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Iowa Republicans, after two weeks of trying to decide who won the caucuses they held earlier this month, announced Thursday that they simply could not tell.
At a news conference in Des Moines, we were told that Rick Santorum appeared to be 34 votes ahead, reversing the outcome that favored Mitt Romney on the morning after caucus night by eight votes.
It seems that eight of the precincts (out of 1,774) were not fully able to report on the preferences of those who showed up to participate on Jan. 3. Something happened to the records of who was for whom.
‘Maybe a door was open and they just blew out,’ said one Republican in Des Moines, perhaps only half in jest.Ron Elving’s NPR blog on how Iowa Republicans don’t really know who came out first in their caucuses.Source:
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Law to stick it to US tax evaders means hardship for US expats
Overseas Exile caught this one in his writeup of a provision that was slipped into a jobs bill at the end of last year. The New York Times writes
Legislation meant to help the United States government locate overseas assets of American tax cheats created little stir when it was quietly slipped into a jobs bill last year.
But the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca, as it is known, is now causing alarm among businesses outside the United States that fear they will have to spend billions of dollars a year to meet the greatly increased reporting burdens, starting in 2013. American expatriates also say the new filing demands are daunting and overblown.
As pointed out by the above, this will likely mean that foreign banks will simply not deal with US citizens as a result since the costs of maintaining accounts will be too high due to the costs of compliance and potential penalties.
Lest we forget that our ability to reason is what separates us from the other animals
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