"Leave work early and have some fun."
Okey-doke!
Well, Jesse, that WAS a fun thread, but if we're talking about someone endorsing McCain, then it's only fair to point out that of late, Hillary Clinton has been doing a pretty good job of it, herself. :o)
jesse...i think any McCain bash is a clinton bash...as she has pointed out herslef a number of times they are BFF's and nearly identical to eachother on every issue that matters.
reminding you the actual battle is against John "McSame" McCain
Jesse,
Remind Hillary.
reminding you the actual battle is against John "McSame" McCain
Jesse,
Remind Hillary.
The only thing more ridiculous was seeing Charles Krauthammer talk about McCain being more of a uniter than either Clinton or Obama. But Krauthammer is a bonafide conservative loyalist in any case so that shouldn't have been surprising.
Clinton > McCain > Obama
Hillary has made it impossible for me to think of McCain and the danger he presents without also being reminded that she actually feels that Obama is worse.
If she wins the nomination the GOP is going to shove those comments down her throat.
I want to fight against McCain too. Too bad some Dems feel the need to kiss his ass instead.
Well, sorry to say anything not unfavorable to McCain, but the greedy-foundation business is vastly exaggerated.
IANAL but I have dealt personally with the law on private foundations. And, to begin with, McCain's thing clearly is a private foundation if it has in effect only one contributor.
BTW if you want to see details, just write to the foundation and request a copy of their most recent Form 900-PF. He can't turn down this request for tax forms: they have to provide one or lose their tax exemption. I suppose that's where the the Huffington-Harper's report got its data.
Anway, a private foundation can only give its money to public charitable foundations. (There are "private operating foundations" also, but this isn't one if it isn't operating something, like a museum.) So, you give it a tax-deductible contribution, and it gives away the money to tax-deductible public charities. If the PF can legally give its money to those schools, then they must necessarily be tax-exempt charities under the Internal Revenue Code. Hence, he gets the same deduction by passing it through the PF as by just giving directly to the schools.
So why have it? What's the gimmick? Dunno, haven't read their 900-PF. Some people set up foundations so they can pay themselves and their families nice salaries for running the thing; the IRS frowns on excess use of this, and a foundation with income of one million a year won't pay Enron-worthy salaries.
Another use: get your wealth into something permanent, which will survive you and keep disbursing its income in the ways you wanted -- if the trustees hold true to your wishes. Doesn't seem that's what he's doing, if the outgo equals the income. BTW it can't just sit there and accumulate money, but must keep giving it away.
And one other thing: You get a wad of income, and you don't want to give it away immediately; you'd rather space out the giving. So you give it to the foundation and get the tax deduction this year; it then passes the money to real charities over the years. Pursued honestly, this seems to me a perfectly reasonble way to proceed. Especially if your income tends to come in large lumps, as it does if you're, say, an author.
This tax advantage was a bigger deal back when income tax was progressive, but it still can matter.
Oddly enough, when it comes to squirreling away large lumps of windfall income to make later contributions, the tax law is less favorable to private foundations than to plain giving: the percentage of your total year's income that you can deduct is smaller than if you give to a public charity. Give away too much and you can, if you're lucky, deduct the excess as a carry-forward in a later year.
Have I given the impression that this is not an open-and-shut fraud on the taxpayers but a bit of hyper-complicated tax law? Good.
BTW if he got elected to the board of directors of one of those schools, the whole structure would be in danger because of obvious conflict of interest.
So it's not really a tax scam at all. It's just a scam if he wants to convince anyone that he's supporting actual, you know, charities for the benefit of people who, like, need help.
thoug hjesse has a point. from now on its john W Mccain, or JWM and hillary W Clinton hWc...its not like r was her real middle name anyway.
Moon:
I like "Lieberm'am"...:o)
"This break in your regularly scheduled Clinton-Obama Celebrity Deathmatch, has been brought to you courtesy of me, "Doc" Wendel, reminding you the actual battle is against John "McSame" McCain and the Republicans."
-Remind Hillary.
Or is she too wrapped up in her coronation to listen?
This might be OT but the final count of Hillary Clinton's mighty March 4th victory is +6 delegates.
So all this destruction of Obama by the Clinton camp seems certainly worth it...
Wengler:
Old hammer-nail-bang. :o)
yes, mclame has had to kiss bush's ass, after bush&rove had decimated his reputation in s.carolina 4 yrs ago, and yes, it had to have been mind-numbing to do so.
but do you really think it was just bad scheduling coincidence that kept mclame from getting there on time, leaving george "can't talk w/o an earpiece prompter" in front of a waiting press corps for 20 minutes?
revenge is a dish best served cold...
and, in other news, igor resigns after calling frankenstein "hillary clinton"...
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