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Happy Thanksgiving! Now that the bird is in the oven, I have time for a quick post.
This is from a nice blog called "Crash Course: Edward Ericson's annoyingly didactic musings on the Financial Meltdown" over at Baltimore's City Paper. I always liked Baltimore, and now I have one more reason. Hat-tip to Choire over at The Awl (my new favorite site). Choire picked the clutch quote:
The Sunpredictable drivel
Sun
Sen. David R. Brinkley, a Frederick County Republican on the Budget and Taxation Committee, acknowledged that some taxpayers fell to lower income brackets because of the economy but insisted that some fled the state's higher taxes. As a financial planner, he said, he advised one millionaire client to move to Florida.
last time they calculated
This week's BusinessWeek cover storyNew York TimesBusinessWeek
Around the same time the Hoosier agreement was finalized, the IRS began cracking down on leaseback deals. The federal agency in a memorandum called them a "sham" that lacked any business purpose beyond tax evasion and amounted to a circular exchange of assets and cash. Legally speaking, a transaction that merely reaps tax rewards and has no other economic purpose is often considered an abusive tax shelter. Although the IRS hasn't ruled on Hancock's tax breaks, U.S. District Court Judge David F. Hamilton concluded in an opinion last fall that they looked "abusive." Hancock says it believes it's entitled to the tax benefits.
BusinessWeek
In recent years the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority tied up a third of its subway fleet—almost 300 cars, some 30 years old—in a series of pacts with investors, some of which required keeping the same equipment running until 2014. To avoid violating the terms, the transit authority rejected a 2006 recommendation by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to replace or retrofit older cars. The NTSB warned at the time that in the event of a crash the old cars posed a higher risk of injury to passengers than newer models. One of the old cars was involved in a wreck in June that killed nine people. A spokeswoman for the transit authority said it lacks the funds to replace the cars.
Read the original post.