Category Archives: Legislation

Panama Papers Snares Another Clinton Tax Haven?

Posted on by

First the Panama Papers revealed the Podesta Group. John and Tony Podesta, the founders have connections to a Russian bank which is blacklisted. John Podesta is the architect of the Hillary presidential campaign.

  John Podesta, a real operative in the White House for years.

John Podesta was an Obama advisor and upon leaving that role, he said his greatest regret not revealing more about UFO’s. Sheesh…

The mailman must be real busy and overworked at the address below.

This Delaware Address Is Home to 200,000 Shell Companies—Including Hillary Clinton’s

In wake of ‘Panama Papers’ scandal, renewed interest in tax avoidance efforts

FreeBeacon: The address “1209 North Orange Street” in Wilmington, Del., has become known in recent years as the epicenter of U.S. corporate secrecy. The squat, split-level building is the official address of over 285,000 companies, many of which are looking to take advantage of Delaware’s Panama-like secrecy rules, tax incentives, and business-friendly case law.

In the wake of the recent “Panama Papers” scandal, this unassuming brick office has received renewed scrutiny from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Telegraph, and advocates for corporate tax reform.

But one of its tenants may come as a surprise—a company owned by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Hillary and Bill Clinton quietly set up two shell companies listed at “1209 North Orange Street” in 2008 and 2013, the Washington Free Beacon has found. The names of the companies, but not their location, were first made public in tax filings released by Hillary Clinton last year.

According to records, one of the Clintons’ “1209 North Orange Street” companies is WJC, LLC, which was set up by Bill Clinton in 2008 as a pass-through for his consulting fees.

Another company at the same location, ZFS Holdings, LLC, was set up in February 2013, one week after Hillary Clinton left the State Department. Hillary Clinton received $5.5 million from her book publisher, Simon & Schuster, through the company.

The “1209 North Orange Street” building is the headquarters for the Corporation Trust Company. The firm acts as a registered agent for thousands of corporations that are not actually located in Delaware, including the Clintons’ companies.

Anti-secrecy advocates say the building is prime evidence that Delaware has become a corporate haven that’s comparable to more well-known, offshore locales.

“If you imagined a building with 1,000 corporations in it, you’d imagine a building like the Empire State building,” said Richard Phillips, a senior policy analyst with Citizens for Tax Justice. “But apparently 285,000 companies claim [1209 North Orange Street] is their address.”

“What this shows is this is not really the address of companies that are doing real business. This is the address of a lot of companies that are just shell companies,” he added. “In this case, it doesn’t even look like they have mailboxes. They just claim that address as the places they’re doing business, even though they’re not doing business there.”

Similar registered agents have come under scrutiny in recent years. While campaigning in 2008, President Obama slammed the “Ugland House,” a five-story building in the Cayman Islands that is reportedly home to over 18,000 companies.

“That’s either the biggest building in the world, or the biggest tax scam on record,” said Obama.

The Clinton campaign declined to comment on why the Clintons, who live in New York and have no evident residential ties to Delaware, set up companies in the state. But the presidential candidate isn’t alone. Experts say Delaware is the most popular place to register a company in the United States, due in part to its established system of business case law and tax incentives for intellectual property and real estate holdings.

One of the biggest draws may be the state’s lack of disclosure requirements—businesses can be created completely anonymously, allowing the owners to avoid public detection and even hide income from U.S. authorities.

According to advocates for corporate tax reform, Delaware’s laws rival well-known secrecy havens like the Cayman Islands and Panama.

“General secrecy laws and the ability of these corporations to hide the identities of those who own it, that’s what makes [Delaware] an onshore tax haven, and that’s what makes it just as bad as the Cayman Islands,” said Phillips.

Hillary Clinton has promised to crack down on tax havens on the campaign trail. Referring to the Panama Papers last Wednesday, Clinton condemned “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere.”

The Clinton Foundation also has three shell companies in Delaware, according to its amended financial disclosures released last year.

One is the Acceso Fund, LLC, which was registered by the Corporation Trust Company at 1209 North Orange Street in 2009. The Clinton Foundation has used the company to channel money to its Colombia-based private equity fund, Fondo Acceso.

The private equity fund, which is run out of the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office, has invested in telecom and food processing companies in Colombia, the Free Beacon reported last November.

Another Clinton Foundation company, Acceso Worldwide Fund, Inc., was registered in 2013 by the Corporation Services Company, located in Wilmington, Delaware.

A third company, the Haiti Development Fund, LLC, was registered in 2010 by National Corporate Research, Ltd, located in Dover.

In Delaware, limited liability companies such as WJC, LLC, and ZFS, LLC, are not required to file annual statements disclosing their directors or owners. The Clintons also registered both companies in New York after they were established.

There is no evidence the Clintons are using the entities for any nefarious purposes, and it is perfectly legal for non-residents to set up corporations in Delaware. But even if corporations stay within the law, critics say Delaware shell companies can sometimes be used to legally circumvent taxes in other states.

According to a report published last December by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Delaware’s popularity as a hub for shell companies is “responsible for the loss of billions of dollars in revenue in other U.S. states.”

“It’s legal tax avoidance,” said Phillips. “We would say it’s immoral, or not the best thing for the country.”

Anti-secrecy advocates also say the laws make it easier for criminals to evade federal taxes or finance terrorism, all under the radar of the public and U.S. authorities.

“Some anonymous shell companies have financed terrorism and supported corruption and human trafficking and Delaware is a traditional hub for creating these fake companies,” said Andrew Hanauer, campaign director at the Jubilee USA Network.

Jubilee USA Network and other groups have been advocating for legislative reform. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), and Rep. Carolyn Maloney recently put forward legislation that would force U.S. companies to disclose their actual owners.

The Clinton campaign did comment on whether Hillary Clinton supports the legislation. The campaign also did not comment on whether she or Bill Clinton have any other companies registered in Delaware.

But the concerns over corporate secrecy and tax avoidance have trickled into the Democratic presidential race, with Sen. Bernie Sanders incorporating it into his stump speeches. Clinton has also railed against tax havens on the trail and vowed to take action.

“Some of you may have just heard about these disclosures about outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere,” said Clinton during a campaign event last Wednesday.

“Now some of this behavior is clearly against the law, and anyone who violates the law anywhere should be held accountable,” she added. “But it’s also scandalous how much is actually legal.”

Visa Waiver Program to be Suspended or Terminated?

Posted on by

EU may require visas from Americans and Canadians: EU source

Reuters: The European Union executive is considering whether to make U.S. and Canadian citizens apply for visas before traveling to the bloc in a move that could raise tensions as Brussels negotiates a free trade pact with Washington.

The European Commission will debate the issue, prompted by U.S. and Canadian refusals to waive their visa requirements for holders of some EU member states’ passports, at a meeting next Tuesday. That is just over a week before U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Europe on a visit that will include discussions on trade.

“A political debate and decision is obviously needed on such an important issue. But there is a real risk that the EU would move towards visas for the two,” an EU source said.

Washington and Ottawa both demand visas before traveling for Romanians and Bulgarians, whose states joined the EU in 2007. The United States also excludes Croatians, Cypriots and Poles from a visa waiver scheme offered to other EU citizens.

Europe’s Schengen area, comprising 26 states, most of which are in the 28-member EU, has a common visa system. Poland is a member of Schengen, and the other four states are due to join.

Trade negotiations between Brussels and Washington are at a crucial point since both sides believe their transatlantic agreement, known as TTIP, stands a better chance of passing before President Barack Obama leaves the White House in January.

Obama is due to visit Britain before meeting German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a trade fair in Hanover on April 24.

Blah blah blah —>>>

U.S. Visa Waiver Program

DHS: The Visa Waiver Program (VWP), administered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in consultation with the State Department, permits citizens of 38 countries[1] to travel to the United States for business or tourism for stays of up to 90 days without a visa.  In return, those 38 countries must permit U.S. citizens and nationals to travel to their countries for a similar length of time without a visa for business or tourism purposes.  Since its inception in 1986, the VWP has evolved into a comprehensive security partnership with many of America’s closest allies.  The VWP utilizes a risk-based, multi-layered approach to detect and prevent terrorists, serious criminals, and other mala fide actors from traveling to the United States. This approach incorporates regular, national-level risk assessments concerning the impact of each program country’s participation in the VWP on U.S. national security and law enforcement interests.  It also includes comprehensive vetting of individual VWP travelers prior to their departure for the United States, upon arrival at U.S. ports of entry, and during any subsequent air travel within the United States.

Economic Benefits

A strong and vibrant economy is essential to our national security. The United States welcomed approximately 20 million VWP travelers in FY 2014 who, according to the Department of Commerce, spent approximately $84 billion on goods and services.  VWP travelers injected nearly $231 million a day into local economies across the country.

Initial and Continuing Designation Requirements

The eligibility requirements for a country’s designation in the VWP are defined in Section 217 of the Immigration and Nationality Act as amended by the Secure Travel and Counterterrorism Partnership Act of 2007.  Pursuant to existing statute, the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, may designate into the VWP a country that:

  1. Has an annual nonimmigrant visitor visa (i.e., B visa) refusal rate of less than three percent, or a lower average percentage over the previous two fiscal years;
  2. Accepts the repatriation of its citizens, former citizens, and nationals ordered removed from the United States within three weeks of the final order of removal;
  3. Enters into an agreement to report lost and stolen passport information to the United States via INTERPOL or other means designated by the Secretary;
  4. Enters into an agreement with the United States to share terrorism and serious criminal information;
  5. Issues electronic, machine-readable passports with biometric identifiers;
  6. Undergoes a DHS-led evaluation of the effects of the country’s VWP designation on the security, law enforcement, and immigration enforcement interests of the United States; and
  7. Undergoes, in conjunction with the DHS-led evaluation, an independent intelligence assessment produced by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis (on behalf of the Director of National Intelligence).

 

Fleecing Taxpayers, $137 Billion

Posted on by

GAO Report: Federal Government Paid $136.7 Billion in Improper Payments

IndependentJournal: The United States federal government spent $136.7 billion in improper payments last year, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

In the report released Wednesday, the GAO outlines how 121 different government programs doled out a record amount of improper payments, according to 22 different agencies.

The report further notes that only three programs accounted for three-fourths of the improper payments:

“While these 121 programs span various agencies across the federal government, improper payment estimates for Medicare, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit accounted for more than 76 percent of the governmentwide estimate…”

According to the GAO, $32.3 billion, or 23.6 percent, of the improper payments were from other government programs.

Source: GAO

Source: GAO

This is just the latest report of improper payments, which remains an increasing problem. Since 2003, the GAO has reported the cumulative increases, which have risen more than $100 billion in the past 13 years.

The GAO wants to curb the massive streak of improper payments. Their report included specific suggestions:

“[The GAO has] identified various strategies and recommendations that could help to reduce improper payments in these key programs, including requiring states to conduct audits of payments to and by Medicaid managed care organizations.”

The report also claims that efforts are under way to address the various problems, but there is still a long way to go.

“Until the federal government has implemented effective processes to determine the full extent to which improper payments occur and has taken appropriate actions across entities and programs to effectively reduce improper payments, it will not have reasonable assurance that the use of federal funds is adequately safeguarded,” the report noted.

A report was produced in 2014 where millions were paid to federal employees to stay home and not work.

Examiner: The federal government has shelled out more than $700 million in paid leave to more than 57,000 employees who were home from work for time periods stretching from one month to three years, a Government Accountability Office report has found.

In a 62-page report published Monday, the GAO analyzed why so many federal employees were home and getting paid for such long periods of time and they discovered a variety of reasons.

In many cases, employees were home awaiting the outcome of investigations into alleged misconduct and criminal actions. Some racked up paid leave for “physical fitness activities,” and others were away from work seeking professional development. Employees also took paid leave for “recuperation” from overseas work.

Hundreds of federal employees remained at home, collecting a paycheck, for years.

If you are so inclined to go deeper, how about this well researched summary noting the collusion and blurred lines of federal employees working on official time versus union time. Thanks to Capital Research for this one.

Summary: Few Americans are aware that, through their tax dollars, they finance labor unions through a practice known as “official time” or “release time.” The cost to taxpayers is skyrocketing, while—thanks to Obama administration stonewalling—accountability is declining. Fortunately, reformers are working to rein in this costly, corrupt practice.

Obama Commuting Sentences, Take Away his Pen

Posted on by

I am not too sure we should be surprised, this is a global mission of Barack Obama for terrorists and state sponsors of terror like Cuba and Iran. There are no consequences and following law much less treaties is something Obama is loathe to do. He simply uses his pen to sign clemency notifications or waivers.

BaltimoreSun: President Barack Obama commuted the prison sentences of 61 drug offenders on Wednesday including more than a third serving life sentences, working to give new energy to calls for overhauling the U.S. criminal justice system.

All of the inmates are serving time for drug possession, intent to sell or related crimes. Most are nonviolent offenders, although a few were also charged with firearms violations. Obama’s commutation shortens their sentences, with most of the inmates set to be released on July 28.

Obama, in a letter to the inmates receiving commutations, said the presidential power to grand commutations and pardons “embodies the basic belief in our democracy that people deserve a second chance after having made a mistake in their lives that led to a conviction under our laws.”

In a bid to call further attention to the issue, Obama planned to meet Wednesday with people whose sentences were previously commuted under Obama or Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. The White House said the former inmates would share their experiences about the challenges of re-entering society after incarceration.

One of the inmates, Jesse Webster of Chicago, is serving a life term for intent to sell cocaine and filing false tax returns. Another, Byron McDade of Bowie, Md., got 27 years for cocaine-related charges as well. In both cases, judges in the cases later said publicly it was too harsh, though sentencing guidelines often prevent judges from being more lenient. Webster and McDade will both be released later this year.

****

He is not stopping either.

Politico: White House promises to speed up clemency program

White House Counsel Neil Eggleston rebutted critics who’ve questioned whether the administration is truly committed to its clemency initiative.

Obama has commuted the sentences of 248 federal prisoners, mostly low-level drug offenders affected by mandatory minimum drug sentences, including 61 on Wednesday. While that’s more than the past six presidents combined, the pace of commutations since the Justice Department announced its clemency initiative two years ago has disappointed advocates. The White House has promised to pick up the pace, but so far, acceleration has been halting. That’s about to change, Eggleston said on Friday at a POLITICO Playbook Breakfast.

“No more eating, sleeping or drinking until we get all these commutations done,” Eggleston recalled telling his staff after Obama met on Wednesday with people who’d had their sentences commuted in the past.

So far, Obama’s commutations have come in batches released every few months. December’s was the biggest set to date, at 95. At that time, too, administration officials promised more speed. On Friday, Eggleston said he believes the “infrastructure is now very much in place” to file and process clemency petitions.

“You’re going to start seeing a lot more very quickly,” Eggleston said. “I think you’re going to start seeing them on a more regular basis. I did want to get a little out of the notion that each one had to be more than the one before because that’s sort of an artificial floor.”

Despite interest from tens of thousands of prisoners, it has turned out there aren’t so many federal prisoners who meet the initiative’s strict criteria for clemency, which include serving for at least 10 years and strong standards for nonviolence.

The Clemency Project 2014, a coalition of volunteer lawyers, said it has reviewed 30,000 requests for clemency and filed nearly 600 petitions, with another 100 nearing completion. (So far, most of Obama’s commutations did not originate with the Clemency Project, but their petitions are making up an increasingly substantial percentage of the total, and Eggleston praised their efforts on Friday.)

Eggleston also directly responded to complaints lodged by former Pardon Attorney, Deborah Leff, whose January resignation letter was obtained by USA Today.

Leff complained that her office did not have enough resources to fulfill the goals of the clemency initiative and that she did not have access to the White House counsel’s office.

“The pardon attorney’s office has a little more resources, which is good, and I have regular dealings with the pardon attorney directly, so to the extent that Ms. Leff was complaining about that, that was solved. Actually, it was solved before she left,” Eggleston said. “And so I think that we’re moving forward in a pretty good way here.”

Eggleston also rejected “out of hand” an argument — floated most recently in a New York Times editorial — that there can’t be meaningful pardon reform until that agency is moved out of the Department of Justice, because federal prosecutors are trained to put people in jail, not get them out.

“They’re quite committed to this,” Eggleston said of Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates and the acting pardon attorney, Robert Zauzmer.

“I was a prosecutor in the Southern District of New York in the 1980s, prosecuted a lot of drug crimes,” Eggleston said, “and I’m quite committed to this also.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/04/white-house-clemency-speeding-up-221467#ixzz44b5QJfZs
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Senator Leahy’s Written Challenge to Israel on Human Rights

Posted on by

Is this senator nuts or has he in fact been void of news or foreign policy updates provided to Congress? Both perhaps? And some fellow senators appear to have the same problem.

What is worse, the letter is addressed to SecState, John Kerry who is quite anti-Israel and for sure anti-Egypt but perhaps the White House has a few in the senate taking on this written challenge…..

Check this out…..

First comes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s response:

PM Netanyahu’s Response to US Senator Patrick Leahy’s Letter (Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)  

Following is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to US Senator Patrick Leahy’s letter:  

“The IDF and the Israel Police do not engage in executions. Israel’s soldiers and police officers defend themselves and innocent civilians with the highest moral standards against bloodthirsty terrorists who come to murder them.  

Where is the concern for the human rights of the many Israelis who’ve been murdered and maimed by these savage terrorists?  

This letter should have been addressed instead to those who incite youngsters to commit cruel acts of terrorism.”

Then we need to ask some deeper questions regarding the influence some communist lobby groups have in Congress like American Friends of Service Committee.  Perhaps this organization is also tied or maybe funded by Iran?

Leahy asked State Dept. to investigate Israeli human rights ‘violations’

160329_patrick_leahy_1160_gty.jpg

Politico: Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and 10 House members have asked the Obama administration to investigate claims that the Israeli and Egyptian security forces have committed “gross violations of human rights” — allegations that if proven truei could affect U.S. military aid to the countries.

In a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry dated Feb. 17, the lawmakers list several examples of suspected human rights abuses, including reports of extrajudicial killings by Israeli and Egyptian military forces, as well as forced disappearances in Egypt. The letter also points to the 2013 massacre in Egypt’s Rab’aa Square, which left nearly 1,000 people dead as the military cracked down on protesters, as worthy of examination.

Leahy’s signature is particularly noteworthy because his name is on a law that conditions U.S. military aid to countries on whether their security forces are committing abuses.

“In light of these reports we request that you act promptly to determine their credibility and whether they trigger the Leahy Law and, if so, take appropriate action called for under the law,” the signatories state in the letter, which was obtained by POLITICO on Tuesday evening from an organization that provided input for it.

The Leahy Law’s application and impact have been difficult to measure, and while U.S. funding to a particular foreign military unit may be cut off as a result of the law, overall U.S. military aid to the country need not be stopped.

The letter’s real impact may be political: Israel’s unusual, if not unprecedented inclusion with Egypt on such an inquiry is likely to rile Israel’s allies in Washington, who bristle at the notion that the Middle East’s only established democracy could be lumped in with a notorious human rights abuser like Egypt.

Though it was sent to Kerry well beforehand, the timing of the letter’s release comes just days after an Israeli soldier was filmed executing a Palestinian prisoner at close range – setting off fury in the Arab world and launching a military disciplinary process that has many on the Israeli right fuming.

Leahy spokesman David Carle downplayed Israel’s inclusion in the request, noting that the Vermont Democrat “has always said” that the law that bears his name “should be uniformly applied.”

Egypt’s inclusion may be no easier to navigate, as the military-backed Egyptian regime has proved a vexing problem for President Barack Obama as he has sought to balance the U.S.’s traditional concern for human rights with its need to maintain Cairo as an ally in an increasingly chaotic Middle East.

The U.S. is so wary of losing Egypt’s friendship it declined to call the military’s 2013 takeover over of the elected Muslim Brotherhood government a coup — a label that would have triggered a legal obligation to suspend military aid. Israel, meanwhile, remains America’s closest ally in the region despite tense relations between Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and it has received billions in U.S. military assistance over the years.

The letter questions the current mechanisms that the U.S. has to monitor its military assistance to both countries and asks for clarity on how the various divisions of the State Department “document and determine the credibility of information related to allegations of gross violations of human rights by foreign security forces.”

“According to information we have received, the manner in which U.S. military assistance has been provided to Israel and Egypt, since the Camp David Accords, including the delivery of assistance at the military service level, has created a unique situation that has hindered implementation of normal mechanisms for monitoring the use of such assistance,” the letter states.

A State Department spokesman said it would provide a comment later Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the letter was hailed by left-leaning organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, the National Lawyers Guild International Committee and others. These groups also provided input for the letter.

“Both Israel and Egypt receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid, and both countries’ security forces have opened fire on protesters with impunity. This letter from key members of Congress is an important first step in the right direction,” said Sunjeev Bery of Amnesty International USA.

Added Raed Jarrar of the American Friends Service Committee: “We call on the Department of State to investigate all the cases mentioned in the letter, and to provide Congress with a comprehensive answer.”

**** About American Friends of Service Committee as noted in part from Wikipedia:

For its anti-war, pro-immigration, and anti-capital punishment stances, the AFSC receives criticism from many socially conservative groups. Often the criticisms allege that the AFSC has supported Communist activities.[citation needed]

Throughout much of the group’s history the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government agencies have monitored the work of this and many other similar organizations.[17][18][19]

Since the 1970s, criticism has also come from liberals within the Society of Friends, who charge that AFSC has drifted from its Quaker roots and has become indistinguishable from other political pressure groups. Quakers expressed concern with AFSC’s abolition of their youth work camps during the 1960s and what some saw as a decline of Quaker participation in the organization. The criticisms became prominent after a gathering of Friends General Conference in Richmond, Indiana, in the summer of 1979 when many Friends joined with prominent leaders, such as Kenneth Boulding, to call for a firmer Quaker orientation toward public issues.[20] Some Jews have accused AFSC of having an anti-Jewish bias.[21] Jacob Neusner calls the Committee “the most militant and aggressive of Christian anti-Israel groups.”[