Everyone Is An Attorney At Heart?

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by Lisa

Alternative Fact: From Trump Jr, attorney client privilege protects a conversation he had with his father because attorneys were present with both parties. Seriously.

Real Fact: FRE Rule 501 makes privilege a little difficult to figure out in federal cases. And privilege may not even apply to Congressional testimony. But considering attorney client privilege in general — Attorney client privilege restricts what the attorney can divulge. A reasonable protection, otherwise people wouldn’t be able to have frank conversations with their attorneys. There is precedent for the witness invoking privilege regarding a conversation they had with their attorney. But that doesn’t mean every utterance a lawyer hears instantaneously becomes top secret information that cannot be disclosed by either party.

First of all, the communication has to be for the purpose of obtaining legal advice. Iffy, but you might be able to sell that. Wanting to understand the legal ramifications of publicizing information.

Having a conversation with ones attorney in the presence of a third party can nullify the privilege. There’s a joint defense privilege which allows parties with common interest in the litigation to share information without waiving privilege. This applies for parties “sharing a common interest in the outcome of a particular claim” [United States v. LeCroy, 348 F. Supp. 2d 375, 381 (2004)]. Common interest in the outcome doesn’t mean “daddy cares what happens to me” or “I was working on daddy’s campaign when I did this”. It means a legal interest. So they’ll need to sell that there’s a joint defense going on (which admits that Trump Sr has some involvement in these events of which he claims ignorance).

Furthermore, there’s an exception to privilege when the communication is itself seeking to commit a crime or fraud. Even if Jr rang up his lawyer to discuss what false narrative should be presented under oath to Congress, that is not privileged communication.

There’s a legal principal that the parade of horrors shouldn’t be considered when adjudicating a case — essentially you need to ignore the ramifications of the order — but if the presence of a lawyer in a conversation makes the conversation privileged, wouldn’t a whole bunch of rich dudes just have a lawyer go with them everywhere?

The Santa Myth

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by Lisa

Anya’s preschool is writing letters to Santa and otherwise celebrating the secular commercial iteration of Christmas. I just don’t get why this myth is perpetuated in any setting where you don’t know everyone’s financial situation and religious beliefs. Or even their views on commercialism and manufacturing practices.

Religious beliefs, to some degree, are obvious … it’s not a really big Sikh holiday, for instance. But even within the subset of Christian Americans … the secular version of Christmas can be offensive. And, hell, when I was a kid I thought Christmas absolutely sucked for Jesus – could you imagine how bad your birthday would be if it was celebrated by giving everyone ELSE presents?

Financial situation — the Santa story is that you won’t get what you want if you aren’t good. All the good behaviour in the world isn’t going to make a hundred bucks show up for a family with an empty bank account. Maybe their income and expenses mean the family barely subsists. Maybe an emergency sucked up the family’s spare money. If good behaviour means you get the toys you want, not getting the toys means you were bad. And that’s a terrible lesson to be conveying to young kids who are already disadvantaged due to financial circumstances.

Commercialism — this is the one that applies to me. I don’t like thing presents. Some are thoughtful and well used, but a lot of wastes of resources that take up space. I much prefer to plan a special experience for a celebration. Spend time together, do something unique, and you don’t have to find storage space for anything when you’re done. Telling my kid that presents should be tangible things — and that you can consult this toy flyer for ideas — is offensive. This isn’t to say Anya has never gotten a tangible present from us, but it’s part of an experience. Go ice skating and here are some ice skates.

Manufacturing — beyond the “be good or else”, Santa has elves that spend the year making all of the stuff that constitutes Christmas presents. Baring incredibly conscientious purchasing decisions that are not the norm … the elf is some kid in a third world country, victims of debt bondage … sure you got the toy for a pittance, but that’s because the labor didn’t even get a pittance. The image of cute elves singing and making toys in some gingerbread cottage looking room is not the reality of international manufacturing. Your kid may not be old enough to understand the socioeconomic ramifications of globalization … but that doesn’t mean you need to tell them elves make their toys.

Net Neutrality And Infrastructure Investments

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by Lisa

Ajit Pai claims eliminating net neutrality will spur carriers to invest in network infrastructure. And he’s not exactly wrong – there’s equipment required to QOS traffic to allow companies who have paid access extortion to have their traffic move faster. There’s equipment required to block services for subscribers who haven’t opted to pay for, say, the “Social Media Bundle”. Billing systems will need to be updated, which means more work for developers.

Turning all of the public roadways over to private corporations and allowing them to elect to operate them as free or toll roadways would spur a lot of investment or hiring too. There’s not an automated toll collecting barricade at the end of my street today, or a human toll collector. Imprisoning half a percent of the entire US population spurred a lot of investment and hiring too – new prisons, guards, support staff.

Investment or hiring is not, eo ipso, a boon. Sure it’s great for the company whose products are being purchased. Sure it’s great for the person who just got a job. But for society some impetus for investment and hiring is outright detrimental.

Since Pai has outright stated that he cares naught for public opinion, I am appealing to my members of Congress to enact legislation to enact principals similar to the existing net neutrality regulations. That’s the point of checks and balances in government – the courts could deem the reclassification of Internet providers to be unconstitutional (it isn’t, so not gonna happen). Congress can pass laws changing that which the executive branch needs to enforce. The executive branch can veto the legislative net neutrality bill, but a 2/3 majority in Congress can override the veto. Courts can rule those laws unconstitutional (since the existing regulations have already passed legal challenges, that’s doubtful too).

Insurance And Medical Billing

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by Lisa

 

There’s been a lot of talk about health care reform – years ago when the ACA was written, over the summer when the Republicans were working on a replacement bill, and again now that health care is trying to get slid in with tax changes. At no point has any politician addressed the real problems in health care costs: medical billing.

Scott went to his doctor for a routine checkup — a preventative service that is 100% covered by insurance. The doctor asked him if there’s anything else. He mentioned back pain, and his primary care physician referred him to a back pain specialist. We get the bill and he got billed for both the routine checkup and a medical appointment. Evidently, when the doctor asks if there’s anything else during a routine checkup … the answer is NO WAY IN HELL, otherwise you get billed a couple hundred bucks. Didn’t look at his back, didn’t prescribe any medication. Just said “yeah, you’ll need to see a specialist”.

The worst part is, in talking to the medical billing people, a doctor doesn’t know at what point a conversation will be deemed sufficiently in depth as to incur an additional code on the bill. There is absolutely no other situation where people would accept blindly accepting a service without knowing the charges involved. Could you imagine taking a University course and getting a bill at the end based on some financial department worker’s interpretation of how much interaction you had with faculty and educational resources for the duration of the class? A restaurant meal where the bill comes six months later and is based on the time you spent at the table, each interaction with a server, you chatted for a few minutes with the guy who brought the beer and that’s an extra fee because you discussed the IBU of their different offerings. Could have just said hoppy bitter flavor, but you used a technical term and incurred a consulting fee. Hell, you take your car in for service and they’ll provide an estimate before performing maintenance.

What I don’t understand is why we accept this billing model for medical services. I saw someone on SharkTank a week or two ago selling at-home medical testing kits. Her sales pitch wasn’t just the convenience (or privacy) of testing for medical problems at home. It was that there was a known cost for each test. You want to know your cholesterol levels? That’s 80$. Thyroid problem? Measuring TSH, TPO, free T3, and free T4 levels costs 150$. You pay in advance, you know how much it costs, and you don’t get a bill thirteen months later for services you never consented to receive.

What recourse do you have when the Cleveland Clinic screws up your appointment and you end up with expensive bills you didn’t anticipate receiving? Or a quick comment to a doctor garners another 150$ charge? Not a lot. Leave messages for their ombudsman who never returns calls. Pay the bill and appeal to the credit card company? Take them to small claims court?

Pies

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by Lisa

Again this year, no one wanted to make the pumpkin pie for Anya’s preschool feast. So I volunteered. I didn’t want to make the same pie a few days later for our dinner.  A bit of Internet searching and I found a dairy free pie for her class and a carrot pie for us. Both were incredibly good.

Because these are custard fillings, I blind baked the crusts. When dough is in pie plate, lay aluminium foil over the whole thing. Pour white sugar into the lined pie plate. Bake at 350 — 40 minutes for non-refrigerated coconut oil crust, 60 minutes for butter crust that was refrigerated for an hour after being placed in pie plate. Remove from the oven, allow to cool, and pick up the aluminium foil with the sugar & dump it back into the sugar bag. Since the crust is already baked, I covered the pie’s edges with aluminium foil to bake the completed pie.

Vegan Pumpkin Pie – adapted from https://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2013/11/04/healthy-pumpkin-pie-recipe/ and http://minimalistbaker.com/coconut-oil-pie-crust/

Pie Filling:
20 oz pumpkin puree
14 oz can coconut milk without emulsifiers
2 tbsp ground flax (or 2 eggs)
1/4 cup rolled oats, powdered in food processor
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp fresh ground nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp vanilla extract

Crust:
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp sea salt
2/3 cup solid coconut oil
6 tbsp ice cold water

Crust:
Put about half a cup of water into a glass and place in freezer.
Mix salt and flour, then use a pastry blender to cut in coconut oil.
Add 4 tablespoons of water from freezer and mix in. Add a little more water, a teaspoon at a time, until dough forms.
Split dough in half, wrap with clingfilm, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Remove from refrigerator and roll out dough. Place into pie plate and bake for 30-40 minutes until it is cooked.
Remove crust from oven and allow to cool while making filling.

Filling:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Drain watery liquid from tin of coconut milk and reserve. Combine coconut milk solids with pumpkin puree and mix to combine.
Add sugar, spices, vanilla, and salt. Mix well.
Add ground flax seed (or egg) and mix. Pour into pie crust, cover crust edge with aluminium foil, and bake for 30-50 minutes until pie has mostly set.
Cool, refrigerate for 4+ hours.

A lot of kids really enjoyed the pie (it never occurred to me that “picky eating” extended to pie … but I learnt last year that, yeah, a lot of kids won’t eat pie. Especially not a pie that’s got any sort of could-be-a-veggie in it. For a normal snack/dessert, I make the filling, put it in ramekins, and steam it in the pressure cooker. Same flavour without the trouble of making a pie crust.

The recipe made two “normal” sized pies (i.e. not deep dish), and there was plenty for twenty people (sixteen kids, four adults). With enough left over that all three of us got a slice after class 🙂 Since I expected to have pumpkin pie on Tuesday, I wanted to make something different on Thursday. I found a carrot pie at http://www.craftycookingmama.com/carrot-pie-perfect-fall-holiday-pie/ and adapted it a little bit. I used the all-butter crust from Smitten Kitchen.

1.5 lbs carrots
2 T butter
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup maple syrup
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ginger
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp tapioca powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Boil carrots for 20-30 minutes until they are tender. Drain water & return to heat to evaporate excess liquid.
Place carrots, butter, and cream in a food processor and puree until smooth.
Add the remaining ingredients to the food processor and puree until well mixed.
Pour into cooled crust and bake at 350 for 60 minutes until pie is set (knife inserted into centre comes out clean).

Served with maple whipped cream — add a few tablespoons of maple syrup to one cup of heavy whipping cream and whip until stiff peaks form.

This pie was really good too – Scott didn’t realize it was carrot-based until I mentioned it. It’s creamy and spicy and really good. So good we didn’t manage to get any pictures 🙂

Paul Ryan’s Cindy

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by Lisa

Paul Ryan wants to talk about how his tax bill is going to help this mythical Cindy person. She was invented by the House Ways and Means Committee in a discussion of how awesome their tax bill will be for everyone.

What if Cindy’s employer offers tuition reimbursement? Completing her degree is part of pursuing “her own professional aspirations”. Bummer! Tuition reimbursement is now taxed — so the 5250$ she is given to pay for University is now taxed, so the 711$ savings is now 186$ in tax savings. Still a savings, but not as impressive as the initial story. The budget also cuts moneys to local schools. Does the county reallocate funds from road repair to update text books? Cindy blows out a tire in an unrepaired pothole and that’s where her 186$ in savings goes. Maybe the school cut services instead. Great, she saves 186$ but at the expense of her kids education. Does the state just raise their income taxes? Does the county raise property taxes? Cindy doesn’t own her own home, but rent has to cover property tax expenses. Does her landlord lose money or does the landlord raise Cindy’s rent to cover the new local taxes? Cindy’s public library was going to build out a maker space where her kids could gain familiarity with 3D printing and robotics. Does the county raise taxes to fund the library, or do her kids miss out on this opportunity? Maybe she ends up saving a few hundred dollars a year in taxes, but losing beneficial services. Or maybe she ends up paying 300$ more in rent and is behind a hundred bucks a year.

The committee’s cherry picked scenarios aren’t exactly alternative facts, they’re real facts. But they conveniently omit the larger picture that is an individual’s budget. Not to mention hundreds of other real scenarios where an individual or business ends up paying more in federal taxes under this tax plan. Or, in Cindy’s case, saving money on federal taxes until the extra child tax credit expires and then paying more under the plan.

And none of their scenarios address the likelihood that Cindy will be working for many more years because this debt increasing fiasco of a tax plan will create a situation where we have to save money by enacting something like Ryan’s path to prosperity plan. Which ups the Medicare eligibility age, so individuals who could have retired under the current scheme now need to work just to retain medical benefits.

Nothing Is New

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by Lisa

I keep seeing articles hyping the anonymity of bitcoin-type “currency”. That’s not a new concept in value stores. Non-registered bearer bonds allowed untraceable fund transfers. As bearer instruments are not illegal in the United States, such bonds can still be issued. The holder cannot get any tax exemptions on interest paid for the bond, but you can transact business using bearer bonds. And just like bitcoin-type currencies … you’re screwed if someone takes it. Bonds provide legal recourse – bitcoin, not so much. If no one wants to pay a couple hundred thousand dollars for your bitcoin, you have little bits on disk. It’s like an anonymous stock — it’s worth whatever people are currently willing to pay for it.

As a data storage technique – distributed across the world, redundant, but ultimately meaningless in its sub-components to anyone who happens to have a snippet – it’s intriguing. But as a non-dodgy way of transacting business, it’s just silly.

More Corporate Tax Rate Bullshit

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by Lisa
I’m never sure if ‘lower the corporate tax rate’ people are just completely ignorant of how business accounting actually works or just a pack of liars (not mutually exclusive, I know).
 
The idea they promote is that CapEx isn’t deductible like a business’s current expenses – CapEx gets depreciated over a number of years. If I buy a new snazzy machine for my manufacturing plant and pay half a million dollars for it, I actually deduct 100k a year for the next five years. Depreciation calculations are more complicated, but the crux of it is [cost] / [years over which product depreciates]. And there’s a whole table defining depreciation periods.
 
*But* section 179 deductions allow the full cost to be deducted the first year. These deductions have a 500k limit and a spending cap of like 2 mill. The whole thing is more complicated because there are years where bonus depreciation is a thing … but like the “OMG the corporate tax rate is 35%” (on business that have over 18 MILLION a year in taxable income) … “Lowering the corporate tax rate will spur investment” is only *maybe* true for companies talking about multi-million dollar investments. This isn’t something meant to help the small manufacturer. Say my small/medium business that sunk half a mill into a snazzy machine and *didn’t* depreciate it over time. Under Section 179, I deduct the whole equipment purchase this year … which is a bigger savings the *higher* the corporate tax rate happens to be. Thus I’ve got less incentive to invest in new equipment if the tax rate is lowered.
 
Since they’re talking about 35% tax rates, we’re writing tax code to benefit GE (Apple, Amazon, insert your favorite enormous company here) … it isn’t like capital expenditures aren’t written off income AT ALL. Depreciation is spread out over the useful life of the equipment. Computers depreciate over 5 years. Cars and trucks depreciate over 5 years too. Equipment used in the manufacture of musical instruments depreciates over 12 years.
 
What makes investing in large capital expenses more attractive? I’m GigantorGuitarCo and we’re talking two hundred eighty million dollars in receipts and a hundred fifty mil in taxable income. And I buy a six million dollar something-or-other to make guitars. At a 35% corporate tax rate, my tax deduction by depreciating that purchase is 2.1 mil. At the 20% corporate tax rate, I only reduce my taxes by 1.2 mil. And yeah it sucks that I had to outlay six million dollars this year and only got to save 175k on my taxes. But doesn’t it suck *MORE* to spend six mil and only save 100k on my taxes??
 
Now the theory is that lowering the corporate tax rate will leave the companies with more money *to* invest. In this case, GigantorGuitarCo didn’t *have* 6 million dollars and instead spent years using sub-optimal processes because they simply didn’t have the money to invest – regardless of how much they’d be able to save on taxes *by* making that investment. I’m paying 52 million in taxes at 35%, but next year my taxes, at 20%, will be 30 mill. Frees up 22 million dollars, and I use that money to buy a whole bunch of equipment. Honestly, my best case would be that the corporate tax rate was 20% for ONE YEAR. Lets me free up capital to invest in my business, then give me the maximum tax benefit as I depreciate out the equipment.
 
But that’s mathematics without thinking about business. As the CEO of GigantorGuitarCo … wouldn’t I use a loan (business interest is tax deductible too), hire a couple of new tax attorneys, or lose some equity and do a fund raising round to get that six million dollars if the machine was going to provide some huge benefit to my company? And if the machine isn’t going to provide that much benefit … why wouldn’t I take my 22 mil in tax savings and stash it somewhere? Buy the machine when we *need* it, or when tax rates go up and the ROI calculation is different.
 
Sure there are edge cases where lower tax rates will spur investment in the business — *some* CEOs raised their hand when Gary Cohn asked if they planned increased investments when the GOP tax plan passes. [Although these may just be die-hard trickle-down guys who will SAY anything to promote corporate tax cuts] But the entire point of business’s investment (and the rational for depreciating CapEx instead of allowing full cost deduction in the first year) is that the new thing-a-ma-bob adds value to your business. My six million dollar investment makes guitars better/faster/with less human labor, thus increasing my profit margin. Said another way, CapEx is meant to increase employee productivity. Short some dramatic surge in demand … increased productivity means *fewer* employees. Not stellar economic stimulus, that.

The Colloquial Occam’s Razor

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by Lisa

Occam’s razor – it is futile to do with more things that which can be done with fewer – is colloquially rendered as “the simplest solution is the most likely”. We had multiple tickets opened today for authentication failures on an Apache web server. Each malfunctioning site uses LDAP authentication and authorization against an Oracle Unified Directory. Nothing in the error logs. The service account from the Apache configuration can log in and query the directory from the box using ldapsearch, so the account is valid and there is nothing in the OUD preventing access from this particular host.

That’s a puzzler, and I was about to take down a lot of web sites to reload the service with its log level set to debug. Not even sure what made me do it, but I went out to the groups and looked at their member lists. Oops. Something had gone wrong with the identity management platform and employee accounts had been cleared from the groups (all of the contractors were still members, which made it even stranger). Added a few people back into groups appropriate for their position, voila they could log into their site again.

No idea how the identity management group restored the memberships, but verifying people who should have been members (who had been members and had done nothing to remove their memberships) were actually members of the group saved a lot of time running through debug logs. Sometimes the simplest answer is the most likely.

Updated Federal Budget Distribution – 2017

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by Lisa

Here’s the latest pie charts of how the federal government spends its money. Again, there’s discretionary spending — spending from appropriation bills and the full budget which includes spending for things like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid which vary depending on the number of recipients and how much each recipient is being paid. This doesn’t mean the non-discretionary components couldn’t be changed — there’s been discussion of means testing Social Security payments and Medicare eligibility — but these changes are generally considered politically untenable (would you vote for the guy who just reduced your SS cheque because you happened to have a pension or money saved in a retirement account?).

Here’s the full budget breakout, updated for 2017

And the discretionary budget: