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Slovakia: You get a car, you get a car, everybody pays their taxes.

By Bill Humphrey April 19, 2014 - 11:45 pm September 22, 2016 Arsenal Analysis

Gotta love clever governance solutions. Slovakia is trying to fight business tax cheats who are pocketing value-added (sales) taxes, which hurts both consumers/manufacturers and the government. The country came very close to requiring a bailout last year because its economy and debt situation was such a mess. So their revenue loss solution was to host a lottery with huge prizes, from almost $14k cash to a new car and more. The only thing you had to do to enter was upload receipts for things you had purchased with VATs on them (almost everything).

The government then checks to see if the business paid up the tax listed on the receipt (and the buyer can report fake tax numbers, too). The consumer is entered to win either way. You can enter over and over by uploading lots of receipts — which is why nearly half a million people have uploaded 60 million receipts since the program began last year.

Tax collection began to increase early in 2013 and rose more sharply after the lottery began. Officials say they collected about $512 million more in 2013 than in 2012. How much of that is a result of the lottery may never be clear.

But Mr. Kazimir said that it was surely a big factor, and that it had cost only about $276,000 to get the lottery going. He said the new influx of complaints had already proved that it was not just small businesses that were cheating: Chain stores have also been caught giving fake receipts.

It’s been so successful that Portugal just launched its own lottery this past week.

The lottery project has drawn criticism from some Portuguese opposition politicians who say it is a capitalist tool to turn citizens into tax inspectors.

Hell yes it is… and there is nothing wrong with that. Tax evasion is a cancer on democratic societies because it both undermines confidence in the fairness of the taxation system and erodes the government’s ability to invest in infrastructure and provides services, which reduces its credibility. And it’s even worse when that evasion is on value-added taxes that consumers and manufacturers have already had to pay up front, without the government seeing a dime. It’s essentially theft from the people, really.

Arming ordinary citizens with the power to help enforce tax compliance strengthens democracy and governance. Doing it in such a light-handed way is brilliant and virtually painless. The only people who lose are those who are already breaking the law and stealing revenue.

You get a car, you get a car, everybody pays their taxes.

Combat, mental health, and uncomfortable questions

By Bill Humphrey April 19, 2014 - 2:51 pm April 19, 2014 Arsenal Essay

After the recent (latest) military base shooting, the V.A. urged the media and people generally not to jump to conclusions — suggesting that the shooter suffered from PTSD — that might further stigmatize mental health problems facing some veterans. In the abstract that might make sense, but in context it doesn’t quite. Because that request almost implies that there isn’t any connection — that it’s a myth. Which unfortunately is not the case…

In a Slate article headlined, “PTSD Contributes to Violence. Pretending It Doesn’t Is No Way to Support the Troops”, combat Marine officer-turned-journalist, David J. Morris, looks at historical links between war, PTSD, and home front violence and poses the uncomfortable question:

What if Dept. of Veterans Affairs isn’t trying to protect its veterans from being maligned/marginalized when they tell people not to link shooting sprees and veteran homicides with PTSD — and is really just trying to whitewash the fact that the country sent a bunch of people into very unusual moral situations (and then didn’t help them re-adjust when they got back)?

We absolutely need to do better, and certainly not everyone comes home messed up permanently. But refusing to acknowledge the lasting mental health toll of war for many veterans doesn’t mean it doesn’t last.

The simple fact is that war poisons some men’s souls, and we aren’t doing our veterans any favors by pretending that war is only about honor and service and sacrifice and by insisting that PTSD is completely unrelated to the problem of postwar violence. It’s not only morally irresponsible, it’s scientifically inaccurate.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t want this to be true. In fact, as a veteran who has struggled with post-traumatic stress, I hate that it’s true, but war is an evil thing. As a society we need to face the reality of it head-on so that we can avoid the next war. And despite its official protests to the contrary, the VA secretly agrees with me. Visit any VA hospital across the country and you’ll see what I mean. What’s the first thing you see when you walk in? A metal detector with an armed VA police officer standing nearby.”

Big government, for the few or the many?

By Bill Humphrey April 18, 2014 - 2:59 pm April 18, 2014 Arsenal Analysis

I believe in the power of big government because I believe (when used correctly) it’s a better enabler of personal economic freedom and advancement to more people than the “free market.” And I believe that more people having those opportunities results in bigger economic growth overall.

That and I’m willing to acknowledge the fact that the U.S. economy only got as big as it did through massive (Federal government) import tariffs and vast (Federal government) land giveaways.

“Big government” — at least in the sense of a government distributing resources on a large scale — has always been with us and always will, though it has fluctuated by degrees and type of resources. The only real change we’ve seen is whether the resources are targeted more toward the few or more toward the many.

So: Do conservatives want personal economic freedom and advancement for “more people” or just “some people”?

April 14, 2014 – Arsenal For Democracy 80

By Bill Humphrey April 16, 2014 - 4:13 pm April 14, 2018 Radio Show

Description | Topics: Hobby Lobby contraception case, Catalonia and European nationalism in the 21st century, autism awareness month. People: Bill, Sasha, Persephone, and guest Monika Brooks.

AFD 80

(Nate and Greg are off this week.)

To get one file for the whole episode, we recommend using one of the subscribe links at the bottom of the post.

Did Egypt’s military organize the protests leading to the coup?

By Bill Humphrey April 15, 2014 - 6:20 pm June 13, 2014 Arsenal Pulse

egypt-coat-of-arms One man is alleging in an in-depth report by Buzzfeed that his much-cited populist organization, Tamarod, which paved the way for the Egyptian military coup in July 2013 and demanded intervention on behalf of millions of protesters, was actually just five guys in an office whose name and social media popularity was co-opted (or at least force-multiplied) by the military and Interior Ministry as a front group to legitimize the coup. The original organization leaders would send talking points to state television and the Army would rewrite them and then put them out over the air under the Tamarod name anyway. But, then again, he also suspects three of his co-founders may actually have been Army plants all along.

By the end of June, he asserts they were effectively no longer in control of the group as Interior staff began using its offices to stage and organize protesters to rally against the president — down to the logistical level of how many little flags and water bottles were needed. In other words, more like a highly choreographed U.S. presidential convention audience with pre-printed signs than a spontaneous mass demonstration of affection for the military and disgust with the president.

The June 2013 protests always seemed way too well organized (or rather, unusually well supplied) to me, but I tend to hesitate to jump on board with suggestions that may prove to be conspiracy theories. These allegations aren’t necessarily true either — the Buzzfeed reporters had trouble finding anyone who could corroborate his account and he sometimes hinted he had been less ignorant of the situation at the time than he lets on — but it would certainly fit with a suspicious pattern that resulted in a very rapid emergence of a mass produced Cult of Personality surrounding (soon-to-be-president) General Sisi within a week or so of the coup.

Then again, maybe I’m just looking for even more reasons to be disgusted with the idea of millions of people rallying enthusiastically for the replacement of transitional democracy with military dictatorship — and with their Western cheerleaders who, to this day (despite all the terrible things the new government has done or endorsed), can’t contain their excitement for military rule, in their haste to quash Islamic participation in government.

Op-Ed | Heartbleed: National Insecurity Agency

By Bill Humphrey April 14, 2014 - 7:39 pm April 14, 2014 Arsenal Essay

Excerpt from my new op-ed in The Globalist:

The media is abuzz now with the discovery of a major cybersecurity vulnerability known as “Heartbleed.” The breach may have been exposing passwords and credit card data to thieves for several years.

To add insult to all the mega-monitoring injury, the NSA now finds itself alleged to have known about this flaw for more than two years, without alerting anyone.

In the past, the NSA and its defenders have claimed that – beyond its controversial surveillance role – it provides a major service to the modern U.S. economy.

The argument goes that the NSA has the best of the country’s best cybersecurity experts on staff – and thus helps shore up U.S. corporations and the nation’s citizenry at large from cyber threats, by identifying and closing flaws. That would indeed be a valuable service in pursuit of protecting the public good.

Now, it turns out that the NSA knew about what may prove to have been the biggest flaw in the history of internet security, yet said nothing.

Read the rest of “Heartbleed: National Insecurity Agency”.

Adapted by The Globalist from Deymos Photo on Shutterstock.com

The vulnerability within: NSA exploited Heartbleed

By Bill Humphrey April 11, 2014 - 8:49 pm May 4, 2014 Arsenal Pulse

NSA Hey guys, remember how the NSA is actually beneficial because they help American corporations shore up their data and networks against vulnerabilities when they find them?

OH WAIT JUST KIDDING. Turns out the NSA knew for more than two years about the massive multi-year year cybersecurity breach, known as Heartbleed, affecting most of the internet and they decided not to tell anyone about it so they could snoop more easily.

To target a few, they endangered us all. Really makes one question their priorities and utility.

Steve Rogers, we need you.

Yearly Archives: 2014