Two types of events that should always raise eyebrows in national and international politics: Important people killed in small plane crashes, and convenient suicides*.

A Washington Post story about an anthrax settlement case (Stevens v. US) that was settled by the government with a $2.5 million payment. After settlement, the Justice Department tried to file a notice of errata seeking to correct evidence it had presented that contradicted its own findings in the case of Bruce E. Ivins, the dead man who was pinned with the 2001 anthrax killings. One part of the justice department claimed that Ivins’ work could not have been related to the attacks, and that the strain used bore much more similarity to a strain developed by laboratories in Ohio. I would have said Iowa. Typo? How many fricking anthrax production facilities do we have?

Bruce Ivins was accused of being the anthrax killer, and then committed suicide. Case closed.
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*The reader might note with this link that the Boston Globe is doing easy journalism by speculating on mischief in a suicide in Russia, a place known to harbor evil people.

Most people’s tax returns are ridiculously easy. If you have wages, interest or unemployment benefits, and perhaps have some Earned Income Credit coming, go to the IRS site that directs you to place where you can do your taxes for free. Don’t be scared – it’s routine, fail-safe, and accurate.

Whatever you do, avoid H&R Block.

If your taxes are more complicated, you are self-employed, itemize deductions, have doubts about whether or not you are entitled to exemptions, buy a tax program. TurboTax will get you through it. They will rip you off to piggy-back a state return, which is a big profit center for them, and maybe even charge to e-file, which costs them virtually nothing. But you are still better off than you would be visiting an expensive preparer.

Whatever you do, avoid H&R Block.

If you have tax issues beyond the norm – sale of assets or residences, passive investments, minimum IRA withdrawals, audits, rental units, LLC’s and S-Corps and K-1’s, then it would not hurt to visit either a CPA or an enrolled agent. Avoid the shingle-hangers, tax preparers who are neither of those, as they are usually strictly reliant on the software and often turn out shoddy work. CPA’s and enrolled agents must undergo rigorous training. It’s not easy to become either. Do ask your preparer how he/she bills, as many of them, like auto mechanics, work off a schedule and charge $X for this form, $X for that form, without regard to actual time. Those who charge by actual time are usually more reasonably priced. ut remember that if you think the fee unreasonable, you are paying for time, knowledge, and liability.
Continue reading “Avoid H&R Block” →

The things that informed me most were my experiences in fighting for freedom of the press, freedom to communicate knowledge – which, in the end, is freedom from ignorance. Secondly, [were] my experiences in understanding how the military-intelligence complex works at a practical level. I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination.

I just got back from a trip, and in the mail was a Rolling Stone magazine. So typical, it is part pop culture, trying to stay in touch with young people and at the same time wanting to connect with older generations too. So on the cover is David Bowie (John Lennon has the week off), and inside is a full length interview with Julian Assange. Oh yeah – did I also say that Rolling Stone* is one of the few publications in the United States that does actual journalism?**

I set the magazine by my chair, but elected not to read the interview last night as I did not want to become agitated before sleepy time. I read it this morning. I’m not agitated. It’s more depressing than infuriating. The power of the United States National Security State (NSS) is so impressive that it cannot be well-described. It is felt via Assange and Bradley Manning as ominous, far-reaching and oppressive. We are not a free country. I knew that, but did not feel the weight of the oppression in totality until I read his words.

It’s one thing to see him destroyed – he knows that what he was told by a “Western intelligence source,” that he is “fucked,” is true. Whether he is nabbed by Karl Rove’s buddy Carl Bildt in Sweden, or whether the US brings him home via British extradition laws, he’ll likely never experience freedom again. Obama*** intends to fry him, and he has at his disposal the full weight of the military-industrial complex. Companies that have attempted to help him lose clients, individuals lose their jobs. The US media is assassinating his character – there are over twenty million links to him and “rape” now on the Google. MasterCard, Visa and PayPal have conspired against him and yet there are no legal proceedings against the companies in their conspiracy against him – not a good sign. There is complicity, top to bottom, among the corporate, military, media and government wings of the NSS.
Continue reading “Freedom from ignorance” →

Jhwygirl writes about a political discussion hosted by the Policy Insitute last week. The event was not recorded so that the candidates could speak freely. Not kidding. That’s how we roll.

During the event Rep Kim Gillan of Billings is said to have remarked that last year’s oil spill on the Yellowstone River was a benefit. Her words, as cited by jhwygirl:

…there are people in Billings that think the oil spill was a good thing, that it was good for business. They are looking at their watches and asking can we do this again next year?”

It’s not clear from that brief remark whether she is being sarcastic. I doubt it. I ran for legislature in Billings in 1996 and Gillan was a fellow candidate, one of two or three successful ones. I was terribly unimpressed with her at the time, not sensing any progressive impulses in her. She struck me as a right wing Democrat. I would not fully comprehend until the year 2000 how much the Democratic Party leadership despises progressives**.

I am going on memory here now, but as I remember, Gillan, the wife on a physician, had gotten a later-life masters in economics. Most likely she studied neoclassical economics, and credulously sponged it up – I was not impressed by her intellectual firepower. But she learned duckspeak, and was thereby set to go into politics properly trained in right wing economics.

I believe in public education, and that our brains and grades should be the guide by which we advance, and not our bank accounts. I wonder if Gillan would survive in a merit-based system. The remark above, if cited correctly, is testimony to the Carolyn Kennedy* syndrome: too much education wasted on too little brain.
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*To avoid the tinge of sexism, this could also be called the “Steve Forbes Syndrome.” It is not gender-based, but rather a phenomenon of
privilege, where people like Gillan, Forbes, and George W. Bush have access to higher education without meriting it. They are taught the words, but never quite grasp the music. In Bush’s case, it made him a dangerous man. The others are just annoying.
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**I hasten to add that I brought about my own electoral defeat without assistance from anyone.

Glenn Greenwald cites Law Professor Jonathan Turley in listing the assaults on the Bill of Rights taking place in the post 9/11 environment, first brought on by the George W. Bush Administration and now intensified by Obama:

1. Assassination of U.S. citizens;
2. Indefinite detention;
3. Arbitrary justice;
4. Warrantless searches;
5. Secret evidence;
6. War crimes;
7. Secret court;
8. Immunity from judicial review;
9. Continual monitoring of citizens;
10. and Extraordinary renditions.

Any student of post-war America realizes that all of this went on from VJ day forward. The US was in a position of unparalleled power, and the people who ran the country were no less susceptible to absolute corruption than anyone before. It happened quickly, with passage of the National Security Act of 1948, changing the name of the War Department to “Defense,” and conversion of the wartime OSS into the peacetime CIA. Soon thereafter came McCarthyism and the attack on civil liberties in the name of anti-communism. Wars, major and minor, were routine.
Continue reading “They are always with us …” →