Harry Reid: Mitt Is Not The Face Of Mormonism

[_Bob Loblaw]

I have a hard time with the idea that there's something morally wrong with using the tax code to your advantage legally. My guess is that all of us would do the same thing were we in Romney's position. The problem is that the laws don't work not that people use the laws as they are written.

[_Blixa]

I should add, for the sake of fairness, that I think Mitt is probably a fine person and someone who is quite capable and talented in other areas--like avoiding taxes (sorry). He is, however, even less talented as a politician than either of the Bushes--he is in Dukakis, Dole, Kerry, and Mondale territory--and he has simply shifted positions too many times for me to be sure what it is he stands for.

How I wish they had nominated Jon Huntsman.

You are not the only one. I'd be fine with a Huntsman presidency.

[_Cicero]

I apologize for being so impassioned. As a younger academic, I often feel embattled these days. There are a lot of Republicans out there that want to see my profession downgraded for their own purposes. I don't take kindly to it, and I do believe that the almost reflexive disdain that people generally have for "ivory tower" academics who do not work in the "real world" is part of the reason it is so easy for right wing radicals to assault the Academy.

You are not personally at fault for that. It did, however, get my dander up. I guess I did not realize how much so until you brought it more to my attention how I was behaving.

Kish: Thanks for providing your perspective. I do have to say, however, that in the legal world the distinction between practicing lawyers and legal academics is often quite stark, and each side is often hostile to the other. Practicing lawyers often complain that legal academics are indeed in an ivory tower in the clouds so far removed from real world concerns and issues that their work is of very limited utility to practicing lawyers. A good friend and law school classmate of mine is a brilliant law professor, but his writings on the philosophical underpinnings of contract law aren't terribly useful to me in negotiating real world business transactions. I am guessing that most of the practicing lawyers on this board would agree with me that their law school training did very little to prepare them to actually practice law.

As I said, this animosity does go both ways. Law schools (especially prestigious law schools) give almost no credit whatsoever to applicants for time spent practicing law, which in my opinion is reflective of how much value a lot of academics ascribe to practicing lawyers.

Oddly enough, as Jason mentioned above, one area of law where the distinction between academics and practicing lawyers is much less stark is tax law.

It's also good to learn how you like to razz your friends. You must love Droopy

[_Kishkumen]

I have a hard time with the idea that there's something morally wrong with using the tax code to your advantage legally. My guess is that all of us would do the same thing were we in Romney's position. The problem is that the laws don't work not that people use the laws as they are written.

Maybe I am way off base here, Bob, and I am happy to be corrected, but I am not sure you realize the degree of sophistication these tax evasion schemes involve. This is, in my view, the tax law equivalent of the esoteric formulas that were used to fuel the misbehavior of the financial crisis. It is, in other words, an obscurantism that is designed to shield the tax cheat from the government. The IRS is actually rather poorly funded for the scale of its job. If a corporation or wealthy person can concoct a sufficiently sophisticated scheme, then it is just a matter of playing the odds to see whether the government decides to pursue you.

It strikes me almost like a cold war between the government, on the one side, and corporations and wealthy individuals, on the other. In my view, pronouncing what these corporations and wealthy individuals do as legal is not really accurate, unless one is going by the criminal law standard of "innocent until proven guilty." A lot of these schemes are questionable, and from what I have heard of the kinds of things Mitt Romney has done, and I mean "heard from tax law professors," some of what he is doing is of questionable legality.

My view is that if he is pushing the borders of legality in order to avoid taxes, I call him a tax cheat. You may not agree, but there you have it.

What bothers me most is that it is those who have massive wealth who are able to bend the law in this way to avoid paying taxes at an effective rate that matches the percentage that average middle class people do.

[_Cicero]

I have a hard time with the idea that there's something morally wrong with using the tax code to your advantage legally. My guess is that all of us would do the same thing were we in Romney's position. The problem is that the laws don't work not that people use the laws as they are written.

Generally I agree with that, but I think I do better understand Kish's perspective now. The key word in what you said Bob is "legally." There is often a lot of gray areas involved in determining what is "legal" when you're dealing with complicated estate planning and tax law. I generally agree that about 99% of us don't want to pay one cent more in taxes than we are legally obligated to; the difference then is how willing people are to push that legal boundary. If one is generally less willing to push that boundary then others, I can see how that person would see the others as "cheaters."

[_Bob Loblaw]

Generally I agree with that, but I think I do better understand Kish's perspective now. The key word in what you said Bob is "legally." There is often a lot of gray areas involved in determining what is "legal" when you're dealing with complicated estate planning and tax law. I generally agree that about 99% of us don't want to pay one cent more in taxes than we are legally obligated to; the difference then is how willing people are to push that legal boundary. If one is generally less willing to push that boundary then others, I can see how that person would see the others as "cheaters."

Agreed. I'd probably be a cheater if I were that wealthy.

[Guest]

Kish: Thanks for providing your perspective. I do have to say, however, that in the legal world the distinction between practicing lawyers and legal academics is often quite stark, and each side is often hostile to the other. Practicing lawyers often complain that legal academics are indeed in an ivory tower in the clouds so far removed from real world concerns and issues that their work is of very limited utility to practicing lawyers. A good friend and law school classmate of mine is a brilliant law professor, but his writings on the philosophical underpinnings of contract law aren't terribly useful to me in negotiating real world business transactions. I am guessing that most of the practicing lawyers on this board would agree with me that their law school training did very little to prepare them to actually practice law.

As I said, this animosity does go both ways. Law schools (especially prestigious law schools) give almost no credit whatsoever to applicants for time spent practicing law, which in my opinion is reflective of how much value a lot of academics ascribe to practicing lawyers.

Oddly enough, as Jason mentioned above, one area of law where the distinction between academics and practicing lawyers is much less stark is tax law.

In some ways, I would say that law school is broken. In my view, law school should be two years long, and the third year should be an apprenticeship of some kind. I see no real value in three years of law school. Furthermore, I actually do agree that much legal academic scholarship is essentially worthless to practitioners. Unfortunately, law professors tend to have an academic envy of their PhD counterparts on main campus, and so they have increasingly turned to producing work that is rather pointless to the profession.

That said, my wife teaches in a practitioner-oriented LLM program in tax that is fairly well ranked. Her most recent article has been accepted for publication in Tax Lawyer, a journal jointly published by the ABA and Georgetown University. Some of her work is more practitioner-oriented, and some is a little more out there. Her colleagues in tax prefer more practical work.

Now that I give the matter more thought, I see what you are talking about. My particular fiery feelings, however, are related instead to the broader anti-intellectualism of American culture. And, I do think that there are places where law scholarship does have more impact than perhaps it does in the lives of practicing attorneys. But, I do understand the disconnect you are talking about.

It's also good to learn how you like to razz your friends. You must love Droopy

Really? I didn't think I was that harsh. My apologies.

[_Blixa]

It's also good to learn how you like to razz your friends. You must love Droopy

I love Honey Boo-Boo more...

[_Droopy]

Foreign policy has been a disaster?

Yes. The world, and especially the Middle East, where he has knowingly helped Islamize much of the region, including a major former ally, while protecting a genocidal Nazi regime in Iran from any accountability as it rushes to nuclear capability, is many times more dangerous than when Bush left office.

Because he hasn't declared Russia our enemy?

Russia is our enemy, and the enemy of much else, as far as free, open society is concerned, in its own backyard.

Fiscal policy if you could call it that?

Yeah, the whole Alinsky/Cloward/Piven agenda. Good stuff!

I am amazed that cutting taxes on the wealthy or closing unspecified loopholes is to be considered an improvement.

Leftist can't. Ignore as irrelevant.

No wonder I am an independent.

[Guest]

What an interesting discussion between Jason & Kish, at least to me. And even though it's resolved, I'm just foolish enough to jump back in. Knowing something about law practice, law school, graduate school and teaching in higher eduction outside of the law (and absolutely nothing about tax) here is what I think was going on.

Let's start with this. There's an old saying if you want to know what the law is, got to Harvard. If you want to know what the law should be, go to Yale. Here's the point, for the most part, lawyers and law school professors frequently don't think of law school professors as being academics. Which is not to say that law professors can't be theoretical or policy oriented (especially at Yale as the old saying indicates). But most law schools are like "Harvard" in the saying, they teach a fairly discrete, well defined, non-speculative body of knowledge. To over simplify, that body of knowledge is the answers to the questions on the bar exam. And having done both bar exam and Ph.D. comps, I can say they are not the same.

If you want to get some pop corn, pull up a chair and see a good cat fight, get a poli sci Ph.D. constitutional law professor to debate a JD law school constitutional law professor. They are coming from different planets. Ever wonder why poli sci Ph.D. constitutional law professors don't often teach constitutional law at law schools? Well at the law school I went too, they tried that once, the legend was, it was a disaster. Ph.D.'s don't know what to teach law students so they can pass the constitutional law questions on the bar exam. JD's do. Ph.D.'s can't teach the way judges approach a constitutional case. JD's can.

To look at it from a different angle most law professors and most practicing lawyers have exactly the same degree, a JD. They're both lawyers. Lawyers don't necessarily see law school professors in a pejorative "ivory tower" sense. They're just lawyers who teach. There isn't the same division between BA/BS and Ph. D. as in a lot of other professions. Everybody, for the most part is just a JD but doing a different thing. One of my first law school professors said how difficult it was to be on the university's facualty senate because JD's and Ph.D.'s have such different approaches to issues.

To look at it from a 3rd angle, law school is a professional school, not a graduate school. You learn to do a specific thing, analyze a fact pattern like a judge will (who happen to be lawyers.) Take med school. What's the difference between an MD who teaches in medical shool and one who doesn't. The dental school professor's role is not necessarily thinking through the basic profundities of life, its how to drill the damn tooth. It's more like trade school. You usually wouldn't think of a trade school instructor as an accademic.

So when Jason says not "real world" in reference to a law professor, he may not mean an impractical academic (for the record I don't think academics are impractical, although one of my sisters does, which might be another reason this issue caught my attention.)

On the other hand, Kish hears not "real world" and equates it with all too common but completely false accusation of an academic theoretician of limited use (not a position that I buy).

What was really going on was the law professor was being a little more Yale and a little less Harvard, although he teaches at neither. And while being a little more Yale, he is commenting on a Harvard like issue, what Mitt's tax returns actually say. But if you are filing tax returns, you need to be very Harvard.

In other words, lawyers don't usually think of law professors as being academics, they think of philosophy professors as being academics (and I for one, love philosophy professors and all other academics, law school professors, not so much).

Now maybe there's a law school professor out there who wants to argue that they are academics and that I should love them.

I wish I had enough money to need a tax lawyer and long live academics.

ETA and in the time it took to write this missive, I see that Cicero completely disagrees with me. Maybe he went to a better law school