Latest news with #judgment
Irish Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Irish Times
Fitness-to-teach panel considers ruling on former principal who stole more than €100,000 from school
A Teaching Council fitness-to-teach panel has reserved its judgment regarding a former principal convicted of stealing more than €100,000 from the school in which he was working. A total of 381 instances of theft occurred in the primary school between 2017 and 2019 for which the teacher was tried on indictment, found guilty and subsequently sentenced to six years, with the final 4½ years suspended. The thefts stemmed from the use of a credit card and cheques, on which the man forged the signature of the chairperson of the board of management. The decision of the panel to retire to consider its ruling followed the second day of the inquiry on Tuesday, when Cathy Maguire SC, appearing for the teacher, brought to a conclusion the oral evidence. Extensive legal submissions from counsel for both parties were also made. READ MORE The inquiry heard that as part of the terms of the suspension of the last 4½ years of the custodial sentence the teacher received, he was to pay to the school he stole from €20,000 on each of the first three anniversaries of his release from prison. However, the inquiry heard that on the first anniversary the teacher only paid €10,000. A sum of €5,000 was paid 13 months later. The principal of the school said that the board of management are empathetic to the teacher's circumstances and his addiction but that 'the bottom line' is that the money outstanding must be repaid. To that end the board and the teacher recently came to an agreement that the teacher will pay €500 fortnightly to the school, beginning in July, to clear the existing €36,000 that remains owed. Ms Maguire argued that the panel should ask the teacher to comply with certain undertakings and to accede to being censured. She also argued that the Teaching Council, being a regulatory body, was covered by the Employment Equality Act 1998 and that the teacher's addiction fell within the definition of a disability as per the legislation. Consequently, she said the Teaching Council should take effective and practical measures, including that the teacher would stay away from finances to permit him to participate in employment. However, counsel for the director of the Teaching Council, Eoghan O'Sullivan BL, asked about the message that merely asking the teacher to comply with undertakings and to accept censure, rather than imposing sanctions, would send to other teachers regarding the severity of the offences. He also argued that it was important to protect the public confidence in the teaching profession, including its regulation. The first day of the inquiry was held on May 15th, when it was decided that the inquiry should proceed in public but that the name of the teacher should be anonymised. Further amendments were made to that order including not reporting the names of any witnesses, except those called in a professional capacity, the name of the sentencing judge, the nature of the disability the teacher has, and the name of the school where he is employed. However, the panel then also decided, following queries from The Irish Times, that it could be reported that the inquiry related to a former principal from the midlands who was affected by an addiction. The man is teaching in a primary school in the east of the country and has been five years in remission from his addiction, the inquiry also heard. Once it has considered its decision, the panel will inform both parties whether it will ask the teacher to accept certain undertakings or if it will impose a more severe sanction.
Forbes
6 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
IRS Liens To Be Enforced Against Glen Stoll's Property
Money and wooden house with vintage key on tax form background If you are really stubborn, you can hold out on paying the IRS for a really long time. With luck, the statute of limitations on collection might bail you out. If the IRS does not collect within ten years of the time that it assesses a tax, you are home free. There are complications and ways in which the ten-year clock can be stopped, so I don't recommend this sort of course for the faint of heart. Glen Stoll is not faint of heart. He believes that all IRS assessments against him are wrong and looks forward to the day of total vindication, which may not come until Jesus returns. Mr. Stoll recently had a setback in his quest for vindication in the United States District Court for the Western District Court of Washington (the state). Judge Thomas Zilly ruled that the IRS assessment of tax liabilities for the years 2001-2008 with interest through December 13, 2024, totaling $1,265,461.89 is "reduced to judgment". The ten-year clock will no longer tick, because it has been smashed. It is not an assessment anymore. It is a judgment. Then there is the matter of property in Marysville, Washington. The IRS was seeking to foreclose liens on the property. That added defendants to the case - Stoll Family Trust, Director of the Family Defense League and Snohomish County. Director of the Family Defense League, which is also known as Family Defense League and a couple of other things, is a corporation. According to the Washington Secretary of State website, the nature of its business is "A Washington Acknowledged Corporation Sole of the Church". The Governor of the corporation is Glen Stoll. There is also a note that the corporation was administratively dissolved on June 3, 2023. I asked Glen Stoll about the dissolution. He told me that he has several years to fix that. It was a sort of administrative glitch. The state stopped allowing paper filings, and the people he had helping him with it are not internet savvy. The Stoll Family Trust had been amended in 2005 to provide that on the death of Glen's parents, Richard and Mary Stoll, property including the Marysville home would be distributed among Glen and his two siblings with the Marysville home going to Glen. If Glen disclaimed, the property would instead be distributed to the Director of the Family Defense League. Glen Stoll disclaimed in 2012. Although there was never a formal deed to the Marysville home, he has been living there, although he does not receive mail there or treat it as his legal address. The case was complicated by the lack of attorneys for the trust and the corporation. Glen Stoll told me he had a great difficulty finding attorneys. Among his efforts was some sort of AI program that contacted 600 attorneys, none of whom were interested. An individual can represent themselves, but entities need to be represented by an attorney. Stoll believes many of our problems come from two sources. One is organized religion. I think he is referring there to denominations. The other is "unionized attorneys". That is a reference to bar associations. Finally Alan Stuart Richey agreed to represent the Stoll Family trust. I found this a surprising enough choice that I gave Kent Hovind a call about it. Richey represented Hovind in his 2006 trial and Hovind was very dissatisfied with the job he did. Hovind told me that he thought that Richey was a wolf in sheep's clothing. Richey was named as a defendant in Kent Hovind's half billion dollar lawsuit in 2020. Glen Stoll was aware of this, but nonetheless found Richey fine to work with. I have not been able to reach Richey. There were a few elements to the ruling. First off, the judge denied Stoll any further extensions of time. To the extent that the Director of the Family Defense League holds an interest in the property, it does so as Stoll's alter ego. This was a default judgment, as the corporation never had an attorney. Even though there was never a deed issued, the Stoll Family Trust is no longer the "true owner" of the property as the trustee was required by the terms of the trust to distribute it. That makes it irrelevant whether the trust was Stoll's alter ego. The Government had previously entered into a stipulation with Snohomish County that property taxes were ahead of the federal lien. The final word is: "The Government is entitled to judgment as a matter of law concerning the amount of Stoll's tax liability, including interest, penalties, and statutory accruals, and its right to foreclose on its tax liens against the Subject Property." When I spoke to Glen Stoll he indicated that he will be appealing. He was a bit incensed at Judge Zilly, who he didn't think paid close enough attention. He attributed some of the problems to the judge's advanced age, which Stoll exaggerated a bit, He did not think the judge paid attention to his arguments. Generally speaking Stoll wished people would read and listen more. In various documents, Glen Stoll wrote fascinating arguments that I would have loved to see Judge Zilly address Judge Zilly did comment on Stoll's statements that he had never run an 'abusive tax promoter business' of any kind. The judge noted Stoll's guilty plea in 2021, which I covered here. Stoll argues that he has no taxable income, because he is a volunteer to the church, which he effectively controls. He does not need any income because the church takes care of his needs. He had not been filing returns, because he had no income. The IRS created substitutes for returns for 2001-2008, which is where the assessment comes from. He responded with zero returns. It would have been interesting to flesh that issue out more. In an appendix to his memorandum of fact, argument and law, Stoll includes a bit of an autobiography which includes: "For nearly all my adult life I have been doing charitable church mission work without any direct payment for my personal gain. All compensation for my services, if any at all, goes directly into the ministry. In turn, the ministry provides me with a place to live, for other basic necessities of life, and for the basic support of my family. I own nothing and have no personal income." And then there is this: "By 1999, I had travelled seven times across the U.S./Mexico boarder (sic) on Medial Missionary journeys. During each of those crossings I formally identified myself using my Church issued passport as a Citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven and Resident of the Church" If you are interested in a passport or drivers license from the Embassy of Heaven you can check this link out. I don't recommend it. I reached out to Paul Hansen, Kent Hovind's co-defendant in 2015 and the brains behind his over half-billion-dollar lawsuit. In the past Hansen has been very critical of Stoll's work. Hansen's legal theories tend to be based on forcing government agents to prove that they have jurisdiction. I asked Hansen if his opinion of Stoll had changed since the critique he wrote in 2017. Hansen indicated that he could add to the critique. Neil Bass of the Bass Tax Group has a nice piece on the opinion titled The Long Game of Glen Stoll: How a Tax Scheme King Finally Lost His Kingdom. He concludes: "In an era where tax enforcement is becoming increasingly aggressive, Glen Stoll's saga is a case study in how long a determined individual can game the system, and what it takes to finally bring them down. But the damage is not limited to one man. For years, his schemes lured desperate clients seeking tax salvation. They, too, now face audit, penalty, or worse. As federal agents prepare the paperwork to sell off the last symbol of Stoll's financial fantasy, one can't help but see the irony: a man who built a career helping others "protect" assets couldn't even protect his own front door." I don't think we actually are in an era of more aggressive tax enforcement. The taxes that may now be collected from foreclosing on property determined to be effectively owned by Glen Stoll are for the years 2001 to 2008. In cases like this we are seeing the effect of decades of lax enforcement..
The National
7 days ago
- Health
- The National
We should consume information like we eat our food
Before the advent of the digital age, for someone to be considered a well-informed person – knowledgeable about news, current affairs and events – was a hard-won status. It wasn't easy to have regular access to the full range of books, newspapers and periodicals we now have at our fingertips. We had to keep our daily appointment with the evening news simply to know what had happened that day. To be well-informed was, to some extent, an aspirational pursuit. The newspaper you bought would say a lot about that aspiration. Yet beyond acquiring facts or being 'in the know', it was also, at its purest, about cultivating judgment, enriching the inner life, and developing the wisdom to make decisions that might help us prosper and thrive. Today, access to information is no longer seen as a luxury but as a necessity, despite the heavy irony of it being in far more regular supply than ever before. Research from Pew, published this month, underscored this, suggesting that the questions of how 'closely Americans are following the news, where they get their news and how much they trust the news they see … are not as straightforward as they once were … as people are exposed to more information from more sources than ever before and lines blur between entertainment, commentary and other types of content'. 'People don't always like news, but they say they need it: while many express negative emotions surrounding news [such as anger or sadness], they also say it helps them feel informed or feel that they 'need' to keep up with it,' according to Pew. While it has always been true that few would readily admit to any kind of ignorance, these days you can inadvertently make such an embarrassing admission by revealing you know too much. This is because the idea that we 'need' information has led, by and large, to no longer consuming it to understand the world but instead consuming it just to consume. This claim isn't revolutionary – 'infobesity' has been around as a term for a while, for example. Like the overconsumption of fast food, many of us are gorging ourselves on information far beyond what we actually need for a healthy life. But the consequences of a data binge are subtler and perhaps more insidious. The deluge often gets in the way of making good decisions. Knowledge isn't enough by itself to let go of our bad habits. We need to want it At least with overeating, the signs of our bad choices are more immediately evident: typically weight gain and a direct correlation with health issues and the general sense of being unwell. With information overload, the links are not always obvious at first. We feel anxious, distracted and overwhelmed, but we often don't connect these feelings to our overconsumption of data. No one would argue anymore that the effects have been far-reaching, creating volatility and uncertainty across the political, economic and cultural landscape. A chief topic of interest at the moment – artificial intelligence – has us excitable and fretful as we hungrily absorb as much information about it as we can get hold of. In a sense, we are each of us behaving like large language models, rampantly ingesting vast quantities of data with abandon. But obviously, we are not machines and this isn't a sustainable state to be in. We do eventually learn to say enough is enough. Parents and teachers are advocating for limits on screen time for children and organising pledges to delay giving them devices in order to protect them from overuse. Beyond these efforts, the US state of Utah, for example, has tried to enact legislation to limit children's screen time, and many others have proposed similar moves. Digital detoxes and digital fasts are wise initiatives, and we should practise them often. But like with any resolution, we eventually we go back to our bad habits. The long-term solution might be found in a lifestyle change. Yes, we need to have access to information but not constantly. Just as we have intervals between meals to allow our bodies to digest, we need periods during each day when we take a break from consuming news and information, particularly from digital sources. This isn't only because we necessarily need a break from our screens, but because our minds need time to digest, reflect and synthesise what we've already taken in. My suspicion is that this will probably happen naturally anyway, over time. Subsequent generations are already highly media and technology-literate, and they are very aware of the risks of wanton consumption at younger ages. It won't be a straight line though. Look how we are still struggling with the consequences of obesity, despite how much we have learnt about nutrition and health. You see, knowledge isn't enough by itself to let go of our bad habits. We need to want it, more than we want to have unfettered access to information, to really experience a change for the better.
Daily Mail
27-05-2025
- Daily Mail
As Lambeth loses case brought by local campaigners, and other councils face court showdowns... Is this the end of the road for the hated LTNs fleecing drivers and leaving our suburbs gridlocked?
As courtroom dramas go, it might not have matched the freeing of the Guildford Four or the conviction of murderer Dr Crippen. But thousands of south Londoners who five years ago found themselves suddenly barred from making local car journeys they had been undertaking for decades, greeted the judgment handed down by Deputy High Court Judge Jim Smith this month with something approaching euphoria.
New York Times
23-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
How to Stop Being So Judgy
When my daughter was 3, she bolted while I was paying for groceries at the supermarket. I was fumbling for my credit card and didn't notice. For 20 long minutes, I ran up and down the street shouting her name. Some people helped me look for her. Others asked me how I'd let this happen. When I finally found her — she had walked home across seven city blocks — I vowed never to judge anyone, ever again. That, of course, didn't last very long. We pass judgment all the time, and sometimes we don't realize we've done it. Research suggests that when people see a new face, their brains decide whether that person is attractive and trustworthy within one-tenth of a second.
