Failson privilege

This morning we read that yet another luxury hotel development is coming to a formerly modest New Orleans neighborhood. That's not likely to catch anyone's eye these days.  This bit did catch ours, though.

Kupperman's firm, 1507 Magazine LLC, has scheduled a July 17 community meeting to gather feedback about the project. The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at Felicity Church, 1220 Felicity St.

Kupperman did not return a message seeking comment Thursday.

Kupperman was a co-founder of Dinner Lab, a New Orleans-based membership-driven catering and events business that expanded to more than two dozen cities before abruptly pulling the plug and filing for bankruptcy in 2016

Dinner Lab (once described as "the darling of the New Orleans entrepreneurial community,") was a scam that sucked up about $10 million in venture capital and roughly $3 million state tax credit subsidies before declaring bankruptcy and suddenly firing 30 people. Apparently somebody gave that guy some more money to burn through on this project. Historic renovations often qualify for tax credits too, you know.. .

Anyway, how is it that Kupperman keeps getting handed sacks of cash with which to do trendy but unsustainable things? Well, that's just Donald Trump's America, isn't it?  If you're already somebody, you're likely to stay somebody.  It's all about wealth accumulation through failsonnery. 

In April 2016, as Donald Trump was on the cusp of clinching the Republican nomination for the White House, he sold two luxury condos near Manhattan’s Central Park for less than half the price his company had said they were worth. The lucky buyer: Trump’s son, Eric.

Such family-friendly deals would normally incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in gift taxes.

But in this case, Trump appears unlikely to have been on the hook for anywhere near that, thanks to benefits only available to real estate developers.

Eric Trump bought the two condos on the two top floors of the Trump Parc East building at 100 Central Park South for $350,000 each. Trump Organization filings show that, as of February 2016 — two months before Trump sold the apartments to Eric — the condos were priced at $790,000 and $800,000. A similar one-bedroom condo on a lower floor at the same building sold for $690,000 in 2014.

The transactions illustrate the unique advantages that real estate developers like Trump have when passing down valuable assets between generations.

This ethos also explains Sidney Torres, by the way. Something to keep in mind when or if he starts putting up "his own" money for a mayoral campaign.