US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9306

On November 23 2017 04:36 Plansix wrote:
Sentencing guidelines are fine. Mandatory ones that attempt cover all possible reasons the law could be violated are travesties of justice and have lead to the mass incarcerations over minor drug charges. They are a flaws premise that the way combat human error by judges is to mandate human error by the legislature through a “system.”

On November 23 2017 05:00 zlefin wrote:

or the problem is that the system isn't sufficiently expansive and adaptive to cover all those situations; which it certainly could be if it was constructed intelligently, though I wouldn't count on legislators to do it right.

On November 23 2017 05:13 TheTenthDoc wrote:
Reading that story, I really hope he doesn't step down (well, except the part of me that wants a Democratic House and thus wants every R incumbent out). Sending nude pictures of yourself is dumb, especially when you have your face in them while in a public position, but if you're separated from your wife and dating other people and in the process you show them what you look like naked it shouldn't be some heinous crime.

If anything I hope this promotes the push for federal regulation of real revenge porn.

On November 22 2017 23:27 Mohdoo wrote:


I can't believe he'd say "poor man's don king". god damn. So many things wrong with that.

This dad is certainly weird though. Comes across as very opportunistic. I really get the feeling he is enough of a shit to raise a kid who is enough of a shit to steal sunglasses. The kid is obviously shit, Trump is obviously shit and the dad is somewhat shit.

That being said, I would handle this situation identically to the father. He is no doubt being compensated for his interviews and whatnot. I dunno what kinda career he has, but this has to be a good use of his time. Being the recent colored person in a feud with Trump is good money. I imagine there will be some kind of gofundme or some shit eventually.

On November 23 2017 05:28 Simberto wrote:


Yeah, not really a problem imo.

Sending nudes of you around (To consenting adult people) is stupid, but not really problematic. Don't see why that would mean that he "let his constituents down" or anything like that.

On November 23 2017 05:00 zlefin wrote:

or the problem is that the system isn't sufficiently expansive and adaptive to cover all those situations; which it certainly could be if it was constructed intelligently, though I wouldn't count on legislators to do it right.

On November 23 2017 01:47 Plansix wrote:

This entire article seems to be focused around Online backslash to a local election. I have no way to knowing if it represents the local population or if it is just a bunch of people online having a Woke Off. At the end of the day, the other candidates welcomed him and people did discuss that a black person hasn’t held a seat in 25 years.

On November 23 2017 05:52 mozoku wrote:

Well there's an infinite number of potential contexts for even a single crime, so that system is going to take a while to develop. Even for the smartest man alive. You're literally guaranteed to fail with a sufficiently large number of cases.

The law and judgment of humans are far too complex to be treated like you would a computing problem.

The release of the so-called “Paradise Papers” touched off new scrutiny of how moguls, celebrities and politicians stash their cash in offshore tax havens. The practice, though, is hardly limited to the global elite. In fact, government documents show that state and local officials have sent hundreds of billions of dollars of public sector workers’ retirement savings to a tiny archipelago most famous for white-sand beaches — and laws that shield investors from taxes.

Operating outside the U.S. legal system, the offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands give Wall Street firms leeway to make complex international investments and to earn big fees off investors' capital. But with offshore accounts featuring prominently in high-profile Ponzi schemes, some critics warn that the use of tax havens can endanger the retirement savings of millions of teachers, firefighters, cops and other public workers — a situation that could put taxpayers on the hook for losses if the investments go bust, or the money goes missing.

The tidal wave of cash has flowed from public pension systems into so-called “alternative investments”: private equity, hedge funds, venture capital firms and real estate. While many alternative investment firms operate in Lower Manhattan, more than a third of all the cash in those private funds flows through vehicles domiciled in the Caymans, according to Securities and Exchange Commission records reviewed by International Business Times. Those same records show that public pension plans, university endowments and other nonprofits have funneled a massive $1.8 trillion into alternative investments.

“Based on SEC data, it appears that public pensions alone hold around $300 billion offshore in the Cayman Islands in hedge funds and private equity,” said Chris Tobe, a former state pension trustee and author of the book “Kentucky Fried Pensions.”

In recent years, SEC regulators have tried to crack down on alternative investment firms’ fee schemes that regulators say can end up enriching money managers at the expense of investors. At the same time, state officials and investor groups have pushed for more transparency in the alternative investment industry as a whole.

But with so many of the investments now running through a maze of shell companies in lightly regulated tax havens, some experts say the outflow creates the conditions for rampant fee abuse and financial shenanigans — and prevents pension officials and law enforcement officials from even knowing exactly where billions of dollars of public money is being held.

“The additional risks related to investing in funds established, regulated and custodied in tax havens are real,” former SEC attorney Edward Siedle has warned.

A trove of confidential hedge fund documents reviewed by IBT shows that major financial industry players acknowledge some of the potential risks that can arise when money is invested outside the United States. The documents show that in the fine print of their agreements, the firms admit that shifting cash to less-well-regulated foreign locales can end up putting money into brokerages that may not adhere to traditional banking regulations. They also acknowledge that moving money into international securities can reduce basic protections for investors and ultimately increase the risk of significant losses.

“How does investing in funds established in loosely regulated offshore tax havens benefit government workers — participants in a pension that doesn’t even pay taxes?” Siedle has written.

One answer to that question, say lawyers, involves pension systems seeking to preserve their existing tax exemptions. Under laws passed in the 1960s, those tax-exempt entities would have to pay taxes on the kinds of debt-financed earnings involved in private equity and hedge fund investments — but they can avoid those levies if they first route their investments through “blocker” corporations in tax-free jurisdictions like the Caymans.

“This is very standard planning — it’s a plain vanilla technique,” said the Tax Policy Center’s Steven Rosenthal, a former partner at the global law firm Ropes & Gray LLP, who advised universities on investments.

Public pension systems vary in how they report their investments. Many simply list the firms that are managing retirees’ money, but not where the firms are located, or whether the funds are ultimately being moved offshore. However, occasional references to offshore funds are scattered throughout public filings.

In South Carolina, for instance, the annual report for the government workers’ retirement system listed nearly $60 million invested in a Cayman-based fund run by Reservoir Capital Partners, which received more than $2 million in fees from the state last year. In New Jersey, state investment officials have in recent years committed more than a quarter-billion dollars of state pension money to hedge funds based in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, the country at the center of the Paradise Papers controversy. And in Texas, a 2015 report from the teachers retirement system showed the state paying a combined $13 million in fees to Cayman-based funds run by Bain Capital and Soroban Capital Partners.

Siedle told IBT that Wall Street firms may set up shell corporations in tax havens “not to help public pension fund investors, but really to protect the managers from taxes and regulations.”

A 2008 Government Accountability Office report detailed some of the potential benefits financial managers can glean from domiciling their operations in the Caymans. The agency found that “some U.S. persons can minimize their U.S. tax obligations by using Cayman Islands entities to defer U.S. taxes on foreign income.” GAO also warned that “some persons have conducted financial activity in the Cayman Islands in an attempt to avoid discovery and prosecution of illegal activity by the United States.”

Law firms openly promote the benefits of offshore investment vehicles.

“The tax exempt, tax transparent, non-regulated and highly flexible nature of the [exempted limited partnership] and the absence of regulatory or licensing requirements touching the general partner, together with the flexibility of the Cayman Islands exempted limited company, combine to make the Cayman Islands the preeminent jurisdiction for offshore private equity funds,” said a recent memo from Mourant Ozannes, an offshore law firm whose website says it is “advising many of the world's foremost financial institutions” on the laws in the Caymans, British Virgin Islands, Guernsey and Jersey.

Facebook said on Wednesday that it would let some of its users see whether they liked or followed pages belonging to Russia-linked operatives that sought to sow political divisiveness around the 2016 US presidential election.

A new page to be published on Facebook's help center by the end of the year will show whether some accounts interacted with the Russia-linked accounts, Facebook said in a blog post.

"This is part of our ongoing effort to protect our platforms and the people who use them from bad actors who try to undermine our democracy," Facebook said.

Roughly 150 million Facebook users saw posts shared by pages belonging to the Russian propaganda organization known as the Internet Research Agency, Facebook previously told US investigators.

On November 23 2017 06:36 Mohdoo wrote:
Facebook is apparently going to inform users if they were duped by Russian propaganda.

http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-will-let-some-users-see-the-russian-pages-they-interacted-with-2017-11



Some activists are going to be reallllly salty when they realize (and then deny) they were manipulated by an oligarchy.

On November 23 2017 06:47 Excludos wrote:


I wonder if they'll release statistics for everyone to see?

On November 23 2017 06:52 Mohdoo wrote:


It would be interesting to see total views. When you see "batshit insane friend liked 'REVOLUTION KILL ALL CAPITALISTS' photo" and it is some kinda Clinton slave trade stuff, that is still reaching people. I am sure a lot of people were slowly convinced of certain beliefs just from a constant stream of certain people on facebook liking all these crazy ass posts. Sure, only 10,000 people 'liked' the post. But each like is projected to 100+ people.

On November 23 2017 05:37 doomdonker wrote:


LaVar is the dad of Lonzo Ball, 2nd pick of the NBA draft and starter for the LA Lakers. He has two other kids he's also trying to promote and inflate their worth.

All of this is to promote his Big Baller Brand. A good number of people don't like LaVar but he actually does seem like a man who genuinely loves his kids and wants his kids to have good lives. He doesn't need a gofundme because, unlike Donald Trump, he's actually an example of a man with actual hustle.



Its Texas. He also definitely doesn't mean it, its just something to say.