New Mayor Ko Wen-je of Taipei is making a splash. Not only did he stir up discussion in China with his simple ways, some of the local citizens are asking why their mayors can't be more like Ko. Very refreshing.
I'm sure it is just a coincidence that since he beat the KMT in the election the tax office is investigating his parents. Yes, surely the KMT would never use the governmental apparatus to punish the opposition.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je expressed dismay Monday that Taiwan's tax bureau is going after his parents for possible tax evasion because of a NT$10 million loan they gave Ko to help him pay for a house in Taipei.This post-election investigation is standard playbook and has happened to many DPP politicians, though tax evasion is certainly a new wrinkle -- probably because the standard attack is misuse of public funds, and Ko's parents are retired private citizens with no access to public funds. It says a lot about the KMT that it believes that all politicians are misusing public funds...
Ko, a surgeon-turned-politician, said he was disgusted when the National Taxation Bureau audited his personal income taxes to see if he had reported income from speeches made in a few years prior to last year's Nov. 29 elections.
Ko said that now that the elections were over, the National Taxation Bureau was "going overboard" in having his father go to the agency and explain the matter.
"This goes beyond what any normal person can tolerate," Ko said, publicly asking the agency to explain its actions.
Sad. But since Ko is an independent, it can only increase his popularity.
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Daily Links:
- Synapticism on a 1940s mansion in rural Changhua.
- UDN savages Ma Ying-jeou in editorial. All stuff I've been saying for years.
- Ryan Scoville on why Japan has a better claim to the Senkakus.
- China doubles its amphibious infantry for Taiwan invasion
- From May: Japan-Taiwan relations after the Sunflowers
- Drew with another great route, this time the Nantou 56.
- Drew again, on Taiwan's strange cycling routes.
- Strategic Risks in the Taiwan Strait. Refers to my blog post on the Black Ditch. Yay!
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!
Michael, you may want to check this out. Western paper that, somewhat uniquely these days, defends Japan's position on the senkaku islands
ReplyDeletehttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2285190
most revealingly, his analysis of the Treaty of Shimonoseki via methods of island location at that time basically reveals that China is projecting modern international law back into the past to claim that Japan knew the islands belonged to China....and then says that said international law has no bearing on the issue.
You may also want to take a look at these:
http://islandstudies.oprf-info.org/research/a00004/
http://islandstudies.oprf-info.org/research/a00009/
Ozaki Shigeyoshi's parts 2 and 3 of countering China's claims to the Senkaku islands
Ma needs to change his diapers and stop acting like a baby.
ReplyDelete