Funny thing No. 1: Vyacheslav Lysakov, first deputy head of the State Duma's constitutional committee and a member of United Russia, proposed requiring the children of Russian officials to return home after studying abroad. "We should consider making officials' children return to their native land. If a person gets an education in order to build a nest there, that's one thing. If they get an education in order to return home and use that knowledge here, that's something entirely different. This needs to be thought through — it's a matter for discussion," Lysakov said. And it gets even better. Valery Trapeznikov, a co-author of the bill banning state employees from owning foreign real estate and bank accounts, and a member of the presidium of United Russia's general council from the labor committee, supported the initiative. "Everyone should study in Russian schools — from Magadan to St. Petersburg. I believe everyone should study at our universities: the magnificent Moscow State University, Plekhanov University (informally known as 'Plyoshka'). If you love your homeland, you should study here. We have excellent higher education institutions even in the provinces. Remember Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, the writer and zemstvo doctor (a physician in local self-government medicine in imperial Russia). Those are the spiritual values we should look to," he said. http://ria.ru/society/20121227/916389741.html Lysakov, by the way, had already spoken on this subject before. Quite wonderfully. Absolutely on point. What we have now is that a person talks about lofty matters and patriotism, while sending his own children abroad. People who represent the authorities and hold public office — from the federal level down to the municipal — must set an example by showing that they live in Russia and tie their own fate, and the fate of their children, to Russia. And when some of my colleagues send their offspring to study in the West, that child often ends up staying there forever and linking his life to a Western company. That is why we propose that lawmakers, officials, and members of the security services set an example in everything, including in the education of their children," Lysakov said. http://www.dni.ru/polit/2012/8/7/238424.html This initiative, of course, has no real prospects. One can only imagine the horror the idea inspires in the United Russia leadership: that their little darlings might end up studying "in Russian schools — from Magadan to St. Petersburg" and also at the "magnificent Plyoshka".
That same Trapeznikov. It's just very funny how these comic "ordinary-guy United Russia members," recruited to shout at rallies and play "that... what's it called... the people," have started trolling their colleagues — the wealthy United Russia crowd, about whom Krasheninnikov wrote very accurately: they sincerely think it's all a kind of theater, and that they are actors playing patriots until lunchtime and sometimes again in the evening (if they're invited on television). Funny thing No. 2. Our striped little mattress, in a desperate attempt to save face, dashed off to the tax office yesterday and produced a certificate (admittedly a rather odd-looking one) saying that in 2007 he received 103 million rubles from the company News Outdoor.
A clever move, supposedly. He got the money after the deadline for filing his asset declaration, and by 2010, when the next one had to be published, the money was nowhere to be seen. Presumably he bought something from a domestic manufacturer. As if having 103 million rubles gives Zheleznyak the moral right to lecture the rest of us about loving the Motherland while sending his children abroad to live and study. Still, it was a mistake for him to do this. Everyone quickly remembered that this same News Outdoor, in those very years — 2006 and 2007 — when Zheleznyak was receiving his lovely multimillion-ruble bonuses, was willfully evading taxes.
http://kad.arbitr.ru/PdfDocument/4d8ef5c1-6ecf-4b03-ac26-2da390912cf5/A40-94140-2009_20100519_Reshenija%20i%20postanovlenija.pdf So willfully, in fact, that there is even a tax authority ruling upheld by the arbitration court. And now Irek Murtazin has already appealed to the Investigative Committee. It will be interesting to see whether the fearsome Investigative Committee press general Markin appears on screen to announce the creation of a ten-person investigative team.