[BBC] History shows that during times of crisis, politicians tend to reach for more power. It's happening again now, argues researcher Luke Kemp, and democratic citizens should be wary of the dangers.
[Penguin] A compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from 'the most brilliant British historian of his generation' (The Times)
Disasters are inherently hard to predict. But when catastrophe strikes, we ought to be better prepared than the Romans were when Vesuvius erupted or medieval Italians when the Black Death struck. We have science on our side, after all. Yet the responses of many developed countries to a new pathogen from China were badly bungled. Why?
While populist rulers certainly performed poorly in the face of the pandemic, Niall Ferguson argues that more profound pathologies were at work - pathologies already visible in our responses to earlier disasters.
Drawing from multiple disciplines, including economics and network science, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe offers not just a history but a general theory of disaster. As Ferguson shows, governments must learn to become less bureaucratic if we are to avoid the impending doom of irreversible decline.
#2
I recall a branch of mathematics named catastrophe theory way back in the last century 1970s or 1980s. It was supposed to be useful in understanding discontinuities and sudden failures. It never seemed to live up to its promise.
#3
Amazon has the ebook available for pre-order, with delivery on May 4th. Thank you, Besoeker — Rantburg recommendations have greatly broadened the variety of books in my library.
[FAST Co.] More than a month after the official opening date of the 2021 tax season, many Americans who filed early are still waiting for refunds to hit their bank accounts. The Internal Revenue Service, which encouraged taxpayers to file early for a speedier return, maintains that most refunds will be issued within 21 days for taxpayers with direct deposit who file online, but that hasn’t been the experience for many early filers.
Fast Company wrote about the issue earlier this month, and we continue to receive letters daily from taxpayers who say they’ve been waiting longer than 21 days. One common complaint is the lack of information from the IRS about what may be causing the delay. The agency says some tax returns take longer to process, including those that contain errors, are flagged for identity theft, or just require "further review in general."
But taxpayers who are able to reach the IRS by phone say the agency won’t provide specifics, and that lack of communication is a source of huge frustration in a year when money is tighter and people are relying on their refunds even more than usual.
In fact, a recent report to Congress from the Taxpayer Advocate Service—an independent office within the IRS—underscored this very problem. It notes that 5.2 million refunds were flagged by fraud filters in 2020, meaning the filers’ income or identity had to be verified. While most of those flagged were found not to be fraudulent at all, the report notes that the extra step caused delays for a significant number of flagged accounts: 25% of refunds flagged for income verification took more than 56 days to arrive, and 18% of those flagged for identity verification took more than 120 days. That’s almost four months!
Even more frustrating, the report found, is that the IRS’s Where’s My Refund tool—which is supposed to provide a degree of sanity to taxpayers anticipating a refund—is little help to many who get flagged. It doesn’t offer information about the cause of a delay, what information might be needed to rectify it, or how long they can expect to wait. This black hole of communication is often what sends taxpayers to the phones or to social media to complain.
"Although the IRS has tried to expedite refunds, it needs technology upgrades and procedural improvements to do more," the report’s authors write. "Upgrades would also improve communications with taxpayers, which would help the IRS provide better service and manage taxpayer expectations."
This early electronic filer (Feb 16) has yet to get a refund. Details from the above site report that "after a manual review" the canned TurboTax calculations "were in error".
#3
Georgia sent my $128. refund within 10 days. My CPA is ruthlessly meticulous. In nearly 20 years she has never made a 'mistake' or forced me to endure an audit. The feds can stick their refund and crapulous money up their arsses. I want nothing from these SOB's other than to be left alone.
#7
My first stimulus check took several months to arrive. I gave up looking on that IRS site and then it one day came in the mail.
But, several months prior, two relatives with same last name and, like me, had not filed their taxes (due to the extension) got theirs on the same day. Maybe no rhyme or reason.
Lois Lerner can rot in hell or some other miserable place.
Feuding factions on both sides of the Kyrgyz-Tajik border implemented a cease-fire on the evening of April 29 that ended some 24 hours of the worst and most widespread fighting the restive region has seen since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Tensions between the Kyrgyz and Tajik communities along their common border have been building for years and evolved from fistfights to throwing sticks and stones and, more recently, to shoot-outs that sometimes involve mortars and grenade-launchers.
That was the case with the latest violence, which has left as many as two dozen dead and at least 150 wounded on both sides.
[Gateway] Maria Bartiromo: Let me switch subjects and ask you about election integrity. This is a subject that is taboo. We’re not allowed to question the 2020 election. We’re not allowed to question what is going on in Arizona or in Georgia. What do you say to what is going on in Georgia and how Texas is similar to that situation? I mean around election 2020.
#3
Austin voters overwhelmingly outlawed urban camping, reversing the city council and mayor's vote. Hopefully the homeless drug addicts will get the hell out of town and take Mayor Adler (Commie - New York) and fellow city council carpetbaggers with them.
[PRESSTV] The United States is not a democracy. It is "the global capitalist system run by and for the oligarchs" who control the country, according to an American political commentator in Oregon.
Charles Dunaway made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Saturday after US President Joe The Big Guy Biden ...46th president of the U.S. I'm not working for you. Don't be such a horse's ass.... called the January 6 attack on the Capitol by former President Donald Trump ...Perhaps no man has ever had as much fun being president of the US... ’s loyalists an "existential crisis," stressing that while American democracy survived, "the struggle is far from over."
"The insurrection was an existential crisis—a test of whether our democracy could survive. It did," Biden said Wednesday at his first joint address before Congress.
"But the struggle is far from over. The question of whether our democracy will long endure is both ancient and urgent."
Dunaway said, "Biden, or to be more precise the gaggle of Washington insiders who prepare his teleprompter scripts, speaks in coded language. The January 6th insurrection did reveal an existential crisis, but one that has nothing to do with democracy. The political jargon of the US government has been particularly effective on its political class who may still believe there is a democracy here, but the people of this nation are rapidly discovering there is not."
"When US leaders talk about democracy, they mean the global capitalist system run by and for the oligarchs who control the United States. In this definition, nations that hold regular elections in which all citizens can participate - Iran, Venezuela ...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south... , China, and Russia - are considered authoritarian regimes while those who make a mockery of the term like the Zionist regime in Paleostine are hailed as great democracies," he stated.
"The existential crisis engendered by the storming of the US Capitol is one of credibility. Can anyone take the US seriously as a world leader when it is so bitterly divided internally? When its people have no faith in the government or in the press or even in their academic institutions, can it long survive as the world hegemon? Can a nation that cannot house, feed, educate or provide medical care to its people continue to see itself as an exceptional nation?" the analyst asked.
"As Biden suggests, the US regime will continue to struggle to regain its status. It will continue trying to force other nations to obey its dictates and punish those who refuse. In the end, it will fail; but many thousands both inside the US and out will continue to suffer because of its obstinate refusal to accept reality," he concluded.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/02/2021 00:00 ||
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Top|| File under: Govt of Iran
#4
Republics are hard to survive the natural behavior of man; tribalism, territorial instinct, and hierarchical order. Thus they are 'unnatural', but possible as flying when one arranges and enforces decentralization, checks and balances, and constrains the 'lust' for power. Power has a tendency to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Penguin] A compelling history of catastrophes and their consequences, from 'the most brilliant British historian of his generation' (The Times)
[FAST Co.] More than a month after the official opening date of the 2021 tax season, many Americans who filed early are still waiting for refunds to hit their bank accounts. The Internal Revenue Service, which encouraged taxpayers to file early for a speedier return, maintains that most refunds will be issued within 21 days for taxpayers with direct deposit who file online, but that hasn’t been the experience for many early filers.
...46th president of the U.S. 
