Not So Evil 66th Edition - Fortune 500 – Call it the ultimate business scorecard

If you believe it will work out, you'll see opportunities. If you believe it won't, you will see obstacles.

- Wayne Dyer.

Designer Jim Malloy has reimagined the books of Dr. Seuss for the coronavirus age by altering the titles & cover illustrations and changing the author to “Dr. Fauci”. You can check out the results on Instagram and in this Instagram Story. 

“Fortune 500 – Call it the ultimate business scorecard. This marks the 66th edition of our ranking of America’s largest companies. The 500 that made this year’s list represent two-thirds of the U.S. economy, with $14.2 trillion in revenue. Explore the list for a full breakdown of who’s up, who’s down, and why.”

Roberta F. Mann (Oregon), Fiona Martin (New South Wales) & Bill Butcher (New South Wales), Saving the Planet by Cutting Corporate Taxes: A Comparative Case Study Analysis, 23 Fla. Tax Rev. 238 (2019):

This Article examines corporate tax trends in the context of the pressing global issue of climate change. Multinational corporations play a huge role in the global economy. We argue that the role of for-profit corporations should not be limited to making short-term profits for their shareholders. If corporations benefit from corporate tax reductions, some of that benefit should be shared with society.

Theodore Seto (Loyola-L.A.), How Should We Think About Wealth Tax Avoidance? (JOTWELL) (reviewing Lily Batchelder (NYU), Leveling the Playing Field between Inherited Income and Income from Work Through an Inheritance Tax (reviewed by Mirit Eyal-Cohen (Alabama) here) in Tackling The Tax Code 48 (Jay Shambaugh & Ryan Nunn eds. 2020)):

In Leveling the Playing Field between Inherited Income and Income from Work through an Inheritance Tax, Lily Batchelder proposes that our current estate and gift transfer taxes be abolished and that gifts, inheritances, and bequests in excess of a lifetime exemption and various annual exclusions instead be includible for both income and payroll tax purposes. She would require constructive realization of large accrued gains on gifts and bequests and repeal of carryover basis and stepped-up basis for such gains as well. To avoid forcing the sale of family farms and businesses, she would allow heirs to defer indefinitely the resulting taxes to the extent they exceed the heirs’ liquid assets, minus a cushion of $500,000. She would also permit taxable inheritances to be spread over five years to minimize bracket shift problems. Finally, to address the avoidance problems that currently plague our transfer tax system, she proposes a series of reforms to rules governing the timing and valuation of transfers through trusts and similar devices. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center estimates that if the lifetime exemption were $2.5 million, Batchelder’s proposal would raise $34 billion per year; if the lifetime exemption were $1 million, $92 billion per year; and if the lifetime exemption were $500,000, $140 billion per year. By comparison, our current transfer tax system raises about $16 billion per year. 

Washington Post op-ed:  Local Governments Need More Revenue. Try Progressive Property Taxes., by Andrew Hayashi (Virginia) & Ariel Jurow Kleiman (San Diego):

Local governments are cash-strapped. Even if Congress agrees to give them financial support, it probably won’t be enough. Localities must raise revenue using the fiscal tools available to them — but without overburdening struggling households. The answer is a progressive property tax. The tax could feature rates that increase with property values, income-based tax relief or deferral of payment. Many states provide such deferrals to senior citizens and the disabled, and this could be extended to those eligible for unemployment benefits.

Dutch spies helped Britain's GCHQ break Argentine crypto during Falklands War

Five Eyes-style Euro intel alliance Maximator tipped UK off about Crypto AG machines

Marry, kill or have sex? Traders rated women co-workers, suit alleges

Male traders and portfolio managers at a New York hedge fund openly ranked women on a 1-10 scale, classifying them according to what men would like to do to with them, a former junior associate claims in a lawsuit.

“…that the failure of Victorian Police to obtain legal advice before persuading and paying a criminal defence barrister to inform on her own clients was 'negligence in the highest order'”.
'Lawyer X' Royal Commission: More Than 1200 Cases to be Reviewed
In her closing remarks at the end of the The Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants' public hearings, Commissioner Margaret McMurdo thanked the commission lawyers and staff who have been working to investigate and identify any tasks that may have been affected by Nicola Gobbo's conduct.
Between 1995 and 2009, Victorian gangland lawyer Niccola Gobbo worked both sides of the justice system, as a criminal defence barrister, defending some of Australia's most notorious criminals, as well as acting as a registered police informant, official number 3838.
by Sonia Hickey


Peter Dronke obituary | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Though his health declined after Ursula’s death in 2012, he produced unstoppably: a new edition of the Roman 6th-century philosopher Boethiusand a trailblazing in-depth introduction and commentary to the radical ninth-century theologian John Scotus Eriugena (the name means Irish-born). His Periphyseon (On the Natures of the Universe, five volumes, 2012-17) openly dismisses scriptural literalism: it was “too simple-minded, thinking that paradise was some place on earth, that the trees were earthly and the fountains physically perceivable. True Reason laughs at this.”

Cryptomining hacks aren’t new by any stretch, but a string of recent incidents is raising eyebrows. ZDNetreports that culprits infected multiple European supercomputers with Monero mining malware in the past week, including the University of Edinburgh’s ARCHER, five of bwHPC’s computer clusters and most recently a cluster at Munich’s Ludwig-Maximilians University. That’s unusual by itself, but there appears to be a common thread between the hacks.

Cado Security has determined that the attacks were conducted using compromised SSH (secure shell) logins from universities in Canada, China and Poland, using similar malware file names, the same vulnerability and shared technical indicators. That suggests they might be the work of the same bad actor. In the case of ARCHER, the attacks appear to have come from Chinese IP addresses.
Supercomputers across Europe have fallen to cryptomining hacks


At Sydney uni's privilege factories the 'mostly migrant' workers clean up rich kids' mess