St Patrick - Painting the Beer 🍻 Green

Whatever St Patrick says about myself or my shenanigans… you won't hear a bad word from me about him even on Twitter;-)

Appropriately for a March 17 letter, Bogan cites Yeats and signs off with “Love on the day of all the Patricks!”

Who say it is not easy to be green?

Everyone is Irish today.

Even for recycled teenagers from old Czechoslovakia with religious confirmation names

Where Did St. Patrick’s Day’s Green Beer Come From?

Catholics Can Eat Their Corned Beef and Cabbage in Good Conscience on St. Patrick's Day ☘️ 

Word on the twitter street is that some countries had to cancel the day, someone explained to them that St Patrick was an illegal immigrant who arrived in Ireland on a small boat.

St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland on 17 Mar. The "snake" symbolism represents spirit of all kinds of images.

There is a line in a Eugene O’Neil play: St Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland who then swam the Atlantic and joined the NYPD.

And in March 2023 Australia toddler chasing snake finds nest of 110 venomous serpent eggs 

Seriously? Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a delicious and nutritious twist! This Spinach Chickpea Dip is low-carb, calorie-conscious, and low-sugar - perfect for your St. Patty celebrations???

Morgen is het St. Patrick's Day en dan speel ik met De Bikkels in Ierse pub St. James Gate op het Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam van 20.00 uur tot laat en als het net zo leuk wordt als de vorige jaren dan gaat het dak er weer af. En zaterdag ook, meteen na Ierland-Engeland.

Catherine - Every election since 1984 I have fought 24/7 for the Liberals. I have like others walked away from this one. Left NSW altogether going to postal vote

Keating of Irish background  exposes ministerial incompetence in Albanese Government

Why The Mysterious Book Manuscript Thief Did It

In court papers, former Simon & Schuster staffer Filippo Bernardini is quoted as saying, "I never leaked these manuscripts. I wanted to keep them closely to my chest and be one of the fewest to cherish them before anyone else, before they ended up in bookshops." - The Bookseller (UK)

Murdered Papua New Guinea Ports Official Benefitted From Suspect Offshore Payments

A Manila-based multinational paid millions of dollars into the offshore account of an Australian consultant around the time it won lucrative contracts to operate Papua New Guinea’s biggest ports. Senior PNG Ports officials — including one who was recently killed — then received money and apparent benefits.

Now two Liberal candidates exposed by

@maxmaddison

Exclusive: The NSW Liberal Party’s Maroubra candidate promoted an unproven drug used on horses as a cure for Covid-19 and labelled climate change the “biggest fraud committed on hard working people”. ⁦

@australian

⁩

Does Rishi Sunak have Something to Hide in his Tax Returns?

Florida Legislator Proposes a State Registry for Bloggers Jonathan Turley. Turley bizaarely fails to mention this law is not enforceable outside Florida.

Credit Suisse finds ‘material weaknesses’ in financial reporting controls FT. See NC here, here, and today.

Thanks to generative AI, catching fraud science is going to be this much harder The Register

Saturday Night Thoughts on the Need for a Lender of Last Resort Brad DeLong’s Grasping Reality. “Then chaos monkey Peter Thiel showed up: advising companies to pull their money out of SVB.” A fine operational definition of an extremely robust banking and regulatory system. I say let’s use it for payroll!

After big bank failure, renewed questions about Home Loan Bank System American Banker

The Fall of Silicon Valley Bank The Rational Walk. SVB’s 10-K

Roku Says $487 Million of Its Cash, or 26%, Was Held in Failed Silicon Valley Bank Variety. Streaming media

Crypto’s bedrock bank implodes Felix Salmon, Axios. Silvergate Bank, not SVB, Yo, Elon! Yo!

Gulnara Karimova: How Uzbek president’s daughter built a £200m property empire BBC  I’m shocked that money was laundered through London (real estate), but also certain that the malfeasance was limited to outliers in the ‘Stans.

SILENT COLLABORATOR Declassified Australia. Australia’s official neglect of jailed WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, is revealed in Federal Government files obtained under FOI legislation.

1. This NPR segment deriding the idea that egg & fuel companies are price-gouging consumers is what happens when reporters think they’re being clever & contrarian, but they’re actually just parroting corporate talking points laundered thru an economist. https://t.co/QotONKJHGj

— Basel Musharbash (@musharbash_b) March 4, 2023

 Sex parties and polyamory in Silicon Valley? It’s more common than you might think South China Morning Post. No, I don’t think it is.

 

Ted Chiang: Fears of Technology Are Fears of Capitalism Kottke.org

 

Surveillance in the Danish welfare state (Wired)

TIGTA Recommendation for Legislation Consideration to Make Failure to File a 2-Year Felony 

TIGTA released a report titled The IRS Has Not Adequately Prioritized Federal Civilian Employee Nonfilers (TIGTA Rept No. 2023-30-011 3/6/23), here. The report discusses that category of nonfilers and the Federal Employee/Retiree Delinquency Initiative (FERDI) started in 1993. The report criticizes the IRS for its low compliance enforcement. Of course, most IRS compliance initiatives are weaker than they could be because of resource constraints. But TIGTA urges the IRS to focus more on that program.

TIGTA makes a number of recommendations based on its findings. One of the recommendations, a recommendation to consider legislation, sweeps broader than Federal Employee noncompliance and would have a major effect on tax crimes generally (particularly IRS charging recommendations and DOJ Tax charging decisions). The recommendation is (Recommendation 5, p. 14):

The IRS Commissioner should:

Recommendation 5: Share this report and recommendation with the Treasury Department Office of Tax Policy to consider a legislative proposal to amend IRC § 7203 by replacing “misdemeanor” with “felony,” and additionally, by replacing the time for potential imprisonment from “one year” to “two years,” thereby making willful nonfiling a felony. Management’s Response: IRS management agreed with this recommendation. The IRS will share TIGTA’s report and this specific recommendation with the Treasury Department Office of Tax Policy. The IRS does not formally propose legislation.

As I understand the proposal, it would not change the current elements of the failure to file crime, which already requires willfulness. It would change only the maximum incarceration period to make the crime a two-year felony.

I have no idea how much traction that recommendation will get within the IRS and the Office of Tax Policy and ultimately in Congress. But if it were to gain traction, I think it will materially affect the criminal tax arena from both the charging side (DOJ Tax and IRS) and the defense side.