Keeping America, America? Britain First Action

Posted on April 20, 2016April 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Does we have the same attitudes? Is this a call to action in America?

Example…is this happening here in America?

Say NO to Labour’s Muslim mayor!

At a funeral in South London, Sadiq Khan, the local Labour MP and now Labour candidate to be mayor of London, shook hands with convicted terrorist Babar Ahmad, a man who has been blamed for inspiring a generation of extremists, including the gang behind the London bombings of July 7, 2005.

The pair exchanged brief pleasantries before Khan moved on. This happened only a few months ago, around the time of Khan’s nomination as Labour’s mayoral candidate.

Khan shared a platform with Yasser al-Siri, a convicted terrorist and associate of hate preacher Abu Qatada, and Sajeel Shahid, a militant who helped to train the ringleader of the London bombings.

Recently, it emerged that his parliamentary assistant posted a series of highly offensive Islamist, homophobic and misogynistic messages online. Shueb Salar also posed for photos with guns.

Khan was also exposed when it was revealed he ‘followed’ two Isis supporters on Twitter. One posted links to propaganda videos; the other is the brother of a man convicted of supporting insurgents in Afghanistan.

Khan’s former brother-in-law, Makbool Javaid, had links with the extremist group Al-Muhajiroun, an organisation that praised the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 bombings. Javaid appeared at London events alongside some of the country’s most notorious hate preachers, including the now banned cleric Omar Bakri.

Both before and after Khan became an MP, he shared speaking platforms with Stop Political Terror, a group supported by a man dubbed the ‘Bin Laden of the internet’. Anwar al-Awlaki, an imam linked to Al Qaeda, preached to three of the 9/11 hijackers and became the first American to be targeted and killed in a U.S. drone strike.

Stop Political Terror later merged with Cage, a London campaign group that described the notorious ISIS executioner Jihadi John as “a beautiful young man”.

United Healthcare Bails on Obamacare

Posted on April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 by Denise Simon

Nancy Pelosi, call holding on line 3. There are other healthcare providers that are likely to bow out of Obamacare in 2017.

UnitedHealth pulls back on ObamaCare exchanges amid huge losses

FNC: The nation’s largest health insurer, fearing massive financial losses, announced Tuesday that it plans to pull back from ObamaCare in a big way and cut its participation in the program’s insurance exchanges to just a handful of states next year – in the latest sign of instability in the marketplace under the law.

UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said the company expects losses from its exchange business to total more than $1 billion for this year and last.

Despite the company expanding to nearly three dozen state exchanges for this year, Hemsley said the company cannot continue to broadly serve the market created by the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion due partly to the higher risk that comes with its customers.

UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it now expects to lose $650 million this year on its exchange business, up from its previous projection for $525 million. The insurer lost $475 million in 2015, a spokesman said.

UnitedHealth has already decided to pull out of Arkansas, Georgia and Michigan in 2017, and Hemsley told analysts during a Tuesday morning conference call that his company will not carry financial exposure from the exchanges into 2017.

“We continue to remain an advocate for more stable and sustainable approaches to serving this market,” he said.

The state-based exchanges are a key element behind the Affordable Care Act’s push to expand insurance coverage. But insurers have struggled with higher-than-expected claims from that business.

A recent study by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association detailed how many new customers nationwide under ObamaCare are higher-risk. It found new enrollees in individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 had higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, depression, coronary artery disease, HIV and Hepatitis C than those enrolled before ObamaCare.

On the heels of Tuesday’s announcement, Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said in a statement it’s a sign of “the President’s broken promise that families would have more choices under ObamaCare.”

The Kaiser Family Foundation, in an analysis on the prospect of United’s exit, said “the effect on insurer competition could be significant in some markets – particularly in rural areas and southern states” if it is not replaced.

In the most extreme scenario, “If United were to leave the exchange market overall, 1.8 million Marketplace enrollees would be left with two insurers, and another 1.1 million would be left with one insurer as a result of the withdrawal,” the analysis said.

UnitedHealth had moved slowly into the newly created market by participating in only four exchanges in their first year, 2014. But the company then expanded to two dozen exchanges last year and said in October it would add to that total. It currently participates in exchanges in 34 states and covers 795,000 people

A month after announcing its latest exchange expansion, UnitedHealth started voicing second thoughts. The insurer said in November that it would decide by the first half of this year whether to even participate in the market for 2017.

Insurers say they have struggled, in particular, with customers who have signed up for coverage outside regular enrollment windows and then dumped expensive claims on their books, a problem the government has said it would address.

A dozen nonprofit health insurance cooperatives created by the ACA to sell coverage on the exchanges have already folded, and the survivors all lost millions last year.

Other publicly traded insurers like Aetna have said that they have lost money on this business as well. But some companies, like Molina Healthcare, have said they have managed to turn a profit from the exchanges.

Analysts expect other insurers to also trim their exchange participation in 2017, especially if they continue to struggle with high costs.

Iran Still Complains, White House Complies

Posted on April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 by Denise Simon

Where Iran’s Complaint About Banking Integration Misses the Mark

Levitt/WSJ: The governor of Iran’s central bank warned last week that failure to do more to integrate Iranian banks into the global economy could jeopardize the international agreement over Tehran’s nuclear program. The onus is on Washington and its allies to reassure banks that doing business in Iran is fine, Valiollah Seif said in a speech Friday at the Council on Foreign Relations. He said tellingly little about Iran’s efforts to change an environment businesses are wary of investing in, underscoring the discrepancy between Iran’s view of the nuclear deal and other international perceptions.

Mr. Seif complained that “almost nothing” has been done to reintegrate Iran into the global economy since implementation of the deal was announced in January. “Unless serious efforts are made by our partners,” he said, “in my view, they have not honored their obligations.”

Treasury official Adam Szubin said on Wednesday that Washington is not standing in the way of permissible business activities involving Iran. Some of the reasons entities might be wary of doing business there include rampant corruption, as Transparency International has documented, and the extent to which Iran’s banking sector is out of step with international banking norms, as my Washington Institute colleague Patrick Clawson has written.

“Effective implementation of the agreement,” Mr. Seif said, must be done “in such a way that Iran’s economic and business activities will be facilitated.” Otherwise, the deal “breaks up on its own terms,” he said.

Iran seems to expect the Obama administration to provide benefits beyond those in the nuclear deal, including access to the U.S. financial system and the ability to change into dollars foreign currency transactions through U.S.-based banks. U.S. officials say that neither demand will be met.

We live in a “post-sanctions environment,” Mr. Seif said. This ignores the fact that sanctions remain in place over Iran’s efforts to sponsor terrorism; its ballistic missile program; and its human rights abuses, which include executing minors and persecuting religious minorities.

Mr. Seif appeared to dismiss concerns about those activities as old hat. “If, according to our partners, it is our conduct which prevents international banks from engaging in business with us, they were fully aware of our conduct before signing. … We have not changed.”

That Iran has not changed is at the core of its problem, but that’s not how Mr. Seif seemed to see it. Asked about the risks of unwittingly doing business with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is still targeted by Treasury sanctions, Mr. Seif said potential investors could engage Iranian companies that run checks to determine who they would be doing business with. The use of Iranian companies to hide the IRGC’s involvement in business activities has been documented by the Treasury Department. And using in-country third parties to perform customer due diligence is seen as high-risk by international bodies that govern banking transactions.

The bottom line is that Iran has yet to curb or stop the illicit conduct that makes it a pariah state and a financial risk. It enacted a law against terrorist financing last July, but that’s done little to calm banks’ fears because its government continues to support terrorism. Until those behaviors change, banks are likely to continue to see prohibitive reputational, regulatory, and other risks to doing business there. And the only country that can do anything about that is Iran.

ALSO IN THINK TANK:

What the U.S. Has and Hasn’t Learned From Imposing Sanctions

On Iran Sanctions, Mixed News–and Warnings for Potential Investors

*****

Bloomberg: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said international banks remain wary of U.S. regulations and need “reassurances” that they can resume business with his nation even after its nuclear deal with world powers.

Zarif, speaking in New York ahead of a Tuesday meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, said talks with his counterpart were necessary to follow up on the implementation of the agreement on the U.S. side.

The deal’s aim “was to not have the U.S. intervene in Iran’s relations with most other countries,” the Iranian Students’ News Agency cited Zarif as saying. “We should prevent past U.S. regulations from being obstacles to most financial institutions in Europe and Asia having banking relations with Iran.”

Iranian central bank Governor Valiollah Seif voiced similar sentiments last week, telling Bloomberg Television that the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control should issue guidelines encouraging European banks to be more receptive to Iran. Seif met Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Thursday during the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in Washington. More from Bloomberg.

See Who Does Exploit Offshore Tax Havens

Posted on April 19, 2016April 19, 2016 by Denise Simon

Offshore investment is among the murkiest sectors of the financial world. That’s by design — keeping money offshore can help shield money from tax authorities, obscure its origin and conceal the genuine owners. There are many legitimate reasons for opening an offshore banks account. Wealthy people do it to better manage their investment portfolios or protect their assets. Offshore accounts can also help the rich pay less tax — legally.

However, offshore accounts are also the lynchpin in many illegal tax avoidance schemes. Owners go to great lengths to conceal the existence of these accounts from their home governments, and they are often helped by lax disclosure rules in offshore tax havens.

Investors caught trying to hide their accounts can face steep penalties. More here from CNN.

US corporations have $1.4tn hidden in tax havens, claims Oxfam report

Charity analysis of the 50 biggest US businesses claims Apple have $181bn held offshore, while General Electric has $119bn and Microsoft $108bn

Guardian: US corporate giants such as Apple, Walmart and General Electric have stashed $1.4tn (£980bn) in tax havens, despite receiving trillions of dollars in taxpayer support, according to a report by anti-poverty charity Oxfam.

The sum, larger than the economic output of Russia, South Korea and Spain, is held in an “opaque and secretive network” of 1,608 subsidiaries based offshore, said Oxfam.

The charity’s analysis of the financial affairs of the 50 biggest US corporations comes amid intense scrutiny of tax havens following the leak of the Panama Papers.

And the charity said its report, entitled Broken at the Top was a further illustration of “massive systematic abuse” of the global tax system.

Technology giant Apple, the world’s second biggest company, topped Oxfam’s league table, with some $181bn held offshore in three subsidiaries.

Boston-based conglomerate General Electric, which Oxfam said has received $28bn in taxpayer backing, was second with $119bn stored in 118 tax haven subsidiaries.

Computing firm Microsoft was third with $108bn, in a top 10 that also included pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer, Google’s parent company Alphabet and Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company not owned by an oil-producing state.

Oxfam contrasted the $1.4tn held offshore with the $1tn paid in tax by the top 50 US firms between 2008 and 2014.

It pointed out that the companies had also enjoyed a combined $11.2tn in federal loans, bailouts and loan guarantees during the same period.

Overall, the use of tax havens allowed the US firms to reduce their effective tax rate on $4tn of profits from the US headline rate of 35% to an average of 26.5% between 2008 and 2014.

The charity said this had helped firms spend billions on an “army” of lobbyists calling for greater state support in the form of loans, bailouts and guarantees, funded by taxpayers.

The top 50 US firms spent $2.6bn between 2008 and 2014 on lobbying the US government, Oxfam said.

“For every $1 spent on lobbying, these 50 companies collectively received $130 in tax breaks and more than $4,000 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts,” said Oxfam.

Robbie Silverman, senior tax adviser at Oxfam said: “Yet again we have evidence of a massive systematic abuse of the global tax system.

“We can’t go on with a situation where the rich and powerful are not paying their fair share of tax, leaving the rest of us to foot the bill.

“Governments across the globe must come together now to end the era of tax havens.”

Oxfam estimates that tax avoidance by US corporations costs the world’s largest economy some $111bn a year, but said it was also fuelling the global wealth divide by draining $100bn from the poorest countries.

“Tax dodging practised by corporations and enabled by federal policymakers contributes to dangerous inequality that is undermining our social fabric and hindering economic growth,” the report said.

Oxfam also singled out British overseas territories such as Bermuda for their popularity with US firms seeking to slash their tax bill by “profit-shifting”.

In 2012, said Oxfam, US firms reported $80bn of profit in Bermuda, more than their combined reported profits in Japan, China, Germany and France, four of the world’s five largest economies.

The charity called on the US government to pass the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, including a requirement for firms to report their tax contribution on a country-by-country basis, there is only one caution when doing this though and that is to not be mistaken that a country is a tax haven when in fact it isn’t, for example many people refer to Andorra as the tax haven of Andorra however Andorra is not actually a tax haven, one way to be sure whether a country is a legally classed tax haven is refer to the FATF blacklist, it lists every country that is recognised by government as an actual tax haven.

Country-by-country reporting has been recommended by a host of non-governmental organisations and charities to prevent companies from artificially shifting their income out of the poorest countries.

Hillary Granted Big $$ to Yunus and Grameen Bank

Posted on April 18, 2016April 18, 2016 by Denise Simon

Pssst, Stanley Ann Dunham, Barack’s mother also had historical connections to Grameen Bank. The audio and article are found here.

Thank you Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, for your wonderful speech last Friday, January 23rd.

We have, with President Obama, someone who believes in development and diplomacy. Coming to the State Department yesterday sent a very strong signal. A few of you may even know, as I mentioned in my testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee, that the President’s late mother was an expert in microfinance and worked in Indonesia. I have been involved in microfinance since 1983, when I first met Muhammad Yunus and had Muhammad come to see us in Arkansas so that we could use the lessons from the Grameen Bank in our own country. I was actually looking forward to being on a panel with the President’s mother in Beijing on microfinance.

You were very warmly welcomed by foreign service workers who have been struggling through eight years of the US losing its moral footing in the world. You brought up a favorite subject, microcredit, and two of my favorite people (along with yourself), President Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham Soetero, and Muhammad Yunus, my “boss.”

One of those helping President Obama’s late mother organize that meeting was Lawrence Yanovitch now heading up Poverty issues at the Gates Foundation. He spoke to me about his work with Ann Dunham Soetero when in Paris last year. This Obama victory is also a victory for her and her work with microcredit.

Microcredit is not the only answer but it surely should be an important part of not only how we restructure our own American economy, but how we support others around the world.

Microcredit helps women. Microcredit helps fight against fundamentalism and violence against women, children, immigrant communities, and makes the business-model approach to ending poverty a human one.

Muhammad Yunus’ work with the Grameen Bank has now made it to the US with Grameen America. Organizations such as the Grameen Foundation have been replicating this model around the world.

President Obama’s late mother “got it,” Hillary Clinton “got it”…years before others. Now let’s grow it at home and around the world. It’s one banking system that is actually working. What other bank these days is made up mostly of women borrowers and can claim a 98-99% payback rate? Surely not Citibank!

EXCLUSIVE: Disgraced Clinton Donor Got $13M In State Dept Grants Under Hillary

Thank you to DailyCaller News Foundation: Hillary Clinton’s Department of State awarded at least $13 million in grants, contracts and loans to her longtime friend and Clinton Foundation donor Muhammad Yunus, despite his being ousted in 2011 as managing director of the Bangladesh-based Grameen Bank amid charges of corruption, according to an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

The tax funds were given to Yunus through 18 separate U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) award transactions listed by the federal contracting site USAspending.gov.

They highlight how Clinton mixed official government business with Clinton Foundation donors. Yunus gave between $100,000 to $300,000 to the foundation, according to the Clinton Foundation website.

Groups allied to Yunus received an additional $11 million from USAID, according to the contracting website. Yunus had business relationships with all of them.

For more than 30 years, Yunus oversaw the distribution of Grameen Bank “micro-credit loans” to the poor to set up small businesses. He was eventually regarded as a saint among many anti-poverty activists.

But he also got a big helping hand over the three decades Bill and Hillary Clinton actively promoted him and repeatedly showcased him as a celebrity figure at major Clinton Foundation functions.

The former president is credited with launching a personal lobbying campaign to press the Nobel Committee to award its peace prize to the Yunus. It did so in 2006.

Secretary Clinton’s mixing of official work with foundation donors is reportedly the focus of a second, less publicized FBI public corruption investigation of the former secretary of state. The more widely known FBI probe focuses on her use of a private email server located in her New York residence to conduct official government business.

“Presumably if The Daily Caller News Foundation has this information, then the FBI has it,” said Robert T. Hosko, former assistant director of the Bureau’s criminal division. “Certainly, the FBI would want to know the nature of these relationships,” he told TheDCNF.

“That’s precisely the sort of thing that the FBI would be looking at and should be looking at to determine whether there’s an official act of corruption,” he said.

The FBI declined comment, saying, “we generally do not comment on whether or not we’re conducting a particular investigation.”

Clinton was not shy about using her post as America’s chief diplomat on behalf of Yunus and Grameen Bank when the Bangladesh government announced an investigation into multiple allegations of financial mismanagement by the political activist.

Clinton rocked the Bangladeshi political establishment when she publicly intervened on behalf of Yunus in 2011 as the South Asian government prepared to launch its probe.

With Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni — also a woman — at her side, Clinton said at a State Department news conference that “we have expressed directly to the government our concern and hope that the Grameen Bank … is able to continue to function productively on behalf of the people of Bangladesh.”

Emails from Clinton’s private server disclose that Bill and Hillary Clinton closely monitored the Bangladesh government’s investigation of Yunus, who is a high-profile fixture at most of the Clinton Foundation’s major gatherings. The foundation features him at 37 places on its website.

David Bossie, president of the conservative activist group Citizens United and a long-time Clinton critic, called for the FBI to look into possible conflicts of interest linked to the long association between Yunus and the Clintons.

“The mixing of State Department and U.S. government business with Clinton Foundation donors and interests is a prime example of what the FBI could be investigating in addition to the private email server setup.” Bossie told TheDCNF.

The Clinton-Yunus relationship dates from Bill Clinton’s tenure as Arkansas governor, when he and Hillary fell in love with the concept of micro-credit loans. Yunus, then a Bangladesh economist, has championed the micro-credit cause through Grameen Bank since 1978.

Things went terribly wrong for Yunus and Grameen Bank about five years ago when a number of independent authorities decided to take a closer look at the bank and the 50 inter-related enterprises Yunus created, most of which operate in Third World countries where there is little financial oversight.

Former Secretary Clinton and her husband closely followed Yunus’ mounting problems. A June 11, 2012 email from Amitabh Desai, the foundation’s foreign policy director, for example, alerted Hillary Clinton of a Yunus response to the Bangladesh investigation.

“In case you haven’t seen it already, WJC wanted HRC and you to see this,” Desai said in the email routed through Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, and Huma Abedin, her deputy chief of staff. “WJC” is Bill Clinton and “HRC” is Hillary Clinton.

Hosko said the email “is potentially an indicator of the co-mingling of state business with the Clinton Foundation. It is very concerning.”

Clinton’s aid to Yunus also included 18 grants, contracts and loans awarded to two of his America-based foundations, the Grameen Foundation USA and Grameen America, according to USASpending.gov.

The awards, totaling $13 million, were issued by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the development arm of the State Department, beginning when Clinton became secretary of state. Another $11 million in federal funds went to organizations allied with Yunus.

When asked to explain the Yunus grants and loans, USAID Spokesman Raphael Cook said the agency didn’t have the “manpower” to respond to questions about the transactions.

Other federal agencies also opened their coffers to Yunus after Clinton entered the administration. The Department of Treasury awarded a $600,000 grant directly to Grameen America under a fund designed to boost financial institutions in community development. A Treasury Department spokesman declined to provide any details beyond the fact the funds were for activities in New York.

A series of Small Business Administration grants to Grameen America also began in July 2011, totaling $934,000. Those grants were for “salaries and expenses” for the foundation to operate its New York offices where Clinton once a U.S. senator.

In addition to being revered among anti-poverty activists, Yunus was popular among elements of the Bangladesh military. When a group of generals overthrew the Bangladesh government in January 2007, Yunus considered establishing a new political party to lead the new military-led government, thereby legitimizing the coup.

The BBC reported April 7, 2007, that “the army would sponsor Nobel Peace prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunus as a new leader.”

Sabir Mustafa, the BBC’s Bengali Service editor, added that “Dr. Yunus is still viewed as a credible candidate by elements in the army.” In the end, Yunus opted not to create the new party.

The Grameen Foundation, USA did not respond to a request for comment from TheDCNF. Neither did spokesmen for the Clinton presidential campaign or the Clinton Foundation.