US Federal Agencies Rank Last in Forrester Customer Experience Index

Australian Catholic University staff details stolen in fresh data breach

A number of staff email accounts and some university systems were compromised in a phishing attack last month, the acting vice-chancellor revealed.

HBO's Chernobyl vs real footage shot in and around Chernobyl in 1986

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE BACKS TREASURY SECRETARY MNUCHIN’S REFUSAL TO RELEASE TRUMP’S TAX RETURNS TO CONGRESS

David Cay Johnston (DCReport.com):

• The Koch Papers, Part 1: Tax Dodges Of The Super Rich — How a Trump Neighbor and Supporter Has Avoided Paying $1 Billion in Taxes
• The Koch Papers, Part 2: A Coverup And A Neighbor In The Oval Office — When Bill Koch’s Company Transferred Its Profits to an Overseas Tax Haven, the IRS Looked the Other Way;

• The Koch Papers, Part 3: How Koch’s Company Paid Him Millions of Tax-Free Dollars While Showing No Profits  —The IRS Ignores Another Whistleblower Complaint

New York Times op-ed:  Yes, Taxing the Rich Is Possible, by David Leonhardt:

For a long time, there was a predictable response to any proposal for increasing taxes on the rich: It will wreck the economy. You don’t hear this response quite so often anymore, however, because it’s become so obviously false. If anything, the economy in recent decades has grown more quickly when Washington taxes the rich more, not less.

Instead, you often now hear a new argument: There’s no point in trying to tax rich people, because they’ll just figure out a way to avoid paying taxes.

The Washington Post ran a big news article recently making this case (and parts of the argument have appeared elsewhere too, including in The Times). The Post article claimed that Elizabeth Warren’s plan to introduce an annual wealth tax relies on a set of “assumptions that defy a long history of U.S. policymaking”: namely, “that the country’s wealthiest taxpayers won’t find ways to evade the targeted tax hike she proposes.”

But this claim is wrong, too. The long history of American policymaking actually shows that raising taxes on the wealthiest taxpayers is entirely possible. ...

Forrester – “Small Gains To CX Quality Emerged Amidst Broad Stagnation – Forrester’s 2019 US Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) reveals that the overall quality of the US customer experience rose by an anemic 0.4 points, to 70.2. The report is based onForrester’s CX Index methodology, which measures how well a brand’s CX strengthens the loyalty of its customers. In this year’s report, we reveal the complete numerical scores of all 260 brands across 16 industries, based on a survey of 101,341 US adult customers.

• Some scores at the brand level inched upward. Although 14% of brand scores rose, 5% of scores declined and a whopping 81% stagnated. Of the brands that posted statistically significant score changes, the size of the gains and losses were about the same — a modest 3 points…”

Federal Agencies Rank Dead Last in Forrester Customer Experience Index – “..As they have in the past, federal agencies measured in the index comprised several of the worst overall brand scores, with USAJobs.Gov—the federal government’s jobs portal—scoring an index-worst 46.5. Other poor scorers falling in the lowest scoring metric—“very poor,” or scores lower than 55—include Healthcare.Gov, the IRS and Education Department…”

Tax Analysts has announced that it is changing the name of its influential weekly publication from Tax Notes to Tax Notes Federal (and its sister publications to Tax Notes State and Tax Notes International). It is a shame that Tax Analysts did not heed Erik Jensen's suggestion in Critical Theory and the Loneliness of the Tax Prof, 76 N.C. L. Rev. 1753, 1755 n.13 (1998):

I wrote a short essay, only partly tongue-in-cheek, urging that Tax Notes, which has become the tax professional's bible, change its name to something more pompously academic, like the Harvard Tax Journal. See Erik M. Jensen (Case Western, Tax Notes by Any Other Name Would Smell Sweeter, 74 Tax Notes 641 (1997). It was an issue that struck a chord, attracting several professorial letters of support and a practitioner rebuttal. Despite its name, Tax Notes is great. A recent anthology of about 150 tax articles included more from Tax Notes than from any other publication. See Letter from Paul Caron, 74 Tax Notes 966 (1997), noted in Tax Report, Wall St. J., Mar. 19, 1997, at Al.

More from Erik's article:

[N]o one wants to talk to us, and no one except (maybe) other tax lawyers wants to read what we write. The sense of isolation from law school colleagues is exacerbated by the perceived reluctance of top student-edited law reviews, the reviews that non-tax people see, to accept tax articles. Once in a blue moon a top-ten review will take a serious, technical, doctrinal tax article, but blue moons don't seem to come around as much as they used to.

MURRAY SAYLE. On Tiananmen Square – June 1989

Posted on 10 June 2019

On May 13, with Gorbachev’s visit imminent, the students began a hunger strike in seven-day relays. How did the regime react? The People’s Liberation Army sent one thousand quilts; the Chinese Red Cross brought water, salt, and sugar for the hunger-strikers; and Mayor Chen’s own Beijing municipality set up portable toilets. Students were taken to state- owned hospitals for treatment, unhindered by the authorities, and none died. Continue reading →

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Calls for Limiting Collateral Consequences for People With Criminal Records

“More than 44,000 collateral consequences exist nationwide that continue to punish people with felony records long after the completion of their sentence. Today the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is releasing Collateral Consequences: The Crossroads of Punishment, Redemption and the Effects on Communities, a report highlighting the relevant data and arguments for and against the imposition of collateral consequences on people with felony convictions. The report finds that many collateral consequences are unrelated either to the underlying crime or to a public safety purpose. In these circumstances, the imposition of collateral consequences “negatively affects public safety and the public good.” The Commission’s research and analysis was based in part by expert and public input, including testimony by The Sentencing Project’s Marc Mauer on the negative impacts of felony disenfranchisement laws. The report offers actionable recommendations to the President, Congress, and numerous federal agencies. 

PAUL BARRY. With pollsters and pundits getting the election result so wrong, how fair and balanced was Australia’s media this election? (Media Watch ABC )

Posted on 23 May 2019

So how did the Coalition make it happen? And what effect if any did a partisan media have on the result?  News Corp’s army of right-wing commentators barracked tirelessly for the Coalition throughout the campaign, warning the nation would be destroyed if Labor won.  News Corp’s news, meanwhile — meant to be opinion free — was often as one-sided.  (ABC Transcript) Continue reading →

X DAY: This is not a “what if” story’; Tokyo braces for the earthquake of a century.

TWITTER IS A VIRUS OF THE MIND: An excerpt from Glenn’s new book, The Social Media Upheaval.