– Thomas McNulty, a 17-year-old Irishman in the U. S. Army, 1850s.
Canberra 'too remote' from most Australians, says de Brouwer
ENGAGEMENT: Government risks becoming separated from the people, warn a group of mandarins, as policy and service functions move apart.
Wall Street Journal, What’s a Service Business? That’s Now a Multibillion-Dollar Tax Question:
For Extraco Banks of central Texas, the 2017 tax law that promised a 20% deduction is turning into something of a headache.
S-corporation
banks such as Extraco technically qualify for the break. But under
proposed IRS regulations, Extraco might lose out, because it gets too
much revenue from managing trusts and selling mortgages into the
secondary market. Those activities may be ineligible and taint the
ability of the whole business to qualify.
Situations like Extraco’s were a crucial part of an IRS public hearing Tuesday, as the agency prepares to finish the rules for
the new 20% deduction for pass-through businesses such as partnerships
and S corporations, closely held companies that don’t pay standard
corporate taxes.
Companies
and the government are struggling over who is eligible for the tax
break, and representatives of veterinarians, escrow agents, automobile
dealers and franchised businesses pleaded their case at the hearing.
Major League Baseball sent in a new detailed letter explaining why teams think they should get the tax break.
New York Times, He Raised Legal Hell for 35 Years. Now He’s Back.:
On the day his law license was reinstatedthis past summer, Stanley L. Cohen got a call from an old friend and client, Mousa Abu Marzook, a senior political leader of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza.
“He said, ‘You’re up to trouble again already?’” recalled Mr. Cohen, 67.
In certain circles in the Middle East, he said, “Word had gotten around very quickly that I was back.”
That Mr. Cohen is back — after a prison sentence on federal tax charges that resulted in the suspension of his law license — is certain to infuriate many people.
He has spent much of his 35-year law career raising legal hell, defending controversial clients with an audacity that has antagonized his enemies, including United States intelligence figures and many Jewish groups.
He calls his clients “the despaired, the despised and the disenfranchised.” Others call them terrorists and irredeemable criminals.
They include members of Hamas, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda, all of which the United States considers terrorist groups, as well as Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, who was convicted in 2014 of conspiring to kill Americans. ...
The lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz — no stranger to controversy himself, having represented O.J. Simpson and Claus von Bülow, among others — said of Mr. Cohen: “I think he’s a horrible human being with horrible values, but I’ve defended worse.” ...
The criticism and the labels — terrorist supporter, traitor to his country, Jewish anti-Semite — all “come with the turf,” said Mr. Cohen, who relishes the spotlight his provocative style attracts.
In 2015, he suddenly dropped out of public view when he entered a federal prison in Pennsylvania after pleading guilty to having failed to file proper tax returns or maintain necessary financial records for his law practice.
True to form, Mr. Cohen denounced the case as politically motivated and retribution for his history of defending radicals and terrorists.
He served nearly 11 months of an 18-month sentence, in conditions he likened to a “Boy Scouts barracks.” Inside, he started a blog called Caged But Undaunted and ran the law library. He taught inmates civil and human rights law and held classes on Middle Eastern issues, he said. ...
