"Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience."
~ Howard Zinn28 Oct 2026 at 5pm
Australian Taxation Office
Tax Practitioners Board
Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission
How Trump’s FBI Purge Saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn From a Bribery Investigation ProPublica
Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem)
V-Dem provides a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects the complexity of the concept of democracy as a system of rule that goes beyond the simple presence of elections. We distinguish between five high-level principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian, and collect data to measure these principles.
The V-Dem Dataset – Includes the world’s most comprehensive and detailed democracy ratings. The latest version of the dataset and associated reference documents can be downloaded free of charge. Download the data – Each ZIP includes: Dataset, Codebook, What’s New, Cautionary Notes, and Suggested Citations. Download our datasets and reference materials.
TIGTA: 2.2 Million Tax Returns Prepared Using Noncompliant PTINs
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has identified more than 38,000 paid tax-return preparerswith noncompliant preparer tax identification numbers (PTINs) who prepared more than 2.2 million returns for the 2025 return-processing season. The IRS requires individuals to have current PTINs to prepare tax returns for compensation, and PTINs must be reported on tax returns. After the D.C. Circuit’s 2014 decision in Loving v. IRS, mandatory PTIN registration provides most of the federal government’s very thin (and largely voluntary) regulation of return preparers who do not practice before the IRS.
The TIGTA report connects noncompliant PTINs to potential tax evasion or fraud. The question, however, is what this potential tax malfeasance looks like, and what should be done, if anything, to close the gap in tax administration. Data, commentary, and the juiciest excerpts from the TIGTA report, below the fold.
Read MoreComputer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things Humanity Has Ever Made
Gideon Lewis-Kraus in The New Yorker [no paywall]: Computer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things Humanity Has Ever Made. “They power our phones, cars, dishwashers—and the A.I. systems that prop up the economy. They’re also at the heart of fierce geopolitical rivalry.
“The global semiconductor supply chain … has united its participants in the pursuit of something profoundly difficult that could not have been achieved in the absence of intercontinental solidarity.” That’s what makes them great. That’s what makes their manufacturing and movements so precarious; it takes a lot of big elements to make these tiny products…
But the financial interests pale in comparison with the geopolitical ones. The vast preponderance of the world’s most advanced chips are made in Taiwan, a tropical island best known in America for its bubble tea, the Din Tai Fung restaurant chain, and its tense proximity to a superpower that regards it not as an independent nation but as a temporarily lost belonging. The prospect of a Chinese invasion has long loomed over Taiwan’s horizon…”
See also New book from James Gleick about the history of the telephone. “It gave us the party line, the busy signal, dial tones, wiretapping, the late-night DJ, and the booty call. It magnified the possibilities of government, of business, of friendship, of love.”
Unvetted AI agents are accessing U.S. bank accounts
Axios: “Major U.S. banks are detecting unauthorized third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts, with some agents attempting to take actions that appear to be independent of user instructions, sources tell Axios.
AI agents are becoming a nightmare for America’s banks, making their way into banking systems faster than financial institutions can respond. The difficulty in distinguishing between a human and an unauthorized bot is forcing banks to block the technology and rapidly rewrite their terms of service.
Banks including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and others are racing to contain agent risks. Some are aware of unauthorized access, people familiar with the issue said.
- These are generally situations when an agent or AI assistant accesses a human’s account with the user’s permission and login credentials. Even if permitted by the user, this goes against the guidelines of most banks requiring that humans log in to their own accounts.
- This presents significant security risks: Banking executives fear the steps agents with login access might take, especially if a user has granted purchase authority or the ability to shift funds…”
