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Tuesday, November 30, 2004



The Australian Centre for Tax System Integrity, a joint undertaking of the Australian Taxation Office and Australian National University, has revamped its web site. New Australian Centre for Tax System Integrity Web Site


The massive corporate wave of crime, fraud and abuse rolls on, is undeterred by regular exposes in the business media itself. My favorite corporate crime journal (aka the Wall Street Journal) is a daily newspaper that never runs out of material. a daily newspaper that never runs out of material

Invisible Hands & Markets: New Perspective Toward Auditing Firms
The outside accounting firm is one of the four key gatekeepers. The sentries to the marketplace are: the auditors who sign off on companies' financial data; the lawyers who advise companies on disclosure standards and other securities laws requirements; the research analysts who warn investors away from unsound companies; and the board of directors responsible for oversight of company management.
Sentries of Risk Management ; [The clarity of former tax lawyers like Robert H. Jackson, Harry Blackmun, and Sumner Redstone shows that -- far from being a bunch of crazies speaking in tongues -- tax law represents just the opposite. Much of tax practice consists of trying to find logical definitions of ordinary English words (such as "sale" and "ownership"); and tax tries to root those definitions in the concerns of actual transactions Tax thinking boils a transaction down not to labels but to who gets what why, and it forces you to examine where and how it says that ]
• · Crime may not pay, but blowing the whistle on companies that swindle the government sure can. Jim Alderson got $20 million in one settlement and split $100 million with another whistleblower in a related case, both involving Medicare fraud by the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain and a company it acquired Blowing the whistle can bring big bucks; [Move On, Evil Conspiracy Theorists -- Nothing to See Here! ]
• · · Americans have always hated taxes. And for good reason. There’s a fine line between legitimate taxation and the abuse of power Giving Thanks
• · · · When liberals in the media or in politics start being alarmed about the national debt, it means just one thing: They want higher taxes. The thought of reducing spending would never cross their minds A taxing experience
• · · · · Are You Paying Yourself Enough?
• · · · · · Only the little people pay taxes: How much will the government's crackdown on tax shelters affect ordinary companies? More than you think ; [Money Does Change Every Message ]

Saturday, November 27, 2004



For the first time ever in the known history of Portcullis House there came before us, unsuspecting Westminster villagers, something of a mirage: the figure of the Rt Hon Baroness Thatcher looking heavenly in a sharp-cut royal (Tory) blue suit.
The Barons have spoken; we just don’t know what they said

Eye on Politics & Law Lords: Timothy Garton Ash
Ever since I learned how to read the sentences in English I have been reading one and all stories By Timothy. As an outsider to Central and Eastern Europe, Timothy sees events which to many of us were invisible. His imagination and concrete interpretation make the paragraphs in his stories to transcend the words into images and spirits. Ash is just a fireproof Giant!
This is a crisis of the West that's quite different from all the crises we had during the Cold War, because then we were always brought together again by the common enemy, the Soviet threat, and now we're not. We see "the enemy" in different ways. I think the Iraq crisis brought to the surface something that was latent, and not just since 9/11, but from what I call "the first 9/11," Nov. 11, 1989 [9/11/89 in European notation], not the fall of the Twin Towers but the fall of the Berlin Wall, when the common enemy disappears and Europe ceases to be the center of world politics. If you're sitting in Washington, you say to yourself, "Well, what do I need Europe for? It's irrelevant." And I think somebody like Dick Cheney does say that to himself. I think that's the deepest root of the crisis. Of course, it was exacerbated by a) 9/11 and b) the Bush administration reacting as it did.
A British historian of the present ponders America, Europe and the future of the West [Deutscher’s Trotsky was thought by two generations – his own and its successor Victory in Defeat ]
• · The pajamahadeen are firing their virtual bullets into the cyber-air in celebration of CBS anchor Dan Rather's death The pajamahadeens are digging their own graves
• · · Brilliant title behind this sad case of a woman basher Legal Precedent Doesn't Let Facts Stand in the Way
• · · · There is some association between the idea that I have a right to be let alone by the government and not having a large dog circle my car Smells like privacy invasion
• · · · · Evolutionary roots of altruism and moral outrage

Wednesday, November 24, 2004



(Real) political science blogs

Eye on Politics & Law Lords:
Margo maintains her view that an independent public inquiry is needed. The honour of six people is under a cloud. The integrity of our democracy is under question in the seat of New England. Fat chance, Kingston. You're dreaming. Noone cares about that crap anymore. Least of all the media.
Your right to know? Silly you - trust the AFP [ Untangling the Windsor knot]
• · The Americans are Sowing Dragons' Teeth in Iraq
• · · Invisible Dissent
• · · · Could the peaceful triumph of Czechs and Slovaks over communism fifteen years ago offer A model of democratic revolution to religious fundamentalists today?
• · · · · Why Central Europe’s young are dancing, dressing, and drinking as their parents did before 1989
• · · · · · Raper: Carr has a rail Mr Fixit ... and his name isn't Costa ; [A philosopher produces ideas, a poet poems, a clergyman sermons, a professor compendia and so on. A criminal produces crimes The Sopranos, Capitalism And Organized Crime


You're not going to read a book
You're going to cross the Iron Curtain

The tale, not the teller,
is what matters most ...

#1 Powells Power
*Amazon Digital River
*DP Roseberry (writer/editor)
*Every Sentence was a Struggle
*Every Stroke was a Struggle
*For Love of Freedom: A Tale of Desperate Acts
*Kollector of Surreal Stuff
*Long Dragon Tail
*Meeting with Disaster & Triumph; Treating Them Just The Same
*River of Attention: The Kindness of Strangers
*When you publish a book, it's the world's book. The world edits it.
*Women: Sanctuaries of Human River

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