Tuesday, April 30, 2019

One Too Many for the Muse

John Quincy Adams "Whoever tells the best story wins ..."

 "Happy is the one who can feel their different merits" I came across several articles relating to Brexit where Voltaire and Adams were quoted (I link to one dealing with Voltaire in the context of our current dark ages)

"Though Voltaire wrote in a private letter that ‘our religion [Christianity] is without a doubt the most ridiculous and the most absurd’ he was able to publicly present convincing arguments for tolerance by carefully quoting the Gospels.

Even men in the highest positions felt free to mock the religious dogmas of the time, such as Cicero when he spoke of hell; ‘Not even an old imbecile would believe in it’.

There is an 18th-century quote, most often attributed to Voltaire, that could pass muster today were he a 21st-century philosopher seeking to warn us about a religion political correctness sensitivities disallow identifying by name: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.”

“Dare to Know! Have courage to use your own reason!”Both Voltaire and Kant would be appalled that 21st century democracies have, by their own actions, slipped back into the Dark Ages, banning knowledge and free thought...

In a 1985 article in the New York Times titled “One Too Many for the Muse,” J. Anthony Lukas noted that “an exhaustive roster of literary scrooders would be too long to publish here.” He then provided a partial list of some 60 American writers whose drinking was noteworthy. Most are among the usual suspects—Poe, Faulkner, Hemingway, Kerouac, Capote. But the drinking of some—James Whitcomb Riley, Katherine Anne Porter, Wallace Stevens—is less well-known.
“The Writer and Addiction”: The relationship between literature and alcoholism




America Isn’t as Powerful as It Thinks It Is Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy (Re Silc: “It’s why guys in sandals and ak47s always beat us”).







As The Earth Warms, Long-Buried Objects Are Emerging. It’s Both Scary And Fascinating




Water levels in the River Elbe dropped so far that “hunger stones” were revealed – carved boulders used since the 1400sto commemorate droughts and warn of their consequences. One of the stones bears the inscription “Wenn du mich siehst, dann weine” (If you see me, weep).  – The Guardian




Is ‘Jeopardy!’ Winning Machine James Holzhauer Breaking The Game? If So, Does That Matter?




Emily Yahr: “After all, we’re in an era where television is more fractured than ever. Big TV events are increasingly rare, and it’s refreshing to have one topic to discuss around the virtual water cooler of the Internet — especially something that you could easily catch up on in one episode.” – The Washington Post


When What We Think Will Make Things Better Makes Them Catastrophically Worse


“Our very attempts to stave off disaster by introducing safety systems ultimately increases the overall complexity of the systems, ensuring that some unpredictable outcome will rear its ugly head no matter what. Complicated human-machine systems might surprise us with outcomes more favorable than we have any reason to expect. They also might shock us with catastrophe.” – The Atlantic


As a call centre worker I saw how employees are stripped of their rights | Guardian Careers |
The modern call centre has been described as an “electronic panopticon” (pdf) – a place designed in a way that strips workers of their rights. Having spent six months working in one ...

Call Centers Are Slave Ships? – The Greatbong Blog & Podcast


 It seems that their actual state is comparable to those of galley slaves in ancient Rome and to prisons in the 19th century. Aww those sugar bunnies. The labor practices call centres follow ...
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Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society” - free file A Story of Agency Capture 


'Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society”

“On May 1, 2019 at 1:30 p.m., the Law Library of Congress will present its annual Law Day event. Join Law Librarian of Congress, Jane Sánchez, in a conversation with American Bar Association President, Bob Carlson, for a discussion on this year’s Law Day topic, “Free Speech, Free Press, Free Society.”  Please register for this event via Eventbrite. The discussion will take place in Room LJ-119, located on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. In addition, a collections display featuring items from the Law Library of Congress and the Serials and Government Document Division will be open at LJ-113 from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Held annually on May 1, Law Day is a national day to celebrate the rule of law. Law Day underscores how law and the legal process contribute to the freedoms that all Americans share. Law Day also provides an opportunity to recognize the role of courts in democracy and the importance of jury service to maintaining the integrity of the courts. This program is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required but registration is highly recommended. For additional event information, please contact the Office of External Relations atlawoutreach@loc.gov.”
If you can’t find something on MEdia Dragon or Google, does it even exist? When it comes to free tax-filing offerings, at least, TurboTax maker Intuit sure as hell seems to hope you think the answer is no.
TurboTax Purposely Hid Its Free Tax-Filing Page From Google Search




Dennis J. Ventry, Jr. (UC-Davis) presents Free File: A Story of Agency Capture at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop Series hosted by John Brooks and Lilian Faulhaber:
The IRS Free File program and the Free File Alliance (FFA) harm taxpayers. Meanwhile, the IRS refuses to conduct any meaningful oversight over the program or FFA companies, thereby failing to protect taxpayers and exacerbating an already abusive program.Worse, Congress wants to make Free File a permanent part of the Internal Revenue Code, obligating the IRS to partner in perpetuity with FFA companies and their abusive tactics.

ProPublica, Lawmakers Just Confronted the IRS Over Tax Audits That Target the Poor:

Over the past six months, ProPublica has detailed the myriad ways the IRS has been gutted and how that has impacted its ability to do its job. In sum: The wealthy escape scrutiny while the working poor, an easier target, are audited at high rates.

This week, Congress, in two separate hearings, confronted IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig with the findings.

“How can the Congress stand by a tax-enforcement system that punishes working people and gives the wealthy a green light to cheat?” asked Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, during his opening statement on Wednesday.

Wyden was referring to a ProPublica investigation last week into the fate of the elite unit the IRS formed to keep up with the complicated tax-avoidance schemes of the wealthy. Faced with staff cuts and blowback from the wealthy and their tax representatives, the effort fumbled and was scaled way back.


 Pamela Paul, editor of The New York Times Book Review, decided to downgrade her tech two years ago. “It has worked out, with paper and DVDs instead of the latest apps and gizmos…Strictly in terms of review process, our desk hasn’t changed much — because the vast majority of our editors and reviewers prefer to work in print




DECISION-MAKING: The UK What Works Network is one of the first national approaches to prioritising the use of evidence in public policy decision-making.
George Christensen says voters don't care about his Philippines trips - and he's mostly right - The Age




Medieval Monks Were A Distracted Lot. Here’s How They Focused




It occurred to historian Jamie Kreiner that the monks she studied spent a lot of their time trying to figure out how to stay focused. And maybe their advice might be useful to the present-day world full of digital distraction. – Aeon


The IRS Free File program and the Free File Alliance (FFA) harm taxpayers. Meanwhile, the IRS refuses to conduct any meaningful oversight over the program or FFA companies, thereby failing to protect taxpayers and exacerbating an already abusive program.Worse, Congress wants to make Free File a permanent part of the Internal Revenue Code, obligating the IRS to partner in perpetuity with FFA companies and their abusive tactics. ...

Each year, I encourage my tax students to use Free File to file their federal income taxes. (I also encourage them to use CalFile, California’s truly freee-filing web-based software, for their California income tax returns and to avoid being upsold state filing services from FFA companies.) I also warn them about the upselling and forced arbitration and likely impermissible use and disclosure of their tax return information. Armed with this knowledge, they become savvy consumers of FFA companies’ purportedly free products. Also armed with this knowledge, they can report back and chronicle the abuses of the system, which they have done for years. This year was no exception. ...

Alice Abreu (Temple) & Richard Greenstein (Temple), Rebranding Tax/Increasing Diversity, 96 Denv. L. Rev. 1 (2018):

Tax gets a bad rap. It is generally thought to be coercive, burdensome, complicated, unpleasant, and boring. The annual ritual of filing tax returns underscores the taking aspect of taxation by reminding even those who receive refunds that money has been taken from them. This view of tax—that it is about taking—is not only inaccurate and incomplete, but it may have had two related, significant, deleterious, but unexamined effects. Viewing the tax system only as an instrument of taking may contribute to the creation of a tax bar that is more white and less diverse than the bar in general, and that may, in turn, contribute to the existence of a tax system that disproportionately favors the relatively non-diverse population of taxpayers at the top of the income distribution. This Article examines the first of these effects. We attempt to answer to a question that has gone unasked for far too long: Why is the tax bar so white?



The FBI Alerts the Public to Trends in Internet Crime and Offers Prevention Tips – “The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) 2018 Internet Crime Report includes information from 351,936 complaints of suspected Internet crime, with reported losses in excess of $2.7 billion. The top three crime types reported by victims in 2018 were non-payment/non-delivery, extortion, and personal data breach. In addition to the 2018 statistics, the report contains information about the IC3, the FBI’s work in combating Internet crime, and the most prevalent scams. The IC3 provides the public with a reliable and convenient mechanism to report Internet crime. The IC3 categorizes and analyzes the data to identify and forecast trends to promote public awareness of emerging and ongoing cyber threats. Since its inception in 2000, the IC3 has received a total of 4,415,870 complaints. The quality of the data is a direct reflection of the information the public provides through the IC3 website…”

Steffen Mau (Humboldt University (Berlin)), The Metric Society: On the Quantification of the Social (2019):

In today’s world, numbers are in the ascendancy. Societies dominated by star ratings, scores, likes, and lists are rapidly emerging, as data are collected on virtually every aspect of our lives. From annual university rankings, ratings agencies, and fitness tracking technologies to our credit score and health status, everything and everybody is measured and evaluated.

In this important new book, Steffen Mau offers a critical analysis of this increasingly pervasive phenomenon. While the original intention behind the drive to quantify may have been to build trust and transparency, Mau shows how metrics have in fact become a form of social conditioning. The ubiquitous language of ranking and scoring has changed profoundly our perception of value and status. What is more, through quantification, our capacity for competition and comparison has expanded significantly — we can now measure ourselves against others in practically every area. The rise of quantification has created and strengthened social hierarchies, transforming qualitative differences into quantitative inequalities that play a decisive role in shaping the life chances of individuals.







Six years after it was excoriated for allegedly targeting conservative organizations, the agency has largely given up on regulating an entire category of nonprofits. The result: More dark money gushes into the political system.

In the past decade, people, companies and unions have dispensed more than $1 billion in dark money, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The very definition of that phrase, to many critics, epitomizes the problem of shadowy political influence: Shielded by the cloak of anonymity, typically wealthy interests are permitted to pass limitless pools of cash through nonprofits to benefit candidates or political initiatives without contributing directly to campaigns.
Such spending is legal because of a massive loophole. Section 501(c)(4) of the U.S. tax code allows organizations to make independent expenditures on politics while concealing their donors’ names — as long as politics isn’t the organization’s “primary activity.” The Internal Revenue Service has the daunting task of trying to determine when nonprofits in that category, known colloquially as C4s, violate that vague standard.


George Yin (Virginia), 'Who Speaks for Tax Equity and Tax Fairness?': Stanley Surrey and the Tax Legislative Process:
This article examines and assesses Stanley Surrey’s view of the federal tax legislative process. One of the most influential tax professionals of the twentieth century, Surrey is likely best known for his advocacy of specific tax policy ideas. But Surrey saw legislation as the prime route for adoption of most of his ideas, and he thus focused and provided many commentaries on the tax legislative process. He drew on extensive experience with the process, serving two lengthy terms (almost 20 years) in the Treasury Department, and remaining closely involved with it throughout his academic years.

 Wall Street Journal Tax Report, The Profitable Prospects of Snitching for the IRS:

These are boom times for snitches who turn in tax cheats to Uncle Sam.

The Internal Revenue Service awarded more than $312 million to tipsters last year, according to a little-noticed report released in February [Whistleblower Program Fiscal Year 2018 Annual Report to Congress]. This total far outstrips the previous record of $125 million awarded in 2012. The 2018 rewards, paid in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, were for additional collected revenue of $1.4 billion, compared with $191 million in fiscal 2017.
Alice Abreu (Temple) & Richard Greenstein (Temple), Rebranding Tax/Increasing Diversity, 96 Denv. L. Rev. 1 (2018):
Tax gets a bad rap. It is generally thought to be coercive, burdensome, complicated, unpleasant, and boring. The annual ritual of filing tax returns underscores the taking aspect of taxation by reminding even those who receive refunds that money has been taken from them. This view of tax—that it is about taking—is not only inaccurate and incomplete, but it may have had two related, significant, deleterious, but unexamined effects. Viewing the tax system only as an instrument of taking may contribute to the creation of a tax bar that is more white and less diverse than the bar in general, and that may, in turn, contribute to the existence of a tax system that disproportionately favors the relatively non-diverse population of taxpayers at the top of the income distribution. This Article examines the first of these effects. We attempt to answer to a question that has gone unasked for far too long: Why is the tax bar so white?
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Renowned Australian Literary giant and poet Les Murray dies, age 80

Cecil had died in 1995, which prompted one of Murray’s most moving poems, The Last Hellos ("Don’t die, Dad -/ but they die.").

RIP the great Les Murray. Among his many achievements, his incredible poem DOG FOX FIELD about the Nazi murder of the disabled. A warning to history. A masterpiece.
 Thank you, Les.

        Australian poet Les Murray has passed away; see, for example, Michael Duffy on Les Murray: The leading poet of his generation and possibly of this country's history in theSydney Morning Herald. 

       With ten of his books under review at the complete review, obviously I am a great admirer of his work; novel-in-verse Fredy Neptune is a particular favorite, but look beyond that, too. 

Les Murray, Dissident Poet | David Mason | First Things

A Catholic convert, Murray was a religious poet devoted to creation, but skeptical of all orthodoxies and authorities. Most of his many books bear the dedication “to the glory of God,” as clear a statement of his poetics as anything. If the Word was in the beginning, Murray understood the importance of language while maintaining a healthy modesty about its efficacy.
 "I am only interested in everything": Les Murray, who has died aged 80, and whose body of poetry reflects & enacts that roving, voracious curiosity. I once heard him recite 'Pigs' from memory -- forceful and eerie, his eyes rolling almost back up into his skull as he spoke.


Australian literary giant Les Murray dies

 Fortunately for himself and for Australian poetry, he met Budapest-born Valerie Morelli, and in 1962 they married.
(Les Murray's wife, Valerie, recalls the Hungarian immigrant experience)

 Les Murray: The leading poet of his generation and possibly of this country history  ...
On the way to bury his mother in 1951, Les Murray saw an old Aboriginal man standing by the road with his eyes down and hat off.

"I was 12 then," the poet would recall, "but that man has stayed with me, from what may well have been the natal day of my vocation as a poet, a good spirit gently restraining me from indulgence in stereotypes and prejudices."

Murray was the leading poet of his generation and possibly of this country’s history. His power came from extraordinary poetic technique and a determination to draw for his subject matter on Australia and its past, to which he felt unusually connected by his personal history.

For many readers he enhanced the experience of living here, by revealing a richer culture than we had known, and indeed expanding it. Many talented writers of his generation felt the need to go away; Murray did not.


Vale Les Murray, a witty, anti-authoritarian, national poet who spoke to the world

Les Murray stands with his hand on his head. He is in front of a landscape painting in a gold frame, and he is speaking.PHOTO: Les Murray was "the poet of the rural poor". (AAP: Alan Porritt)




R.I.P., Les Murray. “Poetry can work as the highest form of talking cure, but you have to tell the absolute truth, so far as you can dredge that up,” the Australian poet told us in his 2005 Art of Poetry interview. Read more: 

Leslie Allan Murray AO was an Australian poet, anthologist and critic. His career spanned over forty years and he published nearly 30 volumes of poetry as well as two verse novels and collections of his prose writings. His poetry won many awards... Wikipedia
Born: 17 October 1938, Nabiac
Died: 29 April 2019
Nationality: Australian
Awards: Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, Petrarca-Preis and Christopher Brennan Award

 Les Murray remembered by John Kinsella: a brilliant 'battler'-poet
From the Archives, 2002: In the Land of Les Murray The Sydney Morning Herald
Australian poet Les Murray dies at 80 ABC Local
'Always his own man': Australian poet Les Murray dies aged 80 SBS

 Les Murray is survived by Valerie, children Christina, Daniel, Clare, Peter, and Alexander.

 Mittleuropean story:

Les Murray’s wife, Valerie, recalls the Hungarian immigrant experience

Because of the fraught situation in Hungary in 1944, three-year-old Val­erie and her 18-month-old bro­ther Steve (Istvan) were rushed on to a packed Red Cross train to join relatives in Switzerland.
They were supposedly under the care of two nuns who largely ignored the screaming baby as bombs rained down. Val­erie Murray, wife of poet Les Murray, believes Steve was traumatised for life by this experience.
It was a year before the siblings were reunited with their mother in Zurich, and longer before they were joined by their father, who was trading on the black market to raise money. In the meantime, the children were passed around among relatives.
Murray writes in the preface of her memoir Flight from the Brothers Grimm: “Both my brother Steve and I were born during World War II in Hungary with a Swiss mother (albeit with German antecedents) and a Hungarian ­father unbelievably named Gino Morelli … We came from a cocktail of European backgrounds.”
The Morellis were not Jewish but, because of this “cocktail of backgrounds”, found themselves stateless and in need of a new home. Hungarians came to Australia in four waves starting in the 1830s. By far the largest influx (15,000) consisted of DPs (displaced persons) who came between 1948 and 1952, followed by those who escaped after the Hungarian uprising of 1956.
The Morelli family arrived in Sydney in 1950 when Valerie was nine. My Hungarian family arrived in Melbourne in 1949 when I was 10. We too were stateless and I too had a younger sibling I was often left to care for, though I was not left alone for a week at a time as Valerie was while her parents went skiing. (Today this would be illegal.)

 Steve had been packed off to boarding school. Like me, Valerie was scared witless by the popular radio program Inner Sanctum with the creaking doors and terrifying advancing footfalls. While Valerie’s education and wardrobe were carefully attended to, she was isolated and had too much responsibility.
Children’s emotional needs were rarely considered and Valerie suffered panic attacks and depression for several years until she found friends and gained some independence and even part-time work. I feel a great deal of empathy with young Valerie and her brother.
Murray has self-published this memoir. Close to the end of the book, she notes an exasperated comment from a friend when presented with a memoir, “Not another bloody migrant memoir!”
Hungarian immigrants, along with those from many other nations, have made significant contributions to Australian society and many have compelling stories to tell. It’s important these are recorded and available to younger generations who may be ignorant of Australia’s rich immigration history.
Perhaps Hungarians like talking about and reflecting on their experiences more than others. In a chapter titled Motivation, Murray writes: “It’s a matter of responsibility to me and all the people in my life … but also, I hope, an act of unburdening, of catharsis.” Later she adds: “I needed to recover as much of my background as I could.”
The first third of the book reads as though information has been gleaned and assembled from family snaps as Murray strives to piece together the fragments of her early life as a cosseted child in Hungary and then her more chaotic existence in Switzerland.
The histories of her parents, grandparents and extended family are somewhat confusing and it is hard to hold on to the details and relationships of so many people. We learn her parents were keen shooters. “[In Switzerland] My parents used to practise in the long corridor of their apartment with their air rifle. They would aim at the small doorbell above the entrance door.”
The Morelli family’s trajectory was like that of many immigrants. A block of land, a house that was always a work in progress, a struggle to fit in and to find the best salami. Mr Morelli got into business and thrived. Stylish, well-turned-out Mrs Morelli had excellent references as a designer-cutter from Zurich and worked her way up to a well-paid job at David Jones.
Both worked long hours. Soon the family moved to Sydney’s more salubrious north shore, where Valerie did well at a Catholic school. We learn about her father’s spear fishing, yodelling and skiing exploits and mother’s work experiences and colleagues.
Murray became a teacher of French and German and later moved to ESL (English as a second language) because, as she notes, language teaching has not flourished in Australia. Murray has boundless admiration for her beloved and brilliant poet husband. She writes: “I have had the good fortune to spend most of my life with one of the best masters of the word anywhere.”
Life was never easy or comfortable, especially after they moved to the country to look after Les’s father. Les worked where he could and later gained income from grants, prizes and poetry reading tours. The family often travelled with some, or all, of their five children, with variable success.
Interesting digressions reflect on topics such as why so many immigrants change their names. Valerie’s given name was Valika. She notes how far advanced European doctors and dentists were in their practices in the 1950s and 60s. She describes her mother and a friend going together to have their bunions removed (so they could keep wearing fashionable shoes) and have face lifts. She frets about her ageing and fading parents and how poorly aged care homes deal with long-time immigrants, many of whom revert to their first language.
Finally, she wonders “what I might have learnt, and been, if World War II had not sent my family and me on the long road around the world”. How many of us immigrants wonder about this too?
Writer and critic Agnes Nieuwenhuizen is a first-generation immigrant.
Flight from the Brothers Grimm


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