I'm not a fan of John Oliver. He is the worst possible combination of comedy and partisan politics that has been on air since Jon Stewart faded into oblivion. He's a guy that rants about income inequality while living in a $10 million NYC penthouse bought under a shell company. He also pays almost no taxes.

In 2015, Oliver and his wife used Hoagie’s Place to purchase a 39th floor penthouse in an Upper West Side building overlooking the Hudson River for $9.5 million. Property records show they put half down and took out a $4.75 million mortgage from J.P. Morgan. Neither Oliver nor his wife’s name appears on the mortgage, or any of the other property records discussed in this story. Hoagie’s Place is identified as the buyer in the mortgage, but its listed address is an office building in Encino, California that houses dozens of shell corporations and revocable trusts.

The 40-story Aldyn “offers residents countless amenities right at their doorstep – the cornerstone being the 40,000 square foot La Palestra Athletic Club and Spa,” according to its website. “This prestigious facility includes a 75-foot indoor pool, hot tub, 38-foot rock climbing wall, basketball and squash courts, personal training, bowling alley and more!”...

Even though Oliver paid $9.5 million for his penthouse, the city assessed its market value for tax purposes at just $1.3 million. However, only $515,000 of that amount was billable for property taxes. At a rate of 12.8 percent, Oliver normally would have paid $66,390.

However, property tax records show that, thanks to Trump and Roy Cohn, Oliver gets the very generous 421-a tax break on the penthouse. Hence, his property’s billable value after the exemption plunged by over $300,000, and he owed just $27,343 for 2016. That comes out to a property tax rate of roughly 0.25 percent…

Hypocrisy seems to be a theme with Oliver. Yesterday, Reason published a new video takedown of John Oliver that is definitely worth a look. The focus here is Oliver's frequent use of cherry-picked social science studies to back up the claims he makes on air. The hypocrisy comes from the fact that John Oliver once aired a rant about people cherry-picking social science studies to make their political points.

This video walks through several statements Oliver has made over the past several years on topics that include: rent, sports betting, homelessness, ethanol, SWAT raids, and tipping. In most cases, Oliver showed the source of the study he was mentioning on screen, but it seems he rarely if ever put those sources in any context. In other words, he often quotes a contested claim and then fails to mention that the study he's quoting was done by a progressive organization which has an interest in pushing a certain view of the topic at hand.

Of course a study isn't automatically false just because the people behind it have a point of view, but it's probably worth letting the audience know that so they can judge it themselves. Also, as you'll see below, in his rant about cherry-picking social science, Oliver said "If they are going to keep saying 'a study says,' they should have to provide sourcing and context or not mention it at all." He's clearly not living up to his own standard.

Oliver's staff wrote a lengthy response to questions sent to them by Reason which is better than nothing. In a couple cases their responses pointed out that Reason had published information based on the same studies he'd used on air. That seems like a fair hit but it also cuts against him. Reason seems to have also taken some shortcuts because they largely agree with John Oliver's takes on some of these issues. But the fact that they agree doesn't mean that what they (or he) did was right. If anything, it shows that Reason isn't attacking him because they don't like his message. They actually like a lot of his message but still think he's cherry-picking.

Here's the full video, which is about 13 minutes long. One thing mentioned here is that Oliver reported makes $30 million a year. If true, that's pretty amazing. The market for left-wing BS in this country is truly massive.

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