Monday, February 15, 2021

Excellent Article on Sentencing in Tax Crimes and White-Collar Crimes

Who are the mysterious Bellingcat investigation group?


Why Australia has taken on Google and what this means for the future of the internet NBC


The New Yorker:  White House Dogs Dig Up Trump’s Tax Returns on South Lawn, by Andy Borowitz:

White House DogIn what is being hailed as an amazing act of canine heroism, President Joe Biden’s two German shepherds have dug up Donald J. Trump’s tax returns on the South Lawn of the White House.

According to sources, shortly after the President let Champ and Major out to play in the snow, they started sniffing one small patch of the lawn and digging intently.

Within minutes, the two White House pooches had unearthed twenty years’ worth of Trump’s federal tax returns, which they eagerly deposited on the Oval Office carpet for their master’s perusal.


Tesco tells chancellor to hit online rivals with sales tax (8 Feb 2021)


Rishi Sunak 'considering Amazon tax' to claw back pandemic borrowing from online retailers who profited (8 Feb 2021)


Portugal vs Germany clash on EU corporate tax avoidance (8 Feb 2019)


The Marxist Rupert Murdoch Tribune



The last two decades of my life have been a nightmare without end Welcome to Hell World. Grim detail on the War on Terror.

 

U.S. Navy Has Patents on Tech It Says Will ‘Engineer the Fabric of Reality’ Vice


 XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! Canadian Olympic Committee Warns Athletes Not to Criticize China.

Related: Canadian quarantine hotel owned by Chinese Communist Party company


This is a tribute for Waheed Hussain, who passed away on January 30th, 2021, by the Members of the Economic Ethics Network, of which some CT-ers are part

 

Don’t Trust Those ‘Secure’ Messaging Apps American Conservative

 

This is how we lost control of our faces MIT Technology Review

 

Reimagining the Platform Economy Project Syndicate


 Excellent Article on Sentencing in Tax Crimes and White-Collar Crimes

The data and discussion of the data are interesting.  I particularly focused on the following:

It is tempting to attribute the frequency of non-Guidelines sentences and the extent of the reduction in tax cases to a bias in favor of white-collar offenders. The data, however, does not bear that out, and defendants convicted of tax offenses are more likely to receive below-Guidelines sentences and avoid jail than other white-collar offenders.



Services Australia faced a major backlash after issuing workers an ‘innovation challenge’ aimed at avoiding customer aggression 



3 things you shouldn’t do before a Zoom meeting (and another 3 you should always do)

ZDNet – “We’re all doing more Zoom meetings than ever. But do yourself a favor and follow these simple dos and dont’s for better, more stress-free meetings. The coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic has sent many of us out of the office and into our homes, and we are staying in touch with colleagues — not to mention friends and family — with Zoom being the most popular platform. While many find video conferencing to be less stressful than going to physical meetings, Zoom meetings can in themselves bring new stresses that you have to navigate. Over the past few year, which has felt like decades, I’ve done many hundreds of Zoom meetings for work and play (as well as using it for work, I also teach a few yoga classes using Zoom), and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. Don’t do what I did! I’ve distilled the past few year of using Zoom almost daily into three simple dos and don’t…”