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Where George Santos is often, for some reason, spending $199.99
- necovek 4y agoIs it not trivial to spend $100 or $120 or $140 and pay the rest as tip to reach exactly $199.99?
- schiffern 4y ago
- necovek 4y agoSure, I am mostly offering a trivial mechanism to reach exactly $199.99 without trying to guess at the menu items to reach it. Being outside of US without political affiliation, this strikes me as a lot of work to embezzle relatively small amounts of money (that was $50k over 2 years): I would always envision politicians getting in on much larger payouts or more worthwhile free rides.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rsynnott 4y agoA surprising amount of political corruption is weirdly petty and unnecessary.
- necovek 4y agoI am personally not worried about that: that is not what's causing $1B projects to turn into $20B projects with all the "friendly" (to politicians) companies getting in on the action.
- rsynnott 4y ago… Oh, no, it totally is. How do you think those companies are getting in on the action? Sure, sometimes it’s suitcases full of cash, but often the bribes are, well, smaller than you’d think.
- necovek 4y agoOh sure, but my point is that even then, those $1B projects could go to those very same companies at a smaller markup (say $1.05B: $50M is still a lot of money).
- ThrowawayR2 4y agoIf I had to guess, it's more likely they are expensing the maximum allowed and paying any overage out of pocket. Think of it as splitting the bill, only it's with yourself, and submitting the expense report for only one part of the split.
- schiffern 4y ago
- ThrowawayR2 4y agoSame difference; there's a limit they're trying not to exceed to take maximum advantage of an external source of funds.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- schiffern 4y agoNot too mysterious. FTA: >on at least seven separate occasions he had meals that cost exactly $199.99—a sum that happens to be precisely one cent short of the threshold that requires documentation of campaign expenditures in the form of receipts
- sp332 4y agoHere's a Dilbert comic from 26 years ago about this kind of thing https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-01-03 https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-01-03
- anigbrowl 4y ago[flagged]
- c3534l 4y agoWould this be considered the crime of structuring or does that only apply to banking?
- sp332 4y agoI don't know if it's structuring because it seems to actually be for separate meals. Certainly unethical though, trying to get the most money out of the campaign finances with a minimum of accountability.
- StanislavPetrov 4y agoSantos aside, I've eaten there a few times and it is pretty good.
- jaclaz 4y agoUnimportant nitpick, "osso bucco" is actually "ossobuco" (one word and one c only), it is on en.wikipedia allright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossobuco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ossobuco It would be interesting to know if it is actually written like that on the menu or of it is the journalist mis-spelling it.