FrobeniusTwist · HackerTrans

FrobeniusTwist

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2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

This is very well put, and I agree with it unreservedly. But I do think that it's worth bearing in mind that "trans rights" is, for better or worse, an evolving concept in the culture at the moment. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when people even in my "west coast liberal" milieu wouldn't bat an eye if someone called someone else a "fag." That's practically inconceivable now, as would be playing "smear the queer" as we did just about daily on the playground. It seems to me that we're now in the middle of a similar process with trans rights, and I do think there are issues -- in particular those regarding the rights of minors and their parents -- that many people are trying in good faith to work through, and about which there are bound to be disagreements. I don't mean to make excuses for the politicians you mention, most of whom I think are using this issue opportunistically and not in good faith. I just think "the rights of trans people" is not something that has a well defined meaning at this point.

2 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

It certainly can be confusing. I generally use the term "nonprofit" to mean a corporate entity formed under a nonprofit corporation act, e.g., one derived from the Model Nonprofit Corporation Act. This says nothing about the tax status of the entity, and unless other circumstances also apply the entity would be subject to taxes in the same way as a for profit company on its net income. But many nonprofits also take steps to qualify for one of several tax exemptions, the most well known being section 501(c)(3). Not all of the familiar tax advantages apply to all tax exempt organizations. For example, donations to an organization exempt under 501(c)(3) are deductible by the donor, but donations to a 501(c)(4) are not.

3 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

As noted elsewhere, the EITC is a so-called "refundable" credit. It wouldn't serve its intended purpose if it wasn't refundable.

3 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

>> The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.

> Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true.

The point being referred to here is that you can't take a deduction for profits you would have made in some hypothetical world where things had worked out better for you. It's not all gray areas, and this particular point is entirely un-gray. Nor does the article that you "tl;dr"'ed into this quip support you here. It just says that the studio decided not to risk any further losses.

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Your advice above about maybe not spending recent withdrawals is really good. I just want to point out that recovery of "preferences" (which is what these withdrawals might, possibly, be) doesn't depend on there having been a Ponzi scheme, or any fraud at all, in the underlying business. Identifying and recovering preferential transfers is one of the main jobs of a bankruptcy trustee, and they are given legal superpowers with which to do their jobs.

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

That case probably (it's been a while since I checked) still shows up in most business law casebooks, but it doesn't really help much in understanding modern judicial thinking about the role of "profit motivation" in corporate decision-making.

Here's the abstract from a fairly recent paper in the principal journal of the ABA's Business Law Section in which the case and its relevance today was discussed in detail:

  This article examines Dodge v. Ford on its 100th anniversary. In Dodge v. Ford,
  the Michigan Supreme Court held that a business corporation is organized for
  the profit of its shareholders, and the directors must operate it in service to
  that end. Despite the fact that Dodge v. Ford is rarely cited in judicial
  opinions, the case continues to spark controversy in legal scholarship. There
  is little justification for this scholarly attention because the factual basis
  is little more than a caricature of Henry Ford, and subsequent developments in
  corporate law have all but eviscerated the precedential value of the case.
  Rather, the legacy of Dodge v. Ford may simply be that it serves as a
  convenient talisman, standing for the one sentence anyone actually cares about
  and rolled out with each new battle in the war between shareholder profit
  maximization and corporate social responsibility.

Michael J. Vargas, Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. at 100: The Enduring Legacy of Corporate Law’s Most Controversial Case, The Business Lawyer, Vol. 75, p. 2103 (2020).

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

What tax, specifically, is Delaware a haven from? Incorporating in Delaware doesn't get you out of Federal income taxes, or state income taxes (to the extent your operations, which are probably not based in Delaware, subject you to income taxes from various states), or sales taxes, or property taxes, etc., etc.

There are some taxes that are avoided by incorporating in Delaware, as opposed to some other jurisdiction, but they round to zero when compared with taxes imposed without regard to where you happen to be incorporated.

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I worked in the same building in Honolulu as these folks. Several of us were able to buy various bits of hardware left over after they wrapped. I ended up with a massive monitor that I used for years after. My recollection is that one of my co-workers bought a rack and a few servers, but sadly I can't remember the details (other than that it was a hopelessly impractical purchase on my co-worker's part).

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

"Quiet enjoyment" is a archaic legal term of art, arising (I believe) in law governing conveyances of real property. The Black's law dictionary on my desk defines "quiet" in this context as "Unmolested; tranquil; free from interference or disturbance." That is, it's not a condition imposed on the transferee ("if you do not enjoy the conveyed property quietly, I can make trouble for you").

The term causes enough confusion to be retired, but lawyers do love their stock phrases.

4 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Another (transactional) lawyer here. While I generally agree with this, there are still circumstances in which something like a VC system would be useful. It's not uncommon for documents to go through a dozen or more (sometimes significantly more) iterations before being finalized. It would sometimes be useful to know in which version a particular fragment of language was inserted. But this can be worked out "manually", and indeed I think the real issue is that the value add of a VC system is probably small enough that it's just not worth any significant additional complexity. Having said that, I've long considered doing a lunchtime brownbag session on git, just to blow people's minds about what is possible.

I do disagree about "Track Changes" though. That quickly becomes an incomprehensible mess. Better to avoid Track Changes (except in very small/simple agreements where you don't expect more than one or two turns, in which case it can be useful) and send a "clean" and redline version (based on the immediately preceding version) on each turn.

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I'm a lawyer, and a former (and still occasional) programmer. In my experience, tools developed for (or at any rate, targeted at) lawyers seem to always be bloated, slow, and of negligible utility as far as I can tell. For "legal development" purposes (i.e., writing a letter, contract, memo, brief, etc.), nothing I've experienced surpasses plain old Word Perfect (still in use in some offices I deal with). Word's automated numbering system can burn in eternal damnation.

What might be useful would be better change tracking and management. The problem here is Word's dominance as a means of exchanging drafts. When working on an agreement, I and opposing counsel usually exchange Word drafts along with PDF redlines, which works well enough. Some attorneys like to use the "Track Changes" feature of word, but after a few turns you end up with a complete mess. Still, the sophistication and power of a git or mercurial would probably be wasted in the sort of contexts in which lawyers typically work (a series of form-based documents which are individually tailored in essentially one-off transactions).

I'll ignore your quip about productivity, except to note that you might feel differently if you were the one paying the fees.

5 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

The main "pro" of a successful Chapter 11 is that a viable but struggling business is saved (along with the jobs provided by the business), although the investors in the business may see their investment wiped out. As mentioned elsewhere, being able to pick and chose which leases to assume and which to reject is one of the principal benefits. The main "con" is that unsecured creditors don't necessarily get the deal they agreed to, but (a) the claims of even unsecured creditors are prioritized over equity, and (b) bankruptcy is a known risk for unsecured creditors, and is presumably priced into the debt in the first place. Also, while a Chapter 11 is not going to help a company looking for cheap debt, there's a whole industry of providers of credit to Chapter 11 debtors. As long as there is a viable plan to reorganize, the company should be able to find financing or otherwise emerge with a functioning business.

6 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

> You pay taxes based on where you have a nexus, such as an office.

That's true as far as it goes, but the requirements for "nexus" were significantly weakened a few years back by South Dakota v. Wayfair. It is no longer a constitutional requirement that a company have a physical presence in a state in order for there to be nexus. Having a sufficient number of customers in a state can definitely subject you to taxation by the state.

7 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

Amazed to see Trollope mentioned here.

I read Dr. Thorne probably twenty years ago, and liked it OK. I recently found, and have been completely blown away by, the Timothy West recordings of Trollope on Audible. They are hands down the most consistently enjoyable audiobooks I've ever come across (and I've been listening to audiobooks since the 90s). West's readings add so much to the experience. I really cannot recommend them strongly enough.

9 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

> Actually, the situation i long for is before the creation of the LLC, where shareholders were responsible for paying for the corporations lawsuits. LLCs are fairly recent invention, and also one that hurt consumers a lot.

Er, what? Shareholders are not responsible for paying corporate liabilities (except in rare circumstances where the corporate form is part of a fraud). The creation of the LLC as a new form of business changed nothing in this regard.

11 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

IIA[American]L.

The answer to your question about how lawyers figure out changes to the law is: they give an assignment to a new associate (or law student, in the case of scholars) to track down the history manually. It's a horrible pain in the ass.

Most codifications I'm familiar with (both state and Federal), whether in print or online, include a list of amendments along with each statute. But any given amendment may have changed a dozen (or far more) statutes, and it's generally a tedious and time consuming job to track down the changes to a given statute over time. Also, the reasoning for the changes, when it's given at all, is often burried in committee reports, which are rarely accessible by following links on a webpage. Some commercial services (LEXIS, WestLaw) will provide historical "snapshots" of particularly important statutes (the Internal Revenue Code, for example), which can help to some degree but which still leave a lot to be desired.

Statutes in general contain a lot of structural information (cross-references, definitions, etc.) which in some online sources are hyperlinked at least, but changes to which are not to my knowledge expressly tracked. One can easily get confused when, for example, a court case refers to a section of a statute that has been renumbered, or to which a new subsection has been inserted in the middle.

I took a quick look at the UK site above, and ... it actually looks quite impressive. As you say, however, it doesn't purport to be current, so some legwork is still left to the grunts. As a former programmer (and text munger a la Perl), it has always seemed to me that there should be a lot of opportunities to apply the tools of software development (version control in particular) to the texts of the law, but simply slurping up text into a repository is not likely to be all that helpful, and the overhead of doing anything useful would be considerable.

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

I hear you, but if your assessment is based on XSLT 1.0 (which is likely, since 2.0 was not very widely implemented) you might reconsider. The differences between 1.0 and 2.0 are so stark and significant that they're hardly comparable. They both use the same syntax (XML-based, which is an understandable turn-off), and the processing model is essentially the same, but the inclusion of a real type system in XPath/XSLT 2.0, and some badly-needed features that needed to be kludged in 1.0 (for-each-group being the most conspicuous, IMO) makes a real difference. I think it's a shame that the very real limitations of XSLT 1.0 continue to be imputed to 2.0 (and the impending version 3.0), since, if you're working with XML at all (which maybe you shouldn't be, but that's another issue), XSLT is a great example of Alan Kay's requirement that "simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible."

12 ปีที่แล้วdiscuss

No. In a Chapter 11, the debtor (referred to in this context as the "debtor in possession") remains in control of the proceeding (with court oversight). Generally, the purpose of an 11 is to reorganize or restructure, but a company can also liquidate itself in an 11. Presumably by "debtee" you mean a creditor. Creditors can participate in a Chapter 11 proceeding as part of an "official committee", but they have limited powers and generally are left to complain from the sidelines. In a chapter 7, on the other hand, a trustee is appointed to liquidate the debtor's non-exempt assets, and the debtor is more or less out of the picture.