Friday, February 01, 2019

Spectre of RC: Davos Erupts in Laughter at the Notion of Tech Billionaire Paying More Taxes

We either get better or We get worse, We NEVER stay the same.
~ Wisdom of Imperious and South Pacific Spruikers 



Gale force winds bring city's hottest day this summer to a close





'How bad can it be thinking the cops will arrest you because you haven't paid a bill?'

As the banking royal commission prepares to release its final report, Indigenous leaders are demanding change.


A secret tunnel leading to a Florida bank stumps the FBI


In what sounds like the plot from a bank heist movie, the FBI is on the case of a tunnel that leads to a bank.



This is not rocket science. We can talk for a very long time about all these stupid philanthropy schemes, we can invite Bono once more, but come on — we've got to be talking about taxes. Bono is not the Answer?



IRS will need at least a year to recover from government shutdown, watchdog tells Congress WaPo via Zil

Davos Erupts in Laughter at the Notion of Tech Billionaire Paying More Taxes Motherboard via Ydna - the Prisoner of her majesty





Ex UBS Banker Who Sold Client Data to Germany Convicted of Money Laundering and Acquitted of Bank Secrecy Violation 





A new message from Democrats: it’s time to empower workers in America Guardian (resilc) If you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. Recall that Lambert’s analysis of 2017 Elizabeth Warren speech had her celebrating Uber as a boon for workers.



A judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on Tuesday expressed exasperation with federal tax audits of state-legal marijuana dispensaries, urging the U.S. Department of Justice to “fish or cut bait” on pursuing licensed operations.

U.S. Circuit Judge Carlos Lucero said the threat of federal prosecution “is like a hammer over” marijuana businesses’ heads “whenever it comes time to pay their taxes.”

“The Department of Justice at some point ought to make a decision, to either fish or cut bait on the issue,” Lucero said during oral arguments in Feinberg v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue. “And if they’re going to prosecute, then prosecute and bring the whole thing to a head. Or grant immunity and allow the tax operations to operate somewhat more smoothly.”




California Sues City Over Lack of Affordable Housing Wall Street Journal




What has been Britain’s biggest privatization to date?
…Britain’s biggest privatization has not been of housing or a bank.  It has been of land.  Since Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street in 1979, and continuing all the way to the present day, the state has been selling public land to the private sector.  It has sold vast quantities — some 2 million hectares, or about 10 per cent of the entire British land mass…my best estimate…is that, at today’s prices, the land that has been sold is likely to be worth something in the order of £400 billion…
That is from the new and useful The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain, by Brett Christophers.  Land, land, land!  The author, by the way, is mostly critical of this privatization.

 Britain has a new wealthiest man, and he invented the bagless vacuum cleaner

In most of the world, “Never Forget” was a nice but meaningless thing to say, along the lines of, “Genocide is bad, mmkay?” To the Israeli Defense Force, it means, “You’ve got to come through us,” and they take it with deadly seriousness.