Latest news with #Eisner
NDTV
3 days ago
- NDTV
Sex, Power And A Medieval Murder: Priest's 1337 Death Mystery Finally Solved
A cold case in England appears to be solved after nearly 700 years. A research team from the Cambridge University Institute of Criminology's Medieval Murder Maps project did a comprehensive analysis of the priest John Forde 's murder case details. The priest was killed in May 1337 when some assailants slit his throat on a busy city street. The research team found that Mr Forde's murder was calculated and was an act of revenge by an elite woman. The Medieval Murder Maps project is a database of unnatural deaths in England during the 14th century. Manuel Eisner, who is a criminologist at the University of Cambridge, recently studied the details that can be termed as the reopening of the case after nearly seven centuries. Eisner, the study author, studied coroners' rolls and church archives for his research. The latest findings tell a tale of a gruesome murder - a medieval reality that looks like a Hollywood crime thriller. As per the findings, a woman named Ela Fitzpayne was accused of multiple affairs, including with Forde. She was punished with barefoot walks of shame across Salisbury Cathedral. She was also banned from wearing gold, pearls or precious stones. A large sum was asked to be paid to monastic orders. "We are looking at a murder commissioned by a leading figure of the English aristocracy. It is planned and cold-blooded, with a family member and close associates carrying it out, all of which suggests a revenge motive," said Manuel Eisner as quoted by Cambridge University. "Attempts to publicly humiliate Ela Fitzpayne may have been part of a political game, as the church used morality to stamp its authority on the nobility, with John Forde caught between masters," he said. What exactly happened? Eisner found in another record that Fitzpayne had even conspired with her husband and John Forde to lead a gang of extortionists. It happened around the time of these allegations. The gang is said to have raided a church priory and broken into buildings. They held livestock to ransom. As per Eisner, the Forde's murder could have been a show of strength in order to remind the clergy of the power of the nobility. The records suggest that Ela's lover Forde was a member of the crime gang, but ultimately became a part of her denouncement by the church, which could have been the reason behind his murder, with one of the killers recognised as Fitzpayne's brother. Two others were her recent servants. "Attempts to publicly humiliate Ela Fitzpayne may have been part of a political game, as the church used morality to stamp its authority on the nobility, with John Forde caught between masters," Eisner said. "Taken together, these records suggest a tale of shakedowns, sex and vengeance that expose tensions between the church and England's elites, culminating in the mafia-style assassination of a fallen man of god by a gang of medieval hitmen," Eisner added.
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Team Trump reportedly contacted the IRS about a ‘high-profile friend of the president'
Election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell has been in the news quite a bit lately. A few weeks ago, for example, the MyPillow founder expressed an interest in launching a Republican gubernatorial campaign in Minnesota. A couple of weeks later, someone described as a 'correspondent' for Lindell's media operation appeared at a White House press briefing and asked a cringeworthy and overly sycophantic question about Donald Trump, sparking widespread ridicule. This week, the conspiracy theorist was back in the news, telling a judge he's struggling to pay court-imposed sanctions because his finances are 'in ruins' and 'nobody will lend me any money anymore.' But things aren't all bad for Lindell. As The Washington Post reported, he apparently still has friends in high places. A Trump administration official in March asked the IRS to review audits of two 'high profile' friends of President Donald Trump, including MyPillow chief executive and conservative political personality Mike Lindell, according to two people familiar with the request and records obtained by The Washington Post According to the report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, David Eisner, a Trump appointee at the Treasury Department, contacted senior IRS staff last month about an audit Lindell was facing. Soon after, the same official reportedly contacted the tax agency again, this time about a Republican state senator in Kansas named Rick Kloos. Eisner reportedly used the phrase 'high profile friend of the president' to describe Eisner and Kloos, and wrote that each was 'concerned that he may have been inappropriately targeted.' A related report in The New York Times noted that the IRS did not act on Eisner's outreach, but the efforts 'alarmed agency staff that President Trump hoped to use the tax collector to protect his friends and allies from normal scrutiny, concerns that have only grown as the Trump administration clears out agency leadership and pushes it to carry out Mr. Trump's directions.' And therein lies the point: If the IRS is going to survive and maintain its integrity, it must maintain its independence. The agency cannot be a political weapon — though, in the Harvard case, there's reason to believe Trump sees it as a partisan tool — and just as notably, it can't offer special treatment to the president's pals and those politically aligned with the White House. Nina Olson, who served as the national taxpayer advocate across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations, told the Post of the allegations, 'That's so inappropriate. In my 18 years as the national taxpayer advocate with over 4 million cases that came into the Taxpayer Advocate Service, in that time with taxpayers experiencing significant problems with the IRS, I have never had a Treasury official write me about a case.' A spokesperson for Trump's Treasury Department made no effort to deny the claims, instead telling the Times that Eisner 'acted appropriately' and simply shared 'relevant information' with the IRS. (Eisner did not respond to requests for comment, the Post reported, and a representative from the IRS declined to comment.) Kloos' attorney, meanwhile, told the Post that the Kansas legislator is 'certainly not a close friend of the president'; he doesn't know why Eisner contacted the IRS on his behalf; and he's been engaged in a yearslong court fight over his organization's tax-exempt status. As for Lindell, he suggested that this is all just a misunderstanding and that the Treasury Department had 'misconstrued' his request, which he said actually stemmed from a problem he was having with the Employee Retention Credit. I don't imagine we've heard the last of this one. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The Best Thing About the Proposed California Initiative Named After Luigi Mangione Is the Title
His name and likeness have appeared on t-shirts, in graffiti, and in so, so many memes. Now, Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, might have his name end up in a California law as well. Over the weekend, California news outlets reported that a proposed ballot initiative titled the "Luigi Mangioni [sic] Access to Healthcare Act" had been submitted to the California Attorney General's Office for review. The proposed initiative's title is predictably drawing a lot of attention, as it is named after an alleged murderer. The proposed initiative's author, retired Los Angeles-based attorney Paul Eisner, says that's kind of the whole point. "It is getting the attention it needs because sometimes things require publicity," Eisner told CBS 8. While it has certainly attracted publicity, the controversy over the proposed ballot initiative's working title has distracted people from its even worse substance. Eisner's proposal states that no insurer may "delay, deny, or modify any medical procedure or medication" recommended by a treating physician—or even demand reduced payment for such treatments—if doing so could result in disability, death, permanent disfigurement, or the loss or reduction of "any bodily function." Insurers would have to rely on their own doctors to deny a claim or reduce payment for a procedure. If an insurer is sued for denying a claim, they would have to prove with "clear and convincing" evidence that the procedure is unnecessary. This would mean that an insurer couldn't argue they are denying a claim because the provider's proposed costs are outrageously high. The consequences of this initiative would be sweeping and probably fatal for private insurance in California. Almost every treatment a doctor would recommend could plausibly be defended as at least protecting some bodily function. Proving that a treatment is in fact unnecessary would be a very high bar indeed. In effect, the ballot initiative would put insurers in a position of either immediately approving every claim submitted to them or fighting a lawsuit that they'd almost certainly lose. Since the ballot initiative guarantees successful litigants against insurance companies treble damages and attorneys fees, anyone whose claim was denied would have a major incentive to sue. Because the initiative effectively prohibits insurers from even reducing payment for a procedure, they would also effectively lose their ability to bargain with healthcare providers over prices. That would give healthcare providers a very obvious incentive to raise prices on all their services. At a minimum, insurers would have to massively raise premiums to cover the new costs they'd be exposed to under this proposed system. Spiking premiums would see them shed customers, and plausibly go out of business completely. One couldn't imagine a better system for creating an insurer "death spiral." It is easy to dismiss Eisner's proposed ballot initiative as an unserious effort. He's just one guy proposing a ballot initiative. He still needs approval from the attorney general to start collecting signatures in order to actually get it on the ballot. And he even spelled Mangione's name wrong in his application. Nevertheless, California has a history of gadflies getting far-reaching policies on the ballot that then end up winning. Liberal California likes to point to Proposition 13, which limited property tax increases, as the canonical example of this. Another example would be Proposition 103, a 1988 initiative pushed by consumer advocates that created California's current regulatory regime for property and auto insurance. Prop. 103 limits insurers' ability to raise rates on policyholders and creates a laborious system to justify whatever price increases they are still permitted. This has prevented insurers from incorporating increasing wildfire risks into their rates. As wildfire damages have mounted in recent years, insurers have responded to Prop 103's incentives by limiting the business they do in California wherever possible. The design of Eisner's initiative is slightly different. It would effectively mandate higher insurance payouts as opposed to capping upfront insurance costs. But like Prop. 103, his initiative treats insurance companies as a source of endless money that faces no resource constraints and whose policies need not be based on market prices. As much as people dislike insurance companies, they play an important role in America's healthcare system. They're one of the few institutional actors that has an incentive to actually keep healthcare costs down. That's not an argument that typically resonates with the public. The widespread view of insurance companies as malevolent actors is one of the reasons why Mangione's alleged crime has turned him into a dark folk hero. Fortunately, most people still find murder bad, even if the victim is a despised insurance executive. Even Eisner can't bring himself to fully endorse Mangione. In his comments to CBS 8, Eisner condemned Mangione's alleged violent tactics, saying instead that he was trying to do things "the right way." While it certainly generated a lot of publicity, it's likely that Eisner's proposed ballot title will sap support for a ballot initiative that could conceivably have passed had it not been named after an alleged murderer. In that way, the best thing about Eisner's proposed initiative is its repulsive title. It'll turn people off from voting for a potentially popular, truly destructive policy. The post The Best Thing About the Proposed California Initiative Named After Luigi Mangione Is the Title appeared first on
