There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, othat we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. 
" Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.

~ Alexandre Dumas

One man. One trillion dollars. Oligarch Watch

Elon Musk, Human Ponzi Scheme Paul Krugman

The Cop who Epstein Couldn’t Stop The Epstein Files by Julie K. Brown

Inside Trump’s takeover of the American regulatory machine

WSJ via MSN: “Trump has gotten involved in regulatory decisions big and small that once were made by independent agencies, according to interviews with business executives, lobbyists and administration officials, dramatically shifting the balance of power across Washington and reordering how influence campaigns are waged. 

Lobbying targeting the White House – Political appointees by nature tend to be closely aligned with the president’s worldview. But former agency officials across administrations say it is highly unusual for presidents to be so intimately involved in the details of regulatory reviews. 

Previous presidents were careful to avoid the appearance of influencing agency decisions, typically making a point of not publicly weighing in on matters until reviews were complete. Congress over the years authorized certain agencies to operate independently from the White House to keep some key government functions separate from politics, most of them governed by bipartisan boards whose members can only be removed for cause. 

CEO Chris Ruddy speaks during a 2018 meeting with President Trump and other business leaders. A few weeks after returning to the White House last year, Trumpsigned an executive order requiring independent agencies for the first time to submit major regulations to the White House budget office. 

Trump has fired the Democratic commissioners at multiple agencies, including the FTC, whose five-member commission is down to just two members, both Republicans. The Supreme Court is revisiting the question of whether a president can remove such officials without cause…”

These days, companies are directly approaching the president instead of pleading their cases with staff or senior officials at the agencies. Disclosures of lobbying targeting the White House increased 70% in 2025, according to an analysis of federal lobbying filings by Bloomberg Government, a government-affairs platform. Some current agency heads explicitly welcome Trump’s interventions…”

DOJ Hasn’t Taken Its Usual Steps to Protect 2026 Election

NOTUS: “President Donald Trump says “if you don’t have honest voting, you can’t really have a nation.” But five months out from the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress, his Justice Department has canceled election-integrity training sessions for prosecutors and FBI agents, deleted a 281-page guide to prosecuting election offenses, fired most of the lawyers in its Public Integrity Section and failed to replace the director of its Election Crimes Branch.

 Moreover, the DOJ has not taken the usual steps to establish a “command center” to monitor and address the typical emergencies that pop up around Election Day, three sources with knowledge of the situation told NOTUS. A command center team would address things like voter intimidation and targeted disinformation meant to hinder a fair process. 

These actions — and inactions — have alarmed current and former prosecutors, who say the Justice Department is not prepared to deal with threats to election integrity in the November elections…”

Ross Gittins - Normally, I’m a friend of the taxman. But now ...

KPMG’s audit scandal could be worse than PwC’s tax leaks. Here’s why

After 21 years in this House and Beyond …

 

Normally, I’m a friend of the taxman. But now ... 

Ross Gittins Economics Editor 

June 17, 2026

 As a believer that taxes should be higher rather than lower, I like to think of myself as a friend of the Australian Tax Office. But at present I’m finding the taxman pretty hard to like.

I note that complaints to the Inspector-General of Taxation about the tax office have more than doubled. And I have my own complaint to make.

Illustration by Simon Letch

Inspector-General of Taxation and Tax Ombudsman Ruth Owen told Senate estimates earlier this month that complaints against the tax office had increased by 127 per cent, mainly because of the office’s increased focus on debt collection and its issuing of penalty notices.

“Most of those complaints are from people trying to pay their tax but who can’t meet the conditions set by the ATO,” she said. Small businesses were finding it tough to meet the conditions set by the office. “We continue to look out for people or businesses most at risk of falling between the cracks and for whom the tax system is not working as intended.

“I have publicly raised my concerns about how tax debt is being collected and enforced, and the impact on taxpayers who are trying to do the right thing. The ATO does have administrative powers to offer relief for taxpayers who are experiencing financial hardship, and we can continue to encourage them to use those powers, with empathy, as the community rightly expects,” Owen said.

As for my complaint, I’m expecting a massive refund from last financial year’s tax return but, though it usually takes only a couple of weeks for the office to process your return and issue its assessment, with a bill or, more usually, a refund attached, I’ve been waiting more than three months and have heard nothing.

Admittedly, my case is a strange one. I’m doing something few people would do, even if they could afford to. And the money involved is huge. So I’m not the least surprised the taxman wanted to take a good look at my return before giving it the tick.

But how long should that take? And here’s the thing: when I looked up the office’s website to find a number I could ring to ask what the problem is and offer to help them check my claim was legit, I followed various links on the topic and read a lot of friendly guff on the matter, only to be told to be patient.

Call them up? You could try. But getting a human being on the phone at the tax office is extremely complicated these days. They actually make it quite difficult for anyone to just ring up and ask what the problem is. Prepare for hours sitting on hold. They’ll do it in their own good time and, in the meantime, there’s nothing you can do about it. Really? This is a reasonable way to treat a long-suffering taxpayer?

Do it online, I hear you say. The website is indeed snazzy, making a great show of being helpful without being helpful at all.

As you may know, I was a chartered accountant before I became a journalist. It’s not a decision I regret. But this means I was myself a tax agent for many years before deciding I wouldn’t be doing people’s tax returns on the side and surrendered my badge, so to speak.

I thought the reason why the ATO makes it so difficult for punters like me to ring up with queries was partly because most people have their return done by a tax agent, who could do the ringing up for them.

When I inquired via a few mates, however, I discovered to my amazement that tax agents aren’t allowed to ring up with queries. Really? I can understand why the tax office doesn’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry phoning up and taking up its precious time, but when you won’t even talk to the professionals, that’s pretty high-handed.

We’re the government, so you have no choice but to deal with us. We command; you obey. We make the rules, and you get no say in them. It suits us to deal with your return in our own good time and you are required to wait your turn in silence.

If your return gets caught in the too-hard basket, that’s our prerogative and your tough luck.

I don’t think it was connected to this particular return, but I do remember getting a strange letter from the tax office. It said that some of the amounts I was claiming for were particularly large. It hoped I knew that exaggerating my claims was against the law. So maybe I’d like to take this opportunity to cut them back.

But please, please, please don’t send them any receipts. We feel free to insinuate that you’re dishonest, but please don’t attempt to prove your honesty by cluttering our office with your piddling receipts. We’re allowed to impugn you; you’re not allowed to defend your reputation.

When I see the tax office has become overzealous in its efforts to collect taxes owed, I wonder whether what we’re seeing is an effort to increase efficiency that has gone over the top.

If so, I guess the people leading this efficiency drive have no desire to offend upstanding citizens – especially not if they start complaining to the politicians about the way the bureaucrats are treating them.

Of course, it may be another case of the previous government’s robo-debt: the bureaucrats’ questionable behaviour is the result of pressure from their political masters. Then again, it may be just that old age is making me overly sensitive.

Ross Gittins is economics editor. 

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The DOJ Prosecutors Who Think They’re Trump’s Personal Lawyers

 

Congress Demands List of People Who Have Applied for Trump Slush Fund

Scott McFarlane Reports: “In a memo obtained by Meidas Touch Network, a group of Members of Congress have demanded a list of people who have applied for taxpayer-funded payouts from the Trump Administration’s controversial $1.7 billion slush fund. The 3-page memo, which was submitted to the Justice Department and Treasury Department, said the “conflicting” statements from the Trump Administration about the future of the fund have raised serious questions…”

The DOJ Prosecutors Who Think They’re Trump’s Personal Lawyers

The New Republic: “This week, more than 100 former federal prosecutors in Illinois sounded the alarm about the current leaders of the office where they all once served. “Regrettably,” their statement reads, “there is little doubt that actions taken by leadership in the last year have tarnished the reputation of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois.” They list some serious concerns, including the departure of an “extraordinary” number of experienced prosecutors and the “extraordinary collapse rate” of prosecutions. 

“When judges increasingly call into question the motivation or candor of prosecutors and agents,” they write, “that is a sure sign that a standard has been compromised.” What they have witnessed merits “serious public scrutiny” because the lawyers who work there “affect not only the quality of justice, but the lives of more than nine million residents” in the district. “We write because an educated public is the only hope against overzealous prosecutions,” they conclude. 

The letter is a remarkable statement of what prosecutors fear: that the public may lose trust in the justice system, or that their own career has lost its credibility. But it’s significant less for the set of concerns expressed than the fact that they were expressed at all. Things must be especially bad, in other words, for federal prosecutors to call for the serious scrutiny of the public. They are that bad and worse. Federal prosecutors hold a lot of power, which is one reason why the Trump administration has leaned so heavily on them to defend its dirty work. 

While technically U.S. attorneys work for the Department of Justice and not for the president, such distinctions feel quite hollow when the acting attorney general pledges his loyalty and affection to Donald Trump so openly—“Thank you very much, I love you, sir,” Todd Blanche said at a DOJ press briefing in April. No wonder Blanche was officially nominated this week to stay in the job. Before all this, he was best known as the president’s personal attorney. No wonder it seems like DOJ lawyers serve in that role too. Mercifully, some of them are not very good at hiding it…”

MELANY - Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan

Blasts from the musical past enveloped my early June first the hills of Bellevue Park and then also the hills of Glass Mountains … 

Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan

Step into a world of wit, whimsy and wonderfully over-the-top theatrics with Patience (Bunthorne’s Bride) by Gilbert and Sullivan.

Singing songs of Gilbert & Sullivan

A sparkling satire of trends, vanity and the pursuit of being “fashionably different”, this colourful production delivers laugh-out-loud moments, sharp humour and some of Sullivan’s most loved patter songs.

Brought to life by a talented local cast, this is community theatre at its finest — full of heart, humour and charm.

Perfect for a relaxed afternoon in Maleny — whether you’re a long-time fan or discovering Gilbert & Sullivan for the first time.

 

Date And Time

13th June 2026 / 02:00 PM 

 

Location

Maleny Community Centre

Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan at Maleny

Community Centre

Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan is coming to Maleny!

Looking for a hilarious afternoon full of wit, music, and brilliant local talent? Look no further…

Patience is a colorful, witty masterpiece about a battle of egos, ridiculous poets, and a sensible milkmaid trying to figure out what true love actually means. It's packed with sharp humour and unforgettable tunes.

When: June 13, 14, 20, & 21 at 2:00 PM

Where: Maleny Community Centre

Grab your friends, enjoy the beautiful Maleny atmosphere, and settle in for a fantastic show!

Get your tickets here: https://www.

trybooking.com/events/landing/1537618

• Event details: https://malenycc.

org/event/patience-by-gilbert-and-sullivan/

PATIENCE

By W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, performed by the Maleny Singers and the Maleny Performing Arts Orchestra.

PATIENCE remains one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most celebrated comedies.

Its humour comes from a sharp satire of pop-culture obsessions, and the ridiculous things people do to appear fashionable.

It mocks the way people mindlessly follow trends, much as they do on social media today.

The story centres on two intertwined love triangles. The Dragoon Guards discover that their lovely ladies have become besotted, first with one poet and then another. Meanwhile, two poets, initially captivated by themselves, find themselves equally enamoured of a charming young milkmaid called Patience.

This is a wonderful, colourful production. The Maleny Singers never let us down, and there are many outstanding performances.

The Dragoon Guards (MEdia Dragon Guards 🐉), six men led by lan McMaster and Matthew Gray, are simply fabulous. They are disciplined, funny, and sound amazing; a pure joy to watch.

The two poets, played by Rod Johnson and Colin Dunn, are tunny, colourtul characters who love themselves so genuinely that it's hard not to love them back. Both have great voices and give wonderfully honest pertormances.

Patience herself is played by newcomer Vanessa Millar. She brings vulnerability to the role, conveying her character's confusion in an understated way that makes her feel real and relatable. I also cannot finish without mentioning the sublime voice of Vera Keogh as Lady Jane.

The production is directed by Margaret Taylor

O.A.M., who also conducts the excellent orchestra.

Together they bring energy, colour, and warmth to this delightful comic opera.

Patience opened last weekend and runs again on June 20-21 at the Maleny

Community Centre.

Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience. 2 down 2 more to go …

❤️😘

The White House’s Top Science Goal Is Ignorance

 

It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.

~ Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

Fourth Circuit Affirms Convictions of Bullshit Tax Scam Promoters 

In United States v. Chollet, ___ F.4th ___ (4th Cir. 2026), CA4 here and GS here, the 4^th Circuit panel (Judges Niemeyer, Thacker, and Rushing) affirmed the conviction of three defendants, specifically rejecting various points that I discuss below.

The defendants were convicted of a variant of a marketed bullshit tax shelter. Two of the defendants—Kohn and his daughter Chollet—were tax lawyers; the third defendant was an insurance broker. I will not get into the specifics of the shams they created for their clients to (i) improperly hide their clients' income and resulting tax liabilities from the IRS and (ii) to make money for themselves as they shared in the false tax savings the taxpayers (clients) claimed. Suffice it to say that the scheme involved meaningless (i) limited partnerships, (ii) fake charitable contributions, (iii) fake royalties and management fees, and (iv) supposed life insurance policies.

DOJ Finds Loophole to Pay January 6th Rioters

Raw America: “The Trump administration’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” may be dead, but the effort to pay Trump’s allies with taxpayer dollars is very much alive. 

After Republican lawmakers threatened to sink an ICE funding bill if the slush fund moved forward, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress the Justice Department wouldn’t proceed with it. Trump, however, refused to admit the fund was finished, and said he still loved the idea. So they found a loophole. DOJ officials are now making clear they have both the authority and the resources to settle lawsuits against the federal government however they see fit. Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward posted on social media, “We’re on it,” in response to a suggestion from Senator Lindsey Graham that the government should use existing law to compensate people who claim they were politically targeted. Woodward later deleted the post. 

The legal mechanism they’re eyeing is the Federal Tort Claims Act, an 80-year-old law that allows people to sue the federal government for wrongful actions or negligence. Last Friday, nine pardoned January 6th defendants filed a lawsuit under that law, arguing their prosecutions amounted to selective enforcement driven by their support for Trump and orchestrated by senior officials at the DOJ and FBI. The Trump regime has already gone down this road. In March, the DOJ paid Michael Flynn $1.25 million to settle claims he was the victim of a politicized prosecution. Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador, later sought to withdraw the plea, and was pardoned by Trump. 

A similar settlement was reached with Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser who was placed under court-ordered surveillance. One January 6th plaintiff, Treniss Evans, said he thinks some defendants might have taken smaller payouts through the scrapped fund. Now he’s expecting something bigger. And there’s already a backlog building. Lawyer Mark McCloskey says he delivered boxes containing administrative claims for nearly 400 January 6th defendants to the Justice Department in December. Under the Federal Tort Claims Act, those claims can move to federal court if the government doesn’t act within six months. That deadline is approaching. Legal experts are alarmed. 

Anthony Sebok, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law, put it plainly: the Justice Department, like any competent defense firm, should be making plaintiffs fight for every inch. Instead, he says, the plaintiffs’ lawyers are pushing on an open door. Keep in mind, this is taxpayer money flowing to people who stormed the Capitol, through a legal loophole. While the administration calls it justice.

The founders wrote the power of the purse into Article One for one reason, to keep any president from reaching into the public treasury to reward the people loyal to him, and Madison called that power the most complete and effectual weapon the people’s representatives could ever hold. Watching it get picked apart by a loophole that pays the very people who stormed the Capitol is exactly the corruption the framers built that wall to stop.

See also Lawfare – “At least 97 of the more than 1,500 individuals granted clemency by President Trump for their roles in the January 6 Capitol attack have been arrested for, charged with, or convicted of crimes separate from Jan. 6 since their participation in the Jan. 6 riot. A Lawfare study reveals that almost one in 16 insurrectionists subject to the president’s clemency order has been arrested for and charged with—and in the vast majority of cases convicted of—other crimes, at least some of which were actively enabled by the clemency actions…”

How I interviewed a Facebook whistleblower who wasn’t allowed to speak

The Nerve’s Carole Cadwalladr was all set to talk to Sarah Wynn-Williams, author of the explosive memoir Careless People, at the Hay festival when Meta’s lawyers intervened … and turned the event into ‘absurdist theatre’.

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 6, 2026

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, June 6, 2026 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weisshighlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. 

Five highlights from this week: One company may know everything about you; Fake ChatGPT download site infects Windows and Mac users with malware; Hackers Used Meta’s AI Support Bot to Seize Instagram Accounts; Apple Is Officially Coming for Meta’s Privacy-Invading Lunch With Its Own Smart Glasses in Late 2027; and FBI Tracks ‘Anti-Tech Extremism’ Amid Growing AI Backlash.

The White House’s Top Science Goal Is Ignorance

Bloomberg: The White House’s Top Science Goal Is Ignorance: “The administration’s actions are seen as a deliberate attempt to stifle science and ignore the reality of climate change, in order to support the fossil-fuel industry and satisfy the climate denialism of Trump’s base. 

Shutting down scientific inquiry because it discovers things you don’t like is a bit like turning off all the instruments on your plane because they warn you there’s a mountain ahead. It may satisfy your immediate urge to live in denial but will soon turn deadly. The Trump administration’s crusade to dismantle a scientific establishment long a national treasure and the envy of the world is a blueprint for deliberate ignorance. 

But that’s a feature, not a bug. As Adam Serwer wrote about the first Trump administration’s cruelty, the ignorance is the point. If objective reality as measured by science is no longer available, then it’s easier for President Donald Trump to conjure up a new reality in a way that thrills and rewards supporters, including the fossil-fuel companies that helped get him elected a second time. 

The latest example is a plan by Trump’s National Science Foundation to dismantle a vast monitoring system called the Ocean Observatories Initiative, which compiles mountains of publicly available data about every aspect of the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans. One of its jobs is to track the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation(AMOC), the network of currents that helps keep Europe from freezing over, among other desirable effects. Scientists have become increasingly anxious about the health of AMOC as the planet has warmed, melting Greenland’s ice and disrupting the system that keeps AMOC moving. The shutdown of the system also comes as the world’s oceans are “at grave risk as ecosystems and habitats approach or surpass critical tipping points” because of climate change, overfishing and pollution, according to a United Nations report released on Monday.

 Dying coral reefs, declining fisheries, warming seas and rising waters are all aspects of this crisis, and all are being carefully watched by the hundreds of ocean buoys the government is shutting dow Then again, maybe if we stop measuring this crisis, it will simply go away. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump often suggested fewer Covid tests would lead to fewer Covid cases. Why wouldn’t the same logic apply here? 

Sure, you would lose that argument to any baby that has developed object permanence. But you would at least satisfy the fervent climate denialism of your base while giving you cover to continue squashing clean energy and propping up coal, gas and oil. Since the moment Trump took office again in January 2025, his administration has taken hundreds of steps to do just that, everything from ending subsidies on renewables to forcing old, polluting coal plants to keep operating. 

These are obvious, blunt-force measures to support a fossil-fuel industry that bankrolled the campaigns of Trump and other Republicans in 2024. The subtler approach is to stifle science so that we no longer measure exactly how much burning those fuels is heating the planet and making the atmosphere more chaotic. That’s the only semi-rational explanation for shutting down an ocean-monitoring system that cost $386 million to build and collects data useful to everyone from fishing-boat captains to farmers. 

Or for no longer tracking America’s billion-dollar weather disasters when they’re more numerous than ever, driving up insurance costs across the country. Or for cutting off funding for a global databank of weather disasters. Or for dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research(NCAR), which helps meteorologists predict the weather, a service with an annual economic benefit of $31.5 billion, while also gathering data on a heating planet. 

A federal judge recently halted some of NCAR’s demolition, and the White House Office of Management and Budget has proposed moving the institution’s weather studies to new management. But the uncertainty about its future has already shut down research and chased away scientists who might never return. Trying to separate weather science from climate science is like trying to separate duck science from waterfowl science. 

They’re not exactly the same, but you can’t have one without the other. The administration’s stated rationale for wrecking NCAR gives away its game. Despite being led by OMB, this vandalism has nothing to do with saving money. OMB Director Russell Vought dismissed NCAR as “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country,” echoing language used in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, of which Vought was a co-author.”