It's possible that Epstein's associates believed they were the ones who had dirt on *him* - if he, eg, embezzled their money, he was one phone call away from a slam dunk statutory rape prosecution. Which is in fact exactly what happened.
This plus ethnic nepotism explains some of his otherwise inexplicable career moves - a financial intermediary for borderline or outright illegal transactions *that you can trust* is a valuable commodity.
This specifically explains why Les Wexner felt comfortable giving him power of attorney, which has the advantage of allowing every financial maneuver to be blamed on Epstein if necessary but obviously opened up Wexner to tremendous risk.
Most federal land is not particularly valuable or attractive. Most federal land that *will be sold* will be small urban or suburban parcels because that's what is economically valuable. Those parcels should be identified specifically, because I guarantee that Mike Lee's backers know which ones they have an eye on. But none of this is worth blowing up the BBB over, insider land sales are literally the most precedented form of corruption in american history
This is the modal "federal land for affordable housing" we're talking about here - there is literally no money in putting up Roger Taylor Homes in Yellowstone or whatever, it's way easier for landlords to convert existing cheap housing to section 8. sfchronicle.com/realestate/art…
But you take a disused federal office building in SF or LA or Chicago, tear it down, and do the standard "20% income limited units, 80% market rate" blend for these kinds of public-private quasi affordable housing projects and you make tons of money.
I'm listening to the Kamala x Call Her Daddy podcast because it's time to check in on the core single 30yo women demographic. A 🧵
Note that I know very little about this podcast other than an impression that it's basically vintage Cosmo
I also find it interesting the podcasts Trump vs Kamala go on as they try to get engagement from their demographically core but marginally engaged constituencies. Anyway, podcast
The problem is that "making money" is littered with principal/agent problems, which are exacerbated when "Hollywood accounting" is a shorthand for "ha ha yeah we've been structuring fraud and money laundering thru film production for >100 years"
It is notoriously possible to make back a film's budget thru local tax rebates and grants. Distribution as a separate service makes it extremely possible that the one-off production co is "losing money", the distributor "making money", and everyone nonetheless getting paid
Generally whenever someone says "well all they care about is making money" they are being an idiot and ignoring market microstructure in favor of just-so "the corporation is a unitary rational actor" fantasies
In the city, one can build or buy an apartment block containing hundreds of units, destroying neighborhood demography at a stroke. In neighborhoods of single family housing, 99% of units aren't even on the market, making neighborhood takeover a process that takes minimally months
Preventing the construction of units that Change The Character of the Neighborhood, ie disrupt the pricing distribution or demography, is of course the primary goal of suburban zoning and development boards.
It's farcical to claim that they cannot get an injunction against wish et al to clean up their listings, or get the apps delisted. So I conclude they want this situation to continue and escalate.
Deshtwaun in Chicago does not have A Guy in Shenzhen he's siphoning monero to, afaict all this is thru commerical channels with huge identifiable chokepoints
One interesting thing about the ATF is that they generally respond to letters even if the response is uninformative, not a bad idea for a congressman who wants to make some hay to inquire about what licensing a platform for third party international d2c mg sales might require