This is very well put, and I agree with it unreservedly. But I do think that it's worth bearing in mind that "trans rights" is, for better or worse, an evolving concept in the culture at the moment. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when people even in my "west coast liberal" milieu wouldn't bat an eye if someone called someone else a "fag." That's practically inconceivable now, as would be playing "smear the queer" as we did just about daily on the playground. It seems to me that we're now in the middle of a similar process with trans rights, and I do think there are issues -- in particular those regarding the rights of minors and their parents -- that many people are trying in good faith to work through, and about which there are bound to be disagreements. I don't mean to make excuses for the politicians you mention, most of whom I think are using this issue opportunistically and not in good faith. I just think "the rights of trans people" is not something that has a well defined meaning at this point.
It certainly can be confusing. I generally use the term "nonprofit" to mean a corporate entity formed under a nonprofit corporation act, e.g., one derived from the Model Nonprofit Corporation Act. This says nothing about the tax status of the entity, and unless other circumstances also apply the entity would be subject to taxes in the same way as a for profit company on its net income. But many nonprofits also take steps to qualify for one of several tax exemptions, the most well known being section 501(c)(3). Not all of the familiar tax advantages apply to all tax exempt organizations. For example, donations to an organization exempt under 501(c)(3) are deductible by the donor, but donations to a 501(c)(4) are not.
>> The US tax code is very clear on that point and is not open for debate.
> Anyone who has ever worked with an accountant knows this isn't true.
The point being referred to here is that you can't take a deduction for profits you would have made in some hypothetical world where things had worked out better for you. It's not all gray areas, and this particular point is entirely un-gray. Nor does the article that you "tl;dr"'ed into this quip support you here. It just says that the studio decided not to risk any further losses.
Your advice above about maybe not spending recent withdrawals is really good. I just want to point out that recovery of "preferences" (which is what these withdrawals might, possibly, be) doesn't depend on there having been a Ponzi scheme, or any fraud at all, in the underlying business. Identifying and recovering preferential transfers is one of the main jobs of a bankruptcy trustee, and they are given legal superpowers with which to do their jobs.
That case probably (it's been a while since I checked) still shows up in most business law casebooks, but it doesn't really help much in understanding modern judicial thinking about the role of "profit motivation" in corporate decision-making.
Here's the abstract from a fairly recent paper in the principal journal of the ABA's Business Law Section in which the case and its relevance today was discussed in detail:
This article examines Dodge v. Ford on its 100th anniversary. In Dodge v. Ford,
the Michigan Supreme Court held that a business corporation is organized for
the profit of its shareholders, and the directors must operate it in service to
that end. Despite the fact that Dodge v. Ford is rarely cited in judicial
opinions, the case continues to spark controversy in legal scholarship. There
is little justification for this scholarly attention because the factual basis
is little more than a caricature of Henry Ford, and subsequent developments in
corporate law have all but eviscerated the precedential value of the case.
Rather, the legacy of Dodge v. Ford may simply be that it serves as a
convenient talisman, standing for the one sentence anyone actually cares about
and rolled out with each new battle in the war between shareholder profit
maximization and corporate social responsibility.
Michael J. Vargas, Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. at 100: The Enduring Legacy of Corporate Law’s Most Controversial Case, The Business Lawyer, Vol. 75, p. 2103 (2020).
I think it definitely needs to be considered when it comes to corporate charters and especially in cases of IPO and investor on-boarding. Spelling out that a company's responsibility to long term stability and community at/above shorter term profits to investors in order to prevent certain paths in decision making that is all too common.
What tax, specifically, is Delaware a haven from? Incorporating in Delaware doesn't get you out of Federal income taxes, or state income taxes (to the extent your operations, which are probably not based in Delaware, subject you to income taxes from various states), or sales taxes, or property taxes, etc., etc.
There are some taxes that are avoided by incorporating in Delaware, as opposed to some other jurisdiction, but they round to zero when compared with taxes imposed without regard to where you happen to be incorporated.
I worked in the same building in Honolulu as these folks. Several of us were able to buy various bits of hardware left over after they wrapped. I ended up with a massive monitor that I used for years after. My recollection is that one of my co-workers bought a rack and a few servers, but sadly I can't remember the details (other than that it was a hopelessly impractical purchase on my co-worker's part).
"Quiet enjoyment" is a archaic legal term of art, arising (I believe) in law governing conveyances of real property. The Black's law dictionary on my desk defines "quiet" in this context as "Unmolested; tranquil; free from interference or disturbance." That is, it's not a condition imposed on the transferee ("if you do not enjoy the conveyed property quietly, I can make trouble for you").
The term causes enough confusion to be retired, but lawyers do love their stock phrases.
Another (transactional) lawyer here. While I generally agree with this, there are still circumstances in which something like a VC system would be useful. It's not uncommon for documents to go through a dozen or more (sometimes significantly more) iterations before being finalized. It would sometimes be useful to know in which version a particular fragment of language was inserted. But this can be worked out "manually", and indeed I think the real issue is that the value add of a VC system is probably small enough that it's just not worth any significant additional complexity. Having said that, I've long considered doing a lunchtime brownbag session on git, just to blow people's minds about what is possible.
I do disagree about "Track Changes" though. That quickly becomes an incomprehensible mess. Better to avoid Track Changes (except in very small/simple agreements where you don't expect more than one or two turns, in which case it can be useful) and send a "clean" and redline version (based on the immediately preceding version) on each turn.
SharePoint has version control for Word documents. It's better suited for that than Git.
Also, mailbox full of back and forth emails with successive versions of document in attachments is also a version control system. It just needs better tooling.
