“Girls Gone Wild” founder Joe Francis feels he finally got a break when a federal judge okayed a deal that Francis struck with prosecutors. Under the agreement, Francis was credited with 301 days already served and sentenced to one year of probation.
The plea deal was struck after Francis learned that a key witness, Francis’ former accountant, had withheld information from his defense team at trial. Francis was originally indicted on tax evasion charges in 2007 stemming from a number of income omissions and false deductions. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of filing false tax returns and one count of bribing Nevada jail workers.
“I think we won that one,” Francis said after the hearing.
The former bad boy was polite during the hearing, answering questions as asked. It was quite a turn-around from the belligerent persona he had maintained since the charges were first brought against him in 2007.
After the hearing, he kissed his mother.
Apparently he really does kiss his mother with that mouth.
I’m going all Clairee from Steel Magnolias on you. I’m on the radio!
You can check out my interview with Jeff Horwich on Minnesota Public Radio about “sneaky rich people” here (I’m right after the vaccine report):
If you’re opposed to extending the first time homebuyer’s credit (I am), you’re probably in the minority. And you’re definitely not in the Senate. The Senate voted unanimously to approve the bill and the House is expected to follow suit (at least the approval bit).
Under the new law, the first time homebuyer’s credit would be extended to April 30, 2010 to sign a contract to buy a home and another sixty days to close. *Whew, just in time for the November elections.*
The bill also extends the credit to homeowners who have lived in their current home for five of the last eight years – those folks get a reduced credit of $6,500 for homes purchased after November 30, 2009 (but before the April deadline).
Additionally, income caps were raised to $125,000 a year for individuals and $225,000 a year for married couples.
Raising the income caps? The only sensible part of the plan.
The new law will cost taxpayers about a billion dollars a month. Yes, a billion.
According to a recent report released by Goldman Sachs economist Alec Phillips, all but about 200,000 of the 1.4 million first-time buyers who claimed the first time homebuyer’s credit in 2009 would have purchased a home even without the incentive. The cost to taxpayers? $8.5 billion. If you do the math, that means that the real “cost” to taxpayers for increasing home sales is about $42,500 per home. Let that sink in for a minute.
Goldman Sachs also estimates that all of that money only resulted in boosting prices by 5% – and that includes the idea that sellers increased their prices in anticipation of the credit, something that I was concerned about (you may recall that I wasn’t a fan of the bill in the first place).
I don’t think anyone will argue that the bill did nothing. It clearly did something – at least 200,000 felt compelled to buy under the plan. But I am concerned about the cost. I don’t think we can fix everything by throwing more money at it (except maybe baseball but that just makes me sound like a bitter Phillies’ fan). I guess I’m oddly more laissez-faire than Congress (who’d have thunk it?) but *gasp* what about the notion of letting the housing market right itself? We’ve had two years of housing credits (yes, there was a stimulus credit in 2008) and now we’re pushing off to 2010. When does it end?
If you ask a Mainer about taxes, you’re liable to get an earful: Mainers have one of the highest tax burdens in the nation. Nonetheless, on election day, Maine voters turned down proposals to cut taxes.
In a slow economy, Maine voters were leery of a proposal that would result in cuts in services. The controversial ballot issue, Question 4, asked voters if they wanted to limit future increases in state and local government spending and taxes to the rate of inflation plus population growth. The measure was known as the Taxpayer Bill of Rights campaign, or TABOR. Those opposed to the measure referred to it as “TABOR II” since a similar proposal was turned down in 2006.
Those in support of TABOR claimed that the bill would put more money back in taxpayer’s pockets. Critics wondered what the actual result of would be, as many state and local services were already facing cuts. Public schools are already operating under frozen budgets.
Voters also rejected a proposal to cut excise taxes on some vehicles and exempt hybrid and fuel-efficient vehicles from sales tax. Measures to encourage the purchase of cleaner cars are popular in states like Colorado but critics feared that tax cuts would have to be made up somewhere else. In that way, it wasn’t so much a tax cut as a shift in taxation.
While tax measures on the ballots were overshadowed by publicity over questions about making medical marijuana more available (yes) and gay marriage legal (no), the tax votes may be indicative of the mood of the nation on the eve of a huge election year… Only time will tell.
