“I wanted to save the world” Elliot Alderson
“Sooner or later… one has to take sides. If one is to remain human” – Graham Greene – The Quiet American
“I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused” Graham Green – The Quiet American
(via BC)5 Reasons to Wear a Mask Even After You’re Vaccinated
Yes, Virginia, a mask is very much part of your future.
Mike West: Revealed: Australia’s Top 40 Tax Dodgers for 2021
- HMRC pursues multiple criminal investigations in corporate tax disputes(11 Jan 2021)
- How Nigeria lost $178bn to tax evasion by multi-nationals (11 Jan 2021)
- EU urged to push UK harder on tackling tax avoidance and money laundering (10 Jan 2021)
- Denmark Charges Two British Citizens for Masterminding Billion Dollar Tax Fraud (8 Jan 2021)
- Brexit: Johnson says UK can use tax to drive investment outside EU (4 Jan 2021)
- British ruling class described as ‘mendacious, intellectually limited hustlers’ in New York Times
Craig Elliffe (Auckland), Assessing the Flaws in the 1920s Compromise in the Times of the Burgeoning Digital Economy and the Great Lockdown:
The COVID-19 pandemic has been described by the International Monetary Fund as the worst recession since the Great Depression. The combination of tax shortfalls, increased government spending, and the irrefutable growth in the digital economy has created a situation which means that the world arrives at the crossroads of international tax reform with a great sense of urgency. If there is political consensus, reform will be in the format proposed, or similar to, the OECD/Inclusive Framework’s proposal (described as the 2020s compromise). In the absence of political consensus, then the world will travel down the other branch of the crossroads and we will see the introduction of a plethora of interim and unilateral domestic taxes.
The existing international tax rules are widely regarded as being “not fit for purpose”. After a brief introduction of the history of the international tax framework (referred to by some as the 1920s compromise), this paper traces the development of the current OECD/Inclusive Framework proposals as international tax policymakers grapple with the vexing problem of how to tax multinationals who do business across borders, particularly those that operate using a highly digitalised business model.
The Capitol Attack Doesn’t Justify Expanding Surveillance Wired
Patriot Act 2, Censorship, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix Caitlin Johnstone
Wired, This Economist Has a Radical Plan to Solve Wealth Inequality:
Piketty’s 753-page book Capital in the Twenty-First Century,
published in 2013, sold 2.5 million copies worldwide and helped put
inequality on the global agenda. But his latest, the even thicker Capital and Ideology,
may prove still more influential. The book is nothing less than a
global history of inequality and the stories that societies tell to
justify it, from pre-modern India to Donald Trump’s US. It arrives just
as anger about inequality (some of it generated by Piketty’s work)
approaches boiling point, and was channelled by a contender for the
White House, Bernie Sanders.
The Australasian Virology Society in action.
Solidarity Now The Baffler
Advanced Searches Using Legislative Action Codes on Congress.gov
In Custodia Legis: “The following is a guest post by senior legal reference librarian Beth Osborne. Recently, one of my colleagues from the blog team asked me if I knew of any “hidden treasures” at the Law Library of Congress that I wanted to mention in her recent post. Of course, I realized she was asking about something special—but perhaps often overlooked—from our wonderfully vast physical collection. However, my first thought was, “Congress.gov Action Codes!” So even though action codes did not quite fit the hidden treasures post, I thought I would take a few moments to talk about this powerful advanced search feature from Congress.gov. First—a brief background. Thousands of pieces of legislation are introduced in a two-year Congress, though relatively few are ever enacted into law. From the introduction of a measure to its passage, failure, or death, many different legislative actions can occur. Every bill or resolution that is uploaded to Congress.gov has information about the actions taken during the legislative process (for example, see the list of “All Actions” taken on S. 24, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019). The Congress.gov data on legislative actions is largely pulled from the Congressional Record. Congress.gov enables researchers to search within certain categories of information (fields), and “legislative actions” is one such category. A task such as identifying all bills that were “introduced in the House of Representatives” is easy because that action is available from the left-hand menu as you look at a list of search results. However, if you want to craft a search based on less common legislative actions, or based on multiple legislative actions, using action codes in the advanced search feature may work for you. Action codes are numerical codes assigned to certain types of legislative actions. One benefit that action codes have over keywords is that they efficiently encapsulate similar actions described in different ways. For example, if you wanted to know how many bills had received floor consideration in the House, you could do a keyword search for every word or phrase that conceivably qualifies as a floor action (such as taking up, amending, debate, voting, passage, amendments between the chambers, conference actions, etc.). But, this would be an unwieldy and inefficient search. Instead, you can execute your search using the action code that represents “house floor actions” (actionCode:7000) and quickly capture all variants of floor actions that have taken place in the House. To use action codes, start on the page for advanced search of legislation and jump or scroll to the menus under “Action/Status.” You will likely need to scan the list of action codes to familiarize yourself with what is available and find the code or codes suitable for your search. Additionally, you can find a list of action search scope notes, which provide explanatory notes on action codes, as well as a large set of prepared queries featuring action code search fields. When using an action code, you need to use the prefix actionCode:XXXX, where XXXX is the code. If you are using more than one action code, you can use parentheses and connect them with a search operator…”
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