How Did President Obama Survive The White House? Books. He Says
The man who wrote two books that helped propel him to the presidency has his favorites. “The writings of Lincoln, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Mr. Obama found, were ‘particularly helpful’ when ‘what you wanted was a sense of solidarity,’ adding ‘during very difficult moments, this job can be very isolating.'”
How Money Changes What (And How) Writers Write
“Money taints everything, why not writing too? Once its value is determined by the marketplace rather than the writer or the reader, our relationship to literature becomes estranged. From bloated celebrity advances to rejected masterpieces, the market is more than just a poor arbiter of lasting quality: it tends to obscure that quality behind purely economic motivations. Good writing, we’re told time and time again, is born from love, not avarice. But this romantic picture of the writer, toiling without regard to money, is itself a fiction—one whose roots stretch back several millennia, and whose effects we’re still dealing with today.”
More Writers Need To Talk More About (More) Money
Look, no, it’s not some kind of romantic garrett life: “It’s very tricky because there is a lot of dangerous romanticization, and that can set writers up, particularly in the beginnings of their careers, to blunder in a business they know nothing about.”
Are Podcasts Going To Replace Written Book Reviews? (Or Have They Already?)
First of all, book review podcasts don’t pretend to objectivity. And then there’s the ease of access factor: “It can be daunting for someone who feels like a literary outsider to pick up a 10,000-word piece on three translated works in The New York Review of Books, but not to download a couple episodes of a show you can listen to while you’re cleaning your apartment.”
Most novelists don’t make a living at it. "The entire fiction-writing profession resembles a pyramid scheme swathed in a dewy mist of "romantic yearning" »
What literary categories define the Obama age? Christian Lorentzen unpacks autofiction, the new meritocracy novel, the retro novel, and the trauma novel
Fleeing A Country To Find Privacy – And Artistic Freedom
Writer Xiaolu Gua: “I think of my parents as slaves of industrialisation – the state had its ambitions, and it completely shaped family life. There was no private or personal space. My mother worked from six in the morning until midnight. I had a connection with my father, but neither of my parents had much emotion to give to their family.”
PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Law professor gets a traffic-camera ticket. Hilarity ensues.
I then asked the question one is taught never to ask on cross—the last one. “So, you signed an affidavit under the pains and penalties of perjury alleging probable cause to believe that Adam MacLeod committed a violation of traffic laws without any evidence that was so?”Without hesitating he answered, “Yes.” This surprised both of us. It also surprised the judge, who looked up from his desk for the first time. A police officer had just testified under oath that he perjured himself in service to a city government and a mysterious, far-away corporation whose officers probably earn many times his salary.The city then rested its case. I renewed my motion to dismiss, which the judge immediately granted.Vindication! Well, sort of. When I tried to recover my doubled appeal bond, I was told that the clerk was not authorized to give me my money. Naturally, the law contains no procedure for return of the bond and imposes on the court no duty to return it. I was advised to write a motion. Weeks later, when the court still had not ruled on my motion, I was told I could file a motion asking for a ruling on my earlier motion. Bowing to absurdity, I did so. Still nothing has happened now several months later.Why This MattersTraffic camera laws are popular in part because they appeal to a law-and-order impulse. If we are going to stop those nefarious evildoers who jeopardize the health of the republic by sliding through yellow lights when no one else is around and driving through empty streets at thirty miles per hour in twenty-five zones, then we need a way around such pesky impediments as a lack of eyewitnesses.Yet traffic cameras do not always produce probable cause that a particular person has committed a crime. To get around this “problem” (as a certain law-and-order president-elect might call it), several states have created an entirely novel phylum of law: the civil violation of a criminal prohibition. Using this nifty device, a city can charge you of a crime without any witnesses, without any probable cause determination, and without any civil due process.
It’s all about money.
ATLANTIC CITY CASINOS REFUSED TO GIVE PROFESSIONAL GAMBLER WHAT HE HAD WON. INSTEAD OF PAYING HIM, THEY SUED HIM: Gambler Phil Ivey Can’t Get His Millions Because Casinos Are Too Big To Fail: “The Borgata alleged that Ivey’s actions, which the casino agreed to in advance, constitute cheating. In fact, they merely constitute a gambler getting a legitimate advantage over the casino. In this age of cozy cooperation between the state and the gaming industry, that’s something that’s just not allowed
Kay Bell, More tax whistleblowers were rewarded last year, but they got less money:
Kay Bell, More tax whistleblowers were rewarded last year, but they got less money:
The Whistleblower Office awarded more than $61 million to 418 whistleblowers in the last fiscal year. That’s a 322 percent increase from fiscal 2015, in which only 99 total awards were paid.
…
But the $61 million paid out actually was less dollar-wise than in fiscal 2015. That prior year the Whistleblower Office handed $103 million to whistleblowers.
TaxGrrrl, Why Justice Matters: The Tax Trial Of Dr. Martin Luther King:
Consider the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, a leader in the civil rights movement, who years ago, was on the receiving end of repeated harassment by government officials, including state and local tax authorities. Inquiries into Dr. King’s finances were not new: he was investigated in two separate states (Georgia and Alabama) on numerous occasions. In 1960, he made news as the first person ever criminally charged in the state of Alabama on tax fraud.The complexity of the tax law and the ability of prosecutors to indict a ham sandwich are much of what makes political use of tax administration so disturbing.
