Category: News and Politics
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Looking for insight into the thinking of our Latino neighbors
Slowly, over many years, I built a strong track record of serving the local Spanish-speaking community when they need tax or business services representation (in English language) to resolve problems with government even though I have often struggled to communicate with these clients. Years prior to this, my former business MedSave was a pioneering online…
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Thanksgiving Day Insights into Black Voters
One of the most puzzling things to me personally in my work discussing local economic development is the increasing support of Donald Trump by some black neighbors. While I was part of the early fraud cases representing small business contractors against him, that was decades ago and much has changed in the world. Journalist Astrid…
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Hit and run
A hit and run of a pedestrian is a terrible crime that is too often ignored. The hit is often unintentional but the act of fleeing rather than helping is usually intentional. Often other crimes are connected. Police and prosecutors have a poor track record in these cases. Insurance companies vigorously fight claims made by…
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A reflection on the lack of diversity among my business clients
Today I notice that my alma mater Villanova University, located in my former neighborhood, just named nine new members to its law school professional staff and included a headshot photo of each. Only one of the nine is an Anglo-Saxon man. That new hire ratio is quite a difference from my own new client ratio.…
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UFOs and government permits: an odd connection
For all our lives, there has been some background discussion of “UFOs”. It turns out that the simple fact is that at any given moment, there are thousands of “unidentified objects” data collection balloons in the sky above us. Some additional unidentified objects up there are apparently not balloons but something that some in our…
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SCOTUS will hear Anthony Novak case
The US Supreme Court agreed to hear an interesting case involving a familiar name “Anthony Novak”. Anthony Novak in Ohio was arrested, prosecuted and found not guilty of breaking local law for making Facebook posts that annoyed police. Now he wants to sue police but federal appeals court ruled that officers are protected by qualified…
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My own personal experience with prosecutorial overreach
The concept of prosecutorial overreach is in the news today after the former U.S. Attorney General stated publicly that the Trump children should not be charged with fraud. This post is not about the billionaire Trumps, but about the working class Novaks and our neighbors. In 2018 I had my own rude introduction to the…
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Boycott list
Uline Wendy’s CVS Taco Bell Estes Lauder Equinox SoulCycle Marvel Home Depot Hobby Lobby Goya MyPillow Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe
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Review of Biden administration tax policy progress after one year in office
The Biden administration proposed two major themes in its tax reform agenda. These were widely promoted during the campaign and then heavily promoted by the White House and the U.S. Department of the Treasury over the past year. Now, one year after the administration began work, this blog post reviews the progress made and the…
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Pandemic reopening update
The mess we’ve created in society’s response to this pandemic re-opening hit me hard yesterday. My wife was required to attend a training for managers charged with overseeing their office reopening. Apparently she will be in charge of approving the scheduling plans of her staff that largely want to continue to work from home vs…