When Steve Bannon & co spent $1,000 on booze at Mar-a-Lago, taxpayers picked up the tab

Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/05/01/18-62-per-drink.html

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If that’s how we have to kill Steve Bannon, well I’ll chip in for that, gladly.

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I’m actually impressed at Steve Bannon. Normally you have to be a noir novel private dick level of alcoholic to pick up his complexion, but he somehow managed to look like that without the help of the sauce.

Is he a real life movie villain–turned ugly by the evil in his soul?

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All the criminals in their coats and their ties
Are free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise

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Is that the actual bill? Minus sales tax? Can I claim that at my next big computer purchase?

I like how they drank 22 Vodka shots (nice vork komrades!) and if you combine the tequila categories together it does actually edge out the vodka. Only 6 bourbon drinks, lol. USA? USA? US… A?

And that we are paying the Drumpf crime family roughly $550 a night for civil servant lodging? I can smell the graft from here!

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Steve Bannon says he is a teetotaler and didn’t contribute to the bar tab.

That’s the funniest part of the story. Tell us another one, Gin Blossoms.

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$16 for Woodford Reserve is the real crime here.

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Hold up.

The group asked the bartender to leave the room so it “could speak confidentially,” according to an email written by Mar-a-Lago’s catering director, Brooke Watson.

The Secret Service guarded the door, according to the email. The bartender wasn’t allowed to return. And members of the group began pouring themselves drinks. No one paid.

Six days later, on April 13, Mar-a-Lago created a bill for those drinks, tallying $838 worth of alcohol plus a 20% service charge.

If they served themselves, what’s the “service charge” for?

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“Steve Bannon says he is a teetotaler“
Yeah, the fact that he looks like Otis from “The Andy Griffith Show” is strictly a coincidence.
image

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Laughing%20Minions%2C%20ROFL

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This isn’t premium liquor. It’s mid-grade liquor that they are charging hilarious prices for.

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Crazy thing about that is I can only claim half the cost of a meal as a deductible business expense, but I have to pay the full shot for public sector employees.

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seems like a tax violation to me:

Is alcohol tax deductible in 2018?

Under the new law, for amounts paid or incurred after December 31, 2017, deductions for business-related entertainment expenses are now 100% not deductible . The interim guidance issued by the IRS on October 3, 2018 clarified that certain business meals with clients, prospects, referral sources, etc. are 50% deductible .

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What does this have to do with taxes?

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I dunno… with all the shit going on, charging the tax payer for over priced drinks seems pretty meh :confused: Like, I long for the days that examples of government waste like these were the most scandalous things going on.

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Can’t wait until Trump is out of office and we get to see how many millions of our tax dollars were spent at Trump properties. It will be obscene.

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Assuming he’s telling the truth. Or he’s already damaged his liver and is refraining.

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I wonder if the servers actually received the service charge, or if it just goes to the house.

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I have a feeling two weeks without booze might be the fastest path to the grave for Bannon. Short of filling him up with a funnel, guys like this last longer drinking than most would expect.

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