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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Uncategorized

From this piece in the New York Times:

Despite all the talk of fancy apartments, free Mercedes-Benzes and cash flowing at Christmastime, the criminal tax fraud trial of Donald J. Trump’s family business could come down to three mundane words: “in behalf of.”

The company stands accused of doling out those off-the-books perks to several executives, who failed to pay taxes on them. The scheme’s architect — the Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg — pleaded guilty and testified at trial.

The company, however, is not automatically guilty of his crimes. Under New York law, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney’s office must prove that Mr. Weisselberg committed his many felonies “in behalf of” the Trump Organization, a clunky phrase that the judge overseeing the case has, in something of an understatement, called “a confusing area of the law.”

Call me obtuse, but I don’t see the issue here.  What is the defense claiming to be Weisselberg’s motives for committing his crimes?  Tax fraud is his hobby?  He derives sexual gratification?

Sorry.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Nuclear

Dr. Alex Cannara is best known for his work promoting nuclear energy as a technology that he claims is absolutely essential if we are to control global warming before its effects become catastrophic and irreversible.

Sadly, most environmentalists are rabidly anti-nuke, as they don’t understand that fission is statistically quite safe and becoming more so with each passing year.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Sustainability

A reader sent this in with the text; “This one piece 204 foot mast all came from a single fir tree. And, these days we scramble to find a 40 foot piece that’s half worth having.”

But I rather wonder what his point is.

I asked a friend, who said, “Well, it means that we just don’t grow trees like that any more,” like we don’t parent children like we did when we spanked them when they were disobedient, or we don’t make toasters designed to last a lifetime.

I think the more logical explanation is that we’ve chopped down the huge trees, and replacing them isn’t a profitable enterprise, so who cares?

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The guilty findings against the top people at the Oath Keepers and the long prison sentences that will be meted out may stand as something of a deterrent against future insurrections. The idiot with the swastika shirt and the Nazi salute may think twice before she breaks laws that carry 20-years imprisonment.

In any case, and at the risk of repeating myself, if I were hearing a case like this, I would be somewhat compelled by the fact that these people honestly believed that the election had been stolen and that there were acting as patriots by forcing the overturn of the results.  Why?  Purely because they were ordered to by the President of the United States.

This was not something that came from the deputy police chief of some cow-town in rural Alabama; it came from the White House, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States armed forces.

It is for this reason that justice actions that do not include charging the former president are really no justice whatsoever.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I’m always interested in speaking with my mom about politics, as it gives me a summary of what the Fox News talking points have been over the intervening days since our last conversation.

Last night it was Ukraine–the folly of helping Ukraine defend itself against the invading Russians. (more…)

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

The presence of Mitt Romney in U.S. politics serves as a reminder that there still exists a percentage of Republicans, albeit a small one, that have retained some measure of class and sanity.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It appears that Donald Trump isn’t the only brazen criminal who bilks his supporters out of their hard-earned money to pay for illegitimate lawsuits.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

James Randi left us in 2020 after an impressive career challenging paranormal and pseudoscientific claims.

While I try to avoid judging books by their covers, I have to say from his portrait here that he definitely looks the part.  If you had to create a photo of a super-high IQ scientific skeptic merging with Indiana Jones, could you have done any better?

In any case, our embrace of religion is downward trending, despite the low-brow rejection of science.

If, in the event that we still have a civilization 100 years from now, it will probably be because we favored science over religion.

Of course, not everyone agrees.  Nowadays, we have the far-right-wing concept of reinserting the Bible into our schools, letting us know how we should treat our slaves, and naming the size of rocks that are suitable for stoning adulterers and gays.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Ever since I was a small boy, I’ve heard people say that the Democrats and Republicans are virtually indistinguishable from one other.

While it’s true that both parties are corrupt in the sense that they accept huge amounts of money from wealthy donors in exchange for creating laws that favor them, as suggested at left, most of the platforms of the parties are diametrically opposed.

Moreover, some of the spokespeople for the right are some pretty dim bulbs.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business

All true.

Yet we have neither the interest nor the capacity to turn this around.  Progressives would like to see a tax schedule that looks like what we had between the end of World War II and Reagan’s inauguration, but Congress is extremely unlikely to make this happen.

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