After the SEC, the IRS. Make your predictions.

[rockpond]

I chose B... minor irregularities.

I think the bigger risk is that politicians look at the SEC case, the IRS case, and the massive wealth of the Church and decide that some limits need to be placed on churches tax exempt status.

[nuclearfuels]

On 2/27/2023 at 3:16 PM, Pyreaux said:

they are a political organization that obeys the mob

 

[mrmarklin]

In general, Churches are outside the purview of the IRS.  I don't know if F-Bar reporting is required for churches.  If it is, then the fines can be quite serious, up to 1/2 the monies invested.  If that is the case, and the IRS asserts heavy fines, I would expect litigation.

[mrmarklin]

2 hours ago, rockpond said:

I chose B... minor irregularities.

I think the bigger risk is that politicians look at the SEC case, the IRS case, and the massive wealth of the Church and decide that some limits need to be placed on churches tax exempt status.

The real problem is that many churches are sited outside the US.  The Catholic church for example, has its own country even:  Vatican City.   Do F-Bar rules, or any others, apply to that church?  I doubt it.  I'm fairly sure that money flows freely from the US to Rome and Vice versa.

The Lutheran church, Anglican church are other examples.  I don't understand the total structure of other churches, but for  the IRS, this could be a real mess, if domestic churches are treated differently to others.  What is a domestic church anyway?  Half of LDS members reside outside the USA.

Edited March 1, 2023 by mrmarklin

[The Nehor]

7 hours ago, rockpond said:

I chose B... minor irregularities.

I think the bigger risk is that politicians look at the SEC case, the IRS case, and the massive wealth of the Church and decide that some limits need to be placed on churches tax exempt status.

Doubt it, one side of the aisle does not want the IRS messing with a lot of Protestant faiths (especially megachurches) and looking at their funding and political advocacy and the other doesn’t want to start clarifying rules for the extent of political advocacy coming from minority churches.

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, mrmarklin said:

The real problem is that many churches are sited outside the US.  The Catholic church for example, has its own country even:  Vatican City.   Do F-Bar rules, or any others, apply to that church?  I doubt it.  I'm fairly sure that money flows freely from the US to Rome and Vice versa.

The Lutheran church, Anglican church are other examples.  I don't understand the total structure of other churches, but for  the IRS, this could be a real mess, if domestic churches are treated differently to others.  What is a domestic church anyway?  Half of LDS members reside outside the USA.

Most nations have reporting requirements for money moving from one nation to another. It is not an insurmountable problem. You just regulate the money in your nation. It happens with corporations all the time.

[MiserereNobis]

18 hours ago, mrmarklin said:

The real problem is that many churches are sited outside the US.  The Catholic church for example, has its own country even:  Vatican City.   Do F-Bar rules, or any others, apply to that church?  I doubt it.  I'm fairly sure that money flows freely from the US to Rome and Vice versa.

Catholic dioceses are financially independent from the Vatican. Once a year there is a special collection taken called Peter's Pence. This money is transferred to the Vatican. All the other money collected in parishes stays within the diocese.

[Danzo]

On 2/27/2023 at 2:38 PM, pogi said:

Is that something they do "under oath"?

It doesn't seem like a tough question to get right?  Do you have foreign accounts, or not?

Yes.

That is not what I am suggesting.  I am wondering what "first expressed concern" means.   Was it a general statement that they would be conducting an investigation after whistleblower concerns with nothing specific mentioned?  Did they preemptively change their practices based of their own suspicions of what the SEC would find?  The SEC did not order them to change practices or state any specific violations at the time - just "concerns" (which may have been general and not specific).  The preemptive change seems to show a significant lack of confidence, as if they suspected that the SEC would conclude that what they were doing violated the code.   Funny thing, the CAD expressed concerns long before June 2019 and nothing changed after those internal audits and warnings. 

True "commitment to abide by the law" doesn't ignore "concerns" from internal audits and only respond to "concerns" by the SEC.  It seems that the commitment only applies when they know that they are being watched/investigated.  It's not a good look.

 

 

There is a Jurat on the 990-T (there is also one on your personal tax return as well) so it is filed under oath.

Also the 990-T does not have a spot for reporting foreign accounts.  That would be on the FINCEN 114

Edited March 1, 2023 by Danzo

[Danzo]

On 2/28/2023 at 7:21 AM, Amulek said:

This may seem pedantic but technically no, it isn't something that is done "under oath" - it's something that is affirmed under penalty of perjury.

You do the same thing whenever you file your own tax forms. Here's the language from the 2022 1040, "Under penalties of perjury, I declare that I have examined this return and accompanying schedules and statements, and to the best of my knowledge and belief, they are true, correct, and complete. Declaration of preparer (other than taxpayer) is based on all information of which preparer has any knowledge."

You aren't "under oath" whenever you file your taxes with the IRS - though you do affirm under penalty of perjury that what you're filing is true, correct, and complete.

 

But "Do you have a foreign account?" isn't the same as "Do you have a reportable foreign account?" And that's an important distinction.

Is it possible that EPA had reportable foreign financial accounts and lied about it in previous years? I mean, sure, anything is possible. But it's also possible that EPA only opened a reportable foreign account in 2019. You know, kind of like how people usually don't start filing "married filing jointly" until they are actually married.

Also, it's possible that the definition of "foreign financial account" has changed in the last 15 years. And, as Sam Brunson points out, "whether they failed to file FBARs depends not on whether they had foreign investments (they did!) but whether they exercised control over certain foreign financial accounts (I don't know!)"

And the complaint isn't much help with that. There's no actual evidence of wrongdoing presented in the complaint itself - it's all just inference and logical leaps. They want the government to go on a fishing trip and justify their accusations for them.

For multiple reasons, I don't think that will happen, so I predict that these complaints - insofar as they manage to stick around for a while - will end up being more of a Rorschach test for what people think about the Church than anything else.

 

For all practical purposes you are under oath.  Signing a false tax return can get you in the same trouble as lying under oath.  You can be subject to a fraud penalty and even Jail time under IRC 7206

[carbon dioxide]

On 2/27/2023 at 12:20 PM, blackstrap said:

The IRS can find problems whether they exist or not. My neighbor, who has a large family ,was questioned about his garden because he must be selling off his produce for cash income. 

How would the IRS know about a garden in their yard if they are using that food for their personal use? No need to answer. I saw you posted the answer on an other post.

Edited March 2, 2023 by carbon dioxide

[carbon dioxide]

On 2/28/2023 at 1:44 PM, rockpond said:

I chose B... minor irregularities.

I think the bigger risk is that politicians look at the SEC case, the IRS case, and the massive wealth of the Church and decide that some limits need to be placed on churches tax exempt status.

Possibly but would that not cause a problem with the whole issue of separation of church and state?   If there is a separation, it has to go in both directions.   If the state can start taking from the church, the church can start taking from the state.

Edited March 2, 2023 by carbon dioxide

[smac97]

On 2/27/2023 at 4:13 PM, Amulek said:

I didn't pick one of the options above, but here's what I believe will come of this with respect to both the Senate Finance Committee and the IRS: Nothing! Absolutely Nothing!

Also, @Calm hunted this down and posted it in one of the other threads back when this was first published (so all I did was remember seeing it), but Sam Brunson did a live tweet about the tax stuff in this complaint that you can read all about here:

        https://twitter.com/smbrnsn/status/1623697204748713984

Spoiler alert: Doesn't sound like there's much 'there' there.

 

The weird thing about these discussions is the muddling of the Brethren's disparate competencies as to A) acting and testifying as "Special Witnesses" of Jesus Christ, and B) administering the increasingly significant temporal affairs of the Church.  The former genuinely generally requires the Brethren to be basically and predominantly good, decent, honest, ethical, moral people.  Such attributes are also useful as to the latter, but there seem to be plenty of businesses with less-than-pristinely-nice people running them, and they do fine.  

As it is, however, the Brethren seem to be doing an overall bangup job, both in terms of being good/decent, and also as to being good spiritual/religious leaders, and also as to administering the temporal affairs of the Church.

That said, the Administrative State is vast.  Hundreds of agencies, millions of pages of regulatory rules, all changing and updating on a regular basis.  So for me, it's pretty much a given that all large organizations will, sooner or later, run afoul of this or that regulatory agency.  It is not a matter of "if" this happens, or even "when" this happens, but how often it happens.

Compliance with the various rules and regulations of the Administrative State has a broadly divine mandate (notably, AoF 1:12).  However, failure to comply with such rules/regulations may readily arise from insufficient oversight, inattention, bureaucratic inertia, simple mistake, questionable decision-making processes, or some combination of these.  Overall, I think the Brethren merit our trust as being good and decent and well-intentioned.  So when the Church messes up in this or that issue of regulatory compliance, and in the absence of some fairly substantial evidence to the contrary, I will retain a strong - though still rebuttable - presumption that the noncompliance is more aptly attributable to Hanlon's Razor (or some variant thereof) than to corruption, malfeasance, etc.

Thanks,

-Smac

[jkwilliams]

12 minutes ago, smac97 said:

The weird thing about these discussions is the muddling of the Brethren's disparate competencies as to A) acting and testifying as "Special Witnesses" of Jesus Christ, and B) administering the increasingly significant temporal affairs of the Church.  The former genuinely generally requires the Brethren to be basically and predominantly good, decent, honest, ethical, moral people.  Such attributes are also useful as to the latter, but there seem to be plenty of businesses with less-than-pristinely-nice people running them, and they do fine.  

As it is, however, the Brethren seem to be doing an overall bangup job, both in terms of being good/decent, and also as to being good spiritual/religious leaders, and also as to administering the temporal affairs of the Church.

That said, the Administrative State is vast.  Hundreds of agencies, millions of pages of regulatory rules, all changing and updating on a regular basis.  So for me, it's pretty much a given that all large organizations will, sooner or later, run afoul of this or that regulatory agency.  It is not a matter of "if" this happens, or even "when" this happens, but how often it happens.

Compliance with the various rules and regulations of the Administrative State has a broadly divine mandate (notably, AoF 1:12).  However, failure to comply with such rules/regulations may readily arise from insufficient oversight, inattention, bureaucratic inertia, simple mistake, questionable decision-making processes, or some combination of these.  Overall, I think the Brethren merit our trust as being good and decent and well-intentioned.  So when the Church messes up in this or that issue of regulatory compliance, and in the absence of some fairly substantial evidence to the contrary, I will retain a strong - though still rebuttable - presumption that the noncompliance is more aptly attributable to Hanlon's Razor (or some variant thereof) than to corruption, malfeasance, etc.

Thanks,

-Smac

Again, the regulation in question isn't arcane or difficult to comply with: it's just that people who sign the relevant form must be the same people who actually manage the funds. You can disparage the "administrative state" as some kind of faceless monster that is on the lookout for people to "run afoul of" its heavy hand, but the facts in this case are quite simple: the church, no matter the reason, did not comply with a simple regulation. Acknowledging that does not equal "evil speaking of the Lord's anointed." As I've said before, I'm less interested in the church's actions than the bizarre attempt to explain away what happened here. I don't get it. 

Edited March 2, 2023 by jkwilliams

[Teancum]

On 2/28/2023 at 7:17 PM, mrmarklin said:

In general, Churches are outside the purview of the IRS.

Not necessarily. 

[smac97]

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Again, the regulation in question isn't arcane or difficult to comply with:

Well, maybe so, maybe no. I have elsewhere noted some potential complexities. 

I think it is difficult, in 2023, to understand what sort of legal advice in 2000 could have provided a basis for the reporting approach used by EPA.  And yet, such advice was apparently given.  Moreover, neither the Brethren nor the folks running EPA are hayseeds.  To the contrary, they are both well-educated and experienced.  Moreover, they are broadly good and decent men, and they take their stewardship responsibilities seriously.  We just don't have much information to go on, not enough to impugn the reputations and character of the Brethren (or, for that matter, the folks at EPA).

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

it's just that people who sign the relevant form must be the same people who actually manage the funds.

After 20 years of litigating statutes, regulations, procedural and evidentiary rules, etc., I feel pretty aware of how much even seasoned attorneys overlook, or misunderstand, or misconstrue, or misapply.  

Yes, an attorney or other individual can intentionally seek to evade or disobey such a statute, rule, etc.  However, there is a pretty strong incentive for attorneys to get it right, to have what the client needs to hear predominate over what the client wants to hear.  

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

You can disparage the "administrative state" as some kind of faceless monster that is on the lookout for people to "run afoul of" its heavy hand,

And you can gloss over and ignore the reality of just how byzantine and arbitrary it and its regulations and behavior are.

It is weird to see you and others opportunistically defend the Administrative State.  Hundreds of agencies.  Millions of employees.  Hoards of unelected (and largely unknown and unaccountable) bureaucrats with the authority to craft rules with the force of law.  Tens of thousands of rules.  Millions of pages of rules and regulations, with tweaks and modifications to them happening every day. 

Yes, there is a "Notice and Comment" component to the rulemaking process.  It is a darn poor substitute for the adversarial give-and-take legislative components of the legislative process.  Meanwhile, the excesses and abuses of the Administrative State in its rulemaking and enforcement activities are legion.  

Here, we have unknown, unnamed, unelected bureaucrats ensconced in a powerful regulatory agency of the Administrative State making unproven, untested allegations.  If you were the target of such allegations, I don't think you would be singing paeans to the supposed virtues of the SEC.  As it is, the target is a disliked religious group, which means the SEC needs to become presumptively credible, objective, and impartial, hence the ad hoc chorus of SEC fandom we have seen in this thread.

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

but the facts in this case are quite simple:

Well, no.  The facts are not "quite simple," nor are they even "facts."  Instead, we have a compilation of one-sided allegations - claims of fact not yet proven to be true - which have neither been admitted to by the Church nor adjudicated by an impartial factfinder.  Moreover, there are all sorts of lacunae here.  Gaps in what happened.  There are vast quantities of missing - yet pertinent - data about the who, the what, the when, the where, and so on.

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

the church, no matter the reason, did not comply with a simple regulation.

Sorry, but I just can't go along with glossing over this part.

The "reason" was, per the Church's explanation, to comply with reporting requirements while still maintaining some privacy about the portfolio.  And the effort to comply with the reporting requirements was based on legal advice.

Alternatively, there has been all sorts of venom spewed against the leaders of the Church as to their integrity, honor, ethics, and so on.  With all sorts of "reasons" being imputed to them.

So "the reason" matters.  A lot.  A lot.

4 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Acknowledging that does not equal "evil speaking of the Lord's anointed."

I quite agree.  But this thread is chockablock full of "evil speaking of the Lord's anointed."  This has no relevance to those who are not under covenant to abstain from such behavior, but it ought to be relevant to those who are.

Thanks,

-Smac

[jkwilliams]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Well, maybe so, maybe no. I have elsewhere noted some potential complexities. 

I think it is difficult, in 2023, to understand what sort of legal advice in 2000 could have provided a basis for the reporting approach used by EPA.  And yet, such advice was apparently given.  Moreover, neither the Brethren nor the folks running EPA are hayseeds.  To the contrary, they are both well-educated and experienced.  Moreover, they are broadly good and decent men, and they take their stewardship responsibilities seriously.  We just don't have much information to go on, not enough to impugn the reputations and character of the Brethren (or, for that matter, the folks at EPA).

After 20 years of litigating statutes, regulations, procedural and evidentiary rules, etc., I feel pretty aware of how much even seasoned attorneys overlook, or misunderstand, or misconstrue, or misapply.  

Yes, an attorney or other individual can intentionally seek to evade or disobey such a statute, rule, etc.  However, there is a pretty strong incentive for attorneys to get it right, to have what the client needs to hear predominate over what the client wants to hear.  

And you can gloss over and ignore the reality of just how byzantine and arbitrary it and its regulations and behavior are.

It is weird to see you and others opportunistically defend the Administrative State.  Hundreds of agencies.  Millions of employees.  Hoards of unelected (and largely unknown and unaccountable) bureaucrats with the authority to craft rules with the force of law.  Tens of thousands of rules.  Millions of pages of rules and regulations, with tweaks and modifications to them happening every day. 

Yes, there is a "Notice and Comment" component to the rulemaking process.  It is a darn poor substitute for the adversarial give-and-take legislative components of the legislative process.  Meanwhile, the excesses and abuses of the Administrative State in its rulemaking and enforcement activities are legion.  

Here, we have unknown, unnamed, unelected bureaucrats ensconced in a powerful regulatory agency of the Administrative State making unproven, untested allegations.  If you were the target of such allegations, I don't think you would be singing paeans to the supposed virtues of the SEC.  As it is, the target is a disliked religious group, which means the SEC needs to become presumptively credible, objective, and impartial, hence the ad hoc chorus of SEC fandom we have seen in this thread.

Well, no.  The facts are not "quite simple," nor are they even "facts."  Instead, we have a compilation of one-sided allegations - claims of fact not yet proven to be true - which have neither been admitted to by the Church nor adjudicated by an impartial factfinder.  Moreover, there are all sorts of lacunae here.  Gaps in what happened.  There are vast quantities of missing - yet pertinent - data about the who, the what, the when, the where, and so on.

Sorry, but I just can't go along with glossing over this part.

The "reason" was, per the Church's explanation, to comply with reporting requirements while still maintaining some privacy about the portfolio.  And the effort to comply with the reporting requirements was based on legal advice.

Alternatively, there has been all sorts of venom spewed against the leaders of the Church as to their integrity, honor, ethics, and so on.  With all sorts of "reasons" being imputed to them.

So "the reason" matters.  A lot.  A lot.

I quite agree.  But this thread is chockablock full of "evil speaking of the Lord's anointed."  This has no relevance to those who are not under covenant to abstain from such behavior, but it ought to be relevant to those who are.

Thanks,

-Smac

You misunderstand me. I am not questioning the intent of the actions, but simply noting that the law doesn’t care what the intent was. And others may be spewing venom, but again, that is immaterial to whether the church violated the law. For my part, I’m not seeing much venom on this board, let alone evil speaking. 

But I stand by assessment that the major facts of the case are not in dispute. I remain bemused by the attempts here and elsewhere to muddy what seems pretty clear. 

[smac97]

5 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

You misunderstand me. I am not questioning the intent of the actions, but simply noting that the law doesn’t care what the intent was.  And others may be spewing venom, but again, that is immaterial to whether the church violated the law.

In a civil "strict liability" or other context, sure.  However, in some cases, mens rea may nevertheless be relevant to matters of federal regulatory compliance. For example, if a regulation includes a criminal penalty for violation, mens rea requirements may apply to ensure that the person or entity charged with violating the regulation actually had the required intent to commit the crime. Additionally, in some cases, courts may look to mens rea requirements in other laws or legal principles to interpret or apply regulatory requirements.

In this thread, all sorts of horrible motives and character flaws have been attributed or imputed to the Brethren.  To the extent their character and reputation has been disputed, or their motives questioned, I think "intent" matters a lot.

5 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

For my part, I’m not seeing much venom on this board, let alone evil speaking. 

I am.

5 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

But I stand by assessment that the major facts of the case are not in dispute.

And I stand by my assessment that A) the Church neither admitted nor denied the allegations (again, "claim{s} of fact not yet proven to be true") in the SEC Order, and B) the SEC never submitted their untested, unproven allegations for adjudication by an impartial factfinder, and C) the matter has been settled.  

Imagine that tomorrow you are served with a lawsuit in which your neighbor accuses you of, say, trespass, slander of title, boundary line encroachment, and a few other things pertaining to the boundary line your property shares with your neighbor's property. You retain an attorney, who confers with the plaintiff's attorney and comes back to you with an settlement offer of $1,000.00.

Your attorney encourages you to accept this settlement (as any good attorney would). You might have some philosophical qualms about this, as you believe your neighbor's claims about the boundary line are overblown and mostly nonsense. However, the proposed settlement, if accepted, means that

• A) the dispute will be resolved with zero admission of wrongdoing by you,
• B) the lawsuit will also be dismissed "with prejudice," meaning all of the claims in the suit are permanently "resolved" as is (that is, your neighbor will be forever prevented from ever filing suit as to the boundary line dispute), and
• C) you avoid all further risks and expenditures of time/money/effort you would otherwise incur by proceeding with the litigation, with you "disputing" your neighbor's claims.

All for $1,000.00.

Question #1: Would you settle? Even if you believed your neighbor's claims to be exaggerated or outright crapoloa, would you settle anyway?

Now, let's say that you bite the bullet, take your attorney's advice, pay the settlement amount, and have the lawsuit dismissed.  A few weeks later, you hear that your neighbor has been noising it around the neighborhood, and online, and to your family and friends, that "Yes, I've settled with jkwilliams, but he never actually disputed what I accused him of in the lawsuit, so the major facts of the case are not in dispute."

Question #2: Would you acquiesce to your neighbor's characterization of "the facts"?

 

Thanks,

-Smac

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Here, we have unknown, unnamed, unelected bureaucrats ensconced in a powerful regulatory agency of the Administrative State making unproven, untested allegations....

The "unknown" and "unnamed" bureaucrats are actually known and named:

"Paul Feindt conducted the SEC’s investigation under the supervision of Tracy Combs and Tanya Beard of the Salt Lake Regional Office and Laura Metcalfe of the Denver Regional Office."

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35

As you continue your tirade against the civil servants who conducted this investigation, please have the guts to refer to them by their actual names.

25 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Imagine that tomorrow you are served with a lawsuit in which your neighbor accuses you of, say, trespass, slander of title, boundary line encroachment, and a few other things pertaining to the boundary line your property shares with your neighbor's property. You retain an attorney, who confers with the plaintiff's attorney and comes back to you with an settlement offer of $1,000.00.

Your attorney encourages you to accept this settlement (as any good attorney would). You might have some philosophical qualms about this, as you believe your neighbor's claims about the boundary line are overblown and mostly nonsense. However, the proposed settlement, if accepted, means that

• A) the dispute will be resolved with zero admission of wrongdoing by you,
• B) the lawsuit will also be dismissed "with prejudice," meaning all of the claims in the suit are permanently "resolved" as is (that is, your neighbor will be forever prevented from ever filing suit as to the boundary line dispute), and
• C) you avoid all further risks and expenditures of time/money/effort you would otherwise incur by proceeding with the litigation, with you "disputing" your neighbor's claims.

All for $1,000.00.

Question #1: Would you settle? Even if you believed your neighbor's claims to be exaggerated or outright crapoloa, would you settle anyway?

For a thousand bucks? Yea, I'd probably settle. But if I happened to have $150,000,000,000.00 in my rainy day fund, there is no way I'd settle for $5,000,000.00. I'd fight it, even my legal fees were over five million. I'd send the message that filing frivolous lawsuits against me would be a futile and expensive endeavor, and I would vigorously defend my good name.

Surely your point isn't that the Church is accustomed to writing $5,000,000.00 checks to settle every overblown and mostly nonsensical lawsuit that is filed against it, is it?

 

[jkwilliams]

44 minutes ago, smac97 said:

In a civil "strict liability" or other context, sure.  However, in some cases, mens rea may nevertheless be relevant to matters of federal regulatory compliance. For example, if a regulation includes a criminal penalty for violation, mens rea requirements may apply to ensure that the person or entity charged with violating the regulation actually had the required intent to commit the crime. Additionally, in some cases, courts may look to mens rea requirements in other laws or legal principles to interpret or apply regulatory requirements.

In this thread, all sorts of horrible motives and character flaws have been attributed or imputed to the Brethren.  To the extent their character and reputation has been disputed, or their motives questioned, I think "intent" matters a lot.

I am.

And I stand by my assessment that A) the Church neither admitted nor denied the allegations (again, "claim{s} of fact not yet proven to be true") in the SEC Order, and B) the SEC never submitted their untested, unproven allegations for adjudication by an impartial factfinder, and C) the matter has been settled.  

Imagine that tomorrow you are served with a lawsuit in which your neighbor accuses you of, say, trespass, slander of title, boundary line encroachment, and a few other things pertaining to the boundary line your property shares with your neighbor's property. You retain an attorney, who confers with the plaintiff's attorney and comes back to you with an settlement offer of $1,000.00.

Your attorney encourages you to accept this settlement (as any good attorney would). You might have some philosophical qualms about this, as you believe your neighbor's claims about the boundary line are overblown and mostly nonsense. However, the proposed settlement, if accepted, means that

• A) the dispute will be resolved with zero admission of wrongdoing by you,
• B) the lawsuit will also be dismissed "with prejudice," meaning all of the claims in the suit are permanently "resolved" as is (that is, your neighbor will be forever prevented from ever filing suit as to the boundary line dispute), and
• C) you avoid all further risks and expenditures of time/money/effort you would otherwise incur by proceeding with the litigation, with you "disputing" your neighbor's claims.

All for $1,000.00.

Question #1: Would you settle? Even if you believed your neighbor's claims to be exaggerated or outright crapoloa, would you settle anyway?

Now, let's say that you bite the bullet, take your attorney's advice, pay the settlement amount, and have the lawsuit dismissed.  A few weeks later, you hear that your neighbor has been noising it around the neighborhood, and online, and to your family and friends, that "Yes, I've settled with jkwilliams, but he never actually disputed what I accused him of in the lawsuit, so the major facts of the case are not in dispute."

Question #2: Would you acquiesce to your neighbor's characterization of "the facts"?

 

Thanks,

-Smac

If my settlement involved not characterizing my actions one way or another, I think I’d feel compelled to let it go. The church’s “denial,” it seems, is just to say they followed their legal counsel’s advice (which, it turns out, was wrong). Again, I don’t see why so much mental exertion has gone into not only absolving the church of any violation of the law but the assertion that those on this board who are troubled by the church’s actions are spiteful, etc. To quote George Harrison, “It’s all too much.”

Edited March 2, 2023 by jkwilliams

[rockpond]

7 hours ago, carbon dioxide said:

Possibly but would that not cause a problem with the whole issue of separation of church and state?   If there is a separation, it has to go in both directions.   If the state can start taking from the church, the church can start taking from the state.

The church does "take from the state"... the church participates in many of the benefits that are paid for by tax dollars.

I'm not arguing in favor of removing the religious org tax exemption, just highlighting a concern that it could be limited in some ways.  However, others on here have made a valid argument for why it is unlikely to be tampered with.

[smac97]

21 minutes ago, Analytics said:

The "unknown" and "unnamed" bureaucrats are actually known and named:

"Paul Feindt conducted the SEC’s investigation under the supervision of Tracy Combs and Tanya Beard of the Salt Lake Regional Office and Laura Metcalfe of the Denver Regional Office."

https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-35

I kinda sorta concede the point that as to who is named as having conducted the investigation.  However, who actually "investigated" what, and who reviewed the evidence and made the determinations described in the SEC Order, who drafted the order, etc., is all pretty opaque.  It's signed "By the Commission," and lists "Vanessa A. Countryman" as "Secretary."  She certainly has impressive credentials and experience, but was she the decisionmaker?  Or just a rubber stamp?  We don't know. 

Meanwhile, were any of these people elected?  Nope.

Are all of these people likely ensconced for the remainder of their careers in jobs suckling at the federal teat, with funds graciously paid for by John Q. Taxpayer?  Yeah

Meanwhile, how many other people were involved who are not identified (and hence are "unknown" and "unnamed")?

Are any of these people "accountable"?  Not really.  Victories against excesses, overreaches and abuses by the Administrative State are, sadly, few and far between.  It's no wonder, really, with regulatory agencies having the Chevron doctrine, with no substantive accountability for the bureaucrats, with the bureaucrats having largely bullet-proof job security and very nice salaries and automatic enrollment in one of the best retirement systems in the world, with no concern about legal liability or expense (the AG's office provides free legal advice, after all), and so on.

Here is a link to one of those rarefied instances where the Administrative State got something of a comeuppance:

Quote

Bad Day in Court for the Administrative State

Fifth Circuit panel finds several constitutional problems with the Securities and Exchange Commission

KEITH E. WHITTINGTON | 5.18.2022 5:47 PM

In Jarkesy v. Securities and Exchange Commission, a divided three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit put a shot across the bow of the administrative state. In an opinion written by Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, the court ruled against the SEC in a securities fraud enforcement case on several constitutional claims. The full opinion can be found here.

Petitioners raise several constitutional challenges to the SEC enforcement proceedings. We agree with Petitioners that the proceedings suffered from three independent constitutional defects: (1) Petitioners were deprived of their constitutional right to a jury trial; (2) Congress unconstitutionally delegated legislative power to the SEC by failing to provide it with an intelligible principle by which to exercise the delegated power; and (3) statutory removal restrictions on SEC ALJs violate Article II.

A nondelegation ruling against the SEC is a big deal, but the actual argument is somewhat more modest.  The claim is that Congress did not articulate an intelligible principle to guide the SEC on whether to bring enforcement actions in Article III courts or through administrative decision-making. Significant, but pretty fixable.

The third constitutional claim is potentially wide-ranging, though also fixable. The court concludes that administrative law judges are officers exercising substantial policy discretion, and thus cannot be regarded as mere inferior officers doubly insulated from presidential removal.

The SEC deprived private citizens of a constitutional right?  Congress being so dysfunctional that it just pawns off its responsibilities to the Administrative State?  Ho hum.  Nothing to see here.  No accountability as to the SEC personnel who were actually involved in that deprivation. 

Must be a day ending in "y."

See also here: The Confederate Roots of the Administrative State

Quote

By DAN MCLAUGHLIN

July 30, 2020 6:30 AM

 

Bureaucratic, unelected, managerial government in America had a surprising birthplace: the Confederate States of America.

 

The administrative state has grown explosively in America over the past century, almost entirely without roots in our Constitution. Bureaucratic, unelected, managerial government in America had a surprising birthplace: the Confederate States of America. It would ultimately be imported into the theory and practice of the federal government by a son of the Confederacy: Woodrow Wilson.

 

The foundations of the Confederacy’s pioneering efforts in the field of democratically unaccountable big-government federal bureaucracy were laid in the design of the Confederate constitution. Confederate bureaucracy expanded significantly amid the stresses of a war for the survival of secession. It far outstripped the wartime expansion of government undertaken by the Union — creating, as Wilson himself would write, “a power centralized beyond example in the history of America.” Beyond example, at least, until Wilson’s own presidency.
...

From Wilson, we can easily draw a straight line to modern progressive administration. Not only did our 28th president expand the administrative state in ways both temporary and permanent, but his example was also widely cited by the next Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who served as an undersecretary of the Navy under Wilson and was on the next Democratic ticket in 1920. FDR campaigned in 1932 on returning to Wilson’s approach. “We planned in war,” was the progressive slogan around using Wilson’s war policies in peacetime against the Depression. FDR ultimately bent the Supreme Court to accept the large-scale, permanent metastasis of federal administrative government, under the methods of constitutional interpretation originated by Wilson.

In Woodrow Wilson’s administrative-state legacy, we can still see the long shadow of the Confederate States of America.

The whole thing is worth a read.

Here's another: Dismantling the Administrative State

Quote

A remarkable movement is underway in the legal world, unlike any other during my lifetime. Growing skepticism regarding the conceptual underpinnings of the “administrative state”—the alphabet soup of powerful administrative agencies that dominate Beltway policymaking—portends imminent retrenchment of well-established understandings (and judicial precedents) that enabled the federal Leviathan. Doctrinal reversals of a significant nature are rare, particularly when they reflect conservative initiatives and overturn the foundations of Progressive governance. Yet we are on the verge of such a dramatic shift.

 

For half a century—dating to New Deal-era reliance on administrative agencies to “fix” the ostensibly broken machinery of democracy and free markets—it was assumed that “administrative law” is an essential feature of modern life. Specialized expertise by unelected bureaucrats was the “secret sauce” that would remedy the purportedly sclerotic—and old-fashioned—system of checks and balances contemplated by the Constitution. Justice Felix Frankfurter expressed the consensus view when he described administrative law as an essential form of “governmental supervision” that could not be effectively exercised through “self-executing legislation” or the judicial process. [1]

Indeed, there was widespread bipartisan consensus among both politicians and legal scholars that what we now call the administrative state was a good thing—or at least necessary and inevitable. Chevron v. NRDC, the 1984 Supreme Court decision establishing judicial deference to administrative agency interpretation of federal statutes, was the high-water mark of our infatuation with administrative law.

Stanford University law professor Michael McConnell has described Chevron as “a central pillar of the modern administrative state. It is a systemic thumb-on-the-scales in favor of the government’s view of the meaning of the statute, even if that view changes with political winds and even if it contradicts earlier judicial interpretation.” Chevron is important, McConnell explains, because:

In the modern administrative state, Congress delegates vast swathes of policy-making power to the regulatory agencies, and the courts no longer even attempt to ensure that the key policy choices are made by the legislative branch. The only practical limitation on excessive delegation is to construe delegations of power strictly, to ensure that the agencies exercise only the quantum of power Congress explicitly delegated to them. Chevron goes the opposite way: it green-lights agency assertions of power, even when it is fairly obvious from the context that Congress had no such intention, so long as the words of the statute can be reasonably stretched to accommodate them.

Notwithstanding this perverse dynamic, and the concomitant lack of political accountability on the part of administrative lawmakers, conventional wisdom initially treated Chevron as routine and non-controversial—a logical extension of the progressive totem of presumed “agency expertise.” Even Justice Antonin Scalia was a longtime Chevron enthusiast.

Again, the whole thing is worth a read.

21 minutes ago, Analytics said:

As you continue your tirade against the civil servants who conducted this investigation, please have the guts to refer to them by their actual names.

Oh, brother.  Have fun singing songs praising the Administrative State.  That must be a pretty lonely gig.

21 minutes ago, Analytics said:

For a thousand bucks? Yea, I'd probably settle. But if I happened to have $150,000,000,000.00 in my rainy day fund, there is no way I'd settle for $5,000,000.00. I'd fight it, even my legal fees were over five million.  I'd send the message that filing frivolous lawsuits against me would be a futile and expensive endeavor, and I would vigorously defend my good name.

Uh huh.  

A person in the above scenario can, I suppose, be stupidly self-indulgent about litigating in this way because, well, it's his money to waste, and his risks to face.

Meanwhile, the Brethren hold the wealth of the Church in trust.  They don't really have the option of frittering away potentially massive amounts of the Church's money, time and effort on such ill-advised litigation.

21 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Surely your point isn't that the Church is accustomed to writing $5,000,000.00 checks to settle every overblown and mostly nonsensical lawsuit that is filed against it, is it?

No.

My point is about the practical realities of dealing with litigating against the Administrative State.  In the real world, not some fantasy land with pink skies, purple unicorns and a benevolent and competent and reasonable federal bureaucracy.

Thanks,

-Smac

[ttribe]

14 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Are all of these people likely ensconced for the remainder of their careers in jobs suckling at the federal teat, with funds graciously paid for by John Q. Taxpayer?  Yeah

Well, that just revealed a bias that helps explain the derision with which you've treated the SEC's work on this case.

[jkwilliams]

6 minutes ago, ttribe said:

Well, that just revealed a bias that helps explain the derision with which you've treated the SEC's work on this case.

No kidding. Talk about ridiculous stereotyping. I am not a federal government employee but all of my coworkers are. They do their work as well as anyone I’ve worked with in the private sector. “Suckling at the federal test”? Give me a break. 

Edited March 3, 2023 by jkwilliams

[smac97]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

Quote

Imagine that tomorrow you are served with a lawsuit in which your neighbor accuses you of, say, trespass, slander of title, boundary line encroachment, and a few other things pertaining to the boundary line your property shares with your neighbor's property. You retain an attorney, who confers with the plaintiff's attorney and comes back to you with an settlement offer of $1,000.00.

Your attorney encourages you to accept this settlement (as any good attorney would). You might have some philosophical qualms about this, as you believe your neighbor's claims about the boundary line are overblown and mostly nonsense. However, the proposed settlement, if accepted, means that

• A) the dispute will be resolved with zero admission of wrongdoing by you,
• B) the lawsuit will also be dismissed "with prejudice," meaning all of the claims in the suit are permanently "resolved" as is (that is, your neighbor will be forever prevented from ever filing suit as to the boundary line dispute), and
• C) you avoid all further risks and expenditures of time/money/effort you would otherwise incur by proceeding with the litigation, with you "disputing" your neighbor's claims.

All for $1,000.00.

Question #1: Would you settle? Even if you believed your neighbor's claims to be exaggerated or outright crapoloa, would you settle anyway?

Now, let's say that you bite the bullet, take your attorney's advice, pay the settlement amount, and have the lawsuit dismissed.  A few weeks later, you hear that your neighbor has been noising it around the neighborhood, and online, and to your family and friends, that "Yes, I've settled with jkwilliams, but he never actually disputed what I accused him of in the lawsuit, so the major facts of the case are not in dispute."

Question #2: Would you acquiesce to your neighbor's characterization of "the facts"?

If my settlement involved not characterizing my actions one way or another, I think I’d feel compelled to let it go.

Every competent and decent attorney would advise you to settle.

By saying "I'd ... let it go" are you answering Question #1?  Or Question #2?  Or both?

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

The church’s “denial,” it seems, is just to say they followed their legal counsel’s advice (which, it turns out, was wrong).

Formally, the Church neither admitted nor denied the allegations.

Informally, the Church's press release was, I think, intended to be more explanatory than exculpatory (or, for that matter, inculpatory).

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

Again, I don’t see why so much mental exertion has gone into not only absolving the church of any violation of the law

I don't see much exertion toward that.  Rather, I think the emphasis has been on defending the Church against all sorts of nasty disparagements.

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

but the assertion that those on this board who are troubled by the church’s actions are spiteful, etc. To quote George Harrison, “It’s all too much.”

I guess spite might be one of those "eye of the beholder" things.

If someone publicly accused you of being a liar, of piling lies on lies, of being dishonest, of feeling you are above the law, of holding the law "in contempt," I suspect you would not be so sanguine.

Thanks,

-Smac

[jkwilliams]

Just now, smac97 said:

Every competent and decent attorney would advise you to settle.

By saying "I'd ... let it go" are you answering Question #1?  Or Question #2?  Or both?

Formally, the Church neither admitted nor denied the allegations.

Informally, the Church's press release was, I think, intended to be more explanatory than exculpatory (or, for that matter, inculpatory).

I don't see much exertion toward that.  Rather, I think the emphasis has been on defending the Church against all sorts of nasty disparagements.

I guess spite might be one of those "eye of the beholder" things.

If someone publicly accused you of being a liar, of piling lies on lies, of being dishonest, of feeling you are above the law, of holding the law "in contempt," I suspect you would not be so sanguine.

Thanks,

-Smac

I haven’t seen nasty disparagements, just overwrought accusations of such from you and a few others. 

The church screwed up. Deal with it.