Category Archives: law

An Appropriate Move

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration is adjusting its interpretation of Title IX as it concerns sexual assault, including rape. The change greatly reduces the requirement for colleges and universities to themselves investigate sexual assaults, including rape, where those occurred off campus. Critics, of course, complain that the move will simply increase the likelihood of further moves like the alleged Cornell student who lately has filed a civil suit against the school and the seven students she alleges raped her at an off-campus party.

The move may well encourage fee-seeking lawyers and deep pockets civil suits by alleged victims, but the plain matter is centered on who has the jurisdiction for investigation and criminal charges.

If the assault occurs off campus, even if in an off-campus fraternity or sorority house, it’s still primarily a city police matter, not a campus police mater. The fraternity and sorority house is off campus almost exclusively because it’s not supported or even sanctioned by the school, perhaps even evicted from the school’s campus. That severely limits campus police authority regarding those places, and campus police have no authority at all anywhere else off campus. Beyond that, off-campus means off campus, and so outside the jurisdiction of school authority of any sort.

Outside school jurisdiction, though, does not mean the alleged victim has no protections against assaults or no means of redress after the assault as some of the more hysterical criticisms would have it. Those protections and means of redress remain where they have always been: in the local, State, and Federal laws against any crime, including sexual assaults of any form, in the hands of local and State police to investigate, and in the hands of the State and Federal criminal trial courts.

An Illegal Strike

Posted on by
Reply

Teachers strikes are explicitly illegal in Washington, but so far that State’s law men and women, at both the State and city level, have lacked the integrity to enforce their law. Thus, Seattle’s children are in danger of being deprived, yet again, of their access to education: the teachers of Seattle’s teachers union voted 91% in favor of striking and are set to walk off their jobs before the current school year starts.

There are two responsible answers to this move, if the union follows through, and both of them should be carried out. One is to fire for cause every teacher who goes on this illegal strike. The other is to decertify the teachers union for carrying out the illegal strike.

There are no other legitimate alternatives. The fact that the State’s and city’s managers have kowtowed to teachers unions in past illegal strikes presents no excuse for letting the union and those of its members get away with its illegal action this time. All acquiescing would do would be to demonstrate, once again, the intrinsic dishonesty of those in the State’s and city’s government.

Update: It appears the school district and the teachers union have reached an agreement. Apparently, the union is getting 9% in guaranteed salary increases, plus added school staff, but no added teachers on anything else to improve the children’s academic performance.

Illegal Aliens and CDLs

Posted on by
Reply

The Federal government is finally cracking down on illegal aliens with commercial driver licenses and the schools that “train” them. The latter cavalierly ignore the grave danger to life and property—to say nothing of the businesses’ cargo that those illegal aliens are hauling around.

It’s good that the Federal government is finally moving seriously to reduce the number of illegal alien CDL holders and the risks to us Americans and our businesses that those illegals represent.

It’s not enough, though. Government isn’t the only player here, nor should it be the primary. Businesses that engage shipping companies to move their goods from port, factory, farm, retailer to stores, factories, assemblers, and end users have their own part to play in this. They should require those shipping companies, as a condition of doing business with them, to certify that they have no illegal alien CDLs on their payroll.

The Left and many of their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians like to talk about noblesse oblige in the context of rationalizing their drumbeat of imposing punishing taxes on the Evil Rich. A broader and far more legitimate onus is characterized by patriotisme oblige. It’s time for businessmen who are Americans to act like it, and to act on it.

Money Laundering and Elections

Posted on by
Reply

Non-profits organized and licensed as 501(c)(3) entities get donations to them characterized as tax deductions, and they are prohibited from engaging in any form of political campaign for or against a candidate. Non-profits organized and licensed as 501(c)(4) entities, on the other hand, are allowed to engage in political campaigns, including direct partisan politics.

So far, everything’s jake.

However.

Quite a number of 501(c)(3)s sent all of their donations to 501(c)(4)s explicitly to help fund politicians’ campaigns and to allow their donors’ donations engage in those direct partisan politics. That’s strictly, narrowly legal.

Here are three examples, though, of something more nefarious.

  • Democracy Matters Foundation provided 96% of its 2024 expenditures to its affiliated(!) 501(c)(4), Democracy Matters, some $31.38 million
  • Guarantee Our Votes Project spent just 0.2% of its $13,919,873 on 2024 legal and office expenses; the remainder went to donations like $13.85 million to America Works USA
  • America Votes Education Fund in 2024 gave $20,748,002 to its 501(c)(4) affiliate(!) America Votes. It claimed a token $532 in office expenses and $274 in fundraising expenses that year, and it had no paid employees

Should that sort of thing be legal? It looks like money-laundering to me.

The Answer is Perfectly Straightforward

Posted on by
Reply

New York City has sent letters to folks that city bureaucrats claim are pied-à-terre home owners that contain warnings of impending tax bills on those properties. Many of those homes are primary homes clearly held by their owners, and many others are primary homes that are held in trusts or by LLCs as entirely legitimate devices those homeowners use to mitigate estate taxes and to make things easier for heirs.

Worse, the city is trying to require the home owners to prove their homes are primary residences and not secondary. This throws into a cocked hat the American requirement that government must prove its case, not the one the government is charging or the one government is billing.

It’s true enough that trusts and LLCs can confuse, for some, the ownership of the residence in question. City bureaucrats and their boss, DSA/Progressive-Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani, are among the some who are confused, and they’re whining about it.

City officials have said they don’t always have the information they need about a home to know whether it is a primary residence. As a result, they have sent out more notices to homeowners than the tax will ultimately apply to.
“Part of the point of this outreach from the Department of Finance is to ascertain whether or not that reflects a primary residence or not,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at a news conference last month, referring to homes owned by trusts and LLCs. “One of the reasons that this is being done now is to ensure that New Yorkers have requisite time before the implementation of the surcharge.”

New Yorkers don’t need any time at all for the city to ascertain whether or not the residence in question is a primary residence or not.

The onus is on the city to prove it is not. If the city’s bureaucrats do not have the information they need about a home to know whether it is a primary residence, then they don’t know that the residence is a pied-à-terre, and if they don’t know, they cannot claim that it is. Thus, no pied-à-terre tax is owed.

The question is answered by a simple declaration by the owner, just as with Federal income taxes, with liabilities attached to lying about the matter, just as with Federal income taxes. And just as with Federal income taxes, city bureaucrats can, after the fact, ask for more information, but they cannot be allowed to assign ownership on their own claim and demand a priori the homeowner prove the contrary.

Of course, it may take a court case to enforce this requirement.