“The really terrible thing about life is not that our dreams are unrealised but that they come true.” Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time ... [read more]
“Many social media users have been baffled by the recent appearance of a video clip of a choir in St. Petersburg’s landmark cathedral, Saint Isaac’s, performing a song about total nuclear annihilation of the United States.” It is a parody of former Soviet propaganda. But a lot of parody doesn’t work so well in 2019.
The New Yorker – Are Robots Competing for Your Job? Probably, but don’t count yourself out. [The Internet has long been heralded as the end of the line for librarians…..not so far!]
Even if things should last, human life does not. We lose it daily. As we live the years pass through us and they wear us out into nothingness. It seems that only the present is real, for “things past and things to come are not”; but how can the present (which I cannot measure) be real since it has no “space”? Life is always either no more or not yet. Like time, life “comes from what is not yet, passes through what is without space, and disappears into what is no longer.” Can life be said to exist at all? Still the fact is that man does measure time. Perhaps man possesses a “space” where time can be conserved long enough to be measured, and would not this “space,” which man carries with himself, transcend both life and time?
Hannah Arendt on Love and How to Live with the Fundamental Fear of Loss
10th Circuit Reverses Tax Money Laundering Conviction For Lack of Sufficiency of Evidence
In United States v. Christy, ___ F.3d ___, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 4594 (10th Cir. 2019), here, the Court opens with this summary:
On May 21, 2014, CNB auditors conducted a surprise audit of the Burlington, Kansas Central National Bank ("CNB" or "Bank") vault. The vault was missing $764,000. When they began to suspect Ms. Christy, she forged documents to purport that she had sent the missing cash to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City ("FRB"). A grand jury indicted her on one count of bank embezzlement, six counts of making false bank entries, six counts of failing to report income on her taxes, and 10 counts of money laundering. After a six-day trial, a jury found Ms. Christy guilty of all charges except four money laundering counts. On appeal, Ms. Christy argues that (1) cumulative prosecutorial misconduct violated her due process rights, (2) the evidence was insufficient for her money laundering convictions, and (3) the jury instructions improperly omitted a "materiality" element for the false-bank-entry charges.
Zelenak: IU Tax Policy Colloquium, “The NCAA and the IRS” & Tax Sitcom Night
By: Leandra Lederman On February 14, the Indiana University Maurer School of Law’s Tax Policy Colloquium hosted Larry Zelenak from Duke University School of Law. Larry presented his fun new paper, co-authored with his colleague Rich Schmalbeck, “The NCAA and the IRS: Life at the Intersection of College Sports and the Federal Income Tax.” Larry really hit this one out of the park, with a crowd that was nearly standing-room-only! Larry also hosted a terrific Valentine’s evening event, “Tax Sitcom Night,” featuring three classic sitcom episodes in which couples encounter the federal income tax together. I’ll discuss each of these briefly in this blog post.
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At some point we realise that we trusted someone we should have feared and we fear those genuine relationships that we should trust...
“To create today is to create dangerously,” Albert Camus wrote in the late 1950s as he contemplated the role of the artist as a voice of resistance. “In our age,” W.H. Auden observed around the same time across the Atlantic, “the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act.” This unmerciful reality of human culture has shocked and staggered every artist who has endeavored to effect progress and lift her society up with the fulcrum of her art, but it is a fundamental fact of every age and every society. Half a century after Camus and Auden, Chinua Achebe distilled its discomfiting essence in his forgotten conversation with James Baldwin
At some point we realise that we trusted someone we should have feared and we fear those genuine relationships that we should trust...
“To create today is to create dangerously,” Albert Camus wrote in the late 1950s as he contemplated the role of the artist as a voice of resistance. “In our age,” W.H. Auden observed around the same time across the Atlantic, “the mere making of a work of art is itself a political act.” This unmerciful reality of human culture has shocked and staggered every artist who has endeavored to effect progress and lift her society up with the fulcrum of her art, but it is a fundamental fact of every age and every society. Half a century after Camus and Auden, Chinua Achebe distilled its discomfiting essence in his forgotten conversation with James Baldwin
This Court considers "deliberate ignorance of criminal activity as the equivalent of knowledge."
I just think that is wrong. If the ultimate element of the crime is actual knowledge or specific intent, a defendant's willful blindness should do no more than permit a jury to infer the required knowledge or intent. In other words, it is circumstantial evidence of the ultimate element of actual knowledge or specific intent. A finding that the defendant was willfully blind should not compel a finding that the defendant has actual knowledge or specific intent element of the crime. Congress has not said that when it requires actual knowledge or specific intent as an element of the crime, anything less will do.
I have written on this before, but just wanted to vent again.
Other blog entries on this:
Interesting NonTax Case on Willful Blindness (Federal Tax Crimes Blog 10/3/17), here.
- The Willful Blindness Concept -- What Does It Do? (Federal Tax Crimes Blog 1/23/17),here.
- Willful Blindness / Conscious Avoidance and Crimes Requiring Intent to Violate a Known Legal Duty (Federal Tax Crimes Blog 7/21/14), here.
- More on Conscious Avoidance (Federal Tax Crimes Blog 1/21/13), here.
- Third Circuit Decision in Stadtmauer - Willful Blindness (Conscious Avoidance) (Federal Tax Crimes Blog 9/10/10), here.
The real Don Shirley | About Last Night.
I never saw Don Shirley play again, and when I read about Green Book last fall, it was the first time I’d thought of him in years. I wish our paths had crossed in later life: I would have liked to tell him what it meant for me to see him perform in Smalltown in 1969. Perhaps it would have pleased him, for he died in semi-obscurity, his great talent all but forgotten.
Salvation by Words: Iris Murdoch on Language as a Vehicle of Truth and Art as a Force of Resistance to Tyranny
“Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth.”
What can our public servants learn from UK’s new Outsourcing Playbook?
LEARNINGS: Can Australian public sector outsourcing practices prevent Paladin having our Carillion moment? A new UK playbook offers lessons from failure.
Robust, transparent science backs the Murray-Darling Basin Plan
VIEWPOINT: Disagreement over the the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and spurious scientific analysis of fish kills does not mean that the MDBA was wrong, writes one of its former board members.
PROCUREMENT: The Digital Marketplace where government agencies can purchase IT services now allows public servants to ask vendors for new solutions.
ELECTION 2019: Rural and regional Australia is a big and diverse place, but some broad common issues do emerge as policy priorities.
Digital
disruption comes with the risk of exclusion
Nine per cent of Australians do not have access to the internet or have never used it. As government services increasingly rely on technology, there should be no discrimination for groups lacking internet literacy. (Partner article)
Nine per cent of Australians do not have access to the internet or have never used it. As government services increasingly rely on technology, there should be no discrimination for groups lacking internet literacy. (Partner article)