… leave Garrett Park to go shelling on the Delaware beaches, while everyone knows that the real shelling action in that state lies within the nondescript buildings in Wilmington that house shell companies from around the world.

People are beginning to be aware of this because of all them Russky oligarchs in the news.

For the state of Delaware, these small [incorporation] fees add up to as much as 41% of the state’s entire revenue. In 2019, they collectively amounted to $1.4B...

Adopted in 1899, the Delaware General Corporation Law “reduced restrictions upon corporate action to a minimum” and promised to maintain the most hospitable business enclave in the nation — a place where corporations could frolic in the open fields of capitalism, unencumbered by income tax, bureaucratic policing, and shareholder litigation.

As we frolic ‘pon the open early spring fields of sand, all around us the open fields of capitalism sprout another astounding bumper crop for wee Delaware and we are so oblivious. It’s all secret, see, so even if we wanted to shake the sand off our feet and take a serious look at Delaware’s incomparable tax haven we couldn’t.

Delaware and Nevada are two of the jurisdictions where it is the easiest to obtain the anonymous companies money launderers like best. Those states are in fact significantly less transparent than famous tax havens like the British Virgin Islands... Delaware and Nevada have not just risked the rest of the country, they have risked the entire world. They have tunneled a gaping hole in the domestic laws of any country concerned with preventing corruption, fraud, tax evasion, drug trafficking, terrorism, and all the other ills facilitated by anonymous shell companies.

Here’s one guy who at one time had a slew of Delaware shell companies:

On 2 November 2011, [Victor] Bout was convicted by a jury in a Manhattan federal court of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization, and was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment. Since June 2012, Bout has been held at the United States Penitentiary, Marion.

This guy must be itching to help Putin’s war effort!

[T]here’s also the element of his personal hatred for Hillary Clinton, and it’s not just hate her. I think it’s like Hillary Clinton was impossible as a U.S. president. To imagine that he would have to deal with her as a senior partner, a woman—I mean, he already has to deal with [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel. The lengths that he has gone to to assert his masculine dominance over Merkel is amazing. He literally sicced dogs on her. He has made indecent jokes in front of her, just to try to discomfort her. He hates dealing with a strong woman, and one as president of the United States would be just awful.

Seems reasonable to ol’ UD, and in making this law for at least one of its regions, India is acting in accord with a lot of other countries.

Karnataka’s high court, that is, has ruled that the hijab is not a required religious garment. Those who want a different outcome can appeal the ruling to the supreme court, though I doubt a higher court will reverse it.

The fear … is that the BJP is trying again to impose its Hindu majority agenda on the minorities by depriving them of their right to religion and their freedom of choice.

That’s a very reasonable fear; yet given the routine nature, around the globe, of restrictions on school uniforms, I’m not sure it pertains in this case. In the matter of India, UD is more scandalized by this:

[A recent] government introduced Vedic astrology as a subject in college curricula, despite opposition from several leading scientists.

… UD sings Tom Lehrer.

Wotta shocker.

… and the little missus done got that right. Back in 2017, when the state’s newspaper gushed about LSU’s basketball coach boy wonder, Will Wade‘s wife hit it right on the head: Like virtually all of LSU’s storied basketball and football coaches from the word go, young Wade was dirty as the day is long. And as he now departs the school in the time-honored way of its sports leaders — driven out by years of every conceivable violation — we can only comb through our many LSU is the scummiest school in America except maybe for Baylor posts and ponder, as we like to do, America’s poorest, most corrupt, most violent state and its long dedication to three million dollar a year filthy rotten coaches.

Let’s narrate this from the POV of a Bama boy – Bama itself definitely competitive in the southern jock school corruption sweepstakes, of course:

There’s squat going on today, but — dear reader — your Gump Day comes in strong with a bit of schadenfreude, as the sweatiest man this side of Al Golden, at the dirtiest program this side of SMU, finally had the NCAA hammer drop on them.

Or, at least the first part.

To the absolute surprise of no one, a man under investigation by the FBI, at a school under investigation for widespread sexual assault and Title IX violations, and two programs with a history of dirty dealing, have all finally received their Notice of Allegations.

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Oh yeah. Forgot SMU. Lawdie! [flicks hankie o’er lightly sweated brow] Hard to keep up, ain’t it? … But let me add, and I mean this in the nicest way, that we don’t need no big-city Yankee scolds telln us how to educate our youth at our fine universities! Take all the pleasure you want in our anguish, Mr Fancy Pants; we’ll be back bigger and better than ever ‘fore you can say Dave Bliss!

[The British government sought] to find a way to make sure that Chelsea could continue to function, roughly as normal, once Abramovich’s other assets were frozen. The players, the staff and the fans — especially the fans — must not suffer, the government said. A few hours earlier, Russian artillery had shelled a maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine. But the government was clear: The sanctity of the Premier League could not be sullied...

His arrival marked the start of what will come, in time, to be thought of as soccer’s oligarch age. It was Abramovich, as noted last week, whose arrival kick-started the inflationary spiral that has fractured European soccer beyond repair, with only a handful of clubs hoarding all of the wealth of the game, ruthlessly stripping its natural resources for their benefit...

Soccer’s age of the oligarch is over. This time, there can be no excuse for failing to understand what the game has become. On that, we have clarity.

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This was four years ago, laddies.

… Yad Vashem.

Claims of Roman [Abramovich’s] pivotal strategic role in potentially ending the [Ukraine] war felt so fantastical that they might as well have cast him as some peacemaking chameleon, a very Zelig of international diplomacy. He was there at Westphalia in 1648, where he played some of his best treatying, and at Versailles in 1919, where he had an absolute shitter. And yet, many accepted and repeated the claims – performing ever more unpaid service in the reputation laundromat. Abramovich had bought himself yet another day of grace to add to the thousands and thousands of days of grace he has enjoyed in the UK since buying Chelsea [soccer club] in 2003…

Tomorrow Chelsea will host Newcastle, who are now owned by a group led by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia – but remember, those guys are the good autocrats, because they buy our weapons. And use them in a war in Yemen that has thus far gone on for seven years, killing or starving hundreds of thousands, the vast majority believed to be children under five. But of course, the sovereign wealth fund isn’t the same as the Riyadh government. They just have a good relationship with it, same as Roman Abramovich just has a good relationship with Putin. “Which owner knows the guy who’s killed more babies?” is a question you won’t be seeing on any banners at Chelsea-Newcastle.

Marina Hyde, The Guardian

A beautiful sentence, by David Frum, about the right-wing attack on America/worship of Putin.

UD certainly expects college football players to fuck themselves up during spring break. This usually involves alcohol, and certainly does not feature hyper-clean-cut West Pointers. Nah.

And yet there they are, stretched out on the palm-edged front yard of their rental house, having fentanyled themselves almost to death. Policemen administer Narcan to their fine ripped torsos, while other attractive young people stand around being upset and useless.

In this post about UNC’s plagiarizing vice chancellor FOR RESEARCH, UD expressed amazement that “ninnies” at Chapel Hill let the guy get off with a slap on the wrist.

But then, thought she, he’s a honcho, he brings in the bucks, it’s the southland, he sports expensive suits, he’s in good with the boys’ club, blahbiddyblahblah…

How could UD have known about Mimi Chapman, who speaks for UNC’s faculty? Thirty minutes after someone high up in the administration – someone who knows how to read – read this letter from her, The Kay M. & Van L. Weatherspoon Eminent Distinguished Professor of Genetics packed up his y chromosomes and went home.

Let’s take a peek!

… Over the last few days, faculty members from all over the University have contacted me about the current situation with our Vice Chancellor for Research, concerned that Vice Chancellor Magnuson has not stepped down from his position. As a faculty, we believe that this situation has the potential to taint our own scholarship and gives the impression that some members of our community are “untouchable” while for others such a situation would be a career-ender. Every hour, I have been hoping that an announcement would come so that I would not have to make this statement. But that has not happened and here we are.

… [P]lease resolve this situation in the interests of the institution and out of respect to this faculty with all deliberate speed.

Scathing Online Schoolmarm says: Brava! I see no reason to stick quotation marks around untouchable, but with this small correction the letter is perfect. And it seems to have accomplished its goal. It has disrupted the sausage party at the top and reminded the guys that somewhere hidden among the sports programs at UNC is a faculty, and it can be quite ugly when provoked.

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And as for the institution-embarrassing miscreant himself, he opts for the I’m Too Good for this World defense, stunning all of us with his life-saving achievements, which leave so little room for him to notice that he steals from multiple sources in grant applications. It’s a “teachable moment,” he piously informs us, forgetting to add that it’s only a teachable moment for people like him, who plagiarize.

SING IT!

I walk along the Moscow streets you used to walk along with me
And every step I take reminds me of just how we used to be

Well, how can I forget, Vlad?
When there is always someone there to remind me
Always someone there to remind me

As Kherson falls I pass the refugees around me in the night
And I can’t help recalling how it felt to kiss and hold you tight

Well, how can I forget, Vlad?
When there is always someone there to remind me
Some Polish asshole there to remind me
I was born to love you and I will never be free
You’ll always be a part of me

If you should find you miss the sweet and tender love we used to share
Just come back to the places where we used to go like our beloved Red Square

Well, how can I forget, Vlad?
When there is always someone there to remind me
Always someone there to remind me