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Our Happy Valley town mailing list has been humming with loyal Hillary supporters trying to figure out how to minimize their personal tax bills by deducting in 2017 expenses related to 2018 through 2022 (and beyond?):

For anyone planning to prepay their taxes today, town office closes at noon.

what are the hours next week???

While a covey of us were writing checks at the Town Hall’s Tax Collection counter in the basement, a young man hurried towards us and asked if he could pay five year’s worth.

As of mid-morning today, they were happy to accept 2nd half FY18 payment AND BOTH 1st+2nd half FY19 (using FY18 as the estimate). They specifically would not accept more than that. Of course, policy may have changed during the course of the day.

I went back this morning for clarification. I spoke with the very, very helpful and friendly tax collector. She explained that, yes, the town would accept THREE payments: the April 2018 payment for the 2nd half of FY 2018 property tax; the November 2018 payment for 1st half of 2019 taxes, *AND* the April 2019 payment for 2nd half of FY 2019 taxes.

Interest in this procedure was not dulled by a resident quoting his accountant:

Most towns do not assess in arears (some do) which means that
if you were to prepay on your fiscal 2018 taxes, I am not sure it would be
deductible under the technical letter of the law. So, we are telling
clients that would receive a benefit to pay the January and March tax
amounts as these are already assessed, but we are cautioning them that any
payments for the latter half of the year may not qualify for a deduction
regardless of the amounts being paid in 2017.

It turns out that the passion for having Americans who live in other states fund the Federal government is a Massachusetts-wide phenomenon. “New rules set off rush to prepay taxes” (Boston Globe):

City and town officials across Massachusetts are being deluged with calls and questions — and even requests for financial advice — from homeowners who want to know whether they should pay next year’s property taxes now, before new rules that cap state and local tax deductions at $10,000 take effect in 2018.

To the bewilderment of municipal workers, taxpayers are dropping off checks — in at least one case for as much as $30,000 — to beat changes contained in the sweeping federal tax bill passed this week by Congress.

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It is a source of sadness for me that Harvey Weinstein has been displaced in the news by 100+ lesser men (a partial list, but it doesn’t include, for example, the wheelchair-bound John Hockenberry). Harvey was truly a “whale of a story” for this blog.

Harvey apparently hasn’t skipped to Moscow (see “Where can Harvey Weinstein go for a peaceful retirement?”) so he has continued exposure to U.S. plaintiffs.

Assuming that he continues to stay in the U.S. in his new role as defendant, one question is how the various plaintiffs will carve up the Weinstein carcass (supposedly worth about $250 million).

His former assistant-turned-wife-turned-plaintiff Eve Chilton got a court order for $60 million in tax-free child support under New York law based on her ownership of three daughters. She is in court now trying to get the last $5 million prepaid in case other plaintiffs get to Harvey’s cash first (TMZ). Then there is wife-turned-plaintiff-number-2. Her 10th wedding anniversary was earlier this month and she had refrained from actually filing a divorce lawsuit (TMZ story on Plaintiff #2’s best legal options). After these two, there is a line of hundreds of women who are and will be suing in civil courts alleging that Harvey propositioned them, showered with them, etc.?

Readers here have commented that Harvey’s best strategy might be to give everything to the current wife as a settlement of her divorce lawsuit in hopes that she won’t spend it all and some will trickle down to his kids. However, this kind of action has been deemed a fraudulent conveyance in the past (source) and the line of current and future plaintiffs can potentially grab the money from the to-be-ex-wife.

Should there be a centralized process for dividing up the Weinstein carcass among the plaintiffs? The Hollywood Cleansing is supposed to be about justice, right? If so, why is it fair that plaintiffs suing in jurisdictions with speedy court systems, for example, are likely to recover money while those who must sue in places with slow-moving courts are likely to be left with nothing? And what is the fair division of cash between the women who were married to Harvey and the women who merely watched him shower? (and, to enlarge the pot available to victims, should some money be clawed back from women who had sex with Harvey and received lucrative roles in exchange?)

[Note that this is somewhat simplified when all of the plaintiffs are in family court in the same state. If Harvey had sex with four women in Los Angeles on the same night, and all became pregnant, the first woman to sue would get the full amount under the California child support guidelines, the second woman would get a child support award based on Harvey’s income after deduction of the money paid to Plaintiff #1, etc. Each child would have a different cash value to his or her respective mother depending on the order in which lawsuits were filed. One of the lawyers we interviewed on this subject for the California family law chapter said “Mom #5 has no standing to try to get Mom #1 reduced.” Note that a handful of states have rules requiring that the cash value of all of the children be equalized, but in almost every case it is easy to figure out how the money should be divided.]

Related:

• The Magnificent Century, a Turkish TV series that was made, apparently, without post-production sex-related litigation. The polygamous society of the Ottomans also featured women competing for a fixed bucket of resources represented by the man with whom they were involved sexually. Instead of using lawyers, though, the show portrays women competing by (a) trying to have more children than competitors, and (b) trying to poison competitors.
• “The Las Vegas Gunman Was Rich. Will His Wealth Go to the Victims?” (nytimes) regarding the challenge of parceling out $5 million (that’s rich?) without more than 100 percent of the funds being consumed by lawyers

 

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“Jakarta Is Sinking So Fast, It Could End Up Underwater” (nytimes) is interesting from an engineering point of view. The city of 30 million people has been sinking, leading to a New Orleans-style situation where large parts of the city are below sea level and protected by a wall. How can this work in a typhoon-prone region of the world? Should the bitcoin billionaires be trying to make their next $billion by shorting something Indonesian?

[Separately, the article is interesting for what it reveals about bias in American journalism. The New York Times stresses global problems:

[Jakarta] has to deal with mounting threats from climate change.

With climate change, the Java Sea is rising and weather here is becoming more extreme.

Climate change acts here as it does elsewhere, exacerbating scores of other ills.

all the mounting threats from climate change.

The effect on the countryside has been disastrous, with the burning of rain forests to make way for palm oil producers and textile factories causing fires so smoky they have caused air pollution to spike as far away as Malaysia, contributing to climate change.

In fact, Jakarta is sinking faster than any other big city on the planet, faster, even, than climate change is causing the sea to rise

The article says that parts of Jakarta “have sunk as much as 14 feet in recent years.” Since the phrase “climate change” appears at least 13 times in the article, global sea level rise must be pretty close to this local rate of “14 feet in a couple of decades”, right? The Times doesn’t cite any comparative data, but NASA shows a sea level rise of roughly 0.65 feet over a 130-year period.]

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Here is a story about 50 individuals who were not enthusiastic about a White Christmas in Massachusetts. Now they are living free of state income tax in Florida…

Every year it seems that young Kemp’s ridley sea turtles get caught in the Gulf Stream and travel farther north than planned. Volunteers and NOAA officials gather these lost souls from the beach in Wellfleet, Massachusetts and bring them to the New England Aquarium‘s turtle hospital in Quincy, Massachusetts. The turtles are cold and weak when they arrive and are gradually warmed up and fed. Once they’re healthy they can be loaded into towel-lined banana boxes for a journey to warmer waters.

Unfortunately, turtles can’t go as conventional air freight due to stringent temperature requirements (68-75F). The Turtles Fly Too organization matches up volunteer pilots with turtles and thus on December 8 my friend Tom and I found ourselves fighting winter headwinds from Hanscom Field to Tampa International. The day started around 3:00 am for the NOAA and Aquarium folks. They pulled the NOAA van into the Rectrix hangar around 6:45 am and were given a royal welcome by the full staff. Everyone helped load up the Pilatus PC-12 through the massive cargo door and Rectrix immediately towed us out on the ramp. We had pre-flighted the airplane the night before so we were able to start up and crank on the heat before the turtles could get cold. After about three hours we stopped at the Richmond Jet Center for a quick refueling and then proceeded through sometimes turbulent and/or icy clouds to Signature Flight Support in Tampa. The Signature folks had arranged for vans from four public aquariums to be waiting for us on the ramp (see the rock star welcome in the photos). Eventually the turtles should be strong enough to be released back into the ocean.

An intelligent person would have stayed two nights in Tampa and had three dinners at Bern’s Steak House. The parent of young children, however, had to get back into the turboprop for what should have been an easy trip back to Boston, but turned out to involve much more widespread and severe convection than forecast. We were able to climb over the top of nearly all of this weather, but only barely! (the Pilatus has a service ceiling of FL300 or 30,000′) We landed in the dark at around 9:00 pm. A mechanic from Tradewind reinstalled the rear bench seat the next day and the plane was ready to resume its life ferrying charter customers.

What did I learn on this trip? That it is considered a microaggression to refer to these animals as “Ridley Scott turtles.” Also that top quality FBOs such as Rectrix, Signature, and the Richmond Jet Center can pull out an extra stop or two when you use the “sea turtle” password.

Merry Christmas to everyone! And remember that if the turtles can escape the misery of the Northeast you probably can too!

More:

• see the photos
• we did it again a year later

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Last night I was part of a team of four expert reviewers at an exclusive screening (at the Burlington Mall) of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Our thoughts on the film, in no particular order…

The First Order fights just like the U.S. military during World War II. All of the officers are incompetent and make decisions that lead to defeat by numerically inferior forces. However, it doesn’t matter strategically because they can keep cranking out an infinite number of additional starships and other weapons.

Characters in the movie are obsessed with their parents and connections to those parents. Yet the film comes out of California, which led the no-fault divorce revolution that resulted in the U.S. having the world’s highest percentage of children living outside a two-parent family (some stats). If the parent-obsessed filmmakers are representative of Californians and most of them think that parents are important to children, why would they run a winner-take-all family court system in which one parent will inevitably be discarded? (unlike neighboring Nevada, a 50/50 shared parenting state)

Californians like to talk about their commitment to equality (way better than “inequality” certainly!) and how people are entitled to various human rights, e.g., to shelter, food, health care, etc., simply by showing up and identify as “human.” Yet the characters don’t accord equal rights to human lives. A whole space ship of colleagues can be blown up and that isn’t nearly as sad as if one more fleshed-out character is injured.

Californians also like to talk about their passion for science and hatred for those who are “anti-science”. Yet they’ve made a movie in which the vacuum of space carries sound waves and bombs fall under the influence of Earth-style gravity regardless of where in the universe they happen to be.

As with previous Star Wars films, the movie doesn’t make obvious economic sense. They have capable robots, but people still lust after money. Why isn’t there an infinite supply of everything? Population growth does not seem to have kept up with the improvements in tech. In fact, there is no place in the entire universe that is as crowded as today’s Los Angeles or San Francisco. The richest people in the galaxy are arms dealers, but why should they make more than a normal return on investment? The First Order seems to be the legitimate government and also the consumer of 99 percent of the weapons. Why wouldn’t they run their own arms factories or use low-bid contractors?

Why can’t these advanced folks have some better autopilots? When the goal is to have a space ship fly “straight and level” (see above for how Earth-style gravity operates everywhere!) it is necessary to have a human pilot on board. Also, why not swarms of drone attack aircraft?

Speaking of gravity, the description of the Force sounds a lot like Isaac Newton’s first theory of gravitation. Maybe the Force will turn out to be gravity?

The Star Wars screenwriter’s task has been greatly simplified compared to in the 1970s and 1980s. What would characters say when they think the entire galaxy is about to be doomed by an evil dictatorship? When the universe as they know it is coming to an end? Simply go to Facebook and cut and paste from any discussion of a proposed federal law or state election.

Related:

• Why are some people hating Star Wars: The Last Jedi?

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Christmas Eve and time to gather the extended family. From a Massachusetts case titled “Adoption of Paula”:

The mother and the father met in January, 1981, and commenced living together shortly thereafter. In addition to the parents, the household included the father’s father, his two children by his first marriage (Robert and Belinda) and Paula, the mother’s eldest daughter. The parents had five daughters in rapid succession, the first of whom, Phyllis, was born on October 11, 1981. They married in 1984.

Both parents were episodic users of drugs and chronic abusers of alcohol during their marriage. The parents’ relationship was characterized by a high level of conflict. The father physically abused the mother. He also hit the children, focusing this violence in particular on Paula, who was not his daughter. The mother was aware of his treatment of the children. After confrontations with her husband, the mother would “run” from the household. She would be absent for periods ranging from a few days to several weeks at a time. At first, she took the children with her. When the number of children increased, she would leave them behind. The care of the younger children was often delegated to Robert and Belinda, especially when the mother left the home.

Dangerous weapons were openly displayed in the home. In addition, a number of transient people, many of them adolescents drawn by the availability of drugs and alcohol, frequented the home. Some of these people also acted as caretakers for the children.

After the mother left the marital home, she became involved with a man and became pregnant by him (with Elizabeth). This man died of an overdose of heroin in July, 1989. When Elizabeth, born on March 9, 1990, was an infant, the mother participated in a residential drug treatment program at the Medford Family Life Education Center. She was terminated from the program almost immediately for violation of the program’s rules. She spent nights drinking with a new boy friend, attempted to bring alcohol into the shelter, and left Elizabeth with other program residents for extended periods of time.

At the time of trial, the mother had been living with Gerald, the father of her son, James, born on July 16, 1991, and had named him as a potential caretaker of her daughters. There were allegations that Gerald had physically abused his children by other women, and had the potential to repeat this violent behavior and that the children, with the exception of Phyllis, regarded him with reservations as a caretaker. Several people had observed episodes of his inappropriate physical contact with some of the children, and in particular with Phyllis, whose sexualized behavior placed her at high risk.

The father has remarried and at the time of trial, had three additional children by his new wife. He testified that he was not seeking custody of his children (Phyllis, Jennifer, Susan, Kimberly, and Diane), but took the position they should be returned to their mother’s custody.

That’s 13 kids total. Wouldn’t it be interesting to follow up with these children and see what kind of adults they’ve become?

Happy Christmas Eve to everyone and I hope that your dinner table is surrounded by less fractious family members than the above.

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A Chinese-American physician friend just sent us her “Happy 2018” card (not technically “Christmas card” but the order is red with white snowflakes and there is an “oh what fun” in script across the front, so I fear that this is tainted with the Christmas spirit).

The accompanying letter violates a few conventions for the genre. For example, on the merits of children being 9 and 10: “At last I can count on sleeping through the night, interrupted only by my own bladder.” On the joys of cat ownership: “They went on a spree of indoor urination after [the dog] died [age 12], anointing three couches, an armchair, and a mattress before finally winding down. We now have a hammock in the living room for visitors.”

Readers: What are the best Christmas/New Years messages you’ve gotten in 2017?

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Some of my Happy Valley neighbors were debating whether or not to organize a potluck New Year’s Day party in a town-owned building. They then got into an argument about whether this is even legal. Finally someone found a 2014 law: “An Act Relative to Potluck Events”. Thus it seems that our legislators have defined the term “potluck” for us.

I had prepared to send a message to the list “I found a 25 lb. bag of gluten and also 10 lbs. of peanuts and 5 lbs. of walnuts. I can make a gluten-nut pie for the event.” Fortunately, before I could send the email, the neighbors decided that their legal skills weren’t sufficient to interpret the potluck law and therefore the idea was abandoned.

Hope this helps if you’re organizing a holiday event…

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If you’re looking for a last-minute Christmas present, DxOMark has reviewed the Leica M10. This $7,000 digital camera body puts up image quality scores similar to a 1.5-year-old compact Sony. Don’t forget to budget $2,000+ for a lens!

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… print labels from Google Contacts.

(It doesn’t seem to be all that easy from Microsoft Outlook either, requiring a “mail merge” operation.)

We would expect even the least experienced human assistant to learn that every December it is time to print contact addresses onto labels so that they can be placed on Christmas cards. How are computers supposed to take our jobs if they can’t handle the seemingly simplest tasks?

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