborhood. Wind speed at the wall of the Carr fire "firenado" peaked at more than 225 mph. It was heading down the Sacramento River Canyon and suddenly turned north and burned its way between several large highland subdivisions taking out all the scattered big lot homes between them and scores of homes on the subdivisions' fire=facing sides. Had it not turned it would have taken out at least 5,000 homes and Redding's downtown. None of us would have had a chance. Or fire jumped around 3 miles in a minute to bring it within a half mile of high density areas which it burned thru at 5 to 10 mph until our heroes stopped it. And the Camp fire in Paradise was much, much worse than our Carr fire 6 weeks earlier. BTW - NOT climate change. We had decent rainfall last Spring and a Summer that actually was a bit cooler than average. But our Summers have ALWAYS been very hot and dry. The problem is insanely bad forest management by the incompetent dogmatic idiots in Sacramento and Washington. Dead trees cannot be removed from public lands, and CA has scores of millions of them. Controlled burns to clear brush buildups are so restricted that they're very big news because they are so rare, and in several cases of federal properties not properly controlled resulting in huge wild fires that burned around a half million acres. High fuel areas have to burn and sooner or later they all do. It's an essential element to the health of the forests in the US West. The trick is to set small fires that you have to keep relighting on ideal burn days to clear the forest floor out a bit without hurting the trees, killing the flora that prevent soil erosion into waterways, or polluting air moving into populated areas. There are too few such days every year, and on such days there are far too few competent fire managers to do all that is needed. But that's the American way: steal the nickles and dimes from all types of maintenance and protection budgets to fund pork barrels and buy votes, then burn bales and pallets of money when something literally goes to hell.

Yup, tariffs are bad, and in this case ineffective. With lots of unintended consequences. Tariffs are NOT the way to fight this particular problem. China has huge overcapacity due to bad planning and a slow down in their growth rate. They're dumping some of their excess steel on us at prices below their costs and the remedy for that is in the International Court for such claims pursuant to all trade treaties. If that doesn't do it, or China or the Court malingers, just bar their steel. FYI, the US, and most developed countries, have dumping and predatory pricing laws for their internal economies. China's routine theft of virtually any and all intellectual property worldwide is a much bigger problem. They totally ignore trademarks, copyrights, etc., systemically defrauding both property owners and customers world wide. Just tell them to pony up whatever $$ amount per year looks fair (somewhere north of $100 billion, I would guess) and leave it to their dictatorship to get the $$ from their population that buys our top DVDs for less than a buck and runs everything on blueprints and software stolen from others. No pay, no shipie anything to the US. Our government has been allowing the Kleptocracies of the world steal everything and anything from us that's not nailed down for far too long. And while we're at it, the cost of just about everything made or done in America has skyrocketed with all the extras that have to be done )or avoided) to comply with the rules of the regulatory agencies - the EPA, yeah, but all the others too that prescribe every aspect of our lives with little to no regard for cost/benefit considerations, preservation of the ability to preserve industries vital to national security, employment rates, or common sense. They are 99% about their own power, NOT the welfare of the country or its citizens. Well, you PC idiots, if your rules are so vital to the welfare and survival of the earth, why don't you either bar from the US, or tax the hell out of, imports to the US, that do not fully comply in their manufacture with the rules imposed on US factories? Go a step further, adjust for the minimum labor rate differentials (huge with slave labor economies in much (including China) of the world). If US bureaucratic rules are so vital, fair and just, how can we allow goods made outside the US that are non-compliant with those rules to the great benefit of their foreign manufacturers, and detriment of our own factories and work force (and presumedly the world environment) into the US? Shouldn't they at least carry tariffs to equalize environmental and human rights cost differentials to level the economic playing field? I think this scheme would demagogue well with the populist crowd and would greatly increase employment, as it would require at least another million federal bureaucrats to dream up the rules and enforce them. And then we could have the end game: almost everybody is writing and enforcing rules, and the last few hundred guys trying to feed, protect, transport, and cure them are all either dead of heart attacks or tossed in the can for violating rules that nobody can even find in the pile. Game over, all fall down.

You guys are forgetting the realpolitik version of the golden rule: do unto others as they would do unto you...just be damn sure to do it first. So no merciful ropes, just gasoline cages and dull butter knife beheadings. It's the muslim way.

It's time to stop wasting electrons by reshowing the decline and fall of this demented and delusional old woman. Too much like pissin' on the corpse of a vanquished, but very inferior, enemy. Unseemly. Ignore her. Ditto for Pelosi and the MSM. To them, it's a fate worse than death.

Around ten years ago I recall seeing a case reported in a newspaper concerning an illegal alien who confessed to a major felony and got a long sentence. An appeal had been filed because the felon had not be notified of his right to contact the consulate of his country of citizenship, apparently on the basis that federal law and/or treaties requires such notification, and that failure to do so should be treated as a police failure similar to a failure to give the now standardized "Miranda Warning." I never so a follow up news story, and I'm too damn tired to research it's ultimate resolution (especially because I do not recall the felon's name or Court of origin, but I think it was a California case). If this appeal was upheld by a precedential Court [seems like a slam dunk in the 9th CCA], the failure to make this required additional rights warning is almost automatic, because sanctuary jurisdictions generally prohibit their law enforcement even to inquire as to nationality, even when another nationality seems obvious (e.g., perp can't speak English), thus they wouldn't know what consulate to notify. So, if this asserted addition to the Miranda Warning has been precedentially upheld, California and other idiotic jurisdictions will just have to turn 'em all loose! Maybe we can somehow find a way to send Obutthead back to Kenya in the chaos that would ensue.

Sure, he's willing to have some of his minions blather for a couple of years while lying low and building his CBR inventories, expecting that our millions of new [illegal alien] voters will elect a new ultra left idiot in 2020, who will visit, apologize, and deliver money, just like Obutthead did with so many other demented dictators. I just saw a better plan on another page on this site a couple of minutes ago:

The skills he will acquire as an enlisted Marine will take him further in life than what he would get out of any of the Ivies these days. If he eventually goes to OCS and then stays in the Corps for only the minimum required time, he will be a far more valuable employee to most employers immediately after his ETS than any of his classmates. Your former friends are the proof of that. Every vet knows this, and very few non-vets will ever have a clue. You are clearly one of those few. Just one question: have you sent the above to you son?

And an interesting pit stop on an easy cruise up the North Coast Hwy 1.