My aim is to agitate and disturb people. I'm not selling bread; I'm selling yeast.
— Miguel de Unamuno, born in 1864
'They're in the house': Son of ex-MP warned electorate office of ICAC raid
Uber driver accused of killing passenger returns to jail; bond payment not lawful, judge rules Tulsa World
Source: DOJ via Nextgov
https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2020/09/foreign-hacker-sentenced-1m-scam-targeting-federal-employees-and-contractors/168816/
A foreign national charged with setting up fake government websites, hacking federal employees’ emails and defrauding agency contractors of almost $1 million has been sentenced to a year and a half in prison.According to federal investigators, Olumide Ogunremi, 43, a citizen of Nigeria who also goes by the name Tony Williams, was part of a criminal “ring” that using phishing emails and counterfeit websites to trick federal employees into giving up their digital credentials, which were then used to buy goods to sell on the black market.
In the latter half of 2013, Ogunremi and his co-conspirators sent phishing emails to employees at several federal agencies directing them to fake websites, “including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” according to a Justice Department release.
LA’s Small Theatres Come Together
The LA Together Festival is proof that something positive has emerged from an unprecedented crisis: With mutual survival on the line, L.A.’s network of small theaters has strengthened its communal bonds, pooling resources, expertise and ingenuity and setting aside (at least for the time being) competition. – Los Angeles Times
New York Times, Long-Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance:
The Times obtained Donald Trump’s tax information extending over more than two decades, revealing struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due.
How Corruption is Becoming America’s Operating System
A new book by Sarah Chayes shows the US descent into a level of corruption usually associated with places like Nigeria and Afghanistan
Natasha Sarin (Pennsylvania) & Lawrence H. Summers (Harvard), Understanding the Revenue Potential of Tax Compliance Investment:
In a July 2020 report, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that modest investments in the IRS would generate somewhere between $60 and $100 billion in additional revenue over a decade. This is qualitatively correct. But quantitatively, the revenue potential is much more significant than the CBO report suggests. We highlight five reasons for the CBO’s underestimation: 1) the scale of the investment in the IRS contemplated is modest and far short of sufficient even to return the IRS budget to 2011 levels; 2) the CBO contemplates a limited range of interventions, excluding entirely progress on information reporting and technological advancements; 3) the estimates assume rapidly diminishing returns to marginal increases in investment; 4) the estimates leave out the effect of increased enforcement on taxpayer decision-making; and 5) the use of the 10-year window means that the long-run benefits of increased enforcement are excluded.
