A LOOK INTO THE TAX DODGERS COOKIE JAR

Former tax inspector Richard Brooks tells BBC Panorama in a programme to be aired on Monday night: “I think they were a tax avoidance and tax evasion service. I think that’s what they were offering.

HSBC files show how Swiss bank helped clients dodge taxes and hide millions

Although tax authorities around the world have had confidential access to the leaked files since 2010, the true nature of the Swiss bank’s misconduct has never been made public until now. Hollywood stars, shopkeepers, royalty and clothing merchants feature in the files along with the heirs to some of Europe’s biggest fortunes.

HSBC’s Swiss bankers routinely handed over large sums of cash to visiting clients, asking few questions, the files show. The bank said it had since tightened its controls. “The amended terms and conditions allowed the private bank to refuse a cash withdrawal request, and placed strict controls on withdrawals over $10,000 [£6,600],” its statement said.

The Guardian’s evidence of a pattern of misconduct at HSBC in Switzerland is supported by the outcome of recent court cases in the US and Europe. The bank was named in the US as a co-conspirator for handing over “bricks” of $100,000 a time to American surgeon Andrew Silva in Geneva, so that he could illegally post cash back to the US.

Another US client, Sanjay Sethi, pleaded guilty in 2013 to cheating the US tax authorities. He was one of a group of convicted HSBC clients. The prosecution said an HSBC banker promised “the undeclared account would allow [his] assets to grow tax-free, and bank secrecy laws in Switzerland would allow Sethi to conceal the existence of the account”.

In France, an HSBC manager, Nessim el-Maleh, was able to run a cash pipeline in which plastic bags full of currency from the sale of marijuana to immigrants in the Paris suburbs were collected. The cash was then taken round to HSBC’s respectable clients in the French capital. Bank accounts back in Switzerland were manipulated to reimburse the drug dealers.

HSBC is already facing criminal investigations and charges in France, Belgium, the US and Argentina as a result of the leak of the files, but no legal action has been taken against it in Britain.

“There are very few reasons to have an offshore bank account, apart from just saving tax. There are some people who can use an ... account to avoid tax legally. For others it’s just a way to keep money secret.”

MOM TACKLES POP WARNER

Looks like the best way to get football fans to pay attention is to go for their wallet(s)

Wisconsin mother sues youth football league over son's suicide

A Wisconsin mother filed a $5-million lawsuit against the Pop Warner youth football organization on Thursday, blaming it for her son's suicide after years of playing the "combat sport."

The suit comes amid scrutiny and continuing litigation over the effects of repeated blows to the head in American football, and the potential for such injuries to contribute to depression and other mental health problems among players.

Debra Pyka filed the complaint against Pop Warner Little Scholars and its liability insurer in a federal Wisconsin court. Pyka said her son, Joseph Chernach, hanged himself at the age of 25, after developing brain diseases from playing in the league as a youth.


"Tackle football with helmets is a war game. It is not only a 'contact' sport, it is a 'combat' sport," the complaint said. "Joseph Chernach's suicide was the natural and probable consequence of the injuries he suffered playing Pop Warner football."

And she has some unexpected alies who agree with her;

NFL Hall of Famer Mike Ditka has dedicated his life to football. But if he had a son today, he wouldn’t want that child to do the same, according to a Saturday report by the Chicago Tribune.

In an episode of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” set to air on HBO on Tuesday, Ditka asks sports reporter Bryant Gumbel if he himself would want his child to play football.

“I wouldn’t,” Gumbel says. “Would you?”

“Nope,” Ditka replies. “I wouldn't. And my whole life was football. I think the risk is worse than the reward. I really do.”

BRIAN WILLIAMS; A VICTIM OF ENTERTAINMENT NEWS.

Compared to Cronkite & Morrow Williams is NOT a news anchor. Unfortunately he is nothing more than a pitch man for BigPharma  fixes for dry vagina's and limp penises ;; just to name a few a long list of "ask your doctor" messages that occupy close to 50% of the network news slots. The other 50% is baked in chaos, drama, tear jerk trivia with a pinch of information that Cronkite and/or Morrow would call news. Imagine Cronkite reporting on the assassination of JFK having to break away for 30/60 second sales pitch for a "time is right" drug. 

In exaggerating the news Williams was doing what he is paid to do; entertain the crowd, the majority of which are brain dead and need a constant jolt of "breaking news" just to keep them focused till the next sales pitch.   

Want 100% news?  PBS is the only island of real news in this waste land of faux/entertainment news. 

Brian Williams Faces ‘Fact-Checking’ Inquiry at NBC

Mr. Williams has not addressed the issue publicly since Wednesday, when he apologized on his newscast for embellishing an account of an incident in 2003; over the years he came to say that he was in a helicopter that was hit by enemy fire, an assertion he now says is not true. On his newscasts Thursday and Friday, he did not mention the controversy.

If Mr. Williams is forced to step down, it would be a huge blow to the news division, which is in a cutthroat ratings race with the rival networks. In this season to date, NBC has averaged 9.3 million total viewers for its nightly broadcast, compared with 8.7 million for ABC and 7.3 million for CBS, according to Nielsen.




For NBC, Mr. Williams is more than just a nightly news anchor. He’s a bona fide celebrity on par with Jimmy Fallon, Matt Lauer and Bob Costas in representing the face of the broadcast network. Should Mr. Williams be forced to step down, it is not clear who a successor would be, industry executives said.

Creating a succession plan has not been a top priority at the network as it has focused on sorting out issues with its “Today” show. Mr. Williams has been viewed as a block of stability, and in December the network extended his contract, with the terms reported to be as much as $10 million per year for five years.

Some media critics and TV industry insiders questioned NBC’s plan to conduct an internal investigation rather than work with an outside group.

“Internal investigations are inherently suspect because NBC has a literal financial investment in Brian Williams and his brand,” Mr. Feldstein said. “They have been paying him millions of dollars a year and spending millions more to promote his image as their public face, as their brand, specifically promoting his integrity as a source for news.”

In other media scandals, Mr. Feldstein said, changes in personnel and practice mostly came after external investigations.

Others in the TV news business questioned the point of the investigation, given that Mr. Williams already admitted that he had made false claims about his experiences in Iraq.

News of the internal investigation was first reported by The Daily News of New York.

Mr. Williams now admits that his portrayal of the helicopter journey was misleading, and that he had been on a different helicopter, behind the one that was hit. He said he had “conflated” the two versions, and apologized.

It’s not clear whether other people at NBC were aware that Mr. Williams’s version of the events was inaccurate.

DOES WEALTH CORRUPT?

This study attempts to answer that question;

Does money corrupt?

What is it about being wealthy that might make people behave differently?

Is it the feeling of societal advantage? Or maybe it's the belief that wealth is proof of hard work, and therefore comes with certain entitlements.

A PBS "News Hour" report titled “Money on the Mind”explores these concepts and more, attempting to zero in on how and why money affects attitudes and behavior.

Citing the research of Paul Piff, a doctoral student in psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, the report claims that having more money typically leads to more aggressive, selfish and “morally reprehensible” behavior.

For those who question that, the following example might help support the results;

                               Son allegedly killed hedge-funder dad after $200 allowance cut

The old man stiffed the kid out of $200.00! So what would you expect him to do? Sounds reasonable to me looking at it from a 1% point of view. After all, money is sacred. How dare someone deprive their 30 year old son of part of their allowance. 

This should be a clear message to all those money worshipers out there in 1% ville. Don't mess with your kids allowance. 

The bratty 30-year-old son of a millionaire Manhattan hedge-fund founder was charged Monday with murdering his dad after the old man cut his allowance — by a measly $200, law-enforcement sources said.

Thomas Gilbert Jr. faces multiple charges including murder and criminal possession of a weapon after he allegedly fired a single shot at his father’s head Sunday night.

The son, who just found out he was getting a $200 cut in his monthly allowance, asked his mother to go get him a sandwich so she’d be out of the family’s tony Beekman Place apartment just before he pulled the trigger and executed his dad, sources told The Post.

“He was cutting his allowance. He had been giving him $2,400 a month for rent and $600 for spending money, and he was cutting that to $400 a month for spending money,” a source said about
Thomas Gilbert Sr., founder of the Wainscott Capital hedge fund.

AMERICA'S SNAKE OIL HUCKSTERS ;GNC, Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreens

Here's another example of why the capitalist free market needs to be regulated by government.

GNC, Target, Wal-Mart, Walgreens accused of selling adulterated ‘herbals’

A warning to herbal supplement users: Those store-brand ginkgo biloba tablets you bought may contain mustard, wheat, radish and other substances decidedly non-herbal in nature, but they’re not likely to contain any actual ginkgo biloba.

That’s according to an investigation by the New York State attorney general’s office into store-brand supplements at four national retailers — GNC, Target, Walgreens and Wal-Mart. All four have received cease-and-desist letters demanding that they stop selling a number of their dietary supplements, few of which were found to contain the herbs shown on their labels and many of which included potential allergens not identified in the ingredients list.

“Contamination, substitution and falsely labeling herbal products constitute deceptive business practices and, more importantly, present considerable health risks for consumers,” said the letters, first reported today by the New York Times.

CONSERVATIVES; DEAD MAN WALKING!

Is being a conservative harmful to your health?

Liberals 'live longer' than conservatives and moderates

To test this the researchers set out to evaluate whether time to death was associated in any way with party political affiliation or political ideology, along with the impact of self-reported health and happiness.

Data was taken from the American 2008 General Social Survey-National Death Index dataset. The time to death for 32,830 participants was analyzed, between the years of 1976 and 2008. This dataset is comprised of interviews conducted in person, utilizing a core set of questions asked each year to a different set of participants.

While there was no difference in time to death between participants affiliated with the Democrat and Republican parties, participants who described themselves as "independents" were significantly less likely to die during the study period. This difference became apparent after the researchers adjusted the data for individual variables such as age, sex, education and household income.

However, participants identifying as liberal were less likely to die early compared with moderates or conservatives. This finding remained the same after adjusting the data for individual variables.

Wonder why? It's obvious. They are "anti-people"; more concerned about making money than protection the environment. Believe that they are entitled to a bigger piece of the economic pie because they deserve it.



Looks like the forces of nature (and the Man upstairs) don't agree. 

A SNIPERS REAL VIEW OF THE WAR

Many Americans like to live in a "Disneyland" reality. You can't them because seeing the real world we live in is enough to make your head explode. Dirty Harry (Clint Eastwood) made everybody's day with American Sniper; a fantasy about how we want to believe war is like. 

The shameful atrocities of Vietnam are slowly fading into history as are those that lived through it, so the time is ripe to start rewriting the history of the disastrous war(s) we do remember.

I was an American sniper, and Chris Kyle’s war was not my war

Garett Reppenhagen served as a Cavalry Scout Sniper with the 1st Infantry Division in the US Army and deployed on a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and a combat tour in the Diyala Province, Iraq in 2004. Garett works as a Regional Director for Vet Voice Foundation and is a veterans advocate and social justice organizer.

"When I heard of the bigoted reaction some Americans had after watching the film, I was disgusted, but not surprised. Audience members are mistaking Chris Kyle’s view of the war as “the” story about the war. No wonder someone tweeted that the movie made them “want to go kill some ragheads.” It’s sad that such a nearsighted portrayal of Iraqis has caused more people to fear Arabs and glorify violence against them."

"It would be refreshing if a big Hollywood movie would take on the task of creating a less dramatized, more nuanced version of warfare. There are some incredible documentaries on the subject. “Occupation: Dreamland” and “Restrepo” capture the life of a service member in a modern deployment without sugarcoating the hard political environment that is a backdrop to the conflicts."