Tax Day For Jesus
This Week In Blunders – April 6-12
“Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s …” - Matthew 20:21 (KJV)
Peter delivered bad news: Authorities wanted Jesus to pay taxes. They demanded two drachma, the equivalent of two days labor.
So what did Jesus do? He could have summoned an army of tax attorneys from hell. Instead, he told Peter to go fish.
“Go to the lake and throw out your line,” he said, according to Matthew 17:27 (NIV). “Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four-drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours.”
Naturally, this passage raises accounting questions:
Why were there no quarterly payments from the carpentry business?
Does one have to report income derived from a fish’s mouth?
Wouldn’t it have been faster to demand money from followers, like prosperity gospel preachers do today?
How could a fish swallow a hook with a coin stuck in its mouth?
Eventually, Jesus told Peter to start a church and start claiming tax deductions. On Wednesday, a federal grand jury indicted a Kansas City-area Realtor for doing just that.
Michelle O’Connor created the “Church of Revelation and Love” to dodge about $40,000 in taxes, according to prosecutors. The church’s only congregants were O’Connor, her husband and family members – but even Jesus had to start small.
O’Connor allegedly didn’t stop there. The indictment alleges that since 2011 she:
Ignored more than 50 notices from the IRS for outstanding taxes.
Pulled a slew of tax-dodging stunts, filing “three separate false bankruptcy petitions” and hiding money with cashiers’ checks.
Submitted 34 fraudulent applications for Covid-19 Economic Injury and Disaster Loans and spent the money on personal expenses and crypto.
She needed a miracle, but God works in mysterious ways. So does compounded interest. By 2020, she owed the IRS nearly $500,000 in taxes, penalties and interest.
Now she’s facing more prison time than the Apostle Paul.
How’s that for a revelation?
Tuesday is Tax Day and Easter is next weekend. Get out your fishing poles and pray or pull out your checkbooks and pay.
Bohemian Rhapsody
[[[Don’t Miss These Blunders]]]
Fans trying to figure out alleged CEO killer Luigi Mangione just got another clue on Friday: He loves irony.
Perhaps he’s giving up raw satire after allegedly inscribing bullets with the words, “deny,” “defend,” and “depose” and then gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Dec. 4.
Now his defense team is asking a federal judge to block the death penalty if he’s convicted for this stunning performance.
“The stakes could not be higher. The United States government intends to kill Mr. Mangione as a political stunt.”
So now it’s stunt vs. stunt. Cue the music: “He’s just a poor boy, from a poor family. Spare him his life from this monstrosity.”
Mangione’s lawyers say U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi should not be declaring their client guilty and running her mouth about the death penalty because he’s supposed to be to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise in court.
Irony aside, it’s a fair point. But “Beelzebub has a devil put aside … ”
Billy The Kidder
Billy McFarland, 33, the guy who went to prison for the infamous Fyre Festival, must be missing his cell.
He’s been hawking $25,000 tickets for Fyre 2, promising a three-day event at Isla Mujeres off the coast of Cancun, Mexico, from May 30 through June 2.
Unfortunately, the Isla Mujeres tourist board issued a statement claiming: “We have no knowledge of this event.” So he moved it to Mexico’s Playa Del Carmen where officials have announced, “No event with that name will be held in Playa del Carmen.”
McFarland insists it will happen, nevertheless, even as no performers have signed up for the event, according to media reports. Can you say, recidivist?
In 2019, Netflix released a documentary, “FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.” And Hulu released “Fyre Fraud.”
Guests arrived expecting a luxury concert event on a Bahamian island. The films showed them riding in school buses, sleeping on bare mattresses in storm-damaged tents, and eating cheese sandwiches from foam containers. McFarland got a six-year prison sentence in 2018 for fraud and still owes millions to his investors and ticket buyers.
“I’m sure many people think I’m crazy for doing this again,” he said in a press release in February. His lawyer and his shrink agree, according to a report in The U.S. Sun published on Monday.
In court documents, a psychologist said McFarland suffers from “inflated self-esteem or grandiosity that may range from beliefs of having exceptionally high levels of common skills to delusional beliefs of having special and unique talents that will lead to fame and fortune.”
At least he’s right about the fame. But with Fyre 2 flaming out, there’s probably not going to be enough material for Netflix and Hulu to run sequels.
[[[Tour the Business Blunders Hall of Shame]]]
Outsourcing AI
Albert Saniger raised $40 million from unwary venture capital firms as the CEO of a startup called nate.
He hawked an app that purportedly used artificial intelligence to simplify online shopping, but he was allegedly faking the AI part, according to an indictment announced Wednesday.
“In truth, nate relied heavily on teams of human workers – primarily located overseas – to manually process transactions in secret, mimicking what users believed was being done by automation.”
He should have called it artificial, Artificial Intelligence. Overseas workers ain’t obsolete yet.
Trumponomics
Wall Street just capped one of the most volatile weeks in its history as investors parsed the unmitigated uncertainty President Donald Trump doled out with his erratic tariff announcements.
So far, his 90-day pause is only giving markets a little pause.
“We remain in the early innings of this global trade regime change,” Wells Fargo Investment Institute president Darrell Cronk wrote Friday. “And while the 90-day pause on reciprocal tariffs temporarily reversed the market selloff, it does prolong uncertainty.”
Meantime, we’ve still got a full-blown trade war with China, where officials of that nation foresee Trump’s efforts becoming “a joke in the history of world economy.”
The S&P ended the week down nearly 13% from its all-time high. Earlier in the week it was down more than 20% in scary bear market territory. And the economy is shaky.
This week’s report on inflation wasn’t too bad, but consumers are terrified there’s more to come. The University of Michigan’s report on Consumer Sentiment shows inflation expectations soaring from 5.0% last month to 6.7% this month, the highest reading since 1981.
Investors are leaving the U.S., says Minneapolis Federal Reserve President Neel Kashkari. And interest rates are rising sharply.
I try to avoid writing about politics. There are plenty of other Substack writers who do a fine job with that. But right now the entire economy is politicized, and we may be witnessing one of the biggest economic blunders in history.
Earlier this week, I could not help but chuckle at the cluelessness spewing from the mouths of Trump’s economic team as they dug their holes.
What you do you think? Is Team Trump blundering, or do you believe everything going to be better in the end?
"He should have called it artificial, Artificial Intelligence", lol
I'm with the 5% team. Looks like I'm a real contrarian and contrarians make it big. Ah, the good life awaits.