Never mind that the only time sales tax is collected is when a sale is made, and never mind that sales tax is always part of the consumer’s final lump sum paid to a business, the court elucidated,

1. Don’t tell anyone
Congratulations, you've won! The first thing you'll probably itching to do is to tell someone close to you and share the joy (and get emotional support). Some people counsel that you can tell your spouse or significant other. I say “DON’T TELL ANYONE” – “Anyone” means your spouse, your children, your significant other, your parents, your cousins, your best friend, your coworkers… well almost anyone (you can tell your dog). By that, I mean, drive alone, preferably to some deserted parking lot or forest, and then let it all out (with the windows up). The laughing, the crying, the shakes, and the primal screaming. But that’s it. Calm down and collect yourself. Because nothing can prepare you for recognizing that all of your relationships, your friendships, your career, and indeed the lives of you and everyone in your family, have just changed dramatically. And consider this: you might have built up some anticipation and resolve in handling a win – but everyone around you have not. You are absolutely doing everyone a favor by keeping quiet, because everyone’s lives will have changed, as nobody in at least your immediate family will ever have to worry about the things ordinary people worry about – money, debt, work, job security, healthcare, and buying anything you can dream of – and nothing will have prepared them for it. So don’t tell anyone. Not just yet…

2. Protect your ticket
Powerball, Mega Millions, and most other lottery tickets are “bearer instruments”. This means that anyone who holds a winning ticket is considered its owner. That’s why you need to protect your winning ticket – and not just from obvious theft, but from the ticket getting wet, burned, torn up by an idiot clerk, or eaten by your dog. Don’t jump up and down holding your winning ticket. Don’t drink, eat, smoke, or do anything else stupid with the ticket. What I recommend you do is to snap front-and-back photos of the ticket, back up the photos somewhere, and then put the original ticket in a dry, safe, dark, and secret location. Some have advised winners to put the ticket in a bank safe deposit box, but remember the ticket’s value is likely uninsured by the bank, and depending on your bank’s policies and what you told your bank, if the ticket gets stolen, or destroyed such as through a roof leak, or through fire/smoke, your bank will most likely try to find a way to not reimburse you). Winners might consider not signing their ticket immediately, but to hide and protect it, and get legal counsel as soon as possible so that the ticket won't have their name on it, and use the name of a legal entity that protects the winner's privacy instead. The downside to this is that if the ticket gets stolen, then you might be fighting an uphill battle in getting your winnings.

3. Your privacy is key
You have to recognize – and accept – that if people know you have won, many, if not most, will see you as a walking ATM, and no longer an ordinary person. You will get people on the street recognizing you and begging you for money and loans. You will get letters – some true, some fake, some a mix of both – telling you the most gut-wrenching stories of loss and need, and asking for donations. You will get proposals from business people trying to get you to invest in their projects. You will get never-ending calls from charities and money managers. You will have media hounding you and your family forever. You may even invite people to sue you claiming that you stole the ticket from them. Your family members, if they start telling everyone, will suddenly make lots of new, and possibly unsavory “friends”, looking for a piece of your gigantic pie. Do you want that? Do you want that for your family? It’s understandable that many people dream of becoming famous, but lotteries feature these winners because it helps promote lottery sales, and aren’t featured to promote the winners’ own best interests.

4. Do not go overboard – at least not until you’ve prepared yourself and your family
That means no new mansion. Or Lamborghini. Or solid gold Rolex. Or first class tickets to Fiji for everyone in your family. But take your family out to a nice dinner or to the local amusement park. Certainly, you can now afford a few small pleasures, but drastic, and highly visible changes in your spending habits will alert everyone out for a piece of your pie, and destroy your interest in protecting your own privacy. You can wait a little longer, at least until you’ve figured out how to protect your money, your family, and yourself.

5. Your job has changed
Your #1 job now is to plan ahead and secure your life and your family’s future. It’s hard. Where do you start? “You’ll be wise to surround yourself with a team of lawyers and financial advisers.” But what kind of “lawyers” and “financial advisers”? Let me first suggest that you avoid anyone you know, anyone in your hometown, anyone who advertises, and anyone who has no experience with high net worth individuals. The most important thing is to find professionals who you can trust. Your most important goal is to find professionals who have your best interests in mind, those who are not seeking to be on camera, those who will have less of an chance of intermingling their personal interests while working with you, and those who are not going to be tempted to want a piece of your winnings other than being paid their regular fees. Don't agree, sign, or put anything down on paper to anyone, until you are sure of what you are doing. Don’t be shy about getting another professional to help you understand documents if you there is a lot of legalese that you don't understand. You should also seriously consider finding a reputable, trustworthy therapist or other psychological professional (and ask if they also have a therapist of their own - good therapists use their therapists too). Because these are the people you will vent to, ask for advice, and generally lean on for support during this turbulent time. Lawyers and other professionals will be expensive, in the order of tens to even hundreds of thousands of dollars, but what you are paying for is for them to help prepare your entry into hakuna matata land (by creating legal structures that help protect you and your family down the road), and not a life of wealth-filled misery. You are also paying for them handsomely to keep quiet, to respect your wishes while providing you with good advice and carrying out your plans, and ultimately, you are buying professional trust that will pay off in dividends in the long run.

6. Vet your financial advisors carefully
Did you know that, unlike lawyers and doctors who have to be trained, licensed, subject to strict rules of practice, and supervised by regulators, anyone can call themselves a “financial advisor”?. You will also find people working for “wealth management” and “wealth advisor” companies big and small, local and national firms, people working for large banks (ever notice how your bank always tries to sell you all kinds of loans, savings accounts, investment advice, etc.?), and people with a host of alphabet soup titles and acronyms like “CFP”, “CFA”, “ChFC”, “CTFA”, “PFS”, “RIA”, “CPA”, “CLU”, “CDAA”, “CFWE”, “CMP”, “CPIA”, “CWS”, “Enrolled Agent”, and many, many more. Many of them will wear expensive suits, have perfect manicures and teeth veneers, work in a fancy office, drive fancy cars, name drop, boast about their educational and professional credentials, and so forth. They will ask for you to sign lots of documents, and promise you that their job is to promote your best interests. But remember, don’t sign anything while you are vetting them. Don’t tell them you’ve won the lottery jackpot – just say you've come into some money instead, and want to secure your future and preserve your wealth. Your goal is look past their fancy diplomas and sweet talking, and get answers to some key questions: What do they think your goal should be, and what investments are they generally thinking about that are appropriate for you (it should be a structure designed to preserve your wealth)? What has been their performance like, especially compared to benchmarks like the S&P 500? What is their fee structure (beware that some take a percentage of your deposited funds – even if they lose money!)? What exactly are they proposing to invest in (and is it something you can understand)? Do they get paid from the investments that they are proposing to you?

And, since your ultimate goal should be wealth preservation, do you think you really need an investment advisor to do so? What about taking your money and just putting it in a mix of US/Canadian/Nordic/Swiss government debt, index funds, bank CDs and other accounts that are insured by the FDIC, raw farmland and timberland, etc.? And, perhaps, vet attorneys who can help you set up offshore trusts to make sure that all of your eggs are not stuck in one national basket? This way, you skip the fees, the longwinded calls, and the extra risk of yet another pair of eyes - and hands - on your money. But going at it alone takes significant self-control and time investment on your own, so you have to weigh the benefits and risks of your choices.

7. Take the lump sum, not the annuity option
The lump sum cash option is usually less than half of the advertised jackpot for the Mega Millions and Powerball games. Then you have to deduct taxes: federal tax usually takes more than a third off the top; as for state taxes, California residents pay no state tax on lottery winnings, Pennsylvania residents pay 3.07%, and woe to be a New York lottery winner, who will pay a ridiculous 10.9% in state tax on a big jackpot. So a “$1 billion” jackpot win really results in taking home around $300 million – which, although much less than what gets advertised, is still more money than most winners are ever prepared to handle.

In any event, some may ask, wouldn’t it be more prudent to take the annuity option, since you will end up with more money in the long run, and will be protected from yourself in case all of your cash goes missing? There are several reasons why taking the lump sum makes more sense.

First, consider inflation. Countries that you don’t traditionally associate with high inflation are in fact mired in it. Britain is seeing 7.9% inflation right now. Sweden faces a 9.3% inflation rate. Hungary is at 20.1%. Turkey is suffering 47.8% inflation. So that final $20 million annuity payment you or your heirs get in 30 years will be worth whatever has been inflated by that time. The US federal government owes a mountain of debt, and short of massively cutting expenditures or raising taxes, both of which are politically unpalatable, the only other way I believe the federal government can feasibly manage its debt load is either by (a) printing more dollars to pay off that debt, (b) issuing more debt, and/or (c) selectively default on debt obligations. None of these options are good for the value of your annuity payments. 
Second, consider bankruptcy – not yours, but of your state or lottery organization! Your annuity is essentially a promise by the state or lottery association to pay you later, and guess what happens to promises in bankruptcy? You’ll get pennies on the dollar, if anything at all. Historically, states have never declared bankruptcy, but I believe that there will be defaults in the future. It’s already happened in Puerto Rico. And Illinois stopped paying big lottery winners when it ran out of cash just a few years ago. Unlike the federal government, which can at least print more money to keep paying its bills, states cannot print their own money. So if you live in Connecticut, Arkansas, Kentucky, New Jersey, and Illinois, you should keep in mind that there may come a time when their 35-45% state pension funding ratio (in other words, these states have a 55%-65% shortfall when it comes to being able to pay their pensioners) will result in major budgetary problems. And when a state is forced to choose between paying tens of thousands of pensioners who have significant political clout, or cutting a single lottery annuity check, what do you think that state will choose to do? Pennsylvania is not doing too well either – our state pension fund is currently experiencing a ~$65 billion shortfall, which is in the bottom 10 of the most poorly-funded state pension funds. 

Now, consider this: the total return on investment in the S&P 500 for the past 30 years is roughly 1,000% – meaning, if you had socked away your money in an S&P 500 index fund in 1993 and forgot about it for the past 30 years, you will still be 1,000% richer for just leaving the money in there (not investment advice). Barring a multi-decade stock market and overall economic meltdown (which is possible), it is not hard to more than double your money in 30 years. If you have wisely invested your money, or have hired a team of trustworthy professionals to do so, then you can work to sidestep the whims and mercy of politics and inflation, preserve, and even grow the actual value of your winnings.

In conclusion, it's on you to make the right decisions and exercise self-control now, in order to ensure that you reap the blessing, and not the curse, of a big lottery win.

But, I think he’s been charged incorrectly. This can be problematic. Filing the right charges is very important. If a defendant’s been charged with the wrong crime, then the government risks wasting resources prosecuting him, only to have him be acquitted at trial, or have a conviction overturned on appeal. It’s simple – a defendant can only be guilty of committing a specific crime, and if the charge doesn’t fit, then he can’t be legally guilty of the charge.

Let’s take a look at why I think this defendant's been charged incorrectly. Let’s start with the most serious 20 felony charges – child sexual abuse under Sec. 6312(b)(2). The allegations are not that he engaged in the direct abuse of a child. Rather, this particular criminal law requires the government to prove that this defendant, beyond a reasonable doubt, “knowingly photograph[ed], videotape[d], depict[ed] on computer or film[ed] a child under the age of 18 years engaging in a prohibited sexual act or in the simulation of such an act commits an offense.” Assuming that the evidence the police has gathered only show minors engaging in ordinary urination or defecation, then any lawyer worth their salt will argue that there was no “sexual act” depicted in what this defendant’s filmed. This means that, as reprehensible as his actions may be, what he’s done simply doesn’t fit what this law requires. I expect these felony charges to be withdrawn or changed early on in this case, or else a defense lawyer may ask a judge to dismiss them.

The second set of 70 misdemeanor charges – invasion of privacy under Sec. 7507.1(a)(1) – seems somewhat harder to fight. This law says it’s illegal for someone to “…for the purpose of arousing or gratifying the sexual desire of any person, knowingly does any of the following: (1) Views, photographs, videotapes, electronically depicts, films or otherwise records another person without that person's knowledge and consent while that person is in a state of full or partial nudity and is in a place where that person would have a reasonable expectation of privacy.” A defense attorney’s best shot at tackling this set of misdemeanor charges will depend heavily on the facts involved. Most parts of this law (e.g. Views/photographs/etc., another person, without consent, nudity) will be hard to challenge. But, I think there are 2 ways to defend these charges: challenging the “sexual desire” and the “reasonable expectation of privacy” parts of this law.

Assume, in this case, that this defendant's exercised his right to remain silent and hasn't confessed, and assume that the police don't find any other evidence which show that there was sexual intent involved (e.g. pictures in a folder labeled “racy pics”). While a defendant can be proven guilty by circumstantial evidence alone under Commonwealth v. Brooks, 7 A.3d 852, 856-57 (Pa.Super. 2010) (e.g. the pictures were placed in a folder containing indisputable pornography, versus direct evidence like the defendant admitting that the pictures were taken for sexual gratification), it will be much harder for the government to prove its case if the only circumstantial evidence is that the pictures merely depict nude individuals engaged in regular use of the toilet. A defense argument might be that the defendant's been inappropriately, immorally, but not illegally, interested in human anatomy or bathroom activities, but without any sexual interest. Perhaps this may be just enough to generate reasonable doubt in at least one juror?

The other way to defend these charges can be to argue that there’s no “reasonable expectation of privacy” inside that particular public bathroom. Was the door lockable? Were there windows, and where were the windows? Were the windows open or shut? Were there multiple stalls? Were there other people in the bathroom during the picture-taking? And, does anyone even have a reasonable expectation of privacy in a public bathroom, if they’ve ever used their own smartphone while in the bathroom, which continuously tracks their own location, data usage, phone contents (including photographs), and even vital signs? This argument, of course, seems to be the weaker one. No matter what data one’s own phone may be stealing, an ordinary person certainly does not expect their own phone to be taking non-consensual nude pictures.

Suffice it to say, I think the government might be better served in this case by charging the defendant with other crimes instead. Some examples include criminal trespass under Sec. 3503(a)(1)(i), disorderly conduct under 5503(a)(4), public nuisance under 6504, or perhaps illegal wiretapping under 5703(1) and (3), and wiretapping device under 5705(1) and (3).

Do note, however, that I don’t have the charging documents or evidence in this case, and am only going by what was reported in the news (which often omit important details, and occasionally even get things very wrong). But the relatively simple facts of this case, along with the large amount of evidence that the police must've seized by now, means that the government has a strong case for some kinds of convictions - provided that the government files the right charges.

Because:

1. Tesla's sales are leveling off even as cash burn continues unabted. Recent sales have been spurred by by large discounts, even though Musk himself promised "no discounts";

2. Tesla being unable to achieve extremely important promises that it has staked its name upon because of Elon Musk being wrong. To wit:
 (a) "Full self driving" sans LIDAR for which customers have put down deposits and are now suing,
 (b) Musk in 2012: "Tesla does not need to ever raise another funding round",
​ (c) 20,000 Model 3 cars made per month by 12/2017 (Tesla is being sued for misleading investors by actually producing cars by hand due to "production bottlenecks"),
 (d) Mass firing of employees under the guise of "performance reviews", apparently conducted en masse;
 (e) SolarCity acquisition failing, and much more.

3. Tesla's cash burn of half a million dollars per hour means a capital raise via an equity sale and consequent dilution is inevitable in light of pending interest rate raises by the Fed, which renders another bond sale unfeasibly expensive in the face of an imminent credit downgrade;

4. Tesla is becoming increasingly defensive as well as evasive, and seeing the world in a black-and-white, us-vs.-them lens. During earnings calls, for example, its CFO avoided questions about deposit allocation, and Elon Musk himself actually saying "shut the f---- up" in response to Toyota's solid state battery technology claims (rather reminiscent of Enron's "asshole" earnings call comment made when asked about why it was "the only financial institution that can't come up with balance sheet or cash flow statement after earnings", shortly before Enron imploded);

​5.  After "revealing" the first 30 Model 3 "deliveries" to employees who are subject to gag contracts and the subsequent failure to deliver on its production and sales promises, and realizing the major problems it now faces Tesla and Musk have quickly scheduled another "reveal" that would "blow your mind clear out of your skull and into an alternate dimension". The more joking hyperbole Elon Musk and Tesla spits (psychological "reappraisement" in order to cope with horrific reality), the more it reveals Tesla's true position --Tesla is teetering on the brink of collapse --

In my years of practice, I have seen the issue of opioid addiction come up time and again. Opioid addiction is hardly a new phenomenon; the British even fought two wars to ensure that they could deal opium in China (while simultaneously banning opium in Britain), perhaps cementing Great Britain as the world's first modern narco-state.

​In any event, now that the opioid epidemic is an official national priority, and with the imminent implementation of national policies on this issue, perhaps it would be wise to take a step back and try to figure out how to deal with one of the most addictive drugs in the world.

But in order to deal with it, we have to face some facts -- facts which are not as well-publicized:

- Over 40% of American soldiers who had served in Vietnam during the Vietnam War tried heroin, and 20% became addicted.
- But, 96% of the soldiers who did not receive treatment for their heroin addictions resolved their addictions without treatment.
- Yet, of the soldiers who did receive treatment, 67% relapsed.

One can definitely argue that perhaps those who did not receive treatment, either by choice or because their addictions were not sufficiently problematic to result in forced treatment, were not as addicted as those who were subject to treatment. This might mean that those who received treatment were more troubled and therefore had more potential for relapse. Other arguments may be that treatment was less sophisticated in past years, or that the statistical analysis is flawed in some way. These are all valid counterpoints, but then look at this statistic:

"Of the Vietnam vets who were addicted to heroin in the war, 98% of them didn't get treatment, yet only 12% relapsed. Recovery, without treatment, is the norm."

The current model of addiction is that of a "disease", like "diabetes, cancer and heart disease". The current model for treatment involves the twelve-step program, therapy, incentives (getting paid to not use drugs), encouragement and medication such as methadone. Obviously, this treatment model is not working, because despite the proliferation of treatment options and the more than a trillion dollars spent (that's One Thousand Billion) so far in the War on Drugs, we still have an explosive "opioid epidemic".

Notice what is missing in the current model of addiction treatment: Empowerment. Socialization. 

Instead, addicts are called "patients", as if they caught the "disease" of addiction like one catches the flu or gets cancer, which takes choice and self-determination out of the equation. I am not saying that opioids like heroin and pain pills are without addictive qualities. What I am saying is that the method of getting addicts out of dependencies on opioids is flawed. To be sure, judgment and self-control are adversely affected when there is an addictive craving and so disease-like symptoms are exhibited. But, my point is that the understanding of how one gets into, and gets out of, an addictive state is wrong. It is not like a "disease" where one happens to catch it without personal choice (an addict generally makes a choice to use, and keep using, a drug), and where one cannot exit without medical intervention (e.g. being administered drugs, standard drug treatment methods, etc.). 

​I understand that being an addict can be a stigma, so labeling addiction a "disease" takes away some of the shame in being an addict, and also justifies public policy, the employment of doctors and other professionals to treat this "disease", scientific research (scientists researching addiction are generally blind or silent to their own bias of being funded through orthodox public policy framework of treating addiction as a "disease"), treatment spending, and the provision of current, deeply flawed treatment options in a neat package. But this is a poor argument to base a treatment model on -- should we call other antisocial or self-destructive conditions or issues a "disease", such as wife-beating, drug dealing and fraud? Sounds preposterous, doesn't it? But this is the result if the "disease" label is used -- "an individual pathologically pursuing reward and/or relief" due to defects in the brain's "reward, motivation, memory and related circuitry".  

I disagree with the assertion, however, that "legalization" is the solution; it is a fallacious argument. Did you know that cocaine is already a prescription drug? A highly controlled prescription, to be sure, but still available for prescription for certain uses. Opioids are, of course, also legally available (perhaps too available). So is marijuana (more specifically, THC, the active ingredient in marijuana).

So how should this "opioid epidemic" be treated?

Change the current model. Narcan, getting paid to not use heroin, therapy may all achieve short term results, but it's all part of a flawed framework. Start over with a new, scientific framework for understanding addiction. What is this framework?

A Starter Guide to Doing Business in the United States
$49.00
Edited by Woon-Wah Siu
293 pages

Lawyers have specialized libraries called law libraries, where you will find titles that are almost impossible to find elsewhere. One of these new books that I found especially useful at the Allegheny County Law Library is “A Starter Guide to Doing Business in the United States”. I have recommended this to two clients, who have similarly expressed their appreciation for this book.

A Starter Guide is one of those no-nonsense books that is clearly laid out and written by expert business attorneys from top firms who know what they're talking about. While nothing can replace good legal advice tailored towards the unique aspects of each client's business, clients (and lawyers who do not practice business law) are given a concise and well-written overview of almost all issues they are likely to face, or at least have questions about.

The comprehensiveness of the book is evident from the topics listed in its table of chapters, which address entity selection, federal securities laws, mergers and acquisitions, immigration law, real estate, intellectual property, environmental liability, product liability, and much, much more.

What I most appreciate about the book is its just-the-facts approach with a minimum of use of specialized legal terms and other information of secondary importance. It lacks substantive depth in exploring each topic (e.g. it gives an overview of virtually all the types of insurance a business may need to consider – property, worker's comp, general liability, excess/umbrella, business interruption, directors'/officers' liability, professional liability, pollution liability, health, and life insurance). However, such an overview in 293 condensed pages helps a client understand the framework through which an attorney considers their case, and prepares visits my clients for asking well-informed questions rather than waste time going over the very basics. For example, if a restaurant owner client comes in having already read this book, they will already know what types of insurance they will likely need, and why a landlord or a local governmental body might require them to carry such types of insurance.

While this book is ostensibly written for foreign individuals and entities seeking to do business in the United States, I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to start a business in the United States.

This video is a powerful reflection of society today. I leave it to each viewer to form their own specific opinions.

I can only say that being a police officer today is quite challenging.

John A. Taylor, Esq., decided he had enough of bureaucratic BS, and so he sued the Federal Aviation Administration. By himself. For no money, but only for the pure principle of the matter. It was not even for fame, and it was not even in his practice area (he practices insurance law).

It was him against the man. Just take stock of the intimidating header of the case to begin with:

John A. Taylor, pro se, argued the cause and filed the briefs for petitioner.

Abby C. Wright, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, argued the cause for respondent. With her on the brief were Benjamin C. Mizer, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the time the brief was filed, Michael S. Raab, Attorney, and Paul M. Geier, Assistant General Counsel for Litigation, Federal Aviation Administration. Richard H. Saltsman, Attorney, Federal Aviation Administration, entered an appearance.

But sometimes, no matter how many lawyers they have have on their side, sometimes, justice does pervail:

Congrats, John!