Sergei Brin sold Tesla stock near its peak for new giving vehicle
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
The only meaning I managed to parse for vehicle was an electric car, such confusing title indeed
* Alliterative "billionaire brin"
* Grammatically inexact reference to a polarizing company/product.
* Pun on "giving vehicle" to refer to a nonprofit organization.
I wasn't sure how cars can be magnanimous or selfless, but I was prepared for the article to explain. Maybe it reads you Shel Silverstein books while you drive.
Seems like another WSJ hit piece to discredit Musk for no good reason (other than to appease short sellers)
Musk unfortunately takes after his father.
new?
a cursory reading of the 500 section of the tax code has that listed in plain English, and it wasn't invented or modified at all in any recent tax code. I read the article hoping there was something mentioned about why it was "new". Its just new to that guy, or new to a broader collective conscious with a few high profile entrants.
I think the public put way too much emphasis on 501(c)3's non profits on their own, people just rattle off words they hear without thinking about what they mean. There are c3's c4's, c5's, c6's and more. I don't really think its wrong for people to not have realized that "501 c" was a reference to a section of the tax code, surrounded by other variants, I mostly expect Bloomberg to have mentioned it that way.
For example, When I listen to a lot of the employee sentiment in the for profit world, especially the people that want corporations to "use their platform" for things unrelated to corporate revenue, I always thought those employees would be better off working for a 501(c)4 or 501(c)5 because those are purpose built for using their platform on political and labor matters.
Read the tax code. ChatGPT is aware of it and can get you a more digestible overview long before you point your licensed professionals into that general direction to corroborate what you understand.
>In addition to indirectly providing support for the creation of super PACs, Citizens United allowed incorporated 501(c)(4) public advocacy groups (such as the National Rifle Association, the Sierra Club, and the group Citizens United itself) and trade associations to make expenditures in political races. Such groups may not, under the tax code, have a primary purpose of engaging in electoral advocacy. These organizations must disclose their expenditures, but unlike super PACs they do not have to include the names of their donors in their FEC filings.
Or, quoting OpenSecrets[2]:
>Essentially, Citizens United allowed 501(c)(4) groups to participate in political activities just like other groups already had been doing. But, unlike most of the other groups, which are under the oversight of the Federal Election Commission and must disclose their contributors and expenditures, 501(c)(4)s fall are overseen by the IRS. They must make filings with the FEC when they spend money explicitly advocating for or against a candidate, as well as when they buy issue ads that run in the weeks close to an election, but they aren't required to provide detail about where they're getting their money or how they're spending much of it.
[p.s. also "guild" is incorrect. There is no mention of "guilds" in the code. There are however, 104 instances of "lodge".]
From the article:
> While 501(c)(4)s have been a part of the tax code for decades, often exploited by “dark money” political funds, prominent billionaires are beginning to use them for broader purposes.
This is probably the only reason that Catalyst4 is known about at all, because it is the organization that sold shares ultimately controlled by Brin.
edit: no. its saying the strategy was new, not that Catalyst4 was new.
Musk: "hey Sergei, want in on this Twitter deal, say $2B? Ellison wants all of it, but I can hold $2b for you."
Brin (to Musk): "No."
Brin (to financial advisor): "Let's game plan out the impact on Tesla stock if Musk buys Twitter..."
>The Tesla shares were sold by Catalyst4 for $366 million over four days starting Dec. 14, 2021, the filings show.
So, if Catalyst4 sold the shares in December 2021, it cannot have been created with them.
On the other hand if the new organization is being setup now, where was the money stored since then?
Maybe Brin (or one of his companies/holding/whatever) sold them and later (when, in these days, 1 and a half year later?) this Catalist4 organization has been founded?
Catalyst4 had tax filings worth quoting in 2021 according to the article.. It's his newest ~nonprofit as far as we know, not a brand new nonprofit.
It looks like it was was founded 10/22/2021 according to a CA DOJ search.
>Google co-founder Sergey Brin is setting up a new half-billion-dollar nonprofit focused on health and climate change, and filings show the majority of funding so far comes from Tesla Inc. shares.
> Catalyst4, the new organization, is a 501(c)(4), which allows Brin ...
but it seems like that should have been more like (in plainer English):
In 2021 Brin created a 501(c)(4) organization, named Catalyst4, to which (somehow) he conferred his Tesla stock that were later sold in December 2021, Bloomberg has learned only now by examining its past filings.
What an awful, cynical way to describe someone donating billions of dollars into philanthropic causes. Bloomberg can do better.