Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Negative Stories

We lived in a world in which children and adults were often wounded, blood flowed from the wounds, they festered, and sometimes people died. One of the daughters of Signora Assunta, the fruit and vegetable seller, had stepped on a nail and died of tetanus.  Signora Spagnuolo's younger child had died of croup.  A cousin of mine, at the age of twenty, had gone one morning to move some rubble and that night was dead, crushed, the blood pouring out of his ears and mouth... Our world was like that, full of words that killed: croup, tetanus, typhus, gas, war, lathe, rubble, work, bombardment, bomb, tuberculosis, infection. With these words and those years I bring back the many fears that accompanied me all my life.
~Bathroom Quote

Scholars who are convinced that my friend Bill, Shakespeare, must certainly have been a military man. Or a lawyer. Or closely associated with royalty. Or even a Jew.
To which Ellen Terry: Or surely a woman...
~ Bathroom quotes via Bookslut who is having a Wake in Brooklyn on 8 May 2016 AD the blog is 14 years old / hundred years old in the blogosphere age | the Polish Sto Lat Sto Lat song will be sung!

“These days, though, when I leave a room, I often have the sense that I might not return. Steps can’t always be retraced; the path through the forest closes behind me as though it was never there...”
"10 Shots Across the Border: The killing of a Mexican 16-year-old raises troubling questions about the United States Border Patrol." Mark Binelli has this cover story in The New York Times Magazine

vampire-bat-hanging
Robert Rubin Was Targeted for DOJ Investigation Fortune. Wow. A much easier way to get at this would have been a Sarbox certification violation, which carried jail time in the statute. But DoJ taking the criminal referrals from FCIC and effectively tossing them in the trash is just so damning.

Bogus economics: Black money, real estate and tax havens 
UK Gov't Needs to 'Lift Lid' on Tax Haven Secrecy – Charity

Renacci appeared on Cleveland Fox 8 News to tell his personal story of his identity being stolen, and the actions he is taking to curb this growing threat for Americans.
'Congressman Renacci works to protect others after becoming victim of identity theft'

Perth is following Sydney's example State government pushing 'crazy, monstrous' developments in Perth: expert 

Total madness ... great TAFE colleges close And are replaces by scam artists. The owners of a major training provider that collapsed after a government crackdown on "study now, pay later" loans established a "Collective Exit Strategy Trust" for its assets in 2010, before the college even opened its doors. Global Intellectual Holdings' government funding grew from $1.7 million in 2013 to $35 million in 2014. Its total income in 2015 was more than $80 million.   The ABC can reveal Aloi Burgess had reason to expect he would leave the industry prematurely.
Global's colleges replicated the business model used by a training college Mr Burgess was involved with 
Carich, like Australian training companies that came after, offered internet-based learning to students from low-socio economic areas with the lure of free laptops Collapsed training college owners always planned to cut and run

Kay Bell, How long are you willing to wait for your tax refund? I.D. theft has forced tax agencies to slow down refunds to keep them from going to thieves.



The Washington Post ran 16 negative stories on Bernie Sanders in 16 hours Common Dreams. Thomas Palley: “When elite media behave in this way, we lose the ability to believe in any news source and it legitimizes Fox News and Hate Radio which become merely the other side of the same coin..”

Why Fascism is the Wave of the Future Edward Luttwak, London Review of Books 1994, Fabius Maximus website 

The meaning of death. Diogenes wanted his body left outside for the animals. His request still shocks. Why?...Certainty

Beijing overtakes New York as new 'billionaire capital'
BBC, 25/2/16. Beijing has overtaken New York as the city with the highest number of billionaires for the first time, a new report by China-based firm Hurun says.

Pastor who prayed with Ted Cruz at Idaho rally shot one day later – video Guardian

Ronni Abergel has created a library of people, where users can borrow humans instead of books on any subject. The concept was launched in Denmark in 2000 and has since spread to more than 70 countries.

“Just once in my life…a door did stand before me. That door opened. It was opened by someone who defended her solitude and impotent misery so fiercely that she would have kept that door shut though a flaming roof crackled over her head. I alone had the power to make her open that lock. In turning the key she put more trust in me than she ever did in God, and in that fateful moment I believed I was godlike…We were both wrong: she who put her faith in me, and I who thought too well of myself.”—Magdushka, speaking of her servant Emerence.

The crisis behind the headlines of corporate scandals

Looking to reinvent your storytelling? Look to civic hackers for inspiration


The city of Miami has a detailed map, created by its downtown development authority, where anyone can see planned and proposed real estate development projects in the city. I learned about Miami's map while attending Open Data Day, an annual international event that’s held in dozens of cities around the globe. In each, people come together to brainstorm …
"Justice Elizabeth Warren? The Supreme Court pick that would be the drama of all dramas." Pamela Brown and Dan Berman of CNN.com have this report

Senior U.S. immigration judge says 3 and 4 year old children can represent themselves in court Boing Boing Only in America

von Shoshana Zuboff, March 3, 2016: “Governmental control is nothing compared to what Google is up to. The company is creating a wholly new genus of capitalism, a systemic coherent new logic of accumulation we should call surveillance capitalism. Is there nothing we can do?…Google is ground zero for a wholly new subspecies of capitalism in which profits derive from the unilateral surveillance and modification of human behavior.  This is a new surveillance capitalism that is unimaginable outside the inscrutable high velocity circuits of Google’s digital universe, whose signature feature is the Internet and its successors.

I shower once a week. Here’s why you should too Guardian

David Brunori speaks wisely: If You Need Tax Credits, You Shouldn’t Be in Business 

Jack Townsend, Report on Remarks of AAG Tax and Practitioner Regarding Nonwillfulness and Foreign Account Enablers:
Ciraolo and Bryan Skarlatos questioned whether foreign account holders can remain nonwillful about foreign account reporting obligations at this stage.  The article quotes from her prepared comments (linked above) as follows:
After three very well-publicized voluntary disclosure programs, nearly 200 criminal prosecutions, ongoing criminal investigations and the increasing assessment and enforcement of substantial civil penalties for failure to report foreign financial accounts, a taxpayer’s claims of ignorance or lack of willfulness in failing to comply with disclosure and reporting obligations are, quite simply, neither credible nor well-received.

"The Dark Side of All Those 'Friends' at the Supreme Court": Law professor Noah Feldman has this essay online at Bloomberg View.

"Anti-gay writings take center stage in Wisconsin court race": The Associated Press has this report


"Rebecca Bradley in 1992: 'Queers' with AIDS, addicts merit no sympathy." Patrick Marley of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an article that begins, "Newly appointed state Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley wrote in a student newspaper 24 years ago that she had no sympathy for AIDS patients because they had effectively chosen to kill themselves, called gays 'queers' and said Americans were 'either totally stupid or entirely evil' for electing President Bill Clinton." You can access the student newspaper items via this link.
Molly Beck of The Wisconsin State Journal reports that "Rebecca Bradley apologizes for student columns calling AIDS patients 'degenerates' and gays 'queers.'"
And columnist Christian Schneider of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has an essay titled "I care more about what Rebecca Bradley thinks now."


Ray A. Smith has Lack  Cash Registers  very good WSJ piece on this phenomenon-  increasingly the case at some upper end stores and boutiques

 “When I compared humanity to a flower growing in the shadow of a munitions factory,
it may be that I was being unfair to flowers.”

A former ABS head attacks the agency's approach to privacy. An ex-Immigration spinner takes on his old stomping ground. When former bureaucrats speak out there's rare insight but noses out of joint. When former bureaucrats speak out: insight and resentment


Workplace cyberbullying rife in Australia’s public service: study
Cyberbullying in the Australian public sector is causing stress, reducing job satisfaction and harming productivity.
 Public servants interviewed identified the existence of a “cyber-underground” where a negative online culture had sprung up which allowed some employees get away with freely harassing and bullying others.
*Report - 
Prevalence and consequences of negative workplace cyber communications in the Australian public sector


Financial industry target in 10 data breach scenarios
CRI, 8/3/16. Verizon has released its first ever Data Breach Digest after investigating more than 500 cyber security incidents occurring in over 40 countries in 2015.