Ben George

[L A R R Y @LarryOConnor]

The second most astounding thing about this is that they kept it a secret right up until this reveal.

Holy crap!

[Ben George @laxtonto]

For the NHL has a hard cap, so the mapping is slightly different, but the logic is the same. Picture a team using sham related-party “partnerships” and buried owner cash so hockey-related revenue and the cap picture both look clean, while the real money is assembling a roster that should not fit. Add false filings to the league and a multi-year effort to obstruct the investigation. The Kovalchuk contract (Devils: circumvention, contract voided, draft-pick penalties) is the small version of the method. City is that idea applied to the entire commercial side of the club for nine seasons, at roughly $1.2 billion of distorted revenue/cost, then followed by “please stop asking for the emails.”

[Ben George @laxtonto]

Imagine a club that just got bought by a sovereign-wealth owner. Overnight the “sponsorships” explode: stadium naming rights, shirt deals, regional partnerships, all written at numbers no independent sponsor would pay. The counterparties are quietly tied to the same ownership group. Those fake dollars make the books look healthy enough to run a mega-payroll while staying on the right side of the Competitive Balance Tax, debt rules, and whatever financial filings MLB requires. The team then submits those books to the commissioner’s office and the auditors. Eight years later, an independent panel says the sponsorships were a conduit for owner money, the filings were false, and the club spent years trying to stop the investigation. That is City. It is not “the Yankees signed Judge.” It is “the books that justified the payroll were a prop.”

The closest real MLB cousins are not the Astros’ sign-stealing (on-field cheating) so much as international bonus-pool skirting plus luxury-tax gamesmanship plus related-party stadium/sponsorship accounting — stacked for nearly a decade, then compounded by stonewalling the league office.

[The Elder Scrolls @ElderScrolls]

Want to get your hands on an original copy of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall? Now's your chance!

To celebrate Daggerfall's recent 30th Anniversary, we're giving one lucky winner the original game along with a poster illustrated by @samdunn of @PosterPosse. Follow and repost to enter, and a winner will be messaged in a week!

Full rules: https://t.co/jRlOry628V

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@Oilfield_Rando The hand that rocks the cradle

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@FreddyLA7 Gus's Fried Chicken!

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@CFBNerds I would recommend https://t.co/ZvrxNMPkLM as it has TV charts by both networks and timeslots

[Ben George @laxtonto]

What I find much more interesting is that this is now about eligibility for a player in a specific conference at a particular school and how does that work with specifc university admissions. If the SEC (or another conference) takes a position that ends up tied up in court, how do you separate the university’s admission decision from the athletic department’s and NIL decisions?

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@nickshirleyy Why isn't there a simple audit run on all addresses to see if they are zoned residential? This isn't rocket science and the script to cross-reference addressees is incredibly easy to build. This should be the first line of defense on any quarterly system audit or new application.

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@shipwreckedcrew How does that "service charge" concept now work with the "no taxes on tips" IRS language? Are businesses hurting their employees, or creating a tax liability, by treating the "service charge" as wages vs. taxes?

[Ben George @laxtonto]

I think one of the bigger parts that people need acknowledge here is that the DOJ has set up a taint team, which means they have communications between Comey and his legal representation.

Any mention in there by Comey about concerns it might be misconstrued falls right to the idea that the image could be reasonably viewed as a threat or how this is great publicity for his book could be problematic.

Now, the fight will be what is privileged or not, but the continued mantra that there is little other pontential ways to provide additional evidence is a farce. It’s not about did he mean it or not, but instead could a reasonable person believe it to be a threat. That leads to all sorts of potential statements that could be problematic for Comey.

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@MensHumor Technically, wouldn't they already have at least the tip?

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@StatsGuru @tangotiger I think we took for granted how dominant Pedro and Randy Johnson really were...

[Ben George @laxtonto]

Ummet Ozcan - Mongolian Jingle Bells (Official Music Video) https://t.co/yuZurKWjH4 via @YouTube

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@CFBNerds Use this... https://t.co/LPFoB0JaNE

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@SplattrCatGames Im afraid to ask for a link, and yet the absurdity of the title makes me wonder...

[Matt Orfalea @0rf]

Still a banger

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@TheAKGuy

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@matt_vanswol @libsoftiktok The grant funding is paying the University to do the project thr government wants done. The bigger question needs to be how did they amass all of the wealth? Was it residuals off of patents the government funded or is it overages of what wasn’t spent on the research?

[Ben George @laxtonto]

@ProfMJCleveland Harvard can afford to hire the best, and the federal government is then paying the institution to do the research via grants. This is why the admin expense carveout is a huge deal for large research institutions because a chunk of the grants on their own DEI-aligned policies